This is a follow-up to that post that has been slowly compiled over time.
Just like in 2018, I was interested in non-religious Easter stories that fit somewhere into the speculative fiction spectrum.
There were no other criteria. I was totally open to short stories, novellas, or novels. Something written in 1800 would have been just as welcomed as something that was published last week.
So it came as a surprise to me to see what a short list I came up with. The vast majority of the titles on this list are children’s picture books. This was after I trimmed out all of the storybooks about Cartoon Character X’s first Easter. I’m sure they’re adorable stories, but I didn’t want them to crowd out everything else I found.
Children’s Picture Books
These were the picture books that appealed most to me. My parents read The Runaway Bunny to us when my siblings and I were growing up, and it was lovely.
After coming up with these titles, I had some success with speculative fiction that was written for an adult audience. In order to add this section, I needed to loosen up my “no religion” criteria a tad. Both of their blurbs do make references to non-secular celebrations of this holiday, but they don’t appear to be written in a proselytizing manner from what I can tell.
What books can you add to this list? I’d love to write a follow-up post if or when the speculative fiction community realizes how much fodder there is in Easter for all sorts of different tales.
Content warning: death of a pet and blood. I will not be discussing these things in my review.
I Am Mother is a 2019 Australian science fiction thriller about a human girl who was raised by a robot that was designed to repopulate the Earth after some sort of extinction event.
The characters in this tale don’t have conventional names like you or I do. Instead, the human child is called Daughter and the robot who raised her is called Mother.
While Daughter is well cared for, her isolation not only from other people but from anything outside of their isolation bunker is absolute.
Mother insists it isn’t safe out there, and her word is law.
Characters
Clara Rugaard as Daughter
Daughter was an intelligent and thoughtful young woman. She’d previously been obedient of Mother’s wishes, but her curiosity about what life was like outside of the UNU-HWK_Repopulation Facility and dissatisfation with what her mother told her about it was growing stronger by the way.
Luke Hawker as Mother (performance) Rose Byrne as Mother (voice)
Mother the robot who had raised Daughter and who was making preparations for the next human infant she’d take responsibility for. She was strict and protective of her daughter. While Daughter’s health and happiness was important to her, she refused to compromise on any of the rules she’d come up with on how best to raise a human child in a post-apocalyptic environment.
Hilary Swank as Woman
Woman was the injured, dying stranger who stumbled upon the bunker one day. She’d lived a life filled with fear and danger. Every move she made was calculated to give her the highest probability of surviving just one more day.
My Review
Just like with Annihilation, my biggest reason for wanting to watch this film had to do with the fact that all of the main characters in it were women. All of the science fiction films I grew up watching were male dominated. Some of them were comprised of nothing but dudes. Others might have as many as one female hero for every three, four, or five male heroes.
I’m elated to see this changing, and I’ll continue to highlight science fiction films that change those old norms as I find them.
You may have noticed that the cast for “I Am Mother” is pretty small. No, I didn’t leave anyone out to avoid sharing spoilers. This tale was so tightly woven around the fates of the three main characters that they seemed like the perfect number of players for the plot.
Mother, Daughter, and Woman were three complex individuals whose goals sometimes clashed sharply. Finding a solution to their conflicts that satisfied all three of them would be a herculean task at best because of how differently they all measured success and how much friction existed between what everyone wanted.
No, I can’t go into more details about that without giving you spoilers. It is definitely something that’s worth exploring for yourself, though. I’m the sort of viewer who picks one character – not necessarily the hero, mind you – and spends the entire film hoping she will succeed. In this case, my loyalties shifted from one scene to the next.
Daughter and Mother having a discussion.
One of my strengths as a viewer is that I always want more information about the science in science fiction, so there were a few things about Daughter’s upbringing that I wish had been addressed with a bit more detail. For example, how was Mother planning to keep her immune system strong when the girl had never been exposed to any outside germs? Were there vaccines for every possible virus and bacteria in this world? How did Daughter get sufficient vitamin D when she’d never been outside and ate what appeared to be a somewhat monotonous diet?
These weren’t exactly criticisms, though, because I came to easily accept other parts of her existence that were spaced even further away from our current scientific understanding of human biology and growth patterns. I strongly suspect that wondering about how this stuff actually worked, alongside many other questions this story brings up, is something the filmmakers did on purpose for their audience.
Some questions become more interesting if you’re not spoon-fed answers to them, especially since the mystery elements of the plot were so simple to put together in my experience. There were plenty of clues about what was really happening with Mother and Daughter for anyone who pays attention to what they’re watching and thinks critically about it.
I figured out the mystery pretty early on. What was compelling about it was seeing how Daughter reacted to the clues she also had access to and what happened when she realized that the information she already had wasn’t fitting together the way it should.
Something was missing.
I’ll leave it up to my readers to discover what that something was. What I will say is that this is a film I’d happily watch again. It was simply that well written and thought provoking.
Click on the tag “hope” at this bottom of this post to read about all of my suggestions for hopeful science fiction. If you have recommendations for future instalments of this series, I’d sure like to hear them. Leave a comment below or send me message about it on Twitter.
Recently, I discovered the Better Worlds series, a science fiction anthology of short stories and films about hope that was published at The Verge two years ago. This is the fourth story from this anthology I’ve covered here, and I will eventually blog about all of them.
There are mild spoilers in this post.
Monsters Come Howling in Their Season
Cadwell Turnbull’s “Monsters Come Howling in Their Season” was about how St. Thomas integrated an AI to defend itself against hurricane seasons that had been growing more violent over the years thanks to climate change.
Like many of the other stories in my Hopeful Science Fiction series, this might not sound like a particularly hopeful place to begin. Keep reading.
The characters in this tale were ordinary, mostly working class people who pooled their resources together for the greater good. I love seeing this perspective in the science fiction genre. There’s something heartwarming about finding out how characters who aren’t wealthy or powerful protect their community from climate change.
Some of the most compelling scenes were the ones that described how the AI was designed to function, especially once it became too complex even for programmers to fully understand. It truly had everyone’s best intentions in mind.
Technology might have caused climate change, but it was also a force for a lot of good in this world. That is such a refreshing change for this genre.
I also appreciated the way the characters’ emotional reactions to hurricane season were portrayed. Violent storms like that are dangerous as Dr. Stevens and her community were far too aware of already. The act of finding hope for people whose lives had been turned upside down by hurricanes that happened before the AI was developed only made these changes in their lives more poignant.
As complete as it story felt in and of itself, I wished it could have been expanded into a full-length novel. There was so much more I wanted to know about the characters and the artificial intelligence they’d created to protect and provide for them during hurricane season.
Maybe someday we’ll get that sequel. In the meantime, this was such a soothing thing to read.
Frozen II is the 2019 animated fantasy sequel to Frozen. It is about Elsa and Anna’s attempts to figure out the origin of Elsa’s magical powers and save their kingdom from being destroyed by the elemental spirits of Earth, Fire, Water, and Air.
It isn’t strictly necessary to watch Frozen before checking out Frozen II, but I do highly recommend the first film in this series to anyone who loves the fantasy genre or animated films in general.
In order to avoid spoilers, I will only be discussing characters who were also in Frozen.
Characters
Idina Menzel as Elsa
Elsa was the Queen of Arendelle and Princess Anna’s elder sister. She possessed magical ice powers whose origins were unknown. While she’d grown quite comfortable with using them, she had a deep longing to understand where they came from and why she had them.
Kristen Bell as Anna
Anna was the Princess of Arendelle and Elsa’s younger sister. She was deeply in love with her boyfriend, Kristoff.
Josh Gad (right) as Olaf
Olaf was a sentient snowman created by Elsa’s magic who was first introduced in Frozen. He was as intelligent and silly as always.
Jonathan Groff (centre top) as Kristoff
Kristoff was an ice harvester and Anna’s boyfriend. He was strong, loyal, and determined to help the people he cared about in any way he could.
Sven was his pet reindeer. He was a good reindeer.
My Review
Prepare yourselves for a story filled with wholesomeness and joy.
I love a good adventure that ramps up quickly in a storyline, so I was glad to see this film move so fast in the beginning. That snappy pacing was exactly what Elsa, Anna, Olaf, Kristoff, and Sven needed before setting off on their journey.
Yes, there was a brief summary of what happened in Frozen for anyone who isn’t familiar with this franchise. It was shared by Olaf and was as hilarious as it was accurate. As mentioned earlier, I think anyone who hasn’t seen the first film would have no trouble getting caught up to speed if they jumped straight into Frozen II. The nice thing about film series written for kids is that they tend to be pretty welcoming of new or distracted viewers, and this one was no exception to that rule.
Every sequel has to live up to the story that began that series. I had high expectations for Frozen II based on how much I loved Frozen. While this was a fun story, I thought it didn’t quite have all of the magic of the first one. Many of the jokes in it were references to things that happened in the first instalment, so they had to be explained for people just tuning into this series. I did find myself wishing the screenwriters had spent more time developing new, original jokes, especially when it came to characters that hadn’t been introduced previously. With that being said, I still enjoyed Frozen II and do recommend it.
Olaf was by far my favourite part of this film. Just like in Frozen, he was a regular source of amusement for both the audience and the other characters. His understanding of how the world works was childlike in certain ways and yet quite mature for a snowman of his age in others. I desperately wanted to include one of his jokes in this review, but I think it’s best if you discover all of them for yourselves.
If you need a lighthearted distraction for viewers of all ages, Frozen II is a good place to start.
Frozen II is available on Netflix and Apple TV. It is no doubt quickly attempting to catch up with Frozen and become available everywhere else in the known universe as well.
Click on the tag “hope” at this bottom of this post to read about all of my suggestions for hopeful science fiction. If you have recommendations for future instalments of this series, I’d sure like to hear them. Leave a comment below or send me message about it on Twitter.
Recently, I discovered the Better Worlds series, a science fiction anthology of short stories and films about hope that was published at The Verge two years ago. This is the third story from this anthology I’ve covered here, and I will eventually blog about all of them.
There are mild spoilers in this post.
A Model Dog
John Scalzi’s “A Model Dog” was about an overbearing CEO who demanded that his employees engineer a solution to his dad’s aging dog.
It was written in an unusual and creative way: pure dialogue. That is, the entire story is shared with the audience as we read various conversations between the IT manager and one of their employees.
(The genders of these two characters were never clarified, so I’m making no assumptions about how they identified).
The CEO had a specific vision for how the IT department should handle his request. Not only were they asked to create an android dog, they were supposed to create it to behave just like the living dog who lived with the CEO’s father currently behaved. It was supposed to be such a close replacement that it would be as if the dog would never need to die.
Some of the funniest scenes happened in the beginning when the programmer explained to their boss that they already had 11 action items on their to-do list for that day alone and couldn’t possibly take on another project, much less one as massive as this one. I’ll leave it up to all of you to explore the nuts and bolts of that conversation for yourselves, but it was something I think people from many different professions can relate to.
I loved the plot twists in this tale. While I can’t go into any detail about them without sharing massive spoilers, I can tell you all that they were as logical and internally consistent as they were plain fun to read. Building an android dog that can replace the real thing is incredibly complex. Honestly, this must have been set several decades from present day in order to give this plan or anything that happened after it even half a chance of success.
It was also cool to read about a future for humanity that involved such great improvements in people’s quality of life thanks to technology and science. The task the main characters were given was certainly difficult, but it was by no means impossible. Reading about their attempts to create the perfect android dog only made me more curious to know what else was possible in their world that we can still only dream of. What a joyful place that must be.
If this vision of the future is anything close to what will really happen, sign me up!
From noted short story writer Nisi Shawl comes a brilliant alternate-history novel set in the Belgian Congo.
What if the African natives developed steam power ahead of their colonial oppressors? What might have come of Belgium’s disastrous colonization of the Congo if the native populations had learned about steam technology a bit earlier?
Fabian Socialists from Great Britain join forces with African-American missionaries to purchase land from the Belgian Congo’s “owner,” King Leopold II. This land, named Everfair, is set aside as a safe haven, an imaginary Utopia for native populations of the Congo as well as escaped slaves returning from America and other places where African natives were being mistreated.
Shawl’s speculative masterpiece manages to turn one of the worst human rights disasters on record into a marvelous and exciting exploration of the possibilities inherent in a turn of history. Everfair is told from a multiplicity of voices: Africans, Europeans, East Asians, and African Americans in complex relationships with one another, in a compelling range of voices that have historically been silenced. Everfair is not only a beautiful book but an educational and inspiring one that will give the reader new insight into an often ignored period of history.
Review:
Content warning: Racism and sexism. I will not be discussing these things in my review.
Strap in for a wild ride.This book has a bit of everything!
Ms. Shawl did a very good job of explaining the political and historical landscape of the setting. I didn’t know a lot about how Belgium colonization of the Congo went so horribly wrong in our world, so I was grateful for all of the details the author provided about why Belgium made that decision and how they expected to make it work before she imaged how things could have turned out much differently for the Congo if they’d already had steam technology when this conflict boiled over.
The cast of characters was massive. Rather than telling this tale from the perspective of one or even a few different people, there were dozens of narrators and other protagonists to sort out as I read. Given the fact that each chapter was written in a form that was pretty similar to a short story and that previous characters often weren’t revisited until many years after their previous entry, I had lots of trouble keeping up with everyone and the plot at the same time. This felt like something that really should have been separated out into several novels or many more novellas. There was so much going on in the plot that nobody got all of the attention they deserved.
There was a list of characters, their relationships to each other, and approximately when and where they lived included before the story began. I was glad to have this information and would highly recommend taking a look at it before beginning the first chapter. As I mentioned earlier in this review, the cast of characters is humongous. Having a basic idea of everyone’s identity and when they lived is crucial in order to understanding the plot, and this list did help with that even though I still believe the plot would have been better served if it were divided into a series and no more than three or four narrators were included in each instalment.
Anyone who loves alternate history speculative fiction should check this book out.
Content warning: death of a parent, police violence and gun violence. I will be discussing the last two items in this list in my review.
See You Yesterday is a 2019 science fiction film about C.J. and Sebastian, two high school students who are best friends, fellow science enthusiasts, and inventors.
Their latest invention is a backpack that allows the person wearing it to travel back into time. The technology wasn’t perfect. It could only go back into the recent past and could only be used a certain number of times. They were still figuring out how to change those limitations when the events of this film took place.
After C.J.’s older brother, Calvin, was murdered by the police, she and Sebastian decided to use their unfinished invention to travel back in time and save her brother before time ran out for him for good.
Characters
Eden Duncan-Smith as C.J. Walker
C.J. was the protagonist of this tale. As an incredibly intelligent and driven young woman, she believed she could solve any problem that came her way by seeking the scientifically correct answer to it.
Danté Crichlow (left) as Sebastian Thomas
Sebastian was C.J.’s best friend. He was just as intelligent as C.J. but tended to be more cautious about trying new things until he’d gathered all of the date he needed about how they worked.
Michael J. Fox as Mr. Lockhart
C.J. and Sebastian’s science teacher
Mr. Lockhart was C.J. and Sebastian’s supportive science teacher. He didn’t believe in time travel, but he did believe that his two smartest students would do incredible things with their lives. Supportive teacher, but doesn’t believe in time travel.
Anyone who is a fan of this actor’s previous work will find a delightful Easter Egg about it at some point in this tale.
Brian “Stro” Bradley as Calvin Walker
Calvin was C.J.’s overprotective but loving older brother. He admired his sister’s intellect and believed that she’d one day make life better for their entire family because of it.
My Review
This was such a good story that I’m planning to watch it again!
Obviously, there were strong social justice themes in this movie. The blurb and trailer for it will give that fact away immediately to anyone who somehow missed it. C.J.’s invention was really cool in and of itself, but the thought of it being used to right terrible wrongs only made me more curious to see if and how she’d reach her goal of saving her brother’s life.
C.J.’s character development was beautifully handled. There were excellent reasons for her sometimes stubborn behaviour and unshakeable belief that science can be used any problem if one works hard enough to understand what happened and how it can be changed. I’ll leave it up to other viewers to discover these things for themselves, but it was delightful to see how her past and present shaped who C.J. was and who she was becoming.
There were a couple of fantastic plot twists later on in the storyline. They made perfect sense given everything C.J. had gone through earlier. While I did see them coming due to how familiar I am with tropes in the young adult and science fiction genres, I’d be pretty curious to find out if other audience members had the same reaction to them. Either way, they enhanced the viewing experience nicely.
My brain is beyond eager to discuss the ending in this post, but I’ll need to carefully dance around what actually happened in it in order to avoid spoilers. What I can say is that it fit the themes of this tale well and it had a powerful message for audience members about how we should respond to police and gun violence.
Ending on such thoughtful terms was such a great decision. I’ve read that the director isn’t planning to make a sequel, so it looks like the audience will have come up with our own theories about what might happen next.
A Note on the Violence Tags in My Review
Some of the violence was implied. Other acts of violence were shown directly to the audience, albeit in a sensitive and thoughtful manner. There were the briefest hints of blood in a couple of scenes, but in general this was a pretty blood-free story (especially given the subject matter).
See You Yesterday is something that I’d recommend just as highly to adult viewers as I would it’s original young adult audience.
Click on the tag “hope” at this bottom of this post to read about all of my suggestions for hopeful science fiction. If you have recommendations for future instalments of this series, I’d sure like to hear them. Leave a comment below or send me message about it on Twitter.
Recently, I discovered the Better Worlds series, a science fiction anthology of short stories and films about hope that was published at The Verge two years ago. This is the second story from this anthology I’ve covered here, and I will eventually blog about all of them.
There are mild spoilers in this post.
Online Reunion
Leigh Alexander’s “Online Reunion” was about a young journalist chronicling a vintage e-pet reunion who gets more than she expected.
One of the things I found most interesting about this tale was how little time it spent on the world building.
The Internet had changed society in some pretty profound ways over the decades, but this wasn’t something I fully appreciated until I read it for the second time. I’d definitely recommending reading this slowly in order to catch every hint about what’s really going on here.
Human Nature
Fashions may come and go, but human nature remains constant from one era to the next. The best portions of this story were the ones that quietly highlighted what has changed, and even more importantly what hasn’t changed, over the past few generations since people began using the Internet heavily.
Jean, the main character, thought she had a good idea of what to expect when she went to Mrs. Marchenstamp’s house to interview her. I was amused by the assumptions she made about the first generation who used the Internet heavily, especially once Jean realized that she might have underestimated her interview subject.
There was also something comforting in the thought of people finding new ways to connect with each other in a futuristic world where something similar to Internet Addiction Disorder is much more common and dangerous than it is today.
I can’t go into detail about that topic without wandering into serious spoiler territory, but I was pleased with how familiar this tale felt. Yes, the characters had access to technology that you and I can only dream of, and there were plenty of social problems the plot hinted at that seemed to have grown worse over time instead of better.
But I still felt as thought I could sit down and have a cup of tea with any of the characters. Other than the occasional slang term that would be used differently in their world than in ours, they seemed like people I already knew. There was a familiarity with their problems and their triumphs that made me want to get to know them better.
As much of a cliche as this is to type, people are people everywhere. I loved seeing all of the similarities between them and us.
It made me look forward to the future. What could be better than that?
Content warning: snakes and bugs. I will not be discussing these topics in my review.
Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle is a 2017 fantasy, action, and comedic film about four high school students who were accidentally transported into a magical video game and needed to beat every level of it in order to get back to the real world.
This movie is a reboot of a franchise that began with the original Jumanji in 1996. According to my spouse, there were multiple Easter eggs from the first version of this tale tucked into the storyline, so keep an eye out for them if you’re already familiar with this franchise.
With that being said, I’d never seen the original and had no problem figuring out what was happening in the plot or who the characters were because everything was explained clearly.
Some of the secondary characters had too many spoilers wrapped up into their backstories to be introduced in this post, so I’ll stick with the four protagonists in the character section of this review. They will be described both as their game world avatars and real life personas.
Characters
Game World
Dwayne Johnson as Dr. Smolder Bravestone
Dr. Smolder Bravestone was a strong, confident archeologist, explorer, and team leader. He was Spencer’s avatar.
Jack Black as Professor Sheldon “Shelly” Oberon
Professor Sheldon “Shelly” Obero was a cartographer, cryptographer, archeologist, and palaeontologist. He was Bethany’s avatar.
Kevin Hart as Franklin “Mouse” Finbar
Franklin “Mouse” Finbar was a zoologist and weapons carrier. He was Fridge’s avatar.
Karen Gillan as Ruby Roundhouse
Ruby Roundhouse was a martial artist and fighting dancer. She was Martha’s avatar.
Real World
Alex Wolff as Spencer Gilpin
Alex Wolff as Spencer Gilpin.
Alex was nerdy and sometimes socially awkward student at Brantford High School. He and Fridge were childhood best friends, but now he feared he’d been left behind.
Madison Iseman as Bethany Walker
Bethany was a popular, pretty, and self-centered student at Brantford High School. She spent a great deal of time taking selfies and posting them on social media as shown in the photo above.
Ser’Darius Blain as Anthony “Fridge” Johnson
Anthony was a strong and athletic student at Brantford High School. He was proud of how much work he’d put into his body and enjoyed showing off his strength.
Morgan Turner as Martha Kaply
Morgan was a quiet, shy, intelligent, and cynical student at Brantford High School. She struggled with letting people get close to her, especially if she thought they wanted something from her.
My Review
My characters descriptions were more negative than usual in this review. The beginning of this film made it a point to hammer home each character’s flaws, how aware they were of them, and how those problems were affecting their lives.
The four main characters moments after they were transformed into Mouse, Dr. Bravestone, Ruby, and Shelly.
Since the four teens the audience were just introduced to were about to be transformed into video game avatars, getting to know them was crucial.
One of the things this film did incredibly well was to show how each character’s tics and habits carried over into the game. All of the adult actors mimicked the teens they were playing so well that it was easy to forget they were acting!
I loved seeing all of the little ways they reminded the audience of their teenaged selves. This was especially funny when it came to Shelly because of how she’d been transformed from a beautiful young girl into a fairly average middle-aged man.
Yes, the storyline did address the gender flip there, but it was done in a very respectful manner. Gender and gender identity was never the butt of the joke in this tale which was refreshing. When the storyline gently made fun of Shelly, it was for her self-absorption and other character flaws, not the fact that she had no idea how to properly urinate standing up. (Although there was a hilarious scene involving just that early on in the plot!)
What I would have liked to see was more attention paid to the character development. The four protagonists were all written in pretty stereotypical manners as you might have gathered from the descriptions of them above. While I understood that much of it was written that way to poke fun at some of the more ridiculous – and even sexist – tropes in video games, I think more time could have been spent developing the main characters and showing how they were different from typical video game avatars.
As entertaining as the plot was, there were times when I was honestly a bit bored with the characters at times because of how easy it was to predict how they’d behave. I’m saying that with the understanding that a casual video game player like me probably isn’t the ideal audience for this sort of film at all. People who immerse themselves in that hobby may have a very different reaction to it, so I don’t want this criticism to dissuade anyone from giving it a try if the trailer grabs their interest.
Just remember that there is a lot of tongue-in-cheek stuff going on here. The less seriously you take it, the better.
The cartoonish violence was a lot of fun, though. I’m the sort of person who looks away from the screen or TV when a violent scene pops up, and I was able to handle the fight scenes without a problem. Characters certainly get thrown around a lot in all sorts of ways that are only possible in a virtual world, but there was no blood or gore to make my stomach turn. That was definitely something I appreciated.
All in all, this was an amusing way to spend a couple of hours. It was a light, cheerful storyline that didn’t require the audience to do much analyzing at all. You just had to sit back and enjoy the show. There’s something to be said for movies like that!
Click on the tag “hope” at this bottom of this post to read about all of my suggestions for hopeful science fiction. If you have recommendations for future instalments of this series, I’d sure like to hear them. Leave a comment below or send me message about it on Twitter.
Recently, I discovered the Better Worlds series, a science fiction anthology of short stories and films about hope that was published at The Verge two years ago.
A Theory of Flight
Justina Ireland’s “A Theory of Flight” is the first instalment of this series. It was about a daring plan to build an open-source rocket could help more people escape Earth. Click on the link in the first sentence of this paragraph to read it for free or scroll to the bottom of this post to watch the short film version of it. There are mild spoilers in this post, so reader beware after this sentence.
When I first began this series, I talked about my expectations for hopeful science fiction.
This type of sci-fi isn’t about creating a utopia or brushing aside the very real challenges people face. It’s about finding hope and fighting for a happy ending no matter what the circumstances are.
Carlinda was no stranger to conflict or struggling. She was a black woman who’d grown up in a low-income neighbourhood. This may have been set in a future version of Earth, but the obstacles she faced were the same ones that people from all of these groups face today.
The big difference between her time and ours had to do with how much the environment had degraded thanks to climate change. Life on a hot, polluted planet was beyond difficult, especially for people who didn’t have the money or social clout to get away from Earth.
Cooperation
Carlinda had some money saved up from a well-paid job building spaceships for the wealthy folks who were fleeing Earth for safe colonies on Mars and Europa.
Her funds weren’t enough to get her to either of those places, though, much less help anyone else to join her. This futuristic version of society was so economically stratified that the vast majority of people were doomed to live out short, painful, poverty-stricken lives on Earth.
Or were they?
The beautiful thing about Carlinda’s open-sourced plans for rocket ships was that they could be built out of trash. Very little money was required to create them. All you needed were some workers who understood how to follow the plans and build something that could safely bring a few hundred folks to Europa.
There are some plot twists related to the political ramifications of this plan that are best left up to new readers to discover for themselves. Still, I loved seeing how the small percentage of humans who were wealthy and politically powerful reacted to the idea of ordinary folks taking their own fates into their hands.
Not only did it add a layer of urgency to the plot, it gave Carlinda and the people working with her even more of an incentive to keep building and to share their knowledge with as many other poor folks as possible.
A better world is possible, and it all begins with regular people banding together to creatively solve problems that are too big for any one person to fix on their own.
Two years ago, I wrote Are There Any Science Fiction and Fantasy Stories About Easter?
Content warning: death of a pet and blood. I will not be discussing these things in my review.
Cadwell Turnbull’s “
Frozen II is the 2019 animated fantasy sequel to Frozen. It is about Elsa and Anna’s attempts to figure out the origin of Elsa’s magical powers and save their kingdom from being destroyed by the elemental spirits of Earth, Fire, Water, and Air.
John Scalzi’s “
Title: Everfair
Content warning: death of a parent, police violence and gun violence. I will be discussing the last two items in this list in my review.
Leigh Alexander’s “
Content warning: snakes and bugs. I will not be discussing these topics in my review.
