Diabolical Plots – Page 50 – From Inspiration to Ink…

Anime Catch-Up Review: Psycho-Pass

written by Laurie Tom

psychopass1 Psycho-Pass is an original self-contained anime from 2012 that I missed during initial broadcast. I’m generally not a big cyberpunk dystopia fan, so I only came back when I kept hearing about it. This review covers the first series, which is stand-alone.

I’d never thought about how much different American TV storytelling is from Japanese until I watched Psycho-Pass and realized how western its presentation is. Character development, particularly for the supporting cast, feels paced out like I would expect on an American show, with small nuggets here and there that lead to an eventual payoff, and the world itself draws clear inspiration from Philip K. Dick (particularly Blade Runner and Minority Report).

Combat is visceral and limited to what is realistically possible, not just what looks good, so there are few explosions and no death defying leaps. Despite the protagonists being members of the police force, they can and do screw up even when it counts.

The result feels like a western live action drama, except that it’s an animated series from Japan and most of the characters are Japanese.

Like its more famous cyberpunk counterpart, Ghost in the Shell, Psycho-Pass asks questions about the state and validity of its world. In this future, all aspects of life are governed by the impenetrable Sibyl System.

Citizens are subjected to cymatic scans which register their mental health and ability to think outside the law, and people whose Criminal Coefficients rise beyond a certain point on the index are labeled latent criminals and taken into therapy (by force if necessary). With therapy, it’s possible for those people to return to society, especially if caught early, but a fair number don’t return and remain in isolation wards away from the rest of the population.

Particularly vicious latent criminals can rank high enough on the scale to warrant immediate lethal enforcement, though this is rare, since ordinary people can’t hide from the system that easily without being identified. Generally if someone ranks high enough for lethal enforcement they’ve already done something cruel enough to warrant it.

Criminal acts and violence tend to mentally stress the well-being of everyone around them, resulting in everyone’s coefficients going up, so the idea behind Sibyl is that it’s better to lock away the few who would endanger the many, and the result is that Japan is so safe that most people don’t even lock their doors.

Psycho-Pass follows the story of Division 1 of the Public Safety Bureau’s Criminal Investigation Department as told through the eyes of Akane Tsunemori, the new inspector who joins the team at the start of the show. The unit is composed of two inspectors, who are citizens in good standing, and four enforcers who are latent criminals given a limited amount of freedom in order to do their job, which is to flush out and capture other criminals, latent or otherwise.

Since one needs to be able to understand criminals in order to be equipped to capture them, it’s generally not possible for an inspector to do the meanest parts of the detective work, because if they were capable of thinking that way, they would be a latent criminal themselves.

Much of the interpersonal drama between the characters has to do with the inspector/enforcer divide and how it affects the judgement and behavior of the characters involved. Inspector Ginoza, Akane’s senior at the start of the story, warns her not to befriend them and to keep a professional distance, but Akane can’t help wanting to understand them and see them as people. Though Ginoza’s attitude initially seems to come from a sense of superiority, over the course of the show we learn that’s not the case at all.

Sibyl keeps most people safe, but it’s not ideal, and some enforcers are former inspectors who succumbed to notions of revenge or distrust over the course of their jobs. One enforcer was labeled as a latent criminal when he was five, and becoming an enforcer was the only way he would ever go out in the world. Even employed by the Bureau, he can’t go anywhere except the office and his living quarters unless an inspector is accompanying him.

Being a crime drama, Psycho-Pass largely focuses on the failures of the system and how criminals can get around it. What do you do when the system cannot properly assess a criminal, when enforcement is only possible if Sibyl can read them? It starts with mostly stand alone episodes that build into a larger story arc, which wraps up by the end of the series.

The Sibyl System is brutal to those who don’t fit neatly within it, and there are no moments of epic heroism or revolutions of any kind. Division 1 doesn’t have a change of heart where they fight the system or help people escape from it. Rather, the characters acknowledge that the system is imperfect, but it’s the best they’ve got so they’re going to enforce it.

Psycho-Pass is completely stand alone, though there is a second series that was animated a couple years later.

The first episode in particular is a gem at worldbuilding, character introduction, and setting the stakes. Without a wasted minute, viewers know exactly what they’re signing up for, and Psycho-Pass does not disappoint.

Number of Episodes: 22

Pluses: dystopian cyberpunk at its best, excellent worldbuilding, trying to be a moral person in an inflexible system

Minuses: some members of Division 1 never get much character building time, Kogami is promo-ed like he’s the main character but he’s pretty one note, execution of criminals is usually ridiculously violent

Psycho-Pass is currently streaming at Crunchyroll (subtitled only) and Funimation (both subbed and dubbed, but subscription required). Funimation has licensed this for 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’s short fiction has been published in Galaxy’s Edge, Strange Horizons, and the Intergalactic Medicine Show.

DP Fiction #28B: “Regarding the Robot Raccoons Attached to the Hull of My Ship” by Rachael K. Jones and Khaalidah Muhammad-Ali

From: Alamieyeseigha, Anita

To: Alamieyeseigha, Ziza

Date: 2160-11-11

Dear Ziza,

You already know what this is about, don’t you, dear Sister? The robot raccoons I found clamped along my ship’s hull during this cycle’s standard maintenance sweep?

Oh, come on. Really? You know I invented that hull sculler tech, right? They’ve got my corporate logo etched into their beady red eyes so my name flashes on all the walls when their power is low. I admit some of your upgrades were… novel. Like the exoshell design–I’ll never understand your raccoon obsession. Impractical, but points for style. I hadn’t thought you could fit a diamond drill into a model smaller than a Pomeranian’s skull, so congrats on that. Not that they made much progress chewing through my double-thick hull, but I’ll give credit where credit’s due.

Still, it was unsisterly of you, and it’s not going to stop me from dropping the terraforming nuke when I get to Mars. Come to grips with reality, sister: you’re in the wrong. You always have been, ever since we were girls. Especially since Mumbai accepted my proposal for Martian settlement. Not yours.

I’m sending back the robot raccoons in an unmanned probe. Back, because yes, I’m still leagues and leagues ahead of you. I only lost a day cleaning up the hull scullers. I’ve kept the diamond drills. I bet they’ll chew right through that Martian rock.

I’ve also included a dozen white chocolate macadamia nut cookies, because I know it’s your birthday tomorrow. Happy birthday!

Now go home.

Love your sister,

Anita

From: Alamieyeseigha, Ziza

To: Alamieyeseigha, Anita

Date: 2160-11-12

Dear Anita,

Remember that summer when Father dropped us off at the northern rim of the Poona Crater on Mars? Alone. For two weeks. “This rustic camping trip will be a great learning experience,” he said. “My precious daughters will bond.”

When I learned that there were no pre-fab facilities and that we were responsible for erecting our own dwelling, sanitation pod, and lab, I started plotting ways to poison our father. You, on the other hand, I am still convinced, were determined to thoroughly enjoy the experience just to spite me.

But Father was a conservationist, and now that I am older, I can appreciate that he was trying to instill that same spirit in us. “Not all life jumps out and bites you in the butt,” he used to love to say. And we learned the truth of that when we unearthed a family of as-yet-undiscovered garbatrites in the red dust on one of our sand treks.

We spent hours watching them under high magnification under the STEHM, trying to communicate with them, recording their activities and creating hypotheses about the meanings of their habits. I have to admit, there was a point when I stopped cursing father and started to secretly thank him. And where I sort of, kind of, could maybe see why you weren’t so bad after all.

I don’t think I’d ever seen you so dedicated to anything before this. You missed meals and stayed up throughout the night trying to communicate with the elder garbatrite. The one you named Benny. Exhausted, you fell asleep at your desk and left the infrared light on too long and effectively fried the poor critter. You cried for days and you even held a formal funeral for Benny, something his fellow garbatrites didn’t seem too pleased about.

With that in mind, how could you possibly want to drop a terraforming nuke on a planet you and I both know is already teeming with life? Creating a new habitable world only has merits if it’s not already inhabited.

If you won’t see reason, then I’ll just have to make it impossible for you. The Council for Martian Settlement may have accepted your proposal, but let me remind you that I’ve never been keen on following the rules.

So, you found the hull scullers, eh? I knew those diamonds would distract you from my real plan. You’ve always been so… materialistic. But hey, someone has to be.

On another note, the cookies were to die for! They were even better than Mother’s, but I’ll never tell her that. I really appreciate you thinking of me. I have a proposal to make. On our next monthly meal exchange, I’ll make your favorite, a big old pot of Anasazi beans and sweet buttered cornbread, if you’ll send more of those cookies.

XOXO

Ziza

P.S. My sweet raccoonie-woonies, Bobo and Cow, liked the cookies too. They also send their love.

From: Alamieyeseigha, Anita

To: Alamieyeseigha, Ziza

Date: 2160-11-15

Sister:

Come now, Ziza. Let’s not make me out to be some kind of villain. Of course I remember that summer. I remember how we licked the condensation inside our lab windows to stay hydrated because Father’s Orion Scout childhood romanticized survival stories. It’s the real reason we’re such die hard coffee drinkers nowadays. He ruined the taste of water for us.

And I remember the garbatrites. How could I ever forget? That dusty red boulder we found in the sandstorm provided just enough shelter to pitch our emergency pod while we waited out the squall. Nothing to do but talk with each other, or play with the STEHM. Which meant we chose the STEHM, obviously. It’s the closest look I’ve ever gotten at you, all those disgusting many-legged organisms crawling on your skin and hair, in your saliva, your earwax. You’ve always had an affinity for vermin.

But I’ll be forever grateful you suggested taking samples around the boulder. When we first saw the garbatrites, their tiny little dwellings drilled into rock like mesa cities–that might be the closest I’ve ever felt to you, each of us taking one eyepiece on the STEHM, our damp cheeks pressed together, our smiles one long continuous arc. When the light brightened or dimmed, they danced in little conga lines. We weren’t sure if it was art, or language. Is there really a difference?

There’s something I realized when Benny died. The sort of revelation you only have when you’re nudging together an atomic coffin beneath an electron microscope with tiny diamond tweezers just three nanometers wide: life is short. Life is painfully short, full of suffering and tragedy and wide, empty spaces. And those rare spots hospitable to life are just boulders tossed into an endless red desert, created by accident or coincidence. The only real good we can do in life is to spread out those boulders, minimize the deserts where we find them. Make a garden from dust. Plant our atomic coffins and let them bloom. Terraform whole planets, so we’ll have more than just the blue boulder of Earth.

That’s what you never understood, dear sister. It’s why when you spent your youth chasing pretty men, I betrothed myself to science, burned my hopes of human love in the furnaces of my ambition. Do you remember when Asante, my poor besotted lab assistant, proposed to me at the Tanzanian Xenobiology Conference? How I laughed! As if any children he could give me would approach the impact my terraforming nuke will make on our species. Never forget, Ziza, that this mission is my life’s work, my legacy. You will not stop me.

In other news, I got the Anasazi beans and cornbread, still warm and fresh in their shipping pod. How did you know I had the craving? That was a kindness. I remembered you while making salaat today.

I was less pleased about the virus installed in the shipping pod’s warming program. Nice try, but I saw through that in about five seconds. Here’s a tip: next time, beta test it on all the shipboard systems I invented, not just the navigation. My sanitation program does more than filter my own crap.

I’m sending you an e-manual on Programming 101, and an ordering catalogue for Anita Enterprises in case you’d like to support the family business.

XOXOXO,

Anita

P.S. Go home.

From: Alamieyeseigha, Ziza

To: Alamieyeseigha, Anita

Date: 2160-11-28

Anita,

It’s been nearly two weeks since we last spoke, and of course, you know why. When you told me to go home, I knew that you were serious, but I never thought you’d resort to using the health and welfare of our dear mother as bait to get me to turn around and head back to earth.

I’m still trying to figure out how you managed to simulate for video not only our mother’s countenance, darkened and marred by some mysterious illness, but her voice, the cadence like smooth stones tumbling in water and her accent. When she pleaded for me to return home, telling me that she was afraid to die alone, of course I turned back.

How much time did it take for you to create those videos, one arriving each day, her looking progressively worse? The worst was that one video with her by the window in her study, Mount Kilimanjaro in the distance. It came on the third day. The sunlight that glinted through her silver hair, like icy filaments, made her look so painfully beautiful, yet it was not enough to erase the shadows beneath her eyes or the sadness in them.

A better question, I suppose, is “Why?” Why resort to that when you know how much Mother means to me, especially now that Father is gone? Are you still jealous of our closeness? Do you still believe she loved me most?

Not that you deserve to be, but I’ll let you in on a secret. I used to believe Mother loved me more than you as well. One day, I must’ve been about twelve, in my pathetic need to always be reminded that I was loved and cherished, I asked her why she loved me more than you. I waited a few moments, as she looked skyward, it seemed, for the answer. I was sure she’d say it was because I was more beautiful, more kind, smarter, that I had a more generous spirit, because truth be told, these things are true. But she didn’t say that. Mother told me that she did not love me most. Nor did she love you more than me.

Then why do you spend so much more time with me than Anita? Why do you kiss me goodnight and not her? I numbered all the things she did for me and not you. Do you know what she said?

Because you need me more than Anita.

In her way, which was always kind yet honest, Mother was telling me that you were the stronger of the two of us. But now, I wonder. Would a strong person use her sister’s weaknesses against her just to win? This was a low blow, Anita.

By now you’re probably wondering how I eventually figured out that the videos from Mother were merely a cruel ploy to get me to go back home without a fight. It was the video from Day Eight.

Mother lay in bed, slight as a sliver of grass. When her image popped up on the view screen my heart felt like it was trapped in a vice. She reached out. A tear traveled from the corner of her eye toward the pillow. She coughed, then called out my name. Her voice was so soft, so small and weak.

“Please hurry home, Ziza,” she said. “I don’t want to die without laying eyes on my favorite girl at least one more time.”

Favorite girl? No, Anita. Our mother never would have said that.

You think you’re so smart. You think you know everything. Yet, you don’t know kindness or humility. You don’t even know your own mother.

The decision to dedicate your entire life to science was an error. Life is so much more than entropy, polymerisation, and endothermic reactions. You really can have your coffee and the cream too. You should have married Asante. He would have humanized you. He would have taught you to slow down and enjoy the precious little moments, that together they all add up to a great big life full of disappointments, yes, but also joy and love and mystery. He would have saved you from yourself and cold loneliness.

This is where I remind you that you know nothing about programming that I didn’t teach you. Anita Enterprises is the mega-conglomerate it is because of me, your older sister and mentor. If I wanted to shut down every system on your ship, including life support, I could. And believe me, after this latest stunt of yours, I’ve been giving that idea serious consideration. The fact that I haven’t sent a couple of torpedoes your way is a testament to my love for our mother. She’d be angry if I killed you. So, I won’t.

See you on Mars.

Ziza

P.S. Don’t start none, won’t be none.

P.P.S. Bobo and Cow are very displeased with you.

From: Alamieyeseigha, Anita

To: Alamieyeseigha, Ziza

Date: 2161-01-01

Ziza,

It’s been weeks since I last wrote, but you haven’t been far from my thoughts. Far from it.

While I continue toward the planet, I’ve been passing the time on my escape pod making a list of all the reasons I hate you, numbered and ordered least to greatest. It’s a long long list, forever incomplete. A sister’s hate is like the heat death of the universe: infinitely expanding, eternal, the last flame burning in this cold, barren desolation where God abandoned us.

Reason #1,565: I hate the way you eat popcorn with chopsticks to keep your hands clean. Are you too good even for butter smudges?

Reason #480: I hate how you laugh at bad jokes. Puns aren’t actually funny, Ziza. Everyone outgrew “why did the chicken cross the road” after elementary school.

Reason #111: Blue eye shadow. Self-explanatory.

Reason #38: “Don’t start none, won’t be none.” Really? Better knock that shit off. Like you’re not an adult responsible for her own actions.

Reason #16: I hate how Mother named you after herself, like you were the pinnacle of all her hopes, while I was named to placate our pushy grandmother.

Reason #15: I hate how you always laugh at me.

Reason #10: I hate how your favorite animal is the raccoon. You only picked it because it’s endangered. You can’t resist a lost cause, even if you don’t actually want to do anything useful about it.

Reason #9: Seriously, blue eye shadow.

Reason #4: That last family dinner we had before Father died, when we took the shuttle out to the Moon to picnic on Mons Agnes while we watched the Perseid meteor shower dancing bright upon Earth’s atmosphere like the footsteps of angels. Mother brought her heirloom silver for the occasion; I think we all knew in our hearts it was a special trip. We’d agreed for Father’s sake to get along, just for a few hours. He hated how we fought, how we picked at each other like children picking old scabs that won’t heal. Do you remember the white curling through his black hair? His cheeks sunk deep by the chemo? He wanted to dish up the jasmine rice and flatbread himself. His hands trembled so badly the peas rolled onto Mother’s quilt beneath the picnic pop-up, just skirting the regolith.

We both know I wanted to talk with him about the inheritance. I just wanted my share, my 50/50 split, but Mother was so concerned about poor helpless Ziza, who had run into such tough times after college, chasing after pretty men and idealistic wide-eyed save-the-raccoons causes that she needed a larger cut to keep up her lifestyle. Anita Enterprises cost me everything while all you ever did was chase your girlhood dreams of love and happy endings.

We were having such a great time. Your useless pet raccoons were recharging their solar batteries in your lap. Father told us stories of his childhood, how they didn’t even have a family shuttle when he grew up, and you could only sleep rough in wild places like Antarctica’s rocky plains. Mother held his hand and kissed him, love shining in her eyes. No matter how sick he got, he was still the dark-skinned 17-year-old godling she’d met on the road to Mount Kilimanjaro in their youth. We even tolerated a few of your puns.

It would not last. I volunteered to scrape the leftovers into the recycler at the service booth down the path. It was so close, I didn’t bother to bring a communication device. You deny it, but we both know you followed me. You used the Moon’s lower gravity to pile those rocks against the door while I did my chores inside. When I tried to leave, the door wouldn’t budge. I could only watch my family from the viewing port, my mother and sister and dying father laughing together, though I couldn’t hear them. I screamed and pounded the window, but nobody noticed from the picnic pop-up. No one could hear me through the vacuum of space.

How can I ever forgive you that prank, those precious minutes of our father’s health ticking away, and me unable to be there? How can I forgive that lost opportunity, those memories that should have been mine to cherish, to bear me up when I wake at night so desperate to feel his whiskered kiss on my forehead, his voice telling me he’s so proud of me, proud of everything I’ve done?

This is why I hate you, Ziza. This is why I can never stop hating you.

Reason #2: Those diamond drills in your robot raccoons weren’t just drills. That cornbread pan wasn’t just a pan. You know what, Ziza? In spite of everything else, I only sent you back to Earth with those fake videos to protect you from yourself, and keep you out of harm’s way. Because despite this whole list, part of me still loved you, stupid as it sounds. Maybe it’s because you’re named for Mother. But you tried to dump me into the vacuum of space, Sister Dearest. You tried to murder me in my sleep. You activated the wafer computer in the pan’s false bottom, hacked my defenses, and the drills turned my hull into cheese by the time I woke up. If I hadn’t mounted the terraforming nuke to the escape pod… but I did.

Reason #1: Did you ever love me? Ever, Ziza? I’m not filling this one out yet, because I don’t think I’ve yet hated you as much as a woman can hate her sister. Not yet. But I will.

So I’m going to tell you something else you don’t yet know: On the wreck of my shuttle, scraping by on the last of my life support, are a dozen rare raccoon specimens. I was going to release them on Mars after the terraforming ended so they could colonize a safe place far from any predators. My shuttle is set to self-destruct in two days’ time. If you leave your current course, you might just have time to save them. Let’s find out what you care more about: helpless garbatrites, or near-extinct raccoons.

The shuttle also contains an urn with Father’s ashes, wrapped in extra scarves in the top hatch in my quarters. Mother asked me to scatter them on the planet because Father had so many happy memories of camping there with his daughters. I didn’t have time to rescue it when I had to abandon ship a few days ago.

I don’t have that one on my list yet. Better go add it now.

Hate you always,

Anita

P.S. Why did Ziza fly across the solar system twice? Because she was a double crosser. Get it?

P.P.S. Happy New Year, by the way.

From: Alamieyeseigha, Ziza

To: Alamieyeseigha, Anita

Date: 2161/01/02

Anita,

By now you’ve probably realized that regardless of your efforts, your escape pod’s trajectory is no longer Mars. You are now on an intercept path with me. I know that you must be seething, cursing my name, praying for my damnation (you’ve always been so dramatic), but give me the opportunity to explain.

Your ship was never in danger. The plan was that once you entered in new coordinates to anyplace other than Mars, preferably home, the diamond drills would have set about repairing the holes they’d created in the hull of your ship. Genius ancillary programming, if I do say so myself. All you had to do was turn around. But you, with your flare for the dramatic and unwillingness to give up, even when you know you’ve lost, decided to jump ship and make the rest of the voyage via the escape pod.

The escape pod. The escape pod with only half the power you’ll need to complete the trip to Mars. At the rate you’re going you’ll be one hundred and three before you even break orbit. If you paid as much attention to the details as you do the drama, you might have remembered that.

Why couldn’t all your hot hate keep those poor raccoons warm as your abandoned ship plunges onward toward the cold outer depths of space, too long and too far for either of us to go? I won’t be able to save those raccoons, nor Father’s ashes, because I will be saving you.

You can thank me later.

Your last message, so thick with evil enmity for your only sibling in the galaxy, reminded me of Tariq, the only man I ever considered staying with for a lifetime. I’ve tried over the last forty-three years, without an iota of success, to tangle and finally lose my memory of him among the many others. He was brighter than Sirius and sweeter than lugduname, at least to me. I know that long-legged bird wasn’t perfect, he chewed with his mouth open and, truth be told, he wasn’t very bright but he loved me without reserve.

You didn’t like him at first. You called him a “pretty, useless thing”, because he didn’t have the same knack for business or driving ambition for more, that you did. He was an artist and liked to create beautiful things, to experience the delights of life with all of his senses exposed and ready.

It was through your senses that he finally won you over. So thoughtful was he, that knowing your dislike for him, he still surprised you with your favorite, hot homemade waffles, on your birthday.

When I broke off the engagement with him only a week later, you, who had hated him all along, refused to speak to me for months. You said I’d made the biggest mistake of my life. You called me a fool.

I never told you why I broke off the engagement. And I bet you never knew that even now, there are sleep cycles when instead of sleep, I lay awake imaging how happy I’d be today had I not broken poor Tariq’s heart.

I broke off our engagement because of your Reason #1. In answer to your question, I love you more than breath itself, baby sister.

Tariq said to me one day, as we lay beneath the sun in a field of cool holo-grass, “Any sister who would waste her dying father’s final hours arguing over an inheritance is surely too selfish to bear.” He took my foot in his hands and kneaded my heel expertly. “I’m willing to tolerate Anita, my love, because of you.”

I said nothing to this for a while, mostly because the foot massage was so exquisite that it stole my breath and crossed my eyes. But when he was done, I politely slipped on my shoes, clapped off the holo-vision, and asked him to leave.

“If you love me, you must love my sister too. Anything less is unacceptable,” I told him.

So you see, silly sister, you can hate me a million times, but no matter what, I’ll still love you, even though you don’t deserve it. God, you’re such a brat.

Ziza

P.S. Are you seriously pouting about your name? Mother should have named you Shakespeare because you’re nothing but drama.

P.P.S. I didn’t pile those rocks against the door. That was Bobo and Cow. They were just trying to play hide and seek with you. I guess my sweet raccoonie-woonies won that round.

P.P.P.S. Why did the raccoon cross the solar system? To keep her sister’s paw off Mars.

From: Alamieyeseigha, Anita

To: Alamieyeseigha, Ziza

Date: 2161-01-11

Dear Ziza,

Greetings from Mars.

Don’t worry. Nothing has changed. I have regretfully failed to deploy the terraforming nuke. My mission has failed, for now.

Perhaps even before you read this message, GalactiPol will be taking you into custody. I called them when my escape pod veered off course, when the navigation stopped responding to my counter-hacks. You might have forgotten in your rashness that the Mumbai Council for Martian Development endorsed my plan for terraforming, and that I was their agent. Interfering with my mission meant meddling with the Coalition of Humankind itself.

I didn’t call GalactiPol sooner because I wanted to beat you at your own game. So few people in this huge, empty universe can even approach my creativity and intellect. You’ve always pushed me to the greatest apex of my brilliance. I’m never as inventive as when you’re scheming to ruin me. But the thought of losing Father’s ashes into the void of space… well, it gave me no rest. He doesn’t deserve that, not at our hands. I’d hoped you’d fetch the urn, but instead I’m calling an end to our battle of wits.

GalactiPol scooped up my escape pod and listened to my account of your wrongdoings. They have dispatched a salvage vessel to my wreck, and an armed cruiser to arrest you. Unfortunately, I made a fatal mistake: the raccoons. As you well know, I did not have authorization to remove these endangered creatures from Earth.

So they’ve arrested me too. I’ve been dropped on Mars for safekeeping while they run the raccoons back to Earth. They’ve dispatched another cruiser to your coordinates. Soon they will bring you here too, dear Ziza, and for the second time we’ll wander the sands together in this desert of red storms, with only wit and curiosity and mutual hatred to keep us alive until someone returns for us.

Did you know part of our old camp is still here? Somehow the shell of our mobile lab held up against the years. Probably because of the garbatrites. Remember we’d left the lab tucked in the shadow of their great stone. Apparently they liked it (perhaps for the way it holds warmth during the cold Martian nights) because they covered it in their tiny homes like a shipwreck bejeweled with coral and barnacles. When I turn on the lights at night, they dance along the seams in swirling shapes, carving microscopic paths through the dust coating, just as frail human biceps have pushed and moved the world until you can see their efforts from space. The Great Wall of China! The glittering glass megascrapers of Nigeria! How floating Melbourne glistens like a blue jewel in the dark, riding the waves forever, its flooded gondola channels sipping the ocean’s rise and fall! Our little lab is a world for these tiny creatures. They shout, We are here. We exist.

But let’s talk about Tariq. Now there’s an unhealed wound running to our cores. It’s true, Ziza, that you were always the prettiest. I am a plain woman, an experience you can never understand. Your beauty is a passport into people’s best nature. Everyone sees in you the face of an angel, and they give you an angel’s due. Well, any plain woman knows the converse is true, that we have to prove again and again our worth and goodness to a world that mistakes the grotesque for evil, the ungroomed for lazy, the fat for stupid.

Your Tariq, like all pretty men, suffered from the same assumptions. He was never as good to anyone as he was to you, Ziza Angel-faced. When he didn’t ignore me outright, he liked to pick on me for your amusement. He named me Yam Nose and Ogre Teeth, and when I protested, he laughed me off as too sensitive, as if I didn’t have a right to my dignity. People like him are cruel to girls like me in a thoughtless, automatic way, like they can’t imagine us having feelings any more complex than a dog’s. Yes, I detested him. But the day he made me waffles, throwing me one small, quiet kindness, I realized how happy he made you, that you intended to marry him. He’d be around our family a long, long time. I made my peace.

I am sorry you realized so late the flaw in him that was obvious to me from the first. But know, Ziza, that Tariq must accept responsibility for his own character. If you had married him, when you aged and your beauty began to fade, he surely would’ve turned that same cruelty on you. He may very well have been your soulmate, but take a hard look at your own soul, and ask whether you too mistake your angelic face for more than it is. You are merely human.

So come to Mars, Sister. Come to where this all started that summer our father wanted us to bond, back before we hated the taste of water, before we learned to despise each other in small ways and big. We cannot escape one another. Our hatred has been our brilliance, our secret genius, the harsh red desert that pushed and pinched and goaded us to build towers you can see from the Moon. Imagine what a lifetime of love might have accomplished

Come to Mars, Ziza. Scatter our father’s ashes with me. If we cannot make this place bloom with life, at least we can make it a little more dusty.

Anita

From: Alamieyeseigha, Ziza

To: Alamieyeseigha, Anita

Date: 2161-01-11

Dearest Anita,

I can see the GalactiPol cruiser from my starboard viewport. Its black and gold stripes practically glow beneath the strobing orange beacon and make it look like a psychedelic bumblebee. Most people in my situation, facing detainment on Mars, endless expensive legal proceedings, possible time in prison, would be locked in the grips of fear and worry. Perhaps even shame. But not me. The one thought stuck in my mind, like a diptera fastened to sticky paper, is how beautiful that cruiser is and how excited I am to begin this second adventure.

It’s all about perception.

During that last picnic on the moon, when you were locked in the service booth, Father talked about perception. “Perception is everything. If you can project what you perceive it will become reality. You will believe it. More importantly, whether good or bad, everyone else will believe in your reality as well, and they will believe in you.” Not until I read your last letter did I realize how right Father was. And how wrong we have been.

In the mirror I’ve always seen the imperfect likeness of our mother, not quite as beautiful, not quite as kind, and with but a fraction of her intelligence. I have our father’s height and amber-flecked brown eyes, but none of his grace, strength, or athleticism. Yet, somehow you see in me the face of an angel.

In you I see the sharp mind and steady hands of a scientist. A fearless tenacious spirit intent on exploring all possibilities even at great cost, able to articulate your ideas, to change hearts and minds. You have boundless strength, so much so that you have been the central support for Mother and me since Father’s death. There is nothing plain about you, little sister, nothing wanting.

How is it that our perceptions have never aligned?

Be right back. GalactiPol is hailing me…

From: Alamieyeseigha, Ziza

To: Alamieyeseigha, Anita

Date: 2161-01-12

Sorry it has taken me so long to return to this letter, but I had a few calls to make. Officers Gavalia and Ambrose boarded my ship at 2315 and took me into custody. My detainment cell is surprisingly modish, with full amenities including a computer and personal uncensored communication device. I have even been given unrestricted access to their onboard digital library.

According to officer Gavalia, though entry into GalactiPol requires extensive training and a stringent vetting system, they have little opportunity to actually do the type of policing their organization exists to perform. I suppose there just aren’t that many galactic criminals to catch these days, besides you and me, that is.

Now where was I? Ah yes. Perceptions.

I’ve been mesmerized by the images you sent of the garbatrite homes, the bright multilayered encrusted structures in every shade of red, orange and pink, lambent lights beneath the gaze of the sun. They expound beauty and ingenuity and life and more than anything, a prescience greater than anything either of us could have conceived.

We’ve been darting back and forth through this solar system, in an effort to outdo one another, trying our damndest to affect the change of our choosing, thinking we are so smart and so in control, when in truth, we are no greater than those garbatrites, and perhaps we are even less wise than they.

Perhaps there is a way for us both to have what we wanted, to terraform Mars and to protect the garbatrites. They were always keen to share their world with us and seeing the ingenuity and beauty of their structures, perhaps we can convince them to help us transform the barren surface of Mars into one of cooperative beauty. We can provide the framework for our cities and homes, and they can build upon them, layering their coral-like exoteric structures, creating homes befitting us all, unlike anything in the entire solar system.

I called Tariq shortly after my detainment aboard the GalactiPol cruiser. Before you think me hopeless, let me explain. Besides being happily ensconced in a polyamorous relationship with two of the nicest men and woman I have ever met, he has long since given up on his art (he was never very good anyway) and has been the Chief GalactiPol Officer for several years. I was hoping that there was still enough lingering affection between us that he would agree to assist me in this difficult situation.

Unfortunately, he is unable, as I had hoped, to have the charges against us repealed, but we have been allowed to serve the entirety of our sentence on Mars. Together.

Shall we do this, sister? Shall we make our dreams come true?

I envision us making a home from our old pod quarters. Perhaps we can build on an extra room and invite Mother. We can even build a special corral for Bobo and Cow, where they can play happily and where they won’t be able to disturb you as you work on your next great experiment. With the help of the garbatrites we can build a greenhouse. We’ll grow corn and tomatoes in soil fertilized with the ashes of our father. We will create a real home, a life. And we will relearn one another, our strengths and weakness, our mutual love for each other. One day other Earthers will join us on our red planet and find a world of wonder encased in garbatrite domes. A home.

Can you see it, sister? Good. Now hold that thought in your mind until we are reunited.

With all my love,

Ziza

From: Alamieyeseigha, Anita

To: Alamieyeseigha, Ziza

Date: 2161-01-13

Dear Ziza,

Why did the sisters cross the solar system? To get to the other’s side.

See you soon,

Anita

Author’s Note (Khaalidah): When I met Rachael about three years ago, I experienced an instant and sincere affection for her. We toyed with the idea of a collaboration for awhile before we finally dove in. We didn’t outline this story beforehand and had no clear idea where it would go. It took us across the galaxy, with great food, adventure, and lots of laughter. Collaborating with someone as talented and easy-going as Rachael was a joy for me. She charged my imagination. I am pleased to be able to share the results with everyone else. In many ways the end result reflects how I feel about Rachael. She is a sister in my heart and a dear friend.

Author’s Note (Rachael): Khaalidah is my dear friend, my comrade-in-arms, probably a time traveler, and everything I want to be when I grow up. So when we started kicking around the idea of doing a collaboration, I jumped on the opportunity. Writing this story with her was immensely fun, often hilarious, and always surprising. While working on “Regarding the Robot Raccoons,” we eventually realized that although we each controlled a single character’s voice, we were actually writing each other’s characters via our reactions to one another, creating a more complex and nuanced view of Anita and Ziza that you get through just one perspective. I think this phenomenon also exists in all good friendships: in seeing yourself reflected through another’s eyes, you’re inspired to push harder, reach higher, and go farther in life than you ever would on your own. Khaalidah’s friendship makes me a better person, just as collaborating with her makes me a better writer. I hope our readers, in turn, will enjoy the results.

Rachael K. Jones grew up in various cities across Europe and North America, picked up (and mostly forgot) six languages, and acquired several degrees in the arts and sciences. Now she writes speculative fiction in Athens, Georgia. Contrary to the rumors, she is probably not a secret android. Rachael’s fiction has appeared in dozens of venues, including Lightspeed, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Strange Horizons, and PodCastle. Follow her on Twitter @RachaelKJones.

Khaalidah Muhammad-Ali lives in Houston, Texas, with her husband and three children. By day she works as a breast oncology nurse. At all other times she juggles, none too successfully, writing, reading, gaming, and gardening. She has written one novel entitled An Unproductive Woman available on Amazon. She has also been published at Escape Pod , Strange Horizons, and Fiyah!. Khaalidah is also co-editor at Podcastle.org where she is on a mission to encourage more women to submit fantasy stories. Of her alter ego, K from the planet Vega, it is rumored that she owns a time machine and knows the secret to immortality.

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BOOK REVIEW: The Prey of Gods by Nicky Drayden

written by David Steffen

The Prey of Gods is a science fiction and fantasy novel from Harper Voyager, the premier novel by Nicky Drayden.

The book takes place in a future South Africa, where there are a lot of improvements for the future–everyone has a helper android to help make life easier, and the booming genetic engineering business in Port Elizabeth has revitalized the town.

A hallucinogenic drug is gaining popularity, awakening long-dormant parts of the human brain. And living among us are those who are more than human. Sydney is a demigoddess who has been laying low for decades, living a subsistence lifestyle for her kind, but she sees opportunity in the state of the world to rise again to her former glory. The unlikely group of people to stop her: Muzi, a gay teenager living with a traditionalist grandfather and who is discovering his ability to to control minds, Riya, a superstar pop singer who hides her medical condition, Nomvula, a young Zulu girl discovering her own power, and a politician who has a secret second life as a woman (and a singer).

The biggest strengths of the book (and by extension my first sampling of Drayden’s novel-length writing) are: ignoring genre boundaries, strong relatable characters, a sense of humor, and solid action elements that never let the reader be bored.

One of the things I really liked about the book is that it was solidly science fantasy. There were strong elements of both science fiction (intelligent robot helpers, genetic engineering, technological progression beyond the current time), and fantasy (demigoddesses, other myths proved true). I feel like publishers too often tend to pigeonhole books into being clearly either science fiction or fantasy–that is important for some stories (The Martian would’ve been ruined if fantasy elements were added for instance) but I would like to see more stories like this that freely mix the two. The boundary between is in many cases entirely arbitrary, so why not mix them when it makes a more interesting story.

I wasn’t sure how the ensemble cast would work, if there would be too many characters too really get into them, but Drayden has made each one interesting and relatable in their own way. At first the characters seem to have no connection with each other, but soon the lines of connection between them start to form. Even Sydney the demigoddess, who is the clearest villain of the novel, is relatable in her own way–remember the great heights of power she has fallen from, she wants to recapture her glory days, but as the book starts she is working in a salon just trying to eke out a basic living and only using tiny bits of magic in small strategic ways. If anything, I would’ve liked to get to know the characters even better, by the book being longer, but at the same time I appreciated that the book is well-paced and never dawdles, so probably what I really want is for Drayden to write book 2.

I had some unresolved concerns about the ending (but nothing that couldn’t be resolved by a second book). I quite enjoyed the book and would recommend it : weird, compelling, empathetic, and fun. I look forward to reading Drayden’s next book, and the ones after that.

REVIEW: Hugo Novelette Finalists

written by David Steffen

Another category in the Hugo Award review series for this year, this is for the novelette category which covers fiction between 7500 words and 17,500 words.

As mentioned before, this year marked several rule changes–including that there will be six nominees in every category, and the nomination tallying rules are different to discourage voting collusion that had been dominant in the couple years prior. This (and perhaps other factors) seems to have had the intended effect.

1. “The Jewel and Her Lapidary” by Fran Wilde (Tor.com Publishing, May 2016)
The gems that live beneath in the kingdom in the Valley can talk, and they can exert a powerful influence on those who can hear them. In centuries past the great deaf king found that he could bind the dangerous jewels mined from the earth so that they could be bent to the people’s will, and since then the country has been protected and ruled by a combination of Jewels and Lapidaries. Jewels are the ruling class, those most influenced by the gems. Lapidaries are their faithful servants, able to talk the jewels into speaking echoes of their own intent, though the gems will only obey those who are faithful to their oaths, the more powerful the oaths the more the gems may obey them. The country is now in shambles, betrayed by the King’s Lapidary, and it is up to the one remaining Jewel (Lin) and the one remaining Lapidary (Sima) to thwart this hostile takeover.

Powerful story with very interesting and novel magical system. I’m not entirely sure I understood all the details of the magic system by the end of the story, and so was never entirely sure what a Lapidary was capable of until it happened. The switching points of view between the two main characters probably didn’t help because I didn’t always seem to notice when the point of view switches and took some time to realize and re-orient. But I think this was only my own failure as a reader and not a problem with the story as such, and the story was very well done.

2. “The Tomato Thief” by Ursula Vernon (Apex Magazine, January 2016)

Grandma Harken lives outside of town, partly because she is a witch, but mostly because she just wants to be left alone most of the time. When someone steals her prize tomatoes just before she has a chance to pick them for herself, Grandma Harken sets out to find the thief and show them the error of their ways. No mundane gardener, neither is her tomato thief a mundane animal.

Grandma Harken reminds me (in a good way) of one of my favorite characters in fantasy stories–Granny Weatherwax of the Discworld series by Terry Pratchett. No-nonsense, grouchy but compassionate and unwilling to admit that last bit. Vernon is very good at writing this sort of character (her “Pocosin” of the previous year is another great example), and I very much enjoyed this and the imaginative turns it took with its practical no-nonsense protagonist and this twisted desert mythology.

3. “You’ll Surely Drown Here If You Stay” by Alyssa Wong (Uncanny Magazine, May 2016)

In this Weird West tale, Ellis is a young man in a small town trying to come to a handle on his necromantic powers. Strangers come to town looking to make use of his uncanny abilities.

Alyssa Wong is one of those authors whose work I always look forward to. Her stories are amazingly imaginative, with powerful and relatable characters and she seems to have a particular knack for writing very dark characters that are nonetheless very easy to root for. This is another excellent one from an author who consistently hits them out of the park.

4. “Touring with the Alien” by Carolyn Ives Gilman (Clarkesworld Magazine, April 2016)

Because Avery has a security clearance, she gets recruited for a top secret job showing an alien and its human liaison around the USA in a tour bus. At least, she’s told there’s an alien… is it in one of the crates? Left only with the alien-raised human, who is strange enough.

This has the feel of a classic SF story with an inexplicable alien and the exploration of what it means to be human and how a lifeform that did not come from the same evolutionary environment as us–thought-provoking and interesting.

5. “The Art of Space Travel” by Nina Allan (Tor.com, July 2016)

Thirty years after the first manned Mars mission, a second mission is preparing to launch. Emily works as a housekeeper at a hotel that will be housing some of the astronauts before the launch and so she is kept plenty busy with her preparations for the highly publicized visit to come. Her mother, Moolie, mentions something that suggests that Moolie may have known some of the original crew, and may have been more than just acquaintances. But Moolie’s mind is slipping–is she just confused, or is she talking about something that really happened?

I’m afraid I found this one quite hard to get into. I didn’t find the Moolie’s vague claims all that compelling, and they did just seem to me like flights of fancy and it didn’t seem like there was enough substance to drive the whole thing to me. Your mileage may vary, as ever.

6. Alien Stripper Boned From Behind By The T-Rex by Stix Hiscock (self-published)

The story is exactly what it says on the tin. The protagonist is a three-breasted green alien who shoots lasers out of her nipples when highly aroused. When she meets a dinosaur who seems so different from the rest of her clientele… well, it’s not a spoiler if it’s in the title, right?

Yes, this one is conspicuous on the ballot for its title, the author name, the cover art, and for being erotica. Like Chuck Tingle’s story last year, there is a reason that you can find out if you dig into it. Like last year it didn’t seem to be the author’s doing, so I wanted to give it a shot.

I’m afraid that speculative erotica might just not be my kind of thing. It seemed like it was trying to be erotic and also trying to be funny, and for me it failed to inspire either response. I think the cover art could use some serious work, and the quality of writing was not impressive, and the entire premise was pretty much contained in the title.

Anime Review: ACCA: 13-Territory Inspection Dept.

written by Laurie Tom

acca

ACCA: 13-Territory Inspection Dept. is a slow burn, sometimes agonizingly slow, which is incredible considering that there are rumors of a coup with secrets all over the place and multiple characters who have no idea who can be trusted. Each episode feeds into the audience’s pool of knowledge and yet the truth feels frustratingly out of reach for half the show.

This isn’t necessary a bad thing, as it’s a ground zero view of the information most of the POV characters are working with, but ACCA plays its cards so close that the world seems made up of trees rather than a forest.

The Kingdom of Dowa faced a failed coup d’état a hundred years ago and to maintain peace through the varied territories, the response was to give them relative autonomy from the main government with an overarching agency called ACCA to oversee them.

Dowa today is a world much like ours, so there are cell phones, airplanes, and other modern conveniences, though there are some odd differences such as cigarettes being an incredibly expensive luxury good. And it’s through the ability to burn through such goods that we’re introduced to our protagonist, Jean Otus.

Jean is the deputy chief of ACCA’s inspection department, and as such it’s his job to travel around to the thirteen territories and make sure that everything is in order. In theory his job is supposed to look for signs of sedition, but the country has been so peaceful ever since the establishment of ACCA that in the first episode there’s discussion of closing his department entirely.

However, there are rumors of a new coup d’état and the current monarch, the aging King Falke, does not step down to offer the crown to his grandson and sole heir Prince Schwann as most people expect. The young Schwann wants to dissolve ACCA and is shocked that his grandfather hasn’t chosen to abdicate in his favor. (And though he comes off as a brat, Schwann is far less stupid than his initial appearance suggests.)

Meanwhile, the five Chief Officers of ACCA were going to close the inspection department, but change their mind. Presumably they do because of the coup d’état rumors, but at the same time, they bar the Director-General beneath them from investigating the matter. And the Chief Officers themselves are not a united front, with some of them suspecting each other of being part of the coup.

Jean finds himself caught in the middle of all of this, because his position allows him to travel to all thirteen territories, which are widely different from each other to the point that it’s amazing that they can be considered part of a single country (and probably why there was a coup d’état in the past, because there is no national identity). Both coup sympathizers and those who wish to track down the coup see Jean as the communication line for an uprising, which places him straightly in everyone’s crosshairs.

And yet throughout the show Jean largely just does his job. There is talk of a coup, but this isn’t the kind of show where everyone’s packing heat and assassins are around every corner. Discussions of secrets and plumbing people for information can happen over dinner and cake (I’m not kidding, this show could well be described as politics with pastries) and there’s so much spinning around looking for potential enemies without finding a thing that there came a point where I was wondering if there was even a coup at all or it was everyone’s paranoia at work.

It helps that Jean is a perceptive individual. Though he’s not a schemer himself, if given a hint as to his situation, he’s quick to pick up the rest. He’s also an incredibly hard read as the audience is rarely privy to his thoughts and his usual expression is one of bored disinterest. This occasionally results in moments where it’s not possible to figure out whether he’s been blindsided or he has a plan up his sleeve, and there’s a fair enough mix that it often goes either way.

ACCA is a slow build, but the pay-off once the cat’s out of the bag is quite good, and through the show never takes off at anything resembling a sprint (if ever there was a low key conspiracy show this is it) the second half reveals everything that had been subtly building in the first. It’s fascinating watching Jean once he realizes everything at stake and it upends his world in a way neither he nor the audience would have guessed when everything started.

The manga concluded at the end of last year so that helps in that the series is able to wrap up as well. I highly recommend ACCA.

Number of Episodes: 12

Pluses: Excellent mid-series plot reveal, fascinating watching Jean and his poker face navigate through treacherous waters, delicious baked goods everywhere (if you like that sort of thing)

Minuses: Show doesn’t really take off until second half, oddly relaxed pacing for a conspiracy involving a coup, hiding Jean’s thoughts from the audience becomes a little unfair once the ending is revealed

ACCA: 13-Territory Inspection Dept. is currently streaming at Crunchyroll (subtitled) and Funimation (dubbed). Funimation has licensed this for eventual retail distribution in the US.

Submission Window

written by David Steffen

Diabolical Plots will be open for the month of July, buying a year’s worth of stories. Read the guidelines–especially in regards to anonymity and the right way to query to avoid disqualification.

Guidelines

DP Fiction #28A: “The Existentialist Men” by Gwendolyn Clare

Kris has a talent for making toast come out perfectly every time. Never burnt. The rest of us yearn for a superpower so practical.

Ryan has incredible parking-space karma, but only after he has already parked. He’ll circle round and round the block, finding nothing and more nothing, and eventually give up and take that one empty space six blocks away. He’ll bundle up against the cold, scarf wrapped all the way up to his chin and hands shoved deep in his coat pockets, and walk the six blocks to the restaurant. And without fail, just as he opens the door, a parking space will open up directly in front. Once, he ran back to his car to move it closer, but the empty space had been claimed by the time he drove there. The parking spaces are taunting him.

Technology always behaves itself in the presence of Candace. If someone has a computer problem, all she has to do to fix it is walk over and glance at the screen. Of course, as soon as she walks away, the computer begins malfunctioning again. She doesn’t understand what the rest of us are always complaining about.

Julie could disappear, but only once. We all miss Julie.

Hiro is never, ever, in a situation where he might have the opportunity to be a hero. One day he slept in, and that was the day someone lost control of their car on the ice and plowed through the glass front of the café where he usually got his morning coffee. When the flu prevented him from going holiday shopping downtown, a chunk of limestone façade spontaneously fell off a building onto a crowded sidewalk, killing one person and injuring six. If he declines to join us for lunch, invariably someone in the restaurant will nearly choke to death. The rest of us got trained to do the Heimlich, and we try to take him along with us whenever we can, like a shield against the bad luck that seems to cluster in his absence. Hiro, for his own part, tries to stick to his schedule so he’s never not somewhere he’s supposed to be.

Brianna gets improbable injuries. It’s true that she enjoys her share of dangerous activities—rugby, skiing, roller derby—but that’s never when she gets hurt. She sprained her wrist in her sleep. She broke a bone in her foot getting out of the desk chair in her home office. Once, she actually slipped on a banana peel and broke her elbow. At an improv comedy show, she laughed so hard she cracked a rib. Most of the ER nurses know her by name. She has to be especially careful when Hiro’s not around.

Nick always knows exactly what time it is without looking at a clock. This would have been incredibly useful back in the 18th Century. But we all own watches and cell phones, and don’t really need him for anything.

Carlos says he has consistent, reliable precognitive abilities. Unfortunately, his precognition only senses one or two seconds ahead, so he never manages to react in time to change the outcome. This means no one else can really confirm whether or not he has a superpower at all, but we choose to believe him anyway. With everything else we’ve seen, why not? At least he knows what’s coming.

My superpower is that I’m friends with all these people, and nothing extraordinary ever happens to me.

Gwendolyn Clare’s debut novel — INK, IRON, AND GLASS — is the first in a YA steampunk duology forthcoming from Macmillan/Imprint in 2018. Her short stories have appeared in Clarkesworld, Asimov’s, and Beneath Ceaseless Skies, among others. She holds a BA in Ecology, a BS in Geophysics, a PhD in Mycology, and swears she’s done collecting acronyms. She lives in North Carolina with too many cats, too many ducks, and never enough books.

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THEATER REVIEW: Sneetches: The Musical

written by David Steffen

I am a lifelong Dr. Seuss fan, so I was very excited to hear that Sneetches: The Musical. In case you haven’t heard of it, “The Sneetches” is a children’s story by children’s author and illustrator Dr. Seuss (the pen name of Theodor Geisel), published in the collection The Sneetches and Other Stories originally published in 1953 and still available in print.

The original Sneetches story was very short, but was one of Seuss’s most memorable pieces, about two groups of birds whose only distinguishing characteristics are that one group has green stars on their bellies and the other has none. The star-belly sneetches use this cosmetic difference as a reason to justify poor treatment of the poor-belly sneetches while the star-belly sneetches exclude plain-belly sneetches from all of their social events. This inequality continues unchanged until the shyster businessman Sylvester McMonkey McBean comes to town selling the use of a machine that will put stars on bellies, and then when the original star-belly sneetches complain about the injustice of it all he offers use of another machine that will remove stars from bellies, and the sneetches all run from one machine to another until all of the sneetches are bankrupt. McBean leaves town much richer than when he came, and the sneetches actually learn a lesson from the ordeal–all treating each other as equals.

The story could be seen as having several different themes or lessons (such as the distrust of the motivations of profiteers, as in The Lorax), but the biggest by far is that we shouldn’t treat each other poorly because of trivial differences between us. I like this story for kid’s for a major reason I love SF in general–by framing a real-life problem in an imaginary way, it becomes much easier to approach contentious subjects and convey a point of view on them. Most people, reading this story, would agree that it’s silly for the star-bellies to shun the plain-bellies just because of that marking. Why then are other real-life traits like skin color used for the same thing? The original story was published when school segregation was still legal, and not long after witnessing the Nazi treatment of Jews in WWII.

Now to the present, with the worldwide premier of Sneetches the Musical in 2017 at the Minnesota Children’s Theater in St. Paul. Dr. Seuss had collaborated with the Minnesota Children’s Theater many times while he was alive, granting them the rights to produce plays based on his works, and this is just the newest in a series. I did wonder how they were going to produce a full length theater production from a picture book you can read in five minutes, but I was interested to find out.

The answer was that they created protagonists and they added much more detail to the society of the sneetches. The original book had had no named characters apart from McBean–just hordes of sneetches with or without star-bellies. The musical creates a cast of characters, focusing especially on a young star-belly girl and an older plain-belly man. The society is filled out so that it’s not only shunning from social events that mark the two groups apart, but every aspect of their lives: including physical separation on Sneetch Beach where one side is star-belly only and the other is plain-belly only, as well as occupation and living conditions–plain-bellies toil in factories all day while the star-bellies are frolicking on the beach.

The set design was the highlight of the production–the stage had a Seussian feel from the first moment I walked into the theater with brightly colored off-kilter set design, especially the very very tall wavery lifeguard chair overlooking Sneetch Beach split with a taped line down the middle. I wasn’t sure what I thought about the Sneetch costumes at first–primarily because they were not apparently birds at all. Each had their own unique costume that exposed fuzzy yellow midriffs with or without stars and had yellow wigs. But, practically speaking I can see why costuming made that decision–if all of the characters had beaks it would probably make it much harder to differentiate one character from another in a theater setting where you might be quite a distance from the stage. McBean’s van was the best of a very good set design with huge expanding cloth sections for the machine entries and exits.

The songs were catchy, and I found myself singing them under my breath at odd times for days afterward. Though I thought they could’ve incorporated a bit more of the original book in terms of rhyming–especially the climactic page of the book where the sneetches are running in a steady stream from one machine to the other “on those wild screaming beaches”.

For the characters, McBean was the highlight of the bunch, hitting a very creepy and credible profiteer claiming to be a friend of the people while using their own prejudices for his own profit. For the main two protagonists, I felt like with this more expanded Sneetch Beach that they filled out the prejudicial society of the sneetches quite a bit, but it felt less real to me because the segregation was so all-pervasive but did not seem to be enforced by anything. This omission pointed out to me more starkly the odd choice of protagonists–a young star-belly girl wanders to the plain-belly side and starts hanging out with a grown plain-belly man without the knowledge of her parents or any other star-bellies. If this was so easy to do, why hasn’t it happened before, especially with children? Why isn’t the man gravely worried about the consequences about being seen with this? I realize a Dr. Seuss children’s play is not going to involve a lynching, mind you, and thank goodness, but I was wondering why he wasn’t more worried about very harmful consequences.

All in all, it was a fun production, great set design, and carried the same worthwhile lessons of the original story. The songs were catchy (if not as catchy as the original book) and it’s a fun play to take a kid to. But I didn’t end up liking it as much as I was hoping I would in part because the expansion of the Sneetch Beach world brought up some plausibility concerns that the show never answered to my satisfaction.

Anime Review: Saga of Tanya the Evil

written by Laurie Tom

tanyatheevil

Saga of Tanya the Evil is one of the best military-oriented anime series I’ve watched. While a lot of shows feature characters who are part of a military unit and involve war-related storylines, Tanya the Evil is particularly well suited to military enthusiasts, the kind willing to argue whether the Schlieffen Plan actually could have worked.

That’s not to say that lay people can’t enjoy Saga of Tanya the Evil on it’s own, it’s fantastic watching our jerk protagonist scrabble out of situations that progressively get from bad to worse, but military history buffs will get an extra kick out of the show from its pseudo-historical setting and frequent basis in historical tactics and battles.

Though it’s not billed as such, Saga of Tanya the Evil can be considered an exercise of what would happen if someone with the knowledge of historical wars went back to the time they were actually fought.

This is where Tanya comes in.

Tanya was originally a male middle manager of a presumably large corporation in our world, but being a ruthlessly pragmatic sort of person, he lays off a mentally unstable employee (for understandable reasons) without displaying an ounce of sympathy. That former employee repays him by pushing him into the path of an oncoming train.

Right before the moment death, a higher power freezes time to speak to him about faith. The soon-to-be Tanya however is unrepentant about his worldview and rejects the possibility of this entity being God, settling on calling it Being X. He even calls out Being X on being a poor deity if it can’t properly manage seven billion people the way it wants them to behave.

Being X decides to teach him a lesson and reincarnates him as an orphaned girl in another world on the brink of war, stripping him of his access to advanced science, his social position, and putting him into the worst straits possible on the chance that his faith might awaken when he has nothing else to rely on. But this time, if he dies, he will not have another chance at reincarnation.

Now Tanya Degruechaff, the former salaryman discovers that he has magical powers and will eventually conscripted into the army because of them. Given the inevitable war, he decides the best course of action is to voluntarily enlist, thus getting into an officer track, and eventually working his way up the career ladder to a comfortable rear echelon position. It’s not so much different from the corporate ladder, but a hell of a lot more dangerous.

This world is an alternate World War I with thinly renamed countries standing in for Germany, France, Scandinavia (they get amalgamated into one), etc. The world map is the same and the Republic (France) is currently locked into trench warfare with the Empire (Germany) along the Rhine, and making matters worse for the Empire, they are being hemmed in from the southeast by Dakia (which seems to be Bulgaria, which oddly was Germany’s ally in WWI) and from the north by the Northern Entente (Scandinavia).

The reason for the war starting is not disclosed, but the Empire is clearly on the back foot. And did I mention that Tanya is an Empire citizen?

Apparently age is no restriction for warfare in this world as only token protest is given to Tanya’s enlistment while she is clearly still a child, and after she proves herself a capable and outwardly fanatical commander she’s deployed and ordered about as any other officer.

The funny thing about watching Tanya is that she (and I’ll use she from now on since other characters don’t know her history) comes across as this incredibly patriotic and devout officer to her fellow soldiers, when she actually doesn’t give a crap. One of the few higher echelon officers aware of Tanya’s true disposition describes her as a monster in the body of a little girl, and that is fitting.

Tanya is not nice. Tanya primarily cares about ending the war for her own personal security and isn’t afraid to manipulate rules and laws to get things done. In the very first episode when she tries to send misbehaving soldiers away from the front lines because she can’t count on them to follow orders, they protest in order to remain. Annoyed, Tanya decides to grant their wish, by leaving them in the position where they’re most likely to get killed. (Which they do.)

Being X never lets Tanya get too comfortable though. Whenever it becomes apparent that Tanya is overcoming her limitations, Being X likes to throw a monkey wrench into things and takes her down a peg.

What makes the whole thing bearable, since Tanya herself is an awful person, is the cast around her. Lieutenant Serebryakov, the only other female soldier in her unit, is incredibly good-hearted, and once Tanya forms her own air mage battalion, Weiss and Grantz form similarly sympathetic faces. Despite Tanya’s disregard for most people, she does seem to genuinely care about her unit and earns their respect in return.

I really appreciate this more nuanced approach to an admittedly fantastical version of World War I. It would have been easy to paint one side as the “bad guys” but the series never goes there and that’s what allows us to see how ridiculous all the speeches about patriotism and honor are. I highly recommend this series.

Number of Episodes: 12

Pluses: lots of nods to real world history, funny watching Tanya get what’s coming to her, Tanya and her battalion have good chemistry together

Minuses: Tanya is a jerk and that will be a dealbreaker for some viewers, Being X is incredibly petty for a higher power, Being X oddly disappears in later episodes

Saga of Tanya the Evil is currently streaming at Crunchyroll (subtitled) and Funimation (dubbed). Funimation has licensed this for eventual retail distribution in the US.

BOOK REVIEW: River Of Teeth by Sarah Gailey

written by David Steffen

Did you know that in the early 20th century the United States Congress considered a bill to populate the Louisiana bayou with hippopotamuses to serve as a new source of meat during a meat shortage? In River of Teeth, we get to see an alternate history where that law passed and some decades later there are hippo-riding “hoppers” which are something like cowboys.

River of Teeth is a new release and debut novel by Sarah Gailey and published by Tor Books. It is sort of a an alt-history Western with the feel of a heist story, and also a revenge quest, the first of a two-part book series.

The hippos have been in Louisiana for decades now, and enough hippos have escaped from ranches that the southern portion of the Mississippi River is avoided by most as it is inhabited by feral hippos.

The main protagonist of the story is Winslow Houndstooth, a hopper who had been very happy establishing a hippo ranch until he was betrayed and the ranch burned to the ground by his then-ranch hand Cal. Now he has accepted a job from the government to clear all of the feral hippos out of the Mississippi so the river can be used again. He is gathering a group of specialists to help him on the job, including Cal himself, and Houndstooth also has revenge on his mind.

The book has an ensemble cast of characters, several of which takes turns as protagonists, and most of which have their hippos as ancillary characters—each with their own personalities and distinguishing characteristics. The protagonist’s goal is a daunting one—how do you move hundreds of hostile hippos out of their own territory with just a few hippo-riders?

Given the premise of the book I was expecting the genre to be something like bizarro or weird fiction, this took some mental adjustment for me because it was solidly alternate history. I don’t think this was an issue with Tor’s marketing, because I don’t believe I really read any of their marketing apart from seeing Sarah post about the premise, and from the premise I assumed it was bizarro. What I mean by the difference is that the book started with a weird idea (which it claims is a historically accurate weird idea that didn’t get approved), but otherwise plays the book completely straight—given the initial premise, everything else about the story is a consequence of that weird idea.

The book is full of action, lots of cool character interactions and deception, and has the feel of a heist plot (a subgenre I enjoy). Lots of things to keep you guessing as to what’s going to happen next. I appreciated that the main cast of those participating in the heist were pretty evenly gender-split, including a nonbinary character which I appreciated that representation, as well as gay characters.

On the whole, I enjoyed the book. I was surprised at how quick of a read it was, and I’m looking forward to reading book two to find out how the story concludes.