Officers Weep

by Daniel Orozco

This was a novelty piece, in the format of a policeman's log book. Clever, though, and very funny at times. The bit about "Daddy's Sweet Bitch" was so out-of-the-blue that it made one of us (Stevens) genuinely flop over with laughter. Ending was a bit New Yorkerish, but what else could Orozco do? Very clever, and a fun one.

Vasquez Orbital Salvage and Satellite Repair // Captains of Industry

by Matthew Jarpe

Inspired by his zippy "City of Reason," we sought out and found Matthew Jarpe's Web site, where he has posted two more stories he sold to Asimov's. Both have a lot in common with "Reason." They pile on the unlikely events in a steady, but credible way. Both are whimsical at times and do a neat job of tranlating present-day experience (a junk man, a corporate legal battle) into an sf context (a junk man who collects space junk, a corporate legal battle waged from the gravity well of a black hole [maybe the ultimate solution to the slow turn of the wheels of justice 8-) ]).

Of the two, "Vasquez" is the better, we thought. It's more upbeat and has a faster pace. "Captains" mixed two themes, because it switched POV from the space station above the hole to the suface of the planet, and back. On the surface, Jarpe employs (as he does repeatedly, and usually successfully, throughout these stories) a familiar sf trope: in this case, a caste-based corporate culture. (Hmmm... this is similar to Mike McQuay's novel "Jitterbug." In a world where everyone wants to be the next, "next Heinlein," could Jarpe be the next McQuay? I'd be glad if that were true.) It's a workable idea, but it slightly conflicts with the rest of the tale by drawing attention to itself without adding much. We thought he had more material waiting to be developed back on the station, where the cultural effects of leading a vast industry from a location where time runs m-u-c-h more slowly than elsewhere should have been more visible. For example, the protag has lawyers reviewing on the station what his lawyers were doing in flat space. Why? By the time they're done, those flat-space lawyers wil be decades beyond the material reviewed. We thought there were lots of opportunities for exploitation of this, but maybe next time. (One idea we had: make the space station long enough that different floors' clocks run at different rates; each "slower" floor takes its reports from the next "faster" one, allowing the hierarchy to function in something like a traditional management structure, while still requiring that each floor only burden the next one with a summary of its work.)

"Vasquez" was more light-hearted and, at the end, even a bit too sugar-coated. Once again, where other writers would have lost us in the sequence of fortuitous/serendipitous events, this story didn't put us off with all of its unlikely events. Somehow, they still worked in a convincing way. Maybe there's no more reason to it than that it would be just so cool if all of this were real.

We'll remember this author.

City of Reason

by Matthew Jarpe

Finally, a real corker! This is a mix of Niven, Pohl, and the died-way-too-soon Mike McQuay. Jarpe piles on the tropes, but at a steady and exciting rate. It would have been dangerous to add more than he does (Kuiper Belt colonies; cyborgs; atomic space combat; super-science private eyes; replicants; data mongers; autonomous spacecraft; teenaged romance) or as much in a shorter story (Jarpe himself says that 8,000 words is a "sweet spot" for his style, which might limit the markets that take his stuff, alas). But, pretty much all of them are recognizable to the regular reader of sf, so none of it calls for much explanation. For some reason I can't nail down, it also doesn't feel like any of it is too convenient when it appears, or too "made up." When I read the work of wannabe sf writers, a problem I often see is that they feel obliged (or maybe just "allowed") to have helpful robots, super aliens, or secret weapons just appear out of nowhere when nothing else will move the plot along. This is almost always a bad idea, though, because it tends to show that the writer was stuck and couldn't think of a logical and convincing way to keep the story going. Jarpe's introduction of various gizmos and gimcracks skirts this danger, somehow. I need to think more about why it worked for him, when it usually kills a story for others, but I'll figure it out.

Anyway, this was a great story. I'm looking forward to the August, 2007 release of his first novel, "Radio Freefall."

Travels with My Cats

by Mike Resnick

This was a pretty light-hearted piece, but in a poignant way. I was glad to read it after the awfully downish "So Help Me God." There was a point where Ethan seems to have the woman convinced she will live longer than she does, but later she refers to being "brought back," as though she knows she's dead, so I found that confusing. I also thought the ending was unsatisfying. Further, I thought it unlikely that Ethan would remain as calm and potentially accepting of seeing a "ghost" as he did. Still, maybe partly because I've tried writing stories myself that deal directly with this issue, if Resnick had spent much time on how Ethan would really have reacted, I suspect that probably be what the story would have been about entirely.

I did like the theme and the easygoing writing style. I met Resnick in 1994, at a "coffee-clatch" table at Worldcon 52. He's a very affable, level-headed guy. This story matches his personality, at least as far as I can tell. I wonder how much of this arises from his own experiences. Liz said she could see some recognizable moments. That is, bits here and there spoke to her as probably coming from the writer's own life. I think that helps a story, but I'm stumped as to how to do it myself.

In the end, not a bad story, but I think the basic idea has been used a bit often and, therefore, called for a more creative ending.

So Help Me God

by Joyce Carol Oates

Yeesh! A "New Yorker Dreadful." This was a relentlessly down-beat story with compelling writing, but I've really had it with this kind of, "it all sucks, it's all pointless, people are dirt" theme. Messrs. Penzler and Turow admit, right at the front of the book, that "mystery" is a very inclusive term. They use it to include any story with, or about, a crime.

Gentlemen, that's wrong! I read mysteries to solve whodunnits, follow the procedures of investigators, get inside the criminal mind, and generally experience something interesting about a crime. Merely watching a crime as it relentlessly slogs towards me is not what it means to read a mystery. There are many markets for this kind of thing, so why are you opening yours up to it?

I found this story depressing, rambly, slow, and uninstructive for the writer I want to be. Because it's about an abused woman, I'm sure it has its champions. But I am judging these things on the quality of the work, not my sympathy for the subject matter. This one, I judge a dud.

The Shooting of John Roy Worth

by Stuart Kaminsky

From EQMM, this is a story that we (Liz and Stevens) thought could have appeared in "The New Yorker." That's because it is a linear work where the only event that occurs is that the protagnist gets shot (nearly) to death. Kaminsky has written a sly tale of a slightly simple man who is looking for a way to limited greatness (by killing a celebrity) and guaranteed security (by going to jail for it). Yet, it's a rambling piece with a few forced bits. The very last paragraph suggests that Wally (the protag) makes more choices than the reader might have known. Still, one is left to wonder if this story--by Very Famous Author Stuart Kaminsky--tests the theory that all fiction is treated equally when it lands on the editor's desk.

Lakes of Light

by Stephen Baxter

An entry in the author's "Xeelee" canon, where the human race of the far future is fighting a galactic war against an enigmatic and poweful foe. This short story doesn't require knowledge of the larger context, but it suffers somewhat from the need for exposition used to supply the backstory. Seems like what Baxter really wanted to do was get to the second half of the story, where Pala is driving pole-wards and--as Liz insightfully observed--undergoes something of a conversion to other-than-human status.

If you read Clement's "Mission of Gravity," you'll recognize one basic concept. Alas, I felt a bit of homage was called for by this fact, yet Baxter didn't deliver it; he just used the same idea. Nothing wrong with that, but the similarity was so strong, that I felt the omission hurt the story.

Kind of a hard-sf tale with lost opportunities for more character development. In my view, the lessons here are many, but chiefly they are: don't crowd with backstory an otherwise good idea just to make it part of a larger canon; get to the "sfnal" part quickly enough to grab the reader; pay your due respects to those who have gone before you.

Welcome!

This is a site for readers and writers (aspiring, rising, established, or otherwise) of genre fiction. There are plenty of sites for just one or the other (and, sure, lots that welcome both), but we wanted to create a site deliberately devoted to readers and writers who gain from talking to each other. We're going to read a story, meet in person with a few friends if we want to first, then talk about it here where all the world can share its thoughts.

Our choices are made with one thing in mind: to learn from the best. That way, the readers can be sure they'll have a good time and the writers will know they're studying the masters. We've chosen four recently edited collections of mystery and sf to get us started. Buy those, or even one or two of them, and you can be sure you'll have plenty of mugs (the "mugs" are the stories, get it?) to share with the rest of us for quite a while.

If you're new, please join right in. Tell us who you are if you want to, or you can remain wrapped in an enigma, if that's your choice. All we ask is for the kind of courtesy that would make your mother proud. Violators will be made to go stand in the corner.

If you see a story in one of the current collections we're reading and you'd like to see it become the next mug, please let us know right here (or in the comments to whichever post is current). We'll give it a look-see and maybe serve it up for you. Regardless, we hope you'll enjoy the mugs we do serve, and be part of our extended table.