REVIEW: “Clap Your Hands” by Andrew F. Kooy

Review of Andrew F. Kooy, “Clap Your Hands”, Apex Magazine 107 (2018): Read Online. Reviewed by Joanna Z. Weston.

Fiction is rife with children unfairly blamed by their father for their mother’s death in childbirth. Fiction is also rife with corrupt revival preachers (just once, I’d like to see a revival preacher who doesn’t fake his own miracles). “Clap Your Hands” gives us a powerful combination of the two.

The story opens on a ten or eleven year old boy named Five, who has been abused by his preacher father, for his entire life. Despite this, he is essentially a sweet kid who loves listening to the Psalms, even as he fears hearing his father preach about hell and damnation (having heard a bit too much of that already). The first time someone shows him real kindness, he discovers an ability he didn’t know he had.

The speculative element in this story is subtle, but I didn’t mind that. It’s almost more magical realism than fantasy, dealing mostly with horrors of the human variety.

This is a dark story, without hope or redemption at the end. That being said, the prose is clean, clear, and lovely, which makes for a surprisingly enjoyable read. And it’s not long, which means there’s less time for the hopelessness to really sink its claws into you. Despite the dark ending, this is a well-crafted story and an engaging read.

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REVIEW: Glass and Gardens: Solar Punk Summers edited by Sarena Ulibarri

Review of Sarena Ulibarri, ed., Glass and Gardens: Solar Punk Summers (World Weaver Press, 2018) — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

I was extremely pleased to be offered an ARC of this book as my exposure to the solarpunk genre has so far been rather limited and I’ve wanted to change that. I read enough depressing stuff, fiction and nonfiction, that the prospect of reading a collection of stories all of “a type of optimistic science fiction that imagines a future founded on renewable energies” (back cover) is enormously tantalising.

The book promises stories that are uplifting and optimistic, and the seventeen stories in this anthology are speculative in the very best sense of the word: They speculate on how our future could be, rather than how it must be, and provide an optimistic view which somehow manages to escape being escapism. Reading these stories, there is still a sense that these speculations could turn out to be true. The red thread that runs through all of them and ties them together into a lovely whole is the thread of hope: Sometimes the hope that survives in the face of adversity, sometimes the hope that thrives in the seat of comfort. I came away from reading these uplifted.

As is usual with our reviews of anthologies, we’ll review each story individually, and link to the reviews in the contents list below as the reviews are published:

All of the authors are new to me but one; Julia K. Patt’s story in Luna Station Quarterly was one of the first I reviewed for this site. But this is what I love about anthologies: A chance to be exposed to new genres and new authors.

The book itself is a lovely one, with attractive typesetting, impeccable proofreading, and a colorful and enticing cover. Having reading this anthology, I’m now quite interested in seeing what else World Weaver Press has to offer.

Sara L. Uckelman17 Comments

REVIEW: “The Death of Paul Bunyan” by Charles Payseur

Review of Charles Payseur, “The Death of Paul Bunyan”, in Steve Berman, ed., Wilde Stories 2017: The Year’s Best Gay Speculative Fiction (Lethe Press, 2017): 279-286 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology.)

The suits pass a glance amongst themselves like it’s weed at a folk rock concert and Johnny wishes he ad brought something to take the edge off. H remembers smoking with Paul and Babe, during a summer they spent in the northwest once. Bigfoot hunting, they said, though in the summer of 1944 draft dodgin was probably more accurate.

For me, this was the perfect piece to finish off the anthology with, which is why I left it for last. The title alone evoked both nostalgia — memories of the Paul Bunyan murals at the Memorial Union at UW-Madison where did my BA and MA — and also a bit of embarrassment when I realised I’ve left Wisconsin behind long enough ago that I do not remember the details of Paul and Babe’s story.
So of course I did what any self-respecting academic would do, and read up on them before reading Payseur’s story. (While utterly irrelevant to Payseur’s story, I feel honor-bound to inform all of you that Disney did an animated musical Paul Bunyan, featuring the voice of Tony the Tiger.) What surprised me — most likely because I never knew this in the first place — was the status of the Bunyan tales as “fake-lore”, that is, stories that were made up to be like folk tales but without the long oral history that folk tales have. But this is supposed to be a review of Payseur’s story and not a discourse on Paul Bunyan, so let’s go see what happens when Bunyan dies, because that is when this story begins:

Paul Bunyan has died. Paul Bunyan has died and Johnny Appleseed is heading north (p. 279).

Both Bunyan and Appleseed are men out of American myth, but their status as myths doesn’t prevent them from still being men. (Reading the story I had a strange sense that I was reading a superhero story.) But how one can be both myth and man is the pole around which this story pivots, and in turn the story — stories — are that which make Paul and Johnny who they are:

They’re all made of stories, people like Johnny, people like Paul (p. 283).

But does the story die because Paul does, or does Paul die because the story does? That ambiguity, dear reader, is why you should read this story for yourself.

(Originally published in Lightspeed, 2016.)

Sara L. Uckelman1 Comment

REVIEW: “Deleted Scences” by Chris Cornell

Review of Chris Cornell, “Deleted Scenes”, in Abandoned Places, edited by George R. Galuschak and Chris Cornell (Shohola Press, 2018): 73-85 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology.)

There are many ways in which a place can become abandoned — there can be a specific reason, a conscious decision, a particular action; or it can merely the slow ebbing away of any reason, decision, or action that one might have or take to go there. The town of Shetlerville has been abandoned both by choice and by inaction, and this illustrates the central theme of the story, how our choices affect our futures.

I really enjoyed this story-within-a-story-within-a-story, a story that balances upon the precipice between romance and horror. It is only the deleted scenes that determine which it is.

Sara L. Uckelman1 Comment

REVIEW: “The Drowning Line” by Haralambi Markov

Review of Haralambi Markov, “The Drowning Line”, in Steve Berman, ed., Wilde Stories 2017: The Year’s Best Gay Speculative Fiction (Lethe Press, 2017): 183-195 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology.)

I drive on the way back and tell my husband everything he needs to hear — slowly and with conviction, a recital of sweet nothings. What I really do is think about the man in the water, my family’s legacy and undoing.

The story opens with a man being woken by the ringing of a cell phone, and in the exchange that follows between the first-person POV narrator and the man who has called him, I found I had to flip pages back and forth and reread the scene two or three times until I figured it what was happening and who was saying which words.

But that is pretty much my only complaint about the story. It is breathlessly beautiful and full of love and it caught me up in its wake and made my heart weep and bleed. It is both ordinary — the queer aspect is both foregrounded but utterly mundane — and extraordinary — with the speculative elements providing a framework that blend fantasy and reality seamlessly. Reading this story makes me so glad I bought this anthology, despite my misgivings about my suitability to review it.

(Originally published in Uncanny Magazine, 2016.)

Sara L. Uckelman1 Comment

REVIEW: “It’s the End of the World As We Know It” by A. C. Wise

Review of A. C. Wise, “It’s the End of the World As We Know It”, in Steve Berman, ed., Wilde Stories 2017: The Year’s Best Gay Speculative Fiction (Lethe Press, 2017): 259-275 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology.)

Do dead boys get boners? Or are they safe from being mortified? Oh, God, pun intended.

This is a classic coming-of-age, boy-meets-dead-boy, high-school-prom-graduation-and-what-comes-after story — oh, wait, that’s not really classic, is it. Nevertheless, that is exactly what the story is, and it was a pure delight to read. Now, I’ve never been a high school boy myself, so I can’t attest to the verisimilitude of the narrator’s (I just realised we never learn his name) experiences, but they feel so very real and genuine, the embarrasment, the longing, the joy, the fear. This is a story I will file carefully away, to keep safely until the time comes that I think “I know someone who needs to read this story,” at which time I’ll pull it out and share it with them. Because everyone at some point in their lives, particularly in high school, needs to read a story that shows them they are not alone.

(I also totally and shamelessly want to see this short story turned into a movie. But only this story, however short a movie it ended up being, and not some story vaguely inspired by this story but with a whole bunch more added to it. Because the twist that comes about 2/3 of the way in is both completely unexpected and entirely perfect.)

There is no way to separate the act of reading a story from the reader. There is no way I cannot read the title of this story without thinking of the same-titled REM song, the song that was my mental soundtrack in the weeks after discovering I was pregnant. I cannot get away from those memories or that song while reading this story, which makes my experience of it individual, singular (but though it is individual to me, it is no more individualised than any other reader’s experiences of the story). So I was quite glad that a nod was made to the REM song at the end of the story. I hope those kids think of that time of their lives every time they hear the song, too.

(Originally appeared in The Kissing Booth Girl and Other Stories, 2016.)

Sara L. Uckelman1 Comment

REVIEW: “My Heart’s Own Desire” by Robert Levy

Review of Robert Levy, “My Heart’s Own Desire”, in Steve Berman, ed., Wilde Stories 2017: The Year’s Best Gay Speculative Fiction (Lethe Press, 2017): 199-211 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology.)

He said he was a man of means now hidden to the world, and that he wanted nothing more than to take me back to his place. It is safe, he said, and warm. He also let it be known that he could conjure the most illuminating things, potion-soaked wafers that gave you crystal visions. The Hierophant’s shit is so good, my brother Carter told me later, people say God is his supplier.

Content note: Contains explicit incest.

This was a difficult story for me to read, not the least because of some fairly graphic incest scenes. I’m not a huge fan of graphic sex scenes, but there are some contexts when they feel so right and natural that I do not mind them and even enjoy them. But the context here just feels so wrong.

Often when I’m reading, the underlying question I am continually asking is “Why this story?” Why did the narrator choose to tell this story? Why did the author choose to tell this story? Quite often the answer is a simple — if unhelpful — “because it’s a good one”. But other times, I feel like I must struggle with the story to find the answer, because the underlying premise to the question always is “they must have had a reason, a reason that they thought this story was the one worth telling”. One of the salutary things about fiction is the way in which it can force people to question their defaults and assumptions, to take a second look at why they react the way they do. I found myself doing that quite often reading this story — asking myself “is the repugnance with which I view incest preventing me from seeing clearly the answer to ‘why this story’?” Is there something the author has to say that makes this particular mode of saying it not only appropriate but justified?

At the end, I don’t know. I also don’t know whether the fault lies with me, or with the story — or with both, or with neither. It was well-written — lovely pacing, beauiful imagery, depictions of drug-induced experiences that I can appreciate aesthetically even while I have no point of contact in my own experiences — but I’m not sure that was enough to rehabilitate this one for me.

(Originally appeared in Congress Magazine, 2016.)

Sara L. Uckelman1 Comment

REVIEW: “Propagating Peonies” by Suzan Palumbo

Review of Suzan Palumbo, “Propagating Peonies”, Podcastle: 515 — Listen Online. Reviewed by Heather Rose Jones

How long do you wait for reunion when you and your beloved are out of sync on the paths of reincarnation? Arthi remains near the village waiting for the love who left her to return: as a peony, a butterfly, a cat. She is feared–or appreciated–as a witch as she waits for the cycles to turn. But when what you longed for finally arrives after so much waiting, is it worth it? This is a slow-moving, meandering story, rich in description and detail with more of a slice-of-life structure than a conflict-driven plot. The action is internal and in the end there is more acceptance than resolution.

I’m not sure how I feel about this story. It didn’t grab me by the throat but it isn’t that kind of tale. I kept trying to work out if the setting were inspired by some particular real-world culture or was entirely imaginative. It felt like the latter, so I didn’t worry quite so much about the logistics of how the reincarnation was supposed to work (except for wondering why it only seemed to be relevant for the central characters). Pleasant, but not likely to stick with me as deeply memorable.

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REVIEW: “Most Holy Ghost” by Martin Pousson

Review of Martin Pousson, “Most Holy Ghost”, in Steve Berman, ed., Wilde Stories 2017: The Year’s Best Gay Speculative Fiction (Lethe Press, 2017): 155-162 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology.)

Maybe that story, and the others, were meant as postcards from a world losing air. A world where living food petrified, untouched, and dying music echoed, unheard. if light was fading on Cajun men, it had burnt out–utterly and completely–on their darker kin, the mixed-blood Sabines, who only lived in folklore now. The Sabine legend was a gray monument razed by time, and my Sabine grandfather was left a relic.

The narrator’s Sabine grandfather, Rex, is a man who mixes truth and myth. The stories told of him are of a man larger than life, but with such minute, precise details that they cannot be myth. He is both god and man. But Rex ran off years ago, and his grandchild is left to follow the trail, listen to the stories, try to find out what kind of a man Rex really was, to find the truth behind the most holy ghost that is all that remains.

This was a lively story, subtly different from the others in the anthology I’ve read so far; but it took me until the very end to realise: This was a story of a queer young man where his queerness was not witnessed by being in a queer relationship. It wasn’t until I realised this that I realised just how strange it is that it should be the only one (so far) like that. I wonder if any of the remaining stories will also break that mold, or if this will be the only one.

Sara L. Uckelman1 Comment

REVIEW: “My Heart the Bullet in the Chamber” by Stephanie Charette

Review of Stephanie Charette, “My Heart the Bullet in the Chamber”, Podcastle: 514 — Listen Online. Reviewed by Heather Rose Jones

Oof. Another really gut-punching story from this year’s Artemis Rising series. “My Heart the Bullet in the Chamber” is more of an alternate history than a fantasy, per se. What if a town in a nebulous Old West setting decided that the solution to anarchy and violence was to forbid guns to men and to arm women instead? But that’s a facile description of the premise here. This is a full-out imagining of a woman-centered alternative society reminiscent of the sort of matriarchal/separatist experiments of 1980s SFF, but here the background worldbuilding is all to tell the story of one young woman’s quest to redeem a youthful mistake and avenge her sister.

In the community of Founding, a woman earns the right to carry a gun when she gives birth and joins the Matrons. But Alice has a deeper goal than simply coming of age. She and her sister had gone on a forbidden adventure outside the community. Only Alice returned and the true story would destroy her sister’s reputation. The plot is fairly straightforward: a quest, a duel, a coming of age. What makes this story powerful is how solidly detailed the setting and atmosphere are and how very real Alice feels as a character.

Content warning for sexual assault and violence. Not recommended for those suffering from male fragility.

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