Tor.com, June 2023

“The Star-Bear” by Michael Swanwick

“After the Animal Flesh Beings” by Brian Evenson

“Ceffo” by Jonathan Carroll

Reviewed by Mike Bickerdike

This month Tor.com delivers three pieces of fiction, and for the first time reviewing the online magazine I find myself recommending all three stories—a very positive trend that one hopes will continue over the coming months.

“The Star-Bear” by Michael Swanwick is an interesting fantasy tale set in the Parisian scene of early twentieth century émigré writers. One Russian émigré, Zerimov, is struggling to finish poems of true merit, when he encounters a wild bear on a city street as he sits in a café. Over time, he sees the bear several more times, but on each occasion, it is more domesticated and sorrowful looking. Offering a mirror to the diminishment of his Russian heritage as he struggles to create his art, it is a rather deep little tale. The prose is good, and the imagery is eye catching. With a satisfying redemptive conclusion, this is a good short story—one of the best I’ve read by Swanwick in recent years—and is recommended.

“After the Animal Flesh Beings” by Brian Evenson is an intriguing SF short story set on a future Earth after humans have all left for the stars. With some similarities to the film Wall-E, but much darker in tone, robots left behind dig up buried parts of other robots from which they construct their ‘children’, aided by their robot ‘God’. Told in five scenes, which between them cover touchstones in the robots’ history, this short story delivers inventive SF while providing allegories on abuse, rape and reliance on religion. At the core of the tale is an attempt by the robots to understand ‘life’, exercised through their obsession with children. The robots do about as well as humans—which is perhaps what one should expect. This tale is also recommended.

“Ceffo” by Jonathan Carroll is a rather good novelette. Given it is well grounded in the real world, it would be best described as magical realism. The tale starts with tight focus on a couple holidaying in Italy. The woman has fallen out of love with her condescending and cold fiancé and the tale delivers her feelings of isolation and current thoughts with clarity and great believability. Indeed, the ‘straight’ non-fantasy aspects of the story are its strength—they ring true and also provide the groundwork whereupon the reader can accept the more surreal events that unfold. To say too much of the plot that unfolds would probably spoil the story, but this is recommended; it’s mature and engaging reading.

More of Mike Bickerdike’s reviews and thoughts on science-fiction can be found at https://starfarersf.nicepage.io/