One of the space program's pioneers gets one last chance to fly

“Dorothy lived in the midst of the great Kansas prairies, with Uncle Henry, who was a farmer, and Aunt Em, who was the farmer's wife.”

L Frank Baum used this line to start his most famous work, The Wizard of Oz. Now, Mary Robinette Kowal uses this same line to start a whole new story, 'The Lady Astronaut of Mars.'

Here, the space program played out a little bit differently. Instead of simply being content with reaching the Moon, humanity kept pushing out into space. While computers were still in the punch-card phase, man reached Mars and eventually colonized it, beneath bio-domes to keep in the air.

Elma York was the face of the Mars program. With the mind of a scientist, the heart of an explorer and the looks of a starlet, she was the perfect choice to be the face of the colonization program, along with her computer-science husband.

Fast-forward several decades and their lives have become the same as any couple in their later years. Elma keeps in shape for her NASA-compliance physicals, and also to help take care of her husband. While his mind is as sharp as ever, his body has begun to betray him. The tremors have gotten so bad, and his muscle mass has gotten so low, that he is transitioning into 'it's a matter of time' territory.

But how much time? Because NASA has a new project in the works. They need a person to make a one-way trip to the nearest star system, to set up an array to facilitate travel. Does Elma live out her marriage with her slowly dying husband, or take her last chance to fly among the stars?

Mary Robinette Kowal's talent lies in finding the humanity in her characters. Whether they be a clockwork toy, an IT girl on a generational ship, or a woman living on Mars, Kowal makes the reader wonder what they'd do in their place. This is the real joy of Kowal's stories, and what keeps readers coming back time and again.

Highs: It's a amazing what a little girl from the Kansas countryside remembers years later.

Lows: I might resent the narrator using her looks in this way, but then again it was the 1960s.

Verdict: Very much worth the read, for free, on Mary Robinette Kowal's site here.

Further Reading: 'Paper Tiger', Shades ofMilk and Honey

An AI to make HAL look like a kitten

Technology is becoming more and more of part of our everyday lives. Surgeons can preform complex operations halfway across the world using mechanical arms and video feeds. Factories automate many of the production lines run by humans just a few decades ago. Google Cars have driven over a million miles, in traffic, without intervention by humans. Drones, some piloted by humans well away from the front lines and others controlled by sophisticated programming, have the ability to identify persons of interest and buildings, both for surveillance and for military action.

All of these are controlled by computer programming. All are connected to some form of network. And anything connect to a network can be compromised.

In Daniel Wilson's near-future novel Robopocalypse, even more aspects of our lives is influenced by computers and automatons. Many households and businesses are aided by domestic robots, as well as the military version that can help with everything from routine patrol of war zones to active combat situations. Vehicles come with automatic driving programs. Even buildings have their electrical grids and other systems tied into these omnipresent computer systems.

Dr. Nicholas Wasserman has been working on a truly conscious AI program. He took every precaution when he brought Archos into being. He enclosed the system in a Faraday cage; no signals should have been able to enter or leave. He only gave Archos limited information about the human race, to help control the views that the program had of humans. He did everything he could to keep his creation from escaping. But humans are sloppy. A laptop left on, with an IR port, was all it took for Archos to slip into the rest of the world. And like any other living creature, its goal is to survive. By any means necessary.

It began slowly. A domestic seemingly on a frozen yogurt run malfunctions and attacks the clerk. A child's toy scares it's young owner with too much knowledge about the family. A phone phreak notices something a bit strange. But nothing to make a coherent picture of what is to come.

And then...Zero hour. 

Written as a series of short stories taking place around the world, Robopocalypse is a terrifying look into a seemingly possible future. Even without an AI to instigate it, humans' reliance on technology and lack of attention to security is already manifesting. From reprogramming insulin pumps to lethal shocks from hacked pacemakers, the general public seems completely unaware of the creativity and ruthlessness of hackers. If the computers themselves were to turn on humans, the results would be catastrophic.

Written as something like a series of short stories, many revolving around a core set of half a dozen humans, Robopocalypse is an amazing novel. As the crisis unfolds and the resistance takes form, Wilson creates a believable world that seems just a few steps away.

Highs: Mr. Nomura and his factory in Japan almost deserves a companion novel all of its own.

Lows: Like many authors, Wilson doesn't quite succeed in writing for our youngest protagonist.

Verdict: A thoroughly creepy book, I would suggest against reading this in a dark room with a computer's standby light blinking.

Further Reading: 'The Perfect Match', 'For Want of a Nail'

Manga Monday: It makes sense that Alexia would end up hanging off the side of an airship

We meet Lord Maccon's former pack, and they have a most peculiar problem on their hands in Gail Carriger and Yen Press' Soulless The Manga Volume 2: Changeless.

Note: Soulless The Manga Volume 2: Changeless is, of course, the sequel to Soulless The Manga Volume 1,  and follows the story of The Parasol Protectorate Volume 2, Changeless. The review for Soulless The Manga Volume 1 is here, and the review of the novel Changeless is here. Otherwise, read on!

This isn't your grandmother's finishing school

Gail Carriger returns to the Parasol Protectorate universe with a young adult prequel, Finishing School Book the First: Etiquette & Espionage.

Note: This book is a prequel to the Parasol Protectorate series. As such, while there are no direct plot spoilers, there are some allusions to the earlier series. Check out the first Parasol Protectorate book, Soulless, here. Otherwise, read on. 

Manga Monday: Why did Mr. Smith think he could sleep astride a camel?

Mr. Smith continues on his travels, and meets two special young ladies, in Kaoru Mori's A Bride's Story Volume 4.

Note:  A Bride's Story Volume 4 is, of course, the sequel to A Bride's Story Volume 3.  The review of A Bride's Story Volume 1 is here, and the review of A Bride's Story Volume 3 is here.  Otherwise, read on! 

A hospital tries to save Japan's first 'Criticality' victim

Environmentalists have a terrible time with energy production. Coal, nuclear, wind, solar, natural gas-each falls in and out of favor in turn. Recently, it's been nuclear power's turn at being bashed, although perhaps the talking heads with turn to wind farms changing air currents soon.

A Slow Death: 83 Days of Radiation Sickness by the NHK-TV “Tokaimura Criticality Accident” Crew could so easily have been just another diatribe against nuclear energy. It could have been manipulative, full of the authors' condemnation of nuclear proliferation and misinformation about nuclear science and history.

Instead, A Slow Death is a critical look at the regulation of an industry, the ethics of experimental medicine, and end-of-life care and its effects on both the family and the healthcare workers involved. Ouchi's fate was determined the moment he saw the Cherenkov light and his body was bombarded with neutron beam radiation, but the events of the next three months are a look into the inner-workings of a medical system woefully unprepared for what was wheeled into their emergency room that day.

The first failure is, of course, on the part of the private uranium processing facility for which Ouchi worked. Completely ignoring international regulations regarding the processing of uranium, the plant had the workers pouring components into the precipitation tank via bucket and funnel, rather than the components being added by a pump. On top of this, the precipitation tank was shaped differently, allowing a build-up of the fissionable Uranium-235 to form. On top of this, it seems that Ouchi was never informed that this was not the standard operation protocol; he had no idea that the job he was doing had any inherent risk at all.

Being so near Tokyo, Ouchi was immediately taken to one of the finest hospitals in Japan. Attached to the University of Tokyo Department of Medicine, Ouchi was to have the best doctors and nurses available taking care of him. Kazuhiko Maekawa, the doctor who would be in charge of Ouchi's treatment plan, was a master of emergency medicine. Able to treat anything that might roll in his doors, from stroke patients to trauma victims, at the suggestion of a colleague only recently started looking into the treatment of radiation victims. The framework by which a radiation exposure patient would be assessed and treated was completely nonexistent at the time, so Maekawa would be treading in unknown water.

In this aspect, the book is absolutely not a condemnation of the facility or its staff. No patient exposed to more than 8Sv of radiation had ever survived more than a week. In living for almost three months, new ground was being tread almost every day. For example, it takes two weeks for epidermis cells to go from creation to the top layer of the skin. Ouchi's chromosomes were shattered, so no new skin could be generated. As the existing skin across his body went through its natural life cycle, there would be no new skin to take its place. Marks from removing the tape that held his IVs and other medical devices in place would never heal, and eventually the use of medical tape was forbidden. As muscle tissue was destroyed, traumatic rhabdomyolysis - Crush Syndrome - developed. The massive release of myoglobin into the bloodstream overwhelmed his kidneys and caused them to begin to shut down. Even a stem-cell transplant from his sister to boost his decimated immune system created macrophages that attacked his own systems.

In the beginning, Ouchi was in very good spirits, accepting the often painful treatments that the doctors and nurses performed. As is still the practice in Japanese hospitals, neither the patient nor the family is told of how bleak the situation truly is. Because of this, although the staff valiantly tried to keep Ouchi alive, he and his family had no information by which to decide when treatment should be ceased. Not until Day 81, 22 days after a cardiac arrest left him unresponsive, did Maekawa finally explain the current situation to his family, and suggest that a DNR order be put in place. 

The question this raises is at what point would the family, and perhaps Ouchi himself, have decided to end active treatment and simply decided to wait for the inevitable with palliative care? Ouchi's brain waves never actually flatlined: could he have experienced locked-in syndrome for weeks after his ability to communicate failed? How many dressing changes, how many skin grafts, how much isolation in an ICU ward transpired after all hope should have been set aside? These are the questions that the doctors and nurses involved in the case carry with them to this day.

A Slow Death is a hard book to read. From the beginning, the reader knows the end of the story. Each new treatment, each moment of hope, must eventually end in failure. Parts of the book read awkwardly, perhaps journalistic writing transposed into a book form is to blame, or maybe translation difficulty. Even with these hurdles, it is still a quick book to read, totaling only 141 pages. This is a contemporary look at a very rare situation, and with so much firsthand information and interviews, it's equal parts fascinating and horrifying throughout.

Highs: Inset 3, the micrograph of his chromosomes 'destroyed into pieces' shows the reader, perhaps better than any external photo could, the amount of damage that a split-second of radiation can do to a living creature.

Lows: The back-and-forth between the clinical science of the situation and the emotional impact of a human being going through such pain can be jarring.

Verdict: An important look at both corporate and medical ethics, and short enough to be read in an evening, A Slow Death imparts a lot of knowledge quickly, and leaves the reader a lot to ponder.

Further Reading: The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

A mother's love transcends all

The child of a first-generation immigrant finds himself in a unique situation. Raised in a culture separate  from that of his parent, it can be difficult to find a common ground between home life and life outside the home. This dichotomy is explored in Ken Liu's Hugo, Nebula and World Fantasy Award-winning 'Paper Menagerie.'

As a young child, our narrator Jack was very close to his Chinese mother. He saw nothing strange about speaking Chinese to his mother and English to his father. When his mother made him an origami tiger from the leftover wrapping paper that she had saved, he was delighted to watch it scamper about like a kitten. She made him a collection of animals, and they would play together on the table and go up to Jake for pets.

but all children eventually compare their own home life to that of their friends. It's hard to compare toys folded of used wrapping paper, no matter how lovingly made, to the flashy plastic action figures of his friends. It's difficult to watch his mother attempt her broken English with the people in the neighborhood. And in the end, these difficulties drive a wedge between mother and son that is nearly impossible to bridge.

Then again magic, especially the small magics of the home and of a mother's love, are hard to quash. Somehow, these magics escape and sometimes even the most world-weary of hearts is touched by them once more.

Ken Liu is an amazing voice in the field of short stories. Whether seamlessly blending a bit of the fantastic into the current-day or shedding light on a budding problem by showing a possible future, his short stories transport the reader in to a world other than the mundane one we're stuck in, and helps us to see our own lives a bit differently.

Highs: Jake's sense of loss at never really knowing his mother's heart is something that most people can identify with.

Lows: Watching him turn away from his family is as heartbreaking as it is inevitable.

Verdicit: Available for free at io9.com, there's no excuse not to read this amazing, award-winning story.

Further Reading: 'The Perfect Match', Moscow but Dreaming