Short Thoughts on Short Fiction Vol. 8: Federations Part 2

This is the second part in my Short Thoughts on Short Fiction read through of the Anthology Federations (Prime Books 2009), edited by John Joseph Adams. Part 1 can be found here. None of the stories I will discuss this week are available online as far as I can tell. If you do know a source, let me know and I’ll add the link.

In the second part I will cover:

Aftermaths by Lois McMaster Bujold
Someone is Stealing the Great Throne Rooms of the Galaxy by Harry Turtledove
Prisons by Kevin J. Anderson and Doug Beason
Different Day by K. Tempest Bradford
Twilight of the Gods by John C. Wright

    
Aftermaths by Lois McMaster Bujold

Aftermaths is another story dealing with inter-stellar warfare. The main character is a man recently graduated as officer in the fleet. Unfortunately for him he is three days too late to take part in the ongoing war. By the time he is deployed there is only one thing left to do. Clean up the mess. Not quite the job he dreamed of.

Accompanied by an middle-aged medical officer, his job is to recover bodies from the battlefield. Gathering the bodies that have been exposed to the vacuum of space is an activity that repulses him. What repulses him even more is the way his colleague treats the bodies they recover.

It’s a very powerful story emotionally. You can feel the anger and resentment in the main character as well as the patience and life experience in his companion, which is something the author drives home in the conclusion of the story. It’s certainly not a detail of warfare that gets a lot of attention. A very interesting choice for this anthology, and I have a feeling this one will end up as one of my favourites of his collection.

    
Someone is Stealing the Great Throne Rooms of the Galaxy by Harry Turtledove

You can almost hear Adams thinking “…and now for something completely different” when he selected this story for the anthology. The contrast between Aftermaths and Someone is Stealing the Great Throne Rooms of the Galaxy could not be greater. I am not familiar with Harry Turtledove’s work but I understand this humorous story is something of a rarity in his catalogue.

In Someone is Stealing the Great Throne Rooms of the Galaxy an overweight hamster and space cadet Rufus attempts to solve the aforementioned crime. It’s a story full of horrible puns and silly situations. Rufus’ ship for instance, has a wheel drive, a device that translates the motion of Rufus treading his wheel into faster than light travel (somebody still believes!).

I can see why Adams added this story, the other two anthologies I read display a similar diversity. I must admit this one made me groan more than laugh though. I think you need to be in the right mood to appreciate it.

    
Prisons by Kevin J. Anderson and Doug Beason

Generally I am not impressed with Kevin J. Anderson’s projects but I must admit this story is better than anything else I’ve read by him. I’m not familiar with Beason’s work at all though, so I have no idea how much of the story is his. In Prisons Anderson and Beason dust off an old idea, that of penal colonies is remote areas. In this case a nearly uninhabitable planet in dire need of terraforming.

The environment is so hostile that to put living beings to guard the prisoners is regarded as inhumane. Instead, an artificial intelligence keeps an eye on the prisoners. Powerful and smart as this AI may be, it remains a glorified computer and thus susceptible to hacking, something the authorities find out to their shame when a prisoner revolt takes over the planet.

It’s an interesting idea. I think it would have been nice to see what the long term plans of the prisoners would have been. This story is more about the problem they pose to the authorities. Their attempts to get things under control again are not very effective and the motivation for the attempt described in the story is plain revenge. Somehow it seems unlikely to me that someone that high up in government would get away with taking that kind of decision motivated purely by revenge. It is a good reminder that you can rely on technology too much though. Decent story but I don’t think it is one of the stronger works in this collection.

    
Different Day by K. Tempest Bradford

One of the shortest stories of the anthology and as the editor puts it in the foreword, something of an anti-science fiction story. In just over two pages, Bradford takes a shot at a number of common but fairly illogical themes in science fiction (movies and television in particular). Why do aliens always end up in the US for instance? Why are they so often seen as not only technologically but also morally superior? In itself it’s probably not a brilliant story, or perhaps that is just me, I always have problems appreciating a story this short, but the way Adams slips it in here forces the reader to consider another perspective on the anthology as a whole.

    
Twilight of the Gods by John C. Wright

Götterdämmerung, if you go Wagner all the way. On a generational spaceship we meet a captain who reigns like a feudal king. War has ravaged the magnificent ship and the captain no longer posses the knowledge or technology to make the most of his vessel. In fact, large parts of it are in the hands of his enemies. To restore his power and reboot the great computers that run the ship the captain needs to get his hands on a ring. Unfortunately this ring corrupts the mind of his owner and is coveted by whoever is not owning it (sounds familiar?). Backstabbing and treachery ensue.

This story got me reading on the connection between Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen and Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. It appears there is quite a story there. Of course use medieval Germanic/Norse sagas as source material but some people see more of a resemblance between the two. Tolkien did not, he always denied the connection.

But let’s get back to Wright’s story. I suppose the setting is one usually associated with science fiction. Much of the story has more of a fantasy feel to it however. I must admit I didn’t like this one a whole lot. The language feels forced to me and the quick succession of betrayals and power grabs make the plot quite hard to follow. Maybe you get more out of it if you’re familiar with Wagner.

That’s it for this week. Join me next week for the next part, featuring stories by George R.R. Martin and Robert Silverberg among others.

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