Clarkesworld #130, July 2017

“The Age of Ice” by Zhang Ran

Reviewed by Bob Blough

This issue of Clarkesworld is a weaker issue overall than many but the story from Rich Larson does save it from mediocrity.

First up is a story by Zhang Ran which is translated from the Chinese by Andy Dudak. Called “The Age of Ice” we are introduced to a frozen head of a mother cryogenically reawakened after 50 years or so to talk with her daughter (now an old woman.) It doesn’t have much to say about family or anything new about cryonics or waking up in the future. The two have a conversation, the mother wants to be cryogenically frozen again when they can build her a body.

It is rather pedestrian and not very engrossing.

“Travelers” by Rich Larson is something else, however. It starts out with the hoary cliché of someone waking up early from “torpor”—hibernation on a starship. She finds herself in a ship that has been changed and may be in disrepair. She also finds a man who was previously woken up early. What is going on and what happens next could only come from the wily and clever mind of Rich Larson. It goes in unexpected directions, so the cliché at the beginning is turned on its head.

“The Significance of Significance” is a pretty standard Robert Reed story, and by that I mean that it is tightly written with loads of interesting ideas. It is a multi-generational short story that tries to do too much in too short a time. Sarah rebels against her parents who record everything she does or says with cameras and audio equipment which also feeds her chemicals to keep her happy. This has occurred due to a paradigm change in Human thinking because it is discovered that the world is only a high end simulation no older than 300 years. During Sarah’s lifetime, another paradigm shift in Human thought occurs that makes her upset with her own child’s choices.

Reed usually comes up with fascinating ideas; he writes from the perspective of real people dealing with these ideas but somehow he rarely makes it all work for me. His stories—which should ring in the mind because of the awesome ideas explored—rarely remain after their initial reading. Perhaps he puts too many ideas in too short a space, making one feel like they are just the schematic of a story?

Whatever my problems are with this piece of fiction, it is still better than 90% of what is published as SF these days.

Bo Balder comes up with an interesting postulation in “The Bridgegroom.” A young man is thrust into the job of being the jailor of a sentient bridge high in the European glaciers in a far future Earth. It turns out that the bridge was a sentient machine that brought about the destruction of human life and is now tethered to this spot with a jailor who has watched over it for the past 450 years. What the new jailor and the bridge get up to is the meat of the story.

I have many problems with this story: Why a bridge? Why keep it alive after it destroyed civilization? And more to the point, Why does a bridge that can go nowhere even have a jailor? Some of this is hinted at but still none of it makes any sense to me. Balder has a good imagination and she writes her central character well but her world-building needs more rigorous editing.

Unfortunately, the final story, “Last Chance” by Nicole Kornher-Stace, is a mere fragment of a longer story. Aneko, the child of a famous torturer, is taken by raiders and sent to scavenge in the wastes surrounding the “before-time” ruins.

It is a grim story filled with deaths and beatings but doesn’t go anywhere with its themes or plot. And it is not written in prose that makes me want to read any more.

Clarkesworld for July is not very good, but you can’t fill a magazine with winners all the time. For me, it still remains my favorite internet magazine.