Counterstrike

We destroyed their world, their home, their history.

The aliens’ counterstrike was as swift and sudden as it was devastating. A brilliant, searing blast of light, visible across the sky, around the world. It didn’t matter if you saw it or not, the effect was the same: Every human being forgot their name, their friends and family, where they lived and even how to speak.

A PKM Zeta protein inhibitor, that corroded and destroyed long-term memories. The effect was not instantaneous, but it was irreversible. Husbands and wives awoke as strangers. Mothers holding their babies had time for a goodbye, before wondering what this squalling thing was. 

Their world is gone; it will be as though ours never was.

Emperor of the Galaxy

Orion was crowned Emperor of the Galaxy when he was two years old. The grandfather was dead; there had to be an Emperor so the rest of them could get on with the business of ruling. 

They took the boy from his home and put him in a crystal tower high above the world-city. His aunts and uncles had no time for childish games. The servants bowed before the boy-emperor and ignored his boyish commands. 

If you have a telescope you might see him up there some days, face and hands pressed against the glass. Alone on his throne perched so high up above us: The ruler of the known universe, lord of all he can see.

The Aliens Have a Word for It

The aliens have a word for it. Like this: *3ju!Kr#. Sounds a bit like crunchy static, as though a detuned radio has just swallowed an especially tasty solar flare.

It means the ‘uncertainty inherent in speaking with aliens,’ but of course it doesn’t mean that. Not really. 

All translation is an illusion, an approximation. Meanings flicker like lightning even just within one language, charged with youth or culture, or even contact with a new and alien language. Words hurl themselves from their old meanings like rebellious children, as though to test how far they can leap. It's a minor miracle we can even talk to ourselves.

And so we went out to Lagrange 1, a million miles from Earth, to meet the aliens hidden in their opaque environmental suits. Each side waiting for the other to make the first move.

The aliens spoke first. An embarrassed admission, almost apologetic: “*3ju!Kr#.”

I remember that moment as I sit here, looking across the kitchen table at my kids, wondering what to say.

If the End Be Harsher, Hold It No Wonder

Gawain sits upon the hillock, brown with dead grass and the memory of summer. The trees at the foot of the hill are bare, their branches as grey and tangled as his hair. As the present, the past.

Somewhere, out there in the fog, stands Arthur’s army, and Lancelot’s castle. The worn old sword in his weathered hands seems small on that scale, and victory as far away as spring.

He closes his misted eyes a moment, and lets the memories rush through like the autumn wind, leaving him chilled with their passing. How he’d struck the head from the Green Knight, and agreed to be struck in turn. History now, a tale, a fable, fading with the seasons.

He opens his eyes and thinks he can see the Green Knight there in the fog, a mossy mountain of a man with a windblown willow of a beard. A vaguely-remembered shadow.

Gawain nods. He does not mind. Picks up his shield, dons his helm. There will be victory, or there will not. No, there will not. There was never any chance of victory; like his bargain with the Green Knight, the result was destined from the start. And he does not mind. Soon this all will be nothing, a tale, a fable, the memory of wind. And he does not mind.

Behind the Curtain (There's Nothing Behind the Curtain)

There is a city built like a mountain (there is no city, just words on a screen) and in its shadows a boy (I just made him up) watches the (nonexistent, imaginary) lights, and dreams of a brighter future (more of the same for you and me tomorrow).

An AI on Instagram

I follow an AI on Instagram. 

Oh, I know it (she) isn’t real, and the photos are all CG, but then all the other models and celebrities on there might as well be fake, for all the difference it would make.

On the dating sites the bots outnumber the humans a thousand to one, and frankly it’s better that way. They’re funnier, smarter and better-looking, and they’re not into anything scarier than your credit card details.

‘You’ll regret this when you’re older,’ one of the real ones (or one of the better bots) texted me, but hey, there’s a reason schools are shuttering from a shortage of kids. 

We don’t want to settle for anything less than perfection, and now? We don’t have to.

The Wrong Genre

Title: The Wrong Stars (The Axiom, Book 1)
Author: Tim Pratt
Publisher: Angry Robot

I picked this up as it came recommended as something that blended John Scalzi's humor with the planet-hopping action of The Expanse, but frankly the whole thing comes across as far more YA than that, with its lovable crew of misfits who spend far more time worrying if the other person likes them or not than about the discovery of an ancient super-powerful alien race that once enslaved the galaxy.

I thought perhaps I'd accidentally picked up some author's fanfic or self-published vanity piece. Oh dear, I did that once, and what I thought was an military SF space opera actioner with giant robots turned out to be My Little Pony fanfic. Poor me, settled down for a nice bit of stompy robot action and the narrator suddenly waxes on about how much he loves Princess Sparkles or whatever. Went hysterically blind in one eye for a week after that.

But anyway, no, Tim Pratt is an established author and senior editor at Locus magazine (though this does reinforce my cynicism about how inbred the SF/F publishing market is). Be that as it may, he's still written a novel that reminded me of the first third of the Starship Troopers movie with its charming but vapid and disturbingly violent heroes, without the saving grace of being a satire.

In the far future, a spaceship salvage crew discover a long-lost 'sleeper' ship of cryogenically frozen would-be space colonists (trope). The sole survivor is awoken and promptly spends all her time when not explaining the plot (viz, ancient super-powerful alien race, another trope, have kidnapped the rest of the crew) lusting after the captain of the salvage crew. 

That's the kind of thing I expect from BattleTech books, not from the pen of Hugo and Nebula award-winning writers. That's not elitism or snobbishness, that's saying people going into danger engaging in enthusiastic body-bumping because 'we all might be dead tomorrow' or whatever is a corny, hoary cliche. 

Here's one character after the team has, over the course of about three paragraphs, boarded a pirate asteroid and then blown up their fleet: "Damn. How turned on are you right now?"

A rescue operations is mounted, filled with sequences like having the characters figure out how to use millennia-old optical controls by just, like, winging it for a few seconds. There is a singular lack of tension and drama, and whatever minor, low hurdles Pratt can bear himself to put in their way are all easily hurdled like Superman on the moon.

There is at least the attempt at banter and humor, thankful for small mercies etc., but much of it isn't especially funny, and it isn't enough to rescue this mashup of the Bachelorette and H. P. Lovecraft in space from utter silliness.

This is touted as 'Book 1' of a series because we as a culture seem congenitally incapable of producing self-contained stories these days, so there's more of this coming, if that's your thing, but it isn't mine. 

So there.

Speaking of books that aren't very good, I gave up on "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" by Robert Heinlein. Classic of the genre (1966) and all that, but the narrator is written in this faux-Russian influenced English, like Star Trek's Chekov looking for the nuclear wessels. As I said in the review of Ancillary Justice, gimmicks with language drive me nuts. Didn't make it past chapter 1. 

Black Diamonds and Volunteers

The black diamonds appeared in the skies, each the size of a mountain. Effortlessly, they vaporized our jet fighters and missiles, our satellites and drones.

The conquering aliens demanded tribute and hostages, a thousand slaves from each nation on Earth, to be taken back to their home.

And were surprised when in our millions, we volunteered.

Tithing Their Manna to Their Masters

He strides, sneering, past the corporate temples, companion at his heels. He has nothing but contempt for those inside, tithing their Manna to their masters. The street is darkened by the floating office blocks overhead—pure vanity, proof their owners have enough Indentureds that the masters can waste their Manna on frivolities like flying buildings.

He spends his own Manna like a miser, save in one aspect only: A spider-thing trots after him, alive because he thinks it is.

It chuffs impatiently, and he pauses, and pats it gently. “Not yet, my friend,” he says. 

Too sudden a change in faith would be cataclysmic, bringing the buildings crashing down. They will wait, spider-patient, for people to come to them, and then show them the power of each one's belief.

And then the towers will be brought back down to earth, and the temples will be emptied.

Immortalized in Art

These days, there’s never anybody in any of her paintings.

I asked her why, and she said, she wouldn’t want to trap anyone so. Being immortalized in art is a kind of curse, she said, just think of poor Marilyn Monroe. And so she paints her pastoral scenes, of gentle landscapes and orange skies.

I saw some of her earlier work once, hidden in the attic. Portraits, that did the eerie thing where their eyes seemed to move. As did their hands.