"...Pinsker has delivered a sturdy collection in the speculative tradition of Ursula K. Le Guin or Kelly Link but with her own indomitable voice front and center.
An auspicious start to what promises to be one wild ride of a literary career...."
This beautiful, complex debut collection assembles some of Nebula winner Pinsker’s best stories into a twisting journey that is by turns wild, melancholic, and unsettling...Pinsker’s captivating compendium reveals stories that are as delightful and surprising to pore through as they are introspective and elegiac.
No spoilers: The story follows a young boy who is brought into a system because he wants to learn magic. The piece is at turns brutal and tender, showing him age into a role he doesn’t fully understand, and what it costs him.
Review: It’s rather chilling how the story follows the main character, a boy who isn’t cruel but who has a burning desire to know how things work. And, driven by this desire to know how, finds himself pulled into a game that he doesn’t know the rules of, where he agrees because he hopes to learn them well enough to win and doesn’t see until it’s far too late that the rules are something of a cheat, and the how might not be as important as the why. And that’s a lot of what I love about the story, that it shows what even a not-cruel person will do and be apart of when they let the how become the only thing they think about. That curiosity that pushes him forward is a vital tool for progress, and yet it’s also a tool for a lot of tragedy, pain, and loss. It’s almost shocking how much I as a reader wanted to root for this character, to see him as a victim, because in many ways he is the victim, and the story does an amazing job of gaze. It keeps the entire focus on this character, and doesn’t look elsewhere. We get to see what he loses every time he uses his power, and in seeing that he becomes a tragic figure. Only we’re not really seeing the true tragedy, which has much more to do with what he’s using his power for. The problems that he solves and has to pay for are huge, and though he’s curious about what his power is doing, he doesn’t examine it. He could be killing hundreds, thousands, or millions of people, and he doesn’t care, doesn’t stop. Because he wants to understand what’s happening. And it’s like watching a train wreck. He can’t pull himself away and I as a reader can’t look away, until all that is left are the unanswered questions, which really weren’t all that important. It’s not “how does it work?” that haunts me, at least. It’s “what has he done?” And I feel the story does a great job of being about mysteries and the different ways people can approach them, and how dangerous it is to pursue only some answers while ignoring other pressing questions. But yeah, it’s an excellent story!
licious virus wiped most of the ship’s memory not too long into the journey, and Rosie and her fellows work on restoring what’s been lost by re- membering everything they can, including folk tunes. Some of her students resent being taught history, though – another form of remembering. Why should they re-create Earth on the ship, or even the new planet (that they will never see)? Even Rosie’s daughter has doubts. But purpose- ful forgetting – or malicious erasing – hardly seems right either. These questions are consid- ered in the light of Rosie’s thinking about a par- ticular folk tune, ‘‘Windy Grove’’, a favorite of her grandmother’s, and how it changed over time – and might still change. Thoughtful and quite moving."
The fiction begins with the novelette "Wind Will Rove" by Sarah Pinsker. -+- Rosie Clay is of the third generation on a generational ship, her grandmother was one of the originals who started on the voyage. Rosie Clay is in her 50s, teaches history, and regularly plays her grandmother's old fiddle with other traditionalists. One important song is from 1974, called "Wind Will Rise". One of her students does not want to learn history and wants the past ignored. How can she best deal with this rebellion? A beautiful, poignant tale.
"...I also appreciated “Left the Century to Sit Unmoved” for its lack of closure and its approach to family; it gives the reader the same sensation of jumping into the pond that might disappear a person that the protagonist has—damn skillful..."
Okay wow, this is a rather strange novella that at first glance fills me with all sorts of hesitations. It’s a bit of a meta-piece, after all, casting the author as not just the character in the story, and not just the main character, but pretty much every character in the story, in a cross-dimensional convention of Sarah Pinskers. For all this could be an adventure in navel-gazing, though, I find it instead to be a deep and complex look at possibility and the pull of diverging realities, the hurt of loss and the wondering what could make it better, wondering what if the loss had never happened to begin with. Oh, and it’s a murder mystery and [SPOILERS] the murder weapon is a Nebula Award. So it’s also a lot of fun. The story centers a Sarah who is an insurance investigator, who is pulled into looking into the murder because she’s the closest there to a detective. And I like how meticulously the story is set up and how well all the pieces of this fit together. All of the characters are kind-of the same person, and yet all of them are very different, too, and the story shows how circumstance and experience can shape things even as there are things that remain pretty constant through everyone. That there turns out to be a murderer among them is a shocking moment for everyone, then, because so many of the Sarahs (and other not-named-Sarah Sarahs) think of themselves as firmly not murderers.
The story does a great job of exploring divergence and how these different people are related. But not only that. Through this self-examination, the story creates this deeply personal and layered narrative about choices and what’s important. The main Sarah has to face the things within herself that could make her into a murderer while at the same time keeping a handle on the facts of the case. The prose is easy to read and fun, creating this atmosphere of bizarre comfort. When the mystery starts to come together there’s a solid momentum and I love how that it pulled into the idea of chasing down a runaway horse. It all just works so well together and the story pulls away before answering all the questions, before revealing a lot of what comes next. And the weight of that for me is to put this emphasis on how choice can be like that, can be like gazing into a thousand iterations of yourself and wondering which is best, which might be better than your own. And in that moment being guilty of something, because you’re not dealing with the mess in front of you, because you’re letting yourself be distracted by “what ifs.” Which is a wonderful thing to explore in SFF especially because that’s so much of what it is, that asking, that answering. So yeah, it’s an excellent story with a great premise that has definitely won me over. Go check it out immediately!
Novella. Published in Uncanny, March/April 2017.
Sarah Pinsker’s story of a convention–SarahCon–for Sarah’s from thousands of alternate reality might be my favorite novella of the last several years, to be honest. It’s smart and funny and thoughtful in perfect proportions. It was enchanting from page one, and it’s a story and concept that has been often on my mind ever since I read it.
Rocket Stack Rank awards a rare five stars, calling the story “Intricately plotted, Moving, and Fun.” Full review (spoilers! murder mystery spoilers) is here.
"The March-April Asimov’s has an effective story written in response to (or in dialogue with) Ursula K. Le Guin’s ‘‘The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas’’. Sarah Pinsker’s ‘‘The Ones Who Know Where They Are Go- ing’’ is told from the point of view of the abused child, who gets a chance to escape. The moral logic of the story is powerfully resolved and it presents a more wrenching choice than those who walk away make."
(Uncanny): This is my favorite Pinsker story to date – a thoughtful, subtle piece about the lures and traps of memory.
There are portals and then there are portals, and in some ways the pool of this story is a classic example of a gateway to the unknown with a little Russian roulette thrown in for good measure. A reflective surface that could conceal…anything. And the story contains such a longing, such an uncertain want and indefinable hurt and insecurity and hope and feeling that I can't help but love it. It's a beautiful story, one where there's this central loss and threat. The main character has lost a brother and yet instead of being repulsed by what might have taken him they embrace it, they push on after his example, adding to his legacy, to his list of reasons why we jump. [SPOILERS] And for me part of what makes this story so compelling is that is doesn't offer any real answers. Like the list, the story is a sort of anchor, an acknowledgement that there is something in us that longs and hurts and doesn't know, that is searching for answers and coming up blank. That throws itself into the abyss for any number of reasons and for no reason, because it is in us, because it draws us, because in some ways we feel more defined and in control and whole and alive there, in that moment of falling, of flying, of not knowing if we'll surface and if we do not knowing where we'll be. It's a story of a dissociated sort of want, one that I can empathize with because it seems to draw most from the way people hope without knowing exactly what they're hoping for, just that when it happens it will make sense and feel right. It's a great story, short but with such a vibrant life to it and definitely go read this one!
"...Sarah Pinsker’s beautiful tribute to veterans, “Remembery Day,” ...Afsharirad has put together a refreshing military and SF anthology that will be enjoyed by a wide range of readers."
The pieces of the story knit together perfectly. Luce has already chatted with Truly about doing a gig together. Luce worries about Daisy being stolen. The offer from the StageHolo people hangs in the air. We want Luce to take the StageHolo deal--we're painfully aware of just how much it costs her to be on the road, and how much she's lost now. And yet Jacky's speech about Luce not being herself without a real audience rings true, somehow. Luce belongs on the road, and part of what makes the road real is that bad things can happen.
Intellectually, we're quite aware that Luce is fighting a lost cause.She'd be far more sensible to take the deal. And yet there's something inspiring about someone who fights for a lost cause.She's true to herself and true to her principles, and whether we agree with her or not, we have to salute her courage.
This is a rather disturbing story, actually, about a woman who can't afford to have a child who starts dreaming of one, and that dream-child is real to her. Real enough that she slips more and more into sleep. It's nothing something that her wife really understands, though she is supportive. It's nothing that the main character really understands, other than it is real to her, and it appears to be something that is real to others as well. And then the children become real to everyone, arriving out of the ocean and drawing their dream-parents like sirens. So the main character goes because she feels she has to, though it strains her relationship with her wife. The story does a great job of playing up the creepiness of the situation, the uncertainty of what is happening. It seems almost magical, that these children as borne somehow from the want of children, but there is also something very, very sinister about the whole thing, about how it all works together. How the children might be anything, how they are using the bond of parent and child perhaps for...something. But it has drawn everyone in, has made them unreasonable and there's no real clue as to what the children are. That lingering doubt that is being crushed by parenting instinct is what gives the story such an unsettling feel, that fear that something that is normally viewed as so good, so wholesome, might be blinding people to something very dark, very dangerous. The story works, conveys that creepiness while also being tightly paced and compelling. A good read.
Words of Realms - Anthology: Queers Destroy Science Fiction!
I read this story on Sunday, and it was the perfect story to read after Friday’s court decision. The history of LGBTQIA rights in America is a huge part of this story. It’s a time travel story, but one that spends most of its time going the long way round, from 1943 to the 1980s. The story ends in 2015, with a mention of marriage. I would say it falls into the first category of stories that I mentioned, but contrary to what one might expect from a story about queer issues, it’s a hopeful story. It’s also one that acknowledges how much work was done to get we where we are today. And it’s important to remember, I think, that any decent fictional story about queer issues is also going to be a story about queer characters. The people who have fought, who are fighting for their rights–not just the right to marriage, but the right to life, the right to work, the right to not be discriminated against for who they are–aren’t doing so because of politics or hypothetical moral issues. When we fight for our rights, we’re doing it because they are our rights. We’re fighting for our lives, and for the lives of our friends and the strangers who we may never know, but who share with us the connection of oppression. This story, I think, is a wonderful example of that, of a person who finds she has to fight, because this is the world that she and her friends have to live in.
A story about war and the scars that it leaves, both the physical ones and the mental and emotional ones. A girl prepares for Remembrance Day, the day when soldier from the war get to remember their service, get to remember the horrors and everything else. Every other day of the year is spent under the Veil, which makes them all forget. It's something that they vote on, that is always voted for by a large margin. For Clara, whose mother is in a wheelchair and whose father died in the war, the day is mixed. Because it reveals a mother that she doesn't really know, a mother who served and lost. A mother who wants to remember but because the vote is all or nothing she has to live out her life without the memories. It's an interesting and hitting story, something that reminds us all that there is no forgetting war, that for those that serve they have to live with what happened every day, even if the rest of the world seems to only remember their service on holidays. It also touches the nature of scars, and on asking the right kind of questions. The writing is tinged with sadness and loss and the characters all seem to be silently mourning, mourning either without knowing why or mourning that they'll never know the woman Clara's mother is without the Veil. An emotionally impacting story with a great central idea and solid character work. Indeed!
"...So, it hit the right buttons for me; while I wouldn’t say that it was a perfect novelette, I think it’s handling a topic that will speak to some people intimately and in a very particular way…"
"Our Lady of the Open Road" by Sarah Pinsker -+- In a near future, Luce Silva and Jacky are a band called Cassis Fire traveling in a van they call Daisy. They pass through Indiana on their way to a gig in Columbus, Ohio. One of their big songs, written by Luce years ago is "Manifest Independence". Young punks like the song: "We all shared the same indignation that we were losing everything that made us distinct, that nothing special happened anymore, that the new world replacing the old one wasn't nearly as good, that everyone was hungry and everything was broken and that we'd fix it if we could find the right tools." The other big song is "Our Lady of the Open Road" which she dedicates to Daisy. She has an offer with a company called StageHolo that brings hologram music into people's homes. But the experience is artificial with no real live audience. What will Luce do? Beautiful, bittersweet tale. Just perfect.
“Our Lady of the Open Road” by Sarah Pinsker is the standout story of this issue. Set in a near future America it imagines a frighteningly familiar and credible insular world in which the spontaneity and excitement of live music has been replaced by “StageHolo” and “StageHoloLive” and self-drive cars are killing the romance of the road. Luce, the only female in a struggling rock band, narrates a moving and involving character-driven story of the temptations of conformity.
"DROP EVERYTHING — the circus has landed. See how the big top attracts the whole town, how it has an unsettling power over people and how Haley struggles to resist its call. Question with us, Haley and her mother what “real life” really is.
Sarah Pinsker’s sparkling imagination shines through this whimsically dark tale. This near-sentient circus challenge these small-town residents to shirk responsibility to see the show — over and over. Remember, there are only three types of people: people who want to go to the circus, people who want to be in the circus and people who haven’t made up their minds which they are yet. What kind are you? Step right up — adventure beckons."
Circuses are popular things in speculative fiction, going back to Bradbury and likely before, and this story is a nice example of using the circus to good effect, capturing the magic and other-worldliness of the place and performances. It also makes the circus timeless, something that normally is used to set the circus as outside the normal dynamic of our world. In this, a young woman who has lived her life resisting the call of the circus finally sees it as an adult. For the first two times she had been to the circus her mother had demanded she keep her distance, had demanded she stay. Now a mother herself, she has to come to terms with her own desires and those of her daughter, who seems just as keen on going with when the circus departs. And the story ends up questioning what is escape, what is running away. Is it cowardly to pursue the magic of the circus, or is it brave? Is it freeing to not have to live by the constraints of the normal world? It makes it's points well and then takes a bow and leaves the stage, the ending a bit clipped but still with the feeling of completeness. Well worth checking out.
"A Stretch of Highway Two Lanes Wide" by Sarah Pinkser -+- When he was 17, Andy had his left arm tattooed with LORI AND ANDY FOREVER AND EVER. Two weeks later, Lori dumped him when she left town for university. Four years later, his right arm was mangled by the combine in his Saskatchewan farm. He woke up in the hospital with "a robot arm and an implant in his head". One night, after being treated for an infection, he dreams that the robot arm was a highway. That stayed with him. His arm wanted to be a 97 kilometers (actually 60.2758 miles) stretch of two-lane asphalt in eastern Colorado. "A stretch that could see all the way to the mountains, but was content not to reach them." Andy has never been out of Saskatchewan but he knows everything that happens on this stretch of highway. He goes back to work on his farm but has this desire to also be in Colorado. This all gets resolved and in a very poignant way that brings all the aspects of the rest of the story together. Brilliantly done and on my Hugo short story short list for 2014.
A very mixed issue with some good work, including a fine short story by Sarah Pinsker, for whose work I will now be watching.
Andy got his arm chewed up by the combine and they replaced it with a bionic prototype. He heals well and gains increasing control over the arm, but he begins to have a mental disconnect because his arm thinks it’s a highway in Colorado.
He struggled to communicate with it. It worked fine; it was just elsewhere. Being a road wasn’t so bad, once he got used to it. People say a road goes to and from places, but it doesn’t. A road is where it is every moment of the day.
The disconnect only gets worse, and Andy finds it harder to carry on with his life. He struggles with the compulsion to drop everything he loves and drive to Colorado.
Very well done story of character. Andy is deeply real, and readers will feel his pain even if they don’t quite understand it. The SFnal problem remains in part a mystery, but the conclusion is emotionally fulfilling.
This and last week’s Strange Horizons have been taken up with the telling of a two-part story by Sarah Pinsker, who, according to her author bio, is apparently something of an indie pop star. If her music is as good as her writing, I’ll be checking her out. “In Joy, Knowing the Abyss Behind” is a strong and emotional story, although I’m not certain exactly how it stands in relation to its title.
The story commences with the stroke of elderly George Gordon and follows his wife, Millie, as she copes with his illness and his mental absence. While George is in hospital, not getting better, Millie deals with the grief of her children and grandchildren while remembering her life with George. When they met he was an idealistic and talented young architect employed by the U.S. army, full of vision and energy. In the early 1950s, however, something changed: a secret project for the military left him drained and broken. Never again would he find joy in his work or express his creativity through architecture.
Millie, disturbed by feelings that she wasn’t supportive enough of George during this crisis, determines to get to the bottom of it. It could have something to do with George’s only conscious activity since his stroke: sketching a prison with his one functioning hand while in the hospital. While her children play the “retirement home” card, worrying about her future, Millie delves deep into her past with George. After the incident that ruined George’s working life, he expressed himself only through the construction of the house he shared with Millie and their children, so it is here, with the help of one grandchild, that she searches.
Millie’s quest, and what she learns, is really of secondary importance to the exploration of the emotional attachments of a long-married couple, to their shared and contested dreams, their private memories, ambitions and grief. As a result, the science fictional component of this story is relatively insignificant, even somewhat distracting. I’m also not convinced “In Joy, Knowing the Abyss Behind” needed to be as long as it was – it would have been more effective, I think, read in one sitting rather than being broken into two parts. But whether it needed to be as long as it is or not, it still works. It’s a moving and very human story of many nuances.
“Twenty Ways the Desert Could Kill You” by Sarah Pinsker (debut 7/20 and reviewed by James Hanzelka).
Her mother moved her to the desert from Baltimore, taking only what little they could carry. It was an “adventure”, Mother had said, but the girl knows it’s more. Mother has her telescope trained on a “star” that grows bigger each night. Why are they here? She thinks she knows, her mother is protecting her, but from what?
The author weaves the little tale of loss and loneliness between a list enumerating all the dangers in the little girl’s new world in the desert. The author does a good job of building the story of the girl and her mother while using the list of dangers to show the girl’s angst about living in a different environment. It was well done and has a nice air of suspense about it.
Synopsis: A short snippet of meta-scifi and the deserts of New Mexico.
We left Baltimore five weeks ago. Mom came home early from her job at the space telescope. She said, “Pack your summer clothes and your five favorite things, Allie. We’re leaving on an adventure.” If I had known her idea of an adventure I might have packed better. I would have said goodbye to my friends.