As a researcher into 'the connections between the weird and ecological fiction' (her words) or 'climate-change fiction, in particular its Gothic and weird aspects' (Anglia Ruskin University, where she is a PhD student) Marian Womack is evidently working to her core interests, and to her strengths with this book. She is a Clarion alumni, writing in both Spanish and English, and is involved in the translation of speculative fiction as well as in publishing it as co-editor of Ediciones Nevsky/Nevsky Books.
Lost Objects, her first collection of short stories, was published by Luna Press; a number of her stories have also been published in magazines and other collections, including in 'The Year's Best Weird Fiction'. Besides the expected dystopian and degenerative ecological angle you would expect given her interests and background these stories also at times present interesting windows into promising futures, unusual takes on SF tropes, and evoke both the inevitable New Weird touchpoints like LaLumiere or Tidbeck (whom she translated) but also literary classics like Borchert in her portrayal of slightly hallucinatory states of the mind.
Below I run through the stories in the collection, 4 of which were previously published in magazines and books – if you would rather approach this without all the spoilers this entails then stop here, with my recommendation that I think this collection is well worth reading for anyone with an interest in unusual/weird fiction; even if I found not all stories equally/entirely engaging.
What do you do when a book you've been asking, wishing, begging for finally arrives, several years later than you'd have liked it to? When several Christmases plus your Birthday have come in one go? You complain about it, of course. So, to be clear, this is no way long enough. We want more, and we want it now! Although one notices that the credits contain a Series Editor (Jacob Weisman). There is hope yet...
Peter Watts is an award-winning Canadian hard SF author, a lapsed marine biologist, a survivor of necrotising fasciitis, and a convicted felon (just ask the TSA) who will not enter the US again. I guess there are worse fates... He now has 8 published Novels (one of them published in two volumes for ‘commercial considerations’) and 2 collections of short stories under his belt; he has been labelled a “sociological futurist Lovecraft” in a discussion on Charlie Stross’ blog - a quip which predates the story at hand, but is nevertheless fully appropriate, too.
The Freeze-Frame Revolution is set in his Sunflowers universe, ie the same universe in which the Hugo-Award-winning Novelette The Island (as well as a raft of other stories and snippets published over the last few years) is set in, and follows the same wormhole-building ship/asteroid and its dysfunctional crew and AI.
Whilst he wrote novels, too, I always consider Fredric as one of the grand masters of the short - sometimes very short - story, frequently with an surprising twist to it that can turn an entire story on its head and forces the reader to start again. This is not one of those, but the twist is a classic.
For those not familiar with the term, Wikipedia provides the following definition for Solipsism:
from Latin solus, meaning 'alone', and ipse, meaning 'self', is the philosophical idea that only one's own mind is sure to exist. As an epistemological position, solipsism holds that knowledge of anything outside one's own mind is unsure; the external world and other minds cannot be known and might not exist outside the mind. As a metaphysical position, solipsism goes further to the conclusion that the world and other minds do not exist.
Here's a story set in Aliette de Bodard's 'Dominion of the Fallen' universe:
Children of Thorns, Children of Water is set between two novels - The House of Shattered Wings and The House of Binding Thorns. It was a preorder reward for The House of Binding Thorns, and was then made available for free online in issue 17 of the Uncanny Magazine.
It has now, deservedly in my opinion, been shortlisted for the 2018 Hugo Award.
To whet your appetite for the story, which I strongly recommend you read, I shamelessly nick Aliette's own description of her story:
Dragons, creepy magic, cooking (!).
In a Paris that never was, a city of magicians, alchemists and Fallen angels struggling to recover from a devastating magical war…
Once each year, the House of Hawthorn tests the Houseless: for those chosen, success means the difference between a safe life and the devastation of the streets. However, for Thuan and his friend Kim Cuc, — dragons in human shapes and envoys from the dying underwater kingdom of the Seine — the stakes are entirely different. Charged with infiltrating a House that keeps encroaching on the Seine, if they are caught, they face a painful death.
Worse, mysterious children of thorns stalk the candidates through Hawthorn’s corridors. Will Thuan and Kim Cuc survive and succeed?
Once in a while a book comes your way which transcends boundaries - sometimes because the author is rooted or interested in several things, sometimes because the book, the story, the characters ran away with the it and created something bigger and more complex in the process; and sometimes because, like with An Android Awakes, the originators (Mike French, and illustrator Karl Brown in this case) set out to do so - successfully, in this case. An Android Awakes is a hybrid novel, part classic SF book, part graphic novel, with both parts interlinked and feeding off each other. It’s an interesting concept, going way beyond the classic ‘illustrated story’ approach, whilst adding the depth of story and character which pure graphic novels frequently struggle to bring to the table from the text portions. The closest I can compare it to, in format and interaction at least, is Ian Sinclair’s Slow Chocolate Autopsy, although that is a completely different monster of a book.
The book is set in a future where all or nearly all fiction, as well as other creative tasks, are done by androids, and not humans anymore - so much for there being areas where robots will never be able to replace humans!
But in the end this is simply a consequent extrapolation of where we’re going already: “In the future some of you will become great writers, renowned artists, visionary filmmaker and talented photographers. Most of you though will just have more sex. Go forward a few more generations and none of you are creative save that of your procreation. Your culture is shaped by machines.”
Why, welcome back to my on-going catch-up with one of the most enjoyable series of books I’ve had the pleasure to sit down with (and miss bus/train stops) in a long while. I’m talking about Charles Stross’ Laundry Files series, of course, of which The Nightmare Stacks is the 7th instalment. The 8th novel, The Delirium Brief, came ouit in July, so you could say that I’ve caught up! The Laundry Files follows the fortunes (and, quite frequently, misfortunes) of a number of protagonists working for a secret and secretive Government Agency dealing with what we call the Occult - essentially MI5 for tentacled horrors from other dimensions (I simplify, a lot, as you will see below). Essentially, though - magic is real (it’s a branch of applied mathematics), and so are a lot of the mythological creatures and concepts going round, and someone had to keep a lid both on things which go thump in the night (and might terminally affect humanity, never mind the UK), and on people with a mathematical or programming (closely related in many cases) mindset who might just independently trip over some of the crucial theorems and algorithms (aka invocations…) which might do them, and us, much harm. This is, though, mixed in with a good amount of geeky jokes, irreverent discourses on the horrors of Bureaucracy and Politics, never mind Office Politics and Paperclip Audits; as well as peppered with references to other genres, writing styles, and societal structures. In short - it’s much more fun than simply something which crosses what is essentially Horror with a Secret Service Agent setting.
Charles Stross is a professional writer, now mainly of Science Fiction but previously also of Computer Science and whatever paid the rent for a freelance journalist. He’s a hugely entertaining presence, should you have a chance to see him speak on stage, or in a Bar at a SF Convention. He lives in Scotland, but was born and raised in Leeds, which, telling from the story at hand, he does not have a great relationship with! He has won multiple awards for his stories and books, and shows, thankfully, no sign of slowing down.
Metaphorosis describes itself as an online speculative fiction magazine which publishes an original story every week, plus book reviews and other content related to the topic. It has been going for two years now, and has published 'Best of' collections for both of those, plus other books and collections available in print format, too.
Metaphorosis: Best of 2017 contains a Baker's Dozen (that is to say 13) stories selected by the magazine's editor, B. Morris Allen, plus a group of volunteer 'trusted readers'. These cover, as you would expect, a substantial range of approaches, topics, and writing styles. I felt that there was a bias (and no, not in a problematic way at all) towards societal, human-centred, non-technology, 'feely' stories. “Sad” seems to be the most frequent adjective I took down when taking notes from the stories – not in a bad, or tear-jerking way, but just in the outlook of a number of stories. A good number are classic SF tropes, others are Fantasy, or in some cases rather Myths, new or re-imagined ones (and yes, this boundary if very fluid, both into SF and Fantasy).
Below I will provide capsule reviews of the individual entries, which by its very nature will spoil some of the content – if this is a problem for you then stop here, with my recommendation that this is a great, varied, and fascinating collection, which you should seek out and enjoy yourself!
Oh, the name of the magazine, Metaphorosis, is a clever mis-spelling of Metamorphosis (the Kafka kind) – and whilst I had actually been hoping for something even clever-er I think that it's cool and evocative as it is.
