“Rise Up” by C. S. Fuqua
“Almost a Good Day to Go Outside” by Peter Wood
“Doctor Adderson’s Lens” by Natania Barron
Reviewed by Steve Fahnestalk
So what to make of the title, “Bull Spec,” eh? Maybe a combination of “bull spit” and “on spec”? I’d kind of expect a magazine with that title to come from Texas—but no, this’n’s from North Carolina. It comes in at 71 pages, with a glossy color cover and glossy interior pages—containing three stories, one novel excerpt, three interviews, poetry and art.
I won’t touch the interviews, the poetry or the novel excerpt (except to say that it does its job—makes me want to read the book, A Gathering of Doorways); I’ll briefly touch on the art—most of the interior art is photographs, except for the “graphic story” (a continued one) and a few others. I’ve seen better, I’ve seen worse—but the cover is notable for how bad it is. It illustrates “Rise Up,” and I just don’t get it. The artist, Mike Gallagher, can draw—he’s proved it with the strip inside, but this just looks like bad fanart. Oh, well… on to the stories!
“Rise Up” by C. S. Fuqua is a Twilight Zoneish story about a mandolin player named Bobby who plays in a bluegrass band called Pensacola, doing one-night stands throughout the South. Fuqua’s resume doesn’t say he’s done anything like that (he plays flute), but it’s hard to believe he hasn’t, judging by this story.
After a gig in some unnamed city, Bobby meets Wynne in Sharps & Flats, a music store where she works behind the counter, but he doesn’t deal with her then—instead talking to the old woman who owns the store; she allows him to play a mandolin of such clarity that he has to stop playing, knowing he can’t afford such a fine instrument. The old woman, who tells Bobby she is from the Appalachians, also tells Bobby that for certain people, music has power. (Since we’re reading a fantastic story, you can already guess where this is heading.)
Two years later, Wynne is singing backup with Pensacola as well as managing the band; Bobby has come into the knowledge of his power and the band’s CDs are selling better than ever at their gigs. Late one night, on their way out of Baton Rouge, Bobby crashes the car and Wynne… well, again, you can guess what happens.
Despite the ordinariness of the Twilight Zone plot; despite the inevitability of the Twilight Zone twist, and mostly because of the specificity of the author’s musical knowledge, this story works. Granted, it probably won’t make any “best of” anthologies, but for all that, I found it worth reading.
“Almost a Good Day to Go Outside” by Peter Wood (illustrated with a NASA photo of Olympus Mons, in case there was any doubt about the setting) is about a nuclear family on an unnamed planet two lightyears from Earth. The planet is more or less airless, like Mars (okay, Mars has an atmosphere, but you breathe it) and Ricardo’s crew is part of the terraforming process, getting the ground ready for the ground cover that his wife, Lori, is working on in the bio lab. They, along with their two kids, live with about 20,000 other colonists in a “hive”—and because Ricardo’s a construction boss, they get four rooms, where most families have to make do with one. But Lori longs to go outside.
One day, to relieve the tension, Ricardo brings home a television set—Earth’s early broadcasts are just beginning to hit the planet, and the databanks don’t have anything as ancient as those broadcasts—the twice-yearly supply ships have brought hundreds of the sets. From there Ricardo’s life begins to spiral out of control.
The many outdoor shows on the television begin to exacerbate Lori’s need to go outside; eventually, real depression sets in and she quits her job and stays home, listlessly watching the box. How Ricardo learns a healing technique follows quite well from the plot. I find myself liking this, especially since it’s the author’s first published story.
“Doctor Adderson’s Lens” by Natania Barron is, I suppose, steampunk—it concerns one Dellacarta, aide (spelled “aid” in the story) and apprentice to one Doctor Adderson, who lives and works in the Elusian province in Elusia City—he’s obviously some sort of polymath; inventor and explorer of science, he has created such things as the Silver Ear (called so, because it is silver and resembles a human ear), the electromagnetic dog collar, and more.
Doctor Adderson has invented a lens which can show the unseen—and I’ll stop here, mostly because I don’t want to spoil it for you, but also because it’s a reprint from the Gatehouse Gazette—and ye olde editor doesn’t want us doing too much review of previously published work contained in original fiction publications. All I can say is that if you don’t enjoy this story, I will only sigh and feel vaguely wistful for you. It’s quite nice.
So, overall, what’s my impression of Bull Spec? I liked it, overall. I think entirely too much space was spent on interviews (seven and a half pages devoted to an interview with the owners of the local game/comics shop!), and not enough on fiction. The reviews were competent, and the poetry pretty much so, though poetry is much more subjective than fiction. For a first issue, production values are very high, and the quality of the contents I would rate as very good; I hope the editor learns to curb his enthusiasm for weird fonts.