Nath, The Cyclist (2010)

Fred Nath, The Cyclist. Fingerpress, 2010. Pp. 304. ISBN 978-0956492517. £12.99 / $19.99 / €15.99.

Reviewed by Jerome Kemp

The Cyclist is the debut novel by Fred Nath, a neurosurgeon from the North East of England, and it is published by Fingerpress, an independent, London-based publisher, who claim on their website to publish non-fiction and “top-quality fiction across a range of genres.” The précis sounds promising enough: a thriller set in 1943 Aquitaine; Jews being rounded up; a sadistic German SD officer on the scene; the murder of a sweet young chanteuse; and a sterling French policeman, Auguste Ran, wanting to redeem himself for his complicity in incipient Nazi atrocities, and, as a consequence, having to escape to Switzerland with his family and oldest friend.

Unfortunately, this expectant interest is soon overturned, and any ideas of getting into this story—such as it turns out to be—are pretty much abandoned. The prose is at times awfully clunky and the narrative voice which it conveys uncomfortably earnest. For me, at least, the problems in style and voice are too great to have afforded any hope of becoming involved in the rather simple, though perhaps potentially rather good, story.

So, to the first stumbling block, on the first page, where Nath, perhaps in his eagerness to impart a realistic, atmospheric detail, goes so far as to describe a woman thus: “An elderly woman, curly grey hair and sagging breasts...”

Of course, I concede that sagging breasts certainly amount to a realistic detail, but surely not a very necessary one. Or perhaps I’m being too sensitive and shouldn’t attach much importance to it, that it’s natural enough in the flow of the narrative? Or then again (and this is what I was actually at first prepared to think) maybe the author is up to something: perhaps there would be some consequent detail about this woman’s breasts (in her youth perhaps) that would render their present sagginess all the more striking, poignant, or, for that matter, funny. But it’s clear, once you’ve got to the end of the opening page, that no such future revelations or explanations are likely to be forthcoming. Instead, the thing that I then became most aware of was the childishly earnest narrative voice.

Indeed, it is a narrative voice which, by virtue of its childishness and wish to blandly over-describe, often brings forth wasteful, explicatory sentences, tagged on to the end of paragraphs (whether or not the paragraphs are redundant already is open to question), as with:

“He shoved Claude’s body into the hollow trunk. It was an impossible task, because the feet stuck out and he had to gather fallen branches and armfuls of leaves to hide them. Anyone walking the path in daylight might have spotted the corpse otherwise.” (my italics)

And there are other moments where the writing is just inappropriate.

“Brunner swayed back and forth. A greenish colour began to evolve on his face and it gave Auguste a deep satisfaction and pleasure to imagine the wine jettisoning from the German’s gullet...” (This somehow had me thinking of vorsprung durch technik advertisements.)

Or a bit silly:

“The wicked English, the ‘Rosbifs’, were rumoured to haunt the ruins, though Auguste paid no attention to such childish beliefs.” (Presumably this was to reassure us of our hero’s sense of reason.)

Or again:

“They embraced and he held her as tight as he would the edge of a cliff from which he had slipped. He felt like a plummeting man.”

He felt like a plummeting man? After reading that, so did I.

But there is more. The most irritating grammatical feature is in the use of commas. They sometimes crop up understandably to denote a subordinate clause, but don’t then reappear to mark its end, e.g.:

“The light, he was sure came from a torch and he saw it hover then extinguish. (sic)”

Or sometimes they just crop up in the wrong place:

“Zara, ma fleur, Zara,” Auguste said, reaching towards the stairs with one hand, grasping the empty air as if by doing so, he could mend the hole Odette and he had made in her life. (sic)” etc.

But in fact, the most hideous editorial feature is the prevalent and inappropriate hyphenating of words when interrupted by the line ending, as with: “pu-shed,” “ca-lled,” “fl-ailing,” “ke-ep”—and, of course: “Aug-uste.” So it does come as quite a shock that the book has been published in its present state, and I think the publishers (Fingerpress) and editors have to be held partly responsible for many of its flaws.

To some extent these editorial mistakes perhaps make it difficult to fairly and fully appraise the novel’s (would-be) literary merits, though on the other hand they do serve to complement its most obvious demerits. On the whole the characterisation is wooden. The protagonist—chief of police Auguste Ran—is unremittingly and (most importantly) unrealistically earnest. His friendship with Pierre, the Jew he’s known since childhood, is mainly defined by the way they rag each other about their respective faiths (Judaism and Catholicism) which isn’t particularly endearing (as it’s presumably supposed to be), it’s jarring and unconvincing. Indeed, the attendant theme of Ran’s struggles with his religious conscience is also handled with unrealistic simplicity. The characterisation of the German officer, Brunner, is, however, a little more engaging (and the scene involving the Nazi Barbie is interesting), but even here there is a sense that Brunner’s evil is never properly communicated: it is, I suppose, to be taken for granted. As it turns out, the lesser characters (the treacherous colleague, Claude, and the loyal secretary, Édith) are more convincing: it is perhaps a shame that more attention isn’t paid on them.

In fact, there is a sense that if this book had been properly edited and the author had had some sensible feedback with regard to characterisation and narrative voice, the story itself could have won through, and this could have been a passable novel. (In its present state, though, any emphasis on the purported theme of ‘a search for absolution’, as indicated in the ‘Note to the Reader’ before the start, again seems uncomfortably ambitious.) There are some scenes, particularly towards the end, which, in spite of editorial or authorial neglect, do just about sustain the reader’s engagement. And although this does not hold for the book as a whole, it may be fair to say that the author can envisage a good story: he could just do with a bit more care and guidance in putting it into print.

So what might have been, if ably handled, an interesting insight into a certain period and place in history, and even an exciting thriller, is rendered a lumpen, badly edited—or perhaps just not edited—account of people that, in their unrealistic portrayal, are impossible to identify with.

Oh yes, and then there were the sex scenes... but that would be too much...

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Solomon, Visitors to the Inner Earth (2011)

Professor Solomon, Visitors to the Inner Earth. Top Hat Press, 2011. Pp. 314. ISBN 978-0912509105. $16.00.

Reviewed by Terry Grimwood

At first glance Visitors to the Inner Earth by Professor Solomon looks a bit like one of Terry Deary’s Horrible Histories. The photo of the author on the back cover, preparing to enter a cave and wearing a tool vest, hard hat and dapper shirt and tie as well as the light-hearted cover illustration, all help maintain the impression that this is a tongue-in-cheek visit with some of those who claim to have travelled deep into the earth and found remarkable things there.

Not so.

Stracher, The Water Wars (2011)

Cameron Stracher, The Water Wars. Sourcebooks, 2011. Pp. 256. ISBN 978-1-4022-4369-1. $16.99.

Reviewed by Regina de Búrca

Cameron Stracher’s The Water Wars is a YA dystopian novel set in a world where water is a rare and precious commodity. The countries in the novel’s world are in conflict as they try to gain control of the little drinkable water that is left. 15 year-old Vera narrates the story that begins with her meeting the mysterious Kai, who tells her of a river that exists but is being kept secret by the authorities. When Kai goes missing, Vera and her brother Will go in search of him and learn the truth about the worldwide drought: that it is due to lack of access to water, not a lack of water itself. The premise of this novel was intriguing, and when the book arrived I loved the stunning design of the dust jacket, but I’m afraid this book did not match my expectations.

Lowe, Tour of Beaujardin (2010)

Marc Lowe, A Tour of Beaujardin (or, The Derelicts). ISMs Press,
2010. Pp. 48. £3.00/$4.50.

Reviewed by Kate Onyett

ISMs is a Manchester-based independent press, producing chapbooks and e-books, that specialises in edge fiction: odds and sods, curios and, in their own words “to promote the best of the darkest, quirkiest, most surreal new writers in town.” Also a publisher of an e-zine, Sein und Werden that sees itself as “a literary magazine of experimental prose, poetry and artwork that seeks to merge and modernise the ideas behind Expressionism, Surrealism and Existentialism,” there is a distinct stand for individuality and an unashamedly choosy editorial position. If it’s not clever, witty, dark as pitch and unrepentantly visceral, it probably won’t make it in. This could be seen as literary snobbery; instead, it is a filter for odd little offerings like A Tour of Beaujardin (or The Derelicts).

Lowe’s touch is light, inviting implication and reader involvement. He sketches the frame, sets the mood lighting: the reader fills it with the dark scenes and dystopian details gleaned from previous novels read, films watched, etc. Like the image on the cover; a figure half-hidden in the shadows of tall blocks, he is deliberately allowing interpretation of a half-seen view. A writer of dark and weird subjects, highly educated (to masters level), it would be naive to assume that his writing, while having all the freshness of spontaneity, is not heavily influenced by literary and creative themes. Certainly the reading of his work brings multiple readings to mind. Some may be intentional: it is a credit to him that his work is able to provoke such thinking.

The story is ostensibly a ‘tour’ of an insular, isolationist and crazed city-scape. There is heavy irony in the name. Translated to ‘beautiful garden,’ it suggests open spaces, cool flora and pleasantly scented airs. What actually emerges is a 1984-esque, grimy, controlling and paranoid construct. The voice, predominantly that of the guide, is at once specifically individual (offering disallowed anecdote and personal reflection) and the voice of humanity crushed by the weight of systematic control. On one level, the book is a critique of enormous institutions that overwhelm the human being.

Cutting the story into unequal sections creates a tour-book-style set of descriptions, delineating districts and locations like differently shaded areas on tourist maps. The effect on reading these sections, especially as they change from descriptive detail to opinions (see below) is of an anxious haste. One is left with the impression that being a visitor here is almost forbidden. There is a steadily building sense of menace, until it spills into a violent conclusion, when the one being guided—the ‘you’ up till now—takes on the ‘I’, and is left to face the dangers of the place alone.

The sections are akin to monographs, all centred on the depiction of the city. Thematically this is a landscape of fear, repression and danger. There are extremes of rich and poor, unrealised tenderness in unlikely places, oppressive, fascist politics and what could be a severe critique of modern capitalism: the injunction to work fourteen or so hours a day, when all workers (all adults over school-age) are locked in the tall glass monolith buildings, leaning at feverish angles to accentuate their looming presence. The main roads are a constant stream of mechanised death: the crossing lights are too short, the vehicles are nose to nose and one must be careful no blood is splashed onto one’s shoes from the latest victim. No sense of mortality or recognition of human suffering or human connection is allowed here in this post-modern creation. Strong stuff, indeed.

Going deeper, a reviewer of a previous work of Lowe’s names a “maddeningly logical construction.” The deliberate sectioning of parts is a solid construct in a rushing narrative. It is logical, indeed, for a heavily monolithic city to be described in parts: in bricks of description building it up. Yet the description is about implied details, hints and ambiguities that are wide open to interpretation. If “maddeningly logical” describes the clash and strain of flexible narrative breaking against consistent form, then Lowe is infuriatingly logical in his writing. The “relentless intensity of imagery” the reviewer ascribes to the earlier story, is present within Beaujardin, but it is due to the deliberate non-describing of actualities and landmarks. The reduction of physical detail is conversely proportional to the narrative moving into personal soliloquy; the desperate desire on the part of the guide to make his mark on the mind of the visitor, despite bending rules and saying and showing that which he admits is forbidden.

The city is not so much around in physical form at this point as embedded, in the way of repressive regimes at their worst, within the psyche of the citizen. Yet even as the landscape of the narrative changes from physical to psychological there is never any doubt that this is still The City. There is now a merging of what is seen (sense) and what is thought (response) into a single place where sense and response meet when one replies to the other in the ordering of the intellect. The city now stands as a map of the human mind, in a metaphorical tour of the self. The guide is a nervous, haunted Virgil, always looking over his shoulder for some demon-manifestation of the city- guilt, perhaps?—to come and claim him.

Eventually we have to ask: is the reader, invited by the act of reading into this place and time, a visitor, or are we actually the guide, walking in areas of uncomfortable questions and painful revelations that could well await us should be probe into our own minds and souls? The death of the guide in the end would be worrying indeed in this context, if there was not the switch to the visitor’s viewpoint. This appears an exemplar of a change in mental tracks; expressing the flexibility of the mind moving from one viewpoint to another. But the nightmares will still haunt us: wherever we go, we take ourselves with us; the ‘I’ of the narrative might have changed over, but remains indisputably ‘I’. The awakened interest of the dark denizens of the city-mind; those thoughts we would rather disavow, but which still linger in the gutters of our subconsciousness: mental derelicts of the subtitle, and against which the new narrator (the new consciousness) needs to defend itself, is a dire warning against thinking oneself too civilised and dabbling too lightly within dark places. The forbidding style and repressive surface politics of the city (see above) is mirrored in the implied injunction that such dabbling, such soul-searching is likewise forbidding and forbidden: one will not find answers in pure introspection. Indeed, it might lead to one’s doom. Be warned that even the guide has paid the price for his transgression.

The short, statement style is common to Lowe’s writing. A review of other forums for his work present short stories and longer works cut into smaller bite-sized sections. Perhaps this is a comment on the intensity of a moment making a lasting impression rather than an elongated experience. Or perhaps this is homage to the cut-away edit that, once adopted by early cinema in the 1920s, revolutionised how stories were told and paved the way for the concise style of the ‘classic’ cinematic style. That is, the beginning of shortened attention spans as input becomes shorter, faster, and more immediate. The immediacy of Lowe’s writing is one that smacks right into the cerebrum: a filmic trick that comes from the hurried pacing of the story, the hurry of the guide and the creeping uneasiness, finally ending in a blaze of guns that would not be out of place in an apocalypse film or last-stand dramatics.

The book itself is in chapbook format: printed on thick, cream-coloured paper with neat, slightly old-fashioned looking print, there is an air of a historical document, even a testament. There is definitely criticism of modernity in here, but also an ironic embracing of it, in the cut-up presentation and in the elements of filmic melodrama.

As an existential exercise it is robust. As a surreal tale it is a success. I was entertained and intrigued. I enjoyed it greatly; perhaps this was down to the size (that short attention span again!), but any longer and it would have failed as a sketch piece. It is provocative: obviously and deliberately so. Unconventional in its length, presentation, and style, this is a mental exercise, an outpouring of a creative bubble. The written words begin and end decisively, but after finishing, it felt as if I had stepped into a longer story I can almost read at either end: speculation on the previous life of the guide and the fate of the visitor. Perhaps this is Lowe’s biggest existential message; nothing exists in a vacuum, and has reasons before and effects after. Left with an impression that I had been lead to respond as such, in blatant and playful juxtaposition to the pithy presentation, the best way to sum up is not at all, but to leave with a...

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Christian, Love without Gun Control (2010)

M. Christian, Love without Gun Control. Futures-Past Editions, 2010. Pp. 162. ISBN 9781615082162. $15.99.

Reviewed by Jaym Gates

I honestly wasn’t sure what to expect when Love Without Gun Control showed up to be reviewed. The cover is very retro-pulp-comic, a scene on Mars, all bright colors and simple lines, misleading as to the content. It seems more like a graphic-novel cover, or a series of 70's porn. The book itself is quite thin, only 155 pages. I was pleasantly surprised. The collection opens with the eponymous story, ‘Love Without Gun Control’, published for the first time in this collection. Ultra-violent and rather bizarre, it is somewhat reminiscent of a D. Harlan Wilson story. A sort of modern-day Western romance, the story really does defy labeling as it shows the effects of one snake-oil doctor’s ‘love potion’, applied erroneously, and the destruction that can come from thwarted desire. A fun, rollicking ride with a very unique flavor.

The second story, ‘Needle Taste’, is a unique concept with an ambiguous ending. The story itself is a totally different beast from the previous tale, but the wistful tone holds up the strange story well enough until the end, when it feels a little... abrupt. If there’s a weak one in the bunch, it’s this one, simply on a relative scale. It is in no way a bad one, it just doesn’t have quite the force of the others.

...seeking a forever-quiet man in the whole buzzing, humming, singing, cackling city.

‘Hush Hush’ is my favorite story in the collection. The language is absolutely beautiful: weird, eery and slippery. The tale is half mystery, half internal journey. Whether he solves the mystery or not is really unimportant. What he learns along the way is not. This was a lovely to read for the language as for the story.

‘The Rich Man’s Ghost’ is probably my least favorite of the stories. It lacks the smoothness of voice, the weird beauty of most of the other pieces. The story is a little less Weird, too, and maybe that colors my opinion.

‘Wanderlust’ is one of the stories that I’m not really sure, at first, how I feel about it. On the one hand, the reader is kept in the dark until the very end of the story. I simply didn’t have a clue what was going on. On the other hand, the writing is very rich, so it isn’t necessarily a bad thing to enjoy the ride. A man who inspires absolute ecstasy from everyone he meets comes across a bit thin at first, but their reactions if he stays around for longer than a few minutes are... interesting.

‘Orphan’ is chilling and haunting. A young man running from something, to something, carrying a horrible secret. There were a couple of places that could have used a clarity edit or that read a little contrived, but overall, definitely a memorable piece worth reading again.

Really, though, I’d be hard-pressed to say that any story in this collection is best skipped over or read in a hurry. There’s just enough variation in the stories to keep them unique, and enough cohesion to develop a voice that just draws me in more deeply, the farther I read. (The first story is an odd difference to the rest of them, but no less enjoyable.) The cover-art remains a sticking point, as it has no apparent connection to the content, and prose like this needs something lovely to wrap it up, and what it has is not something I would be wild about displaying on a shelf.

Read this one slowly, because each story is best savored and mulled over. And I’ll be keeping an eye out for more of M. Christian’s stories.

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Hultquist, Off Track (2011)

Michael Hultquist, Off Track. Belfire Press, 2011. Pp. 244. ISBN 978-1-926912-25-7. $12.99.

Reviewed by Djibril al-Ayad

Off Track is the powerful third novel by horror writer and screenwriter Michael Hultquist, from small, independent publisher Belfire Press. Targeted at a young adult readership, this is the story of an abused boy after a stint in juvenile detention, fostered by a couple with problems of their own in a cleaner-than-thou small-town suburb. In this impossibly perfect setting, our protagonist has to deal with layers of institutional prejudice, hypocrisy, distrust, bullying, abuse and the desperate posturing of high school boys, as well as his own red-hot temper as he tries to overcome his past and adapt to a normal life. Again and again the good is balanced by the bad, as the world increasingly seems determined not to give him a second chance, even if he decides to be able to give himself one. This is not an easy book to read.

Trevillian, A-Men / A-Men Return (2010-11)

John Trevillian, The A-Men. Matador, 2010. Pp. 410. ISBN 978-1848763432. £18.99 / $24.95
and The A-Men Return. Matador, 2011. Pp. 400. ISBN 978-1848766198. £18.99 / $24.95.

Reviewed by Paul Wilks

The A-Men and The A-Men Return are the first two parts of an anti-utopian trilogy, written by John Trevillian and published by Matador. The final part of the trilogy, Forever A-Men, is not yet released. The first two parts of this stunning, visceral dystopia concern a hellish world set in a dark future where the mega-corporations have all but vacated a devastated Earth for neighbouring moons. The narrative is divided into numerous character perspectives and the reader is led through the alternating streams-of-consciousness of the principal A-Men members.

‘The A-Men’ are essentially one of many gangs within the troubled Dead City, who randomly come together under the leadership of amnesiac Jack, also known as The Nowhereman. While it could be argued that the novel is wrapped around the actions of Jack, we also glimpse the world-views of: ‘Sister Midnight’, a tough-yet-kind religious zealot; ‘Pure’, a beautiful street-smart junkie who becomes obsessed with Jack; ‘D’Alessandro’, a slightly unhinged scientist inventor; 23rdxenturyboy, a young comic-obsessed urchin and ‘Dingo The Wonder dog’ his genetically spliced dogman. The author cleverly blends these individual perspectives, and the chapters give a vibrant, continuative narrative to follow. The danger of this kind of text, similar for example in the way David Mitchell writes Cloud Atlas, is the possibility of overlap, where a character’s language spills over into other stories. This thankfully doesn’t happen in the A-Men novels, instead the stories are intelligently crafted apart.

As mentioned, the central focus of both books is Jack. The novels essentially tell of Jack’s induced amnesia and his journey to unravel the whys, the whos, the wherefores of his existence. His sections of the book dominate, which proves challenging at times because there is very little to like about the man. Jack comes across as an angry narcissistic hedonist who shows little or no compassion to his fellow characters, except for those he wants to have sex with. His behaviour is continually without any kind of moral code, and it strikes this reader as remarkable that his fellow A-Men feel inclined to do anything for him. This threatens the text at times, as it is difficult to understand where character motivations come from and the narratives struggle at times to justify character behaviours. However, the story is told at such a pace, this doesn’t detract enough to derail the novels.

Most startling about the novel is the sheer volume of swearing. I am in no way offended by bad language, and the inventive use of four-letter-words would probably impress the likes of Richard Curtis. This said, the overt use of certain word, in certain contexts, makes Jack especially appear highly misogynistic and perpetually angry towards the women in the novel. The language entwines the accounts of violence and sex throughout the books to the point where they occasionally blur. Sometimes this really works, sometimes it doesn’t. Lines like “Pull out my D&K (gun). Feels good in my hand. Feels like a dick when it’s hard. My metal cock. Ready for fucking” sound more like a line from an immature pubescent rap artist than a literary protagonist. Fortunately, this only occurs occasionally as Trevillian writes to a very high standard. The linguistics employed in the novel are innovative, refreshing and funny, the humour snakes through the book and I laughed out loud a number of times. The vocabulary is delicious throughout, and during the times where the novel slows, this keeps the narrative alive. There is a distinct William Gibson feel to the language. While in my opinion the story itself isn’t quite as good as, say, Neuromancer, the language is superior. At around 400 hundred pages each, there is a thoroughly entertaining story running throughout The A-Men and The A-Men Return, but there were times I felt it was diluted by the volume of the books. I must stress however that, even if the books have been padded, they remain incredibly entertaining.

Besides Jack, the characters themselves sometimes lack development and, as I have mentioned, a reader might sometimes wonder what their motivations are. Survival would be one, perhaps that the other options available to them render Jack the most viable, but it becomes difficult to distinguish for the reader. There are some quite elaborate yet indulgent passages that add little to the story. At great risk, Jack emancipates Sister Midnight from a religious commune and has sex with her, only to dump her completely, in addition to the other A-Men, when the pneumatic Pure comes along a few pages later. The A-men as a gang seem to impress quite a reputation upon other gangs within Dead City, and I couldn’t quite fathom how this reputation was manifest. There is kind of legendary reverence about them, and I would argue it isn’t really justified. Jack and Sister Midnight are the principal fighting antagonists for the A-Men and seem to have earned the group’s reputation more though luck than endeavour. This does not impinge upon the story one jot, but for a while I found this to be a curious assumption on behalf of the other gangs that served the A-Men well.

There is great depth in both novels; themes include family, religion, identity, fairy tales, sex, drugs, computer games and virtual reality. I would suggest that Jack’s misogyny sometimes becomes a little overbearing upon the narrative, and the continual referral to Sister Midnight as ‘black’ is a peculiar and disconcerting. This is unlike most dystopias I have read and there is little focus on the collapsing society, rather it concerns itself more with the journey of the protagonist Jack. If Jack was a little more likeable, for me the books would be even more engaging. But, as a reader might struggle to endear themselves to Jack’s narcissism, they must rely on the soaring language used in the novel for pure engagement. The language is utterly uncompromising and, while it occasionally slips horribly, Trevillian’s use of words is both fantastic and mesmerising in equal measure. I eagerly look forward to the conclusion of the trilogy.

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Crossed Genres Quarterly #1 (2011)

Crossed Genres Quarterly #1 (January 2011). Pp. 114. ISBN 978-0615443713. $11.99.

Reviewed by Keith Lawrence

Crossed Genres, a monthly speculative fiction magazine, spells out in its name its unique premise—although I think a strong argument can be made that it does not necessarily spell it correctly. Each issue of the magazine collects stories that combine the month’s “Current Genre” with Science Fiction or Fantasy. I would describe the genres in Crossed Genres Quarterly (CGQ) #1 as themes instead; CGQ#1 collects issues 25 (“Celebrations”), 26 (“Opposites”), and 27 (“Tragedy”), and the collection examines these themes through the lenses of Science Fiction, Fantasy, Magical Realism and even an old-fashioned Ghost story. Semantic nit-picking aside (and I do accept that Stories Written in Various Genres Concerning a Common Theme would have made an unneccesarily Victorian title for a magazine), as a premise it works nicely, giving each of the three issues a centre from which the stories can blossom without constraining them too strictly.

Bourdon, Cemetery Psalms (2011)

Danielle Bourdon, Cemetery Psalms. Wildbloom Press, 2011. Pp 34. ISBN 978-0982831755. $0.99.

Reviewed by Sheri White

Cemetery Psalms is an e-book collection of five stories that take people from everyday life and throw them into unusual and sometime horrific situations. The author, Texas-based Danielle Bourdon, is the author of two novels, Dreoteth and Bound by Blood (both 2010); a third, Sin and Sacrifice, is forthcoming. The cover art is less than impressive; it shows a face over a graveyard that looks like an afterthought for the collection. However a book shouldn’t be judged by its cover, an adage proven by the stories collected here.

Everybody loves a good ghost story, and the teens in the story ‘The Haunted Carousel’ have lured a friend to “Gravity Hill,” where supposedly ghost children push cars up a hill in the road. Although the friend, Mark, tries to act brave, he is visibly shaken when the car actually moves. Pleased with the results, the group decides to go visit an abandoned farm that features a haunted carousel. Will this adventure end with the desired result as well? This story takes what is a joyful children’s icon and turns it into the ride from Hell. This carousel doesn’t have the usual horses and unicorns; this merry-go-round boasts a mime, a devil and a court jester. I enjoyed ‘The Haunted Carousel’ very much; it was well-written and even gave me the creeps. However, I don’t think the last scene was necessary to the story. The last scene seemed tacked-on, and cheapened the story somewhat, like a movie in which the antagonist jumps up at the screen before the credits roll.

In ‘Petrified’, a married couple searches for a shop called “Surlee’s” that sells beautiful carved items out of petrified wood. They look around the wonders of the store, fascinated by the faces carved into wood, some sorrowful, others terrified. As they reach the back of the shop and go outside, they find out the secret to the beautiful artwork. ‘Petrified’ is a fun story, although somewhat violent towards the end. The story is unique and told well, even though it might have been better if the antagonist hadn’t told the woman exactly why and what was going on. A little mystery would have made the story creepier.

The weakest story of the collection, ‘Music Box’ uses the “’til death do us part” meme, but doesn’t do anything different or clever with it. A man who has killed both his wife and himself in a fiery car crash has immortalized the two of them in a music box, him playing the piano and her dancing. The box is passed down through the family to keep their love alive. The details of the story are interesting; the music box has been carved into a miniature ballroom that mirrors the one in the home they shared together. The reason for the murder-suicide doesn’t make much sense; there is no other man or other woman to come between them, no threat to their relationship. It’s just a selfish act that really makes no sense in the context of the story.

‘I Am Ellis Moore’ is the story of a man who sneaks around his house, foraging for food. He is not wanted there; another family lives in the house although they hear things and think the house is haunted. Soon it becomes apparent that this is a ghost story/haunted house story, and discover that even Ellis Moore isn’t quite aware of what he is. This is the other weak story in the book. Haunted house stories need a good twist to make them scary and interesting; unfortunately, this twist in this story is telegraphed from the beginning. I’ve read this type of story many times, and ‘I Am Ellis Moore’ doesn’t stand out in any way.

‘Chameleon’, on the other hand, is a fun story of a man who drinks his ex-wife’s special tea called “Chameleon,” and proceeds through his day, taking on the emotions of everyone he comes into contact with. As Thaddeus finds out, this can be both a blessing and a curse. What happens if he comes across a robbery, a basketball game, a lover’s spat? In a way, ‘Chameleon’ reminded me of the wonderful story by Richard Christian Matheson, ‘Echoes’, in which a man is suddenly tortured by the voices of people who are suffering until they drive him insane. Thaddeus doesn’t go insane, exactly, but he is deeply affected by the emotions of those around him. I enjoyed ‘Chameleon’ very much, it was extremely well-written and fun to read.

Danielle Bourdon has put together a good, solid collection with Cemetery Psalms. Although at times flawed, the stories were mostly well-written and the details kept me involved in each story. I haven’t read anything else by the author, but would gladly check out her other works.

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Fantastique Unfettered #1 (2010)

Fantastique Unfettered #1 (December 2010). Pp. 144. ISBN 978-0983170914. $9.95.

Reviewed by Nader Elhefnawy

M-Brane Press, the publisher of small press science fiction magazine M-Brane SF, launched a fantasy counterpart to that publication last year, Fantastique Unfettered (or FU). Under the editorship of Brandon H. Bell, FU has as its stated purpose the publication of ‘well-written, compellingly readable, original stories of fantasist fiction,’ both short fiction and poetry, which is ‘unfettered by traditional copyright,’ so that all its content carries a Creative Commons CC-BY-SA license.

Theakers Quarterly Fiction #35 (2011)

Theaker's Quarterly Fiction #35 (Winter 2011). Pp. 80. ISSN 1746-6083. £3.99.

Reviewed by N.A. Jackson

Theaker's Quarterly Fiction, edited by Stephen Theaker and John Greenwood, started out in 2004. The magazine aims to publish stories with an element of the fantastic, defined as: hard sf, soft sf, fantasy, heroic fantasy, dark fantasy, humorous fantasy, slipstream, magic realism, horror and terror. In their publishing statement the editors say, “Difficult, arch and oblique writing is a lot of fun. We certainly don't demand it, but it's something we enjoy when submitted. I love to be sent to the dictionary when checking proofs.” With disarming honesty, the publishers ask potential submitters to take note of the magazine’s uncertain credentials and tiny print circulation. All of this is either an indication that the magazine has a true spirit of independence about it, or perhaps just wants to keep submissions down. In this issue they have made the unusual decision to combine a short modern horror story by Maura McHugh and a dark rambling fantasy novella of 65 pages or so by Matthew Amundsen. These two stories, together with 25 pages of reviews, make up the entire issue.

Christian, Bachelor Machine (2010 [2003])

M. Christian, The Bachelor Machine. Circlet Press, 2010 (2nd ed.). Pp. 200. (ASIN B003Y8XUK2.) $7.99 e-book.

Reviewed by Djibril al-Ayad

This collection of erotic science fiction short stories (first published in 2003 by Green Candy Press), is re-released now in e-book format by Circlet Press, publishers of erotic romance with “a sex-positive outlook” (12). The PDF reviewed here was a little rough around the edges; I understand that another print edition may materialize presently. There is an uncommon variety of material in here, from cyberpunk to space opera, alternative history to dystopia. The science-fictional settings are manifold, as are the sexual positions and inclinations—and, more importantly, the role of the inevitable explicit sex within each story. From the frivolous to the poignant to the socio-politically scathing, there’s something in this book for everyone. (Except, perhaps, titillation, but more on that later.)

The opening story in this collection, always important because it sets the reader’s expectation for the rest of the volume, is the finely crafter ‘State’. A blue-skinned, élite (and expensive) robot-whore with a secret welcomes a discerning john into her room in the bordello and fulfils his fantasies with machine-precision. There is not much plot in this story, just one sexual encounter between a whore and client; apart from the protagonist’s robot nature (and blue silicon skin) this wouldn’t really need to be a science fiction story; nor is it particularly sexy. “Fields” (the whore) technically has a certain amount of initiative and therefore power by virtue of her deceit, but this is still the story of a john using a hooker, and neither character has much to endear them.

The next couple of stories in the collection (‘Bluebelle’ and ‘Winged Memory’) did little to dispel the notion that characters were all going to be shallow and obnoxious, and the sex graphic but unappealing. But then comes perhaps the darkest and most poignant piece in this volume, one much more about the characters than about the sex. ‘Eulogy’ is a very dark tale of a man and woman who get together to remember a flawed genius engineer they both mourn, and they seem about to topple into a pathetic (although at least guiltless) comfort fuck which she thinks of as a eulogy to her dead lover. But their memories and their relationships with the dead man (and his mysterious disease) are obviously more complicated and more problematic than the reader at first realizes, and what starts as a depressing but harmless seduction scene becomes deadly serious. The lightly but convincingly sketched characters reveal surprising depths of complexity. From the sci-fi perspective, there is some beautiful description of water-parting wave technology in the backstory.

One of the short pieces, ‘Fully Accessorized, Baby’ is more or less a vignette, recounting a kinky, gender-twisted single scene of paid-for-sex with cyberpunk toys and countless role-reversals (both physical and behavioural). The cyberdildo technology didn’t strike me as terribly creative, but the erotic tension of domination play with what was effectively two tops made this one of the most impressively original pieces in this collection. (And, yes okay, pretty hot.)

Perhaps the best crafted piece in the volume is ‘Guernica’, which recounts a hard core S&M sex party in a futuristic dystopian state where all such pleasure is strictly banned and penalties for abuse are brutal. Although in outline this story is little more than an extravagant litany of transgressive and sadomasochistic sexual scenarios, it somehow builds to a whole greater than its parts. The dystopian message is a powerful one, and the piece ends up casting light both on the intolerance of society and on the mentality behind sexually motivated threat/fear play. Here is a great example of graphic erotica that serves the purpose not of titillation, but of social commentary and satire. After reading the end of this story, I had to put the book down for a while and get my head around what I thought, which is an excellent sign for any piece of writing.

In a more traditional cyberpunk story, the heroine of ‘Heartbreaker’ is an undercover cyborg vice cop, infiltrating the hidden, run-down premises of a ring responsible for “drugs, puppets, illegal stims, stolen memories, and [...] slavery” (107) in a high-stakes sting operation. She has been hunting the notorious kingpin, known only as “Heartbreaker” for years. Inside, she encounters only a naked young girl, almost as modified as she is, who appears (but only appears) to be “barely legal”; there follows a lengthy scene of very hot, very dangerous, almost violent lesbian sex, as the cop keeps the perp occupied while her backup team can trace the operation and mount a raid. But she has more than met her match in this sexed-up cyber-girl, ultimately both sexually oustripped and (of course) outmanoeuvred. There’s not so much of a moral to this story, but it is a well-constructed short thriller.

‘Skin-Effect’ is a much darker, but essentially much simpler tale of a military cyborg—a “brain in a polyarmor combat frame”—who has evaded the obligatory PSTD treatment and misses the rage, violence and distruction of war. On the recommendation of a now-lost comrade, he visits a patchwork whore-bot who is even less human and more fucked-up than he is, but who may have a solution to his problems. Ironically, all of the sex and all of the kink in this story are in the world of flesh, pre-war and pre-cybernetic, so neither the military technology nor the psychotic pathology are invoked.

At once more mundane and more fantastic, ‘Sight’ is the story of the only human artist whose work is popular with the superior alien race who bestow limited technological largesse upon the people of Earth. Our artist is horrified to discover that his priceless works are, to the clients who have made him super-rich, mere pornography. His artistic purity sullied, he is unable to create until he relearns—graphically, of course—the value of “beauty and lust” (156). Despite (or perhaps because of) the present of the aliens, this may be the most human story in the collection.

Finally, we are ushered to a climax by the title story, ‘The Bachelor Machine’, saved for last, and perhaps containing the most pathos and poignancy of all. It is also probably the least sexy story in the collection, in as much as the graphic descriptions of flirting, foreplay and fucking are designed to be unattractive rather than titillating. Our hero, a drifting in a post-apocalyptic cityscape, visits a decrepit and barely-functioning robot whore; reminded at every step of her artificiality (both in terms of manufacture and of faked sexual interest), of the countless men she has serviced, and the disrepair this has left all over her ruined chassis. Telegraphed a mile off, it is no surprise to learn that the drifter is actually the whore in this relationship, paid to make the has-been sex-bot feel wanted when no one would pay to have sex with her now; more surprising is how Christian manages to imbue this relationship with a certain tenderness, a sense of sympathy for these decayed characters whose best is behind them. Another case of the erotic motif used to tell a human story, perhaps the most important story of all.

There are technical problems with this book; not really enough to spoil the reader’s pleasure, but more than you would expect even from a small-press publication. A scattering of infelicities and repeated words, clustered more in some stories than others, are little more than typos, although they should have been caught by an editor. More interesting, although a subjective taste, is Christian’s penchant for rich and poetic metaphors, sometimes bordering on the synesthetic, whose beauty he then undercuts by feeling the need to explain them in the adjacent phrase (an example: “pulsing advertisements: product-placement nebulae” [157]; either half of that expression would have been enough). On the whole, the erotic passages are a bit better written than the science fiction.

Perhaps it is not the role of erotic literature to titillate or sexually excite the reader; this is not, after all, mere pornography. Personally, I find most erotica too personal, too geared to the kinks of the writer (or, I should say, of the implied narrator, since the author’s own sexuality is not necessarily revealed in his work), to work for me; I couldn’t even appreciate a classic eroticist like Anaïs Nin, for her brand of mildly kinky sex is not mine. So I would be reluctant to argue that Christian’s erotica fails to titillate, as I hinted above and have been suggesting throughout this review; in fact on the contrary, there is such a wide variety of sexual preference, performance, and function in this collection that there will be something for almost everyone (and something to turn off almost everyone).

More to the point, however, the sexual content in stories such as these serve rather to remind us that we’re human, that our concerns such as love, lust, companionship, rejection, nostalgia, however fleshy or base, are universals. The sex in these stories serves as a microcosm for all of life, for social observation, for political satire, for the promotion of tolerance. In other words, the role of sex in well-written erotica is analogous to the role of technology in science fiction, or magic and beasts in fantasy: yes it’s exciting, yes we take a geeky or prurient interest in them, yes we enjoy them for what they are, but ultimately they’re the tools that tell a bigger story, that paint a more important picture. And on these terms, Christian’s science-fictional erotica is very well-written indeed.

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