Hub #35 - 38

Over the last year, I’ve learned by experience exactly what people mean when they say their lives keep them too busy to read. Now, by this I mean, of course, that while I may have plenty of time in which I could read, sometimes I choose not to because working life forces one to be selective. And what this means in practice, and what it means for this lead-in, is that anything long—novel, nonfiction book, magazine, anthology—hops onto a pile of unread material and could well languish there for some time, however well-meaning I am.

Hub does not suffer from this problem. It appears almost every week in digestible chunks: one portion of fictional meat and one of nonfictional veg. The average issue can be read in under half an hour, which is perfect for lunchtime, downtime, or spare time reading.

Issue 35 opens December’s batch of issues with “Weapon of War” by Guy Haley. This is a faux-mythological tale of the doings of gods and heroes, complete with a heavy dose of cod-medieval prose liberally peppered with “unto,” “so it was,” “thus,” and “thine.” At times, this stylistic conceit becomes irritating, but most of the time, it remains at a low ebb and doesn’t distract too much. This cannot be said for the character names, unfortunately, with the improbably-named Terfus and Klinglaz forging the weapon Klingmoo. “Moo” is what cows say. This sword clearly lacks a name to strike fear into the hearts of men. It’s merely ridiculous in an inoffensive sort of way.

“Weapon of War” hangs indecisively between a cautionary morality fable and a lightweight, tongue-in-cheek fantasy. Some of the humour is well-judged, but none of it is outrageously funny, and only the tale’s conclusion breaks the mould to any degree. It’s not bad per se—just disappointingly unimaginative. The story is also capped by what I think is a great error of judgment—an ironic, black-humoured final line that unfortunately demolishes any resonance the aforementioned conclusion managed.

A much stronger story in issue 36, Vaughan Stanger’s “The English Dead” takes a very different kind of myth as its cue. This is the mythology of Everest, of the men who climbed it, and of the secrets of dead men. A climber named Ben wants to discover the secrets of George Mallory and Andrew Irvine, who may or may not have reached Everest’s summit in 1924. Advanced techniques are used to produce a clone of Mallory, and Ben adopts the body and role of his companion, Irvine. Together, they set out to reproduce the events of 1924 and to provide an answer to the secret, once and for all.

“The English Dead” is an excellent story and fundamentally good SF; the central conceit, cloning historical figures, is not new, but its application is fresh. The climbing lingo reads authentically to a layman like myself. The obsessions of the tale’s central characters are well-portrayed, informing their decisions and actions as they move towards a convincing conclusion.

A name that must be familiar to almost every genre writer provides the next tale—Ralan.com maintainer, Ralan Conley. “Running the Slash” begins gently, but Conley skilfully builds his setting and characters over time. Dozer, Bagz, and Kitty are “worms”—essentially indentured treasure-hunters—who search for precious bloodstones in a narrow and dangerous network of volcanic caves called the Slash. They are all misfits in their own way: Dozer suffers epileptic fits several times a week, Bagz is a veteran worm with nothing to his name after a lifetime in this dangerous profession, and Kitty was born with empty eye sockets. But this trio are also a closely-knit team, and following an unprecedented valuable find, the story details their journey out of the Slash. The dangers within the Slash they understand, less so those on the surface.

“Running the Slash” won’t win any prizes for breaking new ground, despite the interesting setting, but its small scale and damaged characters result in a heart-warming read that it’s difficult not to like.

Finally, in Christmas issue 38, Paula R. Stiles offers us “Life in the Red Zone.” The setting, tone, and desolation of this tale recall images of the dead zone around Chernobyl. The world-building is scarce—a deliberate conceit, being only occasionally relevant to the story—but what can be gleaned is that the world is recovering from a series of disasters, both natural and manmade. Amongst these was a nuclear blast that wiped out an entire city, leaving few ruins beyond an enormous crater. Stiles introduces us to Mariya, responsible for overseeing the mechanical cleanup around the disaster area, and Sam, a potential new assistant.

It soon becomes apparent that there is more to this claustrophobic red zone than is immediately obvious. This generic element to the story is skilfully foreshadowed, and the gradual reveal is paralleled by corresponding increases in pace, culminating in a breakneck race for survival.

There’s a tremendous sense of isolation in “Life in the Red Zone,” a sensation contributed to by the secrets both Mariya and Sam keep, as well as the narrative reliance on Mariya’s interior monologue, but as already mentioned, the tale also possesses a genuine sense of claustrophobia. Within the red zone itself, only Mariya’s house represents a genuine sanctuary from the radiation that permeates everything. Further, the red zone is shrinking, regularly, as the RTG cleanup machines constrict the border. Reading this story is an affecting encounter, one that recalls the loneliness and horrors of Chernobyl, but which makes from their cloth an unsettling new experience.