A novella is a job for the weekend, so we start issue 224 with story two. I don’t think I’ve read anything else by Katherine Sparrow, but this is up to Rachel Swirsky’s usual standards. Like “Eros, Philia, Agape”, it takes a familiar sfnal conceit — in this case, absorption of an individual into a hive mind, here called Aviva — and ferrets out its implications for normal human relationships. It’s narrated by an absorb-ee, Simon, looking back at the circumstances that lead to his absorption: a painful breakup, and a rebound with Aviva.
“Relationships between people with lone bodies and lone minds are always unequal.” That’s what Aviva says. “Power springs up between them like a weed, and tangles everything.”
As Lois Tilton notes, the story is filled with contradictions: Aviva seeks out Simon because she is entranced by his dancing, but he ends the story having given up physical existence entirely; Aviva is the creation of a group of Orthodox Jewish geneticists looking for a way to preserve their culture, and does she what she’s doing as preservation, yet it’s clear there is at least some loss of individuality: personalities can be closer to or further from the surface of Aviva. But it seems to me the story is entirely aware of this, that it grows from the central contradiction of any relationship — two (or more) people trying to be one entity (also a particularly apt theme for a collaborative story, of course) — and that absorption into Aviva is far from being “too good to be true”. For Simon, at least, it’s a capitulation, an acknowledgement that he cannot — does not want to — carry on alone. “You can’t preserve things without changing them”, says Aviva, as if in explanation of the doped-up nature of existence inside her; but at some point, the title’s prediction comes true.
This is a good one, too. Sturdy. Clear narrative voice (Scotsman seeking his fortune among the stars), interesting setting (two settings, actually, but the main one is Atlas B, a heavy-metal-rich planet with a suitably adapted ecosystem), well-paced (including a couple of good action sequences), knowing (planet called Midas, group called the Robinsonade Guaranteed Lashup Company), cold-eyed about where its premises lead (brutal colonialism). It would feel wrong to ask for anything more.
I mentally graphed my reactions to this story in my head as I read, not unlike those audience-interest graphs that accompany some reviews in Total Film. “We Champions do not write, neither do we read, but we are very particular about time, numbers, family and memories. After all, we are perfect”: promising start! Interest grabbed by the promise of the construction of an alien consciousness; this continues through the jargon of the next few sentences — “I watch the scavengers”, “echospeaker arrived in her shelter engine”. Then: “Mike, how are you?”: nice shift in registers, although interest dips slightly with the following realisation that the narrator is an animal (in fact, a Cheetah) with a “machine collar”. “Substitute a pack of wolves for a coalition of cheetahs and I could believe what I just saw”: interest perks up again, although partly based on fond remembrance of Jurassic Park‘s raptors. Mike leaves, and the visitor (Ella) sets about framing him: interest dips, although if the narrator’s not going anywhere, neither can the story. “⟨I am not the scavenger you call Ella⟩”: nicely creepy, slight up-tick in interest. “You — you bred humanity as tools?”: Uh-oh. Cats-domesticate-humans is good for a joke, not so good for a story. “Thirteen thousand cheetahs, and one mass mind!”: I suppose if you’re going to go there, at least go gonzo! “⟨It amuses cats to control you for us — nothing can use a cat⟩”: and oh dear, down into the ravine of boredom we go. A certain commitment to the narrator’s arrogantly cruel demeanour is something, but can’t compensate.
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