REVIEW: “The Sorcerer” by Charlotte McManus

Review of Charlotte McManus, “The Sorcerer” in A Brilliant Void: A Selection of Classic Irish Science Fiction, edited by Jack Fennell (Tramp Press, 2018): 209-221 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology).

The story of the Sorcerer is the story of William Carney, “who had a charm” (p. 209). There is a pleasing uncertainty and ambiguity to this charm — is it charm in the sense of being charming? Or is it more concrete, more explicit, is there some tangible magic spell that he holds? McManus is never explicit, leaving the reader to fill in the gaps as they will.

This unclarity concerning the Sorcerer’s charm is in interesting contrast to another character in the story, whom we only know as the Experimenter — he is never given a name. His experiments are scientific in nature:

He was engaged on experiments of light, and sound, and electric waves, and psycho-activities, and was just then experimenting on sound in its relation to the rest (p. 213).

His particular interest is in animal magnetism and odic forces, and the ways in which all of these forces interact is described sometimes in great detail. It makes for an interesting experience: The magic, less detailed, is described in such a way that one can yet believe in its veracity; the science, more detailed, has become dated, so that it is hard to willingly suspend one’s disbelief. It’s an example of a broader phenomenon — that fantasy can stand the test of time better than science fiction sometimes can.

(Originally published in 1922.)

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REVIEW: “The Great Beast of Kafue” by Clotilde Graves

Review of Clotilde Graves, “The Great Beast of Kafue” in A Brilliant Void: A Selection of Classic Irish Science Fiction, edited by Jack Fennell (Tramp Press, 2018): 193-205 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology).

Some science fiction themes are perennial: And in the case of this present story, the theme which feels just as current now in 2019 as it must have in 1917 when it was originally published is dinosaurs. Modern SF dreams of extracting dino DNA and splicing it in to eggs to create new dinosaurs; and apart from science people still dream of one day finding the Loch Ness monster or her cousins. In “The Great Beast of Kafue”, the narrator, tells us of an incident that happened when he was a young boy, living with his Dutch-descended father in Rhodesia, some years after the death of his Irish mother, concerning the titular Great Beast, whom newspaper reports had said had been sighted in the wild depths. A mysterious, fantastical beast, that few had seen — and in fact, seen by only one white man, and the narrator dreams of the day that he might find the beast himself, and with his father’s elephant gun kill it. But when he tells his father this, he finds himself drawn into a story he’s never heard before, and being asked to promise something that would mean forfeiting those very dreams.

In a weird way, this is almost a love story, more than anything, and its strengths lie in the timelessness of its topics (both dinosaurs AND love). But it’s not entirely timeless: It’s unreflectively colonial in a way that would’ve been unremarkable a century ago but which is somewhat uncomfortable now. I liked the way that Graves incorporated the narrator’s father’s Dutch heritage so seamlessly into the story, even while my appreciation of that warred with how problematic the framing itself was. It’s hard to know what to say about a story like this: I don’t want to excuse the author, but I also don’t want to say “don’t read it”. So I guess the best thing to do is to flag the issue, and let the next reader make an informed decision for themself.

(Originally published in 1917.)

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REVIEW: “Making the Magic Lightning Strike Me” by John Chu

Review of John Chu, “The Library of Lost Things”, in Steve Berman, ed., Wilde Stories 2018: The Year’s Best Gay Speculative Fiction (Lethe Press, 2018): 79-94 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology.)

Charlie Tsai’s job is one that needs a man with height, and strength — two things Charlie didn’t have and always wanted and that’s why he got the job. Because his new employers would “make the lightning strike” and even if it didn’t give him the body he wanted, it was close enough that Charlie would always be beholden to them.

This was a story full of contrasts and tensions — on the one hand, it almost feels like a superhero origin story. On the other hand, for a story involving big burly men who lift weights and are described as being like WWF fighters, it is unexpectedly and surprisingly tender. It is finely crafted, and that brings with it its own layer of pleasure, to watch a master story-teller plying their trade.

(Originally published in Uncanny Magazine, 2017).

Sara L. Uckelman1 Comment

REVIEW: “Lady Clanbevan’s Baby” by Clotilde Graves

Review of Clotilde Graves, “Lady Clanbevan’s Baby” in A Brilliant Void: A Selection of Classic Irish Science Fiction, edited by Jack Fennell (Tramp Press, 2018): 179-189 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology).

This is one creepy, appalling story. Lady Clanbevan, as youthful and beautiful now as she was in her twenties, even though she is now approaching fifty, has been a widow for two decades, and yet, she is never seen without the accompany of a young baby, her child — her only child. A chance encounter between the Professor who loved her once many years ago and the unnamed narrator gives the Professor an opportunity to finally confess the details of his experiments with protium — now called radium — and the way in which he discovered he could use it to halt the affects of ageing. By now, of course, the reader knows what resolution must be coming, but it doesn’t make the narrator’s final encounter with Lady Clanbevan’s baby any less disturbing.

(Originally published in 1915.)

Sara L. Uckelman1 Comment

REVIEW: “The Luck of Pitsey Hall” by L. T. Meade and Robert Eustace

Review of L. T. Meade and Robert Eustace, “The Luck of Pitsey Hall” in A Brilliant Void: A Selection of Classic Irish Science Fiction, edited by Jack Fennell (Tramp Press, 2018): 151-176 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology).

This is a pretty classic Gothic story, leaning more towards psychological horror than to science fiction, though there are elements of the uncertain and unknown that stem from a possibly scientific origin. The key figure in the story is the mysterious Madame Koluchy, renowed physician and healer who is able to effect miraculous cures, though scientific tests performed upon her drugs and medicines show them to be no different than those used by other doctors.

Mysterious Madame Koluchy may be, but she is also rather nefarious. Shortly into the story she is implicated in a murder, and other secrets and possible crimes come to light. By the end, we are still left with a veil of uncertainty; who killed Delacour, and why?

(Originally published in 1899).

Sara L. Uckelman1 Comment

REVIEW: Wilde Stories 2018 edited by Steve Berman

Review of Steve Berman, ed., Wilde Stories 2018: The Year’s Best Gay Speculative Fiction, (Lethe Press, 2018) — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

Last year, I reviewed the 2017 edition of this anthology (read the review) with a bit of trepidation, as it’s not exactly my place as a het woman to be offering my opinions on gay male fic. But I loved so many of the stories in that anthology so much that when pre-orders for the 2018 volume went up, I immediately signed up.

With the same caveats as last year in place, I decided to review this volume as well, and it did not disappoint. The breadth of stories is amazing, which means that there were a few that didn’t tick my buttons, but that’s okay — many, many more did, and I am sure that other readers will find the stories that didn’t speak to me do speak to them. Overall, what struck me about the stories in last year’s anthology struck me about these as well: And that is how beautiful they were. Beautiful stories, told in beautiful words. These are like a pile of precious gems, to be treasured and kept close. I’m only sorry that Berman has announced that this will be the final year that he edits these anthologies; though perhaps this means next year I’ll have to start working through the back catalogue.

As usual, I’ll review each story separately, and link them back here when the review is posted:

(I also adore the cover, which is just gorgeous. Many kudos to Inkspiral Design, who designed it.)

Sara L. Uckelman15 Comments

REVIEW: “An Advance Sheet” by Jane Barlow

Review of Jane Barlow, “An Advance Sheet” in A Brilliant Void: A Selection of Classic Irish Science Fiction, edited by Jack Fennell (Tramp Press, 2018): 127-148 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology).

What a marvelous story. Reading it, it was hard to keep in mind that it was written more than a hundred years ago, how unexpectedly timeless, prescient, and modern it was. We are quickly introduced to the main characters in the first page, Dr. Warden and Dr. Thomas Harlowe (the 1st person POV), two medical doctors who work in a mental institution, and a patient of theirs, John Lynn, who ended up in the institution after a nervous breakdown caused by anxiety over his university exams, a story all too familiar in the early 21st C. The focus of the story is Lynn, and a strange encounter that he relates to Harlowe. The trope involved is not an uncommon one in early SF: Travel to another time or another world via mental projection alone.

But what really took me with this story was the detailed explanation that Lynn gives Harlowe not about how such travel is possible, but about why we should even think these other worlds and times exist. Barlow’s explanation is uncanny: First, she articulates a version of the many-worlds interpretation of the universe:

“I refer to the fact that such a limitless atomic universe necessarily involves the existence, the simultaneous existence, of innumerable solar systems absolutely similar to our own…” (p. 129).

But not content to start there, she has Lynn immediately make the analogical step from the existence of different worlds to the existence of our own world at different times — and all of these different worlds being causally isolated from each other.

See, when I’m not writing, reading, and reviewing speculation fiction, I’m a philosopher who focuses on questions of modality and time. One of the most important developments in the logic and metaphysics of modality during the 20th C was David Lewis’s developments of modal realism, the idea that there are other “possible worlds” that are of exactly the same type as ours, but which are causally inaccessible to us. Lewis himself took time to be represented by different “stages” of these possible worlds; but it is also possible to take the possible worlds model further and identify times with worlds themselves, speaking of “possible times” instead of “possible worlds”. For Lewis, these worlds are out there, fully developed, and independent of ourselves; while we cannot access them through spatio-temporal relations, we can think of them, and, with a bit of a loose metaphor speak of looking through a telescope to these worlds to see what is occurring in them. Lynn adopts a very similar metaphor, as a means of explaining clairvoyance:

For, if what I have said is factually true, the explanation is simply this: the clairvoyant has somehow got a glimpse into one of these facsimile worlds, which happens to be a few years ahead of ours in point of time, and has seen how things are going there” (p. 1310)

The parallels in the views are remarkable, and even more remarkable that Barlow as writing 75 years before Lewis, and without the benefit of the philosophical and educational context that Lewis had in the 1950s and 1960s. Having read Barlow’s story, I’m now totally convinced I need to read more by Barlow, and write up a paper on this curious 19th-C Irish female precursor to one of the most important developments in contemporary analytic philosophy.

(Originally published in 1898.)

Sara L. Uckelman1 Comment

REVIEW: “The Pulse of Memory” by Beth Dawkins

Review of Beth Dawkins, “The Pulse of Memory”, Apex Magazine 116 (2019): Read Online. Reviewed by Joanna Z. Weston.

It is generally agreed that, on a generation ship, nothing can be wasted. But what about memories? In this unusual story, people have discovered a way to recycle the memories of the dead, so that no knowledge or experience will be truly lost. How is this feat accomplished? Through fish. The fish eat people before they die, and then teenagers eat the fish when they come of age, thus gaining the memories of the people that fish dined on. It’s morbid, but effective.

The brilliance of this story lies not in the idea of memory-eating fish (though that’s a pretty great conceit), but in the way it shows how different people respond to this practice. Society is not a monolith, even in the constrained environment of a generation ship. Some people feel an almost religious reverence for the fish, others are disgusted by them, and some yearn to do away with them entirely. It’s a rich and organic source of conflict, and one that is too rarely used in most stories, making this story all the more sweet for really exploring it.

For such a strange (and at times, confusing) story, Dawkins keeps us grounded with a strong point-of-view character. Cal’s love for the fish, and for the role they serve in society, provides the reader with a hand to hold from beginning to end. This story gives us a unique take on generation ships, a staple of science fiction, and I’m grateful to have read it.

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REVIEW: “The Professor’s Experiment” by Margaret Wolfe Hungerford

Review of Margaret Wolfe Hungerford, “The Professor’s Experiment” in A Brilliant Void: A Selection of Classic Irish Science Fiction, edited by Jack Fennell (Tramp Press, 2018): 107-123 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology).

In the days before cryogenics and assisted comas, the idea of being able to put a person to a dreamless sleep that can persist days or weeks or years without any degradation of the body is both fantastical and tantalising — since the days of Shakespeare and perhaps even longer people have dreamt of potions which can induce a sleep like death. In Hungerford’s story, the old Professor has been researching the potions of the ancient Peruvians and South American Indians for decades and is now ready to put his theory into practice, despite the worries of his student and friend, Paul Wyndham. As yet, he has been unable to find anyone in Ireland that he could experiment on…and then there is a knock upon his door…

There is one place in the story where I fear there may have been an editorial mishap in the abridgement process; on p. 117 there is a strange repetition of six sentences. In the first place, there is a queer shift in time which is inexplicable, while the second occurrence of the sentences a few paragraphs later makes a lot more narrative sense. It seems as if the first occurrence of the sentences was mistaken, and it makes me wonder what — if anything — should have been there instead.

(Originally published in 1895.)

Sara L. Uckelman1 Comment

REVIEW: “Mercia, the Astronomer Royal” by Amelia Garland Mears

Review of Amelia Garland Mears, “Mercia, the Astronomer Royal” in A Brilliant Void: A Selection of Classic Irish Science Fiction, edited by Jack Fennell (Tramp Press, 2018): 79-103 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology).

It’s amazing how modern a late 19th C story can feel. Here is the story of how Mercia, the Astronomer Royal, suffers sexual harassment at the hands of her boss (Emperor Felicitas). First she tries to resign her position to get away; and when he won’t allow her to resign and he lays his hands upon her, and she tries to rebuke him and protect herself, she is arrested on charges of attempted murder. Anxious to know how the trial will unfold, the Emperor visits a noted psychic who shows him scenes of the future — scenes that do not go well for the Emperor, though he does not know why. In an attempt to restore public favor to himself, he offers Mercia a pardon — a pardon which she refuses to accept because she has neither committed nor yet been convicted of a crime. In the end, the trial goes ahead and in a convenient plot twist Mercia is cleared of all charges and the emperor is disgraced.

I wonder what Mears would have made of the Blasey Ford/Kavanaugh investigation of 2018…

(This is an abridged extract of a novel originally published in 1895.)

Sara L. Uckelman1 Comment