In “Dancing for the Monsoon” by Aliette de Bodard, the chosen women perform to entice the gods to bring rain, then suffer paralysis. Nampeng couldn’t go through with it and has redeemed herself by training Khean to take her place and save the suffering people from drought. It didn’t make sense to me that the disgraced Nampeng would be entrusted with the training of her replacement. The story is predictable, with none of the interesting plot twists I’ve seen in other of this year’s Campbell nominee’s stories.

“In the Middle of Nowhere With Company,” Jordyn flees to the wilderness of Alaska in her quest to recover from the tragic death of her husband and daughter. When she arrives in Rolynka, a former gold mining town on the Bering Sea, her Eskimo driver immediately sees the birds of sorrow following her.

Far from city life, Jordyn glimpses a lifestyle governed by spirituality and survival rather than rules and the letter of the law. When a bird shot out of the sky, the sacrifice of the innocent creature’s life symbolizes the loss of all her hopes and dreams, moving Jordyn toward healing and acceptance.

Ruth Nestvold packed this story with metaphor and uses flashbacks to fill in the backstory. I wonder if first person instead of third might have strengthened its punch. Despite the solid structure and excellent writing, the characters are emotionally shallow, conflict is resolved far too easily, and the ending felt contrived.

Here are the high points of the mysterious alien Doctor Zg’s lecture:

“I do understand the strange biology that prevents your females from properly dying when they give birth to sons. In itself that is not immoral […] I understand, and that is the biological immorality that will doom your race. You have no way to control your outward growth and, in time, you will be overwhelmed by your own excesses.”

Bud Sparhawk navigates “No Cord or Cable” through many twists and turns as Hal solves the mystery surrounding his father’s death. Was it murder or suicide? Who stood by and did nothing while he died? And who is immoral: The woman who destroyed her husband by cuckoldry, or the alien who thought she should have died after Hal was born? This interesting story combines elements of space opera with noir mystery. Pay attention.

Flash baffles me sometimes, and this is one of those times. In “Deep Moves” by William Highsmith, Captain Hannah Martina, USAF, volunteered for a sleep study mission. The first eighteen years she “slept soundly, followed by seven years of occasional semi-consciousness and vivid dreaming.”

Now, she’s homesick and facing “100 years of torment.” She wonders about her family, yet spends part of each one hour correspondence per 25 year maintenance looking for a chess partner. Okay, so things on Earth have changed and NASA has been subsumed by the Near-Space Utilization/Deep Space Experimentation Administration, but chess? Really?

“The Midnight Girls,” a gorgeous impressionist allegory, gets my vote for best of Issue 30. Lisa Koosis painted this story from discarded ink bottles which shatter and splash all over paper, faces, clothing, and tile floors. Is the mysterious art teacher who conjures the image and style of Van Gogh with “violet eyes that seemed all iris and no pupil” real or imagined?

Vincent and the garden that haunts Lily’s dreams and her paintings emerge from the darkness of depression and despair.

“And you, Lily,” he said, “paint for me loneliness.”

Paint loneliness. It came with images, LSD flashes of large, sweaty hands and drawstring pajama bottoms and the scratch of stubble. Loneliness was a gingham quilt yanked down, bare legs and the press of flesh on flesh.

Damaged people recognize other damaged people, pheromones or electrochemical signals, or maybe soundless, colorless waves that crash onto them […] and with Vincent it was like a brittle, blue aura, so ancient it might be crushed.

The sumptuous, vivid, and evocative imagery sucked me in, but like the disturbed thought processes of those haunted by mental illness and the specters of abuse, left me befuddled. I read this four times, still have questions, and would love to discuss it in the forums.