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Novelettes & Short Story
Sep. 22nd, 2023 07:41 amThe Hugo voting deadline is coming up at the end of this month, so here are my thoughts on the novelettes and the one short story that I read:
Kudos to Uncanny magazine for continually bringing us fantastic and thoughtful works of short fiction. I am sorry for all the trouble the editors have had in the last year, and I'm thankful the staff kept the magazine going.
***
We Built This City by Maureen Vibbert is a story about labor relations, which, as some of us know, are the third most important thing in life. The setting is a city enclosed in a bubble, where workers have to do the dangerous work of climbing outside the bubble to clean it off. Working conditions are unpleasant.
I agree that labor relations are critically important, and I am unhappy to say that I personally failed as a labor organizer. I didn't particularly enjoy this story, and I can't say how much of that is because the storytelling was unexciting and how much of that is because this is such a sore subject for me. I have fortunately solved my problems and found a better situation for as long as it lasts, and those suffering difficult working conditions have all my sympathy.
***
The Difference Between Love and Time by Catherynne Valente is a decidedly unusual love story, where the love interest is the spacetime continuum. Imagine having a love affair with the spacetime continuum. It is more emotionally impossible than most humans. Valente cleverly presents the spacetime continuum as it might have been as a child, an adolescent, a young adult. She presents the ways it gets into fights, the ways it acts passive aggressively, the ways it is mostly not a dick. She takes us through the life of a nameless narrator character, who describes her relationships not only with the spacetime continuum but with other partners and with her mother. We hear about the narrator's parents' divorce, her mother's health, and many of her life experiences. The story is gradually revealed in out-of-order vignettes, because time is all the same to the spacetime continuum, right? The life vignettes are full of pop culture references that bring back the reader's memories of the times.
I enjoyed this story quite a bit, and I found the ending particularly meaningful. The entire work is just unutterably human. Valente uses a non-human character to tell us something important about our humanity.
***
If You Find Yourself Speaking to God, Address God with the Informal You by John Chu is a tale of cautious romance involving a crimefighting superhero who also fights police and anti-Asian violence. It is told from the perspective of Steve, a gay bodybuilder of Taiwanese descent. The story flips back and forth between descriptions of videos of a flying superhero and Steve's life lifting weights in the gym, slowly building a romance with a very strong but soft-spoken bodybuilder whom Steve initially identifies only as "Sweatshirt Guy." After many weeks of lifting together, when Sweatshirt Guy asks him to help move a couch, Steve finally finds out that Sweatshirt Guy's name is Carl.
This touching story explores the secret identities of both superheroes and closeted queer people, and the frustrations of being in the closet. I thoroughly enjoyed both the romance and the superheroism.
Rabbit Test by Samantha Mills is full of poignant rage. The story is told as a series of vignettes, exploring the lives of women with unwanted pregnancies, in a near-future US with illegalized abortion. The story is interspersed with vignettes highlighting moments in the history of abortion rights. I was particularly proud when I read the parts about reproductive rights activists in the early 70's, because my father was one of them. The story builds, bit by bit, further into the future, making it clear why women's rights to control their reproduction are so critical. It does indeed tell a narrative story, with ongoing sympathetic characters, rather than sermonizing. Listening to it as an audiobook was a particularly intense experience. This is one of the most powerful works I've read. Thank you, again, Uncanny Magazine, for bringing this to us, and I hope it wins a Hugo!
Kudos to Uncanny magazine for continually bringing us fantastic and thoughtful works of short fiction. I am sorry for all the trouble the editors have had in the last year, and I'm thankful the staff kept the magazine going.
***
We Built This City by Maureen Vibbert is a story about labor relations, which, as some of us know, are the third most important thing in life. The setting is a city enclosed in a bubble, where workers have to do the dangerous work of climbing outside the bubble to clean it off. Working conditions are unpleasant.
I agree that labor relations are critically important, and I am unhappy to say that I personally failed as a labor organizer. I didn't particularly enjoy this story, and I can't say how much of that is because the storytelling was unexciting and how much of that is because this is such a sore subject for me. I have fortunately solved my problems and found a better situation for as long as it lasts, and those suffering difficult working conditions have all my sympathy.
***
The Difference Between Love and Time by Catherynne Valente is a decidedly unusual love story, where the love interest is the spacetime continuum. Imagine having a love affair with the spacetime continuum. It is more emotionally impossible than most humans. Valente cleverly presents the spacetime continuum as it might have been as a child, an adolescent, a young adult. She presents the ways it gets into fights, the ways it acts passive aggressively, the ways it is mostly not a dick. She takes us through the life of a nameless narrator character, who describes her relationships not only with the spacetime continuum but with other partners and with her mother. We hear about the narrator's parents' divorce, her mother's health, and many of her life experiences. The story is gradually revealed in out-of-order vignettes, because time is all the same to the spacetime continuum, right? The life vignettes are full of pop culture references that bring back the reader's memories of the times.
I enjoyed this story quite a bit, and I found the ending particularly meaningful. The entire work is just unutterably human. Valente uses a non-human character to tell us something important about our humanity.
***
If You Find Yourself Speaking to God, Address God with the Informal You by John Chu is a tale of cautious romance involving a crimefighting superhero who also fights police and anti-Asian violence. It is told from the perspective of Steve, a gay bodybuilder of Taiwanese descent. The story flips back and forth between descriptions of videos of a flying superhero and Steve's life lifting weights in the gym, slowly building a romance with a very strong but soft-spoken bodybuilder whom Steve initially identifies only as "Sweatshirt Guy." After many weeks of lifting together, when Sweatshirt Guy asks him to help move a couch, Steve finally finds out that Sweatshirt Guy's name is Carl.
This touching story explores the secret identities of both superheroes and closeted queer people, and the frustrations of being in the closet. I thoroughly enjoyed both the romance and the superheroism.
Rabbit Test by Samantha Mills is full of poignant rage. The story is told as a series of vignettes, exploring the lives of women with unwanted pregnancies, in a near-future US with illegalized abortion. The story is interspersed with vignettes highlighting moments in the history of abortion rights. I was particularly proud when I read the parts about reproductive rights activists in the early 70's, because my father was one of them. The story builds, bit by bit, further into the future, making it clear why women's rights to control their reproduction are so critical. It does indeed tell a narrative story, with ongoing sympathetic characters, rather than sermonizing. Listening to it as an audiobook was a particularly intense experience. This is one of the most powerful works I've read. Thank you, again, Uncanny Magazine, for bringing this to us, and I hope it wins a Hugo!
