2023 read #154: The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, January 1996 issue.

The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, January 1996 issue (90:1)

Edited by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

162 pages

Published 1996

Read from December 14 to December 15

Rating: 2.5 out of 5

Rusch was an unfairly ignored editor in the history of F&SF. I hadn’t even been aware of her ’90s tenure in the editorial chair until I was reading through a Wikipedia article earlier this year. I’ve wanted to read some of her issues ever since, but always got sidetracked one way or another.

This issue is my introduction to Rusch as an editor. I picked this one because 1) it has great cover art, and 2) the table of contents looks interesting, without any obvious red flags. (None obvious to me, anyway. Goodness knows there could have been all kinds of ’90s writer scandals that got hushed up or forgotten.)

“Here We Come A-Wandering” by Nina Kiriki Hoffman. I was nervous about this one — it’s a magical homeless drifter story from the ’90s. Thankfully, it turns out to be a lovely, delicate, inventive tale, in which the vertiginous strangeness of men stepping out from walls, and cars sharing insight into the psychology of their drivers, feels like a natural part of our world, just around the corners of things. The story itself was maybe a bit pat, with Matt breaking through the walls of her PTSD to find human companionship on Christmas, but still, it was quite good. B

“The Mall” by Dale Bailey. Early next year, a story of mine will be published in an anthology of shopping mall horror, so it was interesting to compare and contrast it with this tale from 28 years before. Bailey and I approached mall horror from opposite perspectives — me, an elder Millennial who grew up around and found shelter in malls; Bailey, writing with Boomer suspicion of malls and their hypnotic pull on those Millennial kids — but both of us gravitated toward the idea of malls as extradimensional spaces inhabited by hungry beings. I felt the ending of “The Mall” fell a little flat, but it was surprisingly palatable overall. B-

“The Plight Before Christmas” by Jerry Oltion. A bland tale of yuppie white male mediocrity. Our hero is an advertising man, prone to hissy-fit outbursts, who endlessly edits his day with a household time travel appliance. He can't figure out why sales are down, nor can he figure out what to buy his girlfriend for Christmas. First meh story of this issue, though even this one elicits some mild interest with the social ramifications of casual time editing. C-

“Annie’s Shelter” by Bonita Kale. Didn’t like this one, not one bit. It’s a dreary number about Annie, a developmentally disabled young woman who, thanks to a new job, can support herself in an apartment, and Ziv, a homeless drifter (another one!) who cons his way into her apartment by telling her he’s an alien studying human culture. We get front row seats to Ziv sexually exploiting Annie, because we’re in the rancid meat of the ’90s. Of course Annie gets pregnant and Ziv kicks her out of her own apartment. (And yes, Ziv’s POV keeps referring to Annie with the usual slur.) I know fiction that makes readers uncomfortable is important, but it didn’t feel like this piece had anything to say beyond being a slimy little soap opera. There isn’t even any speculative element, besides Ziv’s lies. F

“In the Shade of the Slowboat Man” by Dean Wesley Smith. A vampire visits her one-time husband, who’s dying in a nursing home, and reminisces about how they met on a paddle-wheel “slowboat” on the Mississippi. It’s a sweet trifle. B-

“Javier, Dying in the Land of Flowers” by Deborah Wheeler. Seeing this title on the table of contents, I imagined an atmospheric reinterpretation of a medieval French lai. Weirdly specific idea, and sadly wrong. Instead, it’s a near-future piece about a migrant worker landing a job on Tierra Flores, an artificial island resort where rich Anglos lead sparkling lives far away from the drugs, violence, and cartels — the usual feverish stuff Anglo-Americans imagine when they peep over the southern border. Every Anglo stereotype about Mexico, in fact, pops up in this story: wailing babies and swarming rats, nightly cartel gun fights and mariachi bands at the mercado, ingrained misogyny and swaggering machismo. The Angla tourists also apparently come to the island with a race-play fetish. Though the story is written well enough, I don’t think any Anglo authors can be trusted with any of this. F

“Go Toward the Light” by Harlan Ellison. Rankled by sanctimonious comments from an orthodox coworker, professional time-traveler Matty Simon trips back to witness (and hopefully debunk) the miracle of Chanukah. But somewhere along the way Matty decides the miracle needs a little help. This compact yarn is Ellison in fine form. B

“Bulldog Drummond and the Grim Reaper” by Michael Coney. The title, and the excellent cover art, sadly oversell the promise of this closing novelette. The “Grim Reaper” of the title is a nickname for a dungeon scenario that “proximation” players experience through a robotic avatar, a mix of video game and escape room. “Bulldog” Drummond is the pulpy adventure hero of the dungeon narrative, battling through every peril to foil the diabolical Carl Peterson. But our actual story is the friction between Bobbie, founder of the proximation company, and her ex-slash-business-rival Bill, whose technology connects users to implants in various animals, letting them experience the adventures of their pets, lions on the hunt, and so forth. Naturally, Bill uses his tech to spy on Bobbie via a raccoon named McArthur. Inevitably, Bobbie runs out of robots partway through recording the Grim Reaper scenario, and ventures into the dungeon to finish the proximation herself. Predictably, Bill must send his implanted animals into the Grim Reaper to save her. I didn’t hate the story, but McArthur was the only character I cared about. And as you might imagine from my hectic summary, the pacing is a bit awkward. C-

And that’s it! A couple ’90s stinkers, but overall, not bad! A significant improvement over Rusch’s predecessor, certainly. I’m intrigued to read more.

2023 read #153: Earth Before the Dinosaurs by Sebastien Steyer.

Earth Before the Dinosaurs by Sebastien Steyer

Translated by Chris Spence

Illustrated by Alain Bénéteau

Foreword by Carl Zimmer

181 pages

Published 2009 (English translation published 2012)

Read from December 11 to December 14

Rating: 3 out of 5

I always despair at the general apathy toward science. Public apathy flows into a feedback loop with publishers’ capitalist calculations: amateur interest in scientific primers is sporadic to nonexistent, thus few of them get published for a general audience, thus there’s no way for the public to learn basic science. Plus, with any introductory text in a fast-moving field like paleontology, there’s always the probability that it’ll be outdated within a few years.

I’ve long been interested in the tetrapods (and the ecosystems) that evolved before the dinosaurs, but outside of a few books like Beasts Before Us, there really aren’t any popular introductions. I don’t know enough to know what parts of Earth Before the Dinosaurs might already be outdated — though 2009 feels like a long time ago, in paleontology years, so the concern was hard to avoid as I read it.

Whether it’s because of the original author or because of translation, the text alternates between patronizing and densely technical. The book belabors the importance of using precisely defined terminology, instead of lazy pop science metaphors like “missing link” and “transitional fossil,” yet ironically throws around a ton of jargon without defining it. (I know what sarcopterygians and temnospondyls are, for example. but I’ve been obsessed with evolution and paleontology for thirty years or more.)

Steyer’s central topic is evolutionary relationships, so we get an entire chapter on embryology but not much at all about my primary interest, which is paleoecology. 

The best part of the book, by far, is the luscious artwork by Alain Bénéteau. It amply makes up for any deficiencies of the writing and structure of the book.

2023 read #152: The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, August 1979 issue.

The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, August 1979 issue (57:2)

Edited by Edward L. Ferman

162 pages

Published 1979

Read from December 10 to December 11

Rating: 1.5 out of 5

I have about 95 unread issues of F&SF, ranging from 1968 to 2022. I also have about 40 unread issues of Asimov’s Science Fiction, most of them from the early 1990s and the early 2000s. Plus, we all have access to a plethora of free-to-read SFF magazines online. Out of this embarrassment of options, why choose this particular issue? Mostly just because. I liked the cover art, and Richard Cowper stories are usually a good time. That’s all.

“Out There Where the Big Ships Go” by Richard Cowper. That title stirred images of vast industrial starships, big interstellar freight haulers in the cold dark, planets and stars as fragile bubbles lost in the incomprehensible distance. And while it’s nothing at all like that, the backstory that gets doled out still has some potential: Pete Henderson was the commander of The Icarus, the last starship Earth sent into space. Two time-dilated centuries elapsed on Earth while Pete was out in his voyage. He returned to a broken and demoralized world that has given up on hope, a world primed to obsess about the game Kalire, which Henderson brought back from the stars — the “Game of Games,” mastery of which is a prerequisite for the galactic federation. Unfortunately, disregarding all that, this longish novelette turns out to be a crisply written but mundane coming-of-age tale set at a resort town in Latin America. Our POV is 12 year old boy Roger, who wiles away his hours at the resort while his mom socializes, plays in the Kalire tournament, and goes to the salon. Roger attracts an odd amount of interest from actress Anne Henderson, and Pete, her obviously much older husband. The result feels undercooked, disjointed, unsure whether it wants to be a spin-off of Star Trek or of Fantasy Island, with a soupçon of the musical Chess for good measure. C-

“A Sending of Serpents” by L. Sprague de Camp. Ineffectual “humorous” affair about a bank officer dealing with a rash of elderly customers withdrawing their savings to pay a cult leader, who promises reincarnation and contact with the stars. This being de Camp, he can’t resist throwing in an extended racist bit for the laughs. The story’s only redeeming feature is how it skewers Scientology. F

“The Whisper of Banshees” by Nicholas Yermakov. This is a pretty rote tale of wearable holographic “Auras,” remarkable only for how early such a cyberpunkish concept appeared. The point of view, however — an advertising VP hoping to spin a new marketing angle — is about as far from punk as you can get. D

“Love-Starved” by Charles L. Grant. Another equally privileged tale, this time with some well-to-do dude getting bored at his business and revving his convertible out into the countryside, where he falls in lust with a mixed-race woman (though Grant phrases it rather more predatorily than that). Turns out she’s a succubus! Which you really don’t want a dude from the ’70s writing about. You get both sides of the straight man coin here: dull and icky. F

“The Word Sweep” by George Zebrowski. An unusually creative and interesting setup: Sometime in the 1930s, words began to materialize as tangible objects, and could not be destroyed without creating toxic gases. Words are now rationed, carted off to the overflowing dump every morning; each neighborhood is patrolled to ensure no one buries the streets in word residue. I could imagine something along these lines getting written in the late 1990s. It’s still very much a ’70s piece despite that, but hey, points for effort! B-

“Standoff” by Raylyn Moore. Back to ’70s banality with this apocalyptic number, which seems to be trying out a stylistic flourish: refusing all proper nouns, dubbing our characters “the first man” and “the second man,” orienting our geography with terms like “the western city,” refusing to specify what’s leveling cities. The result is more muddle than flourish. It ends with a joke about… let me see… food packaging being difficult to open? Okay then. D-

“Playback” by Larry Tritten. A actor named Holt dies and winds up in Hell, where he learns that the sexual revolution has made the afterlife pretty hip, or at least more laidback on matters of sex. The demon who processes him stresses that any sex act between consenting adults is fine — but alas, this is the ’70s, so our hero is gonna have some trouble with the “consent” part. Spoilers: Holt is given a second chance, and ends up in Hell anyway. D-

“‘You’re Welcome,’ Said the Robot, and Turned to Watch the Snowflakes” by Alan Ryan. I love a good, wordy title, but this one almost sounds like it’s trying too hard for what turns out to be a standard Asimovian robot story. Our man Benny has worked at International Robots for fifteen years as a robot tutor, wired up to robot brains to train them on social interaction and feeling. Benny is grumpy and resentful because he’s fed up with his cushy, well-paying, secure job that he’s retiring from at the ripe old age of 38. (Weird how one generation’s white male angst sounds like an utterly unattainable dream forty-four years later.) Well, to be fair to this story, Benny is fed up because he’s realized International Robots recruits tutors for one skill: having no personality of their own. That’s a hard pill for a mediocre white guy to swallow. D

“The Angel of Death” by Michael Shea. Right at the doorstep of the ’80s, we’re treated to that most exhaustingly ’80s of tropes: the gleefully manic psycho killer! Engelmann is today’s standard issue psycho killer, calling random citizens to leave “tips” in doggerel rhyme before slaughtering “bitches” for the crime of having sex. But the city streets also play host to a shapeshifting alien sent to mingle with and investigate humanity. And what better way to investigate humanity than by smooth-talking an Earth babe into backseat sex? You’ll never guess what happens when Engelmann and the alien cross paths! F

And that’s it for yet another mediocre old issue! As was so often the case in these times, the cover was the best part of the issue.

2023 read #151: Venus in Furs by Leopold von Sacher-Masoch.

Venus in Furs by Leopold von Sacher-Masoch

Translated by Joachim Neugroschel

156 pages

Published 1870 (English translation published 2000)

Read December 10

Rating: 2 out of 5

Sure, later psychologists named masochism after this author, adducing a diagnosis from his unconventional tastes, but the bigger pathology I find in these pages is cultural: Western culture’s conceit that woman and man are “hereditary enemies” locked in a ceaseless struggle for dominance. Like, that’s precisely what you get when you corner half of humanity into the boudoir and force them into subservience in order to survive the world you made. Power play and animosity, the “cruelty” and “despotism” that Sacher-Masoch so tenderly documents, are only to be expected. As my partner R joked, “[Patriarchal toxicity] invented primal play without realizing it.”

Like basically any of his European or American contemporaries, Sacher-Masoch is adamant that his particular kink is “consistent with universal and natural laws,” pulling elaborate pseudoscientific exposition about electricity and heat and passion out of his ass, because such was the philosophy of the time. “‘So a woman wearing fur,’ cried Wanda, ‘is nothing but a big cat, a charger electric battery?’” Instead of, I don’t know, fur being a classic symbol of wealth, power, and unapproachability. Sure.

I have to admit that the eponymous song by The Velvet Underground is way sexier than the book turned out to be. There are glimpses here of sensuality and eroticism that still work today; Wanda’s first “scene” wielding a whip is instantly relatable, in all its solicitous awkwardness. But such moments are overbalanced by the gender norms and philosophy of the times — in other words, page after page of rancid misogyny disguised as philosophy. And, of course, Venus couldn’t be fully of its time without some weird, gross racial stuff.

2023 read #150: The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, November / December 2023 issue.

The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, November/December 2023 issue (145:5-6)

Edited by Sheree Renée Thomas

258 pages

Published 2023

Read from December 5 to December 7

Rating: 4 out of 5

Even as it becomes ever more difficult to find on newsstands, I’ve kept up with reading each new issue of F&SF while it’s still current, a habit I began with the March/April 2023 issue. I also went back and read the January/February 2023 issue, making 2023 the first year I’ve read every issue of F&SF.

It’s been a terrific year for stories, absolutely unprecedented for quality and breadth of fiction in the magazine, but it’s been an abysmal year for the short genre fiction profession as a whole. Hopefully F&SF (and all the other markets in financial straits) can continue this golden age of creativity and diverse, astonishing fiction. If you love short speculative fiction, support your favorite publications!

How does the final issue of 2023 rate against the others?

“The Many Different Kinds of Love” by Geoff Ryman with David Jeffrey. A vast and magnificent hard science fiction novella, “Love” follows the abiotic viewpoint of a survey station under the surface of Enceladus, as well as the postbiotic encoded memories of five billion people, downloaded and updated to give the AI flexibility and decision-making abilities. And then Earth goes silent, and the updates cease. Like so many excellent stories before it, “Love” explores humanity in all of its petty, beautiful, irrational, violent, tender, selfish, loving, contradictory, bewildering grandeur, constructing a posthumanist vision of fully human (and humane) optimism. Absolutely blew me away.

“Karantha Fish” by Amal Singh. Sharp description and efficient worldbuilding are highlights of this richly atmospheric, space opera-ish tale of religious hangups and misunderstandings. Quite good.

“Longevity” by Anya Ow. In an all-too-near future where teenagers’ bodies are permanently tapped to siphon plasma for the rich, and each human life is worth only what corporations can extract from it, Ruhe is a Forever, her lifespan extended indefinitely so that her Company doesn’t need to train a replacement. Shaken out of the torpor of years by the death of her cat, Ruhe on a whim meets with teenage Kasey, who compares society to the bygone practice of chicken farming: “The useful ones get to stay and grow old forever, laying eggs for the greater cause. The not-so-useful ones get ground out sooner or later.” Chilling, haunting, with a touch of optimism. One of the best near-future pieces I’ve read in some time.

“All That We Leave Behind” by Charlie Hughes. This one feels like a throwback to the 1980s, both in style and in content. A book club finds itself, without quite remembering why, reading a book called All That We Leave Behind. When they meet to discuss it, each of them has been changed — each of them has prepared, whether they remember it clearly or not. Not my genre, but this story succeeds at what it’s trying to do.

The first in a block of poems, Lisa M. Bradley’s “Through the Keyhole” is a werewolf tale full of gristle and beauty. Wonderful stuff.

Next, a pleasant surprise: Geoffrey A. Landis’ “No One Now Remembers—” is a lovely poem about dinosaurs. Perhaps it’s a stretch to add the dinosaur fiction tag to this issue, but hell, this poem deserves it.

Landis also contributes a poem about “Titan.” It’s fine enough, but lacks dinosaurs.

Marissa Lingen’s “Like Other Girls” is the last poem in this block. It is a powerful reinterpretation of Andersen’s “The Little Mermaid.”

“Portrait of a Dragon as a Young Man” by J.A. Pak. A sweet, wistful recollection of a dragon’s first love, and his first experience of learning to be human. Features a comfortable, lived-in world, and crisp prose. Excellent.

A couple on-theme poems by Mary Soon Lee follow: “Orchid Dragon” and “Phoenix Dragon.” Both are exquisite.

“Twelve Aspects of the Dragon” by Rachel K. Jones. Sumptuous sensory list that also tells a story. Creative and evocative, unexpectedly sexy.

“Meeting in Greenwood” by R. K. Duncan. Yet another all-time classic in an issue freighted with them. Timothy Jackson is a fed who rides the trains of the dead to make contact with spirits who help fight against the Lost Cause of slavery. “Greenwood” is a staggering feat of imagination and a resounding fuck-you to the white supremacist machinations that have led from Appomattox to our present moment.

“The Pigeon Wife” by Samantha H. Chung. Another stunner, flawlessly mixing folklore and the struggles of modern Late Capitalism. Our narrator snags a pigeon husband to stabilize her finances — but then he unionizes.

“Los Pajaritos” by Sam W. Pisciotta. Sharp and efficient examination of loss — personal and ecological — after the disappearance of sparrows. Heartbreaking and gorgeous.

Chet Weise gives us “Science Fiction Novel in Four to Seven Words,” a poem which takes Hemingway’s famous six word story and adds “A.I.” and a line break.

“Pluto and Tavis D Work the Door” by Brooke Brannon. A strange and atmospheric tale of appropriation and cultural parasitism, and learning how to communicate your feelings.

Two poems by Brian U. Garrison follow: “The Music of Neptune” and “Lesser Realities.”

“Indigena” by Jennifer Maloney. Brief but vivid depiction of how an alien ecology might deal with an invasive species: humanity. Solid.

A poem by Roger Dutcher, “The Canceled Sky,” has some good imagery.

“New Stars” by Christopher Crew. Another story that feels like an ’80s (or perhaps ’70s) throwback, a fairly straightforward tale of a father and son watching a spaceship race burn past their planet, rooting for the ship piloted by the memory patterns of the boy’s grandfather. Enjoyable.

“High Tide at Olduvai Gorge” by Kedrick Brown. After Earth was conquered and colonized by the humans from Elucida, a people who promise equality but instead value financial “respectability” above all else, former Olympic athlete Ayo happens to win the lottery, finally gaining the “respectability” needed to compete again. But even then, the playing field is far from level. A sardonic, trenchant allegory.

“Prisoner 121 Is Guilty” by Renee Pillai. A tragic tale of life and punishment under a deeply hierarchical culture. I think it’s a bit too compressed for the story to fully bloom; some extra space for character and worldbuilding would be nice.

“Fools and Their Money” by Meighan Hogate. Pheena is a venal bird who likes coin, and doesn’t mind whether he gets it for his services as a guide or by guiding his charges into a bog to get killed by a swarm. One such traveler happens to bring a cursed amulet his way. It more or less amounts to a chaotic evil rogue’s backstory, but it’s told creatively. Enjoyable.

We wrap up this issue with a poem from Marisca Pichette: “triple knot.” It is, as expected, utterly enrapturing.

And that’s it! A stunning issue, among the very best I’ve ever read. May Sheree Renée Thomas’ time as editor continue long, and brilliantly!

2023 read #149: Binti: Home by Nnedi Okorafor.

Binti: Home by Nnedi Okorafor

164 pages

Published 2017

Read December 6

Rating: 3 out of 5

I found the first Binti book promising but uneven, its sweep and creativity muddled by middling prose. Home, the second Binti novella, feels much the same.

Binti, the first of Earth’s Himba people to study at the prestigious Oomza University, feels strange, uncharacteristic fury deep inside, even when she “trees” (accesses higher mathematics through a kind of focused meditation). She leaves Oomza to return home for a cleansing pilgrimage. She is accompanied by her friend Okwu, who is a Meduse. The peace treaty between the Meduse and Earth’s Khoush people is still new, the memories of their bloody war still fresh. And their ship to Earth is the same ship which Okwu and its people attacked Binti and her classmates, when Binti first left for Oomza.

After the “You killed all my new friends, but I guess we can be friends now” turn was glossed over in the first book, it was almost a relief to find that Binti’s trauma, and the need to process it, is prominent in Home.

As always, I enjoyed Okorafor’s worldbuilding, its space opera future that doesn’t center white people or Western expectations.

2023 read #148: Tinykin’s Transformations by Mark Lemon.

Tinykin’s Transformations by Mark Lemon

Illustrated by Charles Green

78 pages

Published 1869

Read December 5

Rating: 1.5 out of 5

Another largely forgotten Victorian children’s tale that (like Goblin Market and Wanted—A King) I found in the 1973 anthology Beyond the Looking Glass. I’ve been burning through these tales in a shameless bid — shameless! — to pad my reading numbers, and tie or break the record of books I read in 2013.

The titular Tinykin — actually named Uluf — is a young Saxon boy whose father, a woodsman, has newly moved the family to a lodge near Tilgate Forest. Titania, queen of the fairies, reposes in a special glade in the wood, which is now troubled by the axes of his woodsmen. But Titania discovers (as the fae are wont to do) a special love for Tinykin, and in a series of vignettes, changes him into an ouzel, a silvery fish, a fawn, and a pink mole. In this last form, he applies the instincts of his previous shapes to help win the freedom of an enchanted princess. Pretty standard stuff, and not retold with any special interest. 

There’s a lot of Christian doggerel about the perfection of Man and his mighty dominion over the lesser beasts, and an even greater amount of spousal abuse. Once again, the illustrations are the best part of this tale. The rest probably should have stayed forgotten.

2023 read #147: Wylding Hall by Elizabeth Hand.

Wylding Hall by Elizabeth Hand

146 pages

Published 2015

Read from December 4 to December 5

Rating: 4.5 out of 5

This is the book that I had hoped The Doubleman would be.

It takes the form of an oral history recounting the summer British folk-rock band Windhollow Faire holed up in the titular Wylding Hall to record an album. The Hall is a sprawling countryside manor where the ancient magic, carried in strange melodies, lingers. A place of Neolithic barrows and dead birds and grimoires in the antiquarian library, a place where strange passageways open up one day never to be found again, a place where time itself seems to waver. Julian, the band’s genius guitarist, is obsessed with the occult, with magick: crafting spells in his music, opening doors that perhaps should have stayed shut.

The British folk-rock movement — and the wider folk revival of the 1960s and '70s — have been particular interests of mine for well over a dozen years. Wylding Hall could not have been more of a treat to this hyperfocus, name-dropping Sandy Denny and Steeleye Span and the Middle Earth venue. I love the hippie vibe of bringing back the Old Ways, the deep magic of the land we lost due to industrialization, enclosure, imperialism, Christianity. As much influence as the folk revival had on fantasy fiction, helping it grow away from the Howardian barbarians and into the New Romantic era, I can’t think of another book that captures the folk revival vibe, or reads as much like a love letter to the movement, quite like Wylding Hall. The only book that I can even think of that comes close in its reverence for strange old musical magic is War for the Oaks, and that deals with a punk band in the ’80s.

I was initially skeptical of the oral history format, but Hand pulls it off beautifully, infusing each “interview” segment with character and perspective. Each surviving member of the band emerges as a personality, each marked by the trauma of the Wylding Hall sessions in different ways: some credulous, some calling bullshit, some driven to alcohol, some driven to quit. It’s as fluently written and atmospheric as you’d expect from the author of “Echo” (read and reviewed here).

2023 read #146: Wanted — A King by Maggie Browne.

Wanted — A King, or How Merle Set the Nursery Rhymes to Rights by Maggie Browne

Illustrated by Harry Furniss

89 pages

Published 1890

Read December 4

Rating: 2 out of 5

Like Goblin Market, this novella was a mostly forgotten Victorian children’s fantasy, anthologized in the 1973 collection Beyond the Looking Glass. It’s an obvious imitation of the Alice books, but with centralized executive authority at its heart rather than chaos.

Our heroine Merle, abed for months after a bad fall, drifts off and finds herself at the turnstile into Endom, the land of nursery rhymes. The turnstile is manned by Grunter Grim, an irascible old man / evil spirit who hates children and refuses to give her a ticket, insisting she must leave her body behind before she can enter. Topleaf — a friendly leaf who used to wave at Merle from the top of a lime tree — curls around her and smuggles her in. Merle quickly discovers that the odious Grunter Grim has given the fairy who tells fairy tales all the wrong details, making the nursery rhymes ever so mean, so it falls to Merle to fix the mixed up nursery rhymes by selecting a king.

“Fixing” here entails making the nursery rhymes all proper and mannerly, undoing all the naughty changes introduced by Grunter Grim. Jack Horner, you see, tries to be a good boy, instead of boasting that he is. And so on. It’s the most Victorian thing imaginable — Victorians had such a passion for editing out all the disreputable details of history, folktales, ballads, etc. Bold of Browne to make that the stated reason our heroine quests into the land of fairy tales.

But in the midst of the monarchical bowdlerizing, there was one detail that fascinated me. When children arrive at Endom and Grunter Grim takes their bodies, he doesn’t return their proper bodies back. Merle meets a ten year old girl who was given the body of a three year old boy, who explains: “every one is astonished because… some girls [are] more like boys, and some boys more like girls.” A basic sense of gender expression in 1890! There isn’t much of interest in A King beyond that, but it was something. (Well, some of the art was pretty cool too.)

2023 read #145: The Poison Belt by Arthur Conan Doyle.*

The Poison Belt by Arthur Conan Doyle*

62 pages

Published 1913

Read December 4

Rating: 2 out of 5

* Denotes a reread.

Doyle’s Professor Challenger stories are frequently collected into a single volume. Such was the case with the edition I had as a tween, and such is the case with the edition I have at hand today. I remember reading The Lost World for the very first time, and paging ahead with anticipation, speculating what the other stories would be. The Land of Mist would surely prove to be a direct sequel to The Lost World, full of strange and pulpy adventures (alas, it was very much not). But The Poison Belt was a strange title, and I had no idea what to expect. (My tweenage imagination leapt to the possibility that some mad inventor had a belt with a packet of poison attached, which he would whip around to crack against his enemies. Needless to say, I was abused as a child. Who else would see the word belt and immediately think weapon?)

The Poison Belt is, of course, an early cross between cosmic sci-fi and eschatological fiction, an expression of pre-World War anxieties. Challenger invites his old companions from The Lost World to stay with him and his wife in Rotherfield to witness the end of humankind, which he has calculated with precision after some astronomical observations. As Challenger predicted, the Earth passes through a belt of “ether” which seemingly causes asphyxiation in all oxygen-dependent creatures. Locked in an airtight room with supplementary bottles of oxygen, Challenger and friends observe the death of humanity — only to discover, with horror, that the belt has passed, and they seem to be the only beings left alive on Earth.

Belt has a leg up over The Lost World because the climax here does not involve our British heroes heroically genociding a population. The scenes in which our group motors around dead Sussex and London in the Challengers’ flivver are outstanding, fixed forever in my tweenage imagination. One is inevitably reminded of similar scenes throughout The War of the Worlds.

Most of the novella, though, exists to set up the antiquated sci-fi of the soporific “ether,” or to muse upon mortality and life after death. And even in such a brief and self-contained story, Doyle couldn’t help but center imperial race theory, just because he could. Also a bit of classist bullshit that escaped me as a tween, but feels particularly glaring now: no one in Challenger’s party even thinks to invite the professor’s faithful manservant into the oxygen room before the crisis.

2023 read #144: The Turn of the Screw by Henry James.

The Turn of the Screw by Henry James

133 pages

Published 1898

Read from December 3 to December 4

Rating: 2.5 out of 5

I have a vague memory of attempting this one much too young, maybe 8 or 9 years old — young enough that, when our narrator gets a ride on “a commodious fly,” I pictured giant insects — and neither understanding nor liking it. I’m pretty sure I didn’t make it beyond the second chapter.

The opening certainly has its share of Victorian clutter. It drops us into a framing device full of unnamed interlocutors and half-spoken inferences, delaying the telling of the tale over several nights, a tale which was committed to paper twenty years before and relates events many decades prior. Presumably, to late Victorian tastes, this drew out the tension and increased the anticipation for its promised “uncanny ugliness and horror and pain,” but it hit my modern attention span like a speed bump. At least Dracula provided chicken recipes.

The ghosts of the sinister valet and the “almost shabby” ex-governess aren’t exactly on the same level as Count Dracula, and James’ prose often (in my opinion) trips over its own janky clauses, but it’s a fair sample of Victorian sensationalism, full of meanings either hinted at or actively concealed. Where we today might use horror to explore the loss of bodily autonomy or the violence of bigotry, the taste of James’ contemporaries seems to have dwelled on “corruption.” The threat of the ghosts seems rooted in the excess of their “familiarity” — the transgression of class distinctions, both with the children and with each other. It’s a sexualized caste anxiety, expressed with the same “Protect the Children!” hyperventilation that modern regressives deploy in defense of their own myriad bigotries, equating the transgression of social norms to predation, the willful corruption of the young.

The fact that James himself may have been homoromantic and potentially asexual adds further layers of repressed meaning. Some days you just wish Victorians would say what they mean.

2023 read #143: Not Good for Maidens by Tori Bovalino.

Not Good for Maidens by Tori Bovalino

345 pages

Published 2022

Read from November 30 to December 3

Rating: 3.5 out of 5

I’m glad I read Christina Rossetti’s Goblin Market before I tried this book. Not only because it’s fun to read the inspiration before the retelling, but also because it helps smooth over Maidens’ biggest barrier to entry: making goblins sexy. When you think of menacing but sexy monsters, you think vampires, werewolves, mermaids, aliens, Mothman. Slotting goblins into that same category, without Rossetti’s Market fresh in memory, might have taken some adjustment. After Market, a glamoured goblin with green eyes and a sharp smile makes much more sense, as does the carnal allure of the market itself.

Bovalino writes well, building a believably beguiling world of temptation and illusion in the goblin market beneath York, a predatory dance where both witch and goblin desire each other’s blood. The protagonists of her dual timelines — seventeen year old Lou in the present day, and her aunt May eighteen years before — have pleasing depth, avoiding the usual YA clichés of bickering, short-fused teenagers.

Instead, we plunge into some different clichés: Lou and May’s family belong to a secret society of leather-clad badasses who train to battle with knives and witchcraft against sexy goblins in the underworld beneath the streets of the city! And one witch and one goblin yearn to break free of the rules and violence that dictate their lives! Maidens manages to temper the silliness that might suggest, maintaining enough dimension to stay fresh and interesting. In particular, as a long-time aficionado of British folk ballads, I enjoyed how the narrative utilized “Scarborough Fair,” “Death and the Lady,” and “Demon Lover.”

Another “interesting” aspect of this book is how, since the present-day chapters take place (presumably) in 2022, the eighteen-years-before flashback chapters must take place in 2004. While May and her goblin paramour Eitra dance in the underworld, the human clubs in York above would be blasting “Toxic.” Maybe that isn’t interesting so much as it makes me feel very, very old.

2023 read #142: Castle Rackrent by Maria Edgeworth.

Castle Rackrent: An Hibernian Tale, Taken from Facts, and from the Manners of the Irish Squires Before the Year 1782 by Maria Edgeworth

90 pages

Published 1800

Read from November 30 to December 1

Rating: 2 out of 5

I read this for one reason: I hadn’t yet read anything from the decade of the 1800s, and this sounded like the least uninteresting book I could find from those years. Plus, it’s short. Maybe someday I’ll take the time to read Alexander von Humboldt’s Personal Narrative of Travels to the Equinoctial Regions of the New Continent during the years 1799–1804, but not today.

Rackrent is, for the most part, a delightfully snarky little satire of English colonialism in Ireland, ironically chronicling four heirs of the Rackrent estate, all of them some flavor of predatory English lord on occupied soil: “the drunken Sir Patrick, the litigious Sir Murtagh, the fighting Sir Kit, and the slovenly Sir Condy….” The satire is in a vein that should be familiar to anyone who’s read Early Modern literature:

However, my lady was very charitable in her own way. She had a charity school for poor children, where they were taught to read and write gratis, and where they were kept well to spinning gratis for my lady in return….

Beneath the slyly ingratiating surface, it’s all deliciously pointed.

Someone in the publishing process, however — quite possibly Maria Edgeworth’s father — took it upon themselves to bootlick tender English feelings in an introduction, insisting that English abuses of Ireland spontaneously ceased sometime around 1782, and that everybody is happy and congenial now and that the Irish simply adore their English overlords:

The Editor hopes his readers will observe that these are “tales of other times”: that the manners depicted in the following pages are not those of the present age: the race of the Rackrents has long since been extinct in Ireland; and… are characters which could no more be met with at present in Ireland, than Squire Western or Parson Trulliber in England. There is a time, when individuals can bear to be rallied for their past follies and absurdities, after they have acquired new habits, and a new consciousness. Nations as well as individuals gradually lose attachment to their identity, and the present generation is amused rather than offended by the ridicule that is thrown upon its ancestors.

Endnotes, also appended by this editor, made every effort to satirize the Irish at large for their “laziness,” their funereal lamentations, their litigiousness, drunkenness, not paying their rent on time, and so on. Unsurprising, given the overwhelming fragility of the colonialist ego, which we can observe for ourselves in our own era.

And, sadly, this editor wasn’t Rackrent’s sole letdown. There’s a plotline in which the wastrel Sir Kit marries Jessica, a Jewish heiress, which detours the narrative into some shitty of-the-era antisemitism.