On Spec #134, Winter 2025
“Last Vacation of a Termite” by Michèle Laframboise
“Queen of the Sword” by Fiona Heath
“Night Shift with the Demon Drive” by Jarrett Poole
“The Steady March of Progress” by Andrea Bernard
“Title IX” by Derryl Murphy
“The Permission Is All Mine” by Melissa Ren
“Victim Impact Statement” by Catherine Austen
“Eris” by Glenn Willmott
“The Gift” by Ruth E. Walker
“A Need for Space” by Marie Labrousse
“Leto’s Demons” by Colleen Anderson
“The Dragon She Didn’t Want” by Adrian Croft
“Ribbons” by Elis Montgomery
“Québec” by Lorina Stephens
“The Girl with Candyfloss-Pink Hair” by Geoffrey Hart
“Payment Is Commensurate” by Elizabeth Smith
“One Hand Washes The Other” by Karl El-Koura
“Waking Up” by D.G. Valdron
“The Billy Goat’s Bluff” by Stephen Kotowych
“Forever Bound” by KT Wagner
“Seven for a Secret” by Chris Patrick Carolan
Reviewed by Mina
It was with great sadness that I reviewed this last ever (bumper) issue of On Spec. It was brimming full of good stories and there was a nice bonus with some wonderful illustrations by Janice Blaine.
“Last Vacation of a Termite” by Michèle Laframboise starts us off with a bang. It feels like the ramblings of an “old biddy,” as she enjoys her first holiday after a lifetime of slaving in mines. Slowly, the story takes on a more sinister note, as we realise that the corporation she worked for is trying to kill her because she was fighting for an investigation into her husband’s death in a mine collapse. There are touching moments when she remembers her husband or forms friendships with a group of people even more exploited than she was. The piecemeal plot is very well done.
“Queen of the Sword” by Fiona Heath is another slow build. An elderly lady, Maud, pulls a sword out of a stone in Battersea Park. She names it Thistle, but Thistle has a mind of its own and wants to become a sword of peace. I enjoyed the gentle humour and optimism.
“Night Shift with the Demon Drive” by Jarrett Poole changes the tone to that of a horror story. Polina must negotiate with the demon powering her travelling colony’s ship. There is a predictable but neat sting to the tail.
“The Steady March of Progress” by Andrea Bernard is a tragic tale. For years, the landscaper has tended the garden, with plants that talk to him. When the lady who supported the garden dies, her granddaughter begins to sell off the garden bit by bit. Each time, the plants must vote who will live and who will die. Each time, the gardener mourns the dead, until he too must accept defeat. But he is loved by the garden to the very end.
“Title IX” by Derryl Murphy is a blend of fantasy, horror and SF. In a school training teens with nascent superpowers, the establishment clearly favours the male high-fliers and does its best to sabotage its female stars. But the girls fight back. A feminist tale that talks about girls finding strength together in the face of male aggression in its most vicious form.
“The Permission Is All Mine” by Melissa Ren gets off to an intriguing start. We meet a cyborg AI designed to be a Companion to a human. But is she also Lilith, the Mother on whom all other Companions are based and who can connect them all? And what does freedom actually mean to her? The ending felt rushed and I would liked to have seen more development of some good ideas—sometimes more is actually more.
“Victim Impact Statement” by Catherine Austen takes an imaginative look at the limits of criminal rehabilitation. Can a psychopath truly ever feel remorse for their crimes? We see the story from both the point of view of “the perpetrator” and the “parole officer.” When the Consequential Awareness and Reintegration plan doesn’t work, the parole officer switches to Alternative Sentencing for the perpetrator. Read to find out what that means.
“Eris” by Glenn Willmott definitely gets its inspiration from Invasion of the Body Snatchers but goes much further. Fitz arrives at the outpost Eris to replace Yu Xi as a sentinel on the lookout for “Gems,” metamorphic aliens who can replace humans as their identical (playful) twin. But Fitz and Yu Xi become locked in a battle, each trying to prove that they are human, not Gems. The ending is pleasantly enigmatic.
In “The Gift” by Ruth E. Walker, Marella is indentured to the The Overseers who invaded Earth. She must use her talent to tell members of the ruling (human) elite about the last moments of their loved ones’ lives during the invasion. The seeker shows their contempt for the ordinary people forced to scavenge for food and shelter, people like Marella and her family. So Marella lies to the seeker even though she knows she will be punished for it. A bleak tale.
“A Need For Space” by Marie Labrousse, translated by Margaret Sankey, is set on Earth after the Great Exodus. When the Earth was devastated by climate change, the elite took themselves off to Mars, after slave labour paved the way for them. Priya dreams of the stars but Nuala works to rebuild life on Earth. With the elite gone, the remains of humanity are pulling together to survive in a truly equal society (communism how it should have looked?). Not a lot happens but the end is sweet because we see two disparate personalities able to live and love together. And both of the title’s meanings make sense in the end.
“Leto’s Demons” by Colleen Anderson is set in a world where humans are barely surviving. We follow Neoma’s group as they move north to find cleaner air. There, they join an Inuit settlement. As almost no children are born, Neoma’s group has found a way to raise cyborg children. Then three “gods” come to stay, bringing cruelty and violence with them. And vengeance is born.
“The Dragon She Didn’t Want” by Adrian Croft is a nice surprise, as dragon tales often lack psychological depth. Myra’s grief and anger at her mother’s death that lead her to initially reject her dragon feel real. The slow build-up as she accepts her duty yet gains freedom for herself and the other dragon Keepers is well done. And there are a couple of nice touches: a dragon who turns out to be worthy of her, and an unlikely friendship. I loved this tale.
“Ribbons” by Elis Montgomery plays with the trope of the (male) hero that will change the fate of the world to avenge the murder of a (female) loved one. But what if the hero were no longer needed because the victim becomes a heroine instead in her own right?
“Québec” by Lorina Stephens is a sad tale. We keep a dying man company as he remembers being ripped away from his “redskin” mother as a child. Now an adult left homeless on Christmas Eve, trapped in a crashed car in a snowstorm, he is watched over by the spirits of a French colonist, a Jesuit priest and a cunning redskin. Kondiaronk invites our narrator, nameless to the end, to the Land of Souls where he will be free of worry and pain.
“The Girl with Candyfloss-Pink Hair” by Geoffrey Hart is a slice-of-life story. Just one moment and one conversation between a waitress and the customer only she can see. But one conversation may change her life forever.
In “Payment Is Commensurate” by Elizabeth Smith, an ambitious man goes to have his fortune told. He wants to change his future and is willing to pay any price. But do we truly understand the value of something before we lose it?
“One Hand Washes The Other” by Karl El-Koura occurs almost entirely in Pietr’s mind. Is he being tortured for information by the enemy posing as his friends, or are they really trying to save the mission by finding the code they need in his Martian-virus-infected cybernetic-enhanced brain? Yep, only in SF reviews can you write a question like that!