Josh Roseman
(not the trombonist; the other one)

Roseman looks at some current trends to explore love, sex and relationships in the near future, through the eyes of a young man who regrets his decision not to renew his relationship contract with his partner after eight years and one child.

Roseman’s first story in Asimovs (‘Bring on the Rain’) was an action-packed drama, and he attempts a much more difficult story here, in looking at relationships and getting into the mind of the protagonist, and it just feels a little less subtle than it needs to be.

Climate change brought on by an ‘event’ leads to a sort of Mad Max future, with nomaid communities of desert-adapted vehicles/ships forming, the better to protect themselves and to seek water. A tight drama is enacted, with a bit of backstory, and an ending offering the potential of a sequel. FWIW I’d vote for one.

Bring on the Rain” by Josh Roseman takes place sometime in the mid-22nd Century, years after Earth had been hit for two days by a solar flare, killing three-quarters of the population and rendering all the surface water undrinkable. William is part of a fleet of land ships that constitute Demetrius Colony, nomads that scour the desert surface, looking for big rain storms. He is in charge of computer models that predict when they will occur. It’s a nasty world in which competing colonies fight vicious battles over water and we get a taste of it in this well-written story.

Use of the present tense in narrative writing is generally a technique of the avant-garde, but here in “Bring On the Rain” it’s put to its use in a piece of military-oriented fiction, seeming either out of place or too much in place. Isn’t it the truth, though—there’s no hope for men at war and in the modern world where isn’t there war? I don’t think the author would dispute that his characters are war-mad. You can’t call a story pessimistic when you have nothing optimistic to compare it with, so you call it “realistic”. Yes, there’s little hope for the Earth in this one—in fact, there isn’t any. Except to say “it’s only a story”, but that doesn’t work out too well, or wouldn’t if it wasn’t sf.