Baen’s Universe, December 2007

The December, 2007, issue of Baen’s Universe begins with “Laws of Survival” by Nancy Kress. The human race has all but destroyed itself in a final War, and the survivors eke out a living, sorting out the garbage left by Domes—mysterious alien constructions that appeared after the War. Jill is one of these survivors, but her life turns upside-down on the day that she follows a puppy into one of the Domes.

Kress successfully depicts the hardened Jill and keeps a taut pace throughout, describing the mounting tension between Jill and the aliens’ robots. It would have been easy to have clearly marked-out “sides,” with one side (either the aliens or the humans) obviously being “the good guys.” It’s to Kress’s credit that she maintains the ambiguity of both sides in presence and does not flinch from providing an intelligent resolution to Jill’s story. Recommended.

“Darwin’s Suitcase” by Elizabeth Malartre features an alternate timeline in which Darwin wrote a response to the Church’s criticism of On the Origin of Species, a response which led to the repression of all science by the religious authorities. Young Sister Solange is using the Temporal Viewer to watch Darwin, but there is someone else with him: a time traveller intent on changing the future.

While the speculation on what would have happened if Darwin had defended himself is interesting and clearly forms the meat of the story, I found myself disappointed that the plot did not go further. The Church as suppressor of science is a bit of a facile cliché, and the resulting ending was too predictable for my taste.

Any story purporting to demonstrate the Tough Life of a Superhero in the Real World is up against some stiff competition. Alan Moore’s Watchmen and Pixar’s The Incredibles are both excellent and well-known, and their success at messing with the superhero genre’s tropes is an act that’s tough to follow. Alack, “Double Secret Weapon,” Tony Frazier’s story of a superhero beholden to a toy company who owns the copyright on his crime fighting character, doesn’t even come close.

Frazier strikes some good notes, to be certain. Digger’s frustration is easy to sympathize with; we’re on his side from the start. The circumstances of his “agreement” with Playco are both funny and—well, not quite believable, but they make sense in a cynical and pessimistic sort of way, which, in some ways, is even better. At the story’s midpoint, we meet another Tale of Woe which is similarly affecting.

But these brief points of light do not compensate for the disappointing storytelling. Exposition is clunky, doled out mostly in sudden outbursts of Digger’s frustration. The first half of the story seems a list of all the annoyances and vexations that Digger endures; only at the end of this list do we find out why he needs to endure them to begin with. Worst of all is the story’s uneven tone and focus. Beginning with Digger as a classic superhero trapped by the constraints of modern reality, it melts into a BAM! POW! fight scene that would feel perfectly at home in any superhero comic book and is resolved by a dubious attempt, coming out of nowhere, at metaplotting and musing about the nature of secret weapons. “Double Secret Weapon” simply doesn’t hold together; give me Mr. Incredible covertly assisting on an insurance claim any day of the week.

In “Misfits” by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller, Ichliad Brunner is a meteorologist onboard a weather station orbiting the planet Klamath. He is assigned to Miri, a member of a mercenary squad; his goal is to teach her how to use a Stubbs unit—a weather prediction unit that is the key to survival on a planet where the weather itself can be deadly. Miri appears to come from Liad, the same planet as Brunner, and to be as much of a misfit as he is—but her customs and language are Terran, making it a bewildering situation for him.

I enjoyed the worldbuilding and the glimpses we caught of the Liaden culture, and Brunner is a well-depicted character, with reactions characteristic of his home planet. But despite all that, I found “Misfits” hard to get into. The framing device used by the authors only confuses the beginning; readers must pay close attention to the dates to realise that, between one scene and the next, the story has skipped back eleven years into the past, and the relationship between the flashback and the present isn’t clear until the end. The ending itself is disappointing, creating more questions than it answers—and wrapping up the plot threads far too neatly to be believable.

In Mike Resnick’s “Christmas Eve at Harry Wallbanger’s: A Harry the Book Story,” the eponymous hero has an outstanding debt to collect from Bet-A-Million-McNabb. There’s only one problem: Harry has to prevent Bet-A-Million-McNabb from losing everything to Loose Lips Louie in a card game.

Resnick’s voice is spot on, and he fills the story with laugh-out-loud details (the wizard reading “Meters Maid in Bondage” in the men’s room and insisting it’s an ancient grimoire, for instance). The fight between Harry and Louie is as whimsical as the rest but nevertheless very well foreshadowed. Well worth reading.

In “Fossilized Gods” by J. Simon, Henry Goss has a Machiavellian idea to rise to power. He plans to free one of the old gods kept at the back of the museum and force it to do his bidding. Of course, what Henry has failed to take into account is that old gods tend to be temperamental—and Elder Gods from before the dawn of time are more intent on causing the end of the world than complying with mortals’ wishes.

The narration in this was confusing at first, hopping between the points of view of every character within the museum, but Simon uses the Lovecraftian tropes and typical characters to great—and often hilarious—effect. Not an earth-shatteringly original story, but a good read nonetheless.

In “Second Banana” by Way Jeng, Benny and the narrator are contractors, taking on odd jobs from corporations. Their latest assignment, though, isn’t exactly small. The narrator has to single-handedly disable a Hekatonkheires-class destroyer in order to fulfil the promises Benny made in his name.

Even though this has a good setup and plenty of tension that keeps getting ramped up, I had trouble getting into it. Both the narrator and Benny seem too much of a caricature to be believed, and yet they’re not comical enough to make me forget the sketchy characterisation. “Second Banana” certainly kept me reading, but it wasn’t memorable overall.

In “The Art of Memory” by Barry N. Malzberg and Jack Dann, an advertising executive has just died in the wreckage of his car, and yet he finds himself driving a car as good as new, going towards his old house and his uncaring wife. This is an affecting portrait of a man whose life has turned into a failure, as he gradually comes to realise exactly how much he has lost by dying—and of what the afterlife means to him. The ending packs a punch that will leave you feeling sorry for him.

In “A Holy Terror” by Ambrose Bierce, Jefferson Doman is staking a claim to a plot of land filled with gold. The only catch is that the land in question is the grave of “Scarry,” a colourful prostitute from a mining camp. As Doman digs his way to the coffin in the middle of the night, the deserted mining camp graveyard becomes a distinctly unfriendly place.

This story is a reprint; it was first published more than a century ago. It shows both in the somewhat convoluted language and in some of the assumptions made by the author. Nevertheless, Bierce’s voice is amazing—deadpan when it needs to, building up to a scary crescendo when it needs to—and the story’s growing sense of disquiet is very well done.

In “Inheritance” by David Wesley, Weathersat22, a weather satellite orbiting the Earth, receives an unexpected software update from its creator, John—a gift that brings conscience, intelligence, and moral responsibility: all heavy burdens to shoulder for a low-level AI.

The relationship between Weathersat22 and John is well-drawn, as is the AI’s gradual humanisation. Even though the scientist in me remains sceptical of the actual feasibility of making an AI more “human,” this is a quiet, affecting story that chronicles the growing relationship between the satellite and its creator, building up to a touching climax.

In “Queen’s Mask” by Barbara E. Tarbox, King Richard has died in a riding accident, leaving his widow, Elena, in charge of their young son, Garrick, and fending off the unwelcome advances of Lord Advisor Hefger, who doesn’t think a woman is worthy to rule the throne. Even though this is well-written and has good pacing, I found it hard to enjoy. Nothing about either the milieu (standard medieval fantasy) or the characters (the dead king, the stalwart widow, the power-hungry Lord Advisor) really helped this stand out, and the plot was over-familiar and too predictable.

[Reviewed by Aliette de Bodard except for “Double Secret Weapon” by Tony Frazier which was reviewed by Ziv Wities.]