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Novelette: "The Waiting Stars," Aliette de Bodard (The Other Half of the Sky)
An intricate rescue-quest set in a clash of cultural incomprehension on a galactic scale where starships are inhabited by altered humans, kindred of their crews, and old wars have left disabled but living ships floating in a helpless coma. The world-building is brilliantly efficient, the tension is compelling, and the resolution is unexpected in its details while being believable and emotionally satisfying. Heroes and villains are painted with a somewhat over-broad brush, and it is left ambiguous whether the “villains” have committed horrific acts from an impulse toward good that fails to imagine other goods than their own, or whether even this is a lie among layers of lies, working toward some unspecified self-interest? In the conclusion, the reader is left to fill in a few key technical elements and motivations that are, perhaps, left overly vague. The reason for binding the ship-mind to a new body at all is unclear to me--though I could imagine possible motivations. And the fate of that secondary body once the mind has withdrawn is also left to speculation. The story sucked me in and kept me hanging to see which way things would go. I could easily see how the same setting and premises could be taken in many different directions, but I’m glad it took the one it did.
An intricate rescue-quest set in a clash of cultural incomprehension on a galactic scale where starships are inhabited by altered humans, kindred of their crews, and old wars have left disabled but living ships floating in a helpless coma. The world-building is brilliantly efficient, the tension is compelling, and the resolution is unexpected in its details while being believable and emotionally satisfying. Heroes and villains are painted with a somewhat over-broad brush, and it is left ambiguous whether the “villains” have committed horrific acts from an impulse toward good that fails to imagine other goods than their own, or whether even this is a lie among layers of lies, working toward some unspecified self-interest? In the conclusion, the reader is left to fill in a few key technical elements and motivations that are, perhaps, left overly vague. The reason for binding the ship-mind to a new body at all is unclear to me--though I could imagine possible motivations. And the fate of that secondary body once the mind has withdrawn is also left to speculation. The story sucked me in and kept me hanging to see which way things would go. I could easily see how the same setting and premises could be taken in many different directions, but I’m glad it took the one it did.
