#asimov's

takes an original approach to the definition of life. The hills are alive not with sound but light-- piezoelectric scintillations as the inhabitants move/are moved about the planet. The approach isn't wholly unique, as any Star Trek TOS fan will note, but the original inhabitants of Pele aren't like the Horta except in being silicon-based. The Horta were basically silicon based humans—communication and mutual comprehension followed by cooperation quickly ensued, once it was determined that the Horta were sentient. The Peleans are beyond comprehension.

Sentience, the quality addressed less often these days in Sci-Fi, is not addressed and is not addressable in the context of the Peleans. They live on a vastly slower time scale than humans. Pohl's Sluggards in the Heechee stories are right with us by comparison. Once again, mutualism was possible once the obstacles were overcome between humans and Sluggards. The time scale differences between Pele’s two peoples are too vast for mutual comprehension to occur. This leaves an unfathomable gap between the humans and Peleans.

Even so, the colonists soon feel that they'll understand the rocks before they make sense of the orders they receive from Houston. They are ever more aware of the comprehension gap between them and the US national command authority on Earth. Pele orbits 61 Virginis, with a time lag of 28 years between the sending and the receiving of orders via radio. (No FTL. No ansibles. No quantum linked commo.) As in C.J. Cheryh's Downbelow Station, orders issued in the past have little bearing on the present. Personal messages from home only emphasize the sense of separation and loss and isolation felt by the colonists. Earth and its troubles quickly lose relevance in the light of the discovery of so different a life form under so distant a sun.

Pele is set in a future where nationalist prestige and competition demand the expenditure of 10% of GDP on a one-way, manned, NAFAL mission to an Earth-like planet far away. (Originally to be claimed for all mankind. Then they get "new orders" per the deteriorating political situation on Earth.) The Pele mission was sent by the US. There is a Russo-Chinese mission to Gliese 581 and a Euro-Indian mission to an unnamed planet. There is a three way cold war between these three power blocs. Anyone who lived through the US-Soviet Cold War understands the essential need of a country to one-up its rivals. What better way than taking resources that could be used to improve life here on Earth and sending a handful of colonists to 61 Virginis or Gliese 581?

The story presents an interesting political constellation-- I'm not sure that China would get back with the Ruskies, and I'd hope we'd get together with India. (Historically, India and Russia are a more likely friendship.) I see Chinese and Indian interests as coming into conflict, so why not a US-India alignment and one between Europe and Russia? To a lesser extent, China and Russia may come into conflict over their frontier. They’ve clashed in the past. China has people; Russia has open spaces. China has recently renewed its claims to waters to its southeast and has rapidly expanded its navy. Eventually, China must cast hungry eyes to the empty spaces to the North. On the other hand, finding mutually agreeable solutions may result in gratitude and collaboration—and alliance

The story requires the development of anti-matter reactors to get 151 colonists to Pele and depends on an Earth power not developing FTL to enforce the old disorder the colonists increasingly wish to leave behind. The living rocks are so innovative that I can't quite overcome my scientific skepticism. (The scientists among the colonists have to wrestle with it as well.) However, the hardest point for me to suspend disbelief over is that anyone on Earth would put forth sufficient effort to colonize another star system. Whenever the subject of the Final Frontier comes up, I think of the Coneheads laughing at the notion of "astronauts on the moon". (Does my bitterness over the "space program" show? The Coneheads laugh and I sigh.) That’s why we read Sci-Fi, though. To escape the horrors around us and to search for better answers than the ones offered us. I look forward to reading more of Liu’s future history. It may be more fun than the one we are living in. I long for a future that includes space colonization. Certainly I envy the humans on Pele. This story is certainly more fun to read than the newspapers

Is a cyberpunk/transhumanism story about a man named Tuppence and a girl, well people my age would say “a girl,” but a young woman, on a quest for a piece of alien weaponry at the behest an alien, “The Client”. The Client had been an ally of the Polity in the Polity-Prador War until a falling out when their interests diverged. It had developed this weapon, the Farcaster, to destroy the Prador and to wreak its vengeance against them. The pieces were scattered and it wants them back very badly. There is more about The Client in Asher’s Rise of the Jain stories.

Taken from /r/books/

It’s become abundantly obvious that this is Lavie Tidhar’s reality and we’re all just living it.

Tidhar was interviewed in FROM EARTH TO THE STARS, the ASIMOV’S author and editor blog, about his short story “Neom.”

Asimov’s Editor: What is the story behind “Neom”?

LT: I’ve been visiting the Red Sea for twenty years now (on the Egyptian side), and I was always struck by looking just across the water to the Arabian Peninsula, and that huge stretch of desert along the Red Sea coast is, of course, Saudi Arabia. Then I came across crown prince Mohammad Bin Salman (MBS)’s plan to build this sort of cyberpunk utopia called Neom there! I mean it has a promotional Youtube video and everything . . . And I’ve been recently very interested in the idea of future cities, and I knew I had to write about it. If only because I find the idea of a cyberpunk utopia so very terrifying . . .

And by Michele Chiappetta at RECURSOR.

Your novel CENTRAL STATION has received much acclaim. What inspired you to write it?

I was living in Tel Aviv back in 2010, and I became kind of obsessed with the old Central Bus Station area, as well as the new station itself, which is this crazy, enormous place with its own nuclear fallout shelter, if you can believe it. And, you know, most of my novels fall into this weird, political, alternate history, noir sort of thing, and I wanted to do something completely different — just write about these people and this place.

And I always loved mosaic novels, especially in science fiction. That’s where a lot of the classics are. But it always struck me as quite a difficult thing to do, from a technical point of view. So, that was the challenge.

I wrote it now and then over the next five years or so. Some of the stories got into various Year’s Best anthologies. A few got translated into various languages. And then one day it was done. I just didn’t expect anyone would actually read it.

On The Italian site STAY NERD, Andrea Viscusi views Tidhar’s work through the lens of CENTRAL STATION and the short story collection Terminale Terra.

The strength of Lavie Tidhar's stories lies precisely in this: not originality, understood as the innovative power of ideas, but the work of unification with which the author drew the constituent elements of science fiction and made it a playground. in which a multiplicity of actors and situations collide. CENTRAL STATION and Terminale Terra are not to be read for the research of mindblowing ideas, but for the naturalness with which the ideas are treated. Those who follow and know science fiction (above all literary, but not only) will be able to recognize dozens of citations and references, but those who are more distant can still appreciate the constant unfolding of stories of normal people in exceptional contexts. The enthusiast and the neophyte can therefore be considered both satisfied, even if for different reasons.

Translation courtesy of Google

Yay!

But... wait a second, hold on... there’s something familiar about...

Ahh, there you are, my beloved giant tome that I bought from the Science Fiction Book Club back in like the mid-nineties.  I  don’t know why the little thumbnails at the back don’t actually have page numbers so they can’t be used as an index, but I should be able to find the right page if I just flip through...

There she is!  It’s the lady from the back of “Distant Stars”!  And I remember there was a story about this piece...

Oh.