Note: this review originally appeared on the blog of Starship Reckless, as part of a series in which Athena Andreadis discusses works of the contributors to The Other Half of the Sky.

by Athena Andreadis

Cat Rambo’s recent collection, Near + Far (Hydra House, $16.95 print, $6.99 digital), is a tête-bêche book containing 2×12 stories of wildly different lengths that previously appeared in such venues as Abyss & Apex, Clarkesworld, Clockwork Phoenix, Crossed Genres, Daily SF and Lightspeed.

Before I discuss the stories themselves, I’ll mention two secondary but important aspects of the book. One is the attention paid to the presentation; as one example, the text ornaments are almost distracting in their beauty. The other is that each story has an afterword in which Rambo gives its backstory and worldpath. Personally, I greatly enjoy such fore/afterwords (I still fondly recall Harlan Ellison’s needle-sharp, needling introductions) and find that they invariably deepen my understanding and appreciation of the tale – provided that the writer knows their craft. Which brings us to the content of the collection.
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[Do you have an idea for a future Mind Meld? Let us know!]

This week we asked about books you don’t love.

This is what they had to say…

Robert Heinlein’s Stranger In a Strange Land was not the first Heinlein book I read. I started with what is still, in my mind, one of his best, Double Star. Nor was Stranger the second Heinlein book I read. Or the third. Or the fourth.

Indeed, back in the days when my interests in science fiction were broadening and I would occasionally talk to people about them, Heinlein would inevitably come up. “You should read Stranger In A Strange Land.” I must have been told this a dozen times by a dozen different people. I even tried reading the book, but on two occasions, spaced years apart, I simply couldn’t get very far into it. I felt terribly guilty about this. Something must be wrong me. It seemed everyone who ever read a book had read and loved Stranger. But not me. I couldn’t even get through it.

It wasn’t Heinlein. Couldn’t be, right? I went on to read and enjoy Heinlein’s future history in The Past Through Tomorrow. I read and loved Podkayne of Mars. I read Puppet Masters and Starship Troopers and found those entertaining. (Although both movies were appallingly bad.) I adored Friday and The Door Into Summer.

It finally took jury duty for me to get through Stranger. In the fall of 2000, in a cavernous room within a Hollywood courthouse, I battled my way through Heinlein’s tour de force. And before my jury service was up, I’d managed to finally finish the book.

And hated it. Just plain didn’t like it. To this day, when asked if I’ve read Stranger, I reply with a world-weary, “Of course. I read it while suffering through jury duty in the fall of 2000.”

“And what did you think of it?”

And without skipping a beat, reply, “I couldn’t be picked for a jury soon enough. My how I suffered through that book!”

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Athena Andreadis has posted the table of contents for her upcoming anthology/collection The Other Half of the Sky:

1. “Finders” by Melissa Scott
2. “Bad Day on Boscobel” by Alexander Jablokov
3. “In Colors Everywhere” by Nisi Shawl
4. “Mission of Greed” by Sue Lange
5. “Sailing the Antarsa” by Vandana Singh
6. “Landfall” by Joan Slonczewski
7. “This Alakie and the Death of Dima” by Terry Boren
8. “The Waiting Stars” by Aliette de Bodard
9. “The Shape of Thought” by Ken Liu
10. “Under Falna’s Mask” by Alex Dally MacFarlane
11. “Mimesis” by Martha Wells
12. “Velocity’s Ghost” by Kelly Jennings
13. “Exit, Interrupted” by C. W. Johnson
14. “Dagger and Mask” by Cat Rambo
15. “Ouroboros” by Christine Lucas
16. “Cathedral” by Jack McDevitt

Athena included teasers in her posting. I’m including them after the jump…
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Athena Andreadis was born in Greece and lured to the US at age 18 by a full scholarship to Harvard, then MIT. She does basic research in molecular neurobiology, focusing on mechanisms of mental retardation and dementia. She is an avid reader in four languages across genres, the author of To Seek Out New Life: The Biology of Star Trek and writes speculative fiction and non-fiction on a wide swath of topics. Her work can be found in Harvard Review, Belles Lettres, Strange Horizons, Crossed Genres, Stone Telling, Cabinet des Fées, Bull Spec, Science in My Fiction, SF Signal, The Apex Blog, World SF, SFF Portal, H+ Magazine, io9, The Huffington Post, and her own site, Starship Reckless.

CHARLES TAN: Hi Athena! Thanks for agreeing to do the interview. First off, how did you first get acquainted with Science Fiction and Fantasy?

ATHENA ANDREADIS: My pleasure, Charles! I taught myself to read at four; I wanted to figure out what was this mysterious activity that diverted my adoring, adored father’s attention from me… The first book I clearly recall reading was Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea (unexpurgated, I found out later). So you can say my acquaintance with SF&F started early – and I’ve been a constant wanderer in this literary domain ever since.

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Lavie Tidhar’s new novel, Osama, is described as follows:

In a world without global terrorism Joe, a private detective, is hired by a mysterious woman to find a man: the obscure author of pulp fiction novels featuring one Osama Bin Laden: Vigilante…

Joe’s quest to find the man takes him across the world, from the backwaters of Asia to the European Capitals of Paris and London, and as the mystery deepens around him there is one question he is trying hard not to ask: who is he, really, and how much of the books is fiction? Chased by unknown assailants, Joe’s identity slowly fragments as he discovers the shadowy world of the refugees, ghostly entities haunting the world in which he lives. Where do they come from? And what do they want? Joe knows how the story should end, but even he is not ready for the truths he’ll find in New York and, finally, on top a quiet hill above Kabul–nor for the choice he will at last have to make…

In Osama, Lavie Tidhar brilliantly delves into the post-9/11 global subconscious, mixing together elements of film noir, non-fiction, alternative history and international thriller to create an unsettling–yet utterly compelling–portrayal of our times.

Recently, Athena Andreadis moderated and took part in a discussion of the novel with Kay Holt, Paul Jessup and Fábio Fernandes. Here is what they said…

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[Athena Andreadis was born in Greece and lured to the US at age 18 by a full scholarship to Harvard, then MIT. She does basic research in molecular neurobiology, focusing on mental retardation and dementia. She is an avid reader in four languages across genres, the author of To Seek Out New Life: The Biology of Star Trek and writes speculative fiction and non-fiction on a wide swath of topics. Her work can be found in Harvard Review, Strange Horizons, Crossed Genres, Science in My Fiction, H+ Magazine, io9, The Huffington Post, and her own site, Starship Reckless.]

REVIEW SUMMARY: An anthology showcasing the authors of the writing group Written in Blood.

MY RATING: context-free, within the larger context.

PROS: The anthology has variety and all its stories except one are competently executed.

CONS: Most of the stories have serious flaws and almost none are memorable.

This anthology contains one story from each of the eight members of the writing group Written in Blood. All have published short stories in well-known SF/F venues and two (de Bodard, Hardy) have also brought out novels. So these are not beginners in the crafts of either writing or publishing.

Because the collection is meant to showcase the individual authors, the content and style of the stories rove freely. Given the collection’s goal, most of the story choices are puzzling because they don’t represent the authors’ best efforts. As is my habit, I’ll start from the bottom and work my way up, so that we begin with gruel and end with truffles, if not ambrosia.

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[Athena Andreadis was born in Greece and lured to the US at age 18 by a full scholarship to Harvard. She does basic research in molecular neurobiology, focusing on mental retardation and dementia. She is an avid reader in four languages across genres, is the author of To Seek Out New Life: The Biology of Star Trek and writes speculative fiction and non-fiction on a wide swath of topics. Her work can be found in Strange Horizons, Crossed Genres, Science in My Fiction, H+ Magazine, The Huffington Post, and her own site, Starship Reckless.]

REVIEW SUMMARY: Optimistic near-future SF collection

RATING: absolute, in context

PROS: A welcome change from cyberpunk/urban noir adolescent gloom. Diverse in style and content, human/e in tone and scale.

CONS: Uneven, like all tightly themed collections; few truly memorable, trailblazing stories.

An editor who undertakes to compile an anthology of optimistic SF must toil up a steep and stony hill. It has become an article of increasing faith and fashion in contemporary SF that happy endings lack sophistication and hence are fit to appear only in such déclassé subgenre ghettoes as – horrors! -romance or squarish venues like Analog. Girls can squee, but manly geeks need their angst. Not surprisingly, this mindset mirrors the declining political and financial fortunes of the Anglosaxon First World. The attitude is so pervasive that it has trickled even into Hollywood, that lowest of common denominators: with the partial exception of Star Trek, there are no functioning post-scarcity quasi-utopian societies in movies and TV.

Into this breach stepped author and editor Jetse de Vries, who broadcast his intent to publish an SF anthology that was not only optimistic but also near-future. How do you say Cruisin’ for a bruisin’ in 22nd century Spandarin? But he persevered and Shine duly appeared, with a cover of a glowing lovely young Eurasian woman who reaches toward the reader with a beguiling half-smile… but lacks nipples and is surrounded by grim gunmetal-gray skyscrapers and smokestacks. Which is an accurate visual summary of the collection’s stories and their strengths and weaknesses.

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Continuing our theme of science fiction tropes, we asked this week’s panelists:

Here’s what they said. Are your favorites listed?

The single most memorable robot:

• Jenkins, from Cliff Simak’s City. Simak made you care for Jenkins at a time when Asimov was creating scores of robots that only Susan Calvin cared about.

Others:

• Joe, from Henry Kuttner’s “Robots Have No Tail”. Kuttner was another writer who had no interest in the Three Laws, and created a charming robot.
• Roderick, from John Sladek’s Roderick and Roderick at Random. Roderick was a perfect vehicle for Sladek’s sardonic commentary.
• Adam Link, from Eando Binder’s I, Robot (sic) and others; he’sthe missing link between clanking metallic monsters and positronic robots.
• Sisto Settimo, from Robert Silverberg’s “Good News From the Vatican”. He’s only onstage for one paragraph, but the notion of a robot pope is as memorable as they come.

And if I can suggest three totally non-Asimovian robots that made major ballots:

• Sammy, from my “Robots Don’t Cry”.
• Jackson, from my “Article of Faith”.
• Mose, from my and Lezli Robyn’s “Soulmates”.

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