REVIEW: “Boxes” by Lauren Barker

Review of Lauren Barker, “Boxes”, in David G. Clark, Callum Colback, Joe Butler, and Alex Hareland, eds., Beneath Strange Stars, (TL;DR Press, 2020): 107-110 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology.)

I found this minimalistic story utterly entrancing. It is a deft example of how a rich and deep world can be built through only a few brief remarks and casual references. I was torn between wanting to know more about the titular boxes and feeling that any more would have ruined the delicate balance Barker managed. Gold star to this story.

Sara L. Uckelman1 Comment

REVIEW: “As Long As You Remember” by Marla Cantrell

Review of Marla Cantrell, “As Long As You Remember”, in David G. Clark, Callum Colback, Joe Butler, and Alex Hareland, eds., Beneath Strange Stars, (TL;DR Press, 2020): 81-87 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology.)

This is the story of Chick, an itinerant car-thief who never stays in town more than a few days. It isn’t clear where he is going or why — if he is running from something, or two something. The story is told at an arm’s length remove, being a factual recounting of his actions. It is only when we get brief glimpses of the person who is doing the recounting that any sort of story develops, that we get to see a side of Chick that isn’t quite as unsympathetic as the facts present. Things veer off in a strange direction at the end, leaving the reader (well, me) with an uncertain resolution. I’m still not sure why Chick’s story is one that I should care about.

Sara L. Uckelman1 Comment

REVIEW: “Nothing Lasts” by David Estringel

Review of David Estringel, “Nothing Lasts”, in David G. Clark, Callum Colback, Joe Butler, and Alex Hareland, eds., Beneath Strange Stars, (TL;DR Press, 2020): 79-80 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology.)

If the hope of this anthology is to engage the wider public with science through the media of fiction and poetry, then the lesson we are to apparently learn from this poem is that “Nothing lasts”, which is both the title and the refrain at the end of each verse. It is a depressing and hopeless message.

Sara L. Uckelman1 Comment

REVIEW: “We Feel Autumn in Our Bones” by Joe Butler

Review of Joe Butler, “We Feel Autumn in Our Bones”, in David G. Clark, Callum Colback, Joe Butler, and Alex Hareland, eds., Beneath Strange Stars, (TL;DR Press, 2020): 73-78 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology.)

Content warning: Contemplation of abortion.

To my taste, the story was slightly overwritten — I kept feeling like a just a few fewer words in each sentence would’ve tightened and sharpened everything up — but it was premised upon such an intriguing idea that by the end of it, I forgave the overwriting. There are many different ways that authors can contemplate solutions to the every growing population on Earth; Butler’s was a take I’d not seen before, and I enjoyed that.

Sara L. Uckelman1 Comment

REVIEW: “Dark Constellations Beneath Electron Microscope” by Carla Durbach

Review of Carla Durbach, “Dark Constellations Beneath Elecron Microscope”, in David G. Clark, Callum Colback, Joe Butler, and Alex Hareland, eds., Beneath Strange Stars, (TL;DR Press, 2020): 59-60- — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology.)

Lately I’ve been struggling about what makes a poem a good SF poem. Durbach’s poem is just that: It tells an undeniably and intrinsically science fiction story, but in a way that enhances the beauty of the poem rather than distracts.

Sara L. Uckelman1 Comment

REVIEW: “Another Heart” by Bryan Arneson

Review of Bryan Arneson, “Another Heart”, in David G. Clark, Callum Colback, Joe Butler, and Alex Hareland, eds., Beneath Strange Stars, (TL;DR Press, 2020): 61-71 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology.)

This is the kind of SF that I really like — the science is subtle and in the background, but it emphasizes our most basic questions: What makes us human? What are emotions? These and others were brought to the fore through the lense of the character Rosco, whose own status (robot? enhanced human?) remains uncertain right until the very end.

Sara L. Uckelman1 Comment

REVIEW: “Carry On” by Shelby Van Pelt

Review of Shelby Van Pelt, “Carry On”, in David G. Clark, Callum Colback, Joe Butler, and Alex Hareland, eds., Beneath Strange Stars, (TL;DR Press, 2020): 49-58 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology.)

This was a story full of paradoxes. It was full of sharp, fine details that made the setting feel intimate and real, and yet I couldn’t tell you where or when it was set. The first-person narrator continually addresses an unnamed “you”, but that “you” is not me, the reader. Instead, it feels like we’re inside the narrator’s head, overhearing her internal monologue, as she recites her history and how she and her friend ended up stranded in a desert when almost everyone else has moved on, made the long trek to the south.

Even in the ending is shrouded in mystery and uncertainty. I think I know what happened — but I won’t spoil the surprise by telling it here.

Sara L. Uckelman1 Comment

REVIEW: “Hell With Friends” by Emily Deibler

Review of Emily Deibler, “Hell With Friends”, in David G. Clark, Callum Colback, Joe Butler, and Alex Hareland, eds., Beneath Strange Stars, (TL;DR Press, 2020): 33-48 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology.)

Content note: Suicide and contemplation of suicide.

Scout has sold her soul to Satan and is now dead in the ninth circle of hell. There’s certain plusses about being in hell — no more grad school, the chance to hang out with Satan’s three spouses, Naamah, Lilith, and Judas — but hell is also a place that magnifies everything that was wrong with you in life, Scout finds. She’s just as angry, just as sardonic, just as scared in hell as she was on earth, and “she needed every friend she could get” (p. 39). But “Hell with friends was still Hell” (p. 39). Perhaps the worst, though, is that Scout still doesn’t know what she is meant to be, to do, with her “life”, even now that she is dead.

This story, like the preceding one, is much more fantasy than science fiction. I found myself wanting more from it than I got. With a fantasy story, one expects either grand worldbuilding or characters full of depth. Here, I learned almost nothing about the nature of hell, or how Scout was able to make her bargain with Satan. Little details were given, but I never got a sense of the overall place. But the characters felt rather flat, though, with stilted, unnatural dialogue. I wonder what the author could have made of the story with the help of a ruthless editor, because there was definitely a kernal of something interesting in there.

Sara L. Uckelman1 Comment

REVIEW: “Petrichor” by Hannah Hulbert

Review of Hannah Hulbert, “Petrichor”, in David G. Clark, Callum Colback, Joe Butler, and Alex Hareland, eds., Beneath Strange Stars, (TL;DR Press, 2020): 15-31 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology.)

I always expect the opening story of an anthology to typify the entire collection, to set the scene, so to speak. This story does not, however, make good on the expectation set by the foreword and introduction. If what makes a story science fiction is the presence of some sort of science in it, then this story is definitely not science fiction, but instead pure fantasy. The story alternates between two points of view, that of Nolauronomailik, an Earth elemental, and Nol his priestess, who worships him as a god.

But while I found it a perplexing choice to open this collection, I did not dislike the story itself. It had some lovely imagery in it, and some poignant moments as Nolauronomailik must balance his fallibility with Nol’s belief in him.

Sara L. Uckelman1 Comment

REVIEW: Beneath Strange Stars edited by David G. Clark, Callum Colback, Joe Butler, and Alex Hareland

Review of David G. Clark, Callum Colback, Joe Butler, and Alex Hareland, eds., Beneath Strange Stars, (TL;DR Press, 2020) — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

This gorgeously thick volume of short stories and poems is a charity anthology supporting the Association for Science Education, the United Kingdom’s professional association for teachers of science and science technicians and “the largest subject association in the UK” (p. 11), with proceeds going to benefit the ASE’s wider educational mission. Hannah Russell, the ASE’s chief executive officer, provides a brief introduction to the volume that stresses the importance of novel ways to engage the wider community with science of all kinds — such ways including, naturally, science fiction and speculative fiction more generally.

I expected more science fiction and less fantasy, and the quality of the stories varied. But even so, as a whole, the stories and poems in this collection made good on what was promised: They both entertain and instruct. And across the board, the poems were the high points. I do not usually have a very high tolerance for poetry, but I really enjoyed so many of the poems in this anthology.

As usual, we’ll review each of the stories in turn, and link the reviews back here when they are published.

Sara L. Uckelman34 Comments