Subterranean Online, Spring 2008

The Spring 2008 issue of the Subterranean Press online magazine offers seven stories (arranged in alphabetical order by title, something I’ve never noticed in other magazines), along with an article on Henry Kuttner, a review of Thomas Ligotti’s Teatro Grottesco, and an interview with Sherrilyn Kenyon. This issue also includes “Delilah and the Space Rigger,” a teleplay by Robert A. Heinlein and Jack Seaman which is not reviewed here, but is likely of interest to readers.

The first story is also without question the star of the Spring issue: “After the Siege” by Cory Doctorow. This piece, the longest of the batch, is recorded on audio in five parts. (As an aside, I’m curious as to the success of offering audio fiction alongside print stories. Do people gravitate towards listening as opposed to reading when perusing an online magazine?) “After the Siege” is a gripping war story seen through the eyes of an adolescent girl.

In the beginning, Valentine lives in a candy-colored nanotech world of plenty, a post “revolution” world that stands in stark contrast to the scarcity, poverty, and disease of the time before the “revolution.” We learn shortly, however, that this revolution is more of a pause in the violence rather than a permanent victory. Called the Info-War, the war’s nature is capitalistic, involving intellectual property and royalties. The majority of the action takes place during the siege of Valentine’s city (which seems to be in Brazil) and as the story unfolds, we learn that the U.S. and the EU are the “axis of evil” to our main character’s home (which is allied to Russia and China).

Once the siege begins, Valentine’s mother goes off to defend the city, and then her father follows. Rationing begins. Technology breaks down. The war is not going well. As life worsens in more ways, Valentine meets a man who, based on his appearance, she calls the Wizard. The Wizard brings her to his own abode of luxury and functioning pre-siege technology. He and a woman named Anna treat Valentine with surprising kindness and give her food. (This scene will make readers desperately want a chocolate shake.) This encounter marks the first of several meetings. Whenever Valentine needs help, she goes, Dorothy-like, off to the see the Wizard.

Months pass, and Valentine digs ditches for the war effort. The rations peter out to nothing and people begin to starve to death. Valentine then begins hauling dead bodies for bread (and pilfering the deceased’s possessions for a little more bread). The story behind the Wizard, the outcome of the war, and Valentine’s fate unfold within a tight structural framework that keeps the tension high. Doctorow powerfully demonstrates the way violence dehumanizes and brutalizes people, and he presents a picture of the suffering that civilians endure during war, especially children (and Doctorow’s point is well taken that Valentine is neither American nor European). Ultimately, “After the Siege” is about overcoming violence, hanging on to one’s humanity, the hope for peace, and, as Valentine’s name suggests, love.

A pastiche of 19th century science fiction, “Air and Angels” by Beth Bernobich is about a shiftless young man named Steven Eliot. He has squandered his time at Cambridge where he halfheartedly pursued Mathematics, and he has squandered the goodwill of his parents upon whom he depends. He neither wants to marry nor pursue a career. When he sees Eva Dubois at a society party, however, his curiosity is piqued. She is occupied, not by chatting with other party guests, but by scribbling equations in a book. They meet, but before Steven can discover more, Eva’s equally mysterious sister pulls her away. Eventually, after one more chance encounter with Eva, Steven receives an invitation to her estate. There he finds the answers he wants, not to mention witnessing (and in one sense taking part in) an event he never could have imagined.

The prose in “Air and Angels” demonstrates some nice turns of phrase and a more or less believable tone. On the other hand, the class distinctions among the characters, which should be clear, seem a bit vague, partly because the prose sometimes lacks convincing details. But overall, this story offers a satisfying, interesting plot, and, with a gentle touch, it addresses female empowerment and the idea of wanting a different life from the one you have.

“By the Liter” by Ekaterina Sedia is a shorter piece, a vignette, concerning souls enticed by liters of beer into entering the living. The narrator reminisces about the first soul to enter him and how he was infused with the private memories of the dead man. Making its setting the chaos of Russia’s post-Soviet economy, the story’s premise seems to be a bleak play on the cliché of the alcoholic Russian. The dialogue is believable as is the narrator’s voice. Had any of the souls in question been interesting, this vignette may have worked.

“Connoisseurs: A Lucifer Jones story” by Mike Resnick offers up the further adventures of the geography-challenged, malapropism-spouting Lucifer Jones and his nemesis, Erich Von Horst. This installment finds Jones drawn into a plot to steal the Pebbles of Jupiter, an emerald necklace worth at least a million dollars. The plot whisks along briskly as Jones tries to outsmart Van Horst and swipe the jewels for himself. A couple of good jokes and a breezy pace make this a fluffy, fun read.

Glen Barlow returns from his job on an oil rig to deal with his sister’s death in “Road Dogs” by Norman Partridge. The police, having found Glen’s sister in the woods torn apart by an animal, assume the death is accidental—a hiking accident. Glen decides it’s murder, committed by his sister’s old boyfriend, a man Glen knows to be abusive. Deputy J.J. Bryce doesn’t agree, but he does want to stop Glen from seeking revenge. In the mix is Glen’s feelings for his ex-girlfriend, Lisa, his unresolved alienation from his sister, and a love triangle. Unfortunately for the story, the narrator enters the viewpoint of every character, something jarring for any length of fiction other than a novel. (And even then it’s tough to pull off.) In any case, a revenge story becomes a monster story when Glen and Bryce uncover a couple of surprising facts in the case. While the plot moves along well enough, what left me cold here was the writing itself. To Partridge’s credit, he revs up scenes with visceral energy, making the reader see and hear and feel, but he regularly veers into a ditch with overheated metaphors, purple passages, and well-worn phrases. To end on a more positive note, there is a fairly well done fight scene, Glen does come to a few realizations about himself, and we receive an acceptable if not altogether satisfying resolution.

“Stone Eggs” by Adriana Campoy and James P. Blaylock introduces a man named Max, house-sitting for his uncle Jonathan, whose old house has stayed in the family for generations. Max’s uncle has left no details as to where he’s gone or when he’ll be back. So, having seemingly unlimited time on his hands, Max pores over the house’s unusual library of scientific books and manuscripts, until he reads a mysterious note in one of the books’ margins. Like “Air and Angels,” “Stone Eggs” harks back to the Victorian age and the science fiction adventures and mechanical marvels of the time (in this case, a direct reference to Jules Verne bears this idea out). Max’s mystery is eventually solved, but unfortunately it doesn’t justify the story that comes before it. As a character, Max is two-dimensional, and his actions come without motivation, clearly contrived to forward the story from scene to scene. On the positive side, a couple of fresh and clever observations appear, such as a stove being described as having been “built during an era that had an inventive sense of humor, or perhaps a humorous sense of invention.” Plus, the story does introduce the notion of lighting a fish on fire for illumination, which begs to be pulled into some sort of Monty Pythonesque sketch.

Venturing into point-of-view territory that tends to be scorned by readers and editors alike, “Your Collar” by Elizabeth Bear is an impressive tale told in the second person. Here the main character is the Minotaur Asterion of Greek mythology. He has been captured (or rescued, depending on how you look at it) from his labyrinth and presented to an oracle-queen at her palace. Held in chains of gold and a padded leather yoke, he is subjected to a velvet captivity. Nonetheless, the Minotaur forms a relationship with the oracle-queen, and they spend afternoons playing chess (the games are an efficient metaphor for the changing dynamics of the relationship). Both characters emerge as fully-rounded, each with a personality, and Bear crafts them with economy. She also mines this simple scenario deeply, bringing up insights into power, language, and patriarchal demands on women. Drawing parallels between the palace and the labyrinth, the story depicts two characters making choices about what burdens they will carry in life. Themes aside, the story is worth reading for the visually evocative language alone. And Bear’s choice of second person proves to be a necessary one when the story pulls off a tricky point of view maneuver.