KJ Kabza

One of the things that I learnt from reading Science Fiction when I was young was that short stories can contain entire worlds and can anchor themselves to my imagination as firmly as any novel. Done well, they can be intense, illuminating and completely satisfying.

'Water: A History' is only seventeen pages long but in it, I visited a different world and met a remarkable woman. It's the kind of short story that first made me fall in love with Science Fiction. It's about emotions and choices show more and consequences and what it means to be human rather than about science and it feels tureen the way that only good fiction can.

This is the story of a woman (we never discover her name) who has outlived all of her contemporaries and is facing the end of her days. She lives in an enclosed colony on a planet that was supposed to have enough water to support human life but which turned out to be both arid and toxic. Let me introduce you to her with a quote that speaks to her character and way of thinking

Since Adrianna Fang died last year, I’m the oldest one left. I’m supposed to feel sad and alone, maybe, or at least the chill of my looming mortality, but I don’t feel that way at all. Instead, I feel wonderfully unmoored. I am now the only person in the colony of Isla who has any direct memories of Earth. This means that I can abuse this position at my pleasure and tell them all kinds of bullshit stories they have no way of disputing. It’s my way of getting back at them for the way they treat me now: like some kind of minor god rather than a human being.

She is a strong woman who has walked her own path since childhood. Along much of that journey, she was accompanied by Sadie, the love of her life. Now Sadie is dead and she is alone amongst people who don't have the memories to understand her context. Until she meets a young girl called Lia and a new friendship begins.

I lost myself completely in this story because I believed completely in the person telling it. I felt I knew her. I admired her. I understood her choices and wished I had the courage to make the same kind of choices, although I know that, like most people, I don't.

If you want to travel to a different world that still poses the same challenge to people who want to follow their hearts rather than the rules, then read 'Water: A History' and meet an old woman and a young girl and let them live in your imagination. They may make you cry but they'll also give you hope. show less

I got this book for free as part of the LibraryThing Early Reviewers program. Now that I've gotten that out of the way..

This book was amazing. It's been a long time since I've given a book of short stories a try because I've been burned by them in the past. These stories were all so vastly different. They went from bittersweet to hopeful to freaking weird to mind blowing to so surreal that I begin to question my own reality. I can't recommend this book enough - just prepare to think to show more yourself "wait.. what?" a lot. I will admit there was one story I couldn't get through ("The Soul in the Bell Jar"). It was too graphic in weird ways for my overactive imagination and I had to skip it. I think my favorite stories from the book are probably "The Color of Sand" and "Steady on Her Feet" - though I thoroughly enjoyed them all ("You Can Take It With You" is also amazing). show less

[Note: I got the book via the Early Reviewers program]

The short stories in this book are quite strange. I am not sure where to put them: it's a mix between sci-fi and fantasy with a good part of horror, at least in the first stories. I found some of them a bit disturbing, but this is a problem of mine; the prose is quite good and Kabza is really able to set up the atmospheres, even if sometimes the endings are disappointing. Among the stories, I liked The Ramshead Algorithm, the setting of show more Heaventide and the space travel of We Don’t Talk About Death: all of these stories have something non standard. The last story, You Can Take It With You, is a novelette; its end is a bit too quick, which is unfortunate since the idea and the plot in the first 80 pages or so were really good. Overall, a very good book.

Keep in mind that for people like me for whom English is not the mother tongue, the language Kabza uses is sometimes difficult: it could took me some pages before I grasped the meaning of a key word. show less

The Leafsmith in Love - In a steampunk future, the local leafsmith finds himself besotted with a visiting noblewoman. For someone as talented as him, with all the wonders of his enchanted garden at his fingertips, wooing a lovely young thing should be no problem at all. However, the jealous princess has plans to destroy his attempts out of spite. As he creates more and more elaborate gifts, the princess keeps butting in and ruining everything. What's a romantic fool to do?

The Color of Sand - show more A young boy is raised in exile by his mother on the sand dunes. It's a quiet life, collecting strange glass along the beach to sell in town. The boy's only company is the sand cat who shares his dune with them. Bone is the cat's name and his infrequent, terse dialogue colors their days. One day, Bone informs them that the strange glass they sell in town is actually magical. It's called "refulgium" and it's what gives Bone his voice. Amazed, the young boy (Catch) eats one before Bone can stop him. To his and his mother's horror, Catch grows to a gigantic size. With Bone's assistance, the small family sets off on an adventure to uncover the mystery of refulgium and find a way to reverse Catch's growth.

The Ramshead Algorithm - Ramshead is the son of an insanely rich business magnate. Designated as the family "playboy" it seems his destiny is to wile away his life in luxurious debauchery, but Ramshead has a secret. He's discovered a portal to another dimension in his family's hedge maze. In that other world he's found meaning, purpose, and responsibility unknown in his natural life. But when he learns that his father plans to destroy the maze, Ramshead is forced to seek out the obscure ingredients to spell that will safely transport the portal to another location.

Night and Day - Every night a young man finds himself having the same dream. He becomes a catlike creature who watches over the palace of the sleeping mind. He trades of shifts with another cat who stands guard during the day. When he sleeps, he believes he is actually awake. It soon becomes clear that his dream persona has a serious responsibility. If he doesn't guard the sleeping souls, something catastrophic might happen.

The Flight Stone - In a corrupt future a racing company adopts orphans from the streets as their diminutive stature predisposes them to a stunted physique. One young girl finds he hopes of racing fame threatened by her body's stubborn determination to grow. She decides to take additional measures to guarantee she makes the cut.

Steady on Her Feet - A street urchin with a heart of gold soon finds her personality qualities of use when she visits a moral surgeon. By some obscure science these men remove character flaws and implant admirable traits. Although she doesn't need surgery herself, the decide to train her as an apprentice. But when her family drives her out, the once friendly doctors soon reveal their hidden motives.

The Soul in the Bell Jar - A young girl is sent to live with her crazy old uncle while her parents are gone on a trip abroad. Soon after she arrives she realizes that her uncle is worse than crazy, he's a proper mad scientist experimenting with reviving dead animals by stitching in captured souls. His hostile assistant resents the girl's presence and is suspicious that she's out to ruin her uncle's work.

Heaventide - In a society where gender is determined by sexual preference and where gender roles are sharply segregated, a newly determined young woman struggles with her role. Her entire life, she assumed she would grow up to be a man and would have the adventure of traveling around the world. However, seemingly at the last minute, her love of men has condemned her to the female role of housework and eternal stasis. Together with her lover, she hatches a plan to have her own adventures by exploiting a loophole in the gender rules. But will her home village accept her unorthodox plans?

We Don't Talk About Death - In this futuristic world, high speed space travel is effected by specially trained pilots who can perceive and operate a ship through UReality. While in the fugue state of UReality, a normal copilot must be available to keep them on task and prevent distraction. The narrator of the story is a passenger who is more or less disappointed by her own mediocrity. She looks up to he pilot with admiration that borders on hero-worship. She's obsessed but pretty sure her Pilot barely knows she's alive.

All Souls Proceed - A brief story about ghost bikes and the way urban cultures remember their dead.

You Can Take It With You - After saying tearful goodbyes in hospital room, a dying man wakes up in the afterlife. That is, the digital afterlife his former employer is paying him to beta test. He's there for a 90-day stint that will hopefully help pay for his hospital bills. After the time is up, he'll be erased and essentially die again. In the mean time, he's doing is best to not go insane. There are laws governing the layout and construction of afterlife servers, but this one seems to be infernally designed to only obey the letter of the law, not the spirit. Technically, each home must be within one hour of each other. But here in Perfectia, houses are divided by hidden paths through hostile forests. The terrain is inhospitable and confusing. Perfectia also seems to be mostly empty as yet. The protagonist takes several days to find anyone who is interested in talking to him. At last he finds a house full of other lonely people waiting out there time together. Beyond this final house is a mysterious train station and a beckoning mountain path. It seems Perfectia's programmers have riddled it with secrets and there are lots of rumors about Easter eggs and hidden escapes. Some are resigned to their fate, disregarding any rumors that might inspire false hope. But our fearless protagonist is determined to seek out answers and find a way to contact his lost love in the living world.

Overall, I found these stories very unique and surprising. I respect the author's pushing of the limits to of the genre. Some of the stories, however didn't quite catch my interest as much as the others. Still, that is true of most story collections. Ultimately, I enjoyed these stories and their original plots, settings, and characters. show less