Short SF marathon Day 3&4: Bell, Black, de Bodard, Butner, Bowes, Brenchley

Helena Bell, “Lovecraft.” Clarkesworld, October 2014.

My mother visited yesterday, so I had no time to post then. Hence six stories today, the first of which is a domestic horror drama, about a middle aged woman who carries a mouth on her collar bone, through which she spews cthulhu and the young woman who starts to care for her and one special cthulhu. A deftly done kitchen sink drama, so to speak, but I’m not quite sure which period it’s supposed to be set in and if the “Howard” in the story is meant to be the Lovecraft of the title. It left me slightly dissatisfied.

Holly Black, “Ten Rules for Being an Intergalactic Smuggler (the Successful Kind).” Lightspeed, September 2014.

This was a, fun, old fashioned adventure science fiction story, of a young woman who stows away on her uncle ship and learns the hard way how to become a successfull smuggler. There’s nothing really surprising or new about the story, but the way Black tells it makes all the difference. I’d like her to write more about Tera Lloyd and her new, alien partner, as this pretty much feels like an origin story.

Aliette de Bodard, “The Days of the War, as Red as Blood, as Dark as Bile.” Subterranean, Spring 2014.

This is another short story set in the same universe as On a Red Station, Drifting, set in the same slow burning civil war featured in that as well. If you like this setting, you’ll this, but it is a bit of a story fragment rather than a complete story, a feeling I have with more of her short work.

It is in fact something I’ve noticed with quite of the short stories I’ve read so far, that they set up and briefly explore a situation, before ending. Few of the stories seem to tell a fully rounded story; sometimes this looks like a deliberate choice, as with “Lovecraft”, just a slice out of somebody’s life intersected with the strange, sometimes it seems as if the writer’s running out of steam. Is this an internet thing?

Richard Butner, “Circa.” Interfictions Online #3, May 2014.

I read this two hours ago and already need to dip back into the story to see what it was about. Not a good sign, but this is a ghost story in which two eighteen year old friends go for a sleep over in an old house in 1984, he makes at her, she rejects them, then he sees her future self when she’s on the toilet. They meet up again in 2014 the night before the house will be demolished, talk about their separate lives since then and then he sees the ghost of her past self.

Trite is the word for it. Midlife crisises are not made more interesting with a mild application of the supernatural.

Richard Bowes, “Sleep Walking Now and Then.” Tor.com, July 9, 2014.

I’ve read stories like this before, in uninspiring volumes of Gardner Dozois’ Year’s Best, a slightly meandering, overlong story of future decadence, clumsily written, where the writer feels the need to mention that New York is now the Big Arena three or four times in the course of the story. Anyway, a future theatre production is set in an old hotel, showcasing several acts of violence that happened in its turbulent past, through which the audience can walk and look on to. All it’s missing is a third act…

There’s the hint of a decent story here, but the writing needs to be tightened a lot.

Chaz Brenchley, “The Burial of Sir John Mawe at Cassini.” Subterranean, Spring 2014.

I’m a bit wary of Space:1899 style retrofuture steampunk stories, but if you like that sort of thing, this is a good example of how to do it properly. On a Mars where the British presence is barely tolerated by the natives, who, in a neat twist, aren’t so much the people who dug the canals but the people who live in the canals and the crater lakes, a man hanged for violating the Charter is being buried with all the pomp and circumstance the city of Cassini can give him. As Old Cobb, the gravedigger finds out, something else is going on though.

What made this story for me was that Brenchley is fully aware of the nastiness of the British Empire he depicts, even though this isn’t noticable on the surface of it. It makes me curious to see if this was a oneshot or if he has written more in this universe.