Chaos on CatNet by Naomi Krtizer

Chaos on CatNet by Naomi Krtizer is the sequel to Catfishing on CatNet, which was an excellent book and I recommend reading it first. The short story "Cat Pictures Please", is also set in the same world and makes a nice introduction to one of the characters, though is not necessary to follow the story in the novels. Furthermore, do not be put of by the very generically US YA cover, the book inside is much more unique than the cover makes it seem.

It takes an AI to catch an AI in Chaos on CatNet, the follow-up to Naomi Kritzer's award-winning near future YA thriller.

When a mysterious entity starts hacking into social networks and chat rooms to instigate paranoia and violence in the real world, it’s up to Steph and her new friend, Nell, to find a way to stop it—with the help of their benevolent AI friend, CheshireCat.

Chaos on CatNet was an excellent read. We return to Steph, CheshireCat the AI, and their human friends, plus some newly introduced characters. Steph is now living (permanently) in Minneapolis and makes a new friend at school. Her new friend just so happens to have recently left a cult, which makes more some unexpectedly interesting and ominous reading.

Overall, Chaos on CatNet had higher stakes than the previous book, and the brewing confrontation was very menacing and disconcerting. I don't want to spoil anything, but I found the rising background tension unnerving and, which I think was the intent. It was still a compelling read, but less fluffy and comforting than Catfishing on CatNet (which had more of an isolated climax).

I enjoyed this book a lot and I would definitely read a sequel if one were forthcoming. This series has made for very unputdownable reading. I highly recommend Chaos on CatNet to fans of Catfishing on CatNet and the series generally to people who are intrigued by the concept of a cat-loving AI befriending a bunch of nerdy teenagers.

4.5 / 5 stars

First published: April 2021, Tor Teen
Series: CatNet book 2 of 2 (so far)
Format read: eARC
Source: Publisher via NetGalley

Short Stories #6–10, mostly Hugo shortlisted

I have not "officially" read very many short stories this year. As I think I mentioned in my last short story post, this is in large part because of reading submissions for Rebuilding Tomorrow, my new anthology, coming out by the end of the year if no more apocalypses hit. Since I, of course, can't mention those on the blog, my other reading has been rather slow. This latest batch were partly inspired by the Hugo short list, except for the first one, which just jumped out at me for being a cool story.

I plan to do some proper Hugo round ups when I've read all the relevant things, but for now, here are some of them, in the random order I read them in:

Little Free Library by Naomi Kritzer — A very cute story about a woman who built a tiny community library. It has a nice mystery and a compelling ending. I liked it a lot and I won’t be surprised if it makes next year’s Hugo ballot. Source: https://www.tor.com/2020/04/08/little-free-library-naomi-kritzer/

A Catalogue of Storms by Fran Wilde — A surreal but sweet/sad (sort of) story set in a world where storms have some degrees of sentience and certain people become incorporeal to fight them. I enjoyed it. It felt quite poetic. Source: https://uncannymagazine.com/article/a-catalog-of-storms/

Ten Excerpts from an Annotated Bibliography on the Cannibal Women of Ratnabar Island by Nibedita Sen — An interesting story told in snippets from the points of view of a variety of people. It explores colonialism, diaspora and a few other issues, with an additional off-putting layer of cannibalism. I generally find stories told through snippets interesting, but I’m not sure I can easily like them as much as traditional narratives. Source: http://www.nightmare-magazine.com/fiction/ten-excerpts-from-an-annotated-bibliography-on-the-cannibal-women-of-ratnabar-island/

And Now His Lordship Is Laughing by Shiv Ramdas — A satisfying story of revenge against colonisers, after a detailed description of some of their atrocities. I was not a fan of the narration from the Strange Horizons podcast. Source: http://strangehorizons.com/fiction/and-now-his-lordship-is-laughing/

Away With the Wolves by Sarah Gailey — An engaging enough story about a werewolf who suffers from chronic pain when human. The story was more or less about the idea that one need not torture oneself just to find acceptance in the community. I found it got a little preachy at the very end, but overall it was fine. Source: https://uncannymagazine.com/article/away-with-the-wolves

Catfishing on CatNet by Naomi Kritzer

Catfishing on CatNet by Naomi Kritzer is a YA novel set in the world of the short story "Cat Pictures, Please", which does not require previous knowledge of that story to enjoy. This was an excellent book which I accidentally started reading and then didn't put down until 4 am, several months before its release date. Whoops.

My two favorite things to do with my time are helping people and looking at cat pictures. I particularly like helping people who take lots of cat pictures for me. I have a fair amount of time to allocate: I don’t have a body, so I don’t have to sleep or eat. I am not sure whether I think faster than humans think, but reading is a very different experience for me than it is for humans. To put knowledge in their brains, humans have to pull it in through their eyes or ears, whereas I can just access any knowledge that’s stored online.

Admittedly, it is easy to overlook knowledge that I technically have possession of because I’m not thinking about it in the moment. Also, having to access to knowledge doesn’t always mean understanding things.

I do not entirely understand people.

As if an endearing AI wasn't enough, this book's human protagonist also has an excellent voice, turning this book into quite a page-turner. The story mainly focusses on Steph, who moves around a lot with her mother and hence doesn't have much chance to make friends in meatspace, instead forming her closest friendships online. Starting at yet another crappy school, Steph finally does make some friends and this sets off a complicated chain of events which results in a very high-stakes climax.

It's just as well this book is written in an extremely up-beat tone, because it deals with some pretty heavy issues, mostly surrounding domestic violence and the appalling state of the US education system (near-future or not) but also with passing nods to racism. It would have been a very depressing read if it wasn't funny — and if we didn't have the AI as a bit of a wildcard to mix things up.

Catfishing on CatNet is an excellent book and I highly recommend it to all fans of science fiction — especially AI — and YA. If you want to get a feel for the book without committing to it, the short story "Cat Pictures Please" will give you a very good idea of the tone, even if it's about the AI rather than Steph. This is a completely self-contained read but there is potential for sequels or spin-offs. I would be more than happy to read more stories about any of the characters in this book.

5 / 5 stars

First published: November 2019, Tor Teen
Series: Maybe? Same world as "Cat Pictures Please" but a self-contained story with a potential hook for a sequel
Format read: eARC
Source: Publisher via NetGalley

#ReadShortStories all over the place (76–80)

I'm still making my way through the Hugo Novelette shortlist, as evidenced by only one of those novelettes appearing in this batch of reading. I also started a new collection: The Manticore's Vow by Cassandra Rose Clarke. It's very short — only three stories — so expect to see either the rest of the stories soon or the review of the whole thing imminently.

It is almost interesting to note that all five stories in this batch came from different sources. (Although I put in the Uncanny link for the Aliette de Bodard story, I actually got it from the Hugo voter packet.) Unfortunately Emma Newman's story is currently not accessible to people who don't subscribe to her newsletter, but she has promised that the stories will be collected together in a book eventually.



Remember by A J Lee — An OK flash piece. A predictable twist and an insufficiently dramatic ending, perhaps. Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-01507-w

What Travis Built by Emma Newman — A short piece filling in an off-page moment set after After Atlas. A sweet vignette about the romantic relationship between two characters and also a farm-sim game. Source: Emma Newman’s newsletter

The Thing About Ghost Stories by Naomi Kritzer — The story opens like a nonfiction essay but then settles into the lived experience of the narrator, who is a ghost-story collecting anthropologist. As well as discussing different types of ghost stories, the story gives us a glimpse into the narrators life with her ageing mother. I quite enjoy this story, for its discussion of ghost stories as well as the main story. I guess I had enough of a scientist to enjoy such categorisations. Source: https://uncannymagazine.com/article/the-thing-about-ghost-stories/

The Dragon That Flew Out of the Sun by Aliette de Bodard — A story of racial tensions arising from one group destroying the planet of another (well, rendering it uninhabitable). I liked both the idea and the execution. Source: https://uncannymagazine.com/article/the-dragon-that-flew-out-of-the-sun/

The Manticore’s Vow by Cassandra Rose Clarke — Narrated in first person by a manticore, this story follows a young manticore, her human servant and some friends as she misadventures in her father’s kingdom. I enjoyed it well enough, particularly towards the end of the story. Source: The Manticore’s Vow By Cassandra Rose Clarke

Short stories 21 to 25

Two stories in this batch written as something like diary entries: the first and the last, and they couldn't be more different. One is told through a cooking blog during a pandemic, while the other is disturbing diary entries during an alien war. In between there was time travel, spaceships made from humans connecting a vast colonial empire, and some kind of transcendence.

So Much Cooking by Naomi Kritzer — This is the story of a flu pandemic told through the medium of a food (cooking) blog. It pulled me into the story as soon as I opened it and, despite not being into food or particularly interested in the recipes, I couldn’t put it down. A surprisingly good piece of writing. Source: http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/kritzer_11_15/

Oblivion is a Crease Left By Memory by Chen Qiufan — Following the theme of a flight that lands 20 years in the future, this story is about an artist who was going to run an exhibit in San Francisco. Instead, they learn about a new form of art made possible by technology that taps into your brain and experiences. I found it an interesting read and not what I expected (the previous story I read from this anthology, by Charlie Jane Anders, had a very different, comical vibe). Source: https://seat14c.com/future_ideas/17F?utm_source=author&utm_medium=web&utm_campaign=seat14c&utm_content=ChenQiufan

These Constellations Will Be Yours by Elaine Cuyegkeng — A story of colonialism and a future where spaceships are built from a particular group of people. Told from the perspective of one of the ships watching a woman who was not similarly made into a ship. I really liked the ideas in this story though it wasn’t a happy read. Source: http://strangehorizons.com/fiction/these-constellations-will-be-yours/

Worlds Like a Hundred Thousand Pearls by Aliette de Bodard — Eh. A flash piece about grief and transcendence. It was OK but didn’t really grab me. Source: http://dailysciencefiction.com/hither-and-yon/the-numbers-quartet/aliette-de-bodard/worlds-like-a-hundred-thousand-pearls

Diary of War by Joyce Chng — Somewhere between a prose-poem and diary entries, this story tells about war waged by alien invaders, who turn out to be very invasive. The sparse style is moving, especially with this subject matter. Source: http://www.anathemamag.com/diary-of-war

A second batch of stories

It's possible that I need to think of a better blog post naming scheme for these series of posts, but since they don't pertain to a specific challenge, I don't have any ideas. I do have an update on my short story recording/organisation, however. Now I have a script that will automatically extract story details (title, author, mini-review, link) from my spreadsheet so that I can copy the output directly to a blog post. All I have to do is add the bolding (which might become automated too...). This was easy enough to do inside the spreadsheet itself, but for reasons I won't bore you with having a script is less fiddly, especially as I tick stories off as being blogged about. (This setup works using Apple's Numbers and Applescript, so it's probably not for everyone.)

My favourite story in this batch is hands down "The Cartographer Wasps and the Anarchist Bees" by E Lily Yu, which was apparently short listed for ALL the awards, and I can see why. Definitely recommend reading it if you haven't already. The longest story in this batch, which actually took me a few days of reading (in between novel reading) to get through. I didn't actively dislike it, but it didn't really grab me and is probably my least favourite Greg Egan read to date. Oh well.


Waiting Out the End of the World in Patty's Place Cafe by Naomi Kritzer — A story about the imminent end of the world at the hands of an asteroid, and the friendships made along the way. A mostly good story, but the science was silly; they kept complaining that they couldn’t map the trajectory because Arecibo got defunded, but that is entirely the wrong sort of telescope for asteroid tracking (and even if it wasn’t, it’s also not the only telescope in the world). Source: http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/kritzer_03_17/

Dragon Brides by Nghi Vo — A story about a queen who, in her youth, had been rescued from a Dragon by her now-husband. A nice story but a little slow and I saw the end coming. Source: http://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/dragon-brides/

The Cartographer Wasps and the Anarchist Bees by E Lily Yu — A delightful story about educated wasps who can make paper, write in Mandarin and make maps. Source: http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/yu_04_11/

Uncanny Valley by Greg Egan — A long story about a realistic android made in the image of a Hollywood screenwriter with all his memories loaded in after he died. Or almost all his memories, which is where the story lies. An OK read but I didn’t love it nor connect with the protagonist. Source: http://www.tor.com/2017/08/09/uncanny-valley/

An Age of Ice by Zhang Ran — A story about a near future when cryonic freezing and thawing have become reality. Thoughtful but not excessively so. (And not as extreme as, say, Cryoburn by Lois McMaster Bujold, but certainly tending in that direction.) Source: http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/zhang_07_17/