Aeon #11

Aeon #11 is the first issue of this e-zine that I have read, but I must say that I was impressed. Most of the offerings are fantasy to dark fantasy—though the first story is probably best categorized as SF—yet each tale is unique, and I’d recommend it to any reader of speculative fiction.

Melissa Tyler tells an African airborne adventure tale in “The Sky Spider.” Young narrator Chiku relates how her family is escaping via an airship to a place of safety. Several colorful characters are depicted, but the most important is the title character Death-Eye, or Deadeye as the crew call him. Deadeye is quite a striking fellow, a special crewman who maneuvers around on the outside of the airship to accomplish near-impossible feats. Tyler captures the true sense of wonder quite well, but I had problems with the story itself.

The writing is a little clumsy at the beginning with the flash-forwards; the reader is jerked out of the moment occasionally as the older Chiku leaves the now-time of the story to relate that she is writing of her past as a young girl. Also, I never could get a grip on exactly who these people were and why they were fleeing. But mostly, it’s the lack of energetic plot that causes this story to sputter out toward the end. I know that I’m supposed to be seeing this through the eyes of an awestruck young girl’s, but being an adult reader who’s read thousands of stories, it’s hard to overlook that the plot lacks salience and dramatic unity. Unfortunately, this is a “protagonist as observer” story, where the main character plays little part in the drama. And Chiku’s observations of Deadeye don’t hinge enough on the personal drama of the escaping family and their plight to make this a truly gripping tale. If Deadeye were removed from the story, the family’s outcome would’ve probably been the same. For this to work, Deadeye’s character needed to do something that the drama of the escape truly hinges on. Then Chiku’s observations would have carried the ideal weight to match the reader’s emotional investment—this is an adventure story, after all.

This is Tyler’s first fiction sale, so I was impressed with her strengths, but this could’ve been envisioned better. While the ending is touching, this short novelette feels like a small slice from a novella or even a novel where all these elements could have been more effectively put into play. Still, there are some fine things about this tale, and I did enjoy it.

“A Very Old Man With No Wings at All” by Jay Lake is a beautifully written yet equivocal short-short. A presumably immortal old man living under a desiccated dhow is confronted by a desperate boy seeking help when soldiers overtake his village. The old man tells the boy: “This is just a moment in the eyes of God. It means nothing more than any other moment.” But the old man is painfully aware that the soldiers carry rifles and not the spears of warriors from his past.

Lake says in his introduction that this story is the result of his hubris as a writer, that he had a narrow, tiny vision of Gabriel García Márquez and Milton locked in mortal combat. The title, of course, pays homage to Márquez’s magic realism story “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings,” and those who have read this famous story will note a few iconic similarities. As I said, Lake’s prose is beautiful, but I found the theological aspects too heavy-handed, as though the author were pumping up the style and employing religious icons to elicit an emotional response in the reader. This type of allegorical story is easily open to many different interpretations; literary critique groups could expound for the better part of an hour on the allusions and their possible meaning. Each reader, I think, will interpret it depending upon his or her personal beliefs. Not being a person of faith, I found it sentimental and was annoyed. I’m sure others will feel differently.

In “The Underthing,” Ryan Neal Myers explores the old childhood phobia of monsters under the bed in a new way. Constance is a bookish, shy young woman whose demon is her “best friend.” She still fears it, but after all these years, they’ve developed a rapport. She eats ramen while the beast eats meat that she rots for it on the porch, her social life next to nothing. But Constance has a literary bent and is attracted to the owner of a used bookstore named Bran.

Though probably not the superlative story in this issue, it’s my personal favorite. The banter between Constance and Bran about Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness” is priceless. According to Bran, only three types of people read this work: “English majors, the girlfriends of English majors, and people who want to know what all the hubbub is about.” When Constance reads the book aloud to her monster at home, the creature says, “Conrad has a very low ratio of content-to-prose.” I’m not going to give away any more of the plot because I don’t want to spoil this fun story for you. So much dark fantasy nowadays is depressing and lackluster. “The Underthing” is full of life while being darkly humorous at the same time. It fills a void in our often overly serious field.

January Mortimer takes the reader back to the Edwardian period (1901-1910) in “Brighton Bay.” English sorcerers Fiona and her brother, Edwin, have fled Kent with the Constabulary sorcerers hard on their heels. At Brighton Bay, Fiona befriends a young sorceress named Julia whose uncle is anything but avuncular. This is only marginally what I’d call speculative fiction, as the magic could be removed from the story and it would still work as a piece of fiction. But that scarcely matters as Mortimer’s first person narrative here holds much charm, capturing the narrative mannerisms of the time as well as a bit of history. (The author knows her stuff.) This is basically a period mystery, but what gives it a wry tone is not finding out whodunit, but the clever way in which Fiona goes about finding a means to an end. Please allow me to mangle eras and genres here and say that it’s more The Rockford Files with its con-artist artifice than the studious Ellery Queen.

John A. Pitts employs dual narratives separated by 2000 years in “The Hanging of the Greens.” First, during the reign of Julius Caesar, Legate Atticus commands seven cohorts of soldiers in Belgae to fight the Gauls and their druid fey forces. After capturing and killing a winged pixie, they find an old man named Leucix who leads them to the beautiful tribal queen, Marabus, in a magical glade.

The second narrative thread entails the exploits of a group of men in modern-day Kentucky, off to “bring in the green” to be hanged for Christmas by their Pagan women who wait behind. These parts are actually dual narratives as well, recounting the men on their gathering mission, while elderly Mabel tells young Candace how they are the last to honor the pact and how the menfolk pay with their blood.

This is a fine story that packs much into 7,300 words. I enjoyed the Roman thread more so than the modern-day Pagans; when Atticus and his men reach the glade, the tale suddenly becomes resplendent with enchantment, recapturing for me why I enjoy fantasy fiction. While reading, I was wondering where this was all leading, whether the two worlds would be tied together effectively. The final scene accomplished just that.

Ginny Levitan and her husband, Jim, are inspecting a possible retirement home at the outset of Rob Hunter’s “The Song of the Rice Barge Coolie.” With the aid of real estate agent Barbara Casmirczak—“Call me Babs”—they buy the odd dwelling and soon discover they have an ant infestation. Later, Ginny discovers that Jim is having an affair with busty Babs. What raises this above the typical tale of marital discord is the alternating sections told from the ants’ POV. While the snappy dialogue between the humans is quite clever, the early sections dealing with the ants are outstanding. Which leads to my only real complaint. Having set up this round-robin style of twin narratives, the author dispenses with the ants’ POV a little ways into the story. I can understand the need to do so, but as Ginny becomes the cuckolded wife, I found myself missing the finely depicted ant world of The Lady Mother of the Long Walkers, which felt like a well-crafted world of high fantasy. A small grumble on my part as they do appear again, of course.

Insects are nothing new to horror fiction, but Hunter elevates this tale above the standard fare with engaging characters, keen POV shifts, and a quirkiness of style that makes the outcome most satisfying. While the dénouement was inevitable, it left me with a devious grin on my face. Impressive.