Source: supplied by publisher via Hugo Packet

#HugoReview: 10 Visions of the Future; or, Self-Care for the End of Days by Samantha Mills

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | audio reviews> audiobooks> book reviews> Hugo Review> podcast review> Short Story Review
#HugoReview: 10 Visions of the Future; or, Self-Care for the End of Days by Samantha Mills"10 Visions of the Future; or, Self-Care for the End of Days" by Samantha Mills in Uncanny Magazine, Issue 63, March/April 2025 by Samantha Mills
Narrator: Erika Ensign
Format: ebook, podcast
Source: supplied by publisher via Hugo Packet
Formats available: magazine, podcast
Genres: dystopian, post apocalyptic, science fiction, short stories
Series: Uncanny Magazine, Issue 63, March/April 2025
Pages: 10
Length: 44 minutes
Published by Uncanny Magazine on March 4, 2025
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo
Goodreads

The March/April 2025 issue of Hugo Award-winning Uncanny Magazine.

Featuring new fiction by Samantha Mills, G. Willow Wilson, Wen-yi Lee, Charlie Jane Anders, Eugenia Triantafyllou, Stephanie Malia Morris, Kirsty Logan and J.L. Akagi. Essays by John Wiswell, Angela Liu, Amanda-Rae Prescott, and J.R. Dawson, poetry by Rafiat Lamidi, Ai Jiang, Abdulrazaq Salihu, and Lesley Hart Gunn, interviews with Wen-yi Lee and Eugenia Triantafyllou by Caroline M. Yoachim, a cover by Galen Dara, and an editorial by Lynne M. Thomas and Michael Damian Thomas.

Uncanny Magazine is a bimonthly science fiction and fantasy magazine first published in November 2014. Edited by 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2022, 2023 Hugo award winners for best semiprozine, and 2018 Hugo award winners for Best Editor, Short Form, Lynne M. Thomas and Michael Damian Thomas, Betsy Aoki, and Monte Lin, each issue of Uncanny includes new stories, poetry, articles, and interviews.

My Review:

This is the final entry in my Hugo reading. It’s being posted, fittingly enough, just before this year’s Worldcon in LA, where the Hugos will be announced. I wanted to hold one review until I got closer to the con, although I promise I read/listened to this last story before I turned in my ballot.

Also fittingly, this is one of the weirder stories in the category, which is saying something because they’re ALL weird in one way or another. Part of me wants to make a joke about if one wants a list of realistic short stories one should not be looking at the Hugo list. Or the Stoker list. The Edgar list is probably hit or miss.

What’s interesting about this particular story is that its weirdness is a bit TOO close to reality. While the individual scenarios are, for the most part, science fiction or fantasy or horror, the idea that the world as we know it might come to an end, and specifically might come to an end now or soon because it feels like everything is FUBAR’s beyond our collective ability to cope, feels read and right here and right now.

Then again, the idea of a Hellmouth opening in California isn’t all that far-fetched. After all, we’ve seen that story before. Maybe Buffy wasn’t quite as fictional as we once believed. Or hoped.

This story isn’t about the ways in which the world might end. That’s not its point. The key word in that long title is “self-care” because the unnamed narrator in this story isn’t telling the tale of ALL the various horrifying futures that she’s seen, she’s only talking about “the good ones”.

Which aren’t necessarily great outcomes in any way – at least not for the world as a whole. Those “good” outcomes, such as they are, are defined by one, simple thing. The good ones are the ones where the family stays together. Where they all survive. Not unchanged – in a few there’s an actual demon baby, not unscathed – no one lives with a demon baby unscathed or unscorched. But they all have each other, all of them together, and that’s the only definition of good that matters when the world is coming to an end.

Escape Rating B: As I was listening to the podcast for this story – read by the always marvelous Erika Ensign) I had a weird thought to go with the weird story. In my head, this story combines Robert Frost’s poem, “Fire and Ice”, with Naomi Kritzer’s Hugo and Nebula Award winning novelette, “The Year Without Sunshine”.

If you’re wondering which poem I’m referring to, it’s this one:

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

Frost’s poem is a bit downbeat – at best. Also memorable, as that first line gets quoted OFTEN. He certainly gets the point across that it doesn’t really matter how the world ends, just that it will happen, humans will probably be responsible in one way or another, and in the end (ahem) how it ends doesn’t matter, just that it does.

Kritzer’s story won Best Novelette in the 2024 Hugos. Very much on the other hand, it’s a hopepunk story. Not that things aren’t terrible, because they definitely are. It’s hopefule because the community survives because they all stick together and help each other through. Not out of enlightened self-interest – or certainly not just that – but because they’re better together if they all live to see the next sunrise. However long it takes.

The particular scenarios in THIS story go by quickly. This is a short story and the vignettes inside it are VERY short. They are also all homages to various SFnal and Horror disasters. Not just Buffy’s Hellmouth, but the Cthulhu Mythos rears its ugly head more than once, and climate change effs up the world more than a few times.

But the particular scenarios aren’t the point. The point is that (the right kind of) togetherness is all it takes to turn something truly terrible into something survivable.

I’m glad I saved this one for last. I’m ALSO happy that the Hugo announcements are coming soon, as I can’t wait to see how it all turns out. And I’m already looking forward to next year’s Hugo readings!

#HugoReview: Laser Eyes Ain’t Everything by Effie Seiberg

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | book reviews
#HugoReview: Laser Eyes Ain’t Everything by Effie Seiberg"Laser Eyes Ain't Everything" by Effie Seiberg in Diabolical Plots DPFiction #123B by Effie Seiberg
Format: ebook
Source: supplied by publisher via Hugo Packet
Formats available: magazine
Genres: science fiction, short stories, superheroes
Pages: 12
Published by Diabolical Plots on May 16, 2025
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website
Goodreads

​Come for the superhero shenanigans, stay for the accessibility catharsis.

My Review:

This year’s Hugo readings are winding down with this penultimate (next-to-the-last) short story. Which is a surprisingly fun bit of a wind-up, albeit with just a few caveats.

On the one hand, this is very much message fiction. And on the other, it’s a surprisingly good story AND an equally surprising if very short readalike for Hench and Assistant to the Villain.

The story takes place in a world where superheroes are commonplace. Or at least common enough not to need secret identities. What they do need – and have – is a union. Something that new superhero RazorBeam is probably all too familiar with. As a mundane but wheelchair bound assistant in the City Planner’s Office, she may even have been a member of one.

Not that it did her any good either when it came to pushing forward her proposal for traffic circles for safer access to street intersections for everyone and not just people like her. Or when the budget cuts came for her job.

But after she was zapped by a falling piece of alien spaceship debris, she joined the ranks of the Super-Abled. Her new laser eyes might not help her mobility issues, but they should raise her ability to get heroic-type things accomplished. Because that’s what superheroes do.

Getting, or even creating, traffic circles should be a piece of cake, amirite?

But not when her Super-Abled Local Union can’t be bothered to make the Union building handicapped accessible. Especially when they make it clear that RazorBeam is only part of the Super-Abled when they need to showcase their diversity.

What they really need is RazorBeam’s analytical skills to help them figure out why supervillain Doctor Croc (animals not shoes) is going all “Hulk Smash” on a bunch of seemingly innocent old buildings.

Or perhaps it’s time for the new superhero and the destructive supervillain to make a really super splash – one non-compliant old building at a time.

Escape Rating B: This is very definitely message fiction. It also definitely works. Not that the message isn’t emblazoned on every page, but that the story, for the most part, is good and feels entirely too real – particularly for a superhero story – and has a very reasonable character arc for its superhero protagonist.

Most superhero stories stray pretty far from the real. This one doesn’t AND it serves its message up with a rueful smile.

Reviewing this is hard, as I’d rather not put my foot in my mouth up to the knee in this review because the core of the story is rooted in an experience that is not part of my own.

Howsomever, the experience of working in government service is one that I have had, and all of the excuses and delays and obfuscations and EVERYTHING about all the half-assed reasons that the city government she worked for and the union she hoped to work with won’t (and it’s not can’t, it’s won’t and there’s a huge difference) all rang very, very true.

The one part of this story that didn’t quite ring true was Doctor Croc. Not about the way he became a supervillain, or even his reasons for becoming a supervillain. His reasons for turning to the Dark Side do make sense. What doesn’t make sense is that he goes on his destructive rampage without ever telling ANYONE why he’s doing what he’s doing. It’s obvious to him, but he doesn’t even do a bwahaha evil speech justifying his seeming insanity.

Admittedly he’s not all that evil and he’s not insane, but if he’s expecting a reaction to his destruction he needs to at least give people a hint about what reaction he’s looking for.

(It’s all about old buildings being ‘grandfathered in’ in regards to compliance with the ADA. Meaning they don’t have to because they’re old and built way before the standards existed. Minor damage just gets repaired but complete destruction requires complete replacement which gets around the grandfathering they’re using to get around the law.)

Which is where it becomes inevitable that Doctor Croc and RazorBeam join forces. She knows how the system works. She’s capable of focused destruction that WILL get the job done. It’s a job they both want done and personally know needs to be done. They’re going to be an awesome team.

And if they remind readers just a bit of either Hench or Assistant to the Villain – not that either of them is the henchperson or the assistant to the other – so much the better.

So the story works, their solution works, and it’s all delightfully lighthearted on top of the message.

I started this one with mixed feelings, because message fiction generally gets a bad rap, and often that’s deserved. A story has to tell a story, not beat the reader over the head about its message. There may not be a ramp to the Super-Abled Union building, but the story about that lack ramps up to its goal very well both in making its point, in telling a good tale, and in sending the reader off with a smile.

I have one final story left to go, and the Hugo ballots are due on Saturday. My favorite so far is still a coin flip between “In My Country”  and “Kaiju Agonistes”, but this one rolled delightfully into the middle of the pack for me. It’s certainly one I’ll think about and use as an example for how well it does what it does.

Appropriately, the last story in my Hugo reading is “10 Visions of the Future; or, Self-Care for the End of Days”, because the future is so often what SF is all about. Even if, or especially because it’s about a future where things have gone terribly, horribly wrong.

#HugoReview: When He Calls Your Name by Catherynne M. Valente

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | book reviews> novelette review> Short Story Review
#HugoReview: When He Calls Your Name by Catherynne M. Valente"When He Calls Your Name" by Catherynne M. Valente in Uncanny Magazine, Issue 65, July/August 2025 by Catherynne M. Valente
Format: ebook
Source: supplied by publisher via Hugo Packet
Formats available: magazine
Genres: fantasy, horror, paranormal, short stories
Series: Uncanny Magazine Issue 65 July/August 2025
Pages: 35
Published by Uncanny Magazine on July 1, 2025
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo
Goodreads

The July/August 2025 issue of Hugo Award-winning Uncanny Magazine.

Featuring all-new short fiction by John Chu, Catherynne M. Valente, Shveta Thakrar, Emma Törzs, Daniel H. Wilson, Jordan Taylor, and A. W. Prihandita; essays by J. R. Dawson, Brandon O’Brien, Charlie Jane Anders, and Amanda Wakaruk and Olav Rokne; poetry by Lora Gray, Shankar Narayan, Avra Margariti, and Prosper C. Ìféányí; interviews with Catherynne M. Valente and Daniel H. Wilson by Caroline M. Yoachim; Nilah Magruder’s The Duet as the cover; and an editorial by Michael Damian Thomas.

My Review:

First, if you’ve never heard Dolly Parton’s classic song, “Jolene”, it’s probably best that you listen to it AFTER you read this take on it. “Jolene” is clearly the basis for this novelette, but I’m honestly not sure whether knowing the original will help or hurt in your interpretations of this re-interpretation.

At the same time, and in the same thought, if you’ve never heard, or heard of the Eldritch Horror version of “Jolene” , you REALLY don’t want to look that up until after you’ve finished the story. Because this story fits WAY BETTER into the Eldritch Horror version than it does the original.

The outline of the story is the same as the song. It’s the same as a lot of songs, actually. “Jolene” strolls into this small town, “steals” the narrator’s husband and comes to claim her “prize”. The scare quotes are because a person can’t be stolen in the way these stories usually mean, and frankly, Charlie is no prize for either of them.

The story is theoretically about a conversation between the narrator, the “wronged” wife, and the brazen, man-stealing hussy Jolene.

It’s in the word “theoretically” that all the paranormal elements AND interesting speculation come into this story – on both sides.

Some of that is in the circumlocution that the narrator uses to refer to Jolene. At first, we’re pretty sure that the word she’s talking around but not actually saying is ‘whore’. Or possibly either ‘bitch’ or ‘cunt’ or all of the above. It’s only as the story progresses, as they talk on the porch, that the reader realizes that the word that’s being talked around is actually ‘vampire’.

And that the reason they’re having this conversation on the porch is that porches are liminal spaces, neither inside or outside, and that the distinction is important to creatures like Jolene. And, as it turns out, to people like the narrator. Maybe. Possibly. Eventually.

Because Jolene can’t get into the house to get Charlie without permission. Permission that the narrator is not about to give. Ever. At the same time, Jolene doesn’t need permission to get inside the narrator’s head. All she needs is time to talk and a whole lot of experience in getting people to question themselves and everything they thought they knew.

Escape Rating B: This is the last novelette in my Hugo reads. And it’s a very sort of equivocal story to end with. It’s not exactly fantasy, it’s not exactly horror, it’s not exactly the song and it’s not exactly like the story the reader thinks it’s going to be at any point in it. It also doesn’t exactly end. Jolene goes, the narrator stays and Charlie wakes up from his ensorcellment but it doesn’t feel like an ending. Or so I thought on first reading

It felt more like a temporary settling on the original status quo, and a pause while the narrator thinks about whether she’s going to remain content with the small life in the small town with the mostly tolerable husband she mostly keeps afloat through life. Then I reread the beginning and realized it wasn’t.

Either way, the real story doesn’t feel like it’s Jolene stealing Charlie or stealing Charlie’s soul or stealing Charlie’s life essence. It’s about the story she tells that night, a very unreliable narrator explaining how she got to be what she is and that it doesn’t work the way that people think it does. And that the narrator is just as likely to turn out like Jolene someday as Jolene was likely to have been her if her life had been different or if she’d been willing to settle for what other people thought she should be.

From one perspective, this is a feminist take on the story in the song. Jolene didn’t choose to become a vampire, she chose not to settle for the life that society believed she was supposed to have. This is absolutely not a ‘wronged woman’ vs. ‘brazen hussy’ story that pits two women against each other over a man who isn’t worth it. Jolene is just surviving and the narrator is just protecting the life she’s built. In the end, they aren’t enemies, they’re merely two sides of the same coin.

I thought the story was left a bit open-ended, that the narrator had decided one thing in the moment but might – and could – change her mind at some point in the future. The author contacted me to tell me to check the opening line again, and she was right to. Because the opening line does give the ending, but only after you read the whole thing through. Something that’s easy to lose track of in the throes of a good story. Which I did.

In the end, I left this one with mixed feelings. It held my interest while reading, and Jolene’s interpretations of the hows and whys of her kind of vampirism were interesting and a bit different, which was itself good because damn but that’s been done to death – pun definitely intended.

However, the story needs a lot of underlying assumptions about the narrator’s life and choices to make it work. (Also, in the original song she’s so pathetic that I can’t even with that.) A little bit more story, novella length perhaps, would have allowed more room for worldbuilding and a bit less of the song lyrics, resulting in a killer earworm. Your reading mileage may vary.

But now that I’ve finished my reading in this category, I’m left on the horns of a bit of a dilemma in my Hugo ballot. Not about this story, which is going to be well down my ballot, but needing to flip a coin between “Kaiju Agonistes” and “Never Eaten Vegetables” for my top pick. I have less than two weeks left to decide!

Grade A #AudioBookReview: Never Eaten Vegetables by H.H. Pak

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A Reviews> audiobooks> book reviews> novelette review> podcast review> Short Story Review
Grade A #AudioBookReview: Never Eaten Vegetables by H.H. Pak“Never Eaten Vegetables” by H.H. Pak in Clarkesworld, Issue 220, January 2025 by H.H. Pak
Narrator: Kate Baker
Format: ebook, podcast
Source: podcast, supplied by publisher via Hugo Packet
Formats available: magazine, podcast
Genres: science fiction, short stories, space opera
Series: Clarkesworld Magazine Issue 226 July 2025
Pages: 39
Length: 1 hour and 42 minutes
Published by Clarkesworld Magazine on January 13, 2025
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org
Goodreads

Clarkesworld is a Hugo and World Fantasy Award-winning science fiction and fantasy magazine. Each month we bring you a mix of fiction, articles, interviews and art. Our January 2025 issue (#220) contains:

Fiction

"When There Are Two of You: A Documentary" by Zun Yu Tan
"Child of the Mountain" by Gunnar De Winter
"Never Eaten Vegetables" by H.H. Pak
"The Temporary Murder of Thomas Monroe" by Tia Tashiro
"Beyond Everything" by Wang Yanzhong
"Autonomy" by Meg Elison
Non-Fiction

"Do Termites Celebrate Holidays?" by Priya Sridhar
"Finishing the Read: A Conversation with Diana M. Pho" by Arley Sorg
"Humbled By Love: A Conversation with LaShawn M. Wanak" by Arley Sorg
"Editor's Desk: 2024 in Review" by Neil Clarke
Cover Art

"Landscape Painter" by Alex Rommel

My Review:

The title of this Hugo-nominated novelette didn’t give anything away. I mean that seriously as I came into this one with no idea what it was about. Some titles are spoilers but this one may have been the opposite. I certainly wasn’t expecting “Never Eaten Vegetables” to be the name of a tadpole. Or a ship. But it’s both.

This is a colony-ship story. It has echoes of Mickey7, not in the humor but in the predicament. In a scenario where there is no faster-than-light travel, colony ships are an expensive, iffy proposition. At best. Mickey7 played those possibilities with a lot of gallows humor. This story takes them very seriously, particularly in the human factors that result.

Not that technology doesn’t play a part in the mess, but the reasons the technology messed things up all end up right back in the lap of those human factors. Even though too many humans are doing their damndest – literally – to blame the tech for everything that went wrong. Because of course we do.

The colony ship technology of this particular universe is wrapped up in a megacorporation controlled space whose megacorps rival those of Murderbot’s universe in their rapacity AND in their expectation that their skullduggery won’t be uncovered because they’re smarter and more powerful than anyone who might try to take them to task for their misdeeds.

Which are legion,

The colony ship doesn’t send out humans in cryochambers. It sends out 10,000 barely germinating Petrie dishes of human blastocysts. (Not quite, but close enough). A whole colony’s worth of eventual test-tube babies, along with a platoon of mumbots and nannybots and service bots to raise them once they reach their new home.

It’s a tried and true method of creating new colonies in this universe, wholly owned by the megacorp, with those not-yet-people born indebted to the megacorp and committed from before birth to pay back their owner-progenitors for seeding them into the new colony. And a future of indentured servitude or worse if they fail to meet their quota.

Which is where “Never Eaten Vegetables” and Senator Luwa come in. Because something went very, very wrong on this particular colony-ship’s journey to their new home. 500 embryos came out of cryostasis early, and the poor NEV sacrificed everything she had to get those children to their new home. Even though 500 is not nearly enough people for a fledgling colony to make it to profitability. So NEV sacrificed her every resource, including the other 9,500 blastocysts, to make sure that her children survived.

Twenty-six years later, the megacorp intends to punish both NEV (technically NEV stands for “Natal Embryonic Vessel” but she prefers “Never Eaten Vegetables”) AND the 500 colonists for their so-called “poor” decisions. Senator Luwa has a better idea. At least a better idea for her, her family of fellow colonists, and “Never Eaten Vegetables”.

A plan to make the megacorp – and its officers – eat something much less palatable. Crow.

Escape Rating A: There was a LOT in this story. So much so that at the end I went back and checked to make sure it really WAS a novelette – meaning under 15,000 words. Because those 15,000 words did a bang-up job of telling a story that was much bigger than the amount of space it took would suggest it had in it.

Even if the ending did wrap up a bit too neatly and quickly. This is one where the meat of the story is in the setup of the entire situation – and that setup takes up most of the word count. But really, really well.

What made the story work was the way that we saw the whole situation from Luwa’s point of view in the present, and then we got to tease out how it got to be that way from NEV’s perspective in the past.

NEV is sentient the way that Demeter is sentient in Of Monsters and Mainframes. She has her own independent thought-processes, she’s able to deal with ambiguity in her situation if not always well – BUT she also has core programs that she can’t control or even see that have the capability of controlling HER against her will.

Which is exactly the situation that led NEV and her colony into this mess in the first place.

Luwa’s side of the story is absorbing – even in its necessary fits and starts – because it’s her perspective on their small colony and isolated situation. Not just that it seems that no one can enter the colony from the outside for a reason we don’t actually see – because that would have solved the problem MUCH too easily. But also because the 500 were all raised together in a tiny community with no one else. They’re all each other has and they know each other all too well. It’s the whole small-town everybody knows everybody else’s business problem writ so large as to overwhelm them. It’s love and it’s stifling and there’s no privacy but there’s more support than anyone might want and there’s no possibility of a fresh start or even much change because there’s so much loving pressure to be who you need to be for the whole colony to keep functioning.

As you can tell, I got really into this one. Luwa’s perspective made the whole story work for me, even though she did keep all her cards REALLY close to the vest for 99% of the story.

Of the novelettes so far, this one is probably my favorite, with “Kaiju Agonistes” as a close second. “Kaiju” is more fun, but this one is more thoughtful and thought-provoking. At this point in my Hugo nomination reading, I have one novelette, “When He Calls Your Name” by Catherynne M. Valente left to go, only because there’s no podcast of that story as there was with “Never Eaten Vegetables”, read marvelously as always by Kate Baker.

#AudioBookReview: Missing Helen by Tia Tashiro

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | audio reviews> book reviews> C Reviews
#AudioBookReview: Missing Helen by Tia Tashiro“Missing Helen” by Tia Tashiro in Clarkesworld, Issue 226, July 2025 by Tia Tashiro
Narrator: Kate Baker
Format: ebook, podcast
Source: podcast, supplied by publisher via Hugo Packet
Formats available: magazine, podcast
Genres: science fiction, short stories
Series: Clarkesworld Magazine Issue 226 July 2025
Pages: 15
Length: 37 minutes
Published by Clarkesworld Magazine on July 11, 2025
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org
Goodreads

Clarkesworld is a Hugo and World Fantasy Award-winning science fiction and fantasy magazine. Each month we bring you a mix of fiction, articles, interviews and art. Our July 2025 issue (#226) contains:

Fiction

"Missing Helen" by Tia Tashiro
"The Walled Garden" by Fiona Moore
"Welcome to Kearney" by Gary Kloster
"Serpent Carriers" by K.A. Teryna
"Bits and Pieces on This Floor" by Eric Del Carlo
"A Land Called Folly" by Amal Singh
"Hunter Harvester" by Bam Bruin
Non-Fiction

"Wilderness Resurrection and Compromise" by Priya Sridhar
"Who Owns A Story: An Interview with Allison King" by Arley Sorg
"Diverse Bodies: A Conversation with Annalee Newitz" by Arley Sorg
"Editor''s Desk: Taking a Moment to Smell the Roses" by Neil Clarke
Cover Art

"Alone" by Matt Dixon

My Review:

Is this Helen talking about Elaine, or Elaine talking about Helen, or both of them observing Mark from a supposedly objective perspective? Is it all of the above? Or is it just narcissism all the way around?

If that’s a bit confusing, that’s fair, because that’s the way this story left me. Confused. Also entirely certain about the narcissism under the literary trickery – and maybe that was the point.

As I keep saying in these Hugo readings, the shorter works this year have been more interesting and/or clever and/or thought-provoking than they are fun. “Kaiju Agonistes” in the novelette category is standing out more and more, as it is both thought-provoking AND fun – which doesn’t seem to have been what this year’s nominators were going for AT ALL. Dammit.

Let me back up a bit. The idea of “Missing Helen” is very SFnal. This story is set in a future where human cloning is feasible, successful, and so far seems to be successfully regulated so things don’t get too weird. (There’s already plenty of SF about runaway human cloning for nefarious purposes, but this isn’t that. Which is good because that’s been DONE. The Heist of Hollow London did it well and went to more places than just the cloning if you’re curious).

This is more about the human issues of cloning – not the scientific issues, the social and psychological issues. Which is also where narcissism comes in.

Helen sold her cloning rights as soon as she was legally able to do so. She needed the money to fund a future better than her “original” life would have allowed her. As that original life was uncertain, chaotic and poor (it’s never stated but her parents were either addicts or abusive or both). Helen wants a better start for her “other self” and needs money for education to catch a rung on the ladder of training and self-sufficiency.

But it’s left her with a whole host of emotional baggage – insecurities, control issues, paranoia, fear of abandonment, etc., etc., etc. Anxieties that lead to the break up of her marriage – because she needs to leave before she gets left.

Which is where her clone comes in. And Helen’s ex-husband Mark gets engaged to Helen’s alternate self, Elaine. It’s not just trading his middle-aged wife in for a younger model, but that Elaine is a younger model without the terrible baggage that Helen carried which destroyed their marriage.

It all sounds icky and squicky and it kind of is. But Mark isn’t the story. It’s not his story. He’s just the vehicle that allows Helen and Elaine to finally meet. To see each other through a mirror, however darkly, and realize that they are all they either want or need.

Escape Rating C: This one didn’t work for me. Obviously. It’s trying to be clever about using second person perspective, as though Helen and Elaine are describing each other to themselves AND each other, and it ended up being more clever than interesting. A trick that didn’t land, at least not for this reader. (As always, your reading mileage may vary.)

So far in my Hugo readings in the Short Story category, “Missing Helen” is the fourth of six, and it’s my least favorite, with “In My Country” still leading the pack for me. Two more, “Laser Eyes Ain’t Everything” and “10 Visions of the Future” to go.

#AudioBookReview: Wire Mother by Isabel J. Kim

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | audio reviews> audiobooks> B Reviews> book reviews> Short Story Review
#AudioBookReview: Wire Mother by Isabel J. Kim“Wire Mother” by Isabel J. Kim in Clarkesworld, Issue 229, April 2025 by Isabel J. Kim
Narrator: Kate Baker
Format: ebook, podcast
Source: podcast, supplied by publisher via Hugo Packet
Formats available: magazine, podcast
Genres: artificial intelligence, science fiction, short stories
Series: Clarkesworld Magazine Issue 229 October 2025
Pages: 9
Length: 23 minutes
Published by Clarkesworld Magazine on October 23, 2025
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org
Goodreads

Clarkesworld is a Hugo and World Fantasy Award-winning science fiction and fantasy magazine. Each month we bring you a mix of fiction, articles, interviews and art. Our October 2025 issue (#229) contains:

Fiction
"Wire Mother" by Isabel J. Kim
"The Cancer Wolves" by Fiona Moore
"Crabs Don't Scream" by H.H. Pak
"Understudies" by Greg Egan
"Giant Grandmother" by Liu Maijia
"The Job Interview" by Carrie Vaughn
"In Luck's Panoply Clad, I Stand" by Phoebe Barton
Non-Fiction
"Space Bears and Engineering the Next Generation of Astronauts" by Gunnar De Winter
"Memory, Loss, and Memory Loss: A Conversation with Rich Larson" by Arley Sorg
"Technology as a Language: A Conversation with Ken Liu" by Arley Sorg
"Editor's Desk: Nineteen" by Neil Clarke
Cover Art
"Overgrowth" by Quentin Stipp

My Review:

Cassie does not get along with her mother. She’s not thrilled with her dad when the story begins, either. Then again, she’s a teenager and those attitudes are not that uncommon. Which is why there are plenty of jokes about how much our parents learn between our ages of 17 and 21 or thereabouts. Not because they learn stuff, but because we start seeing the world as it really is.

But Cassie’s particular issues with “the ‘rents” aren’t about the usual things. Or at least not about our usual things – although we’re getting there faster than we like to think.

Cassie’s issue with her mother is that her mother isn’t really her mother. Well, not her biological mother. Not because Cassie is adopted or her parents used a surrogate or whatever you might be thinking of. Cassie’s mother isn’t really her mother in the biological sense because Cassie’s mother isn’t a biological entity. She’s a digital person that her dad created to his specifications.

Or, as Cassie refers to her, a ‘wife simulacra’.

Cassie’s not alone in having a digital person for a parent. But she is singular among her peers for having been diagnosed with Emotional Contagion Deficit or ECD. Cassie can’t emotionally connect with digital people as people. In other words, she doesn’t love her mother because her mother is a collection of ones and zeros and binary programming, and Cassie is unable to lose her awareness of that to accept her mother as a person.

So when one of her few friends turns her own diagnosis against her, and she learns one of those painful lessons about adulthood that we wish we could turn to our parents for even if we don’t, Cassie decides to make her reality real for everyone around her. Whether because she’s lashing out, because she’s certain she’s the only keeper of the truth, or because misery demands company.

We don’t know, and neither does she.

Escape Rating B: This, like many of the shorter works in my Hugo Awards reading, was both a thoughtful and an uncomfortable read. And not just in the ways that were obvious on the page. Or in listening to the podcast (read well as usual by Kate Baker) which is how I experienced the story.

Because it’s not just about Cassie’s uncomfortable situation – although that was plenty. She is rebelling in what seems like a typical teenage way – until the story reveals that she really isn’t.

In science fiction, we often not merely accept, but outright enjoy and even empathize with AI characters. The central characters of Emergent Properties and the recent Ode to the Half-Broken are both artificial intelligences and we accept them as persons in their own right and feel for them when their rights are threatened because they are AI.

So it’s a bit uncomfortable reading/listening to “Wire Mother” from Cassie’s point of view because AMY the digital person isn’t just not the mother Cassie wishes she was, but she’s not her mother. And we feel that too, that the digital person in the box can’t really be her mother no matter what Cassie is told because that’s just not what mothers are. Or because we’re still cognizant that digital personas aren’t ‘real people’. Siri and Alexa may be terribly helpful but they’re not actual persons – at least not yet.

And then, on my other, digital hand, there’s the place where the concept of ‘wire mothers’ came from, not in science fiction but in actual science. It was part of a psychology experiment in the 1930s with infant rhesus monkeys using mother-shaped figures made out of wire to study the monkeys’ reactions to fear and whether they could derive comfort from a mother-shaped object if they were raised with it. It’s all pretty horrific both for the actual research methods and the way it was used to study questions about attachment and isolation and social deprivation that were applied to human children as well.

It’s clear that THIS Hugo nominated short story is related to those experiments. If only to stand all the concepts on their tiny little heads. This is an uncomfortable story, as many of this year’s nominees in the short works categories are, and it is also in dialogue with the past as the author’s Hugo nominated story from 2025, “Why Don’t We Just Kill the Kid in the Omelas Hole” was. Although that was in dialogue with science fiction of the past, while this one is in dialogue with real science of the past. (The picture at right is a ‘wire mother’ with its baby and it’s still heartbreaking. If you’re curious, check out this entry in Wikipedia.)

What makes this story relevant for TODAY is that it turns the study about ‘wire mothers’ and infant/maternal attachment on its head by introducing AI and 21st century (possibly even later) into the mix and centering the story around a teenaged girl who can’t attach to the future’s version of a ‘wire mother’ because she’s old enough and logical enough to know that it’s not real.

Cassidy can’t make herself feel what her society has decided are the “right” feelings for digital people. Because a digital mother can’t give her a hug without using a body surrogate – which is a whole other bundle of wrongness. Because she’s a programmer and she knows what goes into creating a digital person and she knows that programming can’t create a real person.

And that just because her dad is in love with the wife simulacra that he created to his own specifications – it does not mean that the program loves him back. Or that it’s capable of loving anyone, even its own daughter, at all. Or that Cassie can close off the truth of her own mind to let herself believe that it does. Even when she wishes she could.

#AudioBookReview: The Millay Illusion by Sarah Pinsker

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | audio reviews> audiobooks> B Reviews> book reviews> novelette review> podcast review> Short Story Review
#AudioBookReview: The Millay Illusion by Sarah Pinsker"The Millay Illusion" by Sarah Pinsker in Uncanny Magazine, Issue 67, November/December 2025 by Sarah Pinsker
Narrator: Erika Ensign
Format: ebook, podcast
Source: supplied by publisher via Hugo Packet
Formats available: magazine, podcast
Genres: fantasy, magical realism, short stories
Series: Uncanny Magazine, Issue 67, November/December 2025
Pages: 29
Length: 1 hour and 12 minutes
Published by Uncanny Magazine on November 4, 2025
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo
Goodreads

The November/December 2025 issue of Hugo Award-winning Uncanny Magazine. Featuring all-new short fiction by Sarah Pinsker, Natalia Theodoridou, Ana Hurtado, Rati Mehrotra, Eleanna Castroianni, Mary Robinette Kowal, and Russell Nichols; essays by Javier Grillo-Marxuach, Mari Ness, Jordan Shiveley, and Marissa Lingen; poetry by Somto Ihezue, Romie Stott, Angel Leal, and Hannan Khan; interviews with Natalia Theodoridou and Eleanna Castroianni by Caroline M. Yoachim; and Paul Lewin’s Mushroom Mother of Us All as the cover; and an editorial by Michael Damian Thomas.

My Review:

This is the fifth review in this year’s series of Hugo readings. It’s also the third time I’ve reviewed this author’s work in my annual Hugo reading, so plenty of things to compare to on multiple fronts.

Last week’s Hugo nominee, Kaiju Agonistes, was the first one this year that turned out to be fun as well as a potential choice for number one of my Hugo ballot. This week’s story, another novelette, was one of those things. But in the other, it matched my previous Hugo reviews for this author.

I’m being cryptic, and it’s fun for me but not informative for MY readers, so let me try again.

“The Millay Illusion” was fun to read. It’s a story about magic, but not “foolish wand waving” magic. Although sometimes there is a wand involved. But the wand isn’t functional in casting the magic, because there isn’t any. It’s only functional in the sense of magically fooling the eye of the beholder. Or hopefully so.

This is a story about stage magic and stage magicians in the days well before, well, a whole lot of things. It feels like the late 19th century, but might be a bit later. Before burlesque and vaudeville, but still in the heyday of when live performances were the heights of entertainment and traveling shows were the norm for the players and a rare treat for the audiences.

Also a time period where women were assumed to be many things – and none of them involved being the headline act of a magic show. So Lottie performed onstage in her Uncle Albert’s magic show as “Johnny Chess The Boy Wonder”. And Suzanne Miller was only allowed to perform as herself if “herself” was a comedy act.

The story is Lottie’s, either complacent or scared of being thrown out of the only home she had. Even though her act as “young” Johnny was starting to get a bit old and obvious. Suzanne, however, wasn’t willing to remain a disregarded and disrespected “clown” when she knew she was better than ANY of the male headliners. Because she was.

Which she eventually proved in a truly spectacular fashion, once and for all.

Escape Rating B: Which is pretty much where my ratings for the author’s previously nominated short fiction, “Signs of Life” last year and “One Man’s Treasure” the year before, ended up. The other voters agreed with me – or agreed enough – as neither won their category in their year.

Howsomever, I enjoyed this as I was listening to the podcast, as read by the always excellent Erika Ensign. Lottie is a fascinating perspective on the scene and the era and the story because she’s close to Suzanne, but chooses to go along to get along – and, admittedly, to stay employed and housed and fed. Also, she’s been trained to believe that she isn’t any better than her uncle believes she is and doesn’t believe she has any better chances. She admires Suzanne and envies her drive but not enough to follow her path – or even to back up her assertions when Suzanne needs her to – severing their relationship irrevocably.

I did love the ending, which combined a whole lot of epic but bloodless revenge AND an opportunity for Lottie and female performers just like her to take center stage in Suzanne’s wake. But the way it happens – as much of a WOW as it is – isn’t really fantasy. It’s magical realism. So the story is fun but not Hugo-worthy, at least not IMHO. We’ll see how that turns out when the awards are announced.

A- #BookReview: Kaiju Agonistes by Scott Lynch

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A- Reviews> book reviews> novelette review> Short Story Review
A- #BookReview: Kaiju Agonistes by Scott Lynch"Kaiju Agonistes" by Scott Lynch in Uncanny Magazine, Issue 62, January/February 2025 by Scott Lynch
Format: ebook
Source: supplied by publisher via Hugo Packet
Formats available: magazine
Genres: alternate history, science fiction, short stories
Series: Uncanny Magazine Issue 62 January/February 2025
Pages: 46
Published by Uncanny Magazine on January 7, 2025
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo
Goodreads

The January/February 2025 issue of Hugo Award-winning Uncanny Magazine.

Featuring new fiction by Scott Lynch, J.R. Dawson, Tia Tashiro, Tade Thompson, Mary Robinette Kowal, Rati Mehrotra, and AnaMaria Curtis. Essays by Nicholas Whyte, Ai Jiang, A.T. Greenblatt, and Suzanne Walker, poetry by Kaliee Pedersen, Mari Ness, Shankar Narayan, and E. N. Díaz, interviews with Scott Lynch and Rati Mehotra by Caroline M. Yoachim, a cover by Maxine Vee, and an editorial by Lynne M. Thomas and Michael Damian Thomas.

Uncanny Magazine is a bimonthly science fiction and fantasy magazine first published in November 2014. Edited by 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2022, 2023 Hugo award winners for best semiprozine, and 2018 Hugo award winners for Best Editor, Short Form, Lynne M. Thomas and Michael Damian Thomas, Betsy Aoki, and Monte Lin, each issue of Uncanny includes new stories, poetry, articles, and interviews.

My Review:

I finished this one first in my Hugo readings, then realized it hadn’t been discussed yet in the Hugo Readalong on reddit.  so I saved this until it gets there so I can see if there’s anything I missed. (Which it has here.)

I have to say that this one was fun. In fact, as this is now the fourth review in my series, this is the first one that HAS been fun. Which is to be expected based on the reputation of the author, Scott Lynch. I’ve never read his Gentlemen Bastard series (The Lies of Locke Lamora) but based on how much I enjoyed this story – mostly for its jaundiced view of humanity and its snarkitude – I clearly need to start.

The idea of this has been done before in SF. The idea that life on Earth and other planets was seeded by some alien race for whatever reason of their own. What’s interesting in this story is that the reason wasn’t just benevolent or observing until the planet was ripe for plucking or needed to be obliterated or anything else.

Instead of life in general being seeded, in this case it’s one life in particular. One little seed whose job is to bunker down somewhere deep and dark and above all (or below all as the case may be) – like the Marianas Trench – and wait and watch and GROW. Humanity is being observed, but only for one specific thing.

Nuclear power.

Because the aliens have discovered that nuclear power is the road to planetary extinction. The (formerly) little seed’s job is to watch and wait until and unless the humans start playing with dangerous and destructive things they REALLY don’t understand.

Which, of course, we did. The problem is that the alien only observed our science. It didn’t take into account our behavior.

And that’s where the story and the fun come in. Along with the snark. Because the alien tries to warn us into putting away our dangerous toys. Which doesn’t work AT ALL. In fact, because this story takes place during the Cold War and does a great job of sending up all the attitudes about that mess, the alien’s threats make things worse.

It’s a literal nuclear arms race set off by an alien who wanted to prevent a nuclear arms race. The irony is delicious. The way that history morphs and twists under the threat is fantastic. (Also reminds me a bit of Three Miles Down by Harry Turtledove – which I’ve suddenly realized is considerably more apropos in more ways than I originally thought!)

The alien is LOSING this race. Not because it’s not capable of decisively eliminating us, but because that’s the exact opposite of what it’s programmed to do.

The solution to the problem is both elegant and hilarious. This might be my winner. It’s certainly a winner and a good reading time.

Escape Rating A-: For an author who doesn’t write a lot of short work, he certainly managed to hit the bull’s eye with this one. The story is exactly right for this length. It builds piece by piece, it takes just enough world time to get to its solution, and it’s both thought provoking and a quick, fun read.

I also found the Cold War setting, particularly the portrayal of Richard Nixon, to be both hilarious and spot on. At this point in my reading, this is either my number one or number two pick. We’ll see how that goes as my reading continues.

I’ve been eagerly waiting to see if the reviewers in the readalong agreed – which turned out to be interesting because most of them didn’t enjoy this one nearly as much as I did. Clearly, as always, reading mileages definitely varied.

#AudioBookReview: In My Country by Thomas Ha

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | audio reviews> audiobooks> B Reviews> book reviews> podcast review> Short Story Review
#AudioBookReview: In My Country by Thomas Ha“In My Country” by Thomas Ha in Clarkesworld, Issue 223, April 2025 by Thomas Ha
Narrator: Kate Baker
Format: ebook, podcast
Source: podcast, supplied by publisher via Hugo Packet
Formats available: magazine, podcast
Genres: dystopian, science fiction, short stories
Series: Clarkesworld Magazine Issue 223 April 2025
Pages: 16
Length: 39 minutes
Published by Clarkesworld Magazine on April 1, 2025
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org
Goodreads

Clarkesworld is a Hugo and World Fantasy Award-winning science fiction and fantasy magazine. Each month we bring you a mix of fiction, articles, interviews and art. Our April 2025 issue (#223) contains:

Fiction
"Through These Moments, Darkly" by Samantha Murray
"The Seed" by Sheryl Singerling
"Aegiopolis Testudo" by Gordon Li
"Still Water" by Zhang Ran
"Symbiotic" by Carolyn Zhao
"There Is No King in My Country" by Thomas Ha
"An Even Greater Cold to Come" by Rich Larson
Non-Fiction
"Climate Change and the Shifting Disease Landscape" by Victoria Brun
"Unreliable Characters: A Conversation with Ai Jiang" by Arley Sorg
"Unapologetically Strange: A Conversation with Natalia Theodoridou" by Arley Sorg
"Editor's Desk: Perhaps Light Gray?" by Neil Clarke
Cover Art
"Naï Naï's Arrival & Rituals" by Thomas Brissot

My Review:

This is the third short work in my personal Hugo Awards reading and this is another story that is interesting and thought-provoking rather than any sort of fun. Which in this case is definitely the point.

At first, it reads as if it’s set in a totalitarian country. And it would be an easier read if it were. I mean, it kind of is, but not in the way we think of such things. Because we think that totalitarianism tends towards uniformity of thought – or an attempt to force it.

(We also think of totalitarian regimes in the spirit of neighbors watching neighbors, government watching everyone, Orwell’s 1984 and “Big Brother is Watching You”. We do get that but it’s just different enough to speak to our moment rather than the usual idea about it. All the mechanisms are there, but they’re pointing in a different direction.)

In this unnamed country, there are blue houses in every neighborhood. The person who lives in the blue house is watching everyone, and has the technology to do so covertly. It’s still obtrusive because everyone knows that the person in the blue house is watching everyone all the time.

But what that person, and by extension the government is watching for, isn’t a particular opinion. What they’re watching and listening for is uncertainty. Ambiguity. Thoughts that go down rabbit holes and find multiple possible choices down in the dark at the bottom of the hole.

This government doesn’t care if you love it. Or, for that matter, if you hate it. Neither attitude is punished as long as you’re clear about where you stand. Because people who are certain in their attitudes and their thought processes don’t ask questions and don’t look for new answers.

What this government fears, punishes, and eliminates at any cost is ambiguity. Open-ended stories. Writing that is open to interpretation. Because interpretation invites questions, and questions invite exploration, and exploration has the potential to upset the status quo and change the certainties that keep the country on an even keel.

The story is told by one man, one father with two children, as he does his best to toe the party line. To tell his children what they need to know to survive in this world where everyone is watched and everyone must be clear every minute and no one can afford to ask questions of the world around them.

It’s only after his children are both gone, chewed up by the system that does not allow open-ended questions and less than 100% certain answers, that he realizes that his attempts to teach them not to ask him questions he didn’t want to answer clearly only led to their deaths. Because in his lack of clarity they learned that the system was clearly designed to keep people from thinking at all. And they couldn’t stop.

Escape Rating B: I listened to the podcast of this story, and it worked well as an audio experience because the story itself is all about the speaker’s attempt to teach his children through the words he couldn’t say and, at the end, his willingness to say the words that he was wrong to try to anyone who is willing to listen.

Under that, or over it, there’s the implicit message – again, what is not said – about the power of stories that don’t tie up neatly and don’t follow a prescribed format and don’t fit neatly into a box to engage the human mind and keep it worrying through the possibilities and the implications. The kind of story of which this story is itself an example. Because it too is open ended and that open ending is filled with possibilities. Some better, some worse but none of them either clear, or certain.

#AudioBookReview: Six People to Revise You by J.R. Dawson

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B Reviews> book reviews> Short Story Review
#AudioBookReview: Six People to Revise You by J.R. Dawson“Six People to Revise You” by J.R. Dawson in Uncanny Magazine, Issue 62, January/February 2025 by J. R. Dawson
Narrator: Erika Ensign
Format: ebook, podcast
Source: supplied by publisher via Hugo Packet
Formats available: magazine, podcast
Genres: science fiction, short stories
Series: Uncanny Magazine Issue 62 January/February 2025
Pages: 19
Length: 51 minutes
Published by Uncanny Magazine on January 7, 2025
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo
Goodreads

The January/February 2025 issue of Hugo Award-winning Uncanny Magazine.

Featuring new fiction by Scott Lynch, J.R. Dawson, Tia Tashiro, Tade Thompson, Mary Robinette Kowal, Rati Mehrotra, and AnaMaria Curtis. Essays by Nicholas Whyte, Ai Jiang, A.T. Greenblatt, and Suzanne Walker, poetry by Kaliee Pedersen, Mari Ness, Shankar Narayan, and E. N. Díaz, interviews with Scott Lynch and Rati Mehotra by Caroline M. Yoachim, a cover by Maxine Vee, and an editorial by Lynne M. Thomas and Michael Damian Thomas.

Uncanny Magazine is a bimonthly science fiction and fantasy magazine first published in November 2014. Edited by 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2022, 2023 Hugo award winners for best semiprozine, and 2018 Hugo award winners for Best Editor, Short Form, Lynne M. Thomas and Michael Damian Thomas, Betsy Aoki, and Monte Lin, each issue of Uncanny includes new stories, poetry, articles, and interviews.

My Review:

Why would you ask a whole bunch of other people, most of whom don’t know you well, or at least don’t know you well NOW, for their input into everything about yourself that you should change? Another question, why would the process to change someone start with asking people who are, mostly, at best, casual acquaintances or frenemies, how a person they may not like should change.

What does that say about the society that does this? And why would a person submit themselves to it?

Those are just some of the VERY thorny questions being asked in “Six People to Revise You”, the second in this series of Hugo nominated short works reviews.

You’ll notice that I’m not asking why the person at the center of this story – or any person in this story or anywhere else – would submit themselves to such a process AT ALL. Because the answer to that question seems both obvious and rooted in human nature in general.

No one needs an SF story to tell them that they might be better off, or more successful, or happier, or fit into their society better, or be more comfortable, or WHATEVER – if they just changed a few important AND intrinsic things about themselves.

Our families, our friends, society at large and the whole entire internet press upon us every single day that our lives could be “better” for some very nebulous definitions of better if we just “got with the program”, whatever that might be.

So the story isn’t about that. It also isn’t about the mechanics of how this gets done. It sounds like brainwashing or programming or deprogramming or handwavium or all of the above. The methods don’t matter in this context.

What matters is the result. The way that the process of “revision” seems to blunt the personality. Smooth down all the rough edges. Take away individuality. And possibly – and insidiously – freedom of choice through self-censorship. In the way the process of “revision” takes away individual choice through self-erasure, it reminds me a LOT of the short story “Thickly” by Dorothy de Kok in Writers of the Future 42. The results are very similar even though the process is different.

From one perspective, this is a story about someone (specifically in this case the unnamed first-person narrator) asking a whole lot of people she only sorta/kinda knows which parts of herself she should change to become a happier and more successful person. The answers are mostly self-serving on the part of the people being asked, and are frequently unkind at best. (That the system itself is set up this way is extremely weird – at best.)

But this isn’t a story about what she SHOULD do. (Personally, I think externally applied SHOULDs are the devil, and that’s absolutely true here.) The story isn’t about listening to what other people think even though it is about just how insidious those external voices are.

Instead, it’s a journey of self-discovery. Because the ultimate discovery isn’t about who she should be, it’s about the good and the joy she’s brought into the world by being the person she already is. A perspective that’s delivered by one lone voice among the six people who are supposed to be “fixing” her future course who knows her and cares about her as the person she is.

Escape Rating B: Like my previous Hugo Review of “The Girl That My Mother Is Leaving Me For”, the story, as a story, has more than a few holes and weirdnesses built in. In this case, the gigantic hole is that the reader has no idea what the process of revision really is, how it came to be, what people think it’s intended to do and what it actually does.

We can infer a lot from what we have, but it still feels like handwavium on the technical side and smoke and mirrors on the results side. Or something like that.

And it could be that’s exactly what’s intended, that the reader is supposed to put their own interpretation into the process and its results. It feels like the actual intention of “revision” is to program social outliers into behavior society finds more “acceptable” – all of which needs to be in scare quotes. Because those types of purposes lead to some terrible “greater good” scenarios.

That the narrator doesn’t do it after all, that they realize that how they are is how they’re meant to be and that they’re happy as they are as much as any human is happy as they are allows the story to lead on a hopeful and dare I say it, happy, note. But the questions the story asks are troubling – especially because we are all being programmed, every day, by the masses of information and misinformation and high decibel outrage and meaningless consumerism we’re flooded with every single day.