Wednesday, May 3, 2017

The Person Who Saw Cetus, by Tang Fei

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(SF) Lillian grew up poor, but soon she’ll be one of the first astronauts to traverse a wormhole. Memories of her father keep haunting her, though. (5,532 words; Time: 18m)

Rating: ★★★☆☆ Average

"," by (translated by S. Qiouyi Lu, edited by Neil Clarke), appeared in issue 128, published on .

Mini-Review (click to view--possible spoilers)

Pro: There are a lot of good elements here: the mysterious disappearance of her father. The mysterious star. The equipment he left. And the narration and dialogue are good—no infodumps or very artificial conversations.

Con: It sort of fizzles at the end. Yep, he really did die. Huh, somehow he really did have pictures of a star he shouldn’t have been able to see. But nothing comes of it.

Some of the science is poor. It’s hard to imagine a poor man affording a clone of himself. There is a δ Ceti but no δ3 Ceti, and δ Ceti is a B2 supergiant, so not suitable for planets. Why do we need to travel through wormholes if interstellar travel is so cheap that Lillian’s classmates could take vacations on other planets?

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Tang Fei Info: Interviews, Websites, ISFDB, FreeSFOnline

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1 comment (may contain spoilers):

  1. I could have done without the horrible suicide performance of the father. Other than that, a good translated story.

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