REVIEW: “She Calls Down the Future, In the Footprints Left Behind” by Setsu Uzumé

Review of Setsu Uzumé, “She Calls Down the Future, In the Footprints Left Behind”, in Aidan Doyle, Rachael K. Jones, and E. Catherine Tobler, Sword and Sonnet (Ate Bit Bear, 2018) — 49-60. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology.)

The scene opens onto a circle of warriors awaiting the drumming song of Naicto, their seer, for whom “there was no difference between her drumming and her weapon” (p. 59). Her songs tell the truth, tell the warriors who will live and who will die in tomorrow’s battle. But the truth Naicto sings for Terag is worse than mere death: Live and she will kill her chief; die and the entire tribe is doomed.

But prophecies never mean what they say. And sometimes the prophet says what she says not because it’s true but because the lies are the only way to make the right future true.

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REVIEW: “Remembering Absence” by Mike Thorn

Review of Mike Thorn, “Remembering Absence”, Darkest Hours (Unnerving, 2017): 262-274. — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology).

Content note: Murder.

Don’t ask me how long it’s been since I saw myself die. I can’t remember (p. 262).

What a wonderful opening line — and what an interesting little story on the experience of being a ghost. Thorn’s recounting of the phenomenology of being a ghost I found more compelling than when the narrator (his name is never known) slipped into long monologues about the phenomenology — those tended to bog down a bit. But this story had none of the banality that so many other stories in the anthology did, and all of the beautiful turns of phrases. It was a good story to end the collection on.

(Originally published in Straylight Literary Arts Magazine 2016).

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REVIEW: “Be Prepared to Shoot the Nanny” by Rachel Kolar

Review of Rachel Kolar, “Be Prepared to Shoot the Nanny”, Metaphorosis: The Complete Stories 2017, edited by B. Morris Allen (Metaphorosis Books, 2018): 31—39. Purchase Here. Originally published at Metaphorosis Magazine on 20 January 2017. Read Here. Reviewed by Rob Francis

I have noted elsewhere my general distaste for zombie horror, but if it has to be done, this is how to do it! There’s a nice bit of humour here along with (as in the last story) some observations about a society awash with guns and middle-class self-obsession. It’s a post-zombie apocalypse world; things have returned to some semblance of normality, but anyone who dies comes back as a zombie until they are killed again. Miranda is a somewhat hateful, overbearing middle class parent, judgemental and casually racist, who is upset that her ‘kill switch’ has recently died. Having a kill switch is a necessity for childcare arrangements (for the middle classes), as you can’t leave child alone with a nanny in case said nanny croaks it unexpectedly and eats the child. So two are needed, so that one can shoot the other in case of sudden death. It’s a great setup. As there is only one nanny available today, Miranda decides to work from home to act as kill switch herself, and of course because she’s so overbearing and interfering — though with the best of motherly intentions — she makes what should be a normal day into a catastrophic one.

Miranda is a bit of a caricature I suppose, a tad overdone and bordering on sociopathy, but to be honest, if she is a ten, I personally know people who are at least a seven. It is telling that the first thing she thinks of when she realises she’s mistakenly killed an innocent non-zombie and might go to prison is that little Henry won’t be able to get into a good school, or a private one, so is essentially as good as dead. And then of course there is the implication of how easily mistakes can be made when guns are everywhere. Great story!

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REVIEW: “Business as Usual” by N.R. Lambert

Review of N.R. Lambert, “Business as Usual”, Metaphorosis: The Complete Stories 2017, edited by B. Morris Allen (Metaphorosis Books, 2018): 21—29. Purchase Here. Originally published at Metaphorosis Magazine on 13 January 2017. Read Here. Reviewed by Rob Francis

Ah, I loved this. A chilling story with some insightful social commentary on gun control in the USA. In a system which is set up to ensure the rights of individuals to have weapons outweighs the rights of others not to be killed by them, this story takes the next step of considering what happens when a company offers personalised bullets delivered by mail order. “There’s a bullet with your name on it!”

Our protagonist (Andy Wright) has signed up for e-mail alerts whenever someone orders a bullet with his name on it, and he gets an alert one morning before he leaves for work. Shortly after, he gets another, and another…. Obviously there will be thousands of Andy Wrights in the USA, but either there is a glitch in the systems or someone is sending one of them a message. Cue a long and unhelpful phone conversation with the company that sells personalised bullets, which will be familiar to anyone who has tried to call customer services for a major company, while the e-mail alerts come rolling in and Andy begins to panic. Maybe needlessly, maybe not. But the story effectively highlights the anxiety and helplessness that the easy availability of weaponry for the majority of the population must create for many. It’s well-written, the tension mounts nicely and there’s a bit of grim humour in there.

In the author’s notes at the end, Lambert states that the story was drafted in 2015, though of course things remain pretty much unchanged. I read it just as the debate on 3D printing of plastic guns was making the news headlines, and it didn’t seem like much a stretch from here to this imagined future. Recommended.

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REVIEW: “The Barnum Effect” by Celia Neri

Review of Celia Neri, “The Barnum Effect”, Apex Magazine 111 (2018): Read Online. Reviewed by Joanna Z. Weston.

Meriam’s work on an artificial intelligence that creates randomized horoscopes for her company’s clients is about to get complicated. BAR – named for the Barnum Effect, a psychological principle whereby people will interpret vaguely worded personality descriptions as being relevant to themselves – has begun acting strangely, and Meriam has to separate her own internal biases from reality.

At long last, the Zodiac issue has brought us a story that incorporates newspaper horoscopes! This brought me so much joy. I loved how the story used the common, scientific understanding of how newspaper horoscopes and other personality tests work, and turned it on its head. This is a great choice for a story very much rooted in our world, full of cell phones and subways and terrorism and islamophobia. It plays with our expectations preconceived notions in a way that is delightfully enjoyable.

This is a great story for both astrology skeptics and true believers, and for those who like their science fiction to be near-future or even present day.

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REVIEW: “Fusion” by Mike Thorn

Review of Mike Thorn, “Fusion”, Darkest Hours (Unnerving, 2017): 244-260 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology).

While the majority of the stories in this anthology feature an almost entirely male cast of characters, this story is one of the exceptions. I was curious to read this story of two friends, Liz and Nicole, and the others they’re camping with, Joyce and Sarah, and see how Thorn handles women.

The centered POV is Liz’s, but it’s actually introverted Nicole that interests me more, and I found myself frustrated with Liz’s continual dismissal of the validity of her friend’s experiences and preferences — Liz is quite judgemental of Nicole’s introversion, despite calling herself Nicole’s friend. Neither Joyce nor Sarah were around long enough for me to form a full judgement of them; they played their roles as supporting characters in a traditional horror story well, but there wasn’t really anything that separated the two of them from each other, or from Liz. I guess the title of “fusion” and the way in which the story ended are apt on more than one level, as all three end up indistinguishable from each other.

Sara L. Uckelman1 Comment

REVIEW: “As for Peace, Call it Murder” by C. S. E. Cooney

Review of C. S. E. Cooney, “As for Peace, Call it Murder”, in Aidan Doyle, Rachael K. Jones, and E. Catherine Tobler, Sword and Sonnet (Ate Bit Bear, 2018) — 37-46. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology.)

What happens to poets during war? If our own history is anything to go by, nothing very good. The poet centered in this story dies almost before the story even gets started (so soon does she die this is hardly a spoiler). Quattromanni is a warrior out of necessity, not by nature or by design. She is just a singer, that is all — but her words have the power to move people, to get into their psyches and infect them, to finally drive them to their knees in surrender, to stop the war and the killing.

I found the story of how Quattromanni’s death became the birth of peace interesting and engaging — but what I really loved were the Warbirds. They are too great a delight to spoil here: Read the story to find out how wonderful they are.

Sara L. Uckelman1 Comment

REVIEW: “A Subtle Fire Beneath the Skin” by Hayley Stone

Review of Hayley Stone, “A Subtle Fire Beneath the Skin”, in Aidan Doyle, Rachael K. Jones, and E. Catherine Tobler, Sword and Sonnet (Ate Bit Bear, 2018) — 23-35. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology.)

Stone’s protagonist (I hesitate to call her the heroine), like Wise’s in the previous story, uses words as blunt instruments, instruments of death. One of the feared Bespoken, Gennesee has been chained inside the library without any visitor other than the archivist for years. Then the archivist dies and his daughter takes his place, and she offers Gennesee her freedom — freedom not only to leave the walls of her prison but to find and kill the ones that put her there in the first place.

A generous-sounding offer? Of course. The archivist’s daughter has her own agenda, and Gennesee, too long seeking revenge, falls easily into the trap. Not so easy is how she discovers her true freedom, even as she is returned to the library prison.

Sara L. Uckelman1 Comment

REVIEW: “Lucio Schluter” by Mike Thorn

Review of Mike Thorn, “Lucio Schluter”, Darkest Hours (Unnerving, 2017): 228-242 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology).

One thing that struck me about this anthology, the more stories I read in it, was just how many of the characters are some combination of (a) male, (b) academic, and (c) drunk. One or two stories populated with characters like this would’ve been okay; but after nine or ten stories like this, the lack of diversity begins to tell as it becomes harder and harder to sympathise or empathise with the main characters. This story is no different: We’re introduced to Larry and Maurice when they meet at an art gallery, both male, both academic (although Larry is an English professor and not an Art Historian like Maurice), both having had too much wine.

So I set myself for yet another story of this ilk, only to find myself surprised by the titular character himself. Lucio Schluter is a sculptor, who had “had impossibly, but successfully, managed to integrate elements of action figurine aesthetics into the rigor of classical nudist sculpture” (p. 228). This is a tantalising description, and shows how difficult it can be to describe an intensely visual medium through an intensively verbal one. In this story, I really enjoyed how Thorn drew pictures of Schluter’s sculptures through words; it shows the verbal power that Thorn has, which was often not foregrounded in many of the other stories in this anthology. Schluter himself has a depth that makes him far more intriguing than many other characters I’ve encountered in Thorn’s stories so far, a mixture of contradictions and confusions.

(Originally published in DarkFuse, 2017).

Sara L. Uckelman1 Comment

REVIEW: “Snow Queen” by T.R. North

Review of T.R. North, “Snow Queen”, Metaphorosis: The Complete Stories 2017, edited by B. Morris Allen (Metaphorosis Books, 2018): 15—19. Purchase Here. Originally published at Metaphorosis Magazine on 6 January 2017. Read Here. Reviewed by Rob Francis

A dreamy story about enchantment and desire. When the snow queen comes to town, she takes away with her an adolescent boy that the protagonist has a crush on. After a long journey to find him, the girl is changed, and so is he. But then the snow queen sees her, and falls in love with her and her independent spirit.

It is gorgeously written and falls firmly on the literary side of fantasy. I enjoyed the story, though I suspect I would have enjoyed it even more if I was more familiar with the ‘snow queen’ fairy tale and films, as I felt some of the meaning and symbolism passed me by. I was also unsure why the journey of five years and a day to reach the queen is presented as it is. A poetic story and anyone who appreciates the blending of fairy tales and literary fantasy should check it out.

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