Conservation of Shadows - Yoon Ha Lee

The poll to vote for reviewed work number 400 is open a view more days. Don't forget to put in you vote!
 

 I've seen a lot of positive comments about this collection floating around the blogsphere so when I realized I hadn't reviewed a collection for a while Conservation of Shadows by the Korean-American author Yoon Ha Lee seemed like an obvious choice. When I picked it up I thought I hadn't read any of Lee's work before. That didn't turn out to be correct. I had in fact read Swanwatch before as part of the John Joseph Adams anthology Federations. The stories in this collection are a selection from what he's published between 2001 and 2013. The collection contains 16 pieces of short fiction and an introduction by Aliette de Bodard. Lee is not hugely productive and hasn't published any novels to date but his short fiction has definitely been noticed. It has appeared in some in magazines like Fantasy & Science Fiction, Clarkesworld and Lightspeed magazine.

Lee's writing is something you won't come across often. His prose is very poetic and thematically a lot of Asian influences are included. Lee has a bachelor in Mathematics and he has used this as an influence on his stories as well. It makes for an interesting mixture of mathematical concepts and magical plot elements. The stories range form fantasy to science fiction, but in each of them you get the feeling that there is a real scientific concept at the base of the plot. Lee can make a magical system seem rational like no one else I've read.

The collection opens with one of the strongest stories. Ghostweight is a space opera in which the main character carries with her the souls of the dead. It is a very dark tale of revenge with an absolutely devastating climax. Not a very upbeat way to open the collection but it is one of the stories that had the greatest impact on me. Lee mentions in the story notes that it is set in the same universe as The Shadow Postulates, only in a far future. I don't think I would have seen that without her mentioning it.

The Shadow Postulates is the next story in the collection and one in which you can clearly see the mix of influences I mentioned above. It mixes magic and mathematics in very interesting ways. The story follows a student on the verge of graduating and struggling with a mathematical problem that generations of students have tried to crack. It builds towards a conceptual breakthrough in a way that shows Lee understands how to handle the pace of a story. I wasn't surprised to learn that it's partly inspired by Fermat's Last Theorem that nobody has been able to find for centuries. In fact, many now believe Fermat came up with a wrong proof. If I had to pick a favourite, this one may well be it.

It is hard to pick a favourite though, I greatly enjoyed the story Iseul's Lexicon as well. It's quite a complex tale that shows how language and culture are interwoven and how banning languages, over time, can be very effective in suppressing a culture. Lee used the Korean Hangeul, an alphabet that replaced the more complicated Chinese characters from the 15th century on, as an inspiration. The story also shows echoes of the complex and often violent history between Korea and Japan. There are a lot of layers to this story, on the surface there is a military campaign, spying and an interesting magical system, deeper down there are the references to our own world and the parallels with Korean history. Even if it is one of the longer pieces in the collection, I still couldn't shake the feeling that a novel is hiding in there somewhere.

In the story notes Lee mentions several pieces are related to unpublished novels. Iseul's Lexicon isn't mentioned as being one of those but The Battle of Candle Arc is. It is one of several that have a space opera setting and deals with interstellar warfare. War and the price to be paid for it, is one of the themes that pop up in a lot of stories. This one is a story inspired by another bit of Korean history, the 1597 battle of Myeongnyang, part of the Imjin war (1592-1598), in which the Korean fleet achieved a decisive victory of the the vastly numerically superior Japanese invasion fleet. The general in this story reminded me a bit of some of Frank Herbert's characters. The depth of his insight appears to be almost superhuman.

The Unstrung Zither is the last story in this collection I want to mention. It includes a mix of traditional music (it strikes me as Chinese inspired but I don't know enough about this subject to say for sure), elemental magic and a far future setting. The main character is a composer. She doesn't seem to feel she is brilliant at it, merely competent. Nevertheless she is entrusted with a very important mission. Music in this story, is more than a cultural expression. It appears to create structure in society. War and politics are discussed in terms we don't often associate with them. In finding the right structure for her composition, she finds the solution to the problem posed to her. I liked this piece very much although I wouldn't have minded knowing a bit more about the war at the heart of these events.

As usual, I've had a lot of trouble writing this review. It took me well over a week, where I usually do a draft in one day and clean it up the second. Short story collections are a pain to review but Conservation of Shadows was even more difficult than usual. Lee writes very complex stories. He packs a lot into a few pages and often steps outside the western cultural framework. He makes me work pretty hard and I'm sure I missed quite a bit. In fact, without the story notes I might very well have been lost completely.

I'm somewhat frustrated by my own inability to properly express why I enjoyed this collection so much. I guess it is a combination of things. I liked Lee's prose a lot for instance. I'm not one for audio books but from reading these stories I get the impression that it would sound beautiful if narrated skilfully. Then there are the themes Lee addresses that, despite the nagging feeling that I'm missing some of the context, still strike a chord with me. I guess you are just going to have to take my word for it, if you enjoy reading short fiction, Lee is an author you'll not want to miss.

Book Details
Title: Conservation of Shadows
Author: Yooh Ha Lee
Publisher: Prime Books
Pages: 336
Year: 2013
Language: English
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 978-1-60701-387-7
First published: 2013

Kabu Kabu - Nnedi Okorafor

In August I read Nnedi Okorafor's novel Who Fears Death (2010). It was my first experience with her writing in the long form and I found it to be one of the most thought-provoking novels I've read all year. When I saw Kabu Kabu, a short story collection published by Prime Books, pop up on NetGalley I jumped at the chance. Kabu Kabu is a very diverse set of stories. I guess you could call most of them fantasy or magical realism, sometimes with a bit of science fiction mixed in. It's one of those collections that take a bit of time to read. I think it took me three weeks to read all twenty-one stories. It is one of those collections that work best in small portions.

The stories themselves are pretty diverse but a number of themes crop up in a lot of them. Okorafor is the daughter of Nigerian immigrants to the US, more specifically of the Igbo people. The borders of Nigeria are a remnant of colonial times and the nation is home to a ethnically diverse population with the three largest groups, Hausa, Yoruba and Igbo making up almost seventy percent of the population. The Igbo people make up the majority of the population in south-east Nigeria, a place Okorafor has been visiting regularly since her early childhood. Her experiences of visiting Nigeria have worked their way into such stories as Kabu Kabu, a collaboration with Alan Dean Forester and The Carpet. The prejudices of both sides are discussed in this story, sometimes in a humorous way, although at time exasperation also shines through.

The parts of Nigeria where the Igbo people are the majority of the population is also the oil rich part of the country. In several stories oil production plays a large part. She describes the environmental degradation caused by oil spills and the irony of the fuel shortages that plague the local population, as well as the other disastrous effects of attempts to steal fuel. In Spider the Artist, the only story I've read before, it was part of John Joseph Adam's anthology Seeds of Change (2008), she creates monstrous robots released by oil companies to protect their pipelines. It's a very dramatic story that despite the inevitable death and destruction contains a kernel of hope. The Popular Mechanic is another that blends a science fiction element with the reality of the situation in the Niger delta. This time Okorafor aims for more than just the oil companies.

Nigerian folklore shows up in a number of stories as well. The stories How Inyang Got Her Wings, The Winds of Harmattan, Windseekers and Biafra all feature the Windseeker Arro-yo, a character from an unpublished novel, is the main character. Windseekers have a number of supernatural abilities and Arro-yo is regarded with suspicion in most of the stories. Okorafor uses How Inyang Got Her Wings in particular to show the horrible treatment a woman who stands out can expect to receive. The treatment of women who dare to step outside what is deemed proper in a patriarchal society is a theme included in many of the stories. Pretty much all of Okorafor's female characters are unashamed of their ambitions or sexuality. In the Windseeker stories, featuring characters that are very obviously different, this theme is particularly pronounced. I understand Okorafor has written a young adult novel featuring a Windseeker as well. I haven't read that but based on these stories I might pick it up one of these days.

The most harrowing of the Windseeker stories must be Biafra. As the title suggests, the main character finds herself in the midst of that horrible post-colonial conflict called the Biafra War or the Nigerian Civil War. The story shows the tragedy of the conflict that to an extent still looms over Nigeria. Arro-yo is not one to takes sides, apart form separating those that are doing the hurting from those being hurt. It's a very powerful story.

Two stories are connected to other novels Okorafor wrote. In The Black Stain we return to the post apocalyptic world of Who Fears Death and digs into the history of the Ewu, children of mixed origin, the product of weaponized rape. As the subject suggests it is another tragedy. This time we see the story unfold from a male point of view. It's interesting to see how the main character swings from complete acceptance of the dehumanized status of the (fictional) Okeke people, to love for an Okeke woman so profound he challenges society and stands up for her. The consequences are nothing short of brutal.

The story Tumaki is lifted form Stormbringer, the sequel to The Shadow Speaker (2009). I haven't been able to find much information on it but to the best of my knowledge Stormbringer has not been published yet. Tumaki essentially a love story and one that once again shows the terrible consequences of a woman overstepping the boundaries society sets her. In some places, even reading is a crime. Personally I got the feeling I was missing a lot of the background of the story here. There is obviously a whole future history attached to the story and main character, a boy by the name of Dikéogu, has powers that are barely mentioned in the story. The strength of this piece is that we get to understand his fascination with Tumaki and even why it blinds him to the danger surrounding them. Given the rest of the collection the outcome of the story can't be too surprising to the reader though.

There are quite a few stories in this collection that end badly but Okorafor closes on a slightly lighter note. In The Palm Tree Bandit we see another woman doing something that is forbidden to her, but in stead of being harshly corrected, we she manages to overturn a custom. The foolishness of the men trying to figure out the identity of the bandit will make more than one reader grin. The occasional flashes of hunour in this story and a number of other ones (the opening story The Magical Negro is another one of those) are a nice counterbalance to the darker side of Okorafor's work.

The story contains a lot of different approaches to story telling. They span over a decade in the writing career of Okorafor. Her writing has obviously changed over time and since the stories, as far as I can tell, are not ordered chronologically, the collection might come across as a bit of a jumble. In fact, I'd be curious to know the reasoning behind the order they've been placed in. Personally the diversity of the stories and cross genre nature of the collection are things I enjoyed about Kabu Kabu but Okorafor does make the reader work hard to find the common ground and see the thematic links.  Kabu Kabu is a collection that requires a bit of patience and reflection to properly appreciate. If you are looking challenging reading material, stuff that crosses into territory not often visited in fantasy or science fiction, this collection might be just the thing.

Book Details
Title: Kabu Kabu
Author: Nnedi Okorafor
Publisher: Prime Books
Pages: 241
Year: 2013
Language: English
Format: E-book
ISBN: 978-1-60701-405-8
First published: 2013

When the Great Days Come - Gardner Dozois

Gardner Dozois is probably best known for his work as editor, for which he has won an unprecedented number of Hugo Awards. He was in the editor of Asimov's for twenty years between 1984 and 2004 and has edited an enormous number of anthologies of all kinds, including The Year's Best Science Fiction series, which is up to its 28th annual edition. Recently there have also been a series of cross genre anthologies edited with George R.R. Martin that were generally well received. Dozois' fiction is less well know. He is not a very prolific writer, somewhere between 50 and 60 short stories were published, the first of which appeared in 1966. He has also published three novels, the most recent being Hunter's Run (2007), a collaboration with George R.R. Martin and Daniel Abraham. This book was the only work I have read of Dozois before reading this collection.

When the Great Days Come is the latests of half a dozen collections that have appeared over the years. It is a selection of eighteen stories spanning his entire career and contains an insightful introduction by Robert Silverberg. The oldest stories were published in 1971, while the most recent is a story originally published in one of the cross genre anthologies I mentioned before. Three of them are award winning stories. Dozois got a Nebula for The Peacemaker (1983) and Morning Child (1984) and a Sidewise Award for Counterfactual (2006). The collection contains stories that range from post apocalyptic to alternate histories, first contact and horror/science fiction hybrid. One of the stories even borders on fantasy. They are often very bleak, containing very little in the way of optimism or utopian themes. As such, it took me a while to get though this collection. Although the stories are very well crafted, you don't want to read them all in one sitting. Eighteen stories is too much to discuss them all, so I will just cover a few. I found it very hard to pick favourites, the quality of this entire collection is exceptional.

Counterfactual is the story that opens the collection and is, in my opinion, one of the strongest pieces in it. It's an alternate history, set in an America where the civil war didn't end with General Lee surrendering his army but where the South started a guerilla war that lasted for generations. The main character is a journalist writing a counterfactual (alternate history) on a boring trip to cover a speech by the vice president in one of the occupied southern states. What Gardner does is have the main character examine a future that could well be ours, tugging at Lee's motivation for dispersing his army and wondering how close he came to giving up. He constantly asks the "what if" question letting the reader bounce back and forth between our history and that of the main character. There are some very good stories in this collection but I think I like this one the best.

Two stories that offer a nice contrast are When the Great Days Came (2005) and A Cat Horror Story (1994). In the first story Dozois writes about a great change from the point of view from a rat. He very carefully avoids anthropomorphizing pointing out several times that smart as they may be, we can't project human emotions on these rodents. He only hits at the evolutionary path these creatures are about to take, to which the rat is completely oblivious. Somehow Dozois makes this story work without a sentient character.  In a A Cat Horror Story, Dozois does the opposite. It deals with a gathering of cats telling tachometer stories of the horrible faith that may befall each of them. They include such evils as cars, castration and euthanasia. Despite being a cat person, I didn't think it was the strongest story in the collection but in combination with When the Great Days Came, which I like a lot, it works nicely.

Ancestral Voices (1998), written in collaboration with Michael Swanwick is one of the longest pieces in the collection. I guess you could see it as a first contact story. The story contains two points of view. One of a creature struggling to override his survival instincts, the other of an old woman who encounters it. It's a very bleak story, one that could be said to have happy end but one plagued by regrets and suspicions of manipulation. What I liked about this story in particular is the pacing. Dozois and Swanwick build to the climax carefully and deliver a twist I didn't see coming until they wanted me to.

In A Special Kind of Morning (1971), the author explores the emotional scars on a veteran of a brutal war. The story is basically told as a monologue. The veteran is speaking to a younger man or boy but other than that we never learn anything about him. The setting feels like a far future story, one in which reliance on technology has reached such extremes that it leaves society wide open to attacks with the most primitive means. I guess this soldier discovers post traumatic stress all over again during his campaign. Given the publication date I wonder if the Vietnam war had anything to do with writing this story.

I guess A Knight of Ghosts and Shadows (1999) matches A Special Kind of Morning in a way. The main character is also an old man, famous for making a political statement on the desirability of applying all kinds of technology to the human species to lengthen their lives, or to become in effect immortal, as well as the emergence of artificial intelligence. His message was a bit too subtle for the general public but his followers still hold him in high regard when his eightieth birthday approaches. Dozois uses what the main character things of as time travellers to impress the seriousness of the decision the main character will be faced with. Although it takes a few pages for this choice to become apparent, the author already builds the tension early on in the story. I also liked the rather ambitious ending of this story. It fits somehow. A story about the how a decision is made, rather than what the decision is.

As I mentioned earlier, I thought almost all of these stories were very well written from a technical point of view. They were very well paced in particular. Structured so as not to give the twist of the story away too early. The tone of most of them is very dark though, making When the Great Days Come a somewhat depressing read. That being said, I like the way in which Dozois delivers the punch of his stories. The endings are often ambiguous, yet fit the tales perfectly. They leave the reader to mull over the larger theme of the story, rather than the fate of the main character as often as not. Some readers may find his style a bit verbose at some points but that was not something that bothered me in any of these stories. When the Great Days Come is a great collection. It took me longer than I expected to make my way though it, but is was reading time well spent.

Book Details
Title: When the Great Days Come
Author: Gardner Dozois
Publisher: Prime Books
Pages: 359
Year: 2011
Language: English
Format: Hardcover
ISBN: 978-1-60701-278-8
First published: 2011