Beneath Ceaseless Skies #357, June 2, 2022
“The Nostalgia Panes” by Aaron Perry
“These Hands Only Make Last Meals” by Evan Marcroft
Reviewed by Kevin P Hallett
The 357th issue of Beneath Ceaseless Skies has two short stories, including one novelette.
“The Nostalgia Panes” by Aaron Perry
City archivist Seneca appraises nostalgia glass in this SF novelette. The unusual glass panes trap the images falling on them and release them later, sometimes decades later. It isn’t long before the rich want windows of this glass from thirty years ago, and that’s where Seneca comes in. She watches the trapped images to determine if they were from that long ago.
However, Seneca has a history of her own. Before becoming an archivist, she was an activist with a group of protesters. Now those same rebels disown her, claiming she has become part of the problem and a devotee of the despotic establishment they fought against as a team.
Meanwhile, Seneca has been hiding among the enemy and is ready to engage her cohorts to begin fighting again. And part of her plan involves using the nostalgia panes of glass.
The plot was easy to follow and relied on mystery alone to pull the reader through the slow prose. The story harkens back to the 1966 Hugo and Nebula nominated story “Light of Other Days” by Bob Shaw, wherein Shaw introduces the now famous concept of “slow glass,” which Perry has obviously used as the model for “The Nostalgia Panes.”
Unfortunately, like the nostalgia glass itself, Perry’s characters felt underdeveloped, given that this story was at novelette length.
“These Hands Only Make Last Meals” by Evan Marcroft
In this short SF story, Chieve is a Sister to a Brother who is a cyborg built for the war. Her Brother is taciturn, leaving Chieve wondering what is wrong with her. Still, she performs her duties with a smile, keeping her Brother clean and preparing his meals.
Slowly she goes to work on Kogjai, her Brother, searching for the way to his heart. And when she finally discovers a way in, she learns about his loves, and they bond as a Brother and Sister, just as the military wants. But that bonding also leads to knowledge that rocks Chieve to her very soul.
The author’s character-centric plot made for an entertaining read that kept its messages well-hidden until the end.
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