Strange Horizons, July 2007

For July, Strange Horizons offered five fantastical stories of varying themes.

In “Brazos” by Jerome Stueart, a god approaches the human narrator with a proposition of marriage between his son, the Brazos River, and the narrator’s daughter. But the narrator, who has learned the hard realities of love after two divorces, is not willing to give his daughter away to a young god who probably won’t dedicate the necessary effort needed to maintain a lasting relationship. Even though he risks an unpleasant fate, he continues to argue his case.

The presentation of the gods is amusing without being trite. They bear some resemblance to the Greek pantheon, with their apparent tendency to bed and shed girls on whim and their habit of turning ex-lovers and other irritating humans into strange things:

“I remembered Tammy, who became a drive-in theatre, and her family transformed into Dairy Queens all along Interstate 180. They popped up overnight, even as her family disappeared.”

The narrator is a solid character. He is a practical man, both when it comes to relationships and in the running of his farm, and a caring father, and these traits flow naturally from the page. The prose has a good rhythm to it, allowing the story to slide easily off the screen. “Brazos” contains a message and gets it across well without feeling overbearing about it. Most importantly, the author doesn’t forget that a story is, first and foremost, meant to entertain; “Brazos” does that well, too.

A note to those who, like me, appreciate the aesthetics of a publication: Lydia C. Burris’s illustration is absolutely stunning.

“The Captain Is the Last to Leave” by Caroline Lockwood Nelson follows Wade and Roamer, two brothers searching for a woman, Jessie, who has eluded them for an undefined length of time. Most recently, she established a family in a small seaside town, only to disappear again after her husband and children were found murdered. As Wade and Roamer examine the house she lived in, they feel the past washing over them. Jessie and her family, happy; Jessie killing; Jessie telling her son about the Immortal People:

“That we stand in the sunshine and freckle. That we cross ourselves when devils pass, that we kneel in churches, and eat pasta with garlic. That we nick our legs in the shower and groan when we give birth, to children who will never outlive us. That we walk among men and that we get nothing from them, not their strength, not their folly, not their pasts. Just a second of warmth and then we let the bodies drop. But we are cursed.”

The idea of vampires struggling to cope with their immortality is far from being a new one. However, Nelson handles her story with a grace and care that prevents it from being stale. The characters and their interactions are what make it strong. The uneasy relationship between Wade and Roamer, the even more difficult one between them and Jessie, the babysitter’s insight into Jessie’s mental state—all are real and fascinating. Though Jessie never appears onstage, her presence is a troubled constant throughout, and the ending is powerful.

“The Perfume Eater” by R. J. Astruc is another tale about the supernatural in our world. A deev (a kind of Persian demon) appears in the tenement garden, and Zeem, who lives in one of the apartments, is the only one to know what and who it is. The history between them stretches back centuries to when Zeem (an old kind of fairy: a Peri or “perfume-eater”) trapped the deev underground during a war. Now, though, the war is over, and things have changed, and Zeem wishes the deev could see that.

The mundanity of the modern world is a strong presence—in the names and details of the people who live in the tenements, in Zeem’s life working behind a supermarket checkout, in the basic descriptions of the tenements and the garden. The deev is an outsider to this, a relic. Its battle with Zeem is long past its sell-by date. Its inability or refusal to see this leads not to a grand supernatural battle, but to what amounts to a casual dismissal by the modern world.

An unusual and strong story.

In “Limits” by Donna Glee Williams, Williams creates a fascinating world. Villages are set on the side of a long slope. Each person is limited regarding how many villages up and down they can go before things like heat rash or perpetual coldness dissuade them from continuing. For most, this range is small, but Len’s son, Cam, is one of the Far Walkers. When all of Cam’s friends find their limits, he and his friend, Fox, can still walk further up and further down. But when Fox finds her upward limit, Cam realises he may have to start walking alone.

However, the story suffers from a lack of focus during its first half. It follows Cam through his mother’s viewpoint as he grows older and walks further and further. The narrative is very straightforward, very A-to-B-to-C, especially as we already know from the opening paragraph that Cam will be a Far Walker. (It’s not said outright, but the implication is strong.) Worldbuilding details add flavour, but they are not enough to make the narrative exciting. It reminded me of novels where the first chapter is a summary of the main character’s life to date, and the important stuff begins in the next chapter. In almost all instances where this occurs, excising that first chapter would result in a far better book. When it happens in a work only several thousand words long, this superfluous backstory weakens the story is even more noticeably. If Williams had cut the first half of “Limits” and managed to convey the important elements interspersed into the second half—when Fox turns back and Cam realises she is reaching her limits—the story would have been far stronger. That’s where it gains focus, in examining the difficulties the characters face and the choices they must make. The ending is the strongest moment here, and it’s there that Williams shows that she is a capable writer.

“Wake-Up Call” by Leslie Brown is about a woman who lies in a vegetative state, awakening for several minutes every few years. When she wakes, she demands odd things from her daughter, Dagmar: apple seeds to grow new trees, Dagmar’s necklace. When her mother sleeps, she is in another world, where she is a powerful sorceress and must defeat a great foe. Though Dagmar’s father insists that it’s a figment of her mother’s mind, the things Dagmar gives her disappear soon after she falls back to sleep. However, when Dagmar is sixteen and her mother wakes up again, she’s determined to change the unfair situation, but her mother has an even more urgent request.

I found this story too bland for my tastes. The plot didn’t capture me, the characters showed no flair, and the prose was flavourless and didn’t flow as it did in the other July offerings. It all seemed too simple, too straightforward. I gained no sense of her mother’s struggle, and Dagmar’s decision came more easily than it should have.