The Light of Other Days by Bob Shaw

This short story is centered around Slow Glass- a futuristic glass that slows down light passing through it, there by enabling people to save old memories and places in them, like a live painting. The story deals with human emotions, sense of loss and art of letting go; than the implications of slow glass on a global scale.

Slow Glass sounds like a realistic sci fi plot, something that might​ happen in future, though I am an absolute dummy on how. Maybe a futuristic metamaterial with tinkered refractive index. Light traverse differently through different medium and refractive index(the ratio of the velocity of light in a vacuum to its velocity in a specified medium) is the property of the material that determines its propagation. With a metamaterial of negative refractive index and stuff, the slowing down of light is probable. The science I postulated above is very primitive and probably a weird explanation as I mostly flunked my masters, yet keyword searches would help you pelt along.

If you strain yourself a little more, slow glass is an earthbound black domain, an escape strategy explained in Death’s End that involves slowing the speed of light below solar system’s escape velocity and thereby creating a hypothetical shrouded Dyson sphere for humanity to escape to . Though spoiled midway, this short story will leave an everlasting impact on you.

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“Light of Other Days” is the title of a 1966 Hugo– and Nebula-nominated short story by Bob Shaw. It was incorporated into a novel in 1972, Other Days, Other Eyes, which also dealt with issues of surveillance and privacy. The title for both the novel and the short story is drawn from the poem “Light of Other Days” by Thomas Moore.

It was also developed into a novel under same name by Stephen Baxter based on a synopsis by Arthur C. Clarke

Seasons of Glass and Iron (Nebula Winner-short story- 2016)

Available for free read here

Congratulations on Nebula, and congratulations on tricking me into reading Fantasy.

This story in its essentials, felt like a modern day retelling of two Brothers Grimm fairy tales – Bearskin and Old Rinkrank that I barely remember from my childhood (my memory might as well be wrong here). What I loved about the narrative was the ambiguity that followed Tabitha and Amira, like they were already part of a well expanded universe, the details of which readers are free to imagine. In this retelling or extended act of passing reference, Author intertwined the essentials of both fairy tales into one lovely story, making them female centric and in poles with the original perspective. My ambitious and embarrassing attempts to understand the metaphors are given below.

Number 7, from a Biblical view point represent perfection or completion and number 1 stands for unity or oneness, the numbers which the female protagonists of this story identify themselves to be bound in by magic. So Tabitha before reaching completion of penance(of her and her were-wolf-would-be-man husband) by exhausting the ‘seven’ pairs of shoes, gets to taste the ‘Apple’ of Glass Mountain(which could be argued as this story’s Eden). She then decides to be ‘one’ with Amira and leaves her baggage, thanks to the new found wisdom. And they both leave the safety of Glass and Iron(their personal paradises), for ‘Away’(Earth) with nothing but the company of each other and the sense of freedom.

I think I might have heavily misread the ‘things’, this allegorical reading was supposed to explore the nuances of. Nevertheless the lovely prose will have every reader covered for sure.

Binti by Nnedi Okorafor

Binti is a Nebula and Hugo Award winning novella and below review covers only the first installment of an ongoing series. An ambitious Wakandan-ish girl, also the very first person from her tribe to leave the planet, is left with the heavy responsibility of universal peace as some Romulans– ish race butcher her Starship,  which was on its way to Oomza University – this story’s StarFleet Academy.

One is often insecure about his stand when it comes to registering his like or dislike towards a culturally or ethnically diverse work; which often leads to a personally unjust review, under peer pressure or the fear of being branded by the adjectives for intolerance, non progressiveness and their kins. I am unable to get my head around this old school racism or sectarianism, that forms the basic framework of Binti (also some how limited to protagonist’s particular tribe), considering the extremely diverse and pluralistic Intergalactic society, story’s universe is based on.

Okorafor is a really good writer, and I heavily appreciate the prose which consorted well with tribal girl narrative, and the non pretentious word/world/culture building; but as far as science fiction is considered, story is solid meh.

From a whovian perspective, the philosophy of Binti would be something like this – Hey, I can’t accept Martha Jones, but Sontarans are cool.

Maybe I need to read more to understand Afrofuturism as a genre. Yet, it sounds kinda unappealing to me as an extension of the same can cause a lot of futurisms with prefixes like Indo, Arab, Sino etc etc. And I don’t want to pick a book on this reason, over the diversity and perspectives authors from different cultures can offer.

The Story of Your Life – Ted Chiang

Beautiful, absolutely beautiful. I wish I had more stars to give and more pages to read.

Honestly this review covers only the eponymous story and I read it after watching first trailer of ‘Arrival’. Expected something of Contact sort, never in my head crossed what it really was during the speculative process of determining what it could be. The writings of a mom to her daughter, those wore some of the most beautiful things I have ever read. I found myself standing in train absorbed in the copy, never caring to check for seats or station.

Big alien ships out of nowhere like Childhoods End all over the world and a linguist is hired by government to establish communication with the visitors. Stuff like Calculus of variation and Fermat principle of least time seems elementary to them, the very stuff I dozed off in last weeks lecture series. Now I am stuck with Whorfianism and sorts like below in my head. Human ear is adapted for the sounds of human larynx and so forth with every other sensory elements, and perception outside usual neurotic receptions would certainly be overwhelming. Also we as well maybe limited in our capabilities and thought processes by our language and senses.

Anything more will be rendition and spoilers. And keep an eye on the usage of tenses through out the read. Totally a non zero sum game 🙂