Posted by Nicky Drayden on Oct 23, 2014 in
Reviews Buzzy Mag
http://buzzymag.com/threads-of-pearl-writhing-by-gwendolyn-clare/
Author Website: http://www.gwendolynclare.com/
Elizabeth Felsen is one of just a few uninfected humans left aboard a station at the edge of human space. She sneaks about in the air vents, trying to do any little thing she can to sabotage the tiny, tentacled aliens that have taken the station’s inhabitants as mindless hosts, pumped full of artificial bliss and happiness. Elizabeth is on the path to finding a cure, along with the aid of her husband–each time risking discovery and infection.
Like always, I go straight for the communications panel while Angelo watches the door. They turned the quarantine broadcast off again since the last time we checked. The parasitized humans aren’t particularly bright or motivated, but occasionally, one of the gossamers manages to steer its host human into the control room and undo all our security measures. The gossamers are content for now, but as they use up the humans aboard the station, they’ll grow more desperate for a starship to take their species to greener pastures. Like a planet.
As it is, I have to restart the quarantine broadcast and re-engage the lockdown on all docks. I send a quick status update to the xenoparasitologist who was assigned our case, along with a request to resend the last incoming message—which they erased.
Angelo wanders over from his post by the door to look over my shoulder. He plants a soft kiss on my neck.
“No news,” I whisper. “They deleted it.”
His lips move close to my ear. “You know, Liz, those meat puppets are starting to really get on my nerves.”
I throw an annoyed glance over my shoulder. He knows I don’t like it when he calls the hosts meat puppets. Our friends are still in there somewhere. But I get what he means; I never imagined an alien invasion would be so soft and tedious.
That last line was the one that made me smile, and maybe salivate a little. That’s the point, a mere few hundred words in, when I settled into the story and prepared myself for how awesome this was going to be. Well played, Gwendolyn. The aliens in this are perfect. I thought we were heading towards a menacing Borg infestation, but in this story we have something even more sinister: aliens that make you happy. The hosts go about their daily routines (with scrawny alien jellyfish lodged in their throats) in a blissful fog, barely any motivation, thank goodness. A little gumption, and this infection would have spread so much more quickly. But the gossamers seem to be content with their slow and monotonous invasion…or are they?
This story is full of tension, and will have you on the edge of your seat. The twists and turns are amazing. Nothing goes according to plan, and there’s just the right balance of emotion and action. Though the ending is somewhat telegraphed, it’s still a good one, and deeply satisfying. If you’ve got a tentacle fetish, this one’s definitely for you. And if you don’t have a tentacle fetish, come closer, dear one, and open wide.
Tags: Alien Invasion, Aliens, Buzzy Mag, Nicky's Pick, Short Story, Short Women in Space, Tentacles
Posted by Nicky Drayden on Oct 20, 2014 in
Reviews Apex Magazine
http://www.apex-magazine.com/primrose-or-return-to-ilmaril/
Author Website: marymcmyne.com
Virginia Booth is a noted xenoanthropologist well past the end of her career, during which she held a deep connection with the people of Il’maril, a planet in the Andromeda galaxy. She is called there out of retirement by Vierro Casstratil, a powerful Il’marilian shaman, who she must convince to leave their homeworld due to the impending supernova of their star. Despite the threat of extinction, it will not be an easy task. The people of Il’maril hold tightly to myth and beliefs:
I’d awakened that morning with a particularly germane line of scripture on my tongue. All day, as the caravan led me to this cave, I’d been repeating it to myself, worried I would forget without the memory chip I’d refused out of respect for the taboos. “‘Without the sun we are nothing.’”
He nodded. “Your teacher taught you well. And yet you advocate for evacuation?”
“No matter how much I love this place,” I hoped he could hear the regret in my voice, “I must.”
From the surface, the Il’maril sky was enchanting, the crimson sun bathed in rose–coloured light. Only from space was it clear the planet actually had two suns: a tiny white dwarf and its companion, a rosy red giant blooming petals of dust. Probe ships had been making passes over the system ever since convection began in the dwarf star, which accreted enough mass to go supernova long ago. This year, after their annual pass, the astrophysicists projected the disaster’s date: one month from today. Only a splinter group of Il’marillians had agreed to evacuate so far — the emigrants, they called themselves proudly, though the word for the concept was considered obscene. My mission was to convince Casstratil and the rest to go.
I gestured at the floor, the traditional place on Il’maril for discussions of state. “Should we sit?”
Casstratil nodded almost imperceptibly beneath his hood. I still couldn’t see his face. Somewhat further down the tunnel, I was certain now, I could see a light glowing on the wall. Orb–shaped, it glowed a vague silver colour with hints of purple; it wasn’t very bright. In my first pub, I’d speculated that they kept some kind of ancient tech in these caves, which ran on the mysterious geothermal energy the shamans referred to as zim–zivat. It had only been a storytelling device; now, I wondered if I was right.
The superiority complex of humankind extends well into our future in this piece. With all of our science, tech, and knowledge obtained over artificially lengthened lifespans, we know what’s in the best interest of a planet in a galaxy far, far away, right? Our calculations and predictions could never be wrong. We are infallible, after all.
It does not take much to draw modern-day parallels to this story, so this is an important tale to take to heart. It’s sad to think that in half a millennium from now, we’ll still be making the same bull-headed mistakes we are today, so it’s good to read a story that puts humanity in its place. This piece does so, and gives us great characters to cling on in the process. Virginia gets a glimpse of how despite our ability to skip across the stars, we are still toddlers in our knowledge of so many things–going confidently about our lives, completely unaware of the danger lurking in the pretty fire upon the stove top, of the hundreds and thousands of small lives extinguished beneath our oblivious footfalls on the sidewalk. And yet, I don’t think this story was meant to disparage us, but to encourage us to grow. It’s okay to be born not knowing everything, and learning doesn’t have to be a race. Sometimes it’s important to just stop and smell the primroses.
Tags: Aliens, Apex Magazine, Nicky's Pick, Short Story, Short Women in Space
Posted by Nicky Drayden on Oct 17, 2014 in
Reviews Lightspeed
http://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/deep-end/
Author Website: http://www.nisishawl.com/
Psyche Moth is a prison ship, on a slow, long interstellar journey to the planet Amends, some eight light years form Earth. The prisoners, who are on the ship “voluntarily,” have spent most of the voyage in freespace–a virtual world where they frolic weightlessly, in contrast to the new meat bodies they are being downloaded into as they near the end of their voyage. As awful as that sounds, life for Wayna has gotten worse since she downloaded into her meat suit. Her girlfriend has grown aloof, her jealous boyfriend is stuck back in freespace, and her new body–her new and strangely white body–is malfunctioning.
Then the pain hit.
White! Heat! There, then gone—the lash of a whip.
Wayna stopped moving. Her suit held her up. She floated, waiting. Nothing else happened. Tentatively, she kicked and stroked her way to the steps rising from the pool’s shallows, nodding to those she passed. At the door to the showers, it hit her again: a shock of electricity slicing from right shoulder to left hip. She caught her breath and continued in.
The showers were empty. Wayna was the first one from her hour out of the pool, and it was too soon for the next hour to wake up. She turned on the water and stood in its welcome warmth. What was going on? She’d never felt anything like this, not that she could remember—and surely she wouldn’t have forgotten something so intense . . . She stripped off her suit and hung it to dry. Instead of dressing in her overall and reporting to the laundry, her next assignment, she retreated into her locker and linked with Dr. Ops.
Space is the New Black? This story is easy to get sucked into and equally easy to get creeped out by because of its plausibility. It’s not like sending a bunch of prisoners to a remote colony is unprecedented, or anything. These people give up the bodies they are born with, have their minds uploaded into a computer, and then are squirted out into new bodies cloned from the privileged, and live on a new planet that almost nothing is known about. Are they getting a new start? Yes. Did Earth rid itself of thousands of criminals in the name of exploration and discovery? Yes. Are they being exploited? Yes. I know that this is just a story with fictional characters, but I feel my heart aching for them in an absurd soft of way. I hope that they find happiness out there, and are able to make amends with the past that has been stolen from them.
Tags: Lightspeed Magazine, Nicky's Pick, Prison Ship, Short Story, Short Women in Space
