Diabolical Plots #98, April 2023

“Re: Your Stone” by Guan Un

“Bottled Words” by Carol Scheina

Reviewed by László Szegedi

“Re: Your Stone” by Guan Un

The daily tasks in the corporate world can be soul-killing and sometimes lack any kind of human touch. This is what the author shows in the form of the so-familiar endless email chain.

Although the idea is neat, the text misses raising it to anything higher, thus it feels more like a gag than a standalone story.

“Bottled Words” by Carol Scheina

The first sentence is always important to drag the reader into the world of a story, especially in the case of short stories. Carol Scheina mastered it with this one: “When Dad sent me into the kitchen for a container—any lidded vessel at all—to bottle Grandma’s voice, all I could find were lonely lids.”

The story is set in a magical reality where people’s voices can be trapped and stored in vessels indefinitely. The author plays well with the warm homely episodes of family life like yard sales, cooking, or spare lids. The whole text has a sentimental touch like the best Bradbury stories. Carol Scheina also deals with sounds and silence pretty well; the reader can feel like those sounds around them are blooming vividly.

Although the story deals with many talking points about family life, generations moving on and how futile our fight against the passing of time might be, some of these themes are repeated too many times, making it rather lengthy and a bit difficult to keep one’s attention. Overall, the story provides an interesting personal point of view of everyday life, but without a strong plot.

László is an SF enthusiast living in middle Europe, who also writes songs in the attic.