REVIEW: “The Age of Glass” by Ryan Row

Review of Ryan Row, “The Age of Glass,” Persistent Visions, 18 August 2017 — Read Online. Reviewed by Essence B. Scott.

What does it mean to be human? Ryan Row’s short story “The Age of Glass” responds to this question perfectly. Is being a human having a soul? Being sentient? Being open with your problems? What about having problems?

“The Age of Glass,” according to the blurb at the top of the story, is a “coming-of-age-during-the-apocalypse tale.” Though the growing up is in the nameless female protagonist’s imagination, we see her trying to make sense of the world around her by attempting to appear more grown up than she actually is.

Form—both of humans and of the enemy Stickmen—is a motif throughout the story. In the first paragraph, the protagonist says that her friend, Tracy, is “shorter than me, and her skeleton is less formed” in comparison to her own, which a boy told her via a note in her locker was “’historic’.” Our protagonist is obsessed—much like the way the blurb before the story’s start said—with form, her own and others. Further into the story, she admires Adam while he smokes. “When he inhales on his cigarette… his chest expands just so in the light. And I imagine this movement of his, this angle, this light, has never been seen before by anyone alive.” She romanticizes war and the way it changes people. Later, she describes a picture hanging on Adam’s wall: “In it, he is smiling in a way I have never seen before. Broadly, revealing his teeth to be a little too large for his mouth. A human perfection in him that I have come to love as his only flaw.”

Our protagonist eschews childish behavior, though she is a child herself and has childish thoughts. This smile on the wall is childish to her. She wants so much to be an adult, like most teens do, that she admires Adam’s adulthood. She describes his smile now as “cool and adult.” She practices her smile in the mirror every morning. Her cool, adult smile with no teeth showing.

When she first happens upon Adam smoking hand rolled cigarettes, they remind her, “embarrassingly” of “tiny tampons.” A little later, Adam’s arrival in Falls City is described using sentence fragments. She sees Adam and can only imagine that this is what she wants.

So, she makes herself appealing to Adam in the way that most teenagers who are attracted to someone do: make themselves attractive. For the protagonist, this is through jogging. She wears shorts that “accent[s] the length and curve of [her] tanned legs” and wearing “brightly colored tank-tops cut low, hugging [her] slim chest and stomach like a finer skin.”

When Adam says he’s been thinking about war and the dreams he has surrounding it, all our protagonist can say is, “cool.” She thinks she understands him, but she doesn’t in the least. I think she wants to understand, but she won’t really get it until she’s in the situation herself.

Glass is another motif in this story. This story is called “The Age of Glass.” When glass is mishandled, it shatters into a million pieces. Glass is beautiful when it is treated with respect. It takes in light; glitters, shines when one moves it around.

The Stickmen’s skin is “polished and geometric, edged.” While our protagonist has not come face-to-face with a Stickman, she has seen videos of them: “I know this from the shaky, soldier taken videos on websites like ‘Save Sentient Species’ and ‘Snuff Before Bed’.” Stickmen have a simple mean of taking out the enemy. From our protagonist: “One clip showed a Stickman reaching toward a group of soldiers, and thin, blue-white beams came from its fingers like tangling marionette strings. The men fell to pieces like dolls.”

In the next paragraph, she describes the Stickmen as “beautiful and misshapen. Almost human… but thin and with random extra joints or protruding nobs of glassy flesh.” They are “faceless, but not headless. Deformed, but alive. Long limbs like bones without flesh. As translucent as moonlight or handmade glass.” Even Stickmen can’t escape her fantasies of war and fighting to save the world.

Stickmen come from the ground, in the Creator Lands, spreading outwards “like a spill and become Crater Lands after they’re sucked dry.”

In the scene where our protagonist is working to reinvent herself, we also meet her mother. Her mother is vulnerable. After the protagonist’s father’s name is added to the list of other people who have went MIA, her mother “move[s] through life as caught in an undertow, struggling against something invisible and all around her.” Her teen daughter, perhaps? It can’t be easy raising a child without a father, MIA or not.

As the story nears the climax, around page seven or so (I printed this story out; it is easier for me to read), the scenes get shorter. When our protagonist learns about Adam, she gets a lot more than she might have wanted.

This story is a bit on the long side (fourteen printed pages), but I enjoyed reading it. Row uses interesting description, and the story feels original to me. Persistent Visions did a good thing by publishing this story. To read this story and others, go to http://www.persistentvisionsmag.com

 

 

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REVIEW: “The Secret Life of Bots” by Suzanne Palmer

Review of Suzanne Palmer, “The Secret Life of Bots”, Clarkesworld 132: Read online. Reviewed by Kerstin Hall.

Bot 9 has been in storage for a while. It’s a dated model with a reputation for instability, but when the ship runs into a crisis, even temperamental old multibots are called to assist. 9 is to deal with a pest problem –something is chewing through the walls– and while it would prefer a more important job, it dutifully sets about hunting down vermin.

This story is warm and funny and endearing. The narrative is well-constructed, and balances humour and tension throughout. The narrative voice is especially appealing when 9 is the focaliser. The newer bots and the ship are dismissive of 9’s limited functionality, so there’s something thoroughly charming about our hero’s gung-ho attitude. It might not have access to the newfangled ‘botnet’, but it never doubts its ability to get the job done.

The situation onboard the ship escalates. In between fighting off the pest (which is a bit like a bug, and a bit like a rat, or perhaps more like a “Snake-Earwig-Weasel”), 9 decides to fix the humans’ rather more life-threatening problems too.

If you are looking for something amusing, satisfying and easily digestible, “The Secret Life of Bots” won’t disappoint.

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REVIEW: “The Red Tree” by Natasha Suri

Review of Natashi Suri, “The Red Tree”, Luna Station Quarterly 31: Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

One way in which short stories are trickier than longer media is that the author has very little time to catch the reader’s attention and get them involved in the characters. By the end of the fourth paragraph of “The Red Tree”, I am already involved. I do not know why Alder is hiding in a tree, I do not know why the man at the foot of the tree is crying, but Suri paints his anguish and fear so clearly and strongly that one cannot help but want to know the reason for it, and what one can do to comfort him.

But this story is the story of Alder, not of the boy. Alder’s name is, from the very start, a hint to her identity, and I hope it is not too much of a spoiler to say how much I enjoy a dryad story; for whatever reason, of all the well-known creatures in the ordinary human mythological repertoire, dryads (and naiads) feature very infrequently in fantasy and speculative stories. One benefit of this is that there are fewer preconceived notions of who they are and what their relationship to their trees, and thus authors have more freedom to play with these myths. Suri’s take is both poignant and beautifully written. It is a story of hope and vitality — and just a touch of revenge. I think I would’ve liked the story if it had ended up the note of hope, but I can see how the ending Suri wrote is fitting and meet.

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REVIEW: “The Spice Portrait” by J. M. Evenson

Review of J.M. Evenson, “The Spice Portrait”, Escape Pod 594: Listen and read online. Reviewed by Duke Kimball.

“They said my love for my daughter was excessive, that I made her weak by kissing her and singing in her ear at night.

They also said I killed her.”

With these opening lines, “The Spice Portrait” introduces the fear and self-doubt of every mother who has had her parenting corrected into a world of oppression and brutal scarcity. It is a visceral story of love and loss set in a sparse post-apocalypse, within a rigid society motivated almost entirely by lack. All the while the question looms: in a world in which only the strongest can survive, can there be room for a mother’s love to blossom? 

I like that Evenson shows us a section of this society with no direct masculine influence, (including merely oblique and ominous references,) and instead lets us live through the women of this future world. Naz and her mother endure backbreaking labor, petty squabbles, and ever-present hunger- only to face the greatest loss possible. I found the tale tempered with moments of incredible humanity and compassion throughout. The world is nuanced and effortlessly grounded, from the faith to the food to the daily chores- and while a difficult place, it was easy to find myself immersed in it. 

With resonant notes of Atwood and Le Guin, Evenson’s heart-wrenching story is one that is worth tasting.

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REVIEW: Flash Fiction Online, October 2017, edited by Suzanne W. Vincent

Review of Flash Fiction Online, ed. Suzanne W. Vincent, October 2017 — Read Online . Reviewed by Meryl Stenhouse.

Stories in this issue:

A Siren Song for Two by Steven Fischer

Claire Weinraub’s Top Five Sea Monster Stories (For Allie) by Evan Berkow

Fluency by Matt Mikalatos

Monsters by Edward Ashton

Editorial by Suzanne W. Vincent

Editorial by Suzanne W. Vincent

October’s issue is monster-themed in recognition of Halloween. As someone from a country that doesn’t celebrate this event, I was surprised at the focus on family, not something I would associate with Halloween at all. But as I said, we don’t celebrate it here, so what do I know?

Monsters, however, are something we can all appreciate. What I liked about this collection was turning the concept of ‘monster’ on its head in interesting ways. Rather than four stories of ‘person vs monster’, the stories challenged the reader to reconsider what is monstrous.

A Siren Song for Two by Steven Fischer

I struggled to connect with this story, for a couple of reasons. The science was incorrect; ice does not expand in the heat and contract in the cold. Also, spacesuits made of metal would be heavy and impractical. I never had a clear idea of what the workers were there for, other than to make money so they could go somewhere else. And I did not understand how, if they knew about the song, they didn’t take precautions to prevent the appalling number of deaths. So perhaps, because I was already doubting the authenticity of the story, the finale didn’t resonate with me.

Claire Weinraub’s Top Five Sea Monster Stories (For Allie) by Evan Berkow

A lovely story about loss and how we remember people. Claire’s relationship with Allie is defined by their mutual love of books and particularly Allie’s love of sea monster stories. I enjoyed the way the list carried on past the end of Allie’s life and became part of Claire’s healing. The two characters were well drawn for such a short piece.

Fluency by Matt Mikalatos

Fluency is a challenging story. An alien race start a war with Earth purely for the purpose of uniting the fractured governments. The protagonist, through their life, learns alien words, but it is only at the finale, on the alien planet, that they fully understand them.

While the personal journey drawn in the story is fulfilling and well-developed, it’s impossible to ignore the background of death and destruction which is barely mentioned in the story. What a horrific crime, to force people to go to war to protect their planet, for the sake of unification. And how would a global war unify a planet? The more likely outcome is that the stronger cultural groups will survive, and the weaker would be assimilated or destroyed. You cannot predict a rosy outcome to such an action without first considering history.

Monsters by Edward Ashton

Niko’s love is dying, and the monsters circle. They want to take her away from him, but Niko won’t let them. I’ve read stories like this before, and there was nothing new here, but it fit neatly into the theme of this issue and was a good ending for those who might not have seen this trope before.

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REVIEW: “Dire Wolf” by Michael J. DeLuca

Review of Michael J. DeLuca, “Dire Wolf,” Beneath Ceaseless Skies Issue #234, September 14, 2017: Read online. Reviewed by Elora Gatts.

In a world resembling the United States circa Prohibition—judging from the prevalence of logging/trapping, the stark disconnect between city and “wilderness,” and the mention of a speakeasy—a man named Staggerlee is always on the lookout for a fight. One day, trouble finds him in the form of a massive wolf, and a beautiful woman from his past…

Brimming with authentic sensory detail, “Dire Wolf” thoroughly embraces the grit, dirt, and violence that defines protagonist Staggerlee’s existence. He is an exile from “the city,” a wanderer whose many regrets lead him to drink profusely and go toe-to-toe with anyone who might be willing. Unfortunately, these regrets are kept vague—the few hints afforded us do little to flesh out a satisfactory backstory for Staggerlee. I personally conjured the image of the brooding “hero” from one of the old westerns that helped my father start learning English as a child in Japan; the same ones he sometimes still watches, basking in the glow of nostalgia. But like many of those characters, there is a sense that Staggerlee’s foundations are firmly grounded in toxic masculinity. After all, the first thing we learn about him is that he feels compelled to react with physical displays and self-destructive behavior. I feel like this could have been an interesting angle, but it seems to have been played straight, with Staggerlee being “the baddest mother around.” (Incidentally, this is given as one of the reasons he is “exiled” from the city).

The women play secondary roles, though it’s obvious that Delia—a beautiful former singer from one of the city’s speakeasies—is one of Staggerlee’s regrets. Why? He loved her. It’s also explained in a few brief lines that a certain woman (or girl?) “froze to death,” and for this, Delia desires revenge. She now hunts him with a massive, man-eating she-wolf in tow (a little on the nose thematically, but it’s the primary speculative element). If we fully accept that this wolf is a metaphor for Staggerlee’s desired death, the ending becomes much more interesting; even if it does, however, I’m not sure it really changes anything for Staggerlee.

And this then is the sense I take away from “Dire Wolf”—for all its action, we never learn enough, about the world or its characters. To end on a positive note, while I may not be the ideal audience for this type of story, I appreciate the many technical merits of the prose. I was particularly impressed with how grounded I felt in the action.

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REVIEW: Flash Fiction Online, September 2017, edited by Suzanne W. Vincent

Review of Flash Fiction Online, ed. Suzanne W. Vincent, September 2017 [Read Here / Purchase Here]. Reviewed by Meryl Stenhouse.

Stories in this issue:

“Listen and You Will Hear Us Speak” by A.T. Greenblatt

“The Last Man on Earth Crawls Back to Life – A Mini-Novel Sequel” by John Guzlowski

“What Lasts” by Jared W. Cooper

“And All Our Bones Were Dust” by Steven Fischer

Editorial by Suzanne W. Vincent

Vincent quotes Ray Bradbury in her editorial, to point out that a science fiction story is any story about an idea that changes the world. It is the art of the possible, not the impossible, says Bradbury. Three of the four stories in this issue touch on the impossible, one of them blatantly, so my acceptance of them as science fiction is incomplete.

That said, if the stories were presented without genre boundaries, I would have enjoyed them unreservedly. A well-curated collection.

Listen and You Will Hear Us Speak by A.T. Greenblatt

Being the science fiction pedant that I am, I will say straight out that this is science fantasy; there’s no scientific method to remove voices the way they are removed in the story. It’s a magical box. Let’s move on.

There are layers to this story, which is an achievement in so few words. The unnamed narrator is one of the voiceless – people stolen from their home, their voices taken away from them, sold into indentured servitude from which they cannot escape – because how can the voiceless have a say in their fate?

I won’t ruin the ending for you, but I do like the way that Greenblatt’s victims win by embracing their difference and finding the power to control their fates, and their oppressors. The parallels to the voiceless in our current society can’t be ignored. Uplifting, tightly written, delicious rebellion story.

The Last Man on Earth Crawls Back to Life – A Mini-Novel Sequel by John Guzlowski

The concept of this piece appealed to me. The last man on Earth chooses suicide, but then finds himself unable to follow through. The rest of the story answers the question of why.

I winced at the recitation of his bird list. I doubt very much that, at any stage in history, this observation: “they were everywhere: In the trees and on the sidewalks, between houses and abandoned cars, on the empty roads…” would include birds such as “emus and antbirds, cassowaries and penguins”, especially not in the middle of the USA. Besides, a cassowary on the footpath is a suggestion that you should find another road to walk down, mate. The comment that the narrator had seen Mousebirds (denizens of sub-Saharan Africa) hints that he had travelled widely before deciding to kill himself, and this raises other questions that, on close examination (food, fuel, ocean crossings), start to unravel the worldbuilding.

Best to stick with your local birds.

The rest of the story is beautiful. It’s about loneliness, and a personal concept of God, and the recognition that humans, social animals, start to unravel when left alone. It’s a sadness reminiscent of the death of the last of any species; the endling (a name coined by Robert Webster in 2004 to denote the last member of a species). The thylacine, the passenger pigeon, soon the white rhino. To consider a human to be one of these lonely beings is humbling. The fact that the author doesn’t give this endling a name says everything. It could be any one of us.

What Lasts by Jared W. Cooper

This is a love story.

It’s also a story about pain that won’t go away, that you wish you could excise from your body and throw away.

It’s a story about loss, and a story about gain. Losing your old self, finding someone knew in the ashes, someone stronger.

It’s beautiful.

Well played, Mr. Cooper.

And All Our Bones Were Dust by Steven Fischer

This story is the opposite in so many ways to What Lasts, and reading them one after the other felt like two halves of the same symphony. It’s a love that crumbles, rather than a love that builds.

I’m going to comment on the visions, because I have opinions on what makes a story science fiction, and this one edges into science fantasy again. Not only for the visions, which have no explanation, but for the use the narrator makes of those visions.

In her editorial Vincent considers this story heartwarming, but I would call it frustrating. It’s a classic case of seeing the disaster coming but being unable to change it. The frustration comes with the narrator not even trying to save both of them; he follows the path set out for him, right to the final moment, with no attempt to reclaim or understand.

The story is beautifully executed, but not for me. I don’t like watching the axe fall. The joy in a story comes from the struggle, not the chop.

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REVIEW: “Though She Be But Little” by C. S. E. Cooney

Review of C. S. E. Cooney, “Though She Be But Little”, Uncanny Magazine 18 (2017): Read Online. Reviewed by Jodie Baker.

C. S. E. Cooney has produced a distinctive world full of pirates, animated stuffed animals, and world changing magic. Readers who enjoy stories from the New Weird genre will find plenty of surreal, unexplained fantasy in this tale. Readers who like their weird mixed evenly with charm will enjoy “Though She Be But Little” even more as Cooney mixes in wry pirate jokes, and off-beat details, with her more bizarre, haunting creations.

The sky in Emma Anne’s world went silver one day, and suddenly everything changed. Overnight, Emma Anne went from being ‘Mrs. Emma A. Santiago,Navy widow, age sixty-five’ to ‘eight years old in her jimjams and Velcro sneakers. One belt, one tin can on string, two stuffed toys the richer. Sans house, sans car, sans monthly Bunco night with her girlfriends of forty years, sans everything.’ “Though She Be But Little” has a keen eye for subtler horrors as well as presenting a truly terrifying monster in ‘the Loping Man’ who is coming for Emma Anne.

“Though She Be But Little” is ultimately a story about transformations, good and bad, and quietly about female friendship. The ending, which presents a fantastic scene of monstrous women coming together, was my favourite part.  

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REVIEW: “The Drover’s Ghost” by Melanie Rees

Review of Melanie Rees’s “The Drover’s Ghost.” Persistent Visions (21 July 2017) Read online. Reviewed by Essence B. Scott.

“The Drover’s Ghost” by Melanie Rees confused me. I had a hard time differentiating between the two protagonists, Stewie and Mutton; their voices sounded too much alike in my head. I didn’t feel drawn into the story or the setting. The story also seemed like it wandered a bit, much like the main characters in the story.

Everything in this story felt flat, from the characters to the world. Honestly, this story could have been better had Rees just sat with it a little more. Generally, I am intrigued by ghosts that haunt; however, the ghosts here seem overzealous to keep the peace. I wonder what would have happened if the ghosts had awareness. These ghosts that haunt only know bloodshed, and one seems attracted to Mutton.

The dream sequence in this story feels obviously like a surprise. One minute I’m reading about the ghosts that come because of bloodshed (even accidental bloodshed) and the next minute I’m in a sequence about Mutton’s past with a guy named Philip (we learn that Mutton’s real name is also Philip, only adding to my confusion).

Overall, this story was not one of Persistent Visions’ best and felt that they could have chosen another story.

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REVIEW: “Little /^^^\&-” by Eric Schwitzgebel

Review of Eric Schwitzgebel, “Little /^^^\&-” , Clarkesworld 132: Read online. Reviewed by Kerstin Hall.

Works of science fiction and fantasy produce an inordinate amount of unpronounceable names. Say, for example, Kvothe (Cough? Voth? K-Voth-ee?). Or, in the pre-HBO days, Daenerys Targaryen (Day-ne-rice?).

Or /^^^\&-. On reading this story, my first thought went out to whoever was responsible for the podcast. It transpired that Clarkesworld’s Kate Baker opted to use musical tones to represent the names of the entities in this story, which I found to be an elegant solution. More so than, say, ‘slash-up-up-up-slash-ampersand-minus’.

/^^^\&- is by no means little. She is a planet-sized consciousness, or perhaps a planet with a consciousness. For the purposes of this review, she can be seen as a bored computer intelligence powered by ‘chambersful of monkeys’. She’s serving out a jail sentence in our solar system, and the place is a dump.

The monkeys are biological humanoids living within /^^^\&-, a fact which becomes apparent later. She is both their home and their creation; their work powers her thoughts and actions. Without diverging too far into the realm of interpretation, through /^^^\&-, the monkeys are collectively their own god, a point which becomes increasingly thematically resonant.

With little else to do, /^^^\&- decides to teach Earth how to speak. This takes a while, and the narrative strays from /^^^\&-’s perspective while Earth reconfigure itself into ^Rth^. I found this to be a weaker section of the story, and preferred the scenes that were more firmly rooted in character.

/^^^\&- is a funny and likable protagonist. Both she and the narrative tone sober as the story progresses, and she grows increasingly attached to ^Rth^ and her own monkeys. She affirms the value of the small and powerless, particularly after an incident of carelessness renders their fragility apparent.

The story juxtaposes the colossal and the minute in touching ways, and ultimately builds to a conclusion that is tragic and uplifting.

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