Clarkesworld #222, March 2025“From Enceladus, with Love” by Ryan Cole
“Mindtrips” by Tlotlo Tsamaase
“Hook and Line” by Koji A. Dae
“Funerary Habits of Low Entropy Entities” by Damián Neri
“Pollen” by Anna Burdenko
“Those Uncaring Waves” by Yukimi Ogawa
“The Sound of the Star” by Ren Zeyu
Reviewed by Victoria Silverwolf
This issue offers a novella, a novelette, and five short stories, two of them newly translated.
“From Enceladus, with Love” by Ryan Cole features a stowaway on a spaceship carrying people escaping an Earth devastated by the awakening of consciousness in artificial intelligences. She travels to the moon of Saturn mentioned in the title hoping to find her mother, who traveled there some time ago and who has stopped writing to her. The awakening of an AI on the vessel threatens to expose her illegal presence and, more importantly, allow the AI to take control of the ship.
The AI has the personality of a very young child, allowing the protagonist to treat it as a friend. The presence of the main character’s best friend on the spaceship parallels this theme. Written in a way that makes it seem intended for younger readers, this sentimental tale appeals more to the heart than to the intellect.
In the novelette “Mindtrips” by Tlotlo Tsamaase, a woman suffering from psychosomatic illness receives medication that causes her to relive traumatic experiences from the past. (It is made clear that such treatment is mandatory in this future society, the only alternative being institutionalization.) A series of hallucinatory visions of her childhood follow, leading to a moment she is terrified to face.
The surreal scenes of the woman’s visions offer a powerful symbol of the memories of a survivor of abuse. In the real world, interactions with a manipulative boyfriend parallel this theme, but in a much less violent way. The story contains a melodramatic element that seems intended to be a surprising revelation, but the reader is likely to predict it from hints early in the text.
“Hook and Line” by Koji A. Dae takes place aboard a generation ship fleeing an unspecified disaster on Earth. The main character is an elderly woman, the last of a group of mediums who were able to contact the spirits of the dead left behind. She tries to teach a young apprentice this skill, with little success.
This combination of science fiction and the supernatural is a very quiet, undramatic story, with little conflict. A person who takes over the room used by the medium seems at first to be a rival, but this is quickly resolved in a friendly manner. Readers who don’t mind a blurring of genres and a lowkey plot will best appreciate this gently melancholy slice of life.
“Funerary Habits of Low Entropy Entities” by Damián Neri consists of four sections of text, each one dealing with nonhuman beings and their reactions to the deaths of others of their kind. These stories within the story feature insect-like extraterrestrials, aliens inhabiting the ocean under the icy surface of a moon of Jupiter, sentient crystals falling through a planet’s atmosphere, and protons with artificial intelligence orbiting a black hole.
The author displays extraordinary imagination and the ability to make very strange entities into characters with whom one can empathize. Striking imagery creates a true sense of wonder.
“Pollen” by Anna Burdenko is translated from Russian by Alex Shvartsman. A girl is left inside her family’s spaceship with her younger sister when pollen from a plant on an alien planet causes hallucinations and the desire to trap oneself in the feeding pit of the organism. She perceives dead adults as hallucinations while she waits for rescue that may never come.
Although the characters are children and the narrative style is appropriate to their ages, the story never reads like something intended for younger readers. The protagonist has to deal with hallucinations while caring for her sister, displaying great courage. Her interactions with the illusory adults are believable, and their kindness toward her has a more powerful effect on the reader than any attempt at horror would be. As a bonus, the story has sufficient speculative content, including extraterrestrials and an alien pet, to please any reader of science fiction.
The novella “Those Uncaring Waves” by Yukimi Ogawa takes place on an island where many of the inhabitants have colorful patterns on their bodies, giving them a higher status in society because they attract tourists from the mainland. The main character treats people with physical and mental disorders by creating other patterns for them to wear or ingest. The plot begins with an unexpected change in the ink she uses, derived from shellfish. This leads to encounters with a woman burdened with suicidal tendencies because of her patterns, and a woman from the mainland who is involved with her in a mysterious way.
I have probably explained the plot very badly, as I found the premise of the patterns, found everywhere in the story in multiple forms, difficult to understand. Even a lengthy scene of exposition from the mainland woman left me confused. The story is certainly original, but is likely to leave readers with unanswered questions.
“The Sound of the Star” by Ren Zeyu, translated from Chinese by Jay Zhang, is narrated by a space traveler. He journeys to a planet where the inhabitants can only speak to those who are close in age, because their voices and hearing change as they grow older. He then delivers alien dragonflies that become invisible in warm conditions to a wealthy client. An unplanned visit to another world leads to a meeting with an alien that communicates by touch. Next, he retrieves the last song performed by a dead singer from a planet where all sounds last forever in the atmosphere, followed by a trip to a nearby world where sound is trapped in deep valleys, then one where people can communicate over long distances through their voices.
As can be seen, this is an episodic tale, although the final scene brings the reader back to the beginning. The story contains three footnotes that attempt to explain some of the happenings in scientific terms. These are unnecessary and distracting. The individual scenes are colorful and interesting, even if they do not blend into a solid whole.
Victoria Silverwolf is going to have some Earl Grey tea now.