Edited by Paul Campbell
199 pages
Published 2020
Read from February 17 to February 19
Rating: 3 out of 5
Cossmass Infinities is, like so many genre magazines that came before it, now sadly defunct. I read and enjoyed the occasional standalone story during its run, and at one point, one of my stories made it to the second tier of its editorial review process, but this is the first time I’ve sat down to read a full issue. I bought a paperback copy of this issue for the sake of Nemma Wollenfang’s “Mesozoic” story below, which I discovered via the expedient of searching for “Mesozoic” on the Internet Science Fiction Database.
The editorial (written April 1, 2020) has the obligatory paragraph about lockdown, fear, and the “different world” we found ourselves in that northern spring. I miss the lockdown era. I miss that naive optimism I felt in the midst of the global uncertainties. It was a better time by far than our current regime of pretending everything is back to normal while thousands die of the selfsame virus each week, and thousands more become permanently disabled. (As I review this, my ex-spouse is sick with COVID for at least the second time, and isn't sure how to prevent our kid from catching it from her, also for the second time. I’m sad and upset at how normalized this has become.)
Anyway, moving on to the stories.
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“Chains of Mud and Salt” by Evan Dicken. Atmospheric and sea-girt tale of loss, colonialism, and rebellion. Our narrator’s mother died years ago in a failed action against the distant oligarchic League, but there is more than one means of rebellion, just as there is more than one method of colonization. I quite enjoyed this story, with all its rich detail and hints of a sprawling world, both within and beyond the salt marshes.
“Rag and Bone, Scrap and Sinew” by Jonathan Laidlow. A haunting and beautiful fable of the collapse of industrial civilization, as seen from the perspective of Tatter, a rag-and-bone-man who takes care of her city as its power fails and its residents trickle away. Excellent, and perfectly strange, following the logic of the best fairy tales.
“The Djinn of Titan’s Dunes” by Deborah L. Davitt. In bare outline, a “realistic” sci-fi piece about prospectors accidentally finding evidence of life on a hydrocarbon-rich moon in the outer solar system isn’t that special. It’s something of a subgenre all its own, dating back at least to the 1990s, and likely much earlier. But there are just enough unique touches — the elderly volunteers sent on the theory that they’d die anyway before the radiation killed them, the folkloric flavor of Kahina’s maybe-hallucinations — to elevate this entry. Pretty good.
“The Hard Quarry” by Caleb Huitt. I didn’t find much of interest in this tale of a generic dude out mining an asteroid and the pirates who dogfight his ship in space. The vibe just never clicked for me. There’s no depth or complexity to it. Ah well.
“We’re Alone in This Together” by Donald Norum. A depressed dude starts corresponding with his younger self, whose hopes and dreams spur him to work out, learn poetry, and ask out his old school crush, to help make up for wasting the last ten years. Slightly interesting premise, but the flat, interchangeable narrator didn’t do it for me.
“A Study of the Mesozoic ‘Schistostoma’ of the Late Cretaceous Period and their Abundance in Large Theropods” by Nemma Wollenfang. This, by contrast, is delightful. Our narrator, an undergrad, is assigned a shitty project by her time travel professor: collecting dinosaur fecal samples to assess the presence of gut parasites. The mix of put-upon collegiate humor and unglamorous Cretaceous turd-hunting was a fresh spin on old time travel tropes. In the long, unsatisfying history of dinosaur fiction, this story is a nice standout. My only complaint is that I wish we’d gotten to see more of the Cretaceous.
Two reprints follow, both originally published in 2017:
“Batteries For Your Doombot5000 Are Not Included” by Merc Fenn Wolfmoor. This is a sweet, sentimental, humorous tale of a retired supervillain buying some of her old doombots at an estate sale, and hoping to find in them some trace of the woman she… liked a lot. Charming.
“Illicit Alchemy” by Eric Lewis. Disgraced when her mentor joined the rebellion, apprentice alchemist Emony has to take any job she can get — which lands her at a black market alchemy “startup.” Interesting premise, but this story doesn’t do much with it, and the dialogue feels ripped from a YA novel. It’s fine?
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And that’s it! Not bad for a second issue of a semipro magazine. Worth it for Wollenfang’s story, but the Dicken and Laidlow pieces were standouts.
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