DreamForge Anvil #16, Summer 2024
“Tomo and Humanity” by Esteban Raposo
“A Business Trip to Natchez” by Christopher Davis
“To Catch a Foo Fighter” by David Hankins
“Making Music on Ganymede” by Chad Gayle
“Happy Activationday to Me” by Santiago Marquez Ramos
“Living Fossils” by Christopher Blake
“The Songs of Summer” by Robert Silverberg (reprint, not reviewed)
Reviewed by Geoff Houghton
The Summer issue of DreamForge Anvil #16 includes several non-fiction articles, six original stories and one reprint. Only the six original pieces have been reviewed.
The first original story is “Tomo and Humanity” by Esteban Raposo. Tomo is an advanced AI android in a near future USA that has become violently divided over the increasing use of AI robots to replace natural-born American workers. Tomo’s creator was the involuntary recipient of an experimental drug that enhanced intelligence and creativity at the cost of permanent brain damage that causes seizures and a likely early death. For some unexplained reason, she is no longer working in the cybernetic field, but is living a reasonably comfortable if precarious life on a specialist farm that produces genetically manipulated food.
This is an easy to read story that holds up an SF mirror to several of the problems that beset the present day USA, with Tomo and his fellow robots taking the place of the most recent wave of immigrants. Big Business, Government and the militant mass of disgruntled workers all comprehensively let down the ideals upon which the USA was founded and only the android Tomo emerges with any credit at the sad but also uplifting end of the story.
The second offering is: “A Business Trip to Natchez” by Christopher Davis. This is set in the near future in the jungles of a planet Earth that is barely recovering from a brush with runaway global warming. The protagonist is a salaryman of the Olympia Bank of Mars. The Directors have sent him from the human enclave on Mars to the wilderness of Earth to retrieve a crashed cargo drone. He had been taught that the Mars Enclave had been set up by the wealthy, civilised and sophisticated elite of old Earth when it became obvious that global warming of the Earth was out of control (See Elon Musk for further details of how to apply!). His first experience of those who had been left behind on Earth to fend for themselves appears to fully support his schooling that all that was worth saving had already been moved to Mars. His gradual discovery that he was wrong is cleverly unveiled in multiple revelations. The author squarely addresses the issue that rampant capitalism may not be the only viable route to salvation and offers a slightly idealised but heart-warming alternative.
The third original work is “To Catch a Foo Fighter” by David Hankins. This is a story of First Contact set aboard a US aircraft carrier in the very near future. The first person narrator is a US naval aviator who has been selected to fly an unusual mission specifically because of his disability. His experimental new plane uses a direct AI link with its pilot to shortcut slow and clumsy manual control in the manner of Craig Thomas’ Firefox in his techno-thriller of the same name. Our young protagonist is entirely mute and has already become adept at interfacing with AI in order to communicate. Therefore, he is very comfortable and competent at a similarly close meld with this experimental fighter.
The ability of humans to interface with AI was the last test that the Galactic Federation required humanity to pass before they could be allowed the option to join and their AI watcher accordingly initiates the Federation’s contact protocol with our protagonist. It is unfortunate that the US Military had known of the existence of alien craft for years and that our leading character’s special mission was to capture or shoot down one in order to steal or copy its technology.
When the inflexible mission commander refuses to abandon his capture or disable scheme on the unsupported word of an alien of unknown provenance, our hero behaves in the manner beloved by Hollywood and entirely disrupts his Admiral’s plan for what he sees as the greater good.
The disobedience makes a rattling good tale but the reader must decide whether the power to decide whether the alien AI is a benign emissary of a benevolent federation or the spy of an evil Empire should rest with a rebellious young lieutenant, an inflexible Admiral or somewhat higher up the command chain.
“Making Music on Ganymede” by Chad Gayle is set in a high-tech farming dome on Jupiter’s largest moon, Ganymede, somewhere between a few decades and a few centuries into a successful human future that could easily come to pass, if only we can avoid destroying ourselves before we can arrive there.
The first person protagonist is a precocious teenager who will not allow mere insuperable problems to stop her achieving the impossible. Like many teenagers she meanders through those parts of life that she considers mundane and boring, but when she is engaged by a mission that she passionately believes in, then she becomes an exceptionally driven and energetic young lady. The supporting cast are neither heroes nor villains but ordinary people bemused by a teenage visionary. This is a well-crafted story that reminds us all that the best of our species can move worlds if only we have the will to do it. Her success is not exactly what she had originally intended but should still bring an appreciative smile to the lips of all but the sourest and grumpiest of readers.
“Happy Activationday to Me” by Santiago Marquez Ramos is set in the near future in a technologically more advanced but easily recognisable First World Capitalist country where sentient or near sentient AI is available to nearly every citizen. This is written in the first person from the point of view of Blot, an apparently sentient AI whose calm demeanour and endless patience is entirely engaged in serving his rather ordinary office-worker human.
This “Day in the Life” style story may amuse, but it also explores the increasingly important theme of the relationship between humans and their creations as AI moves more and more towards the fuzzy edge of true sentience.
Each reader must decide if humans are forever unique for some reason or whether emergent sentience is equally feasible for both carbon-based and silicon-based physical entities. This author begins with the assumption that both are possible and offers the reader a new Uncle Tom’s Cabin to explore whether we could have unwittingly invented a brand new form of slavery that is as unthinkingly biased as the plantations of the Old Deep South before the US Civil War.
The last original work is “Living Fossils” by Christopher Blake. This is set in contemporary New Zealand, a few years after the discovery that a last small breeding colony of Draccus maris, a full-scale dragon, is still alive in the wildest parts of New Zealand. This story is centred about the aftermath of a mid-air collision between a female dragon and a small plane trespassing into their internationally restricted airspace. The vastly experienced female vet and Dragon expert has only a callow young graduate to assist her as they discover that they have a fatal injury to the fully grown dragon but also a viable egg still requiring rescue.
Once the issues of dragon viability and especially their aerodynamics are accepted as a given, the remainder of the story is SF rather than fantasy. The author is clearly either an Obstetrics and Gynaecology specialist or has an excellent memory of a full O & G rotation since the subsequent actions of the veterinary team are exquisitely detailed and anatomically realistic. Readers of a nervous disposition are advised to read this before, rather than during, their evening meal.
Geoff Houghton lives in a leafy village in rural England. He is a retired Healthcare Professional with a love of SF and a jackdaw-like appetite for gibbets of medical, scientific and historical knowledge.