Fantasy & Science Fiction: July/August 2011

This is the fifth issue of Fantasy & Science Fiction that I've read. I reviewed the two prior issues here and here.

We begin with Peter David's story, Bronsky's Dates with Death, one of the issue's several humor pieces – and, without a doubt, the best of them. The titular Bronksy's a salesman as incapable of lying as he is of shutting up, and, in his old age, all he wants to speak of is death. This causes a problem, because the benevolent death cannot approach one who thinks of him, because he "doesn’t do well with expectations." (p. 14) The two meet several times, and at each meeting death is increasingly adamant that Bronsky must focus on other matters before the other death, the malevolent one, can come to fix the problem. This is a genuinely witty story, and the ending – in which we go from laughing to caring – is superbly done.

The next piece, Peter S. Beagle's tribute to Avram Davidson, The Way it Works Out and All, is less successful, though I'll admit that part of my apathy may derive from me not knowing much of anything about the late, and evidently great, Mr. Davidson. Read without knowledge of the man or his work, all we've got is a simple story about travelling outside our reality that, while certainly competent, does little to excite or set itself apart.

Rob Chilson's Less Stately Mansions is about farming, and the author's passion for the subject bleeds through everywhere you look. Our tale takes place in a future where the earth's on a decline and deals with a man's family's decision to try and force him to sell his farm. None of the story's turns are particularly surprising, but the characterization and, even more importantly here, love for the subject matter shine through all, and the story's conclusion packs a hefty emotional punch.

Next up is the issue's cover story and centerpiece, Robert Reed's novella The Ants of Flanders. In our opening, two alien presences make their way to earth, and we follow the gargantuan teenager Bloch as he and everyone else are caught in the middle of a war waged on a scale unimaginable. The story's central thematic thrust is right up my alley. We are the Ants of Flanders here, those caught in the middle, as one of the characters theorizes: Picture some field in Flanders. […] It's 1916, and the Germans and British are digging trenches and firing big guns. What are their shovels and shells churning up? Ant nests, of course. Which happens to be us. We're the ants in Flanders. (p. 114) Reed's prose throughout all this is excellent, loaded with almost cheerily delivered macabre touches (The van's driver was clothes mixed with meat. (p. 89)), and above all a mixture of the crass and the epic:

The mass of a comet was pressed into a long, dense needle. Dressed with carbon weaves and meta-metals, the needle showed nothing extraneous to the universe. The frigid black hull looked like space itself, and it carried nothing that could leak or glimmer or produce the tiniest electronic fart – a trillion tons of totipotent matter stripped of engines but charging ahead at nine percent light speed. (p. 84)

Alas, the synthesis of humor and the grand, while excellent at a sentence level, does not work so well in the tale as a whole. We spend half the story with the Science Fiction apocalypse playing out off screen while we observe Bloch's antics – after having seen so many movies along similar lines, we're presumably supposed to fill in the apocalypse for ourselves. The other half concerns that apocalypse reaching to the characters and dragging their lives off course, changing who they are and restructuring their world. The two clash more than they aid each other. The early developments carry no impact at all. The rumors of destruction are too vague to inspire awe but too generic to create much wonder, and the tongue in cheek nature of much of the characterization serves to undermine the plot. Some of this is intentional. As one character says: Adventure is the story you tell afterwards. It's those moments you pick out of everything that was boring and ordinary, and then put them on a string and give to another person as a gift. Your story. (p. 128) But the random nature of those ordinary events sabotage the extraordinary, leaving us with a story whose grand arc feels less revelatory than arbitrary, not to mention one where the heroics feel out of place in light of the overriding antesque theme.

Joan Aiken's Hair is the opposite of Reed's preceding short: short, quiet, creepy, and resplendent with hope and despair in such a fashion that, instead of canceling each other out, each only reinforces the stronger. After a brief but whirlwind romance and marriage with a once secluded girl, and after that wonderful woman's death, the main character must deliver a lock of her hair back to the home of her birth. There, there's no outward horror here, no true danger, but all is decrepit, taken care of and helpless, it's denizens gentle, frail, and unspeakably old. (p. 144) They live in a home of perpetual decay, an atmosphere of continuous death. (p. 141) After the happiness of his love, the protagonist realizes that, by returning his physical mementos of her, he seems to be allowing her to slip from the world. This is a story of entropy on a personal level, and its center is the at once fabulous and dooming line, You'll tire yourself out. (p. 140)

Steven Saylor's The Witch of Corinth is next, a historical piece set in the time of Rome and the destroyed city of Corinth. Our protagonist Gordianus – and his teacher, the poet Antipater – meet a group of twelve other travelling Romans as they explore the ruins, and there they find riches, memories, and terror. Saylor never reveals whether the deaths are truly the work of witchcraft, but he doesn't need to. The tale's centerpiece, occurring perhaps two thirds of the way through, is a fantastic twist and even better set piece, both cinematic in its description and rivetingly creepy. Best of all, though, is the way Saylor grounds his tale in the time period, something that shows not only in the subtleties of character interaction but also in the quips they make, the best of which might be: "Oh, some women are always cursing each other. Especially the Greeks – 'Hermes of the Underworld, Ambrosia is prettier than me, please make her hair fall out.'" (p. 161)

Richard Bowes brings humor back to the fore with Sir Morgavain Speaks of Night Dragons and Other Things, a story about the enchanted sleep of King Arthur and his knights – oh, and about the enemy warrior mistakenly thrown in along with them. The story is a monologue of that knight, sometimes delivered to another knight and sometimes to the air around, and it's filled with digressions, witticisms, and clever turns of phrase and thought. Can't remember my name? our protagonist asks. Well, why should you have to, dear fellow? It's such a bother remembering peoples' names. Everyone should be able to remember his own name and not expect others do it for him. (p. 187) The speaker, it must be noted, is not sure why he's included in the generally sleeping group at all, eventually concluding that it's either a mistake or that he was put there to be myself and spread unease. (p. 189) Watching him spread that unease, always in the most conversational and genteel fashion, is quite simply a delight.

Someone Like You, by Michael Alexander, is a disorienting and engrossing story of time travel and different realities. The narrator's father was murdered by an impossible killer, and she – in numerous different timelines – figures this out and resolves to stop it, even if it's at the risk of erasing herself as well. The story's confusing at first, but soon comes clear, and the connection of the different periods is damn clever. To top it all off, Alexander's writing is littered with enjoyable quotable moments like: Ants can't blaspheme. (p. 215)

Our closing tale, The Ramshead Algorithm by KJ Kazba, begins with a scene of strange otherworldliness before the protagonist returns to earth. The portal between dimensions is located in the backyard of our protagonist, Ramshead's, father, a billionaire who cares little for the games and dementias of his second son. Though the story never returns in force to the delicious oddities of the opening, the interactions between Ramshead and his family are enjoyable, the characters and their lifestyles larger than life, and the tale overall at once gripping and humorous.

Standouts: Someone Like You, Bronsky's Dates with Death, Hair, and The Witch of Corinth

Fantasy & Science Fiction: May/June

This is the fourth issue of Fantasy & Science Fiction that I've read. My review of the prior issue, March/April, is here. Like most of the issues I've read so far, the May/June issue is generally quite successful, filled with well written tales that occasionally manage to prove themselves exceptional. Which is not, of course, to say that there aren't a few weaklings among the bunch.

Chet Williamson's The Final Verse is the first of two stories about music. The tale centers around a hunt for the fabled lost verse of "Mother Come Quickly," a break out classic folk song. The best part of the story is the way Williamson manages to weave Mother Come Quickly into the music scene and history. By the time you're done hearing the first printed verses, don't be surprised if you're searching youtube for a live performance. The supernatural aspect isn't particularly surprising, but it's well done, and the conclusion is a good creepy closer.

Next we get the first of Robert Reed's two pieces, Stock Photos. To be honest, I'm not sure what to think of this story. A man and a woman come up to the protagonist and ask to take his picture a few times. That's about all that happens, and any deeper significance was, even after two readings, totally lost on me. That being said, Reed's writing is strong enough that the dialogue flows naturally and that there's an unmistakable undercurrent of malice throughout. Reed's second story (a hundred or two pages later) gives us the behind the scenes footage of Stock Photo. Though the big questions still aren't answered, everything makes far more sense afterwards. Still, while the second story's the one that brings the clarity, it's the first that's truly memorable. I'm not sure if the two story gimmick is particularly fair play (they read more as part one and two), but Reed pulls it off too well for me to really complain.

Albert E. Cowdrey's The Black Mountain pits a preservationist against a developer when the latter decides to renovate a cult's old cathedral. Like most of the Cowdrey tales I've read, The Black Mountain is enjoyable without being incredible. The supernatural aspect is pleasantly subtle, and the two main characters do have an engaging and natural rapport, but there's no moment that elevates the tale to greatness.

Steven Popkes's Agent of Change is the first of two stories that are about A. climate change, and B. lizards. The mighty Pacific Leviathan has emerged, and it's wreaking havoc. Or something like that. The story is told through articles and transcribed board room meetings, and there are numerous places where Popkes's straight faced characters manage to become laugh out loud funny, such as Toho, LTD.'s statement: Toho has copyright on the look and feel of the Godzilla franchise. […] If this creature is real, it is the property of Toho and a natural resource of Japan (p. 84-5).

Fine Green Dust – by Don Webb, one of the authors involved in last issue's collaboration – focuses on an apocalypse of rising temperatures. Our straight man, math teacher protagonist notices that the people around him are disappearing as it gets hotter and hotter, and lizards are everywhere he looks. He notices one of his students in the yard next door mutating, mainly (p. 100) into a lizard in the family Gekkonidae, I think (p. 100). Unfortunately, the reader's likely to figure everything out long before the protagonist does, and any surprises are few and far between.

Alexandra Duncan's Rampion is the longest story in the issue. It is also fantastic, one of the best tales I've read in F&SF. Scenes alternate between the present, with our protagonist disfigured and blinded, and his past as a prince. The story takes place in a Spain divided between Christians and Muslims, and, though the actual events and characters of the story feel too vibrant to possibly have existed, their every thought and action evokes that time period. The main character's secret love for a Christian woman feels at first like a small story well told, but the rumors and glimpsed conversations of the opening and other sections serve to broaden the story's focus and show the ramifications of seemingly minor acts. To be fair, this is a fantasy story by only the most tenuous of threads – a character is rumored to be a witch – but the quest and characters are as well done as you're ever likely to find.

Carter Scholz's Signs of Life deals with a group of scientists manipulating the seemingly empty information surrounding the meaningful part of DNA, and Scholz manages to make a compelling metaphor for our lives while creating several fascinating lines such as: We want nature to speak our soul's language. When we can no longer bear its silence, we speak for it. tell a story where no story is (p. 159). Or: Mind lays traps for itself, it's capable of anything. Traps simple as habit, devastating as psychosis, elaborate as epistemology, seductive as science. (p. 162) But while the writing and thematic portions of the tale are strong, I found the actual story and characters unsatisfying. This feels more like a story about modern day science than a Science Fiction story. The eventual revelation falls well short of earth shattering – at least to my layman's perspective – and, worse, the main character remains grumblingly but not compellingly unlikable throughout. Signs of Life is, in some ways, an accomplished tale, but it's not one I can say I enjoyed.

Scott Bradfield's Starship Dazzle is evidently one of many tales about Dazzle the talking dog, but no knowledge of the other stories is required. Dazzle manages to get himself sent into space, and, once there, finds himself broadcasting advertisements across the stars. Dazzle's quarrel with his corporate superiors is a bit obvious, but the story is saved by its fantastic and humorous voice. A prime example's Dazzle's initial launch speech:

"I know I haven't been the best company you could wish for on this stupid planet. […] And I'm sure you'll be perfectly happy to see my hairy butt vanish into the Pleiades. But at the same time, I'm not bitter about our past dealings, and I hope you're not bitter about me either. So good luck, try to clean up the mess you've made of this planet, and think about me every so often. By the way, my name is Dazzle, and while you probably can't tell from this crazy space suit I'm wearing, I'm a dog... (p. 179)

S.L. Giblow's contribution, The Old Terrologist's Tale, opens with a conversation between a terrologist, the man he plans to sell his newly-created planet to, a few other elite members of Giblow's futuristic society, and an "old terrologist." (p. 194) The heart of the story-within-a-story is the story told by that last character, the old terrogolist. The man's conclusions about beauty aren't particularly surprising, but both the frame and the narrative are well told and fascinating, and Giblow manages to fill his scenes with both a homely, conversational atmosphere and a futuristic sense of wonder.

In the March/April issue, Ken Liu contributed The Paper Menagerie, a quiet but powerful story about a family and its quiet magic. His story here, Altogether Elsewhere, Vast Herds of Reindeer, also has a family at its heart. Liu presents a dichotomy between an artificial reality resplendent with freedom and intricacies far beyond our own and, on the other hand, reality. Our viewpoint is the child of a father who – like most of the society – stays immersed in the virtual, but the protagonist's mother is one of the strange folk who seems to prefer the real. Liu imbues his future with enough strangeness – both in style and in concept – and depth to make it seem a compelling place, but the story never took off for me. The ultimate conclusions about the physical world feel obvious, and, where The Paper Menagerie felt quiet and unassuming, Altogether Elsewhere, Vast Herds of Reindeer feels empty.

Kate Wilhelm's Music Makers closes the magazine and is the second of its two music-focused pieces. Unfortunately, it's also the weakest story here. While Chet Williamson's story that opened the magazine focused on a quest with music as the object, Wilhem focuses on the emotional and familial sides of music. But the performers never come to life, and, without coming to believe in their sound and success, the adoration of the other characters and the tragedy of their deaths just comes off as effusive and saccharine.

Standouts: Rampion, The Old Terrologist's Tale, Stock Photos

Shock Totem #2

Shock Totem’s second issue was a long time coming. The supposedly biannual magazine didn’t end up released until a full year after the original. Reading the issue, however, it’s hard to be upset. Changes are immediately apparent. The issue’s shorter (with more readable font), there’s only one interview, there is a nonfiction article, and, more importantly, the more whimsical nature of many of the first issue’s stories is gone, replaced by something darker and more relentless.

Ricardo Bare’s The Rat Burner opens the collection, an oppressive and moody piece about life in a bizarre, run down, and infested future city that the reader can learn in the story’s notes is a transformed Austin. Like many of the issue’s pieces, this is more of a mood piece than one particularly concerned with plot. There’s no traditional structure here, no true beginning middle or end. That’s not to say that nothing happens, though; the populace’s (and the neighborhood’s) steady, inevitable disintegration is painful and intoxicating to watch.

The most haunting mood piece, however, is Leslianne Wilder’s Sweepers, a flash story set in post-apocalypse New York City. The characters come through strongly, the imagery of the destroyed city is powerfully evocative, and her prose is mesmerizing:

Some cried and wiped their eyes with hundred dollar ties. Some jumped. They dropped down into the soup of everything that had been, and where they hit they left little black holes where they dragged the bodies down with them. Then the holes closed up. (p. 27, Sweepers)

Some of the mood pieces are not as successful. None of them are outright bad, but a few fail to attain the necessary weight of atmosphere to make their stories more than passively interesting. Christian A. Dumais’s Leave Me the Way I was Found shows a mind-destroying, Lovecraftian youtube video that savages the world as it goes viral. The concept is interesting, and the story is certainly amusing, but there’s never enough of an idea of just what the video actually is for the story to be particularly affecting. Cate Gardner's Pretty Little Ghouls is also intriguing in its premise, and manages to make the reader desperately want to know more about the world it shows, but I felt I had far too many questions at the end of the brief piece to be satisfied.

Of the fuller stories, most are quite successful. In his introduction to The Exit to San Breta (in Dreamsongs), George R.R. Martin says that he wanted to update the ghost story, taking the traumatized undead from gothic mansions and putting them in the middle of where modern tragedy occurred: the expressways. Taking Martin’s 1972 logic and bringing it to the 21^st century, Grá Linnaea and Sarah Dunn explore death through facebook in Messages from Valerie Polichar. Over the course of the story, Valerie becomes a sympathetic character, and the way that she becomes obsessed and then is taken over by her obsession is chilling.

Vincent Pendergast’s The Rainbow Serpent, too, intertwines invented mythology with the modern world and never loses the flow of either. The imagery is bizarre and fascinating here, and the multitude of threads make for a well done dreamlike feel. Though the story seems to be building to a predictable finale, Pendergast manages to avoid the obvious ending and manages to make all of his story’s various strands end satisfyingly.

Kurt Newton’s Sole Survivor and Nick Bronson’s Return from Dust both suffer from being too familiar. Sole Survivor’s immediate action is compelling, but the overall setup is overused and has lost its punch through repetition, leaving the story unable to compete with Newton’s 32 Scenes from a Dead Hooker’s Mouth from the first issue. Return from Dust is also interesting in its telling, but the tale is ultimately devoid of surprises. The final tale, David Jack Bell's Upon My Return, is a relatively familiar concept but told well. The gifted but strange carnival worker manages to evoke our sympathies quickly, though the conclusion feels rather obvious when it pretty much explicitly states the tale's core.

There are less interviews this time around, but Yardley’s chilling nonfiction prose more than makes up for it. Like before, the reviews cover a wide array of horror releases, from books to games and music. They’re generally good, though I did note a bizarre phrase in John Boden’s review of the Road: This is a PG book: No Swearing, very little violence, and sex free (p. 44). Good to know that books don’t impact people based on content, just language. After all, cannibalism and slow but inevitable starvation were my favorite middle grade reading material.

The first issue of Shock Totem was very good; almost every story in it was well worth reading. The second issue is even stronger. There are a few weaker tales here, but the strengths of those that do work make this magazine essential reading for horror fans.

Standouts: Sweepers, The Rat Burner, Messages from Valerie Polichar

Shock Totem #1

Shock Totem is a relative newcomer to the horror scene, but you wouldn't know that from the quality of the publication. The editorial that opens the first issue of Shock Totem is stunningly humble; it and the ethereal and beautiful cover art set the tone for what follows. The stories are generally a blend of more whimsical humor with out and out horror, though tales fall on both sides of the spectrum.

Our opener, T.L. Morganfield’s The Music Box, seems on first glance to be as odd a horror opener as imaginable. The story is told from the point of view of Snowflake, a sentient stuffed elephant who does his best to get his nemesis, the stuffed Boo Bear, to be eaten by the family’s dog instead of him. The first pages are more cute and amusing than scary – and then comes the part where Snowflake and the other animals display sickening cruelty in their competitions with one another. At the edge of the story, the reader can make out sympathetic characters on the periphery, coming into the light just long enough to be pushed aside.

Mercedes M. Yardley’s Murder for Beginners follows. Like many of the stories in the collection, it’s centered around violence – the two main characters are standing over the corpse of a murdered man – but, like many of the first issue’s stories, it’s the bizarre atmosphere that really defines the story. The two characters are completely nonchalant and unconcerned by their recent crime, though they are well aware that a dead man’s pockets are gross, and their snappy dialogue is laugh out loud funny in context.

Brian Rosenberger’s Mulligan Stew and Jennifer Pelland’s ‘Til Death Do Us Part operate in a similar manner. Both are short (a poem and a piece of microfiction respectively), and they each quickly build to an amusing and light hearted climax. Neither is jaw dropping, but they are enjoyable and flow very well between the longer pieces and nonfiction articles.

Like the opening stories, Brian Rappatta’s The Dead March only has violence on the side, and the grotesque dismemberments that are not infrequent in the tale either happen on screen or are just alluded to in a single sentence. The story’s protagonist has the ability to raise the dead with a word, leading to some good old fashioned zombies. Said zombies are too matter of fact in their creation and mindless obedience to be particularly frightening, but the sympathy generated by the protagonist’s relationship with his mother in the early pages is powerful enough to make the read an affecting one.

There are difficulties inherent with short fiction, especially with a hard word limit (5,000 words), and one of those difficulties is weaving exposition into the narrative. Les Berkley’s First Light and Don D’ammassa’s Complexity both irked me to a greater or lesser extent by blocks of exposition.  The first of them, First Light, is a short tale set in a bizarre and anachronistic countryside where ghosts wander. The actual horror aspect of it is relatively typical, but Berkley’s prose is powerful and manages to convey setting, atmosphere, and personality all at once:

Time’s a strange commodity in the County. Moving out here struck me like coming home, if home was a couple centuries ago. We hang on to the past as though it was worth something. Roads stay unpaved so they can’t develop things, and we mostly take care of our own problems without recourse to outside authorities or laws. The .357 Colt Python in my saddle holster reminded me that this way of living comes with its own dangers. (p. 29)

Complexity is intriguing, and the narrator’s attempt at isolation are fascinating. D’ammassa skillfully evokes the narrator’s paranoia and is adept with the description of his home, but I felt that the tale ran into problems as it progressed. The revelation of just what the narrator was afraid of was kept back until it was told in a great lump towards the end, and the story’s climax felt jerky and abrupt.

David Niall Wilson’s Slider sets itself apart by being about a rather normal fellow (compared to the relaxed killers of Yardley’s piece or the zombie-raiser of Rappata’s), but I’ll admit that this is the one story in the collection I was apprehensive about. See, I may live in New York, but I know nothing about baseball. Nothing. I needn’t have worried. Wilson’s passion for the sport shines through and invigorates the characters, but the little terminology that there is is easily either picked up or bypassed, and the story’s core is filled with sympathetic characters and delicious twists.

The only story in the collection that felt like a true weak link to me was Pam L. Wallace’s Below the Surface. This story has more of a high fantasy bent than the others, but (though I’m generally a large fan of fantasy) the tale overall didn’t work for me. The betrayal at its core was too obvious, and the conclusion felt clunky, though the prose was generally strong throughout.

Things end with Kurt Newton’s Thirty-Two Scenes From a Dead Hooker’s Mouth closes the collection. The story is a backwards journey through the murdered woman’s life, featuring thirty-two tenuously linked scenes. The actual events are in danger of being cliché (the “weird” client, the specific abuses and difficulties of the lifestyle) but the manner of their telling is excellent, painting the picture of a tragic life a shade too out of focus to ever be ordinary. The final scene, though expected, is extremely powerful and ends the collection on a highly emotional note.

In addition to fiction, the issue also includes three interviews and a lengthy review section. The interviews were varied and content and had interesting questions; the reviews were more cursory than I’d prefer but well written. Further nonfiction articles are promised in future issues. Finally, there’s a “Howling Through the Keyhole” section of the stories behind the stories which I loved.

Shock Totem is a quality product. The stories are powerful, and the editors’ drive and determination is clear from the beautiful paperback binding, though some credit for that surely goes to the collection’s artists, Rex Zachary and Robert Høyem. It says something about a collection when the weakest story has strong prose and a generally good atmosphere. At 5.99, this issue’s a great buy for horror fans (even if the print’s a tad small).

Standouts: Murder for Beginners, The Dead March, and The First Light

Short Fiction in...Magazines!?

There’s been a rather odd hole in my reading for a while. See, I love short fiction. Out of my five favorite authors, two exclusively write short fiction (Lovecraft and Ligotti) and one I like best for his interconnected short fiction (VanderMeer). In my recent Best Of posts, four of the books I nominated were collections. Recently, I’ve even begun to submit my short fiction to the various genre magazines that duotrope has so helpfully listed for us desperate writers.

And, through all of this, do you know how many magazines (where short fiction actually, you know, comes from) I have read? The answer’s roughly zero. A while ago, I bought a copy of Fantasy & Science Fiction to peruse but never got around to it.

I considered making this a Breaking New Ground post, but this is such an oversight that it seems almost silly to do so, especially as I won’t exactly be heading off to new genres. Just sensibly exploring the genres I already love. Also considered making this a new year’s resolution, but I’m not quite that dramatic – just dramatic enough to write over two hundred words on the subject in its own post.

What publications am I looking at? Well, first there’s Shock Totem, which is actually the magazine that got this whole thing started. After that, I suppose I’ll go buy a few single issues, read them (and perhaps read that F&SF I have around here somewhere), and see about subscriptions from there.

So, after far too long on the subject, the rather simple meat of the post: short fiction in magazine form shall come to the Rack.

I know, I’m excited too.