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Bourbon, Sugar, Grace
"Bourbon, Sugar, Grace" by Jessica Reisman is a science fiction novelette about Fox, a young salvager living in a mining colony on an inhospitable planet abandoned by its owners once the mines were shut. When Fox is hired to find an object lost in a recent accident, she finds a mystery, an opportunity, and trouble.
At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
35 pages, Kindle Edition
First published June 7, 2017
2 people are currently reading
54 people want to read
About the author
Jessica Reisman
19 books28 followersI have always loved any fiction or art that opens doors -- or windows or cracks in the air -- to possibility, that lets wonder into the room.
The first things I wrote, at nine years old, were fantastic literature, and that's where my heart has always been -- whether you call it science fiction, fantasy, horror, dark fantasy, magic realism, or fabulism. My writing is about two things: exploring and expanding limits and notions of the possible, and feeding the body and spirit through language and story.
Having lived and gone to school in Philadelphia, parts of Florida, California, and Maine, I make my home these days in Austin. Well-groomed cats, family, and good friends grace my life with their company. I've been employed as a house painter, a blueberry raker, an art house film projectionist, a glass artist's assistant, an English tutor, teaching assistant, and an editor, among other things. I dropped out of high school and now have a master's degree. I was a Michener Fellow in grad school, graduated from the Clarion West workshop, and have a large collection of Hong Kong movies. A narrative junkie from a young age, I have always found inspiration and solace in books, movies, and television. Also in animal life, nature, good food with friends, artful cocktails, and rain.
Some of these facts are only tangentially related.
The first things I wrote, at nine years old, were fantastic literature, and that's where my heart has always been -- whether you call it science fiction, fantasy, horror, dark fantasy, magic realism, or fabulism. My writing is about two things: exploring and expanding limits and notions of the possible, and feeding the body and spirit through language and story.
Having lived and gone to school in Philadelphia, parts of Florida, California, and Maine, I make my home these days in Austin. Well-groomed cats, family, and good friends grace my life with their company. I've been employed as a house painter, a blueberry raker, an art house film projectionist, a glass artist's assistant, an English tutor, teaching assistant, and an editor, among other things. I dropped out of high school and now have a master's degree. I was a Michener Fellow in grad school, graduated from the Clarion West workshop, and have a large collection of Hong Kong movies. A narrative junkie from a young age, I have always found inspiration and solace in books, movies, and television. Also in animal life, nature, good food with friends, artful cocktails, and rain.
Some of these facts are only tangentially related.
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Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews
June 20, 2017
3.5 stars for this Tor novelette, free online here at Tor.com. Review first posted on Fantasy Literature.
Fox is a young woman living on her own on the mining planet Sloe, after her hard drinking offended her co-op’s administrant once too often. Life on Sloe is difficult and jobs are scarce since the mining company abandoned the work and most of its mine workers there. Now Fox is scraping by doing odd jobs as a scavenger.
Fox’s current salvage job is to retrieve an object from a wrecked train car mired in toxic sludge, identified by the scanner given to Fox by the person who employed her to retrieve the object. It turns out to be an oblong rock with a strange crystal spiral embedded in it. When Fox badly injures her leg leaving the train car, burning it in the sludge, the rock seems to block most of the pain. It’s worrisome, but even more concerning is the fact that two sinister company employees are hard on her trail, searching for this mysterious rock.
This novelette is an interesting mix of hard science fiction and mysticism. The power in the rock seems to have a link to the stories once told to Fox by her two loving moms (one of whom is referred to as “he,” in a noteworthy take on gender identity). Fox is a memorable character, damaged by life on the inhospitable planet of Sloe, but she begins to understand that it’s nevertheless home to her and many of her community.
Fox is a young woman living on her own on the mining planet Sloe, after her hard drinking offended her co-op’s administrant once too often. Life on Sloe is difficult and jobs are scarce since the mining company abandoned the work and most of its mine workers there. Now Fox is scraping by doing odd jobs as a scavenger.
Fox’s current salvage job is to retrieve an object from a wrecked train car mired in toxic sludge, identified by the scanner given to Fox by the person who employed her to retrieve the object. It turns out to be an oblong rock with a strange crystal spiral embedded in it. When Fox badly injures her leg leaving the train car, burning it in the sludge, the rock seems to block most of the pain. It’s worrisome, but even more concerning is the fact that two sinister company employees are hard on her trail, searching for this mysterious rock.
This novelette is an interesting mix of hard science fiction and mysticism. The power in the rock seems to have a link to the stories once told to Fox by her two loving moms (one of whom is referred to as “he,” in a noteworthy take on gender identity). Fox is a memorable character, damaged by life on the inhospitable planet of Sloe, but she begins to understand that it’s nevertheless home to her and many of her community.
August 20, 2021
Everything must breathe, even rock.
Fox lives on a small mining planet called Sloe with her two mums. She is a scavenger and a salvager and drinks a lot. When she is sent to recover a rare object, she finds herself in the midst of Sloe politics.
Humans had been on Sloe for twenty-two years standard, twelve longer than they were meant to. They were confined to the area within the combine’s ring of atmosphere assisters, sunk like sentry columns of tech in the planet’s rock. Once the area had been mined of its resource minerals to the point of instability, turning the local geologic layers into lace and giving rise to the gurges, the combine was to have lifted off the human techs, scientists, engineers, and administrative personnel overseeing operations at seven different mining stations within the ring. First there were technical delays; then in-combine political delays, and then more technical delays. Eventually, it became clear that the mining combine had all but abandoned them. They still got the automated drops of survival supplies, meds and food basics, but queries on disembarkation updates were lost in the bureaucratic cloud.
This story took me a while to get into but I did love the setting. A mining planet somewhere in the universe, where the people have been abandoned but still they made it home. That rare object got me curious too but I didn't like the ending.
Life exists in more forms than we can predict or comprehend.
3 stars
Fox lives on a small mining planet called Sloe with her two mums. She is a scavenger and a salvager and drinks a lot. When she is sent to recover a rare object, she finds herself in the midst of Sloe politics.
Humans had been on Sloe for twenty-two years standard, twelve longer than they were meant to. They were confined to the area within the combine’s ring of atmosphere assisters, sunk like sentry columns of tech in the planet’s rock. Once the area had been mined of its resource minerals to the point of instability, turning the local geologic layers into lace and giving rise to the gurges, the combine was to have lifted off the human techs, scientists, engineers, and administrative personnel overseeing operations at seven different mining stations within the ring. First there were technical delays; then in-combine political delays, and then more technical delays. Eventually, it became clear that the mining combine had all but abandoned them. They still got the automated drops of survival supplies, meds and food basics, but queries on disembarkation updates were lost in the bureaucratic cloud.
This story took me a while to get into but I did love the setting. A mining planet somewhere in the universe, where the people have been abandoned but still they made it home. That rare object got me curious too but I didn't like the ending.
Life exists in more forms than we can predict or comprehend.
3 stars
June 11, 2017
I can do this. Indomitable, indomitable, in the Sloe Ghost’s image are we, indomitable. I can do this, this can I do, Fox repeated Pisque’s Litany in her head. From where she stood on the Furrow bank, the train car upended in the toxic sludge of a gurge-sink looked a long distance away.
----
The thin light of Sloe’s sun cast streamers through wreckage. Fox used the seats like rock outcroppings and came down to the opposite end of the train car. With one hand to a blood-streaked seat back, she slipped the scanner out of the suit’s hip pocket. Ryuu had cobbled it together specially for this salvage. Fox thumbed the seek switch on the finger-sized unit, not sure exactly what she was looking for; the scanner would supposedly identify it and Ryuu’s customer would pay a generous fee for it.
---
Settling onto a bench that was part of one of the fab’s molded walls, Fox drifted, a tang of pain in her mouth, thoughts floating into patchwork corridors and dead-end alleys. Her moms appeared and wandered nearby, disappeared, reappeared. Ohnee said, “What’s that in your skin, Foxy girl?” Taf said, “She’s taken up molecular patterning, m’love.”
---
By the time she was eighteen, she’d been salvaging for a few years. The co-op’s resident speciationist had asked her to find a sample of a particular mineral at one of the closed mine sites, and sent her son Attar, a little younger than Fox, along to test the samples on-site so Fox wouldn’t have to haul back any useless ones. Attar’s oxygen filament had glitched. It was one of the times a glitch was fatal; the filament died. She hadn’t been able to get him back to Drumtown quickly enough. She still woke up sometimes feeling Attar in her arms, wheezing for breath, and then—not.
---
Drumtown’s alleys and byways ran between makeshift, puzzle-boarded walls of printed metal alloy and scavenged mineshaft panels—some scavenged by Fox—patched with ceramsteel castings and haphazardly grown over with a chemical lattice for algae. The walls leaned close as Fox navigated a path. Scents of cooking and the humid fetor of humans living in what was essentially a closed and artificial atmospheric system. Clashing threads of music and conversation, argument and rhythms of activity reached her and, once, then twice, close, breathless words of intimacy.
----
“Life exists in more forms than we can predict or comprehend."
Read the story here
----
The thin light of Sloe’s sun cast streamers through wreckage. Fox used the seats like rock outcroppings and came down to the opposite end of the train car. With one hand to a blood-streaked seat back, she slipped the scanner out of the suit’s hip pocket. Ryuu had cobbled it together specially for this salvage. Fox thumbed the seek switch on the finger-sized unit, not sure exactly what she was looking for; the scanner would supposedly identify it and Ryuu’s customer would pay a generous fee for it.
---
Settling onto a bench that was part of one of the fab’s molded walls, Fox drifted, a tang of pain in her mouth, thoughts floating into patchwork corridors and dead-end alleys. Her moms appeared and wandered nearby, disappeared, reappeared. Ohnee said, “What’s that in your skin, Foxy girl?” Taf said, “She’s taken up molecular patterning, m’love.”
---
By the time she was eighteen, she’d been salvaging for a few years. The co-op’s resident speciationist had asked her to find a sample of a particular mineral at one of the closed mine sites, and sent her son Attar, a little younger than Fox, along to test the samples on-site so Fox wouldn’t have to haul back any useless ones. Attar’s oxygen filament had glitched. It was one of the times a glitch was fatal; the filament died. She hadn’t been able to get him back to Drumtown quickly enough. She still woke up sometimes feeling Attar in her arms, wheezing for breath, and then—not.
---
Drumtown’s alleys and byways ran between makeshift, puzzle-boarded walls of printed metal alloy and scavenged mineshaft panels—some scavenged by Fox—patched with ceramsteel castings and haphazardly grown over with a chemical lattice for algae. The walls leaned close as Fox navigated a path. Scents of cooking and the humid fetor of humans living in what was essentially a closed and artificial atmospheric system. Clashing threads of music and conversation, argument and rhythms of activity reached her and, once, then twice, close, breathless words of intimacy.
----
“Life exists in more forms than we can predict or comprehend."
Read the story here
July 5, 2017
This was good, but felt compressed and abbreviated. I think the world-building and the potential of object Fox found were too much for the short length. Would've been better as a novella.
June 14, 2017
Excellent SF shortstory, has a few rough edges but very promising.
Free at: Bourbon, Sugar, Grace
Free at: Bourbon, Sugar, Grace
June 13, 2017
I really liked this one. Not depressing, full of hope and a quick read. Good sci fi. Four stars, I recommend it.
August 15, 2017
I could see this being made into something more. I really liked Fox and the world where she lived. It would be interesting to see where this world could go.
June 9, 2017
“Life exists in more forms than we can predict or comprehend.”
A pleasant science fiction short story, which challenges the reader to keep up and entertains at the same time. Set in a dystopian mining colony after the mines have played out and the corporate overlords are reneging on closure promises.
“The thing that needed doing.”
Much better storytelling than the current crop of Hugo Award finalists. Potential lead in to a larger story.
“She knew it was the wrong thing to do, at the wrong time. But …”
A good take on how language evolves in “moms.” Nice cover art by Jon Foster.
“Please … let me not be graceless in this.”
A pleasant science fiction short story, which challenges the reader to keep up and entertains at the same time. Set in a dystopian mining colony after the mines have played out and the corporate overlords are reneging on closure promises.
“The thing that needed doing.”
Much better storytelling than the current crop of Hugo Award finalists. Potential lead in to a larger story.
“She knew it was the wrong thing to do, at the wrong time. But …”
A good take on how language evolves in “moms.” Nice cover art by Jon Foster.
“Please … let me not be graceless in this.”
June 20, 2017
Short story on Tor.com.
I would like to read more.
I would like to read more.
September 8, 2017
Gostei muito dos personagens, médio do worldbuilding e um pouco da história. Achei que o conflito da história muda perto do fim; é um bom conflito, inclusive, mas acho que teria me importado mais se fosse melhor plantado no começo da história e não fosse confundido com outras correntes da história. Inclusive, tive a impressão de que a história é um excerto de algo maior, e não uma novela (o que não curto muito). É uma boa leitura, mas tenho a impressão que gostaria de ter lido outras histórias com esses personagens e nesse universo.
July 17, 2017
'Bourbon, Sugar, Grace' by Jessica Reisman is a good Sci-Fi short story set on a mining colony where the deposits have dried up with the mining company having since abandoned the people and workers, save for automated shipments of supplies.
The story follows Fox, a salvager, as she's commissioned to retrieve an object, but finds out that two company employees are also on the trail of the object as well.
The object she finds, some kind of mystical rock, seems to have some kind of link to the stories of Pisque And The Sloe Ghost, that she was told to by her moms, yes plural, Ohnee and Taf, as well as some kind of power.
Despite being a short story, the world building is pretty good, setting up a world that's been largely forgotten about by the company that sent them there. I also enjoyed the character of Fox. She seemed pretty realistic and we get a glimpse into her life with events that have moulded her into the person she is.
The ending is a bit ambivalent but overall it's a good read that could be the beginning to something more.
The story follows Fox, a salvager, as she's commissioned to retrieve an object, but finds out that two company employees are also on the trail of the object as well.
The object she finds, some kind of mystical rock, seems to have some kind of link to the stories of Pisque And The Sloe Ghost, that she was told to by her moms, yes plural, Ohnee and Taf, as well as some kind of power.
Despite being a short story, the world building is pretty good, setting up a world that's been largely forgotten about by the company that sent them there. I also enjoyed the character of Fox. She seemed pretty realistic and we get a glimpse into her life with events that have moulded her into the person she is.
The ending is a bit ambivalent but overall it's a good read that could be the beginning to something more.
October 31, 2017
Comme quoi, pas besoin de faire long pour envoyer le lecteur non averti sur une autre planète !
le thème n'est pas excessivement original (cf La Résistante de Elizabeth Moon ) mais tout y est, tension , personnages attachants (dont bien entendu Fox) ambiance à la fois oppressante et intrigante, arrière fond sur thème de l'exploitation par de grandes compagnies, survie, vie extra terreste, bref, entre les limites imposées de la nouvelle, de quoi s'évader, réfléchir et un goût de "revenez-y" Mais serait ce raisonnable ? la nouvelle perdrait elle de sa magie si elle se transformait en roman ? cela dépendrait du talent de l'auteur
Fox est un personnage sympathique, attachée à son monde malgré sa dangerosité Fera-t-elle le bon choix ? à vous de le découvrir en lisant cette nouvelle gratuitement ici :
https://www.tor.com/2017/06/07/bourbo...
Nota : inscrire sur mon carnet mémoire Mme REISMAN comme auteure à suivre
le thème n'est pas excessivement original (cf La Résistante de Elizabeth Moon ) mais tout y est, tension , personnages attachants (dont bien entendu Fox) ambiance à la fois oppressante et intrigante, arrière fond sur thème de l'exploitation par de grandes compagnies, survie, vie extra terreste, bref, entre les limites imposées de la nouvelle, de quoi s'évader, réfléchir et un goût de "revenez-y" Mais serait ce raisonnable ? la nouvelle perdrait elle de sa magie si elle se transformait en roman ? cela dépendrait du talent de l'auteur
Fox est un personnage sympathique, attachée à son monde malgré sa dangerosité Fera-t-elle le bon choix ? à vous de le découvrir en lisant cette nouvelle gratuitement ici :
https://www.tor.com/2017/06/07/bourbo...
Nota : inscrire sur mon carnet mémoire Mme REISMAN comme auteure à suivre
June 12, 2017
Read this as a free short story on Tor.com. Really enjoyed it.
Jessica Reisman has a spare style. Says just what is needed to convey the story but at the same time she imbues the story with such rich worldbuilding that your senses get quite a workout!
I highly recommend both this story and Ms. Reisman's Substrate Phantoms novel to those who enjoy good hard sf/speculative fiction!
Jessica Reisman has a spare style. Says just what is needed to convey the story but at the same time she imbues the story with such rich worldbuilding that your senses get quite a workout!
I highly recommend both this story and Ms. Reisman's Substrate Phantoms novel to those who enjoy good hard sf/speculative fiction!
September 3, 2017
I really enjoyed this science fiction novelette, and I hope to read more stories set in this fictional world in the future. This is the story of Fox, a young salvager living in a mining colony on an inhospitable planet abandoned by its owners once the mines were shut. Fox is hired to find an object lost in a recent accident, she finds it more than what she asked for... a mystery, an opportunity, and trouble.
March 14, 2018
I like the concept of the colony abandoned by its corporate owners, here, but ultimately there was too much backstory and technobabble crammed into too little space for me.
October 20, 2017
I really liked the world-building, the intrigue, and the plot behind this, but I was left ultimately unfulfilled. a wildly creative gesture of a story but not given enough space to expand.
February 18, 2020
A moving short story, set on a very unpleasant sounding planet.
Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews