Brainycat > Books: read_in_2010‎ (51)

Though this is a software issue we’re talking about now, rather than a hardware problem. At least to the extent that you can make that distinction when it comes to brain chemistry. Anyway, look—by all the accounts I’ve read, the Project Lawman originators reckoned that variant thirteens would actually have been pretty damn successful in a hunter-gatherer context. Being big, tough, and violent is an unmitigated plus in those societies. You get more meat, you get more respect, you get more women. You breed more as a result. It’s only once humans settle down in agricultural communities that these guys start to be a serious problem. Why? Because they won’t fucking do as they’re told. They won’t work in the fields and bring in the harvest for some kleptocratic old bastard with a beard. That’s when they start to get bred out, because the rest of us, the wimps and conformists, band together under that self-same kleptocratic bastard’s paternal holy authority, and we go out with our torches and our farming implements, and we exterminate those poor fuckers.”

Carl lifted fingertips to his face, brushed at his cheekbones. “You see this? When you’re a variant, people don’t look at this. They go right through the skin, and all they see is what’s written into your double helix.”
The Rim cop shrugged. “Perhaps you’d prefer them to stop at the skin. What I hear about the old days, we’re both the wrong color for that to be a better option. Would you really prefer it the way things were? A dose of good old-fashioned skin hate?”

“You know what it feels like, Marsalis? Constantly testing your actions against some theory of how you think you might be supposed to behave. Wondering, every day at work, every time you make a compromise, every time you back up one of your male colleagues on reflex, wondering whether that’s you or the gene code talking.” A sour smile in Carl’s direction. “Every time you fuck, the guy you chose to fuck with, even the way you fuck him, all the things you do, the things you want to do, the things you want done to you. You know what it feels like to question all of that, all the time?”
He nodded. “Of course I do. You just pretty much described where I live.”

So, since Shadrach certainly wouldn't move in to protect me and my art from the cold pricklies of destruction - I mean, I couldn't go it alone; I had this horrible vision of sacrificing my ceramics, throwing them at future Pick Dicks because the holo stuff wouldn't do any harm of a physical nature (which made me think, hey, maybe this holo stuff is Dead Art, too, if it doesn't impact on the world when you throw it) - since that was Dead Idea, I was determined to go down to Quin's Shanghai Circus (wherever that was) and "git me a meerkat," as those hokey nuevo Westerns say. A meerkat for me, I'd say, tall as you please. Make it a double. In a dirty glass cage. (Oh, I'd crack myself up if the Pick Dicks hadn't already. Tricky, tricky pick dicks.)

You can still hear Nick's sentences, but you don't want to complete them, for they are monstrous, guttural creations, and they reek of blood. They are not the constructions of the Nick you know, the Nick who loves the Canal District for its many-layered conversations, the deals being made, the mysterious magic of it that defies easy definition.

Another week passes into gray oblivion. You're a slow dream, an autumn freeze, a ship in the doldrums. Thoughts come slow and ponderous, like deep-sea fish floating heavy and memory-bound to the surface; coelacanth reborn.

keywords: horror, post-apocalyptic, bioterrorism, plague, anthology
brainycat's "5 Best B"s (on a scale of one to five):
boobs: 1 / blood 3 / bombs 2 /

keywords: horror, post-apocalyptic, bioterrorism, plague, anthology
brainycat's "5 Best B"s (on a scale of one to five):
boobs: 1 / blood 3 / bombs 2 / bondage 1 / blasphemy 3

Grant's Pass is an excellent concept anthology that I enjoyed reading. The authors of each of the twenty pieces were provided with the following scenario: Bioterrorists unleash plagues across the globe that leave a survival rate of 0.001 percent. While the plagues were buring through the population, a blog post written by a young woman goes viral. This post, written before the plagues started, is a letter to her friends asking them to meet her in Grant's Pass, Oregon if the world comes to an end. Each of the stories in this book are about characters deciding to go to Grant's Pass, trying to get to Grant's Pass or trying to keep people from going to Grant's Pass. The city becomes an analogy for hope and community, for safety and a chance at reconnecting with people assumed lost during the plague.

I really, really like post-apocalyptic stories. Like most fans, I enjoy imagining myself as a survivor and I put myself into the desolation and destruction,  daydreaming about a world without deadlines, traffic, bills or legions of stupid people; where my wits and my physicality are the difference between life and death - every day. I also daydream about people in extraordinary circumstances. What if I were far from home when the extinction even occurs? How will the infrastructure (power, water, sewage, internet) fall apart? What about researchers in Antarctica or isolated cultures living the way they have for thousands of years deep in the rainforest? What is the mathematical model to determine if a group of survivors are open and welcoming to strangers or likely to subjugate or kill people who come across them? These are the things that I think about when I'm staring off into space. I can divine how cynical I'm feeling at any given time by the answers I provide for myself.

And these are the questions posed by in this collection. As with other post-apocalyptic books, a major theme throughout most of the stories can be summed up with a Rousseau-ean supposition: When the chains of civilization are broken, how do free people behave? Some of the answers gave Stacey nightmares. I don't disagree with her assesment that people are capable of doing amazingly horrific things to each other when there's little to no liklihood of reprisal (eg Animal Husbandry by Seanan McGuire, The Few That Are Good by Scott Ames, and Men of Faith by Ivan Ewert). Each of the characters in those stories believe they are forced into their actions by the conditions they're in and are totally justified in everything they do, leaving the reader mute witness to the downward spiral into madness and anarchy the characters throw themselves. If I didn't get nightmares but instead felt entertained, it's because I'm a cold heartless bastard.

"Somebody once wrote 'Hell is the impossibility of reason'", and by this measure some of these stories are truly hellish. I'm not speaking of the nature of the plagues; this is not a medical thriller and the editors made a better-than-half-assed-attempt at making the science plausible, so I'm willing to buy into the disease etiology. Some of the stories explore an alienation and dysphoria so overwhelming that we watch the characters' psyches splinter apart and flutter like so many tiny pieces of confetti in the wind. The character quirks and oddities that endear us to our friends today can become the faultlines that rupture and bring us down in times of stress, and this idea is explored especially well in Final Edition by Jeff Parish, Ink Blots by Amanda Pillar, By The Sea by Shannon Page, Hell's Bells by Cherie Priest and especially The Discomfort of Words by Carole Johnstone. Perhaps egomaniaclly, I didn't especially relate to any of these protagonists, but rather enjoyed watching their descent into madness from a smug perch, confident (hubristically) that I'm stronger than they are.

Is it the responsibility of every survivor to keep clawing at life, fending off the extinction of the human species for as long as possible, or is it every person's responsibility to make their death have meaning? Can anyone's death, or life, mean anything when total extinction is just a few years away? This is an important question, and is being wrestled with today (albeit in a wildly differnt context) in the debates around assisted suicide. For the staff trapped in orbit on the International Space Station, it's not an abstract question and Martin Livings provides his answers in Ascension. Jennifer Brozek also broaches the idea in The Chateau de Mons, and the most romantic story in the collection Rights of Passage by Pete Kempshall shows this choice is not always one's own to make.

Ultimately, the post-apocalyptic genre is about showing us hope. In the personal sense, we each hope that we would survive an apocalyptic even and as readers we hope the protagonists survive their disasters. Exploring stories like this allows us to explore the banal cruelty humans can so casually commit, which makes kindnesses, small and large, seem so much more significant. Hope and the redemption of the social fabric we know today are powerful motivators for heroes and antiheroes alike, and they drive several stories including An Unkindness of Ravens by Stephanie Gunn, Boudha by K.V. Taylor, A Newfound Gap by Lee Clarke Zumpe, Black Heart White Mourning by Jay Lake and especially A Perfect Night to Watch Detroit Burn by Ed Greenwood.

I thoroughly enjoyed this anthology. It's not just another "driving around the burning remains of North America with a truck full of guns" fantasy, it's a collection of thought provoking and intelligent short stories bound together by a brilliant concept. The writing is consistently solid through the book; while none of the stories struck me as drop-what-you're-doing-and-read-this-now caliber, the lack of weak pieces elevates the overall average and made it very easy to get through the book. I got the .azw from Amazon, and somewhere between it's production and my converting to epub enough formatting errors showed up that it was a bit distracting, and there were several typos. I say this because it triggered my OCD, but at no point were any of the pieces unreadable. I recommend this book to anyone who enjoys horror and post-apocalyptic fiction with an intelligent, emotional edge to it.

"Really." I leaned forward, searching his face for some trace of irony. "You believe this shit, right? I mean, seriously?"

The Mandrake exec watched me for a moment, then tipped back his head and gestured at the sky above us.

"Look at that, Kovacs. We're drinking coffee so far from Earth you have to work hard to pick out Sol in the night sky. We were carried here on a wind that blows in a dimension we cannot see or touch. Stored as dreams in the mind of a machine that thinks in a fashion so far in advance of our own brains, it might as well carry the name of God. We have been resurrected into bodies not our own, grown in a secret garden without the body of any mortal woman. These are the facts of our existence, Kovacs. How, then, are they different, or any less mystical, than the belief that there is another realm where the dead live in the company of beings so far beyond us we must call them gods?"

I looked away, oddly embarrassed by the fervor in Hand's voice. Religion is funny stuff, and it has unpredictable effects on those who use it. I stubbed out my cigarette and chose my words with care.

"Well, the difference is that the facts of our existence weren't dreamed up by a bunch of ignorant priests centuries before anyone had left the Earth's surface or built anything resembling a machine. I'd say that on balance that makes them a better fit than your spirit realm for whatever reality we find out here."

Hand smiled, apparently unoffended. He seemed to be enjoying himself. "That is a local view, Kovacs. Of course, all the remaining churches have their origins in preindustrial times, but faith is metaphor, and who knows how the data behind these metaphors has traveled, from where and for how long. We walk amid the ruins of a civilization that apparently had godlike powers thousands of years before we could walk upright. Your own world, Kovacs, is encircled by angels with flaming swords”"

Whoa. I lifted my hands, palms out. "Let's damp down the metaphor core for a moment. Harlan's World has a system of orbital battle platforms that the Martians forgot to decommission when they left."

"Yes," Hand gestured impatiently, "Orbitals built of some substance that resists every attempt to scan it, orbitals with the power to strike down a city or a mountain, but who forbear to destroy anything save those vessels that try to ascend into the heavens. What else is that but an angel?"

"It's a fucking machine, Hand. With programmed parameters that probably have their basis in some kind of planetary conflict”"

"Can you be sure of that?"

He was leaning across the table now. I found myself mirroring his posture as my own intensity was stoked.

"Have you ever been to Harlan's World, Hand? No, I thought not. Well I grew up there and I'm telling you the orbitals are no more mystical than any other Martian artifact”"

"What, no more mystical than the songspires? His voice dropped to a hiss. Trees of stone that sing to the rising and setting sun? No more mystical than a gate that opens like a bedroom door onto”"

He stopped abruptly and glanced around, face flushing with the near indiscretion. I sat back and grinned at him.

Admirable passion, for someone in a suit that expensive. "So you're trying to sell me the Martians as voodoo gods. Is that it?"

"I'm not trying to sell you anything," he muttered, straightening up. "And no, the Martians fit quite comfortably into this world. We don't need recourse to the places of origin to explain them. I'm just trying to show you how limited your worldview is without an acceptance of wonder."

I nodded.

"Very good of you." I stabbed a finger at him. "Just do me a favor, Hand. When we get where we're going, keep this shit stowed, will you? I'm going to have enough to worry about without you weirding out on me."

"I believe only what I have seen," he said stiffly. "I have seen Ghede and Carrefour walk among us in the flesh of men, I have heard their voices speak from the mouths of the hougan, I have summoned them."

"Yeah, right."

He looked at me searchingly, offended belief melting slowly into something else. His voice loosened and flowed down to a murmur. "This is strange, Kovacs. You have a faith as deep as mine. The only thing I wonder is why you need so badly not to believe."

That sat between us for almost a minute before I touched it. The noise from surrounding tables faded out and even the wind out of the north seemed to be holding its breath. Then I leaned forward, speaking less to communicate than to dispel the laser-lit recall in my head.

"You're wrong, Hand," I said quietly. "I'd love to have access to all this shit you believe. I'd love to be able to summon someone who's responsible for this fuckup of a creation. Because then I'd be able to kill them. Slowly."

Jennifer Pelland's first short story anthology Unwelcome Bodies from Apex Publishing contains only eleven stories, but they are all winners and would

Jennifer Pelland's first short story anthology Unwelcome Bodies from Apex Publishing contains only eleven stories, but they are all winners and would be considered among the highlights of any anthology they're a part of. Jennifer's style is at once both intimate and removed, she focuses on her main characters with a detail that betrays how much she cares for each of them (especially their flaws), while the world around the characters tends to disappear into a vague "otherness". This is the strength of her stories, the faceted characters that are engaging and unique and the relationships between them. Her stories tend to focus on the conflicted desires and obsessions within her protagonists and even the secondary characters, clearly sock puppets for the conflicted feelings of her heroes and heroines, are drawn with more depth and affinity than many other authors can achieve for their protagonists in a novel.

I'd classify the genres represented as dark sci-fi, horror and a touch of "regular" dark fiction. Make no mistake, Jennifer has no trouble leading the reader into darkness using the noblest of human intentions as a guide - the phrase "the path to hell is paved with good intentions" is clearly a common factor in her stories. As I was reading the book, watching her explore different styles and points of view while growing her craft, I felt I was watching a formidable writer take shape and hone her craft. Jennifer is definitely a writer to keep an eye on, she clearly is destined to bring an understanding of the human condition back into dark fiction that, at least in my recent reading, seems to be sorely lacking.

The first story "For the Plague Thereof Was Exceeding Great", the first story Jennifer sold, tells of a grim future where the human race is on the verge of extinction, but still trying to maintain twentieth century lifestyles. Two characters set up on a collision course, both of them dealing with the loss of their friends and family and the constant fear of airborne and contact based lethal viruses, find that while they're reacting to the plague differently, their feelings are coming from the same place inside them. Finally, they are able to absolve each other in a last moment of kindness before the lights go out on humanity.

"Big Sister/Little Sister" was also in the collection Apexology: Horror, and I wrote this about it after reading that book:

Sibling rivalry goes to places it probably never should, but thanks to Jennifer Pelland's excellent treatment of the subject Big Sister/Little Sister, this utterly twisted tale of jealousy and anger is a joy to read, even while people are doing hellishly horrible things to each other. It's the best kind of horror, in my opinion, the kind that makes me ask myself what I would do in that situation and would I be any kinder or humane. Ultimately, I'm not sure I would.

Another quality I enjoyed about this book is the sense of the author's involvement in the story. Some readers don't like to feel they're sharing with the author, they enjoy a disconnected relationship and want to consume the book without any give or take. Both because of the notes included at the end of each story, and the nature of the stories themselves, this is almost like a conversation by email with the author - slightly disjointed, and wild tangents in every direction, but ultimately rewarding. The story "Immortal Sin" certainly resonates for me, as this was clearly written as a catharsis of her catholic upbringing.

"Flood" engages a device Jennifer uses often, the young woman as protagonist. Undine is a pop star, obsessed with the mysteriously disappeared oceans and rivers of a dried up and barely inhabitable earth. Her obsession drives her and is grist for her fame and fortune... but is it driving her towards something, or away from a part of herself she doesn't want to admit? Whlie there's no doubt this story ended at the right time, I would desperately like to see a sequel about Undine's life after [the things that I'm not going to spoil for you].

The most experimental piece in the collection, "The Call" is best described by the author herself: "And now that I've written my second person, all-question story, I never have to do either of those tricks again." The theme, like the rest of the collection, deals with loss, loneliness, absolution and the value of sacrifice. Unfortunately, the stylistic tricks really do take her away from what she's best at, and this was my least favorite piece.

After that mercifully short story, the 2008 Nebula nominee "Captive Girl", another especially strong piece, tells the story of a love that can only happen between unequals - and the depths - and heights - people will go for love. A haunting piece, I believe most people will relate deeply to the metaphor of needing broken things - and intentionally breaking oneself to be needed.

Sometimes good things happen to people, and I would catagorize "The Last Bus" as dark fiction, certainly not horror. Absolution is writ large across every paragraph of this story. Another not so strong piece, but the characters are so richly drawn that even though the plot treads well worn ground, reading it is a pleasure.

One of the longest, and in my opinion the real standout in the collection, is "The Last Stand of the Elephant Man". Jennifer transports Joseph Merrick (the infamous "Elephant Man" of victorian england) into a post-cyberpunk future where bodies are worn like sleeves, and often heavily modified in increasingly garish ways to shock the jaded rich and bored. Jennifer's skill at getting inside the conflicted emotions of Joseph, who suddenly wakes up centuries ahead of his time and with a gorgeous body - simultaneously confused and grateful, she uses his deformed body almost like an albotross around the antagonist Jean-Piere's neck, allowing both Joseph and Jean-Pierre to emerge at the end of the story more wholly human - and imperfect - than ever.

"Songs of Lament" is what Walter Jon Williams' Surfacing would be like, if WJW was filled with a particularly sinister sense of humor and woke up in a bad mood for a couple weeks. From the notes,  "One day I thought, 'What if whales are singing about terrible, violent things?' The thought of all those hippies and new agers blissing out to whales screaming in anger was just too delicious an idea not to play with". And I'm glad she did; I've often thought the exact same thing.

Going back to young heroines again, "Firebird" covers a lot of the same emotional ground that "Captive Girl" does, but from a very different angle. Frankly, "Captive Girl" is the better implementation, though stylistically "Firebird" is written in a journal format that makes the story come alive.

"Brushstrokes" is a very pretty story, but left me feeling a little empty at the end. If it were a happy ending, though, it wouldn't be dark fiction. Again, it deals with love and the lengths people will go to for it in a dark future where humans are basically pets of some undescribed races that control nearly every facet of their lives. Shades of "1984" were clearly visible, but the entire concept of humans as domesticated animals in servitude to vastly more capable alien races has been a thought experiment of mine for years, so it was fantastic to read a story set in such a world.

Without a doubt, Jennifer Pelland is someone to keep an eye on, and her engaging and intimate characters in dark and horrific scenarios makes for some good reading, even if some of the plots and themes feel a little derivative. I highly recommend this book in the strongest terms possible; it's a very quick read and well worth the effort.