Butler, Hellhound on My Trail (2011)

D.J. Butler, Hellhound on My Trail (Rock Band Fights Evil #1). Smashwords, 2011. Pp. 135. ISBN 978-1-4661-3254-2. $0.99.

Reviewed by Kate Onyett

Sometimes, just sometimes, a genuinely bumptious romp of a story comes along that makes you want to praise the gods of narrative for the ragingly camp, OTT genre of pulp fiction. Bursting with action, snappy one-liners, quirky characters and tantalising glimpses of the author’s own view of fantastic mythology, Hellhound on My Trail is a heady series of set-piece fight scenes, improbable adventures and, naturally, rock music.

They say the devil has the best tunes. Apparently the Fallen Angels can no longer appreciate music at all (something they were deprived of, being a Heavenly pastime, when they rebelled), but the collection of individuals comprising the titular rock band are all still literally hell-bent, but determined to stick two fingers yup at Old Scratch before they are doomed forever. What the devil does have, as the story emerges during the course of snatched conversation between fights, is a range of nasty pets and servants and quite possibly bigger problems, politically speaking, among his own demons and the angels. Having escaped from a heavenly prison, the devil left behind a part of his hoof (a sort of satanic toenail), and possession of this is of somewhat vital importance to the band. But there’s an angel on the loose, too, with designs of his own on the item...

Told from the point of view of Mike, an ordinary human (a ‘vanilla’ in Buffy-speak: a not unfair interjection since the story reads very like a high-octane, effects-laden episode of the Joss Whedon supernatural comedy-drama) and a session bassist, called in to play with ‘some band’ in New Mexico. But everything rather goes south when a portal to Hell opens in the middle of the set and a hellhound leaps out, followed shortly thereafter by a Baal (a very nasty fly-demon-thingy). Mike has his own problems: a violent past, a need for drink and suicidal tendencies due to being haunted by the bloodied spirit of his long-deceased brother. Now he’s got a small matter of join a bizarre group of evil ass-kicking musicians or most likely be eaten by a big bad nasty. Thankfully for the continuation of the story he opts for the former; his youthful miss-exploits standing him in good stead in handling a gun against infernal foes.

Mike is the newest member of the band, but not the strangest: there is a man who sold his soul to Satan to become the best rock musician in the world (without specifying which instrument he wanted to master; Satan has a sense of humour, after all); an ambiguously-gendered shape-shifting Fairy; a son of Hell; and a narcolepsy-cursed wizard. Obviously the first choice of squad for the fighting of evil. Since we meet the group with Mike, and this is the first episode (the entire story runs to ten short chapters and is the length of a novella), set-up, characters and tone are all new. Butler’s intention is not, I think, to produce some great artistic polemic on the state of society or of mankind’s moral health, but to whip up a froth of exciting action, far-fetched monsters and add a hefty sprinkling of varied mythologies. We have some Mexican Indian, Christian, Kabbalah, Apocryphal and downright inspired connecting of the dots. These are not a group on a mission to save the world, but to save their hides and try to keep out of trouble. In this instance, they are very believable characters; rarely does one have to save mankind, but often one might feel as if one is fighting one’s own corner. You get the impression, however, that trouble follows them pretty much consistently.

The whole show eases in with a raging battle in a dusty two-bit tin-roofed bar in the middle of nowhere, continues with a pitched battle in a ruined synagogue/temple and finishes out the back in an ancient pyramid structure in the desert: a situation not dissimilar to the pyramid-backed bar in From Dusk Till Dawn. The level of demon-splatter is about the same as that road movie, too, as are the pithy comments thrown back and forth between the combatants. It starts low-key: Mike, we are told, is awaiting the end of the gig to get drunk then take his gun and shoot himself. His guilt over his younger brother’s death years ago still overwhelms him. We don’t appreciate that Mike might have seriously spooky supernatural problems of his own until we also ‘see’ the ghost; a bloodied, furious spirit, spitting blood and rage at the brother it felt let it down in life. In comparison, as Mike’s thoughts tell us, facing a running battle with tangible demons actually seems the better option.

Once ramped into action, the narrative does not flag, nor however, does it become over-excited and wear itself out (and the reader’s patience) before the end of the adventure. Butler keeps a firm hand on the reins; springing his horses, as it were, but not letting them gallop in a mad rush and spoil the narrative’s momentum with an unbalanced, messy crescendo. Out come the adjectives and adverbs, certainly, scattered liberally over the action. But this latter is cleanly described; there’s colourful, but not excess, description here. The images are clear and graspable. For immediacy of content to reader, one is as much ricocheted around the narrative alongside the characters as they are in their beat-up van trying to outrun the forces of Hell. Although it is basically a series of set-piece action situations, Butler is wonderfully unapologetic about this. Undoubtedly, his intention is of a rollicking great time for the reader, but thanks perhaps to the use of verbal quips and having a ‘vanilla’ as the first person, reader’s way in, it is all grounded in a very understandable level of communication. As sheer entertainment, it’s a right royal bouncer: bursting with energy, likable characters, improbable nonsense and a whole can full of whup-arse.

Written with a cinematic eye for the wider picture, it is not a hard jump to imagining the events as written about unfolding on the screen of the mind. As I said above, this is not a story with any great ‘message’ to proclaim unless it is ‘walk softly and carry a big gun’. These are not Heroes on an Epic Quest. Like most of us; they are people just trying to stay alive, in this case, literally! It is all about machismo, unlikely heroes (the comedic value of this is always a winner if properly exploited, and thankfully Butler tweaks his characters, but leaves just enough hanging to keep interest going) and visceral, cathartic thrills and lots and lots of bubbly, liquefying, grizzly, giggling carnage. Truly, the pulpiest of fiction, without being self-parodying. I felt this was a genuine argument for the solid value of a good pulper, rather than as a sardonic ‘homage’. It is so caught up in its own story, it stands utterly alone in a bubble of entertainment on its own merits, and on that basis it has to be something that you might enjoy in order to, well, enjoy. If heavy action, mythic beasties, swearing and gun-toting are not your thing, you won’t find anything in here to please you. It does exactly what is says on the tin: a rock band that fights evil. Repeatedly.

One could argue the merits or otherwise of pulp fiction till the cows come home. Yes, it’s not any great shakes in the moral department; in fact it is a delightfully a-moral genre; its characters nearly always a mix of ambiguity with a large wodge of the down-and-dirty about them. The band members aren’t saints either; all have flaws and problems. And while there’s the old argument about believability of characters being based on their realism, I rather feel that pulp fiction should not be judged on the post-Stanislavski obsession with ‘truth’. Yes, pulp fiction characters are gnarly; most humans are gnarly. This doesn’t mean it’s a social commentary. Pulp fiction, rather, belongs to the ranks of old-fashioned melodrama; the overdone, the grand gesture, the technicolour sets and costumes. Yes, it might be hopelessly overblown compared to ‘real’ life, but there’s no question in anyone’s minds over what is being presented; and what is more overblown than supernatural actioneering? The splatter-gore sub-genre in horror is itself also a child of melodrama. By going overboard we see more clearly our ‘real life’ narratives for what they are; apologetically scrambling on the surface of what they crow over being ‘complex’ human ‘issues’. Pulp fiction reminds us we can have story for story’s sake, and that we can have fun.

Could the format become repetitive? The shoot-'em-up-a-few-times-per-tale format in this start of a series of such tales? I have started in on the next two stories, and I can report that, while they follow the basic format, there is sufficient difference within them to make each its own little bundle of joy. Plus, given enough time between readings, the answer can be given as a no. A favoured episodic TV serial can become repetitive, but still claims one’s affections because it does so with such charm (moderated, of course by its genre. Splattered entrails of the damned might not be everyone’s idea of ‘charming’). Charm in this instance is taken to mean to cast a spell of agreeability (at the very least) over the eyes of the beholder. This is what creates the fan. So with a breather between each story of a day or so to increase the expectation, treating the stories like a TV series aired weekly, I’m finding them to be a roistering series of punchy entertainments.

If they ever make this into a TV serial, it has hit written all over it. Butler very much has his finger on the pulse of reminiscent pop culture classicism (I shudder to use the hackneyed title of ‘retro’). Instead of long-drawn-out angsty reasoning; the milieu of shows and books in the horror/fantasy genre since the early 1990s (themselves victims to Stanislavski’s realism ghost), his characters get on and do, in the spirit of the more lovably awful 80’s serials. It is a marvellous throw-back with all the wit of more up-to-date ventures. Coming out as a series of e-books, it is in a more modern format than the pulp serial magazines of half a century ago, but follows their lead of ‘in next week’s instalment.’ However, I am still waiting (and hoping) for a real hum-dinger of a one-liner delivered dead-pan, 80's action-hero style after a particularly Big Bad is dispatched. There has to be one at some point!

The group is not utterly aimless; they do want a hold over Satan and to win back some un-damnation for themselves. Given the introduction of the characters piecemeal and the fact that the subsequent two tales are focused on other members of the band; their viewpoint, the troubles they are trying to get solved, it is probable that over time we will build up a bigger, richer picture of the whole. The main frame is one of physical action; the tapestry itself on the frame will come from separate, interlocking threads as the characters mould and change one another. Apart from which, they have that piece of diabolic ungula to use, so there should be a build-up towards that at the very least!

This is a solid piece of writing. The author himself is obviously a well-read and literate man; it takes a lot of intelligence to write so deftly and believably about religious mysticism; a musician and someone with a strong background in law. His confidence in his work is clear; it is the confidence that one can pick up from another and make one confident in them. I would love to see this go more mainstream, but it is niched by its content and genre. Certainly I am very pleased that there is more on the way; that we will learn more, and see more action from Jim, Twitch, Eddie, Adrian and Mike.

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Grimwood (ed.), Monster Book for Girls (2011)

Terry Grimwood (ed.), The Monster Book for Girls. Exaggerated Press, 2011. Pp. 289. ISBN 978-1-4710-0975-4. £8.99.

Reviewed by Georgina Bruce

Exaggerated Press is published by horror and fantasy writer Terry Grimwood, who is the editor of this anthology of stories and poems. In his foreword to the book, he states that anthologies “grow a soul of their own, a thread within a theme...” Unfortunately, this is precisely what I found lacking in The Monster Book for Girls.

The collection is a real mixed bag of stories and poems with no discernable theme, or “soul”. Nothing connects or unites the pieces in the anthology, and there is no sense that an viewpoint is being developed, or an argument explored, or a series of images uncovered. The pieces have little in common besides the fact that they all feature females in some way. Stories and poems are thrown together with apparently little thought as to how they play off one another. Literary fiction sits next to schlock horror; thoughtful poems rest alongside comic japes. There is a case to be made for a ‘something for everyone’ approach, but I wished for a more coherent read, with less changes in tone from piece to piece.

The Monster Book for Girls, with its brilliant, evocative title, could have been all sorts of things. I was hoping for a fascinating insight into the complex relationship between gender, sex, and horror. There might have been an exploration of the historical, political and religious elements to the question of where females stand in relation to society. For example, a longstanding point of view claims that girls are inherently monstrous, and therefore must be controlled and tamed—or even trapped and destroyed. A feminist argument is that the monsters girls face are in and of society—they represent patriarchy and institutionalised male control over female lives and experiences. It would have been interesting to see these points of view clash and battle it out. I would have liked to have seen a few stories that explored these ideas with some degree of conscious intent. Even Buffy managed to take on the patriarchy, after all—these are not groundbreaking ideas, but they are sadly lacking from this anthology.

There is no implicit agreement on what a ‘monster’ could be (and no real agreement on who could be a ‘girl’ either. There are girls as in female children, but several of the pieces feature adult women protagonists.) So we have stories that tell of child sexual abuse alongside stories that feature sinister and murderous women. A large proportion of the stories are from male writers, which I found somewhat unbalanced, especially given so many stories about monstrous females. But then, this book is not really about girls and women and the monsters that we face and fight. It is a ragtag bag of pieces with only the most tenuous of connections between them.

Many of the pieces are problematic in how they present female characters. For example, Terry Grimwood’s story, ‘Think Belsen’, presents a world in which extreme thinness and anorexia is the ultimate value, one which women pursue with absolute blinkered devotion. The protagonist of the story is so desperate to lose weight after the birth of her child that she willingly contracts cancer. Worse still, in order to pay for the ‘cancer pill’, she sells her own tiny baby. How gender, bodies, and commerce interact is a fine subject for fiction, but I felt that it was too easy to blame the women involved for perpetuating anorexia, and I found it hard to believe in a society where women could sell their babies as a matter of course—or indeed, that women so starved are able to conceive in the first place. Society places a huge and sometimes oppressive importance on motherhood, and women’s value is often considered to reside in their ability to give birth and raise children. There was no explanation as to how such a stable value could have been overthrown in this story. I felt that it oversimplified and depoliticised the issues involved in thinness, dieting, and mothering.

One story in the anothology stood out as an exceptionally strong piece. ‘Razor Voices’ by Kelly Rose Pflug-Back was a fierce and sorrowful story of love and loss. Young homeless girls and prostitutes are being abducted and murdered, and the protagonist fears for her friends and fights for her own freedom. She makes a terrible sacrifice in order to protect herself and those around her. The imagery in this story is startling and beautiful, and Pflug-Back creates a convincing and moving character arc, with a bittersweet ending. This story was much more along the lines I was hoping for from the anthology. There are real characters here, dealing with all kinds of monsters – monstrous ideas, monstrous people, and the monsters inside themselves. I would have loved to have seen more thoughtful and poignant stories like this in the collection.

Another piece I enjoyed was the mysterious and evocative ‘The Spirit Level’, by Sarah Hilary. This was a flash piece that was packed with strong, precise imagery. The narrator deals with a complex desire and repulsion for her monster. It is compelling and lyrical, although somewhat confusing.

‘Monster Girl’ by Andrew Hook was beautifully written, although the way females were sexualised and devalued by the protagonist, Yoshi, was somewhat disturbing. Yoshi works as a host in a bar in Japan, where he consorts with lonely young women. He saves up and buys a lifelike doll to spend his time with, preferring her company to that of the real women he meets at work. Despite the title, the truly monstrous character in the story was Yoshi himself, with his creepily repressed sexuality and disdain for flesh and blood women.

There are several poems in the anthology, though many of them are the sort of ‘comic’ poetry that you generally see on souvenir tea towels or in greeting cards. A few of them were rather better than that, however, and I particularly liked ‘A Study in Solitude’, by Jessica Lawrence, a meditation on the strangeness of being alone (and perhaps ill) for a long time. It contains the wonderful lines: “But the / mirror whispers back, /its mouth moves when / I speak, its eyes open / when I wake, if it’s a / book I’m a page.”

Unfortunately, there were many more pieces that I thought were weak and a few which I felt were badly written. It is part of an editor’s role to help improve the standard of writing, and I felt that some editorial help and input would have improved some of these stories immeasurably. Many small presses nowadays publish writing of serious, award-winning quality, and small presses are in serious competition in the current market. Unfortunately, the lack of a distinct theme and the variable quality of the writing puts this anthology out of the running on that front, despite a great concept and a few fantastic stories and poems which deserve to be read.

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Alexandre/Loepp, Nuncio and the Gypsy Girl (2012)

Kristen Kuhn Alexandre & Thomas Loepp, Nuncio and the Gypsy Girl in the Gilded Age. Runnymede Press, 2012. Pp. 80. ISBN 978-0977668724. $14.00.

Reviewed by Jessica Nelson

Nuncio and the Gypsy Girl in the Gilded Age is a romantic graphic novel that takes place in the early twentieth century. Populated by all manner of innovators of the era, the story centers around a Gypsy girl named Neci Stans and her love, composer Ezra Muster. Ezra is taken with Neci and her people, but is torn by her young age and his desire to succeed. When Ezra meets Marlene, a beautiful woman with connections that can help him, the two soon become engaged, completing the classic love triangle. But in this tangle of hearts, something more sinister lurks; something that could destroy them all.

Thomas Loepp’s beautiful illustrations bring the story to life. In the beginning, the very basic, scratchy artwork can make telling people apart a little difficult, but as the story moves along, it’s easy enough to sort out who’s who. This is far from a drawback; the artwork brings a simple elegance and tone that adds so much to the romantic feeling of the book, I can’t imagine it being illustrated any other way.

Author Kristin Alexandre brings the Dayton, Ohio of the era to life with a plethora of historical inventors, engineers, and other innovators of the time. Expanding to a national scope, Alexandre adds President and First Lady Wilson to the cast of characters, and expanding further still to a worldwide view, elements of what would become the Great War haunt the reader’s subconscious mind as the danger of German forces on our protagonists becomes apparent. The narrator, Neci’s African Grey parrot Nuncio, along with Neci’s snake Coil bring a vague symbolism to the story that adds to the haunted tone.

Questions of good and evil are a pervasive theme in the story. The author seems to like asking what they mean, if they are always large and absolute concepts. Neci and Nuncio repeatedly state that Marlene is evil: “...and it’s not all of her own doing, but nothing good will come of her.” Soon after, the point is made, when we see how romantically manipulative Marlene can be to get what she wants, and the dire consequences that result.

We see the wisdom in Alexandre’s choice of Nuncio as narrator when she uses him to make large statements about the human condition that perhaps no human could make without certain pretenses. Nuncio remarks on the importance of being careful in courtship... a thing no human ever really considers at the time, often to our detriment. If we were so wise, we would all date and marry only one person in our lives, never giving our hearts so easily, never ending up broken-hearted. But then, we would miss out on so many of the very feelings and experiences that make us human, wouldn’t we?

The author examines love even more closely when Nuncio adds that in the human world, “the plumage is all artificial.” This begs the question, what is it that we fall in love with? We, all of us, as human beings, are always so acutely aware of the judgments of others, that we make every attempt to sway those judgments in our favor. So how can any of us ever truly know another in the short amount of time it takes to fall?

For fans of romance, graphic novels, and cerebral reads, Nuncio and the Gypsy Girl promises to be a rare treat of blended genres. Nuncio and the Gypsy Girl in the Gilded Age is the first in a series, and the cliffhanger ending...

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Hudson, Panoptica (2011)

Patrick Hudson, Panoptica. Kindle ebook, 2011. c. 90,000 words. ASIN B006F37Y5K. £1.15.

Reviewed by Steven Pirie

Panoptic: seen by all. Hudson’s Panoptica is a near-future parody of today’s surveillance society and its seemingly insatiable appetite for all things celebrity. Of course, being parody, this celebrity culture is extrapolated and exaggerated to epic proportions, and the result is a cross-genre work part Science Fiction in terms of futuristic technologies, but mostly Humour in terms of society and its blatant abuse of such technologies.

This is Hudson’s first novel, and self-published at that, and whilst I pride myself as an advocate of the small and independent presses, I nevertheless wondered at the wisdom of taking on such a novel for review. In the acknowledgements Hudson thanks his wife for copy editing it, which gave me the uneasy feeling that even if Mrs Hudson is a professional editor this can hardly be a cold, unemotional edit. Such an edit surely leads to slammed doors and lonely nights on the couch. But I took the book because its humorous premise appealed to me; and because I had a new Kindle just aching to be tried out. As a fellow humorist I know how unforgiving a genre it can be, and I was curious to see whether Hudson could ‘pull off’ such a wild idea as Panoptica.

This is London of the future. The Mall is lined with people, for today is the coronation of a new king. But not everyone is happy. Puritanical Titus Spring knows King Hugh Grant IV is not even an English brand, and Spring’s distaste at the swirling media circus is all but palpable, yet the three graffiti bombs nestling in his pocket as he awaits the appearance of the royal cavalcade are mere protestations, aren’t they?

But when the third ‘bomb’ blows the new king’s head clean from his shoulders, there begins a second media circus; one in which Titus Spring himself is the most awkward of star performers. The charge is Regicide—there’re pictures to prove it—because this London is constantly watched by the most invasive technologies. The people, long forced-fed on a diet of reality television, are still desperate for their fifteen minutes of fame. They’re baying not for justice, but entertainment.

Spring is to be given a very public trial, at the end of which he will undergo a celebrity execution, live on all channels and visors, including pre-death lunch with the embalmed corpse of Michael Winner and a song especially composed by the Estate of Elton John.

Dragged before Mr Justice Malmsey, High Court Game Show Host, he all silver-suited and song-and-dance ready, Spring astonishes all by invoking the ‘old justice’ of being allowed to plead ‘not guilty’. All that’s left is to appoint the defence council, none other than that showman Robbie Williams III. Thus begins Titus Spring’s quest to prove his innocence... after these messages.

Phew!

The odd thing is that as an opening it really works. The relentless pace, the madness, the often chaotic leap from exaggerated voyeuristic concept to the people’s endless appetite for ‘the show’ is perfect to illustrate such a dystopian London Hudson is rattling at us from the page. Given today’s appetite for Big Brother, X-Factor and their like, it’s not too far a leap to make.

‘Don’t you care about justice?’ says Spring to his defence lawyer Robbie Williams III. ‘I've never thought about it before, but let’s give it a go,’ answers Williams.

The dead king is all but forgotten, but again that’s perfect for this society whose shallow attention wanders from one glittering object to the next, and all that matters is Spring’s sudden leap to notoriety and the drama therein. There’s going to be some ‘click-through’ on this, and everybody who’s anybody wants in.

Spring and Robbie Williams III escape the court—very easily, it has to be said, but then it’s most likely scripted—and begin a trek that will ultimately take them to Norwich, because that’s where Spring believes the answers as to who framed him lie, with the Court and MTVCOPS and all manner of would-be celebrity in hot pursuit.

It’s on the road that some of Panoptica’s funniest moments occur. The encounter with Mrs Passworthy, for example, is really an exercise in creating double entendres. It’s like Benny Hill gone wrong. Hudson is clearly the master of the innuendo. We meet ‘head hunter’, Pete, and he had me simultaneously enthralled and maddened by his almost indecipherable ‘street talk’. There’s also Cat Weasel in there, which probably gives away both mine and Hudson’s age. There’s a host of incompetent cops in pursuit, balloon cops that descend from the sky, and drones that appear from nowhere, and I think it fair to say the mid section of the novel proceeds at times at a breakneck pace.

If I have a criticism of the tale it would be of the ending. Without wishing to add too many spoilers, whilst I felt the ending did well to cement the idea Spring has learned and can now win the day, the actual ending itself felt incomplete. It seemed a little rushed, as if in its writing Hudson had seen the finish line and sprinted. It meant a lack of concentration to speech tags, for example, meaning there were times when I was confused as to who was speaking. It also has something of a ‘Well, Mr Bond...’ feel, where the villain waxes lyrical and long about how clever he’d been.

Parody aside, from a technical aspect I think a good judge of a book’s ending is its ability to foreclose on everything that occurred at the beginning. In my opinion, Panoptica doesn’t deliver in this respect. It’s true that we learn effectively the circumstances which led to Spring’s regicide, but I feel the story ends with too many people remaining who need to address Spring’s innocence or guilt. Whether this is a cunning plan on behalf of Hudson to provide a continuation of the story by way of a sequel I don’t know.

But don’t let that detract you from purchasing what is, after all, a terrifically fun and entertaining read. Any book where the cops try to arrest you adding disclaimers as to what Rights they’re taking has to be read.

However, to dwell only on the humorous side of Panoptica would be unfair. There is lurking depth here, too. Both main characters are seen to grow as the tale progresses. Spring, at the beginning, is a somewhat hapless individual dragged along by events, and is easily manipulated by the scene-hungry Robbie Williams III. But by the end of the book it’s Spring who is often more decisive and able, one thinks, to control his destiny, while Williams grows less ‘showbiz’ and more ‘serious’. It’s clear they have developed a friendship. We feel there’s hope for both.

There’s also I felt an almost apologetic idea that to change his fortunes Spring is forced to dilute his anti-publicity, anti-establishment ideas and embrace the system he despises, that to succeed he must use the ‘show’ mentality to his own ends, an idea that would surely be anathema to him at the outset. Does this mean Hudson’s message is we can’t fight Big Brother, that ultimately banality will win and we have to accept our world is destined to become Bentham’s Panopticon?

And let’s face it, there’s a very real social commentary going on here. I once heard that in the United Kingdom there is more surveillance than anywhere in Europe. We already live under the gaze of the technologies Panoptica presents. Our screens are already filled with hours of banal entertainment. This future is pretty much already here. Our privacy is already under threat, with all the fears of abuse that brings. So, what better way to explore those fears than with humour and parody? Often a novel like Panoptica, under the guise of comedy, is a better vehicle to do so than any academic study. In the words of the author, it has knob jokes after all.

Overall Panoptica works well; well enough for me to forgive any perceived shortcomings to the denouement and leave me no worries in recommending it should you feel the need for a fast-paced trip into chaos. In such a work there will always be times when the humour is a little forced, but more often the jokes work well and lead to a very pleasant read. And Mrs Hudson’s editing? Well, I did spot a few errors and omissions, but not enough to justify my fears at the outset. Mr Hudson is probably not relegated to the couch just yet.

I enjoyed Panoptica, and I think you will too, and at a mere £1.15 for a download you’ve not much to lose if you don’t.

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Thompson, Apoidea (2011)

Douglas Thompson, Apoidea. The Exaggerated Press, 2011. Pp. 211. ISBN: 978-1471007897. $10.82 / £6.99.

Reviewed by Martha Hubbard

In his new book, Apoidea, Douglas Thompson proposes a chilling and potentially all too real scenario. Sitting in his hermetically sealed, climate controlled, home-compound in the Colorado desert, Gert Villers is feeling very pleased with himself. His creation, his children, miniature silver, bee-like creatures, ‘apodroids’, developed to take on the task of pollinating the world’s harvests after the death of natural bees, has made him unbelievably wealthy and given him a sense of satisfaction few ever achieve.

Nothing stays the same forever and Gert’s idyll is about to change irrevocably. The U.S. Government in the shape of Major Bob Brautigan wants Gert’s apodroids to use in the war against its enemies. Soon other visitors, Steve Dobs of Lemon, and Bill Yates of Winterra also request a piece of the apodroid pie. Gert refuses all of these requests even as he realises that events are moving out of his control.

Far down south in Mexico City, Del Freemont, a disgraced former employee also has plans for Gert and his apodroids. He arranges for Gert to be kidnapped by the apos, reintroduced to Del and shown a vision of the future potential for the apodroids. While Gert is in the desert, a swarm of apodroids invade the pentagon and kill Major Brautigan. Staggering back to his compound he is placed under house arrest by soldiers who refuse to let him see his wife Marielle. This does not prevent the apodroids from killing Bill Yates and making a near fatal attack on Steve Dobs. In addition, more than half the world’s AI bees have stopped working. Without their pollinization of the world’s crops, the world’s economy will crash and millions will starve.

Because the government and Gert’s other company officers are convinced he is behind these actions, they are treating him like a criminal. Frustrated and angry, he is surprised when a voice from the air-vent system tells him that he is to be rescued. The apodroids drug him, then form a swarm which first tunnels out of the compound and carries Gert away into the desert. Now in the eyes of the world and his family he is an escapee as well as a criminal.

Del’s plans for him continue. Plastic surgery and months of retraining create a new man. When the time is right, Vernon Hopkins is turned loose. He begins an odyssey that, guided by his creations, will take him down through Texas, picking up the lovely and troubled Melissa along the way. Finally Vernon and Melissa make it into Mexico where Del has been waiting for them. He takes them to the cave system where he has set up a control centre. He needs Gert’s engineering expertise to solve a problem that he has been unable to master. But has Del now become another enemy who wants to control of the apos for his own purposes? The answer to this provides the shocking climax of Gert/Vernon’s adventure.

I was drawn to this book because of my long term involvement with the organic and local food movement where I live. Here we are all too aware of the dangers of limiting species variety, of food contaminated by pesticides and antibiotics. As the book says: the need to create an artificial means of guaranteeing pollination after the destruction brought about ‘by our monoculture and selective breeding. As well as the excessive use of pesticides,’ is an all-too real possibility. Currently scientists are baffled by the devastating rise of ‘hive-death’.

‘In 2007, about one third of the US domesticated bee population was wiped out as a result of a phenomenon known as Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), with some commercial hive owners losing up to 90% of their bees.’ (BBC, 28 September 2010)

More insidious is the spread of monoculture genetically modified crops. These, developed, sold and controlled by enormous agri-businesses like Monsanto, are causing wide-ranging problems in many of the developing countries that have adopted them.

‘Shankara ... facing the loss of his land due to debt, drank a cupful of chemical insecticide. Unable to pay back the equivalent of two years’ earnings, he was in despair. ... Shankara’s crop had failed—twice. Of course, famine and pestilence are part of India’s ancient story. But the death of this respected farmer has been blamed on something far more modern and sinister: genetically modified crops. Shankara, like millions of other Indian farmers, had been promised previously unheard of harvests and income if he switched from farming with traditional seeds to planting GM seeds instead. Beguiled by the promise of future riches, he borrowed money in order to buy the GM seeds. But when the harvests failed, he was left with spiralling debts—and no income.’ (Daily Mail, 28 February 2012)

All over the world, governments and farmers are handing control of their livelihoods and nutritional security to giant corporations that have greed as their primary motivator. These are very real issues that have been brilliantly addressed writers like Paolo Bacigalupi in The Windup Girl. Apoidea is a worthy member of this pantheon.

However, an event last week set me to thinking. First was the rescinding of Kormen for the Cure’s decision to cease funding Planned Parenthood The initial announcement of Kormen’s plans, set off a firestorm of reaction, debate and determination to protect what most regard as a critical agency assisting women. A support PP campaign was spontaneously born that generated substantial donations. Kormen’s newish right wing director Karen Handel subsequently resigned. Regardless of which side of the issue you stand on, what was truly remarkable was the speed and effectiveness of the response on various social media. Twitter, Facebook, LiveJournal et al. were a-buzz from morning to night.

This is where I saw the real parallels with Apoidea. What is interesting, exciting and frightening is the power of the hive mind, its uncontrollability, once set in motion, as Del learns to his detriment. Individually an ‘apo’ has limited intellectual capacity; collectively, in the tens of thousands they can learn, reason, plan and carry out complicated group activities that in the book make them a formidable force. In the way that many of the most important events of 2011, the Arab Spring and OWS were reported and driven by multitudes using social media hint at a sea-change in the way revolutions are carried out, the rise and proliferation of linked world wide social media may be a seminal event on the same history changing order as the Gutenberg printing press.

A few small quibbles: The use of blatant name jokes i.e. Steve Dobs and Bill Yates is not really bad—just silly. More annoying were the polemics and propaganda during Gert and Melissa’s road-trip. These create mind blank-out and turn-the-pages moments that interrupt the forward movement of the adventure. This seems to be a dangerous trap some authors fall into when they feel the message is so important it overrides the need to concentrate on the story telling. The message should be in the story; the story itself should be the message.

These aside, Apoidea is an exciting adventure story that raises some challenging questions about the world we are creating.

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Elhefnawy, Surviving the Spike (2011)

Nader Elhefnawy, Surviving the Spike. CreateSpace, 2011. 264 pages. ISBN 978-1463691875. $12.99.

Reviewed by D. Joan Leib

Surviving the Spike is a near-future novel, taking place in the 2070s. Dr. Elhefnawy uses this setting to create a novel that is not quite sure whether it wants to be a black-ops spy story, a polemic on bioethics and religious philosophy, a shoot-’em-up thriller, or a romance.

Our protagonist is a young woman named Bobbie, who at the age of 17 finds out that she is the result of a genetic-modification experiment with which her parents complied. Mysterious Men In Black yank her away from her home, tell her that she can never again contact her loved ones, and set her up with an apartment in a new city and a job for which she isn’t qualified. At this point, the author has a problem. The story he really wants to tell takes place several years later, after Bobbie has worked at her secret surveillance job for a while and gained experience, technological knowhow, and a healthy dose of cynicism. But how to describe her gradual evolution from sheltered teen to jaded spy? Unfortunately, like many a first-time author, Elhefnawy couldn’t find a way to make this happen other than by violating the all-important “show, don’t tell” rule. So we get pages and pages of text telling us that Bobbie is learning her job, and that in her spare time she hangs out in coffeeshops eavesdropping on other people to learn social skills. We’re even told that she engages in several relationships—although the phrasing is vague, I believe we’re intended to understand these as sexual/romantic relationships—all of which eventually fail when Bobbie is unable to tell her partners anything about her past.

The reader comes out of these exposition-dumps understanding what the author wants us to know about the character, but not really “feeling” it. A few well-crafted anecdotes could have accomplished the same purpose and engaged more interest. Similarly, later in the story a love interest is introduced, apparently just for the sake of character-building; but again we are merely told that Bobbie finds the man charismatic, while the author’s depiction of him gives no clue as to why this could be.

As the plot progresses, Elhefnawy effectively builds suspense by showing that the more Bobbie learns about surveillance and tracking technology, the more paranoid she becomes, suspecting that the MIBs who ripped her from her family are still watching her. Though she wants to try to find and contact the people she used to know, the fear that her every move is being watched holds her back.

At the same time, Bobbie occasionally overhears snippets of conversation that seem to provide clues as to where her story might go. The reader is never certain which of these concepts might eventually become relevant to the story. Bobbie spends some time wondering about the genetic modifications that were made to her, and whether they relate to the particular job that the MIBs chose for her. Yet, where one might expect her to do some research into the latest GM developments and technology, she doesn’t: a curious omission. Other conversational threads introduce a new religion based around uploading one’s consciousness into virtual reality, and various geopolitical struggles; but none of these threads seem to be going anywhere either.

Are the MIBs watching Bobbie? Did they set her up in her surveillance/courier job for some nefarious purpose, and indeed, did they genetically tailor her skill set for that job? Is there some pattern to the assignments Bobbie is given? Do the antagonists she encounters have something against Bobbie specifically, or just against her employers? In the end, unfortunately, most of these questions remain unanswered. New plot threads crop up toward the end of the story, which provide a fairly pat resolution to Bobbie’s predicament, but without resolving what had earlier seemed the important questions. The forward momentum of the story is derailed (almost literally) by a bizarre interlude that finds our hero stranded somewhere in Russia, having inadvertently become part of an internecine struggle that has nothing whatsoever to do with the rest of the plot. Given the nature of the assignment that Bobbie is on at this point, and the surveillance technology that the author has so carefully described previously, it’s hard to suspend disbelief and accept that Bobbie can disappear into this side plot for several days without her employers—or her enemies—finding her.

Also problematic to me is the fact that, beyond the first few weeks, Bobbie apparently never spares another thought for her parents. Even as she devises complicated spy programs to run on the worldwide network searching for the people she knew prior to her abduction, no mention is made specifically of her parents, nor does she seem interested in finding them any more than her friends or acquaintances. This was difficult to credit.

In summary, Elhefnawy has the basics of an interesting story, but makes the common mistake of introducing too many plot threads, which seem to tangle him up. In the end, he can’t do them all justice, so most are left hanging. The book would have benefited enormously from the attentions of a good editor. In particular, several major, glaring plot holes could have been avoided, character development improved, and unnecessary scenes pruned. There is some really good meat here for interesting discussion of concepts such as the nature of friendship, the psychological implications of digitizing personality, the ethics of experimenting on humans—all of which are touched on at least to some degree—but a more carefully crafted plot would allow for more nuanced exploration of these ideas. (A good editor could also have introduced the author to the correct construction and usage of the past perfect tense.)

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Allan, Silver Wind (2011)

Nina Allan, The Silver Wind. Eibonvale Press, 2011. Pp. 154. ISBN 978-1908125057. £6.99.

Reviewed by Kev McVeigh

Clocks, I venture to suggest, are the most unadorned form of story. Their inherent conflict between the precision rhythm of mechanism and the seemingly inevitable friction drag of entropy drives the plot of time. Listen carefully, however, for true clocks are not unadorned, within that remorseless tick tick tick tick tick are patterns and digressions.

Nina Allan’s The Silver Wind adopts clocks (not time) as central device. The broken clock, the altered clock, the stolen clock each take a measure of time and recast it in review, rewind, in repeat. The four stories here (along with an afterword I am tempted to disregard as unnecessary and unhelpful) share the repetitive pattern of a clock. Each involves some of whom may be, or appear to be iterations of the same people, yet there are differences, subtle and obvious, in each instance. The narrator Martin’s living sister becomes a dead brother, a lost wife, an alternate. Read collectively therefore, there are patterns and deviations. The recurring character Andrew Owen becomes Owen Andrews, tick tock tock tick.

In the second story Allen introduces the horological concept of the complication, in this and subsequent instances the tourbillon, a device to simulate freefall, removing gravity from the watches mechanism, its wind, to limit running down. Having done so, she continues to describe people and places in a deadpan, precise, taut prose reminiscent at her best of the quiet, bare short fiction of M John Harrison. If Allan, or her characters are not as overtly misanthropic as Harrison’s, she shares his acute observation of the grotesque within people and a directness of approach to this.

Flannery O’Connor insisted that the writer of the fantastic needs to ensure a more intense level of reality, and Allen achieves this to a point. In The Silver Wind clocks ensure grounding in the mundane even as time appears to warp all. Opener ‘Time’s Chariot’ is a literary family set-piece which shows no sign of the fantastic in isolation, but when ‘My Brother’s Keeper’ reworks this with a possible ghost we see what Tricia Sullivan means when she writes in her introduction that the stories ‘haunt one another’.

Only with the title story itself are we explicitly in fantastika, a dystopian near future under a racist government and military control exemplifying entropy in society’s structures. This time our narrator risks entering a restricted area to meet a mysterious dwarf (a significant character with avatars in the earlier stories) who he hopes can reset time to bring his ex-wife back to life. This, it appears, is impossible but the fallout from the attempt reveals variant universes, suggesting a link to the earlier stories. It is at this point however, when Allan abandons her realist mode for a dark mysterious surrealism, that decay enters the system and her carefully constructed mechanisms show signs of breaking and running down. The little detailed exposition of this is more than in other stories where scenes are set in fragments of street names and one-line leftfield impressions. ‘The Silver Wind’ therefore stands out from the other stories, is almost in opposition to them, but binds them as a whole. Where reality was confronted head-on and fantastic obliquely, the fantastic is made explicit and reality disappears. Tick Tock Tock Tick.

There is a brooding awkwardness in every relationship here, a function of characters changing identities between stories, but also Allan’s characters are uniformly cold, artificial and given to false notes like this:

‘He pointed to one of the entries, Juliet Caseby, with the surname in brackets, 24 Silcox Square, Hastings. The postcode began with TN, which Martin knew was for the main sorting office in Tonbridge.’

People just do not think like that, and that last sentence is both jarring and unnecessary. That it works at all is down to the quiet prose breaking down at mostly the right points. That it almost fails is that there are no real characters in most of The Silver Wind, there is a literary artificiality consistent with her use of the measuring device, the clock, ahead of the natural phenomenon, time, that will not be to some readers’ taste. The title itself, The Silver Wind, might be Wind as in breeze (a natural variable phenomenon) but in my mind it might more likely refer to the mechanism of the clock, the Wind, a tense construct.

Ultimately I finished The Silver Wind unsure of what I had actually read and not a little puzzled by how it meshed together. Nevertheless, this is a remarkable book where execution almost matches conception, and one that I will be drawn back to. In time.

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Johnson, R/evolution (2011)

Tenea D. Johnson, R/evolution: A Mosaic Novel. Counterpoise, 2011. Pp. 148. ISBN 978-0615553726. $13.00 print/$2.99 ebook.

Reviewed by Kate Onyett

The scope of this series of interconnected tales is nothing short of epic. A stylishly presented larger tale covering the state of the USA as it turns upon a near-future of decreasing resources and heavy social unrest. Thematically, this is not a frivolous book; it is politically driven with strong views on racial and social discrimination. Set in a future that is decidedly dystopian, we learn that the rich and powerful are controlling not only the wealth, but also the genetic future of the country, affording as they can to have their genomes tweaked for fashionable statements and improved health in an increasingly collapsing environment. Underneath this the dispossessed, particularly the poor and coloured citizens, struggle with industrial poisoning, starvation and racist violence, leading to near civil war between the haves and have-nots. Into this steps a brilliant young geneticist whose attempts to make genetic reparations to the lower orders does not go quite as he planned.

On her website, Johnson claims that she is ‘adoring of ideas’, that she ‘lives beneath a 300-year-old oak.’ But this is not a woman of utter, fanciful whimsy; she also claims to have a ‘swell of honesty (sometimes refreshing, sometimes catastrophic).’ And her writing is about as honest as one can get about what must be very heartfelt opinions. The politics of African-Americans is her metre, but she is just as much concerned with the broader canvas of social justice. On issues of class and race, the author sees these as the most vulnerable cracks along which fragmenting human society, struggling with environmental and social disintegration, will break. Within R/evolution, the predominance among the poorer characters is for non-Caucasian, but through this unbalance Johnson raises once more the issue of slavery. In a modernised sense, she means those exploited workers with no rights as equated with the historical sense of black slaves brought in on the terrible slaving ships from Africa. The connection between the plantations and the modern ‘slavery’ of industrial workers brought together in chapter one where the geneticist, as a boy, hears the origins of his family name, and carried on by direct referencing throughout the book to the ‘slavery’ of the factory worker. In one story a privileged white woman is kidnapped along with other politicians’ children and held in conditions similar to those of the slaving ships in order to teach them about the pain of the black underclass then and now.

The style of the book saves it from becoming too heavy-handed, too much of a shouty polemic. Structured as a self-styled ‘mosaic book’, instead of a direct, single story, what we are presented with is a series of vignettes that colour in areas and leave the rest to the imagination to fill in. These are short stories, connected by the common social and historical-futuristic backdrop and the personal connectivity between the main characters of each tale. The lynchpin is the geneticist, the other characters emerging as satellites to his wide-reaching orbit; those that admire him, are related to him, who have worked beside him and then others besides in other stories, as well as the children who are the results of his procedures. As an exercise in writing, it is remarkably bitter-sweet. Time passes with the unveiling of each story; we are being allowed snapshots along a wider timeframe, as if we had privileged insight into moments in a historical narrative. In fact, this is the strongest impression I had: that these are the main figures in a historical past that I was being allowed to see, to gather from them, from the stories of individuals, the progression of history. This writing reminds us that history is human history; it begins and ends with the decisions and actions of individuals who are in the right place and time to make differences. Writing on black-white relations and the political strife that marks this history in the USA is not new; a great number of authors cover the same subject in a variety of ways. Johnson’s talent is in making a proposed, and possible, future condition sound as realistic as a well-known past: effectively, nothing changes that much. People and their politics rise and fall; sometimes times are good, sometimes they are bad, but they carry on, because people carry on. There is an incredible sense of hope in this—life does carry on.

And this is despite the extremism that Johnson appears to see as the biggest enemy to peace and tolerance. There is racial extremism. White supremacists, the heirs of the KKK, self-titling themselves as ‘knights’, openly attack black communities with bombs and lynching. In an era where, we are told, inter-state law enforcement has collapsed and communities are left to defend their own, the geneticist is persuaded not only to create children healthy enough to survive the modern environment, but who are also strong, fast and efficient, to act as the shields of their town. Facing these new sprigs of humanity is religious extremism. Johnson does not forget the bigotry of the closed-minded against the new. The genetic alterations are seen as aberrations against God, the resulting children are treated with hostility and the geneticist damned for playing God. The irony is that the strongest hate in this quarter comes from the very poorer communities that the genetic ‘reparations’ are trying to help. Johnson seems to be showing us that old human foolishness: fear of difference. And by this means she is also showing us that such fear, leading to ostracism and even violence, is not just a white-black/rich-poor division; that even the underdogs are not helping themselves by clinging to superstition and dividing their own chances of survival. Johnson may have stern ideas on social injustice, but she is equally critical of those who waste opportunities. The ‘reparations’ are attempts to bridge something of the wealth/poverty gap, at least on the terms of the wealthy and powerful, moved to a genetic level. In this way, genetics is the new political, social, religious battleground; it is the new history book where progress, failure and change can be measured. It is also insidious. Instead of material change, changes which can be lost with war and natural disaster, the changes are those that the individual can carry with them at all times, no matter what obligations are laid upon them by others. And there is mention of the dangerous side of genetics; the ‘voodoo doll virus’ is a genetic nightmare that hunts down a specific person based on their DNA to infect them with a fatal illness. Assassination with no escape; genetics may improve lives, but they are also the ultimate weakness. This is the debate of human-ness inscribed within the very body itself; the social-political brought into the most intimate space of all, so there is no escape from the effects or the responsibilities.

Across all of these dialectics is, of course, the narrative archetype of Us and Them writ large. Johnson’s genetic alterations are seen by their supporters as the next stage for human evolution, the created beings are stronger, healthier and more vital than the non-enhanced. This is the Monster Dialectic: who emerges as the better being; the creator or created? This is the Child Dialectic: will the offspring make a better go of things than the parent? The stories raise questions over humanity’s future through the humanity (or lack of) in those involved in upheavals and change, and for all of them the choices come down to stay or go, change or fall. The ‘other’, the ‘monster’ comes across as the hope of the world. The final word is the first-person ‘statement’ of one of the geneticist’s last living creations. Having seen his entire family and community literally blown apart (by a catastrophic bombing), the last man standing is left to consider why he continues; for continue he does. It is, he feels, the boundless ability of the genetically enhanced to move on, if not forget, with the suggestions that the non-enhanced are also capable of this, if they try. Furthermore, this lone survivor with strong, almost perfect genes is prepared to share his DNA in a clinic to improve the position of those at the most disadvantage. This ‘monster’ is prepared to help the race from which he sprang, even while it fears him for his skin colour and his difference. This is Johnson’s hope.

And that hope is manifest in the love (or lack of it) that each character gives and receives. There is the hate-filled, yet loved, stepson; the loyal triplets; the embarrassment of a traumatised daughter (to a wealthy family); the driven young genius and his grandmother’s love and affection; poorer families broken due to illness; the sense of community among the poorer districts; and the genius geneticist’s positive decision to actively help the less fortunate instead of taking a cushy job in research. Those in loving situations notably blossom; affection is vital to human happiness. And yet those who are the most lost—the enhanced triplets living under their township’s suspicion, the ‘forgotten’ daughter, the repentant terrorist—are those who are the most driven to do what is ‘right’; out of crisis comes the most good.

The book moves at a feisty pace, the content is uncompromising and marvellously lacking in over-sentimental fluff. This is a thought-provoking, moving and clever piece of writing, which seems to shift the turn with definite sense of musicality; a symphony of meanings. I was intrigued and challenged. Highly recommended.

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Lewis (ed.), Horror Anthology of Horror Anthologies (2011)

DF Lewis (ed.), Horror Anthology of Horror Anthologies. Megazanthus Press, 2011. Pp. 324. ISBN 978-1447757351. £10.00.

Reviewed by Djibril Alayad

This anthology of twenty stories from the venerable Megazanthus Press boasts no forward, no author biographies, no promotional blurb or detailed explanation of the theme; no editorial hand has lovingly ordered the stories into a meaningful sequence so as to maximize the reader’s please, the stories are merely ordered alphabetically by author’s surname. This is all in accordance with editor DF Lewis’s “nemonymous” philosophy, namely letting the stories speak for themselves. The only common thread in this volume, as its title suggests, is that each horror story herein revolves around (or at least contains reference to) a fictional horror anthology. This leads to an eclectic collection of stories, some rather meta-fictional, some only loosely touching on the theme, which at times feels like it testifies more to the editor’s tastes than to a coherent thread, theme or message. That said, as any reader of the erstwhile Nemonymous series will know, the editor has excellent taste, and while the quality of the contents varies almost as widely as the subject matter, there are more excellent stories than there are duds between the covers of this book.

Several of the stories in this anthology are, as is only natural in a collection of horror stories about horror stories, fairly explicitly meta-fictional pieces, which is to say stories that say more about the writing process than about the ostensible subject matter. Of these, Colin Insole’s ‘The Apoplexy of Beelzebub’ is one of the finer pieces in the volume, telling the story of a public archivist in a depressing, creepy little town with more-vindictive-than-usual residents and more-vicious-even-than-usual children, and a penchant for anthologising the most unpleasant tales from their history, distant and recent. This tale is intriguing and disturbing in equal measure, filling the reader with disgust on behalf of the town, claustrophobia on behalf of the protagonist, and yet wonder on account of the horror-filled volumes in the town’s archives. As a piece of meta-fiction this is particularly effective; after all, what horror writer does not fancy herself a little bit an archivist?

Another very strong story that deconstructs the tropes of horror—in this case film—is ‘Common Myths and Misconceptions Regarding Rita Kendall’ by AJ Kirky; the eponymous Rita is an aging actress, best known for roles in schlock horror films and for her trademark blood-curdling scream. The once-famous Rita is being interviewed by an author for an anthology of stories inspired by classic horror, but her own story is complicated by memories of a twin sister whose life took a very different path from her own, but who is still psychically entangled with her every choice, every role, every scream. This story is a beautiful, and important, deconstruction of the sexy-victim trope in horror cinema, and as such is one of several stories in this collection that I would consider political (in all the right ways).

Also in the meta-fictional category are Dominy Clements’s ‘The Useless’, an atmospheric, creepy and effective borderline-surreal story about an inept lecturer and his impatient wife on a road-trip who get stranded in a village where the citizens are obsessed with reading from some mysterious and dangerous books; and ‘The Rediscovery of Death’ by Mike O’Driscoll, a very convincing (but slightly lacking in motivation or explanation) story of an independent horror editor unravelling—at heart this is an often irreverent but always affectionate homage to the small press, complete with references to real institutions and individuals.

Many stories, as is not uncommon in contemporary horror, deal with the topic of mental illness: what is more frightening to the reader in a relatively safe and prosperous life than losing one’s sanity, one’s grip on reality, or one’s ability to remember who one even is? The highlight of this category, and one of the lights of the anthology, is Mark Valentine’s ‘You Walk the Pages’, a story whose very language immediately suggests that the narrator is mentally ill, if not dangerously paranoid and borderline psychotic. As the protagonist fantasizes into the pages of his found-anthology ever more vivid acts of violence and horror against those who cross him or look at him funny, it becomes clear through the reader’s mounting discomfort that his message is in fact one of sanity and serenity. A truly profound and deeply moving story, and one which deserves to receive some real exposure.

Other stories of insanity include Colleen Anderson’s ‘It’s Only Words, which has an interesting set-up involving schizophrenic voices and unconventional violence, but an ending that doesn’t quite do justice to its topic; and ‘Residua’ by David Mathew, the tale of an (apparently) innocent prisoner questioning the nature of reality and his own mind. Two further stories in this vein involve the slow descent into dementia, a topic that is horrifying in its own right. Joel Lane’s ‘Midnight Flight’ is an understated but deeply moving piece exploring old age, memory and identity, as an aged reader tries to track down the editor of an out-of-print a horror anthology he read as a youth. The other, ‘Flowers of the Sea’ by Reggie Oliver is darker yet, a tooth-grittingly horrible depiction of senility against a vivid backdrop of painting and the squalid world of collectible antiques, including a mid-20th century almanac whose contents are more sinisterly real than expected.

Other stories examine our relationships with time, with aging, with events and experiences that affect us over a lifetime, along with our heritage (emotional rather than economic) from our parents. One excellent story in this vein is Rachel Kendall’s subtle and exquisite ‘Horror Stories for Boys’, the story of a man returning home to face his demons and his dying, hated father. This hideous story, again revolving around an almost-forgotten horror anthology from childhood, around illness and fear and self-punishment, is understated and stronger for it.

One of the stand-out stories in this entire volume is ‘The Pearl and the Boil’ by Rosanne Rabinowitz, another deeply moving story that takes place over several years, with childhood memory and the minor tragedies of growing up revolving around a vividly remembered but lost childhood book of horror stories, and a dreamlike early sexual encounter that may or may not have escaped from the pages of the book itself. This piece is also striking in that it has one of the most satisfying endings of a story of this type.

Other pieces that revolve around family or growing up include Tony Lovell’s ‘The Follower’, a story that takes places in a series of episodes throughout the protagonist Dorothy’s life, from sneakily reading a horror anthology as a child, to reading with her own child, and haltingly discussing the power of words, stories and the imagination with her son as a forgetful old woman; ‘All his Worldly Goods’ by D.P. Watt, a nice affecting story about bereavement and being left behind by modern life, with an ending that didn’t quite get there (but was probably the point); and Christopher Morris’s ‘The American Club’, an atmospheric piece about a young man finding his dying father’s unpublished fiction, with a nice build-up and a tense but understated ending.

There are a couple of classic horror stories in this anthology too: ‘The Fifth Corner’ by E. Michael Lewis, a tale of a magical horror manuscript hidden in a demonic car in a creepy museum, with glorious detail but a disappointingly sane climax; and Clayton Stealback’s ‘The Writer’, a familiar theme of a-writer-living-his-story that could have come from the pen of King or any of his imitators, well-written but not otherwise especially memorable.

A few stories leave the realm of gritty realist horror and flirt with surrealism or absurdist wild fantasy. ‘Tears of the Mutant Jesters’ by Rhys Hughes is a mildly amusing parody of horror writing, and a typically incisive, self-referential study of the surreal horror genre. Nick Jackson’s ‘Paper Cuts’, which begins with a pompous would-be writer badly cutting himself on a rose in mid-winter, and descends into a farcical attack on cliché and pretentiousness. ‘Horror Planet’ by S.D. Tullis is a story of studying in the library, courtship and alien invasion, written in a self-consciously irritating style and with no self-contained ending. (Strangely, sections of this story seem to be typeset in a different color—or rather shade of grey—but whether this is deliberate or an artifact of the otherwise invisible editing process was not clear.)

A piece that doesn’t fit into any of my (artificially) neat categories above, ‘Tree Ring Anthology’ by Daniel Ausema is without a doubt the stand-out story in The Horror Anthology of Horror Anthologies. Ausema not only takes the most liberties with the theme in this piece (the “anthology” is not a book, but a history reconstructed from dendroarchaeology, the growth-rings of a tree that has suffered unnatural horrors in a dystopian future), but it is also one of the cleverest and most original and inventive stories I have read in a long time.

Although I have attempted to categorise the stories in this volume for the purposes of this review, but I should reiterate the the editor has done no such thing, rather through the effectively random sequence and lack of introduction letter each story speak for itself. To take this as a lack of editorial oversight would be an error, however, since this is a carefully crafted anthology as memorable as any of the fictional anthologies in the stories within, and the influence of the inimitable D.F. Lewis is clearly recognizable. I would not be at all surprised if several stories in this volume were nominated or honorably mentioned in the year’s awards and anthologies.

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Kepfield, Pygmalion Unbound (2011)

Sam S. Kepfield, Pygmalion Unbound. Musa Publishing, 2011. Pp 96. ISBN 978-1-61937-098-2. $2.99 (e-book).

Reviewed by Kate Onyett

Before any review can continue on this one, the simply delectable title just begs to be unpacked. As a basis for a first impression, for anyone with half an eye to cross-textual referencing (which I would like to think an intelligent reader interested in this genre of story would be), it’s a doozy. To begin: Pygmalion. Both an ancient Greek myth about the creation of the perfect female form (literally, from ivory, which comes alive at the besotted sculptor’s prayer to Venus) and a popular musical about similar, but in true Edwardian style the ‘moulding’ is a social one; turning a working class girl into the facsimile of a high-end lady.

Then there is Prometheus Unbound; a lyrical play by Percy Shelly from 1830. It continues the ancient Greek tale of the sufferings of Prometheus; a Titan bound to a rock and tortured for eternity by Jupiter for the help and favour he showed towards humans, giving them, among other things, the secret of fire. In Shelley’s play, following the traditions of the romantic poets, Prometheus begins to feel pity for his tormentor, Jupiter, thus showing himself to be the better being. He is released from his torment and reunited with his lost love; there is redemption in the air. Added to this, one cannot escape the marital connection to Mary Shelley, the ‘mother’ of the classic monster story. On the side of the monster, Mary’s take was revolutionary for its time; suggesting that the ‘monster’ was the better being; ultimately meeting and forgiving his human maker; a feckless and hysterical character by comparison. She also put forward the idea of nurture over nature: the monster, despite coming from questionable beginnings, learns to be more human than those who would fear and loathe him, based on his physical appearance. Mary voiced the classic tension of ‘us’ and ‘them’ that haunts politics and speculative fiction.

Kepfield’s story ranges across all these themes; it is no coincidence he chose the snappy collision of ideas. The story is about creating a perfect female, lost love, the politics of human failings, and the created heroine rising above the pettishness of her creators. It suggests a better future of the human race; shown by a created super-human; a new fire of hope from this lovely Prometheus. And it places the dialectic of ‘us’ the ‘them’ in a very familial setting. Humans relating to not-human is the stage for a developmental tussle between the creator ‘father’ and the socialising, nurturing influence of the ‘mother’ psychologist. The loss of a love-of-his-life and of domestic bliss and the feminine influence softens the usual ‘bad guy’ role of the creator in this genre of sci-fi. The stern Dr Crane is the sculptor trying to recreate that loss. Having locked his sentiment away in his doomed relationship in the past, he seeks to be in control, to assert his masculine prerogative, at all times as a way of protecting his dreams. Unfortunately, he tries to control the fate of one that is effectively his ‘child’ in order to try to hold close the memory of his lost partner. This, as any family psychologist will tell you, is not a healthy outcome, and Maria’s escape is inevitable in such a stifling relationship.

And nicely sprinkled over all as a sweetener are just enough geek sci-fi references to make this reader smile; notably direct associations to the Terminator, Metropolis, and trashy 1980s sci-fi actioneers. Asimov’s and Clark’s stories have been held up as the forefathers of current rational thought in scientific development; long have sci-fi ‘geeks’ crowed over the fact that creative imaginations, writing stories, came up with the basic inspirations that a lot of modern technology now appears to mimic. One could say that such writers were in fact just good at reading the lines of eventual development, but it is cute to have a sci-fi story purporting to be all about the serious science make a nod to such themes and beginnings, right from chapter one!

Structurally, the tale runs a gamut from a slow introductory schema featuring densely-packed techno-babble details on the processes involved in the heroine’s creation, to a sense of urgency and ‘escape’, to related legalities (the author is a practising lawyer), to an action climax, featuring a savvy, slick fully-operational ass-kicking female Hollywood would be proud of.

Maria, a new being, is created from a metal skeleton, cloned tissue and nano technology; engineered to be faster, stronger, heaps more efficient and smarter than the average human but to pass as fully organic. To call a comparison to another iconic sci-fi figure, in common with the Fifth Element’s heroine, Leeloo, she is a super-soldier, a sponge for new information, a naif and innocent, soaking up moral and ethical behaviours from the humans around her. And like Leeloo she taps into the sad, long history of mankind’s failings, upon which she learns to break her programming, even Asimov’s Laws, to make her own, independent decisions. Given that hints as to the very personal origin of the DNA needed to create her tissues; from, we eventually learn, a person close to Dr Crane, her creator, it does feel as if Kepfield is making a stand about the triumph of the human spirit, in a story about technical supremacy. Endearingly, his ‘monster’, unlike Mary Shelley’s, carries a rather Victorian notion (still used in sci-fi and horror tales) that the spirit of a person now dead can somehow infect and direct the actions of another; the inheritor of their genetic blueprint. Under this all, and raised directly by the psychologist, Dr Kelly (brought in to bring out a coherent personality in Maria), is the question about the binding element of a being; that of the soul, and whether it can exist in a created being, not of woman born. The ghost in the machine. Maria’s determination to go her own way is Kepfield’s answer. The child grows up and takes her life into her own hands, guided by her own sense of self and right to be.

There is a strong undercurrent of religious thinking in the story, where faith is a supportive, ethical guiding source. Kelly takes comfort from her Catholic background, despite her free-thinking outlook, and encourages Maria to base her ethical and moral development on Christian ideals. It is a mark of Kepfield’s writing ability that this does not feel intrusive or strange. Instead, it is a neat flexibility that has the meeting of science and faith naturally melds in the mind of a semi-organic, artificially created form. If there is one weakness, it is that the characters seem remarkably emotionally calm on many levels; direct and to their points, they are not terribly conflicted. One might expect that Maria, an android programmed with technical informational data, learning about spiritual issues, might have issues grasping one and the other together. But in her the bridge between belief and science is somewhat effortlessly crossed. This is due to a revelation; a crisis moment, over her purpose (prototype) and what will happen next (semi-human ‘drones’ set to slave labour and to go to war; her ‘race’ in bondage; the most obvious ‘use’ of the eponymous ‘Other’), and leaps forward in development are often ascribed to crunch times (evolution as a series of leaps; adaptations to environment. Quiet complacency is seen in biological and social tracts as stultifying). However, given the nifty novella format of the story, too much soul-searching would bog down proceedings terribly. The wit of brevity in this instance can forgive this skipping-over of a lot of the ramifications of what is a pretty huge, social question.

Kepfield ascribes this breakthrough of rational-emotional maturity to deep-rooted genetic-level ‘memories’ from the woman Maria’s DNA came from, and as mentioned above, this is possibly one of the most far-fetched aspects of the story. The fact that this, among the rest, seems the most fantastic, speaks volumes about the authenticity of the style of writing. The story is, for the most part, very believable; set in a near-future where technology is different, but recognisable; and where human nature has undergone no profound changes, as a twenty-first century reader might reasonably expect. The ending, however, is a little too Hollywood; a big badda-boom is the ultimate deck-clearing plot-device. By this time Maria is on the run from her creators; defying their plans for her, she goes into deep cover, unfortunately discovered, and needs must make a final stand (in a mortal sense) to cover up her disappearance for good. Tapping into a well-known filmic gestalt so far as such heroines are concerned; the lean, smart, lovely warrior-woman is a far cry from the theoretical child at the start of the novella. Kepfield keeps it all moving along at a cracking rate.

The epilogue is the fulfilling of hope. Dr Franklin, a co-creator on the project, cherishes a higher purpose; a dream of making a better being to draw humans out of the new dark ages he sees approaching in an increasingly violent world (a shoe-in role for Morgan Freeman, if ever there was one, to give a filmic comparison), and indeed, here is the classical Greek, and non-religious Romantic poet’s, allusion to idea of a greater being’s concern and interest in the redemption of softer, more fragile beings; an ethical code learned from a Catholic psychologist. This new version of humanity, this potential ‘monster’ if humanity had its way with her, has a greater capacity to help mankind.

One of the biggest tropes that stories about robots often employ is the idea of segregation, of the difference between human and the non-human. Comparisons with known apartheid regimes based on race/ religion/ sexual preferences make such ‘discussions’ using the human/ non-human dichotomy direct forums for politicised comment by the author, adding gravitas. Adding to Kepfield’s proven credentials as a writer (solid prose, recognisable themes, and believable characters), depth is added by the continuance of the robot-human discussion. Interestingly, in such a technical story, he has chosen the question of soul. Kepfield stands on the side of soul being possible, but only due to a trace memory within genetics: a possession, of sorts, by a human spirit. This starts to create problems for Crane and his military backers as Maria develops her own identity and begins to want to same respect for her habeas corpus. In some respects, although direct allusion is made by Maria accessing information on, and Kelly and Franklin’s ideas on, the Holocaust and slavery, the biggest aspect of ‘us’ and ‘them’ this semi-robot stands for is the question over family; when to let go; can we make the beloved ‘them’ into a part of ‘us’? This is an unusual tack, and is a unique perspective into the question of difference: the inevitable gap between me (us) and you (them), which appears even upon our own hearths, before we progress into the world; hiding our own insecurities in the ‘big questions’ which are only big because it is a lot of people having the same insecurities and blaming it on others.

The basic premise of this story is instantly recognisable: man makes something amazing. The being rebels, and a struggle ensues during which it is proven that man has much to learn from his creation, which turns out to be pretty awesome in more ways than anticipated. Pygmalion Unbound is a solid, entertaining story that stands solidly on this archetype. It does incorporate a few neat, new visions of its own, which are welcome in an otherwise well-trod genre. It was an interesting and entertaining read: intelligent, competent, and fresh, and I would look out the author’s work again.

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Holt & Leib, Fat Girl in a Strange Land (2012)

Kay T. Holt & Bart R. Leib (ed.), Fat Girl in a Strange Land. Crossed Genres Publications, 2012. Pp. 125. ISBN 978-0615569710. $11.95.

Reviewed by Peter Damien

The premise of this anthology of short stories is very simple and is laid plainly in its title: stories about women who have some weight on them (varying from obese, to merely heavy, or solid) put into stories of speculative fiction where, usually, it’s rail-thin women, or men. I was excited to get my hands on the anthology, first because I had already reviewed a previous anthology from Crossed Genres—titled Subversion—and had found it excellent. But I was also excited because something I take frequent issue with in books, movies, TV shows and comics is the lack of thought put into how people look. Yes, someone in a film might be having a rough life, but they look like Reese Witherspoon, so there’s that going for them.

On the whole, this is a strong anthology, although my one problem with it straight up front is that it’s tiny. It’s 130 pages long. Not only because it’s a terrific topic that I would’ve liked to have seen explored at even greater length, but also because it is quite expensive. That’s nobody’s fault—being a small publisher means money is tight. I merely note it up front. Some of the stories work, and some don’t. When they do, they’re excellent. When they don’t, they really don’t. But we’ll see what I mean as we dive into the stories themselves.

Opening the anthology is ‘La Gorda and the City of Silver’ by Sabrina Vourvoulias, a brief story about a heavyset, strong woman who enters into the world of Luchadores—Mexican Wrestlers—and also the world of costumed heroes, in a way. Both of these are fundamentally men’s fields (“but there are female superheroes” you might argue, and I could argue quite easily that no, there actually aren’t). The story is brief in length and spare in how it’s told, but works beautifully by including only necessary details, full of excellent and telling brush strokes.

Although La Gorda, and all women, are excluded from the world of Luchadores and their wrestling, none of the male characters in the story are actively repressive or particularly sexist. There is no hostility, it just hasn’t occurred to them, really, to make any changes to the way things have always been done. I like this in a story, when you can feel the author’s sympathy and interest in all of the characters. It reminded me of Love & Rockets, a very long-running comic series of which I’m a tremendous fan. They share many elements, from strong women, to the Latin influence, and female wrestlers, to the topic of weight gain and actually treating the weight of the woman as a relevant detail and not just an unsightly handicap. All of this leads to an excellent, well-done short story.

We follow this with ‘The Tradeoff’ by Lauren C Teffeau, which is a very clever science fiction story about the mission which precedes the colonization of new worlds. We follow a group of scientists who go to the mostly uninhabited world and trigger reactions that will make it become habitable over time. Part of the required preparation for this mission, we learn, is to gain a lot of weight. In a world of controlled rations and thin people, this is a crew of people who are very obviously fat. It provides not only warmth, but extra calories.

The main focus of the story is the mission itself, and also the lives and relationships traded for the job... but the matter of weight hangs over the whole story and is somewhere inside nearly every scene and conversation we witness. We get some very smart observations, never harped upon, but brought clearly to light. For one, the way someone carrying a lot of weight can feel trapped in their own body, constantly self-conscious. And secondly, we look at how very differently society treats men and women with some weight on them. The weight will be ignored on a man, but fixated on if it’s on a woman, and this will in turn lead to all sorts of unfounded judgments about her. This is as true in a science fictional future-based story as it is in the modern world we live in, and it’s unpleasant in both.

The only problem I had with the story was that in the moments when events took a turn for the worst, the writing maintained its tone and pacing without a single waver, did not quicken or convey the urgency of the moment to me at all. But this is a brief problem, and leaving it aside, we still have an excellent piece of straight SF.

Unfortunately, moving onward, this small anthology begins to stumble with ‘Cartography, and the Death of Shoes’ by AJ Fitzwater, a story with too many problems to ever take off. First, it’s hampered very badly, I feel, by the second-person point of view. It’s distracting and contributes nothing to the actual narrative itself, but serves as a distancing device for no reason. The story never engages with its own main character, or the world around her. The plot simply occurs, then stops, leaving no particular emotion or idea in its place. Somewhere underneath the problems are the pieces of a clever story, but they never click.

Clever ideas that never click is the problem of our next story too, a piece called ‘Survivor’ by Josh Roseman. It’s a good premise, which suggests that running to avoid the approaching dawn of a burning hot alien sun might not be so easy if you don’t actually look like Vin Diesel. A starship has crashed on the world, and the only survivor is a teenage girl who is overweight, and who has no choice but to try and run the long distance from the crash site to a bunker where she’d be safe from the approaching sun.

I mentioned Vin Diesel, because this was more or less the premise of a scene out of The Chronicles of Riddick, a movie which I dearly love, no matter how dumb people might think it is. I liked the idea of a story which might have looked at that scene and questioned how it would work if everyone wasn’t Vin Diesel-fit. Unfortunately the story never engages with this central idea, or indeed with its central character. She never gives any indication that she’s out of shape—she doesn’t seem to move slowly, doesn’t seem to run out of breath, or actually have any problems—and she never seems to be frightened, or hesitant in the slightest. This means we just can’t connect emotionally with her at all, and thus, it winds up being an action story about Vin Diesel, in the end.

The stumble continues with my least favorite story in the collection, ‘The Right Stuffed’ by Brian Jungwiwattanaporn, a story which I spent a great deal of time puzzling over after I had finished reading it. I can’t quite decide if it’s actually offensive, or was trying to make a point and failed, or if I somehow failed to make sense of it.

The plot as I see it is this: Two overweight women are recruited by the military to be intel-gathering agents in a Matrix-style virtual reality. The best way, we are told, to get information out of the virtual reality intact is to eat it. Regular soldiers, with their fitness and nutrition are just no good at it, so they bring in two fat women ‘cause they’re good at eating a lot.

Not only did I find it an offensive idea, it also doesn’t make a lot of sense. The story is full of holes. While reading, I was given a very blurry view of the real world, the virtual reality, how people fit into any of it, and why this information needed retrieving. I’m entirely unclear on the impetus behind any of the events in the story. But the biggest problem is that recruiting two non-soldier fat girls made no sense. I’m a skinny guy with a very high metabolism. Much to the consternation of my wife and our food budget, I eat more or less constantly. Surely, within the ranks of these soldiers, there must be a few already-trained men or women who can eat a ton? Is there a legal system in the world of this story? Because I can only imagine the lawsuits and repercussions of the military trying to recruit people based on their weight. Whose information is it? Why is it food? None of it adds up, and that left me, briefly, dreading continuing my anthology-reading.

But happy, that dread was dispelled instantly by the next piece, called ‘Tangwystl the Unwanted’ by Katherine Elmer. Tangwystl lives in a tower, kept there by a witch, and the story is about what happens when circumstances force her to leave and go out into the world for the first time, searching for a family she hasn’t seen since she was a baby.

I loved everything about the story. It begins as a riff on the story of Rapunzel (or, as I will forever happily think of it, Tangled) but quickly moves into its own unique territory, as she heads into a world full of wonderfully inventive, genuinely clever creatures and ideas. I am not much for high fantasy stories or fairy tales, full of creatures and made up lands (it’s just not my cup of tea), but was quickly enamored with this world, here presented in a clear-eyed writing style which I would expect from someone who had sold a lot more than one story. It’s a beautiful piece. I wish it were longer, but that being said, it doesn’t actually need to be. There’s not an ounce of flab in the story, and it ends precisely where it needs to. I just wanted more.

From there, we roll into another stronger story, the anthology having regained its stride for the moment. In ‘Flesh of my Flesh,’ Bonnie Ferrante introduces us to Alina, one of the few humans who can psychologically manage to live on the world of Seth with the alien inhabitants, and we see what happens to her life when her fiancé—an appalling, controlling man—comes to town.

The story is well-written, and the twist at the end is well-executed. It’s an interesting look at the great trouble we’d have coming to terms with alien races, especially if some of their social practices are considered tremendously wrong by humanity. It has the feel of an old-school science fiction story by someone like Damon Knight (who wrote a similar piece, the title of which has escaped me). The problem I have with the story is, as with many stories in this anthology, they are barely connected to the anthology’s central theme. Here, it seems mostly irrelevant that Alina has gained some weight during her time on Seth. There were a number of stories in this anthology, and this is one of them, where one could remove the matter of weight entirely from the story and it wouldn’t suffer any collapse at all.

‘How Do you Want To Die?’ by Rick Silva is a very small story about a gladiator woman who has escaped and is dying in the desert. Very little happens in the story, save for glances back at her life. Again, as with the previous story the reference to her weight is maybe one line long, and then plays no further part in the story. But then, there is virtually no story for it to play a part in.

Of the stories mentioned on the back cover of the anthology, ‘Nemesis’ by Nicole Prestin was the story I was most looking forward to reading. I have a deep love of superheroes, tightly woven with an intense dissatisfaction at how shallow and cookie-cutter the characters and stories frequently are. The premise of this short story, though, is very much like superhero plots I am endlessly dreaming up. A woman from Omaha—45 years old, size fourteen—joins a superhero team in a big city, and the first problem she has is that she isn’t 19 years old and size zero (with a DD-cup chest size, of course). Also, she doesn’t want to wear a spandex costume (and is therefore sane. I mean, who would?)

The story proceeds from this initial conflict and does not disappoint. It is exciting and well-written, and best of all, she remains not only a compelling superhero, but also a consistent one. We are given what is nearly a right-of-passage crime for her to deal with (a bank robbery turned into a hostage situation), and when the action kicks off, she doesn’t suddenly begin moving and fighting like a 19-year-old action star.

So it’s an excellent story. I not only left it wanting more, but wanting more in an ongoing comic form. When I finished reading the piece, I spent the rest of my afternoon not only writing this short story as a comic script in my head, but also making up other stories and plot-lines and ideas for what would come next. In the comic medium, in the super-hero genre, this premise would have some razor-sharp things to say, and would also be funny and a blast to read. I really hope this isn’t the last I get to read of Flux.

Onward we go, to ‘Davy,’ by Anna Dickinson, which is a simple story that conveys a great deal in a few pages. It’s the story of Laura, who has just had a baby and is now dealing with all the excess weight that didn’t just disappear when her son was born, not to mention a deep depression which keeps her mostly in bed, and also the frustration, despair, and occasional fury that comes along with trying to deal with a newborn. And also, the strange gray things which are coming out of the painting on the wall, fixated on her son Davy.

This is an extremely well-written piece which—like ‘Nemesis’—makes a topic out of Laura’s weight and uses it thoughtfully and properly throughout the story. This is also a story I found genuinely frightening and harrowing to read, something I just hadn’t expected anywhere in this anthology. I have two young sons myself and am their stay-at-home parent, have been since infancy, and thus identified very much with the exhaustion, despair (which is accompanied by the certainty that one is an unfit parent, both in life and in the story). Like all parents, the thought of something coming and taking my children is the stuff of my nightmares these days. So I was immersed and spooked by the piece. Dickinson deals with a lot of plot and a lot of characters and ideas in a very small space, and ends the story perfectly. It’s a story I can see myself re-reading more than once, which is always a high compliment for a piece of writing.

Another stumble in the anthology is ‘Sharks and Seals,’ by Jennifer Brozek. This is a very small story, in which the leader of one magical order is brought to talk to the leader of another magical order, and that’s pretty much it. It’s a problematic story, which never adds up to anything. Major events are hinted at—a failed ceremony in the past, the calling in of a debt sometime in the future—but neither event appears in the story or is elaborated on.

Nominally, this is a story about self-confidence, but this doesn’t work either. Corelli is worried they won’t take her seriously as the new leader of her magic order—because she’s not only new, but a woman and overweight—but this is an unfounded concern, because except for one henchman in the story, everyone takes her completely seriously. And there’s no element of actually standing on her own, either, because at each instance where she might need to, she uses magic to quickly deal with the problem. (And the use of magic is also irrelevant: one instance of magic makes her seem cold and cruel, another instance of magic is meant to help her speak correctly in a tricky conversation, followed by a very brief and completely clear conversation which requires no magic at all.)

I’m pleased to report that this was a one-story-long stumble this time, because next up we get ‘Marilee and the S.O.B.’ by Barbara Krasnoff, which is an unbelievably catchy title to say out loud. The story begins very simply: Marliee—who is a bit overweight and unnoticed—has made a hobby out of following strangers to their destinations without them seeing her, for no other reason than to find out where they’re going (and really, to give herself some special knowledge and a special ability over which to have power). One day, she follows a beautiful young man off the bus, only to discover that he is well aware of her, and also not at all what he seems.

The story and its characters are easily likable and engaging. This might sound like an odd comparison, but Marliee reminded me of the character Annie Wilkes from Stephen King’s novel Misery, but without the insanity or the terror. She is big, solid, practical, under-estimated, and seems a bit simple as a result (a mistaken judgment to make, we learn). I’ve said this before in the course of this review, but the one failing of the story is that it stops. I don’t just mean that as a compliment, either. I mean that there are interesting characters and ideas on display here, and it feels like the first chapter of an excellent novel, the surface of which this story barely scratches. Something along the lines of War for the Oaks by Emma Bull. I finished the story not only wanting to read more, but plotting how I’d write it as a novel as well.

Following the light-hearted previous story, we now come to ‘Blueprints’ by Anna Caro, which is an extremely powerful piece. Earth is an old, used up husk of a planet, and Terra Nova is a brave new world where dreams come true and the streets are surely paved with gold. Unless, of course, you’re poor, or sick, or overweight (how overweight? who cares?) and then you can stay behind on Earth, with the rest of those who are unfit.

This is a very powerful story which is nominally science fiction, but talks about nothing which hasn’t happened somewhere, sometime in our own history (and is happening even now). The story deals with a range of topics, from the feeling of being left behind, to the difficulty (and brutality) of the legal and illegal immigration experiences, to the inevitable discovery that the new world you’re escaping to is no paradise and might be much worse than what you left behind. The story is not only well-told, but handles these fairly heavy topics with an easy touch, never becoming tiresome or preachy. A very strong piece, which runs as long as it needs to, no more or less.

Finally, we have ‘Lift’ by Pete “Patch” Alberti, a short piece about a girl who is a bit heavy, and not rich, and who is not popular because of these things. So she works and patiently builds a spaceship of her very own, no matter how much the world seems to want her not to. There isn’t much more to the story than that, and that’s just fine. This is a wonderful story for the anthology to end on. It’s a fun, sweet, wholly optimistic story, which finishes off the book on a light note. Beyond being upbeat, though, it’s also well-told and engaging and if I don’t wind up saying any more about it, it’s only because I had no complaints.

So there we have it, a look at all of the fourteen stories in the book. My overall reaction was enjoyment. There were a lot of very strong stories in the book. Unfortunately, there were also a number of weaker stories, and in an anthology of only 130 pages and fourteen total stories, five weak ones is quite a lot. There simply isn’t room to spare for them. My overall complaint was, as I mentioned throughout the review, that too many of the stories seemed not to have much to do with the central theme of the book. The whole premise of the book is right there in the excellent title, Fat Girl in a Strange Land, but it seemed like some of the stories forgot to include both of those elements within the piece. If I can remove the weight issue from the story without causing any damage at all, then I don’t feel it’s had any relevance in the story.

Still, this is the second anthology I’ve read and reviewed from Crossed Genres Publications, and I’m happy to say that my esteem for them remains unchanged. They are publishing excellent collections of mostly strong stories, based around creative topics which I learn about and immediately want to read stories about. Two books later, I’m still of the opinion that I’d pick up any Crossed Genres anthology if I came across it.

Whether you wind up liking or disliking it in the same ways I did, I think Fat Girl in a Strange Land is well worth your time and money, if only so you can make up your own mind.

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