起狮，行礼 (Rising Lion — The Lion Bows)

Short Story by Zen Cho
Read for Podcastle by Tracey Yuen
Original text published at Strange Horizons, March 2011

A British Lion Dance troupe use their performances as a cover for secret ghostbusting missions. This is a warm, humorous ghost story, with lots of Chinese and Malaysian culture and some good comedic musings on why exactly magical lions enjoy cabbage so much. The ending is sweet, not really surprising, but nice. The value of this story is not in suspense, but in happy feelings and wry humor.

3.5 cabbages out of 5.

Librarians in the Branch Library of Babel

Short story by Shaenon K. Garrity

Published free by Strange Horizons

Carol and I were librarians at an infinite library where roughly 72% of books are Moby-Dick. Our library contains, within in its stacks, every edition of Moby-Dick that ever has been or will be or could be published. So does the main Library, of course, but at our branch the probability of coming across one of them is much higher.

This story was awesome. I can't really summarize it other than to say two librarians are trying to keep their infinite branch library from closing down, and mostly just exploring the concept. I suggest you read The Library of Babel by Jorge Luis Borges before reading this, if you haven't it's one of those stories you really should read anyway, available here. Borges' story is brilliant, and this is essentially hilarious Borges fanfic. Garrity doesn't have the existential depth of Borges, but she adds more comedy, and explores her conception of the Branch Library somewhat differently. I loved it.

4.5 editions of Moby Dick out of infinitely many.

Widows in the World

Novelette by Gavin J. Grant

Free Online from Strange Horizons (part 1, part 2)

Frequently seeming weird for weirdness sake, part two is really making up for part one in this novelette. I'm not opposed to strangeness in fiction, in fact I generally like more of it, but for most of it's length, the rambling weirdness doesn't seem to be going anywhere, although there is, just barely, a comprehensible enough plot to keep me reading.

In the end, the positives about evenly make up for the negatives, but I'm not sure serialization was the best idea here, given the unevenness of the story and it's reliance on the second half. Either way, it was over-long.

I won't go into plot detail, as I can't summarize all the crazy details of the world in a reasonable length, and the plot is both so convoluted and so simplistically short that either I give it all away, or ramble for pages talking around the central issues (as the story does). All these things amount to my standard criticisms of surreal post-singularity stories, which often seem strangely alike. But there is some good humor here regarding the Husband and the dog and I actually laughed a few times during the more nonsensical bits, which counts for quite a bit.

But what really redeems the story is the ending, which throws a lot of the earlier nonsense into a more reasonable light, a promise the author seems to make early on which I'd given up believing in by that point. But there is a plot, and it is kind of sad, kind of funny. In the end, the story delivers a surprising emotional punch and fond reminiscence of childhood memories of your grandparents. The theme is that nostalgia is often better than perfectly accurate memories, and while I do enjoy the theme, and it was hinted before, it is so divorced from much of the story as to not have a strong enough impact.

I like the ending, and the prose amused me in places, but overall this story was longer than it needed to be. I'd dock points for that, but I read it quite fast, without putting it down, so although the wordcount is high, the reading time is lower than average for this sort of story. If you're going to read it, just keep reading without trying to figure out too much.

Oh, and using the term "haggis" for living chimera creatures is just awesome.

3 marauding haggises out of 5.

Poetry Roundup: Strange Horizons January 2011

Cold War Champions: Bobby Fischer and Yuri Gagarin Descend to Earth by Mary A. Turzillo

Comparison between two different types of Cold War hero. A lot of overlap between the two, but the poem left me lukewarm. To much just factually stated, not quite enough resonance. And I admit, Fischer's death as a "descent to Earth" is underexplored, but a neat idea to compare with a space mission.

Merlin by Lorraine Schein

I quite like the rhythm and neat rhymes of this one. Merlin is obsessed with time and clocks and his lack of control and limited knowledge. A nice take on the character, and a nice poem.

The Skin Walker's Wife by Lisa M. Bradley

Whole poem is the course of a woman having sex with a random guy, and thinking of her body-stealing husband who she has trouble actually recognizing anyway, after he has been away getting a new body. Maybe she should stop spending her whole life waiting for him to come back to her again. A tad more graphic that it needs to be, but the supernatural, absent husband is an interesting, if obvious, metaphor for the more normal type of absent husband.

Dark Matter by Timons Esaias

Hatred, bigotry, authoritarianism, and blind adherence to tradition will always be with us, no matter how many times science or reason try to push them back. Told through the weirdly bigoted astronomy commentary of the narrator's great-uncle. Neat way to make an important observation.

Shoe by Robert Borski

The Old Woman Who Lives in a Shoe thinks about how much she loves her children in the giant shoe that fell off a giant, perhaps in the vicinity of a beanstalk. Neat images making the nursery rhyme more grounded, but not a whole lot here.

Dark Matter and Merlin are the obvious standouts; I'd give the edge to Merlin as Best of Issue, but only by a hair. I have to say, this being my first time reading Strange Horizons' poetry, that it is MUCH stronger than the typical Asimov's issue. Here's to hoping that is a trend, not just an outlier.

The Third Wish

Short Story by Joan Aiken
Reprinted at Strange Horizons

Mr. Peters gets out of his car and rescues The King of the Forest who is stuck in a thorn bush. The king grants him three wishes and warns him "don't blame me if you spend the last wish in undoing the work of the other two." There is a certain genre-savy and wry humor to the whole exchange, and Aiken gets our expectations of such stories out there in the open from the start.

This is a fairy tale about a man with simple desires, who has read enough such stories to know to be careful. It is a rather simplistic tale, with no real obstacles, but it is short and provides a little lesson about happiness. What I'm most surprised by, and happy about, is the ending. Given extra weight by the title, Mr. Peters' decision about the third wish is surprisingly wise and convention-breaking.

For a story written in 1955, written for children (I think), this really holds up quite well as a fairy tale. I admit it is a genre I don't generally like, but this was surprising and not quite what I expected.
3.5 swans a-swimming out of 5.

A much more in-depth review of Aiken's work was written for Strange Horizons a few years ago, worth reading if you are interested in her other work.

Pinion

Short Story by Stellan Thorne
Free from Strange Horizons

Greyling is an older detective who one day has to investigate an angel for a robbery. Angels walking around with big wings and perfect skin seem to be rather commonplace in this world. It initially strikes me as a noir-detective story inspired by Márquez's "A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings." And frankly, that mode, which is maintained for the first 2/3 of the story or so is one I'm happier with than where this ends up.

But then, rather than just expanding on Greyling's barely-suppressed rage and despair issues following the pre-story death of his partner, we have the angel stalking him because it suspects he is suicidal, moreso because of him. The ending is nicely open, and the story is perfectly concise. I liked the description and especially Greyling's dark characterization. But I could have done without the informed existence of the Christian God (weird comment about an angel story, I know) and without the "you must be saved" tone of the last bit.

At least we don't know how things end, and can suspect that Greyling is still miserable, not magically saved. I'd have preferred a less hard-to-follow climax and not the sudden change in plot and tone toward the very end, but this was still a pretty good story. Perhaps a bit to opaque about the cause-and-effect of the whole incident though.

A bit of description that particularly stands out is the use of "nacreous" to describe the angel's wings. While it is perfect for the kind of lustrous rainbow-white he is getting at, at the same time, it seems like a darker word in this context because of the closeness to "necrosis". I initially read this wrong, and it has a nice extra layer there. Le mot juste.

3 out of 5 viewers think "Robbed by an Angel" would have been a better premise for a TV show.

Trivia: the title refers to a type of feather, but also means a type of gear, as I think is referenced several times in the story, from the description of a lighter to Greyling's place in the police system. A nice title.

The Space Between Stars

Short Story by Cassandra Clarke
Free from Strange Horizons

A scientist at a top secret facility (Area 51?) reminisces in the second person about his non-sexual friendship with a Vegas showgirl. 2,640 words before anything happens, and then only 650 or so words of actual story. I guess what I'm saying is that I don't know whether to be thankful this wasn't longer (as I could barely finish it as is), or whether to wish there was more to it, because after the first 3/4 of the story were out of the way, it wasn't bad, and maybe that could have continued. I'm really not sure.

Anyway, nothing happens, but it turns out that for a too-unexplored-here-to-differentiate-from-cliche story reason, the scientist will never see the girl again and can't go to Vegas anymore. But he wants to impress her even though he won't be with her. Not much character development from the narrator or girl, and there are no other characters. Not much character from those two to speak of anyway. The end has an interesting apocalyptic feel, but nothing is done with it except one nice image that isn't focused on enough.

Nothing to it. Not only will I forget I read this before to long (despite it taking a very long time for the wordcount), but there is really almost nothing to say about this one. Blah humbug.
1.5 small, cheap windchimes out of 5.

Source Decay

Short Story by Charlie Jane Anders
Free from Strange Horizons

Jeremy is trying to break up his friends-with-benefits arrangement with Tara, and devote himself to his girlfriend Roberta. Tara makes this harder than she has to by being willfully delusional and overly attention seeking. I can't reveal much more without spoilers, but this is a comedic story that is decently funny with a good bit of a satire of modern media and historical revisionism.
3.5 women out of 5 are locked in an eternal struggle over one, kind-of-douchy guy.

SLIGHT SPOILERS BELOW

So the telephone-game as conduit for comedy isn't anything new, and while the comedy aspects of this story amused me, the social satire and historical commentary are what I really appreciate. Our tendency to continually revise old myths and stories until they have little or no bearing on reality, while insisting they are probably more true-to-life is a fairly common comment, but what I like here is that the initial "true story" was so far from reality in the first place. Who cares about the revisions and political agendas appended to classic stories when the best source material we have is so far off to begin with?

Our cultural love of voyeurism and "reality" that really does need those quotes around it doesn't get enough satirizing. Sure, everyone comments that "reality TV" is stupid, opium-for-the-masses and meaningless, but it is far too rare that someone points out how seriously we still take it as a culture. Sure, the ending of the story is over-the-top, but the middle has some excellent bits, and the ridiculous earnestness-with-no-self-awareness of most of these reality shows needs to be made fun of. As well as the people who care deeply about which constructed-for-TV personality wins some arbitrary competition, and yet can't be bothered to care about any real issues. Anders isn't entirely original here, but hits points too-infrequently hit, and is sufficiently amusing to make this worthwhile satire. Not a favorite, but a definite recommendation, and a good start to the year for Strange Horizons.

Another End of the Empire

Short Story by Tim Pratt
Originally published in Strange Horizons, free online.
Read for PodCastle by Cheyenne Wright

First off, I love the narration for this story, the voices for the characters are brilliant and he manages to really capture the sarcasm of the story. The pure EVIL with which he reads lines such as "the key here, is innovation" is hilarious. The story is great, and the narrator makes it even better. If you're not deaf, you should listen to this at PodCastle ASAP (link above).

A superior take on what is becoming the standard Evil Overlord deconstruction with exceptionally genre-savvy characters. I've heard stories along the same line, but none of them anywhere near this brilliantly hilarious. The plot was predictable from the title alone, but in a prophecy story, that's nothing new. The purpose is comedy, not surprise endings. And despite this being a comedy, you feel sad for Lord Mogrash at times, there is a surprising amount of warmth and meaning.

4.5 out of 5 probability witches saw the ending coming, and loved it anyway.

Turning the Apples

Short Story by Tina Connolly

Originally published in Strange Horizons, available for free online.

Audio version from Pseudopod read by Cayenne Chris Conroy, also available free online.

It's worth noting that Tina Connolly also wrote my second favorite poem of the 2009 Asimov's Science Fiction magazines.

So this is an SF/horror story dealing with a very unusual brand of crime on another planet. A small number of tourists contract a unique disease on first visiting the unnamed planet of the story. Adults are turned into walking coma patients, most children die, and a select few survive and gain psychic mind-rewriting abilities. Criminals use the orphaned children to program the coma victims for manual labor, and the reprogramming effort has a narcotic effect, getting the kids addicted to helping the criminals.

Szo, our protagonist, is one such orphan, addicted and never able to escape because he hopes to someday find a way to help his mother, who's thoughtless body hauls nuclear waste. One day the police officer he sometimes informs to offers him hope.

The story isn't so much horrifying as exceedingly dark. But it is still the stuff of nightmares rather than good dreams. This is a very different take on the addiction/psychic powers connection, something I'd like to read more of. I'm not sure what it is, but this story will stick with me for a long time.

A brief comment on narration: It is quite good. Another example of the narrator actively improving my enjoyment of the story rather than just relaying the events. His voice makes the thing seem even more gritty.

4 out of 5.