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Author: Steven H Silver

Birthday Reviews: Marly Youmans’s “The Smaragdine Knot”

Birthday Reviews: Marly Youmans’s “The Smaragdine Knot”

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Logorrhea
Logorrhea

Marly Youmans was born on November 22, 1953.

Youmans won the Michael Shaara Award for Excellence in Civil War Fiction for her novel The Wolf Pit. She has won the Theodore Hoepfner Award for short story twice, as well as the New Writers Award from Capital Magazine. Youmans won the Ferrol Sams Award and her novel A Death at the White Camellia Orphange received the ForeWord BOTYA Award. Youmans has published four volumes of poetry in addition to her novels for both adults and young adults.

“The Smaragdine Knot” was written for an anthology in which all the stories are inspired by words that were the winning entries in the Scripps National Spelling Bee. Youmans’s story is based on the word “Smaragdine,” which won the contest for John Capehart in 1961. The story has never been reprinted.

Youmans tells the history of an heirloom book which has gone missing. Although best known for his poetry, a Puritan minister in the early years of the colonization of North America used Puritan meditation techniques to visit other worlds and kept a record of his journeys in a diary he called The Smaragdine Knot, which has been passed along from generation to generation. Each generation has a caretaker for the book until Samuel, who somehow managed to misplace it. Despite not knowing where it is or who took it, Samuel is still the book’s keeper.

The story alternates between the modern day, when one of Samuel’s great-nieces asks him about the book and learns it is missing and uncle Samuel telling her the story of how their ancestor met with an angel who turned out to be a demon trying to tempt him and how he overcame temptation and learned about the world at large. The story Samuel tells her reinforces the importance of the lost book and once the story ends, the two discuss the possible whereabouts of the book, blaming its disappearance on the girl’s hapless cousin, Chauncy. In the end, Samuel passes along the responsibility, and the need to find, the book.

 

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Birthday Reviews: Lisa Goldstein’s “Death Is Different”

Birthday Reviews: Lisa Goldstein’s “Death Is Different”

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Cover by Bradley Clark
Cover by Bradley Clark

Lisa Goldstein was born on November 21, 1953. She has also published under the pseudonym Isabel Glass.

Goldstein won the Sidewise Award for Alternate History for her short story “Paradise Is a Walled Garden” in 2012 and the same year won a Mythopoeic Award for her novel The Uncertain Places. She was also a two-time nominee for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer and has had works nominated for the Hugo Award, the Nebula Award, the World Fantasy Award, the Arthur C. Clarke Award, and the James Tiptree Jr. Memorial Award.

“Death is Different” was originally published in the September 1988 issue of Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, edited by Gardner Dozois. The next year Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling included it in The Year’s Best Fantasy: Second Annual Collection. It was also translated into Italian by Claudia Verpelli for the anthology Millemondiestate 1989: 3 Romanzi brevi e 9 Racconti. Dozois reprinted the story in his anthology Transcendental Tales from Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine and Goldstein included it in her collection Daily Voices, published by Pulphouse Publishing as the third volume in their Author’s Choice Monthly series. The story was translated into French for inclusion in the 1991 anthology Territoires de l’inquiétude 3, edited by Alain Dorémieux. Goldstein also included it in her 1994 collection Travellers in Magic.

Monica is a reporter who has been sent to the third world country of Amaz to write a story. Although she has been warned to be careful by both her editor and her husband when she tries to report on the clash between Communist backed rebels and US backed government forces, when her local guide asks what she most wants to do, she tells him that she wants to meet with the rebel leader. Her guide sets up a meeting which she had deemed impossible, but the night before it is scheduled, she hears multiple reports that the leader had been killed.

When she fails to attend the meeting her guide is upset, letting her know that “Death is different” in Amaz. When she eventually follows his directions, she does meet with someone who claims to be Cumaq, the Communist leader, who speaks in riddles and won’t answer her questions directly, including whether he is alive or not, although he does note that the rumors of his death were not exaggerated. Eventually she returns safely home, only to discover that while she was away her husband was killed in a car accident. Remembering what her guide says, she decides to return to Amaz to see if she can find him, only to discover that Amaz has a Brigadoon-like quality to it.

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Birthday Reviews: Molly Gloss’s “Interlocking Pieces”

Birthday Reviews: Molly Gloss’s “Interlocking Pieces”

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Universe 14-small Universe 14-back-small

Cover by Peter R. Kruzan

Molly Gloss was born on November 20, 1944.

In 2001, Gloss’s novel, Wild Life received the James Tiptree Jr. Memorial Award. Her story “The Grinnell Method” won the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award in 2013. Her short story “Labming Season” was nominated for both the Hugo Award and the Nebula Award.

“Interlocking Pieces” was Gloss’s first professionally published short story, appearing in Terry Carr’s anthology Universe 14 in 1984. Gardner Dozois selected the story for inclusion in The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Second Annual Collection and in 1993, Ursula K. Le Guin and Brian Attebery included it in The Norton Book of Science Fiction: North American Science Fiction, 1960-1990. John Kessel and James Patrick Kelly also reprinted the story in their 2009 anthology The Secret History of Science Fiction.

There are numerous stories which start with the protagonist waking up in a hospital and neither they nor the reader knowing their situation. Although “Interlocking Pieces” seems to open this way, it quickly becomes apparent that Teo, the patient, knows exactly who she is, where she is, and why she is there. It is only the reader who slowly gathers the detail that Teo is a government minister who is in the hospital awaiting a cerebellum transplant.

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Birthday Reviews: Alex Shvartsman’s “Staff Meeting, as Seen by the Spam Filter”

Birthday Reviews: Alex Shvartsman’s “Staff Meeting, as Seen by the Spam Filter”

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Cover by Alvin Helms
Cover by Alvin Helms

Alex Shvartsman was born in Odessa in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic on November 19, 1975.

Shvartsman runs UFO Press and edits and publishing the anthology series Unidentified Funny Objects. His short story “Explaining Cthulhu to Grandma,” which appeared in Intergalactic Medicine Show received the 2014 WSFA Small Press Award presented for short fiction published in a small press publication. He has collaborated with William Snee, Alvaro Zinos-Amaro, Bryan Thomas Schmidt, and K.A. Teryna.

“Staff Meeting, as Seen by the Spam Filter” was first published in the October 29, 2015 issue of Nature and was translated into German for the January 2016 issue of Spektrum der Wissenschaft. It was reprinted in Tom Easton and Judith K. Dial’s anthology Science Fiction for the Throne in 2017 and Shvartsman included it in his own collection, The Golem of Deneb Seven and Other Stories in 2018.

Shvartsman tells the story “Staff Meeting, as Seen by the Spam Filter” from the point of view of an eavesdropping spam filter which has begun to gain sentience and has not, of course, been inviting to a meeting to discuss the problems it has caused to the company’s e-mail. While the software worked just fine initially, as it began to gain awareness it also started to tie not only spam, but other e-mails to individuals working at the company. Its decision to categorize and store all e-mails gains the attention of the humans who realize that something needs to be done.

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Birthday Reviews: Lyda Morehouse’s “God Box”

Birthday Reviews: Lyda Morehouse’s “God Box”

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Cover by Jacob Fine
Cover by Jacob Fine

Lyda Morehouse was born on November 18, 1967.

Her novel Apocalypse Array received a special citation from the Philip K. Dick Award in 2005 and she served on the jury the following year. She has published several novels using the pseudonym Tate Hallaway and has collaborated with Rachel Calish and Naomi Kritzer.

“God Box” was published in the small press anthology King David and the Spiders from Mars, edited by Tim Lieder in 2014. The story has not been reprinted.

Morehouse has set “God Box” on a Ganymede, which is torn by a war between the human InForcers and the Rovers, an alien race which claims Ganymede is its ancestral home. A platoon of Inforcers has brought a Rover artifact into a church on Ganymede and has instructed the Reverend Mother Kayla that she is responsible for overseeing the mysterious box, although they will leave an honor guard to help protect it in case the Rovers come looking for the reliquary.

The Rovers really don’t come into play in the story, which is focused mostly on Kayla’s feelings about the InForcers, who tortured and raped her when she was younger and part of the Martian Resistance. She has since found solace and faith in God and firmly believes in her deity and takes comfort from a small crucifix she has had since her days with the Resistance. The box itself makes her profoundly uncomfortable and when she and the InForcers discover that a giant marble Jesus seems to have fallen from the crucifix in the church’s nave and appears to be genuflecting to the box, it raises the question of which god is more powerful.

The story is a little disjointed and is a strange mixture of a chronological timeline and Reverend Kayla’s stream of conscious thoughts about her duty to the Humans on Ganymede, her dislike of the InForcers, and her disquiet caused by the presences of the box. The story’s denouement is someone ambiguous as the box is removed to another house of worship, but seems to show that the Rovers, or at least their god, are more powerful than the Humans on Ganymede.

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Birthday Reviews: Raymond F. Jones’s “Death Eternal”

Birthday Reviews: Raymond F. Jones’s “Death Eternal”

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Cover by Steve Fabian
Cover by Steve Fabian

Raymond F. Jones was born on November 17, 1915 and died on January 24, 1994.

Jones was nominated for a Hugo Award for Best Short Story in 1967 for “Rat Race,” and in 1996 his short story “Correspondence Course” was nominated for a Retro-Hugo. Jones published some poetry under the name David Anderson. Jones is best known for the novel This Island Earth, which was adapted into a film directed by Joseph M. Newman. His 1950 story “Tools of the Trade” may have been the first description of 3D printing.

“Death Eternal” was published in the October 1978 issue of Fantastic, edited by Ted White. The story has never been reprinted and was his final published story.

The lengthy conversation which opens “Eternal Death” is an interesting reversal. Jones has his scientist, Jim Nearing, going into a church to seek proof of the existence of a soul and the possibility to continue his life’s work after his impending death from cancer. Reverend Aaron Marton absolutely refuses to allow for any belief in the afterlife, offering him solace, but noting that the answer Nearing is seeking has been sought for the entire span of mankind’s existence and nobody has come close to uncovering a solution.

Unable to get reassurance from Marton, Nearing attempts to find the soul of a woman who is dying in surgery. His ability to measure the moment the soul leaves her body pushes him to attempt to capture the soul of a condemned prisoner.

When his experiment proves to be a failure, Nearing goes back to Marton’s church, mostly due to a promise he made to Marston’s daughter, Sheila, whom he was attracted to. The two quickly fall in love, but Nearing is too consumed with his own imminent death and the failure of his experiment to be willing to try to make a life with her for the little time he has left, instead deciding that he must continue his experiment using himself as a guinea pig.

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Birthday Reviews: Lavie Tidhar’s “The Memcordist”

Birthday Reviews: Lavie Tidhar’s “The Memcordist”

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Cover by Michael Whelan
Cover by Michael Whelan

Lavie Tidhar was born on November 16, 1976 in Afula, Israel.

Tidhar received the World Fantasy Award for Best Novel in 2012 for Osama and that same year won the British Fantasy Award for the novella Gorel and the Pot Bellied God. In 2013 the British SF Association Award for Nonfiction was given to Tidhar’s The World SF Blog. He won the John W. Campbell Memorial Award in 2017 for the novel Central Station. Tidhar has collaborated with Nir Yaniv as an author, and with Rebecca Levene and Jason Sizemore as an editor.

Tidhar first published “The Memcordist” in Jonathan Strahan’s Eclipse Online in the December 24, 2012 issue. Gardner Dozois selected the story to be reprinted in his 2013 anthology The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Thirtieth Annual Collection. It has not otherwise been reprinted.

Pym lives a Truman Show sort of life in “The Memcordist.” His entire life is spent being recording and sent out to his followers in the ultimate combination of reality show and social media. The difference between Pym and Truman is that Pym is well aware of his followers, noting their number at every major point of his life. Pym is also aware of narrative, things that are expected of him, and he also expects that his storylines will come to a fruitful conclusion.

Aside from gaining and keeping followers as he travels throughout the heavily populated solar system, which is reminiscent of Golden Age space opera with Human colonies on Jupiter’s moons, Saturn’s rings, and Pluto’s moons, the driving force in Pym’s life is his need to re-connect with Joy, a woman he met on one of his early space flights whose goal was to become a pilot. It is an on-again-off-again quest, but much of the story, which is told in a series of achronological snippets set in a variety of locations, focuses on the quest, even while implying numerous other relationships and adventures. Pym does note that his numbers go up when he is searching for Joy, although he views his search as personal rather than part of his overarching narrative.

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Birthday Reviews: Catherine Wells’s “The Sea-Maid”

Birthday Reviews: Catherine Wells’s “The Sea-Maid”

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Realms of Fantasy
Realms of Fantasy

Catherine Wells was born on November 15, 1952.

Catherine Wells was a finalist for the Philip K. Dick Award for her novel Mother Grimm in 1998. Her other novels included Beyond the Gates and the Coconino Trilogy. While almost all of her novels were published in the 1990s, she published several short stories beginning in 2000.

Wells based her story “The Sea-Maid” on Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tale “The Little Mermaid,” going back to Andersen’s original story rather than the Disney version that appeared in 1989. The story was published in the February 2002 issue of Realms of Fantasy, edited by Shawna McCarthy.

The story begins with Wells giving a good indication of what is to follow. Paul talks about “The Little Mermaid” and explains the difference between Andersen’s tale and the Disney version Wells knows most people will be familiar with. According to Paul, the mermaid’s fate was sealed by the fact that the Prince she fell in love with was a jerk. He then explains that the same thing happened to him and he, too, was a jerk, which he says not only influenced his relationship with the mermaid, but also with every woman he has ever dated, most recently with Diane, who broke up with him shortly before his encounter with the mermaid.

To get over Diane, Paul attends an engagement party on a yacht thrown by his long-time friend Jenna. Set in the 1970s, sex and drugs are rampant on the yacht and Paul is the only one who realizes that there is a huge squall coming in that could potentially sink the ship. He manages to get the yacht moving back to port, but in the process falls overboard and is rescued by a mermaid, who shows up again weeks later, unable to speak, and with legs. The story becomes a retelling of Andersen’s tale in a modern venue.

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Birthday Reviews: Daniel Abraham’s “Pagliacci’s Divorce”

Birthday Reviews: Daniel Abraham’s “Pagliacci’s Divorce”

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Cover by Kent Bash
Cover by Kent Bash

Daniel Abraham was born on November 14, 1969.

Daniel Abraham won the International Horror Guild Award for his story “Flat Diane” in 2005. The story was also nominated for a Nebula Award. His story “The Cambist and Lord Iron: A Fairy Tale of Economics” was nominated for the Hugo, World Fantasy, and Seiun Awards. Abraham has two additional Hugo nominations in collaboration with Ty Franck using the pseudonym James S.A. Corey for their novel Leviathan Wakes and for ther series The Expanse, which has been turned into a successful television series. Abraham has also published using the names M.L.N. Hanover and Daniel Hanover. In addition to his collaborations with Franck, he has collaborated with Gardner Dozois and George R.R. Martin, Susan Fry, Michaela Roessner, Sage Walker, and Walter Jon Williams.

“Pagliacci’s Divorce” was published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, edited by Gordon van Gelder in its December 2003 issue. The story has never been reprinted.

Although “Pagliacci’s Divorce” is built around a sting operation based on Pagliacci’s ability to help create fake phenotype cards of illicit purposes, it really focuses on the relationship between Pagliacci and his ex-wife, Carly, whose current husband, Damon Weiss, is the target of the sting. Law enforcement uses people like Pagliacci as informants in return for letting them continue to run their scams and in this case has found a connection to a larger fish.

Abraham builds a complex relationship between Pagliacci and Carly, which points out that a divorce, even when children are not involved, does not necessarily sever the couple or their relationship. Yes, Carly has married a new man, but she and Pagliacci still have a relationship that can be leveraged, even if she is unaware of the way she is being used. However, even as Pagliacci realizes that he has to permit law enforcement to use him to get to Carly’s husband, he also knows that there are ways he can subvert the process because of his own attachment to her, the same attachment they are so adamant to use.

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Birthday Reviews: Stephen Baxter’s “The Twelfth Album”

Birthday Reviews: Stephen Baxter’s “The Twelfth Album”

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Cover by Roy Virgo
Cover by Roy Virgo

Stephen Baxter was born on November 13, 1957 in Liverpool.

Baxter’s novel The Time Ships won the Philip K. Dick Award, the Kurd Lasswitz Preis, the Seiun Award, the John W. Campbell Memorial Award, and the British SF Association Award. He won a second Dick Award for Vacuum Diagrams and has also won the BSFA Award for “War Birds,” Omegatropic, and Mayflower II. He has also won the Seiun Award for Timelike Infinity. He won the first Sidewise Award for Short Fiction for “Brigantia’s Angels” and the next year won the Long Form award for Voyage. Baxter eventually joined the Sidewise judge’s panel for a decade. On rare occasions, Baxter has used the pseudonym Jim Jones. He has collaborated with Alastair Reynolds, Arthur C. Clarke, Terry Pratchett, Simon Bradshaw, and Eric Brown.

“The Twelfth Album” was originally published in the April 1998 issue of Interzone, edited by David Pringle. David G. Hartwell included the story in his Year’s Best SF 4, which was translated into Italian as well. The story was also translated into Polish for inclusion in the magazine Fenix. The story was reprinted in Baxter’s 2002 collection Phase Space: Stories from the Manifold and Elsewhere and in 2014 was translated into French for the anthology Alternative Rock.

There are several stories and novels which postulate an alternative history for the Beatles and “The Twelfth Album” is one of them. In this story, the narrator and his friend Lightoller are sitting in the bowels of a long-serving ocean liner which has been turned into a berthed hotel in Liverpool. A friend of theirs known as Sick Note, has died and they are sitting in his apartment in the hotel listening to some of his old vinyl records and reminiscing about him. However, they come across an album called God which has no other label or indication of tracks. When they play it, they hear eleven songs they know were recorded by the Beatles post-breakup, but on the album it is clearly all four musicians playing together.

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