REVIEW: “A Maji Maji Chronicle” by Eugen Bacon

Review of Eugen Bacon, “A Maji Maji Chronicle”, in Zelda Knight and Ekpeki Oghenechovwe Donald, ed., Dominion: An Anthology of Speculative Fiction From Africa and the African Diaspora, (Aurelia Leo, 2020) — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology).

I, to my embarrassment, did not know of the Maji Maji rebellion before reading this story; I am glad I read up on it (thanks, wikipedia…) before reading this story as it gave me a sense of place and context for it.

What I thought I was going to get was a story about the rebellion, and I did, if only tangentially. What it was primarily was the story of two time-travellers, Zhorr the grand magician of the Diaspora and his son Pickle, and how Zhorr’s actions rewrote the history that we know (as always happens when magicians time-traveller injudiciously!).

To be honest, I expected a story of Ngoni triumph over German; I did not expect how Zhorr’s interference caused the installation of an Ngoni emperor, or the critical eye that Bacon took to the alternate history she created: “Different historical outcomes are not necessarily better than the ones that eventuated them”.

A thought-provoking, unexpected story.

(Originally published in Backstory Magazine 1, no. 1, 2016.)

[Update August 14, 2020: I’d like to apologise to the author for misgendering her in the review as originally posted! The post has been edited to fix my error.]

Sara L. Uckelman1 Comment

REVIEW: “Red_Bati” by Dilman Dila

Review of Dilman Dila, “Red_Bati”, in Zelda Knight and Ekpeki Oghenechovwe Donald, ed., Dominion: An Anthology of Speculative Fiction From Africa and the African Diaspora, (Aurelia Leo, 2020) — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology).

Red_Bati is a robot dog that Akili has programmed to be a companion for his grandmother. In Dila’s tale, we experience Red_Bati’s world and story through his eyes, feeling the constant tug between the reminders that Red_Bati is a mere collection of mechanical parts and the fact that those parts have all come together to create “a human trapped in a pet robot”. (At least, that’s what Red_Bati thinks. The ghost of Granny that keeps him company as his battery slowly dies thinks otherwise; Red_Bati cannot be human, he has no spirit.) But whether human or not, Red_Bati has a plan and the capacity to implement it. All through the story, right up until the very end, I held out hope that Red_Bati would, in the end, be a Good Dog. And was he? I’ll let you read it and determine for yourself.

This was a delicious story, full of humor and pathos and a steady reminder that we must always question who, and what, we ascribe humanity to — and why.

Sara L. Uckelman1 Comment

REVIEW: “Trickin'” by Nicole Givens Kurtz

Review of Nicole Givens Kurtz, “Trickin'”, in Zelda Knight and Ekpeki Oghenechovwe Donald, ed., Dominion: An Anthology of Speculative Fiction From Africa and the African Diaspora, (Aurelia Leo, 2020) — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology).

Content warning: Knife injury, blood, death.

Raoul awakes one rainy morning in the mouth of a cave, uncertain, at first, of his memories. It comes back to him slowly — today is Halloween, a day for treats, a day for trickin’.

In the city down below, they might not believe in the old gods any more, but he’s planning to change that — if they don’t give him treats, he’ll play tricks on them.

This was a gruesome, gleefully bloody story, part horror, part fantasy. A strong story to open the anthology on.

Sara L. Uckelman1 Comment

REVIEW: Dominion: An Anthology of Speculative Fiction from Africa and the African Diaspora edited by Zelda Knight and Ekpeki Oghenechovwe Donald

Review of Zelda Knight and Ekpeki Oghenechovwe Donald, ed., Dominion: An Anthology of Speculative Fiction From Africa and the African Diaspora, (Aurelia Leo, 2020) — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

When I received an invitation to review this anthology, my response was the email equivalent of grabby hands: Oh my, yes, please!!! This is exactly the sort of fiction I want to be reading, and exactly the sort of fiction I want to see more of being published and promoted — stories that introduce me to new worlds, stories that fill gaps in my knowledge of history, stories that bring me into the unknown. So buckle in, and join me on a tour of these thirteen wonderful, wonderful stories, ranging from poetry/flash fic all the way to nearly novella-length. They cover the entire spectrum of speculative fiction, some fantastic, some scientific, some lingering on the borders of horro. As usual, we will review them individually, and link the reviews back here when they are published.

The ARC I read unfortunately had a number of typos in it (as well as no pagination, so we have left page references out of the individual reviews); I hope they are all fixed before the final publication, as they would otherwise mar what is an excellent collection.

Sara L. Uckelman16 Comments

REVIEW: “State of Trance” by Chen Qiufan

Review of Chen Qiufan, Josh Stenberg (trans.), “State of Trance”, in Jin Li and Dai Congrong, ed., The Book of Shanghai, (Comma Press, 2020): 147-160 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology).

The anthology closed with a bang, with this creepy futuristic science fiction story. Told in second-person (not normally my favorite), it quickly drew me in and forced me to wander through Shanghai “on the last day of the Anthropocene” (p. 151), to partake in a “world on the cups of disintegration” (p. 157). What I really enjoyed about this story was that not only was it science fiction in content, it was also science fiction in construction: Parts of the story were automatically generated by AI programmes “trained on deep learning of the author’s style, and […] not thereafter been subject to human editing” (p. 160). Wonderfully bizarre, and an excellent concluding piece.

(Originally published in Fiction World, 2018.)

Sara L. Uckelman1 Comment

REVIEW: “Suzhou River” by Cai Jun

Review of Cai Jun, Frances Nichol (trans.), “Suzhou River”, in Jin Li and Dai Congrong, ed., The Book of Shanghai, (Comma Press, 2020): 131-146 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology).

C’s trip down the Suzhou River in his white steel bathtub is one of the more speculative stories in the anthology. His journey is layered with surrealism and dreams within dreams, leaving the reader uncertain, at the end, whether he managed to meet up with his beloved Z or not.

(Originally published in The Lover’s Head, 2003.)

Sara L. Uckelman1 Comment

REVIEW: “Transparency” by Xiao Bai

Review of Xiao Bai, Katherine Tse (trans.), “Transparency”, in Jin Li and Dai Congrong, ed., The Book of Shanghai, (Comma Press, 2020): 123-129 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology).

Xiaotong is a PI whose been hired by a woman named Malin to track her husband and send her updates on his life. What is the secret he has been hiding from her? Who is Xiaohua, Malin’s best friend or the woman her husband is seeing behind her back? None of the answers Xiaotong finds are what you’d expect, or what they seem in this quick little mystery story.

(Originally published in Shanghai Literature, 2019).

Sara L. Uckelman1 Comment

REVIEW: “The Lost” by Fu Yuehui

Review of Fu Yuehui, Carson Ramsdell (trans.), “The Lost”, in Jin Li and Dai Congrong, ed., The Book of Shanghai, (Comma Press, 2020): 95-122 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology).

This was a strange, wondrous story, that can be read on many levels. On the one hand, it’s a simple interrogation of our modern society’s reliance on our technology, tapping into the fear that pretty much all of us probably have, of what it would be like if we lost our cell phone.

On the other hand, there’s a weird layer of fantasy overlying everything, the parts of the story where it’s not clear if they’re really happening or not. Despite being one of the longer stories in the anthology, this was one of the most gripping; it sucked me in and kept me interested from the opening paragraphs right up to the bizarre and unexpected ending.

(First published in October, 2012).

Sara L. Uckelman1 Comment

REVIEW: “The Story of Ah-Ming” by Wang Zhanhei

Review of Wang Zhanhei, Christopher MacDonald (trans.), “The Story of Ah-Ming”, in Jin Li and Dai Congrong, ed., The Book of Shanghai, (Comma Press, 2020): 79-94 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology).

Ah-Ming is an unlikely character for a story to center around — “the old lady who lived in a lock-up garage at the end of the estate” (p. 81) who trawls through the trash collecting bottles and cans to trade for money and any other bit of rubbish that one day might be useful. Everyone in the neighborhood had witnessed her slow decline over recent years; but no one expected her to one day be discovered in the trash bins.

The discovery of Ah-Ming in the bin both opens and closes this strange story. I found it a strange juxtaposition of very deftly put together and almost entirely lacking in sympathy, whether on the part of the characters, the reader, or, dare I say it, the author. Strange indeed.

(Originally published in One, 2016).

Sara L. Uckelman1 Comment

REVIEW: “The Novelist in the Attic” by Shen Dacheng

Review of Shen Dacheng, Jack Hargreaves (trans.), “The Novelist in the Attic”, in Jin Li and Dai Congrong, ed., The Book of Shanghai, (Comma Press, 2020): 61-77 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology).

This story was the one that intrigued me the most when I read a one-sentence blurb of it on the back. I thought we’d find out, at the start, how the novelist gets into the attic, but the story actually opens on him when he’s already been up there for years.

Part of the premise of the story is extremely attractive to any writer — a quiet space where one can write uninterrupted, without any cares of housekeeping. But the flip side of it — a writer effectively squatting in his publisher’s attic, toiling away without ever producing his third book — is kind of chilling. For awhile, the reader seems to suffocate along with the writer, until one day the publishing house’s previous director retires and a new, reforming, one takes over. The abrupt change shocks the entire system, including the author, and the story takes a sudden, dramatic twist.

The one thing that struck me about this story is how indistinct it was, in the sense that it could have happened anywhere, to anyone. Only the references to the wutong trees outside the building locate the story in any particular place.

(First published in The Ones in Remembrance, 2017).

Sara L. Uckelman3 Comments