Sarah Pinsker

Overall, a great collection of SF short stories. I didn’t care much for the first three or four, which tended toward very short koan-like weird little stories of the sort I dislike that present little vignettes without resolution. Just, “here’s this weird situation. Isn’t it sad/ironic/outrageous?” But then we get to the longer stories with more meat on their bones, and they tended to be terrific, stories with plot and character development and the sorts of narrative things I like. These were some of my favorites:

"The Low Hum of Her" - A more contemporary golem story. Touching. ****

"In Joy, Knowing the Abyss Behind" - A heart-rending story of a marriage and a burden of guilt and a missed chance but ultimately about love. *****

"Wind Will Rove" - The travelers on a generational ship are torn between preserving and forgetting the past, and a history teacher considers what’s worth saving and why. ****

"Our Lady of the Open Road" - In the near, not necessarily dystopic but certainly bleak future, a band perpetually on the road, going from one dive or make-shift live-music venue to the next in their barely legal cooking grease–powered van, stay true to their punk values in the face of the rise of holographic performances. ****1/2

"The Narwhal" - A gig worker takes a job driving what turns out to be a rather extraordinary whale of a car. It won me over with this: “Scenic routes would take too long, even the kind you drove through on your way to your destination. Ditto state parks and national monuments and reptile museums. She added them to her collection, for another trip she’d take someday. She’d spend two months, she told herself. She’d stop at every historic house, every kitschy roadside attraction. Every single one.” I really felt that. ****

"And Then There Were (N-One)" - Last but not least, a murder mystery. The protagonist gets an invitation to SarahCon, traveling through a multiverse portal to a hotel on a remote island where hundreds of Sarah Pinskers from alternate realities congregate. When one of the Sarahs turns up dead, hundreds of other Sarahs are suspects. Cleverly plotted, but best for its philosophical look at the roads not taken.
Some wry easter eggs from this alternate-reality story:
“Two of the awards looked like they had the shape to be the murder weapon, and one of them looked like it had the weight as well: the Nebula, a three-dimensional rectangular block of Lucite, shot through with stars and planets.”
“The rest of the bag was filled with the usual odds and ends I carried: pens, gum, emergency flashlight, loose change. A dog-eared paperback novel called Parable of the Trickster.”
*****… (altro)

"Two Truths and a Lie" has some genuinely creepy bits that had my skin crawling - the whole setup of Uncle Bob's TV show that everyone seems to forget at times, the stories that possibly have a prophetic element, and the general atmosphere created by the show. But all that good creepy stuff is a bit buried under the other stuff, like cleaning out Denny's house and the chatter between Marco and Stella, and it made everything feel so dragged out. I felt like I couldn't get a grip on what the actual plot was, and by the time Stella sort of started getting answers at the production studio, the story was almost over and the strange ending felt very unsatisfying.… (altro)

(4.5 stars)
"Sooner or Later Everything Falls Into the Sea" is full of gray skies and wistful nostalgia. Its stories long for what could have been, while desperately cherishing what's here now.
There were several duds for me, but the mood is right and there were a handful that really stuck with me.

My favorite by far (maybe my favorite short story I've ever read) was "In Joy, Knowing the Abyss Behind", but I also highly recommend:
"A Stretch of Highway Two Lanes Wide"
"Wind Will Rove"
"The Low Hum of Her"
"Talking With Dead People"
"And Then There Were (N-One)"… (altro)