When
I was in high school, I was a fan of Star Trek: The Next
Generation. I haven’t watched the show in literally decades,
but I recall the variety of situations Picard, Ryker, Data and the
rest of the Enterprise crew regularly got themselves into.
Both external and internal, there were alien encounters of all
varieties as they explored the unknown just as seemingly inexplicable
things could happen onboard without any obvious peripheral stimuli
(at least at the onset of the episode)—even the holodeck was a
source of the uncanny. While the crew regularly changes with each
story, it’s fair to say that editor Neil Clarke’s 2018 reprint
anthology The Final Frontier captures the same Star Trek
spirit.
Attempting
to set the tone is “A Jar of Goodwill” by Tobias S. Buckell. A
simplistic bit of science fiction that is perhaps more at home in a
1948 anthology than 2018 (an original episode of Star Trek
versus Next Generation), one can almost feel the likes of
Clifford Simak or Robert Heinlein leaning over Buckell’s shoulder
writing this conventional bit of alien encounter (sans damsel
in distress). Next is Ken Liu’s “Mono no aware.” A
story that presents an interesting view to American culture (“Then
we’ll improvise,” Mindy says. “We’re Americans, damn it. We
never just give up.”), it hinges on a heroic act (natch) in a
space mission gone wrong, including the cultural heritage of the main
character, and how it plays into said heroic act. The import of the
story seems more Hollywood than refined (hence the popular awards?).
I
find short fiction to be Elizabeth Bear’s strength, and with “The
Deeps of the Sky” the belief rings true. Almost as alien
as fiction can be, the story describes one insectoid’s attempt to
please the queen, and the unexpected meeting it has while collecting
gases one “day”. Wonderfully realistic from the alien’s
pov, it reminds the reader there is more than the homo sapien
sapien view to life. Seth Dickinson’s “Three Bodies at
Mitanni” proves a pleasant surprise. An interesting idea regarding
consciousness that not only puts an interesting spin on ‘zombies’
as well as politics, Dickinson resolves the tension-filled scenario
in intelligent fashion—a coup de tat given sentience is the
main concept at stake.
Beginning
as a straight-forward sf idea (space scavengers discover a deep-space
wreck) but evolving further (a nicely detailed look at the technical
and psychological backdrop of what entering a confined space in space
might be like), “Diving Into the Wreck” by Kristine Kathryn Rusch
also reaches a subtly exciting climax that has the reader truly in
awe of the potential for one of science fiction’s most
stereotypical pieces of tech. A story that stabs at scientific
romanticism, “The Symphony of Ice and Dust” by Julie Novakova
tells of a spacefaring couple and the trouble (aka death) they
encounter upon discovering something unique. Novakova, to some
simple degree of success, glorifies their sacrifice and achievements
in the closing pages.
Tibetan
Buddhism in space, “Twenty Lights to ‘The Land of Snow’” by
Michael Bishop tells of the Dalai Lama’s interstellar flight to
find a new home for Tibetan people. A generation starship story
heavily imbued with the details of Tibetan and Buddhist culture,
nothing about the trip is guaranteed for as calm and serene as the
people are. It’s worth mentioning Bishop’s prose in this story
is superb; the evolution of the protagonist’s voice from child to
teen to adult as evidenced by her use of language is wonderfully
graded. A story that flits back and forth between realism and
satire, “The Firewall and the Door” by Sean McMullen tells of a
failed space mission, and the legal—and social media—fallout on
Earth. (Hint: likes and dislikes help decide a court case.)
A
semi-rare bit of straight-forward science fiction from Michael
Swanwick, “Slow Life” tells of scientists on Titan as they delve
into the moon’s methane sea and find life—as surprising and
influential as its form may be. Continuing with the hard sf groove,
“Sailing the Antarsa” by Vandana Singh is about a woman sailing
the galaxy looking for remnants of humanity, all the while relating
how humans on Earth studied ecology and adapted existence to live in
far greater harmony with the environment than today. (Hard sf
enthusiasts will undoubtedly enjoy this one more, I yawned.) A
bizarre and only semi-coherent story about a gendered planet (i.e.
the planet, as well as the living things on the planet), “Rescue
Mission” by Jack Skillingstead kind of, just, is.
James
Patrick Kelly’s “Wreck of the Godspeed” is space drama
with more depth than those words conjure. Utilizing a
(semi-)generation starship setup, Kelly intertwines the personalities
of the crew members, the AI captain, and the backgrounds they come
from to represent aspects of, and questions regarding, Catholicism
and existence—the conclusion playing out in nicely symbolic terms.
(The longer review can be found here.)
A character study, “Travelling into Nothing” by An Owomoyela
tells of a prisoner with special neural implants who is saved from
death row by a starship captain in need of her abilities. The story
is notable for the intensity of emotion and character, but fails to
achieve something transcendent.
A
nice bit of psychological science fiction with a simplistic title,
“The Mind Is Its Own Place” by Carrie Vaughn tells of a space
ship navigator who wakes up to find himself in a psych ward with no
memories of how he got there. The story slowly unraveled from his
viewpoint, Vaughn nicely perpetuates the mystery of his circumstances
by juggling possibilities until the grand reveal of the end.
Upgraded clones the only humans able to handle the exigencies of
space, “Permanent Fatal Errors” by Jay Lake tells of a long
distance exploratory crew and the mutiny—or is it mutiny?—aboard
their small vessel.
A
Greg Egan story set in the author’s Amalgam
of Incandescence and “Riding the Crocodile”,
“Glory” opens on a sweet mix of pseudo-science pyrotechnics,
which quickly escalates to post-human proportions as an
anthropologist arrives on a distant planet to do
research. Encountering local tensions, compounded by
intergalactic hostilities, her job only becomes more difficult,
resulting in a somewhat blunted story that is not the most subtle of
Egan’s work. Closing the anthology in strong fashion, however, is
Peter Watts’ “The Island” in which a woman tries to come to
terms with a major obstacle (aka strange alien thing) on a deep space
flight while protecting her son. Crackling with dark psychology,
Watts’ characteristic hardline view to human neuro-chemical
realities comes to life in engaging, cynical fashion.
Indeed,
the stories in The Final Frontier echo adventures aboard the
Enterprise et al very strongly. The unknown encountered in
tangible and intangible form, on planets light years from Earth and
in strange space wrecks—even in the human head, a variety of
boundaries of human existence as we know it are colorfully pushed.
For me personally, the stories by James Patrick Kelly, Kristine
Kathryn Rusch, Seth Dickinson, Peter Watts, and Michael Bishop stood
out. The advantage of reprint anthologies only potential, just a
couple had me doubting whether or not time is in fact a factor which
allows the cream to rise to the top.
All
previously published elsewhere, the following are the twenty-one
stories selected for The Final Frontier:
A
Jar of Goodwill by Tobias S. Buckell
Mono
no Aware by Ken Liu
Rescue
Mission by Jack Skillingstead
Shiva
in Shadow by Nancy Kress
Slow
Life by Michael Swanwick
Three
Bodies at Mitanni by Seth Dickinson
The
Deeps of the Sky by Elizabeth Bear
Diving
Into the Wreck by Kristine Kathryn Rusch
The
Voyage Out by Gwyneth Jones
The
Symphony of Ice and Dust by Julie Novakova
Twenty
Lights to "The Land of Snow" by Michael Bishop
The
Firewall and the Door by Sean McMullen
Permanent
Fatal Errors by Jay Lake
Gypsy
by Carter Scholz
Sailing
the Antarsa by Vandana Singh
The
Mind Is Its Own Place by Carrie Vaughn
The
Wreck of the Godspeed by James Patrick Kelly
Seeing
by Genevieve Valentine
Travelling
Into Nothing by An Owomoyela
Glory
by Greg Egan
The
Island by Peter Watts
No comments:
Post a Comment