REVIEW: “Stiff” by Kellie Coppola

Review of Kellie Coppola, “Stiff”, Luna Station Quarterly 25 (2016): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

This is one of those stories that starts off ordinary and mundane, where you read for awhile wondering where the speculative element will slide in, and then when it finally does, it makes you smile. Despite the mention of aliens in the opening sentence, this isn’t an alien story. It’s rather a story about the titular Stiffs, and I found it to be a clever and unusual take on some traditional tropes.

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REVIEW: “A Young Man’s Journey to Viriconium” by M. John Harrison

Review of M. John Harrison, “A Young Man’s Journey to Viriconium”, in Settling the World: Selected Stories 1970-2020, with a foreword by Jennifer Hodgson (Comma Press, 2020): 141-163 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology.)

Two things the title invites the reader to ask: Who is the young man, and where (or what) is Viriconium? Neither question is answered explicitly. Is the young man the narrator? Or is it the Dr. Petromax that he meets in his search for Viriconium? Viriconium itself, we are told, is a place that we all want, but “it is the old that want it most” (p. 142). Half the interest in the story is trying to piece together what (or where) Viriconium is, so I shan’t say anything more about it.

This story was told at a more languid pace than some of the others in this collection, and the framework of one person reporting what another person has told him meant I found myself regularly flipping back to remind myself to whom these experiences belonged. I’d peg this one as “good” but not “phenomenal”, like some of the other stories in the anthology are.

(First published in Interzone, 1985.)

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REVIEW: “Land Locked” by M. John Harrison

Review of M. John Harrison, “Land Locked”, in Settling the World: Selected Stories 1970-2020, with a foreword by Jennifer Hodgson (Comma Press, 2020): 95-98 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology.)

What a contrast this story was to the previous one! A fraction of its length, and entirely different. It bothered me, though, that in a story centered on two characters, one man, one woman, the man was named, and the woman was not.

(Originally published in Seen From Here, 2020).

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REVIEW: “I Did It Too” by M. John Harrison

Review of M. John Harrison, “I Did It Too”, in Settling the World: Selected Stories 1970-2020, with a foreword by Jennifer Hodgson (Comma Press, 2020): 49-54 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the Review of the anthology.

I never would have thought I’d read a story about football and enjoy it! This one had me laughing all the way through; Harrison has a very clever way of juxtaposing something utterly realistic with something utterly fantastical, and the result is perfection.

(Originally published in A Book of Two Halves, 1996).

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REVIEW: “The Gift” by M. John Harrison

Review of M. John Harrison, “The Gift”, in Settling the World: Selected Stories 1970-2020, with a foreword by Jennifer Hodgson (Comma Press, 2020): 27-48 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the Review of the anthology.

I found this story strange: When I first read it, I was deeply entranced by the alternating pictures of the lives of Sophia and Peter, their separate threads and their interwining events. And yet, within a week or so of reading it, I found I could remember almost nothing of it. Ephemeral, not substantial; beautiful while it lasted, but then gone.

(First published in Other Edens, 1988.)

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REVIEW: Settling the World: Selected Stories 1970-2020 by M. John Harrison

Review of M. John Harrison, Settling the World: Selected Stories 1970-2020, with a foreword by Jennifer Hodgson (Comma Press, 2020) — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

I’ll admit: Prior to receiving a request from the press to review this collection, I had not heard of M. John Harrison. My personal route through SFF has been rather idiosyncratic, and has missed out pretty much all of the “classic” SF authors. This made the opportunity to read a retrospective collection of Harrison’s stories — spanning 50 years — rather more desirable, not less, because it gave me an opportunity to fill a gap in my education. For that, I must comment on how useful I found Jennifer Hodgson’s interesting foreword to the collection; it says almost nothing of Harrison’s biography or history, but focuses more on the experience of reading his stories, and the way in which they reflect the world we inhabit and our experiences within it. Coming ignorant to Harrison and his work, Hodgson’s foreword piqued my interest and whetted my appetite, and set the stage for reading this excellent collection.

In these stories we find many repeated themes, as Hodgson highlights: The theme of dissatisfaction with how things have turned out; the theme of never knowing enough; the theme of always being just outside of things. Some of the stories focus on questioning reality; in others, the reality is so different from our own and yet it is taken for granted. Most of the stories contain at least one of these aspects; many of them contain more. This makes them exceptionally accessible: Even the weirdest of weird science fiction in them is not enough to make the stories themselves unfamiliar or strange, while sometimes the most mundane and ordinary of settings turn out to be home to the strangest and weirdest of stories.

Reading the collection was edifying, and I don’t mean this to be pejorative. I learned a lot about ways people look at the world; but I also learned a lot about the craft of writing stories, because even though I liked some stories better than others (usually the older ones I found more effective than the newer ones), there is no doubt that Harrison is a master of his craft, and one cannot help but marvel at what he has produced.

As is usual, the stories will be reviewed individually, and we will link the reviews back here when the are posted.

Sara L. Uckelman18 Comments

REVIEW: “Rest Stop” by MJ Gardner

Review of MJ Gardner, “Rest Stop”, Luna Station Quarterly 27 (2016): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

“If you had a problem you couldn’t fix, you moved on and left it behind.” This is a lesson Marcy learned from her parents, and she’s put it to good use more than once. Right now, the problem she can’t fix is Lenny, and the story opens with her moving on from him, leaving him behind without any reason or notice. Everything seems so very ordinary, up until the point at which nothing is ordinary at all and everything is extraordinary and weird.

I enjoyed the abrupt shift in direction that Gardner introduced with great effect, and felt the two halves — the mundane and the fantastic — of the story balanced each other nicely. I also appreciated Gardner’s choice of heroine — Marcy is in her sixties, fat and grey, and dealing with stress incontinence. In other words, she’s a real person, not a fairy tale. I like reading stories about real people, especially when they end up in unreal situations.

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REVIEW: “A Curse, A Kindness” by Corinne Duyvis

Review of Corinne Duyvis, “A Curse, A Kindness”, in Marieke Nijkamp, ed., Unbroken: 13 Stories Starring Disabled Teens (Farrar Straus Giroux, 2018): 276-304 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology).

This was the other stand-out story of the volume, sitting alongside of Fox Benwell’s story a cut above the rest. It was so unexpected and charming and an unabashed, straight-up fairy tale, complete with a curse, a wholly unexpected genie, three wishes, and a happy ending. A great story, and a great way to end the anthology. Any misgivings I had reading the first story of the anthology were wholly banished by ending it on this note.

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REVIEW: “Mother Nature’s Youngest Daughter” by Keah Brown

Review of Keah Brown, “Mother Nature’s Youngest Daughter”, in Marieke Nijkamp, ed., Unbroken: 13 Stories Starring Disabled Teens (Farrar Straus Giroux, 2018): 260-275 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology).

Mother Nature’s youngest daughter came into her powers early, earlier than any of her siblings. Being able to control snowstorms doesn’t make it any easier for Millie to control her teenage emotions and reactions, especially not when she is being bullied and no one — not the teachers, not the other kids, not even her siblings — will say a word to stop it. If no one else will help her, then Millie has got to help herself — maybe, being the daughter of Mother Nature isn’t the worst thing in the world.

This was an engaging story, but I felt it was a little flat compared to some of the others in the collection, perhaps unfairly because some of the others really sparkled. This one was still a good story, just not one I’m likely to remember strongly.

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REVIEW: “Plus One” by Karuna Riazi

Review of Karuna Riazi, “Plus One”, in Marieke Nijkamp, ed., Unbroken: 13 Stories Starring Disabled Teens (Farrar Straus Giroux, 2018): 104-131 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology).

Hafsah has received an invitation from God, for a once in a lifetime opportunity: To go on hajj. A wonderful opportunity, a blessed opportunity, a sacred opportunity…and one she doesn’t particularly want. Because this is the sort of invitation where a plus one is not expected, and Hafsah doesn’t know how she’ll go on hajj without bringing It along.

Everyone says that It is just a phase, that if she ignores It, if she names It, if she grows out of It, It will go away, but nothing she’s done has ever gotten rid of It. What “It” is in the story is not specified — it is both everything that burdens every teenager and also something unique, special, Hafsah’s alone, that no one else has. My heart ached for Hafsah as she tried to navigate a way forward to a life without It, but I also felt a sense of kinship with her, and I suspect many other readers will too…

Reading this story also made me reflect that I can probably count on two hands the number of stories with a Muslim MC that I’ve reviewed for this site since it started almost 3 years ago. This is something I’d like to change going forward! If only they can all be as good as this one was.

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