THE SLOW ELEPHANTS OF MILAN, Argentinian strangeness in fragments you make into a mosaic

THE SLOW ELEPHANTS OF MILAN
ÁNGEL BONOMINI (tr. Jordan Landsman)
Transit Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$17.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Enigmatic fictions from a lost master of Argentine literature.

A thick fog rolls into Milan as a man watches in astonishment while a procession of elephants crosses the street. A couple wandering through a forest is pointed toward a mysterious city from which they may never return. Two prisoners share a cell in the aftermath of a battle—one finds freedom in writing stories while the other is driven mad with envy.

The Slow Elephants of Milan expands Ángel Bonomini’s exploration of the interstitial realms between dream and reality. Originally published in 1978, these surreal and enigmatic fictions are among Bonomini’s finest and most autobiographical, threaded together by an insatiable curiosity about time, memory, art, and the divine.

With delicate precision, The Slow Elephants of Milan deconstructs the scaffolding of our perceptions to reveal what lies beneath: a metaphysical mirror-world that shimmers with haunting familiarity.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: I didn't find the individual stories...twelve in all...particularly compelling as stories. Author Bonomini is no Hemingway, no transcendent master of the short-story form. He was an excellent craftsman who took great care to use the short-story form as a means to convey moods, insights, gestalts of incident building life.

The title story is a good example of this. A man sees a truly arresting sight: two elephants being led through the streets of Milan. Author Bonomini reflects on this without sentimentality, without concern for the elephant-ness of their existence; the narrator sees them when he is mid-reflection on the deep, deepening sadness of his life and soul; he sees these elephants multiple times walking almost unremarked through Milan's busy streets and is surprised afresh at how this sight he's captivated by is of little to no apparent interest to others.

Okay. That's the kind of trip we're going on, then, the odd but not impossible thing that carries Meaning and delves into Ideas. I wasn't eager for more but it's under 160pp, so what the hell. "Diary of My Portraits" was so memorable it lifted my impression of the collection above "nice work, not amazing but pleasantly engaging." In this story, the narrator sees a bird come into his apartment, thinks it is the same bird; but each time the bird is a different color. This happens in parallel to the narrator's partner painting his portrait, carefully and attentively creating an image of his face with laborious precision; then, dissatisfied with the likeness she has made, she destroys the portrait and begins afresh the process of capturing the narrator's appearance, his face, the image he shows to the world. Only to destroy it again. It is a lovely, poignant moment realizing that the artist's name...Moira...is a very interestingly resonant from its Greek bits to its resemblance to the Spanish verb form "mira"— "Look!"

To be the subject of this process, to have your likeness never completed, never satisfactory...to her, to the image's creator, no participation from you as the subject...was my key to finding these stories more in sum than they are as pieces. Gestalt formed yet? Everything in this collection of stories examines the image of a thing, the viewable parts changing but never fitting a single view, not even for a single viewer.

Instability and surveillance...seeing from on high...meet uneasily, irreconcilable in their differences of kind and sort of result. Nothing seen from the outside *is* the thing, no matter how much you want to call an elephant walking down a busy Italian street it is not.

It is itself.

Interesting ideas coming from perfectly fine stories will not be to everyone's taste, but I found the read much more than the sum of its parts.

BRIGHT FUTURE: An Anthology of Diverse and Inclusive Science Fiction

BRIGHT FUTURE: An Anthology of Diverse and Inclusive Science Fiction
Various Authors
Story Origin
Price unknown to me

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Spaceships, space stations, and distant planets. Stampeding elephants, a talking dog, and a hungover captain without a ship. An ensign far from home, a stowaway, and a pair of runaways. This anthology features stories of a diverse and inclusive future by six up-and-coming indie authors.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM STORY ORIGIN. THANK YOU.

My Review: Teaser-taster collections are very risky reads for me. I am frequently left irked by them, especially when they have excerpts from longer works. A bullet dodged here, then, since these are all tales from established storyverses the authors are working within, with one exception; with another exception, they're the inciting incidents in the series. I'm entirely on board with most of the stories because the authors have high-quality craft chops.

I herewith employ the time-honored tradition of this blog, the Bryce Method, of offering a story-by-story opinion of each piece.

Case File #7: The One with All the Elephants by Jeannette Bedard strikes a delightful, amusing tone as it merges the SF and Fantasy strands of SFF in one quite engaging story. I was hugely amused, to the point of laughing out loud, when I read "She pulled out an old tablet—the kind once used in the elementary classrooms of my grandparents or maybe their grandparents." Exactly as I'd feel if someone pulled out a slate! But I think Detective Flo's partner, Ned, who eats spicy cricket tacos, made the whole story of mini-elephants on a space station come alive for me. If this is in a series, can't find it; if it isn't, please make it one. 4 stars

Jurassic Dark by SI CLARKE brings characters from monadnock-of-indie-SF Si Clarke's Starship Teapot series in a suspenseful, eerie tale in homage to Arthur C, Clarke's iconic, A Walk in the Dark, charmingly dramatized by The Black Dog Chronicles here. It really, truly is a delightful homage, too. Spock is a hilarious character, beak and all. Shake it, Spock! 4 stars

The Blood of the Forgotten by Dani Hoots is a novella set in a world I don't have any experience with, so I spent the whole read wondering what the heck led these two children...sixteen and eighteen, more or less...to be where they were, to what they decided to do, to the final decision in the story that, frankly, squicked me out. The Kausians, which our sister-and-brother narrators happen to be, were very interesting; because I haven't read the series, I had to be okay with gleanings of their essence. It was, sadly, a read I found unsatisfying. 3 stars all for potentials unrealized.

The Arno Manoeuvre by D.M. Pruden will, I'd bet, spawn follow-on tales...it feels like there's more than enough room for more stories in this setting, part of the author's Shattered Empire series. A main character in the series, Captain Pavlovich, is a mere Ensign on his first assignment in this novella. It takes place in a dark, dreadful time in the storyverse's history, and uses the always effective narrative technique of first-person cinematic viewpoint to follow Ens. Pavlovich as he comes by his ability to command and to control...himself, and his own narrative. Battle scenes aren't for everyone; be aware that they are detailed and contain triggering events for those with PTSD. 5 stars

Endigo: Trystero Origins by Dave Walsh is the set-up novella for his series, Trystero. The way the Trystero gets its name, and its captain, in the series to come is a terrific take on the old plot of the passing of the torch. It's a good tale, well told, and has all the action you'd want to see. 4.5 stars

Impounded by John Wilker, first story in that author's Space Rogues series. It felt like the almost-R-rated version of Star Trek: The Original Series, and I don't mean that in a good way. I disliked Wil Calder, the series' main character, almost as much as I disliked Kirk. Not to my taste; possibly to yours. 3 stars

A SCOT'S SURRENDER & HIGHLAND HAUNTING, two of the six stories in "The Townsends" series

A SCOT'S SURRENDER
LILY MAXTON (The Townsends #3)
Entangled: Scandalous (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$3.99 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: "An utterly charming slow-burn romance." - Cat Sebastian, author of The Soldier's Scoundrel

When his brother leaves him in charge of Llynmore Castle, Robert Townsend is determined to make everything go smoothly. What does it matter if he's inexplicably drawn to Ian Cameron, the estate’s stoic steward? Robert is sure he can ignore the way the Highlander's apparent dislike of him gets under his skin. They'll muddle along just fine so long as they avoid one another. An excellent plan…until a fire forces Ian into the castle—and Robert's personal space.

Ian Cameron has worked for everything he owns, unlike spoiled Robert Townsend. And he may not have friends, but he has the Highlands and the stars, and what more could he really need? But when a guest's stolen possession appears in his room, he doesn't have much choice but to admit to the handsome and aggravatingly charming Townsend brother that he needs help. To solve this mystery, they'll have to put aside their differences. And as Ian learns more about Robert, he'll have to guard his heart…or it may be the next thing stolen.

Each book in the Townsends series is STANDALONE:
* Enchanting the Earl
* The Rogue's Conquest
* A Scot's Surrender

My Review: First, read this:

“You’re too kind,” Ian said eventually. Most people would mean that statement as a compliment. Ian didn’t.

Townsend huffed. “I’m too kind?”

“People take advantage of kindness.”

He smiled suddenly. “I’m kind but crafty…the perfect combination. Don’t worry on my account.”
–and–
The Highlander was, in true contrary fashion, one of those people who were at their best in the morning—his face was alert, gray eyes sharp and observant. He’d probably bounded out of bed at dawn and wrestled a few sheep.
–and–
Robert didn’t dislike cats, but he’d always been more of a dog person himself—one knew where one stood with a dog. They didn’t stare at a person with those unreadable, impassive eyes. With cats, it was impossible to tell if they liked you or if they might be plotting your murder.

Here's what you need to know: These aren't striplings falling in love for the first time, these are men whose different stations in life and similar sexual natures keep them from being best friends immediately, from trusting each other's honesty until the bitter end, and from rushing into any kind of relationship at all. So: slow burn, learning to love, and enough baggage for the whole of steerage on the Titanic.

The set-up in the synopsis above gets you most of the way to the plot. There are details you'll enjoy discovering on your own...the focus of the book is less on the action than on the actors and their motivations, their learning, their expanding circle of trust and respect for each other. Ian, as a very senior servant, shouldn't take a snarky 'tude with his boss's little brother but he is righteously annoyed that there's a spoiled useless idler set in nominal authority over his omnicompetent self. Robert is a pleaser, a fixer, and wants only to make sure everything goes smoothly and everyone is happy as larry or it is All His Fault.

The hijinks that ensue are the result of some truly shady events that occur when strangers call. The men are suddenly perforce a team, and they're amazed at how soon they come to like it:

He could admit Robert Townsend was as handsome as the devil, and he had a voice to match, deep and dark and smooth and curled with smoke at the edges.
–and–
And thus, it was official—he was ridiculously besotted. He would have to be to think of poetry at odd, random moments, and it was always Elizabethan poetry, too.

These are men whose lives haven't led them to trust things that come easy. Ian's family...well, least said, soonest mended, and if I told you then you'd refuse to read the book, and really you need to. We are all as Heaven made us, as that Confucian ikon Dee Goong An says in one of Robert van Gulik's lovely stories about him; the judge refers to that series' only encounter with a gay couple. That was daring stuff in the 1950s, and it reflected accurately how Confucian thought deals with men who love men: Weird, but hardly their fault. If only that was the attitude of certain Georgian Scots.

Robert's not...well, he's a luckier if less assured soul than Ian is. He's just about never been honest with anyone, as a means of protecting his inner squishy bits. He writes successful silly mystery stories and makes a decent living at it. You can imagine what the hearty Scot thinks of Temperament, nor is Robert inclined to make allowances for Scottish Temper:

It was a battlefield…of parchment and quills and books. Ian couldn’t even see the actual desk. Everywhere, sheets of foolscap covered in a slanted scrawl were stacked or strewn about. Books, both open and closed, took up any space the foolscap had left. And teetering precariously close to a corner was an intricate silver-topped inkwell and an open cedarwood box that contained no fewer than ten quills.
–and–
“I’m not inclined to stand around while you hurl verbal abuse at me. If I did something that bothered you, find those words you keep buried in the depths of your prickly soul and tell me. Until then, we have more important matters at hand.”

But they are learning...learning to love, to trust, and to be as vulnerable as those activites (properly done) require a man to be.

Ian pulled him like the tide, inexorably, out into the night.
–and–
Why did touching Robert make him feel like he’d flown too close to the sun and somehow emerged on fire but alive?

They're in a category romance. They're gettin' a Happily Ever After. And it makes me very happy that I read this entry in the series, allowed myself to be steered gently by the story's currents, when I reached port:

Love was a force to be reckoned with. It wasn’t a thing to be taken lightly, or toyed with, or revoked at a whim. Its presence was felt, and its dearth. Always, always, the lack of it was missed. Love made all the difference in the world.

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HIGHLAND HAUNTING
LILY MAXTON (The Townsends #3.5)
Entangled: Scandalous (non-affiliate Amazon link)
99¢ Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: For the past few months, Ian Cameron and Robert Townsend have been settling into their new life together, but when a series of odd events occur at Llynmore Castle, Ian begins to suspect that he's being haunted. The question is, is the spirit malevolent or benevolent? Does it want to harm him or warn him of something to come?

As Halloween draws closer, the ghost becomes stronger. Ian and Robert will have to trust each other and trust themselves to find the answers they need before it's too late.

Highland Haunting is 16,000 words and features the main characters from A Scot's Surrender

My Review: First, read this:

“All right. I’m sorry. I didn’t think you were superstitious.”

“I’m not.”

“But you believe in ghosts? You think you saw one?”

Ian nodded, as if there was nothing wrong with the logic of not being superstitious but believing in otherworldly beings.

That is, right there, the entire purpose of this story. Set at Halloween, Ian's culture's night when the veil between the living and the dead is at its thinnest and most permeable but when Robert's culture is beginning its steep downgrade of that into a brummagem and tawdry schlockfest like we have now. That means...this being a Scottish castle at the beginning of Winter...Gothic Atmosphere for days! And Author Maxton's going to make every allowable use of it, too. A ghostie with a tragic love story between ancestors, or bygone relatives anyway, of Ian Cameron and Robert Townsend; an old blood debt that must be paid; and the fact of these men's love, their sexual and spiritual wholeness in relationship to each other, being the medium to pay, repay, and pay forward the bond they each cherish and maintain.

“She was in this room. She was locked in, I think… She kept telling me to let her out.” He knew how strange it sounded. He also knew it was true.

Ian moved toward him, touched his waist. “Are ye all right?”

Robert wanted to sink into the touch, but he didn’t let himself. It wasn’t because Georgina was there, it was because he hadn’t believed Ian at first. Ian must have felt this way, too, this bone-deep unease, this sense of wrongness, and Robert had laughed.
–and–
“There’s a difference between coddling and cuddling.”

“This isna cuddling.”

“Then what is it?”

“Necessary. Like breathing.”

Ian had once accused Robert of saying things Ian didn’t know how to protect himself against. Now that they’d been together longer, it was the other way around. Ian’s words were simple, but they were pointed, and they cut—a knife through flesh and blood and bone—straight to the heart.

This short work does more in its under-seventy pages than many a modernist novel does in hundreds. The fact is that being in love with and lusting after someone is not enough to buid a solid, lasting relationship on; birthday parties aren't the models for quotidian living. Robert and Ian are aware of that now, where before they were besotted by the pretty wrapping paper and the party clothes. Having faced a brace of ghosts down and paid a spirit-debt to their dead foreebears together, and having done so against some pretty steep odds, they are on a firm footing that bids fair to hold them up while they build their lover's retreat from the world into a roomy, finely furnished, comfortable, and durable home for their ever-beating hearts.

It was an odd thing, to be secure in someone else’s love. To have that space, that feeling, be inviolable. It was changeable maybe, because nothing remained unchanged, but it would grow and change with them. Its roots were deep, like that centuries old hawthorn tree, profound and unshakable, no matter how much it weathered. That was simply who Robert was, and who they were, together.

A DEAD DJINN IN CAIRO, first in the Dead Djinn Universe stories, and THE ANGEL OF KHAN EL-KHALILI, second short story in the series

A DEAD DJINN IN CAIRO
P. DJÈLÍ CLARK (Dead Djinn Universe #0.5) And read Arley Sorg's interview with Author Clark!
Tor.com
FREE online read!

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Egypt, 1912. In an alternate Cairo infused with the otherworldly, the Ministry of Alchemy, Enchantments and Supernatural Entities investigate disturbances between the mortal and the (possibly) divine. What starts off as an odd suicide case for Special Investigator Fatma el-Sha’arawi leads her through the city’s underbelly as she encounters rampaging ghouls, saucy assassins, clockwork angels, and plot that could unravel time itself.

My Review: In honor of the publication tomorrow of the first full-length novel in Author Phenderson Djèlí Clark's Majgickqal-Cairo steampunk series, as well as his publishing career, let's revisit the place it all began.

Fatma of the Ministry of Alchemy, Enchantments and Supernatural Entities, and Aasim, the Cairo policeman, are two of the series' through-line characters. They, and the utterly transformed-by-magic Cairo they live in, are introduced in this little gem of a procedural tale.

Fatma sat back in a red-cushioned seat as the automated wheeled carriage plowed along the narrow streets. Most of Cairo slept, except for the glow of a gaslight market or the pinprick lights of towering mooring masts where airships came and went by the hour. Her fingers played with her cane’s lion-headed pommel, watching aerial trams that moved high above the city, crackling electricity illuminating the night along their lines. Their carriage passed a lone man in a rickety donkey cart. He drove his beast at a slow trot, as if in defiance of the modernity that surrounded him.

“Another damned ghul attack!” Aasim exclaimed. He sat opposite her, reading over several cables. “That’s odd. They didn’t kill anyone—they took them. Snatched them and ran right off.”

Fatma looked up. That was odd. Ghuls fed on the living. Their victims were usually found half-devoured. They weren’t in the habit of stealing people.

Now, the scene and the stakes are set: These two are working on more than one case, like law enforcement everywhere, but they are clearly up to their necks in a very different place from where thee and me live. And, it turns out, this is *exactly* what I've been waiting for!

Beneath the tree, a tall figure inspected a curious structure of overlapping gear wheels—some massive, others small and delicate as a coin. Each had been cut with precision, so that their teeth meshed seamlessly together. Their surfaces were engraved with metal script, some she knew to be numerals. At their arrival, the tall figure broke from his inspection and turned about.

With effort, Fatma suppressed a gasp similar to the one that escaped Aasim’s lips. It was always an odd thing to be in the presence of an angel—or at least the beings that claimed to be so.

They had appeared after the djinn, suddenly and without warning. Considerable debate was expended on affirming their identity. The Coptic Church argued that they could not be angels, for all such divinities resided in heaven with God. The Ulama similarly asserted that true angels had no free will, and could not have simply come here of their own volition. Both issued cautious statements naming them, at the least, “otherworldly entities.” The self-proclaimed angels were silent on the matter—validating no particulars of either faith, and remaining enigmatic regarding their motives.

It's this kind of enough-but-not-too-much detail that is what makes Author Clark's writing work for me. This first-in-series story, nominated for a 2017 Locus Award for Best Novelette, convinced me to get as much of this Universe as I could as fast as I could; now my patience (enforced, but it still counts) is at last rewarded.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

THE ANGEL OF KHAN EL-KHALILI
P. DJÈLÍ CLARK (Dead Djinn Universe #0.6)
Tor.com
FREE online read!

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: We are overjoyed to be reprinting “The Angel of Khan el-Khalili” by P. Djèlí Clark, set in the same world as A Master of Djinn, out on May 11!

The story first appeared in the anthology Clockwork Cairo: Steampunk Tales of Egypt, edited by Matthew Bright and published by Twopenny Press.

My Review: This meditation on the price of Truth and the unlikelihood of Honesty being its own reward is told in the second person. This is, I need not tell anyone of my acquaintance, a Literary Original Sin and usually causes me to slam covers and jab power buttons with disgust and outrage.

Author Clark, somehow, is immune to this inflexible rule being applied to him. In fact, these beahviors didn't so much as occur to me. After reading the very, very moreish A Dead Djinn in Cairo, and realizing that I would get some more background on the Angels introduced in that novelette I simply soldiered on into this short story. And look what rewarded me almost at once:

Angels arrived in Cairo some forty years past. Your parents had been children then, but they still tell you stories of al-Jahiz—the disappeared Soudanese mystic, scientist, madman—whose fantastic machines had sent magic pouring into the world with the force of an unstoppered sea.

I absolutely love this world. I am besotted with its clockwork boilerplate eunuchs (robots to thee and me), I am fascinated at the setting of Cairo, that most astonishing of cities with its shocking heat, its soft light, and its myriad of people all of whom seem to have a pack of Gauloises secreted on them somewhere. I even like its magjicqk system! Djinns and ifrits and Marîds and ghuls...turns out maybe what I've been allergic to all these years might not be majgiqck per se but just be the samey Tolkieny elves and fae and stuff.

So after meeting the Angel in the first story, I was really ready for this expansion of my knowledge about them in the contect of this glorious new Universe. I did get some satisfaction:

But angels are another matter. They are rarer things, ethereal beings who shroud their bodies behind contraptions of mechanical grandeur and hold themselves apart from mortals and djinn alike. None, not even the religious bodies of Cairo, have been able to discern the reason for their coming. And they have remained equally enigmatic.

But this is a short story. It's hard for me to get more than a partial lock on what the heck's going on and who will be repeating in the series from such a condensed dosage. The enigma of Angels is ongoing here and, well, like second-person allergy, I will just have to get over my greed for more until it's Author Clark's desire to give it to me.

None of the characters in this short piece appear to recur in the novel. It's not like that's a bad thing; I'm accustomed to being a little more fully knitted into the fabric of a series, though. What does happen here is the Universe expands its spiritual borders in an anti-capitalist direction, and that's just hunky-dory by me! Poor little Aliaa, the seeker of a miracle from Seeker the Angel, has a sister in dire, dire straits. The poor thing is dying of burns she got saving other workers from a fire that broke out in the dress facotry where she works. With, in fact, her fifteen-year-old sister Aliaa.

Shades of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire. And, not coincidentally, Tor.com's 2014 Hugo-nominated novella Burning Girls, which I rated quite highly. That tragedy is intensely relevant again in this day and time, as workers' rights and voters' rights and the simple right of nonwhite persons to exist unmolested in the US are under active attack from the scum on the political right again. Still. Still and again.

And I can honestly, unreservedly say to you that second-person narration, majgiqck that works, and deeply, deeply painful life lessons for a teenaged protagonist...as fat a lump of Mudge-kryptonite as you can imagine, in other words...does not matter to my pleasure in this compact read. It's free. Give it a whirl. Then go read my review of The Haunting of Tram Car 015, a very, very funny and very wickedly pointed expansion of Hamed and Onsi's roles in the ongoing series.

THE STONE WĒTĀ and COME WATER, BE ONE OF US, never mistake short for weak

THE STONE WĒTĀ
OCTAVIA CADE
Paper Road Press NON-Affiliate link to Amazon; the author published the book from New Zealand
$3.99 Kindle edition, available now

WINNER OF THE 2021 SIR JULIUS VOGEL AWARD FOR BEST NOVEL!

Rating: 5* of five

The Publisher Says: “We talk about the tyranny of distance a lot in this country. That distance will not save us.”

With governments denying climate science, scientists from affected countries and organizations are forced to traffic data to ensure the preservation of research that could in turn preserve the world. From Antarctica, to the Chihuahuan Desert, to the International Space Station, a fragile network forms. A web of knowledge. Secret. But not secret enough.

When the cold war of data preservation turns bloody – and then explosive – an underground network of scientists, all working in isolation, must decide how much they are willing to risk for the truth. For themselves, their colleagues, and their future.

Murder on Antarctic ice. A university lecturer’s car, found abandoned on a desert road. And the first crewed mission to colonize Mars, isolated and vulnerable in the depths of space.

How far would you go to save the world?

My Review: When the Revolution comes, it will be women leading it. Secular Saint Stacey Abrams will likely be honking the biggest horn and causing the biggest ruckus. But that's not because it's her M.O. It's because her cover's blown. There is no point in trying to sneak when every-damn-body knows your shoe size and when you cheat on your diet.

So here is a story I read last month about the Revolution led by women and made up of scientists who'll be damned to hell if they're going to make nice for no gain when the planet is dying:

Resistance was revolution, sometimes, blood and dramatic acts, but more often it was survival. More often it was preservation, and the data she carried with her was for preservation more than revolution.

This near-future Earth has gone well past tipping point. The vileness that is Capitalism is still spinning its lies and soothing its consumers to keep them buying while...to be honest I haven't the foggiest clue what they're thinking they can do that we can't, how they will survive the *actual* End of Days, but there it is. The lie-maker machinery behind the popular songs is still humming "Big Yellow Taxi" and cheerfully killing people who know it's all a lie and can't be arsed to do anything about it.

It was hard to be an astronaut and not be an environmentalist.
–and–
She’d seen the photos—Earthrise and The Blue Marble—known the watershed impact they’d had on the conservation movement.

The women in this resistance movement are identified in a clever, amusing way; I won't say, you should find out for yourself. Actually the biggest advantage to this technique is the flexibility it gives Author Cade in prefiguring the events of the chapters and sections. What she does with it is that sly, side-eye fun-making that you and at least one of your friends have, that one whose eye you cannot afford to meet when you're together but not in a safe place to fall out laughing at embarrassing moments. The story is one that today, the sixth of January, 2021, was so perfect in subject, in tenor, and resonance, that I had to re-read it. These women, these scientists, are all in flux and transition (!) and trying to protect the only home we have from the misguided and stupid who are deliberately trying to destroy it.

The challenges of doing that by concealing accurate data, the enemy of fascists and authoritarians everywhere. Do y'all remember my review of The Badass Librarians of Timbuktu? That culture of concealment for survival is mentioned here, alongside its increasingly popular young grandniece:

All those manuscripts, and Timbuktu a place of historic learning, of literacy and knowledge passing on. What it passed on now could be the lessons and skills of resistance, the ways of smuggling out and networking.
–and–
There was a tendency with so much digital to make all copies electronic, and rely on the internet for keeping multiple copies visible and tamper-proof. But any system could be hacked, any data deleted. The information she intended to facilitate had to be kept discretely, separate from any possible influence.

There is no hope for rebuilding from looming catastrophes—and there is a dilly of a disaster we see even before the collapse we're too soon to witness completing itself—without accurate, complete data hidden somewhere, cared for by someone with the skills to use it when it's finally safe to do so. Think of the world we might have had the religious nuts not burned the Library at Alexandria! So there's a precendent for Author Cade telling us this story, and a reason for you to spend the money to read it at this moment in US and UK history. Today's multiple klans of barbarians are doing their damnedest to finish burning the norms and conventions that have protected and enriched the greatest number of people. Author Cade tells us, and the evidence right now points to her prescience, that they won't stop even at murder to finish the destruction of whatever institutions, whatever systems and learning and techniques, prevent them from staying in complete control.

We've fought wars ostensibly to prevent that from happening, against an enemy whose words and iconography we saw used in the Capitol of the United States of America. One woman, identity as yet not revealed, has died from a gunshot wound received during the violence. It is eerie, then, to realize this is not so shockingly unthinkable. Author Cade thought it. She framed it, though, differently from the US news media, as what it is:

One person was such a small-scale loss, comparatively. (One person was enormous.)

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

COME WATER, BE ONE OF US
OCTAVIA CADE
Strange Horizons magazine
Free to read online

Rating: 5* of five

We made the corporations people, but then we did the same to the rivers.

A fever dream of anti-capitalist and pro-planet activism. A simply told, easily understood explication of why it was such a *colossally* stupid thing to create the legal fiction of "corporate personhood."

People are greedy, selfish fucks, so why would one expect an atl-law-only person to be any different? But...here's the thing...bad ideas come with good uses. This one comes with the personification of Water in their riverine expression. If rivers are people, they have rights and they have legal standing; it then becomes possible, nay necessary, to act in their behalf. To give them the care and assistance necessary for them to thrive and prosper, just like all persons whether biological or legal.

Take THAT, capitalism.

WITH FLAMING SWORDS, "One voice is easily silenced."

WITH FLAMING SWORDS
CLEVE CARTMILL
Astounding Science Fiction Magazine, September 1942
free to read on the Internet Archive

Rating: 4* of five

When the estimable James W. Harris, a science fiction fandom monadnock, reviewed this obscure piece of SF's long and patchy history, I ran right out and found it. His review, linked above, wasn't a warble of ecstasy. It was more a muted fluting of appreciative indifference...the B-student's reward from the preceptor "some good ideas, execution needs work" about says it...though the, um, less-than-factually-grounded science (even for the era) gets a drubbing.

note the shiny gent in panel four...taken from Classics of Science Fiction, post linked above

What on this wide green Earth could lead this minor, forgotten writer's minor, forgotten 1942 story (anthologized precisely once) to merit a full four stars? I'm not even going to pretend I care for a single second about the junk science. Here is narrator Saint Robert Hanson explicating the whole rigmarole:

"Yes. Listen. Here is the truth. Nearly three hundred years ago, a new weapon was introduced into warfare. It was fired only once. The destruction was so great and terrible that nations by common consent outlawed it, for it destroyed friend and foe indiscriminately. Thousands were killed within the radius of its effect. It was silent death, for the gun was a ray gun. But listen. On the edge of that area of destruction, people were affected by that ray. Their germ plasm was affected so that male children born of those individuals were born with an aura...."

There's more, but the point is made. This ain't hard SF, or even particularly well-scienced SF. I don't know if, in 1942 as Author Cartmill was writing this, the term "social SF" had been applied or if that coinage was still in a goopier, sappier future. I'm looking at this marvy as someone fresh from the grindhouse that is the 45th Presidency of the USA.

What has happened to these glowy-boys? Some bright spark decided that the post-apocalyptic chaos could best and easiest be controlled by making the poor sprogs into objects of veneration. Thus quite probably saving their lives, since the hoi polloi are ever prone to killing those they Other...and these kids are Othered for all to see! A technocratic theocracy arises under the Saints, and ordinary men and women are enslaved to accomplish their will. Many fanciful things, like garageable planes for all, are commonplace under the rule of the Saints. But the cost to the average person is complete loss of freedom, and utter, bone-deep conditioning to accept that the Saints are Divine. Why, even the woman that Saint Hanson wants to marry still addresses him as "your Reverence" and takes a completely submissive stance in relation to him. An incel's dream, this future...at least if he glows it is. And like people from time immemorial, the status quo has no more staunch defenders than those who lose under its strictures:

"Please believe that you are wrong, your Reverence. Even if you're right, you're wrong. You will destroy faith. That's all we have, our faith. Take it away, and what will become of us? Have you thought of that?"

Thus does Ellen address him, though only at the behest of his enemy among the Saints which possibly explains her temerity in disagreeing with a Saint. And I've thought of little except that since 9 November 2016. The people who benefit the absolute least under the current system, not to mention the efforts of ephemeral intensifiers like the current Administration, are defending the system! At the ballot box! And no one can blast open their addled, misinformed, and downright feeble minds...the world isn't working for you, and if you need proof, look at this bloody pandemic!

So this story, like all good stories, is the story of how we mere mortals screw up and screw over any- and everyone and -thing. In order to maintain a myth of our own superior understanding of the mechanisms regulating our lives, we're liable to fall for the most absurd nonsense. "I don't believe you," cry the uneducated to the deeply learnèd subject-matter expert. It means we know better, you can't fool us! And that's exactly what The System, in this story and in 21st-century America, needs. Because then it's easy to manipulate reality, to say, "you have enough," to people who make the stuff of life and give it to the greedy elite.

We're driven to be "on top of the world" because...well, I'm not all the way sure why. I'm off that carousel and for the life of me I can't remember what made it so desirable to have more than I need and still want more. It's been a very long time that I've been off it, you see.

It's also the story of how a passionate band of like-minded freedom fighters (or a passionate band of scum-sucking wold-be slave-owners) can alter the course of history. Haven't we seen the evidence often enough to know it when it's right there? Does it take a Rosa Parks, a David Duke, a John Lewis, a Donald Trump, to prove *again* how vile people can be, and how the vile can be fought? At the end of this story, a confrontation takes place that's taken place innumberable times before. The powerless rise up against their oppressors when the passionate band show them that they can win, and gives them a reason to want to win.

For that reason, I give this pretty awkward and not remotely believable story four hope-twinkling stars. (Even though the victory is most certainly temporary.)