Clarkesworld #194, November 2022
“The Rhythm of the Soul” by Michelle Julia John
“Calf Cleaving in the Benthic Black” by Isabel J. Kim
“Hummingbird, Resting on Honeysuckles” by Yang Wanqing
“The Whelk” by Samara Auman
“Accountability, and Other Myths of Old Earth” by Aimee Ogden
“The Lonely Time Traveler of Kentish Town” by Nadia Afifi
“The Transfiguration of the Gardener Irene by the Dead Planet Hipea” by Ann LeBlanc
Reviewed by Victoria Silverwolf
Five short stories and a pair of novelettes appear in this issue.
In “The Rhythm of the Soul” by Michelle Julia John, the narrator’s father accidentally creates a musical instrument that allows those who hear it to create anything with their minds. In the chaos that ensues, the government executes the father and imprisons the narrator. After suffering abuse at the hands of jailers, the narrator acts to change society.
The premise is unusual, but seems implausible even if we accept the story as fantasy. The main character puts up with brutal treatment for a long time, in light of the fact that we know the narrator can create things without hearing music. It also seems odd that this extraordinary power is only used to create small things like ice cream and knives. Despite a questionable plot, the story offers a vivid portrait of sadistic oppressors.
The protagonists of “Calf Cleaving in the Benthic Black” by Isabel J. Kim are a pair of escapees from a dismantled space station who make a living by scavenging items from derelict starships. They arrive at a vessel and discover a single living occupant in suspended animation. The practical, if coldblooded, thing to do is kill him, so he will have no claim to the starship as his property. The two come up with another plan.
Written in a laconic, hardboiled style, the story creates a believable portrait of two survivors doing the best they can in an unfriendly universe. Their scheme is clever, unexpected, and plausible. The plot requires the reader to accept the fact that failed generation starships are extremely common, which stretches suspension of disbelief to the breaking point.
The main character in the novelette “Hummingbird, Resting on Honeysuckles” by Yang Wanqing, translated from Chinese by Jay Zhang, is a mortician. She addresses her dead daughter in second person throughout the story. The setting is a future world in which many people are constantly accompanied by small flying devices that record everything they do. The mother allows the daughter’s boyfriend to use the machine to create a simulation of the dead woman. Together, the mortician and the simulation come to a decision.
The author deals with death in an unusually sensitive and mature fashion. The narrative makes it clear that the simulation is not the reincarnation of the daughter, but merely an imitation. This is much more believable than stories featuring downloaded consciousness and similar concepts of immortality. The technology is plausible, and the characters are fully developed. As a bonus, the story also deals with the nature of art, and whether artificial intelligence could ever capture the essence of creativity. Praise should go to the translator as well, who has produced a smooth, readable text.
The narrator of “The Whelk” by Samara Auman is a deteriorating robot with the former function of giving sensory experiences to humans in order to create the feeling of nostalgia. It encounters an abandoned, sentient spaceship. As the two machines slowly fall apart, they work together to give meaning to their mechanical existences.
Although the robot’s very specific purpose seems unlikely, it is an appropriate part of the story’s wistful mood and yearning for the past. The spaceship can be seen as a symbol of early dreams of space exploration, as opposed to the reality. (Its physical description seems like an old-fashioned vision of a rocket ship from pre-Sputnik days.) The story’s climax is implausible, but may warm the heart of those with romantic feelings for space travel.
In “Accountability, and Other Myths of Old Earth” by Aimee Ogden, aliens arrive on Earth and make drastic changes. There is no longer luxury, but there is also no poverty. Those who fight the new regime are transported to remote areas, given the basics needed for survival, and allowed to live as they please. These events are seen through the eyes of a schoolgirl who, like others her age, performs minor acts of rebellion such as shoplifting and vandalism. A disaster forces her to make an important decision.
The premise is reminiscent of Arthur C. Clarke’s famous novel Childhood’s End. Like that classic work, the story features superior beings who impose a utopian society on Earthlings. The narrative style is cool and quiet, at times resembling a history book. One small section addresses readers directly, asking them to imagine a better world. These aspects of the work tend to have a distancing effect, even with the story’s melodramatic ending.
The narrator of the novelette “The Lonely Time Traveler of Kentish Town” by Nadia Afifi is one of the very few people who can observe events of the past and allow others to see them as well. This skill is used to offer tourists the opportunity to experience great events in history, but only those approved by the government. A man hires the narrator to witness and record an encounter between his Palestinian grandfather and one of the most famous persons of the Twentieth Century, in order to have proof of the celebrated figure’s injustice. In a future United Kingdom with a strong anti-foreigner policy and the desire to preserve a pristine image of its past, this is both illegal and dangerous.
The story’s version of time travel is unique, and avoids the complications and paradoxes often found in this kind of fiction. The narrator and her customers cannot change the past, or interact with it in any way. The work seems intended, in part, as an indictment of the British government during the time it administered the territory of Palestine. It also paints a warts-and-all portrait of a British national hero. These aspects of the plot are likely to be controversial.
In “The Transfiguration of the Gardener Irene by the Dead Planet Hipea” by Ann LeBlanc, a portion of a sentient, world-encompassing organism is secretly taken aboard a spaceship. Those who see the entity as a menace destroy the planet. The woman who smuggled the fungus-like entity onto the ship takes desperate measures to preserve it from being killed as well, leading to a bizarre transformation.
Without giving too much away, suffice to say that the premise forces the author to narrate from a very unusual point of view, making the story something of a tour de force. The speculative biology found in the story is intriguing. Some readers may find one important part of the plot disturbingly gruesome.
Victoria Silverwolf notes that the short stories in this issue tend to be on the long side, and that the novelettes tend to be on the short side.