Made To Order: Robots and Revolution, Edited by Jonathan Strahan

As I’ve explained before, I’m not usually a fan of anthologies. The quality and tones of the stories can be highly variable, which I find personally jarring, and one story not to my taste can make me stop reading the whole volume. When I read short stories, I always prefer single authors collections. 

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So why did I request a eARC of Made To Order:Robots and Revolution from NetGalley? 

Well, for starters, I love robots. Always have. Who doesn’t? Remember that part in the beginning of Futurama, when Fry was so excited to have a robot for a best friend because it had always been his dream? I could totally relate. As a kid I remember getting My Robot Buddy by Alfred Slote from the library and I loved the Norby books by Janet and  Isaac Asimov. I wanted to BE C-3P0. Bottom line: I heart robots. 

On top of that, I saw the list of contributors to the collection and I decided to take a chance. There are new stories here by authors I love, including Sarah Pinsker, Peter F. Hamilton, Brooke Bolander, and Annalee Newitz. 

Peter F. Hamilton is most well known for his tomes and doorstops, not his short fiction. But that didn’t make this story, Sonnie’s Union, any less enjoyable. It was a return to his Confederation universe and was excellent, but it really stretched the idea of what is a “robot” beyond what I personally feel is the limit. The story is centered on a woman whose consciousness inhabited a body that was sort of a golem or chimera. To me, once it gets too biological, it stops feeling like a robot. Otherwise, very fun story. 

Sarah Pinsker is one of my new favorite authors. I loved her debut novel, A Song For A New Day, whose near future world of social distancing following a plague and terrorist attacks doesn’t seem so implausible anymore. She wrote Bigger Fish, a detective story that, like Hamilton’s story, is excellent in spite of the lack of traditional SF robots. Instead, the robotic characters are the AIs running a smart home. This story is not to be missed. 

Annalee Newitz also wrote about an AI and not a more traditional robot in The Translator. After the masterful job she did creating the robot protagonist Paladin in her debut novel Autonomous, I was very excited to see what she would do her. I was not disappointed (except for the lack of a traditional clanking robot). Her story is rich and full of heart. 

I could go on about all of the other stories in the anthology, but those three were my favorites. This book is definitely worth checking out!

Beneath The Rising by Premee Mohamed

After reading this book, I will definitely pick up the next book by Premee Mohamed.  This author has a great deal of potential and I look forward to seeing what else she writes.

I wanted to start out with that because I didn’t want anyone to think that I was being too negative about this novel, because there were a number of things I didn’t like.  To be honest, there were times when it felt like a slog and I was tempted to not finish it.  But one thing kept coming back - the raw truth of the central relationship.

 It I’m getting ahead of myself.  This book is in a genre that is not particularly my jam.  I don’t often go for Lovecraftian horrors.  I’m mostly a science fiction fan who also loves fantasy.  I wouldn’t have ever requested an eARC from Netgalley until I read about the book and author on Mary Robinette Kowal’s blog’s My Favorite Bit feature.  Reading what the author wrote about herself and her book made me immediately request an eARC, so thanks to both Mary Robinette and Netgalley for getting me this book.

This novel is the author’s first traditionally published book, and it feels a lot like a first novel.  A lot of the descriptions are lyrical and poetic, which makes it very jarring when the book switches into vernacular.  Apparently, it WAS a first novel, one the author wrote in 2002, which might explain the choice of the alternate history setting where the September 11th attacks did not succeed.  I later read Ms. Mohamed’s Big Idea guest post on John Scaliz’s Whatever blog and I thought to myself, this person seems awesome.  She wrote this book originally when in school working on a genetics degree and it totally brought me back to my own Drosophila lab days.

A lot of the writing feels rough.  The Eldridge monsters start out scary,  but quickly begin to feel repetitive and boring.  The globetrotting quest feels as pro forma as a game of 80’s Carmen Sandiego.

So why do I think this is an author worth following? Simple.  She totally captured the feeling of being the needier person in an unbalanced friendship.  Have you ever had a friendship where you constantly thought to yourself “why is this person even friends with me?” Where your depth of feeling far outpaced the other person’s? Where you constantly felt that you weren’t pulling your weight and you kept waiting for the other person to drift away? This author totally captured all of those raw, visceral feelings and put them down on the page.  That’s why I’ll be watching it for what she does next.  

My 2020 Hugo nominating ballot

The world is falling apart and I feel like I’m a minor character in Connie Willis’s Doomsday Book or Sarah Pinsker’s A Song For A New Day, or possibly Mira Grant’s Feed. I’m working on some more reviews, but until then, I thought I might as well post my nominations for the Hugo Awards. Let’s hope we’re all around this summer to see who wins.

Best Novel

• The City in the Middle of the Night ; Charlie Jane Anders; Tor
• The Light Brigade; Kameron Hurley ; Saga
• Middlegame ; Seanan McGuire ; Tor.com
• A Song for a New Day; Sarah Pinsker; Berkeley 
• The Sinister Mystery of the Mesmerizing Girl; Theodora Goss; Saga

Best Novella

• In an Absent Dream; Seanan McGuire ; Tor.com publishing 
• To Be Taught, If Fortunate; Becky Chambers ; Harper Voyager 
• The Haunting of Tram Car 015; Clark, P. Djeli; Tor.com publishing 
• In the Shadow of Spindrift House; Mira Grant; Subterranean Press
• Minor Mage; T. Kingfisher; Red Wombat Studio

Best Novelette

• The Narwhal ; Sarah Pinsker; Sooner or Later Everything Falls Into the Sea
• Emergency Skin; N K Jemisin; Forward by Amazon

Best Short Story

• Any Way the Wind Blows; Seanan McGuire ; Tor.com
• Articulated Restraint ; Mary Robinette Kowal ; Tor.com
• The Bookstore at the End of America; Charlie Jane Anders; A People’s Future of the United States
• Old Media; Annalee Newitz; Tor.com

Best Series

• Expanse; James S.A. Corey ; Tiamat’s Wrath
• Incryptid ; Seanan McGuire ; That Ain’t Witchcraft
• Athena Club; Theodora Goss; The Sinister Mystery of the Mesmerizing Girl
• Valdemar; Mercedes Lackey; Eye Spy
• Axiom; Tim Pratt; Forbidden Stars

Best Related Work

• Becoming Superman ; J. Michael Straczynski; Harper Collins 
• Transformers: A Visual History; Jim Sorenson; Viz publishing 
• Hugosauriad: a dinography of the Hugo Awards; Camestros Felapton; https://camestrosfelapton.wordpress.com/

Best Graphic Story or Comic

• Amazing Nightcrawler; Seanan McGuire ; Marvel
• Unbeatable Squirrel Girl vol 9; Ryan North; Marvel
• Spider-Gwen: Ghost Spider vol 2; Seanan McGuire ; Marvel
• Wonder Twins vol 1; Mark Russel; DC
• Sunny rolls the Dice; Jennifer L Holm; Scholastic 

Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form

• Star Trek:Discovery season 2; CBS All Access
• Avengers Endgame; Disney 
• Spider-man Far From Home; Sony
• Good Omens; Amazon

Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form

• Steven Universe The Movie; Steven Universe ; Cartoon Network

Best Editor, Long Form

• Lee Harris
• Navah Wolfe

Best Fanzine

• Nerds of a Feather, Flock Together
• Disciples of Boltax

Best Fancast

• Jay and Miles Xplain the X-men 
• The Greatest Generation
• The Greatest Discovery 
• Our Opinions Are Correct
• Wow in the World

Best Fan Writer

• Camestros Felapton; https://camestrosfelapton.wordpress.com/
• Emmet Asher Perrin; https://www.tor.com/author/emily-asher-perrin/
• James David Nicoll; https://www.tor.com/author/james-davis-nicoll/

Lodestar Award for Best Young Adult Book (not a Hugo)

• Alien: Echo; Mira Grant; Imprint
• Sunny Rolls the Dice; Jennifer Holm; Scholastic 
• Dragon Pearl; Yoon Ha Lee; Disney Hyperion
• Catfishing on Catnet; Naomi Kritzer; Tor Teen

Astounding Award for the best new science fiction writer, sponsored by Dell Magazines (not a Hugo)

• RF Kuang; Dragon Republic

DC Comics: Heroes in Crisis by Tom King

I love Tom King.  He’s a super nice guy.  I met him last year at NYCC and he was totally polite and kind to the awkward fanboying I engaged in.  I really like his writing style and have loved his work on Batman and The Vision and Mr. Miracle.  I look forward to his Adam Strange.  So know it is not a knee jerk reaction to say that Heroes in Crisis just did not work for me.

Don’t get me wrong.  I love many things about it.  I love the structure of his comics, his use of 9 panel grids, and the way his character’s voices seem so natural.  I love the grand idea behind it - even superheroes need help sometimes.  Even now, in the early 21st century, mental health problems are still stigmatized.  People suffering from them are often coded as villains, especially in comic books.  So it is a very powerful thing to help normalize to the comic reading audience that everyone needs help some time and just because someone is suffering does not automatically make them a Joker or a Mr. Zsasz.   I don’t even dislike him for using Wally West as the fulcrum of his story - Wally was, in my opinion, an unnecessary victim of the new 52 - there was no room for most legacy characters when all of the silver age heroes were de-aged and restored to their prime in new #1s.  When Geoff Johns finally brought Wally back I was thrilled! But by not restoring his family, it removed some of the most important parts of Wally’s story.  I really appreciate what Tom King was trying to do, showing us just how devastating and debilitating it would be to suddenly not only lose your children, but, find they had been wiped from existence and, on top of that, to find out that your wife/partner/best friend didn’t even remember you.  That would fracture anyone.

I objected to the fact that Tom King made Wally a killer (although not a murderer, it is clearly involuntary) who tried to cover up his crime and implicate two innocent people.  I know that Mr. King was trying to show how broken Wally was and how much damage his trauma had done to his character and his psyche, but it still felt like character assassination to me.  I am not saying I have an easy solution to this narrative problem, and I understand that my feeling upset at this turn of events might be exactly what the author intended, but it still felt out of character to me.

Likewise, Wally’s willingness to use time travel to falsely implicate Booster Gold and Harley Quinn doesn’t jibe with his unwillingness to use the same time travel ability to undo all of the deaths he just caused.  His reference to not making the same mistake Barry made that led to Flashpoint felt hollow to me - it was a false analogy because Barry’s Flashpoint timeline meddling dealt with events years in his past that would have obvious ripple effects, whereas Wally could’ve gone back in time ten minutes after everyone died to prevent it from happening.  

I am not currently reading Doomsday Clock,  and other DC Comics as they are coming out now,  it it seems from the Previews that Wally now has both the Moebius Chair and Dr. Manhattan’s powers, so I hope that a reality warp is coming soon that allows him to restore all of the wrongly killed characters to life, including Wally’s children.  I will wait and hope that he gets a happy ending soon. Or, if not an ending, at least a more uplifting status quo.  

Camping with Unicorns: Phoebe and Her Unicorn vol 11 by Dana Simpson

My oldest daughter is seven now. When she was five, one of the librarians at our local library of, who saw the super hero trade paperbacks I was checking out for her (and for myself), asked me if my daughter liked unicorns. I believe I responded, “Who doesn’t?” At which point she insisted I put a copy of Phoebe and Her Unicorn by Dana Simpson on hold. 

The moral of this story is: always trust your librarian. 

Both my daughter and I love the Phoebe and her Unicorn series. It’s about a young girl who feels a little bit weird who happens to befriend a unicorn with the fantastic name of Marigold Heavenly Nostrils. It’s a sweet, funny comic without being treacly. It is exactly what I would have wanted to read as a child in between Calvin and Hobbes and the Far Side. I would go so far as to say it is the Calvin and Hobbes of today. (BTW, parts of Calvin and Hobbes does not hold up so well anymore. In our current world of school shootings and unapologetic misogynists, it feels uncomfortable at times.)

This volume covers the end of one school year, summer break, and the beginning of the next year. There is some good character development for Dakota, Phoebe’s arch frenemy, who finally starts to realize that being “cool” and hanging with the “cool kids” is starting to interfere with her actual interests. 

I highly recommend this volume and this series to readers of all ages. 

Knife Children by Lois McMaster Bujold

Knife Children by Lois McMaster Bujold

[content warning - spoilers and discussion of sexual assault]

I have loved everything else I have previously read by Lois McMaster Bujold. I wanted to love this book. But I just could not. The entire plot is predicated on a rape that not only goes unpunished, but only barely acknowledged as rape by the rapist or any of the other characters. 

Let me go back a step or two. 

I had somehow missed Lois McMaster Bujold’s entire of body of work until recently. Probably because I am not really into military science fiction and had never read any Baen books (except the bardic magic books of Mercedes Lackey). 

After her Vorkosigan series was nominated for the best series Hugo award, I decided to give it a go. I found the Tor.com reread (which is excellent, I cannot recommend enough) and I embarked. I feel in love. In love with the writing style, the world building, the characters. I started slowing down because I knew that the series, although vast, was finite. Every day while reading A Civil Campaign I went into the office of my coworker who had read the entire series and told him that the book was just “goddamn delightful.”

So when I saw a novella from Bujold from a series I hadn’t read yet on NetGalley from Subterranean, one of my favorite publishers, I thought I couldn’t go wrong. But quickly when I began reading I realized my mistake. 

Which is not to say the book is bad. The writing style and the world building and the characters are all excellent. Ms. Bujold is a clear master of her craft and deserves all of her accolades. But I do not like a book where the entire plot revolves around a rape and the rapist ends up with, at most, a light scolding. 

Barr is our narrator and rapist. He is a Lakewalker, which is a person with some magical powers including “beguilement,” which functions a lot like a Charm Person or Animal spell. 

When Barr was 18, he used his powers to beguile a woman into sex. 

I will quote the passage from the book that explains this:

“He’d been eighteen, just woken to what he’d naively imagined to be his full powers as a new patroller. The same beguiling persuasion that worked on animals worked on farmers, he’d heard, and, encountering that pretty young farmer girl when his patrol had camped on her family’s land, he’d been more than tempted to try it out. Bluebell hadn’t been unwilling. He’d not mistaken those artful glances of admiration she’d cast his youthful good looks. From admiration to arousal turned out to be but a step, and a step more from there to the loft of her father’s barn. Where he’d tried his best to give her as good a time as what he now recognized as his clumsy inexperience could provide.”

Although Barr claims she wasn’t unwilling, it is clear that he used his magical powers on her to get her to agree to have sex with him. Even if she seemed interested in him before he magicked her, his beguilement removed her ability to consent. That is not sex. That is rape. 

This rape results in a child, whom Barr stalks from afar until she is a teenager and her Lakewalker powers develop. She has run away from home, and Barr finds her, brings her home, and explains her parentage to her and his family. 

As mentioned above, there is some light scolding from Barr’s clan, and none from his daughter, the result of the rape. As for the rape victim? She is mostly offstage and is depicted as harried and shrewish, when she might in fact still be suffering from PTSD. In the end, the daughter chooses to remain with her mother’s rapist and live with him and his family. 

I do not think that Ms. Bujold likes rape or is a fan of rape. I do not know her personally, but from reading her other novels, her blog entries on Goodreads, and her occasional comments on the Tor.com Vorkosigan reread, I feel pretty safe in concluding this. She does seem to understand that rape is horrific and has serious emotional consequences for rapist, victim, and progeny, as demonstrated by her portrayal of Sgt. Bothari, Elena Bothari, and her mother. So I do not understand why she doesn’t treat beguiled sex as rape in this novella. Because she does not, I did not like this book.

Upright Women Wanted by Sarah Gailey

I love Sarah Gailey’s work. I first noticed their byline on Tor.com and grabbed River of Teeth, their debut novella, as soon as it hit the library. I really enjoyed Magic for Liars, their murder mystery set a a magic school with a non-magical detective. Their short story STET was amazing and was the top of my Hugo ballot last year (sadly, it did not win).

So I was really excited when I got a arc of their new novella, Upright Women Wanted, from the Tor booth at New York Comic Con. The book promised horse-riding, gunslinging librarians in a semi-postapolacalyptic Southwest, and it delivered on that promise. While overall enjoyable, I left wanting more world building. I wanted to know more about how the subversive librarian network arose and how they were able to continue to function since the content of the books they distributed was not kept secret. Overall, I found it to be a great character study of the point of view character, a teenage girl who ran away from home because she loved the “wrong” person. However, one note of the protagonist’s characterization did not ring true to me. The protagonist sees her first love hanged in front of her. I would have expected that her emotional devastation would have prevented her from harboring any romantic feelings for anyone for a considerable amount of time while she healed from this trauma.  That was not the case during the course of this novella. Maybe it’s because I was never a teenage girl? Maybe it’s because it’s been a long time since I was a teenager? But to me it felt like she got a crush on one of the other characters way too quickly.

Other than that, no complaints. A very enjoyable read. I look forward to their next book!