"Everybody Loves Charles" by Bao Shu :: Aaron's Story Recommendation of the Week

My Story Recommendation of the Week goes to "Everybody Loves Charles," a novella by Chinese author Bao Shu, translated by Ken Liu, from the January 2016 issue of Clarkesworld Magazine.

In "Everybody Loves Charles," a brain implant technology called "livecast," allows the ultimate reality TV-style entertainment: people can experience everything happening to a celebrity as if it were happening to them. The most popular livecaster is Charles Mann, a brash spaceship racer, author, and womanizer. His legions of fans, including our viewpoint character Takumi Naoto, spend most of their days wired up, living Charles's life vicariously in preference to their own comparatively bland existences.

"Everybody Loves Charles" moves along at an easy-to-read pace, and I found the story most entertaining. Bao Shu describes how livecasting works, both technically and socially, in extensive detail, until the story feels more believable than perhaps it should.

Charles begins the story as something of a jackass, but I didn't mind, because I was pretty sure he was headed for some surprises. and because Bao Shu uses Charles's lack of self-awareness to humorous effect; for instance, when Charles earnestly lectures his audience on the importance of being true to themselves.

I wasn't quite so enamored with the second half of the tale, which turns to melodrama as we learn that the creators of the livecast technology are seeking to use it to control everyone in the world and eliminate all individuality. I don't believe there really are many people devoting their days to that cause, but perhaps if I lived in China I would.

Bao Shu is the author of four novels, including the award-winning Ruins of Time, and some 30 pieces of short fiction. "Everybody Loves Charles" originally appeared in Chinese in Science Fiction World in September 2014, and went on to win several Chinese SF awards.  A thank you also goes to Ken Liu, who has been taking quite a lot of time out of his own very successful writing career to translate Chinese science fiction, to the great benefit of the English-speaking SF community.

Aaron's Story Recommendation of the Week :: The Man Who Bridged the Mist by Kij Johnson

My story recommendation of the week is for "The Man Who Bridged the Mist" by Kij Johnson, cover story of the October/November issue of Asimov's Science Fiction (cover by Paul Youll).

The past few years, Kij Johnson has been winning awards with short parables, such as the delightful "26 Monkeys, Also the Abyss," the disturbing "Spar," and the delightful-but-then-disturbing "Ponies." "The Man Who Bridged the Mist" is quite different from those pieces -- longer and more deliberate, less flashy -- but similarly rewarding.

Kit Meinem is in charge of building a massive bridge over the great river bisecting the empire that employs him. This has never been done, because the river is covered in "mist." Mist is a misnomer; this layer is lighter than water, but still dense enough to support boats on its shifting surface and strange varieties of "fish" beneath. The "fish" are poorly understood, especially the largest and most dangerous, which the locals unimaginatively call "Big Ones."

The huge undertaking will demand all Kit's skills both as engineer and politician, as he tries to maintain the support of the locals. Kit becomes fascinated with the ambivalent reactions of the local ferry operators, the beautiful Rasali Ferry and her brother Valo. The bridge will put them out of work (compelling them to change last names), but then again it may save them from their profession's customary early death -- each ferry crossing is a hazardous trip.

The huge bridge symbolizes Kit's desire for meaningful interpersonal connections, but Johnson employs the metaphor delicately enough that it's never annoying. At novella length, Johnson is able to coax the relationships between her characters along gently, in a way that proves most satisfying. For example, halfway into the story, Kit and Rasali have spent a fair bit of time together but it's not clear how close they have become. Then, while Rasali is on the opposite bank, Kit sees one of his bridge workers killed. Kit first worries how the townspeople will react, then flashes back to a university instructor talking about how Kit relates to people:

You're good with people, I've seen it. You like them. . . . But inside the framework of a project. Right now it's your studies. Later it'll be roads and bridges. But people around you -- their lives go on outside the framework. They're not just tools to your hand, even likable tools. Your life should go on, too. You should have more than roads to live for. Because if something does go wrong, you'll need what you're feeling to matter, to someone somewhere, anyway.

When Rasali returns to Kit's side of the river, she immediately helps him to express his own grief over those who have died under his command, and we realize, even if he does not, that Kit now has someone to whom what he's feeling matters.

The science fictional aspects of this story mostly stay in the background, and some readers may find the tale lacking in drama, but I don't think it would benefit from extra explosions or action sequences. This a story of believable characters, who experience real confusion and pain, and I grew to like them very much.

Aaron's Story Recommendation of the Week :: The Lady Who Plucked Red Flowers Beneath the Queen's Window by Rachel Swirsky

I was late to the party on this one. The Lady Who Plucked Red Flowers Beneath the Queen's Window was already a Nebula Award finalist by the time I read it, and I suspect it will soon be a Hugo finalist as well. But it's too good not to recommend, albeit belatedly. This is Rachel Swirsky's third Story Recommendation of the Week, joining Aliette de Bodard as the only authors to receive three SROTWs.

Published in the Summer 2010 issue of Subterranean Online, "The Lady Who Plucked Red Flowers Beneath the Queen's Window" is a fantasy novella, with elements of SF since it takes us far into the future (or a future).

"The Lady Who Plucked Red Flowers Beneath the Queen's Window" begins with the death of the title character, Naeva, a powerful sorceress. As she dies, she consents to have her spirit captured so she can be summoned after death, a decision made from misguided loyalty to her queen.

At first, Naeva is a pawn in a struggle between the queen and a potential successor. But the ages begin to pass, and Naeva is subject to summoning by an ever stranger succession of future generations. Naeva does not take well to being an ancient oracle, and many of those who summon her come to regret it. Naeva has contempt for most of the futures she glimpses, sometimes for good reason and sometimes due to her own prejudices. For example, she is absolutely unable to accept future societies where men are permitted to practice magic.

Finally, she is summoned by a very advanced future society attempting to catalogue all past knowledge. Even though Naeva is primitive by their standards, she remains a powerful sorceress with a force of will that may prove too much for the future.

It is difficult to extend a story over such a large span of time and keep the reader engaged, but Swirsky manages it admirably. Her writing is compelling throughout, and Naeva is a fascinating character. The thread of Naeva's story pulls you along despite the necessarily episodic story framework.

I read several excellent novellas from 2010 -- including strong work from such outstanding authors as Paolo Bacigalupi, Ted Chiang, George R.R. Martin, Paul Park, and Robert Reed -- but "The Lady Who Plucked Red Flowers Beneath the Queen's Window" is my favorite of them all.

Aaron's 2011 Hugo Recommendations :: Best Novella

Listing alphabetically by author, the five novellas I'm planning to nominate for the Hugo Award are:

Paolo Bacigalupi, The Alchemist
Ted Chiang, The Lifecycle of Software Objects
Paul Park, Ghosts Doing the Orange Dance
Robert Reed, A History of Terraforming
Rachel Swirsky, The Lady Who Plucked Red Flowers Beneath the Queen's Window

"The Alchemist" was very recently published in book form by Subterranean (which also boasts the Chiang and Swirsky stories -- a great showing for that small press in this category), but is eligible for a Hugo this year because it was released on audio by Audible in 2010. The same is true for Tobias Buckell's "The Executioness," set in the same universe, which I also strongly considered nominating. Other near-misses for me were "The Mystery Knight" by George R.R. Martin and "The Sultan of the Clouds" by Geoffrey A. Landis.

All of my choices except the Robert Reed piece are current nominees for the Nebula Award. My tastes don't usually align so well with the Nebula voters, and you will see much less overlap in the other categories.

Aaron's Story Recommendation of the Week :: Ghosts Doing the Orange Dance by Paul Park

This week's story recommendation is "Ghosts Doing the Orange Dance" by Paul Park, a novella from the January/February issue of F&SF.

"Ghosts Doing the Orange Dance" is a highly fictionalized (one hopes!) history of the past several generations of Paul Park's family. Early in the story, Park tells us one of the pitfalls of this kind of chronicle:

It occurs to me that every memoirist and every historian should begin by reminding their readers that the mere act of writing something down, of organizing something in a line of words, involves a clear betrayal of the truth. Without alternatives we resort to telling stories, coherent narratives involving chains of circumstances, causes and effects, climactic moments, introductions and denouements. We can't help it.

But perhaps we can help it, for Park proceeds to do none of these things. "Ghosts Doing the Orange Dance" is not a coherent narrative, nor does it ever accede to the notion of cause and effect.

Instead, it is a jumbled set of weird anecdotes from various periods of history, with a connecting framework from the point of view of Paul Park in an unhappy future, for whom the whole thing may be an elaborate escape from reality. Park tells the story with tongue planted firmly in his metafictional cheek, as in this confrontation with a fellow professor, who invited Park to visit his class on meta-fiction to discuss Park's "early novel" A Princess of Roumania but is unhappy that Park emailed the class a draft of a work in progress:

"Did you think I'd be jazzed about this?" he complained, indicating the phrase "whispered drunkenly" in the text. "Did you think I'd want them to think I'm an alcoholic? Though in a way it's the least of my problems: Right now they are reading this," he whispered drunkenly, conspiratorially, "and they have no idea why. Right here, right here, this is confusing them," he said, pressing his pudgy thumb onto the manuscript a couple lines later, a fractured and contradictory passage.

Park tells us he advises his writing students "to consider the virtues of the simple story, simply told," but if you are looking for such a story, stay away from "Ghosts Doing the Orange Dance." If, however, you are open to a tale rather less linear and more offbeat, replete with phildickian reality shifts and self-deprecating humor, you should greatly enjoy this.

Eventually, the disparate elements of the story do circumscribe a plot, although for most of the narrative one can't be sure if it is a tale about ghosts or alien visitations or a jewel heist or merely the prevalence of schizophrenia in the Park family tree. All we are certain of is this fellow Paul Park is an extremely unreliable narrator. Kudos to the author for creating such a fun character.

Aaron's Story Recommendation of the Week :: The Wide, Carnivorous Sky by John Langan

The story recommendation of the week is "The Wide, Carnivorous Sky" by John Langan, an original novella from the vampire anthology By Blood We Live, edited by John Joseph Adams.

By Blood We Live is mostly a reprint anthology, with just two original pieces, but they are two good ones, "The Wide, Carnivorous Sky" and "Foxtrot at High Noon" by popular Russian author Sergei Lukyanenko. While the other tales are reprints, they come from a remarkable array of talented authors and John Joseph Adams has drawn from quite diverse sources. (I had only read one of the 33 stories before, Stephen King's "One for the Road.") Themed anthologies can sometimes become tiresome but -- as he did in his anthologies Seeds of Change, Wastelands, The Living Dead, and Federations -- Adams avoids that pitfall by his knack for combining excellent stories with varied approaches to the theme.

"The Wide, Carnivorous Sky" is a great example, putting a memorable spin on the vampire legend. A group of American veterans first encountered the creature at the heart of the story while in the midst of combat in Iraq, and have since been plagued by a strange telepathic connection with it. The thing drinks blood and has the other key traits of vampires, but oddly inverted or distorted, for example it can only emerge in daylight and the soldiers believe it sleeps in an orbital chrysalis.

The best horror fiction creates a sense of dread from everyday sights and sounds. By having his monster appear out of an open sky and return to a lair above our heads, Langan manages to make the sky itself a source of dread:

Davis had stared at the sky before--who has not?--but, helpless on his back, his spine a length of molten steel, his ears full of Manfred whimpering that he was gonna die, oh sweet Jesus, he was gonna fucking die, the lieutenant talking over him, insisting no he wasn't, he was gonna be fine, it was just a little paper cut, the washed blue bowl overhead seemed less sheltering canopy and more endless depth, a gullet over which he had the sickening sensation of dangling. As Manfred's cries diminished and the lieutenant told--ordered him to stay with him, Davis flailed his arms at the ground to either side of him in an effort to grip onto an anchor, something that would keep him from hurtling into that blue abyss.

John Langan's first novel House of Windows is forthcoming from Night Shade Books, and his collection Mr. Gaunt and Other Uneasy Encounters was a Stoker Award nominee this year. Look for "The Wide, Carnivorous Sky" on horror award shortlists next year.

Aaron's Magazine of the Week :: Asimov's Science Fiction October/November 2008

The Magazine of the Week is the October/November 2008 issues of Asimov's Science Fiction, which contains this year's Hugo Award winner for Best Novella, "The Erdmann Nexus" by Nancy Kress. (The cover is retro, classic pulp art by Virgil Finlay.)

"The Erdmann Nexus" follows Henry Erdmann, an aging physicist in a nursing home, who is suffering strokelike incidents. He learns that others in the home are having similar episodes, and gradually comes to realize that they are all undergoing a remarkable transformation. Nancy Kress has been a regular fixture on the Hugo ballot, with eleven nominations since 1990, and "The Erdmann Nexus" is her second win (after the novella "Beggars in Spain," later expanded into a Hugo-nominated novel, about a new technology that allows folks wealthy enough to afford it to forgo sleep). She has also won four Nebulas and a host of other awards. She will be a guest of honor at MileHiCon here in Denver in October.

We'll get to the Hugo-winning novelette next, but first a science fiction novel that recently hit the big screen.

Aaron's Story Recommendation of the Week :: Act One by Nancy Kress

The story recommendation for this week goes to "Act One" by Nancy Kress, a novella from the March 2009 issue of Asimov's.

Late in "Act One," the narrator asks, "Is it wrong to genetically modify human beings?" This is an important question, one about which our society is currently in collective denial, apparently believing we can keep that genie in the bottle. "Act One" is set in the near future, as the technology is becoming available to genetically modify people, either by gene therapy in utero or by delivery of a gene-altering retrovirus. This technology will be developed not far in the future and it will be used, despite any laws we pass against it. "Act One" delves into some of the implications of tinkering with the blueprint for a human.

What's more, these implications are addressed in the context of an absorbing story, involving engaging and complex characters. Particularly compelling is the main protagonist, Barry Tenler, perhaps the best-drawn dwarf character I have seen in science fiction (depending on whether you think Miles Vorkosigan qualifies). He is resentful of his stature and the pain he endures daily but he soldiers on admirably; yet at the same time he is definitely a flawed human being who has made some regrettable decisions in his life -- far more interesting than the traditional plucky little person, a Hollywood stereoptype Barry himself mocks in the story.

As "Act One" begins, Barry is the manager of a beautiful actress whose career is in a tailspin. To prepare her for a role in a film about children who have been genetically altered for increased empathy, they visit a covert group bent on modifyinging mankind for greater compassion, a group prepared to act as ruthlessly as necessary to achieve this end. Is this justifiable? Nancy Kress gives no pat answers, but she asks the question in a fascinating way.

Aaron's Hugo Recommendations :: Novella

FIVE FAVORITE NOVELLAS OF 2007:
Neal Asher, “Alien Archeology” (Asimov's, June ’07)
Orson Scott Card, “Stonefather” (Wizards)
John Meaney, “Sideways from Now” (Fast Forward 1)
Dan Simmons, “Muse of Fire” (The New Space Opera)
Connie Willis, “All Seated on the Ground” (Asimov's, December ’07)

NOTES:
There were many fewer novellas published last year than novelettes and short stories. Out of this relatively small pool, by far my favorite novella of 2007 was “Sideways from Now” by John Meaney, a terrific combination of hard SF with a New Weird sensibility.

It is a testament to the amazing talents of Orson Scott Card, Dan Simmons, and Connie Willis that their respective stories merit award consideration even thought they all fall short of the authors’ very best work. I’d especially love to see Orson Scott Card get a Hugo nomination, just to annoy the tolerance police who insist that Card should not win awards because they dislike his political and religious beliefs.