Lightspeed #167, April 2024
“a testament to indirection, an enigma, the sun above” by Mitchell Shanklin
“A Pedra” by Endria Isa Richardson
“How to Know Your Father is a God” by Modupeoluwa Shelle
“Under a Star, Bright as Morning” by David Anaxagoras
“Salemo” by David Marino
“Mother’s Day, After Everything” by Susan Palwick
“Travelers’ Tales from the Ends of the World” by Vandana Singh
“Limping Toward Sunrise” by Rich Larson
Reviewed by Victoria Silverwolf
This issue is notable for containing a novelette, in addition to the short stories that usually appear in its electronic pages.
Less than eight hundred words long, “a testament to indirection, an enigma, the sun above” by Mitchell Shanklin features a narrator witnessing a surgeon remove a so-called life-poem from a lover’s brain, to be replaced by a revised version. (The title is the last line of the new poem.)
The author manages to make the bizarre premise seem real through the use of vivid details. This brief tale may be an allegory for helping a loved one overcome childhood trauma. (The initial life-poem is placed in one’s brain by one’s parents at birth.) The poem that ends the narrative is evocative, if not entirely clear.
“A Pedra” by Endria Isa Richardson consists of transcriptions of audio recordings, articles, and interior monologues by the main character. These elements combine to depict a world in which a corporation uses indentured young people to perceive possible futures. In some manner, having a traumatic childhood gives them this ability. Certain of these workers, who are virtually enslaved, are able to travel to these futures, although only at a terrible cost. The protagonist discovers the unsuspected link between herself and the director of the corporation.
The complex narrative structure requires close reading. Even so, certain parts of the text resembling stream of consciousness remain obscure. Sensitive readers should be aware that the story contains scenes of gruesome violence and a generally depressing mood.
The narrator of “How to Know Your Father is a God” by Modupeoluwa Shelle faces a gang of bullies by relating tales of a divine father. The text consists almost entirely of these legends, although there is a final confrontation with the bullies.
The main appeal of this story is the insight it offers into Yoruba myths and culture. This is likely to be new to most Western readers, even if the main plot is very simple.
“Under a Star, Bright as Morning” by David Anaxagoras is a futuristic variation on the tale of the Nativity. Artificial intelligences decide to make the world a better place by implanting a genetically modified embryo into a woman’s womb. The plot follows the Biblical version closely, with the mother and her husband unable to find room at an inn, and so forth. It leads to an ironic conclusion.
Very devout, conservative Christians may find the story offensive, but the mood is so light that most readers will not find it controversial. (A reference to “gold, Frankenstein [sic], and myrrh” is particularly silly.)
Reading the title of “Salemo” by David Marino backwards reveals that it is yet another response to Ursula K. LeGuin’s famous story “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas.” (At this point, it would be possible to publish a decent-sized anthology of such works.) The bulk of the text, which is less than six hundred words long, consists of a description of the utopian city of Salemo.
The end of the story reveals the flaw in this perfection, and makes this tiny fable into a work of metafiction. The author clearly has a point to make; some readers may feel that the moral lesson is an obvious one.
“Mother’s Day, After Everything” by Susan Palwick takes place at a time when multiple environmental disasters have greatly reduced the human population, as well as that of many other species. In particular, no children are born. Survivors hold a bittersweet Mother’s Day ceremony for the elderly woman they believe to be the last woman to bear children. Years later, after she is dead, they honor the holiday in another way.
It is clear from the start that humanity will soon be extinct. Inevitably, the story has a melancholy mood. That said, the author is able to offer an ending that is not entirely bleak. The premise could have resulted in an overly sentimental story, but the realistic, unromantic depiction of the planet’s last mother avoids this problem. The work can be seen as a cri de coeur for environmental awareness, yet it manages not to be preachy and didactic.
“Travelers’ Tales from the Ends of the World” by Vandana Singh is the issue’s only novelette. It consists of what at first seem to be disparate narratives, related by a storyteller, in which various characters find themselves able to travel into alternate realities. They are also able to undergo transformations from human to animal and back, or even into the ocean. Eventually, all these stories come together, and the storyteller’s relationship to the other characters becomes clear.
This is a very carefully constructed story, with an intricate structure weaving multiple threads into a single tapestry. (The image of a loom occurs throughout the text, when the storyteller relates the multiple tales.) The author has serious points to make about the way the world could be a better place, and these lessons are gracefully integrated into the plot.
“Limping Toward Sunrise” by Rich Larson ends the issue on a comic note. A man and a woman fight weird things coming through a portal. Meanwhile, they discuss the man’s sexual arousal during a former battle, and what this means for their relationship.
Besides being a mildly bawdy joke, this brief jape makes fun of fiction itself. The two characters refer to themselves as “action protagonists,” and there is a reference to “backstory reveals.” The ending adds a further level of humor, which is likely to amuse readers of cosmic horror.
Victoria Silverwolf is currently reading Nova 1, an anthology of (mostly) original stories edited by Harry Harrison that was first published in 1970.