SEAL Book Club

[InspectorCaracal]

Ok, this week's magazine is Clarkesworld and these are the stories, alas it's just short stories and no poems this time.

aww I'm actually going to miss the poems this week

I was NOT expecting this development lmfao

Ha. Same. I hardly read poems ever, and I did really like that there were some to read the last two times.

I'm not personally too surprised 'cause while I don't usually enjoy most poems I was looking forward to this making me branch out some more. Which it has been!

Also, I'm amused that while there are no poems, one of the stories has a poem type as the title

[Bee]

...Wait. No. I know what The Wonderful Stag is.

It's an inversion of Little Red Riding Hood.

...yeah, that fits better than Beauty and the Beast, but it's a less interesting interpretation, too, if that makes sense?

ngl I know exactly what you mean, I had that sudden realization and immediately felt disappointed.

TBH I think it might've only started as inversion, because it's really so very different, thematically. Or maybe I really just don't want to feel disappointed in it, lol

I like how everyone liked A Better Way of Saying but it's like, the one that offers the least to engage with lmao. It's lovely and subtle, though.

I actually just totally forgot to write up all my thoughts on it lmfao I realized that last night and was like "oh no! i gotta remember to post tomorrow morning".

I really loved him getting just slightly magical, plus the whole reality-bending nature of it. My favorite Ursula Le Guin short is the one where the guy's dreams become always-have-been-true and his power reminds me of that story, but more subtle. I also really liked how they handled the "question" at the end. It doesn't say whether or not that last "rewrite" took or not. It doesn't even ask if it took or not. It just says what happens and that he "wanted to see if he could", but the answer to that is left entirely up to the reader.

edit: I was rereading and realized I wasn't clear about this. I know the guy who got shot was fine, but the unanswered question is whether that's due to his attempted intervention or not.

And lastly, on a personal note, I particularly enjoyed the narrator being Jewish and a part of the Yiddish community and how the whole story was built on that framework without being about it.

YES, I loved how it's clearly heavily influenced by literary fiction and doesn't feel bound to the constraints of genre. It was so grounded in reality -- the immigrant Jewish community, the time, etc etc etc, and the... it was more of a suggestion of magical powers, really.

It's the kind of story you'd go back to re-read several times without tiring because it's just so... lovely, really.

[Bee]

Don't forget to read this week's texts~

[InspectorCaracal]

Don't forget to read this week's texts~

oh thanks i totally did forget

[Bee]

I've been really distracted this week and forgot to write up my comments so if anyone wants to start, don't be shy >.>

[InspectorCaracal]

I'LL DO IT


Mom Heart

This one hit a little too close on the "relatable" dart board, but once I got past that, I actually super liked it. I can't really put into words why it works, yet, but it does really well at making all the characters and their challenges and emotional responses feel Real. Also, it's not really what you'd think of as a scifi story, but at the same time, the scifi elements of it are actually integral to the story itself so it meshes really neatly.

In a lot of ways it's kind of like A Better Way Of Saying, in that it's about but not really about the strange parts of the story, but about people and their relationships and experiences and lives. This one has a much more focused message, though, being about loss and grief and family and recovery.

The way the father sort of accidentally helps himself recover by focusing on helping his children with the reactions of the two paralleling each other is really good.


This Stitch, This Time

Not a lot to say about this one. I like the conceit and the setting; it had a solid, if fairly typical theme about capitalistic bureaucracy and mismanagement. The "frame story", though, so to speak - the little conversational bits at the beginning and the end - put me off a lot, and the rest of the story wasn't really compelling enough to make up for it.

There's a piece of advice I heard a long time ago about writing book blurbs: don't build it on a rhetorical question. A rhetorical question has an assumed answer, which might not be the answer the person reading the blurb wants to give.

Those frame-story bits really felt a lot like that, but flipped around. They were responding to "me", the reader, as though I was questioning the narrator in a particular way, a way that reflects my own opinions, which immediately put me on edge. "How do you know what I would say?" kind of a thing. And nothing about the story made me feel like I would have asked the implicit questions in the intro.


The Death Haiku of the Azure Five by L Chan

This was FUCKING FANTASTIC. I loved it. I loved every bit of the world building, every bit of the style and narrative, all of the oh-so-subtle variations on voice between them, the reflection of "the same mind" in the way the second one references having said something the first one did about the Third series. The death poems. The way the story repeatedly raises the question of "where is Five", then answers it, then after I finished the whole thing I sit back and thought and realized, wait, there were only four, and went back and realized, the Keeper isn't there, what happened to the Keeper and you don't know. They were the mastermind behind everything. You can see all the pieces they put into play, the drama and defense they set up and allowed to unfold, but you have to extrapolate from there and you'll never really know.

Man this one was so good.

[thiskurt]

We have a bit of theme going on this week don't we? Something like man in the machine, with a ghost, briefly, possessing a cleaning robot in the first one, a sewing machine possesed by a feisty grandma in the second one and just the general conciousness of AI or the simulated human brain at the center of their brain lizard-brain style. (brain, brain, brain)

Mom Heart

This one is really sweet. I had a good idea where it was going, but it did it really well. The kids were characterized nicely, including the stupid neighbour kid, you got a real sense of the mom through the dad's recollections and imitation. All-in-all though I think bit-a-lemon Bob is my favourite character.

I'm not sure this approach was the right idea, it was very sweet, though, and you had a couple of different reactions to it that were all understandable. Of course bit-a-lemon Bob had the right idea in just leaving.

I liked the scene where the dad talks to himself as his wife and it really does comfort him, maybe he's just saying what he thinks she'd say and the memory helps him, but maybe he's 'inspired' by her to say something. I liked the whole thing with 'dad doesn't play' and how that gets resolved.

Just solid all around I'd say.

This Stitch, This Time

This one's ok. I wonder if I'd liked it better if I hadn't read it after the one above.

Those frame-story bits really felt a lot like that, but flipped around. They were responding to "me", the reader, as though I was questioning the narrator in a particular way, a way that reflects my own opinions, which immediately put me on edge. "How do you know what I would say?" kind of a thing. And nothing about the story made me feel like I would have asked the implicit questions in the intro.

The question in the intro doesn't make a lot of sense to me either and I'm not sure who they're asked to, I mean they had a meeting about the ghost sewing machine with all the top engineers, they were plenty warned. I guess it was to an outsider or us, but I just got here, Lady, I don't know what's going on!

I like the Grandma, though.

The Death Haiku of the Azure Five by L Chan

Hey, we got poems after all! Five, no hold on, four ones and they're integrated into the story.

I skimmed this one again after reading it and I'm still not sure I get the ending completely. Their Death Poems are going to be a part of some virus-type thing that's going to be transmitted to all the psyches in the universe to kill them and end the war?

[InspectorCaracal]

We have a bit of theme going on this week don't we? Something like man in the machine, with a ghost, briefly, possessing a cleaning robot in the first one, a sewing machine possesed by a feisty grandma in the second one and just the general conciousness of AI or the simulated human brain at the center of their brain lizard-brain style. (brain, brain, brain)

Hey, you're right! Somehow I completely missed that but they are all about people-in-machines. It's a good theme, I like it.

I skimmed this one again after reading it and I'm still not sure I get the ending completely. Their Death Poems are going to be a part of some virus-type thing that's going to be transmitted to all the psyches in the universe to kill them and end the war?

I think the death poems aren't a part of the virus so much as being tacked on for the ride, but yeah, that's what happens. It's essentially a robot kamikaze attack.

The satellite psyche thins the defenses, the battleship punches open a door, the transport psyche takes the "refugees" through but takes fatal damage to protect the passengers. The passengers are carrying the dismantled bomb psyche and rebuild it deep in the heart of the safe zone, and after it's rebuilt, the bomb sends a kill-switch virus to the entire network of Second psyches.

It's unclear if the war is already over at this point, and it's also unclear if the virus is intended to "win" in the usual sense (the story touches on the definition of victory briefly, which is suggestive) or simply to either "free" the Second Psyches who were forced into all of this or to cripple the already-"victorious" society.

All of the Seconds on BOTH sides are expected to be destroyed by this.

[InspectorCaracal]

Quick side note, I wanna mention I'm referring to the specific tactics and techniques of kamikaze attacks in WW2 and not the figurative use of any kind of suicide rush.

[Bee]

We have a bit of theme going on this week don't we? Something like man in the machine, with a ghost, briefly, possessing a cleaning robot in the first one, a sewing machine possesed by a feisty grandma in the second one and just the general conciousness of AI or the simulated human brain at the center of their brain lizard-brain style. (brain, brain, brain)

Hey, you're right! Somehow I completely missed that but they are all about people-in-machines. It's a good theme, I like it.

Yeah, I think Clarkesworld does themed issues, actually.

Anyway.

Mom Heart was, of course, lovely and hit too damn close. I can't really think about it without wanting to cry, so let's just leave it at that, lol.

This Stitch, This Time pissed me off. The idea of a sewing machine spitting off Morse code from beyond the grave was absolutely priceless, but the more I think about the story, the more it annoys me. It just falls apart if you look too closely, and not in the " unreliable narrator" sense, either. It just falls apart.

The Death Haiku of the Azure Five by L Chan
I'm not really into the "are machines people?" genre so I lost interest very quickly and as a result, wasn't particularly impressed with it, but after reading Cal's comments last night I decided to give it another try... and it turns out the story was actually... good?? :O