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

 
Asimov's April-May 2009

Locus 2009 recommended list   Dozois Year's Best    Strahan Year's Best 

A somewhat pretentious title, taken from a Kipling poem, sets the tone for a poetic story typical of Broderick, whose short fiction seems to be fairly sporadic but is always worth seeking out.  This time around the setting is Titan, where an ancient spaceship has been uncovered, inexplicably sealed in some sort of bubble and covered with living flowers.  That's the most arresting image, and the story basically unfolds around it.  The ship was discovered thanks to a clairvoyant named Sensei Park, who has had images of this very discovery since he was young, and once his vision is borne out by reality, he is called to Saturn's moon to assist the military in trying to make sense of it all.

Interwoven with this story are Park's reminiscences of his son, who died under vague circumstances at an early age.  Park has the ability to cause things to happen without even thinking about it, and at one point another specialist in the arcane is working up an image of what the alien pilot must have looked like.  His own impression of the ancient race shows them as related to the dinosaurs, but Park somehow corrupts that image to that of his own son, which causes both of them to become violently ill.  Broderick is playing around throughout the story with parallels between Park's loss and that of the alien pilot, speculating the circumstances under which this ship could have met its untimely fate.

What is particularly interesting about this story is how Broderick uses the central theme to speculate on the Fermi paradox, the notion that if other intelligent life exists then why is there no evidence of it.  Park has at hand a long list of potential reasons, and this discovery and first proof of extraterrestrials both narrows the list and opens up more questions, since if aliens could come this far, why did this one ship make it to Titan and no others?  At the end, Park does his part to help the survey team break through the seal and the flowers are released into the atmosphere of Titan, one last evocative image to engage the reader from a very poetic, original effort by one of the more underrated writers of our era.
posted by Mark at 10:03 PM