Julian Saari offers up a fish tale of a bar story in “Side Effects.” This  short piece is the only work he has listed on the Internet Science Fiction Database and it appeared in the August 1991 issue of Analog, alongside a Pern story by Anne McCaffrey and the second part of the serialization of Lois McMaster Bujold’s Barrayar, impressive company.

Given the nature of the short story, it is appropriate that Saari sets it in a bar, called Timonescu’s.  Even more appropriately, Timonescu’s is part of a fishing lodge, where one would expect the clientele to tell tall tales about the sizes of their catches, or more likely the ones that got away. To this end, the bar’s owner, Ion Timonescu approaches the story he is told be a stranger with a certain amount of skepticism.

The particular story this client, and Saari, has to tell is about a man who did claimed to do research into bioluminescence, the ability to glow that in inherent to various types of fish, fireflies, and other plants and animals. The man’s research led to a microbe that would eat the oils produced by the sebaceous glands in a person’s body, providing a treatment for, among other things teenaged acne. The fact that the microbe has side effect involving bioluminescence is what causes the issue.

As the speaker describes the problem, he also demonstrates it. The microbes make his nose glow. Of course, part of the man’s story is the explanation for why and how the microbes cause the glow and why it means that the commercial viability of their research is practically nil. Despite his wariness, Timonescu does have to deal with the fact that he saw proof of the man’s story in the glowing nose and he may have to deal with it in the future.

The success of this sort of story is less about the details and more about the way they are presented, how well the author manages to string both the characters and the reader along and how amusing the story is. In this, Saari is only partly successful. Saari’s twist is clever and a fun take on a traditional story, but he doesn’t quite stretch his story out long enough. It comes across as a single joke story.

The story indicates that Saari had potential and it is too bad that this seems to be the only story he published. Even though it isn’t entirely successful, the story is short, barely two and a half pages, and a pleasant diversion.

 

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Steven H Silver is a twenty-time Hugo Award nominee and was the publisher of the Hugo-nominated fanzine Argentus as well as the editor and publisher of ISFiC Press for eight years. He has also edited books for DAW, NESFA Press, and ZNB. His most recent anthology is Alternate Peace and his novel After Hastings was published in 2020. Steven has chaired the first Midwest Construction, Windycon three times, and the SFWA Nebula Conference six times. He was programming chair for Chicon 2000 and Vice Chair of Chicon 7.