GUD Magazine, #1

There’s one hell of a lot of content in #1 of GUD Magazine: over 200 pages with most of the contributors unknown to me. Starting the magazine felt like sitting down at a banquet without quite knowing what was on the menu and realising that it’s going to be a long meal. Was it all to my taste? Read on:

“Electroencephalography” by Darby Larson is the opening story and is told in a rather irritatingly simplistic style. It’s about a man, Dean, who decides to build a robot from a box of parts he finds on the street, but it’s also a lot more than that once his efforts to babysit backfire, and he has to reanimate his niece. Unfortunately, the story doesn’t resonate on an emotional or intellectual level; there is little connection between the reader and the characters, and whilst it’s full of interesting ideas, it doesn’t exploit their potential. However, it does presage the remaining stories in its telling, which means that you know GUD will not be a conventional read.

This is evident in “Arrow” by Nadine Darling, a story of a literal love affliction where an arrow physically punctures the heart. Similar to the previous story, the prose is light and matter-of-fact, and whilst it’s not overtly comic, there is some fun to be had. What puzzled me was the presence of the arrow without the appearance of an actual loved one in the story. However, it’s interesting enough, and the ending is both thoughtful and poignant, if not original.

“Drive Thru” by Kenneth Darling is a short-short, a page long, with some exquisite prose:

“The sun breaks, throwing blades of light. Bait buckets are made molten. Bridge rust glints as though on fire.”

In Lavie Tidhar’s “Hello Goodbye,” again the prose is excellent, as is the tone and overall “feel” of the piece. I enjoyed it without having a clue what it was about.

Jordan E. Rosenfeld contributes “Aliens,” which is one of my favourite stories here. Not the UFO-aliens, but the concept of being alien as a human amongst humans. It’s only one of the themes of this excellent story where Amelia hides a secret whilst working in a Vegetarian restaurant surrounded by oddballs and the dispossessed. Displaying some excellent characterisation, Rosenfeld draws you into the story—makes us care, makes us smile.

“Not In The Yellow Pages” by Lesley C. Weston is another short short, and—similar to “Aliens”—is about who we are as people and who we want to be. I enjoyed it.

In the excellent “Natural History” by Gini Hamilton, it is dead animals who remind us who we are as people, and how we fix our place in the world in relation to others. It’s a stunning, heartfelt story, which really gets to grips with its characters and the beauty and pain in life. This story alone makes purchase of GUD worthwhile.

“Unzipped” by Steven J. Dines is another story which potentially has great aspirations for pathos. However, I found the message too heavy-handed—even if it is necessary and urgent for our times. An Iraqi war veteran finds it impossible to reintegrate into civilian life, but the ending is much too tidy. Can salvation from a pivotal moment in life really be found within a second pivotal moment? I don’t think so.

“Max Velocity” by Leslie Claire Walker is a stumbling bumbling story which never quite makes its purpose clear. Kind of an earth mother, birth mother piece taken too literally, the characters just didn’t engage with me to want to care what was happening with them. Which was unfortunate, as this is one of the longest stories in the magazine.

“The Illiterate Sky” by David Lenson is another shorter piece, where text and land have fused to become…well, it’s not quite clear what. As an idea, the story is interesting, but it failed to break from the page and into this reader’s mind.

“In The Dark” by Sean Melican features an author who is blinded in order to be sent to The Shadows, an alien world where he postulates that:

“a species without the dual experience of day and night wouldn’t have the sort of language dichotomy we have. You know, war and peace, black and white, good and bad, girl and boy.”

As he puzzles his way through the alien environment, storing information for a book, his perceptions are constantly confounded by nuances in language, touch, traditions. An interesting and well-written exposition on just how well mankind could ever interpret an alien culture, the use of “messages” instead of a more direct way of telling adds much to the piece—in the way that our information is also gained blindly, without any exterior explanation. Good stuff.

A blind protagonist also features in “Fear Not Heaven’s Fire” by Jaine Fenn, in this case a nun who commits the sin of speaking to a man who may not quite be a man. The story is well-told and held my attention, but such stories often seem to follow a pattern in their telling, and I found this was no exception as it reached an obvious—albeit logical and well-written—conclusion.

“Experiment: Love” by Brian Conn is a great little story which seems to encapsulate longing and forgetting so subtly that you don’t really realise you’re absorbing the details until it’s over.

“Anything” by Matt Bell is also a story about love and what lengths people will go to in order to obtain it. I won’t say more about the piece for fear of spoiling it, but it was a fun story with meaning, if a little throwaway in the end.

“Women of the Doll” by Nisi Shawl is another long story which I thought could have been pared down for a more satisfying read. There’s some excellent descriptive prose and a clear unhurried plot, but whilst it was interesting and enjoyable, it didn’t really hold me. It’s about women whose souls are saved by being transported into dolls whilst their bodies continue to function independently, and whereas it could have been an examination of who we are (flesh, brain, personality) and our actual essence (soul), the story falls short of tackling this directly, leaving too many unanswered questions. That’s my opinion anyway, but I get the feeling others will love this. It’s one of those pieces you either like or don’t.

“The Gods of Houston” by Rebekah Frumkin concerns two adopted boys (Nixon and Reagan, who only seemed to be called so for the sake of story), and what happens to them shortly after their adoption. It’s a weird tale, not entirely likeable but not displeasing either, and whilst a great deal doesn’t actually happen, by the end of the story you feel that it has. I’d put this down to the quality of the writing and recommend it as one of the most unusual pieces in the magazine.

Mike Procter’s “Item 27” is a short comic story that provides a welcome break from some of the longer pieces. Reading it reminded me of My Name Is Earl, the TV series, albeit set in a slightly skewed universe. A fun read and the intentional lack of depth was quite refreshing.

Finally, “Jimmy’s Luck” by Tammy R. Kitchen rounds off the magazine with a tale that makes you hold your breath—a snapshot of a couple with some dysfunctions but a great deal of passion. Believable characters in an edgy, compact, story.

GUD also features poetry, but as I’m not much of a poet I feel less qualified to review it apart from saying that “The Intrigue of Being Watched” by Rusty Barnes is the best piece of poetry here. Although maybe it’s “Catholic Girls” by Kenneth L. Clark. The magazine also contains nonfiction by Christian A. Dumais.

So, 200 or so pages later and what do I feel? Satiated, in fact. The magazine is diverse, interesting, well-written, sometimes annoying, and mostly intriguing. But is it good? Well, it’s GUD of course; and the meaning of that word is something the editors are hell-bent on redefining. Recommended.