2022 read #37: Perception Check by Astrid Knight.

Perception Check by Astrid Knight

479 pages

Published 2022

Read from October 2 to October 5

Rating: 3 out of 5

This is a self-published New Adult fantasy about a deeply traumatized college student setting out into a Legally Distinct From Dungeons & Dragons world to rescue her friend and confront the evil mage who snatched her away from Michigan one fateful night ten years before. I like the idea of supporting self-published titles; someday I'll likely take the self-pub route with my own novellas, maybe even my own novels. It's hard to discover self-pub titles that I'll actually read, though. I've bought a handful of self-published books over the last year, and just haven't been able to power through and finish them; the prose has always been too iffy for my snobbish tastes. (One exception worth mentioning: Cute Mutants.)

Knight's prose is decent, as good as anything you'd find in most modern YA fantasy (though if I never read the words "sneer" and "smirk" again, it will be too soon). The story is absorbing and does exactly what it says on the label, plunging our heroes into fights with goblins, into dingy taverns with bad food, brushes with the royal guard, and an epic quest to retrieve a Maguffin and save their friend while saving the world. It was perfectly satisfactory in that regard.

I did find it a bit off-putting that every human, elf, and halfling character is coded as white -- most of them with blue eyes; some of them singled out as "pale white" -- except for one guy coded as Japanese, who (spoilers!) turns out to be morally suspect. I'm guessing it was an unconscious oversight, or perhaps a conscious effort to avoid appropriation. (One might position Check as the diametric opposite of Wake of Vultures, another fantasy written by a white woman, and an example of well-intentioned but perhaps dubious "I'll take it upon myself to write diverse characters" saviorism.) I'm in favor of avoiding appropriation, but making every character white -- humans from a fantasy world setting as well as humans from a city in Michigan -- swings way too far in the opposite direction.

2022 read #36: The House in the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune.

The House in the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune

398 pages

Published 2020

Read from September 30 to October 2

Rating: 4.5 out of 5

Refreshingly sweet, maybe even saccharine -- but it's saccharine in an aching and beautiful way that more than earns the right to be sugary. Gently heartwarming, bustling with wonderful characters you can't help but sweep into your arms and defend at all costs.

I knew little about the plot or vibe before I plunged into this book, beyond a general idea that it was lovely, queer, and feel-good, and I'm glad I knew so little about it. The heart of the book is its conviction that love and understanding can bring light and hope to even the grayest, most bigoted of worlds, that change begins with ordinary people opening up from their bubbles of habit, rule-following, and prejudice. Perhaps it lacks the revolutionary fervor of Confessions of the Fox; it certainly slips into the Disney Liberal trap when the sole Black character spends much of the book in animal form. Despite its flaws, though, there's so much room for this earnest joy and found family love on my bookshelf. More of this, please.

2022 read #35: The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, September 1989.

The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, September 1989 issue (77:3)

Edited by Edward L. Ferman

162 pages

Published 1989

Read from September 29 to September 30

Rating: 1.5 out of 5

I've been collecting issues of Fantasy & Science Fiction for years. Not that long ago, I used to collect other magazines too: Asimov's, an occasional Analog, a 1990s fantasy magazine called Adventures in Sword & Sorcery, random fanzines from the 1970s. But life has put forth many upheavals in the last few years (to say the least). Now I'm down to one shelf of F&SF, which ranges from this issue to the current one.

I haven't read any of these issues yet, which is a situation I've wanted to fix for as many years as I've been collecting them. The last time I read a full issue of F&SF was back in February 2019, which we can all agree was a long ass time ago. Some recent issues have stories written by people I know personally, and it's been my #1 dream market since 1999 or so, so it's all the more embarrassing that I haven't gotten around to them. Perhaps I'll read one of those issues next.

September 1989 is my oldest issue, but otherwise it doesn't seem to have any distinguishing characteristics. None of the stories are considered classics, as far as I know; David Brin is the only name I recognize on the TOC. It is noteworthy that every single one of these stories seems to have been written by a dude. Even in 1989, that had to have seemed a bit fishy.

"Steel Dogs" by Ray Aldridge. The cover story, "Dogs" has 1989 written all over it. In a star-faring far future, a theme park modeled after fae and fantasy tales was built around a central AI brain on a pleasure planet, its sumptuous castle and forest populated with android trolls, elves, huntsmen, and sporting dogs. The androids were "filled" with the revenant consciousnesses of criminals, the hunting dogs with canine revenants; even the dungeon rats are robotic, animated by the ghosts of dead rats. Seven hundred years have passed; the pleasure planet has fallen out of fashion, and for centuries the revenant murderers and pirates have acted out their roles without guests to entertain. A growing population of marooned human survivors lives on the planet's scattered islands. Our tale begins as Aandred, the revenant consciousness of a galactic pirate uploaded into the body of a grinning metal Huntsman, bounds out with his hounds to capture a trespasser and bring her back to Droam, the AI at the heart of the castle. The story has potential; it is structured efficiently, securing the reader's interest, smoothly doling out each and every character and plot device as needed. There are iffy moments, like when Aandred takes a long moment to take stock of his captive Sundee while she's naked and unconscious, but overall it isn't as dubious to modern eyes as it could've been. A solid effort, though not a forgotten classic.

"How Hamster Loved the Actroid with Garbo's Eyes" by Chet Williamson. It's fascinating to see early sci-fi speculations around what would become modern-day technological norms. This is a loose hacker-fi retelling of Galatea and Pygmalion rooted in a technology that we would recognize today as deep fake CGI. It isn't a good sci-fi retelling; the narrative voice is sweaty and casual in a too-forced way, reminding me altogether too much of the standard voice used in old cishet Usenet erotica. The R-slur is dropped casually at one point. As far as the story itself goes, I find it funny that the futuristic "Synthecin" is produced by a solitary genius "hacking" (i.e., programming) rather than by a dedicated and overworked team of animators. The public at large goes gaga over new John Wayne and Greta Garbo films for no reason other than the plot needs them to (and because the author was, presumably, a fan of the classics). Both white male main characters are effortlessly brilliant and rich because that's the kind of story this is. Overall, I give it a shrug.

So, uh, for this next one, prepare yourself for some heavy content warnings. Real life SA, SA of children, exploitation, racism. It's rough.

"Where Do We Go When We Sleep?" by Roger Robert Lovin. My ick-sense immediately tingled with this one, possibly because the very first line begins "The cocoa-colored young man..." So I googled this guy and... fucking yikes. A Christian pastor associated with the Discordian movement, this fucker was a sexual predator who especially went after girls. He was arrested for this in 1979, but his friend circle managed to bribe his way out of any real repercussions. He fled to Belize in order to continue his sexual predations on children in a colonized land where he would be untouchable. And it was from there that he wrote and sent in this story, which happens to be about a white man coming to solve a metaphysical mystery in a colonized land. Lovin may or may not have faked his death in 1991. I learned all this on an increasingly horrified google dive before I read any farther into this story. I do not owe any sexual predator the time it takes to actually read their shit. I gave it a shot anyway, and gave up within a few pages as the ick factor and casual racism (complete with phonetically rendered dialogue straight out of Mark Twain) piled on. Fuck this guy and fuck this story.

"Uneasy Street" by Marc Laidlaw. After the last two tales, I'm not in the most optimistic frame of mind for this one. And it didn't do anything to change my mind. It's grim and grimy near-future street drug stuff, rote and uninteresting, and badly written at that. (The main character helpfully doles out exposition: "Easy? That new drug, you mean?") Except for the first story, this issue has been dire so far.

"Somewhere Dreamers Wake" by Wayne Wightman. This feels like a 1960s High Concept Sci-Fi piece slathered with a veneer of aren't-I-so-clever 1980s irony, and I mean neither descriptor in a complimentary way. Faceless technocrats sketch out the parameters of religion and race in committee before sending down pod people (all "defective" personality types from the universe's penal system) to populate a synthetic biome on an experimental planet. And suddenly a young man named Wayne comes to consciousness in his high school in the year 1964 and wouldn't you know it, it was Earth all along! Even the editorial intro to this one describes it as a "basic theme in SF," and that's putting it generously. This stuff would have been dusty even in the heyday of The Twilight Zone.

"The Third Effect" by Edward F. Shaver. A tale of white-collar mediocrity crossing paths with the mathematically ineffable underpinnings of the cosmos. Investment analyst David (whose sex life is fantastic, thank you for asking!) notices that the seventh elevator at his firm's office tower never comes for him. He tallies the probabilities of this and finds they're a trillion to one. But other people see only six elevators, so David must confront the reality of the seventh elevator -- and the trillion-to-one "miracle" he mathematically believes to be awaiting him, for good or ill. When the seventh elevator finally arrives, he takes it -- and [randomly rolls some dice] becomes a vampire! Oops. A modestly entertaining story, nothing especially memorable, not enough to redeem the last four.

"Privacy" by David Brin. A testosterone-soaked "teen gangs mouthing slang and seeking outlets for violence in a tech dystopia" story, pretty standard stuff. This one is improved by the somewhat prescient wrinkle that the old folks in this society are hooked on spying, recording, and reporting any teen mischief in their vicinity, forming a distributed network surveillance state. Still, all in all I can't relate to all this masculist bullshit about how young men intrinsically need violence and honor and boy, weren't things so much better when having a boyfriend was a girl's only source of social status and security? Blech. Well-written but not my kind of thing.

And that's that. I finally read another entry in my magazine collection. And just like the January/February 2019 issue, this one is getting donated somewhere. I've read plenty of excellent F&SF content from the Ferman era, and I've read plenty of excellent sci-fi and fantasy from the late '80s, so I have no idea why this issue was so abhorrent. Absolutely not worth keeping.

2022 read #34: Uncommon Charm by Emily Bergslien and Kat Weaver.

Uncommon Charm by Emily Bergslien and Kat Weaver

93 pages

Published 2022

Read from September 28 to September 29

Rating: 4 out of 5

A sprightly novella set in and around the margins of an upper crust family in 1920s London, Charm weaves magic, Jewish philosophy, Roaring 20s parties, and dark family secrets together into a beguiling story. Shorter even than many Neon Hemlock novellas, Charm could perhaps have benefitted from 20-30 additional pages to let the narrative breathe and the numerous ancillary characters take on a shine. The tangle of family secrets and magical nets would certainly have benefitted from some extra room. Additionally, I could have spent many pages exploring the half-seen dynamics between our narrator Julia and her school crush Charlotte, or with shy magician Simon and his particular friend Max. That said, this little book is a delight.

2022 read #33: Last Night at the Telegraph Club by Malinda Lo.

Last Night at the Telegraph Club by Malinda Lo

411 pages

Published 2021

Read from September 14 to September 28

Rating: 4 out of 5

I adore this book.

It draws you in like the soft cushions of a couch at a home where you first learn who you really are, among people who love the way you do. I adore Lily and Kath, our main characters, who brave ostracism and jail in search of their truest, best selves, and discover love along the way. I adore how precisely and poignantly Lo describes the way first love feels, the unfamiliar ache and vulnerable need, the protective tenderness. I adore how her 1954 San Francisco feels tangible, its fog and its drifting aromas and its busy streets tenderly realized.

This month has been an unexpected struggle, with a flooded apartment on top of the general unending stress of the last three years. My attention span has struggled as well. Telegraph Club's prose is smoothly beautiful, never flashy but always wrapping you up in its story. Nonetheless I found myself almost having to relearn (for the third or fourth time this year) how to pay attention to a narrative and stick with it instead of picking up my phone for a quick spin of dopamine roulette. None of which reflects on the book, which is a treasure. But it does make it even harder to compose any kind of cogent thoughts in this review.

2022 read #32: The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers.

The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers

443 pages

Published 2014

Read from September 9 to September 13

Rating: 4 out of 5

I've wanted to read this book for years, ever since I saw it on the library shelf not too long after it was first published. Over the years I probably checked it out from the library four or five times. As is so often the case with ADHD, the intent was there, but actually opening up the book and reading it was on the other side of an insurmountable hump.

After all those years loosely orbiting this book, it's funny that my introduction to queer space opera instead came from Joyce Chng's Water into Wine. The two aren't especially comparable, aside from the shared working-class, found-family, making-a-home-for-ourselves-where-we-can vibes. Where Wine takes place on the dirt, The Long Way is a tale of spacers, following our colorful hodgepodge tunneling crew as they hop from world to world and spend long stretches in space.

From the title, I had pictured something a bit grander, a long-form meditation on cramped quarters and the deep dark of space. Instead The Long Way is a series of vignettes: the new crew member comes aboard; the shopping trip at the interplanetary bazaar; the pit stop at the dusty outpost planet to pick up spare parts from cyberpunkish modders. It was a cozy, comfortable ramble rather than the epic journey I expected. And that was certainly okay by me. I think having a bit more of the deep dark vastness of space would have added something to the book, but in the end, it's the characters and their relationships that matter most here, and those were lovingly rendered and delightful.

Now, though, I'm jonesing to write my own queer working-class space opera.

2022 read #31: This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone.

This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone

201 pages

Published 2019

Read from June 20 to July 3

Rating: 4.5 out of 5

We've been having a rough time of it here in reality, haven't we? An unelected council of robed wizards declaring that fascism must be the law of the land (at least here in the United States); the relentless loss of liberties and personal autonomy; an incipient genocide against LGBTQIA+ folks gathering momentum everywhere from megachurch pulpits to the opinion page of The New York Times; sacrificing the future of human civilization (and most of the biosphere) to a couple more years of capitalist profiteering -- 2022 has been a bad fucking time.

Lucky thing the gay spec-fic has been so brilliant.

This Is How You Lose the Time War is the book Dinosaur Beach didn't even know it could wish itself to be, but far weirder, queerer, and incomparably better, a poetic manifesto burning in a fist of revolution. It's a document of beauty, a transcendent evocation of love and hunger and grief so fierce it can unmake the future and weave something greater in its stead. With my own thoughts so steeped in the necessity of unmaking the fascism and ecological collapse of our present, I needed this book at this particular stipple in time. I can only quote Amal El-Mohtar from the acknowledgements: "Books are letters in bottles, cast into the waves of time, from one person trying to save the world to another."

This is how we win.