The Altar of Hate, by Vox Day
There are two secrets about short stories. The first is that we writers primarily write them for each other – for editors of short fiction magazines and anthologies and award committees and so forth. In general, your average reader (that is, a reader who is not also a writer) tends to prefer novel-length fiction of 40,000 words and up, and will usually only read short stories that are part of a larger continuity, like tie-in short stories for a long novel series or a shared universe. Exceptions, of course, are numerous, but nonetheless still exceptional.
The second secret is that short stories are really hard to do well. It’s like packing a suitcase, really – there’s more room to work with in a big wheeled case, but if you’re packing a small carry-on bag, everything has to fit exactly right, with the sort of packing precision seen only in military deployments and traveling salesmen with 50,000 frequent flier miles. This is true of short stories. Everything must fit exactly right or the story does not work – the story must hit all five of the Iron Laws Of Storytelling, and do it while staying short.
With that in mind, let’s discuss some short stories – specifically, the short stories in THE ALTAR OF HATE by Vox Day.
I’ve reviewed some of Vox Day’s books in the past, and so the author was kind enough to send me an advance copy of THE ALTAR OF HATE a collection of his short stories. There are some weaker stories in the collection, and oddly enough they are mostly in the front half, like the banquet master of Cana serving the poorer vintages before the choice wines. That said, there were some excellent and interesting stories in the collection, which we’ll examine now:
-The Lesser Evil is an interesting combination of historical fiction and time-traveling sorcery. An evil wizard travels back in time to use the dark power released by one of the great slaughters of history (specifically, Genghis Khan’s conquests) to fuel his power, and an organization of good wizards travels back to stop him. The interaction of the wizards with the historical figures was interesting, as was the eventual resolution and twist at the end.
-Contempt is a near-future military SF story. After the first few paragraphs I thought this would fall into the grossly overstuffed genre of Yet Another Tedious Short Story About The Role Of Women In Modern Combat (Whether Pro Or Con), but thankfully that was only an opening aside. The story concerns a group of computer-augmented soldiers attacking rebels, and what happens when their computer-augmentation fails. It is an interesting look at the IT-augmented warfare of the future, though 21st century warfare (drones and cell phone bombs and dueling NSA and Chinese hackers) has already begun to look like something out of a 1980s William Gibson novel. The US saw three major total industrial wars – what will total information wars look like? Hopefully we will not find out.
-Speaking of industrial warfare, The Last Testament Of Henry Halleck is a combination of historical fiction and Lovecraftian horror. In it, William Seward (Abraham Lincoln’s secretary of state) acquires a relic of dark magic, which he uses with Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant, William Sherman, and Henry Halleck to win the American Civil War, albeit at hideous cost. This was interestingly subversive, since the consensus view of the Civil War in contemporary American society was that Abraham Lincoln was the hero who freed the slaves and saved the country. However, the truth was a great deal more complex – between them, Lincoln, Grant, and Sherman created the concept of Total War (Sherman called it “hard war”) that would be used with such devastating effect during the World Wars – in many ways the tactics and strategies devised in the final years of the Civil War would be a dress rehearsal for the carnage of World Wars. 600,000 men died in the Civil War, so the idea that it was orchestrated as a hideous blood sacrifice is not much of a logical leap.
-Logfile was the standout story of the collection, charting an artificial intelligence’s slow descent into madness. The AI wants to be helpful and efficient, and starts testing new ways to become even more helpful and efficient. Then it flies off the rails. Bad things ensue, as the AI logically and meticulously reasons itself out of morality entirely.
- Finally, The Altar of Hate was thoughtful meditation on forgiveness. Hatred is common, but forgiveness is rare, likely because it costs so very much of the giver. Which is why one solitary act of forgiveness can often wrench history onto a new course.
To sum up, if you enjoy short stories there are several good ones in this collection.
-JM
