The Engine of Recall by Karl Schroeder

There has been a lot of talk over the last decade or so of the amount of great SF coming out of the UK. But there’s also been a steady stream of very good SF and fantasy coming from Canada (particularly, it seems, the Toronto area), from writers such as Robert Charles Wilson, Robert Sawyer, Cory Doctorow, and Charles De Lint. Karl Schroeder is yet another important writer from the Toronto area. He’s written several good novels. The Engine of Recall is his first collection of short fiction.

It’s a shame that more Hugo voters – including me – don’t follow the Canadian SF magazines and anthologies. Several stories in The Engine of Recall, had they been published in Asimov’s, say, would likely have been Hugo nominees. Schroeder is a fine writer, producing good SF – mostly falling into the “hard SF” category – that ranges from near-future stories involving nuclear terrorism to far future encounters with aliens or alien environments.

“Halo,” set in the same universe as his novel Permanence, is set in a universe where people have settled around the brown dwarf stars that are numerous and closer together than the normal stars we see in our sky. The story involves a terrorist threat. Elise Contrell, who controls remote mining mechanism, picks up a signal from an incoming ship, warning her that her world must mine space around it, else their entire population will be destroyed. A fanatical sect, intent on cleaning the local worlds of all but their own kind, has taken over the ship. The message is sent by one of the few they kept alive – a young male singer who is forced to provide entertainment, but who has found a way to sneak outside the ship to broadcast a message. While the overall story arc addresses the response to the threat, much if it focuses on the growing relationship between Elise and the young singer: a relationship that is doomed since the only way to save the settlement is to destroy the ship. Schroeder does a good job in setting up this relationship and tying it to the story of the planet’s activities in trying to save itself.

“The Pools of Air” is reminiscent of Arthur C. Clarke and Hal Clement. Clement once said that he didn’t see the need to use intra- or inter-species conflict in his stories, that the universe was hostile enough and provided enough opportunity for drama. “The Pools of Air” is set in the clouds of Jupiter. Three people are there to film a documentary when their ship is damaged. The story involves their attempt to survive and the obstacles – both physical and psychological – they must overcome. Schroeder does a good job painting the harsh beauties of Jupiter, and creates a story with both tension and character in this locale.

“The Dragon of Pripyat” is set in the area near the ruined Chernobyl reactor. Gennady Malianov must figure out how extortionists are releasing radiation. It’s a good story, one that’s particularly memorable for it’s eerie, harsh setting. Gennady returns in “Alexander’s Road,” this time to track down two stolen Soviet H-bombs and some missing uranium. The story is exciting and the potential terror weapon created from the uranium is truly horrific.

Several of the stories examine what it means to download a copy of one’s brain pattern – consciousness, perhaps – into a computer. “Making Ghosts” addresses it directly. A dying woman copies her brain pattern into computer memory. The result seems conscious, but is it really her? And even if it is perfect copy, what does this mean to the person who is dying, who is still, after all, going to die. “The Engine or Recall” also address the concept, but this time it’s only part of a larger story about an attempt to salvage an alien artifact. In this case most downloads are partials, spun off for specific purposes, which can then return to reintegrate their memories into the person who spun them off. But, even a “full copy” is only a copy of the person’s current state. Schroeder questions how such a construct, lacking the true memory and experience of the original, can truly be the original. Schroeder, in these two stories, does a nice job of raising questions about what has become an SF trope of immortality via downloading.

Other stories involve a reasonably alien (e.g., not just a human that looks alien) alien (“Solitaire”) and life on Titan and mega-engineering in Saturn orbit (“The Cold Convergence”). All of the stories are at least good, and several, as I mentioned earlier, should have been Hugo nominees. This is a good first collection, and I look forward to more from Schroeder.