Zimmer, Exodus Gate (2009)

Stephen Zimmer, The Exodus Gate. Seventh Star Press, 2009. Pp. 580. ISBN 978-0615267470. $19.95.

Reviewed by Nader Elhefnawy

In Stephen Zimmer's novel The Exodus Gate Benedict Darwin, the host of a radio talk show devoted to the paranormal, gets access to a "virtual reality" system that has not yet hit the market from a friend of his in the employ of "Babylon Technologies." He tries it out at home, playing an RPG set in an earlier, antediluvian era, during which Darwin encounters a pack of giant, intelligent wolves, the "An-Ki." Speaking with them he starts to wonder if this is not, after all, more than an elaborate program, the technology involved something more than VR. This being that kind of story, his suspicions are soon proven correct, and he finds himself drawn into an ages-old struggle between Good and Evil ("Adonai" and "Diabolos, the Shining One") in which the human players are lining up to play their roles as the shadow of a One-World government on the side of Evil looms large.

As this summary implies, the story is at its core a version of the End Times narrative which attracted so much attention when Jerry Jenkins and Tim LaHaye's published their mega-selling Left Behind series. It is a thinly veiled one, however, the names of people, places and other such items very slightly changed, while being in all other respects nearly identical. (The United States is UCAS, Germany is Germania, Russia is Muscovy, China is Mandaria, etc.; the F-22 fighter jet has become the I-22; etc.) All of this makes it far too obvious to be regarded as an allegory in the manner of C.S. Lewis (an important influence on the author, as he acknowledges in an interview at the Something Wicked blog), which suggests other rationales: the taking of liberties with crucial story elements, the subversion of a conventional take on the material.

As it happens, an unconventional reading of the Great Flood is central to the story, specifically the idea that it was meant to wash away the giants mentioned in the sixth chapter of Genesis (giants who, in Zimmer's telling of the story, still have their role to play in Armageddon). In crafting the tale Zimmer also draws not only on this reading of the Bible, but a number of other religious traditions, not all of them easily connectable with the Judeo-Christian tradition.

Additionally, while the book does not come across as a shot in the "culture wars" in the manner of John Shirley's 2006 novel The Other End (in his own words, an "unapologetically partisan" book aimed at reclaiming this territory from right-wing fundamentalists), being more politically ambiguous (at times, it even gives off a "black helicopter" vibe) and more theologically conventional as well (even with the talking wolves), the author does step outside safe territory. In particular Zimmer works in post-September 11 anxieties about the motivations behind the "War on Terror," and the hollowing out of a U.S. economy living off foreign-financed debt in a way much less in evidence during the tech boom years. His particular handling of this combination of elements also makes the book an easier sell with "Nine-Eleven" now "Seven-Four," and the Patriot Act now the "Guardian Act."

Of course, while the theological and political touches of the story are well worth commenting on, the book is first and foremost an epic fantasy--the first part of the mult-volume "Rising Dawn" saga Zimmer envisages. To his credit, the mix of ideas he brings together has its interest, though the execution is far from faultless. His prose and characterizations are on the whole unremarkable, and at times rather flat. (The An-Ki, certainly, have little trouble stealing the show from the humans.) It does not help, either, that many members of his rather large cast of characters are not put to much use in this 566 page book. Additionally, there are few immediately significant events after the mid-point of the novel. It might be said that too much of the rather large book is devoted to setting up what will happen in later installments.

Nonetheless, Zimmer knows how to keep the reader turning the pages, and delivers a sufficiently effective foundation for a compelling enough bigger story that he earns some benefit of the doubt.

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New Issue: TFF 2009.16

Issue 2009.16

Men might regard economic equality with favor or disfavor, according to their economic positions, but every woman, simply because she was a woman, was bound to be for it as soon as she got it through her head what it meant for her half of the race.

—Edward Bellamy, from Equality (1897)

Fiction

• Wings So Foreign, Frank Ray Ard (art by Arianna Ciula)
• The Contractor, Terry Grimwood (art by Teresa Tunaley)
• Galatea's Stepchildren, Sam S. Kepfield (art by Rachel H. White)
• Only the Dogs Bark, Dawn Lloyd (art by Bonnie Brunish)
• 10%, Edward W. Robertson (art by Douglas Draper)
• The Recycled Man, part 2, Rob Sharp (art by Cécile Matthey)

Download printable issue : PDF : ZIP

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Zelenyj, Experiments at 3 Billion AM (2009)

Alexander Zelenyj, Experiments at 3 Billion AM. Eibonvale Press, 2009. Pp. 664. ISBN 9780955526824. £18.75.

Reviewed by Terry Grimwood

Before I even read one word I was impressed by the sheer beauty of this book. The cover art and presentation is superb, and apparently the version I received is one of a number of variations. I have not been able to find a credit for the artist, which is a shame because they deserve one. It’s not just the picture on the front however, it’s the sheer feel of this enormous volume, a physical presentation that endows it with an air of gravitas, a sense that you have something important in your hands.

So to the meat under the skin. As I said, this is a big book, 658 pages of prose, 40 stories, each one illustrated with a black and white drawing as enigmatic as the titles themselves. The contents page alone makes fascinating reading; the titles, a list of phrases that collectively reads like a poem: “In the City Where Dreams Wander the Sidewalks”, “Pining for the Lost Love of the Moon Creatures” and “Poppy, the Girl of my Dreams and the Alien Invasion I can Detect Like Radar through my Braces” for example. All intriguing, drawing you in, making you wonder what on Earth (or off it) these stories can be about.

Well, as I said earlier, there are 40 of them, none of which overstay their welcome, and some which, inevitably have already faded into the amorphous whole. However, many more remain vivid in my memory. What to choose? I’ll try to be representative of the main settings (settings whose borders are often blurred or overlapped) of the book, four in fact, the Canadian countryside, the city, alien invasion (okay, not a setting but a theme but it is a recurring one) and the world of teenagers.

“Let the Firefly Men Remind You” shows us a group of those self-same teenagers idling their rural summer away making love through the hot, blue-gold days and sitting in campfire idleness through the nights. Then darkness seeps in from the edges in the form of a series of inexplicable incinerations. Here, then, a fine example of how the interrelationships of the characters, their emotions and certainties, unravel as the light of their summer bleeds away.

Moving to the city we have “I Humbly Accept this War Stick”. The narrator is a serial killer, his raison d’être to impress his bloody-handed idol. The ending is unexpected and shocking and shows that Zelenyj is capable of portraying brutality as well as beauty and this is one story that does take us to the darker regions of the human psyche, but without hysteria or justification. The characters just are.

Many of the teenage love and angst stories are set around alien invasion, or the threat of it, again, never overt or even reliable. “Love, Death and the Monsters at the Drive-in” is a classic of this theme. Two lovers are at the drive-in where an alien-invaders film is showing. As the two lovers pledge heart and soul to one another, something happens. It could be a real invasion, or is it something else, something connected to the film and the state of their love-lorn hearts? Subtle, funny and wonderfully written, this was one of my favourites.

And that is one of the joys of this book, the ambiguity, the intense subtlety of Zelenyj’s writing, what I call satisfying ambiguity.

Along the way we have the gossamer-subtle and delicately tragic “Blue Love Maria”, the gorgeously horrible “Black Flies Inside” in which inner darkness becomes manifest in the most nauseating way. “Gladiators in the Sepulchre of Abominations”, re-visited when a man returns to his lonely family home and the terrible secret it holds. There’s childhood paranoia to be unravelled in “Waiting for the New Reign of the Fire Ants”, and we meet “Captain of the Ship of Flowers,” the last survivor of an interplanetary expedition who stumbled on the face of God.

Terry’s choice? The opening tale, “The Potato Thief Beneath Indifferent Stars”. A lonely, ageing farmer finds a strange creature in his potato patch, a meeting that leads to a touching, delicate relationship and the dawning of a new spirit of hope for the old man.

Very quickly the name Ray Bradbury sprang to mind. Bradbury poured with a dash of du Maurier. Think October Country and Don’t Look Now, mingled with the man’s own art and you will have some inkling of what Zelenyj is about. because many of these stories hold that same, lost, whimsical, oddly nostalgic aura that Bradbury evokes. However, excellent as he is, Zelenyj seldom paints his words onto the page with the same delicacy as Bradbury, where Bradbury is fragile, his worked structures held together by the faintest of literary bindings, a style that gives the illusion of compete unselfconsciousness, Zelenyj is gives the opposite impression, the care and labour is obvious. I know this is an unfair criticism because this author is an individual, a craftsman in his own right and not a Bradbury-copier by any means, but the similarity is inevitable.

Having said that, this is a majestic and wonderful collection. As for genre, well, it I suppose most of the stories here are science fiction, but as soon as those two much-maligned words are uttered the label seems cumbersome and inadequate. Slipstream is better, but then what is slipstream but... okay, I’ll stop right there. The plots are spider webs, both in complexity and layering, motivation and resolution. There are aliens, possibly, an invasion may be imminent, or even underway, or perhaps it isn’t and if there are supernatural events in progress they are always a backdrop, the energy and engine of the relationships and emotions of the protagonists. There are no cumbersome explanations, no heavy-weather descriptions of the why and wherefores of the fantastical elements. They happen and they affect and that is enough.

I read this book in one long marathon, not a good idea. The subtle, and as I mentioned earlier, sometimes self-conscious, style can become wearing and cloying, the intensity and emotional power too much. But isn’t that the case with many anthologies, the parts greater than the sum, the stories, jewels to be appreciated one at a time for their true value to be uncovered. So it is with the tales in Experiments at 3 Billion AM, they are masterpieces of subtlety and suggestion, electric with emotional power, brimming with inventiveness, enigmatic, inconclusive and delicately drawn, touching, without being sentimental, evocative and often deeply unsettling and shocking. This then is that rare achievement, great writing and great story telling.

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Harris, The Third Craft (2008)

James T. Harris, The Third Craft. BPS Books, 2008. Pp. 300. ISBN 9780980923124. £12.00 / $24.95.

Reviewed by Karina Kantas

Knowing that The Third Craft is a trilogy, some readers may think they have the third installment and that the 1st and 2nd parts were called ‘First’ and ‘Second Craft’ respectively. But don’t be fooled: this is a novel about the third UFO to crash land in North America. The book is a comfortable read which could almost put it into the Young Adult genre, especially as the two protagonists are 18 year-old brothers. However, The Third Craft could also be classified as a sci-fi political thriller as the plot is about the political fight between aliens and the US government.

Twin brothers, Hawk and Joe, discover the eponymous craft and in doing so unleash a conspiracy involving aliens that are human and humans that are aliens. Twenty pages in the exciting plot has the brothers just discovering the crashed UFO, Harris’s version of ‘Area 51’, and what really happened in Roswell. Too many dates and name-drops later, we get back to the plot concerning the brother’s discovery.

Unfortunately, the split in the story may cause the reader to lose the flow. The back-story on the major players and their significance plays an important role in the novel, but would work just as well with half the wordage. Too much information overloads the mind, and distracts from the adventure. Certainly, a lot of research has gone into this novel, but with sci-fi, a reader expects to be wowed by advances in science, not delivered lectures on history or religion. The backtracking dulls the senses and may have the reader turning the pages quicker than they are reading them.

Science fiction rightly focuses on the science; the author explains scientific probabilities and results in great detail, but he does so as though explaining to a novice. Most of this lengthy detail would be left on the cutting room floor if The Third Craft were a movie. The scientific detail could be expressed more visually; although Harris’s grasp of the visual in his writing is exceptional, all the back-story and detail in the in-between sections slow down the exciting plot.

There is wonderful description in this novel, however—for example, when Joe first enters the alien ship, Harris allows the reader to explore and experience the interior of the craft along with Joe’s emotions and surprise. Then comes a delicious twist: the next time the novel backtracks, we learn that not only did the government know about the UFOs, but they had been secretly performing their own experiments using alien technology. Later in the novel, Harris offers another delightful twist, one that this reader did not see coming, and that only adds to the excitement of the plot as the twins learn that their life was built around secrecy and lies, and no one is who they seem to be.

The author keeps it in the family when it comes to aliens, and it’s good to know that even extraterrestrials have problems when it comes to politics and property rights!

The books ends how a first installment should: the last chapter is fast and thrilling, causing the reader to want to know what happens next. Harris thankfully doesn’t leave any unanswered questions for future installments, but we know that there is a war coming and that the twins have many more adventures ahead.

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Amis/Conquest, Spectrum 2 (1962)

Kingsley Amis and Robert Conquest (edd.), Spectrum 2: A second science fiction anthology. Gollancz, 1962.

Reviewed by Djibril Alayad.

This is the second of the Spectrum anthologies edited by Amis and Conquest, in which they present a handful of high-quality science fiction stories originally published in the late 1940s or early '50s. These two writers are both known in-genre and respected in literary circles, and part of the agenda behind these anthologies (explicitly recounted in the introduction) is hinted at in the epigraph:
‘Sf’s no good,’ they bellow till we’re deaf.
‘But this looks good.’—’Well then, it’s not sf.’
This volume includes stories by authors as legendary as Aldiss, Asimov, Dick, and van Vogt, as well as luminaries whose names may be less familiar to twenty-first century readers. Pieces range from visionary and thrilling, to silly and dated, but all are important examples of their type, and fit as well into the literature of the mid-twentieth century as they do into the history of the genre. I picked up a battered copy of the Pan paperback reprint of this volume from the £1 clearance shelf in a London bookstore, and this review will be one reader's personal reaction to each of the eight stories within.

The opening story, Wyman Guin's 1951 story 'Beyond Bedlam', is both the longest and one of the most dated pieces in the collection, being a slightly silly tale of a future society in which schizophrenia has become the norm, and people's alter egos are strictly controlled by drugs and allowed to live for 50% of the time each. The background is set with one of the most clumsy excuses for an info-dump in the writer's arsenal: a history project delivered by a schoolgirl in front of her classmates. The necessary drama is provided by a couple who cheat the system in order to have an affair with someone they should never meet, who should be a repressed personality while the other is "on top". The society in which the story is set is stuffy even by 1950s standards (albeit more sexually liberated), and the characters are flat and unsympathetic. I suppose there could be a social/political moral to this piece, along the lines of the pressure to conform finally persuading even the rebel that their punishment is for the good of society (in the manner of Nineteen Eighty-Four, which was published only two years earlier, and is immeasurably more mature).

A second, shorter story is a much better read: 'Bridge' by James Blish, first published (in Astounding, like fully half of the pieces in this volume) in 1952. Not really a character piece, although there is an unconvincing romantic sub-plot between the protagonist and a slightly petulant, not-terribly-competent female co-worker. The glorious hero of this story however is the giant planet Jupiter, in the swirling gases and raging storms of whose surface a group of human engineers are building a massive bridge of ice. The constant perils of this fragile, continent-sized structure, buffeted by the planet, built by robots controlled from orbit, in constant danger of collapse and failure, make an image as beautiful and alien in its own way as Solaris, the sentient but unutterably alien planet-ocean. When it turns out that the bridge is an experiment, an exercise in testing and developing physics and engineering rather than having an end in itself, it becomes even more beautiful: like life, it is all process, not object; all experience, not outcome.

The first overtly political piece in this anthology, Brian Aldiss's 'There is a Tide' (1956), involves a meeting between two very different brothers on the shores of Lake Tanganyika. One a poet, the other a hugely influential geo-engineer, they have different attitudes to the sculpting of the African landscape to modernize the world, as they do to the huge genocide that wiped the white race of the planet within living memory. A sensitive and daring story, Aldiss brings down the wrath of the Earth on the heads of his hubristic protagonists, faces them with a history that never forgets nor forgives atrocities, and a civilization that is even more at the mercy of the Earth than the world is subject to the engineering of an advanced society. The first reading of this story is a little odd, because a "reveal" in the final page feels a bit cheap, but the second reading shows how this was prefigured and consistent throughout the tale. Certainly one of the better, more convincing stories in the collection.

The only story I had read before picking up this classic anthology was 'Second Variety' (1953) by Philip K. Dick, a creepy Cold War story set on the devastated battlefield, where allies and "Ivans" alike are at the mercy of the "claws", automated weapons designed to evolve and be the ultimate, unstoppable killing machine. Unlike the 1995 Hollywood Screamers, which sets the war on a distant mining world, includes a light-hearted sidekick, slick dialogue, a romantic interest, and a pathetic slushy ending, Dick gives no redemption to his world or his characters anywhere in the piece. This is another Dick story about humans' ability to destroy themselves, and our inability to tell real people from convincing fakes. With existential panic and shattered-earth despair, this story is both more modern and more gripping than any other piece in this volume. Amazing to think it was written in the same decade as many of these others.

Isaac Asimov's 'The Feeling of Power' (1958) is simultaneously the most old-fashioned and—as is often the case with Asimov—the least dated story in the volume. A slightly silly, but clearly allegorical tale about a future in which humans have become so reliant upon calculating machines that no one has the ability to perform even basic multiplication. Sad to think that this cautionary tale is even more important today than it was in the 1950s (if we think in terms of scientific and logical literacy as a whole, rather than merely arithmetic).

Another very silly story, and one whose origins in 1955 (Astounding, again) make it a bit difficult to take seriously, is 'Sense from Thought Divide', by Mark Clifton. Involving an engineering exercise to harness the power of (offensively stereotyped; admittedly charlatan) swamis and psychics, equally unconvincing and unsympathetic characters, a plot revolving around the person-management skills of an amoral and patronizing boss, and science that is neither speculative nor credible, left perhaps the least memorable story of the anthology for me.

Much more memorable, if a somewhat typical classic scifi plot, was A.E. van Vogt's 'Resurrection' (1948). Aliens visit an uninhabited but clearly far future Earth, and set extremely cautiously about resurrecting one or two long-dead humans they find preserved in a museum to try and find out what happened to the planet. As they move from distant history to more modern (and posthuman) corpses, they find that the natives have acquired some quite incredible powers, and end up taking awful measures to try to ensure the survival of their own species from the terrible people they have awakened. The plot is all very dramatic and genuinely gripping, although the characters (being both alien and 1940s military stereotypes) are not very interesting or sympathetic. Certainly a well-written story and worth reading (and perhaps imitating).

The last piece in this volume, 'Vintage Season' by Henry Kuttner (original 1946) is one of the most interesting and original tale in the collection. At the start of the story, with a tone almost suggestive of Lovecraft, a rather weak-willed protagonist welcomes three unsettlingly alien guests to a rented wing of his house, while his fiancée persuades him to try and eject them to make more money from a prospective buyer. The alien guests turn out to be both more tenacious and more alluring than either the buyer or the fiancée, and the host finds himself drawn into an affair with a quite unreal woman and mesmerized by the entertainment technologies and media she surrounds herself with. Of course, in this twisted tale of alienness, timelessness, and fate, the protagonist is lost even before he is exposed to things he should never know, and his weakness of character means he is powerless even before forces beyond his imagining are ranged against him. When the final tragic climax comes, all this means it is hard to mourn the shallow society that is suffering such painful toils; nor is there much comfort in seeing the hollow sophisticates that will follow in a later age. A quite bleak and inventive piece.

Interestingly, this 48 year-old collection of the "worthy" science fiction of its day contains a round mix of stories. From those that are a silly and forgettable as one might expect of pulp literature from the middle of the last century, to those that contain the genius and fire that make them the recognized classics they are, via a middle few that are surely worth reading for all their flaws, and which I should probably never have picked up were it not for this exercise. I'm glad that I did.

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Rector, Around a Dark Corner (2008)

Jeani Rector, Around a Dark Corner. Turner Maxwell Books, 2008. Pp. 310. ISBN 9780956188403. £8.99.

Reviewed by Terry Grimwood

This is Jeani Rector’s second collection and an example of an author who is steadily improving and developing her style. She has definitely corrected some of the weaknesses evident in her first collection and moved from the some of the traditional horror tropes it contained to the grey-shadowed, more subtle regions of that gothic land inhabited by the writers of dark fiction.

The anthology opens with a gruesome, amoral and enigmatic tale involving ‘The Dead Man’ and his killer. The reader literally stumbles on an unnamed narrator who is trying to dispose of the corpse of the title. There is a lot of medical detail and the protagonist’s plight is engaging and unnerving, right up until the final, shocking moment.

Following hard on its heels is the rather clumsily titled ‘A Medieval Tale of the Plague’. As a story it is compelling and tense, the atmosphere of fear, the filth and horror of medieval London in the midst of the Black Death is well described and vivid. Tension is cranked up relentlessly as the feisty young heroine first tries to hide from the contagion, then escape the capital. A cracking good yarn, but the effect is spoiled by some very anachronistic and jarring transatlantic language; “I figured...”, “Next street over...” and “Hi...” for example. Not terms used by medieval English - as far as I know. This is a shame because the research and the ambience of the story were authentic up to this point.

‘The Spirit of Death’ is a corker; a tale of seduction and dark and very bloody rituals. Nicely atmospheric this one, and filled with a sense of encroaching doom. In ‘Horrorscope’ we have a disturbed son who is determined to make sure his horoscope comes true at any cost. Again, tightly plotted, well-written and nasty. ‘In any Language’ takes us to Mexico at the time of the American civil war as a deserter comes face to face with a very different violence to the one he has fled south to escaper. The actual horror is traditional, but given a fresh lick of paint by its setting and a lively, energetic telling.

Another disturbed gentleman with an unhealthy interest in ‘Maggots’into a horror of rotting flesh and obsession. There is enough detail and sensory description to make this a story to be avoided at meal time.

‘Flight 529’ is an oddity, a card Rector first revealed in her last collection Open Grave and one I like - the retelling of a true story. In Open Grave it was a personalised version of the genesis of the Ebola epidemic, this time it is the first-hand experience a man involved in a plane crash. The description of the awful realisation that something was very wrong, the terror of the descent, the preparation for imminent impact and the desperate fight for survival that follows all draw the reader in and puts you, white-knuckled, into that seat. The final act of great human courage is both inspiring and as good as any fictional account.

This is followed by my favourite, ‘Lady Cop’. This piece is Terry’s Favourite (I always have one) and a longer, first-person narrative that takes us into the world of a woman police officer. What makes this story stand out is a sense of authenticity and a strong emotional engagement with the protagonist. The cop is a rookie, anxious to impress but treated with disdain by her male partner and colleagues. The case is a nasty one, a murder. Step-by-step the story takes the reader through procedure, emotion, the tension surrounding the case and its brutal dénouement and aftermath. There was a sense of truth about ‘Lady Cop’.

Next is ‘The Golem’ about... well, it does what it says on the tin, and more so because it is a retelling of a Jewish legend. Set in the Prague Ghetto in the 16th century, the story centres around Rabbi Loew who is forced, reluctantly, to take desperate and supernatural action to protect his people from yet another wave of brutal persecution. The problem is that it is very hard to close the door on what comes through from the darker regions. This one is a good historical piece, with no anachronisms or jarring Americanisms. Leow’s dilemma is well presented and the story moves at a cracking pace.

The collection ends with a novella called ‘A Teenage Ghost Story’. Again, a clumsy title that gives too much away because essentially it is about a teenager and... well... a ghost. That said however, the story itself is another compelling, engaging tale that keeps those pages turning. The teenager at the centre of the tale is, thankfully, not the kind of whining, Oh-My-God princess Hollywood throws at us with its endless High School and then-there-were-none slasher movies, but a very personable young lady who quickly wins the reader’s affection. The supernatural element is perhaps not entirely original but the page-turning narrative does draw you in as it races neatly towards this dramatic conclusion.

The cover art is suitably gothic and provides the right feel for the collection. However, I’m afraid the publisher has messed up, certainly with my copy. The spine text is upside-down and off-centre. While not detracting from the stories themselves it doesn’t give the sharp, professional feel necessary to sell a book. And it is unfair to an author who has done her part in laying down some good prose and fine stories. Hopefully this has been rectified.

At her best, with ‘Lady Cop’ for example, Rector displays a keen eye for detail and an ability to engage the reader emotionally with her characters. The same, though to a lesser extent is true of the closing novella. There are some fine dark moments and enough morbid detail and nasty surprises to keep most horror fans happy. There are some predictable endings, but even they can be forgiven because the prose is friendly, likeable, the book is an acquaintance, relating some terrible and dark things that they heard about or experienced.

So, an immensely enjoyable collection of well-plotted and readable stories. There is a mixture of original and traditional–in the horror sense–work, but even the familiar monsters are given a fresh feel and there is no trace of tiredness to them. The historical and real-life re-telling is an interesting string to Rector’s bow, and one I hope she develops further, providing the research and attention to detail–particularly the dialogue–is sound. This is different and works well. Another admirable quality of Rector is that she has taken criticism of her first book on the chin and acted on it to produce a much improved and enjoyable work.

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Dolan, Another Santana Morning (2008)

Mike Dolan, Another Santana Morning. Elastic Press, 2008. Pp. 195. ISBN 9780955318153. £5.99 / $12.99.

Reviewed by Johann Carlisle

This collection stands out a little from the usual fare from small press favourite Elastic Press, by having a more laid-back feel than most. The stories collected here by Mike Dolan veer wildly from fantastic, through trippy, magical, realist, to allegorical, with a generous helping of childlike enthusiasm and innocence. A similar collection to this was first published in 1970, but fell victim to an obscure distributor (who specialised in porno rather than sci-fi) and disappeared rather quickly. The author has apparently not been active in science fiction in the intervening years, but he has come back strongly with this volume. In places the writing feels naive, the content perhaps dated (even in the case of previously unpublished pieces), but this is not entirely a bad thing: there is plenty of 1960s and '70s genre fiction that remains relevant and readable to this day, despite being obviously written in a different time.

Among the most vivid pieces in this volume is the title story of the original collection, 'Santana Morning'. An old man lives a lonely existence in the desert, with his dog and his dreams, when suddenly a young woman appears out of nowhere and moves in with him. This woman is so perfect, so dreamlike, so malleable, like something moulded from his very needs, that the story becomes pure sexual fantasy at this point. When he realises how young she is, on top of all this, he rejects her as an unrealistic dream, sending her away as though she never existed. His loneliness is somehow natural, deserved, inevitable, or at least better than fantasy would have been. It may sound somewhat bleak and moralizing, but this story is full of humanity, of sensitivity for a lonely man's emotions, obsessions and social weaknesses. Stunning stuff.

Another story from the original collection is 'Of a Yellow Summer', the protagonist of which is a tired old man, bereaved, tired and down, who buys a knock-off aerosol called "Summertime" from a huckster dwarf. The powerful vernal scent and colour and light of this unlikely product takes him back to his childhood, where he meets the one girl he ever (briefly) loved... This is a story with a clever, ironic twist on the "changing history" trope: the old man falls while averting the tragedy he has spent his entire dismal life blaming himself for. The story then switches to that of an old woman, who has been alone her whole life, meeting the dwarf and perhaps getting her own chance to relive and change history? As a science fiction story, the time-travel paradox is clumsily side-stepped; as a study of human nostalgia, guilt, and obsession with the past, it is sensitive, moving, and entertaining in equal measure.

A previously unpublished story seems to follow this theme: 'Of Another Yellow Summer' has a dystopian setting, with television news showing nothing but perpetual war, young people being conscripted to fight, and the old forced into "retirement". The protagonists are an old couple whose lifelong home is about to be repossessed because they are too old to keep it—the "Summertime" spray, unlike in the previous story, somehow transports the couple to a cheesy, mom n' pop neighbourhood with pretty lawns and a family that respects them. All this is rather clichéd, and the story is much weaker than the original it harks back to.

The volume opens with another new story, 'The Street of the Storytellers', in which a young would-be raconteur feels unable to compete with the established and experienced tells on the street around him. Wondering which of their stylistic techniques he should emulate in order to win an audience for himself, he finally decides just to be himself, which is the only honest tactic as well as the most effective, since only effortless storytelling is attractive to the listener. As well as being rather blatant allegory for the struggle of the writer to find a voice, I found this a little unconvincing, not to say naive—since it takes a lot of effort to give the impression of artlessness; true artlessness is either incompetent (and not much fun to listen to) or disingenuous. In fact it is only through the deep study of writing styles both past and present that you can choose a voice and be sure that it is your own. That pedantic point aside, as a story this works well, and it opens the volume appropriately.

'Some of My Best Friends Are...' is another story with rather crude allegory: this time it is humans' prejudice against intelligent orangutans that is being contrasted to the racism of American rednecks. The "irony"—that the chauvinist protagonist is himself black (in an splendidly colour-blind future USA)—is also delivered clunkily and as a punchline. The whole business is laid on rather thick, and I'm not sure who it was meant to convince.

One of the original stories, which really feels old-fashioned, is 'Journey by Heliodrome', the story of a travelling salesman who acquires a pedal-powered flying machine and uses it to fly all over the world and have amazing adventures. This piece is rather reminiscent of balloon-journey stories such as Poe's 'Hans Pfaall', and is therefore old-fashioned beyond anything else in this collection. Although this story lacks much by way of drama or climax, it is charming enough in itself.

One recurring theme in this book is a rumination on the nature of the sexes, specifically the different needs and therefore behaviours of men and women. Two stories in which this theory is propounded most explicitly are 'Trudy's Eyes' and 'Strange Lover', both supernatural horror stories of very different flavours: the former is a grim and joyless tale of a young boy trying to deal with the fact that his father is raping his sister; the latter of a woman trapped by a sexual presence seemingly created by her own masturbatory fantasy. Both stories are sexual in different terms—neither is erotic in a titillating way. The theory of the sexes, which is harmless enough in a pre-Mars/Venus context, is broadly speaking that men are always trying to give of themselves, to quest outwards, to spread, to invade others, while women, who contain an emptiness, seek to take others in, to fill themselves, to invite. Although this philosophical musing is less problematic and stereotyping than the crap you get in self-help books from the 1990s onwards, it is still at best pop-psych, describing the cultural fantasies of the Western male rather than exposing any psychological sexual dimorphism. In as much as it helps to drive the relationships between characters, however, this theorizing works as plot device, and perhaps should not be taken too seriously.

One of the most moving and sensitive pieces in this collection is 'Memory', a truly dark and tragic tale a of a little girl waking from unconsciousness after an accident with a little brass dog. She has been out for so long, it seems, that in her confusion and disorientation she might even be dead...

If I have sometimes been critical of the writing or the ideas behind these stories, it is in an attempt to be constructive and to put into context what is actually a very varied and competent collection. The horror is very strong; fantasy is quirky and charming, rarely too clichéd; there are trippy and surreal pieces that are almost prose-poems; even the overt humour is passably successful (which is really saying something, since this reviewer rarely finds "comic" stories to be the least bit amusing).

Some aspects of Dolan's writing need more work (but don't we all!). I hope this author is still writing, and will keep publishing in the small press and the genres that he has been absent from for so long. With this wonderful back-story, I have no doubt that a fresh start and new works will lead to the creation of many more excellent and moving pieces of writing.

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New Issue: TFF 2009.15

Issue 2009.15

There is no solution except the freedom of woman—which means, of course, the freedom of the masses of the people, men and women, and the ceasing altogether of economic slavery.

— Edward Carpenter (1896)

Fiction

• Respite Time, Eric Del Carlo (illustrated by Paul Downes)
• The Transmigration, Nader Elhefnawy (illustrated by Joy E. MacMillan)
• Ephemeral Love, Melanie Rees (illustrated by Miguel Santos)
• The Recycled Man, part 1, Rob Sharp (illustrated by Carmen)

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Full issue and editorial at http://futurefire.net/2009.15/

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Maloney, Six Silly Stories (2008)

Geoffrey Maloney, Six Silly Stories. Elastic Press, 2008. Pp. 64. £3.00.

Reviewed by Craig Bellamy

Six Silly Stories by Australian author Geoffrey Maloney is a collection of six short fairytale stories that subvert commonplace, everyday situations. The stories are brief and morbid, only at times rescued by the shear absurdity of the situation. The characters are threadbare, gloomy and tragic, and leave the reader with an eerie sense of loss rather than the buoyancy gained through having a giggle or a laugh. Perhaps there is a dark sense of humour at work; but it is not always apparent. The reader often feels uneasy and unable to laugh at situations that involve such absurd human suffering.

Maloney has been writing for 20 years and like many Australian authors, it is difficult to pin him down within any genre. Perhaps this is the nature of the small writing scene in Australia where authors are broader; unable to survive in a single scene that may flourish in larger readerships such as England. He has been known to write dark fantasy and ‘future political histories’ and in his own words if there is a unifying charter to his work it is that “I’m always keen to put my characters into odd situations and see how they deal with it. Basically, they need to suffer or at least be terribly confused by what is happening to them” (see Tabula Rasa interview [2006]). I tend to like this about his characters, and indeed this tactic to subvert the banal. This refusal to leave the reader in a comfortable known position surrounded by the prosaic attachments is not the safest path for an author, even in a field as weird as speculative fiction.

In Six Silly Stories there is the story of a woman in an office who has powerful perfume that renders passers-by unconscious—including the repugnant corporate boss. There is the story of a raunchy party on an aeroplane whilst the engines burn, a man dances on the wing, and ants strip the pilot's flesh bare. There is a story of indifferent voyeurs in an office tower who watch the ‘down-on-their luck’ residents in the tower-block next door whilst making wagers on the chances of them jumping to their death. This story is treated with caviller indifference and if there is humour there, then it is dark humour set against a night sky. There is a story of a man trying to get a job as an ant-catcher (that doesn’t really make sense at all); a story of a man levitating in a doctor’s surgery, and finally, the story of a rather dull character riding on the bus where he finds true love in the back of the head of the lady in front of him. Looking at the back of someone’s head on the bus may be something we have all done, but still this story didn’t really cross any conceptual boundaries for me. It still remains absurdly normal.

My personal favourite is ‘Miracle at 30 000 Feet’, the story about the raunchy party on the aeroplane. Whilst reading it was searching for a meaning, for a moral to the story, to something that my subjugated work-a-day practical mind could take away and apply to a useful and meaningful task. But it wasn’t about this. It was silly and absurd. It was meaningless! It takes one of the most rigidly practical and behaviourally-strict environments imaginable; this is mundane modern air travel, and turns it into a riotous feast of Armadillos, ants, a naked nun and drunken priest, and a mysterious grim-reaper type character in a wide-brimmed hat warning the narrator that the plane’s engines are on fire. This is a modern fairytale without the childish innocence; it is gibberish, surreal and visual, almost caustic in its subversion of the mass-produced mind with its particular modes of situational behaviour. The narrator asks ‘is there a Bolivian on board’ (the plane is in fact flying to South America) and a Bolivian puts up his hand. The narrator asks if he is carrying an Armadillo, to which the Bolivian answers yes. The Armadillo is then used to eat the killer ants that have in turn eaten the pilots. Perhaps this is a happy ending; I am not sure—I will think about it when I am flying to Cairo next month. At least I will have something to think about on the plane (whilst looking at the head in front of me), that is a little more intrepid than the mundanely blended world of air travel.

A little irrational spark here and there, a few silly stories to stir up the muck a few absurd images to subvert the ‘normal-o-pathic’ path on the long tedious journey to being, well, normal. Maloney has succeeded at doing this, if this is what he intended to do. The whole collection is a bit patchy with some stories standing out more than others, but still the whole silly collection is worth reading if your thinking, like mine, needs a little jolt every now and again. I just wish I could have laughed a bit more.

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Ashley (ed.), Subtle Edens (2008)

Allen Ashley (ed.), Subtle Edens: An Anthology of Slipstream Fiction. Elastic Press, 2008. Pp. 320. ISBN 978-0955318191. £7.99.

Reviewed by Steven Pirie

What exactly is slipstream? From the back cover of Subtle Edens: “Slipstream may use the tropes and ideas of science fiction, fantasy and horror but is not bound by their rules. Slipstream may appear to be conventional literary fiction but falls outside the staid boundaries.”.

So, this definition suggests, some stories are most definitely literary, and some are most certainly genre, and between the two there lies a kind of buffer zone, where each may dip into the other’s tropes and ideas. But not quite with impunity, because the progeny of this mixed marriage can no longer be thought purely genre nor literary, and so needs a name of its own: Slipstream.

I can understand, perhaps, a distinction being required between say the high fantasy of elves and swords and sorcerers with what might be called more mundane fantasy. But I wonder whether further degrees of genre within this broad division are truly needed. Is slipstream not just urban fantasy, or Mundane SF, or magical reality, or any of the other nomenclatures of the day to describe genre fiction based primarily in the real world? Or is there more here, and this is this some subtle attempt to allow ‘mildly’ genre stories legitimately into the more approved world of mainstream, literary fiction?

After all, there’s always been the thought that literary denizens and readers look down upon their genre counterparts. Audrey Niffenegger’s Time Traveler’s Wife, for example, was marketed to great success as literary fiction yet would qualify as slipstream by any definition offered by Subtle Edens. I wonder whether it would have had the same success were it labelled fantasy, or dare I say it, slipstream? Given that the answer is likely no, it’s not hard to see how genre writers might take any route into literary fiction they can get. Of course, all that might be somewhat cynical.

And the above may seem moot, but I think it’s worth clarifying such labels as Subtle Edens, by the editor’s foreword, is itself a study of this supposed sub genre. The twenty-one stories and one essay are offered as examples of slipstream. And again from the back cover we have the somewhat pretentious claim: “Genre is dead; long live the genre that is not a genre!”.

So, does it work? Is Subtle Edens filled with genre stories that bang upon the very doors of the literary world? To answer that fully I think we’d need to also go down the route of defining what exactly is literary/mainstream fiction, and there are as many opinions on that loitering about the Internet as for slipstream itself. The short answer, though, is... sometimes. There are no bad stories; all are entertaining in their own way. But some of the stories are more rooted in reality than others, yet it’s these others that make me wonder, why slipstream? To be fair, I feel all aspire to evocative language as embellishment rather than rely purely on shock value or genre tropes as their raison d’être, so yes, there is certainly literary value there too. And maybe that’s the point.

One thing that struck me throughout is the number of stories that have sudden, ambiguous endings, as if it’s a feature of slipstream that it’s easy to bend reality to the premise of the story but far harder to bring things full circle and end the story back in reality, with real and plausible explanations of the genre elements.

The anthology opens with Mike O’Driscoll’s 'And Zero at the Bone'. It’s a strong opening that weaves an unfolding mystery message delivered in various ways to Cloud. That Cloud’s wife and daughter are ‘away’ adds emotion and confusion until eventually all is revealed, the message is decoded and Cloud is reunited at least with his daughter. Happily, the dog makes it to paradise too. There should be more tales in which the family dog makes the cut!

'Darkroom', by Nina Allan, is a gentle but compelling tale, lovingly crafted in fine detail, yet somehow it managed to leave me cold with such an abrupt ending. The story meandered a little, but that was fine as I couldn’t help but bob along with the currents of love and loss. But in a way it meant I felt the abrupt ending more keenly given the gentleness of the preceding tale. The fantasy element is slight, and so this is probably a good example of the literary end of slipstream. This, along with “The House Beneath Delgany Street” and “Jasmine”, I feel to be amongst the best stories in the anthology.

'Alouette', by Joel Lane, is much more unashamed genre than “Darkroom”. It’s a horror offering that tells the story of ‘Happy Slapping’ video being sent at regular intervals to the protagonist’s mobile phone. Each call is accompanied by the song of the title. Each call exceeds the previous in the level of violence. Probably not a story for the squeamish, but nevertheless full of colourful imagery and with a nice ending that turns the tale somewhat back upon itself.

'Adrift', by Ian Shoebridge, is an odd tale based on no reality I’m familiar with. The protagonist, like the story, drifts on an ocean having succumbed to the mysterious and unexplained sinking of his ship. Despite clinging to a plank without food or water he survives great journeys. It’s the places he arrives at that raise the story. Shoebridge certainly has a vivid imagination, and the ports of call he creates are wonderful and entertaining. A disappointing ending, perhaps, but one in keeping with the constantly changing tack of the story. The ending has the feel that the writer merely got bored and stopped. The whimsical nature of the tale hints at a deeper allegory, of society’s outcasts and deserters, and possibly even global warming/flooding. Or maybe it’s just sheer entertainment. I can be an Emperor’s New Clothes kind of person sometimes!

'Phobophilia', by Jeff Gardiner, tells the tale of two social misfits pushed together as roommates when starting at university. Phobophilia – the psychological love of fear. From the wonderful opening line, the tale becomes a little heavy-going as lots of back-and-forth dialogue tries to be both vague and enlightening about Toby’s obsession with fear, read death, itself. It’s when the unnamed narrator separates from his roommate I felt the tale become more interesting, possibly because the back and forth is replaced by much introspection and I felt I was getting inside the narrator’s character more. The ending is both depressing and upbeat at the same time—a neat trick—with midlife crises battling the narrator’s determination to conquer the fears that led to Toby’s demise.

In 'Mind-Forged Manacles', by David A Sutton, Wellman, along with his robotic bodyguard ‘Ghost’, is an E-Col operative sent to serve a Compulsory Use Land Order on Miriam Warangula, she who has illegally cultivated ‘Gardenzone’, verdant parkland in the industrial outback. Wellman, rather easily it has to be said, falls in love with Warangula, and the story develops about how the two can disable the formidably armed Ghost. Despite the fact the story writes itself into a one-of-two endings scenario—he either saves the day and gets the girl or he doesn’t—I rather enjoyed this story. It’s nicely written and holds the interest. Why it should be slipstream and not merely science fiction, though, I’m not sure.

'Icarus in Nouvellville', by Douglas Thompson, takes the classical mythology of Icarus flying too close to the sun to explore how the Gods might view the modern world were it thrust upon them. Icarus is borne on broken wings and tradewinds and ocean currents to Nouvellville, whose occupants ride ‘...silver land ships that hurtled by on invisible winds...’ and talk to each other by ‘silver birds... pressed against their ears...’ mobile phones. I love the metaphor and poetic language, though Thompson gets carried away at times with women’s ‘sacred places’ as a euphemism for their, erm, doodahs, and the fact that Icarus’s eyes seem unduly mobile when bathers/water-nymphs run screaming up the beach as his ‘eyes followed after them’. I’d do the same, I fear. It’s an interesting tale, with even a hint of 9/11 for a finale, and is perhaps unusual in the collection in that it turns around the concept of reality. I mean, telling the story from Icarus’s point of view, it’s our reality that’s alien, rather than in the other stories that generally start with our reality as the norm and then warp it slightly into slipstream. Retrograde slipstream? No, don’t get me going again.

'The House Beneath Delgany Street', by Scott Brendel, is another piece most definitely slipstream by Subtle Edens’s definition. This is a glimpse into the harsh world of tramps and hobos, and their search for the almost mythical house on Delgany Street, with its grail-like comforts of roast dinners and gravy; surely the last refuge for down-and-outs before they depart this world. I love the sinister feel to the story, that the house is both salvation and damnation. This is also among the best stories in the collection.

'Overturned', by Neil Ayres and Aliya Whiteley, is one of the longer stories on offer. The story is told from a number of points of view, each overlapping at first as we witness events from each character before each then moves the story forward in their own way. The genre element is slight, revolving around Sammie finding the mysterious and much sought after egg from the “diamond crab”. But the meat of the tale is in the differences and hardships of the characters’ relationships, and the battle young Sammie has in finding her place amongst them. A tale certainly toward the literary end of slipstream, and certainly well worth the read.

'Man, Who Considers The Cosmos', by S J Hirons, I found a little confusing at first, not feeling I knew whose story it was nor what was going on until well into the tale. But, when things did come together, the story took on a new life, became quite dark in tone and was well worth the effort in perseverance.

'Nose Piercing', by D W Green, I think strays too far from reality to qualify as slipstream. It’s a satirical journey into the world of puppets and the strings that constrain them, and the conflicts amongst those who might shake them off. In true Pinocchio style, one soon learns it’s not the noses being pierced but the noses doing the piercing! Possibly it’s the symbolism to real society restraining ourselves that brings in the slipstream element, though the premise of the story to my mind sees it as firmly genre. An entertaining piece just the same.

'Saxophony', by Marion Pitman, is a smooth, pleasant read that I must confess I didn’t understand. Louise has strong feelings she’s known Steven for some time, though from where and when she can’t recall. When the two embark upon a somewhat stop-start relationship one feels it’s only time before all will be revealed of their past. But Steve’s sax playing somehow rescues summer, and behind him when he plays the city becomes verdant. Whether this is a literal return to Eden or a subtle metaphor that he can bring summer back into Louise’s life I wouldn’t like to call. But it’s certainly a piece of writing that lingers after it’s gone.

'My Copy of Robinson', by Daniel Bennett, is the story I pondered longest over in writing this review. I couldn’t quite make my mind up if it worked or not for me. It has an element of describing fiction within fiction, the writing of Robinson of the title and how it applies to the narrator, that perhaps slows things down. Then again that nested quality also adds complexity that might be missing in some of the other tales in the anthology. The attention to detail is superb, yet it still has that slipstream vagueness I’ve come to expect by now.

'Silent Emergent, Doubly Dark' is the rather oddly entitled piece by Richard Thieme, and follows the life of an alien in its quest to understand consciousness and self. There’s some very imaginative writing here, and a complexity that probably raises what’s essentially a story deeply set in science fiction to the fringes of slipstream. We’re left wondering what’s real and what’s not real, and that’s not a bad way it seems to end a slipstream story.

'God’s Country', by A B Goelman, tells of Sammy and Will, both ‘sensitives’ employed by the Department of Industry and Development in laying railway tracks across God’s Country. The sensitives can see the Old Gods, malignant spirits bent of mischief, so their role is one of consultation. But Will is missing, and Sammy sees his real role in finding him. In doing so Sammy’s loyalty to his friend is severely tested. A fine piece of writing, this. I found myself held throughout by the delicious prose and the interesting storyline. Futuristic, perhaps, but solidly slipstream, I think.

'Welcome to Rodeomart', by Steve Rasnic Tem, takes consumerism to entirely new levels as the battle to obtain the latest gadget involves intense cunning, extreme violence and having a decent aim with a lasso. A strange ending involving a heavenly warehouse and the appliance to end all appliances makes for a very entertaining and unusual story indeed.

'The Upstairs Room', by Kate Robinson, is a superbly written piece in which the reasons Coralie is reluctant to spend time in her bedroom is skilfully revealed; from adolescent angst, to hidden voices, to, well, adding more would mean me including spoilers to some extent. Robinson has a deft talent with words, and I love the way this tale begins almost mundanely in the ordinary but ends up decidedly slipstream as the plot progresses.

'Luxury Flats', by Josh McDonald, has the wonderfully imaginative concept that one may ‘rent out’ parts of one’s brain to well-to-do but terminally ill tenants. Of course, as in life, one can not always choose one’s neighbours, and all is soon found to be ‘not well’. Great stuff.

'Conspiracy Courts the Maiden', by Toiya Kristen Finley is a bold experiment with form that sadly doesn’t work for me. Apparently it’s part of the definition of slipstream that writers are allowed to tweak form as well as reality, but here I found the page split in two and two threads of the story told simultaneously too much of a distraction, and the merits or otherwise of the tale became second place. I didn’t feel I knew where I was to read next. Was I to read each thread through in its entirety? And if so, why not just set it out conventionally? Was I to read to each juncture and then go back to start again on the other side of the page (when the idea of turning pages backwards to read a story seems so alien)? I’m a Philistine, I know, but I like my fiction to start top left and end bottom right. Surely even slipstream stories have to be readable else what’s the point?

'Out of Time', by Gary Fry, was a blessing after the form induced headache of 'Conspiracy'. Jim is a self-confessed hypochondriac who discovers he really is ill with a dodgy heart (would that be a joyous thing for a hypochondriac or the ultimate fear?). Jim’s wife is herself terminally ill. They take a trip with a hiking club to Malham, where the town’s famous rift fault becomes symbolic of Jim and his wife’s torn world. And here be monsters. The tale emerges as an extended metaphor to Jim facing his mortality, as one by one each of his hiking companions are taken by the monsters. Derek is a teacher, so education can’t help Jim. Peter is a scientist, Kevin a technologist and Jane deeply religious, and none of them can help. In a way, there’s an underlying pessimism in the tale, that ultimately nothing we can do will cheat the inevitable, and eventually we all must face death alone. And the tale is set to a backdrop of some rather tasty horror writing. But is it slipstream or Horror?

The final piece of fiction is 'Jasmine', by Andrew Tisbert, a profoundly poignant story in which the protagonist, escaping from a failed marriage, takes a job at the Willowbrook Institution, a run-down, under-resourced home for the disabled. Here he meets Jasmine, and is captivated by her simple charms. But with her imperfections, he knows Jasmine can never be his, and only by stepping into alternative universes can he possibly find the ‘perfect’ Jasmine. Too late he realises it’s those very imperfections that make ‘our universe’ Jasmine what she is. And he learns things about his own parallel self that are best not known. A fabulous piece of writing—quite possibly the best kept until last—packed with emotion and as surely as slipstream as it gets.

'Nomads of the Slipstream' is Jeff Gardiner’s one piece of nonfiction in Subtle Edens. It’s an interesting idea to include an essay championing the cause of one’s genre (even when it’s not a genre) in the middle of the book. It allowed time to draw breath, to stand back from the stories read so far and examine the idea of this thing called Slipstream, now that we’ve enjoyed a sample of what it offers. Gardiner argues eloquently and forcibly, and cites a number of literary luminaries to the cause. I wonder, for the sake of balance, whether further essays should have been included, possibly from those fiercely loyal to genre or to literary fiction, just to hear why they might prefer their arenas undiluted by the other’s tropes. All of which is merely my musing, and not to be taken as criticism of Subtle Edens in any form.

My apologies for the length of this review. If you’ve read this far, I hereby award you the Slipstream Medal of Honour (It’s not quite real, so don’t ask The Future Fire for it. :-) ), as truly you are an aficionado of the genre that is not a genre.

Whilst I was writing this report, it was announced Subtle Edens is to be Elastic Press’s last publication. In some ways the news made me pause. It felt as if I was to write something of a eulogy here, too. It’s certainly sad in that over the years I’ve not read a poor offering from Elastic Press. I can empathise with the publisher’s desire to find more time to further his own writing career. I wish him well. Congratulations, Elastic Press, on a fine stint. They ask that readers continue to support the press until the end. I hope this is reflected in the continuing sales of Subtle Edens. Slipstream? Literary? Mainstream? It doesn’t matter when all’s done; at £7.99 for 300+ pages of quality fiction, it’s well worth the entry price.

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New Issue: TFF Issue 2008.14

Issue 2008.14

Article 5. No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.
-- The Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Adopted and proclaimed by General Assembly resolution 217 A (III) of 10 December 1948.

Fiction

• Until the Pit is Dug for the Wicked, John Kratman (artwork: Cécile Matthey)
• A Rock by Any Other Name, Rick Novy (artwork: G. Edwin Taylor)
• Less Than the Sum of the Movable Parts, Richard Thieme (artwork: Chris Cartwright)

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Full issue and editorial at http://futurefire.net/2008.14/

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Collier, 2012 (2008)

Bryan Collier, 2012: A Conspiracy Tale. Matador, 2008. Pp. 243. ISBN 9781906510541. £8.99/$19.95.

Reviewed by Terry Grimwood

Cambridge-based IDSys have won a contract to supply the government with its new RFID implant, the human version of the company’s successful transport tracking device. For CEO Mitch Webb (is the author a fan of a certain comedy duo I wonder?) and his team this is the contract of a lifetime. But things are not as they seem and very quickly the whole project develops a nasty smell. What are the RFID implants really for? Is the major atrocity that takes place just as the RFIDs are ready for utilisation, really the work of terrorists or part of a government-sponsored conspiracy to curtail the freedoms of British citizens?

And in the background, shadowed by a mysterious organisation that consists of the world’s top industrialist, politicians and even royalty, there is yet another, unearthly layer, bent on restoring what was once their role as rulers of the earth. It is down to Mitch and his team to unravel these apocalyptic conspiracies and somehow stop the countdown to disaster, while at the same time keep themselves alive as dark forces close in.

So, an exciting plot and, I have to say, an utterly compelling read. It kept me turning those pages, and prevented me from sleeping at night and from getting out of bed on a couple of the mornings when I should have been up and painting the bathroom. The book builds inexorably and efficiently towards its climax, the characters are well-drawn and convincing and the science seems credible, even more so as the author is an electronics engineer. The cover, designed by Mark Hows, is also suitably menacing.

However, I was not so impressed with the actual writing style. Okay, this is a thriller, it is about ideas, plot and the issues raised (more about which later), so it can sustain a workmanlike style. 2012, however, was stylistically below par in places and really could have done with a ruthless edit. Not in terms of cutting, I hasten to add, because the plot is well honed and sharp and there is little overwriting. Repeated words are an example. These jar and make reading uncomfortable and should have been cleaned out at the editing stage.

The most irritating problem is a structural one. When a character is introduced the author tends to write a potted biography straight away. This is a particular problem at the beginning of the novel, because, halfway through the first paragraph, the narrative suddenly loses pace just at the time when it should grab you, throw you inside the story and tell you to read on. These are the people involved, it should shout, something big is happening, don’t worry about their backgrounds yet, there isn’t time right now, you’ve got to read this, come on, come on, hurry up. Biographies can be provided at a point when you need to catch your breath. Instead, we have this piece of loose, literary carpet over which we trip just as we start to run.

Anyway, back to the positive. The book raises some very important issues about personal freedom, globalisation and just who is in charge. Yes, there are some David Icke-ian elements to the story, which were handled quite cleverly by the way, and with a certain amount of wit, but looking beyond that, we, like the society in the novel, are faced with an increase in surveillance and with the possibility of ID cards. We, like Collier’s fictional citizens, stand on the brink of the whole 666 nightmare which dictates that without that much misunderstood number tattooed on forehead or arm, no one can trade, work or eat. In the story we have a stark choice. You want a bank account, to shop, a job? Then accept your RFID implant or you’ll get none of the above.

The frightening reality raised by this tale is the ease with which freedom can be removed and the ruthlessness with which lives can be sacrificed in the name of expedience and the so-called “good of the many”. It also gives a view into the world of conspiracies and shows us that although we may not believe in the often weird and wacky universe of the conspiracy theorist, there is often no smoke without fire. It reminds us that although disasters and atrocities my not, in real-life, be government-sponsored, political advantage can certainly be extracted from them.

2012: A Conspiracy Tale is a good read. It is compelling, good fun and thought provoking. It is also a first novel and hopefully Collier will iron out those prose ripples in the next one and give us another sharp, intelligent and thought-provoking work.

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Butler (ed.), Taking Flight (2008)

Pete Butler (ed.), Triangulation: Taking Flight. PARSEC Ink, 2008. Pp. 126. ISBN 9780615152806. $12.00.

Reviewed by Djibril Alayad

This is the fifth anthology published under the title Triangulation, brought out by the PARSEC Ink press. Taking Flight brings us a clutch of stories on the theme of things that fly, or that try to fly, or that ought to fly. The subjects of these stories are streamlined, jet-propelled, or space-faring; gas-filled, lighter than air, or fluffy and flighty. It is an eclectic collection with some pieces that approach the theme daringly and imaginatively, that push the boundaries of genre and taste alike. As a volume Taking Flight tends more to the light-weight and flighty end of this scale: at 124 pages of fiction, there isn't really room for many of the 20 stories herein to get going, and some are so vignette-like and perfunctory as to be almost incomprehensible. There are more than enough moving and shocking pieces, however, to reward the patient reader, and I have no hesitation in declaring this volume good value for money.

Among the stand-out pieces in this quite varied anthology is Elizabeth Barrette's 'Peacock Hour', a story that reads like a Near Eastern fairy tale about the eldest daughter in a tragic family who make flying carpets. While her father spins spells and prepares magic wool and other materials, her mother weaves rugs with a life of their own, and her seven brothers risk their lives in a series of failed flying experiments, Haylaa helps as best she can. But she is a girl, and while she can (somewhat scandalously) gather rumours and conduct research into the history of magic carpets, there is little else she is allowed to do. This sensitive story ends with a slightly incongruous combination of, on the one hand, a feminist reaction against the limiting and veiling of women, and on the other a re-affirmation of the classic (and oppressive) assumption that a woman's virginity is somehow pure and powerful and virtuous.

Perhaps the most challenging and even shocking story in this collection is 'Seeing Stars' by Shanna Germain, an intense and graphic depiction of the practice of autoerotic asphyxia. The narrator is a medical professional who offers the service of making sure that her clients do not accidentally kill themselves by strangling, hanging, or suffocating themselves while masturbating. This story manages to be sensitive, erotic, non-judgemental, and deeply disturbing at the same time. A very impressive achievement.

Jacob Edwards's 'Stone Cold' is a short but interesting take on the cliché of using parallel universe theory to pick a single, infinitesimally unlikely outcome out of the range of all possible outcomes of a particular decision, thus having apparently superhuman powers of foresight and/or good luck. If one in a million of you from all these parallel worlds is successful, what happens, this story asks, to those that are not successful? What, moreover, are the moral implications of manipulating your own luck at the expense of your clone in a parallel dimension?

Another piece with a different take is 'It Takes a Town' by Stephen V. Ramey, in which the eclectic (and often eccentric) citizens of a depressed Midwestern town unite under the guidance of a talented schoolgirl to cobble together a mission to bring back soil samples from Mars. The story comprises of twelve short chapters as they countdown to launch day, each from a different viewpoint but linked by the attempts of the local pig farmer to talk them out of this mad mission. This is ultimately a story of affirmation, of small town pluck triumphing against the odds, against opposition, and against skepticism, despite the fact that to all appearances the skepticism would appear to be well-founded. Not only is the attempt to build a rocket from a disused grain silo, a water heater, and other varied farm junk based on a design put together by a twelve year-old girl exceedingly unlikely, but (as Tom the pig farmer rightly points out) there are more pressing problems to solve here on Earth, without which we will not possibly survive long enough as a race to colonize Mars and the other planets needed to support the desperate Earth's population. This is an allegorical story about the need for hope and the value of co-operation, to be sure, and I do not wish to be obnoxiously pedantic or use this as an excuse to damn all space exploration. There are many good reasons to continue to conduct research in outer space, not least the opportunity to learn more about the Universe and our place in it, but if we abandon the health of this planet because of dreams of colonizing some other, then we really are doomed.

By far the most original and striking piece in this volume is David Seigler's 'Graveyard of the Cloud Gods', one of the most inventive stories I have read this year. The protagonists are Llaunu, gas-filled creatures who float above the clouds of their world (which is probably not our own), living a rarefied existence and despising the filth and miasma that exists in the world below. Conservative and pious, they believe that the mere sight of this sinful world will surely kill and possibly even steal the soul of a Llaunu, and that those of them who fall give up their souls to heaven before their bodies can be corrupted and decayed. Ju'utu, an open-minded and inquisitive character who is mistrusted and eventually branded a heretic by his fellows, is not satisfied by the pious teaching of the elders and decides to see beneath the clouds for himself. On the Earth below Ju'utu discovers that fallen Llaunu are worshipped as gods by the base creatures that inhabit the surface, the bodies of the dead reverently disposed of and the survivors tended and fed. As is clear from this brief summary, this story is full of religious language and imagery, and it is not kind to those who hold to the old ways or insist on their blind faith despite any evidence to the contrary, especially those who will repress or attach those who threaten their Panglossian view of their world. This piece manages to be scathing, tragic, philosophical, and optimistic in equal measure, and is a tour de force of a short story.

Among a handful of flighty and fluffy pieces in this anthology, therefore, there is a hard core of sophisticated, streamlined, and jet-propelled excellent science fiction writing. All in all another very good collection from PARSEC Ink, who are proving to be a press worth watching.

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Nemonymous 8 (2008)

D.F. Lewis (ed.), Cone Zero (Nemonymous #8). Megazanthus Press, 2008. Pp. 269. ISSN 1474-2020. £10.00.

Reviewed by Terry Grimwood

From its tentative beginnings at the turn of the century to its latest manifestation as the Cone Zero anthology, Nemonymous has always been an intriguing, beguiling, infuriating and constantly evolving project. There were the comparatively normal (though sideways on) early editions, then the blank-covered and untitled issue, the school exercise book facsimile and so on. I suppose such creative eccentricity is inevitable seeing as Nemonymous is the carefully nurtured literary child of the inimitable D F Lewis who is himself a purveyor of some of the most intriguing, beguiling, infuriating stories I have ever read. Evolved from journal format to book, the Nemonymous conceit is basically the same. You don’t know who wrote the story you are reading. In the early days, there was no hint, no name, just stories. This time the authors names are listed on the back cover, but you are not told which author wrote which story.

Dean Harkness’s cover reminds me of those early-seventies Panther science fiction paperbacks which usually featured a close-up, odd-angled photo of some unidentifiable (but possibly mundane) object. One of Asimov’s Foundation novels had, if I remember rightly, a clock spring on the cover.

So, what about the stories? After all, you don’t buy a book for its cover and you certainly don’t buy Nemonymous because it is full of your favourite authors (although it might be of course). Well, this is certainly the most accessible issue of the series I have read so far, in which, from physical artefact to concept to malevolent, brooding enigma, Cone Zero is explored in all its forms and guises.

There are four stories actually titled 'Cone Zero'. The first taking us into a messy flat where a horrible and alien mould grows in the toilet and the inhabitants, both friend and stranger, lounge around in joint-stupefied lethargy. There is something Pinteresque about this place, full of an unspoken menace that doesn’t quite reveal itself. The second 'Cone Zero' is one of my favourites, a fantastic tale of a man who finds himself in an underground hospital that wouldn’t seem out of place in a Carry On film. Society it seems, has turned Darwinian, it is now illegal to treat illness. A marvellously imaginative yarn full of atmosphere and a strange authenticity.

'Cone Zero' number three teeters in that hinterland between dream and reality. A temple, a statue and a beautiful woman inhabit what is a mysterious and ultimately moving story. 'Cone Zero' four is another masterpiece. Set in some mythical world that seems like 19th Century Paris, it has mention of televisions and is back-dropped by an unnamed but savage war. It snows on Damian’s 30th birthday, and it is snowing blood. A search for a mysterious, visionary artist, terrible revelations and a tragic past all collide into one of the most satisfying endings I have ever read.

So what else have we got here? 'The Fathomless World' opens the show with the story of the errant and ultimately God-like Tall Man who is sentenced to wander the corridors of a mysterious building, until, one day, he finds a way out... 'Cone Zero, Sphere Zero' is set in a self-contained world where it is a crime to even conjecture that there might be anything at all outside the conical walls of the world. A persistent blasphemer finds an ally in the unlikely place. We travel down 'An Oddly Quiet Street' which has resonance and references to Rosemary’s Baby as a wife talks her husband into buying a run down property in, well, an oddly quiet street. Identity and the dream that is the Hollywood Dream are up for grabs in 'More Than You Know' when a stunt man tries to find out just who the star he doubles for actually is. This is a corker; I loved it.

Time for us to be 'Going Back For What We Left Behind', or perhaps not, because that which we’ve lost is sometimes best left that way. My advice, stay on the train if it stops at the mysterious 'Conezero' (pronounced the Italian way) station. Classic horror, this one, given a fresh lick of paint and a healthy dose of emotion. For lovers of Toy Story we have the marvellous 'Cone Zero Ultimatum' in which a herd/swarm/pack of abused household appliances escape and set off on a perilous quest for Eden. Great fun, and utterly compelling.

An ancient, flickering scrap of monochrome film reveals the haunting and poignant mystery of Angel Zero. A cleverly written and technically complex piece this is another of my favourites. A sweating, panic-drenched race for a train is not 'How To Kill An Hour', especially when it ends so bloodily. Another story that draws you in, increases the heart rate and has you shouting at the protagonist to hurry up, and all shadowed by the malevolent and never explained Cone Zero. Looking for a place to rent? Be careful when you see that 'To Let' sign, especially if the owners have left any of their own ornaments on the mantelpiece. A truly dark and sinister work to finish the collection.

Yes, I’ve missed one story out. I always do, because I like to save my absolute favourite till last. This time it is 'The Point of Oswald Masters'. Witty, very funny but making a sharp (sorry), excellently-observed point (sorry again) about art, both the physical and the imagined. Where does art begin and end? Who does it belong to? Are the emperor’s new clothes really a work of art because, untouched by human hands or craft, they are, of course, perfect?

As I said earlier, this is a particularly accessible member of the Nemonymous brood, however, that accessibility is actually something of a veneer. In each work we see the what, but not the why or the how. Who are the creators of Sphere Zero? Which world is Damien living in, this one? An alternative universe? Who is the mysterious patient in that underground hospital, is he a spy, resistance fighter? And is it really the late 1960s? Virtually every story is like a very satisfying and complete iceberg tip that reveals the result, but never gives away that which lies beneath. We should have known, because Mr Lewis has that Oswald Masters touch, just when you think he’s finally mellowed you realise that it’s smoke and mirrors, Uncle Des has held out a sweet (one of those cream-filled chocolate cones with a hazelnut on top) then deftly snatched it away just as your fingertips close about the wrapper.

Well done Des for choosing such a fantastic array of tales to create one of those rarities, a flawless anthology, and a huge congratulations to the authors for the quality, wit and inventiveness of their work. And for telling some Great Stories.

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GUD #3 (Autumn 2008)

GUD (Greatest Uncommon Denominator) Magazine. Issue 3, Autumn 2008. Pp. 204. $10.00.

Reviewed by Johann Carlisle

This professionally presented paperback volume is the fourth issue of GUD Magazine (the first issue was numbered zero). Greatest Uncommon Denominator is a magazine that prides itself on being eclectic, slipstream, surreal, undefinable, weird, and fantastic (in their own words, they publish "literary and genre fiction, poetry, art, and articles"). This issue, which is the size of a short paperback novel, is nothing if not eclectic. The theme is nominally "mechanical flight", but the stories and other contents range from the tragic alternative history, the challengingly speculative, and the chillingly cruel to cheap comedy and surreal collage; and from the brilliantly original to the unutterably silly or the frankly unreadable. It is great that this magazine exists and that its editors have the courage to take risks with unusual material: no reader will like everything in this issue, but there is more than enough good in here to justify the material that I was not fond of.

The first lengthy fiction piece in this volume is Darja Malcolm-Clarke's 'A Song, a Prayer, an Empty Space', which is a very classily written, twenty-page story about a disgraced bishop in an alternative reality where God can only be addressed by means of euchoi, coins imbued with prayer and then processed by a machine that translates the prayers into divine form. Bishop Adan has been exiled from his monastery in Algeria (it is never clear whether the monks in this story are Muslim, Christian, Jewish, or whether "Yahvist" is a catch-all term for a single Book faith) for giving away euchoi to the poor who could not otherwise afford to pray. In addition to rising taxes, a daemon is stealing prayers before they can be euchomified, and the world around the church is starting to crumble. Although this story is well-written and the characters engaging, there was something lacking for my tastes. If there was a political overtone behind the plot, it was only that people ought to be able to speak to God without the mediation of an élite church that charges them for the privilege. The replacement of one church for another is hardly a radical conclusion, and a moral harking back to Reformation sentiments may well have gone over this reader's head. A well-written story, but one which left me a little flat by the end.

Tina Connolly's 'Facts of Bone' is a near-future story about a pair of sisters who run a business harvesting down feathers from cliffside birds' nests. Jules rides a "flycycle" which allows the freedom of the skies as she patrols the cliff face, looking out for the birds and their nests; her sister Marnie is a businesswoman, always travelling and always too busy to come home. A run-in with a poacher injures Jules, and a rare genetic disorder manifests itself in hospital, a condition that threatens to interfere with her ability to fly and do the work she loves. The conclusion to this story is an incredibly sensitive treatment of disability, of mental health affected by physical fragility, and of the psychological implications of virtuality and remote experience. An excellent story, for me one of the outstanding pieces in this issue.

Another subtle but clever story is 'Think Fast' by Michael Greenhut, an understated and original take on the multiple-realities idea. A young man with a tragic family history finds that if he thinks hard and fast enough he can send messages back in time to his younger self. These messages, which are interpreted as instincts, allow him to benefit from his future experience and avoid the worst things that can happen to him: getting into a fight, being murdered, being arrested; he can then take great risks with impunity, since he can prevent the worst from happening by sending messages back again and again until he finds the successful course of action. The protagonist is not a superhero, although he does protect the innocent and fight crime; he makes morally complex decisions, and the reader may not always agree with him. This is a thought-provoking and heart-breaking story, as the hero finds himself always unable to go back and prevent the original, ultimate tragedy.

Perhaps my favourite piece in this collection is the long story 'Night Bird Soaring' by T.L. Morganfield. In an alternative history where the divine Aztec emperor defeated Cortés in 1521, and a great Aztec empire dominates the world in the twenty-first century, Totyoalli is a talented boy chosen by the priests to be Teotl Ixiptla, to be sacrificed to the gods at the age of 29. Befriending the immortal emperor, Totyoalli builds on his talent for science to pursue a career as an astronaut, although he may not live long enough to take the voyage he dreams of. This story contains a fine mixture of rational and spiritual elements, remaining respectful to both. Totyoalli is a scientist and an atheist, but he cannot entirely turn his back on the ancient religion and expectations of his culture. It is perhaps slightly disappointing that in this alternative history, the twenty-first-century Aztec empire features almost entirely mediaeval religious and cultural setting alongside almost entirely modern technology, as if the two would not have co-evolved to create a culture unrecognisable as either. This is a minor quibble, and this remains an excellent and most worthwhile story; sensitive, provocative, and powerful. This one will stay with me.

Jason D. Wittman's 'The Train' is a nightmarish, Alice-in-Wonderland-like story set on a train full of refugees fleeing across war-torn Russia in 1942. Katya is fleeing from the besieged Stalingrad, along with so many other civilians. Her husband is an officer, fighting on the front lines. She knows that his life is in danger, and somehow the old man with the magic coin and the dwarf she meets on the train have something to do with it. This is not a terribly original story, with the protagonists caught up in giant games of chess, chasing fate down the length of the train and pursued by angels and automatons, but it is engaging and moving and well worth reading.

In 'Flower as Big as the Sky', Matt Dennison tells the story of a perhaps unusually gullible young boy and the man building a mysterious construction in the garden next door. Despite the boy's awkwardness, it is the adults in this story whose naivety, and emotional immaturity, and lack of respect for others really earn our pity and contempt. Seemingly befuddled on the surface, the boy turns out to have the best grasp of what is going on in the world around him out of everyone.

A nonfiction piece, Christian A. Dumais's 'Counting Nuns' is a study of phobia (in this case of needles) that contains a richness of language and imagery that many fictional stories lack. A perfect example of the editors taking a risk publishing an unusual piece that pays off.

Two stories that I want to finish with both deal with pathos and desperation/despair in different ways. Frank Haberle's 'The Great Big NOTHING' is the story of an alcoholic who takes some time off from his thankless life to meet up with a woman from his past and hike in the wilderness, but he is unable to overcome his fear of failure and make the most of the opportunity, so knows that nothing will change. Nick Antosca's 'Soon You Will Be Gone and Possibly Eaten' is a story of alien visitation, abduction, and departure, and studies the themes of jealousy, fear of loss, and the fragility of the most passionate and mercurial relationships; also the way we become reliant upon those we love to the extent of physical addiction. A truly heartbreaking story.

Alongside the many powerful (and a few less impressive) short stories in this issue, there are some dozens of poems and pieces of artwork, a few of which are worth highlighting. Dangerous Innocence by Joe Roger is a drawing made up almost entirely of faces, skulls, smileys, and slavering bestial maws. The central figures, asleep or dead, have biblical references tattooed on their flesh, but it is hard to read most of these and the significance is obscure. It is a shame, because this is probably a very subtle piece of art, but the small size, low resolution, and poor quality paper rather ruin the piece. In Clockwork Wings by Kiriko Moth a naked male figure with mechanical wings stands before a clock against a background of cogs and wheels. The juxtaposition of tender flesh and harsh machinery is intriguing (as is the weird metallic buttock-corset the main figure appears to be wearing).

Two poems (which I am usually reluctant to review) caught my attention. 'How to Fetch Firewood' by Michelle Tandoc-Pichereau is dedicated to the women and children of Darfur, and has been published in multiple venues prior to this. It is a powerful, both moving and chilling poem about the horror and desperation of living in a war-torn and famile-wracked land with no hope and no help. Jim Pascual Agustin's 'In Every War'/'Sa Bawat Digma' is a bilingual poem published here in both English and (I presume) Filipino. Like the above-mentioned poem, this one focuses on the plight of non-combatants in wartime, in this case parents who cannot sleep for fear of what might happen to their children.

If the aim of Greatest Uncommon Denominator magazine is to be eclectic and challenging, then issue #3 has certainly succeeded on both counts. Enthusiastically recommended.

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