Apex Magazine #143, March/April 2024
“The Ghost Tenders of Chornobyl” by Nika Murphy
“Everything in the Garden Is Lovely” by Hannah Yang
“Complete Log of Week 893819 – Dana’s Story” by Renan Bernardo
“Chị Tấm Is Tired of Being Dead” By Natasha King
“The Ferns and the Fiddleheads” by Leah Ning
“The End of the Middle” by Andrew Kozma
“A Ring Around” by Lyndsey Croal
“Racing Headless Jenny” by Kati Bumbera
“Where The Flowers Bloom So Fair” by Faith Allington
“The Kingdom Of Wax” by Circe Moskowitz
Reviewed by David Wesley Hill
The March issue of Apex Magazine opens with the strong offering “The Ghost Tenders of Chornobyl” by Nika Murphy, which is set in the Exclusion Zone around the radioactive remains of the titular nuclear power plant. The protagonist, Sasha, is the ghost of an American trans person who was killed while volunteering as a driver in Ukraine during the war. Ghosts, apparently, have a symbiotic relationship with micro-flora, and cultivate “the mushrooms that feed off rogue isotopes” and “help them bring the land back from the dead.” When they’re not tending fungi, Sasha haunts the shack of an old babusya, Lyudmyla, a spunky octogenarian, who puts up a really good fight when a young Russian soldier attempts to raid her larder. I won’t spoil the plot with more detail, but I will say this is an intriguing and melancholy ghost story, intimately connected to contemporary events, and worth reading… Recommended.
The next offering, “Everything in the Garden Is Lovely” by Hannah Yang, is equally strong. In the world of this parable, for men, “the failure to produce children can be overlooked if you perform well in your career. For women, there’s only one way to truly justify your personhood”—by bearing a child. Unfortunately, despite IVF, the protagonist is barren and consequently is sentenced to “become a garden.” Although she initially rebels against the verdict, she soon accommodates herself to the judgment, and under the supervision of a “Transformation Officer” begins the protocol of pills that will within two weeks transition her into greenery… To be honest, when I started reading the story, I didn’t think such a heavy-handed metaphor would work, but it does, and the tale is both bittersweet and … recommended.
I’ve always been a fan of SF stories about generational space ships. Brian Aldiss’ novel Non-Stop (Starship in the USA) comes to mind, as does Harry Harrison’s Captive Universe. The third story in Apex this month, “Complete Log of Week 893819 – Dana’s Story” by Renan Bernardo, a new entry in this canon, introduces us to young Dana, one of fifteen “orphans” being raised by LAIR, apparently an AI guardian, in the wreckage of an interstellar ship still being propelled on its voyage by a “High Thrust Ion Drive VII.” To comfort themselves, the orphans tell each other tales about eventually being adopted, but then LAIR ceases communicating with them, and during this “gap” Dana sets out from the “orphanage,” past the broken pods containing her dead parents, to the edge of their habitable bubble, the “Hull Garden,” where she finds—well, really, I don’t know. Sadly, the story doesn’t clarify what she discovers (at least, this reviewer couldn’t figure it out), and the narrative ends without the characters understanding their predicament, although the fact that LAIR is degrading does not bode well for the orphans’ ultimate survival… A promising story that, unfortunately, peters out without a satisfying epiphany.
The fourth offering, “Chị Tấm Is Tired of Being Dead” By Natasha King, is a fractured fairy tale about an evil step-mother who murders her step-daughter—Tấm—so that her biological daughter—Cám—can take her place and marry the king. Tấm, however, refuses to die, and comes back in various incarnations, only to be killed again by her half-sister over and over again until Tấm finally regains her human form and takes revenge on her sibling. It’s a story as old as time, of course—a story as old as fairy tales, at least—but it’s done well, with some funny moments, and sheds enough new light on an ancient trope to be … recommended.
Generally, when I review a story for Tangent, I read it twice—first, quickly, as a reader; and then, as a reviewer, slowly, in order to better understand the tale. Unfortunately, I read the last full-sized story of the month, “The Ferns and the Fiddleheads” by Leah Ning, three times, and still I came away confused. In this fantasy, Noor’s mother has died due to a magical infection of golden amaranth, while Papa is at death’s door due to the enchanted ferns growing from his body. To save him, Noor seeks healing magic by climbing to the top of the local mountain, where she learns that her father did “an unspeakable thing” to her mother—what exactly, I couldn’t figure out. Nor could I understand why a couple sections of the tale are told from the viewpoint of someone named “Fatin,” who is also climbing the mountain, accompanied by another unexplained walk-on, “Warren.” Perhaps Noor and Fatin are the same person. I can’t say. Hopefully, a reader more perceptive than this reviewer will get the point of this odd story … without having to read it three times.
Next up are two pieces of flash fiction. The first, “The End of the Middle” by Andrew Kozma, introduces us to Ben, who is missing the center of his body. Apparently, this is something that’s going around, like the flu. Even the sun is “incomplete, the middle of it hard to focus on.” Then the narrator sticks “my hand into where Ben should be,” and discovers that Ben “was gone, and in his place was another.” What this means, I don’t know. Sorry, you’ll have to figure it out yourself… The second flash fiction, “A Ring Around” by Lyndsey Croal, thankfully, makes sense. The narrator, Sage, is on a spaceship, harvesting water from a ringed planet, accompanied by their fiance Elana, while the AI pilot, Dina, steers the ship. Then there’s a meteor strike, and tragedy ensues, although the exact nature of what happened is unclear until the end of the story, which ends with a satisfying revelation.
Finally, the issue concludes with three micro-fictions—stories of only 100 words. The first, a horror fragment, “Racing Headless Jenny” by Kati Bumbera, is somewhat disquieting. The second, “Where The Flowers Bloom So Fair” by Faith Allington, is an ominous preamble to a longer story. And the third, “The Kingdom Of Wax” by Circe Moskowitz, a Hanukkah story, unfortunately, is incomprehensible.