‘Immersion’ by Aliette de Bodard – 2012 BSFA Award Short Story Club

‘Immersion’ was originally published in Clarkesworld #69

‘Immersion’ is a neat, symmetrical story that sets out its moral clearly at the end:

It takes a Galactic to believe that you can take a whole culture and reduce it to algorithms; that language and customs can be boiled to just a simple set of rules. For these girls, things are so much more complex than this; and they will never understand how an immerser works, because they can’t think like a Galactic, they’ll never ever think like that. You can’t think like a Galactic unless you’ve been born in the culture.

Quy lives on Longevity Station, a minority culture economically reliant on tourism from the majority culture of the Galactics. She speaks Rong which suggests Himalayan ethnicity origins but the specifics are less important than the fundamental power relationship of minority-majority. Agnes is from the same culture as Quy but has left it behind, along with her original name, to become a Galactic. The technology of the immerser allows her to discard her past far more comprehensively than is possible for us though.

Immersers were invented by the Galactics to act as holographic translators, changing not just words but appearance and gesture. Agnes used hers to more rapidly assimilate into the culture of the Galactics. However, she became addicted to it, without it she would die but with it she is unable to function and exists in a state approaching catatonia. This is mirrored in Que’s half of the narrative where there is a suggestion that she escaped a similar fate but still suffers from depression as a result (which explains but doesn’t improve the flat prose).

So distrust of technology is firmly embedded in the story. Virtual reality as drug is a well-established metaphor and the clichés of one transfer easily to the other. Similarly, well-established is the idea that digital cannot compete with analogue in terms of veracity. So, for example, we have Quy watching spaceships form the docks of the station:

She could, of course, have been anywhere on Longevity Station, and requested the feed from the network to be patched to her router—and watched, superimposed on her field of vision, the slow dance of ships slipping into their pod cradles like births watched in reverse. But there was something about standing on the spaceport’s concourse—a feeling of closeness that she just couldn’t replicate by standing in Golden Carp Gardens or Azure Dragon Temple.

Beyond this, there is a sense that the technology is impure. Quy “actually would have been glad to never put on an immerser again—she hated the feeling they gave her, the vague sensation of the system rooting around in her brain to find the best body cues to give her.” The body horror she feels is echoed in the way she describes her culture being invaded: “a unison of foreigners descending on the station like a plague of centipedes or leeches”.

It is a complacent and overly familiar treatment of technology and one that is reflected in the glibness of the plot. Agnes is saved from mental incarceration simply by Quy saying “you have to take it off”. Doctors have been unable to do anything for Agnes but have not had Quy’s internal self-knowledge and personal connection. So spiritualism is prioritised over science and all sorts of bullshit short, sharp shock theories of the treatment of addiction are validated.

This glibness is matched by the closing moral that I quoted at the beginning which is a shame because it detracts from the more interesting depiction of the unequal relationships between the two cultures. The reason Agnes has returned to Longevity is because her husband is trying to dredge up he

Quy thought of the banquet; of the food on the tables, of Galen thinking it would remind Agnes of home. Of how, in the end, it was doomed to fail, because everything would be filtered through the immerser, leaving Agnes with nothing but an exotic feast of unfamiliar flavours.

It is an excellently pointed use of the word “exotic”. Despite what Quy says, Agnes does magically achieve this conceptual breakthrough. I might not like this fact but it is beautifully expressed:

Her avatar is but a thin layer, and you can see her beneath it: a round, moon-shaped face with skin the colour of cinammon—no, not spices, not chocolate, but simply a colour you’ve seen all your life.

‘The Church Of Accelerated Redemption’ by Gareth L. Powell and Aliette de Bodard

Lisa is a computer engineer, a bottom rung temp. Not only does she get all the shit jobs, her boss repeatedly finds excuses to dock her pay; either it is because she is a woman or because she is American but either way she is powerless to prevent it. Resigned and resenting, she is all to aware that she is one step away form being down and out in Paris.

Taking a job at the Church of Accelerated Redemption, she becomes caught up in protest against the church by the Extraordinary Sapience Committee. The ESC’s problem with the church is that they run state of the art AIs to automatically generate personalised prayers on behalf of their subscribers (a cute idea) and as such they are enslaving carbon facists. Lisa does not find this line of argument particularly convincing. She does, however, becomes obsessed by a man in the crowd of protesters.

This is the first problem for the story. ‘The Church Of Accelerated Redemption’ is told in with the sort of matter of fact prose that is the default not only for this anthology but for genre science fiction as a whole. This means that Powell and de Bodard are unable to really capture Lisa’s pscyological state or the nature of her obsession. (Incidently, I’ve read work by both the authors previously but not enough to sayhow their collaboration differs from their solo work, stylisticly or otherwise.) So we have to accept the depth of her obsession simply because of her actions: she tracks him down and asks him on a date.

It is not a particularly romantic date. In fact, it takes place in a graveyard and is mostly given over to a debate about the possibility of strong AI. He also brings alone a pair of teenage “emo” bodyguard who terminate the date by betaing her up, pulling a knife on her and then kidnapping her. Definitely one for @firstdatehell.

Now we get to the second problem. After a hilariously lame non-apology (“I’m worried we got off on the wrong foot.” No shit.), he then reveals that he is actually a strong AI himself. Following a train accident as a child, a big hole in his brain was filled with “gel and silicon, and electronic components” and from this emerged a new type of consciousness. He rounds out this explanation by giving her a slap. So much for getting off on the wrong foot.

My suspension of disbelief was now shattered but Lisa is made of stronger stuff. Despite her treatment – and in a development that has been painfully obvious from the beginning – she volunteers to infitrate the church. That unexplain obsessive attraction again. The pair watch a romantic comedy at her flat before breaking in and liberating the AIs. As an added bonus, her asshole boss is there so she can beat him up. It is all very neatly tied up, including a very heavily foreshadowed revelation about what happens next for the emancipated AIs. Once again, optimism means magic technology saving the day for humanity.

Near-future? Yes.
Optimistic? Yes.
Readable? For the first half or so.
Good? No.

What’s The Opposite Of Bellum Omnium Contra Omnes?

As you will have noticed from my short story projects I tend to find genre short stories frustrating. For this reason I subscribe to none of the magazines and rarely read any of the freely available material on the internet. The exception is at awards time. This is, after all, part of the point of awards: to filter a huge field and identify the best of the best. By reading only shortlisted works I should avoid all frustration and experience only excellent literature.

Ho, ho, ho.

Not only does awards season mean I read short fiction, it also means I get an opportunity to talk about it. This year Karen Burnham has been running a short story club at Locus Online. It is a welcome development, although it is a shame to see no other contributors to Locus taking part. The club covers all the short stories and novelettes that received two our more award nominations this year.

One of these stories is ‘That Leviathan, Whom Thou Hast Made’ by Eric James Stone, which was shortlisted for both the Hugo and the Nebula. It subsequently won the Nebula. This means, theoretically, that the membership of the Science Fiction Writers of America – professional writers all – thought that this was the best short story published in science fiction and fantasy in 2010. That is quite an accolade. Theoretically.

Before going on to try and puzzle out what has gone catestrophically wrong with the Nebulas, I suppose I better mention the story itself. My first encounter with the story was when Nick Mamatas refered to it as the “Mormon space whale rape story”. Then I read Abigail Nussbaum’s scathing review as part of her overview of the Hugo novelette shortlist. (Nussbaum has also written about the Hugo short story and novella categories. Poor sod.) As such, although my expectations for the short story club had already been lowered by ‘The Jaguar House, in Shadow’ by Aliette de Bodard and ‘Ponies’ by Kij Johnson, I was confident that ‘Leviathan’ would be much worse. And it was.

I tweeted the story as I read it at #whalerape (now lost to the ether) and I’ve left several comments on the Locus post so I’m not going to rehearse why the story is so bad (it is also worth reading the David Moles post linked there). If you think the story has any merit at all, feel free to try and convince me in the comments. Instead, my interest now is in how it won the Nebula. The voting system might well play a part. As Sam Montgomery-Blinn pointed out, unlike the Hugos:

the final vote is a winner take all, unranked vote: pick one of these 5-6 stories. This is precisely the voting system you would expect to produce a mediocre winner with strong hot/cold reactions, while 3 or 4 more potentially outstanding stories split the remaining votes.

But that would still mean a chunk of people had to actively vote for ‘Leviathan’. How many members of the SFWA vote for the Nebulas and how many of them voted for this story? I’ve no idea because this information isn’t published. The Hugos are very good about publishing their nomination and voting statistics and I can see no good reason why the Nebulas shouldn’t do the same. I emailed the SFWA to ask for the statistics but I’ve had no response. Because of this fundamental lack of transparency around the award, I am reliant on anecedotal evidence. For example, Rick Bowes gave a partial answer but I’m not sure what his source is:

it appears that fewer than 20% of the membership recommend on the preliminary ballot or vote on the final ballot. It’s possible for a very small number (even single digets) of recs to put a work on the final ballot.

The combination of First Past The Post and low voter turnout is exactly the sort of situation where you would expect logrolling to succeed. And, chances are, that is exactly what has happened here. Mamatas has since mentioned that Stone is a member of the Codex writers group. He is not the only one. Here is the shortlist for the Nebula novelette category:

• ‘Map of Seventeen’ by Christopher Barzak
• ‘The Jaguar House, in Shadow’ by Aliette de Bodard (Codex)
• ‘The Fortuitous Meeting of Gerard van Oost and Oludara’ by Christopher Kastensmidt (Codex)
• ‘Plus or Minus’ by James Patrick Kelly
• ‘Pishaach’ by Shweta Narayan
• ‘That Leviathan, Whom Thou Hast Made’ by Eric James Stone (Codex)
• ‘Stone Wall Truth’ by Caroline M. Yoachim (Codex)

It is the same old story, you vote for your mates, regardless of how good their work is. Of course, the Nebulas have always had this reputation but even so you would hope people who voted for this story would have the good grace to be embarrassed. ‘Leviathan’ is not the best story of 2011, it is not even a good story; in fact, it can probbaly be counted amongst the worst stories published in 2011. Couldn’t the Codex writers group just have bought Stone a cake? That way I wouldn’t have been tricked into thinking his story was worth reading, that the Nebulas retained an vestige of value and that the SFWA was an organisation interested in literature.