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Jul. 16th, 2024 10:19 pmI've been waiting to write up Ursula Whitcher's upcoming collection North Continent Ribbon until it was available to preorder, but now the preorder button is up and the publication date is fast approaching so it seems like a good time!
This is my favorite kind of short story collection, in which each story serves as a complete and independent narrative in and of itself, but the stories all taken together draw a larger portrait of the context in which they're set and the central questions that its societies are grappling with. My favorite of the stories, The Fifteenth Saint, is about a bureaucrat-judge who works in a city that is under imminent threat of invasion, and the various bureaucratic things he does in and around the work of figuring out what ought to be done about it; I love it both for the fact that Whitcher allows her characters to have thoughts and feelings about AI that are grounded in their own particular cultural experiences with it that's completely distinct from ours, and for the lengthy subplot about malfunctioning city buses.
Other stories include:
Closer Than Your Kidneys, which is good old-fashioned Fraught Lesbian Loyalty Situations between an assassin and the queen she's been sent to assassinate
Ten Percent For Luck, which is good old fashioned Fraught Lesbian Loyalty Situations between a lieutenant and her sergeant on a bomb disposal squad
The Association of Ten Thousand Flowers, my second favorite of the stories, in which a sex worker solves the mystery of a client's murder, and also gets involved in union politics
The Last Tutor, in which a wealthy disaffected teen discovers that they are not the only person in their house who has strong opinions about current events
A Fisher Of Stars, which brings various threads woven through the previous stories -- including AI, unionization, legal systems and the carceral state -- together in the story of a person who has been sentenced to be a starship
In addition to how much I liked the text itself, I was also frankly impressed by how beautifully designed the book was; Neon Hemlock is doing a fantastic job with interstitial illustrations and adornments. Recommended! Well worth owning a copy!
This is my favorite kind of short story collection, in which each story serves as a complete and independent narrative in and of itself, but the stories all taken together draw a larger portrait of the context in which they're set and the central questions that its societies are grappling with. My favorite of the stories, The Fifteenth Saint, is about a bureaucrat-judge who works in a city that is under imminent threat of invasion, and the various bureaucratic things he does in and around the work of figuring out what ought to be done about it; I love it both for the fact that Whitcher allows her characters to have thoughts and feelings about AI that are grounded in their own particular cultural experiences with it that's completely distinct from ours, and for the lengthy subplot about malfunctioning city buses.
Other stories include:
Closer Than Your Kidneys, which is good old-fashioned Fraught Lesbian Loyalty Situations between an assassin and the queen she's been sent to assassinate
Ten Percent For Luck, which is good old fashioned Fraught Lesbian Loyalty Situations between a lieutenant and her sergeant on a bomb disposal squad
The Association of Ten Thousand Flowers, my second favorite of the stories, in which a sex worker solves the mystery of a client's murder, and also gets involved in union politics
The Last Tutor, in which a wealthy disaffected teen discovers that they are not the only person in their house who has strong opinions about current events
A Fisher Of Stars, which brings various threads woven through the previous stories -- including AI, unionization, legal systems and the carceral state -- together in the story of a person who has been sentenced to be a starship
In addition to how much I liked the text itself, I was also frankly impressed by how beautifully designed the book was; Neon Hemlock is doing a fantastic job with interstitial illustrations and adornments. Recommended! Well worth owning a copy!
