Currently available to read at Beneath Ceaseless Skies, and also in the collection Of Wars, and Memories, and Starlight.

And so we’re back to the endings of mindships, this story being about those that are lost when things go wrong, broken apart in the deep spaces.   We’re told about this through the adventures of the scavengers, the divers who throw themselves out of other mindships to collect the gems that the bodies of the passengers become in the unreality of the deep spaces when they no longer have the protection of the mindships.

Mmmm, so yeah, this one’s a bit weird: like a bunch of odd-ball poets who like dropping too much lsd while base jumping and free diving — all at the same time — just to pick up their next fix as cannibal junkies.   I’ve often wondered what mind altering substances future hominids will encounter when we spread out across the galaxy and it seems like Aliette’s been thinking along the same lines, but i got to say, Aliette’s imagination is way beyond mine in this matter.

So yeah, the future, dude!

My only thing is that while this is a fun read in and of itself, i’m not sure how this is fitting with what we’ve been reading.   We just had several books telling us how rare and unbelievable it is for a mindship to be lost and/or die — that, by human standards, they seemingly live forever — yet now we have a story where it seems like broken mindships are scattered all over the deep spaces with scavenger junkies being able to find enough of them to pick clean enough of the dead passengers’ gems for their own addictions but also enough to sell to cover the costs of their own mindships and living expenses.   One can only presume that this story is about a different culture/people than the recent stories dealt with and that this new lot aren’t very good at making mindships.

So yeah, bit of a weird one.

Coming soon: Pearl.

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You can read this at Lightspeed.

Looking at the BBC news before i wrote this, the current discussion concerning our real-world plague of Covid-19 is how we get out this quarantined, house-arrested mess that we’re currently stuck in: specifically, what is the UK government’s lock-down exit strategy.

Of course, in times like this, there are those who bang on and on about vaccines, like, if only we could have a vaccine tomorrow then we could all go out to play again and everyone would live happily ever after: yeah, right!

Crossing the Midday Gate is a story that looks back at the scientists who developed the vaccine for our in-story plague, Blue Lily, and what can go wrong if we aren’t careful.   I think this book should be essential reading for everyone at the moment.

So what we have is a scientist who develops a viable vaccine to Blue Lily, but the manufacturing process simply cannot be made to a scale that can produce enough vaccine, fast enough, without allowing billions to die.   Not to be outdone, another scientist comes up with a method that can scale up the production, albeit, reducing the efficacy of the vaccine.

It was decided that it was better to have a vaccine for everyone, albeit at a reduced efficacy, than it was to have a much more efficacious vaccine for the few.

This new method of producing the vaccine was then rushed through, without proper testing, and a vaccination program began: many subsequently died because the new method of production was fundamentally flawed.

And this is where we very much are with Covid-19 at the moment: too many people, including governments, screaming for a vaccine, or cure, will happily encourage Big Pharma to rush through yet another product that will destroy lives.

Remember, history is already littered with the failures of Big Pharma: the horrendous side effects that have ruined, and continue to ruin, so many people’s lives; not to mention the countless deaths caused by the addictive poisons that Big Pharma rushes to market with bogus, corrupt studies purely for the profits of its shareholders.

So yeah, Crossing the Midday Gate is about this very thing, and also how governments — who are more than happy to be the cheer leaders, stirring up the masses’ clamour for the scientists to take these short cuts — will soon wash their own hands of blame when it all goes wrong and will always find a suitable scape goat amongst the scientific community to throw to the wolves.

Coming soon to a world near you!

You’ve been warned!

Next up: A Salvaging of Ghosts.

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You can read this for free over at Uncanny.

Once again, we return to the death of a mindship; this time the cause of death is a plague known as Blue Lily.   I’ve often picked up a book and found, completely by chance, that it reflected what was going on in the real world in quite an uncanny way — this story being found in Uncanny magazine in this time of a plague known as Covid-19.

I think we could also do so much better if we could just give our diseases much nicer names — like Aliette has with Blue Lily — because Black Death, AIDS, SARS, MERS, EBOLA and now Covid-19 doesn’t really help with people’s mental health during these difficult, anxious and depressing times.   The last thing people need is a disease that sounds like a violent street gang, MS-13, just got more nasty and is coming to get you, yes you, just you!!!

Anyway, this was another story, like Starsong, in that as soon as i got to the end i went all the way back to the beginning and read it all again.   I really didn’t understand what had actually happened after the first time through.   I’m not sure how much of this is Aliette portraying the effects of Blue Lily so well in her writing that i was as confused as someone coming into contact with a victim of this plague, or how much my mind kept on being taken away from this story and drawing certain parallels with Homo sapiens’ current plague of Covid-19.   Suffice it to say that a second reading in which i paid a lot more attention to what i was reading was much better.

If you need your stories spoon fed to you then this most probably isn’t for you as there’s all kinds of temporal, spacial and virtual shifts going on and you really have to pay attention.   However, pay attention and you’ll be rewarded with a rather good sci-fi, plague story.

And next up, we’re going to be Crossing the Midday Gate.

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You can now read this for free over at Clarkesworld, and it’s also in the collection Of Wars, and Memories, and Starlight.

As with our last book, Two Sisters in Exile, we’re once again visiting death.   This time it’s not the death of a mindship but the deaths of the humans in a long-lived mindship’s life.   Imagine that you knew you would live for centuries while all the people you know and care for would only have decades.

We’re also introduced to the idea of having a person’s memories condensed and inherited by their next of kin who then has them implanted, and how the powers that be will, when it suits them, take and use those memories as they see fit.   Consider also that the person whose memories you just inherited may have also inherited memories of their forebears who have also inherited memories or their forebears.

To be honest, i can’t imagine anything much worse than having your ancestor’s floating around in your head, pestering and badgering your every decision.   I could have a big long rant about this but i won’t.   Read it yourself and draw your own conclusions.   Suffice it to say, i’m with The Tiger in the Banyan in that i wouldn’t want them even if you offered.

And so…

…coming soon: In Blue Lily’s Wake.

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Originally published in Solaris Rising 1.5, but you can now read for free over at Clarkesworld.

And so we leave the birth of mindships behind us and move to the other end, to their deaths.

Once upon a time there was the Dai Viet Empire, now that has become divided between the Northerners and the Nam, the Nam are a warring bunch whose mindships don’t last for very long, while the Northerners are a peaceful, creative, trading people whose mindships simply never die: that is, until Nam kills one by accident.

I’ve enjoyed every book from this universe i’ve read already, they’ve all been really good, but this one felt like it all just got even better as we learn ever more about these living space ships and each culture’s attitude towards them.

Once again, Aliette writes perfectly, continuing to build this universe story by story, while at the same time setting a stage and giving us delightful little teasers of what i hope is going to be played out in future stories.

Next up: Three Cups of Grief, by Starlight.

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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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And it’s back to “The Universe of Xuya” for another detective story.

Originally published in Interzone, then printed in The Year’s Best Science Fiction and then re-printed at International Speculative Fiction where you can read it for free.

Once again we’re in the heart of Xuya, and Xuyan society, but instead of an American detective we are now given a Mexica magistrate.   Once again, cultural tensions are played out as the Mexica people who are now living in Xuya are mostly refugees who fled Mexica during the civil war; and just like in real life, where we find immigrant communities we find a wide spectrum between the culturally conservative groups on one side, who do everything possible to maintain their old ways in the new land, and, on the other side, those who chose to leave their past completely behind and adopt the new land’s ways completely as their own: i think, for me at least, the exploration of this spectrum is what this story does best.

Our Mexica magistrate, the first non-Xuyan magistrate in Xuya, has been given a Mexica woman’s death to investigate and is forced to confront her own past, people and culture within this new land, a land in which she, and others, have tried to leave the past behind.

So as much as this story is another piece in Aliette’s alternative history of the world, it’s also a thought provoking look into the lives of those who have had to leave their homes and cultures behind and find a new future in a new and foreign land.

Once again, great writing, interesting characters, good pacing.

And straight into Starsong — yeah, i’m becoming an addict.

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