“Nobody Ever Goes Home to Zhenshu” by Grace Chan

Story #2 of 31: The Best Science Fiction of the Year 8, ed. by Neil Clarke Part of a series: Reading Science Fiction at 75. The first essay. “Nobody Ever Goes Home to Zhenzhu” by Grace Chan was first published in Lightspeed (May 2002). You can read or listen to it online here. Calam sneaks away from Orin to handle unfinished business on the planet Zhenzhu. In this very short space opera noir, the plot features one action scene, with gory results. The story wraps up with a discussion about freeing personal information from political thugs who control public information. That part is relevant to our times, but it wasn’t explored. Treating this story like a wine tasting, I detect a strong flavor of George Lucas, with hints of Samuel R. Delany, William Gibson, and Richard K. Morgan. Not to be critical, this story could have been Luke sneaking away from Han to conduct some unfinished business on Tatooine, but Han follows Luke and saves the day. My point is that writers need to tune into…