It’s an interesting situation with this year’s fiction nominations. We’ve already seen that one of the nominated novelettes isn’t available in English. It turns out that four of the nominated short stories are also only available in Chinese. I haven’t been able to find a reason why these either weren’t released in English or weren’t translated altogether. Having the award ceremony in China this year – meaning Chinese-language speakers might be more heavily represented among eligible voters – could have something to do with it. Hopefully we’ll get to see these stories eventually, but in the meantime I’ve thrown one of the nominated novellas in with the two available short stories.
“Rabbit Test” – Samantha Mills
Contrary to the parlance of the time, it is not the death of the rabbit that indicates a positive test. The rabbit always dies.
First up is the short-story by Samantha Mills, because I think it’s going to be the most polarizing and who-boy, is it ever topical.
It starts with a pregnant seventeen-year-old in a not-too-distant future where fertility and pregnancy are tracked with an implanted chip. The story circles around the fallout from having her control taken away, and the consequences of trying to make sure a loved one has the choice she didn’t. Mills surrounds this story by dancing back and forth through the history of pregnancy tests, how they were developed, how they were used, how vital it is to be able to know what the situation is so something can be done about it. This of course includes abortion, the methods, the community of people who have banded together throughout history to provide it, and what it means to have it as an option, whether it’s a mother who can’t support another child, or a slave who’s desperate to not provide more property to her owner, or a terrified teenager forced to live with a pro-life mother who hates her daughter for having the grandchild she forced her to keep.
This story is raw, and brutal, and angry, and overflowing with empathy for the people who have to bear the disapproval, the financial burden, and the physical and emotional toll of pregnancy, who are also being told they need to be protected from their own decisions. Or punished for them. This story is going to enrage a lot of people, mostly because of its crystal-clear declaration that someone finding themselves pregnant doesn’t owe you anything. They don’t have to believe in your religion, or your version of morality. They don’t have to offer up a claim of sexual assault, and they certainly don’t need to wait until they’re at death’s door before they audition for your approval to fucking do something about it.
Into the Riverlands (The Singing Hills Cycle #3) – Nghi Vo
“So tell me about the Shaking Earth Master and the Hollow Hand…”
Nghi Vo’s novella takes us back to the adventures of wandering cleric Chih (of the Singing Hills) and their faithful companion (Assistant? Stenographer?) the neixin bird Almost Brilliant, as the two of them travel through the sparsely-populated Riverlands. Their official assignment is to collect the folk stories of the region, but I think Chih would do that anyway since they value a good story more than sleep and almost as much as food. Along the way they meet up with mismatched and devoted sisters Wei Jintai and Sang, and the older married couple Lao Bingyi and Mac Khan, who have lived in the Riverlands for a long time. A very long time.
This is the third book in the Singing Hills Cycle, but all of them work as standalone books and all of them are delightful. The fight scenes are gloriously portrayed (Wei Jintai in particular fights in a swirl of silk like she’s part of a choreographed dance), the dialog is fast-paced and clever (“Auntie” Lao Bingyi keeps up a constant stream of good-natured complaints, and her husband Khanh always responds with dry comments that show he’s still besotted with her after all these years), and the author constantly throws in cute little details (Wei Jintai introducing herself with an elegant sweeping, formal bow, kicking her sister’s chair to remind Sang to stand up and introduce herself like a civilized person.)
If you’ve read many of my other reviews you’ll know that one of my favorite parts of a book is when someone, anyone, tells any version of “this is how it happened…” So a novella set entirely around the telling of stories works particularly well for me. Sure, there are a few complaints about how stories tend to reflect the prejudices of the ones telling them (Sang grumbling about how Ugly Women Who Get Their Own Revenge stories need to be valued more), or aren’t portrayed as well as they should be. (There’s a scene where Khanh and Chih talki about the play The Cruel Wife of Master See while in the background Lao Bingyi keeps interjecting with mocking renditions of how the local celebrity would play the lead, and it’s pretty darn hilarious.)
“Oooh, the winter wind howls and so does my heart for vengeance and for honor and of course for the millstone’s weight of the jewels I’m wearing while doing high kicks on stage!”
For the most part the novella shows how stories are nothing less than the air that civilizations breathe. It’s a story about a story-collector, caught up in two other ongoing stories (one who may be where some of the stories come from, and the other who most likely will be the source of stories for years to come.) And all the while, the little found-family group is dealing with an enemy that’s taken its inspiration from monsters in a story that’s been playing itself out for centuries.
“D.I.Y.” – John Wiswell
“There is no educational resource in the cosmos greater than a nerd who thinks you’re wrong.”
John Wiswell’s short-story drops the reader into a world where Seraph bones allow humans to do magic. Unfortunately it’s also a world suffering from a crippling drought, and the only magic users who can do something about it are the ones who’ve attended the exclusive Ozymandias Academy. And neither the Academy graduates or the ones running the school seem to be all that interested in solving the problem.
In addition to the ongoing ecological disaster, the post-Seraph War world also has a very familiar brand of wealth inequality. People below the poverty line, like Noah, have an overworked single mother, a chronic health condition with zero health insurance, and no resources to attend the Ozymandias Academy even though they’re smart enough to be accepted. They’re also told that if they don’t want to be poor then that’s their fault for not “working harder”. Meanwhile, the wealthy have all the advantages, and they use that to game the system and make it even easier for themselves to accumulate more wealth, which they only use to make life easier for the other wealthy members of the population. (Side note: have you heard about the Swindled podcast? You should listen to the episode about the college admissions scandal and then get really angry.)
If anyone’s going to get water to the people who need it, it’s gonna have to be Noah and his best friend (possible romantic partner? They’re both really shy and not pushing things) Manny. The two of them work outside the system, scraping information from internet comment sections, and throwing together magic from found-objects and duct tape.
It’s an infuriating situation, but also an adorable love story between two nerds who aren’t going to let corporate greed get in the way of saving the world.