New Horizons #1

New Horizons is a new publication of the British Fantasy Society. For its maiden issue, a variety of interesting and thought-provoking stories have been solicited from authors established in the field.

First in this issue is Harvey Raines’s “Among the Mollies.” It opens with the line: “I was 16 when I made my first city.” It’s a great first line, and Raines keeps delivering on the promise, hooking the reader by showing how the protagonist learns the secret of making cities from his best friend, Bobby. From the moment the secret becomes his, our main character engages in the business of making cities for himself.

The only hitch in all this city-making is the constant presence of Chaston Hill. Chaston Hill is where the Mollies live. Neither our main character nor Bobby knows what the Mollies are exactly or how they came to be, but the presence of Chaston Hill (and the Mollies) in every city he creates becomes a point of irritation. As our protagonist says: “Chaston Hill was the permanent stain in my urban wardrobe.”

Confrontation seems an inevitability. What results makes for a surprising conclusion that keeps the reader thinking long after the story is over. Raines’s language is fresh, vibrant, and engaging. “Among the Mollies” is a strong start to this issue.

“Silk and Pearls” by K. J. Bishop is a reprint, and it tells of a widowed woman who loves her only son, Pearl Boy, to the point of obsession. This woman has great ambitions for her son, but her attempts to match him with a woman of high rank come to no avail. At the outset, Pearl Boy is a forty-year-old bachelor who still lives with his mother. Unbeknownst to his mother, he has fallen in love with a woman of no rank called Ping. When he tells his mother about his secret love affair with Ping, his mother is outraged. She makes a visit to the magician of the city and asks him to make sure that Pearl Boy will fall out of love with Ping. There are a good number of fantasy stories based on Chinese myth and magic, but Bishop manages to create a story that’s fresh as well as evocative. An enjoyable and commendable read.

“Canoe Boy” by Allen Ashley is set in an England where water is a scarce resource and central London has been turned into a replica of Venice. Phillip, our protagonist, stays home from work with a touch of the so-called yuppie flu and finds out that Canoe Boy, the local urban legend, does exist. The story meanders along, like the canals Canoe Boy rides on, and we are treated to a visual tour of a Venice-like London which serves as a backdrop for Phillip’s story of his failed love affair with Becky.

Ashley’s strength is in creating an atmosphere that embraces the reader. “Canoe Boy” evokes a canal scent, and perhaps my living in a country abounding with canals makes it easy for me to imagine dark, dank depths, and cramped waterways.

In spite of the strong atmosphere, I found it difficult to immerse myself in Phillip’s tale. I’ll have to confess that it took me a couple of readings to really get enough of a feel for this story in order to give it a just review. I would recommend reading this when it’s raining outside and you’re feeling somewhat melancholic.

“Unlikely” by Will McIntosh is another reprint and is probably my favorite of this issue. Samuel and Tuesday are part of an experiment that studies the effect of their proximity to each other on the accident rate. When Samuel and Tuesday are together, accident rates go down; when they’re apart, accident rates go up. McIntosh makes the unlikely seem very likely and effectively establishes emotional involvement from the reader.

McIntosh’s strengths lie in how believable his characters are and in how approachable he makes them. Samuel and Tuesday could very well be the man and woman jogging together along the sidewalk; they could be the couple sitting together on the terrace; or they could be the boy and girl walking down the street, joking with each other. I don’t want to spoil your reading fun by gushing about this one, but it is certainly a story I would push under a reading buddy’s nose and say: “Read it, read it. You won’t regret it.”

“What You Came For” by Jaine Fenn is the third reprint in this issue and stands out because it is written in second person. Writers are often told that second person is a no-no because of the distance it creates between the reader and the story. Fenn, however, does second person very well.

The story opens with a view of the house halfway up the hill. The scene is very visual, and one can imagine a camera panning in for a close-up of the house and its surroundings before it shifts to a panoramic view meant to represent the second person’s vintage point. Layer by layer, the house’s history is peeled away until the truth about the second person and what “you” are searching for is revealed.

“What You Came For” appealed to my sense of justice, and I like how Fenn manages to create so much in so little space. Recommended.

I’m not sure whether “Domestic Interior” by K. J. Bishop is a short-short or a prose poem. It does tell a story, but there is something about the way in which Bishop uses language that evokes the idea and the feeling of a poem. My favorite lines are from smack dab in the middle:

“If a combustible creature wishes to take leave of the world thus, it is best to do so in a blue room, facing south, without clothes on, though clothes may be worn.”

I love how Bishop delivers lines like this in such a matter-of-fact voice—one can’t help but want to know more. This short piece is rich in imagery and quite an inspired piece of writing.

“At Midnight, All the Angels” by David Barnett is sure to appeal to creative minds. Fictional characters from classical novels and classic television series are appearing all over the UK. Dorothy Culpepper and Asif Baig are operatives for the Department for Extra-Usual Affairs, a highly covert division of Military Intelligence Section Five. Asif and Dorothy’s job is to track down ghosts, supernatural appearances, and in this case, materializing characters who aren’t quite as the public knows them.

There’s so much fun in Barnett’s tale, and it’s easy to imagine the author chuckling while he wrote this. Barnett manages to create humor with panache and provides us with an entertainingly wicked tale. Highly recommended.

“Two Dreams” by K. J. Bishop is just that. In the first part, the protagonist narrates about a dream of flying; in the second, the protagonist tells about a dream that evokes intense fear from proximity to a black coffin. Bishop writes of these dreams with a detached tone, and there is something about both narratives that reminds me of Kafka.

In “The Absence Club,” Daniel Bennett tells of a man who loses his job at a bank and, after nine months of unemployment, manages to find a new job at the Associated Colleges of Outer London. Six months into his contract, the campus closes down, and the protagonist finds himself worried as he faces the prospect of being jobless again once his year-long contract comes to an end. He finds himself working in a campus emptying of its employees as they move on to other jobs or as their contracts are terminated. One day, while riding home on the train, he sees a man who he immediately identifies as being like himself. The man is reading a small pamphlet bearing the title, “The Absence Club.” At first, our protagonist is merely curious about the pamphlet, but soon his curiosity evolves into something of an obsession.

Bennett keeps the tension going in this intriguing account of a man’s search for meaning as the campus grows emptier and emptier. A good read.

“The Snow Fox” by Stephen Deas is the last offering of the issue and also the story that engaged me the least. Nikolai regales his love, Lady Katharine, with tales of his adventures on the high seas. He tells Lady Katharine that he has come to her with only the Snow Fox for company. While the reason behind Nikolai’s dominance of the dialogue is revealed later on, I felt it was rather stiff, as if the story hadn’t quite come into its own.

Overall, New Horizons has got off to a promising start. I liked the variety of the selections and the mix between the lighthearted and the serious. Editor Andrew Hook has put together a wonderful cocktail of avant-garde and traditional fiction. This publication seems to say, “We choose the stories we want to read, and what we want to read tastes like an eclectic and bubbly cocktail with deep tones of ruby red.”