European History is full of wonderful (and sometimes horrific) little pockets of oddness, forgotten corners, and attempts at societies and developments which did not stand the test of time, or were extinguished before they could prove themselves. Pirate Utopia deals with one of those by telling a story set in it, and using it as a sketched-in jumping-off point into a different future than the one we ended up in. I found it rather fascinating to read up on the Regency of Carnaro, and the Free State of Fiume, which is the reality, as fantastic as it is messy, that this story is set in/based on. Not a chapter of post WW1 European History I was aware of previously…Sterling labels it as “one of the strangest episodes of political extremism in European History”.
Bruce Sterling himself is an old hand at this fiction game - he came to prominence as part of the Cyberpunk movement (I still wish he had written more in his Shaper universe before the world, and himself with it, moved on!), and the preface of this book lists 12 novels, 7 collections, 2 edited works, and 4 non-fiction books in his name. Good going, I would say, all the more so as several of these are considered genre-defining classics. These days he splits his time between Austin, Turin, and Belgrade, and knows the setting of this story first-hand.
The book kicks off in style, with an introduction to the topic by Warren Ellis: “Futurism, the business of the future, is the act of telling stories of about what’s next”. Of course, the Futurists had their own slant to how they saw things develop, being “drunk on speed, technology, youth, violence, war - the car, the aeroplane, the industrial city”. And, incidentally, being a precursor/influence on Fascism. This is followed by a Cast of Characters (most of them historically correct), the actual story in 6 chapters, an Afterword by Christopher Brown, an Interview with the Author by Rick Klaw (loads of interesting background in this!), Notes on the the Design by the John Coulthart, and Biographies of all involved (and no, Warren does NOT live in London).
I first came across Mercurio D. Rivera in Ian Whates’ story collection Paradox, which assembles a number of writers and scientists to explore the different answers/approaches to the Fermi Paradox. A recommended book on its own, but not what we’re talking about here. Mercurio’s contribution to the collection was such that I smartly turned around and ordered Across the Event Horizon, the only full-sized book published under his name so far (it won’t remain the only one, I can assure you), which is this collection of the majority of his short fiction to date. You might have gathered already that Mercurio D. Rivera is considered the next big thing by those who claim to know, and I have to agree that if he keeps delivering stories of this calibre he will indeed become a household name, at least in SF circles. He is based in New York, is blogging at mercuriorivera.com, has seen his stories in a number of publications and collections, and has been nominated for the World Fantasy Award.
Did the book live up to my expectations from the story in Paradox, you ask? Yes and no – overall this is fascinating and engrossing stuff, but not every story hits home the same way, as you are no doubt not surprised to hear. It’s a collection, after all…
What else can I tell you without spoilers? The book starts with an Introduction by Terry Bisson (who is full of praise for Mercurio), and ends with a potted biography called About the Author and a short chapter on Story Honors and Accolades. All the stories have been published before, between 2005-2012, there is no original first-publication content here. Nevertheless, he excels at stories which I felt are slightly twisted, slightly uncomfortable, even if the subject matter frequently follows classic SF tropes.
One to watch (for the author), and one to buy (for the book), would be my recommendation.
For this month I'd like to point you, not for the first time, at a short story by Aliette de Bodard.
This time is a classic adventure tale called The Dragon's Tears, initially published by Electric Velocipede in 2008, and re-published by Lightspeed Magazine this month (you can obtain a hardcopy of the issue via the link below!)
The story is one which has been told in ever so many variants across all the different cultures - it follows a young man who goes on an adventure to obtain the means to heal his terminally ill mother. I'm not going to spill what makes this iteration of the trope specific, you can find that out yourself through the old-fashioned process of reading the story, but I can confirm that this is indeed well written, and affecting, and worth your time.
The rather wonderful picture on the right is from an artist calling him/herself Reverie Addict, and is not related to the story save by sharing its title.
Now here is a strange, subtly unsettling, and generally unusual book, with a suitably unusual history to it. Orgasmachine is Ian Watson's 'lost novel'. Originally written in 1970 during his stay in Japan, it was nearly sold (the publisher went bankrupt), re-written during the 1980s, sold to Playboy whose book division was sold and subsequently dropped the book; part of it was included in an Anthology in 96 to rave reviews, and it was finally published, back in Japan, in 2001 to coincide with the movie version of AI (Ian has screen-writing credits for that), and short-listed for the Seian award. And, finally, in 2010, Ian Whates' Newcon Press released the book in English, too...
The story follows a number of friends from the same generation of custom-built girls: Jade with the huge blue eyes, Hana with her 6 breasts (plus a nipple on her chin); Mari, a furry cat-women, plus some others. You see, this world is a man's world. Women are, by default, subservient, controlled via brain-nets, mood settings set via remote, and Dream-Cast from the all-controlling Data-Swarm-Male (MALE – for Module for the Application of Law Established). Women are things, owned and discarded at the whim of their owner.
The Three Laws of Feministics:
Your body is not your own; it belongs to another. Therefore you may not damage it nor, through inaction, allow it to be damaged.
You must obey all orders given you by your owner (or in cases of loss of ownership, by any man) even if such orders conflict with the First Law.
You may not injure any man, nor through failure to comply with the Second Law, cause him displeasure and mental injury.
Kim Curran is an Irish-born, London-based writer of YA near-future SF. She has 4 published Novels to her name, plus a short story called ‘A Woman Out of Time’, which was on the James Tiptree Honors List 2014. And, apparently, she has her next book ready, at least in first draft.
Shift, the first book in the trilogy of the same name (the other two are Control and Delete), was her debut novel, which I picked out of a stack of freebies as it sounded interesting (I presume this was to promote the 3rd book in the series at the time).
It plays in a world very much like our own, in a London with recognisable locations. The main difference is that in this world there are people, no, children, who have the power to change their own decisions they made in the past, and thus affect the course of the present, the future, and history as we know it. This power is limited to Children and Adolescents only, and is lost as the Shifter (as they are known to those in the know) reaches a certain age. Any potential paradoxes from this are avoided by changing all subsequent events, so that the new reality chosen by the Shifter is internally consistent. The exception are some Shifters who can recall the other reality they moved from; and mapping out what changes to the world and its history the reversing of a specific decision would make, pre-switch, is a specialist subject.
Scott Tyler, a socially awkward adolescent from a dysfunctional family, and the main protagonist of the series, is one such Shifter. Except that his talents had not manifested themselves at the age when they usually do; so it comes a bit as a surprise when he, for once, hangs out with the ‘cool kids’, and, to impress a girl, climbs a pylon on a dare. From which he falls, to his certain death. Except that this had not happened, and all people knew was that he had fallen off the fence surrounding the pylon and made an arse of himself…
But he gets picked up for ‘shifting without a license’ by the very girl he tried to impress - arrested, and waiting for the Regulators from ARES (Agency for the Regulation and Education of Shifters) to pick him up, until she realises that he actually has no clue about his abilities, and absconds with him. But this train of events, plus a second, inadvertent shift, leave him in a reality where his sister is dead due to his fault; and he (with some help) shifts all of this out of reality, and decides to join ARES and the training/structure they offer voluntarily and of his own accord.
In-between all these reviews, and my complaining of stories falling short of my overly picky expectations here and there, let's give this a break. Here is a treat instead, in the shape of a link to and a recommendation for a short story by Ian McDonald, called Some Strange Desire.
It concerns the machinations of a subspecies, a variant of humanity, two chromosomes apart, living alongside us. They are gender-fluid, able to change quickly and as desired. They work as prostitutes, as they require human haploid cells they acquire during sexual intercourse, to allow their extended life span. But there are threats to them, now, both from within their own making, and from the outside.
And I suspect I've told you too much already, just to whet your appetites. The cultural background Ian wrote for this is part Jewish, part West-African/Haitian Voodoo, and part Witchcraft, and it's utterly fascinating.
The story was originally published in Omni Magazine, and was nominated for a World Fantasy Award. The illustration is by Robert K. J. Killheffer.
