Next up on the Hugo finalists are two novellas, one set in outer space and other in a Cairo of the early 1900’s that looks very different from the one we know, what with the djinn and all. Click the jump to read reviews of stories by Becky Chambers and P. Djèlí Clark.
To Be Taught, If Fortunate – Becky Chambers
This one started out feeling like a slice-of-life story. Several slices, actually. Earth of the early 2100’s has put together several teams of astronauts – completely independent of corporate profit margins or government agendas – and has sent them out to do an ecological survey of exoplanets. Ariadne O’Neill and her three fellow crewmembers will be exploring the worlds of the red dwarf star Zhenyi (BA-921). It’s a life-changing mission, not just because eighty years will pass on Earth before they come home. In this story, Earth has access to a technology that’s a sideways step from terraforming, it’s something called “somaforming”.
I’m an observer, not a conqueror. I have no interest in changing other worlds to suit me. I choose the lighter touch: changing myself to suit them.
The necessary adaptations take place in the years-long sleep in between planets, and depending on what’s needed the astronauts can absorb nutrients from sunlight or ground-level radiation. They can thrive with less than Earth-level oxygen or more, their circulatory systems and muscles can be bulked up to deal with twice the usual amount of gravity, or they can glitter with bio-luminescence in order to better explore an ice-planet with a tiny distant sun.
The skills and scientific fields and personalities of the four members of the Merian fit together like a glove. They work together beautifully, they’re endlessly enthusiastic about what they’re studying, and each planet they visit has its own unique feel and lifeforms. I love the way Chambers describes their lives on each planet, like the four years they spend on a world that’s so wondrously different from Earth, with so much to learn, that time passes in a jumble of random moments.
…early mornings, late nights, failed naps, wild dreams, quarrels, epiphanies, shouted answers, excited questions, hands that ached from work, eyes that burned from staying open, bruises that made me smile, thoughts that raced and never slowed.
A couple of mistakes and a nightmarish time on a very hostile planet takes some of the fun out of things right around the same time that the regular updates from Earth…change. Something irreversible is happening, and if you think being far from home when everything goes wrong is bad, just imagine what it’s like learning that when the interstellar time lag means it’s fourteen years too late to do anything about it. And then the crew of the Merian have to decide what they’re going to do about it anyway.
I absolutely love the idea of an Earth that can get its act together enough to send out scientists who’s only mission is to learn..anything. Everything. And I’m also very taken with a space crew who’s this devoted to each other while at the same time dedicated to making sure they don’t damage life on the planet they’re studying. The whole story is a wonderful study of exactly what it means for people to be sent out to learn and explore on a mission that lasts long after the people who sent them are gone.
The Haunting of Tram Car 015 – P. Djèlí Clark
“Good morning, unknown being,” he said in loud slow words, holding up his identification. “I am Agent Onsi and this is Agent Hamed of the Ministry of Alchemy, Enchantments, and Supernatural Entities. We hereby inform you that you are in breach of several regulations governing paranormal persons and sentient creatures…”
The Cairo of this story is an alternate-universe version with a slightly Steampunk feel. But like my favorite alternate-universe stories, this is more than just a past with airships and magic added. P. Djèlí Clark is the pen name of historian Dexter Gabriel, so when he introduces something into history like, say, a portal being opened into another universe in the late 1800’s that brings djinn into the world and specifically into Egypt, he looks at all the ways that changes things. Goodbye to British colonialism, in fact goodbye to any serious interference from Western nations, and hello to an Egypt with the technology to compete on a world stage.
And also there’s magic and airships.
The plot itself centers around two members of the task force that deals with supernatural issues. (Fun note, Djinn are full members of society, but the Ministry still devotes a huge amount of time to “wish-granting hazards”. Never accept a wish from a djinn.) They’re on what veteran Agent Hamed thinks should be a routine investigation for young rookie Agent Onsi on his first assignment, a “haunting” of one of the tram cars that zips along cables hundreds of feet above the busy streets of Cairo.
Naturally this ends up being anything but a routine case, and the two of them are soon dealing with sentient robots, clandestine religion, gender-changing djinn, and buckets of chicken blood and feathers being flung by a very angry supernatural being out of the tram car it refuses to leave.
The idea that a lot of people have, that Egypt is just one homogeneous population of generic “Egyptians”, is about as silly as the idea that all Americans are people descended from Pilgrims. The story takes place in the vibrant streets of Cairo, filled with a delicious mix of cultures and fashion and food. It’s a buddy-cop story with humor and flashy magic, smuggling rings and politics, all with the backdrop of a suffragette movement occurring decades earlier than it did in our version of reality.