SERIES SATURDAY: Stargirl TV series

This is a series about … well, series. I do so love stories that continue across volumes, in whatever form: linked short stories, novels, novellas, television, movies. I’ve already got a list of series I’ve recently read, re-read, watched, or re-watched that I plan to blog about. I might even, down the line, open myself up to letting other people suggest titles I should read/watch and then comment on.

I think that Stargirl has become my favorite of the current live-action super-hero television offerings. (This being said, as I’ve also noted on social media, in light of not having seen any of Doom Patrol, Titans, Swamp Thing or Umbrella Academy, and having fallen way behind on Black Lightning, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., and Gotham.) So I’m here to talk about why in more depth than my Facebook post.  IN CASE IT NEEDS TO BE SAID – FROM THIS POINT ON, EXPECT SPOILERS! BOW OUT NOW IF YOU HAVEN’T WATCHED THE ENTIRE SEASON AND CARE ABOUT BEING SURPRISED!

I only became familiar with the Courtney Whitmore Stargirl character after her solo comics series had ended and she’d become a full member of the Justice Society of America. In fact, I still haven’t read her solo series, although I’ve picked up the trade paperback collections and mean to get around to them real soon. So my impressions of the show are based on what I know of the character from her appearances in various JSA runs, and on the show itself.

I’m a firm believer in not expecting live-action versions of comic books to hew too closely to the material on which they’re based. It’s less disappointing when they make wholesale changes if you just go in expecting there to be egregious differences. But Stargirl … Stargirl seems intent on capturing the feel, if not the word-for-word storyline, of the comics. I don’t know how closely anything in season one maps onto the original Stargirl comics (other than Courtney’s step-dad being former sidekick Stripesy and building a giant robot) but they certainly seem to be embracing the legacy aspect of JSA comics going back to the 70s (when Robin, Power Girl, and a time-tossed Star-Spangled Kid joined the team). Okay, so this is not the Beth Chapel, Rick Tyler, Henry King Junior or Yolanda Montez I met back in the late 80s (most obviously, the show’s versions aren’t adults) … but they capture the spirit of each of those characters really well: Henry fighting his father’s evil influence, Rick trying to live up to his father’s legacy but still be his own man, Yolanda trying to decide if she even wants to do this superhero thing at all. Beth is the only one I feel doesn’t have much of the original comics version in her portrayal, but this version of the character is endearing and works as the brainier side of a very brawn-heavy team. I also wasn’t sure how I’d feel about the pilot episode’s biggest departure from the comics: killing off most of the JSA. I have to say I think they gave it all the poignancy it deserved, given that show is not about those characters, but rather the legacy they leave behind.

The show is also embracing the giddiness of super-hero fight scenes that many of the current CW shows eschew for more “realistic” (grittier, darker-filmed) fight choreography. It’s not unusual, in a Stargirl fight scene, to see a character get kicked in the chest and fly across the room. It’s also not unusual to actually be able to see who is hitting who and how hard, and what happens to them after they get hit. With the exception of the opening battle of the pilot, in which the Injustice Society kills most of the JSA, even the night-time and subterranean scenes are well-lit enough to see whose doing what. (Arrow’s fight choreography was mostly spectacular – but how often could you actually see the details of what was going on?) I loved pretty much every fight scene from the pilot on, but the fights in the finale had me cheering for just how well-done they were.

The costumes are also really faithful to the comics, and look almost nothing like what you’d find on any of the other Berlanti-led super-hero shows to date. Gone are the realistic heavy leather outfits of Arrow, Flash, etc.; in are cloaks and cowls and form-fitting spandex and outfits that shouldn’t work in real life but do anyway because COMIC BOOKS. It gives the show a more traditional comic-book look, which I think is part of what frees them to be a little over-the-top in the fight choreography. The only outfits I didn’t really like were those in the snapshot of Pat’s former team, the Seven Soldiers of Victory. They looked a little too much like Halloween costumes. Especially Shining Knight’s, which looked like something you’d pick up at a Ren Faire (but maybe I’m being picky on that because he’s one of my favorite super-heroes?).

The details in the costumes are matched by little set details throughout the season. I particularly loved the movies playing at the theater in Blue Valley: the Unknown Soldier, The Haunted Tank, GI Robot (get the feeling that the people of Blue Valley love their war movies?), and Prez. And I’m sure I missed some other easter eggs, because I can’t imagine Geoff Johns and James Robinson not throwing in more and more obscure stuff as production went along.

The acting on the show is top-notch. Brec Bassinger pulls off the neat trick of letting Courtney be pretty unlikeable at the start (she may be justified in being upset about the move to Blue Valley, but we don’t have to like the way she treats Pat or Mike) and even partway through the season (her grandstanding in the training session with “her” JSA) and still getting us to feel for her. Her best episode was the one in which she finds out her father isn’t who she thought he was and all of her insecurities and heartbreak tumble out. The actors playing the rest of the JSA are excellent as well; while some of what they’re given to play is standard “high school angst,” they don’t overplay it like a lot of high school-set shows do. Of the adult characters, I think Neil Jackson steals the show as Jordan Mahkent/Icicle – his character certainly shows the most depth and nuance (especially as compared to the very one-note “sadistic lunkhead” portrayals of Sportsmaster and Tigress), with Christopher James Baker’s Henry King/Brainwave a close second. And I have to give props to Nelson Lee, who spends the whole season acting under a hood through which we’re barely able to see even his eyes and yet sells every scene perfectly. Amy Smart is terrific as Courtney’s mother, and although I’m not a huge Luke Wilson fan I think he gets Pat Dugan’s mix of sincerity and insecurity just right.

I think the tightness of the season – 13 episodes – helped the actors as well. There was no room for one-off episodes exploring side-quests or a “day in the life at Blue Valley High.” Every scene needed to further the narrative or enhance character, and for the most part they did. Even the scenes of Mike Dugan’s school science fair were necessary – we had to care about the kid if we were going to worry about his safety in the finale. The only scenes I felt didn’t contribute to the overall arc were the scenes in the two-part finale focused on Isaac Bowin (The Fiddler’s son); if they’re not a set-up for the character having a bigger role in season two, then they really were extraneous.

The final episode was one of the most satisfying season finales I’ve seen in a long time, super-hero show or otherwise. The writing staff wrapped up all the major plots for the season while still giving us plenty of hooks into season two. And most of the finale was action, action, action. Which made the quieter Christmas scenes at the end more powerful.

But let’s talk about season two before we go.

With DC Universe and the decision to move most of the original live-action and animated content to HBO Max, there’s a lot of trepidation therefore that Stargirl moving to the CW instead will cause it to fall victim to the things that people dislike about the Arrowverse shows: increased romantic soap—opera elements and too many “filler” episodes, and a move to filming in Vancouver instead of Georgia. I’m hoping that Greg Berlanti will stick to the formula that made season one of Stargirl successful: 13 episodes (15, at most) and a focus on one major problem for the heroes to overcome (and that filming will remain in Georgia as Black Lightning has).

The concern I have is that the season finale set up a ton of possible main storylines for season two. We got set-ups for The Shade (one of my favorite DC characters ever), Eclipso, the search for the Seven Soldiers, the return of Sylvester Pemberton, the whereabouts/survival of the remaining ISA members who aren’t clearly dead, and perhaps even some who were … and left somewhat unspoken was what will happen when the ISA’s kids find out their parents are dead or incarcerated (we didn’t see Artemis Crock or Cameron Mahkent in any meaningful capacity in the season finale, but we did see Isaac Bowin take a tuba to a bully’s head) and who is responsible for those deaths/incarcerations. That’s a lot to juggle in a short 13-15 episode season. I’m afraid that the writers are going to try to go bigger in season two, which will not necessarily be better, and I’m hoping that this prolonged pandemic-induced hiatus will give Johns and company time to decide what story they want to tell in season two and what can wait until a probably season three or longer.

But even with that concern firmly in place, I’m excited and hopeful for a second season of Stargirl. It’s nice to see a brightly-lit, hopeful, less-angst-driven superhero show on television right now.

Review of ANTHEMS OUTSIDE TIME AND OTHER STRANGE VOICES

TITLE: Anthems Outside Time and Other Strange Voices

AUTHOR: Kenneth Schneyer

367 pages, Fairwood Press, ISBN 9781933846927 (paperback)

DESCRIPTION: (from the back cover): Curator’s notes from an art exhibition. Exam questions. A children’s social studies book. An end-user license agreement from God. From Nebula-nominated author Kenneth Schneyer comes this collection spanning the range from fantasy to science fiction to horror to political speculative fiction. Representing more than a decade of work, these 26 weird, disorienting stories will accost your expectations while relocating your heart. This volume includes such celebrated works as “Selected Program Notes from the Retrospective Exhibition of Theresa Rosenberg Latimer,” as well as two stories never before published.

MY RATING: Five out of five stars

MY THOUGHTS:  Kenneth Schneyer’s new short story collection Anthems Outside Time and Other Strange Voices finds him at the top of the game when it comes to telling stories in non-traditional narrative forms. Schneyer is not afraid to jump genres, meld styles, subvert tropes or upend storytelling technique. I would not be surprised to find out his next story is told in the form of an interactive jigsaw puzzle, or that he’s tossed pages into an fireplace to char and pieced together a story out of the ashes and unburned remains.

Schneyer loves to force readers to “fill in the blanks,” sometimes quite literally (see “Levels of Observation,” a story told via a series of blank performance assessment forms for people with an unspecified special talent that sounds a lot like telepathy), and sometimes through the eyes of a character ("Tenure Track,” another series of evaluations and applications but with the responses filled in). He gives his readers an extra level of personal investment that might not have been achieved if these tales has been written in more traditional forms. Likewise “Selected Program Notes from the Retrospective Exhibition of Theresa Rosenberg Latimer,” in which we are left to figure out exactly the titular artist was experiencing that influenced her portraiture in sublime ways, and in “You in the United States!” which gives us excerpts from a near-future social studies textbook without telling us exactly how the United States got where it is at the point the textbook was written. “Some Pebbles in the Palm” plays with the reincarnation trope by having the author directly address the reader multiple times to let us know the story isn’t as neat and tidy as we’d perhaps like it to be (and yet, the story itself is still more than satisfying).  And “I Have Read the Terms of Use” might be the best example of legal language trapping us (in this case in our own failing bodies) while holding the writer of the contract (in this case, God) harmless. “Life of the Author Plus Seventy” is a clever look at copyright law and how far corporations will go to close loopholes in the legal language.

Schneyer’s legal experience comes to the fore in several of the aforementioned entries, and also in two of the longer, and best, stories in the collection. Both “Keepsakes” (one of my all-time favorite stories, by Schneyer or anyone else) and “The Whole Truth Witness” focus on lawyers’ use of supposedly infallible witnesses to intimidate the opposition or sway the jury.  In “Keepsakes,” they are essentially living, interactive, recordings of specific moments in a person’s life; in “Witness,” they are people who have been injected with something that enables them to recall everything they’ve experienced with perfect clarity but takes away their ability to speak untruths. “Witness” takes a comedic turn that makes the point of the story all the stronger and highlights how easy it is to find flaws in the infallible. “Keepsakes” is about more than just the legal battle: it’s about how we often fail to let go of our pasts sufficiently enough to live our present, how we fail to learn from our mistakes, and how holding grudges may hurt ourselves more than the people we have the grudge against. It has a bittersweet tone throughout, and my heart broke for not just the leads but also the secondary characters.

Perception is another key facet of Schneyer’s storytelling: how we perceive others, and how we are perceived. Who exactly is “the other”? The protagonist of “Hear the Enemy, My Daughter” thinks she knows all there is to know about an alien enemy and about her own daughter – until she digs a little deeper and realizes how little she understands both. “The Plausibility of Dragons” (another favorite story of mine) gives the “othering” of women and Muslims a supernatural explanation but doesn’t shy away from tackling the issue head-on (and beats down the argument that there were no female knights or black people in Europe in medieval times along the way). “Calibration” also hinges on a mother thinking she knows what her daughter is doing while she’s at work, while “Keeping Tabs” takes on the toxic nature of Fandom and Celebrity by literally enabling a fan to see through a favorite actress’ eyes. “Who Embodies What We Are” may be the most straight-forward examination of how perception alters as we learn more facts, being the story of a Great Hero and the downtrodden culture he died to defend. And “A Lack of Congenial Solutions” centers us – humans – as the “other,” taking on colonization and the human propensity for control.

Schneyer also loves to subvert tropes. Another favorite in the collection is “Serkers and Sleep,” which looks at “berserker rages” in peace and wartime through a magical lens (and gives us a twist on the “sleeping beauty” and “cursed book” tropes for a nice three-fer). “The Age of Three Stars” plays with the nature of prophecy and how words don’t always mean what we think they mean. “I Wrung it in a Weary Land” is another heartbreaker, taking the “alcohol is magic” and “mystical storekeeper” tropes and doing a triple twist before sticking the landing. “Living in the Niche” gives a very physical presence to the feeling that everything we love disappears.

The final story in the collection is also a heartbreaker (and is one of two stories original to this collection, along with “Who Embodies What We Are”). “Dispersion” is about the slow discovery by a daughter that her mother is losing words and memory. The reader realizes what is going on long before the main characters do, and anyone who has watched a loved one descend into Alzheimer’s will recognize the main character’s pain and confusion and determination to do anything to help her mother. What I loved about the story is how Schneyer illustrates the mother’s fleeing thoughts, and how he brings about the resolution.

There are several other stories in the collection that I haven’t had a chance to mention. “The Mannequin’s Itch” and “The Last Bombardment” are studies of wartime tactics with sf-nal touches. “The Sisters’ Line” (co-written with Liz Argall) is a surrealist’s dream. “Six Drabbles of Separation” is exactly what the title advertises. “Lineage” is a beautiful ghost story focused on how small selfless moments can change history.

There is something for everyone in Anthems Outside Time and Other Strange Voices: science fiction, fantasy, surrealism, social commentary, comedy, even a little horror.

READING ROUND-UP: July 2020

Continuing the monthly summaries of what I’ve been reading and listening to. This month’s numbers are a little higher than should be accurate, because three of the anthologies I proofread/copy-edited earlier in the spring finally came out, so I can include them (and the stories in them) in this month’s counts.

BOOKS

To keep my numbers consistent with what I have listed on Goodreads, I count completed magazine issues as “books.” I read or listened to 16 books in July: 12 in print, 2 in e-book format, and 2 in audio format. They were:

1.       Lightspeed Magazine #122 (July, 2020 issue), edited by John Joseph Adams. The usual fine assortment of sf and fantasy short stories. This month’s favorites for me were Tochi Onyebuchi’s “Zen and the Art of an Android Beatdown, or Cecile Meets a Boxer: A Love Story,” Ray Nayler’s “The Swallows of the Storm,” Kiiri Ibura Salaam’s “Rosamojo,” Mari Ness’s “Great Gerta and the Mermaid” and Christina Ten’s “Baba Yaga and the Seven Hills.”

2.       The Second Star by Alma Alexander. Alexander’s latest novel starts out as a mystery, when a lost starship returns with a startlingly altered crew. But it goes well beyond that trope. Full Review HERE.

3.       Ignorance Is Strength (The Dystopia Triptych Volume 1) edited by John Joseph Adams, Hugh Howey, and Christie Yant. Full disclosure: I proofread/copy-edited this trilogy of anthologies. I recommend buying all three and following each author’s story arc across books. They’re all wonderful, but I was most captivated by those written by Seanan McGuire, Carrie Vaughn, Merc Fenn Wolfmoor, Caroline M. Yoachim, Tobias S. Buckell, Alex Irvine, and An Owomoyela.

4.       Burn The Ashes (The Dystopia Triptych Volume 2) edited by John Joseph Adams, Hugh Howey, and Christie Yant.

5.       Or Else the Light (The Dystopia Triptych Volume 3) edited by John Joseph Adams, Hugh Howey, and Christie Yant.

6.       Flyaway by Kathleen Jennings. A rural fantasy fever-dream set in the outback. FULL REVIEW HERE.

7.       Lumberjanes Volume 14: X Marks the Spot by Shannon Watters, Kat Leyh, Dozerdraws, Maarta Laiho, and others. This time, the Roanoke cabin girls follow a treasure map and find a broken statue that turns out to be a vindictive ancient Grecian monster. A fun, fast adventure.

8.       A Spectral Hue by Craig Laurance Gidney. Gidney’s Lovecraftian mid-Atlantic Gothic novel explores the power of muses and the transformative nature of art.

9.       The Gown of Harmonies by Francesca Forrest. A really brilliant novella about a blind seamstress and the dangerous deal she makes with a faerie. Bonus points: the audiobook is narrated by C.S.E. Cooney, whose style is just perfect for this very mannered, deeply emotional tale.

10.   Fence Volume 4: Rivals by C.S. Pacat, Johanna the Mad and Joanna LaFuente. With the school fencing team roster set, the boys face off against their school’s arch-rivals in a pre-season match. Another fun installment.

11.   Malcolm and Me by Ishmael Reed. One of my few recent non-fiction listens. Reed’s life course was altered by his first interview and subsequent encounters with Malcolm X.

12.   Peace Talks by Jim Butcher. After a several year hiatus, Butcher returns to Harry Dresden. I liked the book, but it felt incomplete. It’s not the first time Butcher has used a Dresden book to “move the chess pieces around” to set up the next book, but it is the first time he’s given us a book where so many major plots are introduced and almost none of them are resolved. The next book, which presumably will wrap up some of them, comes out in the fall. (And yes, I’m aware Peace Talks and Battle Ground were originally meant to be one book. It’s still disappointing how much was left dangling.)

13.   Anthems Outside Time and Other Strange Voices by Kenneth Schneyer. A really stellar collection of Schneyer’s genre-bending and tradition-breaking short stories.

14.   Aftermath of an Industrial Accident: Stories by Mike Allen. I’ve described Allen’s most recent novella as a “masterful mind-fuck,” and that appellation could easily apply to a number of the stories in this collection. Full Review HERE.

15.   Unhallowed (Rath and Rune, Book 1) by Jordan L. Hawk. Hawk’s “Whyborne and Griffin” series may be over, but the author isn’t done with the city of Widdershins just yet. This new series focuses on the Librarians of the Ladysmith Museum, and a new set of cosmic horrors threaten to destroy the world. Really great first installment, and an intriguing new gay couple to root for.

16.   The Terrifics Volume 2: Tom Strong and the Terrifics by Jeff Lemire, Dale Eaglesham, Viktor Bogdanovic, Joe Bennett, and others. The art feels a little inconsistent in this volume, but the story feels really solid. The Terrifics bounce around the Multiverse, break up, and reform.

STORIES

I have a goal of reading 366 short stories (1 per day, essentially, although it doesn’t always work out that way) this year (366 because it’s a Leap Year). Here’s what I read this month and where you can find them if you’re interested in reading them too. If no source is noted, the story is from the same magazine or book as the story(ies) that precede(s) it. (NOTE: The Dystopia Triptych anthologies are the books I copy-edited several months ago, but couldn’t list the story contents until the books were published in July. So this list catches me up for the year, but I didn’t actually read all of these stories in the month of July.)

1.       “Zen and the Art of an Android Beatdown, Or Cecile Meets a Boxer: A Love Story” by Tochi Onyebuchi, from Lightspeed Magazine #122 (July 2020 issue), edited by John Joseph Adams.

2.       “The End of the World Measured in Values of N” by Adam-Troy Castro

3.       “The Blue Fairy’s Manifesto” by Annalee Newitz

4.       “The Swallows of the Storm” by Ray Nayler

5.       “Baba Yaga and the Seven Hills” by Kristina Ten

6.       “A Siege of Cranes” by Benjamin Rosenbaum

7.       “Great Gerta and the Mermaid” by Mari Ness

8.       “Rosamojo” by Kiina Ibura Salaam

9.       “Ratting” by Seanan McGuire, on the author’s Patreon page.

10.   “The Department of Talent Resources” by Carrie Vaughn, from The Dystopia Triptych Vol 1: Ignorance is Strength, edited by John Joseph Adams, Hugh Howey and Christie Yant.

11.   “Glasslands” by Tim Pratt

12.   “Animals Like Me” by Rich Larson

13.   “Glass Houses” by Cadwell Turnbull

14.   “Lyceum” by Karin Lowachee

15.   “The Truth About the Boy” by Adam-Troy Castro

16.   “The Shadow Prison Experiment” by Caroline M. Yoachim

17.   “Inheritors” by Hugh Howey

18.   “The Oracle of Exile” by An Owomoyela

19.   “Opt-In” by Seanan McGuire

20.   “One Thousand Beetles in a Jumpsuit” by Domenica Phettleplace

21.   “Red Sky At Morning” by Alex Irvine

22.   “Idle Hands” by Tobias S. Buckell

23.   “The Love” by Scott Sigler

24.   “The Orphan of Greenridge” by Darcie Little Badger

25.   “Mister Dawn, How Can You Be So Cruel?” by Violet Allen

26.   “Trust in the Law, For the Law Trusts in You” by Merc Fenn Wolfmoor

27.   “Keep Your Streak Going!” by Carrie Vaughn, from The Dystopia Triptych Vol 2: Burn the Ashes, edited by John Joseph Adams, Hugh Howey and Christie Yant.

28.   “Cacophany” by Tim Pratt

29.   “Our Lady of Perpetual Disdain” by Rich Larson

30.   “Sand Castles” by Cadwell Turnbull

31.   “Survival Guide” by Karin Lowachee

32.   “The Proscribed Words” by Adam-Troy Castro

33.   “Shadow Prisons of the Mind” by Caroline M. Yoachim

34.   “Inheritors of the Curse” by Hugh Howey

35.   “You Cannot Push Back the Sky” by An Owomoyela

36.   “Conscription” by Seanan McGuire

37.   “Paradise Requires A Wall” by Domenica Phettleplace

38.   “Print the Legend” by Alex Irvine

39.   “The Fruits of their Labor” by Tobias S. Buckell

40.   “The Hate” by Scott Sigler

41.   “How to Use Your Visor Evacuation Helper to Escape an Active War Zone” by Darcie Little Badger

42.   “Our Motto: Do Not Wake Up” by Violet Allen

43.   “Believe in the Law, For the Law is All” by Merc Fenn Wolfmoor

44.   “You Have Been Crowdfunded” by Carrie Vaughn, from The Dystopia Triptych Vol 3: Or Else the Light, edited by John Joseph Adams, Hugh Howey and Christie Yant.

45.   “Spheres and Harmonies” by Tim Pratt

46.   “Failsafe” by Rich Larson

47.   “Dresses” by Cadwell Turnbull

48.   “Sakura” by Karin Lowachee

49.   “Blood Relations” by Adam-Troy Castro

50.   “The Shadow Prisoner’s Dilemma” by Caroline M. Yoachim

51.   “Inheritors of the Earth” by Hugh Howey

52.   “A Foreign-Born Heir” by An Owomoyela

53.   “Recovery” by Seanan McGuire

54.   “Human Country” by Domenica Phettleplace

55.   “Blackberries” by Alex Irvine

56.   “The Machine Votes” by Tobias S. Buckell

57.   “The Sadness & Joy” by Scott Sigler

58.   “Making Faces” by Darcie Little Badger

59.   “Why Can’t I Sleep a Little Longer?” by Violet Allen

60.   “The Law is the Plan, the Plan is Death” by Merc Fenn Wolfmoor

61.   “Some Pebbles in the Palm” by Kenneth Schneyer, from his collection Anthems Outside Time and Other Strange Voices

62.   “Hear the Enemy, My Daughter” by Kenneth Schneyer

63.   “Living in the Niche” by Kenneth Schneyer

64.   “The Mannequin’s Itch” by Kenneth Schneyer

65.   “Lineage” by Kenneth Schneyer

66.   “Keepsakes” by Kenneth Schneyer

67.   “The Last Bombardment” by Kenneth Schneyer

68.   “Confinement” by Kenneth Schneyer

69.   “Serkers and Sleep” by Kenneth Schneyer

70.   “I Have Read the Terms of Use” by Kenneth Schneyer

71.   “The Age of Three Stars” by Kenneth Schneyer

72.   “Keeping Tabs” by Kenneth Schneyer

73.   “Selected Program Notes from the Retrospective Exhibition of Theresa Rosenberg Latimer” by Kenneth Schneyer

74.   “The Plausibility of Dragons” by Kenneth Schneyer

75.   “Calibration” by Kenneth Schneyer

76.   “Levels of Observation” by Kenneth Schneyer

77.   “Who Embodied What We Are” by Kenneth Schneyer

78.   “Tenure Track” by Kenneth Schneyer

79.   “The Sisters’ Line” by Liz Argall & Kenneth Schneyer

80.   “A Lack of Congenial Solutions” by Kenneth Schneyer

81.   “Life of the Author Plus Seventy” by Kenneth Schneyer

82.   “You in the United States!” by Kenneth Schneyer

83.   “The Whole Truth Witness” by Kenneth Schneyer

84.   “I Wrung It in a Weary Land” by Kenneth Schneyer

85.   “Six Drabbles of Separation” by Kenneth Schneyer

86.   “Dispersion” by Kenneth Schneyer

87.   “Six Waking Nightmares Poe Gave Me in Third Grade” by Mike Allen, from his collection Aftermath of an Industrial Nightmare: Stories.

88.   “The Sun Saw” by  Mike Allen

89.   “A Deaf Policeman Heard the Noise” by  Mike Allen

90.   “Tick Flick” by  Mike Allen

91.   “The Cruelest Team Will Win” by  Mike Allen

92.   “Tardigrade” by  Mike Allen

93.   “Burn the Kook Kidz at the Stake” by  Mike Allen

94.   “Longsleeves” by  Mike Allen

95.   “Binding” by  Mike Allen

96.   “Nolens Volens” by  Mike Allen

97.   “Blue Evolution” by  Mike Allen

98.   “The Ivy-Smothered Palisade” by  Mike Allen

99.   “With Shining Gifts That Took All Eyes” by  Mike Allen

100.                        “The Sun Saw” by  Mike Allen

101.                        “Follow The Wounded One” by  Mike Allen

102.                        “Drift From the Windrows” by  Mike Allen

103.                        “Aftermath of an Industrial Accident” by  Mike Allen

So that’s 103 short stories in July. Way over “1 per day,” catching me up for the year so far and actually putting me slightly ahead. (July 30th was the 213th day of 2020.)

Summary of Reading Challenges:

“To Be Read” Challenge: This month: 0 read; YTD: 3 of 14 read.

366 Short Stories Challenge: This month:  103 read; YTD: 236 of 366 read.

Graphic Novels Challenge:  This month: 3 read; YTD: 13 of 52 read.

Goodreads Challenge: This month: 16 read; YTD: 77 of 125 read.

Non-Fiction Challenge: This month: 1 read; YTD: 7 of 24 read.

Read the Book / Watch the Movie Challenge: This month: 0; YTD: 0 read/watched.

Complete the Series Challenge: This month: 0 books read; YTD: 6 of 16 read.

                                                                Series fully completed: 0 of 3 planned

Monthly Special Challenge: July was a month away from special challenges so I could try to play catch up. I increased my graphic novel and non-fiction numbers (if slightly), and read a lot of short stories (even if we unofficially dis-count the three anthologies I’d read pre-publication several months ago). Not a perfect catch-up, but far better than the preceding two months.

In August, I was supposed to be attending Pulpfest/Farmercon. Pandemic put a stopper on that, but I’m still making August’s challenge “pulp and new-pulp adventure/horror/etc.” I also have several ARCs to read of books coming out in September. So that’s two mini-challenges!

SUNDAY SHORTS: Two From Tor.Com

Sunday Shorts is a series where I blog about short fiction – from flash to novellas. For the time being, I’m sticking to prose, although it’s been suggested I could expand this feature to include single episodes of anthology television series like The Twilight Zone or individual stories/issues of anthology comics (like the 1970s DC horror or war anthology titles). So anything is possible. But for now, the focus is on short stories.

Even promising myself to read a short story per day (or at least to hit that average by the end of each calendar year), there’s still way more short genre fiction being published than I can keep up with. Occasionally, it will occur to me that I haven’t read an issue of a particular magazine in ages, or that a particular anthology has been sitting on one of my shelves for far longer than I’d realized, or that I haven’t popped over to a particular website in a while to read anything. So today – two recent reads from Tor.com! If you follow me on Twitter (I’m @talekyn over there, if you’re interested), you already know these two pieces (one a short story, one a novella or perhaps novelette) moved me greatly. Now, let’s talk about why.

K.M. Szpara’s “We’re Here, We’re Here” delves into our endless fascination with “boy bands” – all-male vocal groups – and I think the group at the center of this story is loosely inspired by One Direction. The guys in the band sing – but they don’t do over-stuffed choreography (the way earlier boy-bands like ‘NSync and the Backstreet Boys did so famously). In fact, they don’t do much choreography at all around their planned on-stage interactions. For Back 2 Back, and for our narrator Tyler, it’s all about the vocals. Tyler is the wholesome “good boy” in a four-man group that also includes the unpredictable boy (Zeke, who silly-strings his bandmates and the audience), the brooding boy (Jasper) and the guitar-playing boy (Aiden). When Tyler and Jasper share a deep, romantic kiss on stage, their management goes crazy – the boys are supposed to appear attainable to their female fans, not into each other. Their manager will do just about anything to prevent Tyler, previously the tow-the-line reliable one who is just glad to be in the band, from making the situation “worse.” As the story plays out, Szpara gives us an interesting view of the limits of acceptability in pop culture. All of the band’s fans know Tyler is a transgender male, and their management has no problem with it – provided Tyler appears accessible to those all-important fans. With the rise of K-Pop boy and girl vocal groups (and even going back to the halcyon days of ‘NSync, Backstreet Boys), fans have been known to “ship” bandmates regardless of their true sexual identities, and Szpara slyly comments on the real vs. imagined nature of those relationships. Interestingly, we never really get to see what the Back 2 Back fan-base really thinks of a possible “Jasler” relationship. The SFnal element of this near-future tale is that the guys have manager-controlled vocal implants that modulate their voices to make them sound perfect on stage, and the manager uses this to control Tyler in a way contracts and threats alone might not successfully do. This drives the band closer together, leading to a final scene that I am not ashamed to admit made me tear up (but which I’ll leave you to discover on your own).

Sarah Pinkser’s “Two Truths and a Lie” is also a modern-day tale, but fantasy rather than SF. After the death of a childhood friend’s older brother, Stella agrees to help clean out the brother’s house. But she hasn’t seen these friends in a long time, and her adult habit of making up stories about her history is a hard thing to resist. Early in the story, she tells the friend a total lie about her life in Chicago, inventing a divorce and a son … not because she’s ashamed of her true life, but simply because lying is a habit now. A few pages later, Stella asks Mark if he remembers a local access cable television show she is convinced she made up – but he not only remembers it, his brother has the old VHS tapes of episodes the neighborhood kids appeared on. Including his older brother and Stella. The fantasy element builds as Stella tries to track down the truth of the television show, discovering its host had a knack for telling stories about the kids around him that eventually came true. Stella realizes that part of her has been controlled by an outside source for most of her life. The question is: what will she, or what can she, do about it? I love the way Pinsker builds the mysteries of the story: Why did Mark’s older brother become an awkward teenager and then a life-long hoarder? Why doesn’t Stella remember the show when everyone else does? Is what Stella perceives about the host of the show true or is she projecting fantasy onto real life tragedies? Again, I won’t spoil the ending, but like the Szpara story, it hit my heart in just the right way.

I find it interesting that I unintentionally chose two Tor.com stories that share themes of young people losing some amount of control over their own lives thanks to the entertainment industry (the manager in “We’re Here” and the kids-show host in “Two Truths”). We’ve all read the stories about predators in the entertainment world taking advantage of the youth under their care, and both of these stories are clear about the repercussions of that. Tyler and Stella make very different decisions on their way to reclaiming their own identities and regaining control over their own lives, as befits the tone of the stories being told about them. Pinsker’s story also has a trans character in a minor role, strengthening the connection between these two stories in which the genre element takes a secondary role to the very real emotions and internal conflicts of the characters.

SERIES SATURDAY: Young Heroes In Love

This is a series about … well, series. I do so love stories that continue across volumes, in whatever form: linked short stories, novels, novellas, television, movies. I’ve already got a list of series I’ve recently read, re-read, watched, or re-watched that I plan to blog about. I might even, down the line, open myself up to letting other people suggest titles I should read/watch and then comment on.

To say that Young Heroes in Love was one of DC Comics’ more eclectic offerings of the late 1990s would not be an understatement. It ran 18 issues, from 1996 to 1998, and I remember enjoy its quirky take on a group of early-20s heroes just trying to make their mark in the greater super-hero world while also navigating their own hormones. I liked it enough that it’s one of those short-lived near-forgotten series that has had a permanent home in my comics collection, surviving multiple downsizings and moves.

And yet, I can’t recall having reread it since it was first published. So I was overdue but a little nervous to actually do it. Any time I consider revisiting something I haven’t read or watched in a decade or more, there’s always that question: will it hold up to my memory?

Happy to say that Young Heroes in Love pretty much does. It’s not perfect, but it’s still good – and when it’s really good, it’s really really good.

Writer Dan Raspler and artist Dev Madan co-created the team and concept, and you can tell from the first issue that they’re just having total fun with the idea of, as Wikipedia puts it, a super-hero garage band. These folks know they want to be super-heroes, and that the best way to make a name for themselves is to work together – but they’re really not very good at that last part yet. Given time, maybe they would be – but Raspler never got to explore that far since the series only ran 17 issues (plus a weird DC 1 Million crossover issue).  When the team encounters more famous heroes, like Superman (during his “electric powers” phase) in issue #3, they fall all over themselves fan-boy and –girling while also trying to impress. They even offer the Man of Steel (Electric? Whatever) membership! Most of the run is one endearing attempt after another to “make it big.” They go up against several giant monsters as well as a serial kidnapper and a villain team with a “rat” theme (Raspler’s hysterical take on the long history of villain teams built around a common theme, most famously represented by Marvel Comics’ Serpent Society). They have their biggest case fighting Batman’s enemy The Scarecrow, but they don’t make a big splash in the news. They do make a big impression on fans in Japan and end up the subject of a manga magazine – mirroring the success lots of young bands have overseas long before they become popular here at home.

Dev Madan’s art in the early issues sets a matching serio-comic tone, slightly cartoonish but not over-exaggerated. It took a little getting accustomed to (in my memory, the art was a bit more realistic). The characters all have distinct looks that stay consistent throughout the issues Madan illustrates (although the same can’t be said for the issues drawn by other artists), and he’s really good at giving the characters a variety of body types. Frostbite’s angular build contrasts Off-Ramp’s scruffy dad-bod (a term that I don’t think had been invented yet in 1996, but which totally fits the character). Bonfire is petite, Monstergirl is more full-figured. The diversity in body types of most of the team becomes extra apparent whenever Hard Drive (the telepathic/telekinetic leader) shares panels with Thunderhead (the team tank): both are broad-shouldered, muscular blonds (although Hard Drive’s blond hair is close-cut and Thunderhead’s is a typical shaggy rocker-do). I have to think making the Brain and the Brawn look so much alike was a conscious decision on Raspler and Madan’s part.

Okay, technically, Hard Drive isn’t the brains of the outfit – the diminutive Junior is the smartest guy in the room (at least until the team meets a particular pre-teen genius), but he’s often overlooked by his own team because he doesn’t have any other power other than being small – which does enable him to solve a case all by himself at one point, proving his worth to the cops if not to his own team. And Junior isn’t the only tiny member of the team: Zip Girl joins a few issues in, and she’s not only small, she can change sizes (to lead a normal life out of costume) and she can fly. Junior doesn’t mind, because he’s in unrequited love with her.

Which brings us around to the title of the book. They’re not just The Young Heroes – they’re Young Heroes in LOVE. The soap opera aspect of the book is nearly pitch-perfect, from budding crushes and unrequited love to one-night stands (and a subplot where Hard Drive tries to brainwash Bonfire into being in love with Thunderhead because it’s better for the team dynamic than her total sexual attraction to her power-opposite, Frostbite, and in which its very clear Hard Drive is in the wrong. Yes, he gets his come-uppance eventually). It being the late 90s, it’s not surprising that the majority of the relationships (the good and the toxic) are heterosexual. But not quite all of them. I’d forgotten just how (as comics writer Steve Orlando recently put it) “ahead of its time” this book was in, near the very end, giving us a relationship between a comfortably bisexual character (Frostbite) and a newly-out-of-the closet character (Off-Ramp). And it’s clear this was not a “the book’s being cancelled and no-one is likely to use these characters again, so what the hell” last minute decision. In early issues, we see Frostbite’s glances and flirting with Off-Ramp. Off-Ramp himself spends the early issues not showing attraction to anyone else on the team, mooning over a string of unsuccessful relationships with women. But the character blurbs at the start of the issues often included phrases like “who knows what Off-Ramp loves” – clear hints that sooner or later, Off-Ramp would have a romantic connection with someone. (And no – Off-Ramp’s coming out is not instigated by any kind of mind-control on Hard Drive’s part.)

If there’s one thing that might be deemed problematic about the book, it would be that the main cast is very, very, very white. Monstergirl, aka Rita Lopez, is an alien shapeshifter who hatched from an egg and imprinted on the Latino parents who raised her as their own (shades of Superman’s origin!). She’s the only Person of Color in the main cast (Yes, Frostbite is also not white: but he’s a blue-skinned ancient snow elf from northern Canada, so I’m not sure he counts). And there are only a couple of non-white supporting characters (including Junior’s childhood best friend who is now a cop). This is not something I consciously noticed in 1996-98, and I’m not sure it made a conscious impression on most readers at the time. There was no mention of it on the letters page at least. Which is surprising, given this was only a couple of years after the debut of Milestone Comics, an independent imprint published/distributed by DC. I’d like to think that if Raspler and Madan were pitching the book today, the cast would have been a bit more diverse.

I’d also like to think that if there had been more time, some of the fascinating background world-building would have been explored. Monstergirl’s alien uncle shows up eventually to reveal her true nature, but we never really get to learn anything about Frostbite’s people (for instance, are they connected at all to Justice League member Icemaiden’s community?), nor about the intriguing society of Travelers that Off-Ramp is apparently a member of. In fact, for most of the run everyone on the team seems to forget that Frostbite isn’t just another Young American Hero. Just like they seem to forget Monstergirl’s erratic behavior or Bonfire’s deep knowledge of the super-hero world except when mentioning it is needed to drive a plot point.

Soap opera romance, deep ruminations on the nature of celebrity and teamwork, tweaks on classic comic book conventions, young characters who are earnest and endearing but not perfect and whose bad decisions come back to haunt them, interesting world-building that never gets fully developed, and character traits that somehow get completely forgotten from issue to issue: holy shit – Young Heroes in Love was a CW Arrowverse show before there was an Arrowverse!

I doubt that Young Heroes in Love is on DC’s priority list for collection in trade paperback or hardcover (although, considering the recent collections of First Issue Special and Wanted, I could be wrong about that). But the individual issues seem to be available for only a few bucks each through places like Midtown Comics.

Review of AFTERMATH OF AN INDUSTRIAL ACCIDENT: STORIES

TITLE: Aftermath of an Industrial Accident: Stories

AUTHOR: Mike Allen

235 pages, Mythic Delirium Books, ISBN 9781732644021 (paperback)

DESCRIPTION: (from the back cover): A Korean War veteran must rely on wits, improvised weapons, and words from the dread Necronomicon to escape the lair of a deranged cult. A ghost cannot communicate how she died, no matter how desperately she tries, while an unconventional ghost hunter incurs the venomous wrath of the Queen of Night. Murderous conspiracies reveal themselves in online video clips, a saint blasphemes as a serial killer prays for mercy, and corrupt families in ancient kingdoms trade blood and souls for leverage over foes. Enduring nightmares for a living can lead to a fate worse than burnout. A gruesome invasion from outside space and time tests courage – and corporate loyalty – past all rational limits. In these twenty-three stories and poems, two-time World Fantasy Award nominee Mike Allen spins twisted narratives, some wound through the fabric of our world, some set in imagined pasts or futures, all plumbing the depths of human darkness.

MY RATING: Five out of five stars

MY THOUGHTS: Mike Allen’s fiction is in your face, no holds barred. Allen will do whatever it takes – linguistic gymnastics, horrific physical details, telling a story from the point of view of a parasite or a micorganism – to get under your skin, to make you squirm, and quite possibly to make you throw the book across the room as you fight back nausea. If I may steal a term from my own review of Allen’s most recent novella (in the anthology A Sinister Quartet): Mike Allen’s work is one masterful mind-fuck after another.

If you’re the kind of person who wonders whether a spider might lay eggs in their ears while you sleep and then gleefully describes what it would be like when those eggs hatch, does Mike Allen have some stories for you. Not that that there’s a spider-lays-eggs-in-main-character’s-ear-canal story in this volume – but it’s the kind of thing that would be right at home here, and if anyone could make it scary instead of trope-y, it’s Allen. The stories that are cutting-edge body horror are not for the squeamish. The protagonist of “The Sun Saw” stumbles upon a creature fused together from the living bodies of multiple humans; “Puppet Show” reveals the back-stage workings that turn humans into blood-soaked automatons for a massive rock stage show by the band Bloodbath Jubilee. In these stories, Allen spares no details. He refuses to let us look away from the damage people will do to each other in the name of religion (the cult in “The Sun Saw”) or entertainment (“Puppet Show”) or science (“Aftermath of an Industrial Accident,” which features some graphic death scenes and another forced melding of disparate bodies into one).

Not every story is a full gross-out, of course. The body horror of “With Shining Gifts That Took All Eyes” and “Tardigrade” is subtler stuff, in the former case more inferred than seen. Even the comical-but-disturbing “Tick Flick” is not quite as in-your-face – but all three stories leave an afterimage burned on the mind’s eye that returns days after you’ve last consciously thought of the story at all. And sometimes, that’s worse than the more concrete images Allen gives us.

Body horror is not the only sub-genre represented. There’s a linked pair of fantasy horror tales, “Longsleeves” and “The Ivy-Smothered Palisade,” that take place in the land of Calcharra and explicate the lengths men will go to to gain and retain power (usually over or through the women they’re supposed to care for). There are Lovecraftian themes and overtones in a number of stories: the unseen Owner of the creature in “The Sun Saw” and the unseen Mother in the disturbing  monologue “Drift from the Windrows” being the most obvious. There are cursed books (“Binding,” which is also an excellent example of the “club story” genre) and cursed phrases (“Nolens Volens”).

The Calcharra stories aren’t the only linked stories in the collection. Fans of Allen’s Korean War veteran turned hunter-of-the-weird John Hairston will be happy to see him in two of the tales herein, “The Sun Saw” and “Nolens Volens” (and isn’t it about time Cemetery Dance or Subterranean Press issued a nice hardcover collection of all of Allen’s extant Hairston adventures?). The stories “The Cruelest Team Will Win” and “Follow The Wounded One” don’t share characters or a setting but they seem to take place in the same world, one in which certain people are born with animal spirits that allow them to co-exist in the dreamworld/spiritual realm connected to our own. The female narrator of “The Cruelest Team” turns into a bird to chase away, or sometimes eat, the ghosts haunting friends’ houses, while the male narrator of “Wounded One” turns into a giant cat in the other world and meets a young woman who also turns into a bird. (I didn’t see anything that implies Leeanne in “Team” and Kori in “Wounded” are the same character or even turn into the same type of bird – but perhaps I wasn’t reading closely enough.) Both protagonists take on apex predators in the spirit realm who are equally dangerous in the mundane world.

There are a couple of more standard ghost stories as well: the protagonists of “A Deaf Policeman Heard the Noise” and “Burn the Kool Kidz at the Stake” each deal with ghosts haunting their psyches and their homes. “Kool Kidz” also has a lot to say about toxic fan culture and is perhaps even more topical now than it was when it originally saw print in 2017 (which seems so much longer ago than it really is).

Three of the stories in the collection have never been published before: “A Deaf Policeman Heard the Noise,” “Puppet Show,” and “Blue Evolution.” “Blue Evolution” is a neat bit of classic pulp-fantasy-adventure, in which the crew of a dimension-hopping aircraft/submersible encounter both spider-pirates and giant evolving native organisms. It’s also a great example of the author hitting the main characters with two equally bad problems and forcing them to use one to solve the other (although not necessarily in the way one might expect).

The collection also includes a number of Allen’s poems, of which I would be remiss not to mention “Toujours Il Coûte Trop Cher,” co-written with C.S.E. Cooney and imagining a spiritual/ghostly encounter between Joan of Arc and Gilles de Rais. If this one hasn’t been recorded as a two-person audio play yet, it should be.

There really is something for every type of horror fan in Aftermath of an Industrial Accident: Stories. Well worth seeking out in print or e-book.

NOTE: I received an ARC of this title from the publisher but didn’t get the review written in time for it’s July release.

Review of FLYAWAY

TITLE: Flyaway

AUTHOR: Kathleen Jennings

176 pages, Tor.com Publishing, ISBN 9781250260499 (hardcover, ebook, audio)

DESCRIPTION: (from Goodreads): In a small Western Queensland town, a reserved young woman receives a note from one of her vanished brothers―a note that makes her question memories of their disappearance and her father’s departure.

A beguiling story that proves that gothic delights and uncanny family horror can live―and even thrive―under a burning sun, Flyaway introduces readers to Bettina Scott, whose search for the truth throws her into tales of eerie dogs, vanished schools, cursed monsters, and enchanted bottles. Flyaway enchants you with the sly, beautiful darkness of Karen Russell and a world utterly its own.

MY RATING: 5 out of 5 stars

MY THOUGHTS: Kathleen Jennings’ Flyaway is a rural fantasy fever-dream. Like the main character herself, for most of the book I was never completely sure what was real and what was imagined or exaggerated. Jennings sets small-town insular inter-family dynamics against the power of storytelling; waves of present and past, mundane and supernatural roil against each other to create an intensely disconcerting experience.

In the urban fantasy genre, the city setting is as much a character as the humans who populate it. Jennings’ outback-bordering Inglewild District (comprised of the towns of Runagate, Carter’s Crossing, and Woodwild) is as far from urban or even suburban as one can get. The harshness of the surrounding land and the towns’ struggles to exist within it (one of which is largely lost before the main events of the novella) informs every page. There’s never a doubt that this remote settlement has been forgotten by the rest of Australia. If these towns could talk, what would they have to say about themselves and their siblings? I think if anyone could pull off a novella narrated by three struggling, nearly-dead remote towns, Jennings could.

I also wonder about the name “Runagate.” At first I read it as “run agate” – maybe it was known for a quarry of that type of rock, dug up and transported (“run”) away – but then I started thinking of it as “run a gate” – every time a character encounters a closed gate blocking them from someplace/something dangerous, they bull their way through to occasionally disastrous results. The name can’t be a coincidence.

The District’s character is reflected in the residents. They are all practical, within the bounds of their personalities, except when the landscape and past events have taken their toll. Several characters suffer from personality disorders that leave them outside societal norms, and it seems that Bettina Scott, our narrator and main character, may be one of them. From the very beginning, Bettina seems uncomfortable in her own skin: she’s trying to be the proper young woman her mother has raised her to be, as her thoughts during her prim and proper interactions with a local homeless man, a shop-owner, and a former school friend show. But there are obvious memory gaps regarding her teen years, especially surrounding the disappearance of her father and departure of her older brothers from the family home. How Bettina currently presents herself (subdued, polite, never acknowledging the nicknames (“Tina,” “Tink”) others call her by) is clearly at odds with what her former friends remember of her, and before long Bettina begins to question which is her true self: modest behaving daughter or wild risk-taking friend? This dysphoria – what her mother expects her to be versus who she really is, what she remembers of the night her father left versus what really happened – permeates every moment of the story. Bettina is our narrator so everything, even the stories told to her by other characters, is filtered through her internalized sense that something isn’t right – or rather, that something is very, very wrong. This adds to the novella’s dreamlike quality, as Bettina stumbles her way through the events of the early chapters almost half-awake or sometimes less so. There are at least two instances where she dissociates and “loses time,” wondering how long she’s actually been standing where she’s standing. What exactly happens during these moments, and how long they last, is left for the reader and Bettina to piece together since there is no outside narrator to fill us in on the things Bettina herself can’t, or won’t, remember. We can get some small inkling through how the other characters react to Bettina after one of these episodes, but until Bettina is able to regain her memory, those moments are lost to both the character and the reader.

Dreams, especially those we experience when we’re ill, often take turns into completely disconnected and unexpected territory. Flyaway does the same thing several times, action halting for a side story that feels disconnected from everything around it. But Flyaway isn’t a dream, it’s a carefully layered construction. Each of the side-stories is a complete whole – any one of them could be published as a satisfyingly eerie stand-alone short story, an impressive feat in a book that is already economical in length – but everything comes together at the end. It’s through the digressions that the reader is able to piece together connections the characters can’t, or sometimes willfully don’t, make. And they are placed skillfully so that the reader’s suspense is as great, if not greater, than the characters’.

I devoured Flyaway in one sitting and re-read it almost immediately just to make sure I hadn’t missed anything. The second time around I picked up on another bit of word-play: the Damson family, as represented by current eldest child Gary (a former friend of Tina’s and still concerned about her), are the ones who build and mend fences; their role is stated several times as making sure everyone else knows their place without taking sides in any conflict. The Damsons, if not Gary himself, seem to be as aware of the supernatural aspect of the Inglewild District as anyone else, and so it seems their job is also to inhibit the flow of humans into the wild – one might say their job is to build a dam separating human and supernatural. I’m pretty sure future re-readings will reveal more small connections like that.

Note: I received an e-ARC of Flyaway from Tor.com via NetGalley. The book actually releases on July 28, 2020.

READING ROUND-UP: June 2020

Continuing the monthly summaries of what I’ve been reading and listening to, and featuring the official debut of Scott Witt’s title graphic! As the year has gone on, my reading has slowed down and this month might be the lowest point regarding numbers. I did more behind-the-scenes proofreading for books coming out later in the year, but I also devoted a lot of energy to my Pride Month interview posts, and to catching up on television viewing. The books and stories I did read in June were pretty wonderful, though.

BOOKS

To keep my numbers consistent with what I have listed on Goodreads, I count completed magazine issues as “books.” I read or listened to 3 books in May: 1 in print, 2 in e-book format, and 0 in audio format. They were:

1.       Lightspeed Magazine #121 (June, 2020 issue), edited by John Joseph Adams. The usual fine assortment of sf and fantasy short stories. This month’s favorites for me were Marie Vibbert’s “Single Malt Spaceship,” Matthew Kressel’s “The Marsh of Camarina,” Megan Arkenberg’s “Danaë,” Ben Peek’s “Refuge” and Ken Liu’s “What I Assume, You Shall Assume.”

2.       The Grand Tour: A Jackson’s Unreal Circus and Mobile Marmalade Collection, by E. Catherine Tobler. Tobler’s newest collection gathers the majority of her short stories and novellas about the titular traveling circus of supernatural entities and includes one new story. Full Review HERE.

3.       The Order of the Pure Moon Reflected in Water by Zen Cho. A nun joins up with a band of mercenaries to protect holy relics in this wuxia-influenced novella. Full Review HERE.

STORIES

I have a goal of reading 366 short stories (1 per day, essentially, although it doesn’t always work out that way) this year (366 because it’s a Leap Year). Here’s what I read this month and where you can find them if you’re interested in reading them too. If no source is noted, the story is from the same magazine or book as the story(ies) that precede(s) it:

1.       “Still Life with Hammers, A Broom, and a Brick Stacker” by Tochi Onyebuchi, from Lightspeed Magazine #121 (June 2020 issue), edited by John Joseph Adams.

2.       “Single Malt Spaceship” by Marie Vibbert

3.       “The Marsh of Camarina” by Matthew Kressel

4.       “Real Animals” by Em North

5.       “The Postictal State of Divine Love” by Julianna Baggott

6.       “Danaë” by Megan Arkenberg

7.       “Refuge” by Ben Peek

8.       “What I Assume, You Shall Assume” by Ken Liu

9.       “Wishes and Tears” by Seanan McGuire, on the author’s Patreon page.

10.   “Vanishing Act” by E. Catherine Tobler, from The Grand Tour: A Jackson’s Unreal Circus and Mobile Marmalade Collection

11.   “Artificial Nocturne” by E. Catherine Tobler

12.   “We, As One, Trailing Embers” by E. Catherine Tobler

13.   “Liminal” by E. Catherine Tobler

14.   “Blow The Moon Out” by E. Catherine Tobler

15.   “Ebb Stung By the Flow” by E. Catherine Tobler

16.   “Lady Marmalade” by E. Catherine Tobler

17.   “Every Season” by E. Catherine Tobler

18.   “Inland Territory, Stray Italian Greyhound” by E. Catherine Tobler

So that’s 18 short stories in May. Once again way under “1 per day,” putting me further behind for the year so far. (June 30th was the 182nd day of 2020.)

Summary of Reading Challenges:

“To Be Read” Challenge: This month: 0 read; YTD: 3 of 14 read.

366 Short Stories Challenge: This month:  18 read; YTD: 133 of 366 read.

Graphic Novels Challenge:  This month: 0 read; YTD: 10 of 52 read.

Goodreads Challenge: This month: 3 read; YTD: 61 of 125 read.

Non-Fiction Challenge: This month: 0 read; YTD: 6 of 24 read.

Read the Book / Watch the Movie Challenge: This month: 0; YTD: 0 read/watched.

Complete the Series Challenge: This month: 0 books read; YTD: 6 of 16 read.

                                                                Series fully completed: 0 of 3 planned

Monthly Special Challenge: June was Pride Month, so my goal was to read a number of authors from across the LGBTQIA+ spectrum. Given that I only read three books, it’s pretty obvious I dropped the ball on this one. A few of the short stories I read were written by queer folk. Some of the books I started in June were still unfinished in July as well.

I’m declaring July a month away from special challenges to try to catch up on some of the ongoing challenges.

NEW FEATURE GRAPHICS!

For a while now, I’ve been considering commissioning new graphic headers for some of the regular/semi-regular features on the blog. Features like the book reviews, interviews and even “Series Saturday” tend to lead off with a photograph or book cover and so don’t really need a unifying header. But Reading Round-Up, Sunday Shorts and the new Top Ten(ish) don’t usually have a header of any kind, and boy were they feeling left out.

Enter Scott Witt: long-time friend/brother, former housemate, great cartoonist and all-around nice guy. Scott created three headers featuring his character Mopey the Platypus. Mopey is a coffee-drinking, moody, sarcastic writer waiting for his big break. Yes, he’s based on me.

Mopey has appeared in most iterations of Scott’s The World of Witt — in comic strip form, as part of several card games and board games. It’s an honor to be Tuckerized into Scott’s world. A world you can check out on his Patreon, and his Instagram.

And now: Mopey the Platypus in: New Graphics!

Review of THE SECOND STAR

TITLE: The Second Star

AUTHOR: Alma Alexander

432 pages, Crossroad Press, ISBN 9781951510398 (paperback)

DESCRIPTION: (from the Goodreads page): The Parada had been lost for almost two hundred years before they recovered the ship, drifting in stygian interstellar darkness, and brought her home again. But that was not the miracle. The miracle was that the crew was still alive. That was also the problem.

Six crew members went out on the Parada, Earth’s first starship. All contact was lost, and the ship vanished for almost two centuries. When the Parada’s successor found the drifting ship and somehow managed to bring it home, the six crew members were not only still alive but barely older, due to the time dilation effects of near-FTL travel. Their return was a miracle – but it could not be revealed to the waiting world. The problem was, six individuals went out to the stars. More than seventy fractured personalities came back.

Psychologist Stella Froud and Jesuit Father Philip Carter were recruited as part of the team assembled to investigate the mystery, and to try and help the Parada’s crew understand their condition and possibly reverse it. What they discovered was a deepening mystery, and very soon they found themselves forced to take sides in a conflict that nobody could have possibly predicted. Their world would never be the same again.

MY RATING: Five stars out of five

MY THOUGHTS: In her new science fiction thriller, Alma Alexander deftly weaves together several genre tropes and upends them, taking the story in an unpredictable and exciting direction.

The Second Star starts out as a standard “derelict ship found in deep space” mystery. We have the long-missing Parada found by another ship, Juno, whose crew goes above and beyond to get Parada and its crew back to Earth – where both crews are then quarantined because there are several unexpected issues with Parada’s crew: they are significantly younger than even near-light-speed travel should have allowed them to remain, and they are all suffering from Dissociative Identity Disorder to an extreme degree. The mystery is: what happened to them out there to cause the fracturing of their psyches, and will the same thing happen to the crew of Juno, the only other space-farers Earth has sent out since the launch of Parada two hundred years earlier? Alexander spools out the clues but doesn’t let the reader wonder for long: roughly about a third of the way into the book, the reader (as well as main characters Stella Froud and Philip Carter) know what happened. At which point, the book smoothly transitions, for its middle third, into a medical-psychological thriller with spy-story overtones: worries over whether the Parada crew’s personalities can ever be woven together successfully enough to survive in a world they can’t recognize are complicated by Stella and Philip trying to figure out exactly what the military command in charge of the returned astronauts plans to do with them. Do the Doctor and the Priest follow orders or follow the higher call of their professions to care for their charges? Once that decision is made, the final third of the book takes a turn I don’t really want to spoil in a review. Suffice to say, the final third is not only the most exciting but also the most thought-provoking portion of the book, and well worth the build-up to get there. The great thing about the technical execution of this novel is two-fold: that it never goes where “derelict space-ship” and “medical/spy thriller” stories are expected to go, and that it transitions so smoothly between the different genres. While I was reading, I didn’t identify clear transition points. It was only after I was done that I realized the book was roughly divided into thirds that fit different standard story types.

But all the technical wizardry of mixing genres only goes so far if the story lacks engaging characters. Thankfully, the characters at the center of this story are an intriguing odd-couple. Stella is essentially an atheist, partnered with a Jesuit priest to figure out what happened to Parada’s crew and if they can be counseled into enough wellness to function in a world that has changed greatly in the two hundred years they’ve been gone. Froud and Carter become confidants, friends, and mutual support – something they sorely need in the face of a by-the-books military command that may not have the best interest of their patients at heart. Their relationship morphs from cordial professionalism to confidentiality and camaraderie organically throughout the story, including key moments where their beliefs conflict and they still find a way to work together to do what must be done.

More importantly, Parada’s crew come to trust the Doctor and The Priest, bringing us not only to the key reveal of What Happened Out There, but also forming the hinge on which the final third of the book swings. The Crew are also well-written, the various personalities of each crew member well-delineated in both dialogue and in descriptions of how the crew carry themselves. The Dissociative Identity Disorder is never played as a joke, nor as something temporary to be “cured.” The question is never “will these people ever be ‘normal’ again?” but rather “What will the new normal for these characters look like?” And because they are six individuals (although with a shared instigating trauma), the answer is different for each. There’s no single solution, no path they will all follow. Watching the Doctor and the Priest, as well as the crew, come to terms with what it means for each of them individually is heart-breaking.

When the main characters of a book are a scientist and a priest, one might expect a lot of preachiness (from both sides). Alexander largely avoids that – these characters, and a third who represents a different spiritual mindset from that of the priest, debate and discuss, but for the most part the author does not allow them to stand on soapboxes yelling. The conversations are nuanced, and the author never lets any of the viewpoints dominate. Even before the final third of the book, those conversations had me thinking.

Any mention of a “second star” brings to mind the classic line from Peter Pan (“The second star to the right, and straight on ‘til morning!”). While the story is not obliquely a “Neverland” tale, there is a connection to be made: every one of Parada’s crew have a small-child persona who form a “Children’s Collective” when the group needs to come to a consensus of some kind. They are a mixed- and non-gendered group “ages” six to eight who at once are the most organized and yet the most lost of the personalities. It’s a small nod to Pan, and not the only classic piece of literature the title is a nod to, but I noticed it and think it was intentional.

Readers who enjoy books that blend genres and books that unsettle and make one think should seek out The Second Star, which came out at the start of July.