Asimov’s“Weather Duty” by Kristine Kathryn Rusch
“My Heart a Streak of Light Across the Sky” by Samantha Murray
“On the Night Shift” by Zohar Jacobs
“Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon” by Donald McCarthy
“The Hidden God” by T. R. Napper
“The Demon of Metrazol” by Ray Nayler
“The Mystery of My Death” by Rob Chilson
“A Brief History of the Afterlife” by Anthony Ha
“Cryptid or Your Money Back” by Misha Lenau
“Quantum Ghosts” by Nancy Kress (serial, not reviewed)
Reviewed by Victoria Silverwolf
“Weather Duty” by Kristine Kathryn Rusch takes place in the domed city of Las Vegas in a near future where citizens are required to spend time on government committees, analogous to jury duty. The main character serves on the committee that controls the weather. She and a local celebrity are attacked by thugs with high-tech weapons, for reasons that only become clear at the end.
This novella is effective as crime/suspense fiction and as a portrait of a possible future. The speculative technology and the way the government committees work are quite convincing, both in their advantages and their limitations. The protagonist, a dancer and choreographer, is a plausible action heroine, able to deal with a crisis in a believable fashion while remaining a realistic character with whom one can empathize.
The narrator of “My Heart a Streak of Light Across the Sky” by Samantha Murray has no visual memory, and is thus unable to recall the past in full detail. The narrator and a lover make plans to travel to a distant planet as part of a scientific study, but the starship carrying the lover suffers a disaster that kills her. An event that occurs on the planet changes the narrator’s life in an extraordinary way.
As its title may indicate, this is a story that appeals more to the emotions than the intellect. What occurs on the planet seems more like a miracle than a scientific phenomenon. Readers with romantic natures will best appreciate this bittersweet tale.
In “On the Night Shift” by Zohar Jacobs, destructive hurricanes force NASA to relocate ground control crews monitoring a flight to Mars to another location. Many of the personnel are unable to reach the area, due to the severity of the storm. The protagonist is forced to act as leader of the team and deal with a crisis as the spaceship enters Mars orbit.
The plot requires major hurricanes to hit both the main NASA station in Texas and a backup control area in Maryland. This provides much drama, as the main character is thrust in a new role with great responsibility, but seems unlikely. The situation creates a great deal of suspense, particularly for readers familiar with the technical aspects of spaceflight. However, the last few pages, when the crisis is over, are anticlimactic. If nothing else, this novelette provides vivid descriptions of the chaos caused by massive hurricanes and attempts to evacuate the populace.
The narrator of “Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon” by Donald McCarthy was abducted by aliens when she was a child. As an adult, she travels with a young companion in search of the aliens, hoping to repeat the experience with the help of clues from a government agent.
This story carries one of the magazine’s rare content warnings, in this case for explicit physical violence. This is a bit surprising, as it is much less violent than at least one other story in the issue. Perhaps this warning is meant to reflect the narrator’s disturbing mental state. We learn early that she plans to commit suicide if she does not find the aliens by the time she is forty years old. Her relationship with the young man with whom she travels is ambiguous, and reflects her psychological condition. In any case, this is more of a downbeat character study than a fully developed science fiction story.
“The Hidden God” by T. R. Napper alternates sections of narrative describing unpleasant and often deadly fates facing various rich and famous characters with sections dealing with a philosopher interacting with a highly advanced artificial intelligence. It soon becomes obvious that the powerful AI is attacking people whom it believes are causing enough harm to others that they should be rendered powerless or even killed. (This is the story that contains far more violence than the previous one.) It turns out that there is an unexpected connection between the AI and the philosopher.
Often as vivid and visceral as any blood-soaked thriller, this novella also raises the age-old issue of whether it is acceptable to help many by harming few. The author doesn’t pretend to solve this ancient dilemma, but uses it to delve into the character of the philosopher.
At times the story is overly melodramatic, as in the opening scene, which features the gruesome death of an arms dealer. The creator of the AI is an exaggerated villain, shown to be not only a megalomaniac who expects to achieve immortality but an abuser of underage girls.
The drug mentioned in the title of “The Demon of Metrazol” by Ray Nayler is a real one, formerly used to treat mental patients by inducing violent convulsions. In the 1930’s, a woman works at a mental hospital by photographing patients before, during, and after these grim treatments. The patients always display extreme terror when the drug is administered. The story’s ending offers hints as to why this occurs.
This is a subtle and unnerving horror story, using disturbing facts of the past to create a growing sense of fear. The climax is appropriately ambiguous, suggesting both a descent into madness and something genuinely supernatural.
The narrator of “The Mystery of My Death” by Rob Chilson is a time traveler who discovers his own grave in the future. He ponders exactly when he might die, goes on a mission to correct an error made in the recent past, and makes a major change in his life.
Despite the title and a premise that might seem morbid, this is an upbeat, optimistic story that emphasizes life rather than death. The fact that time travelers only journey to possible versions of the future, subject to change, renders the narrator’s concern about his death meaningless. There may be little new in the familiar paradoxes of time travel found in this story, but it makes for pleasant reading.
In “A Brief History of the Afterlife” by Anthony Ha, multiple copies of the consciousnesses of specially trained young people are transferred into artificial bodies, and also into spacecraft traveling throughout the solar system. In multiple brief sections of text, the story follows one such copy, from the birth of the original human to the copy’s existence on Earth after it is no longer needed in space.
The explanation for the title is the fact that the original humans are killed during the process of copying. One has to wonder why parents would allow their children to be educated in a way that forces them to face such a fate. The theme may remind readers of the famous story “Think Like a Dinosaur” by James Patrick Kelly, which involved a form of teleportation that required the death of the original person using it. Unlike that award-winning tale, however, this new work fails to deal with the ethical questions it raises in a meaningful way. In other ways, it is a decent, if undistinguished, science fiction story.
In “Cryptid or Your Money Back” by Misha Lenau, people can buy kits that allow them to remove their human bodies and become mythical creatures, then switch back whenever they please. The narrator becomes a chupacabra, the so-called goatsucker of Latin American folklore. Reluctant to return to human form, or to socialize with other people who have changed their bodies in this way, the narrator eventually discovers what is really desired.
Despite a whimsical tone, the story can be read as an allegory for gender dysphoria. This is made clear by the ending, and by the author’s self-description as queer and nonbinary. More broadly, it can be interpreted as a metaphor for anyone who feels like an outsider. This theme should not be taken too seriously, as the story is otherwise a very light comedy.
Victoria Silverwolf hasn’t seen a serial in Asimov’s for quite a while.