Darker Matter #5

Issue #5, according to editor Ben Coppin, is the last issue of Darker Matter, and if that’s the case, it’s a real shame. In just five issues, Coppin has put together a tremendously varied and consistently smart collection of speculative fiction and nonfiction, and it’ll leave a real hole in the market when it goes.

This final issue opens with “Peroxide Head” by Sue Lange. It’s an odd piece, almost a reverse travelogue following a woman as she returns home after assignment on the planet Shap. The Shaps, it seems, are relentlessly conformist, camouflaging themselves based on one another’s appearance, and as a result, they all look exactly the same—which is not the best news in the world for a fiercely individual woman in a tough job…

Lange’s story is an odd one and rewards a second and even third reading. What at first seems to be a remarkably straightforward, even dull, travelogue, rapidly becomes something altogether subtler and character driven. This is a story about a woman asserting control of her life through very unusual means, and the end result is both rather powerful and distinctly poignant. Stick with this one; it’s worth it.

“Starlings” by Jerry Oltion is equally subtle and completely different. Keith is a green activist in the middle of carrying out a direct action when he sees a deer. The consequences of that encounter and a second, disastrous encounter with the “deer” and a luckless hunter turn Keith’s world, and everyone else’s, on their heads.

This is a remarkably subtle and profoundly sinister take on an established science fiction trope, and Oltion does superb work with it. There’s a palpable sense of menace, a genuine feeling that something is wrong and getting wronger, and the end result is a story which slowly ratchets the tension up until its surprising and very unusual ending. A real gem.

William D. Mckintosh’s “Young Love, on the Drowned Side of the City” is, at first glance, a far straighter piece than the previous two. Ostensibly the story of a group of teenagers killing time, it soon becomes clear that they’re very far from ordinary teenagers and that this is very far from the normal world. Mckintosh manages to balance utopian overtones with some incredibly bleak touches and at least one image which will stay with you long after the story is finished. This is a very different, very dark take on the generation gap, and it works remarkably well. There are problems, not the least of which being the slightly clumsy, “pseudo-English” dialogue, but this is a high-class story—big on incident and character.

In “Sponsored by…” by Hank Quense, Captain Dave Stiller has a problem. In fact, he has a whole mess of problems, starting with the fact that he’s driving a tank sponsored by Budweiser and finishing with the fact that war has a producer and a script that must be followed.

“Sponsored by…” is about as polemical as they come, but it’s well handled and smart, and most of all, plausible. The best contemporary fiction takes modern tropes and runs with them, creating a world which, as Max Headroom once put it, is “twenty minutes into the future.” It’s an effective idea, well presented, and if I have a problem with “Sponsored by…” it’s that I could have stood to see it expanded a little.

Finally, “True History” by Jason Stoddard explores—frankly—enough themes and ideas to fill a novel. Gemin and Meri are post-singularity humans living in an utopian society where reality and the structure of the solar system itself is a toy for the inhabitants. As time passes and society changes, they find themselves on separate paths through history, old and new, and realise that their definitions of what it means to be human are both unique and increasingly very different.

Stoddard is an effortlessly ambitious author, able to balance intimate character moments with colossal ideas. This is a story filled with stunning images, sweeping societal and genetic changes, and one woman’s search for her own identity, and its pretty heady stuff. However, it’s also remarkably difficult to follow. There are so many ideas, so many concepts on display, that the central plot gets lost. What’s there is undeniably intoxicating, but a stronger narrative line would have helped immeasurably. As it stands, this is an excellent set of ideas, but the narrative structure around them doesn’t quite work.

Regardless, this is as fine a swansong as Darker Matter could hope for. Wildly varied in tone and style, these are consistently intelligent, unusual, and affecting pieces of fiction. Well worth your time.