Lightspeed “Legs” by A.M. Maris
“Infinite Wishes” by Kristine Kathryn Rusch
“The Age of Cancer” by Vajra Chandrasekera
“Fragments of the Whole” by Brooke Bolander
“What Do You Mean the Nanobots Formed a Union??” by Joel W. D. Buxton
“Of All Who Dream” by Adelehin Ijasan
“Ladd’s Robot Repair” by David Anaxagoras
“The Goddess of Not Enough” by Susan Palwick
Reviewed by Budd Trippet
“Legs” by A.M. Maris is a novelette about a creature made in a lab. The story is told from the viewpoint of the creature, her owner is Dennis, and the story is told from her point of view. She has multiple legs and tails, a hard carapace that is like armor and spikes underneath. She adores Dennis and he loves and trains her. He teaches her to shield and to attack. She eats a neighbor’s chicken and the neighbor is horrified to see her. Dennis starts taking her to ‘playdates’ that are actually battles with other lab created creatures and she fights to the death opponents who are monsters. I felt sorry for the creature who adores Dennis even when he is angry and kicks her. She continues to grow and makes a nest of ripped linen where she lays an egg. Dennis is getting rich from the fifgts and from selling the eggs from Legs. A woman named Amelia comes into their lives. Legs does not like Amelia at first but Amelia is terrified at first and later comes to bond with Legs. Dennis buys a house with ten acres where Legs can run and roam without being seen by outsiders. Dennis is an angry abusive man and he abuses Amelia. Amelia cares for Legs, caring for her injuries from her fights. There are parts that are funny when viewed by Legs as she misunderstands humans and their behaviors. The story shows Legs, a monster, as a caring creature and the reader will identify with her. The story ends in terror and tragedy. This novelette was moving even though at times it was grotesque.
“Infinite Wishes” by Kristine Kathryn Rusch is a variation on the theme of fairies being able to grant wishes when captured. Rachel is the main character and is driven by guilt over her younger brother Ryan that she had accidentally pushed down some stairs stars when she was a toddler. Ryan is unable to walk and has been confined to a wheelchair due to his spine being shattered as a baby. Rachel finds a fairy glen and captures a fairy. To release herself, the fairy must grant 3 wishes. Rachel wishes that her brother could walk, with the second wish being for his life to be blessed with happiness. Rachel puzzles over the third wish. She is aware that she must choose extreme care in whatever she says, lest the last wish be wasted. She has a conversation with the fairy and learns that each wish that a fairy grants costs a part of the fairy’s life. Each wish that Rachel has asked for is for the benefit of others, yet she does not want the fairy to be further harmed, and infinite wishes would kill the fairy and the next fairy that follows the first and so on with each wish granted. Rachel is a kind person, and she grants the fairy release from punishment as her third wish. A story of caring and release from guilt.
“The Age of Cancer” by Vajra Chandrasekera The story begins with a passage from H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine wherein the time traveler sees a far future with humanity gone and the dominant species are giant crabs. The crabs see the time traveler in the machine as breathing extremely slowly. They see him as meat without a shell and since they are from the far future, they have access to knowledge of what has transpired in their distant past. They know the progress of all builders, from beavers and their dams to humans with their cities and towers. They know of the traveler and want to speak with him, but the man and machine are gone, still traveling to more distant futures. The crabs want to build a symbol that the traveler will see and know that there was indeed a golden era far into the future, an era built by the crab civilization. Alas, the traveler passes before the crabs can erect their monument to the traveler. The age of cancer is the era of crabs. The wording in this story is precise and evocative.
“Fragments of the Whole” by Brooke Bolander The main character is Lise, and the story starts out as she is applying for a job. The company policy is for each job applicant to undergo pre-employment conditioning before they are hired. Lise begins the conditioning therapy sessions with the company therapist. She had been orphaned at 8 and had been in therapy as a child as she grew. The different parts of her are represented by the influences that have helped her or frightened her. Her mind is presented like a garden with the ideas and feelings that help her to cope. There is Freddie Mercury, created from her teenage years, a Believer represented by a severely dressed man, a Skeptic who is a beautiful woman in a red dress, and there is Captain O’Briers, a Jackalope with antlers. The story has scenes where the different parts of Lise’s brain are attacked by The Construct, a conservatively dressed low key man, The Construct is the conditioning she is experiencing by her prospective employer. The Construct reaches each of Lise’s mental helpers she has created over the years. Each of her personal constructs is a different part of her personality. There are nightmares where she sees The Construct take over different parts of her personality. The battles between her constructs that occur in nightmares and in the recesses of her mind. In her dreams the younger part of Lise is her as a seven-year-old. The seven-year-old Lise is bold and called the Affective by the other parts of her mind that are being absorbed and converted by the company’s conditioning. It is the younger Lise that outsmarts The Construct and her personal constructs that have been converted and who keeps them all from conditioning her to be a bland compliant employee. The best parts of the story are the interactions between Lise’s personal constructs and The Construct. My personal favorite is Captain O’Briers, who portrays her fear and anger, her tough talking and aggressive nature. Captain O’Briers was created from an old book that she read as a child, a book on cryptozoology and the Believer construct came her source reading on cryptozoology as well as her UFOs and experimentation with Witchcraft as a teen. This novelette is full of action and reveals the process where many adults lose track of their childhood dreams as they take jobs to support self and family.
“What Do You Mean the Nanobots Formed a Union??” by Joel W. D. Buxton shows us a central character as a man who receives money in an inheritance who promptly buys ‘The Pro Nano Blitz Package.’ He gets an injection causing 20 percent of his body’s cells that are critical to immune function to be made of nanobots. The nanobots can repair the effects of hard drinking and poor diet so the man eats nothing but cheese, carbohydrates and candy ‘The Three C’s’. He can have unprotected sex, as he gets no STDs. The story is a dialog between the man and a lawyer and later by a Union representative. The man burns himself severely and gets an illegal nanobot injection that increases his nanobot density to 51%. The lawyer informs him that the nanobots have formed a union and he is now a minority shareholder in his own body. The nanobots want a six-day week and be able to take his body for a ride every other weekend. The result is that the days the nanobots are not working he must consume mass quantities of raw healthy vegetable-based fluid and do no drinking whatsoever. If he doesn’t follow the demands of the Nanobot Union, they will strike and his immune system won’t function, and he’ll be reduced to a vegetative coma. Plus, the Union of Nanobots wants to drive his body every other weekend to the park, the beach. And then ride extreme roller coasters. A funny, ironic story.
“Of All Who Dream” by Adelehin Ijasan. This is a story about humanity’s need for Gods and the Gods who need believers to survive. The central character is a man who wants to create a God. He seeks out his grandmother Yeye who is a master who can view reality and the collective consciousness that others reach by meditation or drugs. She must only close her eyes. The son needs psychedelics to reach that state. In these modern times they must consult the middleman, who is Algorithm. He sees the Goddess Porn and all the hedonistic gods of Gambling, Trade, and Crypto, the religion of the Internet. Technological man has created gods whose believers are the users of social media. The Algorithm was originally Anansi the Trickster. This was a thoughtful piece, for some reason causing me to remember the works of Carlos Castenanda I read as a young man.
“Ladd’s Robot Repair” by David Anaxagoras tells a story of a 12-year-old boy named Ladd and a robot named Bitsworth. Ladd lives in a town that is full of salvage material from broken machinery and electronic parts. Ladd is an expert coder and has a robotic arm. He has robots he has programmed to salvage materials he can use in his business. His home is a walker built using a shell from a VW bus. Ladd’s friend Rigs wears an exoskeleton of a crane. Rigs is attacked and killed by Tumbletots, feral children with salvage spines and chromium teeth. Ladd’s walker is missing a critical component, a navigation crystal. Ladd leaves the walker and goes into the Wires, a chaotic mess of scrap metal, antennas that are very dangerous. He crawls into the Wire following a signal that is a navigation crystal. Ladd finds a vehicle with a human form seated within and is afraid of finding a corpse. A humanoid robot falls out; it activates and informs Ladd that its name is Bitsworth—a robotic butler. Bitsworth tells Ladd that he is to serve ‘the young sir’ is any way needed. Ladd calls the robot Bits and they both team up to find the navigation crystal. Ladd gets a signal from one of his salvage bots that a crystal has been located. The bad news is that it is in a dangerous area called Wires. In their search for crystal, they encounter a huge mass of salvage metal, cables and electronics. The story chronicles the pair escaping from the creature, which Ladd names as the Nullhound. The pair is chased by the Nullhound, a creature that can rearrange itself into any form as it pursues them. Long story short is that this story is a tale of friendship and sacrifice, a Buddy Movie between boy and robot. This story is well done and I enjoyed every word.
“The Goddess of Not Enough” by Susan Palwick tells a different tale of the fairy godmother and her charge. The princess steps on her prince’s feet and is distracted by a beautiful gown. Her fairy godmother berates her, and she loses her slipper, carriage and gowns. She returns to her father’s farm where she steals her stepsister’s satchel and gowns and goes in search of those who need to be guided and nurtured, She finds a gambler that always loses, a housekeeper made pregnant by her employer and rejected by him, and a playwright whose productions always fail. She tells the pregnant housekeeper to be a widow and finds a home of working mothers with children who need care while their mothers’ work. She helps the gambler find his love for the soil and becomes a successful farmer. The playwright is helped by guiding him to produce the plays of other playwrights. She finds those who need her and with each person she helps she becomes more vibrant and beautiful. She finds that she has little need for food and rest and discovers that she can levitate and pass through walls, just like the fairy godmother. She ages very slowly, if at all. As the world changes, she continues to comfort and inspire people in need. There are those who have lost the one they love, and she comforts them in their grief. Parents that have lost their child to gun violence and suicide. She comforts however she can, knowing that not all can be comforted. One of the lines catching my attention was: “Through the decades, you have seen glimpses of her. She appears as a game show host, a faith healer, a talent scout. She is the scam artist selling the fool’s gold of Happily Ever After.” She finds the other fairy godmother in rags on a cot at the back of a Payday Loan shop. The first fairy godmother has encouraged greed, she cannot give anyone a world that is dying from the results of greed, wealth and power. She is bitter and berates the godmother who gives care and comfort as she fades away. The story ends with a note of hope by the remaining godmother who has grown more powerful and wise.