Posted by Nicky Drayden on Oct 6, 2014 in
Writer's Life Lightspeed, September 2014
http://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/ten-rules-intergalactic-smuggler-successful-kind/
Author Website: http://blackholly.com/
Short Women in Space, Review #6
In this novelette, a young girl stows away on her uncle’s cargo ship, fleeing a homesteader lifestyle on the boring planet her parents immigrated to. Life aboard the ship presents its own challenges when she realizes that her parents’ warnings about her uncle weren’t completely unfounded. He’s an intergalactic smuggler, but there’s no turning back now. She’ll just have to learn the rules so she can properly follow in his footsteps.
She’s heard a lot of bad things about spaceports, but when she lands on Zvezda-9, it doesn’t live up to the hype. No one’s trying to slip her drugs, no flesh-ripping Charkazak anywhere in sight.
Zvezda-9 is a big stretch of cement tunnels, vast microgravity farms, hotel pods, and general stores with overpriced food that’s either dehydrated or in a tube. There are also InterPlanetary offices, where greasy-looking people from a variety of worlds wait in long lines for licenses. They all stare at your homespun clothes. You want to grab your uncle’s hand, but you already feel like enough of a backworld yokel, so you curl your fingers into a fist instead.
There are aliens—it wasn’t like your parents were wrong about that. Most of them look human and simultaneously inhuman, and the juxtaposition is so odd that you can’t keep from staring. You spot a woman whose whole lower face is a jagged-toothed mouth. A man with gray-skinned cheeks that grow from his face like gills or possibly just really strange ears loads up a hovercart nearby, the stripes on his body smeared so you know they are paint and not pigmentation. Someone passes you in a heavy, hairy cloak, and you get the impression of thousands of eyes inside of the hood. It’s creepy as hell.
After she’s over the initial shock of it all, after she’s gotten herself some high-tech threads, some trendy holographic earrings, and a don’t-mess-with-me swagger, she realizes this place is exactly what she was running away from — boring.
That is until her uncle scores a no-questions-asked job of a lifetime, smuggling a cylindrical casket full of something, or more likely — someone — to an unscrupulous genetics lab. And of course, these things can never go well. Will pluck and her uncle’s rules be enough to get our heroine out of an intergalactic bind?
For all of the blood and guts and gore in this story, it’s a truly charming one. On top of being emotionally wrenching, it’s also masterfully written. The first time I came across this story, I moved right past it, thinking the format was a gimmick, but there’s no gimmick here, just pure and awesome storytelling. I’m so glad I went back to give it a full read. It’s really uplifting to see a young woman in space, setting out on adventures, solving momentous problems, and making a name for herself. This one is a bit of a time commitment, coming in at over 8000 words, but I promise, by the end of it you’ll be wishing there were 8000 more.
REAL Women in Space
Sally Ride
First American woman in space
STS-7 (Jun. 18, 1983)
Creative Commons
Tags: Aliens, Lightspeed Magazine, Nicky's Pick, Novelette, Short Women in Space, Space Travel
Posted by Nicky Drayden on Oct 5, 2014 in
Writer's Life Strange Horizons, Jan 2014
http://www.strangehorizons.com/2014/20140106/Astronaut-f.shtml
Author Website: http://www.damienangelicawalters.com/
Short Women in Space, Review #5
This story is about a Technical Mission Specialist, a space mechanic, if you will, who is damned good at her job. She’s spent more time aboard the space station than she has back on Earth, but when it comes to light that her deadbeat father is a serial killer on death row, her world gets turned upside down–which under the influence of microgravity, usually is not such a big effin’ deal.
Twelve dead women, all with families and loved ones, and the media has decided to focus on me. No, it doesn’t make sense, but it makes a hell of a headline, so they say. Most people don’t remember the names of the victims anyway.
And somewhere in the middle of this whole mess, the press is having a field day. I’ve become the serial killer’s astronaut daughter. I don’t know who the hell she is, but she isn’t me.
And yet here she is, her career in jeopardy because of the crimes committed by a father that was no more than a sperm donor. If she’d been a man, this situation would have blown over within a matter of weeks, reminding us that there are still gender inequalities and glass ceilings, even a couple hundred miles above Earth’s surface.
This piece uses a unique situation to point out some of the double standards that threaten to follow us into the future if they aren’t addressed head on. There are a ton of references to the Alien movie franchise, in which Sigourney Weaver is the supposed measuring stick for all badass women astronauts, and a ton of f-bombs are dropped, so if either of those things don’t appeal to you, you might give this one a pass, but if twentieth century pop culture and sailor-mouthed astronauts are you thing, take half an orbit with this story. I think you’ll enjoy it.
REAL Women in Space
Kathryn D. Sullivan
First American woman to walk in space (Oct. 11, 1984)
Creative Commons
Tags: Short Story, Short Women in Space, Space Station, Strange Horizons
Posted by Nicky Drayden on Oct 4, 2014 in
Writer's Life Daily Science Fiction, June 2014
http://dailysciencefiction.com/science-fiction/space-travel/helena-leigh-bell/the-things-they-were-not-allowed-to-carry
Author Website: http://www.nuetcreations.com/blog/
Short Women in Space, Review #4
This neat little piece teeters between realism and surrealism as a group of interstellar travelers make their way to a new planet over the course of 50 years. Space is limited aboard the ship, and there is no room for non-necessities. Even very small and precious things get left behind. Obviously Martha’s grandmother’s piano cannot make the trip, and also Charles’s 1971 Corvette, but then the list of things they cannot bring goes sideways:
Tangible and intangible things, real and imagined were petitioned and overruled. Geologists Staebler and Garcia wanted to bring the smell of dirt roads after a thunderstorm. No one can carry this, it was decided. We will leave it behind.
Mementos and even memories are an anchor tying the voyagers back to their old life, back to Earth. They are best cast aside, but it is not an easy task to strip oneself of the past. The children aboard have much less baggage and are able to drop their ties to materialism and their old home. They even give up basic necessities such as clothing and bathing, figuring the ship never bathes, so why should they? As a result, in the uncomfortably close quarters of the ship, a cultural rift forms between young and old.
This story is a great account of the mental toll of long-term space travel. I enjoyed the sensory elements, as well as, being drawn along on this journey, slowly coming to the realizations of why history must be left in the past, and how that changes us as a people. It’s difficult to pull this off in a piece of short fiction, but Helena definitely delivers, so give it a read!
REAL Women in Space
Kathryn C. Thornton
First woman to make multiple spacewalks (May 14–15, 1992, Dec. 6, 1993, Dec. 8, 1993)
Creative Commons
Tags: Daily Science Fiction, Short Story, Short Women in Space, Space Travel
