REVIEW: “Making Friends” by Steve Kopka

Review of Steve Kopka, “Making Friends”, in Abandoned Places, edited by George R. Galuschak and Chris Cornell (Shohola Press, 2018): 39-56 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology.)

I’m very bad at genres, especially all the finely-sliced sub-categories that are out there nowadays. But the beginning of this story made me go, “Oh! That’s what ‘urban fantasy’ is (when it’s not vampire and werewolf romance).” Everything is ordinary and real and familiar, except everything that is extraordinary and fantastic and strange. The lines between two the are blurred, and the result is unsettling — unsettling enough that I decided in the end to also classified it as ‘horror’. Horror isn’t my cup of tea, but the story was compelling nevertheless.

For me, though, this story was let down by the quality of its writing. The prose didn’t feel as finely crafted, and I kept tripping up on little things — small grammatical errors, a word occurring in two sentences in a row, the feeling that I was being given a recitation of facts — that detracted from my enjoyment.

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REVIEW: “Nothing Save His Anger” by Chris Bauer

Review of Chris Bauer, “Nothing Save His Anger”, in Abandoned Places, edited by George R. Galuschak and Chris Cornell (Shohola Press, 2018): 163-177 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology.)

Warning: Avoid if you don’t wish to read about child abuse.

Haunted houses are perhaps the quintessential “abandoned place”, but this is no ordinary ghost story. The main character, Frank, is too complex to be an easily likeable hero. There is a deep thread of control and power running through Frank, his relationship with his parents, and his relationship with the haunted house.

Sometimes people haunt houses, sometimes houses haunt people. It is only when Frank finally confronts the house that has been his touchstone since childhood, that we find out which it is.

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REVIEW: “The Last Light” by Miranda Suri

Review of Miranda Suri, “The Last Light”, in Abandoned Places, edited by George R. Galuschak and Chris Cornell (Shohola Press, 2018): 147-162 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology.)

“Piracy” has had a variety of connotations and meanings over the years, from armed hijackers sailing the seas to Robin-Hood-esque hackers who redistribute music from the rich to the poor. Suri’s story taps into an intersective version of piracy, one in which hackers can hijack space-ship computers and take them wherever they want in the universe, wherever they can then put the most pressure on those who carry priceless cargo — in space, there are many abandoned places.

One thing about the “Robin Hood” pirates is that they always think what they are doing is morally superior. We praise the historical Robin Hood as all the tales are told from his perspective as he fights against the evil, conniving, and greedy Sheriff of Nottingham and Prince John. The Robin Hood in this story is the antagonist, though, and what I enjoyed most about the story was watching the main character, Miss Song, slowly realise that maybe, just maybe, she was one of the bad guys.

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REVIEW: “Angel, Monster, Man” by Sam J. Miller

Review of Sam J. Miller, “Angel, Monster, Man”, in Steve Berman, ed., Wilde Stories 2017: The Year’s Best Gay Speculative Fiction (Lethe Press, 2017): 123-151. — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology.)

Because to succeed as myth, Tom had to be dead. Otherwise the charade became too complicated to maintain. And who would know, in this city where the dying stacked up faster than firewood, that this one particular name in the long litany had never been an actual person?

A thought occurred to me, while reading the title of this piece, that while women have the threefold “Maiden/Mother/Crone” division, there isn’t really anything equivalent for men. What would such a tripartite characterisation of men look like? What types of myths and history could such a division tap into, in the way that the one for women does?

Miller’s story doesn’t actually address this question, but these were the thoughts playing in the back of my mind as I read it. I really enjoyed the complex narrative structure: Three parts, one for each portion of the title, one for each of three named narrators, the three that gave birth to Tom.

I loved the way the story operated at two levels, at one, just a story, at the other, an interrogation of the limits and boundaries of lies, fiction, and myth. Above all that, I loved the beauty of the story, with fine, delicate, ugly language. (The story is so full of lines I’d like to quote that if I quoted them all, I’d just be reproducing the entire story. “Adulterous toad-priests”. “Being a criminal is not so different from being an artist.” “Because of course it will hurt, because the things we need most always do.” “Love is the disease.” Ah! So many beautiful words.)

There is a rawness to the stories in this anthology that is unlike anything in any of the other anthologies I’ve reviewed for SFFReviews. It is hard to read these stories, Miller’s included especially, and not be moved. I also think I will be hard pressed to find a more powerful story in the collection than this astonishing one.

(This story first appeared in Nightmare, 2016).

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REVIEW: “Bull of Heaven” by Gabriel Murray

Review of Gabriel Murray, “Bull of Heaven”, in Steve Berman, ed., Wilde Stories 2017: The Year’s Best Gay Speculative Fiction (Lethe Press, 2017): 83-99. — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology.)

So much calculation had gone into giving Francis realistic human coloration: olive skin, brown eyes, brown hair a little lighter than the eyes, striated and naturalistic. No one had done the same with the android Moses: they’d just painted him in tones they found beautiful, which occurred on no living man, which Francis found garish.

This is another story of automata, religious automata programmed and constructed so that they are “born” already knowing all the catechism, already capable of experiencing “the mystery of the faith” (p. 85). It is easy, in this story, to slip into the uncanny valley; it is only in consciously self-reflective narration that we are reminded that Brother Francis is no ordinary temple cleric. Moses, too, is an android, and what I find most fascinating in this story is watching Brother Francis go through his own uncanny valley, to see the automaton respond to the not-quite-right, the too-almost-organic android. “The humans might not have noticed, but Francis did” (p. 86). But there remain many things that Francis does not notice, not until he is confronted with them, not until it is almost too late.

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REVIEW: “Of All Possible Worlds” by Eneasz Brodski

Review of Eneasz Brodski, “Of All Possible Worlds”, in Steve Berman, ed., Wilde Stories 2017: The Year’s Best Gay Speculative Fiction (Lethe Press, 2017): 223-236. — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology.)

Warning: This story contains a rape.

Ehud. I had slept with him years ago. I had loved him for awhile. I should have known he would be found out. A stone flew from the crowd and tore his ear open. It bled black.

This story was a feast of detail — Romans and Jews, slaves and centurions, Colosseum fights, monstrous grotesque animals, a wizened wizard. To every animal, human or beast, that Marad sends into the Colosseum, he offers the following apology: “You must die so that I may live. I don’t ask your forgiveness; this is the way of life. But know I wish this world was different” (p. 225).

All the stories in this anthology make my heart ache, from sadness, from gladness, from a desire that the world is other than how it is. This one left me with a feeling of sadness and fear too complex to be articulated. The horror in it is shattering.

(This story was originally published in 2016 in Swords vs. Chthulhu, Jesse Bullington & Molly Tanzer, eds.)

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REVIEW: “Das Steingeschöpf” by G. V. Anderson

Review of G. V. Anderson, “Das Steingeschöpf”, in Steve Berman, ed., Wilde Stories 2017: The Year’s Best Gay Speculative Fiction (Lethe Press, 2017): 13-28. — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology.)

A hundred million things to paint, to write, to carve, to compose, all trapped in a body that’s failing. Awareness of a brother come to save them at last, separated only by Ambroise’s skin.

An unexpected commission, a journey in the dark, a hidden treasure in an attic, a stone man already alive and ready to be loved…so begins a sort of Pygmalion-in-reverse story.

The best of stories are the ones you read and wish they were real. Everything about this story was perfect — the level of detail to set the scene, the historical references to set the time, the way in which the creation of the Steingeschöpf’s seems so perfectly natural — every aspect of their construction and composition is exactly what you’d expect it to be, so that even though this should be utterly unfamiliar and new, it is not, it feels familiar and already known.

Part of me wishes the story had a happy ending, but even for that I cannot wish this story other than it is.

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REVIEW: “The Astrologer on the Fifth Floor” by Karl Dandenell

Review of Karl Dandenell, “The Astrologer on the Fifth Floor”, in Abandoned Places, edited by George R. Galuschak and Chris Cornell (Shohola Press, 2018): 101-116 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology.)

I remember reading a few months ago a review of an Asian #ownvoices novel where the reviewer complained that when the MC looked in the mirror, the words they used to describe themself didn’t include any of the typical cue words that white people use to describe Asians, and the bafflement that arose from other people at this curious criticism.

As a white woman myself, I’m not in the best place to raise the following reversal of this criticism, but since it was one of the things that impressed upon me the most at the beginning of the story, I think it’s worth mentioning. Dandenell’s MC, Harrison Leong, is “an Asian businessman” — a fair enough description from an omniscient narrator, though I did find it a bit odd to include the description since the surname should’ve been enough of a cue — and he is up on the fifth floor to meet Mr. Norbu, the titular astrologer. It is this sentence that struck me as strange:

Leong saw a short, middle-aged Asian man with a neat beard and sparkling eyes (p. 102)

I can’t help but think, is that really what Leong saw? Or did Leong see someone like himself, see simply “a short, middle-aged man with a neat beard and sparkling eyes”? Would he have seen Mr. Norbu as Asian, or would that have been the working default, just as my own mental narration never tells me when I’m seeing another white person, it only tells me when I’m seeing something that is not my default, not the norm within the cultural context that I live in.

I otherwise enjoyed the story, which flitted from POV to POV in a way that seemed seamless rather than disjointed. I’m not sure how the story fits the theme of “abandoned places”, but I decided not to let slavish adherence to a topic destroy my pleasure in a good tale.

Sara L. Uckelman3 Comments

REVIEW: “Glitch” by Lauren C. Teffeau

Review of Lauren C. Teffeau, “Glitch”, in Abandoned Places, edited by George R. Galuschak and Chris Cornell (Shohola Press, 2018): 27-37 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology.)

The abandoned place in this story is not a real one but a virtual one — a desolate landscape built out of lines of code composed by many hands. But when the hands of the most important coder, Razor, are abruptly lost, so too are the lands that Razor constructed, and it becomes twice abandoned.

The unnamed narrator’s story is the story of why Razor killed himself, and what it was he sought to hide by doing so. Part sci fi, part horror, all just a bit too close to reality — and with an unexpected twist at the end.

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REVIEW: “Frost” by ‘Nathan Burgoine

Review of ‘Nathan Burgoine, “Frost”, in Steve Berman, ed., Wilde Stories 2017: The Year’s Best Gay Speculative Fiction (Lethe Press, 2017): 69-79. — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology.)

To have a man like this, a man like his father, and his brothers, who would look at him and respect him and—yes—love him, even though he was small, and narrow, and gentle. What that might be like.

Flipping through the book to pick the next story to read and review, I opened to the page that had this opening quote, and knew immediately that this was the story I wanted to read. So much hope and sadness in those two sentences, and also a hint of something more.

“Frost” is in essence a classic fairy tale, with the clever youngest son hero, magic to mend a broken heart, and what should be a happily ever after. The man Frost is “born of magic and a longing for love,” and though he seems everything that Little Jay, with the gift of magic in his hands, desires and needs, as often happens when magic is involved, not everything is as it seems. Before my eyes I see the happily ever after melts away as the frost melts in the sun, and my heart ached for the unhappiness that threads through the entire story.

But,

Anything broken might never be what it was, but in the right hands, with enough heart, it could always be something else (p. 79).

There is hope at the end of the story, but I’m not quite sure it’s enough to make it a happy story.

(Originally published in 2016 on ‘Nathan Burgoine’s blog.)

Sara L. Uckelman2 Comments