Essential Short Fiction
Sf Signal has an interesting discussion going on.
Once again, the gaps in my own reading are extensive.
Short Fiction Review #29: Realms of Fantasy June 2010
While rumors of its demise appear to be greatly exaggerated, I thought I should perhaps not wait too long to review Realms of Fantasy for this month. Just in case.
The proverbial “worth the price of the issue” story is “The Hearts of Men” by T.L. Morganfield, who seems to specialize in a subgenre of her own devising, Aztec mythology. I reviewed a previous story of hers, “The Place that Makes You Happiest,” that appeared in the final issue of Paradox, which postulates that colonizing Spain had not destroyed the Aztec culture and comes to predominate modern society in the Americas. This time around, Morganfield transposes Aztec notions of the role of the gods and blood sacrifice (which Joseph Campbell devotees will note shares common themes with the central conceit of Christianity) into the wild, wild West to ask the equally archetypical question of “Who are you, and why are you here?”
“You’re really him, aren’t you?” the boy asked, shuffling a bit closer.
“Who?” I asked
“Huitzilopochtli”
I considered a moment before answering. “Maybe.” I really didn’t know who I was; I wore six-shooters at my hips and my battered felt hat smelled of sweat and rot, but when I checked it for a name, I didn’t find one.”
p.43
Morganfield suggests that, unlike the Greek conception of inevitable and immutable destiny, things can sometimes change for the better, even for the gods, who sometimes are as clueless as the rest of us. You just have to have heart (a joke you won’t get unless you read the story, which I recommend).
Summer Reading
Right now, I’m about a quarter of the way into Robert V.S. Redick’s The Ruling Sea, the sequel (second of a planned four book sequence) to The Red Wolf Conspiracy. I’m reading this in part for an SF Site review, where I previously took a look at the first volume. My interest in Redick stemmed from seeing him at the 2009 Virginia Festival of the Book, held annually in my home base of Charlottesville. To quote myself,
I was struck by how intense Redick was, how much he cared about his characters and the world he created and how eager he was to share it (and how he struggled to cover as much as he could within the constraints of his allotted time). He didn’t strike me as a “Tolkien by the numbers” kind of guy. So I was mainly intrigued by his personality to read his book.
BlackGate fans should probably put it on their summer reading lists, even if they aren’t reviewing it. Things I’m looking forward to reading this summer that I’m not reviewing include:
- The Magicians by Lev Grossman
- Horns by Joe Hill
- Angelology by Danielle Trussoni
- Bright Dark Madonna by Elizabeth Cunningham
- The Many Deaths of the Firefly Brothers by Thomas Mullen
Of course, that’s just the tip of my tottering to-be-read pile. But I’m optimistic that I’ll manage to make a dent in it.
Short Fiction Review # 28: Dark Faith
[Hell] doesn’t exist, no more so than the entities that are called Satan and the Devil. They’re all…storybook constructs…Know this: there is no such thing as a ‘cosmic evil.’ Evil is a human matter, fashioned by ignorance, brutality, addiction, emotional trauma—the list is endless. The cosmos doesn’t feel anything, it is just a space, it doesn’t care about either good or evil, it is simply, like Heaven, indifferent.
“For My Next Trick I’ll Need a Volunteer” by Gary A. Braunbeck
p. 275, 285
That pretty much sums up my personal view of a universe indifferent to ongoing human folly. That said, I’m fascinated by the notion of faith and its ethical implications, so a short story collection entitled Dark Faith co-edited by Maurice Broaddus and Jerry Gordon naturally got my attention. People rely on faith to provide an orderly framework to their lives, to infuse meaning to their existence. What these stories (as well as several poems) share is a consideration of what happens when the assumptions that underpin faith unravel. For the most part, the results are not good
The opening story, “Ghosts of New York” by Jennifer Pelland, considers the afterlife of those who made the horrific choice to jump from the Twin Towers rather than remain in a burning buidling about to collapse. The whole subgenre of 9/11 fiction is tricky, given our collective memory of something so frighteningly incomprehensible that’s been trivialized over time with the endlessly surreal replaying loop of the imploding skyscrapers, but Pelland’s take here is vividly disturbing in suggesting that memorializing the dead can make matters worse.
Poets and sages like to say that there is clarity in certain death. That a calm resignation settles over the nearly deceased, and they embrace the inevitability of the end of life with dignity and grace.
But there was no clarity for her, no calmness, no life flashing before her eyes in a montage of joy and regrets. There was just pure animal terror, screams torn from her throat as she plummeted toward the ground in the longest ten seconds of her life.
And then there was an explosion of pain.
p.2
Short Fiction Roundup: Coming Soon
A new online science fiction magazine
, coming soon to a monitor near you. Looks promising.
Short Fiction Review #27: Conjunctions 52
The Spring 2009 issue of Conjunctions (yeah, I know, my reading is way behind) edited by Bradford Morrow and Brian Evenson, the twice yearly literary magazine published by Bard College, is a follow-up to its New Wave Fabulists issue of about eight years ago. This time around there’s less effort expended in attempting to define a “new” subgenre. Instead, there’s a simple page-and-a-half introduction and a title, Betwixt the Between: Impossible Realism, that I find more concisely descriptive of this type of fiction than the extensive critical commentary contained in its predecessor. Alas, I found the fiction selections overall less compelling than when the earlier volume was trying to prove something.
Part of the reason I didn’t connect with some of these stories may be the underlying premise of the objective here. I don’t have a problem with the premise. I just don’t think it was fulfilled. According to the editors,
Betwixt the Between investigates ways in which, on the one hand, works of fiction treat the impossible as if it were the solid groundwork of the real or, on the other hand how the ineffable can sometimes flash lightning-quick through the realms of the real, leaving everything the same and yet unaccountably changed. Worlds and concomitant models of logic are offered here that reveal something about our daily existence and yet turn away from it to forge disjointed realities that strike the reader simultaneously as familiar and anything but.
p. 7
I get that. But a number of these tales don’t strike me as weird for the purpose of explicating the wondrous underpinning of human existence that otherwise seems mundane, they strike me as weird just for the sake of being weird.
Short Fiction Roundup: Bull Spec
There’s a new magazine devoted to speculative fiction with the unfortunate name of Bull Spec, which I hope for the sake of the editorial team does not become known as “BS” for short. I haven’t read any of the contents, though you can get a pdf version (there is a print edition as well) Radiohead-fashion, i.e., pay what you want. Fiction by C.S. Fuqua, Peter Wood, Natania Barron, Michael Jasper, with a serial graphic story by Mike Gallagher.
Its stated quarterly mission in exploring new fiction is: “Bring the best of speculative fiction with a focus on Durham-area authors and stories to a wide audience for shared discussion.” One critical comment: a particularly ugly website that looks like something coded in 1999.
Short Fiction Roundup: WLT
World Literature Today (WLT), a publication of the University of Oklahoma, has an issue devoted to “International Science Fiction,” though a cursory review of the contributing authors makes it seem that “international” has a mostly eurocentric slant. In any event, you can read Kij Johnson’s story, “26 Monkeys, Also the Abyss,” as well as various non fiction pieces and a poem that have been posted on line.
Short Fiction Roundup: Serialization
Return with us now to those thrilling days of yesterday, when publishers employed serials as a way to keep reader interest in wondering what happens next. Apex is presenting a 20 part serial of “Jesus and the Eightfold Path” by Lavie Tidhar. You can start reading here.
On Reviewing
Justina Robson’s review of Greer Gilman’s Cloud & Ashes in Strange Horizons struck a number of resonating chords for me. For one, her ambiguous feelings about reviewing echo my own. It’s not only wondering if you’re getting it right, it’s how one offhand sentence can be taken to mean something entirely more than what you intended. I, too, had my problems with Bold as Love (which you can read about here and here and here).
I also share with Robson that Gilman is undoubtedly an interesting and possibly profound writer, but it’s much too much work to appreciate it (“This brings us to the real doorstop of the collection, both in terms of page count and prose density. “A Crowd of Bone” by Greer Gillman invokes Celtic myth concerning…this is the longest story here; it is also the hardest to read… English majors who’ve ploughed through Beowulf in the original Old English may find the language fascinating. This English major found it tedious, and at one point just stopped reading it and went on to the next story. I did eventually go back to finish it, but still considered it rough going”).
Finally, I too struggle with balancing mixed feelings about books I actually like, or should like more, at certain levels, as, for instance, my review of Robson’s latest novel.