Sci Phi Journal, Winter 2023/4

“No Room at the Infinity Inn” by Richard Lau

“The Book With All The Ring’s Marvels” by Arturo Sierra

“Beheading Of A Queen” by Matias Travieso-Diaz

“Bloodless” by Todd Sullivan

“Render Unto Jesus” by Andy Dibble

“Sinurbia” by Gheorghe Săsărman, trans. by Monica Cure

“Intersidereal Aliyah And The Law Of Return” by Edmund Nasralla

“Incredulity” by James C. Clar

“Nothing Could Be Something: A Parable of Sorts” by Robert L. Jones III

“The Power Of The Stone” by David K. Henrickson

Reviewed by C. D. Lewis

In Sci Phi Journal‘s Q4 2023 issue Tangent reviews ten new short stories. They range from the comic to the dark and from hard SF to parables. Between alternate history and future tales, the issue offers a wide range of settings. As described in the Editorial, the issue breaks with the publication’s typical mood to include more fanciful and holiday-themed pieces.

Richard Lau’s comic “No Room at the Infinity Inn” reframes Mary and Joseph’s effort to get a room in an overbooked Bethlehem hotel. The humor flows initially from the absurd setting’s bureaucratic flavor and the call center quality of Joseph’s interaction with the reception desk attendant. Math humor adds some SF feeling, and includes discussion of comparisons between different infinite numbers and a reference to a classical paradox that bent brains before Newton and Leibniz invented calculus.

Arturo Sierra’s “The Book With All The Ring’s Marvels” employs an omniscient narrator to describe a multi-millennium treck around a ringworld. Since there’s no protagonist, per se, the reader is required to enjoy either the trajectory of the civilization as it descends to barbarism and recovers, the lighthearted descriptions of the civilization’s various disasters, or the punchline ending. Readers may be entertained by technology mistaken for magic, the meandering path of a mission that outlives civilizations, or the eventual inadvertent misplacement of the eponymous Book. Being lost in the wilderness long enough to kill off those who launched the journey fits the ring’s builders into the issue’s holiday theme by recalling the fate of Israelites lost forty years in the desert, which itself invites comparisons between real-world religions and their development and the farcical convictions of the ring-builders’ descendants and that people’s fate.

“Beheading Of A Queen” is an epistolary-style alternate history by Matias Travieso-Diaz that depicts deciphered messages to King Henry III of France delivered by pigeon from the French ambassador to England who historically had returned to France in 1585 but in “Beheading Of A Queen” is still in England at the time of the Spanish Armada. In Traviesio-Diaz’ alternate history the Armada launched earlier, led by a more competent Spanish commander, and attained its objective. A student of history might enjoy examining the various departures of the story from history and examining how they affect the result. However, a more typical reader will likely notice that the account does not depict a protagonist opposed scene by scene in a story objective; there’s little basis for personal worry over the fate of a sympathetic character in the informant’s account.

Todd Sullivan sets the short story “Bloodless” in a world that might be a simulated reality from which billions seek to retire back to the real world, or might be an Earth influenced by a marketing campaign intended to persuade credulous humans to accept commercially-produced suicide tablets as an acceptable method to leave the “game” to better interact with one’s loved ones. Rather than focusing on an individual’s belief the world might be fake, like Inception, this story raises the horror that a credulous public could be lured into accepting a hostile inhuman/alien occupation, tolerating visible and worsening contamination of the Earth’s surface, and willingly killing themselves by the billions.

Andy Dibble’s “Render Unto Jesus” grounds an absurdist comedy in a fictitious legal case. The story combines ideas behind both United States jurisprudence on corporate personhood and a British case in which a deity was ostensibly allowed to sue to return a stolen statue to the temple that owned it, in order to portray a United States in which courts declared all church-owned property the personal property of Jesus Christ and, as a result, prevent the sale of Church property without Jesus’ consent. (News reports on the British case suggest the laws of India on historic items of cultural heritage, together with witness testimony from the thieves and their buyers, appear to have actually governed the case, rather than legal recognition in British courts of a right by deities to sue in their own names, but why spoil a comedy with facts?) “Render Unto Jesus” leads readers from a 5-4 Supreme Court decision holding all Church property to belong to Jesus through a series of increasingly outrageous consequences. Fans of absurd comedy, or furious opponents of corporate personhood, will enjoy a laugh.

“Sinurbia” is Monica Cure’s translation of Gheorghe Săsărman’s parable about a futuristic community dwelling on a floating city which is devastated by typhoons whenever any of the inhabitants improve their homes and communities by cultivating gardens. The typhoons do no damage to the city’s structure, but obliterate the gardens. The reviewer is unable to claim knowledge of the moral the parable was intended to communicate, but the author’s personal history dwelling in a highly-censored autocracy raises the likelihood his story about a nasty and vindictive ocean weather system was meant to comment (despite censors) on irresistible malign government forces and their effect on the inhabitants of communities that suffer their unavoidable oppressions. The dark message appears to be that when oppressive government consistently destroys the work of individuals who undertake effort to improve their own lives and their communities, members of the oppressed community internalize the effort and come to regard themselves as having accomplished something when they relieve government of the need to crush a nonconformist who tries to make life better by themselves destroying individuals who would improve their communities and life within them.

Edmund Nasralla’s “Intersidereal Aliyah And The Law Of Return” looks at the application of the State of Israel’s law allowing immigration of Jews to Israel to a world after the colonization of other planets. Since the piece is written as if an encyclopedia entry (together with a number of footnotes, for verisimilitude) rather than a short story, it has less of a hook than if it had an identifiable protagonist seeking an ascertainable goal in the face of an antagonist’s effort to thwart progress. Instead, the reader learns what technological and social developments caused amendments to Israel’s law allowing immigration of Jews. Readers with a special interest in the subject matter are more likely to perceive a hook and enjoy the problems, solutions, and results described in the encyclopedia entry.

James C. Clar’s fantasy vignette “Incredulity” depicts a sage who is keen to share his knowledge but is as limited by his own dwindling years as by the willingness of his audience to believe what he has to teach. Anyone familiar with Anselm, or with the difficulties associated with teaching mysticism, will appreciate the sage’s problem. Rather than denigrate mysticism, “Incredulity” sympathizes with the ageing scholar.

Robert L. Jones III’s “Nothing Could Be Something: A Parable of Sorts” opens with a description of a variety of facts related to physics and geometry, as though a science fiction reader might need lessons before being permitted access to a story. When a character is identified to the reader, he has no name and is described only as “the materialist.” The materialist’s experience looks like the start of a work like Flatland or Sphereland but instead of evolving into communication between beings whose existence is bounded by different dimensions, “A Parable of Sorts” shows the main character applying his reason to his observations only to frustrate himself with famously troublesome concepts from classic thinkers.

David K. Henrickson’s flash-fiction vignette “The Power Of The Stone” invites readers to imagine the real or fictional event they’d like to see—and would be willing to risk. It’s a tiny but entertaining twist on wish-granting, and good fun.