[On May 10, 2021 Strange Horizons officially expressed its political support for Palestinian solidarity. The views of Tangent Online reviewers are not necessarily those of Strange Horizons. Fiction critiqued at Tangent Online is, as much as is humanly possible, without prejudice and based solely on artistic merit.]

Strange Horizons, May 31, 2021

“The Chicken House” by Jenny Fried

“Women Want Me, Fish Fear Me” by Paris Green

“A Welling Up” by Natalia Theodoridou

Reviewed by Mike Bickerdike

This issue of Strange Horizons is a special transgender issue, containing 3 fiction stories as well as non-fiction and poetry on the theme, which are not reviewed.

“The Chicken House” by Jenny Fried is a weird fantasy story, which tells the tale of a young boy, Sleep, who lives on a farm, and who is both attracted to and repelled by a red dress that hangs up in the tractor shed. The dress is made from the red feathers of hundreds of male cardinal birds, a metaphor for gender fluidity, presumably. The boy engages in self harm, his father is mentioned but otherwise absent, and his greatest fear is the chicken shed, where he is ultimately drawn. This story is essentially a collection of well-worn transgender issues presented as a sequence of metaphors. Some of the imagery is quite good, albeit not wholly original. Whether the ideas presented are new I’m not sure, and the writing will seem overly stylistic to some. A further minor niggle with the tale is that, to draw a reader in, the mundane events of a fantasy tale should be consistent and commonsensical. Yet early on we are told the boy gets lost in a tractor shed on his own farm (which doesn’t ring true), and then a few sentences later, he simply leaves the way he came in (an inconsistency). Greater dramatic tension and stronger characterisation would also have been beneficial. Ultimately, this is an ambitious story let down somewhat by imperfect execution.

“Women Want Me, Fish Fear Me” by Paris Green is not really a story (at least, I couldn’t discern a plot), but more of a sequence of interludes and conversations between the queer protagonist, who has undertaken some sort of partial fish body transformation, and various lovers she has had. It’s rather odd, and not in a good way. I think the piece is supposed to be amusing at times, invoke sympathetic anger at other times and overall, to be clever. Unfortunately, it misses the bullseye for me.

In “A Welling Up” by Natalia Theodoridou the protagonist’s mother is sick (perhaps physically, perhaps psychologically from loss and guilt), and this has the apparent effect of creating lakes that are welling up across the landscape. This original fantasy idea serves as a backdrop to the main storyline, in which the mother and her daughter are searching for their long-lost son/brother, who was left behind with foster-parents at a trailer park many years ago. With some novel imagery, the story is partially successful, and a dream-like sense of place perfuses the tale. However, the tale is somewhat let down by the unusual presentation, in which the first-person narrator (the daughter) directs the tale to her mother using second-person address throughout. This gets points for novelty, but actually makes the tale less readily accessible. The story leaves the reader with as many questions as it provides answers.

More of Mike Bickerdike’s reviews and thoughts on science-fiction can be found at https://starfarersf.nicepage.io/