Critic Badge - a Book, part four

 "Capitalism in the 22nd Century, or A.I.r" by Geoff Ryman

'Graca and Cristina want to leave Brazil and go settle on another Planet, but it's expensive, physically challenging and illegal.'

I honestly have no real idea what was going on here.  The two girls have been injected with something that means they could give birth to cows in space?  Everyone is hooked up to an A.I. system that runs their lives, and, for some reason, nobody trusts the Chinese.

The story is told from Cristina's point of view, and she backs out at the last minute.  So, she is stuck in Africa full of this illegal cow juice and her sister blasts off on an African rocket to an illegal life in space.  With cow babies, I'm assuming.

Not for me.

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"Hold-Time Violations" by John Chu

Read it here.

I listened to half of this story.  Then I started again because my mind was wandering.  During that second session I realised my mind was wandering because I just couldn't grasp the plot.

Searching online I found the story at Tor.com, so I thought I'd just try reading it instead.  It was just as baffling in print as it was listening on Audible, in fact, I discovered that I was only a few paragraphs from the end!

Elsie builds Universes in the skunkworks out of pipes.  The isolationists want to kill her, and we hear that multiple times.  Her mother is dying, she also used to build Universes out of pipes.  She has a sister who sends messages to Elsie via other people using what seems like telekinesis?  The sister looks after the dying mother.

Elsie realises that there is a potential way of curing her mother by rewiring the skunkworks of this current Universe, but the rewiring will definitely cause a certain migratory bird to go extinct and probably other, untold changes.

In the end, the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the dying mother, and she doesn't complete her rewiring.  Or should that be repiping?  There's also a savoury egg tart, which apparently proves that the Universe is out of whack.

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"Wild Honey" by Paul McAuley

An old woman is the human Queen of a beehive.  Bad guys come along and try to steal the honey? I think.  Another one where the depressed narration makes everything seem one-note.

Old Queen rescues a young woman named Hannah who has been modified and forced to live with the robbers.  Lots of people die when the Old Queen feeds them mad honey.

Hannah stays with the Queen and is taught all the Secrets of the Hive.  The Old Queen hopes that she is teaching a replacement, but when the Queen dies, Hannah leaves.  She has been taught too well and knows the Bees will be fine without their Human Queen.

I'm not sure how many more of these stories I can take on Audible.  There are 21 left...

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