Charles Payseur Reviews Short Fiction: Worlds of Possibility, Baffling, Strange Horizons, and Diabolical Plots

Worlds of Possibility 12/22
Baffling 1/23
Strange Horizons 12/12/22, 12/19/22, 1/2/23, 1/9/23
Diabolical Plots 1/23

The December Worlds of Possibility featured a beautiful story about a djinn and human and the mysteries of the universe in Khushbu Khushi’s “Songs from Samarkand”. The bonds between the human Amir and the djinn Baji are deep and warm, bursting with love, and yet their story is also one of sacrifice and refusing to accept what seem to be the laws of existence. Baji and Amir both find that they will do anything, risk anything, to honor the love they share even as fate seems determined to tear them apart. Khusi provides three perspectives to capture the deep and resounding relationship between Baji and Amir, showing that the laws of the universe sometimes must bend to the strength of two hearts acting as one. It’s wonderful!

Baffling Magazine might just have managed the distinction of putting out the last specula­tive fiction issue of 2022 with a release dated December 31. It also features the publication’s first intentional theme – food! As a big fan of foodie fiction, it was a delight to discover the different takes on the culinary arts with Baf­fling’s continued focus on LGBTQ+ themes and characters. Wen-yi Lee’s “Icariana” looks at how food can be care and nourishment for more than just the body as Kya finds a young woman with wings, Seraphine, and nurses her back to health. Through the act of cooking and caring, Kya finds that what she thought was a healthy acceptance of the desolate world she lives in is actually a failure to recognize the isolation and loneliness she’s surrounded by. And when Seraphine is healthy and ready to fly again, it brings how she lived before, and how she wants to live, into sharp relief. Lee packs a lot of emotions into her prose, and shows that even (and perhaps especially) in a post disaster world, the status quo might not be as safe and satisfying as it seems. A. Tony Jerome closes out the issue with “It’s Just a Date”, where a date between two women seems to be going great until it’s violently intruded on by a man. Just that intrusion, that attack, isn’t what the narrator feared most. Rather, it’s that she has to reveal her true self in response to that violence that worries her more, even as it turns out she’s not the only one on the date with a secret. Jerome expertly captures the tension and danger of the situation, but twists it expertly into a situation less depressingly familiar and into something wicked and triumphant and very much worth checking out.

Strange Horizons featured Erin Innes’s “The Lifers” in December, which imagines a future where humanity has terraformed and adapted to life on Mars, leaving behind an Earth that can’t reliably support them an longer. It’s not much of a loss to the survivors, though, who have found in Mars a balance that they lacked on Earth, a place they shaped and were in turn shaped by. Only a few scientists remain behind on Earth to study it, and why it seems that the data from the ground doesn’t support the expectation from satellite readings – that Earth should be recover­ing. Instead, what these Earth lifers have found is that it remains tainted and a lost cause. Or is it? Innes captures both an optimism for hu­man progress and piercing insight into human history, where the belief that humanity can do better doesn’t erase the possibility that human­ity can also fall back into old, toxic patterns without constant vigilance and effort. In poetry, “Let Water Be Water” by Joe Aguilar looks at impulse and the wisdom of perhaps not always giving into it. In a surreal and humorous way, Aguilar digs into emotions and the ways people can ruin things by acting too quickly, by saying what first comes into their head, or giving into a momentary panic. There is a satisfaction that might come from executing the perfect quip, or escaping a negative emotion by destroying everything around it, but oftentimes the more rewarding path is also the one that lets things slide, that is mindful and kind and patient, and I just love how this poem brings that all together.

Moving into the publication’s January content, Jess Cameron tells an interesting and rather devastating tale of time loops and/or alternate dimensions in “missed connections – Central square today around 930”. In it, a trans woman writes to their ex-girlfriend with whom she’s lived years in an alternate timeline thanks to a curse or gift she received where sometimes when she makes eye contact with someone, she then lives out a possible relationship with them until they break up, at which point she’s back to the moment of eye contact, only this time they don’t hit it off. Most of the time that’s it, but with this longer romantic partnership their ex-girlfriend wanted the narrator to try and reach out, to explain, and the love they shared makes the narrator give it a try. Cameron is precise when striking the emotional cues of the story, capturing all that has been created and lost, and showing a real patience for building to a moment of vulnerability and possibility and just utterly shattering it. I applaud the way the story ends, even as it left me laughing and crying at the same time. R. F. Hovis complicates the Tam Lin story in “In a Parallel Carterhaugh” by removing the element of romance entirely, shifting the focus to finding identity, acceptance, and self-love. The magic remains, and Hovis does a beautiful job of translating the legendary ballad into a more modern context, weaving its themes and imagery into a deep and affirming poem.

Diabolical Plots opened the new year with an issue that lingered on uncertainty and the loss of language, as in “Tell Me the Meaning of Bees” by Amal Singh, in which two Keepers contend with a language that keeps on devel­oping mysterious holes. These holes represent not just the loss of words, but of ideas, and can be catastrophic when important things disap­pear and need to be replaced by Keepers with alternative, new words that are supposed to be the same. Things are getting more and more dire, though, and so this pair of Keepers go out to consult the great Tapestry of language to try and get to the bottom of things. Singh provides a strange, almost dreamlike experience, but with an internal logic that makes sense. The result is tense and worried but also compassionate and tender, playing with language and thought in some very interesting ways.

Recommended Stories
“Songs from Samarkand”, Khushbu Khushi (Worlds of Possibility 12/22)
“Icariana”, Wen-yi Lee (Baffling 1/23)
“missed connections – Central square today around 930”, Jess Cameron (Strange Horizons 1/23)

This review and more like it in the March 2023 issue of Locus.

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