Asimov’s, November/December 2022
“Falling Off the Edge of the World” by Suzanne Palmer
“I’ll be Moon for Christmas” by Michèle Laframboise
“It’s Time to Wake UP!” by Nick Wolven
“The Empty” by Ray Nayler
“Flicker” by Michael Cassutt
“The Long Revenge of Chenda Sebalko” by Tom Purdom
“When the Signal Is the Noise” by Rajan Khanna
“Forty-eight Minutes at the Trainview Café” by M. Bennardo
“Lonely Hill” by James Maxey
“Drowned in the Sun” by Nick Mamatas
Reviewed by David Wesley Hill
In “Falling Off the Edge of the World” by Suzanne Palmer, the first of five novelettes in the latest issue of Asimov’s, the spaceship Hellebore collides with “something high-energy and high velocity” while in jump space. All the crew and passengers are killed except for Gabe, a livestock manager, and Alis, a systems technician. Unfortunately, the two survivors are at opposite ends of the broken vessel, separated by vacuum, and cannot meet in person although they are able to communicate through the ship’s comms. Following Alis’s advice, Gabe makes his part of the Hellebore as habitable as possible, planting a garden and raising bees and ducks defrosted from the ship’s cryonursery. Over the next thirty years, despite their physical separation, he and Alice become close companions, supporting each other during their long lonely exile—until the Hellebore is finally discovered by a rescue party, and their relationship is transformed forever in this touching tale of friendship and First Contact.
Next up is the short story “I’ll be Moon for Christmas” by Michèle Laframboise, in which a huge solar flare, followed by a hacker attack, causes “every quantum computer on the planet” to flatline, resulting in the collapse of technological civilization. The three Moon Bases are less affected, but even so they are unable to communicate with the home world. This is particularly distressing for Madelyn, who was stranded on Earth while visiting family and can’t return to Luna. Worse, her granddaughter, Helia, was herself stuck on the Moon by the “Big Shake.” Ten years pass without either party having a clue as to the fate of the other, but then Helia comes up with an idea how to contact Earth. If only she can get all three Bases to buy in to her plan, they just might be able to reconnect with their loved ones by the holidays! A lighthearted tale of ingenuity and determination, “I’ll Be Moon for Christmas” is a pleasant addition to the seasonal canon.
On the other hand, there’s nothing pleasant—in a good way—about the novelette “Time to Wake UP!” by Nick Wolven, an unsettling tale that takes us to a near future in which Earth is being destroyed by a climate apocalypse. Over fifty million people have already perished in floods and droughts, and conditions are worsening. As head of the Center, a think tank and consulting firm, Alma has campaigned for years for progressive environmental policies. Unfortunately, the company loses the backing of their main sponsor just as Alma finds herself beset night after night by dreams in which she is surrounded by horrific alien creatures with “spiky frills and horned protuberances.” Confused by the nightmares, and determined to keep her company afloat, Alba agrees to meet with Ethan Harp, an eccentric billionaire and former “bad-boy genius”, who is determined to pitch a project to her—“For our last, best chance.” Harp, however, isn’t out to save humanity. He has his eyes on posterity, and when he arrives at the Center with proof of concept of his vision, Alma begins to understand the meaning of her dreams and the true nature of the weird beings who have haunted her sleep…. A dire environmental parable, “Time to Wake UP!” is a difficult but rewarding read.
“The Empty” by Ray Nayler, is somewhat less grim even though in this future most people are unemployed, their jobs taken by robots, and areas of the country are apparently depopulated. Sal is one of the lucky few with gainful employment, working at a “portable drive center” monitoring a fleet of automated trucks. Then a red dot appears on Sal’s screen, signaling that a vehicle has broken down out on U.S. 50 in “the Empty” beside the remains of a diner. While taking stock of the situation using a remote controlled “diagnostic bee”, Sal finds the word “HELP” scrawled in the dust coating the restaurant’s one remaining window. Despite knowing that she will be ruinously fined and probably fired for using the drone outside of defined parameters, Sal is drawn by the silent plea out into the desolation on a mission of mercy in this taut, deftly written story of corporate greed and moral courage, which really emphasizes why it would be wise to carefully choose the right senior community when you retire.
In the next novelette, “Flicker” by Michael Cassutt, young Tyler Wallen, an “air force scope dope” one year out of basic officer training, is assigned to the Cobra Denali, a huge ship built from an oil platform, which is participating in Operation Endless Summer in the Bering Sea. After the Denali repels an attack by eco-terrorists, taking one prisoner, Wallen is assigned to guard the captured activist, “Jo with no E Johnson”, with whom he begins a fraught relationship. Eventually, they half convince Wallen that the Denali’s real mission isn’t to detect low-flying cruise missiles, but to target UAPs—Unexplained Aerial Phenomena. Then Wallen’s “hyper-digital” scanner registers a bogey, and what had previously been speculation becomes all too real…. A searing indictment of the “shoot first, ask questions later” philosophy, “Flicker” is a solid military yarn with tight plotting and well-drawn characterization.
We return to the short story with “The Long Revenge of Chenda Sebalko” by Tom Purdom, which posits what revenge might look like in a society of near immortals, where committing murder has become unthinkable, but “you could do things that made people wish they were dead.” In this case, Chenda is locked in a century-old feud with Jon Kellersun, who was found guilty of killing Chenda’s first wife, but survived his sentence due to advancements in medical technology. Chenda’s last assault against his enemy had “given Kellersun a condition that made people recoil in disgust”, forcing him to spend “twenty-four years in complete social isolation.” Now it’s Kellersun’s turn to get pay-back and to hit Chenda where it hurts, which is, of course, in the wallet…. An amusing tongue-in-cheek exploration of the darker side of human nature, “The Long Revenge of Chenda Sebalko” is a welcome addition to Purdom’s body of work.
As with the first story in this issue, First Contact is the subject of the next offering, the novelette “When the Signal Is the Noise” by Rajan Khanna. Monique is “one of a very small group of people good at drawing meaning from seemingly unrelated data.” Where most would find noise, she finds the signal, which is why her ex, Arjun, the White House Deputy Chief of Staff, invites her to join the team tasked with analyzing the alien spaceship— “the Molecule”—which has appeared in the skies just outside of L.A. Unfortunately, when communication with the ship is attempted, the advance team is infected with a “fine biochemical spray”, sickening them all in different ways, and it’s up to Monique to apply her special talent to figure out what’s going on before the president authorizes a nuclear strike…. While paying homage to such predecessors as Close Encounters, Independence Day, and Arrival, “When the Noise Is the Signal” nonetheless stands on its own as an interesting take on a first meeting with aliens, and as a warning why it will be essential that both parties understand exactly to whom they’re speaking.
In the next story, “Forty-eight Minutes at the Trainview Café” by M. Bennardo, Felix “left his own human body behind” decades earlier to live as an avatar in virtual reality. Unfortunately, despite the verisimilitude of the available simulations—his favorite is Blue Crystal Glacier, which he’s climbed twenty times—Felix feels that something is missing in his life. Looking for a new thrill, he purchases a forty-eight minute visit to the Trainview Café, which costs more than “twelve hours in most other high-end simulations.” Here the physical details of the train station and its surroundings are so perfectly realized that Felix begins to understand how “abbreviated and elided” his virtual life has become, and how much he’s forgotten about being human…. Both a meticulous character study and a thoughtful contemplation of digital existence, “Forty-eight Minutes at the Trainview Café” is excellent, if melancholy, science fiction.
I enjoyed Clifford D. Simak’s books when I was a kid, which is why I was immediately taken in by the folksy tone of the final novelette of the issue, “Lonely Hill” by James Maxey. Buck Heglund is an aging North Carolina farmer who has been living in an old RV out back of his house ever since his wife, Kate, died of a brain aneurysm. Recent rains from Hurricane Tilda have washed away part of a hill on his property, revealing what Buck suspects is a buried spaceship. With the help of his crackpot—or prescient—cousin, Johnny, they get the sentient vessel up and running, feeding it helium purchased from a party supply store in Raleigh. But the saucer isn’t only hungry, it’s lonely for its companion saucer, the “partner/mother/lover” who flew off in search of sustenance centuries ago, never to return…. Entertaining and sentimental, “Lonely Hill” is a “Golden Age” story reinvented for modern times.
The last story of the issue, “Drowned in the Sun” by Nick Mamatas, takes us to a future Cyprus in a world that has been burned by climate change and depopulated. Less than six thousand people now live where a million did back in the “Oil Age.” Panagiota Phillipou believes “the Earth is healing, now that the population is down to a sustainable level”, and devotes herself to practical projects, but her nemesis, Filiz Aydin, has an audacious plan to “repopulate Cyprus”, by causing a nearby volcano to erupt and blast a shield of ash over the island, lowering the temperature “by as much as three degrees.” How doing this relates to repopulating the island is never fully explained, however, although there is an offhand mention of a “correlation between temperature and fertility.” Unfortunately, even after several readings, this reviewer was left confused by the antagonism between Phillipou and Aydin and by the story as a whole. I suspect you need to be familiar with the poetry of Rimbaud, who was quoted several times, to fully appreciate “Drowned in the Sun.” I’m not.