Bugs in the Arroyo by Steven Gould

Episode 004 contains Steven Gould‘s Bugs in the Arroyo, narrated (I think) by the author. According to Gould’s comment on Tor.com, this is an excerpt from a new novel.

The southwest has been overrun by bugs, little machines that feed on metal to create copies of themselves. They can’t stand water, which is why they haven’t spread past the southwest. They are swarming things, and if they get excited they’ll go after the iron in a person’s blood. The scene is a girl stuck on a rock in the desert surrounded by bugs. Makes me think of the scene in Tremors, except with these bugs. A bunch of people a distance away have to figure out how to save her. Pretty cool story, and I’ll look for the novel when it comes out.

The Starship Mechanic by Ken Scholes and Jay Lake

Episode 005 has two stories by Ken Scholes and Jay Lake. The two authors sat down together to write these stories in public; each started a story and then they switched after a time to finish the other’s. Here they read their stories. One note to the two of them on reading their work: drink less caffeine! Holy cripes but you guys read fast. My experience is that audio fiction needs to be read at a fairly slow pace to keep up.

The Starship Mechanic is the first story. Pretty good story of Penauch, the first alien on earth, who keeps returning to Borderlands Books to hang out with the narrator. Penauch has the ability to fix just about anything, except himself as it turns out. I liked this.

Looking for Truth in a Wild Blue Yonder by Ken Scholes and Jay Lake

Looking for Truth in a Wild Blue Yonder is the second story from episode 005. Protagonist is still messed up from the death of his parents on the same day a decade earlier. His therapist robot recommends Wild Blue Yonder, some sort of hallucinogenic drug. This story was very much not my thing. Hell, pretty much any story about therapy won’t be my thing.

The Cat Who Walked a Thousand Miles by Kij Johnson

Episode 006 is part of The Cat Who Walked a Thousand Miles, a story from Kij Johnson about a cat. A semi-homeless cat. Johnson’s work can be hit or miss for me. I liked 26 Monkeys, Also The Abyss, but thought The Fox Woman was kind of slow and fairly pointless. And so I felt about this story too, until going back to the web site to prepare this post. I hadn’t realized the podcast only has half the story. So I wouldn’t listen to this podcast until Tor.com posts a second half. If they do.

Catch ’Em in the Act by Terry Bisson

Episode 007 has Terry Bisson reading his story Catch ’Em in the Act. Loved this story, and loved the narration. The two previous Bisson stories I’ve read had a very similar feel. Understated plots with a twist. Lou buys a CrimeStoppers video camera on eBay, and finds that when he films people they automatically commit crimes for the camera. Lou uses these filmed scenes for blackmail to build up a group of people around him, because at heart Lou is a lonely guy. Not laugh out loud funny, but still full of scenes that caused me to snicker to myself.

Third in my reading of the top ten obscure speculative fiction works from Feminist SF, the Blog!. In this case the book is both very good, and something I didn’t like.

I’ll explain the latter first. This is not written in a style that I like. The few bits of Asian folk tales that I’ve read are generally not my bag, and The Fox Woman is a version of a Japanese folk tale. For one, Japanese nobility don’t seem to do anything in these folks tales. They write poetry. They observe rituals. Their servants shield them from the unpleasantness of the world. Second, the stories are couched in 300 layers of symbolism. I like stories that work on multiple levels, but I don’t want to have to be a scholar to get it. I felt like I would have gotten so much more from this if I had more background on that culture.

The issue of style aside, I thought the book was really well done and fairly enjoyable. To the extent I could get my head past the style that is.

Simple plot: Kaya no Yoshifuji is married to Shikujo. Kaya no Yoshifuji is a minor noble, but failed to receive a government appointment and so is going into internal exile at his country estate. Though his real reason for heading out there is less disfavor at court and more a mid-life crisis. He brings along his wife Shikujo and son Tadamaro with him. There’s a chill in the marriage, but their reticence and Japanese cultural customs prevent them from airing it out. At the estate also live a skulk of foxes. Foxes that are restless… I can’t think of the right word, but that’ll do. The daughter Kitsune wants to be more than a fox. both Yoshifuji and Shikujo fixate on the foxes living in the garden. Yoshifuji with wistfulness for fox freedom. And Shikujo because foxes represent danger.

Kitsune quickly falls in love with Yoshifuji. But she’s a fox, and he’s a human (and married! but that’s less an issue in the culture apparently). Solution! Magic! Little bit of chanting, a human skull, and the help of a few gods, and Kitsune can change herself into a human. Her entire family becomes human. And their den under the gatehouse becomes a palatial estate. Now she just has to lure Yoshifuji to her and get rid of Shikujo…

I thought the perspective of the foxes was really well done. They are not simply evil spirit tempters in this telling, though a quick aside about luring people into swamps with foxfire was amusing. They are just as ignorant of the magic they employ as humans. The have their own desires, perfectly reasonable if at odds with those of the people in whose garden they live. They aren’t a Japanese version of Loki.

And I really liked that there are ethical consequences to everyone’s actions and inaction. Every character of substance sees some growth in their moral compass as a result of the choices they make. No one gets an easy win. There’s no Hollywood ending that absolves the characters of their sins. I am not saying no one is absolved or not, you’ll need to read it to find out. But the story avoids paint-by-numbers ethics such as having Kitsune be the neighbor woman who consoles Yoshifuji after Shikujo’s tragic death and then becomes his lover, letting everyone be morally right. (That’s an example; again, I’m not saying anyone does or does not die.) Everyone faces the consequences of their own choices.

A good book, but I’ll probably not read more novels by the author set in medieval Japan. But it was interesting and well written enough for me to pick up (eventually, my pile of unread books scares me) her stories if they are in a style that fits me better.

Title: The Fox Woman
Author: Kij Johnson
Cover creator: Susan Seddon-Boulet (artist) / Nicole Stanco (design)
Series: Heian trilogy; 1
Imprint / publisher: Tor
Format: Paperback
Length: 382 p.
Publication date: 2000
ISBN-10: 0-312-87559-2
Subject: Foxes — Japan — Folklore — Fiction
Subject: Nobility — Japan — Fiction
LC classification: PS3560.O379716 F69 2000