Plurality (2012)

Plurality, dir. Dennis Liu. Traffik Filmworks, 2012. Starring Jeff Nissani, Samantha Strelitz. 14 minutes.

Reviewed by Paul Wilks

Plurality, by director Dennis Liu, is a slick futuristic indie-short with high production values and a gripping and fast-paced plot. Set in 2023, New York is an incredibly secure and crime-free city. This is principally thanks to the Bentham Grid, a system where all your personal information is tied to your personal DNA and both are able to be traced via contact with nearly every surface in the city. This advanced biometric system, epitomising the notion of an ‘ultimate social network’ essentially rules out the need for cash or ID as a thumbprint will buy you a coffee, pay your bills and even open your car. While this creates a society that is incredibly secure, it raises various privacy issues that has led to underground movements decrying a ‘Big Brother Bentham’.

Vourvoulias, Ink (2012)

Sabrina Vourvoulias, Ink. Crossed Genres Publications, 2012. Pp. 234. ISBN 978-0615657813. $13.95 print/$5.99 e-book.

Reviewed by Djibril al-Ayad

Ink, the first novel by American and Latina journalist and writer Sabrina Vourvoulias, published by the successful and progressive small press Crossed Genres Publications, is an ambitious book. Telling the story of a wide group of protagonists in an only slightly futuristic, and only slightly exaggeratedly dystopian United States in which residents and citizens with recent immigration history are literally branded on their skin to mark their suspect status, it ranges over time, space and magic in a story by turns horrifying, heart-breaking, beautiful, hopeful, frustrating and terribly believable. Vourvoulias’s writing is effortless and effective, uncannily capturing the voices of her disparate protagonists and narrators; not uniformly sympathetic, certainly not always nice, but lucid, convincing and consistent. In some ways the ambition of this novel outreaches the execution, but I’d much prefer that to an insufficiently ambitious work, and Ink is wonderful, worthwhile and certainly worth reading.

Hughes, The Truth Spinner (2012)

Rhys Hughes, The Truth Spinner: The Complete Adventures of Castor Jenkins. Wild Side Press, 2012. Pp. 260. ISBN 978-1-4344-4107-2. $14.99.

Reviewed by Jessica Nelson

The Truth Spinner: The Complete Adventures of Castor Jenkins is the latest short story collection from Welsh author and essayist Rhys Hughes. Previous works by Hughes include The Coanda Effect and The Postmodern Mariner, both of which tie into The Truth Spinner, as well. The stories in this collection are all related, being stories Castor Jenkins tells his closest friends, Paddy Deluxe and Frothing Harris. Most of the stories involve Castor’s friends buying him beer or whiskey, either to keep him going, to shut him up, or just because people don’t know what else to do.

Grimwood, Axe (2012)

Terry Grimwood, Axe. Double Dragon Press, 2012. Pp. 296. ISBN 978-1-55405-965-3. $5.99.

Reviewed by Kate Onyett

In the early years of the twentieth century, Robert Johnson went down to the crossroads and had his guitar retuned by the devil for rock music, or so they say. The deals have become a lot bloodier, and much for special-effects-laden since then. Building to a series of grisly, murderous climaxes, Axe is claiming that Hell really does still have, if not the best, then the most ear-splitting tunes.

Fitzsimmons, Halcyon (2012)

Catherine Fitzsimmons, Halcyon. Brain Lag, 2012. Pp. 218. ISBN 9780986649356. $12.99/$2.99.

Reviewed by Jessica Nelson

Catherine Fitzsimmons produced the cyberpunk novel Halcyon during NaNoWriMo. This alone was enough to pique my interest in the book. Reading a self-published book is always a little daunting in the beginning, as the reader can never be sure about what they’re getting; many self-published novels are fantastic and could have easily been picked up by a big publishing house. Others… not so much. Halcyon falls somewhere between these two extremes. It has a few issues that could be tweaked here and there, but overall it’s a pleasing read, with breakneck pace throughout and cynical political undertones.

Herrera, Blue Tent (2012)

Carla R. Herrera, Blue Tent. Smashwords, 2012. Pp. 21. ISBN 9781476127002. Free.

Reviewed by Paul Wilks

Blue Tent is a short story by Carla R. Herrera and available via Smashwords. Set in a futuristic dystopian USA where the veneer of democracy has fallen to the point the country is now known as The Corporate States, protagonist Tele is in hiding from the authorities after taking part in a protest. She had no choice but to leave behind her family and live out a low-profile existence in a poverty-ridden camp. Such places are rife with danger but she manages to get by with the protection of an Inprod, a form of customised taser. She lives with hope of one day returning to her family.

Anderson, Beloved Evangeline (2012)

W.C. Anderson, Beloved Evangeline. Independent, 2012. Pp. 349. ASIN B006SB026W. $0.99.

Reviewed by Kate Onyett

The story begins in prologue. Within an institution, a girl, spurred on by a dandified figure no one else can see, is about to jump through a window. A catchy opener, more so because it is first-person told. After this subtle narrative throat-clearing, flashback to how Evangeline managed to get into this mess. To begin with, she sounds like a deeply depressed, possibly bipolar character, with high and low mood swings and a strong sense of self-loathing. What a cutie. Stick with me, it gets better, because as the story unfolds, a suspicion flowers—not so much a genuinely mentally unstable character, as a person who has consciously decided to be alone. Bad things happen to those she cares about: boyfriend suicide, maternal drama, and she has decided on a self-imposed social exile: lurking at home when not keeping a low profile in a junior statistician’s job in a non-specified office in the city. Question: is this a moody young adult or the genuinely jinxed?

Ward, Tube Riders (2012)

Chris Ward, The Tube Riders. Amazon Digital Services, 2012. Pp. 516. ISBN 978-1475116502/ASIN B007LVFSP8. $14.99 print/$3.31 Kindle.

Reviewed by Paul Wilks

The Tube Riders, written by Chris Ward and available through Amazon Digital Services, is a gritty dystopian novel set in future Britain, known as Mega Britain. Now a corrupt, deliberately isolated and socially devastated island, the government rules oppressively and the poor scavenge for food under a persistent threat of suspicion by the Department of Civil Affairs—almost like an Orwellian Thought Police outfit.

Reamer, Primary Fault (2012)

Sharon Kae Reamer, Primary Fault. Terrae Motus Books, 2012. Pp. 366. ISBN 9781475123098. $14.95.

Reviewed by Martha Hubbard

This is an remarkable first novel by a woman writer with impressive scientific credentials. Raised in Texas, Sharon Kae Reamer studied Geophysics at the University of Texas then, Ph.D in hand, moved to Germany to start a family and a career as a seismologist; after several years running her own consulting firm she returned to teaching at the University of Köln. The depth of her seismological and geographical knowledge shines through every page and adds credibility to the story details of this very readable, contemporary fantasy thriller.

Wilkins & Berman (edd.), Heiresses of Russ 2012

Connie Wilkins and Steve Berman (edd.), Heiresses of Russ 2012: The Year's Best Lesbian Speculative Fiction. Lethe Press, 2012. Pp. 287. ISBN 978-1-59021-159-5. $18.00.

Reviewed by Djibril al-Ayad

This is the second annual Heiresses of Russ anthology of lesbian SF, collecting stories first published in 2011. Despite the naming of recently deceased Joanna Russ in the series title, this anthology is not full of the aggressive, uncompromising, acerbic feminist science fiction she was famous for, but is rather a mixed and representative selection of different styles in queer SF with lesbian protagonists. By the nature of the collection it is hard to identify a single theme in this volume, but many of the stories share a tendency common in lesbian writing: fairly uncomplicated love stories with happy endings are preferred over angst-ridden or treacherous romances; this slightly clichéd, optimistic simplicity, sometimes classified as twee or idealized, is only as escapist as the worlds without overt homophobia that also occur often in queer fiction. Of course, by no means all of the stories in this collection are in any sense romances, and there are exceptions to this tendency; sometimes, indeed, the divergence from simplicity and innocence is the twist in the story. Like last year’s, this anthology is a mixed bag with some excellent pieces, more good than mediocre, and none really terrible. Most importantly, this collection of fourteen stories is an impressive gathering of speculative fiction, regardless of the theme or the reader’s tastes.

Nightmare (2012)

Nightmare (2012), dir. Nic Collins; starring Nicholas Wicht, Pete Navis, Alexandra Leopold.

Reviewed by Paul Wilks

Nightmare, a short sci-fi film directed by Nic Collins, is a monochrome thriller that broods with paranoia and intrigue, even from the first scene. It tells a story of Carl, a man who has sinister and violent dreams that each feature a brutal murder. However, the dream scenarios then quickly then happen in real life and Carl is motivated to kill the killer before the next murder occurs.

Jungle Jim #12 (2012)

Jungle Jim Magazine #12 (May 2012). Pp. 34. ASIN B00839I6WY. $2.99.

Reviewed by Peter Damien

Jungle Jim is a fascinating magazine to me, for two reasons. First, it is wholly African in origin, and although it is published worldwide (as anything can be in this wonderful digital age), its heart, soul, and papers themselves are all African. It is fiction and ideas from another place, about another person’s home. It’s a form of lazy world-travel. The second reason is that Jungle Jim is a particularly distinct magazine, in every sense of the term. It is visually distinctive, the voices contained within—whether the stories work or not—are very entirely themselves. It doesn’t feel like other magazines. It reminds me of nothing so much as Alan Moore’s underground magazine Dodgem Logic, and indeed Jungle Jim reminds me of all the other magazines which inspired it. It feels like it could’ve been an underground magazine in the 1980s, and that’s exciting. It has a punk-rock atmosphere about it, at least to me.