2020 Nebula Nominees: Short Stories (pt. I)

We’ll start off the Nebula nominee reviews with three of the short stories, ranging from a threadbare-elbow tale of Las Vegas to Edwardian schoolgirl cannibals to blood-stained generation ship cathedrals.

How the Trick is Done
A. C. Wise

This first story on my Nebula reading list is a strange one. It seems to take place on a Vegas on the edge of the horizon, slightly tilted, slightly too real to be real, a Vegas where Resurrectionists bring potted plants back to life and Assistants falling off the Hoover Dam grow sequined wings and, most importantly, where titles have power.

The story is how the Magician died, how the Magician’s Girlfriend/the Resurrectionist, the Magician’s Stage Manager, the Magician’s current Assistant and the Magician’s former Assistant all play a part in it. “How absurd,” the narration notes as two of them first meet, “that they should define themselves solely in relation to the Magician.” These two have had names for some time, but as they introduce themselves, their titles fall away. Similar moments of transformation happen for everyone, except the nameless rabbit called Gus (and his lack of a name is important) and the Magician himself.

Watching the way Wise played with titles and names, names and titles, who’s called what when, was its own delightful little magic show. And I thank her for breathing new life into a whole set of tired old tropes about ledgerdemain, making something new of them. I’m sure Meg and Becca, in particular, would appreciate that trick.

Ten Excerpts from an Annotated Bibliography on the Cannibal Women of Ratnabar Island
Nibita Sen

I remember reading this little gem when it came out last May, I was quite pleased to find it the same story that I remembered. A ghoulish academic summary revolving around distant Ratnabar Island and an unspeakable supper in a girls’ boarding house in rural England, Nibita Sen has a keen awareness of how close academia and cannibalism really are.

On this read-through, I noticed how interesting it was to watch the names and narratives change over time, and watch the Gaurs start elbowing their way back into their own story amidst Rainiers and Cliftons and Schofields. And my God does Sen command the tones! I could place each excerpt’s academic era within a sentence or two, each one distinct and ringing true to its sources. And everyone, from the Angloest Anglo to the Gaur cousins, wants to take Regina Guar and the never-explicitly-stated Churchill Dinner, and carve them up for themselves, for their theories and their narratives.

One has the rather sickening feeling, afterward, that one has just seen the Churchill Dinner all laid out with ten separate diners all commenting on the delicacy of the meat.

It is a delicious sensation.

The Dead, In Their Uncontrollable Power
Karen Osborne

At first, I thought I was reading a fantasy story – a cathedral, a sin-eater, a cup of sin and a cup of virtue, a dying cleric, and a bomb. But it quickly became clear that we were cooped up in one of science fiction’s hoariest of hoary stock plots: the generation ship gone bad.

But the trappings are just that, window-dressing for the two cups, the cup of virtue and the cup of sin, and the two women who drink from them: the captain, and the sin-eater. The one contains all the dead captains’ fine and regal memories, desires, impulses, the other all their…well, all their sins. All the slain mutineers, all the spaced excess, all the foul deeds decided. And Karen Osborne would like you to take a minute and consider what the souls of the unquiet dead can do to people. Especially their virtues.

What I love about this story is how Osborne twists the ending. You know how this story is, you’ve seen it a hundred times on the news and a thousand times in fiction. You can already smell the iron tang and viscera. And Osborne barrels down toward that fetid, horrifying climax…and what she does instead made me cheer.

Read it, if only to see for yourself.