InterGalactic Medicine Show #41, Sept./Oct. 2014
Reviewed by Clancy Weeks
I wanted to hate “Until We Find Better Magic” by H.G. Parry. I really did. As I read the story of a vain and selfish magician, who wanted nothing more than to be with a beautiful dancer he never truly knew if he loved, I found myself charmed by a sweet little tale. Even the sweetest and smallest of tales, though, can hide some truths. One of these is that romantic love can be—and usually is—predicated on pure selfishness. That’s profound, right there. While I wasn’t enamored of the storytelling style (more in keeping with a children’s fable than a story for mature readers) I was able to read it from beginning to end without my brain turning to mush. That’s saying something. Oddities aside (what the heck is an armadillo quill?) I found this to be an enjoyable read.
In K.C. Norton’s “The Far Side of Extinction” we find out what happens to a species after they become extinct. Pharmacants Mosegi Steyn and Tale de Kaant are in search of mythical creatures. Creatures like the fabled elephant or, in this case, dog. In this alternate universe dogs and other commonplace creatures are mere myths for crypto-zoologists to discover, while pterodactyls and pliosaurs are part of everyday life. Left hanging, however, is how the people in Steyn’s universe ever heard about them in the first place. That’s a pretty big plot hole, and one that I couldn’t get past. There is some nice writing, but the resolution is a bit odd, and makes little sense.
It is the end of the Han Dynasty, and Sun Renxian weaves her life poem as testament to the fall of her family to the warlord Cao Cao. “The Two Kingdoms Woman” by James Beamon is a well-told historical tale told through the eyes of a woman twice-used by her brother for political gain, and effortlessly tells the story of the fall of an empire that marked the golden age of China. I have to admit I had difficulty reading this story, as I have little knowledge of the place names or history of the time, but it is engaging nonetheless. In the end, it is about the growth of a spoiled young girl into a thoughtful and empathetic woman. Nicely done.
As my daddy used to say, “If it can be broke, it can be fixed.” The thing was—armed with little more than a high school education—the man could always back that statement up; whether it was the car, our old tube television (yes, I’m that old), or a piece of equipment he used in his business that contained boards full of integrated circuits and old wishes. In “The Time Mechanic” by Marie Vibbert we have just such a person in Holly the auto mechanic. Our protagonist (never named, by the way) has traveled to Dogleg Lick in the year 1928 via his recently purchased time machine to locate some Prohibition era moonshine for a friend. For a light-hearted romp, that is as good a set-up as any. Surprising no one, the machine refuses to start and return him home, but with a little help from Holly all things are made right again. Sort of. This is a truly funny little story of the kind of person we have all met at least once in our lives—an actual “jack of all trades.” Worth the read.
Father Francis Connolly is a Dominican friar in the year 2135 traveling the landscape in his dirigible piloted by an AI named Annie Oakley, and offering aid to the starving inhabitants in the form of mechanical bees to pollinate crops. Mega-corporations now control all the world’s food supplies and production, and even have their own armies to enforce their patents. That’s a fairly complicated set-up for what is essentially a mystery story, but it works. The mystery of “The Temptation of Father Francis” by Nick T. Chan and Jennifer Campbell-Hicks is in the form of a small town with no shortage of food. They have real bees, even though the corporations eliminated those years ago. This is a good story, with several strong characters (not the least of which is Annie) but the ending is a little too easy for me. There are multiple levels of temptation at work here, but each is resolved with no real struggle, and Francis is not very good at resisting temptation, in my opinion. Still, it is a nice diversion.
I’m a sucker for stories about grifters and a good con game. Throw in some magic, and have it all happen in the real world, and I’m hooked. With the feel of a Jim Butcher story, Alex Shvartsman’s “The Fiddle Game” manages to handle all of this and surprise me with the ending. That is a difficult trick in a short-short, and I tip my hat to a master. Recommended.
Clancy Weeks is a composer by training, with over two-dozen published works for wind ensemble and orchestra, and an author only in his fevered imagination. Having read SF/F for nearly fifty years, he figured “What the hell, I can do that,” and has set out to prove that, well… maybe not so much. He currently resides in Texas, but don’t hold that against him.