SHINE
An Anthology of Optimistic Science Fiction
This edition published 2020 by Solaris
First published 2010 by Solaris
an imprint of Rebellion Publishing Ltd,
Riverside House, Osney Mead,
Oxford, OX2 0ES, UK
www.solarisbooks.com
Cover by Sam Gretton
ISBN (.epub): 978-1-84997-166-9
ISBN (.mobi): 978-1-84997-167-6
Introduction copyright © Jetse de Vries 2010
“The Earth of Yunhe” copyright © Eric Gregory 2010
“The Greenman Watches the Black Bars go Up, Up, Up” copyright © Jacques Barcia 2010
“Overhead” copyright © Jason Stoddard 2010
“Summer Ice” copyright © Holly Phillips 2006
“Sustainable Development” copyright © Paula R. Stiles 2010
“The Church of Accelerated Redemption” copyright © Gareth L. Powell & Aliette de Bodard 2010
“The Solnet Ascendancy” copyright © Lavie Tidhar 2010
“Twittering the Stars” copyright © Mari Ness 2010
“Seeds” copyright © Silvia Moreno-Garcia 2010
“At Budokan” copyright © Alastair Reynolds 2010
“Sarging Rasmussen: A Report (by Organic)” copyright © Gord Sellar 2010
“Scheherezade Cast in Starlight” copyright © Jason Andrew 2010
“Russion Roulette 2020” copyright © Eva Maria Chapman 2010
“Castoff World” copyright © Kay Kenyon 2010
“Paul Kishosha’s Children” copyright © Ken Edgett 2010
“Ishin” copyright © Madeline Ashby 2010
The right of the authors to be identified as the authors of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owners.
Contents
Introduction, Jetse de Vries
The Earth of Yunhe, Eric Gregory
The Greenman Watches the Black Bar Go Up, Up, Up, Jacques Barcia
Overhead, Jason Stoddard
Summer Ice, Holly Phillips
Sustainable Development, Paula R. Stiles
The Church of Accelerated Redemption, Gareth L. Powell & Aliette de Bodard
The Solnet Ascendancy, Lavie Tidhar
Twittering the Stars, Mari Ness
Seeds, Silvia Moreno-Garcia
At Budokan, Alastair Reynolds
Sarging Rasmussen: A Report (by Organic), Gord Sellar
Scheherazade Cast in Starlight, Jason Andrew
Russian Roulette 2020, Eva Maria Chapman
Castoff World, Kay Kenyon
Paul Kishosha’s Children, Ken Edgett
Ishin, Madeline Ashby
About the Authors
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Introduction
Jetse de Vries
THERE’S A THING like weed: it grows everywhere, despite the common wisdom that it can’t grow there. In the most barren, destitute and desperate places, it springs up. It flowers, against the grain. It raises its head at the most unexpected of times, even when—often especially when—most people think it’s dead and gone.
It’s hope. Hope fed by optimism.
Now, optimism and an upbeat attitude have been given short thrift in written SF over the last few decades, and especially the last one. Yes, there are novels and short stories with a positive outlook, but these are far and few in between. As an exercise, list five downbeat novels per year from 2000 to 2009. Then make a similar list for five upbeat novels per year (upbeat defined as a story where the future is a better place than today, not a story where over 90% of humanity is killed and where the survivors eventually make do): I know which list will be the hardest to make (or even complete).
Tor editor Patrick Nielsen Hayden has been trying to get an anthology of upbeat SF called Up! going since 2002, but it has never got off the ground. Word at the Anticipation WorldCon had it that he simply didn’t get enough stories (I can empathise: I had to extend the Shine deadline). It’s become so bad that Gardner Dozois remarked, in the July 2009 Locus:
...although I like a well-crafted dystopian story as well as anyone else, the balance has swung too far in that direction, and nihilism, gloom, and black despair about the future have become so standard in the genre that it’s almost become stylized, and almost the default setting, with few writers bothering to try to imagine viable human futures that somebody might actually want to live in.
Yet, in the real world, ‘study indicates people by nature are universally optimistic.’1 This concurs with what I see in my day job: I train people who come literally from around the world in my company’s equipment, and the vast majority of them are very optimistic. So in this matter, written SF is greatly out of step with the real world. Which raises some doubt when SF claims that it is ‘a mirror of today’s world.’
Now I am not against dystopias, apocalyptic and downbeat SF per se: I have certainly enjoyed many such novels and short stories. However, right now, the balance is gone: in I estimate at least 90% of written SF today is downbeat. Shine is an attempt to redress that balance somewhat.
Shine is also my attempt to show the world that SF can do more than merely say: if this (horrible trend) goes on, we all go down the drain. Yes, it’s good to show people the consequences of their behaviour. However, written SF almost exclusively shows the consequences of bad behaviour, and almost never the consequences of good behaviour. Dire warnings and doomsayings, being told over and over again ad nauseam, lose their effectiveness. With Shine I hope to show the other side of the coin: SF that actively thinks about solutions to the problems plaguing humanity today. To show readers that written SF does something more than either provide escapism (which can be nice, once in a while) or wield the whip: that written SF can actively think in a constructive manner.
So, an anthology of near-future, optimistic SF. An anthology where the future is a better place than today (even if that progress is hard fought, as you will see in most of the stories). This was not an easy task, as Jason Stoddard had it: ‘There’s nothing like taking on two kinds of impossible.’
Impossible part 1 is getting SF authors to write an optimistic story. Impossible part 2 is getting them to write about the near future, which is immensely hard to do right, as well. Hence I’ve been constantly shelling out examples on the Shine blog (real world and imagined), posted—or tried to post—controversial articles and even a guest-blog series of ‘Optimism in Literature around the World, and SF in particular’ just to inspire, provoke or even shame writers into writing such stories for this anthology. Which they eventually did.
Then I needed to clarify which kind of stories I was not looking for, and even had to extend the Shine deadline in the hope of finally getting enough of the type of stories I was looking for (as I mentioned above, I can surely empathise with Patrick Nielsen Hayden’s problems with Up!).
And if that wasn’t enough already, I got it into my head that Shine should also be a representation of the world at large: in settings, characters and hopefully also authors.
Why make my editorial life even harder? We might as well get Freudian on my arse. For most of my adult life, I have travelled the world extensively. I’ve been to a wide variety of places, experienced a great diversity of cultures and seen awe-inspiring places. What it comes down to is that Shine may very well represent my belief that this world is a place that is both beautiful and scary, inspiring and frightening, full of wonder and full of danger; and that we can make it work. Cor
rect that: it is already working in many places, but we can make it work better. We can do better, we can make it a better place to live in, even given the huge problems we’re facing.
That is what Shine is about. So fasten your mental seatbelts as Shine takes you on a trip across the world and beyond. Stops on the way to a better future include:
A West Africa where boys’ toys become girls’ gadgets...
A world so over-focussed on recycling that it fails to see that innovation often means embracing-the-new, exploring-the-unknown, even—or especially—when it’s shining just above them...
A Paris where an expat programmer has to grease a semi-scientific cult’s virtual prayer wheels just to get by until she’s confronted by activists whose agenda is more widespread than she could ever surmise...
A pacific island nation that transforms from being the Lazarus of the world into becoming its Maecenas...
A Tanzania where a prodigal son returns, in a way, with plans for the future. However, it’s the vision of his past that truly paves the way...
A Recife where a retired eco-fighter must advise the teenager board of a huge wikindustry about a new company that’s about as dodgy as it is hot, and he needs to get that advice out fast, and risk wrecking the (and his personal) future if he gets it wrong...
A look behind the scenes of tomorrow’s music industry, where bigger often indeed is better...
An Iran where a spirit of stories past merges with the technologies of today to create an Islamic society of the future...
A China where the ground swell of change almost literally comes from the ground, and goes all the way from the ground up...
A place in the heart of the Caucasus where spoiled American nerds clash with seemingly naive Russian naturalists, until they find they have a common enemy...
Adrift on the North Pacific gyre on an artificial island meant to combat pollution while the world around it seems to care less and less, until things seem to get a mind of their own...
A trip to the asteroid belt to mine a rare metal finds something else, as well, with highly unintended consequences...
A visit to the corridors of political/ecological power in The Hague—which are not exactly in parliament—by a group of activists who are not only out of their depths and out of their league, but out of their minds, as well...
A Mexico where the seeds of change spread faster and quite different from what their GM masters intended...
An artist taking a tentative step forward by moving to an unnamed West Coast town where the memory of winter is melting from the collective mind like an ice sculpture in summer...
An Afghanistan where the next generation of surveillance is tested, and where the unlikely friendship between two very different men uses the tools of intrusion for something completely different...
It’s been a hell of a ride getting this anthology together, yet I wouldn’t have it any other way. Another great help was Twitter: through my @outshine Twitterzine I discovered several new and exciting writers. In that spirit, there will be both intro and/or outro tweets before and/or after every story that will provide new angles or fresh insights. So join me in this kaleidoscope of visions where problems huge and small are tackled, immense difficulties are overcome, and where our futures become somewhat more bright!
1Kansas University and Gallup world poll.
The Earth of Yunhe
Eric Gregory
WHILE KAY KENYON—see “Castoff World”—was the very first to send me a story for Shine, Eric Gregory was one of the first to send me a tweet for @outshine.
The moment I signed the contract for Shinewith Solaris Books, I immediately tried to figure out ways to promote it (‘regeren is vooruitzien’ is the Dutch saying, or ‘to govern is to look ahead’). One of the things I did for that is set up a Facebook fan site and a Twitter site for the Shine anthology.
Then I got the crazy idea—inspired by @thaumatrope, who were the very first genre Twitterzine AFAIK—to start @outshine, a Twitterzine for near-future, optimistic tweets (or ‘prose poems,’ as I call them).
Eric Gregory’s tweet was about Ecclesia, an imaginary near-future society, which I liked enough to publish. Then, months later, he sends me a story based on the tweet (or maybe it was vice-versa: I’m not sure), and “The Earth of Yunhe” eventually—it starts deceptively slow—blew me away.
He’s not the only person that I published on @outshine first and here in Shine later on (Jacques Barcia, Eva Maria Chapman, Gareth L. Powell, Ken Edgett, Paula R. Stiles, Mari Ness [who basically didn’t stop tweeting] and Jason Stoddard—although I accepted Jason’s tweet after I accepted “Overhead”—are the others), and he’s not even the first who turned his tweet into a story (or vice-versa, although I had to turn down that person’s story for Shine purely for lack of space: I had a lot of hard choices to make), but he is the single person whose tweet on @outshine preceded and was based on his story here in the Shine anthology.
Typically, though, his tweet functions much better as an epilogue rather than as a prologue, so I’m putting it up after the story.
Now prepare for a look at a China as the garden of the world...
Silent, drafted blind worms burrow /
Decomposing, circles closing /
Garbage eating, circles meeting /
Biocrafted Ouroboros.
—Rajan Khanna—
I RAISED MY my arms for inspection, but Old Zhu laughed and waved me past. He was a flushed, avuncular man who had spent his entire life with a book of dirty jokes in his pocket; as far as anyone knew, he’d never once touched a woman, and he didn’t upset the tradition for me.
Little Yunhe rarely had need for a jailer, so Zhu was perfect for the job. He sat in his rusted fold-out chair on the deck of the Patient Whale and shouted friendly curses to the fishermen who docked nearby. He was thrilled to have a prisoner now—it gave him an excuse to load his pistol—but he treated the entire affair as an excellent joke.
“Boy’s crazy,” the old man called behind me. “You watch him.”
“Oh, I’ll watch him, Zhu.”
“I tell you. One of these days he’ll break down the door.”
My brother was crazy—no question about that—but I’d known three-legged cats who were more dangerous. Xiaohao was only a hazard to himself. I made my slow way down the Whale’s steep stairwell, clutched the rails in case a step fell out beneath me. Most of these old boats were mere breaths from death, and the Whale wasn’t exactly rigorously maintained.
The jail was lit by a single yellow bulb. I strode down the hall of open doors to the lone locked cell at the end, and my shadow pitched across the walls like a drunk. There was a tripod stool outside Xiaohao’s door; I rapped twice on the thick metal and sat down. After an uncertain moment of silence, I heard my brother stir on the other side. He shuffled around for another minute, grunting quietly, then peered at last through his small barred window. He wasn’t fat, but his face had filled out during his years with the Ecclesia. His left eye was red, encircled by an ugly bruise that had only gotten uglier since the last time I visited him.
Xiaohao sighed. “Father still won’t see me.”
“No. Not unless you’re twitching on the end of a pike.”
Exaggeration, of course, but not so very far from the truth. His face fell, and I regretted the words instantly. Idiot that he was, Xiaohao hadn’t expected Papa’s anger—or hadn’t expected it to be so prodigious, anyway. He’d supposed that Yunhe would welcome him back as a savior, that Papa would forgive him in light of his bright, shining genius. My brother had always been a master fantasist.
He gripped the bars, stared at his feet. “Any word from the Administrators?” The question was quiet, hopeless. He didn’t sound like he wanted to know the answer.
“No. But they’re going to let you out.”
“Are they really, Yuen?” He smiled bitterly. “Are you sure? I think they might put me on a pike. Call it an early birthday gift for our father.”<
br />
I leaned forward on the stool. “Xiao, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said—”
“Forget about it.”
“No, listen. I’m sorry. I’m not the one stuck in here, and I shouldn’t joke. But I swear to you, Xiao, no one’s going to kill you. You’re still a Yunhe boy. They’re not going to execute one of their own just because he makes an ass of himself in the square.”
His eyes narrowed. “You may not have noticed, but this isn’t Yunhe.”
“It is now.” I tapped my foot on the steel floor. “This is what’s left.”
“No,” he said, “it’s not.”
He hadn’t been in Yunhe when the ash-flood came, but the wound was fresher in Xiaohao’s heart than anyone else’s. Perhaps because he hadn’t been there. The rest of us had saved what we could, fished out our dead, and slowly, painfully moved on. Made new lives in this make-do city. But Xiao had congenital difficulties with the concept of moving on.
Neither of us spoke. I cracked my fingers. It had been a mistake to come here. I’d only wanted to see that he was still okay. Well-fed. Xiao looked back into the darkness of his cell and raked his fingers through thin, short hair. “You have to get me out of here,” he said at last.
“You know I can’t do that.”
“The fuck you can’t. Pull the key off the codger upstairs. He won’t even notice.”
“Zhu?” I couldn’t stop myself: I laughed. “You think they give him a key? Zhu might as well be your manservant. He’s just here to bring you lunch.”
Realization worked across Xiao’s face. He hadn’t known. He’d honestly believed that Zhu could give him his freedom. I wondered how long he’d spent begging the old man. Xiaohao turned away from the window, rubbed his eyes with his thumb and forefinger. “Shit,” he said. “Shit.” He kicked something I couldn’t see, something large and metallic. It crashed to the floor.
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