Tor.com, April 2020
“Cosmic Crust” by Alex Sherman
“Little Free Library” by Naomi Kritzer
“Go Fish” by Ian Rogers
“An Explorer’s Cartography of Already Settled Lands” by Fran Wilde
“Of Roses and Kings” by Melissa Marr
Reviewed by Tara Grímravn
I’d say it’s a safe wager that, this April, people are going a bit mad, locked inside their homes and looking for ways to break the monotony of quarantine. Thankfully, publications like Tor.com are rising to meet that challenge. This month, Tor.com brings readers no less than five new and original stories. Running the gamut from Horror to Fantasy to SF, readers will be sure to find something that will tickle their fancy.
“Cosmic Crust” by Alex Sherman
Along with his ailing dog, Lucy, Bhu lives in a dilapidated Chicago apartment. The world around him is suffering some type of apocalyptic disease, leaving the few remaining people sick, frail, and struggling for survival. With the last of the meat he uses to feed Lucy gone and no stores left from which to buy more, Bhu heads off to his job at Signoretti’s Italian Bistro, thinking perhaps his boss, Phan, would be willing to sell him a bit of meat for his dog. During his shift, Phan mistakes Bhu’s desire to sanitize himself of the disease via the heat from the wood-fire oven for interest in its construction and launches into an explanation of how he built it by hand, incorporating into its design numerous signs and sigils—everything from Babylonian tablets and ancient Slavic carvings to Greek hexes and Buddhist prayers—all of which resulted in a vortex of strange, undying flame inside the oven. As they speak, Bhu reluctantly asks Phan if there is any meat he could buy for Lucy and his boss obliges, telling him he can have it free of charge. When Bhu feeds the meat to her, Lucy begins to show signs of improvement, getting increasingly better over the week. When this supply dwindles, however, he realizes he needs to get her more but, in a world where such things are so scarce, where exactly is this meat coming from?
Sherman’s strange, Lovecraftian-style horror story is very much worth a read, though not for the faint of heart. It’s disturbing, to be sure, and I found myself, a well-desensitized lover of all things horror, squirming in my seat a time or two throughout the reading. The imagery is visceral and dark and stands in stark contrast to the hopeful (if terrifyingly so) note on which the story ends. Still, it’s a delightfully grim and ghastly read.
“Little Free Library” by Naomi Kritzer
Following in the footsteps of many of her neighbors, Meigan was excited to set up her Little Free Library outside her new house. So much so that she turned it into an adorable work of art. Now that it’s finished and mounted outside her home, she sets to work filling it with books for the neighborhood to enjoy. A few days later, however, she notices that every single book has been taken. Frustrated but still glad that someone is enjoying them, she leaves a note asking borrowers to remember to leave some for others the next time they visit. It wasn’t long after this that, while the mystery reader no longer took all the books, they began leaving small trinkets in their place instead, sometimes including notes of their own asking for books on specific topics. As the odd assemblage of notes and gifts grows, Meigan begins to wonder just who this mysterious reader could be.
Kritzer’s tale is a very cute story. It puts me in mind of an American film called The Lake House (2006), which is itself a remake of a South Korean film called Il Mare (2000), only in Kritzer’s story, the characters are in separate worlds instead of distanced by time. The ending is a little sad yet hopeful, and I found myself wishing the story didn’t end so soon.
“Go Fish” by Ian Rogers
Charles, Sally, and Toby are three special investigators working for the Mereville Group, a company that specializes in securing sites so paranormally active that they’re unfit for human habitation—which usually means they’re deadly. The trio has been sent to investigate the death of a security guard at the North Water fish processing plant, abandoned since 1957 and under the care of the Mereville Group. After speaking to the only remaining watchman and sending him home, they start their inquiry with a briefing on the history of the site before heading inside the warehouse to tackle the ghostly prehistoric threat they believe to be haunting the place.
For me, this story by Rogers is largely uninteresting and not very engaging or entertaining. There were just too many problems with it for my taste. For instance, head-hopping from character to character in a short story is a forgivable sin if it’s done well. In this story, it’s not. The dialogue is awkward and forced, the humor comes across as poorly written shtick, and the characters are shallow, two-dimensional caricatures of various stereotypes. The plot itself is barely mediocre, certainly nothing special or groundbreaking, and frankly didn’t make a lot of sense, especially when it came to the psychic warfare bits and the means of a ghost becoming corporeal and dying (again).
“An Explorer’s Cartography of Already Settled Lands” by Fran Wilde
Refugees from another world have spent three generations traveling to a land foreseen by their ancestors. Upon arrival, however, they find that the world they thought to be uninhabited is already populated by several groups of people, each with varying customs. The Captain sends the Navigator out to see where they might find a safe place for themselves to settle in-between those already there. On their return, the Navigator shares with the Captain maps of all sorts, but none of them tell where the people live, focusing instead on their beliefs and customs. Sent out on their own once more, the more maps the Navigator finds, the more lost they become in this new and strange world.
At the heart of Wilde’s story lies the premise of alien visitation to an unsuspecting world. In calling it that, I realize I’m being slightly misleading as it may give the impression that this is either a horror story or something other than what it is. Instead of a story about a hostile takeover or even something more whimsical, Wilde’s story is solemn and serious, with no threat or humor involved. Without a doubt, it is a fine example of poetic, lyrical writing. Unfortunately, however, the narrative is a little too “up in the clouds,” lacking the necessary things required to truly ground the reader in the story and keep them engaged. The point of the tale is couched in vague metaphor and imagery that, while lovely, doesn’t give the reader anything on which to hold, especially in the way of eliciting any type of emotion. It’s too meandering with little in the way of a real destination.
“Of Roses and Kings” by Melissa Marr
Beatrice, although that’s not her real name, came to Wonderland only four months ago. Starting her career as a castle maid before eventually becoming the Red Queen’s personal maid, she now finds herself being led to the dungeon yet again. After all, having defeated the former Red Queen and claiming the crown, all in order to remain in Wonderland, poor Alice has gone nearly as mad as her predecessor and is just as prone to executing her subjects for even the most trivial of offences. Of course, Beatrice’s latest crime wasn’t quite so trivial—she murdered the Red King in the name of her love for Alice. Now, there’s nothing she can do but wait and see whether she’ll really lose her head this time or if the strange denizens of Wonderland have other plans in mind.
Ever since I was a small child, I’ve loved Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, so I’m always thrilled to see new and unique takes on its quirky dangers. Marr certainly doesn’t disappoint in that regard. The rules that Tom, or what most would know as the Cheshire Cat, have put in place and the reasons why people from the Original World are brought into Wonderland are fascinating. I can’t say that the protagonist, Beatrice (or Rose, as she is soon renamed) is a likable character—she’s more of an anti-hero than anything else and I wish a little more time had been spent on developing her. True, there are a few tidbits here and there that establish a vague idea of her as a person but not enough for me to fully buy into her, even as a serial killer. She’s really little more than a revised knock-off of the main character from the television series Dexter. Still, I quite enjoyed the mix of the madness of Wonderland with real-world psychopathy.