REVIEW: “Stars so Sharp They Break the Skin” by Matthew Sanborn Smith

Review of Matthew Sanborn Smith, “Stars so Sharp They Break the Skin”, Apex Magazine 108 (2018): Read Online. Reviewed by Joanna Z. Weston.

This is a weird story. It’s not told in anything close to chronological order, the point of view shifts between third and second, and the main character’s perceptions of reality are so damaged that we as readers have no way to know what is objectively happening at times. However, if you find weirdness more intriguing than off-putting, or you really like the idea of reading about a veteran of an experimental war fought using weaponized psychic trauma, then you should forge ahead!

It’s hard to say what this story is about. War? Trauma? The fragility of perception and human connection? Is it a love story, a warning against war, a tale or healing? I think it’s all of the above. Without giving too much away, Cal (the disabled veteran of the very strange war) goes through a lot of shit in this story, but comes to a better place.

For me, most of this story skirted the line between “awesome” and “too weird,” but the ending really came together for me. I still have questions about what was and was not real, but the emotional story, the story of Cal and his ability to cope with his losses, came to a satisfying conclusion.

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REVIEW: “Watch Out, Red Crusher!” by Shel Graves

Review of Shel Graves, “Watch Out, Red Crusher!”, in Glass and Gardens: Solar Punk Summers, edited by Sarena Ulibarri, (World Weaver Press, 2018): 51-66 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology).

In the world of Aberdonia, citizens have nanites injected beneath their skin. These nanites help power the community, but they also glow in colors reflecting the owner’s moods. I’m not sure if Graves intended this to be a terrifying set-up, but I certainly found it to be so; one of the benefits of being an ordinary human (in my point of view) is that one can use one’s physical body to mask one’s inner turmoil. Certainly Andee, whose nanites glow a “despondent blue” (p. 52), would prefer that her fears and worries not be betrayed so clearly to all who see; in fact, it is precisely so that she can learn to hide her feelings that she is visiting the mind-matriarch, Madame Morell.

Andee isn’t the only one visiting Madame Morell; one of her childhood classmates, Irwin, is there too, seeking to change the shade he glows. But while Andee wallows in blue despondency, Irwin’s shade is the red of anger. As we learn more about Andee and Irwin’s history, the more sinister the notion of our feelings and dispositions being on display for everyone becomes; for it was quite literally an accident that made Irwin red in the first place, and once he gained that shade he has not been able to escape it. Andee’s generation is the first to have had the nanites injected at birth, before consent could be offered, and thus it is the first generation to see the consequences. Andee’s mother only sees the benefits: “Now we can see them coming” (p. 65), the dangerous people. But Andee wonders if maybe there isn’t another way…

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REVIEW: “What to Do When It’s Nothing but Static” by Cassandra Khaw

Review of Cassandra Khaw, “What to Do When It’s Nothing but Static”, Apex Magazine 107 (2018): Read Online. Reviewed by Joanna Z. Weston.

This is a glorious blend of the strange and the heartfelt, a story about aging and moving on from loss, set in a world in which a team of five (formerly six) little old ladies mentally link up to pilot a mecha and fight giant monsters. We don’t see them do this at any point, but it colors the whole story with a sense of the bizarre. And while the monsters never appear on-screen, the psychic link up is vital to the plot, as the narrator is trying to come to grips with the grief of losing one of her sisters.

I have so many questions about the world. Are all the pilots teams of little old ladies, and if so, why? If not, how did these grandmothers get the job? But of course, that doesn’t matter to the story. I just loved this so much that I wanted more. Some of the dialogue was confusing at first to my North American inner ear, but it really didn’t take long to adjust and figure out what the various interjections indicated.

This is a compact story, short enough to enjoy during a quick break. I recommend that you do so!

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REVIEW: “New Siberia” by Blake Jessop

Review of Blake Jessop, “New Siberia”, in Glass and Gardens: Solar Punk Summers, edited by Sarena Ulibarri, (World Weaver Press, 2018): 149-158 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology).

The story opens with the narrator, Nadezhda, falling off a solar collector and needing to be rescued from quicksand. Reading this I was immediately reminded of a recent meme I’ve seen, which is basically that childhood movies and books lead one to believe that quicksand is a far greater danger than it actually is. But it is a real and present danger for Nadezhda, and she is lucky that Amphisbaina is there to rescue her.

What I loved most about this story was Jessop’s use of language, which is truthful, staccato, and beautiful:

There are only so many ways to become sapient. Evolution converges. We killed the Earth, destroyed the Garden of Eden, and have taken up residence with the snakes (p. 150).

Nadezhda is haunted by what her kind has done to their planet, the slow way in which we killed our Earth even knowing that we were doing it. But this story, like the rest in this anthology, is hopeful; in it, humanity has learned that it is not their right to take but their requirement to ask: They share the planet with Amphisbaina and the other Nagans because they asked to share it, not because they conquered it. And Nadezhda and Amphisbaina together share something even more important: Hope, heat, life.

This was a beautiful, touching story.

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REVIEW: “Caught Root” by Julia K. Patt

Review of Julia K. Patt, “Caught Root”, in Glass and Gardens: Solar Punk Summers, edited by Sarena Ulibarri, (World Weaver Press, 2018): 1-7 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology).

What took my breath away from the very first paragraphs was the depth of hope in this story. The future that both Hillside and New-Ur occupy is quite a bit different from the present we are currently in, but true to the anthology’s self-description of “optimistic science fiction”, Dr. Orkney of Hillside and Dr. Khadir of New-Ur meet not as antagonists but “for an exchange of ideas”, in hopes that each settlement can benefit the other. Every single thing about how Orkney and Khadir meet, grow to trust each other, and forge a future together is hopeful, and reading this story made me happy.

There was one strange aspect about reading it, though. The story is narrated in the first-person, and I, somewhat surprisingly for my usual reading habits, defaulted to reading the narrator as being a woman. It wasn’t until the second page when Dr. Orkney’s given name is mentioned that I was jarred from this default; and even then, only when his name or some other explicit reference was made was I reminded that he was a man. On the one hand, it sort of felt like a trick might have been missed, that the story could only have been made stronger by the presence of a female scientist as the lead. On the other hand, without Ewan being who he was, the sweet romance that developed would not have been the same. I would like to complain about the fact that I couldn’t have both, but it’s churlish to expect authors to perform contradictions, so I will be satisfied with being contented with how the story was written.

Sara L. Uckelman2 Comments

REVIEW: “The Lost” by Doug Engstrom

Review of Doug Engstrom, “The Lost”, in Abandoned Places, edited by George R. Galuschak and Chris Cornell (Shohola Press, 2018): 229-238 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology.)

This is one of the shorter stories in the collection, which is a plus in my book because it’s also 1st-person-present-tense — a combination I find tougher than some to read. Wait — that makes it sound like I’m saying “thank goodness it was short because then I was put out of my misery sooner”, which isn’t at all what I meant. Rather, that when this combination works for me, it tends to work best in shorter rather than longer pieces.

Another reason that makes the POV and tense work here for me is the way in which this otherwise solidly SF story adapts frameworks from fairy tales. In fairy tales, one rarely gets characters, only caricatures. The Beautiful Younger Daughter, the Clever Youngest Son, the Wicked Stepmother, all defined by their labels. In Engstrom’s story, the characters too are identified with their labels, but the labels become names: Engineer, Captain, Ship, Pilot, no definite article, defining their roles and defined by them.

No one is more so defined than Agent, who is the only one of the crew who has “allowed the imperative of privacy to be connected to taboo…stood in the Hall at the Agent’s Academy and seen the shrine dedicated to the Agents who died rather than violate the integrity of the mail” (p. 237). Agent chose this life, chose to allow himself to be defined as Agent, and through his choice this label contains untold power — and an untellable choice.

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REVIEW: “Carnivores” by Rich Larson

Review of Rich Larson, “Carnivores”, in Steve Berman, ed., Wilde Stories 2017: The Year’s Best Gay Speculative Fiction (Lethe Press, 2017): 239-256 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology.)

The restaurateur leaned forward. “You’re a survivor from the original batch, then? From the Bangkok biolabs?”

This story wears its Sci Fi badge with pride, announcing its genre in many different ways in the first few sentences. We have decaying engineering AIs, neural implants, Neanderthal hybrids, and autocabs before we finish the first page. Rather miraculously, these details don’t come across as info-dumping, nor as overwhelming.

Finch and Blake are planning a heist, of a restaurant “kitschy as fuck” (p. 241). The modus operandi involves getting Finch in under false pretenses — and prepared to make false promises. Once inside, what they find is more valuable, and more dangerous, than their wildest imaginings.

The story is visceral, it is tender, it is horrific, and it is sweet. It’s a mess of contradicting experiences, yet nevertheless all balancing each other. And for all of its darkness, it ends with hope. We always can do with a little more hope in our tales.

(Originally published in Strangers Among Us: Tales of the Underdogs and Outcasts 2016).

Sara L. Uckelman1 Comment

REVIEW: “Contingency Plans for the Apocalypse” by S. B. Divya

Review of S. B. Divya’s, “Contingency Plans for the Apocalypse”, Uncanny Magazine Volume, 20 (2018): Read Online. Reviewed by Jodie Baker.

“Contingency Plans for the Apocalypse” is set in a dystopian Arizona where abortion has been criminalised. The narrator and their partner, Chula, have stayed in this dangerous territory with their two children in order to help women recieve safe abortions. The couple fully expect to be found by the law one day, and to have to run, but the narrator, who is disabled, does not expect they will make it out alive. All of their scenarios for the future involve Chula, the woman who is ‘a four-time triathlete, perfect eyesight, no injuries’, getting their children to a safe house. However, everything changes when Chula is killed by a bullet aimed at the narrator. From then on, the narrator has to be the one to survive in order to keep their children alive.

I’ve seen several discussions from disabled commentators about disability and dystopia, and “Contingency Plans for the Apocalypse” definitely feels like it’s in conversation with those discussions. This story adopts a multi-layered approach to depicting a disabled person’s life when the world is in crisis and they’re being chased by the authorities. S. B. Divya shows the practical issues of surviving in a dystopia when you have various disabilities. She allows her narrator to voice genuine concerns about their ability to survive, and to be less than positive about their situation. The fact that the narrator never offers up their name, and is never asked for it, is a subtle reminder that disabled people often don’t exist in dystopian stories.

At the same time, Divya challenges this lack of surviving, disabled characters in mainstream dystopian stories (or just the lack of disabled protagonists in mainstream dystopian stories). This story pushes back against the idea that there’s no place for disabled people in this genre by centring a disabled narrator, writing the story in their first person voice, giving them the tools to save their children, and sending them home alive, and a minor resistance hero. “Contingency Plans for the Apocalypse” creates some much needed space for disability while also providing an action-packed story which comments on the erosion of women’s rights. Try it out if you enjoyed Margaret Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale” or “Flow” by Marissa Lingen.

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REVIEW: “We Are New(s)” by Bentley A. Reese

Review of Bentley A. Reese “We Are New(s)”, Apex Magazine 106 (2018): Read Online. Reviewed by Joanna Z. Weston.

It’s always nice to be surprised. Case in point: this is not the sort of story I like. Weird dialects, an ambiguous narrator, creepy levels of social stratification, technological connection taken to the extreme: this is everything that tends to irritate me about cyberpunk. But this story? I love it.

The world is a near future cyberpunk, both strange and recognizably descended from our present day. The plot is meet-cute, with a low-class boy approaching a high-class girl, and making a genuine connection. But the narrator, the POV character, is something outside of them, something almost omniscient, tied to the constant stream of social media and news updates the near-future internet. It has a creepiness and discomfort that kept me reading.

Beyond the plot, this is a great story about how we interact with current events and media. It’s not exactly a cautionary tale, but it holds a dark mirror to our modern day obsessions and interests. It shows us our addiction to outrage and violence and viral content. Recommended for fans of cyberpunk and anyone who likes cutting social observations in their science fiction.

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REVIEW: “The Elements of The Plague” by Julia August

Review of Julia August, “The Elements of The Plague”, Syntax and Salt #5, December 2017: Read Online. Reviewed by Tiffany Crystal

Alright, so this story is confusing. At first, it doesn’t even really seem like a story…it’s more like an instruction manual. Then it’s more like a warning guide. Then you get to the end, and you go “…wait a minute…”

I am a little embarrassed at how long it took me to really understand what’s going on in this little ditty, but once it hit me, I had to give it a slow clap. If you like timey-wimey stuff, give it a read, but pay attention. I don’t think you’ll be disappointed.

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