The Apollo Quartet is a series of Novellas by Ian Sales, telling stories derived from the US Space Programme – each of them on their own topic, and with their own departure point somewhere along the line from the history of spaceflight which we know. Some of them have SFnal elements and/or are projected into the future, whilst others are pure Alternate History. All of them are beautifully styled – the font they are printed in looks like the manual typewriter sheets that the US produced for their documents and checklists; they are full of the classic abbreviations and acronyms in use by NASA (and thus require a Glossary to translate the resulting, equally classic Alphabet Soup); they come with a Bibliography and list of Online Sources, and generally feel exceedingly well researched.
The first book in the series, called Adrift on the Sea of Rains, won the BSFA Award, and was a finalist for the Sidewise Award in 2012. The second book was called The Eye With Which the Universe Beholds Itself – you might notice some trend concerning titles here. All of them are quotes from a relevant source, and/or have other clever connotations with the story as well as the historical realities behind them. Succinct they are not, but all the more evocative I feel!
“This is not our world. But it very nearly was.”
Then Will the Great Ocean Wash Deep Above, the book at hand, is the one cutting closest to the bone of actual history (as known in our time line!) so far; Ian indicates in his notes that there is only one character in the story which he entirely invented. The title, just to come back to this topic, is a quote from a Homeric Hymn to Delian Apollo.
I cannot really call it a first contact scenario (although it takes place as part of one), as it plays out at the moment when humanity thinks they finally got their hands on a number of alien 'Worms' after one of their spaceships ends up in the Pacific. We see the mortician Hank perform an autopsy on one of the cadavers, brought in by his ex-wife, who now works for the governement.
Now, things are never as simple and straight forward with Aliens, of course, and this story has multiple levels of complications and implications which I won't spoil by pointing them out to you before you read the story yourself. You know the old saying about staring into the void... this here is similar, if a bit more physical. Passage, in ever so many ways.
The story is impressive, with a very interesting twist to it. And whilst I found some of the stylings and plot sub-threads to be over the top I would suggest you make up your own mind, this is inventive stuff right here. The story can be read on the Clarkesworld website for free - links are below and to the right.
The picture on the right is, despite its Alien looks, of an Earth creature - namely a Scale Worm.
As a US-born, raised (and now living) in Paris, English-writing author of half-French and half-Vietnamese origin Aliette de Bodard has both the background/grounding in and the interest to explore non-Western cultures and settings in her novels and short stories in a convincing way. She meanwhile has 12 books of varying lengths to her name, and has won a number of awards for her work, including BSFA and Nebula Awards. She writes across SF, Fantasy, and Alternate History settings, although frequently her stories are hard to assign to one or the other, never mind her series which can combine several in a very natural way. The book at hand, In the Vanishers' Palace, is not part of any of her series/universes (Aztec, Xuya, Domion of the Fallen), but is a Việt story and thus naturally closer to her Xuya ones, even if I have not found anything which would connect it to either the historical or future settings. But even if this is set in a world of it's own, it hopefully won't remain like that!
The story kicks off in an (unnamed) village, where Oanh, the village head's child is found to be sick from a genetic virus. Yện, a scholar trapped in the village as she did not pass the exam which would take her to the court, attends together with her mother, the village healer. There is nothing that her mother can do to help, except use her (limited) magic abilities to call a dragon to help. But whilst Vu Côn, the dragon called, saves Oanh, this comes at a price; and the village elders give her Yện, mainly because she is of less use, less value to them than her mother. But instead of the expected painful death Yện is taken to the palace where the dragon lives, and put to work teaching her children. Doesn't this sound like classic Fantasy to you, maybe with an Eastern slant? Except for the genetic virus, maybe? This world is much more complex. Here once lived, and ruled, the Vanishers. But when they left (and I have no idea if they were known as Vanishers before that!) they threw out all their toys, poisoned, twisted and broke the world, and left behind loads of technological artefacts, creatures and things roaming the wilds, all kinds of mutating genetical deceases, and a palace, which is now being inhabited by Vu Côn, one of their former servants. But whilst Yện teaches the twins, dragons, in the teachings of the Broken-World-Teacher and the rules of filial piety she does not seem to notice that they are different, not really dragons like her master. But maybe living whilst expecting to be dead, or to be violently dying at any point, and living in a Vanisher house/palace with nausea-inducing doors, and rooms with improbable geometry ("their idea of geometry wasn't quite ours") of course provides plenty of distractions of its own, never mind her attraction to the dragon Vu Côn.
It's getting quite challenging, bordering on the slightly tedious, to come up with new variants on the biography for writers whose output (and presence on this site via reviews) has reached double figures, as is the case here. And all the fans who read the series (this is book 9, should you choose to read from the beginning. Not that you have to do so...) really don't need to be told, again. So, this is for those new to the matter, who are reading a review of a book deep into the series – Charles Stross is a Scotland-based writer of SF and Fantasy (classifications can be a bit tricky with his output at times) who has been nominated for about every award going in SF and Fantasy, has won several of them (including Hugos, Locus, and Prometheus), and whose books have been translated into a number of other languages. The Labyrinth Index is, as said above, the 9th novel in his highly entertaining Laundry Files series – written in a number of different styles and approaches, and plotting an overall story arc by following various protagonists for the duration of a novel. The basic promise of the series is, as the author neatly lays out on his own site: "Good news: magic is real. Bad news: it's a branch of mathematics—prove the right theorems, and entities in other dimensions may hear and, sometimes, do what you tell them to do. Worse news: this means that magic is best practiced by computer geeks—"applied computational demonologist" is a job description. Worst news: the extradimensional entities are the horrors that haunted the dreams of H. P. Lovecraft, and the Stars are Coming Right …But don't worry. Her Majesty's Government has a secret agency tasked with defending the realm from the scum of the multiverse. It's nick-named the Laundry by those hapless civil servants and computer geeks who work there [...]”
N.K. Jemisin is an award-winning (including the Hugo an unprecedented three times in a row) author of speculative fiction short stories and novels who lives and writes in New York. Besides writing, she also is a counseling psychologist and educator, and a political/feminist/anti-racist blogger. She used to write a science fiction column for the New York Times Book Review, and still writes occasional long-form reviews for the NYT.
The City Born Great is a story of her hometown, New York, telling how it develops to the point where it is being 'born' after growing for a long time, and the challenges that exist for cities what reach this stage of maturity. Neither the idea of cities as entities, living things, separate beings nor the notion of beings, things, groups going through transcending stages and steps are new in themselves. Uncharitably I could describe the short story at hand as Childhood's End for Cities; more charitably I would describe it as fascinating, breathless, headlong, and absorbing in its detail and drive towards (re)birth, and reminiscent of the magic Charlie Human can evoke when he's not too focused on action. And if I feel that some parts of the climactic scene do not live up the the initial setting and build-up then that's my opinion, and yours might well differ. Have a look yourself, it's worth doing so!
The story is hosted on Tor.com, and so is the picture by Richie Pope that goes with it.
I find long series difficult. Not just from the point of reading them – the author changes over time, his/her approach to writing will vary, and what you used to love in the earlier books might be entirely absent in later ones, of course. But also from the point of reviewing them – I mean, The Delirium Brief is book 8 (plus some short stories etc) in Charles Stross' highly entertaining Laundry Files series. This is not a point to jump onto the series (there was one a few books back. But I'd suggest you start at the beginning). This is not where you would start reading his oevre, not at all. And I will, by default, throw out spoilers for the earlier books simply by talking about this one here. So, here I am, preaching to the choir of those who are reading the series, and want to know about the latest instalment. Which is rather different from the early books!
The Delirium Brief picks up directly where The Nightmare Stacks left off. After the clusterfuck (technical term, of course) in Leeds with the invading alien host of Elves the Laundry has to break cover, and become publicly answerable. Our protagonist Bob Howard (yes, we're back with Bob. I missed him!), as one of the senior managers who were not directly or indirectly implicated by said mess, becomes the public face of the agency, with an appearance to be grilled on the Jeremy Paxman show as the booby price. And yes, this is as much fun as you'd expect. But he finds that Paxman is heavily warded, and that someone is briefing against the Laundry at top level it appears. Raymond Schiller, the mega-church leader with trans-dimensional loyalties and brain parasites is also back from his (assumed) death when the portal closed behind him. And he's in the UK, and set up to meet with the Prime Minister!
Passage of Earth
