Hub Magazine, Issues 43-46

In Issue 43 of Hub, Ian Whates’s “Coffee Break” introduces us to the unflappable Bud, a coffee shop customer who won’t be kept from his beverage. Even an alien invasion force can’t stop Bud from enjoying a cup of coffee on his day off. There’s more to Bud than your average joe-drinking Joe, but not much more; once the reader learns of Bud’s occupation and skills, “Coffee Break” runs out of surprises and becomes bland and predictable. This story needed more: more depth to Bud’s character, more supporting characters, more complexity to the aliens and their motivations, more story. The humorousness of a man set on obtaining his caffeine fix can only carry a tale so far. Reviews of Stephen King’s Duma Key and Kate Elliott’s Spirit Gate complete this issue of Hub.

Issue 44 includes reviews of Blood Ties, a DVD boxed set of Season One, and Brave New Words: The Oxford Dictionary of Science Fiction. This issue’s fictional offering is Jetse de Vries’s “Transcendence Express,” originally published in Hub’s Issue 2. Liona, a researcher studying artificial intelligence in biological quantum computers, follows her boyfriend when he decides to work as a medical volunteer in Zambia. She finds a way to bring her work with her, and in the process, transforms first her classroom and later the countryside. The premise of a personal computer/AI nurturing a child’s emotional and intellectual growth brought to mind Neal Stephenson’s The Diamond Age, the story of a common girl who receives an educational device meant for a child of the upper classes. De Vries’s story provides an interesting twist: these computers are inexpensive and simple to build, thus setting the stage for an epic metamorphosis of human society. Although the disjointed chronology of De Vries’s story was somewhat off-putting, the story’s sweeping vision more than makes up for it.

What can be said about a story in which the first 2500 words are all setting and flat characterization? “Kasimir Larkin’s Final Sale” by Guy Haley (Issue 45) begins with an unbelievable situation (a shopkeeper, Kasimir Larkin, who stays open for business despite the fact he never, ever gets a customer, since the colony has long since died) and goes through a few gyrations before making it believable (the guy is nuts). Overwritten passages abound. Kasimir’s street isn’t merely empty, it’s empty, orange, dusty, and dead. The store’s lights can’t simply turn on; they have to tick, ping, and pop into flickering life. Adjectives and adverbs compete to see which can choke the most life out of Haley’s prose. Tin-eared dialog completes a wholly bleak picture.

Issue 45 also includes reviews of the graphic novel, Judge Dredd, Origins (story by John Wagner, art by Carlos Ezquerra), Nemesis The Warlock Volume 1 (Pat Mills and Various), and The Brightonomicon, an audio adaptation from the book by Robert Rankin. There is also Part 1 of a feature, Creating The Brightonomicon, by Neil Gardner.

In Issue 46, British Fantasy Award winner Simon Clark gives us “Ascent,” a fun H.P. Lovecraft pastiche which doubles as horrific satire on the Rapture. While working on a film adaptation of Lovecraft’s sonnet sequence, Fungi from Yuggoth, the narrator develops appendicitis. He’s recovering from surgery when, inexplicably, he levitates at top speed from his bed and soars upward toward ominously red clouds. All about him, others rise, too, and some plunge to their deaths. Dangerous things haunt those clouds, and something worse looms in the distance. The narrator eventually figures out why this is happening, but many other questions go unanswered. Do these events have anything to do with the narrator’s work on the disputed 37th sonnet? Why are some people chosen and not others; why do some rise, while others fall? The reader who likes all loose ends tied up in a neat package will go nuts with this story. On the other hand, readers who enjoy a wild ride will find plenty to like in “Ascent.” One note to the author: the word is purulent, not prurient. Aside from that one mistake, Clark’s technique is flawless.

Reviews of Iain M. Banks’s Matter and Chris Roberson’s The Dragon’s Nine Sons round out Issue 46, along with Part 2 of Creating The Brightonomicon, by Neil Gardner.