Peter J. Wacks’ short story “Black Box” appeared in the 2023 anthology High Noon on Proxima B, edited by David Boop, a collection of stories that mix tropes of the Western with science fiction to varying results. Unfortunately, spaceships are horses, planets aren’t ranches, and treating them as interchangeable results in stories that feel as if they were written for the early to mid twentieth century pulps. “Black Box” falls into that category.

“Black Box” is set in a world where spacecraft are used to travel between planets, but once landed, horses are used to cover the terrain rather than motorized vehicles. The Crystal Colony, the solar system’s governing organization, has sent multiple ships to visit a planet (or planetoid, Wack’s terminology changes). After a ship from the planetoid opens fire on them they shoot it down a dn discover that the pilot is the sole survivor of the planetoid, which has apparently suffered an apocalyptic war amongst its inhabitants. The survivor doesn’t view himself as a member of the Crystal Colony and refused to help with their inquiries.

The story is heavy of exposition, explaining the way the world works and its history. Given that the story opens with the notice that is it “set in the Deep Practice Universe designed by Peter J. Wacks and Lorin Ricker,” it feels as if Wacks wanted to make sure he could get as much of the background they created into the story as possible. Unfortunately, the manner in which it is done halts the progress of the story and often feels like massive data dumps.

Eventually, the Crystal military finds out what happened to cause the destruction of the planetoid’s colony, although it is revealed when they listen to a lengthy black box recording which tells the story over several pages, essentially another lengthy data dump.  Unfortunately, the crew hasn’t really done anything to earn the revelation they receive and the only break in the dump comes in the notation that there is a corruption in the recording, not by discussion among the characters or any action.

The result is a brief discussion of how from differing starting points, one person’s traitor can be seen as a freedom fighter.  Unfortunately, the world Wacks has created doesn’t leave much room for discussion of the intricacies of the differences, at least not within the confines of “Black Box.” While the story does open up areas for discussion, it never really fully engages with them, showing the characters being reactive to the data dump they hear and trust without further investigation.

The presence of horses and isolated planet almost seem a gratuitous way of making the story fit into the Western theme. Similarly, the survivor’s use of a Smith & Wesson pistol in this far future setting seems odd given the amount of worldbuilding that has clearly been done behind the scenes. Similarly, the physics of Wacks’ world don’t quite make sense.  A planetoid with an atmosphere and other rocks in orbit (or “floating”) close enough to it that a spacecraft had to avoid them seems unlikely, as does an abandoned colony ignored by the colonizers almost immediately, ignoring the colonist’s needs or productivity, especially when the colony appears to be in the same solar system as the colonizing power.

 

 

 

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Steven H Silver is a twenty-time Hugo Award nominee and was the publisher of the Hugo-nominated fanzine Argentus as well as the editor and publisher of ISFiC Press for eight years. He has also edited books for DAW, NESFA Press, and ZNB. His most recent anthology is Alternate Peace and his novel After Hastings was published in 2020. Steven has chaired the first Midwest Construction, Windycon three times, and the SFWA Nebula Conference six times. He was programming chair for Chicon 2000 and Vice Chair of Chicon 7.