Ideomancer, March 2008, Vol 7, Issue 1

The first story in Ideomancer’s March 2008 issue is “Seer of Cities” by Nicole Kornher-Stace. The eponymous boy is climbing a tree in his back garden, only to fall from a rotten branch and seriously injure himself. Paralysed in his legs, he begins dreaming of a city that he sees from his tree. In his sleep, he draws the city, filling sketchbooks with myriad views of it. Then, awake, he sculpts the city from clay. Kornher-Stace blurs the lines between reality and fantasy, allowing the city to gradually encroach on the boy’s waking life. “Seer of Cities” would be a compelling story for this alone, but Kornher-Stace offers more: her narrative cleverness serves a touching examination of the life of a newly disabled child. Recommended.

“Crowntree” by LaShawn M. Wanak also involves a tree and children, but is a quite different story. Stephen, a young boy, is friends with a girl called Vale who lives in the same cul-de-sac. Along with other friends, they play games in Vale’s garden: in the big tree—the crowntree—against the back fence, and around the concrete ring in the middle of the garden. But when Stephen sees Vale’s mother in the middle of the ring, rocking and moaning as if in pain, he begins to realise that something is not quite normal about Vale’s family. Several years later, Vale invites him to the family’s leaving party.

The reason for the family’s short time in our world is not explained; the focus is on the relationship between Stephen and Vale. Wanak deftly conveys Stephen’s feelings and reactions to his strange friend while keeping the pace well balanced between active and contemplative. The family’s departure contained a small but important departure from my expectations, resulting in a more lingering ending than most stories about people who briefly knew someone not of our world.

Changing the mood considerably, L. E. Elder’s “Children of Old Earth” is a story of prostitution in the future. It is not her body that Ande sells to the impotent Oristalts, though, but something in her head. Her ignorance of what they take troubles her, but she does not learn the truth until a man, Ular, approaches her with an offer to explain everything.

Elder adds another layer to the story in Ande’s origin from Old Earth, which makes her stronger than the colonists in more than one way:

“…the survivors of Old Earth were too strong. They were pathologically strong. So powerful was their reflex for life, they persisted without purpose.”

Ande’s persistence through her unpleasant life, through the truth of Ular’s motives, as she wavers between wanting the weakness to die and feeling satisfied at remaining alive, gives the story a particularly pessimistic tone. Elder offers a grim future, with some interesting details; the flesh knives are a great invention. However, there is not quite enough originality to make this story of a prostitute oppressed by those more powerful remarkable.