Strange Horizons
July 2010
“The Red Bride” by Samantha Henderson
“The Bright and Shining Parasites of Guiyu” by Grady Hendrix
“Father’s Day” by Jen Larsen
Reviewed by Rhonda Porrett
“The Red Bride” by Samantha Henderson – July 5, 2010
Samantha Henderson weaves a fairy tale of otherworldly fascination in “The Red Bride.” The Var, one of the seeded races, are enslaved by humans. Twigling is the human son of an ambassador and his wife who own and misuse many slaves. The job of tucking Twigling into bed falls to a Varian servant. One night, the servant relates a bedtime story about how hounds, formed from bellystones of the dead, chase the red bride of Vallhan. The servant also informs Twigling the crimson veil of the bride is to be lifted that night for all to see, but the woman is not beautiful by human standards. Not beautiful at all.
Rebellion and regeneration are the themes that highlight this alarming insight into the darkness of human nature. However, the infusion of so many characters, races, and locations in such a short piece gave “The Red Bride” a disjointed feel. I was so busy trying to remember who was doing what and where that it distracted from my enjoyment of contemplating the why—the deeper meaning and symbolism—of this tale.
“The Bright and Shining Parasites of Guiyu” by Grady Hendrix – July 12 (Part I) & July 19 (Part II), 2010
From the first few lines of Grady Hendrix’s “The Bright and Shining Parasites of Guiyu,” the reader is immersed in a world suffering from the consequences of too much electronic consumerism. Little Cheung, who also goes by the name of MC Master Kicks, works in a hellish slum for his Uncle and recycles electronic components. MC dreams of living in Beijing one day but is frustrated that money from his job trickles in so slowly. He also discovers he must protect himself from the viral circuitries infesting the mounds of old computers and cell-phones. When his friend is tainted by a capacitor bug, MC wants to help but in doing so risks all he has saved up for.
“The Bright and Shining Parasites of Guiyu” is a story of the haves versus the have-nots. The characters are well-developed and the squalid setting is perfectly described. Only one question nagged me at the end, a technical conundrum that deals with the logistics of acquiring the raw materials necessary for massive replication inside a biological setting. One can argue that pollution is the answer, but I wanted a better explanation to convince me. Despite my scientific skepticism, I recommend this as a gritty and engrossing read that leaves a metallic taste on the tongue.
“Father’s Day” by Jen Larsen – July 26, 2010
In Jen Larsen’s flash fiction story, “Father’s Day,” a mixed breed daughter gives her mad scientist father the ultimate present. As satisfying as an unflavored rice cake, I found myself rereading this in hopes of finding depth that wasn’t there. The prose is smooth, but the daughter is a passive main character who does nothing to stir my emotions or make me care about the outcome.
July 2010
“The Red Bride” by Samantha Henderson
“The Bright and Shining Parasites of Guiyu” by Grady Hendrix
“Father’s Day” by Jen Larsen
Reviewed by Maria Lin
“The Red Bride” by Samantha Henderson – July 5, 2010
An alien tells a little girl a bedtime story as a revolution begins in “The Red Bride” by Samantha Henderson. Told in first person, “The Red Bride” evolves from an incoherent bunch of noise about dogs hatching from eggs into a confirmation that humanity, the dominant race of the planet, has abused its cousins, the Var, for too long and are about to pay by falling to the rampaging vengeance of a certain “Red Bride.” The slow reveal of the revolution’s details and what led to it is a major element of the story, so I won’t spoil it, but I will say that Henderson does a good job of creating a long history through the conversation of a single moment. “The Red Bride” is short and simple: a good concept well executed.
“The Bright and Shining Parasites of Guiyu” by Grady Hendrix – July 12 (Part I) & July 19 (Part II), 2010
I love it when speculative fiction breaks out of the iron grip Western Civilization seems to have on the genre, and Grady Hendrix does that by moving the action to China, a setting that has been severely underutilized in my opinion. In “The Bright and Shining Parasites of Guiyu,” we follow MC Master Kicks, man one of a two man break dancing team straight out of Jianxi, which unfortunately has no other break dancing teams. A break dancer can’t get his name out in a backwater province, so MC Master Kicks and man two, otherwise known as Catshit, make their way to Beijing. Only problem is they don’t have a single coin to their names and find themselves stuck halfway, stripping electronics for their valuable metals in a provincial slum. MC Master Kicks, or Little Cheung to everyone else, scrimps and saves to make his Beijing dreams a reality, but the work his is doing is killing him, and there’s the matter of these “capacitor bugs” crawling around Catshit’s skin.
The humor in this story is carried through to us by the narration of Mr. Master Kicks, whose self confidence far outstrips any actual skill he might have and who’s tough talking doesn’t quite match up with his countrified, penniless roots. By the middle of the story the humor is slowly being squeezed out by reality, and by the end “Parasites” has taken a sobering turn. You laugh at the hero for being a real loser, and then sit back and respect when he proves that he really does have some guts. With strong narration, a sarcastic sense of humor, and an ending that makes it more than just fluff, “The Bright and Shining Parasites of Guiyu” is a story I will remember and recommend.
“Father’s Day” by Jen Larsen – July 26, 2010
At four paragraphs, “Father’s Day” is flash fiction about a mad scientist at the bottom of the sea that’s so short any lengthy review would be longer than the story itself. It’s impressive how much detail Jen Larson can cram into such a small space, so if you like mad scientists and doomsday machines, you might want to spare the minute it takes to read this.