InterGalactic Medicine Show #51, July/August 2016
“The View from Driftwise Spindle” by Stewart C Baker
Reviewed by Michelle Ristuccia
“The View from Driftwise Spindle” by Stewart C Baker follows a brother and sister as they help evacuate Earth from their position as powerful businessmen. The idealist brother and practical sister disagree on how to handle the crises. Only when both acknowledge the other‘s perspective can they appreciate each other and weather the impending doom. Baker writes a gloomy story of planet-wide catastrophe, with a seed of hope sown by human compassion.
When giant creatures start destroying the neighborhood in “Ten Things Sunil and I Forgot to Prepare for, When Preparing for the Apocalypse” by Shane Halbach, teenager Jason attempts to follow an emergency plan that becomes increasingly flawed in hindsight. Halbach uses a naive, youthful character to highlight the absurdity of planning for the unknowable.
In “Mathematical Certainty” by Andrew Neil Gray, a young asteroid prospector faces a life of crushing debt when he strands himself in space. As he waits for the rescue team, he befriends another prospector whose more dire situation gives him new perspective on life – his past as well as his future. Meanwhile, his childhood friend becomes a drug runner and offers him a place to stay upon his impending return to the slums. Gray’s matter-of-fact explanations and careful juxtapositions show a universe where mathematics and money are the ever-present fabric of reality, but also one where hope can still spring from personal connection and resolve.
In “Only Then Consume Them” by Aimee Pichhi, Sabrina’s forbidden magic prompts her parents to sell her to a convent, where she then causes further trouble by acting without thought to the consequences. The convent members’ reactions to her shenanigans challenge Sabrina’s overly simplistic worldview. Pichhi’s story is one where a tool, such as magic, is only as good or evil as its user, and it is with the magic user that responsibility and wisdom must also rest.
“The Gong-Farmer’s Daughter” by Kat Otis follows plague survivor Lidea as she helps her father muck out a privy and the two of them run into shady characters. Lidea and her father credit their survival of the plague to a holy blessing, which also thwarts her father’s attempts to drown his grief over the loss of his wife and other children. Otis touches on survivor’s guilt and wraps the message of family togetherness in a purposefully disgusting package of sewage and rot.
“The Raptor Snatchers” by Rachael K. Jones is told from the perspective of ten-year-old Amy, whose best friend is a raptor she bought as a pet. When pet raptors in town go missing, the childrens’ parents are dismissive of rumors, but Amy soon learns that the mysterious white van is real. Jones’ unreliable narrator shows the reader a vast gulf between the adult world and the perception of children, where adults often undervalue what children value highly.
Michelle Ristuccia enjoys slowing down time in the middle of the night to read and review speculative fiction, because sleeping offspring are the best inspiration and motivation. You can find out more about her other writing projects and geeky obsessions by visiting her blog.