REVIEW: “The Heaven-Moving Way” by Chi Hui

Review of Chi Hui, “The Heaven-Moving Way”, Apex Magazine 104: Read Online. Reviewed by Joanna Z. Weston.

This gem of a story starts with Zhang Xuan stealing a spaceship to track down her missing twin brother. Her quest to find him is interspersed with scenes from their childhood, adolescence, and adulthood – right up to the circumstances that led to his disappearance – and the sibling relationship is lovingly and realistically written, neither too perfect nor too fraught. If this had been a simple quest to find a missing loved one, it would have been a fine story. But Hui didn’t stop there; this is a story about the limits of human dreaming and exploration, one of my personal favorite modes of science fiction.

To me, this feels like a fresh take on that classic SF theme: humans exploring space and figuring out their place in the galaxy. It’s good to see characters of color, hailing from a non-Western culture, getting to star in that tale.

There are some stories that make me want to just pack up my word processor and give up, because I will surely never write something as exquisite, as original, as human, as the story I just read. This is one of those stories. The characters, the world, and the story that results from the combination of the two hit all the right notes for me.

If you like your science fiction with well-drawn characters and hope for an expansive future, then I highly recommend checking this out!

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REVIEW: “A Night Out at a Nice Place” by Nick Mamatas

Review of Nick Mamatas, “A Night Out at a Nice Place”, Apex Magazine 104: Read Online. Reviewed by Joanna Z. Weston.

An incorporeal intelligence embodies itself for fun (“downlowing into a limbsuit”), and then goes on a blind date with a human being. Fortunately, human beings are space faring at this point, so they do have something to talk about. Mostly, this is a far-future, philosophical dialogue about the nature of reality. It’s short, sharp, and surprisingly light, given the density of the subject matter.

I don’t think I was the ideal audience for this story. Either it was written for somebody much smarter than I am, and it went over my head, or else it was going for a sort of humor that just didn’t hit my personal funny bone. Maybe both. The futuristic slang and mathematical equations made it hard to understand at times and the narrator was a little too alien and superior for my taste (they joked about. destroying the star they were orbiting and wiping out the whole planet after their date made a tedious joke, and refrained because they liked her smile).

All that being said, the ending made me smirk, and I think that the narrator is supposed to be irritating – by the end, it’s clear that they are not as superior to humans as they think they are. The story is short enough that it’s definitely worth checking out, to see if it is to your liking.

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REVIEW: “To Blight a Fig Tree Before it Bears Fruit” by Benjamín Naka-Hasebe Kingsley

Review of Benjamín Naka-Hasebe Kingsley, “To Blight a Fig Tree Before it Bears Fruit”, Apex Magazine 104: Read Online. Reviewed by Joanna Z. Weston.

Eight brown, pregnant bodies are restrained on a stage, alive, but deeply uncomfortable. Soon, we find out why. The answer is a brutally honest look at what the wealthy and racially privileged would do to extend their own lives, if they only had the right technology. Everything but the technology itself is painfully plausible.

This is a powerful story. Short (barely longer than flash fiction, at less than 1500 words), but it packs a punch. I was impressed by the tightness of the prose, and the focus of the narrative. We stay in the present moment, with only a single flashback – when Meshee, our point of view character, thinks about what her mother would say about the situation. No mention of the history of the technology, or how she herself got to be in this position. Those answers aren’t relevant. The future is unknown. All that matters is what happens right now, on this stage.

The ending is perfect, and surprisingly hopeful. I highly recommend giving this gem a read!

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REVIEW: “Asylum of Cuckoos” by Lila Bowen

Review of Lila Bowen, “Asylum of Cuckoos”, Apex Magazine 104: Read Online. Reviewed by Joanna Z. Weston.

Ranger Rhett Walker stops in a small town with his posse, looking for a quick drink and a pause from their slow journey through the desert. When local law takes an interest in him, he assumes it’s because of his brown skin, or maybe because he’s brown and wearing a Ranger’s star. The truth turns out to be much stranger than he imagined, or than his companions will ever know.

This is a story about monsters, and only somewhat the kind you expect. Yes, some of the characters have, shall we say, special abilities that could get them branded as such by the more ordinary folks around them, but I’d say that this story is actually more concerned with their actions, rather than their abilities. It has a nice depth to it.

Rhett’s gender identity (he is a trans man) comes up a few times, due to the nature of the monster he encounters in that tiny town. As far as I can tell, as a cis-gendered woman, the subject seemed to be handled well – his complex feelings about his body are neither swept under the proverbial rug nor made the main focus, and the only person to imply that he isn’t a man is met with the disdain they deserve.

If you like stories about the wild west (particularly stories that don’t whitewash the region and era) or complex thoughts about morality then you’ll like “Asylum of Cuckoos.”

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REVIEW: “Cemetery Man” by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

Review of Silvia Moreno-Garcia, “Cemetery Man”, Apex Magazine 103: Read Online. Reviewed by Joanna Z. Weston.

“Cemetery Man” is my favorite kind of story; it’s exciting and fun, but has ample depth in both the plot and the characters. The historical setting (Mexican Revolution, circa 1910, I think?) and presence of female fighters are icing on the cake.

Catalina lies bleeding on the battlefield. When she wakes up she is in the lair of the Cemetery Man, a known resurrectionist for the opposing side. She’s fought many of his creations, but for now, she figures she is just lucky to be alive. The story proceeds with brief, disjointed scenes – moments of lucidity and pain, each ending with morphine. As Catalina’s strength increases, so does the length and coherence of the scenes, and what flows from there is a nicely paced story, rich in both internal and external development.

“Cemetery Man” pairs genuine creepiness with serious questions. Are the resurrected really alive? Conscious? Human? Catalina never asks this question directly, but the narrative asks it obliquely through situation and action. There are no easy answers, yet I found the ending satisfying.

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REVIEW: “The Edge of Things” by Katharine E.K. Duckett

Review of Katharine E.K. Duckett, “The Edge of Things”, Apex Magazine 103: Read Online. Reviewed by Joanna Z. Weston.

An endless party with representatives from all eras of human history, containing the breadth and depth of human knowledge, sounds like a dream come true for any curious person. But is it really? And what would you have to give up to get there? These are some of the questions posed by “The Edge of Things.”

I’m not sure I’m smart enough to fully understand this story. Halfway through, I recognized a few characters as characters from famous literature. Were others literary allusions as well? Maybe if I were better read (or had a better memory), my experience of this story would be completely different.

What I did understand of the story was fascinating. Duckett set herself the difficult task of describing a nonsense world from the point of view of someone who recognizes that it does not make sense, and is struggling to find the underlying structure and meaning almost as much as the reader. The only difference is that the narrator has been at it for some time already, and her energy for the task has almost run out, whereas the reader is new to the confusion. We also don’t have to struggle with it for as long, because at least some of it is resolved by the end.

I appreciate that Duckett does not leave us hanging, and provides some explanation. She doesn’t give us a pat ending, because that wouldn’t be satisfying. We learn what is going on in this mysterious house, but not what exists outside of it. That is enough.

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REVIEW: “Behind Her, Trailing Like Butterfly Wings” by Daniela Tomova

Review of Daniela Tomova, “Behind Her, Trailing Like Butterfly Wings”, Apex Magazine 103: Read Online. Reviewed by Joanna Z. Weston.

Some stories sneak up on you. “Behind Her, Trailing Like Butterfly Wings” is one of them. There are so many tiny details that only have meaning in retrospect, so many moments in the opening that only come together in the final paragraphs. This is a story that makes you work a bit, piecing things together. That’s not a bad thing, but it is something to be aware of in choosing the right moment to read it.

This story takes place in a dying, almost post-apocalyptic, world. The human population has divided into nomads who walk the road, following the mysterious and mostly unseen Wandering Woman, and those who remain in towns, called oases. Anomalies called mouths (which I won’t spoil for you with an explanation) are opening up at random, and their spreading threat is responsible for the breakdown of what we would consider the normal modes of society. Life is in flux, and it’s unclear if a new status quo will ever be achieved, or if this is the end. But there’s also a normalcy to the world. People adapt, they survive, they create relationships and families and tribes. I found it to be surprisingly hopeful, for all that uncertainty.

I must confess, this story did not work for me on my first reading. Too much of the world and the characters were mysterious until the end, and I felt dissatisfied. However, I enjoyed it much more on my second reading, when I was able to fully appreciate the skillful way the author dolled out information.

This is a great choice if you’re in the mood for something cerebral, and well-worth a re-read!

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REVIEW: “The Dude Who Collected Lovecraft” by Nick Mamatas and Tim Pratt

Review of Nick Mamatas and Tim Pratt, “The Dude Who Collected Lovecraft”, Apex Magazine 102: Read Online. Reviewed by Joanna Z. Weston.

I am a huge fan of the recent trend of people deconstructing Lovecraft’s work to create new stories, particularly when those stories tackle the racism that crept through his oeuvre. “The Dude Who Collected Lovecraft” is an excellent addition to that growing collection.

Jim Payne just wants to sell his great-grandfather’s letters from Lovecraft, get his money, and go home. He has no skin in this game (beyond the desire to get out of debt), and no interest in either his great-grandfather or his famous correspondent. But when he drives down the rutted, unmarked, dirt road dotted with bestial statues, and knocks on the door of a ramshackle house in the hills of New England, it’s no surprise that things get complicated.

Everything about this story fits together nicely. Jim is a wonderful narrator: observant, wry, and with a low tolerance for bullshit, which makes it easy to follow him through his adventure. The plot itself is perfectly compressed without feeling either too big for the word count or too small to be interesting; it’s just right. I thought that the racism – both in Lovecraft’s work and in modern America – was deftly handled, but as a white woman, I defer to the judgment of those who have personally experienced it.

Recommended for fans of Lovecraft, low-key horror, or either The Ballad of Black Tom (Victor LaValle) or Lovecraft Country (Matt Ruff).

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REVIEW: “Untilted” by K. A. Teryna

Review of K. A. Teryna, “Untilted”, Apex Magazine 102: Read Online. Reviewed by Joanna Z. Weston.

This is an intriguing bite of the slightly surreal, translated from Russian. It begins with a strangely written letter, full of deliberate misspellings and random asides. We quickly learn that the note (and the boy who wrote it — Marcus) are more than they seem. He gives the note to a stranger, a woman named Dahlia, and claims it is a contract. We only find out what the contract is about slowly, as the night progresses, growing ever stranger and more nonsensical.

While this isn’t a strongly “fantasy” story, it is every bit as weird as one. Because the tone is so sensible, and the world so very much our own, the strangeness stands out in stark contrast, even if most of the oddness could be explained as the actions of an imaginative child. This is the opposite of the traditional fantasy or science fiction story, where the narrative has to convince us that wizards or faster than light travel are not only possible, but plausible. It’s even different from that type of story where the main character discovers that the world is full of secret magic. There’s no curtain drawn back to reveal a hidden world, just a constant reminder that this child — Marcus — is behaving very strangely. And when he turns out to have access to real magic, that’s probably the most normal thing to happen in the whole story.

Marcus and the Dahlia take turns narrating, sharing quick spurts of both the present narrative and their pasts. There’s a mixture of wisdom and naivete to be found in both of them, which is the source of much of the story’s charm. Though it delves into heavy themes — mostly coping with grief — it never becomes heavy or self-important.

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REVIEW: “An Unexpected Boon” by S.B. Divya

Review of S.B. Divya, “An Unexpected Boon”, Apex Magazine 102: Read Online. Reviewed by Joanna Z. Weston.

Wow. I loved this story. It has a wonderfully realized non-western setting (this one takes place in Vedic era India), two well-rounded main characters whose points of view complement and add to each other, and a nuanced, sympathetic take on mental illness.

The story has two point-of-view characters, First is Kalyani, a twelve year old girl who struggles with compulsions and has trouble reading people. I read her autistic, due to her frequent over-stimulation, dislike of being touched, and difficulty reading other peoples intentions and emotions, but I could be wrong. Next is her older brother, Aruni, who loves her but is also frustrated by her inability to fit in. I appreciated how warmly Kalyani was portrayed — autistic characters are often portrayed as cold or alien, but she came across as very sympathetic. She is engaged with the world, yet seems distant to others because her engagement does not quite mirror their own. Her relationship with her brother felt very real to me. He defends her against others and worries about her ability to survive in the world, but also resents her to a certain extent. By the end, they come to understand each other in a new way.

The boon referred to in the title offers Kalyani a way to engage with the world more easily, but does not change who she is, because she isn’t broken. When her brother says that he hoped the boon would make her normal, she replies “I will always be myself,” which is a touching message for all of us, but has particular resonance if we assume she is autistic.

This is a beautiful, engaging story that I highly recommend. Being neurotypical, I can not speak to the accuracy of the representation, but I thought it was deftly handled.

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