Throwing this one into ye olde "read" list. I remember reading it -- probably as a teenager? middle school maybe? I can't recall exactly. What I do reThrowing this one into ye olde "read" list. I remember reading it -- probably as a teenager? middle school maybe? I can't recall exactly. What I do remember is reading a paperback copy, tearing through it, and wondering if it really was a true story.
Goodreads says 2 stars is "it was OK" and I think I'll stick to that unless I go through with a re-read that moves it up or down. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ...more
Marty Halpern presents us with an anthology of science fiction short stories predicated on (what else?) alien first contact. I was looking for an anthMarty Halpern presents us with an anthology of science fiction short stories predicated on (what else?) alien first contact. I was looking for an anthology like this. In my desperation for such a thing, I decided to start a rumor that John Joseph Adams (currently my favorite anthologist) was going to create such an anthology. And to this, JJA replied that Halpern had already done this. So I immediately rushed out and bought it.
Overall? I liked it very much; many stories I loved, and a few I could do without. That said, composite rating of all short stories: an even 3.5.
Individual story reviews:
"The Thought War" by Paul McAuley : Doesn't align well with my idea of what a "first contact" story is, but it fits with a modified view of that trope within the genre. It has a few moments, and the style works pretty well. ★★★½☆
"How to Talk to Girls at Parties" by Neil Gaiman : Another one that doesn't align with my idea of a "first contact" story, but is a great story just the same. Though Gaiman gives us what is more like an extended metaphor for our relationships with the opposite sex [1] than with an alternate species. Quaint and sentimental and not overly cloying. ★★★★☆
"Face Value" by Karen Joy Fowler : This is more like what I was looking for in a first contact story, albeit another one that uses inter-sex and/or romantic friction as the anvil for the theme's hammer blows. That said: this is a wonderfully crafted tale. ★★★★★
"The Road Not Taken" by Harry Turtledove : A quirky take on the first contact theme; I enjoyed some of the inversions, not to mention the way he explored the non-linear nature of technological development (as alluded to in the title). [2] Turtledove's style isn't my favorite though, even if I otherwise enjoyed the story. ★★★☆☆
"The Aliens Who Knew, I Mean, Everything" by George Alec Effinger : Feels like another inversion of what I think of as a first contact story--like the preceding short story, only more from the human point of view, and without an alien race that's into conquering. [3] Good sense of humor in there, but always with the "one generation to interstellarism"... ★★★☆☆
"I Am the Doorway" by Stephen King : No surprise -- this one is more of a horror story in scifi clothing. There are some elements to work with here but mostly you've got the entertaining fright factor. Typical King. ★★★½☆
"Recycling Strategies for the Inner City" by Pat Murphy : Really enjoyed this, all the way through. Neat take on the subject, especially the bit about comparing cars to horses. ★★★★☆
"The 43 Antarean Dynasties" by Mike Resnick : Equal parts humorous and sad. Though not (strictly speaking) a first contact story, it does have some elements that fulfill (or at least stand in for) that role. Quaint little allegory about conquest and racial tension. ★★★★☆
"The Gold Bug" by Orson Scott Card : Effectively an "Ender" story. (Of course?) Not one that I particularly enjoyed; tedious and too wrapped up in its own mythology. By the time any introspection happens around being but one of multiple species in the universe... well: that gets lost in the noise. ★☆☆☆☆
"Kin" by Bruce McAllister : First read this in Dozois' 24th. I find this one so difficult to relate to; it feels forces. It also doesn't really seem internally consistent with respect to the ethics in its own little morality play. It has some interesting ideas, but doesn't hold up beyond some surface-level speculation. ★★☆☆☆
"Guerrilla Mural of a Siren's Song" by Ernest Hogan : Quirky and a bit enigmatic, but that's what you need when you're talking about art--and esp. when you're talking about art as the only viable lens through which to view an alien mind. Hogan strikes the right notes here for what is (and isn't) said, for how it's said, and for giving us such a frustratingly perfect narrator. ★★★★★
"Angel" by Pat Cadigan : I first encountered this story... oh, about ten years ago, and it was over ten years old at the time. It doesn't focus on the "first contact" aspect, but the themes are there: the focus on the alienness of the alien, and the alienness of ourselves. When McAllister wrote "Kin", I imagined that he had something like this in mind as inspiration. But this one is pitch-perfect. ★★★★★
"The First Contact with the Gorgonids" by Ursula K. Le Guin : Le Guin is amazing, and there is something special (and comic) about the first contact story embedded here. You'll feel like it's the send-up for some baffling sci-fi slapstick comedy, but there's something more going on in there with the gender politics. ★★★★☆
"Sunday Night Yams at Minnie and Earl's" by Adam-Troy Castro : In my mind, I went between a two- and a four-star rating several times. Where are the aliens? Where is the first contact bit? Why does it feel so rambling? But there's also this:
Occasionally I glanced at the big blue cradle of civilization hanging in the sky, remembered for the fiftieth or sixtieth or one hundredth time that none of this had any right to be happening, and reminded myself for the fiftieth or sixtieth or one hundredth time that the only sane response was to continue carrying the tune.
And that made it worth it, for sure. ★★★☆☆
"A Midwinter's Tale" by Michael Swanwick : Like the story that precedes it in the collection, there is an element of stylistic fancy here. Foreign, second-hand narration embedded in and interrupted by other, unreliable (and possibly fabricated) narration. Aspects of it remind me of China Míeville's Embassytown, but stronger notes of cannibalism. ★★★★☆
"Texture of Other Ways" by Mark W. Tiedemann : That there is a first contact situation, and that we have no basis for establishing communication with the alien species: this I understand. That we hastily engineer not-quite telepaths to bridge that communication gap: this I understand. That our species does this because (the story suggests) our species is impatient: this I understand. That those alien species also seem impatient enough to permit that to happen that way? I do not understand. (Also: parts of the story, especially the end, seem unnecessarily oblique?) ★★½☆☆
"To Go Boldly" by Cory Doctorow : Back and forth on this story, back and forth. That a species or civilization might be so advanced that it doesn't even recognize what you're doing as anything but a game? Clever; cute, even. And there was something endearing about the hammy lampooning style here. But also something sort of... smug? [4] ★★½☆☆
"If Nudity Offends You" by Elizabeth Moon : The approach was good, the narrator was just about pitch-perfect; but I couldn't help but wonder about their motivation, and given the colloquial narrative style, I couldn't help but wonder: if she forgot about it all together, why tell the story like she's telling it from her front-porch? ★★★☆☆
"Laws of Survival" by Nancy Kress : If this isn't one of Kress' best, please point me to better so that I might exalt. It's a little long, but the first contact element is played well, and in such a way that it informs her deeper themes (and not fitting those themes to the first contact element). ★★★★★
"What You Are About To See" by Jack Skillingstead : The alcoholism bit felt a bit heavy-handed; and the bit with the alien was played more for the "weird" factor (an excuse to do some time-slipping) than it was for the first contact element. I guess it came together in the end, but I found myself more frustrated than not. ★★☆☆☆
"Amanda and the Alien" by Robert Silverberg : Pruriently amusing at times and but so that makes you feel a little creepy? [5] In the same vein as "If Nudity Offends You"--sort of. In the same vein as "How to Talk to Girls at Parties"--sort of. ★★☆☆☆
"Exo-Skeleton Town" by Jeffrey Ford : A slight whiff of Naked Lunch? and/or a taste of Gun With Occasional Music? Surreal and twisted up and though the aliens are not all that alien, there is a great story in here. ★★★★☆
"Lambing Season" by Molly Gloss : Some lovely writing, but somewhere the story gets lost in the poetics. (And I couldn't even ding it for falling back hard on one of the obviously-inevitable slain-lamb metaphors which, though we had a slain lamb, never quite tied in with the story in a meaningful way.) ★★☆☆☆
"Swarm" by Bruce Sterling : Not strictly "first contact", but "first contact with them". Reminds me in many ways of Blindsight by Peter Watts, [6] particularly with respect to its twisty little ending. And this is my favorite kind of first contact story--where some seemingly innocuous species turns out to be unimaginably older and more mature than some arrogant human species, and one that has written off "intelligence" as a cancer. (Only some small-ish points off here for aspects of the style.) ★★★★☆
"MAXO Signals" by Charles Stross : Pitch perfect in every way. The right length, just the right twist, and just the right little joke to stab at you contra to "Swarm" (which you just finished reading). ★★★★★
"Last Contact" by Stephen Baxter : As the title suggests, almost an anti-first contact story. But's understated, and has the perfect tone on which to end the anthology. ★★★★★
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[1] I'm being a little too heteronormative there. The story would go after the same point if Vic and Enn were gay. So in that way, it's more about entering the foreign country of sexual maturity than it is entering the foreign country of "girls". The key points remain the same though: let's confront what it means to grow into our sexuality, and let's use aliens on Earth as the backing trope.
[2] That said, at one point when reading this my thought was: "Did he just finish playing Civilization? or Alpha Centauri? or something?" (And then I noticed it was first published in 1985 so... probably not.)
[3] So... an inverted version of the previous inversion?
[4] I swear I don't say this about every Doctorow piece. I really don't. I really did like this story so much better than (say...) "When SysAdmins Ruled the Earth"; but...
[5] Who writes teenaged girls like this? Maybe I just don't understand the Bay Area?
[6] Though in all fairness, "Swarm" predates by Blindsight by 24 years.
I first came across this title via Wayne Barlowe's Barlowe's Guide to Extraterrestrials; and when I was at the library this last time around, I saI first came across this title via Wayne Barlowe's Barlowe's Guide to Extraterrestrials; and when I was at the library this last time around, I said to myself: How can you have gotten this far without reading any Ursula K. Le Guin? those short stories just aren't going to cut it, you know! But when they didn't have A Wizard of Earthsea, I decided to go for this one. Mostly because it was short. (And I figured: Why not sneak in another book to put me two ahead of pace for this year's goal? [1])
What le Guin gives us with The Word for World is Forest is a pretty straightforward piece of (arguably) first-contact [2] sci-fi with strong ecological themes and some feminist undertones. The ecological themes are not subtle: a mono-climatic planet with "peaceful primitive" forest-dwelling natives? forced into slave labor by a colonizing human race that's just there for the lumber? But with fewer than 200 pages in this title, who has time for subtlety? Le Guin hits you with the point early and runs you over with it.
The feminist themes are a little more subtle.
Overall, an enjoyable book — and though it had some moments of outstanding prose, the not-so-subtle plot sometimes translated into some not-so-subtle wordsmithery. I've enjoyed le Guin's short stories in the past though, so I'll be back for ...Earthsea and others, I'm sure.
[2] : I say "arguably" first-contact because (1) the first contact aspect is not the central theme — that would be the ecological stuff — and (2) because if this is a "first contact" story, it is only implied. I say it is only implied because the text is peppered with these oblique references to how the Athsheans have had no concept of murder prior to encountering human-kind etc. — but never "knowing murder" is different than never knowing another species. And none of the Athshean characters ever comes out and says that the humans ("yumans") are the first ever to come. And all this world-time/dream-time stuff is another oblique hat-tip to cyclical history, which just further undermines any definitive claims to this being "first contact". And this is to say nothing of the directed panspermia theory referenced in the narrative....more
Arranged chronologically from 1955 through 2001, Dozois' anthology Worldmakers: SF Adventures in Terraforming, is a tightly-themed collection of scienArranged chronologically from 1955 through 2001, Dozois' anthology Worldmakers: SF Adventures in Terraforming, is a tightly-themed collection of science fiction shorts. It's a good overview of the terraforming subject's treatment within the genre but the anthology seems to lack any stand-out stories — there are no great masterpieces in here. Which is not to say that it's not an enjoyable collection. I mostly picked it up for research purposes (re terraforming and first contact[†:]) but found it to be a good bed-side item. Perhaps the most interesting aspect of this collection is that, because it is arranged chronologically, you get a sense of how views of terraforming have evolved within the genre over time — what are the in vogue technologies? how central is terraforming to the story? what sorts of politics are involved?
As for the computed average of my ratings on the individual stories themselves (out to four decimal places), Worldmakers scores: 3.2250
Includes: • "The Big Rain" by Poul Anderson (1954): ★★½
• "When the People Fell" by Cordwainer Smith (1959): ★★½ » There's a narrative whimsy that's a little off-putting; also, reading this made me recall this essay: The Yellow Peril, Fu Manchu, and the Ethnic Future by Lisa Katayama.
• "Before Eden" by Arthur C. Clarke (1961): ★★★ » A bit dry and stilted but the twist at the makes up for it.
• "Hunter, Come Home" by Richard McKenna (1963): ★★★★ » Reminded me a lot of the fungus/mindworms stuff from Sid Meier's "Alpha Centauri" — and that made it extra endearing.
• "The Keys to December" by Roger Zelazny (1966): ★★½
• "Retrograde Summer" by John Varley (1974): ★★
• "Shall We Take A Little Walk?" by Gregory Benford (1981): ★★
• "The Catharine Wheel" by Ian McDonald (1984): ★★★½ » Felt like "typical McDonald" (gels with my image of his work as reflected best in River of Gods) but felt like it was working more with cyborgian tropes than strict terraforming.
• "Sunken Gardens" by Bruce Sterling (1984): ★★★★½ » Brilliant. But I love Sterling's work. And the Shaper/Mechanist stuff is always great.
• "Out of Copyright" by Charles Sheffield (1989): ★★★½ » The terraforming bit seemed pretty tangential. Also, when did Sheffield start channelling Cory Doctorow?
• "A Place With Shade" by Robert Reed (1995): ★★★ » Most interesting is the way that Reed casts terraforming in a light that makes it look like the engineer's rigor has given way to the dilettante's art.
• "Dawn Venus" by G. David Nordley (1995): ★★★
• "For White Hill" by Joe Haldeman (1995): ★★★★★ » Stunning. Well-crafted and taut.
• "The Road to Reality" by Phillip C. Jennings (1996): ★★½ » Another where the terraforming tropes were off on the side. Speculating about whether to leave a fossil record when building a planet? Cool. Veering off headlong into a cyberworld prison? Huh?
• "Ecopoesis" by Geoffrey A. Landis (1997): ★★★★ » One of the more interesting stories in the whole collection — and I say that even though parts can be a bit hard to follow (esp. w/r/t/ keeping track of characters) and also despite how the romantic bit felt tacked on.
• "People Came From Earth" by Stephen Baxter (1999): ★★★★
• "Fossils" by William H. Keith, Jr. (1999): ★★½
• "A Martian Romance" by Kim Stanley Robinson (1999): ★★★½ » A good story re pacing etc. (and a good ending) but the lead-in was... a little weak? Perhaps this one reads better if you're familiar with the back-story from Robinson's previous stories set in this milieu.
• "Dream of Venus" by Pamela Sargent (2000): ★★ » Could have been much stronger if there was more of a focus on Miriam. (Or: "I didn't much care for this narrator.") The premise works (and makes a good accompaniment to "Ecopoesis") but something about it doesn't carry.
• "At Tide's Turning" by Laura J. Mixon (2001): ★★★★★ » Great. The terraforming bits fall to the wayside a bit but the rest of the story is so strong (strong enough to make this one the best in the collection?) that it stands well despite falling slightly off the theme. Also: Mixon offers us an well-realized milieu with a great vocabulary.
--- † = Though there's barely any first-contact subject matter in here at all....more
This was a pretty goddamned devastating read. I could see that bit at the end coming for hundreds of pages but Russell so expertly unfolded the story This was a pretty goddamned devastating read. I could see that bit at the end coming for hundreds of pages but Russell so expertly unfolded the story bit by bit that it was like standing there with a bloody heart in your hand, butcher's paper crumpled at your feet.
One of the novels I'm working on (and have been since... 2010? way before I read this and I believe also before I'd heard about this one) would do well to be informed by what she does here. A good first contact story reminds you of how similar we might be across species across the universe, but also that the differences -- when we see them -- will be the ones that we could never have imagined [1] and are thus all the more terrifying for it.
I'll leave it at that for now. I have nothing else to add to the narrative of reviews that hasn't already been said; try:
This is the third SF story I've read where a Jesuit priest goes on an expedition to another planet and suffers a spiritual crisis as a result. It's almost becoming a sub-genre.
Among other recommendations, A Fire Upon the Deep appeared on io9's "Twenty Science Fiction Novels that Will Change Your Life" post and after NewtoAmong other recommendations, A Fire Upon the Deep appeared on io9's "Twenty Science Fiction Novels that Will Change Your Life" post and after Newton's Wake, I thought it would be a chance for that list to redeem itself a little. Though far from life-changing, this story is strong and plays with a number of interesting tropes in novel and intriguing ways. The notion of an interstellar (intergalactic?) apprenticeship program for librarians/systems administrators is a fascinating one (esp. Vinge's treatment of the commoditized interstellar communications network), but you can also tell that it's just the long-leash to guide the rest of the story.
I take some fractional points off for some minor quibbles I have. (1) For such a lush space opera, sometimes Vinge's prose can be a little wooden. There are some italicized thoughts here and there which—whether they're an acceptable literary convention or not—don't seem to add anything except a break in the rhythm. (2) The Prologue is nearly Baroque in its inflated style, and I rolled my eyes a bit. Thought ceased for a moment as a shadow passed across the nodes they used. The overness was already greater than anything human, greater than anything humans could imagine. *sigh* If you must... (3) Conversely, the climax and denouement seem almost to fall flat. Not quite Stephensonian, but... after all that build-up: that's it? (4) And as with any space opera (and/or epic fantasy)... there's so much tedious traveling.
But what Vinge gets right (i.e., everything else) he seems to really nail. The io9 piece calls A Fire Upon the Deep "quite simply one of the most inventive, astonishing, and humane space operas you'll ever read"—and I'd agree with that. The epic scope, the alienness of the aliens [†], and the willingness to pen such a weird portrait of the imagined universe—it all adds up to a very compelling and rewarding read.
--- † : Though, truth be told: everyone in the universe seems to operate in a pretty narrowly defined and very human economic system. There's nothing alien about mercantilism and venture capitalism....more
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