Retold: Six Fairytales Reimagined

Retold is a collection of six re-imagined fairytales published by The Book Smuggers. You can currently download them from their website for free individually or buy the whole anthology for $1.99. Given that I think Ana and Thea who run the blog have a rather good taste in books, I decided to give these stories a try.

Each story includes an author's essay on what inspired them to write the story and an interview with the author. I think that's a really nice touch -- I enjoyed reading these pieces very much.
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Title: In Her Head, In Her Eyes
Author: Yukimi Ogawa
Rating: 8.5/10
Thoughts:  This was the first story I read and it was also one of my favorites in the collection. It's based on the Japanese story of Hachikaduki: A Girl with a Bowl on Her Head. The original tale is actually also included with the subversive one. As one might guess the fairy tale features a girl who wears a bowl on her head all the time. I rather liked the reimagined story: it starts out like the classic, but turns out much darker and much more evil than I imagined. The writing is beautiful and flows well, very well done.

Title: The Ninety-Ninth Bride
Author: Catherine F. King
Rating: 6.5/10
Thoughts: This is a re-telling of 1001 Arabian Nights. I like the idea behind the original story better, even though the author explains her logic behind the subversive re-telling. The writing is a little off from the traditional fairy tale and the themes are introduced in such a modern way as to make them jarring. The author makes it feel like a story on work-life balance of a working mom with a deranged husband. It just didn't work for me, though there were some very imaginative elements, such as the true identity of Scheherazade.

Title: The Astronomer Who Met The North Wind
Author: Kate Hall
Rating: 4/10
Thoughts: This is the story of a child who sets her mind on becoming an astronomer, just like her father is. However, she is not allowed to go out with her father to look for a comet in the sky. Instead she takes his equipment, sneaks off, falls down a hill, breaks a bunch of things, and gets semi-rescued by The North Wind's sister, whom she orders around, and then comes home a gives her father an ultimatum. The author's idea is to show how children can know their minds early in their lives and study STEM careers. I feel like the only thing the story made me think is that the girl is really bratty and what she does in actuality accomplishes nothing other than putting herself in danger. Not a fan.

Title: Hunting Monsters
Author: S.L. Huang
Rating: 9/10
Thoughts: This was my favorite story in the collection. A girl lives with her mom and aunt in an out-of-the-way village and is taught to hunt from an early age. Except, she is told it's really important to distinguish dumb beasts from changelings. Killing sentient human beings who have been turned into animals is murder. Then her mother gets arrested on murder charges and she learns a lot more about her family history.

The story sounds a bit farcical in my summary, but it works surprisingly well. It's a mix of Red Riding Hood and Beauty and the Beast, but with a really strange twist that I very much enjoy. It has a great diversity of characters and the writing felt solid. I would consider buying another story by this author.

Title: Mrs. Yaga
Author: Michal Wojcik
Rating: 8/10
Thoughts:  This is the only story in the collection by a male author, and one I wouldn't guess being written by a man as it deals with a mother-daughter type relationship. Baba Yaga lives in her chiken-feet hut as an immigrant in Canada. She is described in vivid detail and I really like how the author combines fairy tale and modern life (she is preferring an SUV to her mortar and pestle these days). Her ward, Aurelia, is complaining how Mrs. Yaga keeps driving away her suitors by giving them impossible quests. I like how the issue gets resolved, even though the skip at the end felt a little abrupt to me. It's a fun reinterpretation of Slavic myth and it definitely tickled my fancy since I am familiar with the original tales.

Title: The Mussel Eater
Author: Octavia Cade
Rating: 6.5/10
Thoughts: This was an odd tale of a man who is wooing a sea creature by cooking her food. She is a protector of dolphins in the sea and he's human who finds her mussels and cooks them in various ways. I thought the tale might be Italian based on all the cooking: there's olive oil, lots of aromatic herbs, and delicious food descriptions.

Turns out the story is based on a New Zealand fairy tale. While fascinating, what didn't work for me in the tale was the man's motivation. He describes his object of desire in some rather unattractive terms, so it's hard to believe he's trying hard to seduce her when he thinks she smells terrible. I thought the ending was rather fitting, but the plot didn't make much sense to me on its own since I wasn't familiar with the original tale. It made more sense after I read the author's essay -- but I rather feel the original tale would perhaps be more to my liking.

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Overall, I enjoyed this collection. There were some hits and some misses, but it certainly made me nostalgic for more fairy tales. 

Rose of Fire

Title: Rose of Fire
Author: Carlos Ruiz Zafon
Genre: Fantasy, short story
Published: 2012

Rating: 6/10

Thoughts: This story is really rather short and it's a tale about the creation of the Cemetery of Forgotten books featured in The Shadow of the Wind. The story is told in a standard fairy tale fashion. Let me just say it involves emperors, curses, dragons, and amulets. It's a neat story, but I didn't find it particularly interesting since it follows all the generic tropes and doesn't seem to have much to say on its own beyond telling the story of the Cemetery. I think this is mostly meant as a promotion for The Prisoner of Heaven -- and as such it does a pretty good job. I am really looking forward to the book now.

Fire Watch

Title: Fire Watch
Author: Connie Willis
Published: 1982
Genre: Science fiction
Url: http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/stories/firewatch.htm

Rating: 8/10

Thoughts: I've been on a bit of Connie Willis streak (thoughts on Doomsday Book are coming soon!). This is actually the first novelette to introduce the time-travelling history department in Oxford. A graduate student, Mr. Bartholomew, travels back in time to be part of the fire watch in St. Paul's Cathedral during WWII. There he learns some unexpected lessons.

Overall, the story is told in first-person narration and structured as a diary that Bartholomew keeps during his stay in the past. The format works well for me, even though the main character can be extremely dense at times, it's a type of situational irony that I enjoy. It also tickled me that the character named Elona in the story is the word alone spelled backwards.

Overall, it's a pretty representative of Willis's writing that I've encountered so far and overall I enjoyed it even though I could see through some of the "twists" they were planning. The novelette won both Hugo and Nebula when it was first published. I would definitely recommend reading it, and if you like it, read the rest of the books in the same universe.

Some of the Best from TOR.com

Title: Some of the Best from TOR.com
Editors: Patrick Nielsen Hayden and Liz Gorinsky
Genre: Science Fiction stories
Published: 2011

Summary: A short story collection from a number of well-known science fiction and fantasy authors.

Reactions: I have become alarmingly opportunistic with my reading ever since I got my Kindle. Mostly because I've found that I can find books for free. And not just any books -- but new(ish) books that I would normally pay money for to read. Since I have this free-book craze, I downloaded this free anthology from Amazon.com and enjoyed it. I am going to write a few thoughts about each story and hopefully you can pick up the ones that sound interesting to you.

Six Months, Three Days by Charlie Jane Anders (7/10). The premise of this short story is that a man and a woman live in the regular world, but they each have a superpower. The man can see the future and the woman can see a number of different futures. The premise of the story is that they meet and date each other. It's a story about their views on free will, and their superpowers interacting. It's a pretty cool premise -- though it takes a stretch of imagination to swallow the idea of these people existing and meeting each other. The relationship takes a few turns that I feel are not quite realistic either, but overall it raises a number of interesting issues and is a pretty interesting read.

The Dala Horse by Michael Swanwick (5/10). A story about a little girl who needs to walk to her grandma in the neighbouring village and meets a fugitive on her way there. Sounds a bit familiar? Here's the twist: the girl's backpack, map, and toys are all intelligent and their meeting will lead to clash between AI superpowers that control the human world. The story has an interesting twist, but I found myself disliking the POV that the author chose for the story and I guess I just didn't care as much for this rendition of the more familiar tale.

A Clean Sweep With All The Trimmings by James Alan Gardner (9/10). A story firmly rooted in noir genre staples where a "Cleaner" type tough guy is hired to dispose of an alien body in a brothel. In the process he meets a "Doll" whom the aliens are hunting. Her specialty is becoming exactly the sort of Doll a man next to her wants her to be. It's a very tongue-in-cheek adventure and I loved the language and the resolution of the story. A very well done noir science fiction that makes me want to check out this author's other works.

Beauty Belongs to the Flowers by Matthew Sanborn Smith (7/10). Set in futuristic Tokyo, this coming-of-age tale follows the teenage girl Miho whose father is dying after being infected with nanobots. It's a story giving a perspective on teenage rebellion and self-worth in a world where technology can make anyone and anything look beautiful. The tale is a combination of a love story and learning about yourself. I think I would have liked the story better in a longer format -- the character growth was a bit too rapid for the story timeline and the ending was rather bizarre.

A Vector Alphabet of Interstellar Travel by Yoon Ha Lee(5/10). This rather strange story is a collection of descriptions of cultures of a variety of civilizations and their approach to interstellar travel. It's interesting in the variety of the imaginings, but I was somewhat hard-pressed to understand the meaning of the story. Perhaps others may like this one better.

Ragnarok by Paul Park (5/10). This was actually not a short story, but rather an epic poem set in post-apocalyptic Iceland following the traditions of epic narratives. The story is well-told, but I just didn't enjoy the epic poem medium of telling the story. Not quite my cup of tea.

Hello, Moto by Nnedi Okorafor (7/10). An atmospheric tale set in Africa where a woman mixes technology and juju to create three powerful wigs for herself and her two friends. The wig gives them powers over others, but also changes them in ways the creator didn't expect. I thought the setting made this story quite interesting as well as the mechanics of magic. The overheating wigs left me amused and the story-telling was pretty good if not in itself as imaginative as some of the other authors in the collection.

Shtetl Days by Harry Turtledove (10/10). Probably my favorite piece of work in this anthology. The premise of this novella is that Reich has won WWII and by mid-21st century it has exterminated most Jews. To remind the world of how awful things were before their reign, Germany sets up a pretend-village modeled after early 20th century Polish settlement where German actors play roles of Jews and Poles in the village. The production is set up for realism - the actors get immersed in the atmosphere day in and day out and are taught to completely ignore the tourists visiting the village. With the actors practicing the language and the culture daily, the novella examines the idea of actors becoming what they are portraying.

Elevator

Title: Elevator
Author: Nancy Kress
Published: Eclipse Two, 2008
Genre: Fantasy, short story

Rating: 5/10

Thoughts: It's a commonly used plot technique: put a bunch of characters into forced confinement with each other and watch interesting things come out of it. Elevator begins with a number of people stuck together in a hospital elevator. No help comes for hours while characters deal with their issues. Typically, this is the sort of plot I enjoy, but I found these characters not very interesting and the story resolution rather anti-climatic. I am also somewhat opposed to the message as a whole, many problems are just resolved for the characters with no action of their own and at the end I didn't feel there was much to take away from the story.

Michael Laurits is: Drowning

Title: Michael Laurits is: Drowning
Author: Paul Cornell
Published: Eclipse Two, 2008
Genre: Science fiction, short story

Rating: 6/10

Thoughts: I have to get this off my chest first: this story is hard to read. The names feel awkward: Laurits, Lief, Nofke. There's also a lot of tongue twisting and just plain awkward phrasing. But in the midst of all that there is some interesting Douglas Adams style humour -- warring Atheist coalitions entering a minor war over whether an arrival of a messiah would change their views. Unfortunately, the funny background didn't have much to do with the rest of the story in which Michael Laurits while drowning manages to transfer his consciousness into a social network. The story has some interesting ideas, but it fails in execution and the ending feels off. Worth reading just for the one paragraph dealing with warring Atheist terrorists though.

Exhalation

Title: Exhalation
Author: Ted Chiang
Published: Eclipse 2, 2008
Genre: Science fiction, short story
Url: http://www.nightshadebooks.com/Downloads/Exhalation - Ted Chiang.html

Rating: 8/10

Thoughts: I've been looking forward to reading this particular story since I've consistently enjoyed all the other stories by Ted Chiang and this one has been nominated for Hugo award this year. While the story was excellent, unique, and thought provoking as most Chiang's stories, it is not my favorite. The basis of this story is a contained world where humanoid robots live, and continue breathing by pumping their re-attachable lungs full of argon every day. They live for a very long time, but don't know too much about themselves until one of them decides to conduct an experiment.

I won't spoil the story, it's absolutely worth reading. There are some clever engineering explanations as well as a more general message on the meaning of life at the end of the story. The reason I didn't like it as much is because I didn't feel very emotionally connected to the narrative. I think the attempt to make such a connection is made, but I just found myself somewhat indifferent and I am not even quite sure why. If you read the story, let me what you think.

The Candidate

Title: The Candidate
Author: Jack McDevitt
Genre: Science fiction, short story
Published: 2006
Url: http://crypticinc.books.officelive.com/shortstory.aspx

Rating: 10/10

Thoughts: Jack McDevitt is a pretty famous name in science fiction and since I've read and enjoyed a couple of his novels I jumped at the chance to read one of his short stories for free. The story is quite short, only a few pages; yet it manages to convey the idea and finish with a bang. The premise of the story is that an AI of George Washington enters U.S. presidential elections. Some basic knowledge of American politics is required, but it's a fun read even if you don't follow politics much. Very much recommended.

How To Talk To Girls At Parties

I am in the middle of several busy weeks at work and not progressing a whole lot with Daemon. But I came across a short story by Neil Gaiman and the title sounded interesting, so I present:

Title: How To Talk To Girls At Parties
Author: Neil Gaiman
Published: Fragile Things: Short Fictions and Wonders, 2007
Genre: Science fiction, short story
Url: How To Talk to Girls At Parties

Rating: 6/10

Thoughts: The story starts with a couple of teenage boys heading to a girl's party. One of the boys is stressing out over how to talk to girls when the other remarks:

"They're just girls," said Vic. "They don't come from another planet."

Knowing that this short story is a piece of science fiction, I immediately got a very strong suspicion that they won't be "just girls". A reader figures out it's not a typical party pretty quickly, but the protagonists are too busy trying to get in some smooching. It's an interesting juxtaposition of teenage and alien cultures, but to me the whole story felt a bit off. I couldn't quite get into it, nor do I feel I could put together the pieces of what Gaiman was showing in the story. To me the ending felt incomplete, and I ended reading it rather puzzled, feeling like I should have been told more of the story. Well, perhaps you can make more sense of it.

Lost and Found

Title: Lost and Found
Author: Sandra McDonald
Published: Strange Horizons, 2003
Genre: Science fiction, short story
Url: http://www.strangehorizons.com/2003/20030526/lost_and_found.shtml

Rating: 9/10

Thoughts: I stumbled onto this short story accidentally, looking for some more information about Sandra McDonald. The story is quite short and its premise is that a father of a family builds a search engine. He builds the sort of search engine that finds things in the physical world. "Where are my car keys?", "Where are my stud diamond earrings?" asks the family first. The machine always answers. Eventually the questions become harder, more important, more significant. Until the final question is asked...

The story is really heartfelt and the speculation opens up even more questions than it answers. I like the way the story is written, it plunges the reader into the family atmosphere almost immediately. Overall, a very nice short piece of fiction, I definitely recommend it.

When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth

Title: When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth

Author: Cory Doctorow

Published: Baen's Universe, 2006

Genre: Science fiction, short story

Url: http://craphound.com/overclocked/Cory_Doctorow_-_Overclocked_-_When_Sysadmins_Ruled_the_Earth.html

Rating: 7/10

Thoughts: I don't think you would enjoy this story unless you have met some sysadmins before. I have met and worked with them and from the story it's easy to tell Cory Doctorow has first-hand experience with them too. Many of sysadmin descriptions are very spot-on for the sort of people you find configuring the servers into wee hours of the morning.

This story deals with a postapocalyptic scenario where the major cities are all attacked by a bio-weapon and a number of sysadmins all over the world survive in the data ceters with good isolation and their own power generators. The protagonist of the story is Felix who finds himself watching the CN tower topple over from his data center in Toronto. The rest of the story deals with the consequences of the catastrophe.

Overall, it was an interesting story with some good internet-related humor. However, I felt the ending wasn't as strong as it could be and I was a little taken aback by the way Felix coped with the catastrophe aftermath. I will consider reading some other Cory Doctorow fiction now, I imagine I might like some of his other writings better.

The Nine Billion Names of God

Title: The Nine Billion Names of God

Author: Arthur C. Clarke

Published: Star Science Fiction Stories No. 1, 1953

Genre: Science fiction, short story

Url: http://lucis.net/stuff/clarke/9billion_clarke.html

Rating: 9/10

Thoughts: I was snickering a little bit in my head throughout the first part of this story. A lama orders a computer/typewriter from a Western company that will be able to write out all permutations of 9 letters of a certain alphabet the monks devised. Of course to do the task on a modern machine would take 3 lines of code and less than a millisecond of time. But in 1953, this is a stretch of imagination and the machine will take 3 months to go through all permutations and print them out.

Nevertheless, I really enjoyed reading the story. It is well written, deeply inquisitive, and the last line of the story is breathtaking. I am very glad other participants of the Out of This World Mini-Challenge steered me to it.

The Crystal Spheres

Title: The Crystal Spheres

Author: David Brin

Published: Analog, 1984

Genre: Science fiction, short story

Url: http://www.grouplite.com/f4a/the_crystal_spheres.html

Rating: 8/10

Thoughts: I felt a bit frustrated as the start of the story by the author throwing around future-world terminology without explaining what it means. However, in a way that was part of building tension for the story, this discovery of what the author is talking about and it was effective.

In the story, a group of deepspacers travels to a planet whose crystal sphere has shattered. I will let the story tell you what that means, but in a nutshell it is a SETI-themed story that is told quite well. It examines human psychology when it comes to finding new species and living in the stars. Overall, a well-written story with a nice thought-through ending.

Falling Onto Mars

Title: Falling Onto Mars
Author: Geoffrey A. Landis

Published: Analog Science Fiction and Fact, 2002

Genre: Science fiction, short story

Url: http://www.analogsf.com/Hugos/Falling.shtml

Rating: 7/10

Thoughts: The story is fairly short, probably around 4 pages. In that time the author manages to paint a rather brutal picture. Incorrigible prisoners from Earth are piled onto flimsy space ships and sent to Mars. This is a story of who survived and how.

The story is good and has an interesting twist at the end. It also does a great job presenting a certain grim mood inherent to the setting. The downside seemed to be that the details of how humans managed to survive were often skimmed over. It seemed strange that people managed to survive given the description of available technology. It bothered me in places, but overall is probably not too important to the story.

There is also one scene that can be interpreted two ways and I wonder what the author intended there. It is a scene where Kayla is found, she speaks of how to get oxygen. However, I wavered to understand whether what she said was a sabotage attempt or a true advice. It also doesn't mention whether her advice was taken. I feel like motivations here could be interpreted in several ways... If you have read the story, let me know what you thought. 

The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate

Title: The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate
Author: Ted Chiang
Published: The Subterranean Press, 2007

Genre: Science Fiction, short story
Url: http://podcast.starshipsofa.com/podcast/Ted_Chiang_The_Merchant_and_the_Alchemists_Gate.mp3 (Read by James Campanella)
Unfortunately the full-text got taken down, I am glad I saved a copy.

Rating: 10/10

Thoughts: I loved this story! I am not surprised it has won both Hugo Award for Best Novelette and Nebula Award for Best Novelette in 2008. The story is lyrical, poignant, and at the same time examines the questions of time travel and human nature.

The premise of the story is that a man in Baghdad discovers a shop at the back of which there is a gate that will allow one to travel 20 years into the future. Before the main character makes up his decision on whether he wants to try the gate, the shopkeeper tells several tales of other people who have done the journey previously.

The whole story is told in the Arabian Nights style, the images are very vivid and the conclusion is satisfying without being predictable. I can't recommend it enough!

The Cold Equations

Title: The Cold Equations

Author: Tom Godwin

Published: Astounding, 1954

Genre: Science Fiction, short story

Url: http://www.oakmeadow.com/curriculum/overviews/english10_sample.pdf (Skip the english part of the lesson -- the story starts below)

Rating: 7/10

Thoughts: The story takes place on an EDS (Emergency Dispatch Ship) where the pilot discovers a stowaway on the ship. However, there is not enough fuel in the ship to take both of them to their destination and the two on the ship must deal with that.

I am of two minds about the story. On one hand it was quite touching, there was lots of tugging on the heartstrings and there were some very nice descriptions. On the other hand, I did not feel impacted by the story beyond the immediate pity that the situation warranted.

The story does bring up a number of ethical questions and questions of human nature, but I feel Tom Godwin doesn't supply any of the answers in the story. The ending did not surprise me, but I was glad of it. Good story overall, but I guess I was expecting more as it came recommended by Carl.

What's Expected of Us

Today is Out of this World Mini-Challenge! I am reading and reviewing science fiction stories. As I mentioned in a post before, I am starting with Ted Chiang.

Title: What's Expected of Us

Author: Ted Chiang

Published: Nature, 2006

Genre: Science fiction, short story

Url: http://www.concatenation.org/futures/whatsexpected.pdf

Rating: 8/10

Thoughts: The whole story is only one page, but it gives something to think about. Ted Chiang introduces a device called Predictor which is a box that blinks a light a second before the button on it is pressed. Then implications of the box on human free will is discussed.

I thought the format of the story was tied quite well into the message itself. And I feel like my take-away from the story is that discussing whether free will exists does not change much -- lots of circular arguments abound and at the end they don't matter. And that's a little ironic in the context of the story. But decide for yourself!