REVIEW: “Conservation Laws” by Vandana Singh

Review of Vandana Singh’s, “Conservation Laws”, Uncanny Magazine Volume, 20 (2018): Read Online. Reviewed by Jodie Baker.

On a trip to the Lunar Geological Institute, Vikram, a young student currently living on the moon, meets Gyanendra Sahai; an explorer from an ill-fated mission to Mars. Delighted to discover that they are from the same state in India, Bihari, Vikram invites Gyanendra to move into Sinha Auntie’s boardinghouse where Vikram, and a small group of lively, intense students, reside. During one Saturday afternoon discussion, Gyanendra is finally drawn into relating what happened to him during his trip to Mars. His tale is remarkable.

Sometimes a story comes along that you just can’t make head or tail of, and unfortunately I couldn’t really connect with “Conservation Laws”. My confusion started when the students at the boardinghouse began a discussion about mirror universes, conservation laws, and ‘Universal Field equations’, none of which I have the scientific knowledge to grapple with. I quickly became lost. Then I had trouble imagining the shape of the fantastical science fiction objects, settings, and journey in Gyanendra’s story; again probably because I don’t have a reading background in technical SFF, or stories which deal with alien technology,. And finally, while the ending clearly had some significant connection to the mirror universes mentioned during the student’s discussion, I couldn’t work out what the significance was. I was left with a sense of foreboding as Gyanendra is ‘sorrowful’, but didn’t understand the full meaning of the ending; mostly because I hadn’t followed the initial discussion.

So, my difficulties with this story largely came down to a lack of personal context which kept me from putting all of the pieces of Vandana Singh’s story together. Not all stories are for everyone. However, I’d suggest maybe dipping your toe into this story just to see if it’s for you instead.

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REVIEW: “The Thing in the Wall Wants Your Small Change” by Virginia M. Mohlere

Review of Virginia M. Mohlere, “The Thing in the Wall Wants Your Small Change”, Luna Station Quarterly 34 (2018): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

I loved the title of this one, because I didn’t know whether to expect horror, humor, or Doctor Who.

What I got was a story of family ties and family love, and the ways in which our lives pull us in two, and which a third of the way through took a sideways turn that left me grinning from ear to ear, and another third later left me gaping speechless at how much power a single act — to take the word of a woman seriously and act on it, no questions asked — can have to make a reader want to cry. A lot of the story made me want to cry.

Read it. It’s sad and good and happy all at once.

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REVIEW: “The Volcano Keeper” by Jenny Wong

Review of Jenny Wong, “The Volcano Keeper”, Luna Station Quarterly 34 (2018): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

This is a relatively short story, filled with descriptions. There is only one character, Ari, but the way in which she interacts with nature, including the volcano, with her history, and with the looming future makes the story feel richer.

It’s a quiet little allegory of ecology balance, quick and pleasant to read.

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REVIEW: “The Hydraulic Emperor” by Arkady Martine

Review of Arkady Martin, The Hydraulic Emperor, Uncanny Magazine Volume, 20 (2018): Read Online. Reviewed by Jodie Baker.

At one point Mallory, the protagonist of The Hydraulic Emperor, describes an artistic influence ‘unfurling’, and it struck me that this is the perfect word to describe the story itself. Arkady Martine has written a slow-burning story, which uses the focus and fascination of the narrator to lull the reader into a state of curious contentment. I, for one, was happy to follow as this story slowly stretched itself in interesting directions.

The Hydraulic Emperor is powered by the attraction of a Macguffin; in this case a ‘Qath puzzlebox’. Kinesis Industrial One engage film collector Mallory Iheji to acquire the box. In return, they offer her the chance to finally view The Hydraulic Emperor by obscure filmmaker Aglaé Skemety. Neither the film or the puzzlebox are important on their own, although Martine skilfully makes it feel as if they are both extremely significant. Instead, The Hydraulic Emperor is all about the journey. The crucial quest’s the thing in this story.  

As Mallory journeys towards the defining point in her collecting career, Martin unspools a languid meditation on sacrifice, anticipation, completion, and enticing art. In some ways its themes and structure bear comparison to Moby Dick, although in this story film occupies the space religious themes take up in Melville’s work. Martine complements these thematic strands with smart world-building, an original plot, and interesting hints about Mallory’s past life.  

Sadly, for a story which often delivers a slow, lush examination which rewards the reader’s attention, the ending of this story left me a little bit unsatisfied. I wanted a little bit more closure when it came to the relationship between Averill and Mallory. I also really wanted to know what happened to Mallory’s bidding partner, Julie, after Mallory was awarded the puzzlebox. What happens to her when she is left without the puzzlebox or her precious Old Earth sacrifices? Unlike the unanswered questions Mallory is left with by the end of The Hydraulic Emperor, my unanswered questions feel like untidy, loose strands, and I’d have loved to see a fuller conclusion.

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REVIEW: “Cherry Wood Coffin” by Eugenia Triantafyllou

Review of Eugenia Triantafyllou, “Cherry Wood Coffin”, Apex Magazine 108 (2018): Read Online. Reviewed by Joanna Z. Weston.

Imagine a world in which a coffin maker begins plying his craft three days before someone dies, woken in the night by whispers of wood and the dead, telling him what size of what material to make the coffin. This is the poignant story of one day in that man’s life. The result is a tiny slice of horror perfection, a chilling ghost story in only 750 words. The language in this story is perfectly restrained, letting the tone build from a quiet sorrow to outright horror, and each of the three characters is sketched in clear strokes, despite the minuscule word count. An excellent example of flash fiction.

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REVIEW: “Campfire Songs” by Kimberly Rei

Review of Kimberly Rei, “Campfire Songs”, Luna Station Quarterly 34 (2018): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

This is a shadowy story of post-war/post-apocalypse horror. It breaks upon a narrator running from wolves (and other, worse, howling beasts) through the dark and alone. There is no place to hide, and no one left to fight with.

It is, altogether, a relatively typical sort of scene, and the details of the horror are vague enough that I struggled to find anything that made this story distinctive. Even after the narrator, Sura, finds an unexpected house with an unexpected object left behind in it, and we are introduced to one of the antagonists, Auntie, I never quite got into the story. Auntie felt like she could’ve been a complex and majestic character, but all that we got to see of her made her feel a bit flat, cruel and autocratic simply for the sake of it, and not stemming from any deeper reasons or nature.

I do not usually go for horror stories, and this one similarly ended up not really appealing to me.

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REVIEW: “Midsummer Night’s Heist” by Commando Jugendstil and Tales from the EV Studio

Review of Commando Jugendstil and Tales from the EV Studio, “Midsummer Night’s Heist”, in Glass and Gardens: Solar Punk Summers, edited by Sarena Ulibarri, (World Weaver Press, 2018): 117-140 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology).

This story is jointly written by not one but two writer’s collectives — Commando Jugendstil is “a real-life small collective of Italian solarpunk creators” and Tales from the EV Studio is “a posse of emigrant Italian writers who specialise in historical fantasy”. The two come together to collaborate on a story that blurs the lines between fact and fiction, as the main characters are Commando Jugendstil themselves. As each member is introduced — Loopy, Sparky, Dotty, Sprouty, Stabby, Webby, Leccy — it’s not clear how much of this is made-up and how much of this is autobiographical, leaving the reader to decide. I opted to read the story as closer to fact than fiction, and was well-rewarded in doing so, but I believe it would’ve been just as rewarding to read it the other way: It’s a fabulous heist story that hit all my buttons. I loved it.

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REVIEW: “Frost” by C. L. Spillard

Review of C. L. Spillard, “Frost”, Luna Station Quarterly 34 (2018): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

This is the first time I’ve reviewed a story with a repeat title (cf. “Frost” by ‘Nathan Burgoine). But this is a very different sort of story than Burgoine’s fairy tale. This story is told in sparse, spare sentences with a tight, quick structure that reflects not only the tension and anxiety that Hu Tao wears on her sleeve but the same nerves that the unnamed narrator seeks to mask with a calm clarity of purpose.

The entire story is so short that it feels like a handful pebbles. But they are exquisite pebbles, and the way the author shifts POV partway through the story illustrates the old adage that rules are made to be broken, and Spillard breaks some canonical rules in the most perfect and necessary way. I enjoyed this short story very much.

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REVIEW: “Things That Happened While We Waited for Our Magical Grandmother to Die – No. 39” by Kuzhali Manickavel

Review of Kuzhali Manickavel, “Things That Happened While We Waited for Our Magical Grandmother to Die – No. 39”, Strange Horizons 30 Apr. 2018: Read online. Reviewed by Danielle Maurer.

If there was ever a story I had mixed feelings about, it’s this one.

This story follows our narrator and two other characters, Kumar and Mythili, presumably as they wait for their grandmother to die (although the grandmother is barely mentioned and does not factor into the story). But the house they live in is strange, mazelike, and it is not easy to escape. Yet Mythili is determined to get out.

I like Mythili a lot, her determination to escape the house and the life it traps her into. She’s immediately empathetic. The narrator and Kumar don’t think she can escape and assume bad things would happen if she did, but Mythili doesn’t let that daunt her. Really, she’s more the main character of the story than the narrator, who does little other than simply watch and comment.

On the other hand, I cannot stand Kumar. The way he treats Mythili is reprehensible, and it almost ruins the story for me. I have no patience for a character who tries to get the house staff to sing a chorus of “stupid b****” and assaults another character and yet never gets any comeuppance for his actions.

But in a way, Mythili gets her revenge. She gets out. She escapes. And like the narrator, I too hope she forgets about the house and its inhabitants.

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REVIEW: “Under the Northern Lights” by Charlotte M. Ray

Review of Charlotte M. Ray, “Under the Northern Lights”, in Glass and Gardens: Solar Punk Summers, edited by Sarena Ulibarri, (World Weaver Press, 2018): 250-270 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology).

This was a cute little love story which I found strangely odd because the narrator seemed so personality-less; his only character trait seemed to be his falling in love with Krista, the woman whose blimp crashed into the lake outside his house. Now, Krista, on the other hand — she was pretty awesome. Confident, ambitious, educated, she I enjoyed reading about enough to feel bad that she had such a bland person falling in love with her, someone whose sole role in the story seemed to be to do that — the fact that the unnamed narrator also happens to cultivate the one thing Krista was searching for especially is a bit too neat of a coincidence. Still, it was a rather sweet way to end the anthology.

Sara L. Uckelman1 Comment