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Broken Stars: Collected Stories
by Jeremy Szal
The blurb on the cover says, “Szal is adept at interweaving big SF ideas and fast-paced action to craft a compelling story.” That’s incredibly accurate, but I’d add that he is even more skilled at providing believable, motivated characters and has a penchant for pointing out humanity’s nearly endless talent for corruption. Here at Abyss & Apex Magazine we were the first to tell the opening story–“The Galaxy’s Cube”–which went on to be his most-reprinted tale. If you like your sci-fi dark, slightly technical, and very human this author will take you to well-thought out places and conflicts that leave an indelible impression on your mind.
As is our custom with collections, we will describe each story.
We opened Issue 58 of Abyss & Apex with “The Galaxy’s Cube,” which is set on a planet settled by people from Thailand. Jharkrat is a street vendor in one of its teeming cities, selling used computer parts and junk. Without him realizing, someone sells him what turns out to be an AI starship-pilot’s cube with the keys to ending the planetary government’s monopoly on all tech, and they want him, and it, destroyed.
“Dead Man Walking” is also an A&A story, is about the team-leader of a group of mech-suited soldiers. His suit, on its own, does unspeakable things to civilians, and he learns why it malfunctioned.
In “Tomorrow, the Sunset Will Be Blue,” two planetary explorers and scientists make the best of a worse situation than you at first realize.
I’ve not read Stormblood yet, so “Scream in Blue” was my first encounter with alien storm tech: alien DNA that, if you take it as a drug, gets you addicted to adrenaline. And the plot here. Wow. Just wow.
“Walls of Nigeria” is very short: it’s a contaminated soldier’s dying message to his family, to humanity, before his contaminated suit takes over and kills him. (Yes, Szal’s fiction is often dark. Why do you ask?)
In “A Love Like Bruises,” a researcher goes too far into identifying with an alien subject, with devastating results.
“Beneath a Bicameral Moon” was so very good. Szal says this story was his first writing from female point of view. Absolutely fascinating and I will not give anything of the story away.
“Metal Empathy” is all about two people, casualties of war originally fitted with nasty, imperfect, replacement robotic limbs, and trying to better themselves one upgrade at a time–all the while being changed by the upgrades they beg, borrow and steal. They don’t lose their humanity, and find a way out of servitude and squalor.
Of course lead programmers in Istanbul are called datasultans. And their AI programs are called djinn. In “The Datasultan of Streets and Stars,” a programmer has been in hiding ever since he did a demonstration of his next-level djinns, only to have them murder those watching the demonstration. A threat to his brother’s life takes him back to Istanbul to try and retrieve them–under the noses of the vengeful relatives of the murdered. Nothing goes as planned and it’s marvelous.
“Oceans Like Neurons.” She’s being used, as a prisoner, as a way to reach an alien hive mind and find their artifacts. So are others. And then there’s a meeting of minds in a salty sea.
In “Mindstrings” a young man descends into a virtual hell of his own making, step by inexorable step.
Science-fiction writers excel in extrapolating where tech will be. “Shipmaster’s Scalp” not only extrapolates what societies that are internally wired with computer memories might be like, but what might constitute a crime in such a society–and how the authorities might get a wired criminal to try and confess.
An inter-species friendship between a young non-human and a human boy forms the core of “Ark of Bones.” Humanity thought there was no sentient life on the planet, but there was, and the native species was…inconvenient to certain interests. The boy’s family had been similarly inconvenient and executed, but he got away. Now those interests were about to destroy the local sentients and the two youngsters try to stop them. Bittersweet victory.
“The Bronze Gods”: Sometimes the best you can do when taking down an evil system is to go down with it.
“Stars in a Grave, Stars in a Skull”: When I tell you this is about a warped cult I’m (uncharacteristically) giving away the ending here. But I’m not giving away the main part of why this hopeful story is sooo good.
The very short story “When There’s Only Dust Left” is, plainly and simply, high tech horror. Not a fan of this one.
As with many of these stories, “Traumahead” is about corruption, betrayal, hope. But this time the POV is an alien whose race has been betrayed by humans, a being who is trying to save what they can of their civilization during a final retreat to another world.
The last story is titled “Inkskinned.” Humans are as bad at keeping promises as
we are. But not all of either race were warriors. There was a chance to live in peace. Yet creating something new, this melding, meant letting go of so much that was important to both. Could they do it?
Surprise! While otherworldly, “THE BLACK HORSE” is a fantasy, not sci fi. It’s a fitting close for a volume full of characters paying the costs of doing what they think is the right thing, or at least the least-bad thing, making hard choices that affect all they love and believe in. It ends on this note: “I’m not sure I’ve ever done the right thing. Not once. Sometimes, there’s only the burden you’re willing to carry.”
–Wendy S. Delmater
