Sunday Shorts: Three from Uncanny #41

I love short fiction, and Sunday Shorts is the feature where I get to blog about it. Posts will range from flash to novellas. At some point, I might delve into individual stories/episodes of anthology formats in other media, like television and comics, but for the time being, I’m sticking to prose in print and audio.

Today I’m taking a look at three stories from the chock-full-of-greatness Uncanny Magazine #41, their July/August 2021 issue, edited as always by Lynne M. Thomas and Michael Damian Thomas. Seriously, there’s a ton of great stuff in this (and every) issue of Uncanny. Go back their current Kickstarter to fund year 8 of the magazine.

“From the Archives of the Museum of Eerie Skins: An Account” by C.S.E. Cooney

Sometimes when reading a story narrated in first person, I find myself wondering to whom the narrator is speaking. C.S.E. Cooney neatly addresses the issue by positing this whole story as a transcript of an interview with Firi Kanaphar, former wolfcaster in the city of Doornwald, as she relates how the loss of her wolfskin resulted in a societal shift in the relationship between wolfcasters (and other shifters) and witches. This is a wonderful slow-burn story, told conversationally, that builds to a horrific climax where revenge is achieved but the narrator’s life has already been irrevocably changed. The loss of Firi’s wolf-skin is a potent metaphor for rape or dismemberment, and the treatment of wolfcasters by witches is an equally obvious metaphor for racial prejudice. The story also addresses power dynamics – the abuser’s ability to continue to harm the abused even from a distance – and the ability of art to foment social justice and social change when the structures that are supposed to do so fail. It’s a powerful story that I am sure will reveal more layers and inspire deeper thinking each time I re-read it. (Side note: fans of Cooney’s “The Witch in the Almond Tree” and “The Bone-Swans of Amandale” will notice some familiar names in cameo appearances as well as place names.)

“The Wishing Pool” by Tananarive Due

“The Wishing Pool” is about the power and costs of wishes, in the finest fairy tale tradition. Joy ventures out to her family’s remote cabin to check on her ailing father, who is not doing well since his wife’s passing. The sights and sounds remind Joy of a brief childhood friendship centered around a “wishing pool” located between their cabins, and how their few wishes came true but went wrong (as is expected in this kind of story). Joy is desperate for her father to be happy and healthy again – but is she desperate enough to risk wishing on the pool and savvy enough to craft the wish in such a way to avoid it going wrong? Due imbues the story with all of the modern frustrations of dealing with an ailing parent who will not seek out the medical attention they so clearly need: carving out time from regular life and work to travel a great distance to check in on them, the realization that their health has deteriorated far more than suspected (in this case, lung disease and cognitive/memory decline), shouldering the decision-making burden when other siblings fail to step up. All of this adds great depth to Joy as a character and to the memories that bring her to her ultimate decision. I also appreciated Due including what ‘Nathan Burgoine sometimes refers to “that slight nod to reality that makes some people uncomfortable.” In this case, it’s a mention of how the family came to have this remote cabin: built by her grandfather to “hide from lynch mobs roused by their envy that a negro businessman could afford a shiny new Ford Model T.” It’s a throw-away line, but a reminder of history and a moment that ties this story with fantastical elements to our reality.

“Immortal Coil” by Ellen Kushner

Students of drama have been as fascinated by what we don’t know about the life of William Shakespeare as what we do know of his work, and it’s always fun reading genre stories that investigate that life. I personally also tend to be a little obsessed with genre stories about writers that explore their relationship with craft, process, and legacy (see, for instance, my “Top Ten-ish Stephen King Books”). Ellen Kushner brings both of those interests together in “Immortal Coil,” which gives us a mid-career(ish) William Shakespeare seeing what seems to be the ghost of his deceased friend and fellow playwright Christopher Marlowe. The figure leads Will on a merry chase across town using book titles as clues to where to go next, and when they finally are face-to-face, the truth of the situation is laid out and Will is made an offer. Kushner beautifully addresses the question every creative person asks themselves eventually: is it preferable to walk away/retire/die at the height of your career or to stay in the game/live a longer life and watch your skills, and reputation, deteriorate? I won’t spoil Will’s choice, nor the delightful coda Kushner gives the story. But I will say that I wonder if, given the opportunity, I would make the same choice.

Review of AFTERMATH OF AN INDUSTRIAL ACCIDENT: STORIES

TITLE: Aftermath of an Industrial Accident: Stories

AUTHOR: Mike Allen

235 pages, Mythic Delirium Books, ISBN 9781732644021 (paperback)

DESCRIPTION: (from the back cover): A Korean War veteran must rely on wits, improvised weapons, and words from the dread Necronomicon to escape the lair of a deranged cult. A ghost cannot communicate how she died, no matter how desperately she tries, while an unconventional ghost hunter incurs the venomous wrath of the Queen of Night. Murderous conspiracies reveal themselves in online video clips, a saint blasphemes as a serial killer prays for mercy, and corrupt families in ancient kingdoms trade blood and souls for leverage over foes. Enduring nightmares for a living can lead to a fate worse than burnout. A gruesome invasion from outside space and time tests courage – and corporate loyalty – past all rational limits. In these twenty-three stories and poems, two-time World Fantasy Award nominee Mike Allen spins twisted narratives, some wound through the fabric of our world, some set in imagined pasts or futures, all plumbing the depths of human darkness.

MY RATING: Five out of five stars

MY THOUGHTS: Mike Allen’s fiction is in your face, no holds barred. Allen will do whatever it takes – linguistic gymnastics, horrific physical details, telling a story from the point of view of a parasite or a micorganism – to get under your skin, to make you squirm, and quite possibly to make you throw the book across the room as you fight back nausea. If I may steal a term from my own review of Allen’s most recent novella (in the anthology A Sinister Quartet): Mike Allen’s work is one masterful mind-fuck after another.

If you’re the kind of person who wonders whether a spider might lay eggs in their ears while you sleep and then gleefully describes what it would be like when those eggs hatch, does Mike Allen have some stories for you. Not that that there’s a spider-lays-eggs-in-main-character’s-ear-canal story in this volume – but it’s the kind of thing that would be right at home here, and if anyone could make it scary instead of trope-y, it’s Allen. The stories that are cutting-edge body horror are not for the squeamish. The protagonist of “The Sun Saw” stumbles upon a creature fused together from the living bodies of multiple humans; “Puppet Show” reveals the back-stage workings that turn humans into blood-soaked automatons for a massive rock stage show by the band Bloodbath Jubilee. In these stories, Allen spares no details. He refuses to let us look away from the damage people will do to each other in the name of religion (the cult in “The Sun Saw”) or entertainment (“Puppet Show”) or science (“Aftermath of an Industrial Accident,” which features some graphic death scenes and another forced melding of disparate bodies into one).

Not every story is a full gross-out, of course. The body horror of “With Shining Gifts That Took All Eyes” and “Tardigrade” is subtler stuff, in the former case more inferred than seen. Even the comical-but-disturbing “Tick Flick” is not quite as in-your-face – but all three stories leave an afterimage burned on the mind’s eye that returns days after you’ve last consciously thought of the story at all. And sometimes, that’s worse than the more concrete images Allen gives us.

Body horror is not the only sub-genre represented. There’s a linked pair of fantasy horror tales, “Longsleeves” and “The Ivy-Smothered Palisade,” that take place in the land of Calcharra and explicate the lengths men will go to to gain and retain power (usually over or through the women they’re supposed to care for). There are Lovecraftian themes and overtones in a number of stories: the unseen Owner of the creature in “The Sun Saw” and the unseen Mother in the disturbing  monologue “Drift from the Windrows” being the most obvious. There are cursed books (“Binding,” which is also an excellent example of the “club story” genre) and cursed phrases (“Nolens Volens”).

The Calcharra stories aren’t the only linked stories in the collection. Fans of Allen’s Korean War veteran turned hunter-of-the-weird John Hairston will be happy to see him in two of the tales herein, “The Sun Saw” and “Nolens Volens” (and isn’t it about time Cemetery Dance or Subterranean Press issued a nice hardcover collection of all of Allen’s extant Hairston adventures?). The stories “The Cruelest Team Will Win” and “Follow The Wounded One” don’t share characters or a setting but they seem to take place in the same world, one in which certain people are born with animal spirits that allow them to co-exist in the dreamworld/spiritual realm connected to our own. The female narrator of “The Cruelest Team” turns into a bird to chase away, or sometimes eat, the ghosts haunting friends’ houses, while the male narrator of “Wounded One” turns into a giant cat in the other world and meets a young woman who also turns into a bird. (I didn’t see anything that implies Leeanne in “Team” and Kori in “Wounded” are the same character or even turn into the same type of bird – but perhaps I wasn’t reading closely enough.) Both protagonists take on apex predators in the spirit realm who are equally dangerous in the mundane world.

There are a couple of more standard ghost stories as well: the protagonists of “A Deaf Policeman Heard the Noise” and “Burn the Kool Kidz at the Stake” each deal with ghosts haunting their psyches and their homes. “Kool Kidz” also has a lot to say about toxic fan culture and is perhaps even more topical now than it was when it originally saw print in 2017 (which seems so much longer ago than it really is).

Three of the stories in the collection have never been published before: “A Deaf Policeman Heard the Noise,” “Puppet Show,” and “Blue Evolution.” “Blue Evolution” is a neat bit of classic pulp-fantasy-adventure, in which the crew of a dimension-hopping aircraft/submersible encounter both spider-pirates and giant evolving native organisms. It’s also a great example of the author hitting the main characters with two equally bad problems and forcing them to use one to solve the other (although not necessarily in the way one might expect).

The collection also includes a number of Allen’s poems, of which I would be remiss not to mention “Toujours Il Coûte Trop Cher,” co-written with C.S.E. Cooney and imagining a spiritual/ghostly encounter between Joan of Arc and Gilles de Rais. If this one hasn’t been recorded as a two-person audio play yet, it should be.

There really is something for every type of horror fan in Aftermath of an Industrial Accident: Stories. Well worth seeking out in print or e-book.

NOTE: I received an ARC of this title from the publisher but didn’t get the review written in time for it’s July release.

Review of A SINISTER QUARTET

TITLE: A Sinister Quartet

AUTHOR: Mike Allen, C.S.E. Cooney, Amanda J. McGee, Jessica P. Wick

382 pages, Mythic Delirium Books, ISBN 9781732644038 (paperback, ebook)

DESCRIPTION: (from the back cover): Behind the walls of an invulnerable city ruled by angels, old movies provide balm for the soul and a plan to escape risks grisly retribution. A princess discovers a passage to a nightmarish world of deception and blood-sealed enchantment. A woman who has lost everything meets a man of great wealth and ominous secrets. In a town haunted by tragedy, malevolent supernatural entities converge, and the conflict that ensues unleashes chaos.

A Sinister Quartet gathers original long-form wonders and horrors composed in unusual keys, with a short novel by World Fantasy Award winner C. S. E. Cooney and a new novella from two-time World Fantasy Award finalist Mike Allen joined by debut novellas from rising talents Amanda J. McGee and Jessica P. Wick. All four offer immersions into strange, beautiful and frightening milieus.

MY RATING: five out of five stars

MY THOUGHTS: The short novel and three novellas debuting in A Sinister Quartet play a familiar lament: the abuse by those in power of those they deem powerless. But listen closely: there are crescendos of rebellion, adagios of personal loss, secrets revealed sotto voce and bravura, and a trembling bass line of body horror tying it all together. These stories are not happy, but they are hopeful, even if that hope doesn’t come until the coda.

In C.S.E. Cooney’s short novel “The Twice-Drowned Saint: Being a Tale of Fabulous Gelethel, the Invisible Wonders Who Rule There, and the Apostates Who Try to Escape its Walls,” the power is wielded by the Angels who rule their walled-off city and protect it from the world outside. But the Angels require obeisance and tribute, and in recent times they’ve become addicted to blood sacrifice – not from their own citizens but from the pilgrims seeking to become citizens and escape the worn-torn outer world. Not everyone within the city, not even among the ruling Angels, is happy about this turn. But is rebellion a new concept in Gelethel or is it a part of the very bones of the city? That’s one of many secrets that underpin and drive the story of the Angel Alizar and his saint, Ish. There are other secrets that surround Ish’s family, including the history of her parents’ marriage and the lives of her Uncles who are part of the Holy Host. And in this story, “host” means exactly that: when the Fourteen Angels fill their hosts with power, they distort the Hosts’ bodies gruesomely. The Angels, like most power brokers, don’t care about the effects of their power on the people who serve them, as long as they get their way. (The descriptions of these bodily transformations are not for the squeamish, nor are a couple of torture scenes midway through the novel.) The past losses and compromises experienced by Ish, by the Angel Alizar, by Ish’s family, all bubble under the surface of the story, releasing and resolving and repeating throughout. And through it all, there is Cooney’s masterful use of language, soaring into the ethereal and plummeting through the earthen – colors and sounds and smells evoked with unexpected turns of phrase and exacting word choice. Sometimes the story feels sf-nal, sometimes high (almost Biblical) fantasy, but it never feels at odds with itself despite the mix of genres.

High fantasy and portal fantasy are the genres for “An Unkindness,” Jessica P. Wick’s marvelous look at the power of the Fae over the mortal world. The tale is narrated by the young Princess Ravenna and is propelled by her sense that she is losing her beloved older brother Aliver to … something. At first, she’s not sure if it’s a growing ailment, a romantic malaise, or something more sinister. But it quickly becomes apparent that he’s been seduced by the power of a fairy ball and the queen who presides over it, and it’s up to Ravenna to save him. All the elements of classic young-girl-adventures-in-Faerie are here: the labyrinth that must be traversed, the portal (in this case, a pool) that must be descended through, the court ball that must be navigated with strange sights abounding, the confrontation with the Queen … but that’s only the middle of Ravenna’s story. The conclusion takes a slightly darker turn, an exploration of a young heroine’s loss of innocence (no, not by rape) that we don’t see in the classic “portal fantasy” stories. This is a rite of passage, a trial by fire, and Ravenna will not emerge unchanged as Dorothy and Alice are wont to do. Ravenna’s voice is endearing but also a little annoying, as befits a pre-teen and very precocious princess whose surety and love for her brother lead her into situations she almost can’t get out of. The sibling relationship we see at the beginning of the story is so real and touching that the sudden antipathy/distance of Aliver in the second chapter hits the reader as hard as it does Ravenna. Kudos to Wick for establishing that relationship so well in such a short opening space; the rest of the story would not work as well if we didn’t believe in the bond between sister and brother that threatens to be severed.  Also fair warning: the body horror is not as explicit is in the other stories but there is one pretty brutal scene involving a unicorn that may make animal lovers upset.

By comparison, Amanda J. McGee’s “Viridian” is very much rooted in the “modern Gothic” and “reconstructed fairy tale” traditions, and this melding is also perfect for the story being told. The setting is a remote part of modern Vermont. Lori Adams is a woman on the run from losses in her recent past (we find out quickly it’s the loss of her sister but don’t find out the details of that loss until later in the story). She settles in a small town and soon meets Ethan, a handsome and very rich stranger. The story is part courtship, part married life, and part the slow revelation of each partner’s secrets. Thanks to the occasional flashback chapter, the reader knows sooner than Lori what Ethan’s secret is (although not why he’s done what he’s done) and in the present-day section sees the way Ethan exerts increasing power over Lori by methods not limited to gaslighting her – but aren’t those the tenets of the Gothic suspense novel, as well as most modern psychological horror? McGee reveals Amanda’s secrets and the depths of Ethan’s depravities at a pace that made this reader anxious for the denouement and not at all eager to get there. It’s always interesting to me when a writer can make a story feel both laconic and urgent, and McGee shifts seamlessly from one to the other in the same scene. There’s only a touch of real body horror (and I won’t ruin the surprise of it here), but there’s a lot of very dark moments for Lori before the story is over. Of the four stories in A Sinister Quartet, this is the one I can most easily see being adapted to film – and in the right hands, I think it would be amazing (let’s not talk about what could happen in inept or cautious hands).

The concluding novella, “The Comforter” by Mike Allen, is the one most firmly rooted in a single genre. This is body horror, straight-up and unadultered, mixed as it may be with classic supernatural thriller elements. Throughout the story, and in increasing detail as the story unfolds, characters are physically altered in horrific ways. The feel of being fully immersed in the genre is enhanced by the multiple points-of-view: some omniscient, some narrowly third-person, some disturbingly second person. The constant shifts in POV keep the reader off-center and always on edge, not sure where the story will go or how much of the truth will be revealed or even if the disparate threads will converge. It’s a masterful mind-fuck, if I may be permitted a bit of vulgarity. “The Comforter” ties to several other of Mike Allen’s fictions, but one need not have read those to feel like this is a complete story. At points you may not understand what’s going on any more than the characters do, but it all comes together in the end. Allen also gives us a different spin on the use/abuse of power and control: the powerful in the first three stories (Cooney’s Angels, McGee’s Ethan, and Wick’s fae queen) allow those they have control over a modicum, at least, of individuality, while Allen’s nebulous protagonist is all about absorption and the removal of differences to make a cohesive and ever-expanding whole. And that protagonist goes to disturbing lengths to get what it wants. This is easily the bloodiest and most physically disturbing of the four pieces of A Sinister Quartet, nudging out the more disquieting scenes of “The Twice-Drowned Saint.”

This review would not be complete if I didn’t mention the Introduction, which I presume was also written by Mike Allen and which functions as a full additional short story. It sets the tone of the anthology and gives oblique, musical nods at each of the stories that follows, but it can be read on its own as a treatise on the power of music and the nature of stumbling, unprepared, into fictional worlds that you perhaps want to look away from but just can’t.

A Sinister Quartet released today, June 9th, and I find it apropos (and perhaps destined?) that I’m writing and posting this review on the cusp as the 9th turns into the 10th, straddling days the way three of these stories straggle genres. So go, now, seek out this strange, sinister quartet and be immersed in these worlds.

Note: I received an Advance Review Copy of this book from the publisher.

Review of DESDEMONA AND THE DEEP

TITLE: Desdemona and the Deep
AUTHOR: C.S.E. Cooney
221 pages, Tor.com Publishing, ISBN 9781250229830 (softcover)

DESCRIPTION: (from Goodreads): In Desdemona and the Deep, the spoiled daughter of a rich mining family must retrieve the tithe of men her father promised to the world below. On the surface, her world is rife with industrial pollution that ruins the health of poor factory workers while the idle rich indulge themselves in unheard-of luxury. Below are goblins, mysterious kingdoms, and an entirely different hierarchy. A goblin market narrative that’s also a steep drop into an uncanny, richly painted underworld, C.S.E. Cooney combines 1920s luxury with deeply felt questions of identity and justice that strike at the heart of who we are, human or otherwise.

MY RATING: 5 out of 5 stars

MY THOUGHTS: In Desdemona and the Deep, C.S.E. Cooney drops the reader into a multi-layered new fantasy world that I hope to see a lot more of. While it tells a complete and compelling story, the novella only scratches the surfaces of each of this world’s layers, with hints of how each has affected the others over their existence.

Cooney gives us “the World,” “the World Beneath,” and “the World Beneath the World Beneath.” The World, known to its human inhabitants as “Athe,” looks and feels very much like our own Earth just before the Great Depression with aspects of where we are in modern times (especially in terms of environmental and human health damage due to uncontrolled industry). The rich get richer off of the toil of the working poor while the natural world is collapsing around them. The “World Beneath” is the Valwode, home of the Gentry (what we might call the Fae), who are concerned about the upheaval of the Valwode’s natural order after the abdication of Queen Nyx. The “World Beneath the World Beneath” is Bana, the home of the kobold-kin (goblins) lead by king Kalos Kantzaros; Bana is a world at odds for different reasons with the worlds “above” it. Humans, Gentry and Kobold can move from realm to realm if they can find the way. But it’s never easy, and always comes with a price. The humans of Athe mostly consider the other two realms to be mythical, but the denizens of the other two realms are all too aware of how actions on Athe affect their own Valwode and Bana.

There is a wonderful lyricality and playfulness to the character names: the alliterativeness of Kalos Kantzaros; the on-the-nose name Mannering for the rich family whose child Desdemona is at the center of the actions; the sensual appropriateness of Gentry names like Nyx the Nighcrawler and Sussura the Nighthag; the regality of a name like Albus Idris and the sheer fun tongue-twister that is The Umber Farkelwhit. Cooney has, across all of her work, a knack for character and place names that conjure immediate and strong images or connections. (The Umber Farkelwhit not only puts me in mind of a Shakespearean court Fool, ala Lear, but also of the character Belaga from the musical Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812 for example.)

One of the things rich-child-turned-activist Desdemona discovers in her travels through the realms is that the richest class is almost always the most clueless and often the most careless. Whether it is the intentional cluelessness of the rich on Athe regarding the human and environmental costs of the industries making them rich, the by-their-very-nature cluelessness of the Gentry regarding how their own attempts to overthrow their previous ruler have doomed them, or the not-quite cluelessness of Kalos Kantzaros regarding the possible misuse of the bargain he struck long ago with members of the Mannering family of Athe, Desdemona sees over and over again the impact of not being aware of the world around you or of your own role in it. The rich of Athe could do more for the poor; the Gentry could do more to recognize their own faults; Kantzaros could temper his search for his missing daughter to find a way out of the contract. But they are all so caught up in their own sense of entitlement that it takes an outsider to set them on redemptive paths. In two cases, that outsider is Desdemona, although it's a different character who sets Desdemona on her own path of redemption.

Early on, Kalos Kantzaros asks Desdemona whose child she is, her father’s or her mother’s, and Desdemona spends the entire book trying to answer that question. We are witness to Desdemona’s incremental transition from spoiled rich child to defender of the weak, and also to the self-discovery journeys of several other characters, notably Desdemona’s closest friend Chaz, Desdemona’s mother Tracy, and the rulers of the other worlds: Albus Idris and Kalos Kantzaros. Each have their own blind spots regarding their better natures or the effect they have on the world around them. All discover that being a part of community is more significant than they previously recognized.

Desdemona’s story may or may not be concluded, but there is so much to explore in these worlds. I’m looking forward to many more visits to Athe, the Valwode, and Bana.