2024 read #102: Worlds of IF, December 1964 issue.

Worlds of IF Science Fiction, December 1964 issue (14:7)

Edited by Frederik Pohl

130 pages

Published 1964

Read from August 30 to August 31

Rating: 1 out of 5

Back at it again with a PDF of an old magazine with some dinosaurs on the cover! What do the Sixties have in store? All male authors, all the time. Sigh. Let’s get this over with.

—

“When Time Was New” by Robert F. Young. This has the best opening line of any pre-1980 dinosaur story I’ve ever encountered: “The stegosaurus standing beneath the ginkgo tree didn’t surprise Carpenter, but the two kids sitting in the branches did.” Of course, it immediately squanders that good will by placing the stegosaur in the Upper Cretaceous. (There’s more time between Stegosaurus and the Upper Cretaceous than there is between the Upper Cretaceous and us, so technically the kids should be less surprising to Carpenter.)

The rest of the novella is in keeping with that pulpy, research-be-damned ethos. Carpenter, a time agent, drives a triceratank, with three horn-howitzers ready for defense. The kids are blue-eyed, pale-skinned Cretaceous Martians; somehow, their gender roles exactly conform to the expectations of early 1960s Americans. They got kidnapped, escaped, and are now pursued by the kidnappers in jet-propelled pteranodons. Fun as that last bit sounds, the story abounds with cringey Manly 1960s Sci-Fi Man bullshit: Martian society is an efficient utopia because they desentimentalize their kids’ brains! The girl child happily makes Carpenter a sandwich while her brother gets to hang out in the cockpit with him!

Which isn’t to say “Time” was entirely awful, at least not at first. More stories should have Cretaceous campouts with frankfurters over the fire. That said, there’s barely any dinosaur action here. Instead, the vast majority of the story is about Carpenter regretting that he made it to his 30s as a measly time traveling action hero in a dinosaur tank, instead of settling down and being a dad. (And not even a cool, 2020s-style dad who, like, participates in being a parent. We’re talking the 1960s idea of a dad.) That’s a flimsy scaffold on which to hang such a long, long, long story.

And then we get to the twist ending. Let’s just say Sixties gender norms should never be mixed with time travel. Perhaps D- before the twist, but all in all, an F

—

“The Coldest Place” by Larry Niven. The end of “Time” soured me on this whole issue, and seeing Larry Niven’s name did nothing to revive my enthusiasm. This forgettable “hard science” bauble exists only to set up the punchline that “the coldest place in the solar system” is the dark side of Mercury. Literally, that’s it. F+

—

“At the Top of the World” by J. T. McIntosh. If you ever wanted to read a prototype of Fallout, but wanted it dull and poorly written, we got you covered. A society of tunnel-dwellers, whose oral history tells them to dig upwards after two hundred years, finally reach the surface. Most of “World” is told in that faux news-magazine style that was so common in midcentury fiction. It goes on at numbing length, straining to draw some parallel between the tunnel teens and contemporary youth culture. It ends (predictably) with a “humanity never changes” punchline. F+?

—

“Pig in a Pokey” by R. A. Lafferty. To me, Lafferty is one of the all time overrated sci-fi authors. This “humorous” affair about a porcine alien who loves to collect trophy heads, and has an inability to understand humans’ hangups about death, doesn’t dispel that opinion. Somehow, though, it’s the least-awful story so far — which isn’t saying much. Maybe D-

—

“The Hounds of Hell” (conclusion) by Keith Laumer. Naturally, we close with the final installment of some serial or other. I’m noticing a pattern with serials: no matter what decade they were published in, they’re attain their length by throwing together a convoluted mishmash of every currently popular trope. This one is a stew of posthumanist body replacement, psionic powers (Project Ozma gets name-checked), secret societies dating back to Ben Franklin running geopolitics behind the scenes, aliens in disguise infiltrating governments. The “hounds” are demonic dog monsters pursuing our hero. Our hero fails to solve Earth’s problems with his metal-reinforced fists, and wakes up a disembodied consciousness piloting an alien war machine. It could almost be interesting, if 80% of the length and 100% of the 1960s pulp conventions were trimmed away. As it is, it’s still marginally more interesting than any other story in the magazine. Still, it’s so much longer than it needs to be, so I can’t imagine giving it more than D-

—

And that’s it for this issue! That was rough. More like Worlds of F, am I right?

2024 read #101: Cretaceous Dawn by L. M. Graziano and M. S. A. Graziano.

Cretaceous Dawn by L. M. Graziano and M. S. A. Graziano

303 pages

Published 2008

Read from August 29 to August 30

Rating: 1.5 out of 5

I thought I had read this book back when it was new. I certainly had a copy. Upon revisiting it, though, I don't think I made it more than a couple chapters into its sub-technothriller-grade character introductions and technobabble set-up. It just isn't a good book. But I want to power through all the dinosaur fiction I can stand, so let's do our best.

Some things I liked about Cretaceous Dawn: It treats the Late Cretaceous environment as a full ecosystem, with our castaway characters meeting shorebirds, beetles, mammals, and crocodiles long before they see a ground-running dinosaur, and they observe mating before they witness predation. That was neat. The Grazianos also make an effort (small, but appreciated nonetheless) to portray just how uncomfortably hot, humid, bug-ridden, and muddy the Cretaceous flatlands would have been. I love the Cretaceous, but I think mucking about in its coastal swamps would've been miserable. 

That said, the Cretaceous ecology the Grazianos portray feels weirdly depleted. I think most contemporary authors (and even a lot of paleontologists) cannot conceptualize the pre-industrial natural world, and the sheer vastness of the biomass our ancestors shared the world with not even four centuries ago. Modern people might see a squirrel, a sparrow, and an owl on a nature walk, and think that's what the world was like before cities and factory farms. The reality would've been closer to endless herds of bison carpeting the hills and flocks of passenger pigeons hiding the sun — the direct opposite of the Grazianos' insistence that you could walk for days without seeing a large animal.

This is a pet peeve of mine, informed by Paradise Found and other looks at pre-industrial ecology. I hope to alter this perception in my own novels, when I finally write them.

What I didn't like about Dawn makes for a much longer list.

The book is rancid with that post-9/11 worship of uniform. One of the marooned characters is a tough, no-nonsense ex-marine, apparently the only member of the group capable of thinking in terms of survival. Even worse, much of the narrative is a modern day police procedural starring a tough, no-nonsense cop who rose in the ranks solely due to her own grit and determination. The '00s loved fellating their goddamn cops and marines.

The cop plot doesn't even add anything to the book, except padding. You could have left it all on the editorial floor and lost nothing.

It would be generous to call the characters two dimensional. They are: Bland Man, Old Man, Tough Man, and Bland Woman. Bland Man is so horny for Bland Woman that part of him wishes they could stay marooned in the Cretaceous forever. When one of them dies, no one reacts much. Clearly, not even the book is that invested in these characters.

The prose improves (or at least gets less obtrusive) once our group lands in the Cretaceous, but it never develops beyond a reheated imitation of airport fiction.

2024 read #100: The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Winter 2024 issue.

The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Winter 2024 issue (146:1-2)

Edited by Sheree Renée Thomas

258 pages

Published 2024

Read from August 27 to August 28

Rating: 3.5 out of 5

I don’t want this to be the end of F&SF.

It might not be. There’s a chance that the publisher will sort out its internal difficulties and get back on some semblance of a regular schedule. I certainly hope so. Under the editorial auspices of Sheree Renée Thomas, the quality of the magazine’s offerings has been astonishing, the best it’s ever been. Plus, several authors have shared news of contracts signed and edits approved, so there’s still a pulse in the organization, somewhere. My personal hypothesis has been that F&SF is husbanding its resources to release another issue this fall, coinciding with the magazine’s 75th anniversary.

But it’s practically September now. This is still the only issue F&SF has produced in what should have been a celebration year. To my knowledge, this issue never made it to newsstands; I had to shell out $30 to get a print copy from an online reseller.

And I can’t shake the impression that the publisher stooped to using an AI-regurgitated cover. One of Jupiter’s rings simply appears in space, mid-picture, unconnected to anything else, and arcing the wrong way. The cover also has that over-processed sheen that makes AI barf (I refuse to call it art) so off-putting.

So. Things aren’t looking great for F&SF right now.

I haven’t even begun reading this issue, and I’m already tearing up over it. But hey — technically this is still the current issue, so I guess my streak of reading current issues (beginning with March / April 2023) remains unbroken!

—

“what kills the stars” by Alex Bisker. Right out of the gate, this story is a stunner. It’s a deft, powerful tearjerker, expertly mingling the personal with the cosmic, heartbreak with the end of everything. “Confident in the abundance of time” is a phrase that will linger in my head for a long while, a perfect cradle for that tremulous joy we feel before the bottom falls out.

“The Ndayaan Sea” by Moustapha Mbacké Diop. Rich, vivid folkloric fantasy, filled with vaster magic and stranger scenes than any sword & sorcery epic. Excellent.

“The Icy Wasteland at Her Feet” by Deborah L. Davitt. In planning for, and sketching in the details of, my own longer-form stories, I’ve been thinking a lot about both the isolation of space ventures and the unreliability of human technology (particularly technology requiring exacting specs but produced with an emphasis on speed and cost-cutting). This tale of the last survivor of a human expedition to Enceladus makes the most of both themes. A solid story of all too human limitations in a hostile environment.

“Guilt Can Wilt the Sweetest Flower” by Veronica G. Henry. This piece feels like a stylistic and topical throwback to the urban fantasy boom of the 1980s. A traumatized Vietnam vet turned library custodian helps a bag-lady who is more than she seems. I rolled my eyes at the villainous librarian character who scoffs at the veteran’s service and fantasizes about throwing him out in the street once he’s no longer needed. I'd buy that from a nurse, sure, but a librarian? Weird strawman. This was not my kind of thing.

Next, a poem: “Sea and Sky” by Megan Branning. I enjoyed it.

“Mackson’s Mardi Gras Moon Race” by David DeGraff. Another throwback, this time a delightfully uncomplicated moon race tale straight out of the 1970s, with our blue-collar hero hoping his experience with driving untracked routes parlays into an edge against the fully sponsored drivers and the scions of lunar elites. Not a deep story, but entertaining.

“The Wizzzer” by Scott Nicolay. This feels like a 2020s-does-1980s-does-1950s suburban horror piece, layers of nostalgia about someone else’s nostalgia. It isn't bad (at least not by the standards of stories about creepy murderous kids), but it's insubstantial. Its greatest asset is its narrative voice.

“Burned Like Coal” by T. R. Napper. I felt indifferent about this near-future tale of would-be ecoterrorists. Didn't hate it, didn't love it. It was fine.

“The Diamond Factory” by Phoebe Barton. Adamantia Dawn returns to the habitat high in Saturn's atmosphere, years after her escape from its authoritarian horrors, as a final inspector, ready to sign off on the habitat’s decommission and destruction. Unexpectedly, something of the Shining City's vile past remains. This is a brief but effective mood piece. Quite good.

“The Body-Part Woman” by Bonnie Elizabeth. Creative concept for a story: our narrator loans out body parts she has collected to those who might need a hand, an arm, a heart, a stomach. It’s a bravura allegory for the unpaid and unacknowledged labors expected of women in our society, and the violence that is rendered in return. A haunting, uneasy read. Excellent.

“How to Care for Your Domestic God” by Clara Madrigano. The only novelette in an issue of poems and short stories, this piece earns its largesse of space. Madrigano commands your attention from the first line, spinning out an utterly absorbing tale of ancestry, community, domesticity, and the meaning of home. Absolutely riveting slow-burn domestic horror, an instant classic.

A poem: “A Selection of Book Curses” by Megan Branning. Does what it says in the title. I enjoyed it.

“Big Trouble in Sector C” by Robert Friedman & Barry N. Malzberg. A throwback to 1990s cyberpunk here, in which part of Murphy’s consciousness gets uploaded into cyberspace to track down rogue malware while dressed like a noir detective. Shallow stuff, but mildly entertaining.

“All Our Better Angels” by Jack Neel Waddell. Fairly average “time traveler loops back on her own life at various times” tale. Spoilers: It’s basically the same plot as Robert Heinlein’s “‘—All You Zombies—’” (read and reviewed here), but with less self-sex and more cloning, thus somewhat less interesting to me. It’s a fine enough story if you resist comparisons.

“Puzzle Pieces” by Jennifer R. Povey. In a dystopian future of reproductive licenses and widespread eugenics, an autistic child is born to a corporate magnate, who chooses to have her “mitigated.” A poignant middle finger to Autism Speaks and other contemporary eugenicists.

“Zariel: Parable of a Gifted Black Child” by Denzel Xavier Scott. Gorgeously written, weary with worldly wisdom, scintillating with pain and power. Harrowing, yet exalting.

“The Wounded King” by J. A. Prentice. It's hard to follow a story like "Zariel," but this is quite good on its own terms. It's a solid, crisply-written reinterpretation of Arthuriana, an effective allegory for a blood-sucking patriarchy that believes it has all the answers.

“The Interspatial Accessibility Compact’s Guidelines for Cross-Cultural Engagement” by Dane Kuttler. This feels like someone took all those viral Tumblr posts about humans being the wacky, self-destructive, pack-bond-with-anything, Florida Man species of the Federation, and decided to build a setting around them. Which isn't a bad thing, at least not here. Enjoyable.

A poem by Richard Leis, “Cities Through Telescopes,” is solid enough, mingling grief and astronomy.

A piece I’ve been looking forward to for a long time: Avra Margariti’s poem “Vanishing Act.” It is, as expected, captivating, intoxicating, absolutely brilliant.

“Do Not Hasten to Bid Me Adieu” by Will McMahon. I was already enjoying this story's immersive 1930s setting when it took a swerve I never would have guessed, and became absolutely delightful. A quiet, unexpected masterpiece.

—

That’s it for this issue! Not my favorite issue of the Thomas era — yet, like every other Thomas-helmed issue I’ve read, it’s vastly better and more interesting than any issue put out by a prior editor. (C. C. Finlay’s issues have come close, but don’t congrue with my own tastes quite the way that Thomas’ efforts do.) It has its share of all-time great stories, as well.

Let’s hope this isn’t it for F&SF. 

2024 read #99: Soft Science by Franny Choi.

Soft Science by Franny Choi

97 pages

Published 2019

Read August 26

Rating: 5 out of 5

Sometimes a poetry collection will be so precisely worded, so breathtaking and deft and subcutaneous, that I forget that anyone could write any other way. Choi’s rhythms and juxtapositions, metaphors and swerving imagery, swept through every ganglion and left me astonished, gasping after their glimpses of profundity, my rib cage splayed in exquisite release. “[ gospel, hornet ],” they murmur in “Program for the Morning After,” and it makes the only sense I’ve ever encountered. In the aftermath of these poems, for a moment at least, nothing else seems to matter.

Science-fictional motifs recur throughout this book: cyborgs, constructed beings, sentient computers, aliens, synonyms for the dehumanizations of society, of bigotry, of nation, of state violence, of sexuality, of trauma. Soft Science excels as a dizzying exploration of genre as a doorway to gender and grief.

One of the best books I’ve read this year.

2024 read #98: Lost Cargo by P.A. Cornell.

Lost Cargo by P.A. Cornell

152 pages

Published 2022

Read from August 24 to August 25

Rating: 2.5 out of 5

For years now, I've wanted to read more books and stories from the indie authors I interact with through social media. (Mutuals, Rick. We call them mutuals.) I’ve wanted Lost Cargo for a while; I'm happy I was able to snap up a copy before it goes out of print next month.

A freak accident sends would-be space colonists spiraling off course, their pod crashing to the surface of an alien moon. Their only shot at rescue is to trudge to an abandoned camp once used by rich sport hunters. What the hunters used to come here to hunt, however, now stalks the survivors: genetically engineered monsters, superficially similar to dinosaurs.

Lost Cargo is a straightforward survival narrative, to which Cornell gives depth and emotional significance through gently opening up the narrator’s grief and loneliness. A worthwhile read, and motivation to work on my own long-form stories.

2024 read #97: Weird Tales, November 1930 issue.

Weird Tales: A Magazine of the Bizarre and Unusual, November 1930 issue (16:5)

Edited by Farnsworth Wright

148 pages

Published 1930

Read from August 24 to August 25

Rating: 1.5 out of 5

Thanks to online PDF archives, I have a phone full of weird old pulp magazines, most of them with one common denominator: dinosaur stories. I’ve even read one or two of them, to my lasting disappointment. Yet I can’t seem to stop tracking down — and downloading — more.

I had a moderately okay time reading the Women of Weird Tales collection last year. Even a book curated for modern tastes, though, had more than its share of offputting or just plain boring stories. I don’t have high hopes for this issue, which will be my first read of a full Weird Tales magazine. Let’s get into it, I guess!

—

We start off with an unpromising poem, “Teotíhuacán” by Alice l’Anson. It’s a rote, morbidly modernist fantasy of “pagan rites” and human sacrifice. The line art that accompanies it is far better than the poem.

What’s next is the sole reason I’m reading this issue:

“A Million Years After” by Katharine Metcalf Roof. Two masked bandits hold up a museum truck and make off with a box valued at a hundred grand. To their dismay, the box contains only a large egg, which they bury to keep the heat off them after the heist. Soon, moonshiners and deacons alike come face to face with a reptile the size of a house, with a serpentine neck and deadly claws. There’s a kernel of an entertaining story here, mixing Prohibition-era crime pulp with a predatory dinosaur loose upon the countryside, but Roof’s mediocre prose, lacking any point of view, makes it less entertaining than it should be. It ends anticlimactically. I’m in a generous mood, so maybe, in consideration for when it was published, I’ll give it a C-

“Tales of the Werewolf Clan: 1: The Master Strikes” and “Tales of the Werewolf Clan: 2: Hau! Hau! Huguenots!” by H. Warner Munn. A pair of amateurish outings thoroughly impressed with themselves, these linked historical fantasies stumble along through a checklist of 16th century clichés, mostly involving casual cruelty. Munn encumbers his tales with needless lore, and with dialogue like this: “The cat, witches’ familiar, mysterious and too-knowing night animal, sharing the secrets of midnight with the bat and the ghouls that ride the wind, had been but the messenger of the Evil One to bid the corpses rise and come to do his bidding!” I’m pretty sure lore posts on LiveJournal role-playing communities were better written and more interesting than this. F

“The Uncharted Isle” by Clark Ashton Smith. I only know Clark Ashton Smith through posthumous mock-ups that Lin Carter “found in a trunk” and published in his Year’s Best Fantasy series. (Earlier this year, I tried to read The Star Trader, but didn’t get far.) This story is a standard “shipwrecked mariner lands on a primeval lost shore” number, mixing in the lost continent tropes so beloved by Smith and his contemporary fantasists (and by Lin Carter). There isn’t much else to it. The prose is purple, but more fluent than anything so far in this issue. Racist vibes permeate the descriptions of the people our hero encounters, the persistent low-level background racism of how facial features are described and so forth. It also brings this issue’s human sacrifice count to two. Maybe D

“Kings of the Night” by Robert E. Howard. Right out of the gate, we’ve got human sacrifice number three. Clearly, this was something of a preoccupation at the time. A Pictish king named Bran wears a red jewel given to his ancestor by some dude from Atlantis. Our POV is Cormac, Bran’s Hibernian ally in the fight against Rome. This is Howard we’re dealing with, so we get plenty of weird bigotry to go around, with graduated “orders” of “civilization” within the Celtic umbrella. (For example, the Picts, with the exception of the kingly Bran, are apparently primeval, ape-like relics of the Stone Age, who are also degenerated refugees from Atlantis? I guess?) It’s all a lot of bullshit about masculinity and natural kingship and racial hierarchy; JD Vance would love it. As if that weren’t bad enough, it’s way too fucking long. F

“The Cosmic Cloud” by Edmond Hamilton. A rote space opera that feels like it could have been repeated with little variation in the early 1960s, which isn’t so much a compliment to this story as commentary on how stagnant the subgenre became after its blueprint was developed. The diverse men of the Interstellar Patrol (because even on worlds of tree people and crab people, it must always be men) stand between the peoples of the galactic federation and anything that might threaten them. Today, they’re finally getting around to investigating this strange cloud of ether that has reached out and drawn in thousands of ships over the last several days. This piece, for all its formulaic plotting and antique stiffness, has a certain musty charm, like something you’d see riffed on MST3K. Maybe C- (at least by the standards of 1930)

“Stealthy Death” by Seabury Quinn. You know, I had thought this issue (Howard’s tale aside) featured remarkably little racism for 1930, but this tedious murder mystery supplies enough for a dozen magazines. Otherwise, it’s mainly notable for featuring a broad stereotype of an Irish police sergeant who’s mysteriously named Costello. Absolutely sucks. F

A poem: “Great Ashtoreth” by Frank Belknap Long, Jr. It’s mediocre at best.

“The Portal to Power” by Greye La Spina. This one is a serial, broken up across four issues. This issue features part two of four, but because I’m not in the mood to start with the second part of a serial, I went ahead and downloaded the October 1930 issue to read part one instead. Like seemingly most pulp serials I’ve encountered, the plot is a convoluted mishmash of whatever was trendy at the time. Part one begins with a witch, hoping to foil the devil who deceived her, handing off a talisman of great power to a small town doctor, enjoining him to take it to the Circle of Light in San Francisco. In the wrong hands, she warns him, the talisman can open the door to the return of the Old Gods — meaning, inevitably, Pan, whose priest comes in on a motorcycle and gets handed a dummy talisman. Then an airship magnate enters the story to help the doctor. The magnate has a niece, who in turn has scarlet lips and a pet marmoset. It’s all modestly charming until a Black cook character straight out of a minstrel show gets introduced. That threw some ice water over my enthusiasm. I feel no need to read part two. D-

A poem from H. P. Lovecraft’s “Fungi from Yuggoth” sequence is next: “4. Antarktos.” It’s fine.

“The Debt” by Eric A. Leyland. “Share my room because I’m scared of ghosts” seems to have been the 1930s equivalent of the “there was only one bed” trope. At least, this is the second story I’ve read from this era that uses it as a plot device. This story feels distinctively queer, between the haunted man carrying a photo of another man, and the narrator dwelling on how very handsome the man in the photograph is, especially after meeting the man’s ghost: “It was his smile, however, that was so charming. When he smiled, his whole aspect changed remarkably.” That elevates an otherwise forgettable story to a solid C

“A Message from Mars” by Derek Ironside. A bully named Bullivant flies a rocket to Mars, and sends a television broadcast back to Earth, just as the ant-like Martians retaliate for his violence. Hokey, but not terrible. Maybe C-

“Siesta” by Alexander L. Kielland (1880). A translation of a Norwegian original. A Parisian dinner party, its guests collected by a rich Portuguese man, wends through its various personalities, until an Irishman puts on a bravura performance with a piano and, uh, makes them spiritually uncomfortable? I guess? D?

One last poem: “The Cypress-Bog” by Donald Wandrei. At least it’s atmospheric.

—

And that’s it! My favorite thing about this magazine was the variety of subgenres we visited. There may not have been much depth to anything, but we got the full spread of what 1930s SFFH could offer. Which was mostly racism. But still.

My second favorite thing about this issue is the ad on the back cover, promising an “Astonishing Electrical Invention” that is “Startling” and “Uncanny.” “This unquestionably is the queerest, most incredible invention since the first discoveries of radio!” What is this prodigy of modern science?? It’s a car alarm.

2024 read #96: Delicious in Dungeon: Volume 4 by Ryoko Kui.

Delicious in Dungeon: Volume 4 by Ryoko Kui

Translated by Taylor Engel

191 pages

Published 2017 (English translation published 2018)

Read August 24

Rating: 4.5 out of 5

A long reading hiatus as my teen’s summer wound down. I’ve been reading a big anthology of short stories, but I likely won’t finish it for a while, and nothing else sounded interesting to read in the meantime — except more Dungeon Meshi.

This volume begins the long Red Dragon arc, which was a bit of a surprise; the first ten episodes of the anime were so iconic that I had forgotten how quickly the story reaches the town of the golden castle.

The artwork and pacing of these chapters is phenomenal. The shading work on the red dragon somehow feels more menacing on the printed page than it does animated in full color. The shifting, deserted passageways of the city feel eerier here than they do in the anime. Even knowing what would happen, I found myself flipping through the pages of the confrontation with the dragon, on the proverbial edge of my proverbial seat. Excellent stuff.

As in Volume 3, I feel that the pacing works better here in the manga. Character beats have time to linger when, say, you can appreciate a silent panel, rather than get carried along by the linearity of the anime. The revelation about Marcille’s magic speciality, in particular, landed better in the manga.

Spoilers: I also appreciate how defeating the dragon, the triumph you might expect from a fantasy narrative, is only the beginning of the characters' problems.

2024 read #95: Delicious in Dungeon: Volume 3 by Ryoko Kui.

Delicious in Dungeon: Volume 3 by Ryoko Kui

Translated by Taylor Engel

191 pages

Published 2016 (English translation published 2017)

Read August 13

Rating: 4 out of 5

In my reviews for both prior volumes, I emphasized how faithfully this manga had been adapted into the anime. But there are still some differences between the different media.

The pacing is better in the manga, I think. Flashbacks and cuts to different parties seem more natural on the printed page. Character beats land with more solidity than they do in the animated version; Namari, in particular, seems way more present in this tankōbon than she did in the corresponding episodes (which is great, because I adore her as a character). The arc where the party is stuck at the level of the underground lake seemed to overstay its welcome in the show, but feels perfectly fine here.

Perhaps all of that is because I know where things are going and no longer feel antsy whenever a subplot gets in the way of what I thought was the main quest.

All in all, of course, the adaptation was extremely faithful. I’ve noticed only a couple major changes from page to screen. I’ve hit my stride reading this series, though, mostly shedding the feeling of repetition in favor of a lovely comfort read vibe.

2024 read #94: Delicious in Dungeon: Volume 2 by Ryoko Kui.

Delicious in Dungeon: Volume 2 by Ryoko Kui

Translated by Taylor Engel

191 pages

Published 2015 (English translation published 2017)

Read from August 12 to August 13

Rating: 4 out of 5

Somehow it’s been four months since I read Delicious in Dungeon: Volume 1. Volume 2 has been sold out, and pretty much impossible to obtain, this whole time, until quite recently. In the meantime, I finished the first season of the anime, then I began Witch Hat Atelier to scratch that fantasy manga itch, and became obsessed with it.

After all this time, it almost feels strange making my way back into the dungeon with Marcille, Laios, Senshi, and the gang. Having watched the thoroughly faithful anime adaptation not so long ago, I struggled a bit with feelings of repetition. The creative ways Kui utilizes the creatures in her dungeon (such as the golem fields in Chapter 8, or the exorcism sorbet in Chapter 11) lose some of their impact when you know what’s coming. It’s important, but not always easy, to try to recapture that sense of wonder from when I watched the anime. It’s harder to turn off that part of my brain when my attention span is already frazzled with summer.

None of that, of course, should detract from the manga. And sure enough, so gradually that I didn’t notice it at first, it transcended mere repetition and became a comfort read. I’ve missed these characters, and I’ve missed the dungeon ecosystem Kui maps out. 

2024 read #93: The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Winter-Spring 1950 issue.

The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Winter-Spring 1950 issue (1:2)

Edited by Anthony Boucher & J. Francis McComas

128 pages

Published 1950

Read from August 10 to August 11

Rating: 1 out of 5

So, I had this plan to read an issue of F&SF from each decade of its existence, double back when I got to the 2020s, and do it again going the other way. I only made it as far as the 1960s before losing what little focus I had. Instead, today we’re hopping back to the 1950s for this, the second-ever issue of the magazine.

It would take me so many years to read through every single issue of F&SF, especially since I would need to buy hundreds more issues (some of them at collector’s prices) to make it happen. As much as I’ve thought about it, I probably won’t attempt it. But I might try to read through every issue I have access to, which happily includes its first full decade, thanks to online archives.

I don’t have high hopes for this issue. I’m choosing to read it because of the Ray Bradbury and Margaret St. Clair pieces, and also because the Coleridge reprint technically lets me add another item to my 1800s decade tag.

—

“The Gnurrs Come From the Voodvork Out” by R. Bretnor. The vast majority of 1950s humor hasn’t aged well. I’ve also never been impressed with any of Bretnor’s efforts. The  editorial blurb above this story hyperventilates: “[A]ny mention of gnurrs tends to reduce both editors to a quivering state of helplessness which has been authoritatively diagnosed as hysteria bretnorica.” What exactly is so hysterical, you ask? We have a kook inventor named Papa Schimmelhorn, a hidebound military officer who still yearns for cavalry, a WAC secretary who’s miffed by the lack of sexual harassment from her commander, and the gnurrs, who swarm out of the wainscoting to eat everyone’s clothes. It reads like something finely tuned to the sensibilities of midcentury 10 year old boys — maybe like old Bugs Bunny cartoons, but not funny. F

“The Return of the Gods” by Robert M. Coates (1948). This reprint, a tale of Greek gods (and various associated creatures) appearing to unsuspecting WWII veterans throughout the Northeast, originally appeared in The New Yorker. The prose has an oddly antique cadence, with news-magazine “the facts of the case” narration. The story itself feels like a throwback, as well, hearkening back to the Pan fad of the 1890s through 1930s. Yet it also has a whisper of the midcentury apocalypse genre within it, perhaps the earliest such expression of atomic anxiety I’ve encountered. I didn’t dislike it, aside from a sprinkling of the typical “women love sexual harassment, actually” bullshit. C-?

“Every Work Into Judgment” by Kris Neville. Dull, bible-thumping drivel that’s thoroughly impressed with itself, this one is a would-be philosophical ramble about a building on a future college campus. The building slowly gains sentience and telekinesis, and gets religion. Neville’s prose strains to attain poetry and meaning, but only gets in its own way. Maybe F+

A Samuel Taylor Coleridge poem, “Time, Real and Imaginary” (1803), has been inserted to fill half a page. First ever poem in F&SF! It might also be my first exposure to Romantic poetry, at least for the purposes of this blog. I liked it, but probably wouldn’t want an entire book of it.

“A Rope for Lucifer” by Walt Sheldon. An early example of a fantasy western, unsurprisingly freighted with racist caricature. If you’re like me, you probably imagined some bronco-busting variation on “The Devil Went Down to Georgia,” but no: our epistolary narrator is the one named Lucifer, and the tale centers on how he received a sacred rope from mysterious India. The story never develops any degree of pizazz. D?

“The Last Generation?” by Miriam Allen deFord (1946). Another postwar atomic anxiety tale, originally published in Collier’s, pre-dating Coates’ effort by two years (though it employs the same news-magazine format). This time a testing accident in New Mexico renders all mammals sterile, all over the globe. The outcomes deFord lays out are equal parts creative and hopelessly optimistic; universal infertility leads to world peace and cooperation, for example, while the world’s rich men are happy to have their now uninheritable wealth taxed for the greater good. However, even within a global utopia, deFord couldn’t resist casting the usual white writer’s aspersions on China, India, and Africa. Maybe D+

“Postpaid to Paradise” by Robert Arthur (1940). I can safely say this is my very first philatelist fantasy. Magic stamps that transport the recipient to El Dorado are a neat conceit. Since this was 1940, alas, the narrator has to emphasize that one of the stamps depicts a teenage girl, before he promptly leers at her. Meh. D-

“The Exiles” by Ray Bradbury (1949). It’s hard to describe this piece without spoiling it, so here are the spoilers: All the canonical literary fantasists of the past (Shakespeare, Poe, Dickens, Baum, Lovecraft, Algernon Blackwood, etc.), kept alive thanks to those who read their books, have exiled themselves to Mars to escape the relentless pragmatism of science and progress. With the first astronauts approaching Mars, the fantasists use the magic of their creations (the witches of Macbeth, etc.) to kill or frighten them away. But the astronauts have an unexpected weapon: the last copies of their books, banned long ago. It’s a shallow business, and very much in the thrall of the white man canon, but it’s cute. I could see this as a Doctor Who serial. C+

“My Astral Body” by Anthony Hope (1895). The “mystical East” meets Edwardian social comedy in this tale from the 1890s. An unnamed “rajah” teaches a well-to-do Oxford student how to project an astral body. The student promptly sends his astral body to attend church and to get trousers measured for him. All this casual employment gives the astral body big ideas, and soon our Oxford student has regrets. A shrug. D

“Gavagan’s Bar” by L. Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt. Actually a pair of stories: “Elephas Frumenti,” which sees bar patrons discuss selectively breeding elephants down to whiskey-drinking house pets, and “The Gift of God,” in which a Christian poet doesn’t know what to do when a miracle happens to her. This pair of flash stories launched the long-running Gavagan’s Bar series, which proved popular for some years in F&SF. I don’t get the appeal. Maybe D?

“World of Arlesia” by Margaret St. Clair. This author is hit or miss, and unfortunately, this one falls in the miss category. The plot — an immersive movie is used to pull people into a Matrix-like work camp — is interesting, and the narration dabbles with second-person, but the pieces don’t quite gel together. D+

“The Volcanic Valve” by W. L. Alden (1897). A supposedly humorous yarn about a scientist who, hoping to perfect a means of controlling volcanoes for profit, inadvertently triggers the explosion of Krakatoa. Full of the horrid racism of contemporary English authors, the entire punchline seems to be “our plan blew up our Chinese workmen.” F

“Not with a Bang” by Damon Knight. A supposedly humorous last-man-on-Earth tale. The “humor” derives from the fact that last woman on Earth is a prim Protestant who can’t wrap her head around the changed circumstances and just give the man some kids already. Gross as fuck. Something worse than F

—

Even with low expectations, this issue managed to disappoint me. The last two stories, in particular, were horrendous. I’ve read worse issues from the 1980s, but this one was a marked step down from the dubious charms of the first issue.

2024 read #92: Cretaceous by Tadd Galusha.

Cretaceous by Tadd Galusha

160 pages

Published 2019

Read from August 8 to August 9

Rating; 3.5 out of 5

An entirely wordless graphic novel is new territory for this blog. I feel that graphic novels (even wordless ones!) count as reading; you’re animating a mental narrative from printed visual input, whether that’s words or artwork. Besides, it’s a dinosaur story, so I’d find a way to include it here no matter what.

Cretaceous is a typical “red in tooth and claw” interpretation of life at the tail end of its namesake period. There’s even a “circle of life” sequence that follows from a dying Triceratops to the flies that consume its flesh to the mammal that tries to eat the flies to the small theropod that eats the mammal to the Quetzalcoatlus that eats the theropod to the mosasaur that eats a quetzal chick, and so on.

The artwork is solid; Galusha has a talent for flow between panels, varying his layouts for maximum impact. The story itself isn’t deep. It weaves, nature documentary style, between a handful of recurring characters: a bereaved Tyrannosaurus seeking vengeance against a pack of albertosaurs, an orphaned rex chick surviving the dangerous wilds, a dromaeosaur pack trying to bite everybody, etc. It’s pretty to look at, but it still anthropomorphizes the animals (like any nature doc), while giving us less emotional attachment than Raptor Red.

Of course, it also gives us fewer cringey sound effects and juvenile phrases than Raptor Red, so it’s a net positive overall.

2024 read #91: Witch Hat Atelier: Volume 10 by Kamome Shirahama.

Witch Hat Atelier: Volume 10 by Kamome Shirahama

Translated by Stephen Kohler

156 pages

Published 2022 (English translation published 2022)

Read August 9

Rating: 4 out of 5

We’ve reached the end of my self-allotted ration of Witch Hat for the month. In September, I’ll read volumes 11 and 12, and be all caught up with the translated books. Sad face.

After the emotional tension and thematic knots laid out so beautifully in Volume 9, this tankōbon feels a bit like a muddle, quick-cutting through storylines for all the girls (and Tartah and Custas too) while also introducing fresh complications in the form of King Deanreldy and his son Prince Eoleo.

It all feels important to Shirahama’s themes of power, its risks, and who decides who gets to wield it. It gives us the most visceral glimpse yet into why certain practices of magic have been banned in this world. But the storytelling felt a bit like a plateau after the breathless build of Volume 9.

Not that I didn’t like it, by any means. Shirahama continues to expertly weave tragedy and dread throughout the seemingly innocent fantasy. Certain other series about young people learning to be witches could never maintain this level of quality.

2024 read #90: Witch Hat Atelier: Volume 9 by Kamome Shirahama.

Witch Hat Atelier: Volume 9 by Kamome Shirahama

Translated by Stephen Kohler

174 pages

Published 2021 (English translation published 2022)

Read from August 5 to August 6

Rating: 4 (maybe 4.5) out of 5

If Shirahama’s artwork felt less ambitious in Volume 8, she more than makes up for it here. Right from the first sequence of Chapter 46, which transitions from a storybook of old legends into Coco and friends’ arrival in the city of Ezrest, and then visualizes the girls' explorations of the city as a board game, this tankōbon is full of clever, creative, and downright gorgeous uses of art to tell (and to augment) the story.

Also, the thematic table-setting in Volume 8 pays off here, as the conflict between helping people with magic, and keeping magic tightly guarded for fear of its abuse in the wrong hands, makes for an explosive emotional crisis. Shirahama does an excellent job at portraying what’s at stake, both for the hardline magic cops (and why they do what they do) as well as the ordinary people who have been deprived of magic by fiat, after horrors committed centuries before.

It’s damn fine storytelling, possibly my favorite tankōbon from this series so far.

2024 read #89: Witch Hat Atelier: Volume 8 by Kamome Shirahama.

Witch Hat Atelier: Volume 8 by Kamome Shirahama

Translated by Stephen Kohler

155 pages

Published 2020 (English translation published 2021)

Read August 5

Rating: 3.5 out of 5

Both for budgetary reasons and to eke out the remaining volumes, I’ve been rationing how many I can order each month. For August, I’ve obtained volumes 8, 9, and 10. I’m saving 11 and 12 (where the extant run of translated tankōbon ends) for September.

This volume begins a new story arc, with Coco (and the rest of Qifrey's atelier) preparing to go to the Silver Eve festival in Ezrest, to help out Tartah at his stationery booth. Tartah's childhood crush on Coco is perhaps the least interesting plotline in this series for me, so centering that crush (and Tartah) made this a middling volume at best.

I get that the focus on Tartah and Custas (who hasn’t been able to walk since the river flood way back in Volume 2) is to provide more of a commoner’s-eye point of view, a desire to change the world to help ordinary people, chafing against all the ancient restrictions on magic. The conflict between the desire to change the world for the better, and the very good reasons to restrict magic, is one of the core themes of the series, so it makes sense to highlight it this way, complicating Coco’s allegiances as we build toward the denouement. It underlines important concepts of privilege, accessibility, and equity.

Still, I just never clicked with Tartah as a character. It seems like a waste to focus so much on him when literally any of the characters in the atelier could use the airtime. Maybe that’s just my opinion, though. “This character isn’t my favorite” is a silly critique of a children’s manga from someone who’s an adult and not the target audience.

Shirahama’s artwork remains as impressive as always, though it doesn’t get the same chance to shine here as it did in Volume 7.

2024 read #88: The Woods All Black by Lee Mandelo.

The Woods All Black by Lee Mandelo

150 pages

Published 2024

Read from July 28 to August 4

Rating: 3.5 out of 5

Lately, my partner R has gotten fixated on queer Appalachian fantasy and horror. I've been wanting to write in this niche myself, so from professional as well as personal interest, I should start familiarizing myself with it.

R recommended this slim novel as a good place to begin. Of course, no matter how slender the book is, it’s still summer as I try to read it, so I’m having my usual difficulties in finding opportunities to read (or the attention span to read when I do).

For its length, Woods is a slow burn, which didn’t help my focus. It centers on an "invert" named Leslie, a nurse with PTSD from World War I, who gets sent to an isolated community in the hills of eastern Kentucky in 1929. There he finds community hostility; an authoritarian brimstone preacher; a fellow trans man (as we might now consider him) who is being abused by the community; and something strange deep in the hills.

I felt that Mandelo does an excellent job at situating Woods in its time and place, conveying Leslie’s queerness and neurodivergence without resorting to couching them in modern terms. The peril of queerness in dangerous times makes for uneasy reading, and the loneliness of trying to model a form of queerness that doesn’t fit, at a time when few models were circulated even within the community, is heartbreaking. Humans (or at least Christofascists) are the true horror in Woods.