SFF Reviews - Science Fiction and Fantasy

Review of That Story Isn't the Story by John Wiswell (9033 words) Uncanny Magazine, Issue Forty-Three : Purchase or Read Online This Hugo and Nebula finalist and Locus Award winner novelette places a striking tale of trauma and recovery in an urban fantasy setting. The details are often left to our imagination, but as we have likely experienced in other stories, our imagination is quite capable of conjuring up horrors to fill the gaps. A supernatural creature holds sway over his familiars, symbolic of the less fortunate who are often preyed on by folks with bad intentions. Victims range from teens to immigrants to gay people - people in difficult situations who are likely to forget their own strength. And that brings us to the heart of the story - recovering your own strength. That journey towards recovery is exceedingly difficult to traverse, and it's made relatively manageable when you have a support system and a semblance of independence and the beginnings of a ...

Review of Kali_Na by Indrapramit Das (7558 words) The Year's Best Science Fiction, Volume 1, Edited by Jonathan Strahan, Purchase Anthology A cyberpunk style story set in India, Kali_Na focuses on our protagonist, a lower caste girl named Durga, and an AI Goddess simply named Devi. Devi is the Hindi word for Goddess - she is simply that. Not one of the many Goddesses from Hindu culture with a rich and varied life and stories, and this is an important distinction. No, she is just generic Goddess 2.0, to whom devotees may ascribe any quality they choose, one who will bless everyone with their own particular type of request, instead of having to ask specific Goddesses for specific things. A product of capitalism, she was supposed to be every Goddess in one. But maybe they forgot to code out the qualities of Kali Maa. And then we see a shift. The sheer power and scale of this story was reminiscent of the scale and scope of Hindu sagas and tales. A truly fantastic story and ...

Review of Zeitgeber by Greg Egan (10399 words) Tor.com, Sept 2019, Read Online   A beautifully written short that seems disturbing and unnatural on the surface of it, but you slowly start to realize that it isn't entirely unlikely for something like circadian rhythm changes to affect the structure of society as a whole. Focusing on the microcosm of Sam's family with the backdrop of society as whole, we get a glimpse into how it changes the life of each person. This story touches on the effect on a human level, and not just on a widespread global level. Indeed, the interspersed narrative of Sam with his family, and the larger society and the school he teaches at, shows how individuals are dealing with it. Individuals like his daughter, Emma, who is now functioning on a different internal clock. As these things go, she is eventually forced to have medication, which keeps her up at "normal" times, but she's dull, feel heavy, and doesn't really feel like h...