Charles Payseur Reviews Short Fiction: Escape Pod, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Three-Lobed Burning Eye, and Fusion Fragment

Escape Pod 11/30/23
Beneath Ceaseless Skies 11/30/23
Three-Lobed Burning Eye 11/23
Fusion Fragment 11/23

Escape Pod closed out November with a gem in Uchechukwu Nwaka’s gripping “Chal­lenges to Becoming a Pro Dragonracer in Apapa-Downtown”, which takes place in a future Nigeria where people like Ishola live rather vulnerably, trying to do their best for themselves and their families but facing the grim lack of infrastructure and pervasive threats of corrup­tion and violence. Ishola doesn’t really dream for herself until she chances into VR and seeing a dragon race inside a very popular MMORPG. From then on, the desire to be a dragonracer grips her despite all the challenges the story reveals – the difficulty in getting access to the game, the equipment, the internet, as well as the prejudices against those who spend their time virtually, and the dangers posed by those looking to either profit from Ishola’s work… or ensure she can’t compete. It’s a tense and vivid story where Nwaka expertly balances the harsh realities of Ishola’s situation with her indomitable will, resourcefulness, and hard edges.

The third November issue of Beneath Ceaseless Skies features stories centered on motherhood and sacrifice, including Jenny Rae Rappaport’s “What Will Bring You Home”, which finds a mother setting off to retrieve her daughter from the fairies, who have convinced her to run away. The piece looks at the precariousness of youth, the unfairness of having to listen to parents, to work, to behave. Against that, the world the fairies offer – their magic, their play – seems better in every way. But this mother is clever, careful not to make this a fight between herself and her lost child, not exactly admitting fault but showing her daughter that the world she is on the verge of entering is more wicked and unfair than the one she’d be leaving. Rappaport shows the strength of family amidst the dangers of the supernatural while keeping the overall mood of the piece fun, warm, and heartfelt.

The latest from Three-Lobed Burning Eye features a number of unsettling and horrifying stories, finishing strongly with Laila Amado’s “The Many Names of Eels”, which introduces two sisters with very different visions of their futures and very dif­ferent relationships to the city of their birth, with its hidden waters and deep magic. One sister left and one sister stayed, but when the one abroad learns that her sister has disappeared, she’s drawn back into the hidden places of the city she left behind, and finds the terrible secrets that have grown in her absence. The piece creeps and crawls toward an ending that is powerful and freeing and just a bit bleak. Amado doesn’t offer readers much in the way of happy endings, but does promise a kind of justice, and delivers a new vision for a city too long dammed and exploited for inland gain.

November’s Fusion Fragment features a lot of great genre-bending (or perhaps genre-blending) stories, from vampires in space to the moving “Tapir” by Derek Kho, which imagines a world postdisaster where a myotic-enhanced rickshaw puller takes a job to ferry a woman in search of a tapir. As the story progresses, though, Kho chal­lenges assumption after assumption, pushing readers to question what they think is happening, and who they think the characters are. The truth, as it’s slowly revealed, defies expectations and the story offers a deeply rewarding experience, mix­ing action, humor, and a wonderfully imagined setting with compelling characters and an emo­tionally resonating ending. A.D. Sui’s “A Robot, a Physicist, and a Monk Walk Into a Bar” might sound like the start to a corny joke, but actually mixes philosophy, physics, and religion with a sly wit and wonderful framing device. The story un­folds across perspectives as a series of characters all relate to an impossible, indestructible box. It frustrates some, inspires others, and represents different things to each person to possess it – a somewhat awkward pickup line, a religious arti­fact, a universe unto itself – all while persisting even in the face of the cosmic annihilation. And while Sui doesn’t quite resist making the ending something of a punchline, it’s also a beautiful rumination on space, time, people, and possibility.

Recommended Stories:

“Challenges to Becoming a Pro Dragonracer in Apapa-Downtown”, Uchechukwu Nwaka (Escape Pod 11/23)
“A Robot, a Physicist, and a Monk Walk Into a Bar”, A.D. Sui (Fusion Fragment 11/23)

This review and more like it in the February 2024 issue of Locus.

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