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MARTIAN NIGHTS
Apologies, once again, for the delay in posting the July installment of Firebrand Fiction. Our excuse? Well, as NASA well knows, it takes quite a while to journey to Mars and back, even if you're traveling on SF time! Many of you Earthlubbers out there have probably been contemplating Mars anew, given the surveying of the recent probes. While I'd dearly love to expound on the archetypal, astrological, astronomical, Magical and literary implications of Mars - time and space (not to mention spacetime) prohibit such musings.
Suffice to say, we've been to Mars and brought you your very own free, round-trip ticket to the Red Planet. That's right, you won't spend a penny for any of the fiction in this month's column - just follow the links for Lightspeed access to every reviewed story. And, because every planet has a dark side, we'll also venture deep into Darkness, beyond Barsoom, to a website lodged in Sith, that is, in pre-Lucasian language, a website addressed in the Night Without End.
But first, it's off to The Martian Wave a straight-forward, story-centered e-zine with a special flair for Speculative poetry. Visitors will note the site won a 2002 Preditors and Editors Award for Best Poetry Publication. As witness, the three poems on offer in the latest quarterly issue:
"Plexi-Glass Teepees on Mars" by Cathy Buburuz sings a lament of interplanetary exile, shaping sparse, imagistic lines "we are scattered / over this fruitless land; / castaway people / plexi-glass teepees / nothing to gather / or hunt;" into a form that recalls the simple, honest, animistic diction of Native American songs and prayers. Though I suspect strongly Ms. Buburuz has gained no especial insight from Hart Crane's lyric, "The Sad Indian", her ending octet reminded me of these lines:
Farther than his sun-shadow - farther than wings
- Their shadows even - now can't carry him.
He does not know the new hum in the sky
And - backwards - is it thus the eagles fly?
I allude to a literary poet like Crane, not only because of the fair correspondence between the two poems, but because the poems offered at The Martian Wave seem to me very highly crafted and deserving of, if not outright comparison with canonized poets like Crane, at least spirited applause for their excellent craftsmanship and imagery.
Each of the poems also packs as much speculative as literary punch; Buburuz's poem, for example, sustains a haunting and emotional 'sense of wonder' that enables its essentially spiritual-political theme to enter indelibly through the reader's SF Third Eye.
"What To Do When Your Relatives From Mars Visit Unexpectedly", by Bruce Boston is funny and ironic. No, there's no acrostic in that long title, but the poem itself offers some very good advice: "Ration their food and water / so they don't get spoiled." If you're not laughing already, you will be when you read the rest. There's a welcome countermelody here as well, a hint of Mars' sinister aspect - remembering through anticipated insurrection: "...if they / think they are going to start / a revolution or something" that Mars is the Planet of War.
"The Last Moon of the Morning" by Tyree Campbell utilizes a well-known pop-song's rhyme-scheme and theme - spoofing "Hotel California" by The Eagles with much gusto. Smile you will, as with the Boston poem, but, again, there's some very effective Speculative imagery, and visceral political undertones to the poem:
Soon our oxygen killed them
And our emissions, too
We didn't take the time to know them
And they faded from view
It's impossible not to mention Ray Bradbury here and "The Million-Year Picnic". Besides being one of my all-time favorite of Bradbury's Martian stories, "The Million-Year Picnic" is a lyrical/romantic prose-poem that also happens to be a brilliant science-fiction story. Yes, I'm calling 'prose' 'poetry' here and I won't apologize.
I'll admit straight away that the fiction is this issue of TMW impressed me slightly less than the poetry. Slightly, I say, because the fiction is quite readable and entertaining; on the other hand, there are no few technical impurities and the stories, while highly readable, seemed a bit underwritten.
"The Mars Diamond" by Karen Romanko bats out a Martian baseball story coupled with a diamond heist. Romanko writes wittily and the plot is clever, but the story's lead-in failed to really grab my attention and the denouement seemed a bit rushed.... That said, the characters in Romanko's tale felt believable to me even when they were doing unbelievable things; I wanted to know more about them and follow them beyond the confines of the story. I liked "The Mars Diamond" and would certainly recommend it to readers - it's not a home-run, but a solid up-the-middle double.
Arthur Sanchez aims straight for the bibliophilic heart of the reviewer with his quickie SF tale, "Contraband". Octavio Jones is a space-station cop in an "Outland" or "Alien" flavored future of interstellar contracting and contraband. The story's "twist" is revealed midway through the rising action, which creates an odd tension for the remainder of the piece and I'm not convinced this was the most effective way for Sanchez to spin this particular conceit. Sanchez writes solidly enough, however, and the story features some effective dialogue and accomplished character portraits, like "Kate the Librarian" in impressively few words.
"Accidents Happen" by Sherry D. Ramsey offers yet another glimpse into the risky lives of space contractors. This time, the "Alien" catch-phrase: "In space, no-one can hear you scream", is modified to: "Space is dangerous. Accidents happen." Of course, the discerning reader will quickly see this is an ironic statement and that Ramsey's story is really about greed with a capital 'G' and how well "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre" really translates into zero-gravity. I thoroughly enjoyed this piece, which like the other two stories in this quarters issue of TMW, won't demand too much of your time to enjoy - but will reward every second with highly-entertaining fiction. Click over to TMW today - there, isn't that better than another hour in front of your television or video game?
 Our next stop was Penumbric a nifty e-zine that you can download as a PDF, ETC or read right there on the site. In addition to some very spirited SF, Penumbric offers "graphic narratives", poetry, and a very provocative series article on "cutting edge videogames". I found the format, layout and artwork for the 'zine very good indeed, and enjoyed the streamlined, easy-to-navigate TOC.
Jesper Nordquist's "Mondo Mecho" caught and held my interest for at least a dozen panels and I would have scrolled through more of this online graphic novel if time had allowed. Certainly, the evolution of Nordquist's drawing technique is fascinating, as revealed through "Mondo Mecho's" developing scenes. A special treat, the artist has published notes about each of the scenes to run along with the story. I happen to enjoy a good story about Martian babes looking for work, especially when the story is told primarily through tasty illustrations. If you need to jumpstart your workday, click over to Nordquist's innocently erotic world of Terran careerism, and contemplate job-hunting in a whole new light.
"Electrix" by Sarah Dobbs appeared on my first read to be yet another riff on "A Clockwork Orange", replete with street-gang slang, a bit of the of the old "ultra violence" and a few dangerous sexual moments that are sure to keep you on the edge of your seat. The story brought to mind another Burgessesque piece I'd read over at CHIZINE "Sloe-Eyed Jacks and Homicide Kings" by Jay Lake, an interesting mood-story that used playing card imagery in a Clockwork-like dystopian future of gangs and too-hip dialogue. To my mind, "Sloe Eyed Jacks" bordered on the overly-derivative. "Electrix" manages to evade this danger by incorporating complex characters with depth and personality. In Lake's story the 'flatness' of the characters may be intentional in keeping with the card-symbolism, but too much nuance is sacrificed to keep the reader engaged.
"Electrix" is an ambitious, baroque tale, that pits multifaceted personalities against both one-another (as told through narrative subsections shift among the principle characters' POV) and a complex backstory and setting (based around a post global-warming flood urban dystopia) which lean, though never intrusively, toward the allegorical. The result is a demanding story, but one well-worth reading and one which manages to generate enough action and suspense to keep the reader scrolling through and/or turning pages.
"The Remaining Sun" by Giovanni Agnoloni is a peculiar foray into memory and psycho-symbolism. This story that tugged at my heartstrings with its vignette-quick rendition of a love-triangle in solipsistic tones. Employing the continent of Australia as a literal symbol of "the neutral territory of the mind"is a bold artistic move and one that I feel inclined to compliment; the tale does suffer, however, from a slow, speculative-deficient opening where "Lucas" and "Tricia", two sketch-pad characters seem little more than a conveyance for the story's exposition. Deeper into the tale, Agnoloni opens his Speculative treasure-chest - if briefly - and the resulting story earns my ever-so-slightly qualified thumb's up.
Penumbric, like TMW, publishes good Speculative poetry and I feel obliged to point out my favorite poem from the latest issue.
Karen A. Romanko  is a past "Great Poetry" Award winner for her Editorship at RavenElectric. She's also a very good spec-poet herself and has a new chapbook "Raven's Runes" now available. Her poem in Penumbric "Mirrors in Mirrors" really stuck with me after I read it. A simple, almost whispered invocation of the power and ambiguity of sight; of eyes - as this stanza hints:
Narcissus ponds
built to hold
reflections of me
A quite powerful poem, built on tercets, and, but for one line: "Narcissus Ponds" every line is itself built of three words. A quite clever and pleasant prosody; as to why there should be a proliferation of trios rather than duos, consult the above-mentioned concept of the Third Eye.
So, all told, Penumbric offers fine, free, eclectic fare for the intrepid SF traveler and I advise all of you to click over and browse around. If you're in a hurry, download the latest issue and read it later. Send the staff some feedback and maybe a donation; with SF e-zines like this online, nobody should worry about whether short spec-fiction is in danger of extinction.
Our last stop takes us to Blackness, to a Dark and possibly obscure website, The Night Land where the author's guidelines are a compelling read in and of themselves! And the site's profuse and highly-engaging store of background and bio material covering its SF obsession and honoring its Prime Mover, are mind-blowing and artfully presented.
Again, spacetime prevents us from giving a thorough introduction to this cyber-gate into William Hodgson's rare mythos. Lady E., however, will spend some column space for Sean McLachlan's masterful story, "The Siege of Humanity".
This story was first posted in January of 2003, but with Internet archives and an ever more slippery audience for short SF, it seemed timely to draw attention to a dark and brooding tale many SF surfers have probably missed. "The Siege of Humanity" won me over with the first paragraph and then proceeded to transport me right out of my chair and into a savage land of eternal darkness, where the last, desperate knots of humanity make war for survival. The Hodgson-inspired elements of the story are described in detail on the rest of the site. But it's not really necessary for a reader to have knowledge of the Hodgson mythos to love Sean McLachlan's expertly plotted tale.
Unlike Daniel, I'm one who's sometimes prone to drift when reading long descriptions of warfare and combat. "The Siege of Humanity" strings battle-scene after battle-scene together, connecting the Romans in Constantinople through the story's many-lived protagonist to a future, post-apocalyptic battle where an ancient cannon is given new life. The sights, sounds, and even smells of this Saturnine and darkly magical mythos are superbly painted. Because this story managed to truly transport me to another world - I've asked Daniel to award this month's Great Fiction Brand Award to Sean McLachlan, and I hope you will all go read the story because it's a shame to think of such a good story on a very unique website sinking into obscurity...
We will undoubtedly return to The Night Land in a future column; meanwhile, the site certainly does deserve your traffic. We gladly bestow our (belated) G.F. Award on Sean McLachlan for his exciting and poetical tale where true adventure in humanity's "Last Redoubt" is apt to hold any reader's hard-won attention.
 While you're in a midnight mood, check out Pitch Black Books, a new publisher of Fantasy fiction. Of special interest is the forthcoming Sword and Sorcery anthology, "Lords of Swords", which boasts some excellent contributors, among them G.F. Winner: Howard Andrew Jones, "Vampire Earth" novelist E.E. Knight, legendary writer Tanith Lee and many other top-name heroic fantasy authors. The anthology is scheduled for release later this Fall and as senior editor for Pitch-Black, LLC., I guarantee that this anthology will exceed its promise of brilliantly written, page-turning adventure Fantasy, the very kind of fiction so many readers have been missing these days.
As usual, we welcome any and all of your comments in the SFReader.com discussion forums.
Until Next Time,
Daniel E. Blackston
Firebrand Fiction Reviews: all content © 2004, Dan Blackston |
