Tag: science fiction

The Practice, the Horizon, and the Chain by Sofia Samatar

Every year, Locus magazine does a review issue in February. In it, their editors and reviewers list their favorites of the year. One of those reviewers this year was Alexandra Pierce. She recommended this novella. I picked it up on her recommendation as a well-written story that explores deeper issues.

The story is that of an unnamed boy and woman. The boy lives below decks on a sort of chain gang about a generation ship. The woman is a professor aboard that same ship in a caste that is just slightly above that of the boy. She gets the boy out of the Hold and brings him to the university. He struggles to adapt there while relying on the Practice that he was taught in the Hold by an old man.

This is a tale of class and hierarchy in society. It moves rather slowly and the writing is dense. It borders on being for English teachers only but never quite tips into that territory. Clearly the author is not just talking about space. This is a metaphor for all human societies. And what the author has to say in her exploration is well worth reading this short book.

My rating: 4/5

The Star by Arthur C. Clarke

A lone star shining in the night sky

I first read this classic story in high school. It won the Hugo Award for Best Short Story in 1956. It is the story of a Jesuit priest who accompanies a mission to a remote star that expired in a supernova thousands of years ago. They are visiting the star system because a civilization lived there that was destroyed by the star’s explosion. But as the priest tells the story, he raises a surprising and important question.

The Star by Arthur C. Clarke (1955) – 2,432 words (about a ten minute read for the average reader)

Someone in Time edited by Jonathan Strahan

I read this as member of my book club at my local library. We each read a different book on a particular topic. For the most recent meeting we read historical fiction that takes place prior to the twentieth century. I kind of cheated with this one. It is short stories and only some of them go that far back in time. But it seemed to be a hit when I told them about it.

The editor was able to get stories from a lot of well know contemporary authors of science fiction. The theme of the anthology was time travel love stories. The book’s title as a call out to the 1980 move Somewhere in Time was totally on purpose. There were sixteen stories in the book. Here are my brief synopses and ratings.

  • “Roadside Attraction” by Alix E. Harrow — After his girlfriend breaks up with him, a young man loses himself by going to the past over and over only to find his destiny in the present. (5/5)
  • “The Past Life Reconstruction Service” by Zeb Cho — A movie director recently dumped by his boyfriend keeps seeing him as he explores his past lives. (5/5)
  • “First Aid” by Seanan McGuire — In order to take care of her younger disabled sister, a woman prepares to go back permanently to Elizabethan England. (5/5)
  • “I Remember Satellites” by Sarah Gailey — When a time traveler draws a short straw job that leaves her permanently in the past, she has to leave behind a girlfriend to become a divorcée who causes the future King England to abdicate. (5/5)
  • “The Golden Hour” by Jeffrey Ford — A time traveler stuck in time reconnects with his time-traveling wife. (3/5)
  • “The Lichens” by Nina Allan — A woman in northern Scotland during the time of Culloden encounters a scientist from the future looking for a buried spacecraft. (4/5)
  • “Kronia” by Elizabeth Hand — Lovers who grew up a mile apart find each other through time. (2/5)
  • “Bergamot and Vetiver” by Lavanya Lakshminarayan — A woman from the 2500s travels back to the Indus Valley Civilization where the future’s leaders use her to steal water the man she falls in love with. (4/5)
  • “The Difference Between Love and Time” by Catherynne M. Valente — A woman tells the tale of her romance with the personification of the space/time continuum. (4/5)
  • “Unbashed, or: Jackson, Whose Cowardice Tore a Hole in the Chronoverse” by Sam J. Miller — A young man regrets not walking his first love home, finding out the next morning that he has been murdered for who he loved. (4/5)
  • “Romance: Historical” by Rowan Coleman — A young neurodivergent woman mysteriously connects with a man from 1914 in the bookshop where she works. (5/5)
  • “The Place of All Souls” by Margo Lanagan — Two people who found each other connected in the space between times, find each other and struggle about what to do about it and how it will affect their families. (3/5)
  • “Timed Obsolescence” by Sameem Siddiqui — A man pursues a fling during multiple visits to the past only to find that his behavior there has affected his present. (2/5)
  • “A Letter to Merlin” by Theodora Goss — A woman from the future inhabiting the body of Guinevere in an attempt to keep the timeline on track writes a letter to Merlin who is also inhabited by someone from the future. (4/5)
  • “Dead Poets” by Carrie Vaughn — A female academic drinks from an ancient cup dreaming of meeting Sappho but instead goes back to 1536 to visit Sir Thomas Wyatt in the Tower of London shortly after the execution of Anne Boleyn. (4/5)
  • “Time Gypsy” by Ellen Klages — A woman goes back in time to meet her scientific hero only to fall in love with her and discover that her advisor in the future isn’t what he seems to be. (5/5)

The average of these ratings give the book as a whole a rating of 4/5.

Clarkesworld Magazine Issue 221 (February 2025)

As I continue to transition to reading more short fiction (short stories and novellas), in addition to reading Clarkesworld Magazine each month I am trying to read at least one short story a day. As I am very interested in encouraging others to get into reading fiction regularly, starting in March I am going to do my best to post a review every day of the highest rated stories I have read. Some will be old, some more recent. Most will be speculative fiction of some kind. In addition to posting them here, I will also be posting them on my Facebook group, Instagram, and BlueSky. Now, on to my reviews of the fiction in this month’s Clarkesworld.

“Bodyhoppers” by Rocío Vega, translated from Spanish by Sue Burke (5,280 words) — A person wakes up in a new body and races to find their lover before they are both caught for pirating a body. The story starts in 3rd person point of view then transitions to 1st person before ending in 2nd person. It is so smoothly done you almost can’t see it. And it works seamlessly. An excellent blend of starting in the middle of the action and revealing the world as the story unfolds without losing or confusing the reader. (My rating: 5/5)

“King of the Castle” by Fiona Moore (6,280 words) — An angry, violent young man threatens his community while they search for a way to bring him back into the fold. The story takes place in the same world and after the events “The Spoil Heap” by the same author. I thoroughly enjoyed that story and the world. Unfortunately, this one fell a little flat for me. (My rating: 3/5)

“We Begin Where Infinity Ends” by Somto Ihezue (9,270 words) — Kids work to save fireflies by toning down the brightness of streetlights and learn the power of love and working together. This one has the depth and feel of a novel. It also has the feel of ‘eighties childhood like in Stranger Things or E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial where kids have their own space to do things without adults constantly hovering around. (My rating: 5/5)

“A Planet Full of Sorrows” by M. L. Clark (13,110 words) — When evidence of a dead alien race on another planet starts a space race to get there, the discovering scientists try to figure out how to stop it. The race is between three proselytizing religions that all have tacit government backing. A look at how capitalism complicates scientific efforts. (My rating: 4/5)

“The Hanging Tower of Babel” by Wang Zhenzhen translated from Chinese by Carment Yiling Yan (6,380 words) — A son cares for his father with Alzheimer’s disease who was mostly absent from his life due to his work in deep space. Reminded me of Arthur C. Clarke’s The Fountains of Paradise, which I read in high school. It too had an elevator to orbit like the Stairway to Heaven in this story. Poignant, heartbreaking, and bittersweet. (My rating: 5/5)

“Numismatic Archetypes in the Year of Five Regents” by Louis Inglis Hall (3,560 words) — The history of six regents told through the coins minted for each. It is descriptions of six coins interspersed with the “history” around them. It is a clever premise, but not much is done with it. For me, it is not quite a story. But it does have a clever twist. (My rating: 3/5)

“Celestial Migrations” by Claire Jia-Wen (3,090 words) — Miners who ride celestial rays home for the lunar new year to see their son learn how the space creatures reproduce. The writing is not very clear for me. It’s like jumping into the midst of the story without enough being explained within the text. Despite the defect in the storytelling, it is a poignant tale of parents sacrificing for their son. But that is a big defect for me. (My rating: 2/5)

Average Rating: 3.86/5