Fantasy & Science Fiction, July/August 2022
“Starblind, Booklost, and Hearing the Songs of True Birds” by Rudi Dornemann
“The Song of Lost Voices” by Brian Trent
“Mycelium” by Beth Goder
“The Collection” by Charlie Hughes
“The Garbage Girls” by Nick Wolven
“The Wild Son” by Rajeev Prasad
“The Dark at the Edge of the Stage” by James L. Sutter
“The Monster I Found in the Third Grade” by Paul Tobin
“Ceremonials” by Robert Levy
“We are Flying” by Alexandra Munck
“Trapping Fairies” by Nina Kiriki Hoffman
“Ciccio and the Wood Sprite” by Nick DiChario
Reviewed by Mike Bickerdike
This issue of Fantasy & Science Fiction contains 4 novelettes and 8 short stories. The standard is reasonably high, with rather a focus this month on horror fantasy; at least 4 stories could be classified as such.
“Starblind, Booklost, and Hearing the Songs of True Birds” by Rudi Dornemann is a strange fantasy novelette, full of interesting ideas and novel concepts, but which ultimately leaves the reader with as many questions as answers. Vitalius lives in the city of Fisher, where his brother was turned into a mad prophet by the ‘Green Chase’ thirty years before and has been held in a golden cage beside the cathedral ever since. Vitalius determines to free his brother, but he can only do this by initiating the magical ‘Festival of the Nines’. This will rewrite the history of the city, though whether this occurs due to the festival per se, or due to Vitalius briefly leaving the city during the festival is not entirely clear. The fantastical nature of the city, its bleak, frozen and otherworldly surroundings, and the way it appears to switch between timelines, is intriguing. However, the nature of the city is quite hard to grasp, and this reader was left wondering exactly what happened and why.
“The Song of Lost Voices” by Brian Trent is an enjoyable and well-conceived novelette with an interesting underlying SF idea. A small team of archaeologists in the Gobi Desert is excavating bodies, and their effects, from the ancient Khan era. A second group, appearing to be official and semi-military, arrives at the scene to collect the sand itself. Explaining the reason for the sand collection here would give away too much, and readers will enjoy the plot reveal as the tale progresses. As well as an interesting and novel idea, the prose is clean and enjoyable, and characterisation is well-handled. Recommended.
“Mycelium” by Beth Goder is a strange little short story, and is almost flash fiction. The protagonist (probably a young woman) travels each year with her friend up a river to a ‘golden head’ which provides one mushroom annually. This is essentially a mood piece, in which the relationship between the two characters develops through their mutual interest in, and appreciation of, the land in which the golden head is found. It’s okay, but doesn’t offer all that much.
“The Collection” by Charlie Hughes is an intriguing fantasy novelette that probably fits most comfortably into the horror genre. An English couple convert part of their country home into an ‘Airbnb’ let, and take in their first guests. Unfortunately for the couple, the gangly, unkempt teenage boy who arrives with his parents harbours dark secrets about the neighbourhood. He constantly listens to a collection of stories, both on headphones, and loudly within the rental property. These stories seem to have a power over the listeners. The story unfolds quite nicely, and the characterisation is well handled. I can’t quite shake the notion that the initial set up and premise was a little stronger than the conclusion though, which provided little of surprise.
“The Garbage Girls” by Nick Wolven tells of a small group of private school girls who are undertaking volunteer work at a New Jersey healthcare camp to boost their chances of acceptance into Ivy league schools. Set in a somewhat dystopian future, where hospital care is presumably over capacity, and camps have been set up to deal with the overflow, the set-up is quite convincing and chilling. One other girl (a ‘noomie’) has an implant that enables her to work in very distressing circumstances, and the protagonist ‘garbage girls’ take up against her. The story is more focussed on the character relationships, which are deftly handled, rather than a complex plot. Overall, it’s quite satisfying.
“The Wild Son” by Rajeev Prasad is a good short story. Set in a fantastic version of south Asia, in a land where caste is dictated by elders and determines your fate, a butcher wants a son and wants him to be in ‘letters’ not butchery. In this world, children are born as appendages to the body, as hip-children or belly-children. The man’s son is a rare ‘head-child’, growing out of his own head. But once born, the boy is challenging throughout his childhood, with a fate few could foretell. The story is deftly told, and thoughtful. The ideas seem quite old-fashioned, or fable-like, but the overall impression is satisfying and compelling. This is recommended.
“The Dark at the Edge of the Stage” by James L. Sutter is a short horror fantasy, about a guitarist who had to leave a band due to his drinking. He goes into a music store to impress the store workers with his musical skills but gets more than he bargained for. It’s inventive and, for such a short tale, it’s quite immersive.
“The Monster I Found in the Third Grade” by Paul Tobin follows the trend in this issue by being another horror tale, set in a mid-west US junior school. The setting and themes are quite reminiscent of Stephen King. In this short story of evil, a young boy finds a monster in the snow drifts during his school lunch break. It’s quite an engaging tale and is well-told.
“Ceremonials” by Robert Levy is a short fantasy story that once again has one foot in the horror genre. A group of teenage girls on summer camp are harassed by the teenage boys also attending the camp, much to their disgust. But when they encounter a strange, almost fossilized, tree in a clearing they uncover a menace that will dramatically change the balance between the groups of teenagers. The tale is slightly gruesome, but it does bring a few new ideas to the well-worked “teen summer camp horror” trope.
“We are Flying” by Alexandra Munck is an intriguing story, described in the foreword note as a ‘prose poem’. Don’t let that put you off, it’s really just a short story. An engineer from the future has invented a device for seeing previous incarnations of herself and her lover, through the ages. With the gender of each incarnation seemingly random, the story explores the immutability of love. It’s quite well done, though the prose style might not be to everyone’s taste.
“Trapping Fairies” by Nina Kiriki Hoffman is very short—almost flash fiction—but it’s rather good. The story tells of two workers who lack magical powers, who trap fairies for their magical employers, much as naturalists catch and band migrating birds.
“Ciccio and the Wood Sprite” by Nick DiChario is a rather enchanting fantasy novelette, that reads like an old-fashioned fable. A sweet, saintly boy of eight encounters a trapped wood sprite in the woods above his village in Sicily. Setting her free, the boy gains a wish, which he can keep and use at any point in his life. His father wishes him to use it in a selfish way, but the boy has a more altruistic nature. The story unfolds quite nicely, and is quite engaging, though it rather lacks for a surprise element or moral depth.
More of Mike Bickerdike’s reviews and thoughts on science-fiction can be found at https://starfarersf.nicepage.io/