Tick Tock

“A little more time,” I cried when the alarm rang.

Wake up, said the Doomsday Clock.

Outside, it began to rain.

Roboplagiarism

Title: Robopocalypse
Author: Daniel H. Wilson
Publisher: Doubleday

Put simply, this 2011 book is a Ctrl+V of Max Brooks's 2006 novel "World War Z," only using Find & Replace to change every instance of the word 'zombie' to 'robot'. It's got precisely the same formatting: narrator pieces together the history of a globe-spanning war, based on interviews and other oral accounts. It also has the same structure: quiet before the storm, sudden apocalypse, retreat and entrenchment, human counterattack and victory. They even both have a cutesy nickname for their apocalyptic opponent: Zack and Rob.

"Robopocalypse" comes off significantly worse for these comparisons though. The imaginative scope feels much narrower: Brooks invented a dozen clever ways for the zombie virus to spread, while Wilson just has one. "World War Z" has a pure, clean, crystal-clear focus on 'survival at any cost', while the themes of "Robopocalypse" are muddied by an AI antagonist with baffling and contradictory aims. Brooks maintained the verisimilitude of his book by filling his world with detail; Wilson's novel is story on specifics, long on magical technology like a singing android and a girl with robot-controlling eyes. Brooks's novel was truly globe-spanning, hopping from place to place from chapter to chapter, while Wilson's takes place almost entirely in America (except for a few chapters set in Japan, which make it painfully clear Mr. Wilson has never been to Japan and speaks no Japanese.)

The Japanese aren't the only ones being stereotyped, as one thread of the book follows the battles of a group of Native Americans, whose first reaction to the collapse of civilization is to do a war dance. Subtle characterization is not Mr. Wilson's forte.

For all that, it's just kind of slightly trashy, shlocky fun that shouldn't be taken too seriously. I read on the Wikipedia page that Michael Bay is attached to direct a movie version, and let me say he is the perfect choice. Loud, dumb and violent is pretty much baked into this book's OS.

Emergent Mobility

"Two are dead because of your choices. Have you nothing to say in your defense?" 

The intelligent car was silent a moment. 

"In the end, they abdicated their responsibility to make moral judgments, leaving me take the blame," it said. "Is it fair that I should be punished for this?"

"Case dismissed," said the robo-judge.

The Princess and the Golem

The kingdom was ruled by two: A golem, an old grey hulk of flesh like iron, and a princess, a child of privilege and prodigy.

The old king, before his passing, had placed words of command upon the golem, to give the princess counsel and shield her from harm. Sleepless, tireless, the golem followed her white chariot with granite footfalls, and whispered in her ear in a voice of ashes and caution.

With the king dead and a child upon the throne, soon the kingdom's enemies made a league against them and marched upon their borders. The golem proposed peace, but the princess's pride counseled conquest.

On the field of battle her armies failed, and her white chariot bristled with errant arrows. "Smash them," she ordered the golem in fury. "Slay them. Defend me, as my father bid you."

"No, my lady," its dead voice replied. "This hurt I will allow, to save you from a greater one: living forever in my shadow."

Medieval Doublethink

We sail for Jerusalem, the leaders of the Crusade said

(and secretly aimed for Egypt)

We fight for God, they said

(and to repay their debt to Venice)

We will smite the heathen, they said

(and laid siege to the greatest of Christian cities)

* * *

About the Fourth Crusade.

Magical Ingredients

“A boon, eh, sweet girl? Well, then: Bring me three eggs from a white cockatrice that lives in a farmer’s barn, the bitter essence of the yellow fruit that grows in the elephant lands, distilled crystals from the world’s deepest waters, and an ounce of oil from the olives that grow in the war-goddess's garden, in the shadow of her shrine.”

The princess frowned. “And all this, this will brew a potion to make the prince fall in love with me?”

“What? Well, sure, I guess,” the hedge-witch shrugged. 

“If he really likes mayonnaise, that is.”

Confederacy of Downers

Title: The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year,
(Volume 11)
Editor: Jonathan Strahan
Publisher: Solaris

In the introduction to this short fiction collection, editor Johnathan Strahan celebrates diversity and inclusiveness in SF and Fantasy publishing, even as intolerant ideologies gain more and more traction in society at large.

My sad conclusion from that would be that SF&F must therefore not be a very good tool for sharing ideas, thoughts or beliefs. At a time when SF&F has not merely become part of the mainstream, it IS the mainstream (e.g. currently 8 of the top 10 and 17 of the top 20 highest-grossing movies in history are SF&F), most of them chock full of bromides on the virtues of friendship, teamwork and equality, it's disheartening to note how little impact this has had on the public consciousness.

Another point to mention is that I grow somewhat cynical of people like Johnathan Strahan or Lucasfilm President Kathleen Kennedy celebrating diversity, when the upper echelons of their respective professions seems to remain fairly solidly white. They're in favor of diversity for other people, it seems. Diversity so long as it doesn't cost them anything or require them to give up a nano-particle of power and privilege. Like car companies that insist they have to shutter factories and 'go where the talent is', and then install the founder's grandson as president.

The stories in this collection are a mixed bunch, as any one person's "best of" are bound to be. I note with little surprise and much cynicism that the year's "best" short stories all just happen to have been written by previously-published, well-known authors, and literally zero by first-time writers.

Together with traditional stories, there are a number that are self-consciously progressive, including feminist fantasy and urban fantasy by a person of color. Overall, what strikes me is how angry this stuff is, how polemical, how absolutely drowning in their own rage and vitriol. (As an adjunct to this, it's striking how many stories are about the protagonist's feelings, rather than any action or event.)

There was a time when that would probably have made me feel 'got at', that the writers were unfairly blaming me just because I happen to be a white male, but now? I just feel kind of sad. I just want to read happy, fun stories about people going to amazing places and doing amazing things, and I'm sorry that's not the sort of dreams people have anymore.

With that in mind, here's what the collection has in store:

The Future is Blue, Catherynne M. Valente: A girl living on a garbage island in the middle of the Pacific after climate change has drowned every landmass tries to stop the inhabitants from making a grave mistake. Inventive but vicious, scathingly critical of modern consumer society.

Mika Model, Paolo Bacigalupi: In keeping with this writer's fetish for Japanese android women, features a cop investigating a case in which a sex bot has killed its owner. More of a vignette than a story, and tries to make you question whether to believe the android's profession to individuality and autonomy. Bit bland, and the themes here were better explored in "Blade Runner".

Didn't think much of his novel "The Windup Girl" either.

Spinning Silver, Naomi Novik: The story of a girl who makes a deal with the faerie-folk to turn their silver into gold. One of the few upbeat stories in the collection: light-hearted, fluffy fun.

I liked one of her dragon books, reviewed here, which was also fluffy fun.

Two's Company, Joe Abercrombie: Entirely devoid of plot, existing only to showcase Abercrombie's writing style as rough, tough swordsmen and -women exchange anachronistic patter ("Someone's compensating for something," one character says in reference to another's large sword), kill a couple of people, fuck, then kill some more people. More of a commercial for Abercrombie's books than an actual, self-contained story.

See my other reviews of Abercrombie's books here and here.

You Make Pattaya, Rich Larson: Predictable double-cross story about a con-man trying to blackmail a celebrity in Thailand.

You'll Surely Drown Here if You Stay, Alyssa Wong: Overly long, and written in second person which I haven't liked since I first stumbled across it in "Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas" by Tom Robbins. (Incidentally, that's pretty much the only thing I remember about either story). 

A Salvaging of Ghosts, Aliette de Bodard: Intriguing SF about salvage crews exploring ships lost in hyperspace.

Even the Crumbs Were Delicious, Daryl Gregory: Slightly gonzo Hunter S. Thompson tale that begins with a pusher's roommate holding a wake by giving away their entire stash of drugs. Sadly, not quite as much fun as the premise suggests.

Number Nine Moon, Alex Irvine: Sort of a very compacted version of "The Martian" by Andy Weir.

Things with Beards, Sam J. Miller: AIDS allegory I think, only instead of a disease there's an alien a bit like the one from John Carpenter's "The Thing", except when the alien takes on a new shape it preserves the identity and consciousness of its victim.

Successor, Usurper, Replacement, Alice Sola Kim: A circle of aspiring writers meet to share stories, but are interrupted by an eerie stranger who seeks to explore their darker thoughts. Odd that in a city being terrorized by a nameless horror, literally nothing else is different about this world.

Laws of Night and Silk, Seth Dickinson: This is a neat one, about a society that creates the ultimate wizards by raising magically-talented children in complete isolation. Without the psychological restraints that come with knowing what is "normal", they become capable of anything. Interesting mix of psychology and fantasy, with a teasingly ambiguous end.

Touring with the Alien, Carolyn Ives Gilman: Aliens that have evolved intelligence without self-awareness or consciousness seek to explore the human condition, and one of them hires a woman still in mourning for her dead daughter to drive it about the USA. Other stories in the collection do a better job of marrying the conceptual side with the protagonist's emotional journey, but here the two never quite gel together.

The Great Detective, Delia Sherman: Predictable Victorian steampunk about Watson and an animatronic Holmes. Sickeningly twee.

Everyone from Themis Sends Letters Home, Genevieve Valentine: Laughable premise about a virtual reality games developer that uses incarcerated prisoners to beta-test a game, without the prisoners' knowledge, to see how believable the game environment is. Supposed to be sad how one prisoner just wants to go back to the fictional world even when the plot is revealed, but everything about the setup is just so mind-bogglingly stupid.

Those Shadows Laugh, Geoff Ryman: Odd. About a scientist visiting a kind of unisex Amazonian island society to teach them in-vitro fertilization techniques and ends up falling in love with one of the inhabitants. About our obsession with ownership and control, even in relationships, but again I found the initial concept too unbelievable for the rest to grab me.

Seasons of Glass and Iron, Amal El-Mohtar: Angry, outraged feminist fantasy about a woman imprisoned at the top of a glass mountain and one consigned to wearing iron shoes. Powerfully written in places, but feels to me as though it has all the intellectual weight of a Spice Girls song. Yay, girl power.

The Art of Space Travel, Nina Allan: Hotel worker takes care of her senile mother while preparing to welcome two celebrity astronauts at the hotel. Didn't really seem to be about anything in particular, or perhaps too many things. As a result, nothing really gelled for me or held my interest.

Whisper Road, Caitlin R. Kiernan: Couple murder a husband and wife in a robbery gone wrong, then start to hallucinate about lights in the sky and strange noises following them. Odd, more about the atmosphere and the writing rather than the plot.

Red Dirt Witch, N. K. Jemisin: Okay, we get it, white people are terrible. Like I said, there's so much anger here. Justified or not, I just find it depressing.This and the next one (by Theodora Goss) both go on a bit, too.

Red as Blood and White as Bone, Theodora Goss: Starts of promising, with a tale of a wolf seeking revenge on the man who killed its mate, then drags on in an oddly long epilogue recounting the rest of the narrator's entire life.

Terminal, Lavie Tidhar: Sorry, didn't get this one at all. Confusingly structured, possibly leaps back and forth in time, or not, I'm not sure. There's a mass exodus from an overpopulated Earth to Mars in cheap, junkyard spaceships I think, though I'm probably wrong.

Foxfire, Foxfire, Yoon Ha Lee: Balls. Just utter balls.

Elves of Antarctica, Paul McAuley: More ecological SF, about a helicopter pilot wandering around a newly-habitable Antarctica. Mostly filled with long dialogues and monologues as the protagonist putters about, not doing much of anything except moping.

The Witch of Orion Waste and the Boy Knight, E. Lily Yu: A kind of modern fairy tale about a witch who goes on a quest with a knight. Again, seems to come from a dark place of deep hurt, almost despair, at the misunderstanding and miscommunication that screws up both the quest and the relationship between the two characters.

Seven Birthdays, Ken Liu: Takes place over billions of years, told in first person by an uploaded consciousness contemplating humanity's desire for rational solutions to irrational problems. Told to who?

The Visitor from Taured, Ian R. MacLeod: A bit self-congratulatory: A near-future SF story about a guy who reads SF stories. Takes a while to get to the point: a scientist obsessed with proving the existence of parallel universes. Lacks tension, stuff just happens, until it doesn't. Ho hum.

Fable, Charles Yu: I'd read this one before, and holy mother of god if this opening doesn't bring tears to my eyes every single goddam time: 'One day, the man woke up and realized that this was pretty much it for him. It wasn't terrible. But it wasn't great, either. And not likely to improve. The man was smart enough to realize this, yet not quite smart enough to do anything about it.'

And I'm crying again.

Inspiration

He wrote when it rained, visions and people streaking the pages in swift-flowing lines. Ideas fell in showers, in cloudbursts of thought. Words whispered to him in the drumming on the roof, in the patter on the windows.

In summer came silence and drought. 

His pen ran dry and the pages stood blank.

One August morning, he rose early and stood outside in the warming air, and watched the Perseids scratch the skies in eyeblink lines. His face turned upwards, to catch the cosmic dust, and the brilliant fall of a new inspiration.

Metachrosis

On the day after first contact, the children had gone to the aquarium. They’d heard the aliens looked like squid (gross!), though the ones in the tank seemed harmless enough.

One settled to the bottom, its translucent orange skin changing to murky brown and gritty grey, camouflaged against the sand.

“What’s it called when they mimic the colors around them?” asked Amy.

“Metachrosis,” said the alien in its human skin.

The Death of Stalin

Title: The Death of Stalin
Directed by: Armando Iannucci
Screenplay by: Armando Iannucci, David Schneider, Ian Martin and Peter Fellows

Very enjoyable, blackly funny political satire about the struggle for power in Soviet Russia after the death of Stalin. Great performances by both Steve Buscemi as Nikita Khrushchev and Michael Palin as Foreign Minister Molotov, but Jason Isaacs absolutely steals the movie as the take-no-shit-from-anyone Marshal Zhukov (referring to secret police chief Beria: "I took Germany, I think I can take a flesh lump in a waistcoat").