recent reading in Asimov's

My favorite story in Asimov’s June issue was Mary Robinette Kowal’s novella ”Kiss Me Twice”, in which a young Chinese detective has to solve a murder with the help of Mae West. ‘Mae’ really is the Portland police’s AI, which tailors itself to the preference of each detective it’s simultaneously working with – in Huang’s case, it means the black & white image of the star of many early talkies. After they get too close to the truth, Mae is abducted, and Huang, who had come to rely heavily on her help, flounders before he falls back to the old gumshoe ways. Mae’s backup is rebooted then it gets hacked, and the detective has to decipher the clues she’s trying to provide him thru her now colorized icon.

July’s issue had Leah Cypess’s ”Twelvers”, about the ostracism that must be endured by kids who grow up in vitro for twelve months instead of the favored nine.

August has three tales I particularly enjoyed. One is Michael Swanwick’s short story ”For I Have Lain Me Down One The Stone Of Loneliness And I’ll Not Be Back Again” in which an Irish-American is about to leave for the stars and never return, so he goes to Ireland, which was the last bastion of the resistance to the alien war that pacified Earth. In Philip Brewer’s short story ”Watch Bees”, the latter are part of an elaborate bio-engineered system established by farms to protect themselves from bandits.

My favorite in that issue though is Lisa Goldstein’s novelette ”Paradise Is A Walled Garden”. When the mechanical men in one of Queen Elizabeth’s factories all malfunction simultaneously, young worker Tip comes under suspicion because he figured out moments before it happened that something would go wrong. Luckily for him, his inquisitive nature, while not appreciated by most, and which would be even less so if they knew she’s a girl, is seen as an asset by the Queen, who sends her as part of a mission to Al-Andulus, which now occupies what was Spain before it lost a decisive battle. There Tip discovers a land where knowledge is highly valued, and has resulted in numerous wonders besides the mechanical men and airships. As Ibn Suleiman, her mentor, explains…

”Muslims, you know, we lived in desert countries, mostly,” he said one day. “And then we came herte, to Al-Andulus, and we fell in love with his water, with the richness of its soil. The first thing we did was create pools and fountains, so we could see that water always. And then we built walls, courtyards, to keep out the desert, and planted our date palms and ourt orange trees. The imams say that paradise, the place we go to when we die, is a walled garden. But it seems to me that this is paradise here, paradise on earth,blasphemy though it is to say so.”

There are some though who’d like nothing better than to destroy that paradise.

When I wrote to the author, I asked if there’d be further tales about Tip. She said she'd written the tale as a self-contained one, but that others had expressed the same hope that this isn’t the last we’d see of her heroine.

an evening well spent

After spending hours on emergency work at the office, it felt especially good to go to a book signing at Page One. My wife needed our minivan so fan Jessica Coyle gave me a ride. The authors were local writer Stephen Gould, and Carrie Vaughn who's in town for Mythcon. (One lady in the audience looked familiar, for a good reason, as she was Catherynne Valente, also here for Mythcon.) Vaughn and Gould spent the first hour answering questions, after which they signed books. Vaughn (who knew my name before I said it, presumably because of my FaceBook icon) autographed "Kitty's Big Trouble" and "Discord's Apple". I later bought her superhero novel "After The Golden Age", but decided not to ask her to sign it because things were winding down. Besides, she'll be at Bubonicon in mid-August. I chatted with a few people then Jessica took me home. It definitely was an enjoyable evening. Nice too that I feel like I belong.