Clarkesworld, February 2008

The February, 2008, issue of Clarkesworld would have to be perhaps the oddest I’ve read. The oddness didn’t always work for me, but I have to admire its guts.

Stephen Graham Jones opens the issue with “Captain’s Lament,” a story about a sailor and his strange convalescence in a hospital and the new nurse who tends to him—but who draws him into her own mysterious agenda. The story builds momentum nicely, but there’s little at stake, really, for the central character, and the nurse is somewhat distant. Given the dramatic events, it’s perhaps indicative of the distance I felt that the climax lacked tension, and the resolution served more to muddy the waters than to tie any loose ends up. Some nice moments, but I’m not sure what the point of the story was.

Once in a while, a reviewer has to come clean and admit they don’t know what the hell a story’s about. For some of us, it happens more often than others. The latest entry in my collection comes from Alexander Lumans with his story, “The Human Moments,” about somebody working to dispose of the bodies from a flu pandemic, isolated, living underground. Our protagonist becomes increasingly unhinged. At least, I’m assuming it’s unhingedness that brings us phrases such as, “I will sign my name with three coils of rope and a dove’s tail over a broken window.” Whether intentional or not, I found the story progressed into obscurity and confusion, and I could discern nothing further from it.

As always, I look forward to the next Clarkesworld, and I recommend readers try it out for themselves. The stories this month are interesting, if nothing else. I wish I could recommend them more wholly. But both fail to coalesce into anything greater for me.