Charles Payseur Reviews Short Fiction: Cast of Wonders, Strange Horizons and Hexagon

Cast of Wonders, 5/25/23
Strange Horizons 5/22/23, 5/29/23, 6/5/23, 6/10/23, 6/12/23
Hexagon Summer ’23

The last May originals from Cast of Won­ders share an episode and a focus on food and recipes. In Priya Sridhar’s “A Letter to A Bully’s Mother” the story unfolds as a letter from a bullied student, who is also a were-chicken, to the mother of their bully, who left a negative review on their fledgling busi­ness. While the story could be seen as a kind of revenge narrative, Sridhar makes sure to keep the justice poetic, though the impact of the piece is still a bit more unsettling than I was initially prepared for given the casual and adolescent voice the letter is written in. What emerges is a reminder that childhood bullying is far from kids being kids – for some, the stakes are as high as life and death – and the story captures that powerfully.

Strange Horizons has been keeping busy, wind­ing down their regular May releases with Goran Lowie’s wonderful poem “Skywoman and Eve,” which evokes creation stories and the knowl­edge of good and evil. Adam is conspicuously and thankfully absent, though, as is the notion that Eve is the author of original sin, instead recognizing her as a victim, betrayed by her loneliness and the punitive nature of the garden she’s been confined within. The Skywoman offers a different focus and source of wisdom, one that doesn’t link loss and destruction with knowledge, and places people as a part of the world rather than the dominating lords of it. Lowie shows a joy rather than a poison that comes from seeing a connection between all living things, and it’s wonderful to experience. Strange Horizons then closed out the month with a Wuxia and Xianxia special issue, which is stacked with amazing fiction and poetry. It’s very difficult to pick favorites from the bunch but Megan Chee’s “The God of Minor Troubles” is a delight, starring a rather lazy god, Duníng, who showed up late when the Celestial Emperor was handing out duties and ended up in charge of minor troubles – which isn’t exactly meant as punishment, for all Duníng suspects otherwise. At least until he meets an old woman, Péi, who has a number of relatively minor complaints as she prepares to liberate a town taken over by bandits. Once a warrior, Péi had given up the life to raise a family. With that family either grown or dead, though, she’s picked back up the sword, and is trying to do the right thing. Chee infuses the story with humor, warmth, and some visceral action, and I love how it all comes together, grounded in a god slowly embracing the potential and pride in a duty he was reluctant to embrace. Of the poetry in the special issue, “Cradling Fish” by Laura Ma really resonated with me, focusing on time and struggle as two people are caught in the wake of history and each other. Fighting a fight that seems doomed to fail and propelled by the strength of their devotion to each other and their cause. Ma weaves this deep yearning for peace in a situation dominated by conflict, finding moments when their dreams seem in reach only for… well, that would be telling. It’s a beautiful work of poetry.

Moving into June, Katherine Nabity pens “Colors of the Sea”, a rather heartbreaking story about an android, Jackson, and Kay, the woman he has been with for most of his life. To most of the galaxy, Jackson is out of date, a relic, and not even a “real” person. In the world that he and Kay have built for themselves, he is a partner, a lover. And that world might be fall­ing apart, as Kay’s body is failing, and Jackson will have to decide what to do next. It’s a deci­sion that’s complicated by the arrival of a new neighbor, a young woman who bumps into the isolation Jackson and Kay have mostly enjoyed. Nabity digs into the characters and their emo­tions, their fears, their humanity, even when some people don’t see them both as human. It’s a quiet and deeply impactful read. Strange Ho­rizons also released a special Fund Drive issue to coincide with their annual Kickstarter, and in it G.E. Woods captures a sense of loss, grief, and space in the poem “Items Collected from Discarded Planet 5x.73: Terra”. In it, space travelers come across a ruined planet, and lift artifacts for collection only to find embedded in them the story of what happened to humanity, dying slowly as the world stopped sustaining life. It’s haunting both figuratively and literally as the space explorers find things, and I like the way that Woods mingles science fiction and horror in a chilling but satisfying way.

June’s Hexagon opens strongly with Jade Stewart’s story-as-restaurant-review ‘‘The Coffee Bar on 72nd Street’’, which introduces readers to a mysterious café, Midnight Coffee, where the proprietors are serious about artisanal coffee and offer blends to a select few that do more than just give a pleasant caffeine buzz – though the piece is laid out in a way that at first had me wondering if the story was speculative. It’s a bit of formatting trickery that works as a secret door, allowing readers to step through from a more straightforward coffee (and reading) experience into something different and magical. For me it’s a rare but appreciated moment where the extratextual flourish helps to enrich the text without being distracting. The end result is a mix of culinary journalism and portal fantasy and makes for a very fun and enjoyable read!

Recommended Stories:

“A Letter to A Bully’s Mother,” Priya Sridhar (Cast of Wonders 5/23)
“The God of Minor Troubles,” Megan Chee (Strange Horizons 5/23)
“The Coffee Bar on 72nd Street,” Jade Stewart (Hexagon 6/23)

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

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