Shimmer: The Pirate Issue

The much anticipated pirate issue from Shimmer is out, helmed by guest editor John Joseph Adams, assistant editor of F&SF. Adams chose an eclectic group of tales, ranging from the serious to the humorous, from modern-day to the Golden Age of Pirates. Nothing here really blew my socks off, but there are a few good stories.

The first offering, and for me the best of the issue, is J. Kathleen Cheney’s shipboard ghost story, “A Hand for Each.” Sailing out of Madras in the Bay of Bengal, Lieutenant Jonas Davies’s ship, the HMS Fortitude, is attacked by natives. When he awakens, he finds his crewmates dead and the ship being steered by mysterious forces toward Australia and beyond. Soon there are signs of “life” aboard the ghost ship, and eventually an islander appears and utters a single word, “Kanaloa.” But in his mind, Davies hears, “I am the sea.”

Though quite descriptive in places, if this first person story lacks anything, it is narrative voice. Much of this is a narrative-laden account with too many declarative sentences (“I did this and then I did that”) in what is basically a tale of mood and atmosphere, rather than one of plot and character. I realize it’s difficult to heighten the drama when a single character wanders the ship day after day, pondering his fate, but given more narrative voice, Jonas Davies (whose name, of course, makes him a personification of the popular idiom, “Davy Jones locker,” the resting place of drowned sailors) could have made this story more three-dimensional. Still, despite my stylistic grumblings, this is a good story with a powerful ending. Recommended.

“Captain Blood’s Booty” by Jeremiah Tolbert is a fitting selection to defy convention as to what one might expect from this themed issue. Our nameless first person narrator and his fellow college student, Seth, are in search of “buried treasure” when netmagic pirates destroy their dorm room. With the help of Molly, a.k.a. Matchmaker231, and his magic PDA, the adventure is on. Though somewhat “computer nerdy” for my taste, Tolbert offsets this with clever dialogue and hip modern locutions. Despite being a bit long for its weight, this story sparks of originality and will make you smile.

“The Blackguard of God” by Melinda Selmys is the shortest tale in this issue. It entails a pirate who comes to the confessional and the priest who assumes his role as pirate so the pirate can do his penance. Aboard ship, the priest is corrupted by the wicked ways of piracy before returning to the church and finding….

Well rendered, though rather predictable.

“Come to the Islands” by Mikal Trimm is a modern tale of urban vacationers on the island of Tobago. Erik and his wife are on a holiday with their wealthy friends, Russell and Trish. Erik is dissatisfied with his humdrum life, as every acerbic sentence of this tale clearly shows. Russell owns a yacht, which is where the final scene linking this story to the pirate theme plays out as Erik enacts his dissatisfaction with life. No spoilers from this reviewer, so you’ll just have to read what happens. Though no real surprises here, this one delivers a punch at the end.

“The Barbary Shore” by James L. Cambias is a space pirate tale, actually a virtual space pirate tale. David Arnold, alias “Captain Black,” has five fan sites and at least as many law enforcement sites devoted to tracking him. Elizabeth is his former girlfriend who isn’t who she first appears to be. I enjoyed the personal relationship aspect of “The Barbary Shore” more than the protracted technobabble about orbital satellites and L-1 libration points, etc., which I thought were overdone. This is SF, though, and the ending is satisfying.

“Pirates by Adeline Thromb Age 8” by Marissa K. Lingen is just that, an essay on pirates written from the voice of an eight-year-old girl. I said above that “The Blackguard of God” is the shortest story in this issue, and it is; while shorter, this 900-word selection isn’t a story but more of a novelty piece. Adeline uses words like “offten,” “allways,” and “superstishus” and reprimands herself by writing 32 times “I will not use vulgrity” after using the term “pansy ass.” All this is accompanied by childlike drawings resembling an eight-year-old’s. This was “cute,” but not for me.

Edward Teach, a.k.a. Blackbeard the Pirate, appears as a ghost in “The Sweet Realm” by Jill Snider Lum. Teach watches from above as his body is thrown overboard by the military sailors who captured and killed him. Now he’s underwater, moving through it as though it were air. A giant lobster appears and assures him he’s not in Hell, but the Sweet Realm, a freebooter’s Valhalla. But pirate Heaven turns out to be Hell for Teach. Soon he’s put before a bizarre group of demons in judgment. This is a light, humorous piece, and the description of the demons reminded me of John Varley’s inventiveness. My interest did wane with the protracted dialogue at the trial, but the ending delivers a modern twist I wasn’t expecting.

For my taste, “The Furies” by Rajan Khanna is exactly the type of story I was hoping to find in this collection. Seaman Michael tells of how his ship is overtaken by a fierce ship flying the Jolly Roger. His crewmates are put to the sword by pirates who are all wearing demon masks, and only Michael is taken aboard—as they need his services to catalogue the booty they raided from his ship. But, knowing when that task is done they’ll most likely kill him, he asks to become one of their crew. A pretty standard tale up to this point, that changes when Michael discovers that to join the crew, his manhood must be severed, and all the masked pirates are female. This is Khanna’s first published story, and I found it a thoughtful, saucy pirate adventure done with skill.

I guess it’s appropriate that an issue with a pirate theme includes a Peter Pan tale, which is what Justine Graykin does for the penultimate story. Unfortunately, “The Perfect Hook” is far from perfect. This story gets off to a rocky start. It doesn’t take too long to realize that they’re at an outdoor performance of Peter Pan in a park, but I had orientation problems initially. The mother’s frustration at dealing with her unruly children is captured well, though I thought the brief flashback to their home life was unnecessary and takes the reader out of the moment. Eventually, Caroline meets Captain Hook, whom she realizes isn’t an actor from the play, and she is swept off to Neverland to be his mistress. While the ending of this account of a grown woman dealing with wish fulfillment and recapturing her lost childhood is touching, I found that it had nothing new to say.

The final selection is “Hard Times for Bartleby Crow” by Grant Stone. This is Stone’s first publication, and I was impressed. Bartleby is a pirate being held by an emir who wants to know where his treasure is buried. Left in his cell to die, Bartleby blathers to a mouse and relates his life of piracy. Often, extended dialogue such as this gets old quickly, but Stone has a gift for writing dialogue, and the tale plops along nicely. Of course, the mouse is more than he appears to be. This tale is told from more or less an omniscient point of view, but with Bartleby’s monologue, the viewpoint becomes tight. An interesting technique, and a fitting coup de grâce to the issue.