Storied Beginnings

"The Ruby Incomparable" by Kage Baker

2009-12-08T19:15:00.004-05:00

I think I enjoy fantasy the most when it's about a character's personal story. Sure, all the old standards of magic-sword-wielding heroes and wise wizards saving the kingdom from hideous monsters certainly have their place. However, what I really love is when an author uses their world to explore characters and their relationships.

This is exactly what Kage Baker does in her short story "The Ruby Incomparable." Except she also adds the curious twist of making what seems like a sort of fantasy-adventure story about the strong-willed daughter of two very unlikely magical parents into something far more interesting. She actually kind of blindsides the reader a bit by sneaking the main character, Svnae's, issues with relating to her mother in the back door of the story while you're busy reading about her exploits. It's very well-done, frankly, and very enjoyable. I highly recommend it.

"A Portrait in Ivory" by Michael Moorcock

2009-12-08T19:01:00.004-05:00

You know, I acknowledge that "A Portrait in Ivory" seems to be well-written in the broad sense, and I also recognize that Michael Moorcock is a giant of genre fantasy fiction. Furthermore, I recognize that Moorcock's long-running character, Elric, who is featured prominently in this story, is held dear by many a Moorcock fan. Perhaps, I would feel the same way about the character if I had read any of the Moorcock's work that precedes this story. But, at the end of the day, I just felt that this story was dragged down by the sheer mass of the character's history. To really understand or identify with Elric's guilt in this story, you have to know what he's done. Since "what he has done", from my brief perusal of the Wikipedia entry one the subject spans over several short stories, novelettes, and novellas, many of which seem to have been written out of chronological order, that's not something I'm willing to do for this story alone. As a result, it left me a little flat.

It does, however, say some interesting things about the nature of art, specifically of portraiture, and what it reveals about the subject. Overall, though, I don't think that these observations, which arn't really all that original or groundbreaking, make the story worth it for me.

"Paper Cuts Scissors" by Holly Black

2009-12-08T18:49:00.004-05:00

First things first: in the interest of full disclosure, I am a librarian by trade. As such, I'm more than partial to the field. Holly Black, who has also gone to library school, is clearly at least a little fond of it as well, since this short story not only involves two library science students, a massive private library, and one particularly well-written section that explains why someone could actually enjoy classification, but is also divided into sections according to the ten broad categories of the Dewey Decimal Classification System. Yes, I'm a geek. You hadn't figured that out yet?

Moreover, this story deals with the reasons why people love books, and how people can come to love books and stories for very different reasons. It's also a story about relationships, about growth and learning to see things from the perspective of others. All in all, though, it's just a damn fine story. Easily one of my favourites from this whole endeavour.

Incidentally, there's also some good tips in here about how to win at Rock Paper Scissors, if that's you thing.

"Shatterday" by Harlan Ellison

2009-12-08T18:38:00.003-05:00

Okay, so this will be the last Ellison story for a while, I swear. And no, that's not just because I've run out of his stories to read, although that does play a very big part in it.

What better way to leave Ellison, however, than with a really creepy supernatural horror story? And a psychological horror at that, something which, I feel, Ellison really does best. In this particular story, the protagonist, Peter Jay Novin, finds that, somehow, he's been split into two different people. Moreover, it seems that the world only has enough space for one Peter Novin. What follows is the playing out of the battle for supremacy between the two Novins. This battle, in many ways, seems to mirror the sort of internal struggles we all experience; struggles between things like conscience and self-interest; Ego and Id.*

It's a really great premise, frankly, and is masterfully executed by Ellison. I won't tell you how it all turns out. I will tell you, however, that, if you get the chance, you really should read "Shatterday."

*Although Ellison actually uses Jungian archetypes in the story (Shadow, Persona, Anima, and Animus), and might object to my choice to word it differently using Ego, Id, and Superego.

"The Executioner of the Malformed Children" by Harlan Ellison

2009-12-08T18:28:00.004-05:00

I'm largely ambivalent when it comes to "twist" endings (e.g.: endings where everything, at the last minute, turns out to be vastly different than what it seemed). When they're done well, they can make for a great literary experience. Fight Club, for example. On the other hand, they can sometimes feel a little telegraphed, which I feel may be happening in this short story.

I won't get too much into the twist of this story, as knowing the twist ahead of time kind of ruins the story. However, I will say that all the signs seem to point to the twist early on. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed this story, as I tend to enjoy all of Ellison's work. More specifically, I loved the setting he creates in this specific story: a future world where psychic agents are trained from birth to protect the presence from dangerous creatures from the future. Yes, it does sound lame when I say it, but Ellison makes it seem pretty cool.

What I didn't love is that the ending twists all that around in a way that seems so, well, obvious to me. Maybe it's because, since this story was written, others have copied the idea to such an extent that it just doesn't seem fresh? Or maybe it's just a weak point in the story. I'll leave that to you to decide for yourself.

"The Other Eye of Polyphemus" by Harlan Ellison

2009-12-08T17:08:00.004-05:00

I have, once again, been remiss in my postings. In fact, I'm farther behind in postings than ever before, with a full six days worth of stories to do. As such, I'm not going to bother trying to apologize for my lazy ass, and get right down to it.

"The Other Eye of Polyphemus" focuses on a man who seems doomed to constantly provide others with what they need, emotionally and sexually, without ever getting what he needs in return. After a very bizarre experience with ethereal people (ghosts?), he seems to come to terms with ability, and, as we are told at the end of the story "he went to get something warm; he went to get what he needed."

This is an admittedly simplistic rundown of this story, which has more layers than I really have the space to explore here. For example, why does Ellison choose the reference to Polyphemus, one of the mythical cyclopes, and his "other eye." Is the man in the story supposed to living a life where he lacks perspective, perhaps. Is he Polyphemus, and does he learn to see through his "other eye" (or, perhaps more appropriately, both his "eyes," seeing both perspectives at once)? I'm not entirely sure, and I fear I lack the knowledge in cyclopean myth to come to a proper conclusion

"Opium" by Harlan Ellison

2009-12-02T19:56:00.003-05:00

This (very short) short story left me kind of flat. Apparently originally written to be read on television, Ellison notes that the four-and-some-change page story was intended as a bit of "guerilla warfare" in his continuing opposition to television (although why, if he is so opposed to TV, did he show up on TV in the first place). It takes it's cue from the idea that, more and more often, people spend all of their free time trying to escape reality. Therefore, why wouldn't reality try to change to become more interesting?

I'll admit that it's an intriguing premise, and I think, given more breathing room, it could have been a really great story. However, as it is, it seems cramped and underealized. Perhaps more than a little ironically, I had a hard time suspending my disbelief in this story. In essence, I really wasn't able to "escape" into it like I was able to with many of Ellison's other storys. Maybe this is intentional, or maybe it's the result of the information about the story that I received from the preface, or some. . third. . thing. Whatever the reason, I just didn't find that the story clicked for me.

"All the Birds Come Home to Roost" by Harlan Ellison

2009-12-01T18:19:00.003-05:00

This supernatural horror story is Ellison at his best. It's creepy, surreal yet somehow streaked through with realism, and somewhat pessimistic about humanity. Seriously, I get the feeling that Ellison is not a very happy human being.

Specifically, this story deals with a man who suddenly finds that he keeps meeting the women with which he's had relationships over the years in reverse order, all inexorably leading back to his first wife, who was not only mentally unstable herself, but was so volatile that she almost drove him insane as well (as is evidenced in the main character's visceral retelling of an extremely disturbing pivotal event in their relationship). Like I said before, the story is certainly surreal and very creepy, with a slow build of tension behind each "chance" meeting with an earlier girlfriend, fiancee, or wife. Yet there's also this level of realism to the story. As the main character deteriorates into a mess of anxiety and paranoia, you begin to wonder if these meetings are some machination of some malevolent force, or if it's all in his mind.

'Alive and Well on a Friendless Voyage" by Harlan Ellison

2009-11-30T19:11:00.002-05:00

In this very bizarre short story, Elllison seems to be using the old saying of "like a moth to a flame" to parallel his main character (who is named Moth, of course), who is drawn to experience the misery of every single passenger of a nameless vessel travelling through something called the Megaflow. Every passenger on the ship is a stranger to each other (and possibly themselves), and no one talks to anyone except for Moth, who becomes their secretly held miseries, drawing them out.

It seems to me that the ship is some sort of bleak metaphor for life and the miseries we all come to experience. Moth himself, through this metaphor, and through his ability to let people displace their miseries on someone else; to vent their self-loathing, becomes an immensely tragic figure. I say tragic because each stranger on the vessel is allowed to leave. However, Moth, who is a permanent resident of the vessel, must stay on, presumably to continue absorbing the miseries and self-loathing of each passenger. Essentially, it shows that, no matter how bad your own individual miseries are, they are better than having to experience every collective misery.

"In the Fourth Year of the War" by Harlan Ellison

2009-11-30T19:00:00.003-05:00

I've said this before here, but let me reiterate: I pity every single person that has ever pissed off Harlan Ellison (I believe that they are legion). "In the Fourth Year of the War" is another sort of revenge story in which the main character, now in the fourth year of a war with the homicidal split personality in his head, is driven to murder every person who has done him or his loved ones wrong, including an old neighbour from his childhood that had his dog put down, and even his ex-wife.

The story itself seems to hinge on the idea that we are made up of our memories, including the bad ones, and that, as human beings, we never really let things go (quite disturbingly, Ellison mentions in the introduction from the Shatterday anthology that one of the inspirations for this story was a woman who had his dog put down when he was young, whom he never forgave). Of course, he's not condoning the main characters murderous actions in the story, rather that this is what not properly dealing with the memories we carry with us can lead to, and that, in some way, all people have a similar problem to the protagonist, which only serves to make the story that much creepier.

"Count the Clock that Tells the Time" by Harlan Ellison

2009-11-30T18:50:00.003-05:00

Next up is "Count the Clock that Tells the Time," which hinges off the idea that time is conserved like energy. In other words, that wasted time, like energy, has to go somewhere. That, instead of being "wasted," it is siphoned off into a sort of pool of time, where it can be recycled and used later.

An interesting premise, to be sure; one which is made more interesting with the addition of the idea that people who have wasted their entire lives, like this story's main character, eventually become so weighed down with wasted time that they are suck into this parallel pool/dimension of wasted time.

Of course, what I've said so far just makes for an interesting premise of a Sci Fi story. It doesn't make an interesting story in and of itself (fact I wish some other authors would realize). But, again, Ellison doesn't disappoint, using the premise explained above to explore what happens when two such "wasted" individuals meet each other in the formless void of the time pool/dimension, and fall for each other. Through this further wrinkly, a sort of irony is achieved in that the two characters never would have met if they hadn't wasted their lives. It also adds the further question as to whether they are still wasting their lives together.

"Django" by Harlan Ellison

2009-11-30T18:33:00.002-05:00

Okay, I haven't been posting regularly. . . again. Chalk it up to laziness if you want. You'd probably be right. However, I'm back to rectify that again, with four new (to me anyway) short stories by Harlan Ellison. First up: "Django"

What can I say about this story other than it is very, very strange. Inspired by the story of Django Reinhardt, Ellison writes this very bizarre story of French resistance member, Michel Herve, who, despite having two of his fingers paralyzed during the war, rediscovers guitar playing while trapped in an otherworldly dimension (think Cthulhu only stranger but less menacing). The strange other-world seems to have trapped him when the other members of this group all died while attempting to escape some German sturmerkommandos (German Stormtroopers, I think?). Instead of falling to his death like the others, Michel falls into this strange new dimension. I told you it was weird.

Now, to me, it seems like this story is entirely a metaphor for depression and the idea of finding something to live for. Michel, who has just witnessed the death of many of his friends, who is alone and without hope in an alien world, rediscovers music, which seems to give him a new lease on life. It seems a little obvious to me, but, frankly, it's still a very engaging story. Obvious or not, it's still a good read.

Oh, and while on the subject of Django Reinhardt, check out the Reinhardt inspired The Lost Fingers. They are truly awesome.

"Coming of Age in Karhide: by Sov Thade Tage em Ereb, of Rer, in Karhide, on Gethen" by Ursula K. Le Guin

2009-11-26T19:39:00.002-05:00

No this is more like it! In this short story, Le Guin revisits the androgynous/dual-sexed people of her classic novel The Left Hand of Darkness (Read it. Read it now.) to craft a coming of age story. This is particularly interesting not only because it explores the difficulties of puberty with a race of people that have the potential to become either sex each time they enter "Kemmer" (their monthly mating cycle), but that, when you really get down to it, the experience isn't really all that different from what humans go through. Perhaps a little less traumatic, in many senses, but very similar nonetheless.

This shouldn't be surprising to anyone that has read The Left Hand of Darkness though, since an overarching theme of the entire novel is the play between the alien and the familiar, and how, particularly, an alien race can simultaneously be so different from us, and, yet, so similar. This short story just takes that same theme in a new direction, removing the human observer from Left Hand and bringing the reader entirely into the mind of an alien. I think this is particularly important to the story, because, in many ways, it adds the extra layer of what is alien and new to the main character, yet, in some ways, still potentially familiar.

"Wang's Carpets" by Greg Egan

2009-11-26T19:24:00.004-05:00

This story was just not for me. I couldn't get into at all. I think this was because it skews so far into "Hard Science" science fiction territory, and takes long digressions into descriptions of biology and mathematics and the like that I, as someone who primarily studied philosophy and literature in the University years, just can't get into. Maybe it would be a good story for someone who's really into speculative science. For me it was just tremendously boring.

I think, for me, the problem was that, while there are some really interesting ideas and story elements here, I just didn't buy into the overarching story. I know that many people argue that "real" science fiction should be about the science first and everything else second, but I just don't buy into that. Again, maybe this is my liberal arts education talking, but, really, what is a short story without a good "story"? Moreover, to me, if the science gets in the way of the story to the point of impeding the reader's enjoyment, then isn't that just bad fiction?

'Recording Angel" by Ian McDonald

2009-11-24T21:01:00.004-05:00

I knew it! I was not, in fact, behind on my reading, and have completed 76 stories. I just havn't written about all of them. You see, I read the following story on Sunday, and, in the press of trying to catch up yesterday, I forgot about it completely. I am shamed.

So, "Recording Angel." This particularly intriguing story reverses the idea of terraforming by having a mysterious alien presence on Earth that is gradually starting to reform Earth into an alien landscape called the "Chaga" The story itself takes place in Kenya at the edge of the advancing line of Chaga, specifically at the famous Treehouse Hotel. The main character, Gaby, is a reporter, who, ostensibly, has been sent to the hotel to cover a running party the world's celebrities are throwing at the hotel up until the moment that the Chaga takes over.

But what she's really there for, and what she ultimately finds, is a new angle on the Chaga. Perspective. Through a man named Prederleith, a hunter in the employ of the hotel, Gaby discovers that the Chaga may not be something else, but something older. In other words, it isn't so taking the African landscape away from humanity, but, perhaps, making it into what it should have been. This, to me, is a very interesting idea, since it is, essentially, playing on the concept that colonialism has changed Africa irrecovably, and it isn't, nor can it ever again be, the suppossed "dark continent" that it was imagined to be for so many centuries. The Chaga, in its own way, is returning the unknown to Africa, and, eventually the world.

Now maybe I'm way off base. I don't know for sure, but that's the feeling I get from the story. Read it yourself and see if you agree.

"The Undiscovered" by William Sanders

2009-11-24T20:24:00.004-05:00

So, apparently, alternate history stories are growing on me a bit, since, like "The Lincoln Train," I also quite enjoyed Sanders' short story. "The Undiscovered" is based around the question of "what if Shakespeare had coming to the New World, and ended up living with the Cherokee. Told from the point of view of a Cherokee named Mouse, who became friends with the man he calls Spearshaker. It's a very detailed, well thought out, and well researched tale on Sanders part. In an particularly well-done conceit, Sanders intersperses Mouse's retelling of Shakespeare's time with the Cherokee with snippets from a diary that Shakespeare kept, giving sometimes very divergent interpretations of the same event. My personal favourite is when they decide to put on a play, but Mouse insists that the female characters have to be played by women, as no man would ever dress up in women's clothing. Shakespeare, being Elizabethan, is, of course, more shocked at the prospect of having women on stage.

Ultimately, though, what makes this story interesting are the characters themselves, especially in how they interact and overcome vast cultural differences. I know, this sounds very corny, but it's done in a very realistic, and not-at-all touchy-feely sort of way. In the end, it makes for a tremendously engaging story.

Also, I've just done a re-count, and I realized that I'm still one story behind. I started this effort on September 9th, and, since today is the 24th, that means I should have 76 stories read, not 75. Unfortunately, I'm really too tired to start another story today, so I'll have to do two again tomorrow. After that, I'm definitely trying to get back to a regular schedule, since getting behind seems to equal getting confused.

"A Dry, Quiet War" by Tony Daniel

2009-11-24T17:44:00.003-05:00

I enjoyed "A Dry, Quiet War" like I enjoy a really well-made spaghetti western or samurai movie. There's some plot-development there, and the characters are deep and engaging, but what you're really there for is the scene where the unassuming main character (usually some kind of veteran of some war) really decides to come out and kick ass. That's where the real fun begins.

Don't get me wrong, Daniel is doing some really interesting things here with ideas like time-travel, interdimensional beings, and wars at the end of the world. He's also saying some interesting things about how much a person might be willing to sacrifice in order to protect the people he loves. But, at it's heart, "A Dry, Quiet War" is a Spaghetti Western in space. And I thank him for that. As a big fan of Joss Whedon's Firefly, I think there really needs to be more work that plays with that aesthetic. All in all, a very enjoyable read.

Oh, and I know, I'm still one story behind. This was yesterday's story, which I never got around to posting last night. I'm reading William Sanders' "The Undiscovered" right now. I'll post about it when I'm finished.

"The Lincoln Train" by Maureen F. McHugh

2009-11-23T12:47:00.004-05:00

As Gardner Dozois, in his introduction to this short story in The Best of the Best : 20 Years of the Year's Best Science Fiction, puts it "There are many tragic periods in history. As the melancholy story that follows suggests, though, there are few of those periods that couldn't also have been made a little worse (his emphasis)"(293).

That quote pretty much sums up "The Lincoln Train," which asks "How would the American Civil War have ended if Lincoln had been shot but hadn't died." McHugh's answer is "pretty bleak." The North still wins the war, true, but, in the aftermath, due to reasons that I, as someone that has never studied American History, can't understand, certain parties take power and start a horrific forced resettlement of all Southerners that still had slaves at the end of the war, much like how the Americans "resettled" many Native tribes. The results are similarly as bleak.

From the point of view of a character study, this is a very engaging story. The main character, a young woman named Clara, is very sympathetic, and her plight as one of the "recalcitrant" Southerners, is engaging. I've never really been a fan of alternate history. I don't usually see the point other than as an academic exercise. However, McHugh has definitely pulled an interesting story out of this particular "what if."

Okay, that's all I have time for now. Two more to go before I'm caught up. I'll post those tonight.

"Guest of Honor" by Robert Reed

2009-11-23T12:32:00.002-05:00

Back again with another batch of responses. It's been particularly difficult the past few weeks to keep a regular daily schedule here, between other obligations and my general laziness, for which I apologize. At least I've been keeping up on the actual reading, which is the important part of this whole exercise.

Anyway, on to the first short story for today, Robert Reed's "Guest of Honor." This strange story about a woman returning to Earth after several decades of space travel raises some interesting questions about life. First, it asks whether it would be better to have a short life full of excitement, adventure, and heartbreak, as the protagonist Pico has lived, or to live a virtually immortal, but sedentary life, as the lives of her patrons. This is an important question because Pico is an amalgamation of the personalities of 63 ultra-rich, near-immortals, and was specifically designed to travel through space for them, only to return to Earth where she will be broken down an implanted into their minds.

This brings me to the second question this story raises: how does a person cope with the idea of their impending death? Especially, in this case, with meeting the people who will, very soon, be killing her? This lays quite heavily on Pico throughout the story, and provides a complementary thread to the juxtaposition of Pico's stories from her travels and the descriptions of her "benefactors'" lives.

"None So Blind" by Joe Haldeman

2009-11-19T17:18:00.003-05:00

I don't want to get too into the specifics of this amazing little short story. It's best if you read it yourself, I think. Suffice to say it posits an interesting question of what people will do for intelligence; what they will be willing to sacrifice. It also involves some really interesting descriptions of how computers and human brains work, and, most importantly, how they differ. The end result is a disturbing but compelling story that I can't recommend enough. I'm definitely going to have to look up some more of Joe Haldeman's work myself.

"Even the Queen" by Connie Willis

2009-11-19T17:08:00.002-05:00

So the day got away from me (again) yesterday, and I wasn't ablet to post. It seems to be getting to be a theme of the is blog, actually. Anyway, to make up for it, I have random ruminations on two new stories coming up.

I really enjoyed Connie Willis' "Even the Queen" although, as a man, I'm not sure I can ever understand it. It revolves around the idea of a future in which women have been forever freed from the menstrual cycle through a drug called ammenerol and special shunts, and a small group of anti-shunt activists called "Cyclists" (Willis uses the, admittedly pretty funny, bicycle joke a few times). All of this is explored through a single family in which the main character's daughter, an obvious "black sheep" has recently decided to join the Cyclists.

The story itself, while serious in subject matter, is pretty light in tone, and surprisingly humourous. The characters are incredibly human, and, at times, very funny. While, like I said before, I could never understand the idea of being freed from something from menstruation (or for that matter, why some women would see menstruation as the perfect expression of their feminine selves), I still enjoyed the story as a whole, and understood the arguments being made on both sides (although I think Willis does skew the story to be strongly anti-Cyclist).

"Tales From the Venia Woods" by Robert Silverburg

2009-11-17T17:18:00.004-05:00

"Tales From the Venia Woods," which is part of Robert Silverburg's "Roma" series of short-stories, espouses an unusual view on the merits of Empire (or some sort of overarching governement). To make sense of what I'm saying here, I should first note that the "Roma" series takes place on an alternate earth where the Roman Empire never really fell, and now covers the entire planet. Well, strictly speaking, the "Empire" has recently fallen, to have been replaced with a second Roman Republic, but, for the purposes of the central argument, "Empire" and "Republic" could be used interchangeably. Whether we're talking about a unified Empire or a unified Republic is somewhat beside the point.

What is the point of this argument, however, is the kind of peace that has been brought about by the Empire/Republic, also known as the "Pax Romana." The narrator notes in this story that this is not a true peace, of course. There have been many internal wars throughout the history of the Empire/Republic. Rather, he argues that it has brought a relative peace to the planet. That the unification created by the Empire/Republic has minimized the potential for strife.

Given the pluralistic, post-colonial society we live in today, I'd say this isn't exactly a popular point of view when it comes to global politics. However, when you think about it, one could argue that, if the planet was unified under one government, World War I would have never happened. On the other hand, it could also be argued that World War II occurred largely as the result of Imperial impulses, so there you go. Either way you look at it, the story does bring up an interesting point, and one that might just be worth thinking about.

"Kirinyaga" by Mike Resnick

2009-11-16T19:47:00.004-05:00

"Kirinyaga," which is part of a cycle of interrelated short stories,* tells the tale of Koriba, the mundumugu or witch doctor of Kirinyaga, an orbital space-colony that has been made in the image of ancient Kenya as part of a Utopian experiment. The story centres thematically around the idea of the need an adhere to rituals to maintain a culture and, in turn, a cultural identify.

Specifically, it focuses on the ancient Kirinyagan custom of killing a baby that was born feet first, as the belief is that such a child would actually be possessed by a demon. To a modern European or North American, this would seem horrible, a sentiment which is personified in by Maintenance, an all-white group of people who, well, maintain Kirinyaga's space station. However, Koriba argues throughout the story that the Kirinyagans cannot defer to maintenance's requests to abandon this ritual. He argues that, as a part of the rituals of Kirinyagan culture, it is necessary in order to maintain their identities as Kirinyagans, and that the removal of just one piece of the culture, just one ritual, will cause them to cease to be Kirinyagan. It's a surprisingly convincing argument actually, despite the disturbing repercussions of culturally-supported infanticide.

*I should note that, despite being part of a cycle, this story does stand quite well on it's own.

"The Pure Product" By John Kessel

2009-11-15T17:25:00.003-05:00

I'm going to be honest, I'm not entirely sure what's exactly going on in this short story. In the story, Kessel introduces us to a nameless* protagonist who, as we quickly find out, not only appears to be immortal, but also totally immoral, travelling across America leaving a trail of senseless murders and various petty crimes in his wake. Furthermore, it appears that he's not the only immortal out there, as he meets a "girl" named Ruth during the course of his story that's also immortal and, like him, pretty randomly psychopathic. To make matters a little more confusing, he might also actually be from the future, and lives in the past because he's afraid of change; of what the world becomes. Of course, that particular revelation comes during a scene in which he's hallucinating from heavy drug use.

So like I said, I don't know what's going on here, but I do know that it's pretty compelling. Despite the central character's psychopathic impulses, the mystery of who or what he is really pulls you along in the story. You really want to know if he's some kind of immortal or demigod or man from the future. Or, if he really is just crazy. Perhaps it's a tribute to Kessel's writing that he doesn't really let us pin the character down into a neat little category. That maybe keeping us guessing is part of the point? Whatever the case, I know that the end result is an awfully good read.

*He might be named "Gerald Spotsworth," or he might be named "Loki." It's hard to tell.

"The Dead" by Michael Swanwick

2009-11-14T09:41:00.003-05:00

Coincidentally, I was flipping through the current short story collection I'm reading (The Best of the Best : 20 years of the year's best science fiction) and came across this story by Michael Swanwick. Since "Triceratops Summer" was still pretty fresh in my head, I thought "Why not give this one a try?"

In no way could two stories by father apart than "Triceratops Summer" and "The Dead." Where one is strangely beautiful, the other is very twisted and bleak. Yet both, in my mind, are great stories, which should say something about the quality of Swanwick's work.

What is interesting about "The Dead" specifically, though, is that it successfully does what I feel "Stable Strategies for Middle Management" doesn't manage: it presents a disturbingly plausible corporate future. In Swanwick's future, not only do zombies exist, but one corporation has just figured out how to use the zombies as blue-collar labour. This means that whole swaths of people will soon be out of work in favour of the walking dead; that their only source of income will be to sell their future dead selves to the highest bidder. Moreover, there's the implication that zombies could also replace people as sexual partners as a sort of living dead concubines, which means the whole concept doesn't just threaten people's jobs, but threatens the future of humanity in general.

It's a truly disturbing thought, only made more unsettling because I could easily see it happening. Most often, in films such as Shaun of the Dead and Fido, the idea of zombies being re-purposed as cheap labour is used as a sort of tongue-in-cheek story point. However, Swanwick is pointing out in this story that there's no reason why this couldn't be executed (excuse the pun) by some corporation in complete seriousness, and that the effects would, in fact be devastating.

"Bears Discover Fire" by Terry Bisson

2009-11-13T20:07:00.002-05:00

Next up is "Bears Discover Fire," which, in a way, is about bears discovering fire one year in the near future. However, in a more accurate way, this story is about how bears discovering fire affects one man and his extended family, including his brother, Wallace, his nephew, Wallace, Jr., and his ageing mother. It's a touching and wry story with a whimsical touch, and it's just good to read. It reminds me a lot of a story call "Triceratops Summer" by Michael Swanwick which I read shortly before starting this blog. Both are really simple but beautifully written stories where science fiction elements are really only there to help drive the true story, which centres on the characters, rather than to take centre stage.

Frankly, this is the kind of SciFi that I prefer: stories where the characters come first and the "science fiction" is there as a supporting aspect to the story. This is not to say that the science fiction element of the story can just be swapped out for the conventions of another genre (in both of the stories mentioned here, for example, the science fiction elements drive the way the characters act and react). If it could, why would you bother writing SciFi at all? Instead, I hold that the SciFi elements are necessary to each of these stories. But, in the end, they're really not what's important. In other words, the story takes centre stage over the science, which is something that I often find is a rarity in the genre.

"Stable Strategies for Middle Management" by Eileen Gunn

2009-11-13T19:56:00.005-05:00

It's been a busy couple of days, so, once again, I'm behind on my postings. I'm going to try to rectify that now.

First up is "Stable Strategies for Middle Management" by Eileen Gunn. I liked the basic idea behind this story (that bioengineering would someday be used by corporate employees to give them very unusual competitive advantages), but I found the execution to be a little extreme. I mean, I can easily see people going in for bioengineering that might make them a little bit stronger, faster, smarter, more attractive, etc. . . . In many ways, with things like plastic surgery? However, the tack Gunn takes in this story involves wholesale genetic manipulation that cross-breeds humans with other species, resulting in things like monkey-people, or, in the case of the main character of this story, an insect woman. I just can't see someone that would be willing to go quite that far just to get a competitive advantage. Then again, maybe this is why I'm not part of the corporate world.

Of course, I think a lot of what Gunn is doing is a tongue-in-cheek shot at corporate culture. Also, I think the analogy with insects is pretty apt. I also think that the end result is pretty entertaining. However, I can't get over the absurdity of the premise. It just feels like it was taken just a bit too far.

"The Winter Market" by William Gibson

2009-11-11T18:17:00.004-05:00

This short story, to me, is Gibson at his absolute best, which. It has all the earmarks of a classic cyberpunk story. And I mean the real earmarks, not just people in full leather and reflective sunglasses. It explores that wonderful play between urban decay and extreme technological advance, slammed violently together and wrapped in a prose so vibrant that you can almost see the sheen off of a piece of computer equipment, or feel the grime built up on an old table.

"The Winter Market," more importantly, explores the human condition and what it is like to be human. Like much of Gibson's early work, it asks whether something that seems in every way to be human IS human, or if there is some quality to humanity that simply can't be replicated. It also, at it's core, touches on the idea that people are flawed, and that, no matter how hard we try, nothing we do is purely selfless.

If you've read Gibson's work before, you probably know what I mean. If you've never read Gibson before, then what are you doing here? Go out and find some Gibson to read on you own! You'll thank me for it.

"Trinity" by Nancy Kress

2009-11-10T20:05:00.002-05:00

There is a a lot more going on in "Trinity" than I can rightfully address in this format. It's very deep, and deals with the relationships between three very complex characters, morality, human testing for the benefit of science, and the nature of God, not to mention two separate acts of what might be classified as incest. Needless to say, it's an intense story. It's also needless to say that there is no way I can do any of these themes justice in a blog post. The nature of God alone, the somewhat bewildering fact that some will give up everything to truly know God, and the possibility that, even if God or something like him does exists, He/She/It may not even be aware of us is overwhelming. So let me just say that I enjoyed this short story immensely, and that I would recommend it to others in a heartbeat.

"Snow" by John Crowley

2009-11-09T16:55:00.002-05:00

John Crowley's "Snow" is a commentary on how human memory works and, more specifically, a reasoning against the idea that human memory is somehow imperfect. This is not, of course, to say that Crowley is arguing that people are capable of remembering everything perfectly. That would be absurd. Instead, he's arguing that our inability, over time, to remember every detail of every moment of our lives is, in a sense, a good thing. This is because, instead of the minutiae of our lives, we are instead left with broad impressions of things. Perhaps the occasional, semi-conscious remembrance of a single person or event that affected us greatly. In the end, Crowley argues, and I wholeheartedly agree, that this second type of non-rational memory, the kind of memory that is composed of impressions and not "facts" or "details," is far more important to us.

Of course, there's a lot more going on here than this thesis on the nature of human memory. This just composes the backbone of a story the explores how people might try to overcome what is generally viewed as "imperfect" memory, and how their attempts, ultimately, fail. It's an intriguing idea, and very well fleshed out, although I still feel it's entirely secondary to the exploration of memory in general.

"Shoppe Keeper" by Harlan Ellison

2009-11-08T16:35:00.003-05:00

Apparently, this story began when Harlan Ellison wondered to himself what the life of the shop keeper must be like in all of those fantasy stories that feature a mysterious magic shop that sells the protagonist some talisman or other that will, purportedly, bring them their deepest desires. He asks who would run such a shop, what can selling these trinkets to unsuspecting passersby can possibly benefit them, and where do they go when the shop inevitably disappears.

Ellison's explanation for these is very imaginative, and very science-fiction heavy for a very traditional fantasy trope. He creates a world in which these shop keepers are actually trading for time; secretly taking time and causing the proliferation of anti-entropic energy by selling what, to the future, are essentially toys, to key figures in history. This time and energy is in turn used by the people of this far future to remain animated in a universe that has entirely succumbed to entropy and dark matter. Heavy, I know.

But the important part of this story is really more about a particular shop keeper; an artist named Lhayne who is working tirelessly to buy the reanimation of his lover, Ahna, but whose own artistic impulse and moral compass runs counter to the necessities of survival. What's really at play here is not just an attempt to answer an idle question on Ellison's part, but an exploration of the problems of art and the artist in the face of necessities of life. Ultimately, Ellison seems to be asking which is more important to the artist: their art or their survival. And, more importantly, why one would win over the other.

"Roadside Rescue" by Pat Cadigan

2009-11-07T17:45:00.003-05:00

There is something deeply disturbing about Pat Cadian's story. Set vaguely at some point in the future in which alien races have become common to Earth, it involves a chance roadside encounter between Etan Carrea, whose vehicle has broken down and an alien. The alien, as we find out from it's Limo driver, is fascinated by the sound of the human voice, almost to the point of a sexual fetish. To this end, Etan is coerced into talking with the alien, in a scene that brutally parallels rape in many ways. It's truly quite unsettling.

Unsettling, but I'm not sure there's really much else there. Of course, the story is only about six pages long, so how much could there be, right? I guess what I mean is that I'm not sure what Cadigan's goal was in creating this story other than to explore the idea that, since aliens could very well be vastly different from us in terms of gender, sex, and sexuality, that violation could take place in many forms. Perhaps this thought is enough to carry the story, and I will admit that, due to the tense and tight writing style, it did compel me to read on. However, after finishing the story, I can't help but wonder what the point was. What should I take away from this other than aliens are quite possibly capable of being just as debased and depraved as human beings? And, if that is what I should take away from this, is that enough?

"Dinner in Audoghast" by Bruce Sterling

2009-11-07T17:21:00.006-05:00

Okay, because I missed Thursday, I'm posting twice today to catch up. Up first, Bruce Sterling's "Dinner in Audoghast."

Sterling's excellently written short story uses a literary device near and dear to my heart, prophecy, to explore the impermanence of all things. He sets it in the ancient city of Audoghast during the height of it's power (and, consequently, arrogance), and inserts into it the figure of a lone prophet who has the undesirable and unique ability to render only true prophecies. I say undesirable here because his prophecies all revolve around the idea that nothing lasts forever: that, specifically, Audoghast and it's elite may be powerful now, but that will someday change.

The use of prophecy in fiction and how characters react to prophetic revelation has long been a subject of interest to me, particularly in how it relates to how the reader reads the story. Here, by having the distance that comes with time, a distance that lets the reader know with certainty that what the prophet says will in fact come to pass, helps to reveal to us the arrogance of the characters in the story when they choose to ignore what has been prophesied. In turn, I think that this does an interesting thing to the reader, making them also realize that our own society isn't permanent either, and that some day, things will change dramatically. This may be four hundred years from now, or it may be next week. That really doesn't matter. What is important is the idea that things will change, no matter what we do.

"Flying Saucer Rock and Roll" by Howard Waldrop

2009-11-06T12:46:00.004-05:00

First things first: apologies for not posting yesterday. I went straight from work to a movie ( Where the Wild Things Are, which I highly recommend), and, by the time I got home, it was too late and I was too tired. So. . . yeah. . .

On to today's short story. I have to say that "Flying Saucer Rock and Roll" is brilliant. It's a wonderful celebration of the underdog and of 1950s to early 1960s acapella rock. It's also a great look into life in the New York Projects during the early 1960s (which, sadly seems to be awfully similar to what life is like in poor neighbourhoods today), and if filling with richly fleshed-out characters.

The one part of the story I don't quite understand is the inclusion of UFOs. I suppose it does provide a sort of escape from a hard life for the central character, Leroy. It also provides an interesting twist two an otherwise common, The Commitments-like story (although, to be perfectly fair, this story, which was published in 1984, predates Roddy Doyle's novel by a full three years). However, I'm not sure it's entirely necessary. There's already enough charisma; enough raw story here to ride to a satisfying conclusion without the UFOs. Perhaps Waldrop has a good reason for their inclusion. Or perhaps he simply set out to write a Science Fiction piece because that's what he likes to write, which, now that I think about it, is also a good reason for writing something. I'm not sure.

This is also not to say that the UFOs detract from the overall quality of the story. I think this element, like all of the other elements in the short story, is executed quite well. I'm just curious about why Waldrop chose to go this route when other, equally viable, but more common, routes would have been available to him.

"Salvador" by Lucius Shepard

2009-11-04T18:26:00.003-05:00

In this short story, Shepard serves up an incredibly distrubing tale of the effects of war with a Science Fiction / Fantasy twist. It follows Dantzler, a Special Forces soldier during a fictional (although not implausible, especially for when this story was written in the 1980s) war of American conquest of South America. There are a few small Science Fiction elements mixed in, largely in the form of government-supplied Ampoules of what appears to be souped-up PCP (again, not entirely implausible), along with, as the story progresses, a heavy mix of Fantasy through the application of the myths and beliefs of the Santa Ana tribesman of El Salvador.

However, if you set the Fantasy and Science Fiction elements aside, you can see that Shepard's true thrust in this story is the inhumanizing effect of the horrors of war. In the character of Dantzler, Shepard shows the effects of war and how a normal person can become so hollowed-out by it, so devoid of emotion, that they become capable of unspeakable acts. Every aspect of this story is tragic, yet, especially if you think of the Fantasy elements as the disintegration of Dantzler's sanity, distrubingly plausible. And that is probably the most unsettling aspect of this story: You can clearly see how Dantzler's experiences make him into the "person" that he is at the end of the story.

"A Cabin on the Coast"

2009-11-03T19:12:00.002-05:00

Gene Wolfe is playing with some classic fairy-myth tropes in this story, mixing the traditions of fairy-folk from a range of cultures with the more modern idea of alien visitors. What results is a sort of gestalt. A distant, utterly alien, and totally aloof force that takes the forms of human myths as it sees fit. This is an interesting idea, of course, but the story the surrounds the idea seems a little done to me. Because he's telling a fairy-story, we're given all the requisite earmarks: a supernatural kidnapping, a deal, and a sacrifice. Even, somewhat expectedly, a twist on wording of the deal that leads to a "surprise" ending. These are all very necessary if you're going to play off of fairy-tales and myths in the first place. But it just ends up feeling like I've read this story before, written by other authors, and with more interesting varients. Also, while the twist is a clever one, it's not entirely unexpected. In the end, I'm a little ambivalent about the story. It's good enough to be fairly enjoyable, but not great.

I should say that the above is, of course, just my opinion, and it is clear that others don't share this opinion, as this story was nominated for both a Nebula and an Locus award in 1985.

"Blood Music" by Greg Bear

2009-11-02T19:54:00.004-05:00

This short story isn't about a vampire rock band, and we can all be thankful for that. It is, in fact, a particularly disturbing take on the dangers of nanotechnology. It's a cautionary tale not uncommon to Science Fiction, although a particularly well thought out one, in my opinion. It also takes a very original take on what could happen to humanity if technology runs out of control.

The one flaw I see in the story is that it does sometimes get lost in technobabble while explaining the microscopic organisms of the tale (Bear doesn't ever actually use the terms "nanites" or "nanotechnology"), but this only detracts very slightly from what is an excellent cautionary tale. , Of course, that's really just a matter of personal taste. I could easily see someone that's interested in computers or biochemistry being really interested in this aspect of the story.

However, even if you're not particularly scientifically inclined, this is a pretty damn good story.

"The Music of Erich Zahn" By H.P. Lovecraft

2009-11-01T17:36:00.006-05:00

Lovecraft Week Continues?!?

Happy All Saints Day everyone (okay, not as exciting as Halloween by a longshot, but it IS All Saints Day nonetheless). As I said in the original post for Lovecraft Week, I'm also reading a Lovecraft story today, mostly because I like the idea of an entire week instead of six days, and I didn't come up with the idea until Monday, so I was a little late for ending directly on Halloween. So consider this the after show.

And for the after show, we have the musical styling of Erich Zahn on the Viol. What really interested me about this short story was Lovecraft's use of music as a sort of conduit to magic or the unknown. In the story, Zahn's music has a sort of transformative and transportive power, revealing things not previously experienced by the listener. However, in true Lovecraft fashion, these revelations prove dangerous and destructive. Zahn's music is dangerous and destructive, both to Zahn himself and to the narrator. Luckily, the narrator seems to escape with his mind intact (something which seems to be a rarity in Lovecraft's fiction), but, once again, knowledge and revelation is seen as potentially destructive in Lovecraft's story. The music itself has a power to reveal, but, in revealing, is also has the power to destroy.

"The Dunwich Horror" by H. P. Lovecraft

2009-11-01T11:57:00.005-05:00

Lovecraft Week Continues!

So I decided that, for Halloween day, I'd read one of Lovecraft's most well-known creations, "The Dunwich Horror." However, I quickly afterwards decided that I should instead eat copious amounts of candy and drink some beer. So, it didn't get read until this morning, leaving me, once again, a day behind schedule. Luckily, thanks to Daylight Savings Time, I have an extra hour to catch up.

As I mentioned before, "The Dunwich Horror" is one of the best-know of Lovecraft's work, having been adapted into three movie adaptations, a radio play, a claymation short, the basis for a quest in the video game Fallout 3, and the inspiration for the song "Goin' Down to Dunwich" by The Darkest of the Hillside Thickets. I'm sure there are others as well. And, as I've found, it it well-known for good reason. It is probably the best of the Lovecraft stories I've read so far. It's dark, atmospheric, and creepy, although, I believe, it stops just short of causing a true feeling of horror in the reader. I think this might me because the horror of "The Dunwich Horror" is so alien, so otherworldly, that, while it could easily drive someone insane in real life, it has a bit of a distancing effect on the reader, allowing them to go "hey, that was weird," while keeping themselves far enough away from it to not truly be scared.

I think this distancing in relation to Lovecraft's work can possibly best be seen in the massive popularity of Chthulhu in pop culture, especially the proliferation of plush Chthulhus and "Little Chthulhus" out there. I think what happens here is that, while something like Chthulhu or the Dunwich Horror is terrifying to those that are actually experiencing them in the story, they just come across as weird, and perhaps even slightly fascinating, to the reader. Now, maybe I'm wrong here. Maybe what's really at work is the age and popularity of Lovecraft's works has made it such a part of popular culture that it is no longer particularly foreign or horrific to the modern reader. Kind of like how vampires have become so commonplace to popular fiction that they're no longer all that scary.

Happy Halloween Everyone!

2009-10-31T11:41:00.000-04:00

I'll be back tomorrow with two Lovecraft stories to round out the week, but I'm too busy enjoying Halloween for now. Hope yours is fun as well!

"The Quest of Iranon" by H. P. Lovecraft

2009-10-30T20:05:00.003-04:00

Lovecraft Week Keeps on Trucking. . .

Hmm, today's selection from Lovecraft just left me a little flat. It's a interesting enough Greek-esque myth about a singer who searches for years for his lost homeland, kept young by his hopes and dreams. It also has a sort of moral aspect to it relating to excess (unsurprising, really, since Lovecraft was apparently a known Teetotaller*), which is mildly interesting, but kind of heavy-handed. Ultimately, the story seems to explore the power of hope in sustaining someone, and what happens when this hope is taken away. It's not a particularly revolutionary sentiment, but a good one. I just wish that the story that illuminated this idea was a little more interesting.

* Or so say the notes to the Penguin Edition of The Thing on the Doorstep and Other Weird Stories, which were edited by S.T. Joshi, a Lovecraft critic and biographer. This also makes it kind of funny that there is a Lovecraft Drinking Game.

"The Tomb" by H.P. Lovecraft

2009-10-29T18:13:00.004-04:00

Lovecraft Week Continues. . . (insert spooky music here)

What struck me most about this short story is it's claustrophobic feel and the tense and somewhat terrifying atmosphere that that claustrophobia creates within the story itself. Set on a doomed U-boat during World War I, we read the last words of the Captain of said U-boat, who is also it's last surviving crewmember. He calmly takes us through all the horrors that have occured on the boat that have, ultimately, left him alone, without power, at the bottom of the ocean in an ancient ruined city. Lovecraft is brilliant at giving the reader a feel of the futilityand claustrophobia of the crew's situation, even having one character choose to kill himself by stepping out of the airlock instead of slowing dying of deprivation.

Also, in true Lovecraftian form, we can't quite trust the narrator, as he no longer trusts his own senses. In turn, this means that you're never sure if everything happened as he says it happened. You're not sure, for example, it he actually "had" to shoot six of the crew because they went insane and started to tear up the boat, or if he just shot them because he himself is insane. This only adds to the spookiness of the situation, and heightens the atmospheric terror that permeates the story.

"The White Ship" by H.P. Lovecraft

2009-10-28T12:40:00.004-04:00

Lovecraft Week Continues. . .

With a uncharacteristically un-scary story, to be quite frank. Of course, I don't think Lovecraft intended it to be scary, just strange (and strange it is), but it, unfortunately, makes it kind of a bad pick for a week where I'm trying to read and write about scary stories.

Nevertheless, Lovecraft's very unconventionally cautionary tale about the grass always being greener on the other site is still an engrossing read. The dream sequence that takes of the bulk of this short story includes some beautifully described passages of wonderfully imaginative locals. There is also a strong recurring theme that things aren't always what they seem, and may, in fact, often be too good to be true. For instance, we learn that Tharlarion, the "'. . .City of a Thousand Wonders, wherein reside all those mysteries that man has striven in vain to fathom.'" is a terrible place, where anyone who has entered have either died, been driven mad, or turned into a daemon by what they have seen. Similarly, while Xuria, "Land of Pleasures Unattained" seems beautiful and idyllic, it smells of the plague and of open graves.

What Lovecraft seems to be getting at here is the need to be happy with what you have, and that getting what you think you want may in fact be worse than what you already have. It's a bit heavy-handed, and I'm not sure that it's a sentiment that always rings true, but it's a valid point nonetheless.

"Beyond the Wall of Sleep" by H. P. Lovecraft

2009-10-27T18:23:00.001-04:00

Lovecraft Week Continues. . .

With this little number about a unnamed doctor reporting on his potentially psychopathic patient, a middle-aged man from the Catskill Mountains named Joe Slater. Slater has been having strange dreams frequently wakes in a violent rage, ranting about being a being of light and about how he needs to destroy his adversary, and will burn anything that gets in his way. The doctor tells us that, at one point, these rages became so violent that Slater beat a man to a bloody pulp. Since it appears Slater is unaware of what he says or does in his rages, the authorities assume that he is completely insane. However, the narrator believes that he is actually tapping into something else: a dream-existence that is incomprehensible to us in our waking lives.

This whole concept makes for a terribly interesting story in itself. However, I still had a hard time with this story because of the overt disdain the narrator has for Slater. There is a real racism and classism at work here, with the narrator repeatedly calling Slater a "degenerate" and a "decadent" that is typical of the people of the Catskill mountains. In fact, the narrator goes so far as to say:

Among those old folk, who correspond exactly to the 'white trash' in the South, law and morals are non-existent; and their general mental status is probably below that of any section of the native American people.

Frankly, as a modern reader, I found this pretty shocking, and kind of offensive. Of course, I realize that, when this story was written in 1919, and certainly for the time it is set (1900-1901), these wouldn't be unheard-of sentiments. The word "Hillbilly" came from somewhere, right? Still, it ends up rubbing me the wrong way. Throughout the story, I couldn't help but laugh at the narrator whenever he would make some sort of assertion that what Slater was saying in his rages had to have come from somewhere other than Slater's own mind on account of the "fact" that this degenerate hillbilly couldn't possibly be capable of such feats of imagination. It just seems like such a ridiculous argument for "proving" the presence of a supernatural force. As a result, the narrator comes across as a bit of an ass.

"The Tomb" by H.P. Lovecraft

2009-10-26T19:04:00.007-04:00

Okay, now that I'm caught up on my reading, it's time to announce what I'm doing for the next week in honour of Halloween. To commemorate one of my favourite non-holiday holidays, I decided that it would only be appropriate to read some scary stories, and who better to go with than H.P. Lovecraft? So, for the next seven days (including Sunday, aka "All Saints Day,"), I'll be reading and writing on one Lovecraft story a day. And who might be the lucky first contestant, you might ask? Well, it's:

"The Tomb"

I personally think that this story perfectly showcases why H.P. Lovecraft is considered a master of creepy fiction, and it doesn't even contain a single Cthulhu reference. It's a first person account of Jervas Dudley, a young man who has been driven mad by his obsession with an old tomb in the woods near his home, the final resting place of the once great Hyde family. What makes this story great, however, is how Lovecraft makes you question whether the "facts" Dudley recites to the reader are the result of his existing psychoses, or if they are the cause of his current state. He makes the reader ask whether Dudley was mad to begin with, or if there was something else that caused his madness (or if he is even mad at all. . .). It's a creepy, atmospheric read, and a great way to start out Lovecraft week.

"The Man Who Was Heavily Into Revenge" by Harlan Ellison

2009-10-26T18:56:00.004-04:00

This story is an elaborate revenge fantasy, and, let me say this right now, I pity anyone who has ever or will ever cross Harlan Ellison, because this is possibly the most inventive revenge fantasy I've ever read (I havn't read many, but nonetheless). It revolves around the idea that sometimes, just sometimes, the cumulative impotent anger of the entire planet (around 4 billion at the time of the writing of this story), reaches such a critical mass and has to find a place to vent; a "lightening rod" who has been so personally wronged and is so deserving of justice that he/she can siphon off some of that rage.

The "lightening rod" in this story if one Fred Tolliver, who has been wronged by William Weisel, as crooked contractor who took Tolliver for thousands of dollars in exchange for a shoddily made guest bathroom. What follows from this cosmic siphoning off is incredibly elaborate and strangely cathartic, although also at times deeply disturbing.

"Would you do it for a Penny" by Harlan Ellison and Haskell Barkin

2009-10-26T18:42:00.002-04:00

I have to say, I recommend anyone who hasn't read Harlan Ellison before to go out and pick up a copy of the Shatterday anthology right now, if only for his brilliant introductions to each piece. It's okay, I'll wait. . .
. . I say that the intros alone make it worth it specifically for stories like this one. In the into, Ellison explains how this collaboration with Haskell Barkin is what finally got him published in Playboy, which, at the time of the publication of this story, was one of the highest paying markets for fiction (and what does that say about the state of modern society?). It's an entertaining anecdote to say the least, and it helps illustrate a bit about how author collaborations come to be.

As for the story itself, it's funny enough. The main character, Arlo, a self-styled "Great White Hunter" of women, is oddly endearing despite being incredibly slimy, and his "prey", a woman named "Anastasia" is wonderfully witty and sarcastic as well. It also includes the best string of explicatives ever put to page. I won't ruin it to you, but, if you have the Tachyon edition of the anthology, skip to the bottom of page 84 to find out.

What I don't like, however, is how the story turns out. I won't ruin it, but, suffice to say, it's very Playboy, so you can guess where it goes. Somehow, I expected a little more from Ellison and Barkin in this respect, especially since every other aspect of the story excels.

"On the Road with Fiamong's Rule" by Sherry D. Ramsey

2009-10-26T18:32:00.004-04:00

So I have, once again, been remiss in my posting, which means it's time for another posting marathon. I have four days worth of stories to catch up on (including today's), so I better get started.

"On the Road with Fiamong's Rule" by Sherry D. Ramsey, is kind of clever, but not incredibly deep. It's a sort of unconventional road trip story involving a stranded alien, a bored housewife, and a minivan. It has it's funny moments (the stranded alien's faulty translator is pretty hilarious, actually), and it's a nice, light read which was perfect for a Friday when I read this. There's also an interesting use of smell on the alien's part to get what he/she wants. But, like I said before, there isn't much depth here. It's a good road trip comedy, and that's about it.

Of course, is there anything wrong with a story that lacks depth? I don't think so, as long as it was the author's intent to create a "fun" story, and I think this is what Ramsey has done here. The characters are well fleshed-out and interesting, and, like I said before, the story is funny. Really, what more could you ask for on a burnt-out Friday night.

"Golden City Far" by Gene Wolfe

2009-10-24T12:00:00.004-04:00

I know, I need to to some catch up, again. I have the stories read for the last few days, but I just havn't had the time to write about them. I only have enough time for one right now. The others will have to follow later today, or maybe tomorrow.

I love a good story where you're not sure if the the main character has lost his mind. Seriously, Fight Club is one of my favourite novels. I think that's partially why I enjoyed Gene Wolfe's "Golden City Far" so much.

In this story, Wolfe works with the not-uncommon idea of a teen protagonist who lives a fairly uneventful life, but dreams of a being a hero in a fantasy world at night. Through the story, the teen comes to success in real life through the strength and skills he gains in the fantasy world. While few particular examples are coming to mind right now, I've seen this story hundreds of times before.

However, the twist here is that Wolfe makes it unclear as to whether his protagonist, William Watcher, is actually visiting a fantasy world in his dreams, or if he is just going insane. The fantasy world bleeds heavily into the characters real world and vice versa (Bill's neighbour's dog starts talking to and follows him around, both in and out of his dreams, a black-haired woman named Dinah from his dreams keeps appearing to him at different points, and so on. . .). Ultimately, it appears that Bill is transported to his dream world, but it's still unclear as to whether this really happens, or if it's all in his head.

"Sleepover" by Al Sarrantonio

2009-10-21T22:02:00.004-04:00

Sarrantonio's story is a tightly written, incredibly creepy little piece that plays off of the regret that some parents sometimes feel about having children, and how horrible it would be if, somehow, those parents could go "back to the way things were before." To make matters worse, he writes this from the perspective of the children, making the reader relieve the sort of deep abandonment that would go along with such a change. The result is emotionally draining, but beautifully written. An excellent piece of short fiction.

"Bill, the Little Steam Shovel" by Joe R. Lansdale

2009-10-20T19:14:00.005-04:00

We have a new champion in the category of "weirdest story!" And, boy, this one is a doozy (that's right, a "doozy." I like odd words. So sue me."

In "Bill, the Little Steam Shovel," Lansdale takes the well-known children's story trope of anthropomorphic machinery and rewrites it for adults. Think Cars, or Thomas the Tank Engine, except that it hasn't been written for six-year-olds. Just like any number of these types of children's stories, Bill, the titular Steam Shovel, is new to the construction crew, and smaller than all the other steam shovels. Unsurprisingly, he's bullied by the local thug steam shovel, is befriended by the old coot steam shovel, falls for the girl steam shovel, and ultimately proves his heroism despite his small stature. However, unlike other stories of this type, Lansdale's story is filled with crude language, psychoanalysis, some musings on the Steam Shovel God (and Jaysus, "the Steam Shovel Who Had Died for [Bill's] Sins and all Steam Shovel's sins by allowing himself to be worked to a frazzle and run off a cliff by a lot of uncaring machines of the old religion"), and graphic violence. Oh, and graphic steam shovel on steam shovel sex. Yep, steam shovel sex. That's not an image I'm going to get rid of soon.

Despite the weird machinery sex (can you tell I'm a little bit traumatized?), this is actually a pretty good coming of age story with overtones of heroism in the face of adversity. And it can be pretty funny, too (see "Jaysus"). In the end, it's definitely worth a read.

"Jupiter's Skull" by Jeffrey Ford

2009-10-19T17:29:00.005-04:00

"Jupiter's Skull" reminds me a lot of Neil Gaiman's short fiction. It has that wonderful feel of the fantastic amidst the mundane that is so often present in Gaiman's work. Also, like Gaiman's work, Jeffrey Ford's story centres on the importance of stories and the act of storytelling. In Ford's story, the act of storytelling is a transformative one. It allows the protagonist, who is burdened with his own sense of failure in life, to escape from the meaningless rut his life and become something more. Through the agency of an old woman named Mrs. Strellop, he and a young prostitute named Maylee tell the story of Zel and Jupiter, two young lovers. It is through the events of Zel and Jupiter's story that the protagonist is allowed (forced?) to leave behind his "life" in the Bolukuchet (a run-down district in a nameless city filled with people who have given up on life), and move on to telling his own stories.

So what does this say about stories in general? To be frank, I'm not entirely sure. Is Ford saying that all stories have the power to inspire people, to allow them to escape from their own lives? Or possibly that a well-told story pulls the reader in to such an extent that they almost become one with the main character, and are changed by the character's experiences? Maybe. It's something I'll have to think about.

"Tots" by Peter Schneider

2009-10-18T17:38:00.008-04:00

In "Tots," Peter Schneider takes the reader into the seedy world of Totfights, kind of an ultra violent version of "Boy Fights" from Arrested Development in which two four-year-old boys fight to death. In Schneider's story, the narrator refers to it as a "logical extension of the vastly more popular cockfighting - though, truth be told, totfighting probably originated long before mankind had domesticated roosters." Yeah, it's a weird story. A very weird story.

Actually, I can't help but think that the Totfights/Cockfights allegory is a bit of a tip of the hat to A Modest Proposal, showing the horrific nature of the actions of real-world people through the logical extension of those actions. While I don't think anyone would equate chickens with toddlers (chickens are nasty birds, while many toddlers can be quite pleasant), the analogy largely works. There are some other interesting things here as well, such as the future of Totfighters as VPs in fortune 500 companies, and the oddly caring relationship of a Totfighting handler for his "boys."

All in all, it's a weird little read of a story that reminds me a lot of Chuck Palahniuk's work (and not just because of Fight Club). The morals presented seem a little broad, but Schneider never decends to the point of preaching to his audience.

Phew, there we go. I'm all caught up on short stories for the week. Hopefully, from now on, I can get back to a regular schedule with a response per day. So far, staying on track for the readings have been the easy part. It's getting to these responses that seem to be tripping me up.

"Watchfire" by Raymond E. Feist and Janny Wurts

2009-10-18T17:25:00.006-04:00

Feist and Wurts (which, incidentally, sounds very funny together) put some major twists on the traditional "regular-person-pulled-into-a-different-world-that-he/she-is-destined-to-save" fantasy trope* in this story. Instead a plucky young pre-teen or teen, the character here is "Old Jake" a half-mad old wino whose only companion on a wet December night is Gran, an even older homeless woman that seems to be suffering from severe dementia. This is enough of a twist to make things interesting to begin with, but Feist and Wurts (again, funny) add the extra twist that Jake, for all the time that he ends up spending in the fantasy world he's pulled into, never really knows if it is real or just a vivid dream brought on by a cold, wet winter's night. This is in turn woven into the role he plays in the alternate world as "the doubter." By the end of the story, neither Jake nor the reader really knows if any of the events from the alternate world "really" happened, or is it was all in Jake's head.

Of course, I think that it isn't important to the story whether what happens to Jake is real or not. Instead, what's truly important is what it all reveals about Jake's character, about how he came to be homeless in the first place, and, more importantly, how he came to care so much for Gran. The story itself ends on a incredible down note, but not one that seems inappropriate.

*What I also like to call "The Narnia Plot."

"Keeper of Lost Dreams" by Orson Scott Card

2009-10-18T17:12:00.007-04:00

Card's story of Mack Street, a young orphan boy growing up the inner city who grows up dreaming other people's dreams, is a real treat of a story. The characters, especially Mack, are well rounded and believable, and the plot is subtle and nuanced. Mack is the consummate "strange" kid, and suffers from waking dreams which he knows arn't his, but are actually the dreams of other people in the neighbourhood. Between these dreams and the fact that he was even alive today was nothing short of miraculous, given that his birth mother had tried to abort him at seven months, Mack has come to believe that his life has a purpose. Most of the rest of the neighbourhood seems to think he's crazy, and suffers from epilepsy, but Mack himself nevers loses faith that there is a reason he's alive today.

What I think makes this story great, however, is that this "purpose" isn't some grand teenage wish-fulfillment fantasy. It's something much simpler than that. It's closer to home, but important nonetheless, and far more beleivable. As to what it is, I'll leave that to you to find out for yourself.

"Coming Across" by Harry Turtledove

2009-10-18T14:38:00.007-04:00

Harry Turtledove is know for his alternate-history fiction, which, while not my thing, I have heard is quite good. So I guess that I shouldn't be surprised that, when I came across a fantasy short story by Turtledove that it would be highly focused on this type of speculation. In "Coming Across," Turtledove establishes a parallel world to ours that is inhabited by elves. The elves themselves are pretty interesting, actually, and it's clear that Turtledove has put a lot of thought into what an immortal race would really be like.

However, the true focus of the story is on a single elf that travels to our world in 1979 San Fransisco, and, after an affair with a man there, ends up contracting HIV. What follows is an exploration of how HIV would spread through the Elven community once he comes back, taking into account that elves had never previously really experienced sickness (or, at least sickness that they couldn't heal). It's clear that Turtledove thought a lot about this, and the results are fairly engaging, but I couldn't help but wonder what was the point. Okay, yes, it would be terrible for these elves if they contracted AIDS. But, I can't seem to figure out if Turtledove is using the plight of the Elves as some kind of metaphor or not. They're so fundamentally different from people that it doesn't seem like the story could serve any kind of allegorical purpose. Ultimately, it just seems like an exercise in "what would happen if," which is interesting, but kind of unfulfilling as a narrative.

Falling off the Wagon

2009-10-17T10:27:00.001-04:00

So I havn't posted in a few days. I don't really have a reason, except that I've been lazy. I have been keeping up on the reading, though, so expect a whole slew of updates tomorrow.

"Perchance to Dream" by David Morrel

2009-10-14T19:59:00.008-04:00

There's not much I can tell you about Morrel's short story. It's an engaging, psychological "horror" about one man's descent into madness as seen through the eyes of a doctor that specializes in sleep disorders. I put horror in quotation marks here, because it isn't horrific in the sense of axe murderers, homicidal ghosts, or supernatural monsters. It's more horrific in the sense of what happens to the man. The story is very Hitchcockian in style, actually.

Incidentally, this Hitchcock-esque style is also why I can't say much about it, as any real analysis of the story will completely ruin it for anyone that hasn't read it before. The story itself relies on the surprise of the ending to make it a good story, and revealing that ending would be doing too much of a disservice to readers. So all I can say is: find it for yourself, and give it a read. I'm sure you'll enjoy it.

"Death's Door" by Terry Bisson

2009-10-13T20:18:00.005-04:00

Turkey Day Marathon Part Five: I'm too tired to say something even remotely clever

I really liked this story, which generally brings the Turkey Day Marathon score to four out of five, which isn't a bad streak at all. In if, Bisson asks the question of what it really would be like if death just took a few days off. In short, it would be horrific. Since people and animals still become injured, but just won't die, the hospitals become overfull in a matter of days. People that are blown apart in horrible accidents still suffer through the pain, and even a little girl's dog that is hit by a car just won't pass away (although cats somehow still manage to get around the "no death" thing, which seems to be such a cat thing to me).

In a way, the point of the story seems to me to be that, in many ways, we should appreciate death. That, in many cases, death is a relief from pain and suffering. Bisson also seems to be trying to tell us that death is what really helps us appreciate life. That, without death, somewhat ironically, life would be pretty horrible.

There, I'm done. Five posts in one night. Not five quality posts, I'm sure, but the point is that they are complete, and that I have kept up my commitment to the rules. From now on, it's back to a normal post-a-day schedule. In the meantime, I'm going to take a nap.

"The White Man" by Thomas M. Disch

2009-10-13T19:55:00.006-04:00

Turkey Day Marathon Episode Four: A New Turkey

Story number four is kind of unusual. In it, Disch deals with how one culture can be woefully misinterpreted by another. It also deals with the exploitation of immigrants in America. It follows a Somali teen, Tawana, who lives with her family in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Through a string of events, and with the encouragement of a local minister, Tawana comes to believe that "White Men," which appears to be an variant on vampires that uses syringes to take your blood and kill you. This belief leads to some very disturbing results.

Equally disturbing, however, is what you learn about Tawana's life, and, through her, the life of a refugee family (Tawana herself doesn't appear to be a refugee, although it is clear that her grandfather and her parents did flee from Somalia to the U.S.). There are several instances where, I think, the reader is supposed to be equally horrified about the everyday things that happen to Tawana as they are horrified by the playing out of the vampire plot. It's an unsettling story, and not one you really want to read while on a long car trip where you have a lot of time to think.

"Out of the Woods" by Patricia A. McKillip

2009-10-13T19:40:00.006-04:00

Turkey Day Marathon Part Three: Turkey Day Revolutions

Another good story comes out of my post-Turkey Day catchup! So far we're two for three, which is not bad at all. Into the woods is an interesting story of crushing normalcy which seems to take place in the background of a Medieval Romance or Arthurian Legend-type world (which are actually one in the same, but anyway). It's the story of a peasant woman, Leta, who spends her days keeping house for a local wizard, and her nights trying to reconnect with her increasingly distant woodcutter husband. She feels the boredom an monotony of her mundane life acutely. To make matters worse, Leta is witness to several fantastic events, one of which I swear is a scene between Merlin and Nimue, a.k.a. the Lady of the Lake, although no one seems to listen to her when she recounts these events.

Ultimately, I think the story shows the power of fantasy to help people escape from the mundane. That the fantastic is ultimately Leta's escape from her life; that it is more compelling and, well, real, than her own life has become. In the end, I'm not sure if you should be happy for Leta at the end of the story or not. You certainly don't feel good for her during the story, but the conclusion is intentionally left vague. You feel that it is an escape, but you're not sure to where.

Anyway, I should stop there. I still have two more stories to write about tonight.

"Tourists" by Neal Barrett, Jr.

2009-10-13T19:27:00.010-04:00

Turkey Day Marathon Part Deux.

I enjoyed this story immensely, even though (perhaps because) it is so weird. You can kind of tell that it's the kind of story where the author had an interesting concept or question that she wanted to explore. In this case, the question is: "What would it be like to be a tourist in Hell?" This, of course, leads to the not only the chance for Barrett, Jr. to establish his own view of Hell*, and to ponder what it would be like to take a bus tour to Hell, but also to ask what kind of tourist would voluntarily go to Hell. I think you'll be pleasantly surprised by the results.

Okay, so I don't think I have much more to say about this one. In short, if you like off-kilter fantasy, look it up. It's an enjoyable read.

* Which is incredibly and unconventionally creepy, by the way, not to mention way better than L.E. Modesitt's version. At least in my opinion.

"Relations" by Nina Kiriki Hoffman

2009-10-13T19:14:00.007-04:00

Okay, I'm back, and I've got five separate stories to write about, so these will be brief.

Here begins the legend of the Turkey Day Marathon

The first story, which I read on Friday, was a little disturbing to me, but not in any way that I think was intended. On one level, it's the story about a woman that possesses hereditary magical powers who uses these powers to make random people fall hopelessly in love with her, then bend them to her will, discarding them once they, as she puts it, "break" and cease to be interesting. Somewhat unsurprisingly, she ends up coming across a man that she cannot make fall in love with her. Instead, she falls in love with him (it turns out that his family have similar powers). The only difference is that he appears to be kind to her while she is cruel to her prey, and there is no indication that he will leave her. Sweet, isn't it?

Except that, read on another level, this story could pretty disturbing. It could also be said that this is a story of a strong (but admittedly evil) woman who goes through life taking what she wants, until she comes across a man that is stronger than her, whom she falls hopelessly in love with. He even draws her into a traditional role of wife by giving her the one thing she could never have before, a child (she was previously barren). And, as we all know, all any woman really wants is a strong man and a child. Barefoot and pregnant!

So, to say the least, this story bothers me a little. I won't go so far as saying that it's sexist, since it was written by a woman, but I'm not sure I agree with the message it seems to convey.

Turkey Day Weekend

2009-10-09T14:06:00.002-04:00

Like many other Canadians this weekend, I will be visiting family for Thanksgiving (aka "Turkey Day"). Now, my parents do not have Internet access, as they are not very technologically inclined. As a result, I won't be able to post over the next few days. However, as per the rules of the game, I will continue to be reading stories in my time away, and will batch post to catch up once I return on Monday/Tuesday. I was hoping to post today as well, but it doesn't look like that will happen. To all you Canadians out there, enjoy your turkey (or, if you're vegitarian, vegetable-based-turkey-subsitite) this weekend. I certainly will.

"Demons Hide Their Faces" by A. A. Attanasio

2009-10-08T17:13:00.006-04:00

Let me start this entry out by saying that not everyone can be Charles de Lint, and, A. A. Attanasio, you are most certainly not Charles de Lint. This is not a bad story by any stretch. The cyclical structure of the story in which the later parts of the story are told interspersed with the earlier segments is actually quite clever and plays into the ending quite well. It won't make any sense until you're almost done the story, but once it does, it strikes you as pretty clever. I don't particularly have anything against the story itself either. The idea that demons steal book to gain power is interesting, to say the least, and Attanasio's portrayal of Hell is nothing if not original.

What I do have against this story is Attanasio's prose style. His prose is just too, well, crowded. When he could say something in a few words, he instead opts for a whole heap of them, choosing complex and obscure terms when simpler ones would do. Now, there could be an argument here that this is done for the sake of poetic style; that Attanasio's choice of words are calculated to bring a more vibrant image to the reader's mind. However, it comes accross more like he's saying "Hey, I know a lot of obscure words! Watch me you them in sentences!" The end effect for me is a distancing from the story itself.

This is especially concerning when the first sentence suffers from this problem. Attanasio opens the story with:

Winterset in Egypt beside a rotting canal at Sidi Bishr, with the little, ceramic hashish pipe in her freckled hand, a thin thread of palpitant smoke twisting in the air before her, the professor faced her student and informed him seriously and with hollow impersonality, "The most avid collectors of books are demons. But they want only the old texts The oldest texts."

Not only does this sentence run on and on, its use of words like "palpitant" (pulsating) and "Winterset" (which, is not defined in any dictionary I can find, and is not "the professor's" name, so I can only assume it means "in the winter") distract the reader. At least they distracted me. The end effect is that I became more interested in deciphering Attanasio's strange vocabulary than the story itself, which I think is a major failing for any piece of prose.

"Riding Shotgun" by Charles de Lint

2009-10-07T19:33:00.002-04:00

I'm not entirely sure what to say about this short story because it is just so good. The characters are full and lifelike, the story is engaging (sometimes even heart-wrenching), and the central conceit of "going back and doing it all over again" is masterfully handled. This is easily the best story I've read during this whole self-challenge, and Charles de Lint in one of my new favourite authors.

Gushing aside, de Lint does some great things with his main character here, playing off his urges to save the people he loves, whether it is his dead brother, the ghost-girl Ginny, or his long time friend, Allessandra. These competing urges to make things better for everyone involved creates some great tensions in the story, as the character is forced to make tough decisions in order to do what he knows is right.

I won't say any more, because I don't want to ruin any part of this great story. Please, if you're actually reading this (there may be one or two you), just go out and find this story and read it. Don't worry, I'll wait.

"Blood, Oak, Iron" by Janny Wurts

2009-10-06T19:01:00.003-04:00

This short story reminds me a bit of "The Tale of Sir Bors," from Sir Thomas Mallory's Morte Darthur in that both stories deal with a main character that accepts a fate they cannot change. In the case of Wurts' story, Findlaire, the son of a dying king, comes to accept his fate as the next vessel for a demon that has plague his family for centuries. One of Findlaire's ancestors made a deal with a demon, presumably to guarantee his rule of the kingdom of Chaldir. In return, the demon possesses the king of the realm, and passes to the closest male heir as each successive king dies, leaving the chancellor and king's council to rule Chaldir in the place of its king. As the story opens, the current king is dying, and Findlaire is the next in line of succession. However, instead of trying to escape his fate; instead of trying to find a way out, Findlaire learns to accept it.

To me, this acceptance seems very similar to Sir Bors' acceptance of his fate in Mallory's tale. In his acceptance of his fate, Findlaire is like Bors, who accepts that he cannot avoid the prophecy that states that he will kill his own brother, instead choosing to act as valiantly as possible despite the prophecy. However, Findlaire's acceptance of his fate and his resulting sacrifice goes much farther than in the case of Sir Bors. While Bors still retains a tinge of the tragic to his character, Findlaire achieves a sort of zen-like peace in accepting his fate. This allows him to accept what must happen without entirely giving up hope, while Bors simply goes on despite the absence of hope. Findlaire is able to recognize that, because life itself is temporary, his possession will only be temporary, and that, while the demon may pass to the next male in the line of succession upon his death, someone will someday be able to break the curse. In realizing the transience of his own life, and if the curse, Findlaire is able to accept his fate without even losing hope that, someday, life will be better for his heirs. It is this sort of grand scale, long-term thinking and the strength that goes with it that allows Findlaire to accept his fate.

"Wonderwall" by Elizabeth Hand

2009-10-05T19:06:00.004-04:00

Despite being a child of the nineties, and thus having been overexposed to the Oasis song of the same name, I still had to look up the meaning of the word "wonderwall" after reading this story. Thanks to the Urban Dictionary, I now know that it roughly means "someone you find yourself thinking about all the time, or are infatuated with." Apparently, it is also the name of a German Pop Band, and a solo album by Ringo Starr, which, in turn, was the soundtrack to a 1968 movie of the same name. Thanks, Internet!

Getting back to the story itself, if we take the above definition of "wonderwall" to be the one applied here (which I am, since I havn't been able to find another definition anywhere), there seems to be two possibilities for the "wonderwall" of the story itself. The most obvious seems to be to be the narrator's friend, David Baldanders, since the story itself starts with the statement "A long time ago, nearly thirty years now, I had a friend who was waiting to be discovered. His name was David Baldanders. . .," and, in turn, ends with her meeting him several years later.

However, while the narrator's relationship with David sets the framework for the story, I'd personally propose that the "wonderwall" of the title is actually the nameless, skinny, lank-haired, blond boy that keeps appearing to the narrator, calling her a "poseur." I think this apparition, lets call him "poseur-boy," becomes the true object of obsession for the narrator in the story, as we witness her descent into a spiral of heavy drinking and alcohol abuse in the pursuit of what she sees as "High Art." In fact, I would argue that "poseur-boy" is a sort of physical manifestation of art, and that, through his violence towards her (he attacks her at one point in addition to shouting "poseur" at her every time she sees him), is trying to show her that the life she's living is not the way to get to a place to create art. He his trying to show her that, in the folly of her youth, she has perhaps mistaken the drug and alcohol abuse of her idols as fuel for their artistic brilliance, when they were, in fact, secondary to sid brilliance. More importantly, I believe the manifestation of "poseur-boy" it trying to show her that, while that life may have "worked" for others, it is only destroying her.

That's my take on it, at least. Maybe I'm wrong.

"A Tower With No Doors" by Dennis L. McKiernan

2009-10-04T10:38:00.002-04:00

It seems to be the "in thing" in Fantasy literature over the last few years to take exisiting fairly tales and folk tales and give them a new twist. I'm not sure who started the trend, exact, although the works of authors like Neil Gaiman (Stardust, American Gods), Sherri Tepper (Beauty), and Gregory Maguire (just about everything he's written), certainly all had a hand in its popularization.

Dennis L. McKiernan's short story is a particular good example of a retelling of a fairy tale. Told cleverly from the perspective of an immortal who claims to have seem the true events first-hand (you'll get a bit of a laugh once you find out who the immortal is), this is a fairly straightforward retelling of Rapunzel, with a bit of a twist that isn't uncommon to these sorts of stories. As usual, not everyone is exactly who the reader expects them to be, and the story doesn't exactly occur in the way you'd expect. The narrator, who, I think, is the best part of this story, also takes some jabs at some of the aspects of the traditional version of the story, like the idea that Rapunzel would have been give to the witch by her parents in exchange for some parsley (he notes that no parent would be that stupid). In the end, like many of these types of stories, it isn't an incredibly deep or challenging story, but it is fun.

"The Following" by P.D. Cacek

2009-10-03T11:45:00.004-04:00

Cacek's ghost story is one of my favourite types of ghost story, because it's really more about the lives of the people involved in the story than about murderous ghosts and cheap scares. The story is a slow, psychological examination of its main character, Lydia Terrell, who has the special ability to capture souls. Essentially, she's a ghost exterminator. But this isn't an episode of Supernatural*, or a similar ghost adventure/horror stories that happen to involve ghosts. It's more about how Lydia copes with her powers and their terrible after-effects.

I think this is really what the best ghost-stories, or stories in general, for that matter, do. They help the reader learn about the characters involved in the story. You get to know them, to identify them; watch them change and grow. So many stories of this genre are wrapped up in interesting conceits or scary sequences that they lose this idea that a story should really be about the characters. It's refreshing to see that Cacek doesn't fall into this trap.

*As a side note, I'm not disparaging Supernatural here. I love its comic-book take on horror and ghost stories. Plus, I think it ofter does just what I'm talking about here, revealing complex stories and characters beneath the top layer of action and gore.

"Fallen Angel" by L. E. Modesitt, Jr.

2009-10-02T18:32:00.003-04:00

Modesitt, Jr.'s story is a unique take on angels, the Devil, and Heaven. The main character, Lucian deNoir (ostensibly the Devil), is called to heaven to work a spell of attraction. Because he is the only fully fallen angel, the only one to have willfully embraced darkness,he is the only one that can create this spell, which is required to, wait for it, encourage other angels to move into the new villas past the Elysian Gardens in order to maintain "ecological an aesthetic balance." So, basically, Real Estate.

The fact that Heaven in Modesitt, Jr.'s story works more like a modern city than God's paradise is, quite surprisingly, actually one of the smallest deviations from a traditional view of Heaven and Hell. In his cosmology, other angels are able to fall, and be redeemed. They seem to have a free will of their own, and act a lot like human beings. They also seem capable of sex and desire, which is a switch from the more traditional sexless servants of God. Oh, yes, and God. That brings me to the biggest change. In Modesitt, Jr.'s story, God is called the Maid, and, apparently, takes the form of a woman. Like God in most stories, the Maid herself doesn't actually appear in the story, but she is always referred to in the feminine sense, and she has priestesses instead of priests, in a obvious flip from Catholic traditions.

The overall effect of these changes is a distancing of the story from it's Judeo-Christian inspirations. Now, I hope that this is in an effort to allow readers to empathize with the character of Lucian (who, incidentally, is well fleshed out and nuanced). However, the cynic in me can't help but wonder if it was in an effort on Modesitt, Jr.'s part to create some plausible deniability for himself in the future. A way to say "see, that's clearly not the Judeo-Christian Heaven, so you can't give me slack for taking liberties with the details." Now, maybe Modesitt, Jr. felt that it was necessary to create a fantasy Heaven as a setting to the story in order to free him up to tell the story he wanted to tell. And maybe that is true. I, however, don't think it was entirely necessary. Sometimes I even found the effect to be a little jarring, as terms or names would be just slightly different from what you'd expect.

Despite this one complaint, I really did enjoy this story. It has great pacing,
wonderful imagery, and, as I mentioned earlier, the character of Lucian is brilliantly compelling. Overall, definitely worth the read.

"The Silver Dragon" by Elizabeth A. Lynn

2009-10-01T21:44:00.004-04:00

"The Silver Dragon" reads a lot like an except from J. R. R. Tolkien's The Silmarillion. It's really more of a legend from the fantasy world Lynn has, and much less of a coherent story in itself. It overtly chronicles the life of "Iyadur Atani," the titular "Silver Dragon," who was a powerful lord in Lynn's world and a changeling that could take the form of a dragon, although the true locus of the story is Iyadur's wife, Joanna Torneo Atani. It follows the trials and tribulations of the couple over the years, and hits many of the stereotypical high fantasy plot points. For example, Johanna grows up strong-willed and learns sword fighting instead of traditional "womanly" pursuits. She pretends to be a messenger to get close to Iyadur, and tells him at their first meeting that they will marry. Later, when Joanna is kidnapped, Iyadur , must make a deal with a sorcerer to get her back, not realizing the true cost of his deal, etc, etc. . .

Now, I don't have problems with an author using standard fantasy plot points. Many of these kinds of points have been around since fantasy was called "romance" in the middle ages, or, even earlier, in the days of what we've come to call "epics" (back in their day, I'm sure they were just called "stories), which, to me, means that they have some sort of resonance with people. But it bothers me that Lynn doesn't really do anything original or interesting with these plot points. I basically knew where each one was going from the moment it began. Also the "chronicle" feel of the story makes it so that many or the characters seem very flat and uninteresting and two-dimensional. The "good guys" are good, the "bad guys" are bad, and everyone acts exactly as you'd expect. In the end, I just couldn't bring myself to care about anyone in the story or anything that happened to them.

You know what really bothers me, though, is that I can't kick the feeling that some of the characters in this story, if they had been given space to breathe and grow, could easily have been compelling. In the end, this short story feels like it should have been a novella or even a novel, if only to give the author more time to develop her characters so you cared about what happened to them.* As it is, it feels to me like I was only getting a sketch of the overall story. To me, this story could have been so much more.

*After a bit or research on Lynn's work, it does appear that the world this story is set in is the same world she uses for her most recent series of novels, which doesn't surprise me at all.

"[Jagged Lines] : Six Hypotheses" by Joyce Carol Oates

2009-09-30T21:25:00.003-04:00

I have to say, I was surprised to find a story by Joyce Carol Oates when I flipped to the next story in the current anthology that I'm reading (Flights: Extreme Visions of Fantasy). I thought to myself "what is her work doing here? She's not a fantasy author, right?" Now, I'll freely admit that I've never been too familiar with Oates' work, other than to know that she's been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize a few times now and that she's incredibly prolific. Now, perhaps, if I did know more, I wouldn't have doubted why she was being included in the above anthology, but, as it was, I had no idea that any of her work could be classified as fantasy.

That's why I was surprised to not only find the short story included in Flights collection, but also to find that it was so good! In fact, probably the best story of the Collection so far. Oates crafts a wonderfully creepy story here, chronicling the a single family's descent into madness under the influence of, well, something. Through the six sections of the story, the six "hypotheses" for how the "Thing" invades the minds of the family and subsequently drove them to madness, Oates really gets the reader into the heads of the characters. You can feel their sanity falling apart, and their frantic reactions to the threat of the "thing" as the story progresses. The final effect is a very, very creepy story that leaves you tense and drained. In short a perfect psychological, supernatural horror story. I'll never doubt that Joyce Carol Oates can write a work of fantasy again.

"Pat Moore" by Tim Powers

2009-09-29T19:52:00.002-04:00

Maybe its because I'm still recovering from this damnable cold (shakes fist futily in the air), but there were large parts of this story I just didn't understand.

Tim Powers short story deals with a man (the titular Pat Moore) who is haunted by his wife's suicide (also the titular Pat Moore). In addition, this wife ends up haunting him as a sort of guardian angel in order to protect him from a third Pat Moore. This third Pat Moore has discovered the key to immortality, which involves becoming a ghost and then taking over another Pat Moore's body. The plot also involves some weird physics that I don't even pretend to understand, the idea that ghosts exist outside of linear time (and thus exist at every point and every place at once), and a chain letter. See what I mean?

Ultimately, the central thrust of this story, once you strip away all the creepy, confusing, surrealness of it, is to explore Pat Moore's coming to terms with his wife's death and his possible role in her suicide. This part of the story is quite touching and human, and acts as a great counterpoint to the creepy, insane Pat Moore ghost.

Overall, this is possibly the strangest short story I've read so far in this challenge, although a few others come very close. Serves me right for reading so much Science Fiction and Fantasy of late.

"The Edges of Never-Haven" by Catherine Asaro

2009-09-28T14:20:00.004-04:00

"Straight Edges could take your soul."

the core of Asaro's story hangs on this incredible opening line. Through the course of this story, Asaro explores the idea that succumbing to hardship and fear can slowly make you less than human, and that you are only able to overcome hardships (the metaphorical "edges" of life), by facing your fears and coming to terms with your doubts. By adapting to and accepting the reality of your life, without letting it drag you into despair. This is expressed in the story itself through the threat of the Edger Demons, who, in my mind, are allegorical expressions of the "demons" that plague the "edges" of our lives -- i.e. our doubts and fears.

To make things even stranger, Asaro uses the idea of linear vs. non linear mathematics as a basis for the Edger demons' magic and their ability to control humans. The demons draw power from straight lines, or rather the equations that define these lines. The only way that the main character, Denric, can escape these demons is by using non-linear mathematics, the math that defines curved lines.

I know, it sounds dumb so far, but bear with me. The idea that non-linear math trumps linear math because it is of a "higher order" bears out into the overarching theme of the story. By not only using curves, but by embracing what they represent (flexible, yielding, soft), Denric is able to overcome the linear magic that traps him. Ultimately, the idea here is that flexibility, adaptability, and the willingness to face adversity overcomes the unyielding, yet also horribly rigid, strength of the Edgers. He gains his freedom by being adaptable enough, yielding enough to face his own inner fears and doubts, which in turn allows him to overcome the influence of the Edger demons.

Apologies if none of that made any sense. I'm still fighting off a bad cold, possibly the flu, so I don't think I'm on top of my game (not that my "game" is very high, but nonetheless).

"Perpetua" by Kit Reed

2009-09-27T16:11:00.003-04:00

Okay, I've been hit hard by a bad cold today, so my brain is pretty much mush. As a result, I'm going to be brief. Kit Reed's story is very, very weird. It centers around a family of five grown daughters and their father, who have shrunk themselves to take refuge inside a specially outfitted alligator to escape a seriews of catastrophic weather events that promise to destroy all of human civilization. Like I said, weird.

It is also enjoyable, however. Rather than getting preachy about the evils of Humanity that have brought these characters to this point, Reed instead, through the character of Molly, focusses on the relationship between the father and his daughters. It explores the urge on the father's part to keep his daughters as "daddy's little girls," and on the urges of the daughters to alternately create their own lives and to please their father. Ultimately, it is about Molly's attempt to escape her father's influence, breaking what she refers to as the "King / Princess" relationship that exists between all fathers and daughters. Keeping with the setting, she does this in a very strange way.

Okay, that's all I have to say for now. I'm going to get some tea and have a rest.

'The Sorcerer's Apprentice" by Robert Silverberg

2009-09-26T15:31:00.005-04:00

In this short story, Silverberg presents an nice twist on the high fantasy trope of the socerer and their apprentice. Instead of presenting the expected young, plucky teen learning from the old, wise, slightly crazy old man (let's call it the Miyagi trope), Silverberg presents a story about an apprentice in his early thirties (Gannin Thidritch), who takes up apprenticeship under a woman of slightly the same age (V. Halabant). As a result of the changes, the story revolves strongly around the power relationship between the two characters, complicated by the character's increasing attraction to one another.

Appropriately, is is Halabant who manages to control this attraction throughout the majority of the story, maintaining her status in the story as the more self-controlled mentor while Gannin descends into a spiral of adolescent obsession. Disappointingly, however, Silverberg sets up a situation in which Gannin can demonstrate his physical prowess over Halabant, balancing it against her superiority with magic, making it possible for the two characters to come together and finally explore there attraction. I will give him credit that Silverberg doesn't seem to imply that they become lovers as a result of this event, although the event itself, along with a few other references in the story, seem unnecessarily sexist. I can't help but wonder if Silverberg himself was a little uneasy with the position of power Halabant assumes in the story, and felt the need to balance it out himself.

"Understanding Space and Time" by Alastair Reynolds

2009-09-25T19:39:00.006-04:00

To me, this story is ultimately a discussion about the merits of knowledge and the merits of faith. The main character, first as a way to escape his situation and, later on, out of his own curiousity, becomes wrapped up in the search for a perfect understanding of how the universe works. However, along the way, he comes to learn that simply knowing that the universe works (essentially having faith in it), is just as, is not more, rewarding. In the end, the obsessive search for perfect knowledge of the universe proves to be self-destructive, while perfect faith that it does work proves to be freeing.

A lot of other things happen here, of course, but they're all too complicated to go into here. Suffice to say that true enlightenment also leads to learning that Elton John is truly awesome. I'll let you ruminate on that, while I go do enjoy the rest of Friday night.

"The Jenna Set" by Daniel Kaysen

2009-09-24T17:27:00.010-04:00

Kaysen's short story reminds of the television show Numb3rs* (Or, if you're a child of the eighties, the infinitely more awesome Mathnet). Except that there are no crimes to solve in "The Jenna Set" And the main character, Jenna, isn't a mathematical genius. Okay, so the only connection is that all three contain complex math that I'm pretty sure might just be made up (Except for Mathnet, of course. That stuff was straight from PBS, so you know it was solid).

Truthfully, "The Jenna Set" is more like a British romantic comedy movie, sort of along the lines of Love, Actually, except that, instead of meeting at a coffee shop, or randomly at work, or any of the other standard Rom Com tropes, the characters end up being brought together through the power of Math! Well, sort of. You see, Jenna ends up signing up for this experimental phone service called Palavatar, which, in addition to all the normal telephone features, will reliably automate phone calls for you, mimicking your voice and making up responses based on your observed patterns. Some pretty funny moments ensure, Jenna ends up getting the guy, of course, and Kelly's geeky sister and the inventor of Palavalar end up bonding over how people and their relationships can be mapped out as set of "psycho-socio-mathematical laws."

This last part about the "psycho-socio-mathematical law" I don't even pretend to understand, but I don't think you have to know what they're talking about to enjoy the story. In layman's terms Kaysen's characters come to believe that people can be mathematically defined by what they like, what they dislike, who they're friends with, and who they hate, and that how well you get along with someone can be calculated from these values. Except for the fact that they're applying this idea mathematically, there's nothing really new to that concept. Nick Hornby's characters in High Fidelity basically hold to this kind of "It's what you like, not what you're like." outlook on life, for example.

But the math is also not really the point of the story, either. Ultimately, Kaysen's story does what a good Rom Com should (and there are a few good ones). It's funny and entertaining. There may not be a whole lot there, but you don't really miss it, either.

"'You' by Anonymous" by Stephen Leigh

2009-09-23T12:19:00.003-04:00

This story is really more of a (very) short essay on the nature of reading fiction and how it becomes part of our lives. To Leigh, fiction stories are like parasites, sliding into our brains through letters and words, and, ultimately, changing who we are. Now, I don't mean that who we are is what we read, and I don't think that Leigh believes this either. More along the lines that what we read affects how we think, that, much like a parasite affects the way a body works, fiction has an effect on how we think. Fiction, especially good fiction, can take us to metaphorical places we've never been and prompt us to have thoughts we've never had before.

Really, none of this is a new idea. Even the earliest works of fiction, like Beowulf or the Iliad, aren't just telling us a story. They're prompting us to think in a certain way about that story. The author(s) of Beowulf wants us to think about what makes a great hero and what makes a great king, for instance.

What is new about Leigh's story how he takes the idea of fiction infiltrating your brain for it's own purposes and turns it into something almost malicious, and certainly creepily insidious, by having the story talk directly to the reader. The directness doesn't quite always work for me, but Leigh also allows for that in the story as well, and works in some interesting safeguards so as to not lose "you." He also keeps the work very short (three and a half pages), which I think was a smart move, because, other than the central hook of the story, there isn't a lot to work with here.

"Search Engine" by Mary Rosenblum

2009-09-22T18:53:00.003-04:00

I really enjoy cyberpunk. Even after all these years, William Gibson's Neuromancer is one of my favourite novels. As a result, Mary Rosenblum's short story, "Search Engine," was a real treat. It had that great computer tech taken to it's nth degree feel to it, with the all too familiar reminder that technology isn't always a good thing. Rosenblum takes the idea of computer networking and runs with it, taking it to some logical, but disturbing conclusions. For good measure, she also throws in Luddiste/Hippie political dissidents called Gaiists, and the idea of migrant "cash" workers to flesh everything out, since everyone wouldn't be happy with the idea that everything is networked, and there are always going to be people who have to take crappily-paying, under the table jobs just to get by. A dark view of society, I know, but this is cyberpunk, folks. It kind of goes with the territory.

It wasn't the setting that really pulled me into this story, though. Instead, it was the very complex main character, Aman. Aman works for Search Engine Inc., which is basically a high-tech detective agency that sorts through all the data generated by everyday life to track down people for their customers. Aman is an old pro at this. He's the sort of cynical, seasoned professional you come to expect from cyberpunk fiction. However, when he's hired by the government to track down a young Gaiist, he starts to have doubts. Throught the progression of the story, the reader discovers that Aman's own son, became a Gaiist years ago, and hasn't spoken to Aman since. So, understandably, the case opens up old wounds in Aman, and the full range of his character unfolds to the reader as the story progresses. In the end, the readers is present with the story of a nuanced and very interesting character, whose true nature is quite far from the stereotypical "hardened professional" that you'd normally get in a lot of cyberpunk fiction. My only complaint is that the story ended too soon. Aman's story could easily have spun out into a novella, or even full novel.

"The Inn at Mount Either" by James Van Pelt

2009-09-21T18:20:00.003-04:00

I didn't like this story at all. It's built around an interesting premise (a isolated mountain Inn where the lodgers can travel to parallel realities and enjoy a whole range of worlds), but it doesn't really take off for me from there. The relationship between the main character, Dorian, and his wife, Stephanie, is mildly touching, and the parallel worlds are well-described (I think this is one of Van Pelt's strengths, actually), but the overall story just leaves me cold.

I think this is because it falls into the trap of the "surprise" ending that is so common to science fiction. Like so many stories before it, the protagonist realizes, just a little to late, that something has gone terribly wrong. It's just been done so many times before, and mostly just reminds me of the premise for a Twilight Zone episode. Van Pelt does put a bit of an original spin on it by pulling off the twist in such a way that the reader isn't entirely sure that something is wrong or that Dorian is just being paranoid, but it just isn't enough for me.

"Flop Sweat" by Harlan Ellison

2009-09-20T11:38:00.005-04:00

I'm not sure what to say about this story. It's enjoyable, and deeply disturbing, but not incredibly deep. It takes a serious dig at modern media which I'm starting to recognize as pretty standard for Ellison's work. But beyond that, there's not a whole lot to work with.

This might have to do with how this story was written, however, which turns out to be a more interesting story that the story itself. As Ellison notes in his introduction to this story in his Shatterday collection, this story was written as part of a challenge for an appearance he was making on a Los Angeles radio show in 1977. The host wanted Ellison to read one of his stories on the air. However, the story in question would have been too long, and would have interfered with commercial breaks. So Ellison suggest instead that she will contact him with a topic the morning of the show, and he would have to write a complete story around the idea by the time that the show goes on aid at 8:00pm that night.

Of course, she doesn't call him until 1:00pm that day, which only gives him about six and a half hours to write the story. On top of that, all she gives him to work with is "Write a story about a female talk show host." Ugh.
Needless to say, however, Ellison manages to work something out in short order, and barely gets to the show on time. In addition, since he works in a theme connected to the Hillside strangler, who was terrorizing L.A. at the time, he creeps the hell out of the audience, and the whole thing is a success.

I kind of hate Ellison for being talented enough to pull this off. Nevertheless, the story is worth reading, and pretty damn good for an afternoon's work.

"Finished" by Robert Reed

2009-09-19T13:53:00.003-04:00

Another day, another story about immortality. Or rather, another story about the cost of immortality, which is almost invariably a more important question than whether immortality itself will ever be acheivable.

In Reed's iteration of the theme, immortality is acheived by a process called "finishing," in which a person's mind is imprinted on a crystal, which is then placed inside an artificial body. The drawbacks are that the process destroys the person's original body, and freezes their consciousness into the state they were in when the finishing was performed. Essentially, people that are finished are frozen in time. The can use memory sinks to learn new things and store their new experiences, but, essentially, they remain the same person that they were at the moment they were finished.

There are a lot of directions that Reed could have taken with this premise, many of which have already explored to death (excuse the pun). Of course, he could of asked whether the finished are really people anymore, whether the person really dies during the process, or if immortality is really worth the cost of being frozen in time.* Instead, Reed focuses on the physical cost of being finshed. To a certain extent, Reed is a realist/pessimist (depending on how you look at it) about humanity and society. In his world, much like it would be in ours, finishing is not a cheap process. It costs hundreds of thousands of dollars to even have the most basic of finished bodies, and much more for the creation of the crystallized brain.

However, as you see in the story itself, it isn't only the super-rich that get finished. Many average people seem to go through the process as well. So, the question remains, how does the average person pay for their finishing. Keeping in mind that, after the process is completed, the finished person is essentially immortal, the possibilities are quite disturbing. I'll leave it at that, because I don't want to ruin anything, although I will say that the resolution does not show a very positive picture of the capitalist spirit.

*To a certain extent, he does address this last question briefly, when we hear the story of a terminally ill man who was finished to escape death. We find out that, because he was sick and miserable and in pain when he was finished, he remains locked in that state for eternity. Basically, this is just a point for the argument on the main character's part for picking the "perfect" day to be finished.

"The Policeman's Daughter" by Wil McCarthy

2009-09-18T17:03:00.003-04:00

In "The Policeman's Daughter," McCarthy creates a world in which death has ceased to exist. Through the technology of "fax machines," which in McCarthy's world, are kind of a cross between Replicators and Transporters from Star Trek. They can copy and transmit anything, including human beings. In addition, copies of anything, including human beings, can be saved in "hypercomputers" (really dumb word, I know) indefinitely. Essentially, this means that people can live forever, making new copies of themselves as needed, sometimes existing as several copies at once in order to multitask. A new state of deathless "immorbidity" ensures. It's a little cheesy, but interesting nonetheless.

What I really like about this story, however, is that McCarthy has decided not to focus on how immortality would affect the way people act. It is in there a bit, of course, but it certainly isn't the focus of the story. Instead, McCarthy asks the question "If death doesn't exist, does that mean that murder also ceases to exist?" Of course, copies can be killed, and people arn't impervious to injury, but, if a new copy can just be made, is it really murder?

In a style reminiscent of old noir stories, this is exactly the question that Carmine Strange Douglas, Esq., renowned lawer of "strange cases," is faced with when his old university friend, Theddy, shows up unannounce at his office one day. Theddy wants to elist Carmine's services because he believes that he is trying to kill himself. More specifically, an earlier version of Theddy from 70 years ago (when both he and Carmine were in their 20s), is now trying to destroy all the current versions of Theddy. The story revolves around the figuring out why, and how Carmine can solve this problem. It's a great twist on the detective story, and even involves a great romantic sub-plot that involves the titular policeman's daughter. All in all, and enjoyable twist on the genre.

"Bliss" by Leah Bobet

2009-09-17T18:57:00.004-04:00

Purely by coincidence, it appears that I've picked a second story in as many days that deals with the addiction. The difference here, however, is that instead of the addictive power of sex, Bobet's story deals with the addictive effects of happiness. I think that the root of Bobet's story lies in what people would assume would be the ultimate drug: a drug that delivers the user into a state of pure joy (appropriately named "Bliss"), and asks what would be needed to kick an addiction to such a drug.

In the story, Bliss appears to basically be Ecstasy on steroids, stimulating the pleasure centres of the brain while also blocking all pain receptors. The user, of course, quickly becomes hopelessly addicted to bliss, descending into severe depression as they come down. After all, once you've experienced pure bliss, it stands to reason that normal reality would seem that much more painful, that much less that what it is while on Bliss. Bliss is destroying society as more people stop caring about anything but getting their next fix. Drug tests are mandatory for just about any sort of job, and it seems to be general practice that Bliss addicts that are checked into hospitals are carted off by "social services," never to be seen again. It's a dark future, to say the least.

So, when Sam, the protagonist of this story, finds out that his older sister, Elizabeth, is back on Bliss again, he's understandably anxious to try and find a way to help her kick her addiction. He enlists his friend, Mac, who is also the drug testing technician at Sam's job, to try and concoct something that will help. Mac's solution turns out to be the truly interesting part of this story. You see, Mac's solution appears to be, in many ways, just as addictive as Bliss, although in a very different way. It's a clever solution that I won't ruin here (if you haven't noticed yet, I'm prone to do so), other than to say that it Bobet ends up implying some interesting things about the power of our emotions and of what humans value (as well as what we will do to ourselves to get what we value). If you want to know more, read it for yourself. It's definitely worth it.

"How's the Night Life on Cissalda?" by Harlan Ellison

2009-09-16T13:43:00.003-04:00

To put it succinctly, this story is about sex and the end of the world. There, that's the sum total of what's going on here. Thank you, and goodnight.

Seriously, though, this story explores the human capacity for sexual desire and the destructive effect that it can have on us as a whole. It's also very, very funny. It's the story of Enoch Mirren, temponaut, who returns from his trip to an alternate earth in a very, well, strange way. Let me let Ellison explain it:

"When they unscrewed the time capsule, preparatory to helping tmponaut Enoch Mirren to disembark, they found him doing a disgusting thing with a disgusting thing."

Mirren, in his travels, has come accross a being called a Cissaldan, the perfect sex partner, and is now locked in neverending coitus. Unfortunately, once those in charge finally figure out a way to pry Mirren and the Cissaldan apart (it's not easy: they even try pulling them apart with horses) and find out what has happened, it's already too late.

It turns out that Cissaldans, never having come across other sentient life before, have, until now, have only ever been able to have constant sex with one another (they're apparently very good at it). Understandably, they've gotten a little bored. So, when they get the chance to schtup a new life form, they take it. The Cissaldans, despite being rather disgusting amorphous ball-like things, also possess psychic powers and the ability to produce powerful hormones, so, it's not like people (or anything) can resist. The apocalypse, or the world's biggest orgy, depending on how you look at it, ensuses.

Setting aside Ellison's basic assertion that, given the chance for perfect sex, humans will give up all else, including eating, sleeping, and, ultimately, their lives, and what that might say about humanity as a whole, this story is mainly just pretty funny. Especially the lengthly section in which Ellison describes how various celebrities and political figures of the early 1980s are overcome by the Cissaldans. My personal favourite being the description of William Shatner, which is as follows:

William Shatner, because of his deep and profound experience with Third World Aliens, attempted to communicate with the disgusting thing that popped into existence in his dressing room. He began delivering a captainlike lecture on coexistence and the Cissaldan -- bored -- vanished, to find a more suitable mate. A few minutes later, a less discerning Cissaldan appeared and Shatner, now overcome with this good idea, fell on it, dislodging his hairpiece.

And, if you don't think Ellison thinks highly of Shatner, wait until you read what the Cissaldans do to Anita Bryant.

"The King of Where-I-Go" By Howard Waldrop

2009-09-15T16:57:00.004-04:00

If I had to choose one word for this story, it would be "subtle." I know that that sounds overly melodramatic, but what I mean is that I'm impressed about the subtle way that Waldrop has decided to deal with time travel in this story. He shows the consequences of going back in time to change the past, and, as a result, the present, but not in an overblown "Oh No, the Nazis won World War II! And then the Commies took over!! And I'm my own grandfather!!!" kind of way. The changes that are wrought in Waldrop's story are small, and the consequences equally so. Of course, they have significant repercussions for the story's protagonist, but not necessarily devastating ones.

Because these consequences are so small, Waldrop ends up focussing much more of his time on the life of his story's protagonist, Franklin (Bubba), and the protagonist’s sister Ethel than on the time-travel element. The reader receives lush descriptions of key scenes from Bubba's childhood, and you really get the feeling of what it must have been like to grow up in 1950s / 1960s Texas and Alabama.* In my mind, this is really the only way to make the reader care about the changes that are made in Bubba's life as a result of the time travel. Without the background, the changes, which are really only implied, would not make sense, and certainly wouldn’t have the same degree of impact.

In the end, I have to hand it to Waldrop for taking an overdone SF trope like time travel and, while not really doing anything new with it, still managing to create a compelling story. Actually, I think that the story itself could have been compelling without the SF elements at all. The story stands well on its own as a story about growing up in the American south in the middle of the 20th century, without having to complicate things with the time travel angle.

*Actually, I wonder how much of the story is based on Waldrop's and his sister own childhoods, since he dedicates the story to "Ms. Mary Ethel (Waldrop) Burton Falco Bray Hodnett, my little sister. . . "

" The Fate of Mice" by Susan Palwick

2009-09-14T19:17:00.004-04:00

I don't have much energy today, so I'll be brief.

This story is about a mouse named "Rodney" (or "Rodent," depending on whether you take his name from Pippa, or from her father, Dr. Krantor). Dr. Krantor has used "SCIENCE" to increase Rodney's IQ and to give him the ability to speak. Krantor's intent in this was to prove that an intelligent mouse that possessed the ability to speak and reason out loud could navigate a maze faster that an IQ-enhanced mouse that couldn't speak (in Palwick's world, intelligent mice have become pretty commonplace in laboratories). However, as you might guess, this isn't the focus of the story. Rather, it deals with the consequences of giving a mouse self-awareness and the ability to speak, while still treating it like a lab mouse. Essentially, Palwick argues that it is wrong to keep a creature that can speak, reason, and even come to terms with the inevitability of it's own death, in a cage. That, ultimately, self-awareness brings a desire for freedom; a desire to live, and not just to survive. While a normal mouse may be happy with his lot as a lab animal, Rodney desires more.

It's interesting to note that, unlike other stories with intelligent animals, Palwick doesn't seem to fall into the trap of making Rodney anthropomorphic. He isn't a tiny, furry little human. He is clearly still a mouse and desires all the things a regular mouse does. Instead, she focuses directly on the idea of what is would be like to make an animal self-aware; to give them the comparable intelligence of a human being (strangely, he doesn't once try to take over the world).

In all, the story is an interesting read. There is a subplot here as well involving Pippa, Dr. Krantor, and Krantor's ex-wife, but I don't feel that it's all that important to the central theme, and I'm frankly too lazy to explore it right now. All I'll say in closing is that if you come across this story, give it a chance. It's definitely worth a read.

"Jeffty is Five" by Harlan Ellison

2009-09-13T15:10:00.005-04:00

Before I talk about this story, I have to say that I've never read any of Harlan Ellison's work before. I'm not sure why, and, frankly, I'm kicking myself for having taken so long, because this story was really good. Maybe my past reluctance to read Ellison has to do with the fact that everyone related to Science Fiction seems to hold that he is an asshole. From what little I know of the man, which is to say, what I gleaned from his introduction to the Shatterday anthology, which contains this particular story, I have to agree. He is a bit of an asshole. But he's a good kind of asshole, in that he doesn't let people get away with being stupid. He says what he feels needs to be said, and I have to say I like him for that. It also doesn't hurt that he seems to be very intelligent and well-spoken (written?).

Okay, so on to the story, which is the exploration of the main character's relationship with Jeffty, an eternally five-year-old boy. The narrator, Danny, grew up with Jeffty, they're the same age. But, where Danny grew up, went to university, and started his own television business, Jeffty hasn't aged a day since he was five. He is completely frozen in time.

Except he also isn't. As time passes, the narrator discovers that Jeffty actually lives in a sort of parallel time; a time of 1940s radio, pulp fiction, and movies. Somehow, in a world that has moved on to other things (much to the narrator's, and, one can surmise, Ellison's, dismay), Jeffty is still able to listen to new episodes of his favourite old shows, pick up new copies of old magazines, and see new movies with all the old stars every Saturday.

But the true thrust behind this story is Jeffty's unsettling ability to exist out of time, but how the present reacts to the existence of the past in its midst. Jeffty is not some kind of Stephen King-like monster child. He's a completely "normal" kid. Instead, the horror of this story, and I would describe this as a bit of a psychological horror, lies in how the past is anathema to the present, and how the present, unthinkingly, comes to hate it and want to destroy it.

This is a truly unsettling thought, but I'm not sure an entirely inaccurate one. Of course, we have a love affair with nostalgia in the modern day (just look at how well the two Transformers films have done and you can see how the modern world is obsessed with its childhood). I'm guilty of this myself (sadly, I did go see both of the aforementioned Transformers films, and even enjoyed the first one on a certain leveel). But I don't think we would act so kindly to a living, breathing past stepping up beside us. It would be unsettling. It would be a constant reminder of what was and is no more; a reminder of our own aging, and, ultimately, our own mortality. In short, if would be really, really disturbing.

Okay, so I've gone on far too long today. I should end this now. I'll be back with another story tomorrow.

"Heartwired" by Joe Haldeman

2009-09-12T10:13:00.007-04:00

Okay, so I don't have a lot of spare time today. As a reuslt, I've picked a pretty short short story to read. Joe Haldeman's "Heartwired" clocks in a two pages and a half pages, and is really more of a sketch than a fully fleshed out story. Haldeman sets up a situation in which a woman, on the eve of her 25th anniversary, goes to a company called "Relationships Inc." and purchases a vial of what is, essentially, a love potion. She is instructed to give half to her husband and to take half herself, the result of which will be that they will temporarily become infatuated with each other, like when they were first together.

After this setup, Haldeman breaks the fourth wall of the story a bit and explains directly to the reader that they are free to imagine any one of "nine permutations" in relation to what will happen next, then gives his preferred ending. It's an interesting technique, as everything is left to the reader. If you follow reader response theory, an immense blank of information is left for the reader to fill in, and how the reader fills in this blank, I believe, can be very telling to their views on relationships. Does she use the vial? Does it work? Does it backfire? The possibilities are numerous. In fact, I havn't counted, but I believe that there are probably more than just nine permutations available to the reader.

I'd like to say more about Haldeman's chosen permutation, and how it still leaves the final results wonderfully vague, but I don't want to ruin it for anyone who might read the story (and they really should read it, by the way). I will say that some of the events imply some interesting things about what the author believes men value in a relationship versus what women value in a relationship, but I'll leave it at that.

"The Edge of Nowhere" by James Patrick Kelly

2009-09-11T18:04:00.006-04:00

It's not that I didn't enjoy this story. I did enjoy it quite a bit. I just feel like I've sort of read it before. Kelly's story is set in the small town of Nowhere, which is populated by people forcibly taken from various time periods by the myterious "cognisphere." No one living in Nowhere knows why they're there, or what the cognisphere is. Appropriately, they also don't know exactly where Nowhere is (It appears to be set on top of a giant cliff surrounded by a vaguely abstract green and yellow grid). Also, somehow connected to all this if the MemEx system, a system which tracks the stories the residents of Nowhere tell to each other about their pasts. Strangely, the residents of Nowhere carry currency through this MemEx system, acquiring credit through hearing stories and spending credit by telling. What's interesting though is that none of the stories appear to be new.

That is until the main character, Lorraine Carraway, operator of the Nowhere Very Memorial Library, encourages her boyfriend, Will, to try his hand at writing The Great American Novel. This act sets something new into place, and seems to bring a sort of personal focus to Will, who we find out early on is a bit of a restless dilettente. Almost inevitably, Will's work on his novel seems to lead him to think about what is really going on in Nowhere, and whether there is something beyond its borders. By creating something new in a world that is simply a rehasing of everything that has come before, Will (who I don't think is named Will by conincidence) is, not to give too much away, set free. Of course, the cognisphere also tries to stop this freeing by sending three of its agents (three very well-dressed dogs, but that's another post altogether) to retrieve the manuscript.

When I say that I feel that I've read this before, it's because it often seems to closely mirror other major stories about the idea that there is something beyond what we see or what we know. I was reminded of "The Truman Show" throughout this story, and it also seems to share some pedigree with "The Matrix," although I think this story does a much better job of dealing with things like reality and perception than "The Matrix" ever did. I guess, ultimately, the difference between this story and the movies I've mentioned above, is that Kelly seems to be more concerned with the idea of creation as a way of escape. That the new can be a way out of the repetitiveness of life, maybe? I'm not sure.

In the end, I did enjoy this story, and, the more I think about it here, the more willing I am to say that it was truly quite good. It still echoes some very familiar themes in places, but I'm not sure that's as bad as I origninally thought.

" A Coffee Cup / Alien Invasion Story" by Douglas Lain

2009-09-10T19:29:00.004-04:00

This story provides a few interesting twists on the "coffee cup" style of short stories popularized by Hemingway and his ilk (eg: a story that is really just a conversation between two characters, the conversation itself initiating some sort of change in their lives). First, instead of just showing a slice from the "normal" lives of two characters, Lain has decided to take that slice out of the lives of two characters that are living in the wake of an alien invasion, or at least an invasion of a sort. The two characters, Alex and Shelly, are sharing drinks outside a pub. In the sky float numerous flying saucers. We learn that the saucers just showed up a little while ago. When they first appeared, they caused widespread panic, but, after they just hung there in the air for a few days, everything went back to normal and people stopped caring about them. In fact, as the story progresses, you learn that some people question whether the saucers really exist.

Essentially the story is a commentary on humanity's ability to cling to normalcy in the face of massive or catastrophic change. However, it is also about Alex and Shelly's inability to accept this new reality and go on with their lives. This is especially the case for Alex, who has been fundamentally changed by the appearance of the saucers.

This brings me to the other interesting aspect of this story. Rather than tell the story of Alex and Shelly in a conventional manner, Lain has decided to interlace the story of how he (or, to be a little more literary, "the character of the author") came to write this story. Alex and Shelly's inability to adapt to their new reality is mirrored with the author's own inner turmoil in the wake of 9/11. In this way, the saucers become a metaphor for the 9/11 attacks, and the fundamental changes wrought by the saucers' existence in Alex and Shelly's world mirror the fundamental shift that the author feels in his own reality in the wake of the destruction of the twin towers in New York. At one point, the author says that Alex and Shelly's story is "a story about the New Normal, about life during wartime." As the two interlacing stories unfold, you begin to realize that Alex and Shelly arn't the only ones having a difficult time adjusting to the New Normal. The author also has his own issues with the new reality that is presented to him in the wake of catastrophic events. All in all, an interesting read, and one I would certainly recommend to others.

"Bank Run" by Tom Purden

2009-09-09T18:56:00.004-04:00

So, completely by accident, I apparently decided to start things out with a pretty lengthy fifty pager of a story. Apparently, I'm not one to do things in halves.

All, in all, I'd have to say that this is an okay story, which is actually a little disappointing, since I found it in an anthology titled Science Fiction: The best of the year 2006 Edition. Don't get me wrong, it's not bad, but it's also certainly not a classic.

The plot of the story follows a man named Sabor Haveri, a well-off banker on a small colony world in a indeterminate future. Sabor is on the run with his concubine slash personal assistant, Purvali, and his sercurity officer, Choytang, from a ruthless landowner named Kenzan Khan. Khan wanted Sabor to lend him money. Sabor refused because Khan is all kinds of crazy, so Khan decided that the best course of action it to take Sabor by force, wipe his mind, and take over all of his assests, basically turning one of the colony's four major banks into his own personal coffer. As they make a "daring" (re: actually a little tedious due to all the time Purden takes to give his complex descriptions of the technology of the future) escape across land, Sabor, with the help of Purvali and Choy, makes a series of contacts and pulls several economic strings, orchestrating Khan's downfall. Ultimately, brains and heaps of money prevail over assholes with giant egos and low impulse control. Hooray!

As the story progresses, we find out that the future of Purden's story features, among other technological advances, extensive genetic manipulation, along with cybernetic brain implants that allow people to essentially carry their computers in their heads. At least if you're rich. It's impossible to tell what it's like to be poor in Purden's world, as the only people that feature into the story that arn't fairly well off property owners or businessmen/women all appear to be, for a lack of a better word, artificially grown slaves for the rich.

To me, this was a particularly bothersome part of Purden's world that just isn't addressed in the story, other than by showing that Sabor is as much in love with his concubine (whom we are told was designed to be Sabor's perfect woman) as his concubine was programmed to be in love with him. They may love each other, but she is still his property, and that leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

The other thing that bothered me was the idea that the free market economy was the best way to run a society. We learn in the story that the colony has no central banking system. Instead, all four of the biggest bankers on the planet maintain prudent surpluses and help each other out by lending to one another when capital gets low. Except for Krazy Khan, everyone seems to basically get along and everything works well, because, as is argued by Sabor in the story, financiers have something solid to lose from a chaotic and poorly run society: their money. Yes, because people with money have never made that bad decisions lead to general chaos and social unrest. . . well, you know, except for that Great Depression thing, but that was a one-in-a-million sort of thing, right? Right?

Setting aside the fact that I would hate to live in the Purden's world of uber-capitalism where you can buy whatever you want as long as you have the money, including people, the story itself wasn't that bad. It was interesting to see Sabor pull all his strings and screw Khan over, if only because Sabor was likable and Khan was portrayed as an insane would-be despot. All in all, I don't think I'd recommend to story to others, but I also don't wish I had the time it took to read back. Again, not a bad story, just not a really good one.

Rules of the Game

2009-09-09T18:25:00.004-04:00

Okay, so I've decided to start a blog. I know what you're thinking: "Big deal, who doesn't have a blog these days? Why should I care what this guy has to say." Generally speaking, you shouldn't care. There are already enough blogs out there with people expressing their opinions on a whole range of interesting subjects, many of which do a much better job than I ever could (others are just plain terrible, but that's beside the point).

But this isn't that kind of blog. I'm not coming here to post my opinions on current events, or pop culture, or music, or whatever you crazy kids are up to those days. Instead, I've decided to start this blog as a record of a personal challenge. Recently, I wondered to myself if I could keep up a schedule of reading one short story a day for a full year. I love to read, and I especially love to read fiction, but, until now, I've never really tracked what I have read, and, and least since finishing university, I've rarely responded to what I've read in any kind of formal manner. Personally, I think that's a bit of a shame.

So, starting today, I will attempt to read, and write about, at least one short story a day. But first, I neet to lay some ground rules:

I will have to read 365 short stories in 365 days, starting today, September 9, 2009.
I will have to write a blog post about each short story I read. This can include a short review or a musing on an aspect of the story. It's content really isn't as important as is the act of responding itself.
A short story will count as any story of 20,000 words or less. More broadly put, anything that can be read in about an hour.
Anying under 1,000 words (aka "flash fiction") generally won't count, unless I read a few in on one go (let's say four or more). I don't have anything against flash fiction, but, for the purposes of this challenge, it just seems way too easy to go that route.
Novellettes and Novellas can count if I can finish them in a day, but I doubt that will happen very often, if at all. I don't have that much free time.
Each story has to be a new story. No rereads.
The stories must be fiction. For the purposes of the challenge, Memoirs don't count.
My goal is to read one story a day. However, I recognize that life can often get in the way of ideals. As a result, I'm allowing myself to miss days reading and/or writing about a story, as long as I have a good reason (eg: sick, swamped with work, alien invasion, etc. . .), and as long as I make up the deficit before the year is over.

Okay, so that seems to be about it. Time to get to work. I've quite a bit of reading ahead of me.