Originally published in Interzone Issue 241, which you can now read for free over at Clarkesworld and also in the collection, The Dragon that Flew Out of the Sun and Other Stories, which is also free to download.

Another story that’s similar to the last two, being centred around the birth of a shipmind, and like The Shipmaker, i feel it would be better placed in the reading order before Shipbirth as we are given even more information about these shipminds and their beginnings that i would have liked to have known before Shipbirth.

In this story Aliette explores the sibling dynamics between a human boy and his mindship sister, but its a dynamic that begins corrupted by the boy attending the extremely difficult birth of the shipmind.   Aliette also introduces us to the fact that these mindships can communicate as fully sentient beings and that the ship is part of the family from which it is birthed.

We’re also introduce to another fact in this ever more interesting universe: that some cultures do not use mindships and have banned them from their space.   So we’re given quite a few teasers of more interesting things to come, which i’m looking forward to.

Once again, very well written and just at that perfect length to enjoy in one easy, flowing read without even having to put the Kindle down — so make a cuppa, go to the loo and turn your phone off before you start.

Next up: Two Sisters in Exile.

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Originally published in Interzone Issue 231, and also in the collection Of Wars, and Memories, and Starlight.   Or you can read it for free over at Clarkesworld.

Aliette lists this on her Xuya page as being after Shipbirth, but i feel it would have been much better read before that because in The Shipmaker we are informed of all the various things that would have occurred in Shipbirth before Acoimi turned up, albeit this is a completely different ship and birth, but the issues remain the same.

As you can probably surmise from the title, this is a story mostly about the person who makes these ships — or is in charge of doing so.   We’re given quite a good tour behind the scenes of construction and the chaos caused when the woman, fully pregnant with the shipmind, turns up a few weeks early to give birth.   All the parts of one of these shipmind births that were missing from Shipbirth are filled in for us — including a description of one of these shipminds as it is birthed.   We’re also told how the different cultures within the Xuya universe view the women who gestate and birth these beings.

Once again, Aliette continues her universe building, this time adding Vietnamese characters — and lesbians — and how those people who chose to live lives without creating children are shunned within conservative Viet culture because there won’t be any future progeny to maintain the graves of their ancestors.   I’m not sure why we’re given a lesbian couple to make this point because there’s nothing to prevent a lesbian having a child; contrary-wise, there are plenty of hetero couples who either chose not to have children or aren’t able to.   Curious.

I could go on a big rant here about my thoughts on burial and the fucked up ideas that certain cultures have with keeping and collecting dead people, but i won’t, i’ll keep it short.   Needless to say, i won’t be maintaining anyone’s grave, ever — heap your shunning and scorning upon me all you like.   If i had my way i’d dig all the grave yards up, grind up all the bones for bonemeal fertilizer and return all that land to the living where it rightfully belongs.

Yeah, sometimes when i read something in a book i get so annoyed that my inner curmudgeon ventures forth for a good rant.

So yeah, i’ll stop me ranting now and go and read the next book: Ship’s Brother.

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As far as i’m aware this has only ever been published in Asimov’s February 2011.   You can contact them to either buy a copy of that edition or to ask them nicely to scan a copy of this article and email it to you.

So we left the story in Starsong with our first melding of pilot and ship into one being, albeit a temporary mistake, and being told that the ship and pilot would be studied intensely to see what exactly had happened.   From there we have taken some huge jump forward in time to where women give birth to shipminds that inhabit ships specifically built with “Heart Rooms” where the shipminds join and flow into the ship becoming one being.   How we get from the events of Starsong to the events in Shipbirth we aren’t told, and what, exactly, these shipminds are like that birth out of these women and crawl into the ship’s heart is left quite unclear and left for one to only presume — use your imagination people!

We begin this book with our protagonist, Acoimi, travelling on a mindship and describing his utter distaste for the mind bending strangeness of how the ship deforms and changes as it travels according to its own will through the deep planes between the stars.   When we reach our destination Acoimi is then transferred to another ship, a new ship, not quickened by a shipmind: the birth has not gone well and it’s Acoimi’s job, as a military physician, to determine if the mother can be saved or if she should be euthanised.

There’s a lot going on in this story: on one hand we have the fertile birthing woman, used to gestate the shipmind of this ship; then the midwife, a sterile woman who, not being able to produce offspring herself, aids those that do, but in this case sits idly by as she has given all the aid she can; and then there’s Acoimi, now male but born female, a physician whose only job seems to be to euthanise the women who fall in birth or the men who fall in battle — both considered glorious ends in Mexica society.

Here is where i will point the reader to Aliette’s “Author’s Notes”.

I also found this review, which i thought sums things up rather well.

So where have we got to?   Well, we now know that the shipminds are things that come out of women who gestate them — which reminds me of the axolotl tanks in Dune.   So once again, just like in my Starsong review, i’m reminded of Dune.   We also get to learn that gender reassignment seems to be quite the norm and relatively easy in this future but that our protagonist has realised that just because she didn’t want to be female didn’t mean he would be ok as a male.

Once again, Aliette writes wonderfully and continues to build this universe in a really interesting and deep way portrayed through these troubled characters she presents to us.

Next up, The Shipmaker.

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The first of “The Universe of Xuya” stories that take us into space.

One thing this book made me think of was the navigators in Dune.   We’re told how the navigators began, by taking too much spice that they changed their whole being into one that could meld with their ships and fold space and travel anywhere in the universe, but we’re never told, as far as i’m aware, what it was like for that first navigator who experienced this.   And that to me is what Starsong is about, the story of those who travel first.   The outsiders who will never belong who are shoved far out beyond the boundaries of where other people’s fear will never allow them to go.

Originally published in Asimov’s July 2012, you can now find it at Orson Scott Card’s InterGalactic Medicine Show where you can read it for free.   And while you’re there be sure to also read “InterGalactic Interview With Aliette de Bodard”.

My first Xuya book was The Tea Master and the Detective, which, in my review, i mentioned needing to get up to speed on all things Xuya and mindships, and Starsong is where all the mindship things begin.

So we have ships and pilots, the pilots of these ships have some kind of implants — neural shunts — that allows their minds to plug directly into the ship’s systems and thus fly the ships, but, they remain separate, a ship and a pilot.   However, this story begins with the ship telling us that the pilot has just got in and connected and the safeguard’s and barriers have failed, the pilot’s neural shunts have been overwhelmed and engulfed by the ship’s systems, melding pilot and ship into one being.

The pilot, who one moment is a whole and separate being, is now no longer, lost in the new embrace of this completely new being, drifting in the “deep planes”, listening to the starsong and able to travel wherever they chose simply by willing it.

And then we are thrown, back and forth, throughout this short story, between past and present and various characters.   It’s like the total cacophony of a full on psychotic episode:  which, i suppose, if we were suddenly joined as a mindship without any warning, or prior knowledge, is exactly what our experience would be like.

I realise, from reviews i’ve read about other books with lots of temporal/spacial shifting going on, that some people really won’t like this book, but, that’s their loss.   Unfortunately, some people’s minds just aren’t up for this kind of trip into the “deep planes” — and back again — several times over.   But for those of us whose minds are ready and who enjoy this sort of thing, this book is genius.

Yes, i got to the end, which also takes us back to the beginning, and i went straight back to the beginning and read the whole lot again — all in one sitting.

And that’s what’s so perfect about being able to write this as a short story (6141 words) and make it work: you can read the whole thing twice in one go and it’ll only take you up to novella length.   And being able to read it twice, so quickly, is really what makes this work.   So don’t throw it away when you find yourself adrift in the “deep planes”, set aside a couple of hours to read this and when you begin to feel a bit/lot lost, keep going, and when you get to the end the first time go right back to the beginning and dive straight back into the “deep planes” and read it all again.

Enjoy!

And now we’re off to visit The Shipmaker — i’m definitely a Xuya addict.

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