Talebones #37

The latest issue of Talebones leads with James Van Pelt’s “Floaters,” in which a dysfunctional trio search the future for clues to an impending global disaster. Our protagonist is Rye, a 3-D gaming/virtual reality wonk with advanced HIV disease. At the beginning of “Floaters,” he joins the inexplicably hostile Gretta and the scientist-straight-from-central-casting Dr. Martin. Together, using a remote-viewing technology developed by Dr. Martin, they will try to find out why the Earth ends in sudden conflagration seven years hence. It’s a high stakes hunt for a needle in a haystack, and why it is best served by a team of three rather than three hundred is never explained.

Van Pelt loads his story with the elements of high drama: the clock ticks down not just for Ragnarök and Rye’s doomed body, but also Rye’s sister, whom Rye has foreseen (thanks to Dr. Martin’s breakthrough) will soon die in a plane crash. Van Pelt wraps up these elements in a too-tidy conclusion which fails to provide the things the typical SF geek (this typical SF geek, anyway) really wants. How does Dr. Martin’s viewer work? And by what mechanism will our world become consumed in flame? (And what is Gretta’s problem?) The result is a story which gets its ticket punched in all the right places but never manages to satisfy.

Next is the short-short “To Be With Amy,” by William F. Nolan. Right from the first paragraph, Nolan brings us uncomfortably close to Ellen-Marie, a woman obsessed with the desire to have a daughter of her own. The fun Nolan has with Ellen-Marie’s character makes the first half of this story a pleasure to read. If he could have had as much fun with the disappointingly trite alien visitation and the predictable conclusion, “To Be With Amy” would have been a real treat.

In “What We Love,” Mark Rich devises a novel means of terraforming Venus: bioengineered pterosaurs that consume sulfuric acid and carbon dioxide and excrete water and oxygen. Chief architects of this multi-trillion dollar project are Robert and Margaret Bildoes, an estranged husband and wife with Issues. Their egos and ambitions are at odds, leading to a spectacular outcome for the terraforming project.

At its core, “What We Love” is a lot of talk and exposition leading to a dramatic, visual conclusion. Whether it works for the reader will depend on his ability to suspend disbelief—particularly, that such a costly mission could be put at risk by two people, and would not be checked and triple checked by its various design teams and protected by numerous fail-safes.

M. K. Hobson gives us a rich and satisfying tale with “The Serpent Who Sleeps Beneath the Shards.” Iyrthyne was once a Cloud Sister, a high priestess to her people. But all that has changed following their conquest by the hyper-rational Empireals. On a day when she and her people are compelled to entertain a high-ranking Empireal visitor by performing one of their sacred rituals, Iyrthyne receives a message telling her the times are about to change.

The fantastic elements of this story are well realized, but the best aspect of “The Serpent Who Sleeps Beneath the Shards” is Hobson’s thoughtful analysis of one culture subjugated by another. Military conquest is not enough; the new rulers must also destroy their subjects’ myths, heroes, and gods. The story provides a number of surprises, too, as when Iyrthyne has a momentary lapse of faith (she, too, has not been immune to the Empireals’ campaign of acculturation), or when, in the end, the reader must question what is meant by a happy ending.

Eric Del Carlo’s short-short “Firelight” answers the question, “Why might firefighters need a Catholic priest on their team?” but doesn’t have much time for plot or character development. The whole story is a lead-up to a punch line. If the reader doesn’t see that punch line from a mile away (or two pages; it is a short-short, after all), he might just enjoy this one.

A Fifteenth Century slaver captain finds himself adrift at sea with a mysterious woman in Edd Vick’s “The Corsair and the Lady,” a pleasing fable about wishes and second chances. Masud el-Allali ibn Harun nearly drowns when his ship is attacked, but someone or something has saved him. Al-Sayyida Raziya bint Faraj insists she was not Masud’s savior, and her story appears plausible, since she’s chained to the center of their impromptu raft (a fragment of her ship’s deck). Vick handles the two character’s burgeoning relationship deftly, and Masud’s redemption is believable. One could fault Vick for showing off his research a bit too frequently, but this is a small quibble of an otherwise enjoyable story.

The protagonist of Lon Prater’s “A Road Like This, at Night” has a somber journey ahead of him. Recently, he lost his daughter to a drunk driver; he has taken a bus to his daughter’s college town, and now he must return home with her car. The car resonates with his daughter’s experiences, leading him to a far deeper understanding of her than he could have ever expected. This is a brief but poignant story, a study of regret, effective without being manipulative or maudlin. In the intro, the editor quotes Prater as saying this is his favorite road story, but “A Road Like This, at Night” is far more than a road story.

“Persephone Eats Winter” by Julie McGalliard is another fine tale, this one a dramatization of the myth of Persephone, who must spend half the year in the underworld, wedded to Hades. Persephone reflects on her arrival in Hades, her infrequent visits to Mount Olympus, and her one ill-fated son by Hades, Zagreus. But this is all preparation for a sudden (and non-mythological) change in Persephone’s status in the underworld.

McGalliard’s Persephone is all about bitterness, and by extension winter, too, becomes a metaphor for bitterness. Perhaps McGalliard’s point is that a life without bitterness would not be half as rich.

Rebecca Tester should take her concept of a school for assassins and run with it: Hogwarts for the bloody-minded. “A Turquoise Morning” lends a violent nuance to the idea of a pyramidal educational program. Cocytus and Sanguine have been lovers during their time at school, but with graduation only hours away, who will murder whom? Tester plays fair with her clues, so some readers may predict the ending—but not this reader. This is an imaginative and clever tale that wants nothing more than to entertain, and succeeds.

Talebones #37 concludes with William Mingin’s “All That Glitters,” a story about beautiful creatures that catalyze escape from an increasingly ugly world. Glitterflies appeared six months ago. No one knows if they’re aliens or perhaps some new natural phenomenon, but they appear to have intelligence and a will of their own. They have come between Karl and his girlfriend, Rose, an unsuccessful opera singer who finds more pleasure in the creatures’ companionship than she does in Karl’s.

Mingin delivers a careful study of Rose’s withdrawal and decline. The glitterflies can be taken as metaphor for any mind-numbing addiction, perhaps, but they do have certain unique characteristics, in that they provide the addict with an illusion of beauty, love, and acceptance. Mingin’s reference to the Internet obsession with glitterflies may be more than a well timed detail; is it over-reaching to think he had social networking sites in mind when he crafted his story?

Yeah, probably.