REVIEW: “Who Wants to Live Forever?” by Karen McCreedy

Review of Karen McCreedy, “Who Wants to Live Forever?”, Luna Station Quarterly 24 (2015): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

“Who wants to live forever?” they asked, and humanity—stupid, unthinking fools that we were—answered, “we do.”

Ange and Bob both work at the Euro-Asian Space Agency, which means that when the humanoid robots sent off to colonise Mars and Jupiter return to Earth offering people the opportunity to live forever — to download themselves into indestructible humanoid bodies — they’re near the top of the priority queue. Only, they never stopped to think what life would be like if all the bits that make them human that come from their corporeal bodies were gone.

This story started off pretty classic SF but continually edged its way closer and closer to horror, as McCreedy deftly illustrates what life would be like if we could, indeed, live forever. Thanks, but no thanks!

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REVIEW: “Helix” by Britt Foster

Review of Britt Foster, “Helix”, Luna Station Quarterly 46 (2021): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

“Project Chimera had gone on for fifty years and billions of dollars had poured into its evolution.” It was supposed to be “the pinnacle of human achievement,” and yet instead, Dr. Magdalena Santos is told that the project is being such down, with immediate effect, leaving her in charge of destroying the project’s assets.

It takes a very special scientist to destroy the results of a research project, especially one that had been going so well, and the question the story revolves around is: Is Dr. Santos one of those special ones? Or, if she isn’t, will she get away with it? On the one hand, it’s clear that we’re meant to root for her to not destroy the assets. On the other hand, it’s not at all clear that those who want to shut the project down are in the wrong. The delightful tension between these two threads means that the ending is not entirely comfortable at all.

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REVIEW: “A Moral Majority” by Nikoline Kaiser

Review of Nikoline Kaiser, “A Moral Majority”, Luna Station Quarterly 46 (2021): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

This was a very different sort of love story than the one in “Forestborn” (read the review), but every bit as lovely, and the way it was underpinned by the collective will, of the entire town of Goldville, to do the right thing in support of Angela and Marigold in their time of need was something quite special. If Kaiser weaves this strength of moral virtue into the rest of her writing, then I want to read more of it.

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REVIEW: “Bridal Choice” by Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach

Review of Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach, Eve Mason, trans., “The Enchanted Prince”, in A String of Pearls: A Collection of Five German Fairy Tales by Women (2020): 53-56 — Order here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology.)

In fairy land there is a handsome young accomplished and most definitely eligible fairy prince, his only flaw that he allows his wit to tend towards cruelty. His mother the fairy queen instructs him to travel to planet earth to find a bride suitable to match him, and of course all the women he meets are impressed by his many virtues and they all seek to flatter his own vice, until the latter almost overcomes the former. Of course, the cure is to be found in a gentle human girl who cares naught for his boasts, because of course no profligate fairy prince could ever be fixed except through the reproof of an innocent woman. The structure of the story was stereotypical and trope-y, but the details that fleshed out the structure were strange and sometimes unexpected.
This was an odd little story!

(Originally published in German in 1892.)

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REVIEW: “The Enchanted Prince” by Caroline Stahl

Review of Caroline Stahl, Eve Mason, trans., “The Enchanted Prince”, in A String of Pearls: A Collection of Five German Fairy Tales by Women (2020): 43-51 — Order here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology.)

The premise is straightforward: Miranda, Armgard, and Wulfhilde are warned by their mother not to go into the forest, for fear that they will be lured into the realm of the enchanted prince, fated to live there until a princess can come and rescue him (though this was a nice twist on the usual damsel in distress!). Of course, they end up in the forest…

But the execution was marvelous. This was a wonderful Frankenstein’s monster of a story, such a conglomeration of different bits. Parts of it reminded me so intensely of The Silver Chair that I wonder if C. S. Lewis had read Stahl’s story, or another variant of it. Other parts were reminiscent of Bluebeard’s wives. And they were all tied together with a lovely quality of language that Mason’s translation really highlighted.

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REVIEW: “The Realm of Wishes” by Louise Brachmann

Review of Louise Brachmann, Eve Mason, trans., “The Realm of Wishes”, in A String of Pearls: A Collection of Five German Fairy Tales by Women (2020): 35-41 — Order here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology.)

This was the most traditional of all the tales: Edwy, a destitute fisherman catches a fantastical fish — “golden and azure and crimson” (p. 35) — whom he intends to sell for a great price. But the fish speaks and promises to grant him endless wishes instead, if only he’ll throw her back. Edwy follows all the standard tropes, requesting ever bigger and grander wishes until he finally asks for something that cannot be granted, and all his wishes are reversed and he ends up back where he started, in his poor fisher hut. Unlike some versions of this story, though, there is no happy resolution, no moral; he is just as discontented then as he was to start with.

(Originally published in German in 1813.)

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REVIEW: “The Nymph of the Rhine” by Charlotte von Ahlefeld

Review of Charlotte von Ahlefeld, Eve Mason, trans., “The Nymph of the Rhine”, in A String of Pearls: A Collection of Five German Fairy Tales by Women (2020): 25-34 — Order here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology.)

This is the story from which the anthology title’s string of pearls comes from; Ambrose the poor fisherman is visited one night by the nymph of the Rhine, who spins him a story of woe and makes a bargain with him: If he helps arrange a meeting so she can forgive her past lover, she will make him rich enough to marry his sweetheart.

I found this story fascinating: Right up until the very end, I did not know which of two ways it would end, and either one of them would have fit into the fairy tale trope. I also found interesting the juxtaposition of the clearly-supernatural nymph within a clearly Christian context: Even the nymph herself seems to feel she is a creature of God, and not of the devil. The final distinctive aspect of the story was how the message of equality between partners as the recipe for marital happiness was put into the mouth of a man, and not a woman. It was a strangely feminist message, and it had all the more impact because it wasn’t a woman arguing for it.

(Originally published in German in 1812.)

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REVIEW: “Princess Gräcula” by Friederike Helene Unger

Review of Friederike Helene Unger, Eve Mason, trans., “Princess Gräcula”, in A String of Pearls: A Collection of Five German Fairy Tales by Women (2020): 1-23 — Order here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology.)

This story kicks off with everything you expect of a fairy tale — a childless royal couple who are finally blessed with a daughter, Gräcula; a fantastic christening visited by a loathsome witch; a child gifted with all the jewels, gold, beautiful dresses one could desire — and then morphs into a bizarre combination of traditional fairy tale trappings, Dante’s Inferno, and that bit in Pinocchio where he gets turned into an ass.

Unger’s story operates on many levels within the structure of a typical fairy tale; there is the story itself, populated with characters that do not fill the standard fairy-tale tropes (Gräcula’s mother, Sentimentale, is a prime example of this. Rather than being either absent or evil, she is a complex combination of characteristics, delighting in learning and education, reading Greek and enjoying philosophy, but also wanting nothing more than to be a mother.), and then there is the social criticism layered on top — of learning philosophy without first establishing a foundation of good sense and character; of penal institutions in which behavior generally “worsened rather than improved” (p. 20); of the aristocracy.

It’s a bit of a whirlwind. Also: I had no idea telegraphs were already in existence in 1804, so learning that was cool.

(Originally published in German in 1804.)

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