Charles Payseur Reviews Short Fiction: Strange Horizons, Cast of Wonders, and Escape Pod
Strange Horizons 3/20/23, 3/27/23, 4/3/23, 4/10/23
Cast of Wonders 3/24/23, 4/4/23, 4/13/23
Escape Pod 3/9/23, 3/16/23, 3/30/23, 4/6/23, 4/13/23
Strange Horizons closed out March strong with some excellent poetry and fiction, including Iona Datt Sharma’s aching and beautiful story ‘‘Always and Forever, Only You’’, which finds Edie living in an assisted living home, passing her days bored and lonely. Having survived her husband, Edie retains a kind of resentment at having been left and no real outlet to process the complexities of her grief. That is, until by chance she hears a song that unlocks something in her, and leads her to become focused on a particular musician whose work moves her. Sharma does an excellent job revealing Edie and her journey as the power of music awakens her love of life as well as the sorrow and grief she hasn’t really processed before. In poetry, A.A. Ademola’s ‘‘abura sashi’’ comes together as a kind of folktale, telling of a bird, the Ubagabi, who can curse those it catches alone in the woods to an early death. The narrator of the piece relates the tragic circumstances that led to the Ubagabi, who was once a poor woman who resorted to theft when no one in her village would help her. For all the Ubagabi’s grim power, though, Ademola reveals that shame can be more powerful still, confronting readers with a complex ending where one threat is averted, but the source of the corruption, human greed and cruelty, remains ever lurking. In April Ana Hurtado mixes ecological, romantic, and familial collapse in ‘‘Murciélago’’. The narrator is a young woman living in a broken world where toxic air has led to mass bird extinctions, and some people, like her girlfriend, question whether birds existed at all. On top of that, her brother is struggling with depression and a strange series of events that imply that some species of birds might not be as extinct as everyone believes. It’s a situation where a moment’s peace or inattention seems immediately shattered by disaster, but where hope still hasn’t been ground to dust. Hurtado finds in this world and in this family a fertile ground for strange miracles, and dreams of flight.
Climate catastrophe and family recur in early April’s Cast of Wonders story, ‘‘The Hidden Forests of Earth and Mars’’ by Anna Zumbro. In it, a young woman has to decide whether she will follow her mother and brother to Mars for a chance at a fresh start and escape from an increasingly hostile Earth, or stay with her father and study the dwindling and burning forests. The choice is supposed to be obvious, but Zumbro does great work in challenging the romance and allure of a fresh start on another planet. Not by focusing on how difficult that work will be, but by showing the need to teach and to plan and to work toward a future where Earth isn’t just desolation. It’s a wonderful read.
At Escape Pod, Adriana C. Grigore follows a kind of spacefaring advice radio show host on a long asteroid survey mission in ‘‘A Cosmonaut’s Guide to Talking to Your Parents’’. In it, Sam is increasingly known for his ability to help other people with their familial troubles, repairing schisms and helping people stand up for themselves in the face of parental concern and manipulation. No matter how many people he helps, though, his own conflict and pain is something he’s running from that he might need help and understanding about before he can confront what’s happened. Grigore packs emotional punch after emotional punch into the story, and readers looking for a good cry could do far worse than spending some time with this resonating and powerful story.
Recommended Stories:
‘‘Always and Forever, Only You’’, Iona Datt Sharma (Strange Horizons 3/23)
‘‘A Cosmonaut’s Guide to Talking to Your Parents’’, Adriana C. Grigore (Escape Pod 3/23)
Charles Payseur is an avid reader, writer, and reviewer of speculative fiction. His works have appeared in The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy, Lightspeed Magazine, and Beneath Ceaseless Skies, among others, and many are included in his debut collection, The Burning Day and Other Strange Stories (Lethe Press 2021). He is the series editor of We’re Here: The Best Queer Speculative Fiction (Neon Hemlock Press) and a multiple-time Hugo and Ignyte Award finalist for his work at Quick Sip Reviews. When not drunkenly discussing Goosebumps, X-Men comic books, and his cats on his Patreon (/quicksipreviews) and Twitter (@ClowderofTwo), he can probably found raising a beer with his husband, Matt, in their home in Eau Claire, Wisconsin.
This review and more like it in the June 2023 issue of Locus.
While you are here, please take a moment to support Locus with a one-time or recurring donation. We rely on reader donations to keep the magazine and site going, and would like to keep the site paywall free, but WE NEED YOUR FINANCIAL SUPPORT to continue quality coverage of the science fiction and fantasy field.
©Locus Magazine. Copyrighted material may not be republished without permission of LSFF.
