OK, now that the confusion is behind me concerning the Kindle and how past issues work, I am going backwards a bit to read the December issue. The December issue of Asimov's Science includes one novella, three novelettes, and three short stories. There is also one essay by Robert Silverberg. I like these essays written by famous writers, and I do wish Asimov's would consider having a few more per magazine. How about three or four of them? In any case, all fiction in this edition add up to almost 59,000 words. That's a short novel, so it's a good value. One name jumps out at me: Pamela Sargent. I have seen her books around, but I've never actually picked one up to read. I don't know why, but I will be reading her novelette.All About Emily, Connie Willis
While I've heard of Pamela Sargent, Connie Willis I have not. I can't say as I ever recall having seen her name on a novel anywhere. However, she is well recognized by the industry, having won dozens of prestigious short fiction awards. She has a good summary of them on Wikipedia.org. She also has her own webpage which is basically a professional blog.
OK, so, this story is about a robot and an actress. The robot enters the actress's life and is pushed away. However, after awhile, Claire Havillard (the actress), in the twilight of her career, finds herself pulled into Emily's magnetic personality.
Strawberry Birdies, Pamela Sargent
This story is about time travellers who are trying to improve the future condition in which they find themselves. They have decided that one particular individual – actually a son and father – whose particular contributions to mankind lead to a series of mishaps and an unfortunate future.
This story seems to be the alignment of several older tropes as well as a newer. The potential future is described as hotter and wetter. This is indicitive of a warmer climate. The park which is contrasted, future and past, is described as lush and green in the past and dry and abandoned in the future.
Somehow, a father who fathers too many children cannot manage to raise all the children on a teacher's salary. As a consequence, he decides to join the military which will result in him inventing some kind of weapon which will cause that scenario to happen. OK, a nod to Terminator or Wells if you prefer. Quite frankly, I'm not sure why Terminators and their ilk can't just go for sterilization and need to go to such extreme measures to eliminate a thorn in the side of the future.
Somehow the benevolent time traveller is able to improve the condition of the future by removing a piece of the puzzle.
I found the story mildly entertaining, fairly well told, but not exciting or mind bending or anything particularly compelling.
Ephemera, Steve Rasnic Tem
The setting of this tale is post-Asian pandemic—three of them no less—which ought to appeal to many fears that western people have of Asia. The population has been positively decimated. Technology has remained on course, however.
The story revolves around three characters: First, Daniel is the father of Lex. He likes antiques. In his room, he has several paper based books carefully preserved. Books are no longer made. Some old record covers decorate the room while books are preserved by sitting inside plastic bags. Physical copies of things are perhaps considered a thing of the past, and digital editions are the norm. Second, Lex is Daniel's son. He is a refined edition of his father's generation. Where Daniel's generation started the move to digital and ultra cleanliness, Lex and his generation have largely taken it a step further. Despite this, both Lex and Daniel cling onto the past. Lex likes to draw, and doesn't want to discard those physical reminders. The third character, Ascher—really just a foil to the other two more modern characters—is a collector of rare materials. He is from another era and contrasts with the main characters. He lives in a house which is more of a pack rat's lair than anything else. It is dirty. Stacks of boxes and shelves overwhelm the house.
Daniel's pride and joy seems to be his virtual collection of library collections which are displayed on a wall. However, this fails to impress Ascher. He is more interested in things that have a physical property.
After awhile, well after Ascher finishes his visit, Daniel fails to find him in his shop in the mall. He therefore decides to track him down to his house which is somehow off the grid of the government thanks to a government agent who had designated the house as government property and essentially deleted it off the records so that he could be left in peace. However, Lex is so disturbed by the uncleanliness of the house that he puts in a complaint to the government, which then shuts the house down and sends Ascher to a home.
This story has an interesting play on the current issue now between digital books and physical books. It assumes that one day physical books will disappear and only the digital equivalents will exist. I have seen this debate before, and I don't believe in it at all. Publishing is clearly changing and growing to include the new formats while the physical formats are changing in ways to survive. I think this conversation that is a fairly hot topic in certain circles is articulated in an interesting way.
The List, Tim McDaniel
A man has a list of people and information that compromises them. He is hiding in a house, wondering when he'll be found and killed over it. Lots of men before him have tried and died to make use of that list.
Really, this story is a dark comedy. The one who comes for him is 'big red' who enters the house via the stove pipe. Big Red then shoots him in the head with a few words that somehow Kurt manages to hear despite having been plugged in the head with a slug, "Ho, ho, ho, asshole." Santa doesn't like it when he's on a list. Clearly it's quite ironic and darkly humourous.
The Countable, Ken Liu
This story is simply of a boy who murders an abusive step-father with a knife in the back as he's beating his mother. There's some math that is woven into the story and graphs displaying the ideas.
The story isn't particularly great. But, I do kind of like how Ken Liu managed to make me think of infinity in a slightly different way. I'm not sure if I'm following what he was trying to get across, I'm just speaking about my own thoughts. That is to say, in contemplating the infinite universe and the numbers that attempt to describe the universe, the difference between zero and one, and one and a million, and one and infinity, is all really the same. That is to say, there are an infinite number of points between 0 and 1, just as there are an infinite number of points between 1 and 1,000,000, or even one and infinity. Infinity times a million, or infinity times one million is infinity. One plus infinity is still infinity. Infinity really doesn't change. It's an interesting thought, but I'm not sure if that's exactly what Ken was saying.
The main character is one of those gifted/cursed people who has a talent for one thing, but cannot function outside of that talent. His talent is math. His curse is that he cannot function in society, and this is further exacerbated by the fact that his step-father is continuously abusing him.
I'm not certain how I feel about the blending of fiction with an essay on numbers. Well, why should I have a problem with it? It's OK, just not big on the story itself.
"Run," Bakri Says, Ferrett Steinmetz
One of the super powers I've often thought about that I picked up from playing games is the ability to save at a place, die, and then go back to the saved place to try again. Well, this story does just that. A young woman is required to rescue her brother who has invented a device that manages to do just that whenever she dies. She is able to remember everything between the point where she is restored and the point that she gets to as she dies.
Eventually, through trial and error, learning how to aim her gun better, etc., she is able to kill a sniper, two guards, infiltrate a prison, kill more guards, and kills her brother who invented the device which has allowed her to do all this. She kills him because she hates the device for forcing her to experience death so many times. She also doesn't want the government to get its hands on the device. Before killing her brother, she asks how she can stop the device from taking her to the restore point.
Essentially, dying thousands of times so that she can kill people to get her brother ends up turning her into a cold blooded killer whose only real concern is to escape the cycle. Of course, she could have done all that without killing everyone. For instance, if she'd shot herself after getting the secret of how to shut down the device, she only had to go back to her restore point one more time to disrupt the cycle. Then she could use it herself so that she would only end up killing her brother.
I think the highlight of this magazine is "Ephemera" simply because it's done a good job of putting into context current fears in publishing. I think it's done in a somewhat comical way--not being entirely too serious.
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