Strange Horizons, January 2008

Strange Horizons began 2008 with a short piece, “Still Living” by J. J. Irwin. Alice’s husband, Carlos, recently died, but the murals he painted throughout their house—their happy moments on picnic blankets under a warm sun, feeding each other—are still animated, each set of Alice and Carlos still together. The real Alice cannot bear their joy.

Irwin manages to capture in a small space the very real essence of Alice’s grief. This is a sad story, a little reminiscent of M. Rickert’s work in its slightly ethereal yet human approach to loss. An excellent start to the year.

Next up is “The End of Tin” by Bill Kte’pi which tells a story about the Tin Man from the world of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. The beginning is awkward and slow, packed with references to the original material that, though not confusing, meant little to me; names and places were dropped, and they could have been anyone or anywhere for all that I knew or cared. Unfortunately, the eventual acceleration of the plot did not improve matters much. The Tin Man’s artificial replacement heart is not a true replacement for the heart he once possessed as a man. Nevertheless, he pines for a childhood sweetheart and chases after her upon seeing something strange in a mirror; at the same time, the end of the world appears to be nigh. The relationship between the Tin Man and Maryann is interesting in the way it calls attention to the problems of a world where women are either ancients or girls, but didn’t redeem my biggest problem with the story. If the Tin Man’s artificial heart enables him to care enough about Maryann to mourn that he does not fully care, why doesn’t he care about the end of the world? Surely this should provoke some kind of reaction from him. Perhaps he is meant to be depressed and uncaring, but this didn’t come through.

I am not sure what Kte’pi hoped to achieve here, but I missed it. In the end, I was left thinking that a fan of Oz might appreciate bits of it more than I could. “The End of Tin” felt like Kte’pi was having too much fun playing around with a favorite fandom and forgot to tell a good story.

I found “How to Hide Your Heart” by Deborah Coates difficult to get into; the writing style is quite loose and chatty, which rarely works for me, and the content did not enthuse. As the story progresses, it becomes more interesting. The main character, a man with many names, hunts dangerous Things that are often erroneously identified as zombies, vampires, and other similar creatures. In the latest city he has been called to, where he hunts not-zombies and a not-wendigo, he meets a young woman, Beth, who has also encountered Things elsewhere. The story focuses on both the rather straightforward action of defeating the not-zombies and not-wendigo and on the reaction that the main character has to Beth. Though he initially seems to be the typical tough, unemotional hunter, he comes to show some complexity of character that makes this story more enjoyable. He is not, however, quite as interesting as Beth, who is more than a typical scarred girl. I would have liked to know more about her. But even with three-dimensional characters, “How to Hide Your Heart” didn’t wow me; it was not quite original enough.

“Looking for Friendship, Maybe More” by Corie Ralston is composed in the style of a message board like Craigslist, where five characters and an activist group are posting requests and reactions. They are all on High Earth Orbit Station, where the D’ohrahd race is making contact. The HumanOnly group fears alien invasion, but the other people on the message board are more concerned with strange rings spread between them from offline sexual encounters with each other.

Ralston provides an enjoyable read, using the narrative style long enough for good effect without it dragging into tedium. Occasionally, she strains the realism of her format.—I was jarred where Handyman tells Helpless Romantic what happened in the hospital, rather than leaving a message for H.R. with the hospital staff or waiting until s/he woke up—but on the whole manages to keep it natural. Announcements from the message board’s service provider allow readers to glimpse what is happening to the characters and the High Earth Orbit Station when they cannot realistically post, which prevents them from having to tell each other what they would already know. It seems a little sad that encountering another alien race would be so marginalized by sex, but Ralston’s cynicism does not strike me as being misplaced. Through format and focus, she provides a fun slant on the first contact trope.