If this week’s Round Up has a theme it might be best described as stories I don’t/can’t 100% understand.1Like all my makeshift, and always made in hindsight, themes this one does not apply to *every* story in the Round Up. That might sound like a pretty silly theme or one not to recommend itself too well, but it absolutely should not reflect on the stories or be taken as judgement on their quality.
The idea that all good stories should be universal, that they should somehow be of equal appeal, or equally accessible, to any reader is one I don’t believe in. Such an idea relies upon a belief in a universal common experience that is far more unhealthy myth than reality, and often a result of a failure, usually by people in societal majorities, to understand that there are experiences separate from their own. But, to paraphrase something I said in the 11th Round Up: If you’re going to read widely, and I think you should, you’re going to read things for which you aren’t the intended primary audience and which you may not “get” in the same way or to the same extent as someone who is. That’s OK. That’s good even. The world is so much more than our own familiar comfort zones, and so much better for it.
Now, on with the stories!
“A Shoal of Lovers Leads me Home” by Ama Josephine Budge from Anathema Issue 5
Our first story this week reminded me strongly of “Children of the Endless Seas” by Suvi Kauppila from the last round up. Both imagine a future of changed humans dealing with a planet, and an ocean in particular, ravaged by climate change and pollution. In that previous story the change felt like it was perhaps evolutionary, this one, at least to start, stems from deliberate genetic meddling. There are other similarities, but I don’t want to get spoilery about it. As befits a story with a title referencing lovers this story also has an important romantic2And probably at least partially NSFW elements. component to it.
I wonder if stories about a mid-ish future of small enclaves of changed humanity surviving on our human-ravaged planet are a burgeoning theme/genre or simply one that’s been here for awhile and I’m only now discovering for myself. Climate-change SF and Solarpunk are not new, but this feels like a darker subgenre and one that, given the recent troubling reports, feels far more likely as a plausible future of humanity than any generation-ship ark or off-world colonization story does right now.
So, wow. This story. It opens with the lines: “The Talk. The Sex. Somebody to trust…” Which, taken with the title makes it pretty clear we’re going to be dealing with a loss, but I was, quite simply, not prepared. The “Somebody to trust…” bit, in particular didn’t really land for me until the end. There is a, I’ll say fairly common, topic that comes up if you spend any time listening to disability activists in the SF/F field talking about the issue of problematic “cure” narratives. This isn’t my lane3If you want to understand these issues better and hear from people whose lanes (because disability covers a very large and diverse area of human experience) they are I suggest the editors and writers of this Issue of Uncanny would be a good place to start. but at it’s simplest the problem comes from assumption that to be disabled or neurodiverse is to be broken and require fixing, which many4Quite probably most. such people find understandably and rightfully both hurtful and harmful.
This story beautifully, painfully brings the problematic cure narrative into sharp focus. Sometimes it is the “cure” that breaks things and if medicine should first do no harm then how very important is it to listen to the people it wants to help. This is not a happy story, it is not an easy story, it is not simple or straightforward. But it is very, very good.
“Saudade” by Nelson Rolon from FIYAH Issue 8: Pilgrimage
Hey look: it’s a novelette! I don’t often read the longer short fiction for the Round Up, and I really would like to make the time to read it a little more often. Novelette’s are really interesting lengths where stories can breath more and take on a different pacing. As a writer who tends to go shorter and has written a lot of flash and even micro fiction, that interests me.
Now, first thing I have to say is this story had a bit of an unfair advantage in grabbing my attention and endearing itself to me by being set in Seoul. I lived in South Korea5Busan and Gimhae though, not Seoul. for a very long time.6In fact, depending on your definition of “adult” I have thus far lived more of my adult life in Korea than my home country of Canada. It’s my other home. So if you want to give me a cool, weirdish, future South Korean setting where people drink Cass and soju I’m going to jump all over that.
Perhaps strangely for a story this long we don’t get a lot of answers to some of the questions about whats going on. We do get a nicely fleshed out setting where humanity has moved past the confines of earth, a world that feels a little Cowboy Bebop esque, and an interesting cast of characters. We get a rat-creature the size of a dog that can be splattered and reconstitute itself, a cybernetic bounty hunter, and a mysterious necklace with a penchant for solving peoples problems with the aid of very large works of art. I enjoyed my time in this world and I intend to read the story again to try and better understand what I currently don’t. I’m also going to hope that Rolon does more with this world – someone get him a contract to turn this into an anime or a comic series! – and keep my eye out for more from this debut author.
Note: As I’ve mentioned before to read this story you’re going to have to by the issue. I should also mention that, at the time of this writing, FIYAH has a sale on for a subscription for 2019+2020. I just got mine!
“The Fisher in The Yellow Afternoon” by Michael Anthony Ashley from Diabolical Plots #43B
The ending to this story put such a smile on my face. It was the perfect end point to our time with the story’s two characters: a woman and a giant bear. They have a fascinating adversarial relationship and it is the key to what makes this story work so well. There is strangeness here and I really don’t want to spoil anything so there isn’t too much I can say about this one, other than it is a unique take on some familiar ideas. Also, I should warn that while I take enjoyment from the struggle and the characters and the ending here, there is sadness on this journey too. Also also, and I can’t say this isn’t just me being weird, but it had me thinking back to another take on a certain character that puts a smile on my face whenever I think of him. To avoid spoilers if you’d like to know who you’ll have to click the little note number here.7The spoiler: I can’t help thinking back to William Sadler’s turn as Death in Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey.
“Ally” by Nalo Hopkinson from Nightmare Magazine #68
OK. We are ending on a really heavy, and frankly potentially heavily disturbing story. Definite content warnings here for child abuse, abusive relationships, dealing with transphobia.
Honestly, when I finished reading this story I wasn’t sure I would include it in The Roundup. I don’t put everything I read here. I read stories, and if I like them enough they go in The Roundup. There have been plenty of stories that I’ve read that, for one reason or another, don’t grab me enough to be included. I kinda thought that’s where this story was heading.
BUT. But then I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I’m still thinking about it several days later. I found it disturbing. I found it, at times, upsetting.8Which you should probably expect could happen if you go picking up a horror magazine. But I couldn’t stop thinking about it. It was, I realized, also powerful.
Still, this story is full of identities I don’t share9But some of which, the author, to the best of my knowledge, does. and I was having trouble sorting through where my discomfort was stemming from and whether I was “getting” this story right or wrong. So I did something I’ve never done with the Round Up: I went looking for a second opinion.10I never do this because I want the Round Up to be my thoughts and feelings, and I fear reading others reviews before writing my own could lead to accidental plagiarism. I also want to make sure I’m including the stories I’ve found and read in my regular manner, and not necessarily what everyone else is already talking about, though, of course there will be overlap plenty of times. I do often read reviews after I’ve written my own though. The place I went was to Quick Sip Reviews, both because I know Charles Payseur, who runs Quick Sip, includes Nightmare magazine in his regular rotation of things he reviews and because I consider him probably the best short fiction reviewer out there today and I trust and respect his opinion. You can read his full review of this story here but the key for me is his picking up on the fact that the two main characters of this story, Sally and Pete, react to the potential influence of a supernatural force altering people’s behavior in two very different ways. Pete sees the potential horror of the situation.11Though to be fair to both him and me the potential meddling force here does set up a possibility that is fairly disturbing. Sally sees the good effect that has been wrought by this force.12If there is a force at play at all.
Charles writes in his review:
“There’s a weird line where agonizing about what actions are the “real” person and which are the ghost just doesn’t make sense when the result is that there’s more compassion, more joy. That stressing people’s “right” to do harm is a pretty terrible argument in the face of a chance for everyone to be better to each other. Safer. Kinder.”
My take away from all this is that I was seeing things like Pete, and focusing on the potential horror. Charles, on the other hand, saw things like Sally and focused on the good that was happening, and that the story is “…a really nice story that looks at friendship and queerness in some awesome ways…”
I can’t help think that we’d all be better off if more people saw things like Charles & Sally and less like me & Pete.
And that is it for another great Roundup. As always, you can find a page with links to all of my Roundups here. Also, as always, if you find something you really like: share it with others!