289 pages
Published 2020
Read from October 20 to October 25
Rating: 1.5 out of 5
I'm jonesing so hard for new-to-me dinosaur fiction. Hell, I'm on the verge of tracking down some paperback copies of Crichton's Jurassic Park and The Lost World -- both of which I read dozens of times as a youth, and last reread in 2011 -- just to try to scratch that dino itch.
Luckily, I found this anthology, in part because one of my favorite up-and-coming sci-fi writers, Jennifer Lee Rossman, has a story in it. (One of their other stories, set in the same universe as "Joan of Archaeopteryx," is featured in my own anthology, The Mesozoic Reader. Please get a copy!) I'm not sure what to expect from the other stories here, but I guess we'll find out!
(Also, when I bought it, I had assumed Apex: World of Dinosaurs Anthology was associated with Apex Magazine, seeing as both involve short sci-fi stories. But no, it's tied into some sort of game company and a dino deck-building game.)
"Smile" by LaShawn M. Wanak. Writers, I've noticed, tend to struggle with making good stories out of dinosaurs. I like my dinosaur fiction to fit one of two very broad categories: either the dinosaurs are just an ordinary fact of life in the setting (such as in Dinotopia, Raptor Red, or many of my own stories), or the dinosaurs fit into the role of movie monsters, albeit constrained to a rough approximation of "realistic" behaviors (such as in the first three Jurassic Park movies, which stop just short of giving raptors mustache-twirling-villain intelligence but still present them as animals, something that could conceivably have evolved on Earth). Some stories, like Dinosaur Summer, excel by combining a bit of both. My least favorite dinosaur trope involves turning them into unconstrained movie monsters, unstoppable creatures with absurd, biologically impossible powers. (Jurassic World comes to mind.) This tale crosses Jurassic World with Octavia E. Butler's Xenogenesis trilogy, presenting us with raptors that can sample DNA from other creatures and utilize those traits for their adaptive advantages. At that point, why make it about raptors at all? It's an alien invasion trope given a dinosaurian coat of paint. The story ends with the reveal that a humanoid raptor is telling us how the ascendency of the raptor over the human world came to be. D-
"Just Like Old Times" by Robert J. Sawyer. I originally read this story (first published in 1993) when it was reprinted in Martin H. Greenberg's Dinosaurs anthology. In that review, I griped: "Transferring the consciousness of a human observer into a gigantic theropod -- Michael Swanwick did it best in 'Riding the Giganotosaur' in 1999. This being the early '90s, however, the transferred consciousness is of course going to be that of a serial killer. The innate silliness and datedness of the premise sinks this story." I don't feel the need to revisit it here. D-
"The Day" by August Hahn. Speaking of dinosaurs as movie monsters, this story takes all the raptor pack-hunter tropes hammered into pop culture via Jurassic Park and cranks them up to 11, giving us a "nature red in tooth and claw" scenario from a raptor's-eye view. The very first story I ever submitted to a magazine, back in 1998, was a piece of Raptor Red fan-fiction; I wrote from the perspective of giant raptors roaming the Maastrichtian in search of new territory. Both my ancient tale and Hahn's story here could have benefitted from a bit more ethological science and a bit less of the pop culture killer-claw cliché. Like, I'd be 100% down to read a dino's-perspective tale about an ordinary day where we all laze in the sunshine and take care of our hatchlings and no one has to fight a rex. I feel indifferently about this one. D+?
"Rebuttal" by Andrew J. Lucas. "[By 2135], the gradual effects of climate change reached a crescendo; sweeping forest fires [had destroyed the forests of western Canada]." Oh, you sweet naïve thing. If only we'd been that lucky. Anyway, in the climate-ravaged future, ancient DNA is a valuable resource utilized to rebuild ecosystems resistant to the plagues unleashed by the thawing permafrost. Herds of ankylosaurs graze the hot desolate plains of Alberta, taking the place of beef cattle. Those dastardly Russians cobble together a weaponized Yutyrannus with a mishmash of cloning and 3D printing and unleash it upon the poor Canadian rangers. Like the cyborg Yutyrannus, this story is a mishmash that doesn't quite cohere. It's an interesting revamp of the classic "dinosaurs in the Old West" trope plus a dash of Dino-Riders, but there's no substance to the story. D+
"High Wire: A Horizon Alpha Story" by D. W. Vogel. Military sci-fi in which a batch of blankly interchangeable soldiers, officers, and kids land on a new planet after something went wrong in their ark ship. The planet is populated with vaguely dinosaurian wildlife. There's simply no characterization to be found here, not even a trace. That's almost impressive in its own way. Worse, literally every named character is male. Every single one. No redeeming value to this story whatsoever. Somehow, this is a reprint; it was previously published in a sci-fi anthology back in 2016. F
"A Boy and His Dog: A 'Dinosaur Protocol' Story" by Jonathan M. Thompson. One of the editors of this volume has graced us with a story set in one of the game settings the book was meant to promote. It's a clunky piece, written stiffly and clearly never proofread. (A young Triceratops is described as weighing "13,000 tons.") A deep-time colony, presumably from our far future, suddenly receives a bunch of soldiers displaced from something approximating the modern day. There's an EMP, soldiers fanning out with M4s, and a kerraaazy misunderstanding between the two groups! This story reminds me of "The Cretaceous Colony," a story I wrote when I was 11. That is not a compliment. If anything, "The Cretaceous Colony" featured a deeper plot and richer characterization than this dud. F
"Joan of Archaeopteryx" by Jennifer Lee Rossman. Oh, thank god. It's such a cliché to say this, but I genuinely mean it: this story is like a breath of fresh air after the last... well, after every single story in the anthology before this one. Laugh-out-loud funny, refreshingly queer, written with verve and personality -- literally everything the foregoing stories haven't been. Rossman's setting is superb: for millions of years random portals have opened between our world and a parallel dimension, which now hosts a mix of dinosaurs, Renaissance knights, gay cowboys, and D.B. Cooper. The repressive knights want to conquer the gay cowboys and force them into their medieval social strictures. Our hero Joan, brain crammed full of 21st century pop culture, is taken through the portal to fulfil a prophecy and save the gay cowboy dinosaur land utopia. It's a delight, and the best story here by a long mile. A-
"A Time Beyond Sunset: An Apex Island Adventure" by Alana Joli Abbott. At this point I've given up on anything in this book living up to Jennifer Lee Rossman's piece, or indeed on anything in this book being good besides "Joan of Archaeopteryx." There's vague potential buried deep in this story -- the "teens volunteer at a dinosaur island during World War II" plot borrows heavily from Dinosaur Summer by way of Dinotopia -- but the writing struggles to make anything good out of it. For a story set on a dinosaur island, we spend an inordinate amount of time in New Haven, or repairing a truck, or talking to random soldiers or people in the infirmary. When we do meet dinosaurs, it turns out they speak impeccable English thanks to a rogue Nazi scientist who invented tin-foil hats. The story crams in some mostly unnecessary backstory about the Nazi scientist (whom we never actually meet) and ends abruptly when one of the teens successfully absconds with a crystal tablet the Nazis were using. Clearly, this was written backwards from the Apex game setting rather than as a standalone story. I'll be generous and award this an F+.
"When the Sky Was Starless and the Ocean Flat" by Gwendolyn N. Nix. An undercooked tale of pterosaur riders watching their world collapse along the Western Inland Sea. There's a nice amount of potential here, and as it stands, it's worlds better than almost everything else in this book, but I feel it could have used a few more rounds of editing to bring out the magic. C-
"We Are Emily" by Lee F. Szczepanik, Jr. A distasteful throwback to the "murderous mentally ill" days of the 1980s and '90s, built around a Hollywoodized misunderstanding of dissociative identity disorder. Derrick, Bobby, and Melissa are a "family" -- a DID system inhabiting a body together, trading off consciousness with each other but communicating freely amongst themselves. They vote in a new member, Emily, who is a raptor from a video game called Cretaceous Wars. Somehow, cyberpunk clichés of "hacking the A.I." are also involved. And wouldn't you know it, as soon as Emily becomes part of the family, she takes control and goes on a wild bloody murder spree! It's equal parts silly, sophomoric, and exploitative. I had to check to make sure this wasn't originally published in 1989. This one gets a big ol' F.
"Party Crashers" by J.A. Cummings. A boy wishes for a pet Compsognathus for his seventh birthday. He helps the wish along with some tricks he learned from YouTube. Magic! Two squirrels turn into compies and promptly cause chaos at the party. That's literally all there is to this tale. But it isn't actively offensive or badly written, so maybe I'll give it a D+.
"Starfall" by Darren W. Pearce. A garbled mess of writing that feels like it's trying to squeeze in every "badass bounty hunter who can psychically talk to dinosaurs in a postapocalyptic wasteland" cliché at the same time. Our hero is a blank slate except for her snark, and her raptor companion can only chuckle and crack wise about how tasty their quarry is. It could not end fast enough. F
"Forever" by Robert J. Sawyer. Bog-standard "intelligent dinosaurs achieve civilization right before the Chicxulub impact" story, first published in 1997. Nothing special. nothing objectionable, nothing new. Somehow that still makes it one of the better stories in this anthology. C-
"To Mega Therion" by Markisan Naso. This wasn't badly written, per se, but the prose veers to the amateurish side with its excessive commas and clunky descriptions. Every bit character is introduced with a name, a couple adjectives, and a genus: "His second-in-command, Sotiris, stretched his long, tan opisthocoelicaudia neck..." With so much of the story devoted to descriptions of hand-to-hand combat, this awkward prose is a major liability. That aside, I enjoyed the general vibe of anthropomorphic dinosaurs wielding swords, fighting duels, and erecting heroic statues in a Cretaceous kingdom. This story even has a sauropod using a spiked helmet to turn himself into a giant morningstar. So, it's a bit of a mixed bag. Maybe I'll give it a tolerable C-.
"Droma Station" by Alexandra Pitchford. Derivative sci-fi action piece. Maybe you wouldn't call "secret experimental facility on an asteroid breeds cyborg raptors" derivative, but I certainly would. Like all too many of the stories in this volume, this reads like the writer has never been exposed to any form of fiction more advanced than SyFy Originals and tabletop gaming supplements. All the characters are the shallowest of archetypes, the action is paint-by-numbers, and there's nothing here deeper than a coat of paint. I'll be supremely generous and offer it an F+.
"What Came First" by Kimberly Pauley. A big ol' shrug of a closing number. The kind of pop sci-fi written by someone whose only experience with scientists is in the pages of pop sci-fi. This story is notable mainly for a section which details a domestic chicken's brief adventures in time-travel. Maybe D-?
And that's it. Finally. I cannot express the depths of my disappointment in this anthology.
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