mataglap -- an Indonesian word meaning "dark eye" or, probably, "dilated eye." It is an indication that someone is about to go berserk and start killing people at random. Used in Walter Jon Williams' novel Aristoi as the name of a berserk form of nanotechnology that devoured the planet.

You can e-mail Mataglap SF at mataglap@yahoo.com

 
First-time nominee William Shunn puts forth this intriguing short novella, probably nominated more for its potential than for what it actually ends up with, but still a very readable story in its own right.  In some indeterminate future there exists a massive space station, home to two million workers who've been there enough generations to evolve into their own quasi-socialist society, although still with plenty of have-nots.  Among that group is the protagonist, a 15-year old named Jude who grows up in a very strict religious community who mostly shun (pardon the expression) all the trappings of modern living, which include rampant body modifications.  But this community, the Guild, are the underclass, poor and in debt to the station management, so Jude's father Thomas sends him to work out among the "Sculpted", exposing him to a series of lifestyles Jude barely knew existed, with of course the admonishment not to stray from his luddite faith.

Within the station is an interesting set of dynamics that can only be touched on within the confines of this story length.  Shunn is more interested with his young hero's coming of age, which is mostly a very conventional set of unfamiliar feelings about his sexuality, his relationship with his father, his devotion to his faith but at the same time being tempted by the other side.  The title stems from the Guild's worship of the Builder and the six classical simple machines, including the inclined plane, which these followers view as a path towards enlightenment.  But Jude's path takes a less fundamentalist turn once he's encountered and starts working closely with the Sculpted.  While he's essentially been brainwashed since birth to disavow what he sees and hears, the appeal of how the other half lives and their seeming ease with it all still has its allure.  Central to his crisis of conscience is the opportunity to make more money for his Guild, if only he agrees to a small body modification that allows him to live in vacuum for short periods of time. 

The revelations come fast and furious at the end, and you ultimately get the sense that this was really just the prologue to a larger story about Jude showing how he rose above his humble origins.  Shunn doesn't directly take on religion, but there would seem to be quite a bit of prodding within the text at the stifling nature of dogma, and the notion of keeping the outside world at bay for the greater good of the community.  But for a novella-length, it seems those issues aren't really explored enough, such that the plot, straightforward as it is, comes across as rather conventional.  For such a vast station, the drama is played out with a very small cast, and it's missing some sense of the overall scope of the artificial world in which the characters live, which after all is the only world they know.   In the end, this story is a reasonably good read that hints at plenty of material from which to build an epic, but by focusing instead on a mostly conventional plot the reader ends up with something that's not as memorable as it could have been.
posted by Mark at 9:48 PM