Olsen, The End (2010)

Nora Olsen, The End: Five Queer Kids Save The World. Prizm Books, 2010. Pp. 270. ISBN 1610401166. $13.95.

Reviewed by Martha Hubbard

The End is a first novel by Nora Olsen, whose goal is “to write fun books that anyone can enjoy”, but she especially wants “LGBT teens to be able to see themselves in [her] books”. It is published by Prizm Books and is young adult science fiction of interest to LGBT teens. Five queer teenagers receive magic amulets that can help them to save the world from nuclear disaster. They must learn to trust each other and work together in order to accomplish this. Ms Olsen tells an engrossing story that is well plotted and moves briskly along to a satisfying and believable resolution.

Christian, Finger’s Breadth (2011)

M. Christian, Finger’s Breadth. Zumaya Boundless, 2011. Pp. 265. ISBN 978-1-934841-46-4. $15.99.

Reviewed by Sheri White

M. Christian is well-known for his erotic stories, as well as editing several erotic anthologies, so I wasn’t surprised to find that his newest novel, Finger’s Breadth, was pretty explicit. This is not a book to read if you are easily offended. Published by Zumaya Boundless, the gay, lesbian, bisexual or transsexual-themed imprint of Zumaya Publications, which has been putting out both e-books and print since 2001.

Finger’s Breadth takes place in San Francisco in the near future—someone is drugging random gay men and cutting off the tip of their little finger. The gay bars in the area are almost empty; men are staying home, scared it might happen to them. The police are baffled; there are no suspects. The first victim, Varney, works for the newspaper and becomes a celebrity of sorts. But his celebrity isn’t exactly earned, and this is eating Varney up inside. He debates with himself whether to confess his sin while still using his infamy to reach out to the public.

Then a gradual change comes over the gay population—those who have been cut are looked at as desirable, exciting. Those who have not been cut now begin to feel left out, even ashamed—aren’t they good enough to be approached by the cutter? Are they unattractive? The bars fill up again; the patrons divided between victims and wanna-bes. It’s rarely said aloud, but those men who are whole are hoping to be the next victim. The internet burns with men in chatrooms, looking for the cutter or a reasonable facsimile. Although the story is seen through the eyes of several characters, quite a bit of the book is written in chatroom format, with the cutter—or supposed cutter—looking for victims.

Those men who have had their fingertip cut off have a certain confidence about them; now that the worst has happened, what else do they have to fear? They feel invulnerable, brave. Those who are still intact begin to take drastic measures—cutting their fingers themselves or even having cutting parties.

So who are the real victims?

Varney is a nice guy who has gotten himself into a situation he’s not sure he can get out of. As a sort of penance, he uses his newspaper column as a format to reach out to the gay community, as well as inviting them to vent to him about the cutter. But even this becomes too much for Varney to deal with, knowing the real truth of what happened to him.

Finger’s Breadth is a suspenseful, erotic and disturbing tale of what happens when the monstrous becomes the desired. While a little slow at the beginning, the pace picks up towards the middle of the book and it's difficult to put down. The characters are well-written and believable; their angst very real. Taylor, who has been traumatized by the goings-on in the city, takes refuge at an ex-boyfriend’s home when Taylor is afraid he is next on the mutilator’s list. His fear of being a victim, and the insecurity over he relationship between him and his ex-boyfriend are palpable. The story is a little hard to follow at times—there are times when I’m not sure who belongs to the chat names—but is overall riveting.

This is not a book for the easily offended; there are many graphic sex scenes. The sex scenes are not gratuitous, however. They are an important part of the story as much as the cutting scenes are. Finger’s Breadth will get to you. It may disgust you and it may even arouse you, but it will definitely get you thinking. Would you change yourself, physically or mentally, in order to fit into the majority of your peers? Teens do this—do the rest of us really outgrow the urge to be one of the crowd? Even if you’re not part of the majority, you may change yourself to fit into a sub-group. Everyone wants to be wanted.

Buy this item from Zumaya Publications
Buy this item from Amazon.com
Buy this item from Amazon.co.uk

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.

Buy this e-book from Smashwords
Buy this item from Amazon.com
Buy this item from Amazon.co.uk

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.

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.

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.

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.

Buy this book from Exaggerated Press
Buy this item from Amazon.com
Buy this item from Amazon.co.uk

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.)

Buy this item from Amazon.com
Buy this item from Amazon.co.uk

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.

Buy this item from Amazon.com
Buy this item from Amazon.co.uk

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.

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 al-Ayad

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.

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.

Buy this e-book from Musa Publishing
Buy this item from Amazon.com
Buy this item from Amazon.co.uk