Strange Horizons, May 2008

Strange Horizons begins the month of May, 2008, with “The Gadgey” by Alan Campbell. In Scotland, two teenage boys on BMXs find a crashed spaceship. After much banter of Star Trek and E.T., the boys meet the alien they call a gadgey, who looks like the alien from the movie Predator, except in a silver space suit. “Take me to your leader” results in the boys taking the alien to hip biker Tam where they smoke pot and trade a bag of weed for the alien’s raygun. The point of the story, I think, is in viewing the arrival of an alien from the perspective of those acclimated to SF media. I’ve never been a fan of dialects in prose, and I wish the author would’ve gone with straight dialogue as I found “The Gadgey” a chore to read.

The next story is Barth Anderson’s “The Refutation of Rosemont.” Told in epistolary form, Dr. John C. Miles writes about his adversary Jeremiah Rosemont, both characters from Anderson’s latest novel, The Magician and the Fool. Unlike the novel, this piece is told in an academic style, delving deeply into the use of the tarot. I wasn’t overwhelmed by this story, finding it mostly of intellectual appeal. Knowledge of tarot isn’t a prerequisite, but an interest in it is.

“Tell Her” by Rachel Kincaid is a narrative-driven story of a man whose girlfriend moved out after a big difficulty that isn’t made apparent until the end. When he goes to the ATM machine, the receipts have messages on them, “Take a deep breath” and “I’m sorry,” etc. After work, he hangs out with an obnoxious fellow named Andy who tells dead baby jokes at the bar they frequent. Toward the end, the messages on the receipts read “Tell her!” and the reader discovers what the man is hiding.

Strange Horizons has been known to publish the occasional offbeat superhero tale from time to time, and such is the case of Tony Frazier’s “No Love for the Middleman.” Ron from Customer Service is in the break room when an explosion occurs. Two petite Asian girls in tights have used their superpowers to infiltrate the building in search of documents to bring down their archenemy, Chessmaster. After a short skirmish, Ron is knocked unconscious, but upon awakening, follows them upstairs. When they realize he’s the retired superhero AcroCop, they crack up laughing. Poor Ron never got any respect as he was the lamest superhero to ever live. Not that lame, however, as he soon renders the twins unconscious by separating them—their powers only work when in close proximity to each other—but then Chessmaster enters. A fun, light tale that doesn’t try to be more than it is.