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Birthday Reviews: Michael Shea’s “Fast Food”

Birthday Reviews: Michael Shea’s “Fast Food”

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Cover by David Christiana
Cover by David Christiana

Michael Shea was born on July 3, 1946 and died on February 16, 2014.

Shea won the World Fantasy Award twice, in 1983 for the novel Nifft the Lean and in 2005 for the novella “The Growlimb,” the latter of which was also nominated for the International Horror Guild Award. His story “Autopsy” was nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Novelette and the Nebula Award for Best Novella. He previously had been nominated for a Nebula for his novelette “The Angel of Death.” His novel A Quest for Simbilis was nominated for the August Derleth Award.

Shea sold “Fast Food” to Robert K.J. Killheffer and it appeared in the third issue of Century in September/October, 1995. Shea subsequently included the story in his 2008 collection The Autopsy and Other Tales, published by Centipede Press.

“Fast Food” is a revenge story with a difference. Jivaro in native to a part of the Amazonian rain forest which is being bulldozed to make way for grazing land for Mighty Burger, an American fast food chain. Befriended by Henry, one of the bulldozer drivers, Jivaro swaps bodies with another driver, Vic, sending Vic to live in the rainforest as Jivaro while the original Jivaro destroys the two bulldozers and gets himself and Henry sent back to the states. Applying for a job at the fast food chain, Jivaro continues to body swap while at the same time causing the chain’s food to infect its diners with strange bumps and rashes.

Jivaro had a long term plan to not only get vengeance on Mighty Burger, but also to attempt to repopulate the Amazon rain forest. Shea’s story points out that just as the forces behind Mighty Burger don’t care what happens when they pillage the rain forest, dooming animals and the indigenous population, Jivaro also doesn’t care what happens to the innocent people whose only connection to Mighty Burger may be that they eat there, or to the animals that he summons up far from their natural habitat.

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Birthday Reviews: Kay Kenyon’s “The Executioner’s Apprentice”

Birthday Reviews: Kay Kenyon’s “The Executioner’s Apprentice”

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Cover by Kenn Brown and Chris Wren
Cover by Kenn Brown and Chris Wren

Kay Kenyon was born on July 2, 1956.

Kenyon has been nominated for the Philip K. Dick Award for her novel Maximum Ice. Her novel The Braided World was nominated for the John W. Campbell Memorial Award. She was nominated for the Endeavour Award three years in a row for the novels Bright of the Sky, A World Too Near, and City Without End.

She wrote “The Executioner’s Apprentice” for Julie Czerneda and Isaac Szpindel’s anthology ReVisions, which focused on scientific achievements as the catalyst for alternate history. Published in 2004, the story has never been reprinted.

“The Executioner’s Apprentice” takes a place in an Aztec empire which is advanced enough to make use of genetic testing in determining who has violent tendencies and likely criminal behavior to determine the appropriate victims of execution. Pacal is the titular apprentice who is preparing for his first execution and has completely bought into the traditional system. When his friends arrange for him to lose his virginity prior to his first execution, Kina, the woman he is with, tries to make him understand that there are better ways than executions.

On the eve of his induction into the ranks of Executioners, Pacal learns that the methodology he has been taught by the priests to find victims is a lie, and that his first victim will be Kina. Rather than culling the Aztecs of their most violent citizens, the priests are working to remove those who abhor violence, building a society which is ready to defend themselves not only against their traditional enemies but also the mysterious Eastern Army, which is implied to be made up of European conquistadors.

The discovery that genetic testing was not used for what Pacal believed is only the first twist that Kenyon introduces. When Kina and Pacal flee so he doesn’t have to kill her, Kenyon reveals more about the Eastern religion Kina follows and the holy book she reveres and tries to get Pacal to understand. This last twist is a nice touch, although it doesn’t help place the time period or the evolution of society to the story, if anything confusing it even more.

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Birthday Reviews: Genevieve Valentine’s “From the Catalogue of the Pavilion of the Uncanny and Marvellous, Scheduled for Premier at the Great Exhibition (Before the Fire)”

Birthday Reviews: Genevieve Valentine’s “From the Catalogue of the Pavilion of the Uncanny and Marvellous, Scheduled for Premier at the Great Exhibition (Before the Fire)”

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Cover by Allen Williams
Cover by Allen Williams

Genevieve Valentine was born on July 1, 1981.

Valentine was nominated for the World Fantasy Award for Best Short Story in 2010 for “Light on the Water.” In 2012, her short story “Things to Know About Being Dead” was a Shirley Jackson Award nominee and her novel Mechanique: A Tale of the Circus Tresaulti was a Nebula Award nominee. That same year Mechanique won the William L. Crawford — IAFA Award.

“From the Catalogue of the Pavilion of the Uncanny and Marvellous, Scheduled for Premier at the Great Exhibition (Before the Fire)” was published by Ellen Datlow in Queen Victoria’s Book of Spells: An Anthology of Gaslamp Fiction in 2013. It has not been reprinted.

Genevieve Valentine’s “From the Catalogue of the Pavilion of the Uncanny and Marvellous, Scheduled for Premier at the Great Exhibition (Before the Fire)” is a story told in the form of letters, catalogue entries, and quotations from books about a lost pavilion at London’s Great Exhibition of 1851. According to Valentine, part of the Exhibition was to be devoted to creatures and oddities from around the world: actual mermaids, fairies, and other mythical creatures, but a fire before the opening destroyed the exhibit.

The catalog of these exhibitions is interspersed throughout the story, beginning with the “Biddenden Maids,” a pair of German Siamese twins, but the entries get more inventive very quickly. Letters from Walter Goodall, the artist hired to paint images of the pavilion are also included as the reader is given background information about both the Exhibition and the staff that is handling this particular pavilion.

The plot of the story, such as it is, is essentially revealed in the work’s title. The enjoyment of the story comes from the descriptions of the oddities which would have been found in the pavilion and Goodall’s letters indicating that he is attempting to maintain at least a semblance of normalcy despite the strangeness of his commission. As a story, it works less well, but it is evocative and makes the reader want to learn more about the Exhibition and if anything like the Pavilion of the Uncanny and Marvellous was meant to exist.

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Birthday Reviews: June Index

Birthday Reviews: June Index

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Cover by Tony Roberts
Cover by Tony Roberts

Black Gate Issue 1
Black Gate Issue 1

Cover by John Picacio
Cover by John Picacio

January index
February index
March index
April index
May index

June 1, James P. Killus: “Flower of the Void”
June 2, Lester del Rey: “Fade Out”
June 3, Tony Richards: “Discards”
June 4, Nictzin Dyalhis: “Heart of Atlantan”
June 5, Margo Lanagan: “The Proving of Smollett Standforth”
June 6, Jay Lake: “The Water Castle”

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Peplum Populist: Goliath and the Vampires (1961)

Peplum Populist: Goliath and the Vampires (1961)

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goliath-and-vampies-lobby-card

Okay, another Maciste film! Let’s do this!

When writing about Maciste’s history in silent movies, I promised that the next Peplum Populist article would hurtle ahead to Maciste’s first appearance in the sword-and-sandal boom of the 1960s, Son of Samson (Maciste nella valle dei Re). But I have a DVD of Goliath and the Vampires (Maciste contro il vampiro) lying here on the shelf, and it’s about time I completed the “dark fantasy” trio of peplum classics after writing about Hercules in the Haunted World (1961) and Maciste in Hell/The Witch’s Curse (1962). Although Goliath and the Vampires doesn’t have the same visual imagination, it’s in the 90th percentile as far as sword-and-sandal fun goes.

Goliath and the Vampires features more stock genre situations than those two other films. The fantastic elements don’t dictate the story as much as they’re pasted onto the pre-fabricated framework of what sword-and-sandal films were quickly solidifying into.

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Birthday Reviews: Adam Roberts’s “Pest Control”

Birthday Reviews: Adam Roberts’s “Pest Control”

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Cover by Julek Heller
Cover by Julek Heller

Adam Roberts was born on June 30, 1965.

Roberts won the John W. Campbell Memorial Award and the British SF Association Award for his novel Jack Glass in 2013. In 2016, he won a second BSFA Award for his non-fiction book Rave and Let Die: The SF and Fantasy of 2014. He has also been nominated for the Arthur C. Clarke Award, the British Fantasy Award, the Philip K. Dick Award, the Sidewise Award, and the Kitschies. In addition to writing series science fiction, he also has published several fantasy parodies, usually identifiable based on a series of Rs as his middle initial.

“Pest Control” was purchased by Mike Ashley for inclusion in the 2005 anthology The Mammoth Book of New Comic Fantasy. Although it appeared in a Science Fiction Book Club reprint of the volume, it has not appeared elsewhere.

A familiarity with the poem Beowulf is a benefit for those reading Adam Roberts’s “Pest Control,” although at the same it can be something of an hindrance. The story relates the events of the poem, but rather than Beowulf coming to Hrothgar’s aide to rid Heorot of Grendel, in Roberts’s version of the story, Beowulf, or Mr. Wulf, calls a modern day pest control company to get rid of the creature.

The humor of the story comes from the juxtaposition of the ancient story of Beowulf and Des Hannigan, the representative of King and Kegan Pest Control, treating the situation as normal, although he thought he was being called to take care of a rat infestation rather than a Grendel. The story follows the tripartite nature of the original poem, so anyone who knows the poem has a good idea about the results of each of the attempts at pest eradication.

Roberts manages to make his jokes land, although it seems like having Mr. Wulf as the pest control specialist and the person with the Grendel problem being a Mr. Hrothgar would have fit the pattern of the original poem a bit better. As it is, Des provides solutions for the clearly not very bright Mr. Wulf and while the reader is allowed to see the progression of the story, the ultimate pest control issue is left to the imagination.

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In 500 Words or Less: Kate Heartfield’s Debut Novel Armed in Her Fashion

In 500 Words or Less: Kate Heartfield’s Debut Novel Armed in Her Fashion

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Armed in Her Fashion-smallArmed in Her Fashion
By Kate Heartfield
ChiZine Publications (350 pages, $17.99 paperback, $10.99 eBook, April 2018)

Fantasy is a tough industry. You can a) stick to tried-and-true tropes and structures and hope to stand out in subtler ways or b) come up with something truly outside-the-box and hope that it still appeals to the traditional fantasy audience. Neither of these options is a sure thing (is anything?). But it seems like every month, reviewers point out authors who are doing one or the other and doing it well.

That’s basically what I’m doing here. Not simply because I’ve been a fan of Kate Heartfield’s short fiction since well before I got to know her here in Ottawa (she’s awesome, by the way). It’s because her first novel, Armed in Her Fashion, is basically Option B on some performance-enhancing drug.

We’ve all seen the basic quest narrative, right? Protagonist and company need to travel somewhere and do a thing, they go through a bunch of challenges en route, and the path to their goal isn’t at all what they expect when they set out from home. Fashion is essentially a Campbellian hero’s journey, but it’s also way more. It’s set in 14th century Flanders, for one thing. It’s also alternate history, taking place at the outset of the Hundred Years War, but with a Hellmouth and revenants in play. And the cast is mostly women, centered on widow Margriet de Vos and her daughter Beatrix, looking to reclaim the latter’s inheritance from Margriet’s sorta-dead husband. The concept of women’s rights and authority is a huge piece of this story, but in a medieval context, and with an additional angle in the form of Claude, a transgender man-at-arms. Claude is a particularly compelling character, allowing Heartfield to explore a topic I’ve never seen in fantasy before: how a transgendered individual would be treated by a medieval, patriarchal society. As well, the disconnect between how Claude views himself and how even Fashion’s other protagonists view him as “that woman who dresses like a man” isn’t all that alien when compared to contemporary society.

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Birthday Reviews: Jeff Duntemann’s “Guardian”

Birthday Reviews: Jeff Duntemann’s “Guardian”

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Cover by Alex Schomburg
Cover by Alex Schomburg

Jeff Duntemann was born on June 29, 1952.

Duntemann began publishing in 1974 with “Our Lady of the Endless Sky,” and has mostly published short fiction. In 1981 Duntemann appeared on the Hugo Award for Short Story ballot twice, for “Cold Hands” and “Guardian,” losing to Clifford Simak’s “Grotto of the Dancing Deer.” In 2005 ISFiC Press published his first novel, The Cunning Blood. He collaborated with Nancy Kress on the story “Borovsky’s Hollow Woman” in 1983.

“Guardian” appeared in the September 1980 issue of Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, edited by George H. Scithers. It was translated for its appearance in the German edition of the magazine, Isaac Asimovs Science Fiction Magazin 13 Folge and was included by Herbert W. Franke in the anthology Kontinuum 4 in 1987.

Duntemann’s “Guardian” is an interesting mix of futuristic and historic. The Guardian in question has been tasked with protecting Princess Divin Rea Hol Wervig, even beyond death. When the princess’s skull is taken from the swamp where she was interred, the Guardian seeks its return and vengeance. He makes his way into the nearby village where he finds himself confronting Abbot Gorman Izak.

In the millennia since the princess died and the Guardian, which is clearly robotic in nature, has come into contact with human civilization, society has changed, as has the technology level. Abbott Izak is clearly a religious in the Christian tradition who is able to have an intelligent conversation with the Guardian and manages to delay its vengeance by a week, during which time the Abbot promises to find the culprit who stole the skull.

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Mage: The Hero Denied #9

Mage: The Hero Denied #9

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Mage-9-smallSo there’s a weird thing that happens in superhero comics after they’ve been running for a while. No matter what sort of superhero we’re dealing with, how weak or powerful, eventually we start to see stories that begin with someone attacking them out of the blue, followed by the hero trying to figure out what’s happening. This happens even more often with superhero teams, since they tend to have publicly known headquarters. While these are sometimes set up as stories of revenge for some past defeat, more often it’s something along the lines of, “The hero is going to stop my evil plan, so before I even start the evil plan, I’m going to take out the hero.” Strangely, after the villain fails to take out the hero, they’ll just go ahead with the plan anyway. But in almost all of those stories, the hero wouldn’t even have KNOWN there was an evil plan if they hadn’t been attacked.

Kevin Matchstick is semi-retired at the start of Hero Denied. He has no idea that the Umbra Sprite has set up a new operation. He’s raising his kids and doing nothing that will cross his path with the Umbra Sprite. He’s not even looking for the Fisher King. Really, he doesn’t start moving until he’s attacked. And even then, he’s basically flailing about with no real focus until his wife and son are kidnapped.

So if the Umbra Sprite had just left Kevin Matchstick alone, he wouldn’t be coming after her. He wouldn’t even have known that anything was going on. Which I suppose is a lesson in how we often make bigger problems for ourselves by overthinking situations.

The issue opens with Kevin and Miranda driving through Fairy Land. Kevin’s got a dozen baseball bats in the backseat, ready to get charged up. I’m not sure how we’re meant to take that fact. On the one hand, it could mean that Kevin’s just getting ready for a lot of fighting. But since he can basically charge any object with magic energy, there is the question of why he’s chosen only to pack baseball bats instead of an assortment of weapons. Or why he doesn’t continue the habit he’s developed in the first half of this series of using improvisation to charge up whatever’s around. It might just be that he’s grasping for something familiar and comfortable as his world is torn apart.

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Birthday Reviews: Robert Lynn Asprin’s “No Glad in Gladiator”

Birthday Reviews: Robert Lynn Asprin’s “No Glad in Gladiator”

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Cover by Gary Ruddell
Cover by Gary Ruddell

Robert Lynn Asprin was born on June 28, 1946. He died on May 22, 2008.

Asprin won the coveted Balrog Award for the Thieves’ World anthologies Shadows of Sanctuary and Storm Season. The first anthology in the series, Thieves’ World, was nominated for the World Fantasy Award. In addition to his work on the shared world series, Asprin is also known for his long-running Myth series, featuring Skeeve and Aahz. Other series, often written with co-authors, include Phule’s Company, Time Scout, and The Cold Cash War. For a time, Asprin was married to Lynn Abbey, who co-edited several of the Thieves’ World anthologies and eventually resurrected the series in the 2000s.

“No Glad in Gladiator” was published in the ninth volume of the Thieves’ World series, Blood Ties, edited by Asprin and Lynn Abbey in 1986. Its only reprinting was in the third Thieves’ World omnibus edition which included volumes 7-9, The Shattered Sphere.

The gladiator slave Jubal was one of the first characters introduced in the Thieves’ World shared world series, conceived by the series creator, Robert Lynn Asprin. By the time the ninth volume rolled around, Jubal had enjoyed his triumphs and suffered his set backs. In “No Glad in Gladiator,” Asprin has cast him in the role of eminent grise, showing a meeting between Jubal and Chenaya, a Rankene noblewoman and gladiator who is trying to make her way in Sanctuary.

Despite both characters’ background as gladiators, “No Glad in Gladiators” is a relatively static story. Asprin has the two characters sitting in a room talking, Chenaya’s looking for an alliance with Jubal and Jubal, after explaining why he isn’t interested in an alliance, explains to Chenaya all of her shortcomings. The story doesn’t fully work without its larger context. Jubal provides enough information about himself for the reader to understand who he was, and is, but Chenaya’s history is only painted in broad strokes, making her something of an enigma.

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