Clarkesworld Magazine #46
July 2010
“Beach Blanket Spaceship” by Sandra McDonald
“The Association of the Dead” by Rahul Kanakia
Reviewed by Bob Blough
For the July 2010 issue of Clarkesworld we begin with a wonderfully wild and yet serious short story by Sandra McDonald. “Beach Blanket Spaceship” sounds quite fluffy, especially if, like me, you grew up on Annette and Frankie and Sandra on the beach in sunny, perfect California. The story uses these tropes to terrific effect as the commander of a flight to Triton finds himself inside a version of the ultimate beach movie.
Colonel Frank Merullo is riding (in a yellow jeep, of course) beside Danny, the star of those Southern California teen beach flicks of the early 60’s. From there it gets weirder and deeper. Is this a malfunction of the “vee-reel” in the computer? Is the Colonel caught in the wrong one? He doesn’t even recall what his vee-real was based on. Could it be the possible aliens they were to contact on Triton causing the trouble? What turns out to be the truth is artfully revealed, with a terrific comment on some current situations in the armed forces today. Unusual and excellent. It proves that with imagination and clever writing anything can be turned into a science fiction story!
The next story is a whole different kettle of fish. It is definitely an “idea” story. It opens up post nano-ization, post uploading, and perhaps post singularity society in ways than I have never seen before, but like the idea fiction of van Vogt or Asimov in the 1940’s the characterization is fairly lean. But oh, those cool ideas carry the story.
“The Association of the Dead” is a story from a newly published writer, Rahul Kanakia (his blog says that he has 500 rejections–so you can’t really call him a new writer), and this is an auspicious beginning. I will admit that my prejudices were strong as I started this story and found that it involved zombies looking for brains to eat, but eventually it all makes sense in context and although I hope he doesn’t continue in this vein, it is a story worthy of Charles Stross.
“The Association of the Dead” is about a man named Sumith and various versions of him – sumith, sumith(?), sumith(!). Uppercase Sumith has flashed himself–using an EMP gun–and is now lowercase sumith. Uppercase Sumith is reincarnated (“Thanks for using Phoenix for your reincarnation needs.”) and resumes the life of “singing the code” that the de-nanoized “dead” sumith can no longer do. Lowercase sumith needs to eat uppercase Sumith in order to stay “alive” and since lowercase still has the EMP gun he does so. This starts a war between Uppercase Sumiths and lowercase sumiths as one controls the gun and one has all the implants needed to run the house and “sing the code.”
If this sounds a little complicated, it is. Think Stross again when his first Accelerando story “Lobsters” appeared in Asimov’s. It’s a humorous horror story about how nano-ization can lead to reincarnation and thence to this society. It’s a gruesomely funny idea story and a terrific debut for the author.