Anime Review: Dance with Devils

written by Laurie Tom

dance with devils

Dance with Devils was a pleasant surprise considering that I almost didn’t watch it, and it ended up being one of my must-watch shows of the season. It’s not a brilliant show, but as a guilty pleasure? Hell yeah!

Ritsuka Tachibana thinks she’s a normal high school student, until her house gets ransacked by vampires looking for a mysterious Grimoire and kidnap her mother in the process. The various members of the student council turn up alternately trying to help or seduce her, as they’re all devils who are similarly after the Grimoire and believe she is key to finding it. And to top it off, her brother comes home from overseas and he’s secretly an exorcist, but that doesn’t mean she can entirely trust him either as there’s a lot he’s not telling her about their family history.

This sort of story has been done before, and in the anime format looks particularly like an adaptation of an otome game (dating game for girls), but surprisingly the game is actually coming later as it’s not out yet even in Japan. What makes Dance with Devils different from others of its kind is that it’s a musical, and things that are not quite so original, or even laughable, when taken as straight dialogue, are perfectly permissible when done in song.

The student council introduction number where each of the four male devils is singing about how badass they are pretty much won me over, and every episode since then finds a way to work in at least one song which showcases the personality of the character singing it. Not all the numbers do it for me, but the sheer absurdity of having singing devils and vampires goes a long way. It’s also hard to hold it against a show that manages to work in a number that features a chorus of demonic Pomeranian dogs.

As for the plot itself, there is one, but it’s fairly bare bones. Most of the series is comprised of Ritsuka trying to find her kidnapped mother and getting baited by vampires (who are definitely the bad guys) and sometimes by devils (who are the “good” guys but not necessarily nice people) while her brother goes full-on overprotective sibling over her.

Each of the devils falls in love with Ritsuka in his own strangely warped way which culminates in all of them fighting for her in the inevitable devils versus vampires showdown over the fate of the Grimoire. It’s clear from the narrative just which devil is the one intended to be her main love interest, though they oddly do not spend that much time together since this is a short series and each major character has at least one episode focusing around them.

Through the show, Ritsuka exhibits questionable judgment (walking down dark alleys with the last people any sane girl should be walking with), but she is ultimately responsible for saving herself in the final confrontation, which was much appreciated even though it felt a little too late.

That said, I did like her decision at the end of the story. It makes the ending a little bittersweet rather than the happily ever after one would expect in a show involving a single girl and a bunch of suitors, but I liked it for taking a more realistic route as Ritsuka is still a teenager and the choice she made feels like the right one.

Surprisingly, there is a stinger at the end of the series, leading to the possibility that there will be a sequel of some kind. If that’s the case, I would happily watch that one as well.

As a series on its own Dance with Devils is solidly B-material, but as a musical, it works so much better that I recommend it to anyone looking to try something new.

Number of Episodes: 12

Pluses: musical, protagonist is ultimately architect of her own destiny, devils versus vampires if that’s your thing

Minuses: characters are fairly unoriginal, protagonist spends a lot of time being pulled around by other people, most of the romantic leads are real jerks

Dance with Devils is currently streaming at Funimation and Hulu and is available both subtitled and dubbed (though dub requires a Funimation subscription). Funimation has licensed this for eventual retail distribution in the US.

laurietom
Laurie Tom is a fantasy and science fiction writer based in southern California. Since she was a kid she has considered books, video games, and anime in roughly equal portions to be her primary source of entertainment. Laurie is a previous grand prize winner of Writers of the Future and since then her work has been published in Galaxy’s Edge, Strange Horizons, and the Year’s Best YA Speculative Fiction.

The Best of Lightspeed (and Fantasy) Podcast 2015

written by David Steffen

Lightspeed is as good as ever, another big source for my award nominations each year. John Joseph Adams continues to edit the magazine. In 2015 they ran the wildly successful Kickstarter for their Queers Destroy Science Fiction special issue. The QDSF special issue was published in May, and the Queers Destroy Fantasy followup was published in the occasionally-resurrected Fantasy Magazine page in December. The QDSF issue was edited by Seanan McGuire, Steve Berman, Sigrid Ellis, Mark Oshiro, and Wendy N. Wagner. The QDF issue was edited by Christopher Barzak, Liz Gorinsky, and Matthew Cheney. Check out the Destroy site for more information about this series of projects (People of Color Destroy Science Fiction is the 2016 special edition upcoming)

Lightspeed publishes about half of their stories in podcast form. The Lightspeed podcast published 52 stories, and the QDF special issues published 2 more.

The List

1. “Nothing is Pixels Here” by K.M. Szpara
Compelled to seek out the rare glitches in a simulated world, a man and his boyfriend decided to visit the real world for the first time since they were kids.

2. “Seven Wonders of a Once and Future World” by Caroline M. Yoachim
A scientist is visited by an entity that calls itself Achron, that exists outside the ordinary stream of time. The story is split into sections based on fantastical versions of the ancient Seven Wonders of the World, which I enjoyed.

3. “Violation of the TrueNet Security Act by Taiyo Fuji”, translated by Jim Hubbert
The original Internet had been abandoned when the search engines went berserk and wiped everyone’s computers, locked everyone out of the Internet. Now there is only TrueNet, the next generation of the Internet, with human safeguards in place to ensure that automated programs can’t overrun everything again. But why did the search engines lock everyone out in the first place?

4. “Ghosts of Home” by Sam J. Miller
Very cool idea for a story, exploring the idea of household spirits in a time after the housing bubble popped. What happens to all the spirits in those empty foreclosed homes?

5. “Veil of Ignorance” by David Barr Kirtley
Based on the theory that difference in perspectives perpetuates inequality because a person is more willing accept bad things happening to people if they’re certain it will only affect other people, a group of friends takes a drug that makes them as a group unable to be certain which one of them they are, to put down a veil of ignorance to see if they will treat each other better from the simple fact of each person not knowing whether they are the one mistreating or being mistreated. Tricky point of view in this one, but I think it was pulled off nicely.

Honorable Mentions

“Werewolf Loves Mermaid” by Heather Lindsley

“Tea Time” by Rachel Swirsky

“The Lily and the Horn” by Catherynne M. Valente

Anime Review: Young Black Jack

young black jack Let’s start from the beginning with this one. Black Jack was an extremely popular manga that ran from the early 1970s to the early 1980s written and illustrated by legendary manga creator Osamu Tezuka (best known in the US for Astro Boy and Kimba the White Lion).

Black Jack is the titular unlicensed surgeon who charges exorbitant amounts of money to perform his job. He gets away with his fees because he’s a medical genius who can save a life when no one else can, but despite his money grubbing image, he’s not as mercenary as he pretends to be.

Young Black Jack (based on the manga written by Yoshiaki Tabata and illustrated by Yuugo Oukuma) would presumably be the story of what turned Kuroo Hazama from a brilliant medical student into the unlicensed rogue surgeon known as Black Jack. Unfortunately, despite having a brilliant era of upheaval to work with by setting the story in the 1960s and having plotlines that run through Vietnam, American civil rights, and the Japanese medical student protests, it mostly manages to fall flat.

Any one of those events in the 1960s could have been enough to twist young Hazama’s ideals from becoming a doctor who helps everyone to the black market surgeon who notoriously only operates on people who can afford his price, but instead he goes through all those events and largely comes out the way he started, robbing him of the kind of growth we expect.

Instead the show feels more like a dry run of his future life, narrated oddly enough, by Akio Ootsuka, who is traditionally the voice of Black Jack (though Yuuchirou Umehara plays the younger Kuroo Hazama in Young Black Jack). Many of the early episodes and surgeries parallel chapters and scenarios from the original Tezuka manga, with the primary difference being several recurring characters and Hazama’s position as an untried medical student.

For instance, in the opening episode, a boy is injured in a train derailment and loses his limbs. When the hospital doesn’t think the limbs can be reattached, Hazama names a large price to the parents and promises to save the child’s limbs.

At first the parents are shocked, because it’s assumed that he’s being greedy, but Hazama immediately arranges for half his fee to be paid to a surgeon at a different clinic so he can use his operating room (the hospital being overwhelmed with other victims), and as promised he reattaches the child’s limbs. After the successful surgery the parents find out that he’s unlicensed because he’s still a medical student, and only pay him half the requested amount since they didn’t like being ripped off by a greedy man who isn’t even a real surgeon. This, of course, means that Hazama did the surgery for free.

Aside from the fact that he’s way too good at his first ever surgery (even for being a genius), it’s a very Black Jack story, but the problem is, we’ve seen it done before and the show doesn’t bring anything new to the table, not even when deliberately making it a period piece. Young Black Jack makes stabs at shaping Hazama through the events of the era, but instead it feels more like a greatest hits tour of the 1960s simply because that’s the time period when he would have been in medical school given when the original manga was published.

I do have to say though that the American civil rights arc did not offend me as much as I feared it would (Japan does not have a good track record of portraying characters of African ancestry), but it still feels like a gross simplification of real world events. Perhaps because the original audience is assumed to be unfamiliar with the civil rights movement, this was necessary to give them a baseline, but it feels like a missed opportunity.

Still, it’s encouraging to see African Americans represented not just there, but among other Americans in other story arcs. They might not be particularly deep characters (none of the Americans are, except for the one who is a surprise cameo of a character from the original Black Jack), but they’re represented, which is very rare in anime and probably owed to Tezuka, who was more conscious of race than most of his contemporaries.

Young Black Jack is a bit of a curiosity because it doesn’t seem entirely willing to be its own beast, and by retreading ground Tezuka himself has covered, it doesn’t feel nearly as fulfilling as going back and reading the originals. Oddly enough, the show also seems unwilling to let Hazama lose a single patient (short of outside interference), which despite being a genius, the older Black Jack does from time to time as a reminder that he’s not a god. He’s just a really good surgeon.

Though we see the road being paved for Hazama’s transformation into Black Jack by the end of the series, it doesn’t feel entirely earned, nor does it feel informed by his experiences. If it wasn’t for the fact this is tied to the original Black Jack property I probably would not have finished.

It’s not that it couldn’t have been good. The manga version of Young Black Jack might well be, considering it’s nine volumes and still running. But there are too many missed opportunities that I can’t recommend it except as a curiosity to existing fans.

Number of Episodes: 12

Pluses: interesting time period, a chance to see a rookie version of one of anime’s most enduring characters

Minuses: time period underutilized, start of Hazama’s transformation into Black Jack does not feel earned, Hazama is oddly more competent than his older self

Young Black Jack is currently streaming at Crunchyroll and is available subtitled. Sentai Filmworks has licensed this for eventual retail distribution in the US.

TV REVIEW: Wayward Pines Season 1

written by David Steffen

Wayward Pines was a 10-episode horror/science fiction miniseries written by M. Night Shyamalan which aired on Fox between May and July 2015, based on the series of novels with the same name written by Blake Crouch. It wasn’t clear when it aired, even when the season ended, whether it was to be continued or not, but at the time this article is posting Wayward Pines Season 2 is less than a week away.

The story begins as U.S. Secret Service agent Ethan Burke travels to Wayward Pines, Idaho to investigate the disappearance of two fellow agents who were last heard from as they approached the mysterious little town. After a car accident en route, Ethan wakes up in the Wayward Pines hospital, unable to contact anyone and unable to leave. In many ways it seems like a stereotypical small town, but there are big warning signs that something is not right in this little town–the strange things that people say, the strict rules the town keeps about not talking about your past and not asking questions. Meanwhile, back at home his wife and son are starting to wonder about him–as a Secret Service agent he can’t ever talk about his work, but after he’s been gone for several days without any news from his office, they set out to find him.

I started watching Wayward Pines with my family, expecting it to be fun and weird but probably not that memorable–it felt in its initial description and promotions to be something very much like Twin Peaks. Don’t get me wrong, I love Twin Peaks, but Twin Peaks is its own weird little thing and I’d be concerned that something that tried to be Twin Peaks would just be a pale comparison.

But it wasn’t a Twin Peaks ripoff in the slightest. Occasionally there was that same weird small town vibe, occasionally feeling like Twin Peaks in some small way, or like a Stephen King sleepy little town horror setting. But these similarities were passing and more to do with a well-captured mood than with deriving too closely from another show. It’s hard to say much more about what the events of the show without getting into major spoiler territory. Even though I started with a skeptical attitude, it got me interested in the first episode, and only increased my interest as the show went on.

One thing that made the show different in a way that might be considered good or bad is that it has major shifts in almost every episode. It’s a show built around mystery, but it’s not stingy with revealing the answers to those mysteries–almost every episode has a major revelation. I’m surprised that they put all of that into a single miniseries instead of expanding it out to a few seasons–some of the shifts would’ve made epic season finales and the shows events could easily have been spread out with plenty of good meat to fill several seasons of TV with gradual reveal of those mysteries rather than stacking them back to back. On the one hand, the show was over so quickly this way, on the other hand it’s fast-paced and never dull and kept me interested to the end.

What makes the best TV shows stand out to me tend to be the writing and the casting, and both are very good in this. Particularly notable in the casting were Matt Dillon, Carla Gugino, Melissa Leo, and Terrence Howard. Matt Dillon as Ethan Burke is not always likeable, and he’s made some bad decisions that still haunt him, but as the protagonist in this tight situation he is competent and compassionate and able to think on his feet. I’ve liked Carla Gugino for a long time, and this is probably my favorite of her roles–as a longtime resident of Wayward Pines she has had to adapt to survive in this strange little town and the conflict inherent in every choice she has to make is well portrayed. Melissa Leo plays Pam, the nurse at the hospital, the first face that Ethan sees upon waking up in Wayward Pines–her performance lends a lot of the initial sense of wrongness about the town in the way that she acts. Terrence Howard plays Sheriff Pope, the law in the town, and is the most clear villain in the beginning of the show, giving a great performance as a quirky but dangerous man.

It wasn’t clear when the miniseries ended whether this would be the end of Wayward Pines. The ending left some potential for that, and there had been some talk of the show being renewed, but some ads for the show referred to the final episode as a series finale rather than a season finale. Since watching Wayward Pines Season 1, I’ve also read the entire trilogy of books that it’s based on. As you might guess, the TV show has the same premise and has some similarities but some differences–I find such things interesting to view side by side as if they were alternate realities. The TV show is basically the trilogy of books tightly compressed, with a lot of subplots left out entirely to fit it into a miniseries. But the way that the miniseries ended is not even slightly compatible with anything in the books, so Wayward Pines season 2 cannot possibly be based on anything familiar. It’s going to have to be something entirely new building off of the familiar setting and characters, so that’s going to be interesting. A reader of the book would be able to spot many but not all of the major plot points in season 1, but readers will have no better idea than anyone what’s going to happen in season 2.

Sneak Peek: The New and Improved Submission Grinder

written by David Steffen

There’s been a lot of work going on behind the scenes at the Submission Grinder site in preparation for a big site upgrade.

ETA: The upgraded version is now on the main site. See the rest of this article for a list of some new features.

What you’re seeing is an overhaul of the site that’s been in the works for quite some time now. The new site includes all the features you’re familiar with, plus some exciting new ones. I’ve written this article to show off some of the new changes. As always, the site is free to use whether you register an account or not. I encourage you to go check out the new site for yourself, or for the first time if you’re a newcomer to the site.

Now that this big batch of features is rolled out, it should be much easier for me to roll out individual features as they are ready to launch. I have a lot of ideas that I think you’re all going to love; it’s just a matter of prioritizing them and finishing them one by one.

First, I want to thank a few people who have contributed to this new development.

First and foremost, thank you to Anthony Sullivan who wrote most of the code. You may remember that Anthony had co-edited Diabolical Plots with me for a number of years, and we collaborated to launch the Submission Grinder site in 2013. He wrote the entire original site in a very short period of time, as well as the majority of the feature updates to that version of the site over the last 3+ years. He also wrote most of the new version of the site, before he changed the focus of his work. Anthony is still around and contributing to the site to help with hosting and mentoring me as I learn more about web development. If you want to find out what he’s doing, you can check out his website, where he’s been working on video game development, at Zombie Possum.
Thank you to Stewart C. Baker and Matt Dovey, for your immense help with the CSS work to make the site much more friendly to mobile devices. I have very little experience with CSS, and it’s incredible to see what someone more knowledgeable than me can do to make the site much more usable. (There is still some work to be done yet to make the site entirely mobile friendly! But the parts that are mobile friendly are because of their excellent work)
Thank you to the beta testers who volunteered to pound out as many dents as possible on this site before it became the new official site, and for meticulously spelling out what you found so that I could track down and resolve those issues.
And thank you to all the users, especially those who donate, spread the word about the Grinder, suggest new features, suggest market updates, or help contribute to the effort in any other way.

Okay, now that all the sappy stuff is out of the way, let’s get to the new features! These are listed in approximate order of how excited I am about the feature, with the most exciting features first. (YMMV so of course it’s possible that you’re more excited about the last ones on the list, so this is far from a scientific sorting method)

Submission Timeline Graph

This is a feature I’ve been so eager to share with more people because it shares an incredible amount of information in a very compact space.

The graph is a bar chart. The X axis is time, covering dates between one year ago and today. The height of the bars is the number of recorded submissions sent to that market on that day. Bars representing submissions that have met different ends are stacked on top of each other–purple bars are pending response, red bars are rejections, green bars are acceptances. If you are logged in and you have a pending response to that market, your submission is shown as a black dot.

For a few examples (not necessarily all up-to-date graphs mind you):

You can see, in the Apex Magazine graph, that they were closed for submissions from about June through December, that they got slammed with submissions when they re-opened. On the far right side you can see what their current slushpile looks like (the purple portion of the graph), and the trail of small purple bars to the left of it are probably stories that have been approved by slushreaders and passed up to the editor and so are waiting a longer period of time outside the main slushpile. (The black dot there is my own submission that was held at the time I took this snapshot)

You can see in the Analog graph that, well, they don’t really stay on top of their slushpile. At the time this snapshot was taken in March no one who submitted more recently than the beginning of October has heard anything, and most people who submitted since the beginning of September has heard anything. Long waits here don’t mean much.

You can see in the Cast of Wonders graph that they closed for submissions from about September through December. You can also see that the volume of submissions has surged upward after they reopened. Not coincidentally, Cast of Wonders increased their payment rates from a flat 5GBP to a professional rate of 6 cents/word when they reopened (after a change in ownership as they were purchased by Escape Artists, Inc) which starts the timer for them to become a SFWA-qualifying market. This has clearly made submitting to Cast of Wonders more appealing to writers. You can also discern the shape of the slushpile and the hold pile pretty clearly here.

You can see in the Clarkesworld graph that they receive a lot of submissions all the time. They haven’t closed within the last year. And they are on top of their slushpile in an incredible fashion (look at how little purple there is!). If you want a quick response (maybe to get one last submission before you can send that story to something else before deadline), this graph tells you that Clarkesworld is a great place to submit. The statistics would’ve told you that before, of course, but the statistics are the summary of a year’s worth of responses, while this graph tells you what their slushpile looks like right now.

In the writers of the future graph, you can guess, without knowing anything else, that they have a quarterly deadline, and that lots of writers submit at the last minute. You can also guess the reason why because they can take a while to respond, and so why not wait until the deadline?

There are probably other things to be gleaned from these graphs, but these are the kinds of things that I’ve been very excited to see in these graphs.

Summarized Recent Activity

SummaryGrinder The Recent Activity list on the front page of the site looks different than you’re used to. You’re used to seeing a list of individual responses grouped first by day and then by alphabetical order of market name. One long-term frustration with that layout was that when an alphabetically privileged market, like Asimov’s, has a big push of rejections, then suddenly the one market would occupy most or all of that list.

Well, no longer! Now a market only has one line per day to summarize all of its rejections. And the page still shows the same number of lines, so you will often see more total information on that list than before these changes. Acceptances still always get their own line, since those are of special interest, and so if you have chosen to show your name for acceptances you will still see it on the front page. If you ever want to know the more detailed list you can always click the “details” icon to click through to that market page’s recent activity which lists all items from the last 30 days without summarizing.

Remember These Settings (Advanced Search)

On the previous version of the site, the Advanced Search page has had some limited memory of your choices, but I’ve never been entirely satisfied with the method of its operation. In the past it would remember the settings of a few of your choices in the exclusion section by using a cookie. But, this would not persist from device to device, it would only affect a select few parameters, and it would remember any change you made even if you didn’t want it to.

So, the new Advanced Search page has a choice to remember these settings. You pick what values you want saved, you check the box for “remember these settings” and then every time you load the page in the future it will have those same values populated. So, for instance, you can choose whether you want to see fee-based markets in the results, and you could set your minimum pay rate to Pro.

Zoomable Graphs

ZoomGraph

One occasional frustration with the market graphs on the previous version of the site was that if there had been a very long response reported the Turnaround Time graph scale would be very very long and it would be hard to make out much detail in the rest of the graph.

All three graphs are now zoomable, so you can zoom in on particular area of interest, see what specific days were associated with certain values, and etc, so this shouldn’t be a frustration anymore.

Average Response Days in Search Results

The Advanced Search Results and other market results pages now show the average response days for easy comparison of responsiveness.

Sortable Columns

The Advanced Search results and some other pages now can be sorted by in ascending or descending order based on several of the column headings (including the new average response days column).

Delete Piece Option

It was always perhaps a little bit odd that there was no way to delete a piece once you’d made it. Generally the easiest way to work around this had been to just rename the piece the next time you finish a story and use the record for that new piece going forward.

But now you can delete the piece, so you don’t need that option.

Alphabetical Market Listings

Why didn’t the site have alphabetical market listings before? I… really don’t remember. I guess people have usually either knownwhat the exact name of a market was already, or they were searching by attribute rather than name. So no one’s really complained about the lack. Anyway, whether it gets much use or not, it’s available. And it might come in handy if, for instance, you don’t remember how to spell Giganotosaurus.

Exclude Retired Pieces

On the previous version of the site the Manage Pieces page let you filter your list of pieces by checking the “Exclude Accepted” box so you’d only see unsold stories. A new box has been added to “Exclude Retired” (which are simply any pieces that you have marked as retired so they don’t show up in your dropdown list of pieces).

Grinder Favicon

The Submission Grinder site now has a favicon in the form of the site logo. This is what shows up on shortcuts or browser tabs. Might come in handy for spotting at a glance which tabs were Grinder tabs.

Anime Review: Fafner: Exodus

written by Laurie Tom

the perfect insider Fafner: Exodus is a series made for the hardcore fan. It’s a sequel to the 2004 Fafner: Dead Aggressor TV series and 2010 Fafner: Heaven and Earth movie, both of which have made it to the US, and also makes nods to the direct to video prequel Fafner: Right of Left, which did not make it to English language audiences. As such, this review will contain spoilers for previous entries.

Exodus makes only the barest attempt to catch up the audience on anything, and what does come out is mostly because of the three year time skip since the movie. The high schoolers of Dead Aggressor are now young adults whose time in a mecha is coming to an end due to the reduced compatibility that occurs as a pilot ages, so it’s natural to show how everyone is moving on. I think it’s telling that all but one of them has chosen a non-combat-related line of work prior to the start of the series. They’ve put in their time and none of them have been left unscarred.

The alien Festum menace still has not ended, but the Festum are no longer a united front, and there is a new hivemind (Mir, in the show’s parlance) that is heading towards Earth. If the humans of Tatsumiyajima Island can contact and befriend it before one of the other Festum, then there is a chance it can be persuaded to side with humanity.

Unfortunately, there are more than other Festum trying to stop them. The humans of the outside world (those who do not live on the island) were secondary antagonists before, but take center stage through most of Exodus, which results in a much different sort of show as the young pilots are not used to fighting people instead of aliens. Not even an alien invasion that has decimated most of the planet is able to keep humans united, but we knew that from the first series.

As in previous installments, Exodus introduces new pilots in preparation for losing the old. There is a lot of torch handing in the beginning, as a third set is drafted through a familiar sequence of Commander Makabe and Dr. Toumi visiting the parents of each pilot candidate to inform them that their teenage children are being drafted.

This once again results in a large cast of characters that needs to be juggled about, but though the new characters and the second set of pilots (who debuted in the Heaven and Earth movie) get a fair bit of screen time, they don’t feel quite as well developed as the older characters.

I think part of it is that Exodus is terrible at giving itself room to breathe, particularly in the first half of the series when it needs it the most. The original was very good at building the bonds between the pilots and their families, and then showing the cost of battle when those bonds are broken by death, which was frequent and unexpected. Pilots became casualties arbitrarily, and not because someone was clearly a less important character.

Exodus only has one casualty early on, and knowledge of it is limited to the viewing audience so there is no chance for it to affect the other characters. At times the series seems afraid to kill even tertiary cast members, which creates two problems:

Firstly, from a numbers perspective, there are just too many people to keep track of. The second set of pilots were prepared because half their predecessors were dying in the line of duty, but the third set is not replacing any casualties. Add in the assorted supporting cast, both allies and enemies (even different factions within enemy forces), and there are somewhere between 30-40 named characters. In the original series this was tolerable because of the high death count across the board, preventing too many people from sharing the stage at the same time, but with Exodus it gets out of control.

Secondly, it’s harder for the audience to get what the pilots are going through. Exodus can blow up hundreds of nameless civilians, but it’s not the same as losing a single pilot that the audience knows and cares about (either by proxy through a more established character, or for their own sake). For a show that spends so much time worrying over the human costs of war, it fails to make the audience understand what that means.

This creates a disconnect between the audience and the second and third sets of pilots who don’t feel as mature as they ought to be, given that the audience’s expectations are at the level of the original, retired pilots. When the originals are called back into service, it ends up feeling like a storytelling failure, as if the writer realized that the newer characters couldn’t stand on their own.

Not that I didn’t like seeing my favorite characters back in action, but I felt I should have enjoyed watching their successors just as much, and I didn’t. The return of the older pilots adds a layer of tension we don’t get with the newer cast. Not only is the situation desperate enough to need them despite their reduced compatibility (Sakura in particular is still physically handicapped from her trauma in the original series), but we’re aware that one way or another this is likely to be their final mission.

When the original pilots are deployed, you can see the difference in how they fight versus the newer pilots, and they’re more willing to make tough calls based on their past experiences. While it’s wonderful to have them back in action, it feels like their presence defeats the purpose of introducing a newer cast. Even with the pilots split between two locations for much of the show, they have more active mecha in each location than the first series ever did at one time.

The result is a jumbled narrative where dozens of characters are going places because that’s apparently where they need to, fighting because enemies happen to be there, and characters alternately dying or coming back from the dead depending on the needs of the story. It doesn’t always make sense and if you’re invested enough to make it to the second half the best advice is to just roll with it. With all the alien junk going on everything probably makes as much sense to the audience as it does to the pilots.

I suspect that if I had binged watched Exodus I would have been able to make more sense out of it, but as a weekly show I kept losing track of who all the people were in the Neo UN (why so much infighting?) and what everyone’s long term objectives were.

If the pilots weren’t such sympathetic characters it would have been a lot harder to watch this show.

In the end, Exodus is probably best read as a confusing love letter to the long time Fafner fan. Those who have been along for the ride since Dead Aggressor are the most rewarded as the surviving pilots from the first show have grown up for the better.

Number of Episodes: 26

Pluses: sympathetic protagonists, rewarding relationships for long term Fafner fans

Minuses: nonsensical story, alien phenomena just happen rather than being expected based on prior experiences

Fafner: Exodus is currently streaming at Crunchyroll and is available subtitled.

What’s Wrong With My Readers?!

written by Ben Hallert

The 2016 Escape Pod Flash Fiction (anonymous) writing contest had been going on for weeks, I was trapped on the wrong side of the glass, and I was convinced my critics were broken.

The length limit: 500 words maximum. If you could tell a story in less, go for it, but too much leftover room usually isn’t the problem with these. My first draft clocked in around a thousand and every single one of them was absolutely vital, but I started hacking and slashing. I’m a novice writer and it didn’t come easily, but the more I read out loud, the more I could find to get rid of. I’d re-organize things, remove others, and occasionally I’d even ADD things in a wild-eyed craze because I knew they were needed. Then, of course, the knives would have to come out again.

It hurt, but I couldn’t quit because somewhere along the way I’d decided that when I grew up, I wanted to be a writer. That I was almost forty years old didn’t help, but I knew that the only way I’d ever get any better was to actually write something where people could comment and then hopefully learn how to suck less. I had to enter the contest.

By the submission deadline, I’d been working on this story for a while. For days, I’d been chiseling tiny pieces off and molding others. I don’t have the natural talent the pros do so it felt like I had to fight for everything until finally, exhausted, I clicked The Button. My story was out of my hands. After that, the waiting started. A new batch released for judging each day with no sign of mine until near the end. Finally, it was time to get some feedback. When people started to critique it, though, something happened and I became… unstuck. I found myself falling backwards in time to a different century, state, and even career. I was back in Santa Monica, it was the 90’s, and I was back in software development.

A couple decades ago, I was getting my first exposure to software usability testing. This is a thing where we would give folks off the street some cash to come in and do tasks from a list while we watched. We’d ask them to talk their way through what they were doing too so we could understand why they decided to click certain things or type others.

Basically, what we wanted to know was “Can normal people use our software?”

Task: Turn off the firewall temporarily
Task: Create a network rule to allow Netscape Communicator
Task: Check for product updates

Stuff like this, we’d give them a basic task to complete and then we’d watch through the mirrored-glass (exactly like you’d find in any number of spy or law enforcement movies) and take notes.

I’d been working with this program for months and I knew it inside and out. I KNEW we were ready to go, anyone could use it and it was a really straight-forward interface so in my mind, this was a formality.

As people started doing the tests, things started to fall apart and I began to question the criteria used to pick them. Were these actual adults who could hold normal jobs and wash themselves? Why were they having all this trouble? I couldn’t understand how they messed up SO MANY THINGS.

“Why doesn’t he click the button RIGHT THERE?” I’d ask someone next to me after watching a tester spend a couple minutes hunting for an option.

Later, another new member to the team shook their hands over their head. “I don’t get why she doesn’t drag the icon into the folder! Has she even USED a computer before? Just drag it!”

“He’s in the wrong screen! Why does he think he can make a firewall rule HERE?! I think this is a prank. Nobody could be this thick!” I said to the other team member. They nodded. We were agreed, this was nonsense.

The seasoned developer in the room, waved at us to quiet down. “Just listen to what they’re saying”, she told us. “This is why we’re doing this.”

Finally, the person running the test asked us to quiet down because they could hear us through the glass. When we stopped talking, we were forced to listen, and when that happened we began to actually hear what this quiet developer had been talking about. No, it wasn’t obvious that they needed to drag something into a folder. Creating the firewall rule in this screen might make sense if they expect this part of the product to work like that other part they tried earlier. That button… I knew that button would take them to the option needed, but that was because I’d played with the product for months. Slowly, I grew to appreciate these tests because they showed me what we needed to do to make our products better. As I matured into my job, I started being able to see some of the problems ahead of time, early in design, and that saved us money and schedule time. I grew to be better at what I did and eventually started to look forward to these sessions.

Back in 2016, reading the responses to my story felt like I was riding an emotional time machine. I was that younger version of me again. Instead of a mirror-wall, it was the anonymity of the contest and the need to not post (because of the danger of revealing which story was mine) that separated me from the readers. “No”, I wanted to post, “that’s not what I meant at all! The character is supposed to be like XXXX, not YYYY. You’re wrong!” “That’s not it at all, that was on purpose!” I wanted to tell another poster. After reading a couple responses and yelling at my monitor, I heard that voice from my past again and this time, I paid attention more quickly.

“Just listen to what they’re saying”, that developer murmured to me from the 1990s. I hadn’t spoken with her in years, but I could still hear that advice like I was back in Pre-dotcom-era Santa Monica. I paused. If I was going to become a better writer, I couldn’t expect to hand-hold my audience. My story would need to be self-contained, if it needed explanation then I’d screwed up. “This”, I could hear her say in my mind, “is why we’re doing this”.

Ben Hallert is an airplane pilot with an IT habit. He’s active in the Maker community, has an extremely patient family, and like to shoot frickin’ laser beams at things for fun. His story ‘Life Sentence’ was published in Escape Pod 426 in December 2013.

The Best of Clarkesworld 2015

written by David Steffen

Clarkesworld Magazine has had an incredible year. As I wrote these lists I was considering my own Nebula and Hugo nomination ballots and much of my short fiction ballot come from Clarkesworld. This year they’ve been publishing a monthly story translated from Chinese as part of an ongoing initiative to share more Chinese author’s works with the English reading fandom. These stories have been a wonderful change of pace, different in some ways from what I’m used to in works written in English, something new and fresh.

The magazine continues to be edited and published by Neil Clarke and the podcast is hosted and most-often narrated by Kate Baker of the excellent voice.

Clarkesworld published 78 stories in 2015

The List

1. “Today I am Paul” by Martin L. Shoemaker
This is my top story pick for 2015 across all publications. It is told from the point of view of a personal caretaker android designed to empathize and to emulate family members of an Alzheimer’s patient so that she can live at home. Solid emotional story with lots of good stuff to think about.

2. “When Your Child Strays From God” by Sam J. Miller
This story chronicles the journey of a mother and pastor’s wife to find her son who has disappeared, leaving traces of a popular telepathic drug behind. She takes some of the drug, which links her telepathically to her son, and she goes to find him… knowing full well that while the drug’s effect last she is vulnerable to her son’s personable boogeyman. A great story of empathy and bravery and doing everything for family.

3. “So Much Cooking” by Naomi Kritzer
Formatted as a cooking blog, at first I thought I wouldn’t like this story. But the format proved very effective for this story of a spreading pandemic as a food blogger tries to take care of her family and still keep her blog going while supplies and travel are severely limited.

4. “Summer at Grandma’s House” by Hao Jingfang, translated by Carmen Yiling Yan
I like this one especially for its discussion of fate. As it says right in the beginning of the story, when fate is discussed it is generally understood to be a script that we follow or that it doesn’t exist at all. I find the explanation of fate given by this story to be much more interesting and also practical.

5. “Ether” by Zhang Ran, translated by Carmen Yiling Yan and Ken Liu
This one might begin a little slow for those used to a “hook me immediately” attitude in publishing, this one was a bit of a slow boil but I thought it was well worth it in the end, and looking back the slow boil made total sense and wouldn’t have worked any other way. It’s a kind of a dystopia story, though it doesn’t immediately seem that way.

6. “An Evolutionary Myth” by Bo-Young Kim, translated by Gord Sellar and Jihyun Park
A world where individual creatures can adapt to changing conditions in the world to become something wholly unique (yes I realize that’s not evolution by the scientific term, but this is a fun and interesting fantasy story not a hard SF tale).

7. “Cat Pictures Please” by Naomi Kritzer
Really interesting story about an AI interacting with people by influencing their web search results. The title is a playful poke at the premise, and there is plenty of that in the story, but I also found it very heartfelt.

8. “Technarion” by Sean McMullen
Shortly after the discovery of radio, humans discover signals seemingly coming from the ether explaining how to build more and more complex computing machines.

Honorable Mentions

“Cassandra” by Ken Liu

“Mrs. Griffin Prepares to Commit Suicide Tonight” by A Que, translated by John Chu

“Daddy’s World” by Walter Jon Williams

“War, Ice, Egg, Universe” by G. David Nordley

DP Fiction #15: “Further Arguments in Support of Yudah Cohen’s Proposal to Bluma Zilberman” by Rebecca Fraimow

Dear Bluma,

I heard that Hershel Schmulewitz, that blockhead, has also presumed to ask for your hand in marriage, which gives you two proposals to consider. Now, you needn’t worry that this will be a sentimental or a wheedling sort of letter. You already know how I feel, and I suppose Hershel’s not so much of a blockhead that he doesn’t feel the same way. I’m simply writing to lay out the reasons, plainly and concisely, why it would certainly be more to your benefit to marry me.

1. As you know, I have so far outperformed all the others in my year on the rabbinical exams. Hershel’s results, I might add, have been a little mediocre. I’m not writing it to shame him, but just to state the facts. Now, on the other hand, Hershel’s father is certainly wealthy, but we all know how a family’s money can disappear in a trice when ill luck strikes, may God forbid it! I certainly don’t wish any bad fortune on the Schmulewitz family, but I’m sure that when you consider it, you’ll agree that to be well set on a career that may bring an income in anywhere offers much more security in these uncertain times than whatever large coffers may happen to exist here and now.

2. I’m not from Vilna and I don’t claim any relatives around here. This may at first seem like a disadvantage to you, but think it over a little! No mother-in-law or father-in-law to come meddling in your business; no sister-in-law to deposit nieces and nephews on you at the most inconvenient times; and if it happens that we should have to be taking care of your mother when she grows older (may she have a long life!) then there’ll be plenty of room for her, and no other elderly folks around to complain about whatever little quirks or troubles she may have. Now, don’t you think that’s an ideal situation?

3. Speaking of family – and I apologize for getting a little bit familiar here – you confessed to me some time ago that you’re not exactly wild about the idea of having children, what with the hard time your sister’s had, and those rumors about your mother. Now, maybe you were trying to warn me off, but I’ll tell you again that I don’t blame you for that at all. If it were me in such a circumstance, I probably wouldn’t be wild either. Fortunately, I can say for a certainty that if you marry me, that’s not a thing you’ll need to worry about in the least.

Now you’re probably thinking, how does he think he can promise that, what kind of funny business is going on here? All right, here’s the truth, Bluma – if you went back to my village and asked after me, you wouldn’t find anyone who knew a Yudah Cohen; and it’s just as well that nobody here would ever think to ask about Rokhl the rabbi’s granddaughter! There are certain things I would need to be fruitful and multiply that I simply have not got.

Maybe you’re worrying now that this minor trouble of mine will affect my future prospects. If so, let me reassure you that you’re the first person in Vilna to know a thing about it. First and only! All it takes to avoid trouble is a little bit of cleverness, and cleverness you must admit I’ve got — unless of course you decide to go showing this letter to Hershel or your mother. But I trust your good sense, Bluma, and I trust your discretion, and I know you’ll take the time to consider the situation before doing anything. You always have before. I’m certainly putting my future in your hands by telling you this, but then isn’t that what it means to marry somebody anyway? I’d rather you knew now than that you didn’t — and to get back to the point, if you’re serious about not wanting children, I’m sure you’ll see that this condition of mine has got clear advantages for you, if you were to marry me.

4. I am better-looking than Hershel Schmulewitz. This is not vanity; it is plain fact. Isn’t it much more pleasant to have a man who’s decorative around the house than one who isn’t?

5. Now, this rumor about your mother — and I hope you don’t think me rude for bringing it up, but if I’m laying out the facts, then we’ve got to look at facts. I haven’t managed to mention this yet, but last week, when I was hanging about your house, trying to get up the nerve to come in and ask your uncle if I could make my proposal to you — yes, Bluma, I was nervous! All right, I know you’re laughing now, but you really can’t make fun of me for that! Who wouldn’t be nervous, in such a situation? That’s one way in which it’s easier to be a girl, not having to ask — anyway, as I was saying, last week when I was hanging about, I did happen to see a great big beast go slipping out the back window.

Now, I’m not saying it was your mother, and I’m not saying it wasn’t your mother. Who am I to say what a wolf might be doing jumping out the windows of your house? There might be all kinds of reasons for that. All I’m saying is that, if the rumors do happen to be true, then I am certainly the best possible man you could marry. I don’t blame your family at all for trying to keep a thing like that a secret. It must be very embarrassing, especially since I’ve never heard of such an affliction being found in a Jewish family before now — our neighbors gossip about the vilkacis, but a creature like that is not mentioned in the books of our learning and law anywhere that I’ve found. Well, perhaps your mother is simply an unlucky woman; and besides, back when she was born, those were troubled times for the Jews too. Terrible things have been known to happen, meaning no disrespect to your mother or to your Bubbe Fruma, may God bless her and keep her memory.

In any case, whether or not the Talmud speaks on this topic specifically, you have to admit, it would be of some use to have a scholar on-hand, who already knows the secret, and has a ready excuse to go poking his nose into all kinds of old books that may perhaps offer ideas on remedies for such an affliction. And think of the benefit to including in your family a rabbi, fully informed of the circumstances, and available at all times to provide spiritual counsel in such a difficult situation! In marrying me, you would provide your family with both of these blessings. Tell me, can Hershel Schmulewitz’s money-chests compare to a bounty such as that?

And as to my discretion — well, Bluma, on that, I’ll refer you back to the third point in this letter. A person like me, who is experienced with keeping secrets, certainly knows how to make a tale that seems believable, and how not to let anything slip foolishly out of his mouth. And if, God forbid, the story ever should get out in truth — if people might not be so understanding, and your family should wish to move themselves elsewhere — well, in that, with this secret of mine, I have experience also.

Now perhaps you’re thinking to yourself, “What kind of a man is this Yudah Cohen after all, to boast of his ability to lie? Certainly he won’t make any kind of rabbi!” Let me remind you, then, that the Talmud clearly shows us that there are lies of expediency that are not a sin to tell; after all, Rabbi Yehudah has stated that even rabbis may lie in matters of a bed, which is to say, matters of modesty and privacy. Besides, though it may happen that we’ll be called upon to deceive others, it’s certain that when we are married I’ll always be honest with you, and for evidence of this I once again refer you to the third point of my argument.

6. As you’re aware, I am of the opinion that Hershel Schmulewitz is a blockhead. Now, you may disagree with me. It is certainly your right to do so. However, I felt it would not be right to close this letter without again reminding you that I fully and firmly believe this to be the case.

That’s all I have to say; the rest, I entrust once again to your good judgment. Please take the time you need to think it over! Best wishes to your mother, and your sister, and the others in your family — may they all remain in good health — and please thank your uncle for me for giving me his blessing to propose to you.

With love always,

Yudah Cohen

Rebecca Fraimow is a digital archivist by day, a rogue video preservation expert by night, and a writer in whatever time she manages to get in around the edges. Her work has previously appeared in Daily Science Fiction, as well as the anthologies Steam-Powered 2: More Lesbian Steampunk Stories and The Omnibus of Doctor Bill Shakes and the Magnificent Ionic Pentatetrameter.

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