'Nathan Burgoine's Blog, page 42

Short Stories 366:175 — “Perfectly You,” by David A. Robertson

[image error]Imagine, if you will, a technology that allows you to run a kind of simulation of potential choices. You hook yourself up, close your eyes, and have a dream to find out if you and someone you’re crushing out on could actually work things out together—or even just so you can consider them without spoiling the current, unpolished potentiality of it all? Now imagine you’re one of the first people to test it out, you’ve gotten someone’s phone number but can’t bring yourself to call, and so you go under expecting to have a kind of virtual dream of a date, and instead it goes in a completely unexpected way. Now you’re ready for “Perfectly You,” from Love Beyond Body, Space and Time, by David A. Robertson.

I think the huge win of this story is exactly in its set-up: the girl in question, who has such a crush on someone she can’t help but idealize (and even has her number, but can’t bring herself to call) decides to try something safe. It can’t ruin reality because it’s not reality. Except anything we experience is, on some level, “real,” and what the device does with her “Vacation” delivers such a powerful message about hesitation and waiting and the end result leaves her in no different a situation, just with a different notion of what the risks truly are. It’s a lovely use of the science fiction “romance of technology” theme to evolve a character, and I left this tale with a smile.

One of my favourite things about short stories is how often the really good stories leave the reader with a kind of catch-22 of a narrative: you have been given enough to have a complete moment; you also want to know what happens next. I think it’s the stories that deliver a third piece: but you know what would likely happen next that really claim a spot in my heart (especially when that knowledge is so very queer positive).

A note: I found this story in Love Beyond Body, Space, and Time: An LGBT and Two-Spirit Sci-Fi Anthology, but I need to point out this is one of those anthologies I’ve had in my collection for, well, years. It’s been sitting on my iPad, and it was only when someone asked me if I’d read it that I went to look and found out the publisher is defunct due to the publisher, Bedside Press, being shuttered when the editor confessed to sexual misconduct and sexual assault. After I went looking online and hit that roadblock, I was looking through my digital library to see what other anthologies I had and found my copy. Accordingly, I’m going to suggest you check out anything by David A. Roberston via his web-page, as I can find no information about where support for this anthology goes.

Short Stories 366:174 — “You Deserve,” by Alex Jeffers

[image error]When it comes to Alex Jeffers, I usually settle in for a story with some fabulism or other flavour of the speculative (see the brilliant collection That Door is a Mischief), beautiful prose, and a rich emotionality. In Not Here. Not Now. Stories and Novellas, however, “You Deserve” delivers a slow-building tension instead of some sort of magical otherness. Almost from the moment the tale begins, there’s a coiling sense of something bad, as we join Max, a boy riding with his handsome friend Rory in a boat, and then slide forward and backward through different moments in the boy’s life as he tries to explain and understand this handsome boy, his own feelings, and the world that has led him to this moment.

On the surface, “You Deserve” has one of my most beloved elements to a story: a found family. Max is struggling with believing he is safe, or wanted, or loved. Adopted by two dads (he calls them Big Dad and Little Dad, which is adorable), one of whom is laid off, their new family decides to go to the summer cottage for the whole summer. The other dad is a writer, and is working on a nonfiction book about their adoption of Max; this is one of those aside moments that coils more tension, as they take a moment to let Max know he’ll get to read it before its sent in and he can veto anything he doesn’t want the world to know. Max himself doesn’t really want to think about it, but as his feelings for Rory grow—and grow complicated—his mind slides back to the past, to what got him here, to things said to him, and done to him.

Ultimately, despite this being a really, really dark story full of (mostly off-page) violence and all-too-real horror, Max seems to manage to hold onto a thread of fragile hopefulness, and even at the very end of the tale, despite some truly creepy intimations of action and thought, I caught myself hoping that Max would be okay. I shouldn’t be surprised. Jeffers has made me care for so many people in his work, why would this be any different?

Short Stories 366:173 — “Daughter of Kings,” by Ana Mardoll

[image error]Oh, how I loved this one. It’s basically a shifted/adjusted re-telling of a sword-in-the-stone tale, but where the prophecy states it will be a woman heir to a particular family line, and, as always, Mardoll’s take on this fantasy trope is through a trasngender or nonbinary lens, and this time, “Daughter of Kings,” (found in No Man of Woman Born) brings us Finndís, who keeps her name and reality secret to all but her closest confidant, and who is about to come face-to-face with a destiny she barely dared to consider.

The strength of this tale is so inherently in the characters, I cannot even begin to tell you. Finndís’s brother, Rúni, is as adorable as he is frustratingly annoying in that little-brother way, and his impulsiveness-as-plot-device reads wholly realistically rather than forced, which itself lends back to the character depth of their father (whose shadow looms over most of the story and only actively appears in the denouement). A little boy who wants to see the legendary sword up close and won’t be denied is a great way to spark the tale.

The magic and fantastical weave together in this story through a witch, the prophecy, and the magical sword itself, but again the real joy is in the characters, and while this story doesn’t have what I’d call enthusiastic acceptance by any means, it has a canny woman in Finndís who knows how to play reality to her advantage, and who has just enough support among those gathered that you leave the story knowing this will end well for her, and her triumph is all the more satisfying for it.

Short Stories 366:172 — “The Descent,” by Jamieson Wolf

[image error]Whenever I sit down to read a story from Jamieson Wolf, I get ready for the sparkle. There’s a kind of bright joie-de-vivre Wolf brings to his prose that’s infectious and bubbly, and honestly sometimes it’s the perfect balm. So when I got to his tale in Nothing Without Us, I was ready for some of that fictional glitter. And I got it, with a heaping dose of amusingly sarcastic wizard Jefferson on his way to meet with an oracle.

Wolf’s worldbuilding is just enough, a dash of mystical contract here, a mention of suddenly appearing doors or chairs there, but this is clearly some sort of parallel to our world happening at the same time—think Harry Dresden, or Charmed—and for Jefferson, part of the magic is what happened to him when he was diagnosed with M.S., and his M.S. ended up with more-or-less a personality and form of its own. Though he half-jokingly referred to this being as Max Shadow, Max is there alongside Jefferson when he starts what is going to be a long and difficult journey down to see the Oracle. Because the journey to the Oracle is different for everyone, and for Jefferson, who struggles with stairs, the journey is, well, stairs. A lot of them.

In Wolf’s hands, the balance between amusing and reality is deftly juggled throughout the story. Jefferson’s travails down the stairwell aren’t sugar-coated (he’s struggling, he’s in pain, and he’s definitely not doing well) but his snappy conversation with Max throughout the descent counterpoints with dogged determination to get to the prize and get a real answer to what Jefferson can do about this unwanted aspect of his life. The ultimate destination (also funny) and result (which warmed the heart) are so very Jamieson Wolf that I ended the tale in the way I imagined I would: with a smile.

Short Stories 366:171 — “Psychometry, or Gone with the Dust,” by Craig Laurance Gidney

[image error]I’ve talked before about how the first story in a collection has to pull more than its own weight, and here’s another shining example of a story that pulls it off perfectly. “Psychometry, or Gone with the Dust,” opens Skin Deep Magic: Short Fiction with this sense of precarious balance between the magic, the real, and a doorway quite literally opening on someone’s former life. We meet a duo, a gay man and a Black woman, both working at a home where the former occupant passed away. She was a hoarder, and the place is full of what I can only think to describe as “racist kitsch” maybe? Lawn jockeys, syrup bottles, dolls… it’s a house full of creepy, horrible, items, and they’re there to catalog and potentially sell them.

The woman has a gift, however, and as she touches items, she can sometimes catch glimpses into the past of the item, and those who were around it. So what might otherwise have already been a disturbing job becomes all the more shudder-inducing as her power ignites, and object after object whispers their stories to her. It’s not long before it’s clear that every story in this home will be a potential hell. It eventually drives her outside just to stop and breathe… and she’ll have to go back inside and keep working.

The immersion was so immediate I barely realized I was on to the next story and the next story, which brings me back to that whole “the first story in a collection has to do extra work” thing. Setting the tone for the whole, drawing in the reader, and letting you know what you’re in for. I flipping dove into this one and didn’t come up for air until the dog demanded a walk.

Short Stories 366:170 — “610 North, 610 West,” by Bryan Washington

[image error]Throughout the tales in Lot: Stories, Bryan Washington circles back to a particular family, though the eyes of a mixed race son, and those particular tales take on the relationship between this son—the gay kid slowly realizing he’s gay—and his family, usually throwing one person onto the main stage. It’s an incredibly effective narrative progression, and whenever the son’s tales popped up, I was all the more immediately invested in the already engrossing collection.

This time we get a glimpse of the son’s home life living above the restaurant the family runs, his Black mother, his brother and sister, but most of the focus here is squarely on his Latino father, who begins an affair at the start of the tale, and eventually makes the completely unexplained choice to take his son with him on one visit to his mistress. Before this, the two brothers have been trying to guess what this woman would be like—his brother assumes she’ll be white, he’s not so sure—but the ultimate revelation of her being much like his own mother, only “plainer than plain” and smelling like cinnamon adds this emotional punch to the moment: you can feel the boy face-to-face with no easy answer to the question of why.

Like all the stories in the collection, the characters and locations aren’t those we often get to read about, and the sharp divides in place and people blur throughout the story (the Black mother’s trip to a market usually full of Latinx shoppers; the son himself noting that apart from his hair, he can pass). These glimpses of the different neighbourhoods of Houston are as much characters as the people, and the whole is all the stronger for it. And while there is an ongoing sense of collapse around this boy’s family—not just in his father leaving, but the wanderings of his sister, and the sliding of his brother into a toxic take of masculinity—the boy himself has this kind of held-breath of hope in him.

Short Stories 366:169 — “Mothers,” by Carmen Maria Machado

[image error]Okay, so basically I have a new name to champion when someone asks me for an example of the crossover between “literary” fiction (smile!) and “genre” fiction (snort!) in that snooty way that always comes with the implicit understanding there’s no answer because literary means good and genre means that nonsense like science fiction or what-have-you. The whole collection Her Body and Other Parties walks the line, and holy flying crap this story, “Mothers,” just had me shaking while I listened, walking the dog and shifting between potential realities (or hallucinations?), potential pasts, split presents, multiple futures… I just. Wow.

I should say that I’m choosing to launch into my reading of this story in a certain way: that, indeed, the couple have “defied” nature and had a child, though I can understand other readers deciding the child is metaphorical in some way. Instead, I walked into the woman’s head and just let her be right. Even when she faces impossibilities, to believe her and let that be my “magnetic north” of a story that changes direction seemingly mid-breath, but in an emotional flow that had me completely captivated from step one. What do you do when you’ve been left a baby from a former (and abusive) partner (given the name Bad)? What do you do when you see all of it at once—everything that was, will be, wasn’t, could have been—happening now, then, someday, and with those events staring you in the face and asking you who you are?

Extra love to the narrator in this one, as she cartwheeled with complete grace through the tones and emotional states of the narrator with complete ease (I’m sure that’s accomplished by lots of editing, but the end result is the part I get to hear, so, again, kudos). The last few fraught moments of this story were also such a perfect moment to end on, as unsure and uncertain and self-recriminating as they were. I just… wow. Some stories you read and you find yourself elsewhere and elsewhen in the most incredible ways, and this was one of them.

 

Short Stories 366:168 — “Legends are Made, Not Born,” by Cherie Dimaline

[image error]Oh, this was freaking delightful. First, it has one of the strongest openings of any short fiction piece I’ve read in ages for drawing you in, starting with a sharp shock to the system—My mom was a Catholic halfbreed who named me after a pack of smokes, Semaa-tobacco. She died in a fiery blaze of glory winning a snowmobile race.—and the tale moves forward to the surviving boy being moved to live with his Auntie Dave in a gloriously described home of contrasts and compliments in both decoration and style.

I think one of the things I love the most about this tale is how very little is left up to interpretation about character: the boy is gay (though he does not know it yet, the authorial voice states it clearly as just that fact: “didn’t know yet,”), Auntie Dave is Two-Spirit. These are facts, and set against the backdrop of the boy grieving his mother, the anchor of the emotionality of the tale gets to take centre stage with that queerness being completely explicit. Reading this story reminded me how often I have to wait for some sort of authorial “reveal,” and how refreshing it is not to have to do so. The rest of the tale flows from this recovery, and shifts from mourning an ending to the start of something brilliant.

Honestly, this story is just so healing and wonderful to begin with, and the characters felt so real, like someone just sitting down and telling me about their friends while they dropped by for a chat. I know it sounds like maybe I’m overstating this a bit, but I don’t know if I can honestly explain just how welcoming it is as a reader to find this kind of “yeah, Auntie Dave is Two-spirit, I’m gay, and here’s the story…” directness. I loved it.

A note: I found this story in Love Beyond Body, Space, and Time: An LGBT and Two-Spirit Sci-Fi Anthology, but I need to point out this is one of those anthologies I’ve had in my collection for, well, years. It’s been sitting on my iPad, and it was only when someone asked me if I’d read it that I went to look and found out the publisher is defunct due to the publisher, Bedside Press, being shuttered when the editor confessed to sexual misconduct and sexual assault. After I went looking online and hit that roadblock, I was looking through my digital library to see what other anthologies I had and found my copy. Accordingly, I’m going to suggest you check out anything by Cherie Dimaline via her web-page, as I can find no information about where support for this anthology goes.

 

Short Stories 366:167 — “The Sharpshooter,” by B.R. Sanders

[image error]If there’s one thing I adore about queer authors, it’s how often queer authors take a trope or a particular plot line and shift it in a different direction. Such is the case with this story, “The Sharpshooter,” from The Myriad Carnival. We begin with the titular act, where a blindfolded sharpshooter in corset and high curls nails every bullseye on targets shifted into position after the blindfold is put in place, and it’s only after the trick shots and kisses blown flirtatiously into the crowd that we get to meet the sharpshooter, alone and back stage, where we watch Yves as they all but tear themself free from the costume they wear for their act.

Which is when a left-behind lover from a few locations back arrives, and things get complicated. Sanders drips the revelations along the story with a great cadence: Yves’s history, how much they hate having to present so feminine for the act (but understanding it adds to the cash flow), how they are so successful at sharpshooting, how many people there are with a broken hearts behind Yves’s shows, and—most centrally—how it is that Yves never misses a trick shot. Their gun is enchanted, and will strike anything accurately, but only if the shooter feels no fear. Which becomes a problem when the latest broken heart to arrive has her husband following close behind, a man who is definitely frightening.

That the story ends in a duel between the sharpshooter and the jilted husband, and that it’s clear from the onset of the sharpshooter’s final act that fear is affecting every shot, lends a tension to the story that builds up to the final moments. The revelations that follow, however, had me grinning in my seat, and as I said at the beginning, loving how so often queer authors find a way to take a step in a completely unexpected direction.

Short Stories 366:166 — “His Father’s Son,” by Ana Mardoll

[image error]Another swing-and-a-hit from No Man of Woman Born, a collection of prophecy-busting fantasy with transgender and nonbinary leads. “His Father’s Son” brings us to young Nocien, a survivor of a terrible assault that wiped out most of his family camp, who is living with those who found him when he managed to escape. Learning swordplay, and nominally adopted into this new family, Nocien longs for revenge and the opportunity to take it, and the day finally arrives when the same force that attacked his family is sighted heading for his new one.

There are a couple of wonderful bits of world-building in this tale: the way the large, extended family/camps work among them, with shared parenting duties and puppy-piles of children and adults in tents. The semi-nomadic culture is brushed on with light strokes, but it’s enough to grant a fully-formed picture of this fantasy world and setting, and the adoptive family/camp’s frantic “tear it all down and move” was a pacing win to set the stakes high from the get go.

Nocien’s decision to take this opportunity to kill the man who destroyed his family is frought with tension (though knowing that Mardoll would never kill the main character is a welcome bit of reader meta-knowledge, frankly), and his ultimate squaring off with the brute in question is really, really satisfying. These fantasy stories can be brutal in places (and they are), but with Mardoll at the helm, I never feel like I’m in danger of hopelessness, and that’s a huge, huge win and not something I can underscore enough.