Sunday Shorts: Two by Dane Kuttler

I love short fiction, and Sunday Shorts is the feature where I get to blog about it. I’ve considered promising to review a short story every day, but that’s a lot of pressure. And while no one will fault me if I miss days, I’ll feel guilty, which will lead to not posting at all. So better to stick to a weekly post highlighting a couple/three stories, as I’ve done in the past.

TWO BY DANE KUTTLER

Dane Kuttler is a wonderful poet (https://www.danepoetry.com/about.html), who has also had two science fiction short stories published in the past year in the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, edited by Sheree Renee Thomas. The two stories are quite different in tone and topic but are equally engaging.

“The Interspatial Accessibility Compact’s Guidelines for Cross-Cultural Engagement” (Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Winter, 2024)

On a multi-species space station where sound carries very well and certain species have a harder time communicating, a florist helps an Earthman express his affection for a coworker is from a sound-sensitive species. This far-future, outer-space story is so sweet, so endearing, so romantic and so recognizable in the awkwardness on the part of all three of the main characters. It’s not easy expressing your affection for someone who essentially speaks a different language, with completely distinct cultural landmarks and social cues. It’s also not easy being the one trying to help two people who clearly care for each other but who aren’t navigating how to communicate with each other. I’ve been in both positions and felt all of the awkwardness. But also felt all of the happily-ever-after (or at least, the happy for now). In other hands, the drama of the situation might have been drawn out into a longer piece with more roadblocks for the protagonists, but Kuttler keeps the story to a tight, fast-moving but still emotionally investing seven pages.

“Off the Map” (Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Jan-Feb 2023)

Ava is in danger of losing her children to the system after a second “neglect” infraction that any rational person would consider unwarranted. Then she receives an offer to relocate to a new town in Florida under the auspices of Better Days, an organization that will give her full-time work, a home, a school that works with students’ learning disabilities and alternative learning styles, and access to therapy and guidance counselors. But is it all too good to be true, especially in a post-climate change, high scarcity of resources world? This story is an incisive and biting look at corporate involvement in social issues, and how the most vulnerable are mistreated and used to further other ends. I’ve read this one multiple times since it was published a year ago, and each time I reread it the injustice and abuse the characters experience (both the abuse they know of, and the stuff they are unaware of) hits hard.

Book Review: PERILOUS TIMES

TITLE: Perilous Times

AUTHOR: Thomas D. Lee

485 pages, Ballantine Books, ISBN 9780593499016 (hardcover; also e-book and audiobook)

MY RATING:  4 stars out of 5

Perilous Times by Thomas D. Lee blends Arthurian tropes with a near-future, post-climate change dystopia which asks, among other ideas, how bad things need to become before King Arthur returns as prophesied. The “once and future king,” said to be destined to return in the time of England’s greatest peril, has yet to reappear – despite two world wars and multiple other conflicts that surely could have benefitted from Arthur’s strength and expertise. Along the way, the novel also investigates the nature of heroism, the ways in which doing the right thing sometimes leads to the wrong result, and how hard it is to alter our own ingrained beliefs and sense of self-worth.

Lee tweaks the “Arthur will return” trope by giving us a version of our world in which it is not Arthur but his core knights, ensorcelled by Merlin, who secretly return when England is in peril. Kay, Lancelot, Galehaut, and others find themselves occasionally revived long enough to do what needs doing to preserve the realm. This time, Kay and Lancelot, who have a not-pleasant history, find themselves on opposite sides of a battle between a group of environmentalists (and other revolutionaries) and the oil barons and oligarchs who control a collapsing political state and whose policies have resulted in a flooded, impoverished, crippled “United Kingdom.” Equally important to the narrative are Miriam, the idealistic but insecure environmentalist Kay rescues from death when he first awakens; Regan, an older friend of Miriam with secrets of her own; and Lancelot’s also-immortal government spymaster Marlowe (yes, that Marlowe).

Into the already near-apocalyptic world the characters inhabit (Lee’s descriptions of flooded towns, disease- and prejudice-plagued refugee camps, and massive oil rigs are viscerally palpable) comes magic that may save the world or may doom it. The magic is as much of a threat as the changed climate is, depending on who ends up wielding it. At the heart of many Arthurian retellings is the idea of “Might for Right” (as opposed to “might makes right”) and Lee plays with that concept throughout the book, with characters debating the proper use, if any, of force to solve problems. The various POV characters allow for a nuanced discussion in the context of many of our current societal problems – not just climate change, but white supremacy, xenophobia, misogyny, and more.

Lee also gives us a more diverse cast than traditional Arthurian retellings (a trend I’ve noticed the past handful of years and for which I’m happy): Miriam is a woman of color; her peers include an older woman, a transgender character, and a lesbian couple; Kay, Arthur’s adoptive brother, is a man of color with pagan beliefs; Lancelot is homosexual (and yes, Lee does give us an in-flashback tweak to the standard Camelot love-triangle). This allows the author to explore the idea of who gets to be a “hero” and how that might be perceived by less open-minded people. Through Kay and Lancelot, the author also gets to investigate how we process grief and grudges and what both might look like for the eternally reincarnated.

Arthurian purists, who want the king and his knights portrayed only in the noblest of lights, may want to pass this one up because the author does not shy away from showing the characters’ flaws. But for those like me who enjoy retellings in which “infallible” legends are revealed as having been fallible/human should pick this up, as should those who like their fantasy creatures mixed with modern real-world concerns.

I received an advance reading copy of this book for free from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review. Perilous Times published on May 23, 2023.

Book Review: THE HITHERTO SECRET EXPERIMENTS OF MARIE CURIE

TITLE: The Hitherto Secret Experiments of Marie Curie

EDITORS: Bryan Thomas Schmidt and Henry Herz

350 pages, Blackstone Publishing, ISBN 9781665047036 (hardcover, also e-book and audio)

MY RATING:  5 stars out of 5

SHORT REVIEW: An excellent collection of stories that consider what might have happened had Marya Skłodowska (who grew up to be Marie Curie) used her scientific knowledge to combat threats to her family and friends. While most of the stories feature a supernatural threat, a few are more standard mysteries. The tales are grounded in the truths of Marya’s childhood: the early deaths of her mother and elder sister, the Russian occupation of Warsaw, and the lack of public education for girls. Many of the stories are followed by author’s notes explaining the science Marya uses to solve problems and help her friends, which I hope will add to the editors’ intent of inspiring children, especially girls, to go into STEM fields.

LONGER REVIEW: The Hitherto Secret Experiments of Marie Curie posits a world in which the teenage Marie Curie, née Skłodowska, uses her scientific knowledge to protect family and friends from threats ranging from murderers to the supernatural. While a few of the stories stray from the concept (either by not including a science-based solution to the problem, or by having the title character do something downright villainous), most fit the bill.

Marya Skłodowska grew up in Warsaw, which was then under Russian dominion. Girls were only allowed to attend school to a certain age, and Poles were treated by the Russians as second-class citizens in their own city. When laboratory instruction in the sciences was removed from the curricula for Polish students, Marya and some of her peers attended a “flying university” that changed locations to avoid Russian detection. Most of the stories take place during the time Marya and her friends were students at a regular “gymnasia” (school) for Polish girls, but a few take place during the “flying university” years, and at least one during the year Marya spent living with relatives in the Polish countryside. Only one (“The Beast” by Stacia Deutsch) features an adult Marie Curie and is a neat twist on the typical time-travel story.

The volume opens with “Uncrowned Kings” by Seanan McGuire, who herself knows more than just a little bit about using hard science in science fiction and horror. After the death of her eldest sister by typhus, Marya stops believing in God and starts trusting in science. When something that seems like typhus rears its ugly head six years later but only affecting children and teens including another of her sisters, Marya follows the evidence to find the true source of this latest scourge: a mythical rat-king in the sewers. McGuire’s tale sets the tone of the book perfectly: showcasing Marya’s determination to not let others fall victim to preventable disease, her curiosity about the scientific underpinnings of the universe, her devotion to family and friends, all ensconced in a story that includes some fantastical element. “The Cold White Ones” by Susanne L. Lambdin also uses the return of typhus to Warsaw as a launching point but with a different supernatural problem at the core.

Marya’s grief and anger over the untimely deaths of her mother and eldest sister, Zofia, are palpable in many of the stories, not just McGuire’s. Sometimes the emotions spur the action, sometimes the action helps Marya process her grief – I’m thinking particularly here of Alethea Kontis’ beautiful “Marya’s Monster,” in which Marya returns from a St. Andrew’s Day birthday party to encounter a wolf-like monster under her bed. I don’t want to say too much more about how the story progresses, except that it is a stunning look at how we process grief and loss.

Other favorites in the anthology that feature a supernatural menace of some sort as Mylo Cabria’s “Three Ravens,” Scott Sigler’s “A Glow in the Dark,” and Jonathan Maberry’s “The Night Flyers,” which closes on the book on as solid a note as McGuire’s story opened it, focusing as it does on the other bane of Marya’s existence: the Russian overlords controlling Warsaw. The story is especially affecting as in 2023 we watch Russia’s continued war on Ukraine.

Not every story features a supernatural element. In “The Magic of Science,” co-editor Bryan Thomas Schmidt teams with author G.P. Charles to give us a wonderful “cozy mystery:” a girl in Marya’s dorm wakes up to discover her skin has turned blue. Later that day, a cook at the school dies. Supernatural explanations are put forward by her fellow students, but Marya is sure there is a rational scientific explanation. There is, and the path to it is well-developed, a very “fair play” kind of mystery. Steve Pantazis’ “The Prize” also seems to lack, or at least downplays, a supernatural element, pitting Marya and a rival classmate against the impending death of the classmate’s father by metal poisoning.

Many of the stories are followed with an explanation of the science that underpins the story, which I think enhances the book’s ability to interest young readers in the sciences and encourage them, especially young girls, to pursue STEM studies.

I received an electronic advance review copy of this book for free from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review. The Hitherto Secret Experiments of Marie Curie was published on April 11, 2023.

Book Review: FEED THEM SILENCE

TITLE: Feed Them Silence

AUTHOR: Lee Mandelo

112 pages, Tordotcom Publishing, ISBN 9781250824509 (hardcover; also, e-book and audio)

MY RATING:  4 stars out of 5

SHORT REVIEW: In Feed Them Silence, Lee Mandelo’s penchant for characters searching for answers to questions that get to the heart of who they are combines with their felicity with sensory details that immerse the reader in the character’s head and world to create a work of lush, sometimes gut-punching, beauty that questions where the line is between ethical and abusive research practices involving animals who can’t give consent and ruminates on human and animals’ shared need to belong. Feed Them Silence is a moving and effective look at the ways in which we seek connection and how our obsessions lead as much to heartbreak as to breakthroughs. At 112 pages, it’s a fast read but not a forgettable one.

LONGER REVIEW: Lee Mandelo’s new release, Feed Them Silence, is in concept and execution about as far as one can get from their previous book Summer Sons: novella vs. novel, science fiction rather than supernatural horror, cold labs and winter forests in place of hot Southern gothic buildings and summer cemeteries. What the works share is lead characters determined to find answers to questions that get to the heart of who they are, and Mandelo’s felicity with sensory details that immerse the reader in the character’s head and world.

Doctor Sean Kell-Luddon’s lifelong love of wolves has led to her current research project: using a surgically inserted neurological interface to transmit the thoughts and emotions of one of the world’s last free-roaming wild wolves to Sean’s own brain. (At the same time, her research team collects the raw data of the transmission for possible future use by the folks funding the research project.) Mandelo does a wonderful job contrasting Sean’s inner life when connected to her wolf Kate, especially the sense of belonging and emotional connection, with her outer life, which is clearly fraying even before the novella begins (especially her marriage, but her relationship to her team as well). Sean is searching not only for an understanding of, and a way to help, her nearly-extinct favorite species but also for a deeper connection psychologically to replace the one she’s losing in the physical world.

Scientists often speak of the dangers of anthropomorphizing – assigning human thoughts and characteristics to – animals (wild or domesticated) whose brains do not function the way ours do. Sean’s rational intention to avoid it falters the longer and more often she is directly connected to Kate via the interface. Transcribing what she gleans into human terms and being unable to separate her personal life from her project sets up the final conflict of the book beautifully.

If I have one complaint about the book, it’s that the narrow Sean-centric POV, which gives us such amazing insight into Sean’s intentions, history, and altering mental state, does not allow us to get to know some of the other characters as well as I would have liked, in particular Sean’s wife, Riya. Riya does play an important role in the story, she’s not just a prop to hang Sean’s faults on, so I would like to have seen some of the events of the book from her perspective. That’s the joy and the sting of novellas, though. I an avowed fan of the format, but the tight focus that makes novellas so enjoyable sometimes leaves us wanting the deeper insight a longer work might provide. That being said, the supporting cast of Feed Them Silence is all well-drawn and distinct. The world-building surrounding Sean, Riya, the team, and Kate is perfectly evoked: with just a few sentences, we know we are in a near-future where climate change has wreaked havoc on wild animal populations as resources dwindle. Also, a world where corporate interests are willing to fund cutting-edge research projects that academia is hesitant to touch – drawing attention to how hard it is to delineate that line where ethical research turns abusive and teasing questions of intent versus execution when it comes to the uses to which the research results are put.

Through it all, Mandelo fills the book with lush, sometimes gut-punching, sensory details, especially but not only when Sean is connected to Kate. I became completely immersed in descriptions of the cold winter forest, the aches and pains of being undernourished, the smells of fellow pack members, the taste of blood and raw meat as the pack takes down a rare bit of prey. I felt like I was truly there. There’s also a very affecting scene between Sean and her Riya that trades on the same level of sensory detail.

Feed Them Silence is a moving and effective look at the ways in which we seek connection and how our obsessions lead as much to heartbreak as to breakthroughs. At 112 pages, it’s a fast read but not a forgettable one.

I received an advance reading copy of this book for free from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review. Feed Them Silence released on March 14, 2023.

So Who Publishes Novellas These Days?

When genre readers think of novellas, they tend to think of either TorDotCom, who release a steady stream of awards-nominated novellas every year (including this week’s release Feed Them Silence by Lee Mandelo, which I’ll be reviewing later today, and next week’s The Lies of the Ajungo by Moses Ose Utomi), or of magazines like Asimov’s, AnalogSF, and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction which have regularly featured novelettes and novellas in their monthly content over their decades of publication.

But there are plenty of other magazines and small press publishers bringing out novellas every year in a variety of genres, and I’d like to mention some of them. This is far from a complete list, and I encourage readers to mention any I don’t in the comments!

Neon Hemlock Press puts out novellas in the horror/SF/fantasy genres, with a focus on LGBTQIA+ creators and stories. They are currently in the last days of their annual novella crowdfunding event, where you can back (a.k.a. preorder) their 2023 slate in print and/or e-book formats. Go check them out before the crowdfunding effort ends on Thursday, March 16th at 4pm.

Speaking of queer-focused publishers: several items in the catalogs of both Lethe Press (including Octavia Cade’s The Stone Weta) and Rebel Satori Press are novella-length, spanning all the genres of speculative fiction and moving into historical, romance and mimetic fiction as well.

Looking novel-length queer romance? Check out Bold Stroke Books. I’m a particular fan of ‘Nathan Burgoine’s “Little Village” novella series, and I’ve been meaning to check out some of their lesbian romance novella collections.

Stelliform Press’s novellas focus on the on-going climate emergency and intersectional views of environmental justice, and range in genre from horror (The House of Drought by Dennis Mombauer) to fantastic science fiction (Weird Fishes by Rae Mariz), and every point in between. Their latest, Another Life by Sarena Ulibarri, comes out May 25th.

If the classics and mimetic fiction are more your thing, look no further than Melville House Publishing. Their “Art of the Novella” collection reissues classic novellas, some in solo book form for the first time ever. They also have a “Contemporary Art of the Novella” series if you’re looking for modern mimetic works at novella length.

Aqueduct Press’ Conversation Pieces series brings feminist science fiction to the demanding reader. While not every volume in this long-running series is a novella (some are poetry or short story collections, others works of non-fiction), quite a few are. Recent releases include To The Woman in the Pink Hat by LaToya Jordan and Apollo Weeps by Xian Mao.

On the mystery side of things, The Mysterious Bookshop’s Bibliomysteries series are usually novelette length excursions into everything from noir to cozy mysteries.

And in addition to the magazines listed at the start of this post, I would be remiss in not mentioning Clarkesworld, which also regularly includes novellas in their pages.

Book Review: SOMEONE IN TIME

TITLE: Someone in Time: Tales of Time-Crossed Romance

EDITOR: Jonathan Strahan

330 pages, Rebellion Publishing, ISBN 9781786185099 (softcover, also available in audiobook, e-book)

DESCRIPTION: (from inside front cover): Even time travel can’t unravel love.

Time-travel is a way for writers to play with history and imagine different futures – for better, or worse.

When romance is thrown into the mix, time-travel becomes a passionate tool, or heart-breaking weapon. A time agent in the 22nd century puts their whole mission at risk when they fall in love with the wrong person. No matter which part of history a man visits, he cannot escape his ex. A woman is desperately in love with the time-space continuum, but it doesn’t love her back. As time passes and falls apart, a time-traveler must say goodbye to their soulmate.

With stories from best-selling and award-winning authors such as Seanan McGuire, Alix E. Harrow and Nina Allan, this anthology gives a taste for the rich treasure trove of stories we can imagine with love, loss and reunion across time and space. 

MY RATING: 5 out of 5 stars

MY THOUGHTS: In lesser hands, an anthology of romantic time-travel stories could have been very one-note and predictable. Thankfully, editor Jonathan Strahan is not “lesser hands.” Someone In Time: Tales of Time-Crossed Romance fully embraces diversity: not just in the types of romantic couples featured but also in the types of time-travel, points of view, and genres.

Eight of the sixteen stories feature LGBTQIA+ characters in a variety of relationship configurations (possibly 9; in one story I’m unsure of the narrator’s gender identity which is probably me not noticing context clues). Some of these queer protagonists are just discovering their sexual orientation, some have been out for years; some of the relationships are new and fraught with “will they or won’t they” tension while some are long-term relationships facing new challenges. Of course, the same is true for the eight stories in the anthology that focus on straight characters, but I still find it noteworthy when stories featuring LGBTQIA+ protagonists in anthologies like this aren’t focused on the trauma of being queer but rather on the ups-and-downs of all romantic relationships. Not that these stories ignore the very real consequences of being queer in certain times and places; they just don’t make that the sole focus of the stories.

Time-travel is thought of as an SFnal sub-genre, usually involving a specific and iconic (or iconic-looking) device: a tricked-out car, a TARDIS, a time-bubble or -machine. And a number of these stories fit that description, with varying degrees of detail as to what the device looks like and the science behind it. But several of these stories move time-travel into the realm of fantasy: the time-travel is an inherent ability, or something accomplished through magic. Part of the fun of starting each new story was wondering how the time-travel itself would be expressed, and the variety helped keep things interesting.

The anthology starts strong right out of the gate with the one-two-three punch of Alix E. Harrow’s “Roadside Attraction,” Zen Cho’s “The Past Life Reconstruction Service,” and Seanan McGuire’s “First Aid.” All three feature LGBTQIA protagonists (one who only relaxes into his identity as the story progresses, one mourning a broken relationship, and one who is out) who meet their romantic partners through different methods of time-travel (a roadside attraction that no one seems to really understand, a mental stimulation device, and a time-bubble that malfunctions).

Sarah Gailey’s “I Remember Satellites” gives us time-travel as a method of making sure history stays on track, and the sacrifices some time-travelers must make to be sure it does. It felt of a piece with Theodora Goss’s “A Letter to Merlin,” in which time-travelers inhabit already-existing historical figures, essentially taking them over to be sure they do what they’re supposed to.

The fantasy side of time-travel is explored in Rowan Coleman’s sweet “Romance: Historical” (who can resist a romance across the decades set in a mysterious bookshop?) and Carrie Vaughn’s “Dead Poets” (which involves an ancient drinking vessel and two quite different historical poets).

Smack in the middle of the anthology, but thankfully not one right after the other, are a couple of truly heart-breaking stories that play with the nature of time-travel: Elizabeth Hand’s “Chronia,” in which the narrator explains to a lover how many times they have and have not met as chronal fluxes mess with their interpersonal timeline, and “Unabashed, or, Jackson, Whose Cowardice Tore a Hole in the Chronoverse” by Sam J. Miller, in which the narrator recounts all the ways in which he might have saved his new boyfriend from being killed had he not been so afraid of the question “walk me home?”.

Leave it to Catherynne M. Valente to craft a story around the ever-changing, gender-fluid, age-fluid personification of the Space-Time Continuum in “The Difference Between Love and Time,” which is both sweet and heart-breaking.

The exploitation of past resources by travelers from the future infuse Lavanya Lakshminarayan’s “Bergamot and Vetiver” and Ellen Klages’ “Time Gypsy” with an extra layer of late-stage capitalism topicality that enhances rather than overwhelms the romance at the heart of each story.

The anthology also includes stories by Jeffrey Ford (“The Golden Hour”), Nina Allen (“The Lichens”), Margo Lanagan (“The Place of All Souls”), and Sameem Siddiqui (“Timed Obsolescence”) that are equally as good as the stories I’ve already mentioned. In fact, I don’t think there’s a weak story in the bunch.

Someone in Time: Tales of Time-Crossed Romance will appeal to romance readers and speculative fiction readers alike.

I received an advance reading copy of this book for free from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review. Because of how delayed I am in posting this, Someone in Time is already available in print, e-book, and audio formats.

Book Review: AND THEN I WOKE UP

TITLE: And Then I Woke Up

AUTHOR: Malcolm Devlin

176 pages, TorDotCom Publishing, ISBN 9781250798077 (paperback, also available in e-book)

DESCRIPTION: (from the back cover): In a world reeling from an unusual plague, monsters lurk in the streets while terrified survivors arm themselves and roam the countryside in packs. Or perhaps something very different is happening. When a disease affects how reality is perceived, it’s hard to be certain of anything…

Spence is one of the “cured” living at the Ironside rehabilitation facility. Haunted by guilt, he refuses to face the changed world until a new inmate challenges him to help her find her old crew. But if he can’t tell the truth from the lies, how will he know if he has earned the redemption he dreams of? How will he know he hasn’t just made things worse?

MY RATING:  5 stars out of 5

MY THOUGHTS: I love a good unreliable narrator, and Spence, the narrator of And Then I Woke Up, absolutely fits that description. Of course, being unreliable isn’t really his fault: his world has been turned upside down twice thanks to the latest plague, and sometimes his understanding of events is a bit muddled between what really happened and what he thinks happened. Reliable or not, Spence’s voice is captivating, pulling the reader along as he jumps between his present (returned to Ironside, as we find out in the opening pages of the book), his recent past (time spent outside the facility locating a fellow inmate’s plague-victim “crew”), and his earlier life (as a member of a different plague-victim “crew”). It’s not often I pronounce that a book is “unputdownable.” As much as I love novellas, I usually end up taking at least two sittings to read one of this length. But And Then I Woke Up turned out to be “unputdownable” for me, and I suspect it will also for many of my friends who love horror.

While I enjoy apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction that takes time to explain the scientific or political underpinnings of whatever plague/crisis the world is facing, I really appreciated that author Malcolm Devlin did not spend any time on that aspect of world-building here. The nature of the plague, exactly how it works, is as unclear to the reader as it is to the character narrating the story. Spence is not a scientist, a reporter, a politician: he’s an average guy who has held down a number of jobs and is working as a dishwasher when the plague breaks loose. He doesn’t understand epidemiology; he just understands that suddenly some people are zombies, and some people aren’t, and that he needs to do whatever he needs to do to survive this zombie apocalypse.

Except that, as the book description above points out, it’s not actually the zombie apocalypse, but rather a distortion in how people perceive reality. This is a horror novel that is more-than-topical, taking on the rise of “false news” and the societal effect of the mindset that everyone’s opinion is as valid, if not more valid, than actual fact. Throughout the novella, Devlin touches on how just a few “true believers” can sway the perceptions of “followers” as well as how tenuous “deprogramming” efforts can be even when someone voluntarily leaves the cult (or in this case, the “crew”) when they start to question the beliefs they’re following.

While there is plenty of bloodshed and death in the book, it is not described in excruciating detail. This is not gross-out horror; it’s more psychological, as both the reader and Spence come to terms with the things he and others have done while subject to the plague. Concentrating on the psychological aspect, on Spence’s unsurety about certain events and absolutely certainty of others (along with hints that what he’s certain about may not be what actually happened), gives the book the narrative drive that kept me engaged from first page to last.

Absolutely recommended for folks who want their horror to be thought-provoking along with being disturbing and bloody.

I received an advance reading copy of this book for free from TorDotCom Publishing via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

SUNDAY SHORTS: Three From The Year's Best African Speculative Fiction 2021

I love short fiction, and Sunday Shorts is the feature where I get to blog about it. I’ve considered promising to review a short story every day, but that’s a lot of pressure. And while no one will fault me if I miss days, I’ll feel guilty, which will lead to not posting at all. So better to stick to a weekly post highlighting a couple/three stories, as I’ve done in the past.

2021 saw the release of what will hopefully be many volumes to come of The Year’s Best African Speculative Fiction, edited by Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki. The inaugural volume includes stories by twenty-five authors from across the breadth of the African diaspora. The stories are, as one would expect, all top-notch. Here are my thoughts on just a few:

“Egoli” by T.L. Huchu features an old village woman on a sometimes precarious pre-sunrise walk, reminiscing about how much technology has changed since she was a little girl, when it was unusual for a village to have even a wireless radio to listen to news. Now there are smart phones and people not only leaving village life behind but leaving the entire planet behind. She’s out and about because her grandson has told her to watch the southern sky around dawn to see something remarkable. I don’t want to spoil what that something is or why it matters, but it is tied up in what makes the story at turns wistful, nostalgic, lonely, and almost elegiac. I’ve commented many times in the past about how I’m usually not a fan of “second person” narrative, where “you” are the character (I find it creepy most of the time), but Huchu is such a deft touch with emotional and sensory elements that I found myself invested in the story and not creeped out at all.

Pemi Aguda’s “Things Boys Do” focuses on three quite different men about to become fathers, and the fear and loss they experience upon the arrival of their sons. Wives get sick, die, or just leave; friends and family drift away; jobs are lost. It turns out the three men have a common past although they have not seen or thought of each other in years, and that past is haunting them. The story is obviously horror from the start, but the creepiness of the small details bio-accumulates – you notice them at first but they don’t seem so “horrific” until they start to add up. Aguda’s interspersing of each man’s travails in the present with a slow reveal of their shared past is perfectly paced. Even if you figure out early on where the story is going (and I don’t think I’ve spoiled anything big in this description), the path is twisty and will leave you thinking.

In “The Thought Box” by Tlotlo Tsamaase, a woman in an emotionally abusive relationship with a man who takes advantage of her begins to learn the depths of his control and infidelity after he brings home a “thought box” so that they can review each others’ thoughts and thus have “total trust” in each other. The truth of her situation is so much worse than she, or the reader, initially suspects. The SFnal element (a box that records and plays back thoughts) is just the wedge into what is really a psychological horror story. Tsamaaase slowly moves the main character from being concerned she’s just paranoid and overworked to the recognition she’s been gaslit, and it is masterfully done; I believed every turn in the main character’s emotional state. This is one of those stories where the final twist is a brutal gut-punch that the author has absolutely earned.

Book Review: THE PAST IS RED

TITLE: The Past is Red

AUTHOR: Catherynne M. Valente

160 pages, TorDotCom Publishing, ISBN 9781250301130 (hardcover, also in e-book and audio)

DESCRIPTION: (from the Goodreads page): The future is blue. Endless blue...except for a few small places that float across the hot, drowned world left behind by long-gone fossil fuel-guzzlers. One of those patches is a magical place called Garbagetown.

Tetley Abednego is the most beloved girl in Garbagetown, but she's the only one who knows it. She's the only one who knows a lot of things: that Garbagetown is the most wonderful place in the world, that it's full of hope, that you can love someone and 66% hate them all at the same time.

But Earth is a terrible mess, hope is a fragile thing, and a lot of people are very angry with her. Then Tetley discovers a new friend, a terrible secret, and more to her world than she ever expected.

MY RATING: 4 out of 5 stars

MY THOUGHTS: In The Past is Red, Catherynne M. Valente’s novella-length expansion of her short story “The Future is Blue,” Tetley Abednego navigates life as the most hated girl (and later, woman) in Garbagetown with a combination of complacency and curiosity. Tetley’s first-person narration is engaging, reminding me of the way older people who are not accustomed to visitors will enthusiastically share their life story. Words and scenes come out in a rush of lush detail interspersed with moments of deep introspection or pain or longing for what has been lost.

Tetley does not waste time or energy on longing for what was lost in the collapse of civilization precipitated by the rising of ocean levels – she and her contemporaries call those who lived before the rising waters “fuckwits” and blame them what happened to the world. And yet, as the novel goes on, it becomes apparent that some things are ingrained in human nature and will never change. Regardless, there’s a certain amount of curiosity about life pre-flood evident in the details Tetley shares, such as when she discovers a long-lost award for “best wife.” She may not be able to mourn a world she never knew, having been born a generation or more after everything flooded, but she can certainly express interest in it while she describes the world she actually inhabits.

The fact that Tetley exists as a social outcast in her own world colors the way she describes it. She tells us several times that Garbagetown – the former Pacific Ocean floating garbage patch that has solidified enough that people can live on it – is the most beautiful place on the Earth. I can’t help but feel her outcast status infuses her opinion with a certain amount of nostalgia for something that never really was. The first arrivals on the patch sorted the trash to create districts (“Candle Town,” “Electric City,” “Aluminumopolis,” and so on) that have become somewhat rigid and codified and even judgmental of each other. Cycles of “haves and have-nots” repeat even in places where people have truly little.

The first half of the novella is comprised of the original short story, which I had never read, and introduces us to Tetley, her estranged family, her first love, and the society around her. We never get to see the event that turned her into the most hated girl in Garbagetown, but we do get to see the aftermath and her on-going punishment. Valente doesn’t spell out the worst of it, but plenty of violence is done unto Tetley throughout the first half of the book – violence she must accept humbly, and which someday could result in her death. It’s a tough dichotomy to get used to – Tetley’s clearly enthusiastic personality and the way she draws into herself when she gets visitors, not knowing what will happen and if this will be the time they kill her.

The second half of the novella is narrated from a later vantage point in Tetley’s life. Her enthusiasm for telling her story is still the same, but she’s learned more about the world outside of Garbagetown and has a new place to live. This expansion of what she (and therefore we) knows allows the story to breath and prevents it from becoming repetitive. It also allows a peak into Tetley’s dreams. Valente allows Tetley to mislead us a couple of times, describing what she wishes would have happened before telling us what really did. I don’t think this quite makes her an unreliable narrator, but it did make me question some of the narrative – which I think was the author’s intent. Tetley is still convinced that what she did, while devastating to her fellow citizens, was the right thing to do to save them from a worse fate. Nothing in the book directly contradicts this belief, but when Tetley is faced with making a similar choice will she decide the price she’s already paid is worth making people hate her all over again?

The Past is Red is more than just a look at the world post-climate-change. It’s a rumination on acceptance, complacency, curiosity, and the ways in which knowledge can be freeing or can be a burden.

I received an Advance Reading Copy from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. THE PAST IS RED will be published on July 20, 2021.

Book Review: SUN-DAUGHTERS, SEA-DAUGHTERS

TITLE: Sun-Daughters, Sea-Daughters

AUTHOR: Aimee Ogden

112 pages, TorDotCom Publishing, ISBN 9781250782120 (softcover)

DESCRIPTION: (from the back cover): Gene-edited human clans have scattered throughout the galaxy, adapting themselves to environments as severe as the desert and the sea. Atuale, the daughter of a Sea-Clan lord, sparked a war by choosing her land-dwelling love and rejecting her place among her people. Now her husband and his clan are dying of an incurable plague, and Atuale’s sole hope for finding a cure is to travel off-planet. The one person she can turn to for help is the black-market mercenary known as the World Witch—and Atuale’s former lover. Time, politics, bureaucracy, and her own conflicted desires stand between Atuale and the hope for her adopted clan.

Sun-Daughters, Sea-Daughters has all the wonder and romance of a classic sci-fi novel, with the timelessness of a beloved fairy tale.

MY RATING: 5 out of 5 stars

MY THOUGHTS: Aimee Ogden’s Sun-Daughters, Sea-Daughters may use The Little Mermaid as its base and starting point, transferring the action to a far-future interstellar setting, but I wouldn’t categorize this novella as a retelling of the fairy tale. Rather, I think it’s the sort of “what happened next” story that has always intrigued me (it’s not chance that of all the musicals based on fairy tales, Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s Into the Woods is my favorite, or that I list Bill Willingham’s comic series Fables and the first season of the television series Once Upon a Time as favorites as well). I quite enjoy stories that explore the “happy ever after” (or not-so-happy, as the case may be), and Ogden delivers the goods.

Rather than start with a straight retelling of The Little Mermaid and progressing linearly from there, Ogden dumps us right into the “no longer so happily ever after” described in the back cover copy: in the very first scene, Atuale (the “mermaid” of the story) leaves her husband’s sick-bed to seek the aid of her former “pillow-friend” Yanja, known more commonly as “the World-Witch:” a smuggler/dealer/scientist who years before created the gene modifications that allowed Atuale to leave her controlling father’s sub-sea kingdom. Hints about those events, about Atuale’s relationships with Yanja, with husband Saareval and his family, and with her estranged father are dropped throughout the story but don’t dominate it. There’s just enough for us to recognize the basics of the original fairy tale, to see how science replaces magic in the narrative, and to understand just how much things have changed for Atuale and Yanja.

And things have changed: the World-Witch is not physically the person Atuale knew and is no longer disposed to acquiesce to Atuale’s needs just for old times’ sake. And of course Atuale is no longer the same person she was when she first left for the surface world. Through dialogue and quiet moments, Ogden explores the question of whether two people who used to love each other but have been estranged for a long time can find their way back to some kind of mutual respect and peaceful co-existence. It’s a beautifully told arc woven around all of the other stumbling blocks the pair encounter, both on-planet and off, attempting to reach Atuale’s goal. I don’t want to spoil any of those stumbling blocks in this review. Suffice to say, they varied from the personal to the societal and none of them felt contrived or forced.

I also must compliment Ogden on how, as someone else put it, “casually queer” the novella is. Atuale and the World-Witch’s former relationship isn’t played for shock or as anything outside of the societal norm, nor are the physical changes in Yanja. It’s always nice to read stories about alien cultures that do not have the prejudices we have here on Earth in the present day.

Although Sun-Daughters, Sea-Daughters was written pre-pandemic, it came out during it, and it was hard not to see echoes (perhaps unintentional given the time) of it in how different the response to such a fast-spreading plague is from culture to culture across not just a planet but star-systems. This, and references to miscarriages as well as a bit of body horror, may make the novella a harder read for some folks.

In the end, Aimee Ogden delivers a fast-moving star-spanning adventure in which the lead characters discover/rediscover themselves during a quest to help others regardless of the personal repercussions, expanding on the questions of identity and belonging that are a part of any good retelling or expansion of The Little Mermaid.

I received an Advance Reading Copy from NetGalley/TorDotCom in exchange for an honest review, which is clearly being posted far later than anticipated. Sun-Daughters, Sea-Daughters was released in February of 2021.