Polluto #3

The third issue of Polluto has the loose theme of “Sex in the Time of VHS,” which turns out to be more restrictive than the previous issue’s “Apocalypse (and Garden Furniture).” No issue needs more than one story about snuff films. Deb Hoag opens with the title story and the first of the snuff film tales. Of course, why make snuff films when you can achieve the same effect digitally? When our filmmaker answers the door one day to find someone he instantly nicknames “Lolita,” and who wants him to kill her, he is at first not interested. He only becomes interested when she proves that, because of genetic engineering, she is indestructible. They proceed to make many, many films together over the years. What happens when she starts to age, though? It’s short and, despite the transgressive subject matter, lighthearted. It is fair to say that it is hard to sympathise with the narrator, though.

Kevin Brown plays safer with the equally lighthearted revenge tale, “Clowns.” Structurally it’s a mess, and it feels as if he’s tried to repair a botched first draft. The first half is the first-person narrative of a very bitter children’s entertainer. His rich ex-wife hires him to be a clown at a kids’ party at her place. The second half consists of the deadpan police report of said children’s party. The first thing the clown did was slip Rohypnol into the drinks of his ex-wife and her new boyfriend. There then follows an erratic series of crazy revenge stunts. It’s unfocused, unbalanced, lacks a proper climax, and is not as funny as it thinks it is, but it’s not dull.

“Verrata” is the first gem of the issue. John Hornor Jacobs won’t win any prizes for originality—this reads like vintage John Shirley c-punk—but its intense evocation of the sleazy swampland slum that used to be New Orleans drops the reader into the heart of the story. The protagonist is a loser, but since Thibault is not a total bastard, the reader can walk with him without too many bumps and scrapes. However, when Thibault’s bioComp starts picking up a ghost, he finds that he is starting to become an observer in his own body. The “ghost” is the downloaded memory of a murdered girl who is seeking revenge. Jacobs’s harsh exploration of identity and free will is one of the longest stories here and deservedly so. It also has a heart.

J. Michael Shell’s “Fallout” could just as easily have been slotted into Polluto #2. Another first-person narrator is placed in a strange situation. He is driving through a blizzard of pollen in this revenge-of-mother-nature story. People are dying, and the emergency services are collapsing under the strain. As in many apocalypse stories, our man tries to carry on as normal even though it becomes obvious that “normal” belongs in the past. It also becomes obvious that he is one of the few people who are naturally immune to this super hay fever. The world is his to enjoy, if he can find a mate and keep her alive.

Marshall Payne’s “Dharma and Bert” concerns itself with one of the goddesses who’s at home and feeling lonely. The rest of the sisters are elsewhere in the cosmos, and she is starting to feel horny. She is sure she can sense a man somewhere in the heavenly palace, but that would involve a betrayal of the sisterhood, which is showing stress fractures anyway. It’s witty and fun in a “men are from Mars, women are Venus” sort of way.

“Hundred Year Old Murders” is the second of the snuff film stories, and Garrett Cook also has an immortal victim who is repeatedly murdered to make snuff footage. It’s a disturbing and unpleasant story that comes close to treading the same ground as the films that it chastises, and it also features a historical killer who just happens to be immortal. “Hundred-and-Twenty-Year-Old Murders” would be a more accurate title, though.

Rhys Hughes’s knowingly filthy pastiche of monetary fraud has a character called Peter the Tenant who finds that someone has emptied his lifetime supply of seminal fluid. It’s probably just a coincidence that the main character’s name is very similar to TTA Press columnist and proofreader Peter Tennant. Of course it is. “The Groin Snatcher” is another of the highlights here, and, while it may not be Hughes at his best, it’s fun.

Janett L. Grady’s “Faux Pas, Doc” is the short and effective story of an aging sex-bot in an age of moral repression that doesn’t seem too far away from the fundamentalist right wing of present-day America. When the robot runs across his creator, he sees that there may be an opportunity for survival. Or maybe not.

The “Highway Girl” in Robert Lamb’s even shorter story has revenge (or entrapment) on her mind, and she unpleasantly turns the tables on the man who attempts to rape her. He then finds that he has to deal with all of the consequences. After a brutal start, the story then moves on to a much more interesting place.

Steve Redwood’s sober “Damaged” is a bleak look at the way men view women. When Maria 8 (the name deliberately evoking in the reader an image of the robot from Metropolis) starts to show signs of wear and tear, John Smith thinks of taking her back to the library for a service. This will mean, however, that her memories will be wiped. She will no longer remember their time together. Worse still, she could be returned to the previous user who had treated her shoddily and inflicted damage on her. But she needs a service—the silver paint is starting to peel off, revealing the pink layer beneath. What to do? This frank and searching story has an excellent chance of making it into some of the Year’s Best anthologies.

Michael R. Colangelo’s punky “Steel Teeth and Synthetics” is set in a violent, postapocalyptic city where cannibalism for food and spare parts is rife. There is a very active black market in mechanical organs, and pragmatic alliances and recreational drugs make life endurable, if not enjoyable. It’s a lively adventure and well rendered, and you’ll already know by the description whether you’ll enjoy it or not.

There is a piece of surreal flash fiction from Frank Burton called “The Day She Melted” that is smoothly written, accurately titled, and about a paragraph long, and then there is the final story, “Live Without a Net: Bloodletting the Robot” by RC Edrington, which is as clear as its title suggests. A being is strapped to a table and is being drained of blood by a middle-aged woman who is keen to sample the properties of his blood. Vampires, AIDS, and junkies all occur to the reader, but the prose remains too opaque to satisfactorily resolve the issue.

Edrington also contributes a lengthy poem to this issue, and there is a sequence of poems (titled “A Sequence of Rashes”) from KC Wilder here as well.

This issue of Polluto is again a fine-looking magazine and, even if it doesn’t consistently reach the heights of the previous issue, it is still a pleasure to read. It has been produced as a limited edition hardback of 100 copies and a paperback of 500 copies.