Reactor, October 2025
“Model Collapse” by Matthew Kressel
“Where the Hell Is Nirvana?” by Champ Wongsatayanont
“Phantom View” by John Wiswell
“Timelike Curves, Spacelike Curves” by P. H. Lee
Reviewed by Axylus
“Model Collapse” by Matthew Kressel is essentially a topnotch setup for a horror story, but with all the horror removed. It would be difficult, in fact, to imagine a more fertile setup for a horror story. The essence of horror is this: start with a kernel of innocence, then slather on layers of harrowing, soul-demolishing guilt, often converging to some form of Death. Horror is our attempt to peel away our workaday facades and get a glimpse of the dark side who we really are underneath all that. More often than not, this potent package is wrapped up within a cautionary tale, as in for example the archetypal randy teen couple blithely banging each other in a graveyard full of zombies (no no no kiddies, eyes front, keep those trousers firmly zipped!). Every cautionary tale features someone the audience can collectively wag a finger at. Innocence, death, guilt: in the horror genre, these three mingle in a triangular dance of hope, fear, and blame that we remove from our hearts to show to ourselves, in a safe and contained manner. And here in “Model Collapse” we have a story that explicitly deals with the disjoint between who the protagonist really is and who she struggles to frame herself as, and what she spreads over the morbidly dismantled core of her reality. This plot and the horror genre are a match made in heaven (or, a facetious soul might argue, in hell). It even has a cautionary element to boot. And yet we have no core flaming arrow of guilt burning and condemning the protagonist, driving the message fully home; no scarlet letter for any sins; and even the depiction of figurative Death is hastily drawn, underdeveloped. Recommended for the excellent writing, but it coulda/shoulda been considerably scarier.
As I sit soaking my perpetually aching feet in a small plastic (possibly non-recyclable) foot spa (Minor Harm to the Environment, -10 karma points) contemplating an impending walk in the park with my beautiful wife (Familial Warmth and Bonding, +40 points; Light Aerobic Exercise, +10 points) and wondering what white lie I can use to persuade her to go to the faraway park with deliciously flat footpaths instead of the nearby one with heart-healthy sloping hills (Sloth, -20 points; Contemplating Lying to your Beautiful Wife, -1,000 points), my mind wanders back to “Where the Hell Is Nirvana?” by Champ Wongsatayanont. I wonder if I could write an alternate version of this novelette focusing on genre fiction reviewers: “Where the Hell is a Satisfying Ending?” by yours truly. In Wongsatayanont’s genuinely entertaining story, a minor deva working as a bureaucrat in the offices of Buddhist heaven chases love (or at least, lust) with dire consequences—sort of like the Terry Gilliam movie Brazil, but with a huge dose of a Theravada Buddhist milieu. Definitely recommended, since I chuckled and giggled aloud more than a few times at Garmuti’s schemes and complaints as he suffered the travails of the Karma Calculation Department (Thailand Division). If only the ending had been more explicitly connected to and derived from his external goal, fulfilling the promise of the premise, creating a more rewarding emotional payoff… but my mind wanders. Footpaths await.
In my humble opinion, “Phantom View” by John Wiswell is yet another well-written novelette in Reactor that fails to deliver on the promise of its premise. In this tale, a son burdened by a bad leg spends his life taking care of his senile father (is the word “senile” considered gauche these days? I never know). Barely able to cover the bills, hobbling around painfully with a knee brace, he is living near the edge of more than one kind of collapse. While thumbing through photos on his phone one day, he discovers their apartment is haunted by a specter. However, aside from one key event, the ghost’s impact on the son’s life is rather minimal. And what of this ghost? We are offered tantalizing clues, but never find out who or what it is, or why it behaves as it does, or why it wants the diverse things it seems to want. Its only well-defined desire is the freedom to explore the world outside the father’s apartment. In short, the ghost’s desires are described, but then left underutilized in any dramatic way. Even its impact on the life of the son is an ephemeral one (albeit important in the moment). All we have left is an anecdote that offers tantalizing possibilities.
“Timelike Curves, Spacelike Curves” by P. H. Lee is one interesting concept, a convincingly-realistic (but dysfunctional) protagonist, and tons upon tons of hardcore sex talk. I’ve heard that romantasy readers explicitly call their explicit stuff smut; can I call this smut too? Yep. That’s what it is. I mean, it does have an interesting concept. Either the protagonist is having delusions, or he’s being seduced by an intangible being described as a “fabric of space and time” and “the relational context between massive objects.” In contrast, the protag’s real-life relationship with a human sex partner is quite dysfunctional, arguably to the point of being degrading. There’s also a twist at the end. And as I said, the protagonist is vividly and realistically depicted. But seriously, if I took the trouble to do a word count, probably the greatest proportion of text is devoted to either the dysfunctional relationship, or the hardcore smut. So this is a story that will be enthusiastically and wholeheartedly embraced and enjoyed by people who love hardcore smut stories with a believable protagonist, a dysfunctional real-world relationship, and an interesting speculative genre-style twist, but mainly heavy doses of smut.