Recent Short SF/F Fiction Reviews

Recent Short SF/F Fiction Reviews

by Rich Horton

Here I'm taking a look at some recent SF or Fantasy short stories I read recently. I'll begin by helping celebrate the 50th outing of Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet -- this remarkable magazine, started in 1996, is still in print, in the traditional "zine" format -- saddle-stapled and all; the issues are very attractive to boot. The editors are Gavin Grant and Kelly Link, and the contents are an eclectic mix of fiction, articles (often about cooking!) and poetry, with the fiction loosely in the SF/Fantasy zone but with no boundaries. 

Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet celebrates its 50th issue with a strong issue, including S. Woodson's "Dog in the Garden", about a woman in a near future highly repressive corporatized environment who follows a mysterious dog into a new world, full of magic. It's sweet -- the nearly but not quite utopian other world is lovingly portrayed. I did feel that things were a good bit too easy for its main character. Jessy Randall's "Remedial Kissing Class" is also sweet, with the narrator finding love by more or less flouting the title lessons. "White Band", by Guan Un, is a nicely written vignette, with the main character a bit upset that their friend is marrying the moon, and "Graceless Creatures", by Shaun Cammack, is pure horror, about an exhibit of what seem sirens, which can be visited by people with headphones so they won't hear the song. Dark and effectively ugly. And Marie Vibbert's "The Summer Kids and the Gemini" has Hannah ready to go to college making one last trip to the amusement park (Cedar Point, in Sandusky, Ohio), only to meet some intriguing young people who spirit her away, to what turns out to be life of endless literal "amusement", and the rides can trasnport one through time to different parks in different eras. Vibbert sharply interrogates the real consequences of such an existence, and Hannah is smart enough to resist it -- even realizing that her mother had once met the same kids and regretted not going off with them.

Those are all fine stories -- Vibbert's being the best, I think -- but the prize story is "The Path to Pembroke", by L. H. Adams. It's set in North Carolina in a climate-ruined future, with serial outbreaks of different plagues a prime risk. Quint is a young man living among a small group of people trying to survive in the woods -- but always facing the risk of wanderers who might carry a new disease. When one such group comes by, Quint is delegated to walk to the Pembroke Biological Research Station, to warn them of a potential new disease and perhaps get some medicine. Quint's trip is terrifying -- he has gotten sick himself, and he is chased by a group of what seem a sort of zombies, and the weather is harsh. The narrative is a powerfully tense story, basically a chase. That's nice enough but nothing special, but the story is elevated to another level by the narrator itself -- at first seeming just an authorial device, allowing us to follow Quint and also learning something of his and his family's past -- but there is a kicker of a sting in the story's tail, combined with some neat and scary revelations of the nature of one of the diseases threatening people in this future.

The next two stories were recommended to me by Will Waller, and I thank him for the pointer. The first is from the May-June issue of Uncanny, the multiple Hugo-winning online magazine edited by Lynne and Michael Damian Thomas. 

One common trick of fantasy stories is to use the fantastical element as a very literal, reified, metaphor for the real life problems of the characters. I sometimes find this too artificial, too much a mere trick, and even unnecessary. But done well it can be very effective, and I though this strategy worked brilliantly in Anjali Sachdeva's "Vivisection". Eleanor has learned to hide vulnerable parts of her body from her partner Severine. Her heart is in the kitchen, her liver in a closet, and so on. We quickly realize that Severine is a pretty awful woman -- powerful, attractive, and also abusive and a cheater. And Eleanor copes -- by hiding parts of herself. And by nurturing a deer -- a hart -- from a fawn to adulthood -- not a pet, but a sort of a near friend by now. 

The story sets up the situation and lets it play out -- Eleanor's increasing desperation in trying both to please her lover and not to be hurt by her, Severine's inevitable discovery of Eleanor's hidden body parts, the eventual crisis. This is a story that could have been told straight, with no fantastical elements -- but the literalized metaphor in this case elevates it, makes every step more powerful. I really enjoyed this.

Now to GigaNotoSaurus, a webzine that has been publishing roughly a story a month since late 2010, when Ann Leckie founded it. The current editor is LaShawn M. Wanak. GigaNotoSaurus tries to publish longer stories -- their stated length is between 5000 and 25000 words. Sage Tyrtle's story "The Starter Family", from June, is about 10,000 words long. It really excited me, as it presents a powerfully affecting (and scary, and creepy) idea that I don't think I've ever seen before. It did remind me vaguely of Ian R. MacLeod's excellent 1992 story "Grownups". 

Charles narrates the story, beginning as he is eleven years old. His school is all boys, and they don't know anything about girls, except for their mothers. At turning eleven, they take the oath never to reveal the truths they will learn about boys and girls, men and women, and Starter Families. Charles becomes an adult, and is allowed to choose his Starter Wife, and they are happy together. Soon they choose a Starter Baby, whom they love. But some ominous currents are churning. Charles knows what awaits them in the future -- and he finds he can't deal with it.

This story is both really wrenching in presenting its central dilemma, and intriguing in the way it satirizes '50s-style families, conformity in general, the tendency to juvenilize women and straitjacket men. It really packs a punch, and it does not pull that punch at the conclusion.