Review: The Far Reaches, edited by John Joseph Adams

[Russ Allbery]

The Far Reaches
edited by John Joseph Adams

Publisher: Amazon Original Stories
Copyright: June 2023
ISBN:      1-6625-1572-3
ISBN:      1-6625-1622-3
ISBN:      1-6625-1503-0
ISBN:      1-6625-1567-7
ISBN:      1-6625-1678-9
ISBN:      1-6625-1533-2
Format:    Kindle
Pages:     219

Amazon has been releasing anthologies of original short SFF with
various guest editors, free for Amazon Prime members. I previously
tried Black Stars (edited by Nisi Shawl and Latoya Peterson) and
Forward (edited by Blake Crouch). Neither were that good, but the
second was much worse than the first. Amazon recently released a new
collection, this time edited by long-standing SFF anthology editor John
Joseph Adams and featuring a new story by Ann Leckie, which sounded
promising enough to give them another chance.

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again
and expecting different results.

As with the previous anthologies, each story is available separately
for purchase or Amazon Prime "borrowing" with separate ISBNs. The
sidebar cover is for the first in the sequence. Unlike the previous
collections, which were longer novelettes or novellas, my guess is all
of these are in the novelette range. (I did not do a word count.)

If you're considering this anthology, read the Okorafor story ("Just
Out of Jupiter's Reach"), consider "How It Unfolds" by James S.A.
Corey, and avoid the rest.

"How It Unfolds" by James S.A. Corey: Humans have invented a new form
of physics called "slow light," which can duplicate any object that is
scanned. The energy expense is extremely high, so the result is not a
post-scarcity paradise. What the technology does offer, however, is a
possible route to interstellar colonization: duplicate a team of
volunteers and a ship full of bootstrapping equipment, and send copies
to a bunch of promising-looking exoplanets. One of them might succeed.

The premise is interesting. The twists Corey adds on top are even
better. What can be duplicated once can be duplicated again, perhaps
with more information.

This is a lovely science fiction idea story that unfortunately bogs
down because the authors couldn't think of anywhere better to go with
it than relationship drama. I found the focus annoying, but the ideas
are still very neat. (7)

"Void" by Veronica Roth: A maintenance worker on a slower-than-light
passenger ship making the run between Sol and Centauri unexpectedly is
called to handle a dead body. A passenger has been murdered, two days
outside the Sol system. Ace is in no way qualified to investigate the
murder, nor is it her job, but she's watched a lot of crime dramas and
she has met the victim before. The temptation to start poking around is
impossible to resist.

It's been a long time since I've read a story built around the
differing experiences of time for people who stay on planets and people
who spend most of their time traveling at relativistic speeds. It's a
bit of a retro idea from an earlier era of science fiction, but it's
still a good story hook for a murder mystery. None of the characters
are that memorable and Roth never got me fully invested in the story,
but this was still a pleasant way to pass the time. (6)

"Falling Bodies" by Rebecca Roanhorse: Ira is the adopted son of a
Genteel senator. He was a social experiment in civilizing the humans:
rescue a human orphan and give him the best of Genteel society to see
if he could behave himself appropriately. The answer was no, which is
how Ira finds himself on Long Reach Station with a parole officer and a
schooling opportunity, hopefully far enough from his previous mistakes
for a second chance.

Everyone else seems to like Rebecca Roanhorse's writing better than I
do, and this is no exception. Beneath the veneer of a coming-of-age
story with a twist of political intrigue, this is brutal, depressing,
and awful, with an ending that needs a lot of content warnings. I'm
sorry that I read it. (3)

"The Long Game" by Ann Leckie: The Imperial Radch trilogy are some of
my favorite science fiction novels of all time, but I am finding
Leckie's other work a bit hit and miss. I have yet to read a novel of
hers that I didn't like, but the short fiction I've read leans more
heavily into exploring weird and alien perspectives, which is not my
favorite part of her work. This story is firmly in that category: the
first-person protagonist is a small tentacled alien creature, a bit
like a swamp-dwelling octopus.

I think I see what Leckie is doing here: balancing cynicism and
optimism, exploring how lifespans influence thinking and planning, and
making some subtle points about colonialism. But as a reading
experience, I didn't enjoy it. I never liked any of the characters, and
the conclusion of the story is the unsettling sort of main-character
optimism that seems rather less optimistic to the reader. (4)

"Just Out of Jupiter's Reach" by Nnedi Okorafor: Kármán scientists have
found a way to grow living ships that can achieve a symbiosis with a
human pilot, but the requirements for that symbiosis are very strict
and hard to predict. The result was a planet-wide search using genetic
testing to find the rare and possibly nonexistent matches. They found
seven people.

The deal was simple: spend ten years in space, alone, in her ship. No
contact with any other human except at the midpoint, when the seven
ships were allowed to meet up for a week. Two million euros a year, for
as long as she followed the rules, and the opportunity to be part of a
great experiment, providing data that will hopefully lead to humans
becoming a spacefaring species.

The core of this story is told during the seven days in the middle of
the mission, and thus centers on people unfamiliar with human contact
trying to navigate social relationships after five years in symbiotic
ships that reshape themselves to their whims and personalities. The
ships themselves link so that the others can tour, which offers both a
good opportunity for interesting description and a concretized metaphor
about meeting other people.

I adore symbiotic spaceships, so this story had me at the premise. The
surface plot is very psychological, and I didn't entirely click with
it, but the sense of wonder vibes beneath that surface were wonderful.
It also feels fresh and new: I've seen most of the ideas before, but
not presented or written this way, or approached from quite this angle.
Definitely the best story of the anthology. (8)

"Slow Time Between the Stars" by John Scalzi: This, on the other hand,
was a complete waste of time, redeemed only by being the shortest
"story" in the collection. "Story" is generous, since there's only one
character and a very dry, linear plot that exists only to make a
philosophical point. "Speculative essay" may be closer.

The protagonist is the artificial intelligence responsible for Earth's
greatest interstellar probe. It is packed with a repository of all of
human knowledge and the raw material to create life. Its mission is to
find an exoplanet capable of sustaining that life, and then recreate it
and support it. The plot, such as it is, follows the AI's decision to
abandon that mission and cut off contact with Earth, for reasons that
it eventually explains.

Every possible beat of this story hit me wrong. The sense of wonder
attaches to the most prosaic things and skips over the moments that
could have provoked real wonder. The AI is both unbelievable and
irritating, with all of the smug self-confidence of an Internet reply
guy. The prose is overwrought in all the wrong places ("the finger of
God, offering the spark to animate the dirt of another world" would
totally be this AI's profile quote under their forum avatar). The only
thing I liked about the story is the ethical point that it slowly
meanders into, which I think I might agree with and at least find
plausible. But it's delivered by the sort of character I would actively
leave rooms to avoid, in a style that's about as engrossing as a tax
form. Avoid. (2)

Rating: 5 out of 10

Reviewed: 2023-10-05

URL: https://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/reviews/books/1-6625-1572-3.html

-- 
Russ Allbery (eagle at eyrie.org)             <https://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>