REVIEW: “confessional” by James Redfern

Review of James Redfern, “confessional,” Radon Journal 3 (January 2023): 57 — Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

I was going to scroll back up through the issue to find a story to review today, but then I glanced at the first stanza of this poem, and it sucked me in and I’d read the entire thing before I realised it. It’s both hilarious, and hilariously on-point commentary on labor in the era of capitalism.

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REVIEW: “The Problem Is” by Thomas Mixon

Review of Thomas Mixon, “The Problem Is,” Radon Journal 3 (January 2023): 55 — Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

This poem nicely encapsulates the existential angst that comes from living in a digital world where everyone is reachable all the time and no one is ever in sync with anyone else, and offers a plea to return to simpler times. On the one hand, I’m sympathetic; on the other hand, I think we’re better off going forward, rather than retrograde.

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REVIEW: “Eight Dwarfs on Planet X” by Avra Margariti

Review of Avra Margariti, “Eight Dwarfs on Planet X,” Radon Journal 3 (January 2023): 52-53 — Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

I’m never quite sure if I like SF poetry, but if all SF poetry were like this poem by Margariti, then I definitely would. It struck the perfect balance of poetry and story, and was very definitely SF without needing to rely on spaceships or stars. The fact that it’s a retelling of a classic fairy tale is just an added bonus.

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REVIEW: “Halsing for the Anchylose” by Stewart C. Baker

Review of Stewart C. Baker, “Halsing for the Anchylose,” Fantasy Magazine 72 (October 2021): 29 — Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

This poem managed to tell a complex story in a compact fashion. Reading it, I felt that it hinted at so much more than it was able to say, and I wondered if the title held clues to what the “more” was. Unfortunately, no dictionary shed any light on either term, so I remain intrigued, but baffled.

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REVIEW: “Soonest Mended” by Honor Hamlet and Till Kaeufer

Review of Honor Hamlet and Till Kaeufer, “Soonest Mended”, in Around Distant Suns, ed. by Emma Johanna Puranen (Guardbridge Books, 2021): 17-20 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology.)

I have pretty narrow tastes when it comes to poetry, and I’ll admit this one wasn’t exactly my cup of tea; it was a bit too “post-modern”, I think, for my tastes — unsurprising because Hamlet and Kaeufer’s collaboration is one of the closest, with Kaeufer contributing a machine learning programming that actual wrote a line of the poem! But what I loved, and which makes poems like this such a wonderful contribution to the volume, was what the poet and the scientist said in their collaboration notes: “While writing a poem, you’re constantly asking if the information in the previous line is relevant enough to trigger a reaction in the next line” (p. 20). What I want from my fiction and poetry is something that makes me think about things differently, and I got that.

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REVIEW: “Glossary” by Emma Bussi and Christiane Helling

Review of Emma Bussi and Christiane Helling, “The Stripped Core”, in Around Distant Suns, ed. by Emma Johanna Puranen (Guardbridge Books, 2021): 11-15 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology.)

This was a lovely long-form poem full of the struggle of trying to express onself through words that other people will understand — whether this is writing a scientific paper about atmospheres on worlds we can visit only in imagination or it’s writing a poem about trying to express oneself through words that other people will understand. 🙂

I really loved it, and felt a lot of sympathy with both the poet and the scientist.

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REVIEW: “Emily” by Marian Denise Moore

Review of Marian Denise Moore, “Emily”, in Zelda Knight and Ekpeki Oghenechovwe Donald, ed., Dominion: An Anthology of Speculative Fiction From Africa and the African Diaspora, (Aurelia Leo, 2020) — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology).

This piece is halfway between flash fic and poetry and tells, in sparse, beautiful language, the story of a seven-year-old girl who has runaway from being enslaved. Across two centuries, Moore reaches out to this girl and offers her hope of a better ending. Very touching.

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REVIEW: Dominion: An Anthology of Speculative Fiction from Africa and the African Diaspora edited by Zelda Knight and Ekpeki Oghenechovwe Donald

Review of Zelda Knight and Ekpeki Oghenechovwe Donald, ed., Dominion: An Anthology of Speculative Fiction From Africa and the African Diaspora, (Aurelia Leo, 2020) — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

When I received an invitation to review this anthology, my response was the email equivalent of grabby hands: Oh my, yes, please!!! This is exactly the sort of fiction I want to be reading, and exactly the sort of fiction I want to see more of being published and promoted — stories that introduce me to new worlds, stories that fill gaps in my knowledge of history, stories that bring me into the unknown. So buckle in, and join me on a tour of these thirteen wonderful, wonderful stories, ranging from poetry/flash fic all the way to nearly novella-length. They cover the entire spectrum of speculative fiction, some fantastic, some scientific, some lingering on the borders of horro. As usual, we will review them individually, and link the reviews back here when they are published.

The ARC I read unfortunately had a number of typos in it (as well as no pagination, so we have left page references out of the individual reviews); I hope they are all fixed before the final publication, as they would otherwise mar what is an excellent collection.

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