Strange Horizons, July 1, 8, & 15, 2019
“Notes on a Resurrection” by Natalia Theodoridou (July 1, 2019)
Reviewed by Jody Dorsett
“Notes on a Resurrection” by Natalia Theodoridou
This is a story told from multiple perspectives. In this way each of the participant’s and observer’s points of view is examined. An industrial accident takes the lives of members of a community, most of them young.
The author examines whether all miracles are good, and how miracles affect people differently. A more important underlying question is whether all miracles are from God. The author doesn’t directly address that issue, but in reading the story it’s a question that has to be asked.
“Cavity” by Theresa DeLucci
A handful of years ago I read a Reddit thread and some Facebook posts about a study of how many murderers do you meet, in one way or another, in your life. My guess is that the author may have read them as well. In this piece she examines all the different kinds of murderers we meet in our life. Some of them will only be known as murderers if they are called that.
I struggled with this because I wasn’t sure if this was a character study, a position paper on male hegemony and patriarchy or a story. In the end I decided it was a story of how a woman deals with the murderers in her life that she has had contact with. It is an interesting read regardless if it is a character study, a position paper on the patriarchy or a fiction story. SF&F it is not.
“Regret, Return, Reignite” by Audrey R. Hollis
In a world where people can come back from the dead, where gods reign in the underworld, a woman goes back to retrieve her wife. Like all the old tales of the underworld there is always a price to pay. In this case some parts of you remain behind.
It is the parts that stay behind which the author asks us to examine. Do we ever truly love another person including their faults? Is it worth getting back an incomplete person or remembering, in our faulty memory, the better person who inhabits our memory.