Realms of Fantasy, April 2008

The crop of stories in the April, 2008, issue of Realms of Fantasy left me in a quandary. Whether critiquing or reviewing, I really don’t feel I’m doing my job if I can’t find something to criticize. Maybe I’m just in an abnormally positive mood, but I liked all the stories and couldn’t find much to complain about, aside from a few gory or yucky bits. This, in spite of the fact that I read them as PDF files on a computer screen, rather than on paper, which I prefer.

“The Dinosaur Diaries” by Scott William Carter begins with a mystery. Who or what is making T-rex tracks on and around the Dellanger farm? Is it aliens, bored with crop circles and trying something new? Is it Jerry’s mom, who’s been deranged since she lost a child in a fire? Jerry’s brother, Chuck, doesn’t make the list of possible suspects; he’s off at college, cocooned in a haze of marijuana smoke, and totally disinterested in the family farm or anything to do with the family. Jerry’s ten-year-old sister, Harriet, emerges from her computer world long enough to claim that she’s been playing chess online with their dinosaur-obsessed dead father, who told her he was going to leave the tracks as a message to their mom.

Has Jerry’s dad really reached out in this bizarre way to encourage and protect his family? It’s already more than young Jerry can manage, to be caretaker to his mom and sister while trying to run the farm on his own. Going to college, as his girlfriend wants him to do, is out of the question. To top it all off, his greedy, obnoxious Uncle Ed, who has always insisted the farm should have been his, steps up the pressure now that his brother’s out of the way. Ed will do literally anything to drive them off what he feels is rightfully his property—including arson and maybe murder.

I liked both the real world and supernatural aspects of this story. The characters are engaging and worthy of the reader’s concern. There’s Jerry, a responsible young man, struggling to do what he believes to be right, even at the cost of his own future happiness. There’s Jerry’s girlfriend, Ashley, who loves him but has her own life to lead as well. Mom and little sister are lesser but still well-developed characters. And Uncle Ed is absolutely awful, easy to hate. Then there’s the fantastic part, with a father and husband reaching back from the grave in an innovative fashion to save his family and enact justice. Justice is indeed served. Go, dinosaurs.

“Gift from a Spring” by Delia Sherman takes us to a fairy-tale setting in southwest France with a young English artist in search of her muse. Whittier, who eschews her given name of Desdemona, wants to create Fine Art, but alas, despite her efforts and obvious competence, she has no passion for the currently acceptable forms of modern art. What she enjoys sketching and painting are realistic landscapes. Her art advisor in school suggests condescendingly that she might become an illustrator for children’s books and compares her “old-fashioned” work to Rackham and Crane.

Let us pause here to sneer at all self-appointed arbiters of Fine Art, especially those who would denigrate illustration in general and Rackham in particular. Having a couple of artistic sons who tend to sculpt and paint realistically, I admit to being biased in the matter.

Out of economic necessity, Whittier takes a job as office manager and bookkeeper for a theatrical summer camp run by ballerina Ondine Delariviére and her husband, Peter Collingsworth. The work is simple enough, if tedious, but she finds herself in the middle of an argument between her employers regarding the installation of a washing machine, of all things. It’s an ongoing issue, and of course there’s more to that than meets the eye.

I rather enjoyed the whole washing machine bit, although the ballerina’s name, in conjunction with the possibly magical pool currently being polluted with soap scum, gave away a little too much. But the lesson Whittier learns—to follow her heart and paint what’s real—is beautifully presented and applies just as well to any artistic endeavor. As Ondine says, “Commerce is about identifying a market and satisfying it. Art is about seeing the truth and revealing it, as beautifully and forcefully and honestly as you are able.” And a hearty amen to that.

“On the Banks of the River of Heaven” by Richard Parks is a charming tale, told in a true “story-teller’s” voice that works beautifully when read aloud. I would have loved it for the voice alone, but also took delight in the adventures of the Celestial Otter, as he skillfully negotiates on behalf of the Celestial Weaver and the Celestial Herdsman, in order to discharge an obligation.

The story finds its roots in Chinese and later Japanese mythology, but I believe the otter’s part is a new addition. The beautiful Asago-hime, daughter of the Lord of Heaven, is the Celestial Weaver who supplies clothing to the heavenly court. She’s married to Kaiboshi, the Celestial Herdsman, who tends the Celestial Ox. The two love each other so deeply that when they were together, they both neglected their duties. So they were separated, one on each side of the Celestial River (also known as the Milky Way). Once a year, on the seventh day of the seventh month, Kaiboshi is allowed to cross the river on a bridge of birds—unless it rains. In this version of the story, it’s been raining every visiting day for three years. The rain is deliberate, caused by a jealous rain god who wanted Asago-hime for himself. The Lord of Heaven refuses to intervene. It seems the matter is hopeless—but not with a clever otter on the job. New story or old, it’s a treat to read.

“The Doom of Love in Small Spaces” by Ken Scholes is one of those stories in which you almost think you know what’s going on, but you’re never quite certain. The world/universe in which it’s written bears some resemblance to American bureaucracy, if you blur your vision and cross your eyes a little. Is it allegorical, or is the author just having fun and/or messing with our minds?

I liked the notion of a troll with Ernie Bilko tendencies, living in the sub-basement, requisitioning and rationing supplies such as love and hope, while secretly making sure that the building/world/universe he inhabits remains largely dysfunctional.

“Memos flying from my pen. Keep the Machine under a constant state of stress and alarm, taut with opportunities for improvement … just like the world beyond our little game of government.”

If applied to our world, it might explain a lot of things. Perhaps the main function of government is to clog up the works. Dare we hope that beautiful Harmony will take over the sub-basement of our world as well?

“Girl in Pieces” by Graham Edwards is another thrilling, multidimensional adventure of that fascinating far-out detective with the reversible coat. As usual, it takes place in a theoretical somewhere whose operating rules fall midway between quantum physics and fractured mythology. [For more, see my review of “Still Point” in the December, 2007, ROF.]

This time, the cast of characters includes a golem with empathy, a girl who’s had a too-close encounter with a machete-wielding serial killer, and a giant, formerly-human spider imprisoned in a self-reticulating, semi-dimensional oubliette. It’s a little on the gruesome and gory side in spots, but our hero manages to patch it all up, escaping from Arachne’s yucky ceiling of writhing rats before delivering a brief informative lecture on Hebrew binary code and its function in creating golems. There’s plenty of suspense and action, with nary a dull moment. I was torn between shuddering at the icky parts, and snickering at the tongue-in-cheek humor.