Baen’s Universe, Vol 3 No 1, June 2008

In the first science fiction offering of the June 2008 issue of Baen’s Universe, “Last Plane to Heaven: A Love Story” by Jay Lake, a group of mercenaries in Mongolia are hired on what appears to be a routine mission: pass themselves off as Ukrainian mercenaries and stage a week-long hostage-taking. But when the hostage turns out to be an odd girl fallen from the skies, the stakes radically change.

The first quarter of the story is a bit hard-going: it’s filled with military banter that doesn’t really add a lot to the story. Once we get to the actual mission setup, though, things shape up quite nicely. The clashes of cultures—within the mercenaries, and between the mercenaries and the mysterious girl—are well-depicted, and the hint of mythology behind the SFnal setup adds some welcome depth.

“Why There Are No Type-C Civilizations” by Marvin Minsky and David Gerrold is a very short piece which describes two vast intergalactic entities as they move through space. To say more would spoil the piece, so I’ll stop here. It’s well written with its tongue firmly in its cheek, and while the point it makes isn’t very believable, it’s certainly an enjoyable read.

In “Quasi” by M. Alan Ford, the countries of Earth have come up with a solution to avert the loss of human lives in wars: they use quasis, beings engineered from animals such as apes and cetaceans. Quasis have no imagination to disobey orders; they do not mutiny, and they can be adapted to a variety of settings such as underwater depths and lunar gravity. John is a quasi, but as the war grows on, he finds himself having thoughts that differ from what he should be…

It’s a fascinating idea, and Ford handles its consequences well while delivering a fast-paced military adventure that kept me interested throughout. I loved the descriptions of the various quasis, and the battle scenes on the Moon are well-handled. One tiny complaint I have, though, is that the narrator keeps comparing himself to humans and other quasis to highlight why he’s not behaving as he should. It’s a good idea to offload some of the exposition, but I thought Ford relied a bit too much on it: every mention tended to distance me from the narrator—since a character cool-headed enough to analyse his behaviour in the midst of a battlefield isn’t one I can believe is in any danger.

In “Ted” by Tom Van Natta, Sam always goes around with a life-sized teddy bear (aka “Ted”), which he won at a company picnic. It’s a joke—but one that’s been wearing thin on Sam’s girlfriend, Marie. Until the night the aliens come…

Aliens and a teddy bear are the last things you’d expect to find together in a story, but Van Natta’s skill is in making Sam completely serious about Ted and what the bear means to him. When the aliens do show up, they’re handled in much the same vein, making for a fun, surreal tale that’s a delight to read. Recommended

In “Making Alex Frey” by Marissa Lingen, Dani and Tad are working for ex-superstar Alex Frey in order to design a simulacrum, an artificial intelligence derived from Alex. Alex, who was once a teen-pop idol, wants his simulacrum to have a virtual career as brilliant as the one he used to have—and rake in the money the simulacrum makes. There’s only one problem: Alex isn’t a very pleasant person…

This was a fun read with well-drawn characters and a very believable description of how to build a simulacrum by a learning process. It had me cheering mentally for the programmers’ team, whose recommendations are constantly ignored by Alex and his business manager, Magda—and the ending, while hardly groundbreaking, was very satisfying. Recommended.

“Maker of Worlds” by Norman Spinrad features an envoy descending to a small planet in order to convince them to join the Federation of Worlds. There’s only one catch: on this planet, magic is real, and in order to convince the planet, the envoy is going to have to defeat the Magus Majoris at her own game.

The humour in this derives both from the parody of Star Trek and from the sly digs at traditional fairytale figures and strictures. It’s an odd mixture that mostly works, except for the ending. I’m afraid I found it too cheesy for my personal taste, lumping together magic and science, thereby contradicting points made earlier in the narrative about their being separate.

“One Small Step” by Kristine Kathryn Rusch takes place on the moon, centuries after the first astronauts landed. One preserved footprint has become the basis for a museum commemorating the arrival of the Apollo missions and the history of colonial settlements. But space is at a premium on the overcrowded Sea of Tranquillity, and property tycoon Liz Borra is determined to remove the museum from its place to build something more valuable. Nyalou, the most junior member of the moon council, has to determine whether it’s worth preserving that footprint.

I liked this for most of its length: the moon setting was well-imagined and felt very plausible, and Nyalou was a sympathetic point of view character. However, I wasn’t quite as fond of the ending; it was the one I had been hoping for, but its lack of subtlety made me feel as though the point of the story had been driven home just a bit too hard.

“Madame Pompadour’s Blade” by Tom Purdom takes place in eighteenth-century France, where the brilliant Marquise de Pompadour owes her power to being King Louis XV’s mistress. However, she is not without enemies, and those have engineered a plan to put her out of the king’s favour. It’s up to her servant, Geveaux, and his protégé, Francois, to save the day, armed with nothing but a magic sword.

I love the setting and the court intrigue, and the interactions between Geveaux and Francois make for a very entertaining, fast-paced story. However, the ending didn’t quite work for me; it seems to cut off the narration abruptly, without dwelling on the consequences of what Geveaux and Francois have accomplished—they have completed their mission, but what will the implications be for the greater political picture? Ironically, part of the reason for this feeling is that the setting is so well-depicted that you expect everything to have ramifications—and it’s so much more of a disappointment when the story ends so “small.”

A small nit from this native-French reviewer: the county of LechMutacque, where Francois is supposedly from, doesn’t really sound French at all—which gave me a moment’s pause whenever I encountered the word in the story.

In “Bella of Ghostea is Dead” by A. S. Fox, Grak is an Orc, cursed to see everyone he loves die in front of his eyes—which obviously poses problems in the dating department. He thinks he has the solution to the problem: date someone who’s already dead. But with Bella, he might be getting more than he bargained for…

This was a fun read, successfully mingling a number of fantasy tropes to produce a light and frothy story about the difficulties of meeting one’s soul mate. It’s not what I would call earth-shattering, but it certainly made me laugh out loud.

In “A Thread of Silk” by Eugie Foster, “[e]ven the wishes of a small ant reach heaven.” This Japanese proverb, spoken by an imperial gardener, reflects both the culture and the hope within this story. Set during the Heian period—a time of the Taira and bushi, when social classes, nature, and Buddhist principals meld into a landscape of intrigue, change, and war—a warrior princess must defend her palace.

Mae steadied her breathing as she nocked an arrow. She stepped into position and pulled the bowstring taut, sighting down the shaft’s length. In her mind, a silk thread shimmered smooth and straight.

The shimmering silk might represent a thread from Mae’s kimono, a visual link from her arrowhead to her target, or perhaps the cosmic string that binds all to a common purpose, a common existence. As Mae further explores the threads of her life, she encounters love, hate, and an ironic twist of fate.

Mae embarks upon a journey to save her people, her family, with blessings from the god of war and the goddess of love. The gods have taken an interest in Mae’s plight, but as in all things, divine intervention is not always amicable attention. In this fable-like tale, Mae must navigate through violence and political plots in a multifaceted journey that resonates through time, pulling the reader into an ancient, enchanted world full of history and lessons.

“A Modest Proposal” by Jonathan Swift is a classic piece of satire. The narrator proposes to lessen the burden of children abandoned by their poor parents or beggaring themselves by offering them up as a prime delicacy for the tables of the wealthy.

Swift maintains the earnest, enthusiastic tone throughout his discourse, which drives home the underlying satire; he is not so much proposing an idea as poking fun at the landlords who have grown fat on the peasants and who can do no better than complain about the latter’s inability to rear their own children with the little they have left. It’s not a particularly pleasant reading experience, but it does hit all the right notes and still has relevance today—when inequalities of wealth still persist, especially between countries.

“Cacophony of the Spheres” by Jeff Haas is the first of Baen’s Universe’s “Introducing” stories, which presents the work of new writers. Tom is a journalist sent to the end of the galaxy in order to discover where all the aliens crowding Earth are coming from. There he meets Bob, an ex-professor of Mathematics reconverted into a bartender. Bob’s bar sits on the edge of the maelstrom, the visible part of the Big Crunch that is going to snuff out life in the universe—except no one on Earth wants to believe him about the maelstrom.

While the setting is very convincing, and the plot unfolds smoothly with well-rounded and funny characters, I found myself unconvinced by the story’s central premise. I thought that the videos and the presence of numerous alien refugees would at least convince some Earth people that Bob was speaking the truth. Having the entire human race in denial felt a bit too unbelievable.

In “Spamdemonium” by John Parke Davis, Pete, fifty-five and recently divorced, receives an odd spam email—this one isn’t concerned about Viagra or penis enhancements, but instead promises to reveal the secrets of the universe if he can break its code. Of course, you know how this is going to end from the first page. But it’s still a good journey getting there, a clever romp where Davis successfully ups the tension as Pete becomes so obsessed with solving the codes that he becomes unaware of the painfully obvious.

[Reviewed by Aliette de Bodard except for “A Thread of Silk” by Eugie Foster* which was reviewed by Rae Bryant. *Disclosure notice: Eugie Foster is the managing editor of The Fix.]