DreamForge Anvil # 21, Fall 2025
“Love Me Do, Played On Concrete Instruments” by Douglas Kolacki
“Play It Again” by Bruce Golden
“The Easy Song” by Colm O’Shea
“Finding A Voice” by Christopher Passeto
“Muzik Man, Part 1” by Wulf Moon (serial, not reviewed)
Reviewed by Mina
This issue is about the true power of music and “what happens when melody meets mayhem.”
“Love Me Do, Played On Concrete Instruments” by Douglas Kolacki is set in East Berlin in 1975. The Russian regime is still in place, the wall is still standing. The protagonist is forced to become an informer by the Stasi after attending a concert next to the wall, where the band plays on concrete instruments. He comes to the realisation that the band comes from a future with no wall. However grim the present, the future still holds hope—an apropos message.
“Play It Again” by Bruce Golden is as haunting as the melody that drifts through it. A human soldier gets lost in a foreign jungle. He hears a strange melody and follows it. Instead of shooting the alien he finds there, he joins in with his harmonica. They swap instruments. Years later, the soldier has become a famous player of the alien instrument when he meets the alien again and they play together one last time. The alien’s total dedication to the harmonica reminds the jaded musician that the music is what counts above all else.
“The Easy Song” by Colm O’Shea is unsettling but holds the reader hard. Imagine a tribe where animals become people, then return to the wild in the end. A visiting photographer gets pulled into the song around the fire circle. Not quite what Elton John meant but a circle of life nonetheless.
“Finding A Voice” by Christopher Passeto follows the hapless Hendry, apprenticed to the minstrel, Bolbec.
For much of the story, we feel Hendry’s frustration at being constantly on the run with his reckless master, who manages to be on the wrong side of the Spanish Inquisition and pretty much everyone else. Then the apprentice finds his voice and the magic in the music. The story turns from an annoying farce into something more memorable at the end.