[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, October 30, 2023
“On Fallow Fields Where Flames Once Bloomed” by N. A. Blair
“Brincando Charcos (Jumping Puddles)” by Ben Francisco
“The Gates of Lanvil” by Michael Roch
“The Fate of Despair” by Malena Salazar Maciá
“I Attack the Queen!” by Sarah Ramdawar
Reviewed by Victoria Silverwolf
This special issue offers five stories from authors with Caribbean backgrounds.
“On Fallow Fields Where Flames Once Bloomed” by Guyanese writer N. A. Blair describes how your skin (who acts as the narrator, addressing you directly) comes off your body in an attempt to make you lose the regret (in this case, an actual physical object) inside you. Only when you follow it outside to meet another separated skin and body do you understand what needs to be done.
The fantasy content in this story is an obvious allegory for the protagonist accepting the fact that she loves another woman, and that she must be open about her sexual orientation despite what others might think. The text is full of striking images and vivid sensory appeal. The unusual narrative technique, a mixture of first person and second person, may be an attempt to make the story more intense, but seems unnecessary.
“Brincando Charcos (Jumping Puddles)” by Puerto Rican writer Ben Francisco features a protagonist who can transport himself to other places by jumping into small pools of water. He loves a man who has the same ability. Like others with this power, they are often pursued by men in blue. When the main character faces the loss of his lover due to an unthinking use of his ability, he has to come up with a way to win him back.
Flashbacks tell the reader how the protagonist’s mother, grandmother, and aunt told him about this power and the men in blue. The latter serve as a symbol of oppression, whether political (the grandmother is imprisoned after a protest) or social (the subtle implication that the two men are being pursued because they are gay.)
As the title implies, this story is narrated with a touch of Spanish mixed into the English text, but this never becomes confusing for the monolingual reader. The concept is intriguing and described in a believable way, and the resulting work is effective both as fantasy and as a love story.
“The Gates of Lanvil” by Michael Roch, a writer living in Martinique, is translated from French by Karine Saint Jacques. I do not know if this is part of the reason why it is a very difficult story to describe. In brief, a clone and the doctor who created him drift inside a container through a sea full of corpses. The doctor’s goal is to escape what seems to be nearly universal disaster and reach the fabled land mentioned in the title. Along the way, the clone devours parts of the doctor’s body.
Despite references to science fiction concepts, this strange story has the feeling of fantasy and the mood of horror. The characters talk in ways that are unlike normal speech, and the narrative is full of phrases that are evocative but difficult to comprehend. At times, it is difficult to determine what the reader should accept as real. (Does a corpse actually address the clone, or is this an hallucination?)
“The Fate of Despair” by Cuban writer Malena Salazar Maciá is translated from Spanish, presumedly by the author. It starts off as hard science fiction, but quickly turns into pure fantasy. Narrated in second person, it describes how you are trapped in an escape pod after an accident in deep space. Another pod appears and attaches itself to yours, then takes you to a planet with a breathable atmosphere. There you discover a copper mine, and encounter the being inside the other pod.
The juxtaposition of space fiction and mythological fantasy is an unusual and imaginative one, but the combination is particularly jarring in this case. The climax provides an inspirational image, even if it is one that is quite hard to believe.
“I Attack the Queen!” by Sarah Ramdawar, self-described as an Indo-Trinidadian Canadian writer, is a very brief story that relates how the narrator threw a flower at Queen Elizabeth II when she visited a Caribbean island in 1966. The monarch was injured, but healed instantly, raising questions in the narrator’s mind about her true identity.
The text consists of a single paragraph written in dialect. Because the story is well under six hundred words long, this should not tax the reader’s patience overly. This little tale can be read as a metaphor for rebellion against colonialism, I suppose, but the mood is too lighthearted to take it very seriously.
Victoria Silverwolf has never been to the Caribbean.