mirror image novellas
Sep. 30th, 2018 12:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
psocopteraSome interesting coincidence of plot and theme in this pair of novellas. Each one is about a pair of siblings, one of whom has an accident that ostracizes them from their society, leaving the other sibling needing to figure out whether/how to support or help them.
In The Expert System's Brother, by Adrian Tchaikovsky, it's the POV brother who has the accident, and the secondary-character sister in the possibly-helping role, and their society is a subsistence community in an extremely hostile environment. The revelation of the details and nature of this hostility is the cool-big-idea of the novella, so I won't elaborate on that; there's also a Classic SF Plot which I enjoyed in a sort of cultural-nostalgia way. (If there's really a population of people who miss old-timey SF, I'd expect them to be all over this for the Hugos; afaik Tchaikovsky doesn't say bigoted things on the internet and in fact seems to be squarely anti-bigot, so he's not probably not suitable for their real agenda.)
The Million by Karl Schroeder is set in the same world as Lockstep - I think it's readable without it, but Lockstep is a much more exciting book (with really excellent imagined SF places), so why start here when you could start there. In The Million, the secondary-character brother has suffered a traumatic brain injury before the start of the novel, and the POV brother has to navigate their absurdly luxurious society when his brother is framed for a crime.
Obviously the outcome of each book comes down in large part to the exact nature of the antagonist(s) and situation, but I thought it was interesting that (spoilers) in the marginal-survival scenario the siblings were able to put loyalty above everything and save each other, and in the you-can-indulge-your-every-whim society sibling loyalty has to be put aside for the big picture and long game. Poor Little Rich Kids, hrm.
Overall I did enjoy both novellas - if I had read them in magazines I would cheerfully include both in my online sff recs - but I wasn't really excited about either. I think the only 2018 novella so far where I finished it and thought "okay I want to nominate this" was Binti: Night Masquerade, and maybe Murderbot 2. Luckily I still have several more novellas on my to-read list, plenty of time for a couple more standouts.
In The Expert System's Brother, by Adrian Tchaikovsky, it's the POV brother who has the accident, and the secondary-character sister in the possibly-helping role, and their society is a subsistence community in an extremely hostile environment. The revelation of the details and nature of this hostility is the cool-big-idea of the novella, so I won't elaborate on that; there's also a Classic SF Plot which I enjoyed in a sort of cultural-nostalgia way. (If there's really a population of people who miss old-timey SF, I'd expect them to be all over this for the Hugos; afaik Tchaikovsky doesn't say bigoted things on the internet and in fact seems to be squarely anti-bigot, so he's not probably not suitable for their real agenda.)
The Million by Karl Schroeder is set in the same world as Lockstep - I think it's readable without it, but Lockstep is a much more exciting book (with really excellent imagined SF places), so why start here when you could start there. In The Million, the secondary-character brother has suffered a traumatic brain injury before the start of the novel, and the POV brother has to navigate their absurdly luxurious society when his brother is framed for a crime.
Obviously the outcome of each book comes down in large part to the exact nature of the antagonist(s) and situation, but I thought it was interesting that (spoilers) in the marginal-survival scenario the siblings were able to put loyalty above everything and save each other, and in the you-can-indulge-your-every-whim society sibling loyalty has to be put aside for the big picture and long game. Poor Little Rich Kids, hrm.
Overall I did enjoy both novellas - if I had read them in magazines I would cheerfully include both in my online sff recs - but I wasn't really excited about either. I think the only 2018 novella so far where I finished it and thought "okay I want to nominate this" was Binti: Night Masquerade, and maybe Murderbot 2. Luckily I still have several more novellas on my to-read list, plenty of time for a couple more standouts.
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Date: 2018-09-30 08:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-10-01 01:22 am (UTC)