North Continent Ribbon

"This is another Neon Hemlock publication. It was the finalist for the Ursula Le Guin prize this year, and I was not surprised. It’s a short story collection, and it follows a very, very distant future civilization through hundreds or thousands of years. They’re standalone stories, but they’re all intertwined because they’re all in the same history. It traces the civilization from the first inklings of trouble to its grand finale. It’s not a typical military sci fi book, but the military and armed conflict and those themes come up over and over again in these different stories. Sometimes they are from the outside looking in, of civilian relations to the military, and sometimes it switches to those in the military and how they feel about this institution, and what they feel their role is. The entire collection is held together by all of these tensions. It’s a very large-scale story because it covers thousands of years, but it still feels incredibly intimate and very character-driven at all times. I want to say that it is critical of the military’s role, but at the same time, some of the characters are in the military, and you kind of understand their position. It manages to be critical while never dehumanizing anyone. It’s such a beautiful short story collection. Ursula Whitcher is a mathematician, and I don’t know how that’s relevant, but you can tell when you read it. She’s also a wonderful writer, and that definitely comes through. I’ve been enamoured with this short story collection ever since I read it while going to the launch. My train stopped, and I was praying that the delay would be long enough for me to finish reading it before I got in! Yes. I don’t want to spoil anything, though. AI is a central theme. It begins with little whispers and stories, and these hints are dropped in a very skillful way – it doesn’t feel like, ‘Oh look, a hint is being dropped’ – but they begin to pull together. It feels like an avalanche starting, where at first there are a few snowflakes, and that eventually builds until it becomes a critical mass. It’s so masterfully done because it takes a few stories for you to start to suspect where things are going. And by the time you get to the final novelette, you have an understanding that there’s no other way this could end. It’s just masterful from a craft perspective. I recommend it to anyone. If people are going to read anything from what I’ve recommended, North Continent Ribbon is the top of my recommendations. I think this collection deserves so much love and so much recognition and I will continue to scream its praises into the world."