James Nicoll Reviews

Ann LeBlanc’s 2024 The Transitive Properties of Cheese is a stand-alone science fiction novella.

For almost twenty years, recluse Millions Wayland has focused on her beloved artisanal cheeses. This happy isolation is shattered by unhappy news: thanks to Wayland’s primary investor Miller, the asteroid Wayland uses to age her precious cheese has been diverted into the Sun.

Wayland is reluctant to confront Miller in person. Happily, Wayland does not have to, as Wayland is a mind running on a computer in a sophisticated robot body. Wayland duplicates her mind and emails the second Wayland to Lenaius Co-Op Station and Trans-Orbital Hub. The duplicate is to confront Miller and demand the asteroid’s orbit be restored. Having done all she could, Wayland returns to making cheese.

As for the second Wayland…

Wayland has avoided Lenaius ever since the great Crestfall disaster, a mishap of which Wayland could be considered the primary instigator. Although she meant well, people died and mind-banks were lost. Wayland believes she is a pariah, a belief that she has held for nineteen years. Without periodically checking it against reality.

First order of business now that she has returned to Lenaius is to obtain a local body in which to house her mind. A hologram won’t do for the confrontation she has in mind. Wayland appeals to local voluptuary and businessperson Hattie for assistance. As Hattie despises Miller, Hattie welcomes the chance to throw sand in his gears. Hattie temporarily takes a backseat in her own body, putting Wayland in charge.

What does Miller get out of all this brouhaha? One motivation is obvious. If Wayland’s cheese cave is annihilated, the cheese lineages stored there will be expunged. Therefore, the value of the surviving cheeses from those lineages will soar. Therefore, Miller (and to a lesser degree, Wayland) will make a lot of money selling the now precious cheeses.

That alone is sufficient reason for Miller to redirect the cheese-cave asteroid and enough reason for Miller to resist Wayland and Hattie’s attempts to nobble his plan. However, Miller has a far more compelling motivation: forestalling doom.

Years earlier, the nations of the Earth put strict limits on mind-copying. The space communities did not. The spacers see Earth as reactionary. Many on Earth see the spacers as fake people who also giant perverts. Conflict was inevitable. One consequence was the Crestfall disaster. Another was that Earth abandoned the space communities to their own devices.

In the nineteen years since Crestfall, the spacers have thrived. Earth’s corporations believe they deserve a piece of the pie. Deskrope LLC in particular believes that the US’s hilariously broken IP laws entitle Deskrope to all of the pie. Caught between heavily-armed Earth [1] and the unarmed spacers, Miller believes he can save the space community… but if Wayland and Hattie make that impossible, Miller will settle for saving Miller.

~oOo~

Hey, look! Another novella not by Tor Dot Com. Remember this next award season.

There’s an interesting disagreement between Hattie and Wayland concerning the Crestfall disaster. Wayland, appalled at the death toll she set in motion, hid for almost twenty years. Hattie argues that the past 

(is) not real, it doesn’t exist, not anymore. What’s real is this moment, here.

So, Wayland should enjoy the moment. Granted, Hattie is a hedonist, but it does seem as if a mass carnage event is the sort of thing for which lasting remorse is reasonable. Actually, Hattie’s stance alarms me somewhat. How long is long enough to argue the past is now irrelevant? A year? A month? The time it took you to tumble to the bottom of the stairs after I pushed you?

It’s not unreasonable for Miller to claim he’s working for the greater good, a stance somewhat undermined by the fact this is a desperate measure compelled by the happenstance that he is the specific person against whom Deskrope LLC chooses to pursue legal action. As well, the means by which he chooses to save himself and his community are needlessly underhanded. A lot of the fuss could have been avoided had he only told someone else what was going on.

There is also the minor issue of all of the major transgressions Miller committed before Deskrope LLC came on stage. Claims of virtue may well be undermined by years of self-serving villainy.

I have long collected stories in which the human form is mutable. Who wouldn’t want to be able to possess boundless durability, peerless vision, or the ability crush human skulls like so much sugar candy? But for some reason, it never occurred to me to frame the technology in a trans perspective, which this novella does. In retrospect, it’s an obvious application [2].

The discussion above might sound like nitpicking, but I enjoy works which prompt me to think about the murky ethical implications inherent in the settings. This was an enjoyable discovery of an author new to me. I hope to see a novel or two from LeBlanc… or at least more novellas.

The Transitive Properties of Cheese is available here (Neon Hemlock), here (Barnes & Noble) and here (Kobo). I did not find The Transitive Properties of Cheese at Bookshop US, Bookshop UK, Chapters-Indigo, or at Words Worth Books.

1: Specifically, the US Space Force, now available to the highest bidder. USA delenda est.

While their current monopoly on guns leads the terrestrials to believe they can easily crush resistance, I suspect the fact that the Millions — the beings who take advantage of mind-copying and made-to-order bodies suitable for any environment — can and do exist comfortably across the Solar System will be decisive in the long run.

2: Admittedly, being able to swap genders on a whim is a big part of Lee’s Don’t Bite the Sun, and Varley’s Eight Worlds (and a minor one in Sheffield’s Sight of Proteus). If my Young People’s reaction to Options is any guide, the state of the art has moved on sufficiently that trans persons may find disco-era treatments unsatisfactory.