Ponies by Kij Johnson

Intrigued by a sudden splurge of tweets on Twitter today, I followed a link to Kij Johnson's story 'Ponies' over at Tor.com. Glad I did. A gruesome little tale about a girl and her pony who both just want to fit in. It's dark, it's sweet, it's heart wrenching. Highly recommend it.

Bust Down the Door and Eat All the Chickens

Bust Down the Door and Eat All the Chickens . . . is this a metaphorical allegory, something akin the ‘fox in the hen-house’?  Certainly!

It’s a quirky little magazine that specializes in Bizarro--a literary sub-genre focusing on the absurd and the surreal through darkly-inane situations while postulating philosophical inquires (notably absurdism, nihilism and existentialism).  It’s rather humorous in nature, but ambiguously so as it conveys truth though absurdity.  In other words, it’s the logic of the illogical. 

So, what exactly is this magazine and how is it absurd?

It’s an odd-timed print magazine (roughly bi-annual), with a few issues available for download at their website: www.absurdistjournal.com.  Their latest issue, #Y’aing’ngah (Winter 2010), is the fourth issue I’ve read from this delightfully odd press, and it definitely didn’t disappoint.

The highlight of this magazine for this reader was Nicole Cushing’s Youth to be Proud Of, a darkly comical and political piece centered around the ever popular and familiar, and dare I say painfully dull and boring, Our Town (the play by Thornton Wilder).  There is so much to say about this piece that it’s just easier to say: high school, small-town life, journalism, “Thus Spake Zarathustra,” and children dangling from wires, limply floating and speaking through unseen voices, conveying morality, spirituality, and seeking forgiveness for their debauchery with a cold, dull lifeless spirit.  Because let's face, the only life worth living is that of an oppressed automaton who just wants to eat shrooms and get pregnant!

Also pleasing was the flash piece Circle Slash Erections by xTx.  Think you have a hard time keeping it up and/or achieving that glorious-resolution at the end of the evening?  Try dating a woman who specializes in the art of non-stimulation.

Equally pleasing was Changing Woman by Brandi Wells, which calls to question the effort of keeping together a relationship involving a leper-zombiesque-splatter-wannabe-Thing-from-The-Adam’s-Family lover.  Warning: Do not eat eggs while reading this piece!

Also worth mentioning is the satirical There’s War by R.E. Greene.  Tyranny, fascism, nationalism, socialism, democracy . . . they all involve the same leader(s): scary people with power and money screaming for obedience as they whip mailboxes and imprison anyone who fornicates with their daughter.  It's hard to earn a living under such constraints, thankfully there's garbage which needs to be collected.

All the stories are worth a read, they’re highly imaginative pieces that play with literary formats, climatic resolutions (or lack thereof) while conveying philosophical themes through illogical scenes and characters.  They also feature reviews of other Bizarro works, inviting readers into the world of the absurd.

Bust Down the Door and Eat All the Chickens is a magazine which will leave you wondering.  What exactly you’ll be wondering is the question . . . perhaps, what?  Maybe, huh?  But most likely: when is the next issue? 

Hungur’s Strange Metaphors: An Exploration of Alien Desires

            The vampires in Hungur are stranger than your typical human-vampire. And, as I read the Walpurgisnacht 2010 issue, I became fascinated with a particular type of vampire: the alien-vampire with undefined and elusive motivations. The metaphor of the unfamiliar is powerful. It resonates with the unknowable elements within our lives, within our personal relationships or within our ever-changing and sometimes bewildering society.  

            Hungur 10, offers intriguing stories in which alien-vampires have understandable motivation. I enjoyed Marge Simon’s And Babylon Shall Rise Again which tracked an alien-vampire race manipulating the progress of human history, and R.S. Pyne’s Blood Drive which explored the vampire myth through from the point of view of android whose mind hosted a cabal of vampire old ones.

.           Good stories, but I was looking for something other. I wanted to dig a little deeper into the bones of the unknown and find the desires which hover on the cusp of perception.  

            Hungur’s two ‘first contact stories’, both feature alien-vampires and both stories are told though the eyes of a human.

            In Dev Jarrett’s Monochrome Smile, a space crew encounter a being of mind control, an entity able to hypnotise unwary humans. This unique alien consumes it victims’ bodies and produces a human facsimile, rendered in monochrome sand. This alien doppelganger retains the memories of its victims and an understanding of human emotion. The alien’s constant refrain is that it wants to be loved. In a nice touch, the people on Earth are thrilled at the discovery of an alien life-form, oblivious to the possible dangers. The story charts the struggle of Gregor, a member of the crew, as he strives to escape the alien and the potential catastrophic outcomes of this first contact.   

            Robert Essig’s story, Patrolling the Outer Rim, gives another glimpse into first contact. A human patrol ship lands on a planet to investigate strange human-like readings. Once on planet, they discover creatures in a flux between life and death, but these undead creatures are the lures of an alien-vampire race. The human crew quickly find themselves under attack. Patrolling the Outer Rim is a fast-paced adventure story, detailing the struggle between the crew and the alien-vampires.

            Essig’s and Jarrett’s stories are both told from the point of view of the human characters and the motivations of the alien-vampires are not directly stated. Good stories, but I felt as if the stories demanded that I assign malevolent motivations to the alien-vampires. They did not quite capture the unknowable element I was seeking.  

            I found this elusive strangeness in a story and in a poem from writer and editor Terrie Leigh Relf.  Her story Chimes of Bone has a dreamy, poetic quality which quickly established the strangeness of the setting with the depiction of the world’s three moons. This story is a cautionary tale: a warning to a young girl who has ventured into a forbidden place. The vampire creatures of this story seek the ‘secret codes’ in their victims’ blood which is needed for their transformation, first into monstrous creatures, and then into a disguise which allows them to blend into the native population. This story is full of wonderful strangeness and puzzling images, the narrator is revealed to be a ghost; the story echoes to the sound of the bones chime, made from the vampires’ victims; there are references to time distortion and to the recurring images of the world’s three moons. It is a lovely story full of unanswered questions.

            Terrie Leigh Relf’s haibun poem balances strangeness and familiarity. The poem describes a wine tasting, but quickly establishes an unbalanced and weird world. The final haiku is particularly powerful.

Although it is a pity to reproduce it incompletely, I think this last haiku gives a flavour of the strangeness of Relf’s poem:

extracted before

their contents spill

fertile wombs

             I am fascinated by the exploration of the strange. Hungur with its blending of the alien and vampire metaphors, within its axis of speculative incongruity is a good place to find such strangeness. 

# 

Hungur is published twice a year. You can purchase a copy ($12.50 + $2 S&H) from Sam's Dot's Genre Mall

Editorial guidelines can be found here.

Ideomancer, Vol. 9, Issue 3

Ideomancer is a quarterly online magazine of speculative fiction and poetry. This magazine publishes work that is typically on the literary side of genre. One tends to find more work trending towards magic realism here than pulp sci-fi or fantasy. After reading this publication for several years, it is one I have learned to count on for lush prose and beautiful descriptive language.

Per publisher Leah Bobet’s Editor’s Note, the “September 2010 issue delves into some off-kilter relationships: how they go subtly right, or wrong, and what we do about it.” That sums up this issue pretty well, I think.

This issue can be read in its entirety here: http://www.ideomancer.com/?p=352

Stories

“Fairest in the Land” by Catherine Krahe – A piece of flash fiction which describes the lives of some famous fairy tale princesses from a different perspective. Words are used in a manner that creates striking visual portraits of the characters. However, the wonderful language glosses over the lack of a clear narrative flow. The story is all description with very little in the way of actual story. Also, the hardened princess trope utilized is becoming a little too pervasive in genre culture and this one does not really add anything new for me. Still worth reading for the language alone.

“It Shall Come to Pass on a Summer’s Day” by Lenora Rose – A selkie story, told as a prophesy. There are some interesting twists in the end, and I applaud the author for how she turns a prophet into an unreliable narrator. My only complaint is that the exclusive use of future tense to tell this story tends to be repetitive and awkwardly worded at times.

“Afterglow” by Sandra Odell – Near the beginning of this story, a character states: “Anything is possible if you love deeply enough.” This slightly oedipal romance is alternately sweet and surreal, tender and disturbing. The term Kafkaesque comes to mind. I guess you could say this story is Jungian erotica. Recommended with reservations. Definitely the most memorable and unique story of this issue for me.

Poetry

“Evening in Pompeii” by Rachel Swirsky – Wonderfully descriptive poem speculating what it might have been like on the eve of Vesuvius’s cataclysmic eruption. I feel this is the strongest poem of this issue.

“diurnal/nocturnal” by David Kopaska-Merkel – Per the author, this is a Fibbonaci-no ku describing a tear in reality. The form for the poem is nice, giving an interesting, somewhat staccato flow to the words when read aloud. However, the author’s “fragmentary ideas” and fragmented imagery gives the poem a fragmentary feel. Without the author’s note at the end, I would have completely missed out on the intended context. On first read, after reading Swirsky’s poem, I thought it might be another piece describing a volcano. All the same, the night/day duality is explored well, and the language is nicely loaded for interpretation.

“Moondance” by Mikal Trimm – A tribal chant describing “Nights of blood and hope and abandon.” A very dark feel pervades this piece.

“Time Ghosts by Ann K. Schwader – History repeats itself giving life to new ghosts which are the same as the old ghosts. A short, thought-provoking poem.

M-Brane SF #22

The day after I joined the Skull Salad Team, the latest issue of M-Brane SF (#22) landed in my inbox. There was no way I was going to be able to resist reading and reviewing it today. Therefore, here is my first Skull Salad review…

Having worked with Christopher Fletcher (the editor) I admire his commitment to genre, his magazine and the respect he has for the writers he works with. This man rocks. He tirelessly puts out a new magazine every month. I don't know how he does it.

It's hard to pick a favourite story from issue 22. Mostly, I'm torn between the African jungle and the strange creatures a scientist has created in Gustavo Bondoni's 'Wyrm of the Mangroves' and the bizarre aliens in Patty Jansen's 'The Invisible Fleas of the Galaxy'. I think Bondoni's tale just nudges over the winning line because I felt Jansen's story ended a little too abruptly. That's not to say it wasn't fun. Oh was it ever. Both stories were also effectively creepy. Trust me, don't mess with DNA and don't mess with aliens however small and seemingly insignificant.

The issue also features fiction from Joseph Auslander, Jr and Bryce Mainville.

Looking for a Few Brave Souls

Here's the deal: Dave Truesdale of Tangent Online has made public Tangent will no longer review publications paying less than "pro" rates (currently 5 cents/word according to both the SWFA and HWA). Jason Sanford has an eloquent response at his blog.

My less-than-eloquent response: that sucks.

No reviews for anything from Clockwork Phoenix, Shimmer, Weird Tales (WEIRD TALES!), Space & Time, Triangulation, Electro Velocipede, Albedo One...

As a writer, I've benefited from several favorable reviews of my stories in Tangent's virtual pages. I don't have the time/energy or expertise to fill the gap left by Tangent's rather narrow focus. I can offer suggestions of short pieces I've read and enjoyed, and will continue to do so here at Skull Salad. What I'm asking is simple:

I need a few brave souls to join me, not as "full-time" reviewers, but as folks who enjoy good, short speculative fiction and would be willing to offer suggestions of reading material from time to time. Nothing big. Even one story recommendation a month goes a long way in keeping the speculative fiction machine alive.

If you want on the list (no obligation), email me. (aaron.polson(at)gmail.com)

From here on, Skull Salad only touches short fiction from venues paying less than "pro" rates.

The First Few Bites of Shimmer Number Twelve

I've tried to be fairly vocal about supporting the small press at my author's blog. As a writer, especially a weirdo who prefers the short form (raises hand), I must tend the garden in which I'm planted (or hope to be planted one day).

I recently snagged a subscription to Shimmer, a lovely magazine of quirky fantasy and strange science fiction. My first issue, Number Twelve, arrived the other day, and I gobbled a handful of stories like a hungry hound dog (but with less bits hanging from my lips afterward). For slipstream fans, Shimmer is delicious.

For example: Peter M. Ball's angsty teen-werewolf story, "The Mike and Carly Story, without the Gossip" is a special piece of writing. Ball lands a solid punch in the emo-stomach of Twilight tainted teen fiction with an amazingly deft voice. Highly recommended.

If you wonder what makes Shimmer different, touch the oddly beautiful zombie-love of "You Had Me at Rarrrgg" by Nicky Drayden, or Carmen Lau's spin on a very old tale with "Red and Grandma inside the Wolf". I've enjoyed each bite.

Off to nibble the rest...

Buy a copy or subscribe to Shimmer.