Borges

Calvino

Peake 

Isobel Avens Returns to Stepney in the Spring

Lambing Season

What I Didn't See

Bloodchild

The Watched

Solitude

Beasts / Engine Summer

Moon Moth 

Stories about animals

Poor Little Warrior!
Author of Acacia Seeds
Black Charlie
Surfacing
Creature
Love is the Plan, the Plan is Death
Finisterra
The Star Beast
Grandpa
The Ugly Chickens
What I Didn't See
Triceratops Summer
The Golden Horn
Roog
The Ballad of Lost C'Mell
Dolphin's Way
A Midwinter's Tale
Sundance
Bears Discover Fire
Face Value
The Black Destroyer

Something to hitch meat to
when i was miss dow
gliders though they be
creature 

The Overloaded Man and Something to Hitch Meat To

Vintage Season and Standing Room Only

What I Didn't See and Women Men Don't See

The Saliva Tree and The Time Machine

The Rose and A Work of Art 

The Best of the Best: Volume 1
The Best of the Best: Volume 2
Modern Classics of Science Fiction
Modern Short Novels of Science Fiction
The Good Old Stuff
The Secret History of Science Fiction
The Oxford Book of Science Fiction
The Norton Book of Science Fiction
The World Treasury of Science Fiction
The Science Fiction Century
The Science Fiction Omnibus
The Wesleyan Anthology of Science Fiction
Eclipse 3
21st Century Science Fiction
The Science Fiction Hall of Fame Volume 1
The Science Fiction Hall of Fame Volumes 2 A and B
Dangerous Visions
The Best of Universe
Adventures in Time and Space
The Locus Anthology
The Best of Magazine of Science Fiction and Fantasy Volumes 1 and 2
Masterpieces 

Angouleme
Bloodchild
The Persistence of Vision
Lambing Season
What I Didn't See
Surface Tension
God's Hooks

Rewards for the day:

The Moon Moth
The Saliva Tree
Sandkings
Surfacing
Seven Views of Olduvai Gorge
Silently and Very Fast

Vance, Aldiss, Martin, Williams, Resnick, Valente.

Standing Room Only
Sur
Salvador
The Ugly Chickens
Angouleme
God's Hooks
Something to Hitch Meat To

Whoa. So Eclipse 3, two stories in, is freaking MARVELOUS. 

The Visited Man, by Molly Gloss

The most beautiful ghost story I've ever read.

Authors to actively follow:

Karen Joy Fowler
Maureen M. McHugh
Tony Daniel
Molly Gloss
Eileen Gunn

Three Stories

A Little Something For Us Tempunauts

Sail The Tides of Mourning

Blood's a Rover

Masterpieces of Fantasy and Enchantment
The Dark Descent
Modern Classics of Fantasy
Fantasy Hall of Fame
The Oxford Book of Fantasy Stories
The Book of Fantasy
The Weird
Cosmicomics
The Complete Stories of Borges

Sur, by Ursula Le Guin

An interesting rebuff to Lovecraft and Campbell.

Three Compact Tales

None So Blind by Joe Haldeman
Day Million by Frederik Pohl
Slow Tuesday Night by R A Lafferty 

Wang's Carpets
Surface Tension
The Saliva Tree / The Worm That Flies
Surfacing
Seven Views of Olduvai Gorge
Silently and Very Fast
The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling
Sailing to Byzantium
Sur
The Moon Moth
The Watched
The Man Who Bridged The Mist
Turquoise Days
Lambing Season
Breathmoss

Time in Advance, by William Tenn

Another great, great story. I remember enjoying Liberation of Earth, and this was even better.

None So Blind, by Joe Haldeman

Hello and welcome world. Very many outstanding stories later (kirinyaga comes to mind) I have found the perfect story I have ever read. This will change in a week's time but till then Joe Haldeman's None So Blind takes top spot. Amazing stuff. Very Sturgeonish.

The Other Celia, by Theodore Sturgeon

Another marvelous read, and strangely heartbreaking.

Surface Tension
The Asian Shore
Seven American Nights
Tandy's Story / The Other Celia
Mother Hitton's Littul Kittuns
Houston, Houston, Do You Read Me?
Eurema's Dam
Jeffty is Five
Solitude
The Marching Morons
The Moon Moth
The Ugly Chickens

Read Today

The Hounds of Tyndalos
High Weir
Solitude
The Marching Morons
Kirinyaga

The Ballad of Lost C'Mell, by Cordwainer Smith

Considered a seminal novella, and I can see why. Golden Age SF charm notwithstanding, this story is one of the few treatments of the 'animal problem' in SF that merits close study. The plot is pretty standard; it's the language, and the light-hearted tone that really made this such a memorable read for me. Smith seems to have been quite ahead of his times when it comes to talking about serious issues in a non-pretentious veneer. A gorgeous read.

Forlesen

I identified with Forlesen more than I thought it would be possible. But it was a heartbreaking read. Again, certain aspects of the story are left unclear (as seems to be always the case with Wolfe) but this time around the ambiguities didn't get in the way of me enjoying the plot. The writing is, as always, top notch.

Read/ Begun

Forlesen
The Voices of Time
Far Centaurus
Waves (Ken Liu)
Hugo Nebula winners for short fiction 2014

The Great Classic Novella Reading Marathon

I have set myself a goal of plowing through ten science fiction novellas which have near mythic status among fans, or are just very good. They are:

1. Forlesen, by Gene Wolfe ( a story I have been meaning to get around to reading ever since I left my very brief stint at a corporate workplace)

2. The Rose, by Charles Harness, a novella nearly always very widely acclaimed by authors but which no one seems to read much.

3. The Time Machine, by H G Wells. Yes, the one that got the ball rolling. Read this so long ago that it deserves a re-read, especially now that I am a little more well read in the genre.

4. The Voices of Time, by J G Ballard, one of the more enigmatic pieces by Ballard I remember being puzzled by on my first read through

5. The Ballad of Lost C'Mell, by Cordwainer Smith, a slightly longish story about underpeople, or talking animals. Smith and talking animals is ALWAYS a good thing.

6. Engine Summer, by John Crowley. A magnificent author with a gorgeous style. Great Work of Time was excellent. I have high hopes for this too.

7. At the Mountains of Madness, by H P Lovecraft 

8. Vintage Season, by Lewis Padgett 

9. Persistence of Vision, by John Varley

10. The Moon Moth, by Jack Vance

11. The Watched, by Christopher Priest

12. Schrodinger's Kitten, by George Alec Effinger

13. Solitude, by Ursula Le Guin

14. The Big Front Yard, by Clifford Simak

Let the games begin!

Random thoughts

Stories I forget about every time:
A Kind of Artistry
The Waters of Meribah
Tk'tk'tk

Going through Dozois's anthology, I finished Pangborn's The Golden Horn, Zelazny's The Moment of the Storm, Shepard's Salvador and Sterling's Doris Bangs. Doris Bangs will not age well, but it is very well written and does not require a familiarity with the two protagonists to enjoy. Zelazny's story is also excellent, but is nothing you haven't seen before in his stories. Pangborn I am developing a taste for, having enjoyed The Music Master of Babylon previously, and The Golden Horn utilizes that same exquisite feel he has for words to a glorious effect. It is a most haunting story. The standout story for me was of course, the remaining one of the four: Salvador is a masterpiece and I think I have found a new favourite author. 

The Moment of the Storm, by Roger Zelazny

Dozois's anthology is still going strong. Another fine, flowing read. It might be that Zelazny, like Pangborn, had only one voice but it's such a self-sure one, it works every time. This felt like A Rose for Ecclesiastes- lite.

Salvador, by Lucius Shepard

A story like this makes you sit up and take notice of the world around you. It's magnificent, and makes me want to question the skill that went into at least half a dozen of the ones I rated highly on this blog. The language, the imagery, the pacing were all top notch, and it all felt authentic. Very barely SF, this is writing of extremely high caliber. The sort that demolishes boundaries and tired debates of what is SF and what isn't.

Influential Novellas

Forlesen
The Voices of Time
The Ballad of Lost C'Mell
Engine Summer
The Rose
The Time Machine
Wang's Carpets
The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling
The Moon Moth
The Man who bridged the Mist

The Lifecycle of Software Objects, by Ted Chiang

Ted Chiang's The Lifecycle of Software Objects almost, ALMOST read like a treatise. But it wasn't one. Instead, it ultimately became a touchstone text for me, because it allows me to approach the problem animals pose us philosophically as human beings from a radically new angle.

Let me be a little more clear: I see animals, philosophically, as a certain kind of conceptual space, a buffer space if you will, where you can work out all of man's ontological doubts in a detached manner. In doing so, I am assuming, on the one hand, that animals as we know them are one, fixed unitary being (which they are not; there are as many animals as there are animal behaviours) and, on the other, that they are free from the kind of condescension usually directed at them when it comes to matters of some socio-political importance.

Such a view of animals is essentially using animals to define man. The animal becomes a kind of negative space, which is our default reaction. Unfortunately, modern thought, while striving to get there in fits and starts, still isn't non-anthropocentric. However, if we are to come up with yet another kind of space, namely the semi-sentient digital 'pets' that Chiang postulates and which are already somewhat of a reality, which hover somewhere between animal and man, we are given an opportunity to deny such a use of animals philosophically, while retaining the anthropocentric viewpoint.

Does that make sense?

Still very much at the level of metaphor, nevertheless Ted Chiang's novella teases at such a world. It poses no easy answers, but it constantly hints at an idea which transcends utopian navel-gazing and becomes something sublime.

The Winter Flies, by Fritz Leiber

It didn't help that I was listening to Thom Yorke while reading Leiber's The Winter Flies; a somber, autumnal track the way Yorke does best. It didn't help that I'm a little disturbed with things: a professional disturbance of the very banal kind, but a disturbance nevertheless. Leiber's story, in other words, was the glue that helped join together the disparate parts of my psyche aching under an extreme dullness.

This was a very strange story. I don't know what to make of it. Surreal fiction.

Beam Me Home, by James Tiptree Jr.

A lesser known story by the late great Alice Sheldon, Beam Me Home has all of Tiptree's trademarks: a certain slant towards an extreme emotional payoff, a credulous dissatisfaction with the world, a nausea inducing testament of the world we are a part of. But it is also extremely perceptive science fiction, in that it is, as Hartwell has suggested, exemplary of the masterly feel Tiptree had for the tropes of SF, especially the trope of the alien. I cannot say much more of the story without revealing it. It is interesting to compare this story with Waldrop's Flying Saucer Rock and Roll to understand why, in spite of both articles being 'literary' in the best sense of the word, Tiptree succeeds. 

Fringe Benefits

This will be a very odd kind of list. The list will include those science fiction stories which aren't enormously famous, but are still concerned certified classics. The fringe, if you will. I will be adding to the list as I go along, so here are today's entries:

1. Lobsters by Charles Stross
2. Wang's Carpets by Greg Egan
3. The Ugly Chickens by Howard Waldrop
4. Stable Strategies For Middle Management by Eileen Gunn
5. Engine Summer by John Crowley
6. Forgiveness Day by Ursula Le Guin
7. Seven American Nights by Gene Wolfe
8. The Winter Flies by Fritz Leiber
9. Jeffty is Five by Harlan Ellison
10. Beggars in Spain by Nancy Kress
11. The Rose by Charles Harness 

Influential stories

The Ugly Chickens
Wang's Carpets
Jeffty is Five
Beggars in Spain
Kirinyaga
Breathmoss 

Flying Saucer Rock and Roll, by Howard Waldrop

Another sad monday, begun expectantly with a story that disappoints. Or maybe it's the breakfast I never have. Whichever the case might be, Howard Waldrop's Flying Saucer Rock and Roll was a little like James Tiptree Jr.'s Beam Us Home, Joanna Russ's Souls,  and, to a lesser extent, Gene Wolfe's The Ziggurat: a science fiction story which almost wasn't one, if it weren't for a tacked on trope that feels like it's dragging the story down Allegory lane. I don't like my science fiction done that way.

A good example of a science fiction story which balances social criticism and science fictional novum organically is Nancy Kress's Out of All Them Bright Stars. And that's largely because the reveal in the story isn't something that sticks out like a sore thumb. It uses a science fiction trope to shed light on a political reality, and not to necessarily 'solve it'. In this way, it avoids accusations of being 'escapist'.

I guess one good thing this story led to was reminding me of why I consider Kress's story to be so essential to the short SF canon. 

The Crowd, by Ray Bradbury

In having to research for a paper on Ray Bradbury, I read this story in Hartwell's The Dark Descent. My motive for doing so was specific: I needed to juxtapose Bradbury's science fictional horror with him at possibly his purest. It is quite clear to anyone familiar with Bradbury's oeuvre that the kind of fiction he wrote owed more to gothic horror and a familiarity with human reaction to the supernatural than science fiction per se. His speculation was not rigorous extrapolation; it was rather, much like his contemporary Fritz Leiber, utilizing the vocabulary of SF to render the everyday of reality into mythic proportions. It is a crestfallen mythology, one where the gods have been displaced by complacency behind which lurks a kind of dread of the future, a dread of having mistaken an utility for what that utility promises.

In The Veldt as well as Mars is Heaven!, this dread has a tangible locus. In case of the previous story, it is a sentient nursery which surmises the deepest needs of its inhabitants and virtually provides them with it. In the latter, it is Mars itself, which for Bradbury becomes a landscape of the human unconscious, mixing desire with dread in equal measure. I shall not attempt a psychoanalytic reading of Bradbury however, precisely because while much of his fiction might show traces of dream logic given rational heft, it is made more corporeal by the inclusion of the science fictional novum, which leads to both it becoming metaphor and a kind of supra-realism.

In The Crowd, however, there is no such one material locus. The object of our attention in this case becomes the perverse attraction J G Ballard would go on to write about in his pornographic novel Crash, which fetishizes the speeding sports car and car crashes in general as a sexual pursuit. Both Ballard and Bradbury are writing about a kind of horror, but this horror is sublimated in two different directions entirely. For Ballard, the horror is intrinsic in the almost sexual gratification humans receive in such physical exhibition of destruction and violence, while for Bradbury, the horror is underscored precisely by the fact that such a pleasure is an unstated reality we brainwash ourselves into thinking does not exist. The paradigms, therefore, are different, and perhaps not as subtly as it seems. The Crowd is science fiction in the sense that Bradbury makes explicit a social fact that is relegated to a kind of invisible conceptual hell that, try as we might, we shall never intentionally exorcise. Ballard is not afraid of such truths, and the horrors of his fiction lie precisely in the fact that neither are his characters. They have surrendered to a new paradigm of humanity, where humanism as we know it and morals as we accept them have no place. It is a perverse parody of the ubermansch, an animal rationale with a limitless capacity for redefining and extending the boundaries of immorality, rendering the entire concept moot in the process.

A Comparison

Surface Tension is a story of human settlers in another world who decide to change human physiology significantly in order for their successors to survive in that world; the successors have no idea where they come from, and they piece what facts the humans made available to them to get at the truth.

Driftglass is about the pitfalls of physiological manipulation to have humans plumb the depths of the oceans to carry out complex engineering and oil rigging projects. It's a complex story of how change might sometimes only achieve a return to one's limitations, instead of transcendence.

Oceanic charts a man's journey from fledgling believer in a troubling religion and his final disillusionment through science. It too, like the two previous stories, is set in the ocean, in another planet, and the humans themselves are not aware that they may be something more.

Surface Tension by James Blish is one of the purest examples of hard science fiction. It is perhaps not as 'hard' as The Cold Equations by Tom Godwin, in which story there is very little in the way of a world-building imagination at work, but it is 'hard' in the sense that every aspect of the story seems geared towards a specific ending, and revelation. It is single minded in its endeavor to bring about a paradigm shift, or 'conceptual breakthrough'.

Oceanic by Greg Egan is similar, but it decides to shed the sense of adventure the Golden Age was so fond of for a more introspective and personal glimpse into the world of faith and science. Where it moves away from the joyous exercise of world-building, it excels in a painfully believable tale of one man's gain, and loss of faith.

Driftglass by Delany decides to walk the fine line by bringing such far flung exercises in speculation down to earth and dulling its edges down. It is what Geoff Ryman might have labeled 'mundane SF', but in being mundane it is that much more invigorating. It offers a world not unlike ours, but sufficiently unlike ours to permit a certain expenditure of energy in traversing that rift, with the intention of having that energy transmuted into a heightened awareness of our world.

In short, where the previous two stories used our knowledge of the 'real' world as a jumping off point into speculative forays, Delany does just the opposite. He begins by having taken for granted a supra-truth, and then works tirelessly to reel it in, into the murky depths of our own world. 

The Paper Menagerie, by Ken Liu

A bit sentimental, and plays on audience emotion, but the end result is a gentle fantasy of the kind I wish there was more of. Very unique and didn't feel derivative. Very lovely.

Tideline, by Elizabeth Bear

I have been rapidly making my way through '21st Century Science Fiction', and find it delightful. It is an interesting exercise to ask yourself why these stories could only have been written today, and not fifty years ago. There is no one answer to that question, but there is no doubt that all of the writers take their science fiction and its metaphors very very seriously: their style and tone indicate a fearless and respectful internalization of the conventions of science fiction which, in malicious hands, can be made out to be twee and at best, charming. There is, indeed, a lot of charm in all of these stories, but only the best kind of charm, that comes of not having to apologize for what you're doing to the world. 'Tideline' encapsulates all of these qualities, and is a magnificent exercise in brevity and restraint. 

Coming Attraction, by Fritz Leiber

A staple in most SF anthologies, this is a very cool look at a beaten, run-down and paranoid America teetering under insecurities and complexes which have, among other ways, manifested in how women dress: specifically, they have taken to concealing their faces. Misogyny is rampant too, perhaps, as is suggested by Leiber, having been aggravated by such a stance towards women. However, I'm at odds with myself regarding how the story ends. It's written in a way so as to deliberately invoke the kind of ready thrills you would find in a pulp, hard boiled detective yarn, but what might lead you to believe is Leiber's brand of feminism suddenly falls apart and reveals an aspect to the story you didn't see coming. Curious. More on 'What did Leiber mean?!' soon.

Even the Queen, by Connie Willis

I think I am finally getting around to realizing why Willis is important, or has been important to the field. She is very much a disciple of Heinlein, but thankfully her politics don't make me cringe, and she is far less confrontational. In fact, a story like this is a winner because of the very many viewpoints it shows, and while Willis's stance is very clear, she does not shove it down your throat. It's also one of the most witty science fiction stories I have read. If I were to come up with a list of 'feminist' SF stories, it would most definitely include this one. 

The Island, by Peter Watts

Suppose you're on a ship. This ship is travelling towards the horizon, hoping that it's the edge of the world, and that it drops off. It also hopes against hope that it lands on the ocean of some other world, and do the same on that world. And so on. The ship needs no destination. It's sole purpose is to seek out horizons and drop off edges.

Now suppose there's something very large blocking the way. A giant, gorgeous whale, for that's what it must be. It belches out large, beautiful groans which take your world weary ear by surprise. You have seen many worlds, you have dropped off many edges, jagged and otherwise. You have passed by countless races and waved at a few, but seldom stayed for a drink or a conversation. There is no time. And all of a sudden, this beautiful creature calls to you. And makes you stay a while and wonder.

You realize, too, that it is bang in the middle of your ship's trajectory. You can obviously change your route, but you have received word that the world you had planned to visit is right underneath this particular route, and changing your road now would mean not getting there at all, or for at least a few million years. There's no compulsion to change your route. If you slam into this magnificent thing, (you call it a thing because something inside your world weary self will not let you call it anything reminding you of human beings), you will kill it. And no one would blame you. No one would feel good about it, but no one would particularly care. How many anthills have been crushed to pave giant roads? You'd thought you'd become cold to the world, and now this happens.

The cabin boy, the only other person on the ship, your only other friend whom you don't much care for, calls upon you to tell you that the Captain has telephoned. He wants you to stick to your course. You quietly tell the cabin boy to inform the Captain that not only will you not do that, but, if you are forced to, you will kill the cabin boy, and thus have him risk turning you insane. For he's the only company you have. And you'll do it too. You're certain.

The Captain, after a long while of deliberation, gives in, setting your mind at ease. Would you really have killed the boy? You don't want to go there. Not yet. You change course, turning the ship around to a route along which the whale would not lie. The cries die down. You're at peace again.

And after a few hours, you're awakened by the cabin boy. He looks frantic, desperate. He tells you that there's a giant, beautiful beast in the way. He remembers, in his panic, to mention 'beautiful'. You've never seen him this way. You wonder to yourself as you grab your telescope, how could your calculations have been wrong? And then, when you see it through the lens, you realize it must have been a conspiracy of some sort. Someone had wanted that beast killed. Someone had transmitted that noise from the route opposite to the one you took, knowing you'd turn and drive straight into this other beast. Who was it? Some other consciousness who wanted it dead. It seems too ludicrous to be true. Who would benefit from this?

But it's too late. There is very little to be done. You watch helplessly as the ship continues on its fated path. The cabin boy puts a hand on your shoulder. You let him rest it there. You need human touch now, human proximity, above everything. You realize something you had run away from all your life.

The Winter Market, by William Gibson

Probably my favourite Gibson short story, I rank this higher than Johny Mnemonic and Burning Chrome, but when it comes to the latter, only just. Largely because there's not much action happening in this one. It's more an elaborate examination of what the cyber era can do to us, taking its sweet time filling you in on everything. I like it when Gibson takes his time. I wish more cyberpunk dealt with the why rather than the what and the how. This is a nuanced look at the genre. Loved it.

A Pail of Air, by Fritz Leiber

A Pail of Air by Fritz Leiber uses a child narrator. I am reminded instantly of two other stories which use a child narrator brilliantly: The Fifth Head of Cerberus, by Gene Wolfe, and The Comet, by Bruno Schulz. The former is a tale of slow reveal: the things the child sees in a colony world and comments upon casually enough opening up the world for the reader too. The Comet, by Schulz, while more surrealist fiction than SF, does the same but in a lush, heightened, exaggerated way. Much like a child sees the world, one could argue.

A Pail of Air feels remarkably fresh for a story written so long ago. And this freshness can be largely attributed to the child narrator. Earth has been captured by a dead star which has ensnared it in its orbit. Now the atmosphere is almost non-existent and the air has condensed into ice. The apparently sole surviving members of the human race, composed of the narrator and his family, make do by scooping up air by the bucketful and heating it to generate oxygen. They don't live in an air tight compartment, but somehow make do.

The science, I'm sure, is very patchy. But who reads Fritz Leiber for the science? One of Leiber's pet themes had been the dichotomy of magic and science, and when he isn't writing about such a dichotomy explicitly, you can still see it coloring his view of science fiction 'proper'. The key to understanding the genius behind A Pail of Air is by allowing yourself to visualize the 'science' in it as a (dare I say it) mood.

How could it be interpreted as a mood? Well, this is a story that very conveniently sidesteps all the social and moral ambiguities that SF of the New Wave would churn up by the truckload. The calamity is a non-human one, and the human race is not to blame. This opens up a mental space that needs to be interpreted as a kind of conceptual playground for the working out of certain human impulses, all seen through the eyes of a chid.

This is difficult, for to take this story seriously is to ask the reader to inhabit the head of a child, fresh and equipped to be gosh-wowed at the mysteries of Nature. That is the first hurdle. The next is to channelize that enthusiasm to make sense of the strong sense of loneliness that Leiber invokes, when the family turns down the offer by the other survivors to come join them. They're very much human, but somewhat typically, they have grown used to a life they are proud of, because they have survived. Leiber calls for a definition of life free from distraction: in survival, in the most basic necessities lie a joy that just might be enough. Or so he suggests. 

Suicide Coast, by M John Harrison

Suicide Coast is written in the same sharp, cold prose style that Harrison is now (in)famous for. It is then a very strange conjunction, because the story itself deals with human passion, specifically pursuits like extreme sports, one of the few pursuits which can be said to be free from any utilitarian motive. What motive could be there for something like mountain climbing, except for the thrill of the exertion and the sound of all your muscles screaming out loud against you, in your head? Where a single wrong move could mean the end of your life, Harrison's short story silently, and in an apparently dispassionate manner, champions one of the last vestiges of human temerity and spirit, in the face of world given to seeking these pleasures vicariously, at the expense of skill. I read it in a Gardner Dozois collection, and it seemed like an odd one out amidst stories which were explicitly estranging. Harrison here is practicing Mundane SF (to use Geoff Ryman's term): SF with the slightest hint of speculation, SF that won't seem out of place with our present reality. In its very ordinariness lies a satisfaction that is as rewarding as Harrison's crystal clear, and cool, prose.

The Wedding Album, by David Marusek

The Wedding Album proves a personal theory of mine regarding one of the ulterior motives of all kinds of fantastic fiction: to provide a platform for the proper and sometimes veiled examination of human madness. For what is this story about if not madness? It is about a time when the need to archive your emotions and your days is taken to an extreme, and when technology, once it has already seen to the basic, and advanced needs of a sufficiently luxurious life, is left in the lurch. With no where to go and nothing more to do, it becomes just another fail safe, but also acts as a mirror for human madness and anxiety. Almost everything can be this, to some extent: animals, for instance, occupy that grey space where human desires, anxieties and exaggerated bouts of emotion play themselves out. So too it is with technology, especially the kind that specializes in deception and illusion. A wedding 'sim', forever stuck on the day of the wedding, grows out of fashion, having heralded an era of technological saturation, which becomes sickening and downright Carroll-ish after a point. The Alice of this tale is Anne, who goes mad shortly after, and her cyber-sim escapes into a wonderland stuck in time, as it were, doomed, or blessed, to repeat the same happy day and emotion day in and out. However, change catches up with the sim too, who realizes before long that even pure unadulterated happiness can repulse after a point. We are merely a string of repetitions in different contexts. The fact that we can stand this fact is thanks to the mind which constantly seeks to smooth over gaps, and rectify a lack of imagination. In hindsight moments and situations feel full of import, when they perhaps really hadn't been. Marusek's fascinating, rewarding novella is, in my reading, a paean to the necessity of memory as it is, without technology as a prop: indefinite, sometimes inconsequential, inaccurate but always aware (as if it was a separate creature) that humans cannot handle reality for very long.

Good News From the Vatican, by Robert Silverberg

"Science Fiction is the internal (intracultural) literary form taken by syncretism in the west. It adopts as it's subject matter that occult area where science in decay, elaborately decorated with technology, overlaps the second religiousness."  So said the late, great James Blish.

The religious aspect of SF owes as much to the act of reading SF, as from the imagery associated with it. You can look at SF in two ways, none of which is exclusive of one another: it is both intensely visual, and at its best, encourages contemplation on everything under the sun. That it can achieve this from within the confines of a short story as well as a novel bears testimony to its often densely fabular nature, where anything that does not directly address the theme of the story in it's barest, most essential form is left out. This might also be why SF has often falsely been classified as children's literature.

Then there are stories, like this one, which are overtly about the intersection of religion and technology. But unlike SF protagonists in tales such as A Case of Conscience, The Quest for St. Aquin or The Way of Cross and Dragon, Silverberg's isn't actively involved in the proceedings. Nor is the treatment didactic, or fabular. He posits a future where a robot is in the running for the position of a Pope. This has caused quite an uproar throughout the world, among both humans and robots alike. But the story is told not by someone in the know, but by a man sitting outside at a cafe with his colourful group of friends, some of whom are of a religious bent of mind, some who aren't, and speculating, through the course of a conversation, on the outcome. His tone is enthusiastic, and the times he does find it all very funny, and has a good laugh at the expense of the hysteria spreading across the globe at the possibility of a robot Pope. However, one senses an interest in Catholicism in what he says, and how he says it, implying that perhaps the incursion of science into something this sacrosanct can only be a good thing for a change, especially if it gets people who are otherwise oblivious to such matters interested.

In a medium such as SF, this is a very interesting approach, especially since more often than not,  protagonists go and do things, and don't just sit around talking about what may happen. (Note to self: Tom Shippey's distinction could be relevant in this regard, on how SF has no heroes). In this, it is very similar to Gene Wolfe's How the Whip Came Back, which also uses a conversation to slowly unveil what seems to be going on, and Ballard's Billenium, which uses a seemingly ineffectual protagonist to make a statement regarding a larger whole.

The ending to the story, where the Pope rises above the crowds and flies away into the air, hovering above them, is quietly sublime.

The Ship Who Sang, by Anne McCaffrey

The use of the fantastic, regardless of whether it is in science fiction or 'fantasy', is often a high-wire balancing act. Almost everything depends on style, in conveying the right attitude. So, for instance, in Driftglass by Delany, the overarching mood is one of solemnity, acceptance and resignation. It is not a 'traditional' science fiction story in the sense that a paradigm shift occurs by the end. Indeed, the paradigm shift has already occured in the very beginning of the story, and the consequences don't leave much in the way of a sense of wonder. However, the lurking image of a man with gills is a strong and vivid one, and it colours, inasmuch as you want it to, every other aspect of the story. It hovers in the background, leaving it completely upto the reader to lend it importance, or not, by lending the characters more importance than the science fiction conceit.

Anne McCaffrey's The Ship Who Sang feels like a story very much in the vein of Campbell, only it isn't able to make the stylistic jump necessary to lend the strong sense of pathos that runs throughout the story the gravity it deserves. The trope of the human who has the body of a ship has since been used in multiple instances, more recently in the multiple award winning novel by Ann Leckie called 'Ancillary Justice', as well as M John Harrison's rightly celebrated return to science fiction 'Light'. But McCaffrey's story is melodramatic, emotional in a way that is a little disappointing and interesting at the same time: interesting because, seen in one light, it reads very much like an old fashioned tale of knights and damsels. It is however memorable because of the lurking image of the woman who is also machine, who is also woman. Because the locus of our attention undergoes a rapid shift as and when the story dictates it, it leads to an intellectual hesitation that strengthens this particular science fiction convention. However, one wishes the overarching plot of the story to not have hinged on such a typical coming of age sequence, reliant solely on the emotional catharsis through death. It is an interesting exercise to read this story very soon after Delany's Driftglass, since both use what is essentially human transience as a pathetic trope, and use the more-than-human to balance it, at that. If only McCaffrey was more subtle, this would have been something exquisite, rather than merely very good.

Edit: I'd like to add that none of this takes away from the flow of the story. Taken in itself, as just a story, it is rewarding, offering the kind of old fashioned joy in a wistful rounding off of a tragedy that has been mastered by, among others, stalwarts such as Theodore Sturgeon. In fact, I wonder how Sturgeon would have approached such a tale. Are there any Sturgeon stories on cyborgs/machine-men/machine-women? Hmm. 

Driftglass, by Samuel R. Delany

My interest in Driftglass stemmed from reading a James Blish short story called Surface Tension. In that story, humans have to adapt to a ocean planet by becoming something more than human, but (if I remember correctly) certain basic human drives remain consistent, such as the need to know what lies beyond the world of comprehension. It features an exotic locale and plenty of vividly imagined creatures, and the undersea setting and the microscopic nature of the neo-humans make it a memorable science fiction story, intended to invoke the sacred sense of wonder.

Driftglass is exotic as well, although in a quite different way. In the near future of this world, men and women are transformed by their government into modified amphibious human beings with gills, who traverse undersea depths at ease trying to install oil plants and such like structures deep down in the ocean. It is a far more nuanced take on transformation, and transcendence, arguing (as it seems to do) on the one hand that humans deal with change, even radical physical augmentation, in a surprisingly straightforward way, and, on the other hand, that this inability to understand the significance of what such transformation might entail becomes our own undoing.

The central metaphor of the story is the eponymous 'driftglass', which are otherwise ordinary pieces of glass transformed by the ocean into beautiful objects. However, seeing beauty in such things is a tragically human initiative, not conducive to Nature and what Nature might have in store for us. This is emphasized by the ugly covering of black silica on the skin of the aquamen who are brought in after the accident out at sea, by the end of the novel, mirroring the protagonist's fate. Human notions of beauty and transcendence are not necessarily concomitant.

However, during the fishing expedition, there is a hint of an exuberant, joyous thrill of the hunt, wherein the human does so while being an 'equal' to that of fish. This can be seen as one of the advantages of such a transformation, which allows the human being to become in a sense closer to his animal counterpart. The aquamen seem at ease in such a setting, suggesting that such a transformation is not necessarily completely at odds with human behaviour either. On the contrary, it reinforces the joy of the hunt, emphasizing what is very much a human endeavour. The tragic consequences that occur a day later suggest that such a transformation requires a surrender to the vagaries of Nature. Transformation does not entail control.

This might seem to be an obvious enough point, but it is not a laboured one. What is obvious gains a new significance in a science fictional treatment, and the emphasis on 'ordinary' men and women only seeks to heighten such an understanding.