Asimov's Science Fiction, September/October 2017 by Sheila Williams

Asimov's Science Fiction, September/October 2017 Reviews

• 
  Tadiana ✩Night Owl☽

  Wind Will Rove is an unusual, thoughtful novelette, recently nominated for the 2017 Nebula award (and so far my favorite in that category). Free PDFs available on
  Asimov's and on
  the author's website (probably just temporarily, until the Nebula is awarded in May 2018). Review first posted on
  Fantasy Literature:
  
  Rosie, the 55 year old narrator, is a history teacher on board a generation ship that has been voyaging through space for the better part of a hundred years, and will be traveling for many more years. She’s also an accomplished fiddler, part of a band of fiddlers, guitarists, mandolinists and banjo players that plays weekly at the OldTime gathering. They play the songs that group members were able to remember and write down, after an angry computer programmer released a virus that completely destroyed all of the ship’s cultural and historical databases from Earth, including backups, only ten years into the voyage. Only essential databases (navigation, life support, medical, etc.) remained; online history, books, art, film, video games, music and more were permanently deleted, along with all communication capabilities with Earth.
  
  Since this catastrophe, called the Blackout, the people on the ship have had a tendency to cling to everything they have been able to recall of Earth’s culture and history. These fragments from the past are preserved with almost sacred zeal; any change to them is resisted. But now some of the younger generation, led by Rosie’s student Nelson Odell, are pushing back, arguing that the past doesn’t matter to them in their current circumstances, and that learning about Earth’s history is a waste of time.
  
  Sarah Pinsker delves deeply into music and its significance for Rosie and others on the ship. Pinsker’s knowledge of music comes to the fore here, with details that make the descriptions of the OldTime band and a particular song, “Wind Will Rove,” ring with convincing authenticity. In the story, “Wind Will Rove” is based on an old traditional song, “Windy Grove,” that has been lost to those on the ship. Both the title and the song itself have changed through the years, and Rosie finds herself adding her own changes to it, despite disapproval from the traditionalists on board the ship. It’s a wonderful metaphor for their journey, and for the need to balance history and change. Highly recommended.
• 
  Richard Derus

  Real Rating: 4.5* of five
  
  A meditation on memory, an examination of societal disasters, a paean to performing as art and as science. Fourteen thousand six hundred words about what loss does to people's lives, to their innermost structural members. And not a subtle reminder that any outside storage medium for our vitally necessary stories cannot be solely and eternally relied upon to do our work for us.
  
  We are human and, in no small part, that requires us to be creators of worlds and ideas and realities for ourselves, each other, and the future. We fail at being fully human when we don't do our work of creation, synthesis, and transmission of our unique vision.
  
  Go listen to
  this tune before reading the free online PDF of this tale that Author Pinsker uploaded so her novelette could be widely read before the Hugos next month.
• 
  Jen

  Second edit: to be fair, the title and name of this are for the story I reviewed, but the cover is for the entire compilation. So now instead of being angry or sad, I’m confused.
  
  First edit: Wind Will Rove review below. Stupid GRLN taking individual reviews and mushing then together under the compilations they can be found in. Screw you GRLN!
  
  April 8, 2018 review below.
  
  Wow. Stupid kids being stupidly rebellious, no matter the time and place. Rejecting history because “it doesn’t apply to them now”. Seriously? How will you know what will and won’t apply in the generations to come? Learn from your past so you will know you aren’t repeating my/your past. Forget it and learn all those hard won lessons from scratch. Idiot kid. 3, this was depressing, stars.
• 
  Peter Tillman

  Rating solely for "Wind Will Rove" by Sarah Pinsker.
  Currently available online at
  www.asimovs.com/assets/1/6/ASFSepOct2...
  Nebula Award nominee for best novelette, 2018
  Rating based on the standout story, which I liked a lot.
  
  This is a fresh look at a very old SFnal story device, the generation starship, which goes back at least to Konstantin Tsiolkovsky:
  http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/...
  Newish author Sarah Pinsker's twist is to look at old-time fiddle music on her starship. Her protagonist's grandmother was a fiddler, and so is her granddaughter, who doubles as ship's historian, and triples as a tenth-grade teacher. There's an appealing lived-in quality to Pinsker's future, and I liked this story a lot. It's unlikely you would have seen a story like this from one of SF's Dead (or old) White Males. 4.5 stars, highly recommended.
  
  More of Pinsker's stuff:
  http://sarahpinsker.com/fiction/
  
  “Books of the Risen Sea“, Suzanne Palmer (9-10/17)
  Available at
  http://www.asimovs.com/assets/1/6/Boo...
  Post-apocalypse story set in a partially flooded library. Eh. I'm pretty tired of this sort of story, and bounced off this one early on. DNF. Try again later?
  
  Two nominees in this issue for the annual Asimov's Readers Award. Ballot and story links:
  
  https://locusmag.com/2018/02/32nd-ann...
  My review is just for these two stories.
  
  Merged review:
  
  Hugo & Nebula Awards Nominee for Best Novellette (2018)
  Also a finalist for the Asimov's Readers Award.
  Copy still available at
  www.asimovs.com/assets/1/6/ASFSepOct2... , as of 8/19/19.
  
  This is a fresh look at a very old SFnal story device, the generation starship, which goes back at least to Konstantin Tsiolkovsky:
  http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/...
  Newish author Sarah Pinsker's twist is to look at old-time fiddle music on her starship. Her protagonist's engineer grandmother was a fiddler, and so is her granddaughter, who doubles as ship's historian, and triples as a tenth-grade teacher. There's an appealing lived-in quality to Pinsker's future, and I liked this story a lot. It's unlikely you would have seen a story like this from one of SF's Dead (or old) White Males. 4.4 stars, highly recommended.
• 
  Cathy

  Review for Wind Will Rove by Sarah Pinsker
  
  What can we learn from history? Do we need to learn from history? When do the lessons that we can learn stop mattering for our present lives? And how does life develop, when that history is lost forever and you loose touch with the past and your ancestors?
  
  This felt too much like a mental excercise, a philosophy lesson. I didn‘t care about the characters, the musical evenings or the kids‘ essays.
  
  I read 34 of 66 pages and skimmed the rest. Not my kind of story, it didn‘t work for me. Yes, all good questions about the importance of history, knowing it, learning from it and maybe also distancing yourself from it to create something new and unencumbered. I was bored.
  
  Hugo Awards 2018 Novelette Nominee
  
  Can be read for free here:
  https://s3.amazonaws.com/content.site...
• 
  Lata

  Interesting idea, of people on a generation ship attempting to recreate their music and stories after an individual sabotaged their entertainment databases many years earlier. In the ship's present, there are groups that get together regularly to keep what was remembered alive; others on board, specifically one teen, question the value of holding onto music and literature and history from Earth when it seemingly has no bearing on their present.
  Though well-written, I found the story dragged. And while I understood why the author kept giving us different versions of "Wind will Rove", I was actually a little frustrated and got it well before the end of this story.
• 
  Mollie

  What a brilliant short story of family, history, music and space travel.
  Its about the middle generations during long space travel. Not the ones who began the journal, and not the ones who will finish the journey. Its not the ones who stepped onto and off of the ship. This is a vignette about all of those who are born and pass during the long journey. And the importance of continuing to teach the history in order to not repeate the doomed fate of Earth.
• 
  Ron

  “There aren’t new things in history. That’s why it’s called history.”
  
  A well-told short story about life on a generation space ship which has lost all its records of Earth. Nice story, but never made a point. Perhaps that’s why the younger generation couldn’t see the point.
  
  “Maybe we failed these children already if they thought the past was irrelevant.”
  
  (2018 Hugo short story finalist. Illustration is cover of magazine in which story appeared; has nothing to do with story.)
  
• 
  Amy

  Always must give 5 stars to stories that make me cry. *shakes fist* (It was when the narrator asks her grandmother about what she left behind on Earth when she left on the generation ship. *queue sobbing from me*)
• 
  Wilson Goodson

  An excellent edition includeing two short stories by James Gunn in his Transcedental Triology universe. There are two outstanding novelettes a tale of adventure and love of books by Suzanne Palmer set in a post climate change world, and Sarah Pinsker's story about the nature of conflict between those who seek to preserve art and those who feel it only bogs down more creativity, brought into clear view by life on a generation ship. I am putting Harry Turtledove's short story Ziegeuner on my list of probable Hugo nominations for 2018 (check facebook group 2018 Hugo Nominations.)
• 
  Silvana

  Interesting premise: a generation ship. all arts were digitized. some jerk deleted the whole thing. people had to rely on memories to recreate arts including music. Wind Will Rove is one of the songs. Alas, the story is too slow for my taste.
  
  PS: having dead-tree book editions could be useful one day, just in case, you know, all your e-books are gone.
• 
  Teleseparatist

  (I've read and rated a few novellettes and short stories in the last few days, but this is the first one that moved me to leave a review, in spite of the risk that GoodReads will decided this is not a proper independent text and shouldn't have an entry, and delete.)
  
  I'm not familiar with that many Sarah Pinsker stories, but the few I've read so far have made quite an impression on me. And of all of them, "Wind Will Rove" is the new favourite. This story about a generation ship (and the generation as well as religious/philosophical clash on it) spotlights a few characters: protagonist, a history teacher and amateur musician; her family (including musical grandmother, actress mother and doctor daughter + small grandchildren) and friends (Harriet, standing guard over tradition); as well as her students (rebelling against authority of the past). It's a story about authorship, about the role and function of canon, about the way in which past and future are intertwined. It manages to comment on all those while at the same time conveying real human emotion, and creating a fully believable world with its own history and its own attitudes to history.
  
  It is both a read to make you feel and think. A true achievement (and I don't even feel that strongly about music).
• 
  Oleksandr Zholud

  This novelette was nominated for both Hugo and Nebula awards in 2018
  The story is set in a generations ship, where quite early in the journey all non-essential information was destroyed, so there is no Earth’s literature, music, movies, etc. At the same time there were still a lot of people, who recalled both the Earth and its culture, so they tried to recreate it from scratch, including writing books or shooting movies “as I recall them”. The action is set a few generation down the way when young generation asks about the necessity of all this old stuff, to which they cannot relate. The story reminded me of
  Franz Kafka's
  The Great Wall of China as the problem when actual doers are unable to see what they do on a greater scale.
  It is fine story but nothing esceptional.
  
• 
  Contrarius

  Wind Will Rove by Sarah Pinsker is one of the two Pinsker works nominated for a Hugo this year. This one is a novelette. I didn't much care for the novella, "And Then There Were (N-One)", but I really love this one.
  
  This is a story about a generation ship, and history, and looking back versus looking forward, and the need to remember that we are part of a continuous thread of life and memory -- we are connected through time, not isolated, no matter how isolating the vast reaches of space may be. Pinsker tells her story through the medium of folk songs and how they mutate over the years. Very effective, and a wonderfully efficient use of a novelette-length wordcount. Good prose, thought-provoking theme, interesting technique of switching between database records, history classes being taught by the MC, and weekly folksong jam sessions. Did I mention that I really love this one? It gets all the stars.
• 
  Clyde

  Quite a good story about music, history, life, and generation conflict -- a quick snapshot of existence aboard a generation ship headed for a distant star. A Nebula Award nominee for Best Novellette in 2018.
• 
  Dennis

  Place holder for Wind Will Rove by Sarah Pinsker
• 
  Remo

  Finalista de los Hugo y Nébula 2018. Lo llamamos ciencia ficción porque transcurre en una nave espacial en la que generación tras generación se transmitirán los conocimientos necesarios para que, en muchos años, los tataradescendientes de los viajeros originales lleguen a otro planeta. La narradora, de 55 años y nieta de los viajeros originales, nos cuenta cómo a las pocas decenas de años de "zarpar", un virus liberado por un programador enfadado destruyó tanto las comunicaciones con la Tierra como todas las bases de datos con todo el conocimiento que los viajeros habían llevado consigo. Desde ese momento todo el mundo a bordo comienza a hacer esfuerzosd para recordar y reproducir todo lo que pueda, para intentar conservar algo al menos de la cultura que con ellos llevaron. Pero hay niños de una generación nueva que consideran que la Historia, y en general todo aquello que no tenga aplicación práctica inmediata, debe ser dejado de lado por inútil . Toda la novela es un ensayo sobre la tradición, la innovación, la investigación y el olvido. Es una novela corta de ciencia ficción muy extraña,no por el desarrollo de la historia sino por lo poco de ciencia que tiene y lo bella que es la ficción. Es casi casi un ensayo sobre la belleza. Muy, muy interesante.
• 
  Norman Cook

  I suspect this story won't appeal to everyone, but I thought it did a great job of discussing the role of history in society. Set on a generational starship, the question arises as to the relevance of the history of Earth when the many generations in the future finally find and colonize a new planet. I'm not sure the story really adequately answers the question, but it does make the reader think, which is the hallmark of a good story. I can understand the perspective of the young people who were born on the ship and will never see anything but the ship. I was a surly teenager once, too. But I can also understand the perspective of the adults who don't want to lose their connections to their ancestors and history; those are a big part of what makes us human. The story didn't really give much middle ground, i.e., why can't you both preserve your history while making new memories? After all, that's what we do all the time now. Some things are forgotten so that new things can be created, but the major strokes of history are there to be studied and learned from.
• 
  Lisa Feld

  Review of "Wind Will Rove": Perfect.
  
  I've seen a lot of generation ship stories, and they all tend to be about how three specific generations relate to each other: The ones who entered the ship, the ones who will live and die on the ship, and the ones who will actually get where they're going. "Wind Will Rove," by contrast, is about the long, long middle. What does generational conflict look like when both you and your grandchildren will live your entire lives on the ship, with no memory of Earth and no share in the new world? How do you devote your life to preserving a culture when the things that matter on either end, like weather, have no meaning to you personally? What happens to those who want to change and grow and create their own culture when any change is seen as a betrayal? "Wind Will Rove" does for history what Name of the Wind did for stories.
• 
  Jon

  2018 Hugo Finalist for Best Novelette
  
  “Wind Will Rove,” by Sarah Pinsker (Asimov’s, September/October 2017) ... I really liked this story, partly because my daughter is a musicologist but also because I love music and its evolution/revolution. And there's a generation ship. (4 stars; read 4/16/2018)
• 
  Faith

  Hugo Nominee 2018 Best Novelette
  
  Oh, brilliant. Thoughtful and complicated and just very, very well done. This is the second work I've read by Sarah Pinsker and they both have kind of knocked my socks off.
• 
  Philip

  4ish stars.
• 
  Christina Pilkington

  
  Really unique story combining a generational ship, music, history and the importance of cultural inheritance.
• 
  John

  A solid issue, with a fantastic story by Sarah Pinsker.
• 
  Antonio Ippolito

  Un anno è già passato, da quando scoprii che il numero di ottobre dell’Asimov’s Magazine è “the spooky issue”, dedicato a horror e weird quanto alla fantascienza (anche se in realtà almeno un ottimo racconto weird c’è in ogni numero).
  Questa volta manca un romanzo breve ricco di invenzione e atmosfera come “The forgotten taste of honey” di Alexander Jablokov; in compenso, per indicare un altro racconto degno del Nebula, “Universe box” di di Michael Swanwick è un geniale e scatenato fuoco d’artificio di invenzioni cosmiche e comiche, scherzi irriverenti e disgrazie; qualcosa che sta tra la Guida Galattica e “The way it works out and all”, un racconto di Peter Beagle contenuto nel “Best of 2011” selezionato da Gardner Dozois.
  Tutti i sottogeneri sono rappresentati: un fantasy molto urbano è “Riding the blue line with Jack Kerouac”, di Sandra McDonald, dove spiriti di scrittori appaiono ai conduttori del metrò di Boston; “The fourth hill”, di Dennis E. Staples, è una storia di incantesimi pellerossa, dove l’autore fa rivivere la cultura nativa, che è anche la sua, e i suoi difficili rapporti con la modernità; “Disturbance in the produce aisle”, un toccante racconto di fantasmi in un supermercato, forse l’ultimo racconto pubblicato da Kit Reed, mancata il mese scorso; “The cabinet” di by William Preston ricrea magistralmente le atmosfere espressioniste dei racconti di Kafka o dei film di Lang: la vita di alcuni impiegati di banca di una cittadina asburgica è sconvolta dall’arrivo di un circo con maghi e strane creature.
  Il migliore di quest’area è forse “Dead men in Central City” della scrittrice di urban fantasy Carrie Vaughn: questo racconto dovrebbe appartente al genere “weird western”. Abbiamo niente meno che un vampiro, eternamente giovane, che fugge alla persecuzione di non si sa bene chi nelle cittadine di frontiera del vecchio West; in una tappa incontra niente meno che “Doc” Halliday, già protagonista con Wyatt Earp della “Sfida all’OK Corral” ma ormai seriamente afflitto dalla tubercolosi: grazie ai suoi Superpoteri lo aiuta a sfuggire a un duello che in realtà è un agguato. Ottimo racconto che si legge di un fiato; belli i personaggi del vampiro e di Halliday; sembra essere solo un capitolo di un’opera di maggiore respiro.
  Passando alla fantascienza vera e propria, c’è solo l’imbarazzo della scelta. Il numero si apre con “Winds will rove”, di Sarah Pinskler, racconto tutto al femminile ma per nulla rosa, fortunatamente. Su un’astronave generazionale si cerca di superare disastri informativi come la perdita della maggior parte delle tradizioni memorizzate alla partenza, causa sabotaggio; per recuperarle, per esempio, l’anziana protagonista e le sue amiche tengono in vita un gruppo di musiche folk irlandesi, altri il teatro, ecc. è uno sforzo eroico? O così si sta impedendo una naturale evoluzione culturale, come sostiene il nipote ribelle?
  Il 94enne James Gunn sta vivendo un periodo di fertilità atrtistica: tra le altre cose, sta pubblicando “Transformation”, terza parte della trilogia “Transcendental”. Da questa leggiamo due estratti. “Arriving at Terminal: Xi’s story”, descrive la biologia degli abitanti di Xifora; una specie che raggiunge l’intelligenza e lo spazio, anche se non ci viene descritta fisicamente se non come vagamente umanoide. “The Ganymede’s Gambit: Jan’s story”, dove un gruppo di bambini cloni, tenuti su un asteroide posto in orbita intorno a Ganimede, vengono guidati dal padre (a sua volte nascosto in una base lunare), che impone loro di terraformare Ganimede. Ci riusciranno, creando unità riscaldanti atomiche e una pellicola che ingloberà l’intero satellite in una bolla che ne trattenga l’atmosfera; ma al prezzo di morire via via, a due a due, nelle varie fasi. In entrambi Gunn si dimostra ottimo autore di fantascienza hard.
  Seguono due racconti di genere brillante. In “An incident in the literary life of Nathan Arkwright”, Allen M. Steele, autore della serie del pianeta Coyote, immagina che due fan prendano misure molto drastiche per impedire al loro scrittore preferito di smettere di scrivere: non dico altro per non guastare la lettura di un racconto piacevolissimo.
  “Squamous and Eldritch get a yard sale bargain”, di Tim Mc Daniel, è un episodio di una serie: due mostri, che però convivono pacificamente tra gli umani, sono in caccia di un “libro maledetto” necessario al loro negozio di antichità e dotato di terribili poteri; dovranno però contenderlo a una cinica casalinga americana, tra una “garage sale” e l’avidità di lei.
  “Grand Theft Spacecraft”, di R. Garcia y Robertson, è un’imponente racconto lungo del genere space opera.
  Chiude il racconto forse più piacevole in assoluto: “Books of the risen sea”, by Suzanne Palmer, avventuroso e delicato. Dopo una catastrofe ambientale che ha allagato il mondo, l’umanità vive come può in paesini in riva al mare. Il protagonista si è costruito una fortezza nella ex libreria della sua cittadina e vive cercando di ricostruire più libri che può tra quelli salvati dalle acque, in particolare un romanzone fantasy. Una feroce scorreria di predoni lo porterà a difendere la sorella e anche il resto della famiglia da cui viveva isolato, e rifiutato perché transessuale; ci riuscirà con l’aiuto di un bislacco robot a sua volta estratto dal mare in tempesta, e riceverà in cambio un prezioso consiglio di vita: quello che manca nei libri che sta ricomponendo potrà benissimo ricrearlo lui.
  
  Per concludere, una parola sulle rubriche. È un piacere leggere recensioni scritte da Norman Spinrad, o divagazioni su un qualunque argomento da parte dell’enciclopedico Robert Silverberg. Il primo, fa una panoramica di romanzi di fantascienza dalla matrice culturale non anglosassone: “Pirate utopia” di Bruce Sterling, ambientato a Fiume in Istria; l’anglo-israeliano Lavie Tidhar con il suo sperimentalissimo “Central Station”; “Binti” della nigeriana-americana Nnedi Okorafor, vincitrice di Hugo e Nebula 2016; “The devourers” dell’indiano Indra Das.
• 
  Mark Catalfano

  I liked "Dead Men in Central City" by Carrie Vaughn
• 
  Hisham El-far

  Nominated for the Hugo Award in the Novelette category, I thought Wind Will Rove was about about music and generation ships on the long voyage between Earth and a new Star. Being tone deaf and having a very limited appreciation for music, I figured I wouldn't love this story.
  
  I was so incredibly wrong! Wrong not just about the subject of the story. (Ok, it is about music and a generation ship on the surface - but so much more.) But wrong because I loved this story!
  
  Wind Will Rove is titled after a piece of music. A piece of music played by musicians onboard the generational ship where the story is set.
  
  On this ship years after it set off from Earth there was an incident that the people on the ship refer to as The Blackout. Everything stored on the ships cultural and entertainment databases was wiped. Permanently.
  
  Ever since then there is an understandable obsession with the people of the ship to try and preserve by, and recreate all of the Films, Plays, Music and cultural art and history.
  
  As more generations are born and grow up, this is causing a cultural schism between generations who struggle more and more to understand why so much attention and energy should be squandered on recreating the old. Especially when new art and culture can develop.
  
  By the time we meet our main character (A teacher and musician) the leanings of some of the latest generation has progressed i
  to the point that some students actively rebelling from the idea of having to learn any of the histories or cultural output from an Earth they have never seen. Our main character struggles to make her History subjects accessible whilst also remembering her own struggle when she was young to appreciate her cultural background.
  
  This story is all about the importance of studying and remembering history. Not just of events and people, but art and culture.
  
  It is about the danger of thinking that we know better than those that came before us - as a warning against presuming that we know everything that those eho are yet to come will want or need.
  
  It is about learning from the past to avoid repeating the same mistakes. It is about accepting the art and teachings of our past and present - but always allowing others to build upon, to twist and tinker with it and create something new. But to never forget.
  
  But yes, It's also about music and a generation ship. It's an engrossing and wonderful story.
• 
  Sir He-Man

  I like fiddle music as much as the next guy. But I found this one rather tedious. A generation starship had its database about anything cultural scrapped by a bitter hacker a few years after leaving Earth. But this doesn't make any sense to me. You're telling me a hundred years in the future no one can back up their data? They don't have any kind of flash drives, much better ones, a hundred years from now?
  
  It works maybe if you picture this written in the 70s and parts of it reminded me of The Starlost (only remotely) but it does have an interesting classroom conflict as a student rebels against the idea of learning or remembering a past on Earth he doesn't remember. I thought that part was psychologically fun to pick apart in terms of their personalities. But most of this just came across as boring. I kind of wanted to hear more about the new arts they were trying to create, or find out more about their duties with farming, etc. The entire thing is anthropological science fiction and delves into generation gaps when it comes to value systems and passing along knowledge orally. I get where she was going with this piece but it doesn't feel like everything entirely added up quite enough to convince me of the reality of the world she established. There could have been such a better amount of conflict if we found out WHY the hacker did what he did 50 years before. I think that would have been a lot more satisfying, to go into his reasoning and psyche. Or to follow the people her mother joined up with, a cult on a starship that wanted to create only art from their own experience. The idea of synthesizing old knowledge with new spin is a good one, but it isn't really emphasized as much as the protagonists' defense of this subject, defending the past as something necessary to learn from.
  
  3 stars for effort but it didn't quite get to the level I'd hoped it would.