The last three Hugo-nominated novelettes are stories by Sarah Pinsker, A.T. Greenblatt, and Isabel Fall. These ones are slightly more…challenging? Thought-provoking? Whatever you want to call it, we’ve got a story about memory, a story about trying to fit in with a group of super-powered heroes, and a very controversial story that I’m not sure really deserved all the controversy.
Helicopter Story – Isabel Fall
What do I feel in that moment? Relief. Not sexual, not like eating or pissing, not like coming in from the heat to the cool dry climate shelter. It’s a sense of passing. Walking down the street in the right clothes, with the right partner, to the right job. That feeling. Have you felt it?
Okay, let’s start with the most difficult one first. I’ve had a lot of trepidation about reviewing this since it’s centered around the concept of gender, and it can be really difficult to talk about something like this without stumbling over the words and accidentally hurting someone.
“Helicopter Story” isn’t the original title. When Clarksworld first published this it was called “I Sexually Identify as an Attack Helicopter”, and apparently a large portion of the internet had a really big problem with it. Clarksworld eventually pulled the story at the author’s request after she was the target of so many personal attacks. Some people thought the discussion of gender and all the ways people feel marginalized by it didn’t feel “genuine”. Others thought it was a clumsy interpretation of women’s (and trans) experience. A few accused the author of being a troll, or a pandering cis dude, or flat-out Nazi simply because of the meme-inspired title, while readily admitting that they never bothered to read anything other than the title (and anyone who judges a book or a story without reading it can GTFO, I don’t care who you are).
What’s ironic about this whole mess is that Isabel Fall is herself trans, and she was trying to reclaim a hurtful meme. And I wasn’t just intrigued by what the author is exploring, I actually enjoyed the story. It does something that I really admire in stories, which is to take an established concept, turn it on its side, and then use the weirdness that follows to examine what the original concept means.
If gender has always been a construct, then why not construct new ones?
The story takes place in a brave new world where the military has found a way to weaponize the idea of gender itself. We see this through the eyes of a helicopter pilot who has undergone “tactical-role gender reassignment”. Basically, to become a more effective fighter, she now has the gender identity of an Apache helicopter.
And yes, ha ha, very ridiculous. And yet not, because the author really looks into what a gender identity means. She explores the ways every person tries to fit their own gender, or resents the everyday annoyances that gender imposes on people, or how gender is a nebulous concept created by humans and yet has strict rules that society enforces with an iron hand and punishes anyone who doesn’t conform to them. (One example the author gives is the women in Soviet Russia who heroically risked their lives fighting the Nazis, and then spent the rest of those lives being ostracized because fighting is only supposed to be a man’s job.)
Deep concepts aside, it’s also a compelling story of a brief skirmish in war, with a lot of exciting moments along with elements of the ordinary ridiculousness of governments that fight over borders, something which is as much of an invention as the concept of gender itself.
We are here to degrade and destroy strategic targets in the United States of America’s war against the Pear Mesa Budget Committee. If you disagree with the war, so be it: I ask your empathy, not your sympathy. Save your pity for the poor legislators who had to find some constitutional framework for declaring war against a credit union.
I can’t pretend I understand everything that the author was trying to say, or that it matches up with every (or any) trans person’s experience. And I can’t dismiss the people who were hurt by the characterizations here (you feel what you feel, never apologize for that). What I really appreciate about the story is that it holds up a mirror to the author’s own experience and says this. This is what it’s like when you feel out of place. This is what it’s like to question whether any of this is really right. And this is how it is when, for whatever reason, for one shining moment, it all works perfectly.
Two Truths and a Lie – Sarah Pinsker
The first time she’d uttered the show’s name, she’d thought she’d made it up.
Stella has a bit of a problem with lying. It’s something she’s done for most of her life, a way to make herself sound interesting. Going to the funeral of an old friend (acquaintance? Schoolmate? Awkward person always hovering in the fringes of her circle of friends?) and helping his brother, Marco, clean up a pretty appalling hoarding situation puts her in a situation where she can impulsively tell a few more lies. Then she randomly asks Marco if he remembers an old public broadcast children’s TV show, something that she’s invented on the spot.
Oddly enough, he does remember the show. And so does Stella’s mother. And the local TV station has copies of all the episodes, including the ones where Stella herself was part of the child audience. So why doesn’t Stella remember any of this? Especially since the TV show and it’s host were both…pretty weird.
“He must’ve lived somewhere nearby, because I ran into him at the drugstore and the hardware store a few times while the show was on the air.”
Stella tried to picture that strange man in a drugstore, looming behind her in line, telling her stories about the time he picked up photos from a vacation but when he looked at them, he was screaming in every photo.
I’ve read a lot of stories where a compulsive liar somehow manages to change reality without realizing it. This one is different, in a way that’s hard to explain. It’s a very quiet, unsettling little piece, with an ending that’s oddly restful. It touches a bit on mental illness, mostly its inherent loneliness. And it plays around with the circular nature of memory, which is something I always appreciate.
Burn or the Episodic Life of Sam Wells as a Super – A.T. Greenblatt
And just like that, Sam’s a member of the Super Team. The hours of standing in front of the mirror, practicing control, paid off. Except there are no introductions or chocolate cake. No smiles or welcomes.
“I’m so sorry,” the woman in magenta tells him before heading to the exit.
People are outcast and abused by society for many, many reasons. Many of these reasons aren’t their fault and aren’t even a bad thing: neurodivergence, sexual orientation, being the “wrong” race (ie: the one that society has decided is the cause of all of their problems. Today.) A.T. Greenblatt takes the general feeling of loneliness and despair from all of these to create Sam Wells, a man who suddenly developed super powers. In a bar. With his horrified boyfriend looking on, and a crowd of strangers recording it on their phones for the next viral video.
Sam’s power is that he can burst into flames, sometimes on purpose when he tries really hard, but usually by accident. Getting accepted onto the Super Team means not having to exile himself to someplace covered in ice, but for some reason no one on the team thinks this is a reason for Sam to celebrate. It’s almost as if being a super hero is a grueling job where people focus more on the people you can’t save than on the ones you can.
And also the Super Team really only needs Sam for his skills as an accountant.
Told in ten mini-chapters, this is a gritty, urban tale of how Sam finds his place in the world, his purpose in life, and how to turn his reason for being an outcast into a positive, simply by looking at it in a completely different way.