Rauch, Eyeballs growing all over me... again (2010)

Tony Rauch, Eyeballs growing all over me... again. Eraserhead Press, 2010. Pp. 144. ISBN 9781936383337. $10.95.

Reviewed by Kate Onyett

Eyeballs growing all over me... again is a collection of short stories by Tony Rauch. Some are very short: just a paragraph or two. Some are pages long and split into parts. Yet the whole book presents as a carefully staged show of playfulness, and like anything playful, could be read by any age that could deal with the concepts. There are no viscerally grisly moments here, and no bad language. A short search for Rauch himself brings up his webpage, and right there on the title page he asserts he is only full of ‘good things’. He also gives a run-down of other writings, confirming they have all been among the fantastic: ‘surreal [...] fantasy, sci-fi, dream-like pieces [...] absurdist pieces’. His other activities include architecture, art and photography. This is a graphically-minded man with an eye for detail. The press that publishes eyeballs is also not one of your run-of-the-mill presses, specialising in fantastic, weird and what appears to be a large number of zombie fictions. Aligning himself to a genre that goes by the name of ‘Bizarro’; don’t expect the mundane from this guy. I had high hopes of something perky and deliberately off-centre.

When one starts to write reviews, one hopes to come the day when in all honestly one can type ‘and then a true gem comes along’. I started eyeballs on a Sunday evening. Even with two full days of work in between, I was done by Tuesday early evening. I was hooked. I may be a sucker for the fantastical, but most of the time I was laughing; and not at the antics on the page, but at the reflected antics of ‘real life’ as it was stitched up by Rauch.

To begin with, we are met by a series of quotes; normally these are stirring words relevant to the text or as inspiration for the author, and three of the four are Biblical. A verse from the Book of James abjures one to be tested to have one’s mettle proven and one’s patience awoken, making one more perfect. Lines from Romans follow the theme of being tested as a means to improvement; a rather Protestant work ethic whose sternness is mitigated by the idea of just rewards and a sense of fulfilment and love. Finally a well-known quote from Matthew tells us the merciful will be shown mercy. What to make of this before a collection of outlandish and fantastical tales?

Having boggled over these for a short time, I came to the conclusion that Rauch wants us to chill out, stand back, and stop trying to impose our ego on others. Indeed, his first quotation, about true personal freedom coming from removal of cultural and social hang-ups and restraints, seems more in keeping with the hectic games his stories play with reader expectations.

Having finished the collection, I realised that the examples of being able to deal calmly with trials and tribulations, and the surprisingly rewards and small miracles that happen because of this that crop up throughout the collection is exactly what all this is about. It’s all about not getting swept along with a mindless mass, and it is about having your preconceptions tested, your character questioned. A good narrative should do that: it should hold a mirror up to life and make you look again.

But Rauch’s book wants to do this by going out to play with you. Indeed, the reviews on the back jacket cover are all about praising Rauch’s ‘playful style’. The blank pages between sections—sections that really aren’t needed because a collection of short stories are self-contained units as it is—are pauses, moments to take a breath and consider before ploughing ahead. The choice of 1950s and 1960s sci-fi images with robots, aliens, pilots, scientists and sinister-faced men in suits are what one could expect from fantastic tales. But because they are dated, they are a little bit campy; they rubbish just a bit the very ‘serious’ fantastical themes they represent. They are a child’s eye view. These things may seem odd, but not inexplicable if one applies one’s imagination; when of course they become assimilated into the main picture and are completely natural.

The biggest take-away message for me was that all this; content and presentation, as well as choice of non-sequiteur titles for the book and the stories, is intended to shake up ideas of normalcy and rock usual narrative complacency. It would be naive indeed to say that writers do not have intent when they write: personal politics and polemics will inevitably inform their writing, but Rauch is going to have a little fun with this established mode...

Rauch is a self-confessed academic (in an explanatory note that came with the e-book), alive with hyperbolic adjectival usage. He is proud, having clarified this aspect of his life, of his academic achievements, but he says he wanted to make a more actively non-academic-sounding book. And he makes good use of the simplest statement sentences and the unashamedly frank first person. This makes the narrative slide down as easily as if overhearing a conversation or watching a dramatisation; almost as if there is no effort to the reading as it reads just like colloquial English to the ear, as no one really speaks in neat sentences and well-versed paragraphs.

‘I turn my head to where she’s pointing. Sitting there on our couch watching t.v. is a great big hairy beast. He is huge—eight feet tall at least. His thick, shaggy brown hair is matted and snarled. And the stink. Worst stench ever. A crippling fog’ (‘the stench’).

The old trick of using shorter sentences during exciting moments adds to the breathless pace the stories sometimes achieve.

This somewhat over-familiar style of writing actually put me most strongly in mind of the artless frankness of a primary-school child’s reporting-style story-writing: ‘and then I said this, and she said that and we went to there...’ In the first person narrative, read in adult fiction, this then translates to something akin to stream of consciousness. In this way narrative conventions are maintained: the unconventional becomes encapsulated by and ‘excusing’ stylistic factor. But instead of the solemnity and artistic poetry of other stream of consciousness writings, this is very much grounded in the language of day to day:

‘“Desmond steps up to us “There a problem here?” Hinrich looks over to him, “He’s just anxious, that’s all.” I look over to Desmond, then back to Hinrich, “Hey, at least I’m tryin’ here...” (‘send krupac though the portal’).

The choice not to begin a new paragraph when characters report others’ speech means that the words strike the reader on an intimate level. I had not previously considered how the formal positioning of words on the page can make such a profound difference. After all, we do not think in, or recall speech in, neatly arranged paragraphs. Those formal conventions again, arranging words place fictional action firmly beyond the fourth wall for acute observation. Running it all together, playing about with an ‘artistic’ style, monkeying with the conventions, Rauch’s writing read like nothing I have read before.

And I liked it.

It could not have been done by an amateur, or someone who had a less able grip on language. There’s no note or preface to explicate all this in the book itself. But even without the note I received, it is plain that this is someone so familiar and comfortable with all walks of language, he can play with it with impunity and see the quality of his writing suffer not at all.

There’s a rude, unpolished feeling about the whole book that seems entirely on purpose. Some of the stories end with a sudden cut-off, leaving one feeling a bit cheated feeling. A good example is ‘small giants’, where, speaking with a tiny farmer, riding a miniscule tractor through the grass, the child protagonist reports;

‘“You’ll wanna see this. Ha! Trust me!” and with that he puttered off, into the long grass and weeds, disappearing into its shadows and deep textures.’

And that’s it, after a story that is part poetic pondering on the landscape and the sky, and part involved conversation between boy and pixie-sized farmer. I was actually physically looking for the next bit. There wasn’t any.

There is also a somewhat alienating factor. A mild suspicion that at odd impenetrable moments, some jokes and references sound like they could be in-jokes for an American audience. Little details of social mores and familial relationships that did not translate well for this British reader

The biggest gag in the bag is a book where outrageous juxtapositions abound. There are the religious quotations at the start, followed by the idiomatic, individualistic and carefree content of the stories. The youthful protagonists that feature in the greater number of the stories ‘speak’ with the fluency and consideration of degree level adults. The calm, considered and clever speech we wish we’d had as teens, but only learned through living life and started to acquire maybe in our late twenties (‘the new kid’, ‘I discover an army of...’, ‘little giants’ and ‘the eyes’ being the best examples). Secret, inner emotional landscapes and thoughts are laid bare to judging gaze by the virtue of reader omniscience over the first person. The characters are sharing intimately with us, the reader, and by extension, the world, and absolutely no one else. One becomes so involved with these characters, so grabbed by their voices; the irony of this is not lost.

Stylistically, counter-positioning the bald, colloquial statement alongside the flowery, frilly descriptive passages and elongated diatribes occasionally indulged in by characters makes the texture of the writing quirky. A hodgepodge scrap-book of thoughts, feelings and experiences. .

The usual scenario of writers on a mission is to lead the reader down the chosen path of narrative, and oh my, what have we here? A scene or a comment by a character that is actually a pictorial metaphor for a BIG LIFE LESSON the writer wants us to engage in. This can be done with varying degrees of subtly, and at its most extreme, the story becomes hijacked by pamphleteering and saddling up the author’s hobby horse. In eyeballs, the tales vary from snippets to pages long, from daft to the meaningful. But when SOMETHING is going to be SAID, instead of wooing the reader, Rauch dives right in there, and his meaningful stories really hammer it home. The highfalutin conversation of teens in ‘the eyes’ becomes a self-mockery of the ‘deep’ conversations young adults have while discovering life lessons. ‘Activate the mathias’ is a mind-boggling mass of scientific supposition and ‘send krupac through the portal’ is a quick trot through layman’s quantum inter-dimensional theory. The prose is denser, the ideas as discreet as a ten-tonne elephant on your foot, and there is no doubt that this is SOMETHING IMPORTANT being flagged. But, by such blatant flagging, the narrative deflates its own pomposity, and one begins to question the faith modern life puts in psychosocial-babble to explain everything. For many of the characters, things happen without explanation (the couple who lose their roof to a robot in ‘gigantic’, and the night-time stampede in ‘the run’).

Yes, there are themes: ‘the stench’ could be read as an environmental tale, ‘the new kid’ a moral about not fearing the new and different. ‘People have been drifting away lately’ could be read as a warning about the shallow, non-committal nature of modern life and ‘the eyes’ multi-tasks: gently mocking the intellectual naivety of teenagers, while underlining the weirdness and awkwardness of transition from child to adult through the metaphor of strange and random diseases. Rauch himself hopes that we will notice his topics of “longing, discovery, secrets, escape, eeriness, surprises, and strange happenings in everyday life.” Indeed, in keeping with the childishness and innocence of the book, these could be said to be the very preoccupations for growing juvenile minds struggling to grasp an understanding of the world. But, the greatest gift Rauch’s book gives us is that, like the Fool in a King’s court (and there is a large clown puppet from a parade on the cover), he shows us very real truths and relatable experiences and problems, dressed up in foolishness to sweeten the blow.

I wanted strange and wonderful things to happen to me after reading this: Rauch has helped me to believe in the power of fairy-tales, and this book, his book of weirdly cool fairy tales and parables, shakes away the ridiculous and precarious nature of ‘adult’ perception and adult expectations, and the remembrance of things playful gives us the hope mentioned in his opening quotations. The stories test and tease; but we come out the other side feeling hopeful and more light hearted. This is the sort of book I wish I’d had to discuss during literature classes at school: clever, erudite, but funny, too, and very surprising and a damn good read.

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Eskridge, Solitaire (2010)

Kelley Eskridge, Solitaire: a novel. Small Beer Press, 2011. Pp. 352. ISBN 9781931520102. $16.00.

Reviewed by Paul Wilks

Originally released in 2002, Kelley Eskridge’s debut novel Solitaire is now being republished in paperback by Small Beer Press. Set in the near future where the role of global corporations is reminiscent of the all pervasive organisations portrayed in Japanese Manga comics; Solitaire is tangibly similar in feel to the likes of Scarlett Thomas’s Popco or the satire of Max Barry’s Jennifer Government. Solitaire’s protagonist Jackal Segura is employed by such a company named ‘Ko’. The story tells of Jackal’s fall from favour as a high-flying executive, her explorations of self, identity and relationships in addition to her eventual emancipation from psychological problems. Although slow to start, the novel is an ultimately rewarding, innovative and refreshing read.

Solitaire is principally an exploration of identity and self-purpose but also has a bildungsroman element as Jackal develops a psychological maturity as the story progresses. The novel is essentially split into three parts and it might be suggested that each part has its own unique identity. During the first part the reader is introduced to the protagonist, an executive project manager and designated ‘Hope’ by Ko society at her birth. As ‘Hope’, Jackal represents a future ambassador for her organisation on the global stage. The reader is also introduced to her petulant and competitive Mother, in addition to her friends or ‘web’, most notably her partner Snow. Although I think the reader is expected to sympathise with Jackal in this section, there are moments when she comes across as being spoilt and constantly in the state of feeling sorry for herself. Jackal certainly feels the pressure surrounding her as ‘Hope’ and she has to modify her already shaky self-perception when she discovers that her status is fraudulent. However, her continuing issues with identity and self esteem, which in many ways appear to be perpetuated by Snow’s coddling, seem unnecessary and I found myself wishing Jackal would discover some inner gumption of her own.

For dystopia readers this section of the book also lacks in societal detail. One aspect I enjoy about speculative fiction is understanding a little about the society the protagonists exist in. Unfortunately there is scant exploration of this in Solitaire. However, despite the griping Jackal—with whom it is difficult to find sympathy—and a seeming lack of direction in this first part of the book, the redeeming features are twofold. Snow is an incredibly intriguing character, and not only because she is an indefatigable well of psychological support for Jackal. Snow’s character and background is neglected somewhat through the novel, but even early in Solitaire she garners real traction in the reader’s interest and you are left keen to know more about her biography. Secondly, the equality within the society is refreshing. It appears that in Ko society men and women share prominent roles and the same-sex relationship of Jackal and Snow is normative and not exploited for narrative effect. The questions concerning sexual equality and sexuality are not discussed and this invisibility is genuinely innovative and refreshing.

Momentum in both the story and Jackal’s character launch in parts two and three. Imprisoned in a virtual confinement, Jackal must spend eight years alone—albeit merely ten months in real-world incarceration. During this period the narration permits Jackal to explore her psyche and confront her identity and esteem issues. While these issues seemed negligible in the first part of the novel, this exploration gives Jackal much needed grit and resolve. Subsequently her character develops important flavour for the reader and genuine interest and sympathy for her begins here. Jackal’s imprisonment eventually leads to new discoveries about her sense of self in addition to the work of her (now former) employer Ko. This further thickens the plot, and by the end of the second part, the novel hits a plateau of intrigue that makes it difficult to put down.

Part three sees Jackal released from her virtual prison and her attempts to rebuild her life. The determination she developed during confinement is put to good use here and her journey towards making new friends and resolving her identity issues is realised in this part. An interesting note on this part of the book is the author’s use of food in the narration. Jackal, and those around her seem to be eating constantly. As a narrative tool this draws the reader in with the virtual tastes and smells of the characters environment. This helps the reader immerse themselves into the story further and continue to sympathise with Jackal.

The character of Snow also appears in part three and has reconciliation with Jackal. While the passages that explore the relationship between Jackal and Snow are tender and emotive, I thought more could have been explored here—it just didn’t seem enough. Again Snow is the conduit of empathy and sympathy; both in the narrative in the way she interacts with Jackal, but also in the way the character of Snow affects the reader. There would appear to be a varied amount of unwritten history regarding Snow and this neglect, at times, left me feeling a little in the dark and wanting to know more. While Snow’s character is primary to this feeling, other characters also have a hidden narrative that could have been explored further.

None of this however should detract from what is a fascinating and intriguing novel. While there remain a few loose ends, and the biographies of some characters are left unsatisfied, the novel bubbles with action and smart dialogue. Jackal’s internal conflict finds gravitas after an initially weak start and her self-discovery and personal resolutions make interesting analysis. Solitaire is not what you might expect from a typical speculative fiction novel—there is little consideration of the social structure in which Jackal belongs. However, there are strong, well explored themes here, most notably identity, notions of self and love. The three-part construction of the novel is, in many ways, innovative and, although it might be said these sections do not blend as well as they could, there is a freshness about this approach. There is rumour that this novel is to be made into a film and treatment of Jackal’s psychological journey will be interesting to observe in this medium. The story is not perfect but any novel that becomes un-put-down-able, even momentarily, and creates genuinely interesting and beguiling characters as Solitaire does, becomes an essential read, if perhaps not an essential library addition.

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A cappella Zoo #5 (2010)

A cappella Zoo #5, Fall 2010. Pp. 119. ISSN 1945-7480. $4.00.

Reviewed by N.A. Jackson

The vibrant orange and blue cover of this collection of stories and poems is a good reflection of the lively and multifarious contents. There are some beautifully written and powerful pieces of fiction and poems in this issue. According to the website, A cappella Zoo is a magazine of magic realism and slipstream with a strong literary slant that has been running since 2008. Editor Colin Meldrum’s interest in science fiction and mythology comes through strongly. Many of the stories feature animals: some fantastic birds, a herd of pigs, an enigmatic snake, a mute lake creature and an engaging Chilean sea blob. But what is wonderful about many of these stories is how the characters are obsessed with and subtly changed by these animals.

Gardner, Strange Men in Pinstripe Suits (2010)

Cate Gardner, Strange Men in Pinstripe Suits. Strange Publications, 2010. ISBN 9780982026649. $11.99.

Reviewed by Steven Pirie

This is without doubt a most unusual collection of short stories. It’s nice when a writer finds a unique voice, and Cate Gardner has done just that with Strange Men in Pinstripe Suits. The book is a trade paperback edition, just short of 200 pages in length, with a rather monochrome cover that’s nevertheless still pleasing on the eye. Roughly half the stories are previously unpublished. The rest are reprints, but given Gardner’s fiction has graced the likes of Postscripts, Fantasy Magazine, Shock Totem and other professional venues, it’s clear a reprint is not something to sneer upon. I found the book available for purchase on the publisher’s website, and at Amazon.com, but it’s not currently available from Amazon.co.uk. This struck me as odd given that Gardner is an English author; whether this is an oversight, or if there is a reason for the omission, I’m not sure.

Gates/Holt, Rigor Amortis (2010)

Jaym Gates and Erika Holt (eds.), Rigor Amortis. Absolute XPress, 2010. Pp. 148. ISBN 9781894817837. $14.95 print / $2.99 e-book.

Reviewed by Don Campbell

Sex and Death; do any two things more preoccupy the human condition? Sex makes us feel alive, it is instrumental in the creation of life itself. Death is our only certainty, our inevitable decay is only a matter of time and our control over it is miniscule at best. Perhaps we get to pick the where, when and how, but we never get a choice about the if.

In Rigor Amortis we have a book that is not really about sex and death. It’s more about sex and undeath. That crawling hunger we all feel replaced by another kind entirely. The lengths we might go to out of lonely desperation or simply the grief of a lost love, those stories are here too. Sometimes it’s gray-green flesh meeting pink or perhaps some straight-up zombie on zombie action. These are stories of loss, experimentation, and control. Genitals grind, teeth scrape on bone, and sometimes it’s happening all at the same time as strips of flesh slough away or are torn off in a passionate frenzy.

The book began as a Twitter joke by Gates and some of the authors, a commentary on the oversaturation of zombie-related fiction on the market. It took on a life of its own and soon Holt brought the collection to the attention of Absolute XPress, a direct-to-reader publisher known for a focus on genre books. The trip from Twitter to “real book” was a surprisingly short one and an interesting example of how different modern technology has made the writer’s struggle. The book itself is in four sections labeled Romance, Revenge, Risk and Raunch, and coming in at only 134 pages, it is a short and sweet collection of flash fiction. Most of the stories found here are no more than a page or two long making them easily, ahem, digested in a single sitting.

The Romance section contains stories such as ‘Til Death Do Our Parts’ by Kaolin Imago Fire (14) in which a freshly turned couple are intent to spend what little remaining time they have together in fiery passion. It is only a couple of pages but one gets the sense of urgency they both feel at their quickly deteriorating state as simple things become more and more difficult. As well as ‘Surrender’ by Xander Briggs (22), a quick tale of a woman trapped in her home by the ravening hordes and the now nearly mindless man she loved having just enough of his self left in his rotted skull to come looking for her.

Revenge contains stories of a more sinister nature, like ‘Love, Love (And Chains) Will Keep Us Together’ by R. Schuyler Devin (37) in which a man’s dream girl comes literally bursting into his apartment, infected and insane, and he does the only reasonable thing he can think of, hold her prisoner and use her as a squirming sex doll. The Revenge section contains the most examples of the human being the aggressor rather than the victim, and in the case of ‘Syd’s Turn’ by R. E. VanNewkirk (58), a powder procured from a local bokor leads to a new type of BDSM play in which a young couple take turns zombifying each other into sexual submission. Incensed over his treatment during his last zombification, the titular Syd takes his turn at being master too far for too long. As the rotting flesh sloughs off of his beloved it is then that you get the true horror of the situation, and it is a story about how sometimes when we give power over ourselves to others, we may find that they abuse it beyond return.

Risk is the section for experimentation, the section in which Michael Phillips dreams of surrendering to the zombie apocalypse in his prose poem ‘Waking Up Someone Who Isn’t Me’ (77). It is a place where a “Z-curious” girl can make a Craigslist hookup with the undead girl of her dreams (no maggots please) in Sarah Goslee’s ‘My Summer Romance’ (81). From one perspective it could be seen as the tale of a doomed romance, from another it is a cautionary yarn about the dangers of online predators. It is a tale of misguided exploration and restraint that ends as all summer romances must, in horrible bloodshed.

The final section, Raunch, is what its name implies. If you haven’t gotten your fill of squelching zombie genitalia by this point, this is the section for you. Your first stop is an undead sex club for a little gangbang action (don’t forget your penis!) in ‘Urbanites’ by Pete “Patch” Alberti (99). Afterward, make a stop in the restroom to tidy yourself up and maybe have a chance encounter with a beautiful stranger in V. R. Roadifer’s ‘Honey’ (109). We end the section and the anthology with ‘Cloudy With a Chance of Zombie Orgasm’ by Annette Dupree (119). It is a bizarre if somewhat clumsily titled piece about a sexually frustrated gun nut of a girl who finally finds the satisfaction she’s so longed for when an army of zombie lesbians show up at her doorstep wielding the ultimate love toys.

I’m just going to come right out and say it, I loved Rigor Amortis. Beginning to end and front to back. I have absolutely nothing really negative to say about it. The worst that can be said is that it is a book of zombie erotica, which has a certain squick factor that is certainly not for the squeamish, but it is well written squick for all of that.

It’s not just about sex and death, of course, but also about our relationships. It is about a longing to be together beyond the veil and how, given the opportunity, we can be overly cruel even to the ones we love. Especially to the ones we love. Our capacity to love is great, but our capacity to take advantage of even the most deleterious of situations can occlude it easily when we are put into a situation where the old rules no longer apply and the new rules barely exist if at all. Sometimes love is beautiful and sometimes it is rancid and festering and full of pain, but we hold onto it anyway. If these are the sort of stories that interest you, you could do far, far worse than this little anthology.

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Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet #26 (2010)

Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet #26 (December 2010). Pp. 64. $5.00.

Reviewed by Keith Lawrence

Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, now in its fifteenth year, is just as eccentric a publication as its name suggests; possibly a genre magazine which does not claim to represent any particular genre, possibly a literary magazine without a dogmatic attachment to the trappings of high art. The pieces in LCRW #26 range in length from limericks to full-length short stories, and form a constellation of points somewhere within the square whose corners are SF, Fantasy, Slipstream and Magical Realism.

Rix (ed.), Blind Swimmer (2010)

David Rix (ed.), Blind Swimmer. Eibonvale Press, 2010. Pp. 360. ISBN 9780956214751. £10.00.

Reviewed by Kate Onyett

Creativity in isolation. This, we are told in the forward by editor David Rix, is the theme upon which Blind Swimmer, the new collection from Eibonvale Press, is founded, and the deciding factor when choosing stories for inclusion. It might be well at this point just to consider what he means. Is it possible to be creative in complete isolation? What constitutes “isolation”? When a collection of stories comes from a collection of disparate authors, it can help to consider the whys and hows of the collection’s intent as a means to determining the relativity of the stories. The book is a wide and varied mix of strange, ordinary, fantastic and irreverent stories that seem anything but isolated, filled as they are with the immediacy of their plot and description. Sometimes the characters themselves have only a secondary connection to “creativity” as they stumble towards their denouements.

Roberts (ed.), Zero Gravity (2010)

Alva J. Roberts (ed.), Zero Gravity: Adventures in Deep Space. PillHill Press, 2010. Pp. 266. ISBN 9781617060007. $16.99.

Reviewed by Don Campbell

Zero Gravity: Adventures in Deep Space is an anthology themed around stories firmly rooted in long term space exploration or in futures so advanced that space-faring ships have become the norm. Science vessels, space smugglers, and interstellar churches populate the book alongside alien beasts and creatures from beyond. Beyond the A.I. Singularity, beyond the edge of the solar system, sometimes beyond the light of the furthest stars, they are stories that deal with the future of humanity’s inevitable move to the stars with ideas rooted firmly in our social evolution, or lack thereof. The science in some stories may be farfetched, but how the characters deal with it is not. There will always be crime, there will always be fringe elements that live on the edge of social acceptability and even further, in the places others fear to tread. Human exploration has always been driven by a need to discover a better life, a place where one could live the life one wanted or a place where riches were abundant. Cities of gold, trade routes, lands of freedom. We are always looking for something better: there will always be those willing to take advantage of others if it means an easy score; always those who seek the precious freedom of living on their own terms, even when it means eking out a meager existence on the edge of survival.

The anthology opens with one of the latter, the story ‘Junker’s Fancy’ by Rosemary Jones (1), and it’s a strong opening, quickly pulling the reader into the far reaches of the solar system. It concerns a Junker—one of the space salvage operators who live most of their lives in their ships with minimal systems to extend time between dockings—named Jacie running across a major haul, a big government ship dead in the water. The only problem? One of the crew is still alive, but he doesn’t have long. What to do? Jones sets up her universe rather nicely in just the first few paragraphs so that when events start truly playing out, you feel at ease with the story. Every fantasy world has its own lexicon and hers is easy to grasp and understand quickly, helping drive the story telling forward rather than bogging it down in attempt to pepper her universe with flavor. Jacie is a character who lives most of her life alone in the far reaches, only docking to resupply. It’s an eremitical lifestyle and her unexpected passenger is a disruption, but is it a welcome one?

Also quite good was Kenneth Mark Hoover’s ‘To Stand Among Kings’ (88), which contains in its short span such a wealth of information about its particular universe that it is clear the author must have spent a significant amount of time creating races and political affiliations and seriously considering the evolution of society before beginning to write. This is a universe where the Church has split off so many times it has completely separated from Earth itself. The story is one of political intrigue and trade agreements, betrayal and wars fought over resources and the rights of an indigenous people. The ending was a bit weak, but the journey to that end was, as it always should be, pleasantly satisfying.

‘Tangwen’s Last Heist’ by C.B. Calsing (146) was a story that at first felt a little flat; it started out a bit too generic for my taste but managed to rope me in as I read on. It is the story of a smuggler who gets in over her head trying to go legit, and it is quite possibly my favorite of the book. Tangwen’s contract target turns out to be a little more heavily connected than even her client expects and a snap decision at a critical moment puts her into even hotter water than she had been in before. A bad situation for a girl simply trying to retire. Faced with an impossible situation, Tangwen attempts to do the right thing, only to be met with political corruption that seeks only to punish rather than listen.

All in all there are no singularly bad stories in the collection, but some are flawed. Some are perfectly good except for certain passages which feel weak or rushed. Others simply never quite live up to their subject material, such as Will Morton’s ‘Glacier Castle’ (188), which had some of the least credible dialogue in the book and was generally a mess. ‘Glacier Castle’ is the tale of a wrecked colony ship, woefully off course and stranded on a bitterly cold and inhospitable ice planet. In an effort to keep up morale while the ship’s crew effects repairs, it is decided that those not otherwise occupied would use the building equipment at hand to construct a great ice palace. The dialogue is clunky in places, the timeline difficult to follow. There are moments when I’m not sure how much time has passed or who exactly certain characters are. There is invented slang that never gets defined enough to make it feel natural. It is not a bad story on the whole but felt as though it needed another pass or two by the author to be ready for publication.

As a whole, Zero Gravity is full of stories that seem to understand that humanity is no longer physically evolving in the original sense. We no longer worry about those genetic markers that in the past made a mate unacceptable. Today we evolve through social interaction and technology and this will most likely still be the case as we hurl ourselves outward beyond the stars. On the perimeter of the universe it will be our technology and our ability to co-habitat with our fellows that will serve us and I feel this collection gets that right. It is just plain good reading that should easily please any fan of deep space fiction. It is light, good for afternoons on the porch or, if you’re like me, a quick story to relax a bit before bed.

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Rhein, The Bone Sword (2010)

Walter Rhein, The Bone Sword. Rhemalda Publishing, 2010. Pp. 221. ISBN 978-09827437-2-0. $14.95 / £13.95.

Reviewed by Sam Kelly

This isn’t Rhein’s first book, but his first with new imprint Rhemalda Publishing. My first impression of The Bone Sword, looking at the cover artwork, was a feeling of sinking doom. From the luridly coloured sky to the distorted, badly proportioned, and vastly over-photoshopped Renn-Faire blonde woman, none of it gave a good impression. Looking at the spine, the title and author’s name have been carefully placed so that they don’t stand out. The cover is credited to “Rhemalda Publishing”, which is quite fair enough; if I were the artist for this, I wouldn’t want to be credited either.

The blurb on the back is quite promising:

Malik emerges from the swamps of Plaiden seeking only shelter, food, and the time necessary to take the chill from his bones. But after a barroom brawl lands him in trouble with the local authorities, he flees to the mountains with two orphaned children who have the power to heal. Pursued by the vicious Father Ivory and his Nightshades, Malik and his charges become the centre of a grassroots movement that quickly blossoms into a full-fledged revolution. Their problems are compounded when news of their exploits draws the attention of Malik’s former Captain, a swordsman of legendary prowess who will not stop until Malik and his followers are dead. As the final battle approaches, Malik must face both his inner demons and his former master in a duel that will determine the fate of the free people of Miscony.

You’d think, with a blurb like that, that there must be much more inside. Sadly, that’s the entire plot; what you see there is what you’ve got. Still, the saying about judging a book by its cover is there for a reason, so I opened it up and prepared to be pleasantly surprised.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t. The first thing I saw was the Map, and it’s, er, quite traditional. Miscony is a forest land, bisected by the Old Road, the East Road, and the Ergeron River; the map also features the Northern Tribes, the Southern Kingdoms, and the Eastland Spires. The legend (a simple “Miscony”, in a standard black-letter font) and the compass rose would be perfectly unexceptionable if not for the absurdly overenthusiastic use of drop shadows, rendering them nigh-illegible. This isn’t the author’s fault any more than the cover is, of course, but it’s still rather unimpressive.

Turning to the text itself, on the first page we have foliage that glistens appreciatively and a protagonist who’s hot with fever while every part of his body is wet with cold. There’s a great, life-changing dilemma in front of him: should he go to the pub? (SPOILER: he does.) It turns out to contain lower-class men in homespun tunics, drinking mugs of foaming beer. Whilst I wouldn’t normally recommend literary criticism texts to a writer seeking to improve his craft, I think in this instance that Walter Rhein would benefit immensely from a close reading of Diana Wynne Jones’s Tough Guide to Fantasyland.

The tavern has a resident bully, and the resident bully has a couple of scantily dressed girls; Malik uses “protecting the honour of peasant women” as part of the reason to kill him, but of course he leaves immediately and then never thinks of them again. Unfortunately, the misogyny and classism shown here (“[T]he regulars immediately stopped their drunken antics and swivelled their fatty jowls to the entryway with the telegraphed interest of a less-than-intelligent dog.”) set the tone for the rest of the book, and the only purpose of this chapter is to show us Malik’s rash impulsiveness and the titular Bone Sword—the legendary weapon of the Camden Guard. Presumably, this sounds like a good fantasy name to the author, but as a Londoner I’m imagining patchouli-scented Guardsmen wearing platform boots and eyeliner.

The writing style is rather laboured and riddled with fantasy cliches, passive tenses, and ill-considered metaphors.

The achievement had startled Jasmine, for never before had she dared to test the strength of her powers. But after seeing the reaction of Gerard and the other men of Elmshearst, her spirit had been soothed. The healing of the elder had opened a floodgate, and Jasmine had labored long into the morning curing hundreds of ailments of all shapes and sizes.

Jasmine’s healing powers are the focus of the novel’s other plot strand; the Church considers them demonic in origin, and she has moral qualms about using them on people who will then be killed because they’re demon-tainted or who will go on to kill others. However, those are resolved (mostly by Malik) and she goes on to become the leader of an outright rebellion. Well, to be honest, she’s manipulated into it, as we see here with Malik talking her into becoming their innocent figurehead and potential scapegoat.

“A queen? I’m a peasant girl! I know nothing of these things!”
“Your heart is pure, Jasmine. Simply guide our swords.”
“We offer ourselves as your noble knights and servants. Do you accept our pledge?”
“What are you asking of me?”
“That you guide us and tell us where to strike, for we trust your judgement above our own. Shall we stop Father Ivory? Shall we stop these killings?”
“Yes.”
“Whatever the cost?”
“Yes.”
“Whatever the consequences?”
“Yes.”
“And you’re willing to bear the burden of this decision?”
“I am.”

The text, however, wants us to support and sympathise with the rebellion, and to admire her noble assumption of responsibility. In the end, the corrupt Earl dies, and Jasmine becomes Queen—but then again, generic mediaeval peasants are usually stuck with the feudal system even after the revolution. That may change if there’s a sequel—Jasmine does talk about the lack of real change at the end, but gets fobbed off with a pat answer by one of the ex-rebel leaders.

It’s a bit of a curate’s egg of a book, though; I was never in any danger of not finishing it, and not just because I didn’t want to miss the next nugget of appallingness. The plot is basic and entirely unoriginal, but serviceable and fairly well paced, and the themes the book poses (how much loyalty do you owe to an organization that doesn’t repay it? When do you have to take a stand?) are good ones. The Camden Guard, despite the name, are an interesting piece of worldbuilding, and it’s good to see a fantasy castle with garden features as well as fortifications—in this case, a hedge maze which plays quite an important role in the ending. It’s also good to see a protagonist of colour, though the name “Malik” and a reference to “long black hair” are the only indications we get.

I’d have liked to have seen more female characters and more agency given to them; I like Jasmine, but she’s dreadfully constrained and never gets to do anything for herself. I’d also have preferred a general expansion of the story, and some motivations for the characters beyond goodness, arrogance, or self-righteous religion. Mostly, however, I’d have liked a more thoughtful descriptive style, and much less reliance on lazy conventions in both setting and narrative.

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Thompson, Sylvow (2010)

Douglas Thompson, Sylvow. Eibonvale Press, 2010. Pp. 308. ISBN 9780956214775. £8.99.

Reviewed by Regina de Búrca

Sylvow is promoted as a literary science fiction novel that explores the modern world’s relationship with nature. The book lives up to this weighty promise and at times exceeds it, defying genre constraints. This overspill makes it a difficult book to review, not to mention a challenging read. Nevertheless, I added Douglas Thompson’s first book, Ultrameta (*) to my reading list on completion of Sylvow, as I enjoyed the author’s compelling style and would like to read more of his work.

The novel is an environmental allegory set in an imaginary Northern European city. The story follows five main characters who are threatened by an ecological disaster. Leo, disillusioned with modern life, opts out and goes to live in the forest that surrounds the town of Sylvow. He believes that “Gaia”, the force of nature, will wreck revenge on the humans that have abused her planet. The forest is a magical, sentient place, not unlike Robert Holdstock’s Mythago Wood. Leo’s sister Claudia, and his abandoned wife, Vivienne, go in search of him, accompanied by a patient of Claudia’s psychiatrist husband, who remains in civilisation but is the fifth viewpoint character. The search party discovers that there is truth in Leo’s theories and that the government is conducting experiments in an attempt to communicate with the power of the forest.

This novel is ambitious in scope. It is surrealist, while also dealing with complicated human relationships against the backdrop of an ecological theme. It is thoughtful, considered and raises philosophical questions about sanity and madness; the natural and constructed. The core plot—that of nature rising up against her human oppressor—is framed by magical realism, in the vein of Jonathan Carroll’s writing. The imagery is clear and vivid, written with striking detail. Sylvow has an interesting structure, taking the different points of view of all the main characters, with an interlude chapter in the middle of the book. It is nicely designed, with an attractive frontispiece and vignettes, in addition to pertinent quotes at the beginning of each chapter. The cover art is also striking.

As the natural forces grow stronger the tables are turned on the people who tried to conquer and tame the environment. This wild, consuming force is also echoed in the main characters’ behaviour as they increasingly break limitations imposed on them by society and act on a more instinctive level. The characters free themselves in varying degrees, culminating with Leo, the character who has completely transcended modern life’s constraints by living in the forests that surround Sylvow. The boundaries between humans and animals collapse with horrible results. “Logically, such a time had to come for some people, when on an arbitrary whim their lives were just totally wrecked by the untrammelled forces of nature” (104). This sentence attempts to capture the ethos of the novel, however, it is the self-destructive tendencies of the characters that seemed to pose a bigger threat. The characters in the book do a good enough job of ruining their own lives, they don’t need an external force to do that for them.

During the course of the novel, nature begins to win out, no longer oppressed by humans. Plant life proliferates, while the characters’ animal natures begin to take over. The idea of the balance shifting is a satisfying notion, yet it does not improve the situation of the characters or the world they live in. I would have liked to have seen the ecological changes bring equilibrium and effect some positive influence, but instead the wild influence of the natural seems to bring out the worst in the characters, while causing havoc in their environment. With the result that the plot of Sylvow sabotages what it sets out to do: it shows what chaos could ensue if nature were not controlled, adding to the argument that natural forces need to be harnessed.

This novel is far from a cosy read. Thompson jolts the reader out of a sense of security by shaking up plot elements and creating characters that are unpredictable and at the mercy of their passions. Their frailty, and the frustration they feel because of it, mean that the threat of disaster comes almost as a relief, as it promises an end to their turmoil. I felt there wasn’t enough distinction between characters, particularly the personalities of the female characters Claudia and Vivienne. Their motivation was unclear and I felt they didn’t contribute enough to the plot as a whole despite being given interesting placements in the story. I would have also liked to read about Leo’s character in more depth, as his character is so instrumental to the plot. By developing his role, the plot would have also been enhanced.

Sylvow contains so many ideas that at times I wanted the author to focus and develop particular aspects further—particularly Leo’s character, as he understands and embraces the force of change more than the others. I would have preferred if nature had more of a redeeming quality in this novel, instead of it deepening the dystopia. I feel the author had a real opportunity to contribute a fresh, new worldview, but instead of speculating on the potential of a world where nature is respected and heeded, at times the book reads like a treatise on the hopelessness of the human condition. However Sylvow is an interesting and diverting read, and I look forward to reading more of Thompson’s work.

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Rand, Anthem (1936)

Ayn Rand, Anthem. Cassell & Co, 1936. Pp. 105. (various editions)

A feminist review by Paul Wilks

Anthem is a dystopian novella by Ayn Rand first published in 1938. It is set in a devolved and semi-primitive future society, beneath an oppressive ruling body known as the ‘World Council’. The protagonist is a male named Equality 7-2521 and the novel tells of his life and subsequent disenfranchisement with society. The novella itself is essentially an early exploration of Rand’s own philosophical ideas regarding individualism and subsequent criticism of the opposing ‘collectivism’. These ideas would be realised in greater depth by Rand’s later novels; namely The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, but Anthem demonstrates a brief critique that relates to her country of birth, a socialist Soviet Russia.

Lewis (ed.), Null Immortalis (2010)

D.F. Lewis (ed.), Null Immortalis: Nemonymus #10. Weirdmonger Press, 2010. Pp. 328. ISSN 1474-2020. $10.00.

Reviewed by Jaym Gates

Null Immortalis is, in appearance, a handsome book, a trade paperback that just might be one of those things some intrepid bookstore explorer pulls off a shelf in twenty years because it catches their eye. Nine previous Nemonymous books have been released by editor Des Lewis, with number 10 the last of the series, and the first to have the author’s bylines attached to the stories. The cover is quite classic, soft colors and a slightly aged look, and gives little indication what might be within.