“LONGING FOR LANGALANA” (PDF Download)

REVIEWS:

• “‘Longing for Langalana’ is simply stunning – one of the most moving pieces of SF I’ve read in a long time.” – Ian Whates

“The best story is the first one “Longing for Langalana” by Mercurio D. Rivera. In it, we meet Shimera, a female member of the race known as the Wergen. When she was young the Wergen and the people of Earth had started a colonization project of the planet Langalana. The young Shimera falls in love with a Earth boy named Phineas. There is something about humans that makes the Wergen find them incredibly beautiful. The story about Shimera’s doomed love is sad and touching.”

“The Wergen species suffers from an uncontrollable attraction to human beings. This love is not reciprocated. Whether it is the physical appearance of the Wergens, or their mating habits, or simply a natural aversion, humans are repelled by their unwanted attentions. Still, the two species have previously found mutual advantage in working together, and the colonization of Langalana is a joint project. On a remote colony outpost, Shimera and Phineas grow up together, and Shimera comes to love Phinny to the point that she refuses to take a mate from her own people. This is a story about the suffering of an unrequited love. At one point, Shimera encounters Phinny with his human wife.

I stopped.
“Does she love you, Phinny?” I whispered.
He nodded.“Let me ask you something,” I said under my breath with a ferocity that surprised even me.
“How do you know?”
“Excuse me?”
“How do you know? How do you know she isn’t just physically attracted to you, that she isn’t just driven by a biological compulsion to propagate your species, to combine her DNA with yours?”
“Shim . . .”
“How do you know it’s true love?”

Good question, Shim. Can any of us ever know what is in the other’s mind? Can we even be sure of what is in our own mind, whether the love that we feel is real, or a chemical reaction? Or whether there is really a difference? But perhaps the kindest thing is not to ask, to let us cherish our illusions.”  RECOMMENDED

“Mercurio tackles a challenging sf trope: intra-species love. And makes it more challenging by making it an unrequited live, and further more difficult by the POV being the non-human. Fortunately, Rivera brings the story off successfully. The Wergens are sufficiently alien from humans to make the story interesting – none of this pointy-ear or slightly greenish tint being the main difference between the races. We gradually have revealed to us just how different the Wergen are – in particular their long term relationships, seeing one Wergen literally absorb the other.

We know, from the start as the Wergen looks back on the lost love, that it will end in tears, but just why it happens that way, and the apparent indifference of the human in the ‘relationship’ is handled well, within an overarching theme of that which we can not have.”

Read the rest of BESTSF’s reviews of Interzone #204 here.

“We begin our review of Interzone 204 with unrequited love. Yes, unrequited love.

“In Mercurio D. Rivera’s “Longing for Longalana,” the entire Wergen species has a crush on humanity. There isn’t a lot of detail on why this is, and the why isn’t that important. All you need to know is that to every Wergen, a human is the most beautiful being in the universe. Humans don’t have any such fascination with the Wergen, but they are interested in the Wergen’s superior technology. And so, a whole host of thorny questions about the nature of love and the ethics surrounding it are raised. There are no answers in “Langalana,” but that’s OK. It’s enough that it asks interesting questions in an interesting way.

“From unrequited love we move on to steampunky goodness. “The Song” by Tim Akers is … a beautifully spun confection that serves well to cleanse the palette after the ruminations inspired by “Langalana….”

Read the rest of Tangent’s reviews of Interzone #204 here.

“In many ways it was rather sad and even deeply emotional in places, reminiscent of something from ancient Greece by Sophocles or Euripides. Mind you, there are those who would say that all plots were invented by the Greeks several hundred years BC and that anything written since is only a derivation of one of these plots.

“Anyway, the story involves a woman of alien nature from a race called the Wergen. Sounds a bit twee and even more so when you learn that her name is Shimera but twee it is not. On the planet Langalana, many years before she fell in love with an Earth boy called Phineas, the women from Wergen think Earth boys are the bees knees and are irresistibly attracted to them. (Where exactly is their planet?) Unfortunately, the love cannot be and the poor woman descends into a sort of melancholy. It must be Phineas’ aftershave.

“I’m now going to look through the Greek tragedies to see where I’ve seen this before. This doesn’t detract from the story. In fact, it puts it on an elevated level which is where it should be. An excellent read!”

Read the rest of SFCrow’s Nest reviews of Interzone #204 here.

http://www.rev-up-review.co.uk/

“The fiction in the current May/June Issue #204 also leans toward the fantasy side and wouldn’t be entirely out of place in The Third Alternative/Black Static. There’s an overarching theme of irredeemable loss, and while many stories are set in the future or on other worlds, the tales are less science fiction than fabulism. The strongest is the lead story, “Longing for Langalana” by Mercurio D. Rivera, which depicts a species infatuated with human beings and how one member of this race deals with unrequited love in a very human (i.e. not overly sensible) way.”

Read the rest of Black Gate’s reviews of Interzone #204 here.

“Longing for Langalana”, by Mercurio D. Rivera, is a sad story of humans colonizing a planet in partnership with an alien species, the Wergen. The aliens have a couple of intriguing features: on marriage they are physically connected, growing ever closer over years. And they are obsessively attracted to humans. But the colonization of Langalana runs into problems (due to a cleverly depicted native species)–and in parallel the relationship of humans and the Wergen deteriorates. This is movingly portrayed by the relationship of the story’s narrator, a Wergen female, with the human boy she meets and is inevitably drawn to as an adolescent.”

“Science fiction blended with inter-species romance; this is the harbinger for Mercurio D Rivera’s ‘Longing for Langalana’. It’s a tale told as though the protagonist is put on a witness stand. Shimera, a Wergen, tells her story to an emissary … the son of the human named Phinny she once loved. Although a little too quixotic, I really enjoyed this one. With strange mating rituals on the Wergen’s part, descriptive language of their beguiling anatomy – and a pesky native of Langalana that cannot be tamed, this opener to the issue will be sure to stay with you long after the last sentence.”

Read the rest of Horrorscope’s reviews of Interzone #204 here.

• “Exogamy gone horribly wrong. Rivera tenderly depicts an exploitative galactopolitical human-alien relationship in terms not of political jackbootery but a cruelly one-sided love affair, in thoughtful and thought-provoking manner.” http://londonkds.livejournal.com/166115.html

• “Longing for Langalana” (Mercurio D. Rivera) is an unusually romantic take on the first-contact standard; I can imagine it making a good short film. ” http://offog.org/books/20060701-interzone-204.html

• “Longing for Langalana” won the Interzone Readers’ Poll for Favorite Story of 2006. The poll results appeared in the 25th anniversary issue of Interzone #209.
http://www.ttapress.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=157&sid=f3ff4ae9ef09e9d43dc008145bcfbd85

Longing for Langalana made the “long list” of nominees for the British Science Fiction Award for Best Short Story, but alas didn’t make the final cut.  http://www.bsfa.co.uk/index.cfm/section.nom2006

• “Longing for Langalana” received an “honorable mention” in Gardner Dozois’s Year’s Best Science Fiction collection.

• One voracious reader was kind enough to mention “Langalana” among his picks for the year’s best on the Asimov’s message board. http://www.asimovs.com/discus/messages4/6695.html?1168442398

• Sam Tomaino of SFRevu listed “Langalana” as worthy of consideration for a Hugo nomination for best novelette. http://www.sfrevu.com/php/Review-id.php?id=5099

TRANSMISSIONS FROM BEYOND PODCAST OF “LANGALANA” – Read by Heather Welliver

•  Paul S. Jenkins at The Fix writes:

I found it a fascinating and satisfying story exploring the nature of love.  Is love something deeply spiritual or simply the result of chemical reactions in the brain?  The story is an example of how science fiction can deal with issues that matter greatly to us in the here-and-now, despite being set in the future and involving alien species. It’s told from an alien perspective, mostly in flashback, and concerns a young alien female who becomes a language tutor for a young human male.  Over time, a relationship develops which we see entirely from the alien’s viewpoint.  As with many such stories, the aliens are depicted as possessing human qualities, which can be a legitimate criticism, though in this case it’s the whole point, enhanced here by Heather Welliver’s expressive reading.

I like podcasts. I like science fiction. So I often listen to cool SF podcasts. I know many of my readers are not huge SF fans (why not?), but I think there are a couple of gems you might be interested in listening to.

The first thing is a short story I listened to this afternoon called Longing For Langalana by Mercurio D. Rivera. It’s a lovely story of unrequited love beautifully read. Aw. Go listen to it at Transmissions From Beyond.

THE SCENT OF THEIR ARRIVAL – REVIEWS

• Colin Harvey, author and regular reviewer for Strange Horizons, writes for Suite 101:

“Mercurio D. Rivera returns with ‘The Scent of Their Arrival.’ Few writers in SF depict aliens quite as alien as Rivera does, as demonstrated in ‘Longing for Langalana,’ which won the Interzone Reader’s poll of 2006 for Best Story. This time an orbiting spaceship poses a mystery for aliens who communicate by scent rather than sound, in a genre-blurring story that ends IZ214 on a high note.” http://scififantasyfiction.suite101.com/article.cfm/interzone_214

“The Scent of their Arrival by Mercurio D. Rivera explores the world of planet-bound but intelligent beings who communicate by scent, struggling to understand the message sent by the vast spaceship which had arrived in orbit around their world. All is not what it seems…” http://sciencefictionfantasy.blogspot.com/

“I was blown away by Mercurio D. Rivera’s The Scent of Their Arrival; it’s the finest story I’ve read for some time. A pair of alien scientists are attempting to decode a transmission from an orbiting spacecraft. The nuances of their culture and details of their physiology make them an intriguing pair and a story about them would have been interesting by itself. The transmission, which they can’t understand, is from a human, telling of the invasion and decimation of Earth by a trans-dimensional species called the Reviled. It’s a harrowing tale and again could have stood on its own. The culmination of the two tales, although I guessed the ending before it arrived, was stunning in its emotional impact. I shall have to read it again.”

Read the rest of the review of Interzone #214 here.

“A second strong SF story. On an alien planet, a race of creatures which use scent rather than speech, to communicate, are attempting to unravel the mysterious transmissions from an orbiting alien spaceship. It has been in orbit for some time, but has made no attempt to land and contact them, and has merely been transmitting a message. The orbiting spaceship is of course of human origin, and we find in the transcriptions of the messages, that humanity has come to a horrific end.

“As the messages progress, the nature of our demise becomes clear – an invading, vampiric race has ravaged Earth. …It’s a page-turner, with Rivera creating a more interesting alien race than is often the case.”

Read the rest of the BEST SF reviews of Interzone #214 here.

“I read the January issues of Asimovs, F&SF and Interzone at the beginning of the month; all had at least one stand-out story (Asimov’s had Tanith Lee’s ”The Beautiful and Damned’ by F. Scott Fitzgerald’; F&SF had John Kessel’s ‘Pride and Prometheus’ and Interzone had Mercurio D. Rivera’s ‘The Scent of their Arrival’)…” http://www.asimovs.com/discus/messages/4/7638.html?1201772240

“‘[I]nteresting mish-mash of subgenres here, and probably my favourite story of the issue.  The main story is a nice Inverted Communication Difficulties thing, where we’re following aliens who communicate by smell having trouble deciphering the message from a human spaceship in orbit because they don’t understand that you can use sound to communicate (the alien planet is so geologically active as to make this utterly impractical, apparently — I can’t say I’m convinced but I’m prepared to accept it for the sake of argument).  The aliens are likeable, in the weird-on-the-outside-human-on-the-inside way that’s never bothered me, and there are a few fun touches to their culture, like their science/religion split somehow falling exactly along their gender divide (men are “supernaturalists”, women are “naturalists”; if it was a longer story I’d want to know a lot more about why and if there are any exceptions, but it was a nice bit of background).  Within this, we get to read the log entries as the aliens attempt to decipher them, which tell the story of how the ship came to be launched — a desperate race to escape Earth after the opening of a portal to alternate universes allowed Actual Vampires to overrun the planet, which is not described particularly explicitly but does set up a very grim SF/horror crossover atmosphere.”  http://ionlylurkhere.livejournal.com/32508.html

http://spaceoperareader.blogspot.com/2008/02/scent-of-their-arrival-mercurio-d.html

“My favourite tale was ‘The Scent of Their Arrival’ by Mercurio D. Rivera which packed in a lot of ideas and the best aliens I’ve read about since Asimov’s ‘The Gods Themselves’. A good SF story might tell of Earth being invaded by aliens from another dimension. A better one might tell of man’s attempts to flee in starships. This one does all that but also tells of the ship’s arrival at a distant planet and its attempts to negotiate with a very different race. Told from the point of view of an alien couple who communicate by scent the whole thing was marvellous. The ending is like a kick in the guts. Wonderful.”

Read the rest of the SFCrow’s Nest reviews of the stories in this issue of IZ here.

“The fiction concludes with a brilliant novelette by Mercurio D. Rivera, “The Scent of Their Arrival.” The inhabitants of another planet wonder why communications from a ship orbiting their planet have been unsuccessful. The problem is that their race communicates by scent. We see the messages from the ship and they are from a future Earth which has been invaded by a race of vampire-like beings. Further, this planet appears to be ruled by inhabitants who are either “supernatualists” or “naturalists”. They cooperate and share power. The story of both Earth and this planet develops in an exciting way with a great finish. This story will be on my Hugo Award short list for next year.”

Read the rest of the SFRevu’s reviews of this issue’s stories here.

“Interzone for February is fairly impressive, particularly its closing story, “The Scent of Their Arrival” by Mercurio D. Rivera. Here, planetbound aliens whose system of speech relies on smell consider with puzzlement a message coded within a broadcast from a starship recently arrived in orbit. They have not encountered other intelligent beings before, and do not recognize the sounds made by the human speaker as meaningful content; as they gradually piece a partly correct picture together, a truly horrible irony unfolds, in which can be perceived the downfall of not one but many civilizations. This is a cogently nasty tale, a bit redundant here and there, but decidedly chilling.”  RECOMMENDED

“This is a brilliant story, told in two alternating strands. In one, a human survivor tells the story of the destruction of Earth, documenting its overrun by vampiric creatures from another dimension. It is a bleak and hopeless tale. In the other, two alien scientists try to decipher the transmissions from a ship sitting in orbit over their planet. It’s been sitting there broadcasting for quite some time, but they can’t make any sense of the communication. They’ve isolated the pictures and displayed them, but without a scent track it is unintelligible to them, since their primary form of communication is through chemical scents. While I’m sure scent-based communication has been done before in the literature (in fact it popped up recently in Paul Melko’s excellent novel Singularity’s Ring), this story is very well done. The relationship between the two alien researchers and the world building of their planet and culture are first-rate. The tonal shift between their straight-forward first-contact narrative and the bleak defeatism of the human narration is striking. The ending packs quite a punch as we realize how the threads tie together. The only small criticism I’d have is that the ending’s impact is more intellectual than emotional; it would’ve been a bit better if the reader were so emotionally involved with the aliens that we’d be really shocked and dismayed at their fate instead of going “Wow, so that’s how it all ties together. That’s gonna suck.” As it is however, this is another story that I’ll keep in mind come award-nominating time.”

Read the rest of Spiral Galaxy’s very thorough review of Interzone #214 here.

• I came across this cool illustration for the story by the terrific Paul Drummond, who also drew the cover of IZ #214.
http://www.pauldrummond.co.uk/illustration/gallery_image.php?image=14&category=2

The Scent of Their Arrival was long-listed for Best Short Story for the British Science Fiction Awards, but did not make the short list.

“SNATCH ME ANOTHER” REVIEWS

• A rave by Sam Tomaino at SFRevu, who says “Snatch Me Another” will be on his Hugo list for 2008:

“‘Snatch Me Another’ by Mercurio D. Rivera is an amazing story. In about 4000 words, he introduces us to a brand new idea and manages to write a great story about it. Kristina and Lindy live in a world in which an invention called the Snatcher allows people to snatch a copy of anything they want from some alternate dimension. Need some paper plates for a birthday party? Put in a sample and snatch a dozen from a dozen other worlds. Want a near-to-original of Vincent Van Gogh’s Starry Night? It’s in the system and can be had easily. Need a replacement for your dead son? Pop a lock of his hair into the Snatcher! This one came up on me unawares. It will be on my Hugo list for next year.”

Check out his review of the entire issue here.

“The first 2008 issue of Abyss and Apex is a good one. Two particularly sharp-edged pieces work best: Mercurio D. Rivera’s “Snatch Me Another” deals with the implications of a technology that can “snatch” conjugate items from parallel universes, and the effect on one couple, as we slowly realize that they have “snatched” a replacement for their dead child.”

http://thefix-online.com/reviews/abyss-and-apex-25/

“REWIND, REPLAY” REVIEWS

• Tangent Online writes:

“‘Rewind, Replay’ by Mercurio D. Rivera is a quiet tale that deals with Wynn, a man whose life changed when he was paralyzed in a boating accident. He relives that day over and over with a shunter, a device that allows him to hop into parallel realities. This story has a neat science fiction premise, but it is Wynn’s personal trauma that lies at the story’s heart. He is in pain, his entire life has been taken from him, and he uses the shunter to hide from reality. Rivera does a great job balancing the characters with the story’s cool idea.”

Read the rest of the review of Northwest Passages: A Cascadian Anthology here.

“THE BEST-DRESSED MAN ON THE COURT” REVIEWS:

• Blog Review:

“The other major highlight was a surprise, something you don’t see often in a “genre mag” — and proof that Matt is up to something different — Mercurio D. Rivera’s “The Best-Dressed Man on the Court,” a moving real life memoir about paddleball, eccentric acquaintances, the transient nature of friendship and the way a tragedy can unite strangers who otherwise have nothing in common. It’s an excellent piece of writing that fits well within the issue’s milieu despite being a slice of Mundania — although Rivera’s depiction of paddleball culture in the Bronx is at least as entertaining as any fictional extraterrestrial society.”

Read the rest of the review of Sybil’s Garage#5 here.

“[The] nonfiction article by Mercurio D. Rivera called “The Best-Dressed Man on the Court,” [is] an immensely readable story of his youth in New York spent in the grips of an obsession with paddleball (a type of lower-class cousin to racquetball). Poignant and relatable, Rivera conveys how, while the sport helped him to make friends, his narrow-minded dependence on the game kept him from knowing his own friends as well as he could have.”

Read the rest of the Green Man review of Sybil’s Garage#5 here.

“THE FIFTH ZHI” – REVIEWS

Artwork by the terrific Paul Drummond

The Fix writes:

“Mercurio D. Rivera introduces us to “The Fifth Zhi”—number 5 in a family of clones preprogrammed with devotion to their mission, an appropriate skill set for the task, and as little individuality as possible. This cloning project is the result of the usual mix between desperation in the face of a terrible threat and the callousness of those who give the orders towards those who carry them out. This theme is familiar, from Joe Haldeman’s The Forever War to Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game and countless others. “The Fifth Zhi”’s use of clones is an excellent, highly appropriate riff on the theme. It’s a gripping story, featuring a unique, likable protagonist; it avoids being unambiguously polemical and gives a familiar conclusion a very satisfying twist.”

Check out the remainder of the Fix’s reviews of IZ #219 here.

“Mercurio D. Rivera presents a tale of alien contact in ‘The Fifth Zhi’, as a succession of clones are dispatched to destroy an immense otherworldly organism that has penetrated the Earth, and is busy giving humanity a bad case of Cthulhu-esque nightmares. Despite the massive scale of an entity that has pierced the planet like a toothpick through an olive, this turns out to be a quite a thoughtful and intimate piece, with issues of identity and individualism coming to the fore in this straightforward but enjoyable yarn.”

Read the remainder of the Barking Dog’s reviews of IZ#219 here.

The fifth Zhi being one of several hundred clones, vat-bred and grown in a week, to make an assault on a very strange alien creature/tree that has landed on Earth, burrowed through the crust, and set up an impenetrable barrier to defend itself. The fifth Zhi is marked out from his cadre siblings by the fact the he alone has been able to pass through the barrier, and he must then climb the great tree to deliver a viral package to rid the Earth of the menace. However, in realising that is was his sense of loss that marked him out from his brothers, he is able to come to some understanding with the alien creature, which itself is suffering from a far greater sense of loss and loneliness. And he has to make a decision – whether to deliver his payload, or become one with the tree and to seek further afield.

Read the rest of SFRevu’s take on IZ#219 here.

In “The Fifth Zhi” by Mercurio D. Rivera, Zhi 5 is a clone who has been sent to destroy the Stalk, a strange immensely thick plant-like form that has bisected the Earth from North Pole to South. He has made it through a barrier that has stopped everything and everyone else. He carries a retrovirus that should kill the Stalk, freeing Earth from the nightmares it causes. He must climb the Stalk and release the retrovirus from the top of it. Naturally, things do not go as planned in this well-told tale of survival and triumph.

I was pleased to note the return of Jason Sanford and Mercurio Rivera whose stories I enjoyed earlier this year…. A giant stalk has skewered the Earth from pole to pole in ‘The Fifth Zhi’ by Mercurio D. Rivera. The eponymous Zhi is a clone sent on a suicide mission to destroy it who makes some startling discoveries about himself and the stalk. The mixture of adventure and introspection make it a touching story that leads to an entirely satisfying climax.