[shameless self-promotion] Dashiell Harrison Reviews Collaborators

 

Here's another rave review for Collaborators, this time from Dashiell Harrison:

Collaborators follows the social and political fallout of first contact between an alien spaceship crewed by powerful and technologically advanced spacefarers and the population of farmers, poets, book-sellers, and diplomats on whose politically volatile planet the spacefarers land. The twist: the spacecraft is crewed by Terran humans from our solar system, and the unsuspecting natives are the alien population of the planet Bandar. The Terrans try to remain neutral, but the political situation in Chacarre is especially unstable, and they soon transition from visitors to invaders. The occupation of Chacarre quickly spawns an insurgency that turns friends to foes and lovers to enemies, and threatens to wipe out the entirety of the Terran expedition.

Collaborators immediately sets itself apart from standard first contact type stories by focusing primarily on the alien perspective. Human characters feature heavily in the first few chapters, but no sooner have we come to know and like the Terran astronauts than Ross subverts our expectations by whisking us out of the relative familiarity of the Terran-crewed spaceship and drawing us into the rich and complex world of the Bandari aliens as they grapple with the effects of Terran occupation on their already fractious society.

It is in the interactions between the Bandaris that Ross reveals a mastery of world building which rests firmly on her background as a biologist and international traveler. The Bandari feel simultaneously alien and human, with single-sex bodies that exhibit sexual dimorphism only when they are pregnant or in heat and a single-gender culture that is as exotic as their urban, clan-based society is familiar.

Ross strikes a neat balance between humor and thoughtfulness in the scenes when the Chacarran diplomat Ferro first meets with the Terran landing crew. How does one read emotion on the face of a creature without a crest? He wonders. What kind of civilization crews a spacecraft with pregnant personnel?

The characters - both Chacarran and Terran - come through vividly and sympathetically, each the hero of their own story, each painfully ill-equipped to understand the needs and customs of the aliens with which they are suddenly forced to interact.

At its core, Collaborators is a tragic tale of cultural misunderstandings and a compelling journey into how they can be fixed.

Here's where to order the book (ebook, trade paperback, and hardcover editions):

Amazon (ebook and trade paperback)
B & N (ebook, trade paperback, and hardcover/laminated cover) 
From your local bookstore, order via Ingram:
     Trade paperback: 9781952589003
     Hardcover/dust jacket: 9781952589027

Kobo (and other ebook retailers) 

Jaydium: Chapter 5 Free on Curious Fictions

Between the wildfires and evacuation, I've fallen behind in posting free chapters of Jaydium on Curious Fictions. With apologies, here's the next one!

Jaydium, Chapter 5

By Deborah J. Ross
Nov 6, 2020 · 1,761 words · 7 minutes

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Art by Vincent Di Fate.  Edit Art · Remove Art

From the author: Far in the future, an interplanetary civil conflict has ground to an uneasy halt. Kithri, abandoned on a desolate mining planet, meets Eril, shell-shocked pilot. A freak accident sends them back to a time when their desert world was lush and green, when an alien civilization stands on the brink of a war of total destruction. They must choose to remain outside the conflict or to stand up for what they believe

---

 An audio version is available for this chapter. Listen online →

JAYDIUM

Chapter 5

For a moment Eril considered telling her the truth, that he had as much chance of getting into the Corps without her as she had getting off Stayman without him. In the mood she was in, she'd probably tell him to stuff a comet up his pitouchee. The only thing to do was to keep his mouth shut and wait for another opening. He hoped he'd get one.

Kithri picked up the water bottle, took a long swallow and then dropped it, sputtering. She pointed down the tunnel.

As he followed her gesture, Eril's mouth went electrically dry. The last time he'd looked, the tunnel had been empty except for the two of them and the scrubjet. Now a man-shaped mist hovered in the middle of the 'hole, one moment diaphanous, then condensing into near solidity. In stark contrast to the rosy glow of the partly-sealed jaydium, it was a clear, untinted gray. Eril made out a bulbous head, two arms, and two splayed-out legs. He thought he saw markings on the head section, but they faded so quickly he could not be sure.

"What the hell is that?" Kithri whispered. "I've been running these tunnels for years, and I've never seen anything like it."

"Space ghost," he said, dredging his memory. "They're sighted along the old interstellar routes. There are only about six or seven documented cases known, never this close to a planet. By our best guess, they're relics of early attempts to exceed the speed of light. Residues of energy that just happen to be shaped like humans. They probably don't actually exist in three-space."

As he spoke, the figure descended until its feet seemed to touch the tunnel floor. For a moment it stood there, motionless. Then it began to move. First one leg and then the other stretched out and swung back as it drifted along in a mechanical parody of walking. 

Here's the link to the rest...

https://curiousfictions.com/stories/3051-deborah-j-ross-jaydium-chapter-5

Election 2020: A Love Letter From Ruth

   “We must criticize without wounding and debate without dehumanizing our opponents. Fight for the things that you care about, but do it in a way that will lead others to join you.”

-- Ruth Bader Ginsburg

Short Book Reviews: A Medical Rescue in White Space

 Machine (A White Space Novel), by Elizabeth Bear (Saga)

My introduction to Elizabeth Bear’s gorgeously inventive “White Space” novels was Ancestral Night (check our my review here). While I highly recommend be read first, Machine stands on its own. Both are huge books in the sense of sweeping plots and vast universe-building.

As before, Bear uses an unreliable but highly competent first-person narrator, in this case Brookllyn Jens, a rescue operations physician ex-cop with a chronic pain condition, who relies on self-administered drugs and an exosuit for support. Despite being estranged from her wife and daughter, she’s formed deep ties with her crew and shipmind, the AI of their rescue vessel. Chance places them first on the scene of a generation ship, drifting far from where it ought to be, with a much smaller ship of methane-breathing aliens attached to it. One mystery unfolds into the next: why are both crews in cryo sleep? What’s going on with the generation ship’s android/ship-computer peripheral unit? Matters take a turn for the much, much worse when one AI after another becomes infected with a meme virus, and all too quickly Llyn realizes there is no one she can trust but herself.

My reactions to this book were very much in line with how I felt about Ancestral Night, so I’ll paraphrase them here: The book is filled with action and reflection that say as much about the different ways of looking at self vs society as they do about Llyn’s journey of self-discovery. It’s all fascinating, if a bit sedate in places, until the pieces start coming together. Then the parts I had previously found slow made brilliant sense and I couldn’t put the book down until the exciting and immensely satisfying conclusion. I say this as an advisory to other readers to hang in there: every piece is there for a reason, and it is richly worth the ride. Machine is in turns dramatic, thoughtful, humorous, hopeful, and tragic. From the government ship name, I Really Don’t Have Time For Your Nonsense to the weird and wonderful aliens to everything I’ve mentioned above, the book is as much about how we balance individual choices with the greater good. Worth savoring, and re-reading, as is the previous book.

In Anxious Times: Holding on to the Hope We Create

In 2016 and after, I wrote a series of posts called, "In Troubled Times," about despair, anger, determination, hope, and all the myriad emotions that followed the 2016 election. 

Now, as we await the results of 2020, I have a few thoughts to share. If the muses are with me, I'll be posting more. No matter what the results, we are in for a tough, divisive time. But we're in it together, and together we shall prevail.

First and foremost -- As I took my evening shower on Election Day, I was struck by a moment of light. No matter what happens, we always have within us the power to be beacons of hope for one another. We are not alone. We can lift each other up when despair overcomes us. I keep remembering my father's steadfast hope -- and he lived through a revolution, pogrom, starvation, the Depression, McCarthyism, and more. He never gave up working for a better world -- and neither will we.

Then I read these words from Robert Hubble: 

We must be patient. Biden has a path to victory that does not depend on Pennsylvania with its contested mail ballots. Biden gave a hopeful speech on Tuesday evening and urged us to wait until all votes are counted. Trump, on the other hand, declared victory in the early hours of Wednesday morning but demanded that counting cease. That tells us all we need to know about what the respective campaigns believe about the ultimate result of the election and the will of the American people. Trump is now trying to subvert that will based on a legal theory that says the functioning of the U.S. Constitution should be stopped based on his personal preferences. That's not how the Constitution works, and Trump's claim is ludicrous and meritless.