#ReadShortStories about feminist robots (126-130)

Not a huge amount of variety in this batch of short stories as I continue reading Mother of Invention, the anthology edited by Rivqa Rafael and Tansy Rayner Roberts. On the one hand, that does mean that this post is just presenting a chunk of anthology stories. On the other hand, clearly I'm enjoying Mother of Invention enough that I'm not feeling the need to seek out other stories to break up the theme.

This was a solid batch of stories that I enjoyed fairly consistently. That said, my favourite was the last in this batch, "Sexy Robot Heroes" by Sandra McDonald, which was delightful and thoughtful and a consistently interesting read. A bit surprisingly, this is also the only story in this batch by a new-to-me author. Hmm.

Junkyard Kraken by DK Mok — A roboticist builds an ocean-exploration robot after failing to get funding for it. A fun story, especially thanks to the inclusion of other AI robots, such that it can be forgiving for being a bit unrealistic. Source: Mother of Invention edited by Rivqa Rafael and Tansy Rayner Roberts

An Errant Holy Spark by Bogi Takács — A Jewish AI growing up, learning, and trying to talk to aliens. Written in the unique style I’ve come to expect from this author, the inner voice of the AI was very different to conventional (robot/AI) tropes. An interesting story and premise, with baffling aliens. Source: Mother of Invention edited by Rivqa Rafael and Tansy Rayner Roberts

The Goose Hair of One Thousand Miles by Stephanie Lai — A story written in the form of an annotated translation of a wuxia story. The story itself is particularly bizarre, to my eye, because of the way the robots are included and thanks to the aspects the commentary focuses on. Even so, it engages with ideas of colonialism well. Source: Mother of Invention edited by Rivqa Rafael and Tansy Rayner Roberts

The Art of Broken Things by Joanne Anderton — An eerie story based on a really interesting premise/theme. I liked the idea and the way different aspects of the story meshed together, but at the same time it creeped me out a bit (mostly in a good way). Source: Mother of Invention edited by Rivqa Rafael and Tansy Rayner Roberts

Sexy Robot Heroes by Sandra McDonald — I really liked this story. It featured a trans girl mechanic, a whole barge of girl mechanics, and androids bound to serve them. It was the right mix of sentimental and sensible. Source: Mother of Invention edited by Rivqa Rafael and Tansy Rayner Roberts

Interview with Jo Anderton

Today I have an interview with the wonderful Jo Anderton, author of the Veiled Worlds trilogy, The Bone Chime Song, and many other stories.

You've mentioned elsewhere that the Veiled Worlds trilogy was influenced by anime. Can you elaborate on this for us? Any specific influences or a more general aesthetic?

I think over the years of watching and loving anime it's managed to seep into my story brain, but then so have the big fat trilogies I devoured as a teenager! While there's definitely a general aesthetic thing going on, I'm more than willing to admit to a few specific influences.

Some of Tanyana's character was inspired by Major Motoko Kusanagi from Ghost in the Shell. I think it's the Major in her that makes her tough, but also at times distant, a personality trait that is challenged as the books develop. One of things I love so much about the Ghost in the Shell world is the way it plays with the concept of identity, and challenges the relationship between body and self. This is a big theme of the Veiled World books -- how much of ourselves is wrapped up in our bodies, what is it that makes me me, that kind of thing.

Another major influence is Full Metal Alchemist. Not only is Tanyana's suit absolutely inspired by Edward's metallic arm, but the brothers in the books (Kichlan and Lad) are based very strongly on the brothers in FMA — Edward and Alphonse. Something in the way Alphonse is trapped in his suit of armour for a body, unable to properly age and engage in the world while his brother struggles to find a way to free him… that's Lad and Kichlan right there.

Another possibly odd-sounding influence is none other than… Sailor Moon. You heard me. You know what I still love so much about Sailor Moon? She doesn't save the day through violence, she saves the world by helping people. It was really important to me that this happened in the Veiled Worlds books. So often in our stories the heroes win the day by resorting to the same violence as the so-called villains. But not Sailor Moon, dammit. And not Tanyana either.



In the Veiled Worlds, you set up a very technical magic system in the worldbuilding. You then gradually picked it apart over the three books. What led you to this setup?

I'm a sucker for worlds that aren't what they seem. This could possibly come from an unhealthy addiction to really complicated Japanese rpgs. You know the ones that don't necessarily make any sense but are still really cool because actually the world is a video game or the gods are really AIs… Or something like that. One of my favourite animes, Scrapped Princess, is like that too.

Basically, I just like it when stories set up a world, and then surprise! actually there's something completely different going on. So naturally I would do the same thing.

Book three, Guardian, breaks somewhat dramatically from the setting of Debris and Suited. Was this the plan from the very start? (Did you always know that this was where the series was going?)


Oh yes, absolutely. Each book has a theme, I guess you could call it. Or a lynchpin. Debris is all about Tanyana's fall. Suited is all about her Suit. But Guardian was always going to be about the Keeper. I knew that to do that, we had to go back to where everything began, and that meant switching settings. Crossing the veil.

Will we be seeing more novels from you or short stories or both? Can you give us a taste for what's coming next?

I certainly hope so! I'm very much enjoying the project I'm working on at the moment, and with any luck it will see the light of day.

Guardian by Jo Anderton

Guardian by Jo Anderton is the third book in the Veiled Worlds Trilogy. I have to admit, when I read book two, Suited, I didn't realise there was going to be a sequel (although in retrospect, I probably should have). And then the publisher of the first two books didn't pick up the third, so it was a longer wait than usual for this concluding volume. Luckily FableCroft did pick up Guardian, so we can all enjoy the ending to the story started in Debris. I have to warn you, though: if you haven't read the first two books everything about Guardian, including the blurb, is made of spoilers.

The grand city of Movoc-under-Keeper lies in ruins. The sinister puppet men have revealed their true nature, and their plan to tear down the veil between worlds. To have a chance of defeating them, Tanyana must do the impossible, and return to the world where they were created, on the other side of the veil. Her journey will force her into a terrible choice, and test just how much she is willing to sacrifice for the fate of two worlds.

Guardian was an unusual book, more so, I think, than the first two which at least shared a common setting. I'd seen a lot of people compare the Veiled Worlds series to anime aesthetics but I didn't really see the resemblance until Guardian. A large part of the story takes place in a different world with little in common with the world of Movoc-under-Keeper. In some ways that world is more similar to our own — mostly in the way that people don't control pions with their minds to build stuff — but it's a pretty extreme post-apocalyptic type of a world.

While Tanyana is there, we learn a lot about how the two worlds are connected, what the Keeper, the Other and the Veil are (although the latter takes a bit longer to become clear) and the connection between worlds. At the end of Suited there was a cataclysmic disruption that did not leave all the characters we've come to know intact. The ramifications of that are explored further here and, most notably, we find out what was going on with "Halves" having a special connection to the Keeper.

I have to say, I had somewhat mixed feelings about one character who was badly injured and then sort of magically fixed. On the one hand, she agreed to what happened (the being fixed part, not the badly injured part), but on the other, I couldn't help but feel the fix took away a lot of her agency and, crucially, affected her personhood and identity. I would have liked to have seen the consequences of that expired more fully rather than just touched upon in a sort of epilogue.

What makes Guardian hard to review is that it's so different from the first two books in setting. I would like to, at some point, reread all three books in succession to get the full impact of the flow of the story. And in case it isn't already obvious, Guardian is not the point at which to pick up the series. It's definitely the kind of trilogy where you should try to read the first two books first.

I quite enjoyed Guardian and indeed the entire Veiled Worlds trilogy. I highly recommend it to fans of technological fantasy or just fantasy which differs from the mainstream. The worldbuilding is very original and one of the real strengths of the series. The magic is very structured; leading some to call the series science fiction. In that light, fans of slipstream and genre-bending fiction should find much to like here.

4 / 5 stars

First published: June 2014, FableCroft
Series: Yes! Veiled World book 3 of 3
Format read: Paper
Source: Well, I pre-ordered an ecopy but then picked up the paperback from the TPP stall at WorldCon and (uncharacteristically) ended up reading that while travelling instead of the ebook
Challenges: Australian Women Writers Challenge

The Bone Chime Song and Other Stories by Joanne Anderton

The Bone Chime Song and Other Stories by Joanne Anderton is, as the title suggests, a collection of short stories. For those of you who've read Debris and/or Suited, these stories were very different in tone, surprising me a little with just how macabre they were.

Overall, I was very impressed with Anderton's worldbuilding in all the stories. Each story read like a glimpse into a complete and carefully constructed world. Just because the stories are short, Anderton in no way skimped on the thought put into them. Even for the stories set in some approximation of the modern world, careful details made them stand out.

I've included some thoughts on each story below, but I'm afraid they're not as coherent as I'd like them to be. Each story blew me away and, quite frankly, I think we're lucky I managed to say anything coherent at all, immediately after reading.

Anderton's stories in this collection can be loosely grouped into three categories: macabre fantasy world stories, macabre more-or-less real world stories, and macabre post-technological science-flavoured stories. (There may be a common thread running through them.) All the stories involve dead things and/or death, and often constructions from dead things. My favourite of the bunch, "Sanaa's Army", falls into the latter category and has my favourite cat of the bunch in them.

I've said, repeatedly, that the stories are macabre and deal with death, but I didn't find it to be in a depressing way. Well, OK, some of them were a bit depressing. But generally, there were many stories about life coming out of death. Or art or solace or something else constructive.

The more futuristic stories generally dealt with the struggle to live on in a world become more hostile. "Mah Song" deifies the vestiges of advanced technology in a world that's all but forgotten how it works. These stories brought to mind Arthur C Clarke's third law: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." Anderton takes it a step further at times, calling one of the AIs in "Out Hunting For Teeth" the Witch and her cyborg constructs Spells. (That was another of my favourite stories, in part for the ending.)

Ultimately, I was glad I didn't have a cat watching me while I read I really enjoyed this collection. Not all the stories were the kind of thing I would usually read, but it was mostly those which I ended up enjoying most. I'm not at all surprised that two of the stories have picked up award nominations and I wouldn't be surprised to see the collection itself shortlisted for next year's awards.

The Bone Chime Song and Other Stories is being launched at Conflux in Canberra on April 26, but in the meantime, you can pre-order a copy from the publisher here. I highly recommend this collection to spec fic fans who like their fantasy dark or who might want to venture out of their comfort zone and become a little more acquainted with dead things. But really, if any of the above or below piqued you're interest, I urge you to give it a go; it really is an excellent collection.

~

Some very brief reactions/descriptions of each story which I jotted down immediately after reading it:

The Bone Chime Song — (Ditmar shortlisted) Eerie, well imagined. A complete world glimpsed through a short story.

Mah Song — Cyborg technology, a future world where computers are alive and revered as gods and people depend on them for food and heeling. The main character desperate to take her brother's place as cyborg sacrifice. Technology mixed with mysticism.

Shadow of Drought — Nothing like the first two stories. A story of modern rural teenagers in a horror movie scenario who are aware of the fact.

Sanaa's Army — (Aurealis and Ditmar shortlisted) Another set in the real world. Another about bones, in a different way to "The Bone Chime Song", but not that different. Interesting that these two should be the Ditmar shortlisted stories.

From the Dry Heat to the Sea — A strange story of drought, of industrial poison, of water, of being an outsider.

Always a Price — Short, contemporary, magic and a cat.

Out Hunting for Teeth — Not what I expected from the title, although making things our of human remains comes up again. A science fiction story of the "sufficiently advanced technology indistinguishable from magic" variety, somewhat literally.

Death Masque — Eternity in an afterlife or a final death? This is the choice a grieving father makes for his son.

Flowers in the Shadow of the Garden — Floating gardens in a desert. This is another story that particularly impressed me with its worldbuilding.

A Memory Trapped In Light — Another post technological world with scraps if technology left behind. A girl protecting her younger sister from dystopian forces.

Trail of Dead — Zombies, the ones who fight them and the one who summoned them.

Fence Lines — Post-apocalyptic, but that wasn't the point. A sugarcane plantation as a safe outpost, guarded by ghosts.

Tied to the Waste — Post-apocalyptic, making things out of dead things. Cats.

4.5 / 5 stars

First published: April 2013, Fablecroft
Series: No.
Format read: eARC
Source: Review copy courtesy of the publisher
Challenges:  Australian Women Writers Challenge, Australian Horror Reading Challenge

Suited by Jo Anderton

Suited by Jo Anderton is the sequel to Debris which I read and reviewed earlier this year. I received an advanced review from the publisher, Angry Robot, but my sources tell me it should be available in ebook and paperback from today.

Suited was a surprising read. The first part was as expected a more or less direct continuation from Debris. After the somewhat disastrous events at the end of Debris, life in the city of Movoc-under-Keeper goes on. Mostly. Tanyana returns to debris collecting with her team and the other citizens of the city go about their usual jobs, albeit with a lot more repair work.

However, the world is not going back to how it was. Pion binders trying to repair damage are finding that they can’t, or that their repairs are short-lived. The debris collectors just can’t find much debris anywhere, even though the damaged pions suggest it should be everywhere. And the sinister puppet men still seem to be everywhere when Tanyana looks closely. In short, doom is looming.

In Debris, Tayana spent a lot more time worrying about her own life than she did in Suited (and Suited is much more about fixing/saving the world than Debris was). It made her a more likeable character, although there were parts where I don’t think she was supposed to be sympathetic, shifting more towards scary.

The romantic plotline, while no more prominent than in the first book, is handled better, I thought. I didn’t quite find the genesis of the relationship in Debris believable, but that was definitely not the case in Suited. I also like how Tanyana spent more time worrying about saving the world and less time worrying about her relationship issues (some of her friends spent more time worrying about her relationship issues than she did).

The ending was strange. The climax went as one would expect but the denouement did not. Of course going into detail would be spoilerific, but suffice to say there’s definitely room for a sequel series.

This is not a book to read without having first read Debris. I don’t think it would make all that much since since a lot of the foundation world building is done in the first book (as you would expect) and is critical to the plot. That said, this is an excellent series and I highly recommend both books to lovers of fantasy*.

4.5 / 5 stars

* As far as I’m concerned, it’s fantasy. Others’ opinions may vary by my feeling is that just because the magic is structured, doesn’t make it science. Also? Throwing in a few modern words also doesn’t make something science fiction when it’s full of magic, even if it has a vaguely steampunkish setting. Just throwing my hat in because some people have called this series SF. That said, I reserve the right to classify any potential sequels differently upon reading them.

Short Stories

I bought a Kobo Touch ereader on my way home from a distant trip. Partly because it’s hard to have an 8 hour layover without buyingsomethingother than necessary food (I also bought a giant box of Jelly Belly jelly beans at half the price of duty free, whoo), and partly because carrying paper books to read on long-haul flights is tedious. For one thing, they weigh more and take up more room and, for another, being shoved in my bag leads to more damaged covers (sacrilege!) than leaving them at home. Also, I have a terrible tendency to choose the wrong sort of books to take on flights, but I’m not blaming that on the dead trees.

Usually I read ebooks on my iPhone or iPad (on the go vs at home when hubby isn’t using it) and that’s not going to change. I have absolutely no problem reading on backlit screens and, hey, my iPhone still has more pixels than the Kobo making it smoother on the eyes. So why did I buy a Kobo? Battery life. It takes 24+ hours to fly from Europe to Australia and neither iThing can survive that many hours of near constant use (even in airplane aeroplane mode) and still have juice for emergencies upon arrival. Sure, I could bet on not reading the whole way — perhaps trying to sleep or availing myself of inflight entertainment — but sleep doesn’t always happen and not all flights have TVs in seats, especially overnight flights (and out of 24+ hourssome of that has to be overnight). So I bought a Kobo, which I just spent too many words justifying.

I wanted to test out my new Kobo but didn’t want to commit to reading an entire novel on it. After loading all my books on it (well, most of them; I discovered I don’t have the best ebook backup/filing system) I thought why not read some short stories that I’ve downloaded or bought and not got around to? The covers above are the stories I’ve read in the past couple of days.

“Grandeur” by Jo Anderton

This is a prequel teaser for Debris(see my review here). It gives a bit of a taste of the world and the characters, particularly the main character, Tanyana. Of course it contains no information crucial to the story in Debris, but I found it an interesting backstory. You can download it free as a PDF from the author’s website.

“Marine Biology” by Gail Carriger

This is a great story with adorable characters. Alec, the main character, is an in-the-closet werewolf who really doesn’t fit in with his pack. There are also merpeople and selkies. It’s similar in sensibilities to Carriger’s Parasol Protectorate books, but set in the modern world and with marine supernaturals included. (Side note: the cover works particularly well on the black and white Kobo e-ink screen.) You can buy it for 99 US cents on Smashwords.

“Party, With Echoes” by Patty Jansen

This is a science fictional deep-sea adventure set on Europa. It has weird alien bacterial colonies and an ice cave. Fun, quick read. You can download it free (for now?) on Smashwords.

“How Astrid Found Her Passion” by Nichole Murphy

A fantasy story about an Australian woman who gets mysteriously transported to a magical kingdom and inadvertently tangled up in a local dispute between mages and a lord. Another fun, quick read. You can also download this story free (for now?) on Smashwords.

Debris by Jo Anderton

Cross posted from here.

I enjoyed Debris by Jo Anderton.

I read a lot of fantasy, especially by Australian writers (no surprise that they’re dominating my reading so far this year). I’ve found that Australian fantasy is less likely to stick to clichéd convention and in that respect, Debris definitely does not disappoint.

The magical system Anderton has developed is focused around pions — bearing no resemblance to the mesons beloved by particle physicists, if you were wondering — tiny, glowing particles that permeate reality and which can be manipulated by people sufficiently skilled and trained. Some people can bind pions to their will, some can’t even see them. The debris of the title is magical matter left over from pion binding; useless refuse that disrupts crucial pions if not cleared away. Overall, the world has a little bit of a steampunk feel to it, mostly because that was the level of technology the society reached before the pion revolution something like 200 years before the start of the story.

The main character, Tanyana, is a highly skilled pion binder architect before she falls — both literally and metaphorically — in the first chapter. Or was she pushed? Forced to live the life of a lowly debris collector when her former lifestyle is lost to her, Tanyana struggles to find some explanation for what happened to her. Because she is convinced something else was there, when she fell, something that pushed her but that no one else could see.

I enjoyed Tanyana as a character. She is arrogant, but I didn’t see that as a bad thing. It made her interesting. She is both realistic and self-deluded about different things (for example, she’s not trying to get her life back, rather to find answers, but on the other hand, she tries to cling to the trappings of her old life a little too long). Most of all, when everything is taken from her, she is a survivor. She finds something else to be a part of. Of course, she doesn’t enjoy it at first, but she accepts it fairly quickly.

The other characters weren’t painted nearly as brightly as Tanyana. Mostly, this is due to the first person nature of the narrative. We know exactly what’s going on in Tanyana’s head all the time, but she doesn’t spend overly much time dwelling on other people (barring special exceptions). It was very much a one-woman show, with everyone else playing second fiddle, which isn’t a bad thing, given the external events also revolve about Tanyana. The only thing, characterisation-wise, that put me off a bit was her love interest. In the scene where they first hook up, I couldn’t really understand at the time why she interested in him, beyond the fact that he provoked her. It does make sense in retrospect, and the subsequent interactions between them worked well, but at the time that first scene left me ambivalent.

The conspiracy and the action in the latter half of the book had be eagerly turning the pages, however it started a more slowly and built up the world gradually. Also, while the climax was very much the most crucial scene in the book, I found the penultimate all-hell-breaks-loose disaster more exciting, in the action-packed sense.

As I said at the start, I enjoyed this book a lot. I am looking forward to reading the sequel out in July this year.

I am also about to go off and read Grandeur, a prequel short story which you can find on Jo Anderton’s website here.

Rating: 4.5 / 5 stars