The Novella Initiative: Journals of the Plague Years by Norman Spinrad

Subject:  Norman Spinrad, Journals of the Plague Years, [Spectra, 1988]

Genre: Science Fiction

Executive Summary:

In an alternate world where AIDS evolved into a ever-changing chimera of a fatal STD, a repressive America suffering under this pandemic brings together the story of a soldier, a free love activist, an ambitious politician, and a scientist who may have found a radical cure for the scourge. If they all don't get nuked, first.

Assessment:

The story was originally written as the AIDS crisis was in full swing, and the dangers of unprotected sex, especially non heteronormative sex, were becoming scary, and frightening, especially given the lack of response from politicians to the crisis, as well as exploitations of the crisis by various parties.

Spinrad takes that as his jumping off point to a world where AIDS has evolved, mutated and chanted to an incurable and quickly fatal venereal disease that makes just about all unprotected sex to be fraught and dangerous. The infected are put in Quarantine Zones (predictably, the Bay Area is a big one), the uninfected turn to sex with machines rather than "with meat", for fear that one encounter could lead to becoming infected, a puritanical streak of America seeking the infected assiduously, and an overall climate of fear, denial, shame and oppression over the United States (and, clearly, the world as well).

The story's epistolary format, first person point of views from the four main characters, gives the novella a good freshness as we get seriously into the heads of the main characters, and this technique really works well when the characters meet at points and we get an external view to the internal and first person point of view of someone we have not seen from the outside. All of the characters in the novella talk a lot in their heads, something I have found is a recurring feature in his work.

The reason why I wanted to re-read this story for the novella initiative was a plot point I half remembered, but came to mind with the recent (as of the writing of this piece) push by vaccine companies to get people to take a booster shot of Covid, even as the science and usefulness of that does not seem clear. In this novella, the cure that Dr. Richard Bruno discovers is one that would affect the bottom line of the pharmaceutical company he works for, and mainly for that reason, it is suppressed--the company he works for *relies* on creating and marketing palliatives for those infected by the plague. 

Things that feel out of place these days is the echo of "free love" that we see in San Francisco, that feels like a relic of the 1960's transformed to the present day. Walter T Bigelow, as a closeted homosexual turned near dictator by the power of his office, felt very much of the Reaganesque type of Republicanism rather than Trumpism. Although most of his instincts are very wrong in the book, and his politics are abhorrent, he finally manages to do the right thing in a way that I think that a similar figure created today and in these times simply wouldn't. He contrasts with, say, the Governors of Texas and Florida today in 2021 in their responses to Covid.

What didn't feel out of place--the fact that the US would invade Mexico to obtain Baja California in order to have a place to put the black card infected. Given the War on Terror and our two decades in Afghanistan, that felt even more relevant than when I first read this at the end of the 1980's. Spinrad saw clearly that the American war machine could be turned to some very dark ends. 

And yet in the end, for all of the trials these characters go through, it is meant to be a hopeful work, in a way that we don't quite see today as of the time of this writing. Maybe Spinrad HAD to have this as epistolary collations from a century and a half in the future to convince the reader that this world did manage to get through its plague.  Maybe the stories that will get us through THIS plague in a similar way could take a page from Spinrad.

Norman Spinrad's stories are often bizarre, strange, stream-of-consciousness works that often defy genre expectations and boundaries. Journal of the Plague Years, with an America, and a world whose strangeness and weirdness comes off on every page and nearly every paragraph, still holds a powerful message, especially in 2021 as we suffer under our own pandemic. This one is even weirder than most of Spinrad's works, but it is a story very much worth reading, and re-reading today.

Score: 9/10

 POSTED BY: Paul Weimer. Ubiquitous in Shadow, but I’m just this guy, you know? @princejvstin.

The Novella Initiative: The Flowers of Vashnoi by Lois McMaster Bujold

Subject:  Lois McMaster Bujold, The Flowers of Vashnoi, [Spectrum Literary Agency, 2018]

Genre: Science Fiction

Executive Summary:

Still new to her duties as Lady Vorkosigan, Ekaterin is working together with expatriate scientist Enrique Borgos on a radical scheme to recover the lands of the Vashnoi exclusion zone, a lingering radioactive legacy of the Cetagandan invasion of the planet Barrayar. When Enrique’s experimental bioengineered creatures go missing, the pair discover that the zone still conceals deadly old secrets.

Assessment:

The latterly novels and stories in the Miles Vorkosigan sequence have been moving away from Miles as primary narrator or even primary character, and The Flowers of Vashnoi continues that trend. Here, Miles’ wife Ekaterin takes the primary point of view and takes lead and point of view of the narrative as she and her  team work on a project on the edge of a still radioactive zone, while Miles is mostly wrapped up in city politics.

As this is a relatively late story in the sequence, a big part of this novella is all about the resonances with other stories, and other themes in the whole Vorkosigan sequence. The most direct resonance is with A Civil Campaign, where we first met Enrique, and we also meet the original iteration of the “butter bugs” which are the aforementioned bioengineered creatures being used experimentally to hasten the decontamination of the land. 

The second resonance is with another non-Miles story, and that is Captain Vorpatril’s Alliance. (The novella takes place just after that novel for those trying to fix it in time)  That novel, while initially focusing on Ivan and some offworld adventures, does in the end bring him home, and he does wind up confronting legacies of the invasion of the Cetagandans. The entirety of the Exclusion Zone IS a legacy of that invasion both for Barrayar in general and for the Vorkosigan family in particular. We get a little more, too, about Miles and his Grandfather’s Piotr’s relationship here, which enriches the narrative, again, for readers of the entire sequence.

The last resonance for this novella, and I think it is absolutely deliberate on the author’s part to mirror the story in terms of plot elements, is to a story very early written in the Vorkosigan sequence, “The Mountains of Mourning” . In that novella, a young Miles goes into similar terrain and country and faces a problem that if not exactly the same as Ekaterin faces here mainly on her own, certainly resonates and rhymes with it. I think this is a deliberate strategy, and this novella then works on the level of showing how much Barrayar, especially outside of the booming cities, has changed in a couple of decades.  And, of course, how much it is certainly not changed as well. 

Given those resonances being much of what makes this novella work, and given that the depiction and portrayal of Ekaterin very much depends on having read Komarr and A Civil Campaign, this is a novella that I think is very strictly for the fans, but the fans will be delighted by it.

Score: 8/10

 POSTED BY: Paul Weimer. Ubiquitous in Shadow, but I’m just this guy, you know? @princejvstin.

Novella Files: In the Watchful City by S. Qiouyi Lu

Subject: S. Qiouyi Lu. In The Watchful City [Tor.com Publishing, 2021]

Accolades: N/A

Genre: Science-fiction fantasy

Executive Summary: The city of Ora uses a complex living network called the Gleaming to surveil its inhabitants and maintain harmony. Anima is one of the cloistered extrasensory humans tasked with watching over Ora's citizens. Although ær world is restricted to what æ can see and experience through the Gleaming, Anima takes pride and comfort in keeping Ora safe from all harm.

All that changes when a mysterious visitor enters the city carrying a cabinet of curiosities from around the world, with a story attached to each item. As Anima’s world expands beyond the borders of Ora to places—and possibilities—æ never before imagined to exist, æ finds ærself asking a question that throws into doubt ær entire purpose: What good is a city if it can’t protect its people? (From Goodreads)

Assessment: In the Watchful City has the protagonist use a widespread network called the Gleaming to monitor ær cities inhabitants. The Gleaming's scope is expansive, its powers are mighty, and mechanics are ineffable. Not so different from this novella. It's suitable that the network is called The Gleaming, because this story also gleams with a scope unrivaled from any novella I've read, along with a literary prowess that is extremely mighty, and a structure that bends and breaks conventions. In a way, it throws everything but the kitchen sink, but it all comes together not in a jumbled mess, but glistening order, forming a sort of impressive city of its own.

This novella contains stories within stories which all hit deeply. And the foundation of it all is a twisty narrative that adeptly sets up a world through lyrical descriptions and characterization. Even though the story is uniquely constructed, S. Qiouyi Lu is able to comfortably and fluidly slide in information within the action, without you even realizing it. Never once did I feel frustrated from confusion. The ending is the final punch to quite a punchy story that left me satisfied.

In the Watchful City is a story that I could see described as "not for everyone",  but I think its readership is much broader than seems at first glance. By having the story burst with readability, endless ambition and experimentation, Lu has managed to craft a tale with depth and enchantment of high order. In the Watchful City is impossible to categorize. It's an island on its own, but one that's inviting. When I entered it, I found a sort of city unlike any other, structured in a way that made me so glad I found it.

Score: 8/10

POSTED BY: Sean Dowie - Screenwriter, editor, lover of all books that make him nod his head and say, "Neat!”

Novella Files: The Necessity of Stars by E. Catherine Tobler

 

Subject: E. Catherine Tobler. The Necessity of Stars [Neon Hemlock Press, 2021]

Accolades: N/A

Genre: Science Fiction 

Executive Summary: Plagued by the creeping loss of her memory, diplomat Bréone Hemmerli continues to negotiate peace in an increasingly climate-devastated world, ensconced in the UN-owned estate Irislands alongside her longtime friend and companion Delphine.

The appearance of the alien Tura in the shadows of Bréone’s garden raises new questions about the world’s decline. Perhaps, together, Tura and Bréone will find a way forward… if only Bréone can remember it. (From Goodreads)

Assessment: The Necessity of Stars makes reading about memory loss indelible. As both Bréone's mind and environment degrades, ravaged by time and climate change, there's an otherworldly spark to it. Not just because of creatively imagined aliens, but because the prose glistens with lyrical magic. It's able to alternate between sci-fi and the mundane in ways that are both skillfully imaginative and cuttingly authentic.

The story is appropriately layered and fragmented, mirroring Bréone's interiority, exploring how a woman's aging undeservingly diminishes desire for them from powerful men who are really the ones that deserve undesirability. Or how information is similarly fragmented--distorted, branching off into many tributaries without much certainty of which is true and which are lies. It's done mainly through introspection, but is also able to form deep characterization, particularly between Bréone and the similarly aged Delphine, whose connection grounds what could be a shaky foundation into passionate humanity.

I'd be lying if I told you I had everything about The Necessity of Stars figured out. It's a novella that packs as much depth as the best of them. What I do know is that the refined prose, excellent characterization, successfully experimental structure, and expansive themes were enough to keep me fully engaged until the end. Time might do some damage to the mind, but just like Bréone's excellent characterization, The Necessity of Stars will remain timeless.

Score: 8/10

POSTED BY: Sean Dowie - Screenwriter, editor, lover of all books that make him nod his head and say, "Neat!”

Novella FIles: Local Star by Aimee Ogden

Subject: Local Star by Aimee Ogden [Interstellar Flight Press, 2021]

Accolades: N/A

Genre: Space Opera

Executive Summary: Triz is a guttergirl, an engineer who has risen from living in the uninhabitable sewers of her space station to having a stable job at the wrenchworks and a steady romantic relationship with Casne, a decorated war hero, and Casne's wife Nantha. Unfortunately, while out for drinks (and trying to avoid Kalo, Casne's fellow soldier and Triz's ex) Casne is arrested for a war crime she almost certainly didn't commit, and Triz is sure that this must be the work of the Cyberbionautic Alliance, a transhumanist terrorist force. Triz needs to prove Casne's innocence, a challenge which will push her well past her usual limits... and, of course, it'll involve teaming up with that pesky Kalo and confronting a few difficult truths about Triz's world and her place in it.

Assessment: On the surface, Local Star is a fast-paced, action packed adventure, full of conspiracies and twists and satisfyingly tropey scenes: Bonding with a gruff but ultimately (maybe) OK mechanic mentor! Horrible futuristic bureaucracies! Jailbreaks! Journeys through space station trash chutes! Zero Gravity Shenanigans! Near-death fakeouts! Within that adventure are a lot of satisfying trials and challenges that add depth to Triz and her world. The space station setting is comfortably familiar for the genre, but with enough flourishes of its own worldbuilding to make it feel distinctive, and Triz's marginalised upbringing and precarious current position gives us a unique perspective on its society, even as we see her move through the same spaces as Casne and her friends with little difficulty. The Cyberbionautic Alliance, or CeeBees, are a plausible, slightly two dimensional adversary force, but what makes them engaging is Triz's own prejudices against almost any form of cyborg body modification as a result of their existence. That's a challenging prejudice to hold when one of your girlfriends is trans and most of your friends are in the military and prone to serious injuries that require advanced prosthetics, and over the course of the novella we see her worldview evolve to something less absolute.

The novella's blurb and marketing puts polyamory at the centre of its description, and the different character relationships - particularly Triz, Casne and Nantha and Casne's parents, who are in a quad marriage - do a lot of work in relatively little space to show us how this works in practice, and what romance and family look like in a world where polyamory is the norm. As an orphan "guttergirl" who owes her current position to Casne's family (her position at the wrenchworks involves working with Casne's meanest and least emotionally open parent), Triz is constantly aware of the power inequalities between herself and Casne and Nantha, who had more privileged upbringings and went to the same flight school before they knew her, entering their shared romantic relationship with a bunch of history and shared experience that Triz is left out of. Instead of glossing over this dynamic, we are made aware that the characters ideally want to form a quad like Casne's parents, with a fourth person who would shift the balance of the relationship. That all of the characters approach this with openness and acceptance makes Local Star's romance elements really pleasant to read, and while Triz and Kalo's dynamic starts off painfully awkward, their bickering soon smooths into a fun adversarial dynamic - complete with a lot of learning about the others' background that apparently didn't happen during their first fling. I struggled to get a sense of what Triz and Kalo's first relationship would have been like just from their dynamic here, but their adventures together make the eventual end pairing a satisfying conclusion.

Local Star is a romp of a novella, and as such it offers few outright surprises, but its conspiratorial, mystery elements very much work as intended and it deploys its tropes very well. More than that, it's a great example of balancing effective worldbuilding, character beats and an action packed plot at a tasty novella length. Definitely one for sci fi romance fans to look out for! 

Score: 7/10

The Novella Files: Comfort Me With Apples by Catherynne M. Valente

Subject: Catherynne M. Valente. Comfort Me With Apples [Tor.com Publishing, 2021]

Accolades: N/A

Genre: Fantasy

Executive Summary: Sophia was made for him. Her perfect husband. She can feel it in her bones. He is perfect. Their home together in Arcadia Gardens is perfect. Everything is perfect.

It's just that he's away so much. So often. He works so hard. She misses him. And he misses her. He says he does, so it must be true. He is the perfect husband and everything is perfect.

But sometimes Sophia wonders about things. Strange things. Dark things. The look on her husband's face when he comes back from a long business trip. The questions he will not answer. The locked basement she is never allowed to enter. And whenever she asks the neighbors, they can't quite meet her gaze...

But everything is perfect. Isn't it? (From Goodreads)

Assessment: Reviewing a book that’s power largely relies on not having the reader spoiled is tricky. Comfort Me With Apples is such a book. It’s a novella that stealthily wraps itself around you like a snake. You feel growing tension, but you can’t locate its source. And once you feel its full-forced pressure, having you in its grip, you’re completely breathless and wrecked. Catherynne M. Valente has crafted a story that eases its reader into a tale with engaging lyricism and an ominous atmosphere, reaching high intensity with brilliant reveals and conclusion.

Comfort Me With Apples is a quick read. It’s novella-length but its wordsmithery is so honeyed that it breezes by quicker than any book this size I’ve read. It finishes in a wholly satisfying way, but even so, I couldn’t help but look back at the pages and hope to be immersed in it forever. For those who’ve read Catherynne Valente, it’s no surprise that every sentence is sublime. While the story has a tall order by being conjoined with writing with colossal intimidation, it more than rises to the occasion. It’s layered, paced and escalated skillfully, and has more than enough subtext for scores of analyses.

For those wondering why I’ve written mountains of praise and almost zero story details, it’s to not ruin the experience. Comfort Me With Apples largely hooked me because its unique and enigmatic atmosphere/setting not only submerged me in its pages, but propelled me to find out how everything fit together. I thought a bunch of the strange happenings couldn’t possibly dovetail into a satisfying conclusion. I was wrong. The twists are of biblical proportions with the sweet and tart taste of an apple. If you take a bite, you’re more than likely to end up devouring the entire thing.

Score: 9/10

POSTED BY: Sean Dowie - Screenwriter, editor, lover of all books that make him nod his head and say, "Neat!”

The Novella Files: Binti by Nnedi Okorafor

Subject: Okorafor, Nnedi. Binti [Tor.com Publishing, 2015]

Accolades: Winner - Hugo Award (2016), Nebula Award (2016); Nominee - Locus Award (2016) 

Genre: science fiction

Executive Summary: Her name is Binti, and she is the first of the Himba people ever to be offered a place at Oomza University, the finest institution of higher learning in the galaxy. But to accept the offer will mean giving up her place in her family to travel between the stars among strangers who do not share her ways or respect her customs.

Knowledge comes at a cost, one that Binti is willing to pay, but her journey will not be easy. The world she seeks to enter has long warred with the Meduse, an alien race that has become the stuff of nightmares. Oomza University has wronged the Meduse, and Binti's stellar travel will bring her within their deadly reach.

If Binti hopes to survive the legacy of a war not of her making, she will need both the the gifts of her people and the wisdom enshrined within the University, itself -- but first she has to make it there, alive. (From Goodreads).

Assessment: Binti embodies the promise of the novella as a narrative form. It is a compressed novel, featuring all the plot, character and thematic development you look for in a novel, but hyper-economical in its delivery. We are thrust into a world where few of our current assumptions hold. It is afro-centric, in the sense that both Binti herself and the two named human peoples come from Africa and are rooted in African cultures, though only the Himba correspond to a named human people on our Earth. It is futuristic, in the sense that there are technologies far more advanced than our own, including star travel and mysterious devices like the ubiquitous astrolabe (which made Binti's people, and in particular her family, famous throughout the galaxy) and an ancient relic whose properties only Binti can unlock. But we are given no lengthy exposition on how these technologies work - or even, in some cases, what they are used for. The alien Meduse, for that matter, are suitably alien - in physical terms, they are nothing at all like humans. 

Readers used to the techno-fetishism of "hard" SF will likely recoil at this approach, but as far as I'm concerned it's exciting. The air of mystery is enveloping and engrossing. We are treated like adults in this world, hearing a story delivered with all the assumptions someone would make if they were telling a mimetic story in our world. The focus is squarely on the characters and dramatic events, and Okorafor's prose is elegant yet unobtrusive. Binti is truly a standout among novellas, and worthy of all the accolades it has received. 

Score: 10/10. 

The Novella Files: All Systems Red by Martha Wells

Subject: Wells, Martha. All Systems Red [Tor.com Publishing, 2017]

Accolades: Winner - Hugo Award (2018), Nebula Award (2018), Locus Award (2018) 

Genre: science fiction

Executive Summary: In a corporate-dominated spacefaring future, planetary missions must be approved and supplied by the Company. Exploratory teams are accompanied by Company-supplied security androids, for their own safety. But in a society where contracts are awarded to the lowest bidder, safety isn't a primary concern.

On a distant planet, a team of scientists are conducting surface tests, shadowed by their Company-supplied 'droid—a self-aware SecUnit that has hacked its own governor module, and refers to itself (though never out loud) as "Murderbot." Scornful of humans, all it really wants is to be left alone long enough to figure out who it is. But when a neighboring mission goes dark, it's up to the scientists and their Murderbot to get to the truth. (From Goodreads).

Assessment: You know from the first chapter that All Systems Red is good, but at first it's hard to pinpoint exactly why. The prose is good but it's a means to an end, not the end goal in itself. The setting - a scientific expedition on a remote and unexplored planet - is reasonably compelling but also well-worn territory. And the main theme - android comes to understand the self via interactions with organic humans - has been done before, including in a recent, high-profile trilogy. Still, as I mentioned, you just know it's good. You know it's good because you feel like you could just read this book forever; you don't even need plot, just things happening in sequence to its protagonist, Murderbot. 

That's the point when you start to get it. It's Murderbot, a uniquely compelling character who is full of intriguing contradictions. Murderbot doesn't think like a human, except when it does. Murderbot has a troubled past, but a uniquely ethical perspective. Murderbot is, in a sense, Chandlerian - but this is not straight SF noir. Not at all.

Another thing to love: Wells is an economical writer; there is no wasted space in this book. There are no tedious, out-of-perspective infodumps, no lengthy (and equally tedious) descriptions of machinery or technology. No necessary exposition at all. Just want you need, delivered with impact. Highly recommended.   

Score: 9/10.