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A to Z Reviews: “The Good Food,” by Michael Ezell

A to Z Reviews: “The Good Food,” by Michael Ezell

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A to Z Reviews

“The Good Food,” by Michael Ezell originally appeared in the 2016 anthology Beyond the Stars: At Galaxy’s Edge. The story feels like a classic science fiction story, placing a single human, his enhanced animal companion, and a computerized ship on an alien planet which has been seeded with plant life and insects in the first stage of a terraforming project.

The planet on which Jensen lands has demonstrated an anomaly. The vegetation around the landing base established by humans has died off, leaving a straight edge not too far from the landing plate in a pattern which could not be natural. However, there is no indication the planet has intelligent life on it.

Although Jensen, as the human, appears to be the commander of the mission, the actual situation isn’t quite as straight forward. Jensen, a former soldier, and Roy, his enhanced dog, are sent out of the ship to explore the region, while the ship’s computer, called Moira, stands ready to analyze any samples they might find that may be related to the anomaly. Their mission goes sideways when they discover a small creature ready to attack both Roy and Jensen, potentially at the head of a larger attack.

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The Martian Chronicles Meet True Grit: The Strange by Nathan Ballingrud

The Martian Chronicles Meet True Grit: The Strange by Nathan Ballingrud

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The Strange (Saga Press, March 21, 2023). Cover uncredited

I wish I could take credit for the headline of The Martian Chronicles Meet True Grit for Nathan Ballingrud’s terrific novel, but according to the author, Karen Jay Fowler came up with it. I hope she won’t mine me stealing it because it is as spot on as any description I could come up with.

The more prosaic version is that The Strange is a Western riff on Ray Bradbury’s vision of Mars, but without the canals. A Mars in an alternate 1930s timeline when interplanetary space travel first began during the Civil War, an oblique reference (among a slew of oblique references to classic SF tropes and personages) to Edgar Rice Burroughs’ John Carter, an ex-Confederate Barsoom warlord. Just as Bradbury had no interest in explaining how humans could actually exist on Mars sans space suits in a sort of off-world version of 1950s Illinois, or Burroughs how you can get astrally projected from an Arizona cave to Mars, Ballingrud just wants you to suspend disbelief and enjoy the ride.

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A to Z Reviews: “A Brief History of Death Switches,” by David Eagleman

A to Z Reviews: “A Brief History of Death Switches,” by David Eagleman

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A to Z Reviews

David Eagleman’s “A Brief History of Death Switches” is a perfect example of a story whose meaning changes over time, but is just as valid now than it was when it was originally published in 2006.

Around the time Eagleman wrote his story, there were many web services which were set up designed to prolong a person’s internet presence beyond death. These services would send out emails purportedly from the dead person on anniversaries or notifications of death. They didn’t last long, but Eagleman took the idea and expanded upon it.

In the context of his story, death switches begin as a means of protecting information. If a person doesn’t log into an account in a set period of time, the system assumes they are dead and sends the appropriate log-in information to a designated successor. This is meant to ensure that businesses can continue to function and heirs can access confidential financial information following the death of an employee or loved one.

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Emancipation: April by Mackey Chandler

Emancipation: April by Mackey Chandler

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April, Mackey Chandler (self published, May 4, 2019). Cover uncredited

Back in 2020, one of the blogs I follow had a paragraph about a newly released self-published novel, Who Can Own the Stars? by Mackey Chandler. The title sounded interesting, so I tracked it down on Amazon. It turned out to be volume 12 of a series; having enjoyed it, I went back to the first volume, April, and then read through the entire series, one volume at a time.

Like many science fiction writers of an earlier era, Chandler has a background that’s technological rather than literary. The April series is self-published, and has the rough spots that often go with that: It could benefit from a professional line edit, both to catch errors of language and to avoid minor inconsistencies such as changing a character’s name. As a copy editor, I’m sensitive to such things, and often they put me off a book. However, I just finished rereading April, and still found it both enjoyable and interesting.

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Immaculate Scoundrels by John R. Fultz

Immaculate Scoundrels by John R. Fultz

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Every job needed a crew.

from Immaculate Scoundrels

I keep revisiting the earliest days of writing about contemporary swords & sorcery lately. Last month I read and reviewed Rogue Blade’s fantastic new anthology, Neither Beg Nor Yield. Now, I’ve just finished John R. Fultz’s return to bash and thrash of the genre with Immaculate Scoundrels (2024).

Fultz was one of the first authors I encountered back in 2011/2012 when I started blogging about S&S. He was one of the writers I discovered through the electronic pages of Black Gate, along with James Enge, Howard Andrew Jones, and Ted Rypel in particular.

Between his collection The Revelations of Zang (2013 – I read it after winning a free copy in a giveaway here at Blackgate!) and The Books of the Shaper series, Fultz staked out a claim to being one of the best new voices in S&S.  These works were heavily inspired by Clark Ashton Smith’ and Lord Dunsany’s strange and often psychedelic fiction ladled over with more blood and thunder. If you think I’m maligning him, rest assured I am not. Anybody daring enough to take Smith as an inspiration and make it more violent, well, that’s not a bad thing.

Instead of more S&S, Fultz followed up with a Native American-themed sword & planet duology. I reviewed both The Testament of Tall Eagle (2015) and Son of Tall Eagle (2017) here. I might have been a little disappointed he hadn’t written more stories like his previous ones, but these are good books and Fultz isn’t one to sit around spinning the same tales again and again.

In the intervening years, he’s written enough short fiction to fill two collections. The first, World Beyond Worlds (2021) brings together his fantasy stories from the period. The second, Darker Than Weird (2023) contains fourteen straight-up horror stories. Now, with Immaculate Scoundrels, it’s back to swords & sorcery, but not like in any of his previous books.

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A to Z Reviews: “Virtually Correct,” by Marianne Dyson

A to Z Reviews: “Virtually Correct,” by Marianne Dyson

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A to Z Reviews

Marianne J. Dyson’s “Virtually Correct” was originally published in the May 1995 issue of Analog under the “Probability Zero” rubric. Stories published as part of the Probability Zero series are stories that use the science fiction tropes, but in a way that allows the author to write a story which could never happen.

Dyson tackles the concept of racial profiling in “Virtually Correct.” Maxwell Bishop runs a security firm known as Security Unlimited. The firm uses virtual reality simulations of actual crime scenes to train their security guards. Unfortunately, following a lawsuit in which a security guard from another firm shot a man who was determined to be innocent, a new law was passed regarding the use of virtual reality.

Mr. Compton has arrived to inform Bishop of the new stipulations, which mean that in order to avoid training his security guards with an unconscious racial bias, all of the individuals in the simulations must be recoded to be color-neutralized. Even as Bishop argues against the need and asks for an exemption, he questions whether he would respond the same way if Compton were caucasian instead of Black.

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A to Z Reviews: “Permission,” by Mark Dachuk

A to Z Reviews: “Permission,” by Mark Dachuk

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A to Z Reviews

Tesseracts is a Canadian anthology series that published 23 issues between 1985 and 2019. First edited by Judith Merril, each subsequent volume was edited by different authors and featuring new science fiction by various Canadian authors. One volume, Tesseracts Q, edited by Jane Brierley and Elisabeth Vonarburg, featured English reprints of stories originally published in French. Mark Dachuk’s “Permission” appeared in Tesseracts Ten in 2006, edited by Edo van Belkom and Robert Charles Wilson.

Dachuk has created a world in which everyone’s goal appears to be to leave the planet earth. Luana lives alone in a small house with an attached garden. When rockets launch from a nearby facility, she looks at them longingly, wanting to leave the world behind, but she doesn’t have the wherewithal to purchase her own tickets to leave the earth. Her hopes rest in the possibility that one of the plants growing on her property, the permission, will one day flower. She surmises that the house’s previous owner was lucky enough to get a blossom, which led to his departure.

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A to Z Reviews: “Hamlet’s Ghost Sighted in Frontenac, KS,” by Vincent Czyz

A to Z Reviews: “Hamlet’s Ghost Sighted in Frontenac, KS,” by Vincent Czyz

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A to Z Reviews

Published in the Festschrift volume Stories for Chip: A Tribute to Samuel R. Delany, Vincent Czyz’s “Hamlet’s Ghost Sighted in Frontenac, KS” has a promising title, which the story doesn’t quite live up to, although it is accurate.

Calling it a story may not be correct. It is more the relating of a slice of life, an evening in Frontenac, Kansas, when Jim Lee, UFO enthusiast and former Marine, spends a night with friends, likely the same as the night before, the night after, and every other night.

The evening begins with him shooting the breeze and sniffing cocaine with Logan, apart Native American whose head was injured in a horseback riding accident. They eventually head over to the local dive bar to hang, shoot the breeze, and sniff more cocaine with addition friends. Their conversation turning to their own histories, giving them the air of men who know that their best days are behind them and anything they do in the future won’t matter. There is a sense of futility to the story.

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A to Z Reviews: “The Hump,” by Fernan Caballero

A to Z Reviews: “The Hump,” by Fernan Caballero

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A to Z Reviews

Fernán Caballero was the pen name of Cecilia Francisca Josefa Böhl de Faber y Ruiz de Larrea (1796–1877). In 1811, she published the short fable “The Hump,” which is a take on the fairy tale trope of a king promising to give half his kingdom away to anyone who would marry his stubborn daughter.

What struck me in reading this story is the oddity of the trope. Sure, monarchs would marry their children (or themselves) off to make alliances with other monarchs, but part of this trope is that it is so random. Marrying the princess off to whoever could slay a dragon or whatever may demonstrate that the individual is skilled in combat, but it doesn’t necessarily equate to the skills to rule a kingdom.

In “The Hump,” the king determines to marry his daughter off to whomever can say what materials she used to have a tambourine made. Even less of an indicator of ability to rule a kingdom, although perhaps useful if the king is more interested in marrying his daughter off to a musician.

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Neither Beg Nor Yield, edited by Jason M. Waltz

Neither Beg Nor Yield, edited by Jason M. Waltz

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Sword & Sorcery is a clenched fist thrust into the sky, a raised middle finger in the face of the Unknown, an epithet spat into the dirt through a rictus of bared teeth. S&S demands an attitude of not merely surviving but of dominating living, all else—everything else—be damned. The heroes of S&S continue living deeply until there are no more breaths to take. The only -ism S&S promotes is LIVE!-ism. Absolutely a rebellion against meaninglessness, it also fully embraces an I-don’t-give-a-damn-if-it-is-all-meaningless creed. “I live, I burn with life, I love, I slay, and am content.” Robert E. Howard, through Conan, again saying it best in “Queen of the Black Coast.”

Jason M. Waltz from “It’s Not Gentle,” the foreword to Neither Beg Nor Yield

I reviewed Return of the Sword: An Anthology of Heroic Adventure over at Stuff I Like: A Blog (called Swords & Sorcery: A Blog back then) twelve years ago. I had discovered the book by way of a mention here at Black Gate, which I had discovered while on the hunt for contemporary sword & sorcery. This book, more than anything else, convinced me there was a wealth of new and, more importantly, good S&S writing being done.

I had created my site to focus on ensuring the classics of S&S weren’t forgotten in the face of the seemingly irresistible tide of grimdark fiction that was new back then. Waltz’s book forced me to direct an increasing portion of my efforts toward the new stories. Howard Andrew Jones, James Enge, and John Fultz were all authors I first encountered in that period. There are also dozens of writers I found reviewing hundreds of new stories right here on the pages of Black Gate.

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