2015 Nebula Award Winners: L:R Winners and accepters at Nebula Awards ceremony: (L to R) Steven Gould, Nancy Kress, Mary Ann Mohanraj, Scott Edelman, Ursula Vernon, Larry Niven, Stanley Schmidt, Usman T Malik, Sam J Miller, and Matthew Kressel.(photo: Ernest Lilley 2015)
You can see the list of winners over at Locus Online
There’s quite a lot of good content in this month’s SFRevu, starting off with an interview with Daniel Abraham on writing as James S.A.Corey and what’s happening with the Expanse on SyFy, as well as a look at Nebula Nominee Charles Gannon’s Trial By Fire, Simon R. Green’s Bond Pastiche, From a Drood to a Kill, a review of Neal Stephenson’s new apocalyptic doorstopper, Seveneves, movie reviews of Tomorrowland and Mad Max Fury Road. Plus lots more book and short story reviews by Sam Tomaino. www.sfrevu.com
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My father was a fisherman
My mother was a fisherman’s friend,
and I was born amid the boredom
and the Lovecratian horror.
Of course Paul Simon’s Duncan (1) doesn’t go quite like that, but if it was about the residents of the creepy New England town Daryl Gregory brings to life, though life seems too strong a word for the residents, so let’s go with being, the song might very well might have.
16 year old Harrison Harrison, H2 or Harrison Squared to hie marine biologist mother, isn’t a New Englander, but after four days of travel in a pickup with four large marine animal tracking buoys in the back and his mom at the wheel, he finds himself in the town that time forgot: Dunnesmouth, MA. Harrison knows that his mom is obsessed with finding a big sea creature, and that she can drop sync on practical daily matters, which is why he insisted on coming along. What he doesn’t know is that this isn’t just any weird New England town; it’s the one his father, mother, and he set sail from when he was an infant on what should have been a three hour trip. A three hour trip.
Let’s stop right there for a minute. OK, “three hour trip” is cleary a nod to Gilligan’s Island(2), and that’s funny in a pop culture sort of way. Daryl Gregory knows pop culture quite well, in fact he’s created more than a bit of it with contributions to comics and manga with Dracula and Planet of the Apes titles, and this book is aimed squarely at a teen audience. Daryl called it ‘Cthulhu for Kids.’ in a Locus interview. His biggest challenge may have been keeping it from being so scary that it wouldn’t keep a “parent (from) picking up a book and thinking it’s too scary for their kids.“(3)
It is scary. Harrison’s Mom disappears after another boating accident and the mythical Scrimshander bogeyman, who does intricate carvings on his victims bones, turns out to be not so mythical. And that doesn’t even get to the chuthianesque bits. At times, it’s almost too scary for adults, and there are some who would otherwise enjoy it that I can’t recommend it to. Still, I don’t think it’s too scary for teens. The teen protagonists quip their way through crises with just enough humor to keep the book from sinking into unrelenting grimness, and besides, kids don’t believe horror is actually real if they’ve only seen it in books and movies. Adults don’t have the necessary innocence to disbelieve it.
Back in the book, Harrison is certain that his memory of the accident that took his father is a fantasy built from mundane events; the ship capsizes, his leg gets caught on the boat, his father drowns. But while he may doubt his memory of a sea monster grabbing him, his father tearing him free…and then being taken by its tentacles, we the readers aren’t so skeptical.
Dunnesmouth is a dump. They don’t have cable, there’s no cell signal, and they definitely don’t have fun. When Harrison gets dropped off to school, he asks what his schedule is, a question that has no meaning with a junior class small enough that everyone has the same schedule. Still, the teacher in his first class, Practical Skills (or more accurately, how to tie knots in nets) gives Harrison the best piece of advice (short of “get out of town now) he’ll get in the entire book. Follow Lydia .
Lydia Palwick is a dour dark haired girl that doesn’t seem to like the idea of being followed around, surrounded by her other townees who have all the affect of extras from the Children of the Damned(4), but at time goes on, and bad things happen, Harrison discovers its’ not the children he has to worry about, in fact under their grim exteriors, there’s a resistance movement going on.
With Harrison’s mother missing, his self absorbed Aunt zooms in from Manhattan to do an imitation of a responsible adult. Self absorbed works perfectly for Harrison, who needs to be able to sneak out and scour the town for clues as to the whereabouts of his mother, who he knows is still alive thanks to a note left by another unlikely ally, the boy Lub, who get’s mentioned in the author’s Novella, “We are All Completely Fine”. Lydia and her friends may be on the strange side, but Lub is a whole ‘nother level of different, and threatens to steal the scene whenever he’s around.
It’s a race against time, taken at a plodding pace, as Harrison and his friends try to find his mother before whatever arcane ritual the townsfolk have planned comes to pass. It’s a pretty great book, all told.
If you’ve read “We’re all Completely Fine(5),” which takes place years later and features Harrison Harrison and others touched by the same supernatural horrors in a therapy group, you know a few plot points, but not so much that it will get in your way. What you don’t know until the end is that this is only the beginning, but what a very good beginning it is.
This could be an important book. It’s about AIs, our future in space, and getting whole. The writing is crisp, the plot is twisty, and the characters are deep in the way that dark waters are deep. You don’t know where the bottom is until you hit it, and you hope you’ve got enough air to find the surface again.
We meet Kate Ross, astronaut, and Virgil, the AI core running her mission and ship, Acadia. Together with ten thousand sleeping colonists they’re on their way to Alpha Centauri, following in the wake of an earlier colony ship, the Valley Forge, though we don’t put that together until fairly late in the story.
Kate’s the only human awake for the long journey, and there’s some serious tension between her and Virgil, who she suspects is pushing her buttons pretty hard, buttons we also don’t get the reveal on until the end.
The question for Kate is clearly whether she can trust the AI or not. It’s a question the author doesn’t make easy as we jump back to Virgil’s beginning, and further back to the first suddenly emergent AI, Charlie, who discovered himself and cut a deal for survival with the woman in the oval office.
“I’m here to administer your oath. You have to take it before the code change.” “Of my own free will.” “That’s right.” Charlie created a face and put it on the monitor. He nodded and held up a hand. “I’m ready.”
Erwin, James (2015-02-16). Acadia (Kindle Locations 2573-2575). Breadpig Inc. Kindle Edition.
The code change in question is the response to the president’s quite reasonable suspicion that Charlie isn’t as cheerfully compliant as he makes out. That he would always be playing his own game, a few feet deeper than any human could fathom. So he offers her the chance to plant an imperative in his core that he can’t betray. A prime directive, and one that twists Charlie’s actions throughout the book.
There are two other major players of note, also one human and one AI. These two aren’t connected at all, though one becomes the instrument of the other. Paul Nakamura, the richest man, dead or alive, past US Secretary, past head of the Belt Republic, past gun-holder to the figurative head of the world economy, and owner of pretty much every piece of orbital rock there is. All with a mass driver mounted on them to move them into mineable orbits. Or city killer trajectories. Depending. Nominally he cut his own deal with Charlie, and he’s the driving force behind the colonization mission of first the ill-fated Valley Forge and then Acadia. The AI, Hunter, on the other hand is a swarm of leftover military nano-stuff unleashed in the barrios of Tuscon.
“With a deep frown on his face, Sandoval crouches down and lays down his gun. He turns and takes three steps. His skin flushes bright red, and the IR camera on his car sends back a picture of his body heat blooming, rising. With a long, ragged gasp, he falls over, convulsing. The watch commander stares at his monitors in horror. His counterparts at Pima County and up at Phoenix are watching too. “Jesus, Franklin ,” whispers the watch commander, “what is that?” “That,” says a gravelly voice, “is nanotech. Your watsons are probably already flagging the video.” They were, red text blaring in his displays. “ I’m swiping off. Have to tell the governor and Homeland.” “What do I do?” The state patrol captain stares wearily at his camera. “You pray.”
Erwin, James (2015-02-16). Acadia (Kindle Locations 1316-1317). Breadpig Inc. Kindle Edition.
Sometimes prayer works, and sometimes you have to use a nuke to try and sterilize the infection. Sometimes that works.
The relationships between the emergent Hunter, Charlie, Virgil, Kate, Nakamura and various other players are hard to divine, partly because the stakes are so high, but mostly because the heart of the AIs are opaque. To us, to the humans around them, but most problematically, to themselves.
The hard science is impeccable, from the clearly realized space habitats to the murky bits of conscious machines, but don’t let that scare you away. Besides, it’s nicely offset with occasional bits of cartooned artwork set there just to make you mind glitch. There’s a definite echo of Hal’s ghost walking the ramparts, or in this case the corridors of a massive starship. The Turing test is easy to pass, but equally meaningless. An AI can simulate being human, but even humans can run more than one simulation at a time.
Acadia faces the challenge laid down on Mulder’s “Trust no one” poster. That’s the safe choice, or so ostriches tell us, but when it comes down to it, humans have to make scary decisions on their own, and Kate Ross, the only human awake on a starship speeding towards a new beginning, is very much alone.