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

REVIEW: “The Curse of the Mud Ball Kid” by Mazen Maarouf

Review of Mazen Maarouf, Jonathan Wright (trans.), “The Curse of the Mud Ball Kid”, in Basma Ghalayini, ed., Palestine+100, (Comma Press, 2019): 171-214 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology.)

Oh, my. Just…oh my. This was by far the strangest, most bizarre (and longest!) of the entire collection. One part science fiction, two parts surrealism, with a blithe disregard for anything so basic as laws of nature. It was unapologetic in its oddness, and every page was a turner. I can’t even begin to summarise the plot, only say that this story hooked me in a way that none other in the anthology did, and it was an excellent way to close the collection out.

Sara L. Uckelman1 Comment

REVIEW: “The Association” by Samir El-Youssef

Review of Samir El-Youssef, Raph Cormack (trans.), “The Association”, in Basma Ghalayini, ed., Palestine+100, (Comma Press, 2019): 143-151 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology.)

The premise of this story is both utterly unexpected and delightfully apt:

Since the 2028 Agreement, the people of the country … had decided that forgetting was the best way to live in peace. The study of the past was forbidden (p. 144),

meaning, among other things, that suddenly, the occupation of “historian” no longer existed.

But, as shouldn’t be surprising, forbidding the study of history doesn’t prevent people from studying history, and plenty of covert historians still exist, including Professor Omar Hijazi, age 68, who is found dead in his apartment one night. The police rule it an accident, a byproduct of a theft gone bad, but petty journalist Zaid at the Daily Diwan disagrees. He sets off to find the truth, and what he discovers is way bigger, and way more oppressive, than he imagined.

It feels weird to say it about such a dystopian story, but this was really a fun read.

Sara L. Uckelman1 Comment