Last
week, in honor of the upcoming Nebula Awards weekend on May 16 - 19th, I
reviewed four of the nominated short stories for this year. Now, I review the
remaining three:
“Immersion”
by Aliette de Bodard
Clarkesworld 69
Free read: http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/debodard_06_12/
Clarkesworld 69
Free read: http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/debodard_06_12/
Told
in alternating second and third person, “Immersion” tells the intertwined
stories of you – a woman addicted to the immerser suit that streamlines your appearance
and your culture to that of the immerser’s creators, the Galactic – and Quy,
whose family owns the restaurant in which you and your husband have come to
discuss the pricing for a banquet. The you character is experiencing cognitive
issues related to not having taken the immerser suit off for a long while. Quy is
not keen on the suits, believing them to be, as they are, a tool for Galactic
cultural domineering, and when she recognizes the you character as an immerser
junkie, she seeks to help her. The two stories are woven together brilliantly,
and the ending is goosebump good. Raises some deep, intriguing questions about
cultural identity.
“Nanny’s
Day” by Leah Cypess
Asimov’s Science Fiction, March
2012
The
story of a future in which a great number of children are raised by nannies.
Some of the nannies, believing themselves to be better parents than the
biological parents, have sued in the past for custody and won. When Margaret’s
son tells her that he wants to live with his nanny instead of her, Margaret
becomes worried that this will happen to her; a new clause has been entered
into nannies’ contracts forbidding them to sue for custody, but Margaret comes
to believe that they want to use her to test the clause in court.
“Nanny’s
Day” feels, above all else, plausible, and its plausibility is part of what is most
appealing to me. It is also an optimistic story, in which there are no bad
guys, only people trying to do what they think is best. That Cypess doesn’t resort
to the obvious is commendable, and there is an emotional core to “Nanny’s Day”
that makes one feel for the main character; that being said, I do feel that
this story would have a deeper impact if I were a parent. In fact, I intend to
come back and reread this story once I am, in the far future. I empathize with
the main character, and with the nannies, absolutely, but I can just sense,
beneath the surface, an even deeper layer of meaning for those with children of
their own.
“The
Bookmaking Habits of Select Species” by Ken Liu
Lightspeed
I
will admit that some of the other Liu stories I have read, while beautiful, are often
too blatantly sentimental for my personal taste. “The Bookmaking Habits of
Select Species” is still somewhat sentimental, but less personally so; it waxes
sentimental about a love of books, which I feel as though I can get behind, and
it is done in a much more intellectual way. Told in five clever segments, “The
Bookmaking Habits of Select Species” tells of five alien species and, well,
their bookmaking habits; the title is pretty self-explanatory. One species
reads and writes using a proboscis on their body. Another reads the world
around them. One of the smartest stories I have ever read.
