Sci-fi and Heroic Fantasy discussion

This is our discussion of the novelette:


"Tyche and the Ants" by Hannu Rajaniemi

This story may be read on-line @ClarkesWorld.com

This story is part of the Edge of Infinity group anthology discussion.

★★★

Synopsis: A futuristic fantasy coming-of-age story set in some distant future on the moon with a protagonist who is probably some android form or a genetically engineered human girl of maybe some 6 years or something. An A.I. with androids ward the girl Tyche in the name of her parents and she drifts off to a Alice in the Wonderlands similar parallel world through a mysterious faery like door.

Review: Alice in the Wonderland mixed with science fiction - it might be the imagined reality in a child's mind, you never know. I liked the story from the start with it's first sentence "The ants arrived on the Moon on the same day Tyche went through the Secret Door to give a ruby to the Magician", which perfectly resembles the style of the story. Tyche's character develops over the course of a couple of pages, the plotline has a nice tension arc. The author weaves in loads of European mythology and Chinese references without explanation. This feels like a background pasture.

It is one of Rjaniemi's weaker stories in his new story collection.

Somewhere in this childish imagination/hallucination there is a sci-fi story lurking, though it's hard to dig it out. (It's amazing what qualifies as hard SF these days!)

A few hundred years in the future, the moon,...

Orphan girl, Tyche, being raised by AI on moon, apparently because genetically enhanced trans-humans such as her parents were outlawed and hunted to extinction. She's constructed a fantasyland, I think all in her mind, inhabited by personifications of Moon-related fables from half a dozen national cultures, who seem to keep her original memories.

And then the "ants" arrive, some sort of swarm of drones from Earth, searching for her kind. (Presumably to study her modifications and/or complete the extermination.)

Evidently nobody wants to tell the girl the truth except her imaginary friends.

Not really my style of storytelling, all this abstract pseudo-symbolic hallucinations. (I didn't care for Rajaniemi's Quantum Thief either.) I prefer my stories to make sense more plainly.

2 stars **