REVIEW: “Kuszib” by Hassan Abdulrazzak

Review of Hassan Abdulrazzak, “Kuszib”, Iraq+100, edited by Hassan Blasim (Comma Press, 2016): 115-138 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology.)

Of all the stories in this anthology that I’ve read so far, this one is by far the most strange. Abdulrazzak imagines a world a century from now where aliens have taken over and humans are reduced to the status of farm animals, and it is from the point of view of the aliens that the story is told (this confused me at first when wine-drinking was mentioned, but was cleared up quite quickly). Through their eyes, we are given a picture of humanity which picks up on all our flaws, our hubris, and our lack of civilization. When the aliens land at Centre Point, which used to be called “Baggy-Dad” in the archaic human language of “Arabaic”, they laugh at the fact that the people of “Newey Pork”, “Lindon”, and “Beige-inn” are all insulted that their cities were not the ones chosen as the invasion site. But “humans were never that good at logic”, the aliens are all taught, and they are uncivilized too, whatever they think. It is easy for those newly arrived conquerors to conclude that their technological superiority translates into superiority in all contexts. From there, it is an easy step to the hunting, herding, and farming of human beings, a thread running through the story whose treatment is just casual enough to make it entirely unsettling.

The story contains more erotic elements than others in the book — fair warning for anyone who would prefer to avoid anything explicit — but these elements are handled with a good measure of humor. It is refreshing to see that alien sex is amusing not because it is alien but because it is sex.

This is the first story in the collection where I have noticed some editorial issues. There is a distinct lack of commas setting off the addressee of speech, and two typos — one “it’s” for “its” on p. 124 and one “pour” for “pore” on p. 123.

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REVIEW: “Led Astray” by Anna Novitzky

Review of Anna Novitzky, “Led Astray”, Luna Station Quarterly 31: Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

The problem with surreptitiously reading stories when you’re ostensibly at an academic conference and supposedly paying attention to the speaker is that when you get a story like “Led Astray”, people start looking at you when you giggle and the speaker has said nothing amusing. But I challenge anyone to read this story without laughing. It is self-consciously meta but that is part of what makes it so funny. The best part, though, is the view of AI/SF/robots that it gives us. Too many stories take the “robots will be the death of us, when they get too smart” path; this one goes down on a different path, the path of “any sufficiently intelligent being will develop a sense of humor.” I simply loved it.

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Guest Post: Steve Quinn / Short Story Showcase

We here at SFFReviews.com created this site because we wanted to promote short SFF and speculative stories, poetry, journals, anthologies, both the readers of such and their writers. There are many ways this promotion can be done, and while at this site we primarily focus on reviewing stories, we’re also eager to showcase other promoters working towards the same ends. To that end, we’re very pleased to have a guest post today by Steve Quinn who since the beginning of October has been running a Short Story Showcase. Here Mr. Quinn tells us a bit more about himself and his reviewing:

A huge “Thank you!” to Dr. Uckelman and the rest of the team here at SFFReviews for giving me the opportunity to post. My name is Steve Quinn, and I’m an amateur author who has recently launched a blog featuring mostly short story reviews, with the occasional writing-focused or weird historical post. My reviews will be a little different from what you’ll see on SFFReviews, though.

There are lots of fantastic stories out there, and there are lots of people more experienced than I who can help you find those stories. So, rather than identifying great stories, I want to get under the hood and discuss what makes them great from a technical perspective. Basically, these are the stories that make me, as a writer, sit up and say, “That was clever! How did they do that?”

I’m going to try to visit as many different publications (mostly semi-pro) as I can in the process, but over time you might notice me focusing on some more than others. That’s not because they’re necessarily any better, but rather because I know Charles Payseur and the great team here at SFFReviews aren’t able to cover them and I want to help draw attention to the excellent work they publish.

Before I begin this review, though, I’d like to put something on the table: I hate the Idiot Ball. Plots that only function because one or more cast members take turns huffing paint make me want to smack myself in the head with the book. For similar reasons, de-powering characters usually annoys me, too. Done well, it can be an interesting exploration of the risks inherent in using a certain skill or ability as a crutch, but most of the time it seems like the author does it because otherwise there wouldn’t be a plot. Further, even when it’s done well, it’s almost invariably less fun than another plot would be.

Consider the duel scene from the Princess Bride (a brilliant scene in a movie full of brilliant scenes). How much fun would that scene have been if they had begun dueling right after the grueling climb up the Cliffs of Insanity, when they were both dead tired? There still would have been tension, of course, but it would have been a grim, grey sort of tension, as opposed to the nail-biting back-and-forth masterpiece the movie created.

That’s why I enjoy stories like “The Bonesetter,” by Santiago Belluco and published in Metaphorosis. The core of the story is a duel of magic and cunning between two skilled, clever antagonists, each among the last of their kinds. They fight as much for survival as dominance, and they both have plenty of tricks up their sleeves to keep each other off-balance.

I use that metaphor advisedly. Ideally, Belluco would have carefully hung each trick up on the wall prior to using it, but in the cramped confines of short fiction, that’s not always possible. Instead, what this story presents is more of a magic show. You never quite know what tricks the protagonist or antagonist are going to perform, but you can count on enjoying the stagecraft.

Between the tricks, though, keep an eye out for the complex worldbuilding Belluco weaves into the story. Some stories feel like they take place on a movie set, where nothing existed before the story’s start and nothing will remain after The End. The world of “The Bonesetter” is full almost to bursting with small details and intriguing facts about far-away places, and you’ll come away with the feeling that you’ve seen just one engrossing facet of an immensely complex gem.

So give it a read! Sadly, you don’t see this sort of thing every day. And, after watching a truly masterful parasite at work in this story, you’ll be rethinking any objections you might have had to cut-rate ones.

We encourage everyone interested in reviews of short SFF to add Quinn’s series to their blog roll. We’d also love to showcase any other sites doing reviews of short SFF, please drop us a line if you’re interested in doing a guest post on our site!

Sara L. Uckelman

REVIEW: “Seven Kinds of Baked Goods” by Maria Haskins

Review of Maria Haskins, “Seven Kinds of Baked Goods”, Luna Station Quarterly 31: Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

This is the second story is as many issues of Luna Station Quarterly that should not be read without some sort of homemade baked good on hand. Sadly, I had none, and spent the entire story feeling hungry.

First-person present-tense narration is a difficult combination to pull off well, even though it seems like such an easy voice when you’re writing, so when the story opened up with that, I was immediately leery. The story isn’t entirely told in the present-tense, though; the narrator quickly shifts into a retelling of her past, a past so delightful that I was immediately drawn in. But when it shifted back, I was (and now I am incredibly conscious of the fact that I myself am narrating in the first person shifting between past and present tense. Do you like my glass house?) left with the feeling I often get with FPPT — just who is the narrator speaking to, and why is she wasting her time telling her story instead of figuring out how to get out of the pickle she’s in?

And yet, my qualms about the narrative choices end up not seriously detracting from the story. Haskins manages to work in an impressive amount of world-building in a short amount of space, and her story does what I want any story to do: It left me wanting to read more.

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REVIEW: “And the White Breast of the Dim Sea” by Hilary Biehl

Review of Hilary Biehl, “And the White Breast of the Dim Sea”, Luna Station Quarterly 30: Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

This is not your ordinary story of man-meets-mermaid and has a child. This is a story of the complexities of family relationships and prejudices, which just happens to be about an enchanter and a mergyndr and their daughter, and it is filled with terribly wonderful lines like

“I know very little about human magic. Possibly it molds to human prejudice.”

I enjoyed this story because it is an example of what stories can be at their best — a mirror on our lives and our actions. It’s not a moralising story, but it is also one you cannot read without thinking and reflecting on what it reflects to you.

All this, and a delightfully satisfying ending. More stories like this, please!

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REVIEW: “Flowers for the Moon” by Clio Yun-su Davis

Review of Clio Yun-su Davis, “Flowers for the Moon”, Luna Station Quarterly 30: Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

I’m a sucker for a good fairy tale. So when I get a story that starts off

There once was a girl who fell in love with the moon even though she knew in her heart that the moon could never love her back…

I’m already in love.

And this story lives up to the promise of its opening line. It is a classic fairy tale — a heroine, her beloved, an old crone who sends her off on a journey, a fateful quest, a snarky talking forest (oh, wait, that’s hardly a classic fairy tale element. But it should be. I want more snarky talking forests in my life) — and yet it is different from any other fairy tale I’ve ever read.

It’s hard to imagine a fairy tale where the happily ever after doesn’t involve two lovers living out their lives together, but this story manages such a happily ever after. Because, as the heroine says to her beloved, “My feelings for you haven’t changed. I, however, have.”

I adored this story, and intend to read it aloud to my 5 year old.

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REVIEW: “Below the River” by Rose Strickman

Review of Rose Strickman, “Below the River”, Luna Station Quarterly 30: Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

It often seems like literature takes a very long time to catch up to technology. The advent of ubiquitous cell phones and smart phones has fundamentally changed the way we interact with each other and our world, and it feels — to me at least — that these changes have been so radical in their depth and scope that we are still struggling to articulate this in our writing without making reference to phones, etc., seem “gadgety”.

One of the things I really appreciated in Strickman’s story was the way in which contemporary technology was seamlessly interwoven into the story. None of the awkwardness that I so often see was present.

But that ease displayed there was not always reflected in the rest of the story, which was occasionally somewhat stilted. The opening scenes were filled with mournful portent without giving the reader a clear indication of what the portent was of or why we should be mournful, and the use of a dream sequence to convey memory is a somewhat overused technique. There are a number of places where I think what I wished for most was less vagueness and more distinctiveness. (Not just “ill”, but ill with what? Not just “medicine”, but what kind of medicine?) Lastly, the ending was pretty clearly telegraphed from fairly early on; now, this is not always a bad thing; sometimes there is nothing more satisfying than a growing suspicion of how things will turn out being vindicated when you reach the end of a story. But that vindication only comes if it is clearly possible that that ending would not be reached. Here, there was never really much doubt.

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REVIEW: “Operation Daniel” by Khalid Kaki

Review of Khalid Kaki, Adam Talib (trans.), “Operation Daniel”, Iraq+100, edited by Hassan Blasim (Comma Press, 2016): 107-114 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology.)

“Operation Daniel” answers the question “What would Iraq be like 100 years after the invasion” with the perhaps unexpected “ruled by China”. This answer forces the reader to consider not only how Iraq might be transformed over the next century but also the rest of the world.

It’s an all too familiar world that Kaki paints, with the repression of the local languages, culture, songs, literature, and names and the introduction of a dictator who rules under the guise of benevolence for all. It is also a macabre world, where people who don’t adhere to the rigid rules of repression are extracted, cremated, and their remains compressed into a tiny diamond to decorate the dictator’s shoes.

The narrator is quite circumscript in their telling, telling us what shouldn’t happen or what cannot happened, rather than what must and what did, and this circumscription fits well with the story. Nothing is ever addressed head-on, only aslant, and this leaves the reader with the lingering feeling that this is a future that might possibly be escaped.

The story is both forward looking (in the sense that it looks forward from the present to the imagined future, but also in that it looks forward from the imagined future) and deeply historical, rooted in the ancient history of Kirkuk — a history one need not know in order to enjoy the story, because there are informative footnotes! Can I just say how much I love reading a piece of fiction that has informative footnotes? One footnote discusses contemporary and historic geography, two discuss the history of Kirkuk, and one provides information about local music. I love informative footnotes.

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REVIEW: “The Call of the Orbsong” by A. M. Matte

Review of A. M. Matte, “The Call of the Orbsong”, Luna Station Quarterly 30: Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

Dafenid is an Amphibian who steals orbs from the Pavlina, a Biped who either creates or collects them (it is not clear which in the story). Though Dafenid is not able to make the orbs sing, she still delights in them, for she sees having them as an act of defiance on behalf of the Amphibians against the Bipeds.

This we learn at the beginning, but much of what transpires after the initial opening scene is the filling in of back story, which suffers a bit from more telling than showing and a couple of awkward info dumps. We learn quite a bit about the relative power differentials between the Amphibians and the Bipeds, and of illicit attraction, but through the middle part of the story I kept find myself wishing for less history and more of the present.

There is, however, a fun twist at the end, which is no less enjoyable for the fact that about 1/3 of the way through, I suddenly had an intuition that that was where the story would go: It was gratifying to read the rest of the story and be proven right. (Half-way through, however, I did get a bit of a shock, when the object of Dafenid’s love was revealed, since earlier in the story (I had to go back and double check, but the implication was definitely there) I had gotten the impression that he was her brother!) All in all: A fun little fairy-tale interpretation, slightly hampered by presentation.

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REVIEW: “The Joy of Baking” by Holly Lyn Walrath

Review of Holly Lyn Walrath, “The Joy of Baking”, Luna Station Quarterly 30: Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

WARNING: Do not read this story without cake on hand, or you will want cake by the time you’re done reading it.

“The secret to effective baking is patience,” we are told, which is why I am such a bad cook. “Timing is everything,” we are also told, and this as true of comedy as it is of baking, and this story has both cake and elements of delightful comedy. Heaven and hell provide much meat for stories, but how often do you get stories of purgatory? (Dante excepted, of course, and Beetlejuice). Whether purgatory is a waiting place before the ultimate destination, or simply a waiting place before moving on to the next life, a place one will come back to again and again, there is something comforting in thinking that perhaps it is a place where the waiting souls are fed and loved and comforted, where they may rest as long as they need, and where the caretakers have all the time in the world to perfect their baking skills.

Yes, I think I’d rather enjoy visiting Walrath’s purgatory. And now I want some cake. My great-grandmother’s sour cream coffee cake, I think.

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