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Nebula Awards Showcase 2006

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Note on this article

This piki article is an edited version of the text from the mySF Project (http://www.pataphysics.net.au/mysf_project/index.html), and the mySF Project Blog, published on the 21 April, 2008. You can link to the mySF Project Blog for Podcast 13, here (http://www.pataphysics.net.au/mysf_project_blog). The podcast runs through the stories from the anthology and comments on their use for teachers and their students in a secondary school classroom. Unlike the podcast, the stories and other material from the anthology that did not fall within the brief of the mySF Project with its five themes were omitted from this article. Contributors are invited to comment on or change any or all of the notes here.

Background to the discussion

Podcasts 13 & 14 look at the anthology Nebula Awards Showcase 2006 edited by Gardner Dozois, checking out the claims published about it for successful use as a sort of background text for teaching Science Fiction 101.

Walking down the aisles of the Science Fiction and Fantasy shelves at Borders I noticed an anthology with the bold claim that it, "would serve well as a one-volume text for a course in contemporary science fiction" as noted by the New York Review of Science Fiction. Just what was needed, I hoped, especially because the Nebula Awards Showcase 2006 was late into the store and it might be picked up cheaply for use in secondary schools.

The book was attractive with a swirling, exploding design on white with a prominent photograph of a shaved head with a circuit board printed over the shorn scalp. The thin card cover was not strong protection for the many pages, but students in a secondary school would be intrigued by the cover design, hopefully protected by plastic film from the library.

The Neblula Awards Showcase 2006 anthology was edited by Gardner Dozois and published by Roc, in New York. Just glancing back along the rows of the SF books his name was seen on several texts, including co-writing the recent Hunter's Run that arrived for the Australian 2007 Christmas sales. More on Dozois and his influence, later in this podcast.

Dozois introduced the Nebula Awards Showcase with the perspective of a long-term editor of science fiction anthologies. He noted that six hundred and forty-two SF and fantasy novels were published in 2004 and stressed that the winner of the ballots and many of the writings from the anthology had faced the harshest jury of all, the "fellowship of working writers who know all the tricks and are not easy to fool". Dozois added that the anthology contained a wide range of stories, from hard SF to political/economic/sociological thrillers to speculations on the nature of the Posthuman condition, to gentle fantasy and creepy horror.

Walter John Williams and 'The Green Leopard Plague'

Dozois introduced the first author represented in the anthology, Walter Jon Williams, and his novella 'The Green Leopard Plague' , the winner of the novella section of the Nebula Awards. The novella was originally published in the October/November, 2003 volume of Asimov's Science Fiction.

'The Green Leopard Plague' can be used very easily within the 'Brave New World' theme area of the mySF Project so it is of great interest, focusing on the possibilities of Posthuman life when genetic engineering advances change human possibilities radically. Mixed in with this nod towards Wells' The Island of Doctor Moreau is a touch of the use of personal information systems as seen in many Cyberpunk texts. Walter Jon Williams describes a lush tropical landscape where "geckoes scurried over the banyan's bark and coconut crabs sidled beneath the leaves like touts offering illicit downloads to passing tourists".

In her most recent form as a sort of mermaid, Michelle is offered a research task to find information on the famous Terzian, whose ideas form a structure for this future world. Her research tasks pay very well and her intelligent software agents are as reliable when activated from the bough of a tree as anywhere else. While Michelle starts the task of researching the missing period in Terzian's life a new element enters when a past love of Michelle, Darton, attempts to find her.

'The Green Leopard Plague' continues to move between two worlds: Michelle as a mermaid on a tropical island pursued by her former lover, and Terzian falling into a thriller story of missing biotech and corrupt governments with the beautiful Stephanie. The narrative delves into one world then shifts focus back into the current time, showing the clear jump from a culture like ours, to a new world where bodies are engineered in nanobeds and murder is just a fourth-degree felony.

By the conclusion of this innovative and complex novella Michelle, the story's mermaid researcher, has a good idea of how Terzian came to proclaim his world-changing philosophy but she chooses to keep it secret. By the end of the novella the reader has learnt a good deal more about Michelle and her former lover, also, and many readers may be worried by her casual amusement from murdering her lover.

The 'Green Leopard Plague' is a complex novella chosen by working SF writers for the Nebula Award . It rewards teachers with two related narrative streams, one set in a far future where the world is changed utterly and the companion narrative in a time closer to our own. Both stories feature love, of sorts, between a male and female, but the narratives are overtly SF as they involve stolen biotechnology, thugs from a rogue government killing the innocent, future choices to store personalities and to change bodies from a little hairy ape to a mermaid to suit the conditions of the environment.

The dual narratives are set in both exotic and standard tourist destinations with some more mundane descriptions as well as some startling and vivid images, such as Michelle's island lake full of jellyfish and the murder of Stephanie in the back canals of Venice.

Teachers can use the narrative productively with students in years nine to twelve, with more assistance required for younger students. The story would be useful for the discussion of the novellas structure as well as its clear use of genetic engineering and artificial intelligence: the Brave New World and Ghost in the Shell theme areas. The future utopia possible through genetic engineering and nanotechnology is an important literary device that contrasts our current society with a future when all economies are based on trading calories as work.

The 'Green Leopard Plague' by Walter Jon Williams is strongly recommended for use in upper secondary studies of SF for its innovative narrative structure and clever contrasts of our times with a future utopia based on technology. This sense of optimism for the use of technology in the future has been called Euchronianism, the "speculation about a better time - the great scientific utopia" by Alsford in What If?: Religious Themes in Science Fiction, published in London by Longman and Todd in 2000.

William Sanders and 'Dry Bones'

'Dry Bones' by William Sanders is the third in the Dozois anthology and it falls easily into the SF genre and within the mySF Project, in the 'Fate and Predestination' theme area.

'Dry Bones' was published in Asimov's Science Fiction of May, 2003 and it was a finalist in the novelette category. This is a first person narrative from Truman's regional America and the author believes it is an example of the 'long-established but seldom seen subcategory of the 'Great Lost Scientific Discovery"'.

The narrator is a thirteen year old boy so this perspective is a helpful start for teachers of secondary students. Our narrator is Ray and he is a bright young chap with an inspiring teachers called Mister Donovan who encourages Ray in his interests, including Science Fiction, while Ray's own parents are narrow and proud of their fundamental beliefs.

A skeleton is found in a hidden cave in a box canyon and Donovan's university friends David and Maddy arrive to investigate. The skeleton shows a spearhead that may be ten thousand years old as the cause of death but there is a major problem because the strange clothes have survived on the skeleton and it seems to have an intact machine pack attached. Ray jumps to the right conclusion when he says, "You think he was a time traveller" to the three scientists.

David's scientist wife Maddy prowls around the tight and unfriendly town 'practically naked' according to the locals so Ray's father tells his son to stay away. Eventually he is asked by David to run an errand up to the box canyon but there he gains a glimpse of his teacher, Mr Donovan and the gorgeous Maddy making life. This section is handled carefully with a light, erotic touch that would not be suitable for high school students after the middle years.

From Ray's point of view nothing much happens until there is an explosion down at the box canyon that seems much greater than possible if it is just dynamite sealing up the cave to stop more explorations by the scientists. It is indicated that the power pack on the skeleton has been triggered by vandalism but the damage has been done between the scientists by Maddy's infidelity. Ray believes Maddy's husband David beat his wife and then sealed the cave himself but for Ray the important thing is that his wonderful teacher, Mr Donovan, leaves the town in sorrow and guilt and returns to life in the military in Korea, where he is killed.

This story is strong and impressive, most suitable for Years nine to twelve looking at Time Travel narratives. It fits easily within the discussion of the 'Fate and Predestination' theme area and has cousins in the well known stories 'A Sound of Thunder' by Ray Bradbury and 'Poor Little Warrior' by Brian Aldiss.

It is a well written, sparse and evocative first-person narrative that asks the reader to take on some of the cognitive load of this great lost discovery. The personalities of the narrative are very important and well rounded yet the narrative itself has one, simple idea. The reader is left with the question that many discuss within SF, 'What if you found evidence of time travel but no-one would believe you?' In this way the story also fits in easily with the film 'Timescape', studied within the 'Fate and Predestination' theme area but avoiding the stupidities seem by Stanislav Lem's comments on time travel narratives like Hienlein's 'By his Bootstraps', also studied in the theme area.

The Masters Speak: Williamson, Silverberg, Le Guin, Aldiss and Pohl

The next section of Dozois' anthology Nebula Awards Showcase 2006 is called 'The Masters Speak'. The masters are Jack Williamson, Robert Silverberg, Ursula Le Guin, Brian Aldiss and Frederick Pohl. As Dozois points out, between them they have two hundred and eighty-nine years of practise writing science fiction.

Dozois' introduction to the grand masters is useful and interesting, leading into Williamson's lambasting of some early editors but does note that modern SF 'has grown too far for any simple description'. Its future seems impossible to predict.

Robert Silverberg writes at greater length and makes important point about SF, such as the rise of the SF trilogy novel as the standard publishing unit. Silverberg argues that modern book publishing is much more conservative than the early magazine publishing of SF stories.

Ursula Le Guin noted the profound impact of the Clarion Method of writers' workshops on young authors. She argued that from the early times women had to be game to write SF because 'guys ruled SF, okay'. Le Guin worried that writing was becoming more standardised because of the Workshop methodology.

Brian Aldiss, co-author of Trillion Year Spree, a vital SF commentary, made the wry comment that under Michael Moorcock's editorship the English 'New Wave' SF stories were about "men going no longer to Mars but shortly to bed, speaking not in corny lingo but of cunnilingus". Looking to the current state of SF Aldiss argues that the genre 'continues on its surreal way much as it ever did - as indeed the great world does, give or take a few suicide bombs'.

Frederik Pohl supplies the amazing statistic that the average income for a 1930s SF writer was somewhere between three and four dollars a week. Even after the second world war some magazines budgeted for no payment at all to writers.

'The Masters Speak' runs from page one hundred and twenty-three to one hundred and one hundred and forty-nine and is of considerable use to teachers as a potted historical background to SF writing from some who know. The Masters skip about chronologically but their reflections and analyses could be copied out to students on an intranet to good purpose, especially as part of a research assignment on SF that looks to its antecedents in more fulsome texts like 'Trillion Year Spree' or to follow with Le Guin's reflections in Donawerth's 'Frankenstein's Daughters'.

Christopher Rowe and 'The Voluntary State'

The next story in Dozois' anthology fits within the parameters of the mySF Project, in the 'Brave New World' theme area on Genetic Engineering.

The story is 'The Voluntary State' by Christopher Rowe and it fits in neatly after Le Guin's and Dozois' comments on the writing conference model as it was a submission piece for the 2003 Sycamore Hill Writers Conference.

Set in a far future near Nashville, Tennessee, the story starts with Soma (who seems as friendly and dull as his name describes) returning to his car and finding it hurt, the window kicked in. His car shies from Soma so Soma grabs the glass salve and sprays analgesic aero on the whole door. Then he 'opens his head and calls the police'. The unnerving police and detectives who arrive almost immediately frond Crow Feather and Soma knows his car has been assaulted by Kentuckians.

Travelling home while his car is nurtured back to health Soma is captured by a Kentuckian raiding party. The Crow raiding party believe Soma is brainwashed by what they call the Containment Field, a vague biological and probably nanotechnological force that changes everything. The leader of the Kentuckians tells a Soma stupefied by a blue paste to break his conditioning that the raiding party intends to assassinate the Governor of Tennessee, an Artificial Intelligence entity called Athena in the centre of the city.

The Tennessee population voted for Athena to run the state and the unhappy result is a city where the garbage trucks are giant bugs who enjoy becoming stonkered on bourbon and are happy to give the Kentuckians a concealed passage into the city in return for drunkenness. In this future city even cars and infrastructure cables are sentient.

The city and its culture is astonishing and challenging, even though the author Rowe has made it easier for the audience by a series of narrative intrusions.

In the end Rowe's 'The Voluntary State' is a simple travel narrative, with Soma captured by the Kentuckians and travelling through dangers into the heart of Nashville to confront a giant hive mind protected by monstrous Dalek-like hybrids called Commodores who defend Athena.

The difficult part for many readers, including secondary students, may be the sentience of plants, 'machines' and the way the State can invade the body and mind of a citizen, riding them as puppets, or interrogating them.

To teach this story a good deal of discussion would be needed before or during the story, especially relating to the way Tennessee might be either an improvement or a decline in humanity and government. In this way the narrative can look at the benefits and terrors of totalitarian regimes as seen in many far and near future SF texts.

This short story is forty pages long, intricate and chock-full of Otherness or alterity at the heart of much SF. It would be very suitable to strong, upper secondary students with an interest in genetic engineering but with little reference to Wells' 'The Island of Doctor Moreau'. Of most use, perhaps, would be the discussion of genetic engineering as a plot device similar to a time machine, with different challenges and rewards.

'The Voluntary State' is linked more closely to Christopher Evans 'Mortal Remains' and Paul J McAuley's 'Fairyland'. The visions of an engineered future are wonderful and memorable but in the end the narrative is simple and straight-forward - studded with exotic and Baroque flourishes of life reinvented for political purpose and social stability.

Anne McCaffrey and 'The Ship who Sang'

On page one hundred and eighty-nine Jody Nye introduces the work of SF Grand Master Anne McCaffrey but this is not as valuable as might be hoped for teachers of SF as it speaks more of being introduced to McCaffrey rather than an overview of her contribution to the genre, as this seems to be assumed.

The story 'The Ship who Sang' by Anne McCaffrey follows, and this important short story by the Grand Master fits easily into the mySF Project, especially into some aspects of Artificial Intelligence in the Ghost in the Shell theme area.

In 'The Ship who Sang' McCaffrey notes that Helva is very deformed in utero and her parents can either terminate her or keep her as an 'encapsulated brain', a guiding mechanism for use for several centuries by Central Worlds.

Helva survives transfer to a metal shell and 'instead of kicking feet, Helva's neural responses started her wheels; instead of grabbing with hands, she manipulated mechanical extensions'. Helva, like other 'shell people', resembled mature dwarfs in size … but the well-oriented brain would not have changed places with the most perfect body in the universe."

Dealing with the moral censure of taking children and knowingly deforming them to suit the manipulation of complex machines was dealt with easily by McCaffrey when she noted that a group of worried individuals visited the Laboratory Schools and even talked with Helva within a computer, but then they saw photos of the original children they applauded the change into Shell People and of course Helva is perfectly happy. She is a valuable resource and her psychological make-up has been tweaked to make her happy and efficient.

On her sixteenth year Helva was graduated and installed in ship XH-834. She has to choose the right Scout to run the ship that she controls. She must choose the 'brawn' in the partnership and she chooses Jennan because he is open, friendly and when she starts to sing, he finds it beautiful. When he talks to her he always looks at where her little body is installed, even though Helva sees through cameras and instruments around the ship.

The 'brain' and 'brawn' are amalgamated and the ship is renamed JH-834. Helva and Jennan speak in stolied dialogue to each other, establishing their unusual relationship.

Helva and Jennan do well initially and then they are ordered to two planets with an unstanble sun where they meet religious colonies that do not wish to leave, even though their little sun is about to collapse and explode. The religious take too long to leave and as a result they cram into a Helva's cargo hold but are just caught by a wave of heat and Jennan dies in the process.

Helva is escorted back to the funeral of Jennan and she is heart-broken. She talks to an older ship who tells her that Helva will again have another Scout and that the flesh part of the ship would come and go while the Shell People and their atomic powered ships would continue.

Jennan is buried with honour and Helva 'Sings the ancient song of evening and requiem" …"until black space itself echosed back the sound of the song the ship sang."

'The Ship Who Sang' is included in Dozois anthology as a tribute to Grand Master McCaffrey.; The story itself is very memorable and of course it is very simple, with two major characters. The narrative fits into the theme area of the 'Ghost in the Shell' in the mySF Project very readily and would be a great accompaniment for any of the anime films studied in that theme area. 'The Ship Who Sang' is an excellent counterpoint to the progression from driving the machine to becoming part of the machine, to finally being the machine. Some of the dialogue is stilted and the drama of Jennan's death is underplayed, but the clear symbolism of the female religious trapped with Jennan in Helva's very female airlock is effective and highly pictorial and worth discussion with students.

Students might like to look at the implanting of specially modified humans into machines and discuss the value system of taking the deformed and using them for these purposes. The students might also like to discuss the rights of a ship like Helva, with a modified human running every aspect of the ship. Is this a possible future and is it an Utopia or a Dystopian vision of the future?

Benjamin Rosenbaum's 'Embracing-the-New'

The next story in the Nebula Awards Showcase 2006 anthology is Benjamin Rosenbaum's 'Embracing-the-New', originally published in Asimov's Science Fiction of January, 2004. This is a favourite story for this teacher from the anthology and it seems to follow naturally from Gunn's 'Coming to Terms'. In the fantasy story the books, the notes and the dream visitation are central and in 'Embracing-the-New' the protagonist is a gifted sculptor.

Rosenbaum was a graduate of the Clarion West school in 2001 and like other stories in Dozois anthology, there is a strong taste of vodoun. The story, says the author, is influenced by "the practical usefulness of the idea of inviting the loa to 'ride' you, supplying you with traits and characteristics you might otherwise not have", from page two-hundred and twenty-two.

The narrative has only alien characters, a risky basis as noted by the author. The protagonist is Vru, a twenty-year old who has only five Ghennungs, an indication that he is neither powerful nor prosperous. These Ghennungs are work or maggoty creatures that dig their fans into Vru's alien flesh but their purpose is to store memory. Without Ghennungs, Vru would know nothing and his family memories would be lost forever. He would be a simple animal hunting others in an alien forest.

Vru's master is Khancriterquee, a horrible old reptile thing with beak and many arms (unlike Vru who is a splendid young reptile thing with a beak and many arms). To test his apprentice, Khancriterquee gives Vru the task of creating a new god scuplture from green stone like jade and if he is successful he promises to give all his own Ghennungs to Vru. Secretly, Khancriterquee knows his own family memories will easily overpower the younger sculpture and he will be able to ride the young man's body as a sort of possession, enabled by the memory-fat and leach-like Ghennungs.

Another apprentice, called Turmca tries to kill Vru using memories borrowed from a soldier alien, enacted by simply renting the soldier's Ghennungs. Vru escapes through sheer luck and redoubles his energy into making a wonderful new god sculpture, carving it from the green stone with his powerful, lobster-like claws. The sculpture shows a young alien living free without any Ghennungs but it is changed by his master, Khancriterquee, into another image and icon of oppression of the ruling class with Ghennungs standing on the face of those without Ghennungs. Vru smashes the sculpture and he knows his fate. He would rather die that be taken over by his master. He is punished by having his Ghennungs plucked from his scaly hide and burnt. He runs like an animal to the forest, remembering nothing.

'Embracing-the-New' is an unusual and entertaining story entirely suitable for Years 8 to 12 students, although (or because) there is a bloody decapitation scene early in the story.

Set on a distant planet never named and run by a species also unnamed, the author hints that in their expansion these beings have met and defeated humans, winning easily because they can inherit memories of tactics, politics and strategy, so their generals face the 'ungodly' who have no Ghennungs and they are easily beaten and exterminated.

Describing a static and oppressive society (with lobster claws in every direction), the narrative follows a young artist struggling for freedom. Finally, the young artist is set free by having his family race memories incinerated for sacrilege. When free of Ghennungs he is a naked creature, hunting in the woods, one of the 'ungodly' and suitable only for slavery and extermination, like humans. This narrative will certainly appeal to many young students. The parasitic, memory-bloated maggots are a great idea, but really these little creatures are just another form of downloadable memory stores as seen in many Cyberpunk stories, particularly with William Gibson's little wedges of software slipped behind the ear to give abilities like being able to fly a helicopter, as was later borrowed for the film Matrix.

When discussing the story with students the key focus could be the price of individual freedom and of course the wonderful idea that students need not undergo school but instead let a small leech-like creature punt their education straight to their shared memory. The story does not seem derivative even though there are many elements found elsewhere and earlier. Instead, it feels fresh and exotic and it is ventured that many students will sympathise and even be jealous of Vru naked but free, hunting for his supper in the forest.

This story is highly recommended for secondary school use, with the cautionary note on some violent images early in the text.

Kathi Maio and 'Film: the year in review'

For the last fifteen years Kathi Maio was the film columnist for The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction and also contributed film essays for Nebula Awards 29 to 31. In 'Film: the year in review' immediately following 'Zora and the Zombie' Kathi covers twenty-one movies, bemoaning the lack of high-quality Science Fiction and Fantasy films, although she also notes the sudden increase in films made in the genre.

Great films are 'Catwoman' and 'The Day After Tomorrow' but receiving warmer reviews are 'I, Robot' and 'The Butterfly Effect'. Strong praise is reserved by Kathi Maio for 'The Incredibles' and 'The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind' while low budget SF and fantasy films are also praised, as in the almost incomprehensible 'Primer' and a series of short films called 'Robot Stories'.

Covering fantasy and SF the reviews are useful in schools to show the journalistic style and approach of a well-known film reviewer. As many student write film reviews of films studied in class as assessment items, the article will serve as a good model of assured, slightly sardonic critiques. Also of value will be the familiar names of many of these films, encouraging students towards a more critical appraisal of block-buster, special effects films such as 2004's 'Return of the King' and 'I, Robot'.

Kathi Maio's short article should be read easily and discussed by students in Years 8 to 11, leading to a discussion forum or journal entry in what it is film reviewers seek in a good SF or Fantasy movie. The article would also serve well as a base for reviewing movies in class for those students not used to this mode of expression.

Rhysling award for poetry: Dutcher and Goss

Also found in Dozois' anthology from 2006 are winners of the Rhysling Award for poetry, winning the best short and the best long poem categories. The prizes here come from the Science Fiction in Poetry Association and the first is for Roger Dutcher's 'Just Distance', on page 304. Dutcher takes on scientific content in the universe about us and notes that, "The moon moves over our oceans and its reflected light / suffuses our poetry and songs". The poet falls away into more prosaic lecturing on the vastness of the universe but concludes with the worthy sentiment that "no distance is greater / than that between human hearts".

Although this statement is very unlikely to be true in an expanding universe, it works quite well and short have an impact on younger readers, tying together reflections on cosmic distance and emotional distance.

The second poem from this section is 'Octavia is Lost in the Hall of Masks' by Theodora Goss. For this reader the poem was of more use than the lecturing of 'Just Distance', especially as it was a prose poem set in a Medieval world.

The reader is introduced to a series of Masks whose voices describe a bloody and terrible vignette of regicide. The poem works well although it moved predictably but unfortunately neither poem was easily related to the themes for teaching SF to secondary students. It could easily be argued that both poems would be enjoyed by a secondary audience keen on writers like Robert Jordan, so as a link into writing poetry for this genre this section would be valuable.

After all, how many secondary students ever come to read SF poetry such as 'Just Distance' and can then walk out to eat lunch on the oval contemplating the distances between galaxies and the frozen wastes of distance between them and their own desires?

Vernor Vinge and 'The Cookie Monster'

The last story from the anthology is Vernor Vinge's 'The Cookie Monster'. Dozois adds in his introduction to the story that 'Vinge is regarded as one of the best of the American 'hard science' writers. The story was published in Analog Science Fiction and Fact in October of 2003.

Vinge takes no prisoners. He does not delay the narrative to explain details but the power of his writing and ideas does drive the reader to meet his demands.

It was important to work hard at the novella but the effect was so impressive that I followed up by reading the author's 'Fast Times at Fairmont High' and most recently the novel Rainbows End from Tor. I read A Fire Upon the Deep some time ago but that Space Opera was not as effective as 'The Cookie Monster', regardless of the off-putting title of the novella.

The narrative begins with Dixie Mae in a cubicle at LotsaTech, a near-future technology business that makes Microsoft look puny in comparison. Dixie Mae is very happy with her job and this is her first day, after six days of training. She is on the Help desk for calls and though she is never described it is clear she is pretty and young, though blowsy and tough with many disappointments in her background. She has a pimply nuisance in the cubicle next to hers called Victor who is self-assured and only in customer service for a short time, to gain material to write an article for an online magazine.

Dixie Mae works very hard on this first day and is ambitious to learn about the products. The day progresses well until Victor next door receives a query for Dixie Mae on his terminal. No-one is meant to know the names of the customer support teams on the other end of the emails, so an email to Dizzie May Lay is unusual and against guidelines. Dixie Mae believes the pimply nuisance is the cause of the problem, but there are some old truths in the text of the message that only she could know about.

Dixie Mae is a determined young woman and even though she wants above all to succeed in her new, comfortable job, she starts a quest to find the source of the irritating email and the secrets contained there. Dixie Mae gathers a few new friends as she leaves the Support Centre building and follows hints from the email text. It is the strength of her character and her intent on righteous revenge for the slurs in the email that drives her, catching others up in her wake.

As she moves around the vast campus of LotsaTech the reader understands that the email has coded solutions to the problems of finding out what really makes the LotsaTech campus and company so easy to work for. In fact, after meeting some excellent cognitive scientists, some exam markers and some high level programmers in their various buildings around the campus, Dixie Mae is faced with the conclusion that she is, in fact, an artificial construct in a very large simulation. So, of course, are the others she meets and they work out together that a whole new storage system and massively parallel processing system has been devised to store them all, and their environment of the squeaky-clean LotsaTech campus.

There is a spy running in the program as well and he zips out to tell the authorities that some of the constructs have worked out they are mere simulations, so all the characters know they are doomed to be rebooted. In fact, although they all run on different projects and have different perceptions of how long they have been working for LotsaTech, they are all running at processor speed, so their discovery of their existence has taken only milliseconds. They will be restarted and refreshed as soon as the spy-ware tells the real world programmers that their constructs know the truth, but this could be a virtual full day to the constructs.

The narrative derives from automation of some company functions, like a Support Centre, as well as speculation that a personality construct of, say, a doctorate student or four could be stored and used to do the work of an actual person, in machine time, advancing the state of the art at an amazing pace and saving money for the company.

All the constructs at LotsaTech have been 'downloaded' into the simulation, all done stealthily from one building where they were 'trained'. The best of the programmers and engineers Dixie Mae meets work out how to create a sort of accretion of a message that will alert the constructs again that they are programs running in a virtual world. They compute that they have been rebooted thousands of times, but each time they are learning a little bit more from an online 'cookie' of information that leads to discovering the simulation.

The Cookie Monster is a file that Dixie Mae helps to create and she sends it to herself, giving hints that her world of the first day of work at LotsaTech Support Centre is a lie. The narrative leaves the reader feeling certain that Dixie Mae and the other constructs will eventually find the culprits for their virtual lives of repetitive work at LotsaTech and somehow escape from their virtual campus.

The narrative is complex and quite long with some lovely moments such as two, identical constructs meeting each other, a blossoming romance, the intrusion of the 'outside' spy who will terminate and reboot the constructs and perhaps the most memorable aspect is the handling of the LotsaTech virtual campus itself, with its shots at Microsoft and California-culture and business style.

The characters are also engaging, although it is really only Dixie Mae and the two clones that we see in depth. The dialogue is challenging and reflects the 'hard science' nature of the narrative with much work left to the reader.

Linked very firmly into the 'Ghost in the Shell' theme area and into Cyberpunk writings with their voyages into virtual worlds, the 'Cookie Monster' is a most rewarding story.

Unfortunately, the Cyberpunk notions, the hard science and the backdrop of high-tech knowledge businesses will make this a difficult narrative for secondary students in the middle years. It is advised for use within a discussion of artificial intelligence and the morality of self-aware systems, but is not linked to much easier texts like War Games, Terminator or even 2001: a Space Odyssey. This story would need some perseverance even with students studying Science Fiction in Years 11 and 12, as well as a good deal of scaffolding with research links and easier readings. The story is superb and fascinating, so it may be suitable for a strong class of older secondary students at the end of their look into artificial intelligence issues, and it will reward the students, especially with a more philosophical bent and an interest in knowledge industries.

Following the philosophical challenges found in Vinge's 'The Cookie Monster' can lead directly to Descartes' dreaming doubt and the refutation that our perceptions of the world around us are false. This has proved of interest to upper secondary students many times, although with 'The Cookie Monster' there is the overlay of Artificial Intelligence theory and maybe even the need to have an understanding of knowledge business, and these may need more time and care than the philosophical points alone.  

Some comments on Dozois and anthologies

  Gardner Dozois, the editor of the anthology, chose the award winners in their various categories but also included a personal selection of some other unsuccessful entrants. This personal selection has a sales basis as not only is Dozois a Nebula Award winner himself but he is also probably the best known anthologist in the genre. After resigning from the editorship of the influential Asimov magazine he moved into publishing the annual 'Year's Best Science Fiction' and a very long series of anthologies by themes, one of the most recent of which is the the New Space Opera anthology, covered in a later podcast in the mySF Project and blog. There are literally hundreds of anthologies edited or co-edited by Dozois, as well as an extended interview with the great man himself.   The anthologies are not slim volumes from Panther. They are great fat things that become rapidly dog-eared and the covers curl away from the wad of paper. In Australia they are great value at twenty to thirty dollars each fo up to eight hundred pages. They are large enough to accommodate several novellas in the modern style, as well as a dozen or more short stories and articles about the genre.   While many Science Fiction writers lament the passing of magazines and periodicals with gifted editors willing to take chances, at the same time the explosion of websites, blogs and fanzines has brought a plethora of new texts. The market for Science Fiction short stories that pay and publish in hard copy is much reduced, while many online sites have very different editorial guidelines with few paying award rates.   As a result of the changes to publishing of genre titles commentators have noted the growing importance of the editor and their choices. Dozois has an unabashed interest in some sub-genres such as Space Opera and probably harder or what he calls 'centre SF'. These interests cannot predominate with the award winners as they are voted in by practicising SF and fantasy authors or associates, but the additional stories could be sieved for particular interests by the editor. Sometimes the particular flavour of the sub-genre levered into the mammoth anthology might represent a redress of too many stories of a particular type, from earlier years.   As suggested by several commentators on the amazing career of Gardner Dozois, the editor of these mammoth paperbacks can set styles and themes, followed by other publishers and their editors. Biographers of Dozois also note that his writings about Science Fiction and even how to write in the genre can be taken as a guide by new writers, illustrating what it is that editors want.

All of this means that the editor of these fat new annual anthologies becomes very important to the future of the whole genre.

The mySF Piki is maintained by MichaelS (mailto:michaels@pataphysics.net.au)

Gozo 22:16, 21 Apr 2008 (EST)

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