Free fiction: 3 stories from Gardner Dozois & Jonathan Strahan's "The New Space Opera 2"

Read at HarperCollins (no download):

1. Robert Charles Wilson's "Utriusqui Cosmi"
2. Peter Watts' "The Island"
3. John Kessel's "Events Preceding the Helvetican Renainassance"

[via SF Signal]

Robert Charles Wilson's "Julian: A Christmas Story": Post-oil degenerate society

This generally quite readable story reads like a less focused retelling of Ayn Rand's "Anthem": modern society degenerates into a medieval one. In case of Rand, you get a hint of deliverance from this pathetic future; in this story, you just get a description of this future society.

The story offers a lot of interesting quotes.

Full text of this story is available online.

Story summary.
After the world's oil reserves are exhausted, there is a lot of conflict & purges. Human population is drastically reduced "to more reasonable numbers".

We learn this slowly, in the year 2172 where the story is set. Location is the village of Williams Ford near the river Pine - somewhere in the US, not far from New York City which is now the capital of the country (not US) of which the village is a part.

This is a medieval intolerant society, generally divided into three castes: "highborn & various aristos" - the rulers & owners; "leasing class" - skilled workers; & "indentured laborers" - unskilled workers that are essentially slaves to aristos.

During elections, votes of members of the last caste are cast by their owner aristos! Elections for President, & for the local representative to some kind of higher council, are a sham. Ben Kreel represents Williams Ford in this council; he is also a kind of local priest & morality keeper.

Economy of twentieth & early twenty-first century is dubbed "Efflorescence of Oil", & the events around the time oil resources were exhausted are dubbed "False Tribulation". Old oil-based technology world is only known through hearsay & legends - with no clarity on where imagination ends & truth begins.

The story is of two teenager friends: Adam Hazzard - the narrator, & Julian Comstock.

Adam's mother is of leasing caste, father is from indentured.

Julian is a very smart aristo. His dad, General Bryce Comstock, was hanged by his own brother - the current President Deklan Comstock - fearing a challenge to his power. Julian's mom has entrusted his education & safely to an old loyal - Sam Godwin. Sam & Julian are visiting the village, & they stay as guests at "Duncan and Crowley Estate".

Story tells us of the origins of their unlikely friendship, their adolescent confusion when digesting some information from "secular ancients", & eventual escape from village fearing for Julian's life at the hands of his uncle. Plus some adventures during escape in Lundsford - a ancient ruin of a town 30 miles from the village.

Christmas part of the story's title comes from the day of the their escape from village - it's the Christmas day.

Fact sheet.
Julian: A Christmas Story, short story, review
First published: 2006
Rating: B
Nominated for Hugo Awards 2007 in novella category

Related: All Hugo Award stories.

Quotes from Robert Charles Wilson's "Julian: A Christmas Story"

I collect some quotes from this novella here:

1. “I’ve heard of DNA. It’s the life force of the secular ancients. And it’s a myth.”
   “Like men walking on the moon?”
   “Exactly.”
2. "DNA isn’t changeless. It struggles to remember itself, but it never remembers itself perfectly."
3. Musings by Adam on seeing pictures of lunar landing in an old book: "Their clothing was white and ridiculously bulky, like the winter clothes of the Inuit, and they wore helmets with golden visors that disguised their faces. I supposed it must be very cold on the moon, if explorers required such cumbersome protection. They must have arrived in winter. However, there was no ice or snow in the neighborhood."
   "If the moon was such a cold place, I reasoned, people residing on its surface would be forced to build fires to keep warm. There seemed to be no wood on the moon, judging by the photographs, so they must have resorted to coal or peat. I went to the window and examined the moon minutely for any sign of campfires, pit mining, or other lunar industry. But I could see none."
4. "every Christian church in America was required to have the formal approval of the Board of Registrars of the Dominion of Jesus Christ on Earth".
   "In America we are entitled by the Constitution to worship at any church we please, as long as it is a genuine Christian congregation and not some fraudulent or satanistic sect. The Board exists to make that distinction. Also to collect fees and tithes to further its important work."
5. 'Einstein, and his insistence that no particular point of view of was more privileged than any other: in other words his “general relativity,” and its claim that the answer to the question “What is real?” begins with the question “Where are you standing?”'
6. 'was I an incarnation of a molecule of DNA, “imperfectly remembering,” as Julian had said, an ape, a fish, and an amoeba?'
7. On Heaven: '"Flaxie, who was five, had believed in it fervently—imagined it was something like a meadow, with wildflowers blooming, and a perpetual summer picnic underway—and if that childish belief soothed her in her extremity, then it served a purpose more noble than truth."'
8. 'vices and wickedness of the Secular Era, some of which still lingered, he said, in the cities of the East—irreverence, irreligiosity, skepticism, occultism, depravity.'