“Ice Giant” by Peter Chen

“Ice Giant” caught my attention this month for its spare, taut pace, surprising but effective ending, and the way its narrative voice and use of detail make it feel like a non-standard, innovative setting for a space opera.  This month, I’d like to look at how that use of information summons up one of the most ephemeral — and most important — tools in our toolbox: authorial confidence.

There’s a lot in “Ice Giant” that really works: Especially how well information — technical or otherwise — is folded into the narrative in a way that keeps the plot moving forward.  We learn about the jet, Uranus’s atmosphere, iridiscium, Corporate, Colony, and a whole world without the story breaking stride; each piece of information is introduced when it’s important to the plot and in a way that feels organic.

While worldbuilding elements like a planetary corporation, mining colonies, and harsh atmospheres are all pretty standard for space opera, it’s how “Ice Giant” deploys — and juxtaposes — them that makes that seamless, fresh, organic feel arise out of those tropes.  For one, floating cities, dirigible, and surveying jets don’t normally go together when we think about the tech level of a potential story, but the nonchalance with which Jake and Adam treat them makes those pieces fit.  Jake’s more concerned about the financial impact of the Assurance’s claim than explaining why a dirigible belongs on Uranus or doesn’t, or expositing the backstory of how dirigibles got there — and that makes the dirigible just a part of the landscape, something to be believed in and worked with.

Secondly, note the stronger effect of having a dirigible introduced with a worry about claims, or how de-icing spray works recited in a singsong tone by a boy who’s mostly interested in showing his father how ready he is to go out and fly. Each new piece of information is tied to a narrative or emotional concern on Jake or Adam’s part.  The readers will get the information, but the core of each sentence isn’t delivering information — it’s setting up a conflict, showing a character’s emotional state, or showing readers what’s at stake if Jake and Adam don’t succeed.  That creates a layering effect in “Ice Giant” where each sentence is doing much more than one or two jobs — and that lets it be a spare, tense, clean story while still bringing the impact of three sentences’ worth to readers in one sentence’s space.

What “Ice Giant” is making work here, and working with well, is the nebulous — and crucial — element of authorial confidence: Building a world below the surface and winding it through other craft elements so that the effect is Of course this is how this world works, because I’m the author and I believe in it.  Science fiction and fantasy are always going to need us to do a little bit of explicit worldbuilding, just because the field of what’s possible is so large, but the effect of using our worldbuilding facts to do things, rather than setting, overexplaining or justifying them, can be incredible.

Like with any piece, there are a few places where “Ice Giant” can improve.  It was initially difficult for me to get a solid grasp on what Adam, Jake, and Elaine’s relationships were to each other, even though Adam refers to Jake as his father in the first paragraph.  It’s important to note that character relationships are something we demonstrate in small gestures as well as defining with labels, and even if Jake is tagged as Adam’s father, the way Adam refers to him, and the way both spend the rest of the story interacting in ways that don’t seem to reflect a parental relationship or a significant age gap means that as a reader, I don’t believe in that relationship.  To me, Jake and Adam read more like brothers or colleagues that parent and child, and it might be worth adjusting both of their behavior so that the emotions and habits of parenthood are visible there — or changing the relationship label so it reflects what’s on the page.

Elaine, as well, as is notably flatter as a character than Jake or Adam.  While it’ll be finer work to get her personality on the page, as she’s only physically in one scene, in a story with three functional characters that weakness will be noticeable.  It’s worth spending some time on the scene she’s in — and on the references to her from Jake and Adam — to find the right details or memories that’ll make her feel fully realized and three-dimensional, even while being in the story just glancingly.

Point of view was also a small issue for me.  The question of whose point of view “Ice Giant” is told in slid a few times throughout reading: Is the reader riding in Adam’s head, or in Jake’s?  This is a very different story depending on whether it’s Adam’s story or Jake’s.  As it stands, there are jumps between them that might not be strictly necessary, and are at this point distracting and a little confusing.  I’d suggest smoothing out the point of view, using a change only when plot-relevant, and making sure that Jake and Adam’s thoughts feel and sound differently, so the difference in point of view is a real, tangible difference.  Again, this is fine work, but it’s the kind of work that has a huge effect on the general feeling of realism in a story.

All in all, “Ice Giant” tells a story that’s gritty, but not despairing, and keeps it at just the right size to make an impact without shorting readers or overstaying its welcome.  It’s a story that almost carries itself on its confidence, and on its careful momentum.  A few smoothings and tweaks on the prose level, and it should be ready to find a good home.

Best of luck!

–Leah Bobet
Author of Above (2012) and An Inheritance of Ashes (October 2015)

From Renita to Reba Clarice, Ch. 1, by Laurie Richards

What stands out for me in this novel’s opening chapter is the strong relationship between the protagonist, Renita, and her servant, Adyna.  The descriptions of them interacting feel vivid and immediate, and Adyna’s cynicism and world-weariness provide a nice contrast to Renita’s romanticism and naïveté. It’s often helpful to have a sidekick for your protagonist who has differing beliefs, since this can create conflict and help to reveal your protagonist’s character.  This is what’s happening here.  The story-within-a-story told by Adyna is engaging and seems like it may foreshadow events to come.  And in the disagreement between Renita and Adyna about how the story should end, the personalities of both characters are revealed.

While the opening chapter has a number of strengths, I think several areas could be improved.  Last month, I spoke about voice, and I’d like to bring that up again here.  The novel is told from Renita’s first person point of view, in past tense.  She is looking back on her existence, remembering events from 1141.  My understanding is that she becomes a vampire and exists to the present day.  While such a long life could lead someone to occasionally phrase something using obsolete syntax or diction, I would imagine that for the most part she has learned and adapted during her undead existence and now sounds mainly like someone living in 2016.  My mother is 85, born in 1930, but she doesn’t call things swell or complain about visiting a clip-joint or refer to a bad neighborhood as skid-row or admire a hepcat.  (Instead, she tells me that she downloaded the Fandango app onto her tablet and asks me how to stream Netflix.)  So if Renita is in 2016 looking back to 1141, why would her voice sound like someone living in 1141?  As she speaks to the reader, why would she say “We shall not tarry long in that century” rather than “We won’t spend much time in that century”?  It doesn’t seem believable to me that she would speak in a 12th-century voice.

I think the novel ends in present day, so it would also be nice to begin with a contemporary voice to tie the novel together, creating unity and cohesion, and to cue readers about the vast time period that will be covered, which will excite readers.

In many similar narrative situations, as the character recounts events from her past, the voice  gradually transitions into one that subtly suggests that past time period and the younger age of the character.  The problem with that strategy in this case is that the present-day Renita regularly comments on the actions of the child Renita, in sentences like this:  “In those days, I still had a soul, and it fancied romance.”  But the present-day Renita should have the present-day voice.  Having the voice jump between 21st century and 12th century would be jarring and distracting.

My suggestion would be to reduce these narrative intrusions and limit them to one or two near the beginning of her account.  Then the voice can transition to one that subtly suggests the 12th century, and we won’t be thrown out of the past story by any modern intrusions.

Another issue I’d like to discuss is the opening.  I enjoyed most of the chapter quite a bit, but if I were not critiquing this, I would never have gotten to page 2.  The chapter doesn’t really begin until “One night in my twelfth summer . . .”  Before that, we get exposition and setting.  That is not a strong way to open.  I think the first paragraph is intended to hook me, but I’ve read many books about the undead, so simply learning that the narrator is undead isn’t enough to make me want to keep going.  I think some of this exposition and setting can be moved later and some can be cut.

Without knowing the entire story, it’s hard to know how to open.  But I think what we may need in the beginning is the occasion for Renita to recount her life.  To whom is she telling the story, and why now?  Is this a compelling situation that would draw the reader in?  The obvious (and overused) choice would be to have Renita on the verge of (undead) death, thinking back over her existence.  A more interesting situation might be for Renita to be facing a difficult decision (one that would be made at the climax), and that she’s searching through her past for the answer.  Maybe she has a lover she cares for but can’t trust, and she needs to decide whether to kill him or not.  So she might think over her past and the evolution of her beliefs about relationships from romanticism to realism to cynicism.  This would create a subtext to tie her memories together and give the protagonist a goal she is struggling to achieve through these memories, rather than having her telling her story with no real purpose and nothing at stake.

When the setting is described (perhaps after she returns to her chamber and Adyna prepares to tell the story), it would be more compelling to describe the elements that are significant to Renita, since this is from her point of view, rather than to simply describe the place as if it were an establishing shot in a movie.  The description in paragraph 3 seems objective, divorced from Renita. I don’t know why any of this is important to her, and I don’t really think it is.  What seems important to her is the isolation of the place, which she doesn’t like.  If you focused every detail of description on showing isolation, the setting would be more unified and emotional.

I hope this is helpful.  Most of the chapter read smoothly and carried me along.

–Jeanne Cavelos, editor, author, director of Odyssey

Immor(t)al — Conclusion by Gene Spears

This is the final chapter and epilogue of an all-but-final draft of a finished novel. I selected it because, even though I haven’t read the previous novel, I can tell that this does the essential things that a final chapter should do.

Tying up loose plot threads? Check.

“As you may expect, I’m getting a lot of phone calls from outraged lawyers, ornery judges and meddlesome Patent Office officials.  I’ve had six calls from Malcolm Bridge, two from the Senior Senator from Utah and dozens more from nosy reporters digging for scoop on Jonah.  Those calls are the only ones I take.”

Finishing the emotional arc of the story? Check.

“The call I was dreading comes on Tuesday.

The phone’s set to buzz because Jo-jo’s napping and sound really carries in Erica’s condo.  It sort of just happened, my moving in for good.  As much as I miss my home office, this view of the District more than compensates.  Erica’s so dug in I’d never ask her to move back to Falls Church.  I should probably put the house on the market, though that’s another conversation I’ve been putting off.

“Hello,” I say into my phone.

“Monsieur Hoffman?”

“Oui,” I reply instinctively.  I follow this up with an immediate “yes.”  French and I aren’t the best of friends, and I don’t want to insult this man.

“Your brother, Jonah.  I’m so very sorry, but he is . . .”

“Dead,” I whisper, echoing the polite and earnest Parisian constable who – on account of his English language skills and impeccable bedside manner – has been assigned the task of telling English speakers about family found dead in his city.”

A happy  —  or at least a hopeful  —  ending? Check.

“I pull out the key that came with Jonah’s letter.

It fits in the lock, just as it should.  The number on the key – 231, it’s right beneath the Union Bank logo – matches the number on the box.  I give it a twist.  Something clicks then rattles.  I grasp an ivory handle.

I can’t breathe at all.

I tug, and with a grating little rasp, the door swings open to Box 231.  There’s a liter bottle inside.  Clear plastic.  Firm.  Polycarbonate?  The bottle’s maybe four fifths full, full of a liquid that’s not water.  It’s too viscous, and there’s a sickly jaundiced tint to it.  There’s no label on this bottle, no instructions, no list of ingredients.

There’s a sticky note slapped to the bottom.

Two words on that note.

Two words in Jonah’s hand.

For Jo-jo.”

Every paragraph in this final chapter is so well done. The story hits all of the important beats —  from the aftermath, to the phone call from Paris, to breakfast with Jo-jo, to the newspaper reports, to the letter and the key, to the travel, to the bank and the safety deposit box, to the final reveal. The threads weave in and out. The pacing is excellent.

But the full power of this chapter comes in the way it consistently creates space for the reader’s emotions. If we’d read this far in the book, we care about Jonah and Jo-jo, and we want something good to balance out the loss. The chapter leads us right up to that final image and stops, creating a space for the reader to imagine the future and feel relieved for Jo-jo and happy about what Jonah has left behind.

But the Epilogue…

Oh, the Epilogue.

Having created a space for the reader to imagine the future, the epilogue wants to go a step further and fill in all the details. To be fair, I like the way it begins:

“When a Roman youth cut his first beard, the family would go whole hog to celebrate.  They’d put on their finest togas, gather their friends and (if they had them) servants and retainers and trundle over to the Temple of Capitoline Jove, where the boy’s cuttings would be offered to the god in a box crafted for that purpose.  Then they’d all get shit-faced on lead-infused wine and if the lad was lucky and his dad indulgent the city’s prostitutes would gain a new customer.

When Jo-jo cut his first beard, the Hoffman family did much the same thing.”

But the casual mention of a hooker in the next sentence felt jarring in tone to the previous chapter and pulled me out of the so-far positive ending. From this point on, the epilogue feels like it’s trying to undo the work of the final chapter.

“My brother was wrong.

About so many things, not the least of which is that MS can be treated with gamma-ISQ7 while allowing the patient to age.  It’s not rocket science.  When Jo-jo shows symptoms, he takes his medicine.”

The information about the gamma-ISQ7 is important to explaining what’s happening with Jo-jo’s life. But whatever feelings or thoughts the reader had about Jonah after the last chapter, the narrator now wants to tell the reader how to feel. “Jonah was wrong.”

And not just wrong:

“And that’s supposed to make things better?”  Jo-jo sniffles, and I may be sniffling, too.  “I think of him, the moment he jumped, looking in on himself and finding nothing, his principles abandoned, his soul empty.”

Now the reader may have felt this way about Jonah, or they may have felt a different way, but Jonah’s story is over, and by making the epilogue look backward, toward him, and telling us how we should interpret Jonah’s choices, it short-circuits the looking-forward.

Because the argument about the road trip and the narrator’s job and the discussion with Donnie doesn’t add any new information to the narrative. None of it goes anywhere. It’s a bunch of unfulfilled possibilities. But the reader already had that at the end of the previous chapter.

And then we come to this final on-the-nose paragraph:

“Jo-jo blinks eyes slick with tears.  “Thank you,” he tells his cousin before directing his gaze back to my brother’s grave.  “Wherever I go, whatever I do, I’ll never forget what you did and what it cost you.  I hope you’re listening and listening good.  I won’t forget you, Uncle Jonah.  I promise I won’t forget you.”

In general, if your character cries, the reader won’t. The emotion is there on the page, so it doesn’t have to manifest in the reader’s interaction with the page. The best way for Jo-jo to remember Jonah is by going off and living his life, but the epilogue doesn’t show that happening. If the reader sees Jo-jo living fully, then the reader will remember Jonah, which is what you really want.

But this last paragraph doesn’t trust the reader to do that. Instead, Jo-jo speaks a series of clichés, which the paragraph tries to make sound more important by doubling them: “Wherever I go, whatever I do… what you did, what it cost… listening, listening good… I won’t forget you, I promise I won’t forget you.”

If the doubling is supposed to suggest that Jo-jo is now living for two people, himself and Jonah, it doesn’t work. The phrases don’t evoke Jonah’s actions or his life. And if you repeat clichés, then you just have twice as many clichés.

In my mind, this epilogue is a disaster.

If the author wants to show Jo-jo living because of Jonah, then there needs to be a more dramatic or narratively interesting situation that externalizes that. This can be a cliché too — I see so many short stories in the submission queue at Fantasy & Science Fiction that end with the character dancing, or singing, or riding a roller coaster, just as an expression of joy in life. But a clichéd action is still better than a dialog cliché.

Of course, the previous chapter shows that the author has the talent to find a really specific external action, unique to this story, that dramatizes the possible future. Do that again here and the story is gold.

Or if the message is that “life goes on” then we need to see the characters actually following through on ordinary tasks and doing things, not arguing about what they are or aren’t possibly going to do and why. Living in the present moment of the story, not the past of the story, will almost always have more power.

I’m not against the idea of the epilogue. I see value in showing Jo-jo grown up. But that’s just it —  we need to be shown it, not told it, for it to have real impact. If the author is committed to the epilogue, then it needs to be rooted in action, it needs to show the value of Jo-jo’s life in some way, and it needs to leave enough room for the reader’s emotions. Do that, and add one well-timed and restrained echo of Jonah, and it could accomplish everything that the current epilogue tries to tell us about him, but more effectively and with greater power.

So my brief advice here is to not touch the final chapter — it’s just about perfect — but to rethink the epilogue. Trust your reader. Give them room to fill in the emotions and continue the story in their head, and it will resonate with louder and longer.

Good luck with your final polish. I wish you every success with the book.

–C.C. Finlay
Edtior, Fantasy & Science Fiction
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