Charles Payseur Reviews Short Fiction: Lightspeed, GigaNotoSaurus, Diabolical Plots, and Beneath Ceaseless Skies

Lightspeed 2/24
GigaNotoSaurus 2/24
Diabolical Plots 2/24
Beneath Ceaseless Skies 2/8/24, 2/22/24

Phoebe Barton returns to the pages of Lightspeed in their February issue with “But from Thine Eyes My Knowledge I Derive”, which should scratch anyone’s science-fiction procedural mystery itch. In it, Va is the head science officer on a ship sent to examine what could be a miniature black hole. When the discovery turns out to be even more exciting, though – the possibility of a small worm­hole – the mood of the mission changes as the captain of the ship, much more used to military operations, decides the subject of their fascination might be a threat to them all. Barton explores the reactions people have to the unknown. For some, it’s a mystery to be explored and studied and mapped where possible. For others, it’s a shadow that could be concealing enemies and dangers. It defines how people step into uncertainty, and what damage they might do when ruled more by their fear than by their curiosity. It’s a theme that is revisited rather poignantly in Wen-yi Lee’s “What Becomes of Curious Minds”, which pulls read­ers into Wonderland, where Creed is the son of a woman who crossed over from the Beyond and fought a war against a frightening queen to help the people and secure a home for her son – but at the cost of her own life. More grown, Creed is now a storyteller helping to feed the people of Wonder­land’s insatiable curiosity about Beyond. But all of his stories come second hand from his mother or whole cloth from his own imagination, and when a new young woman arrives in Wonderland, with entirely different stories of Beyond, Creed is faced with both a fellow traveler who can cut through some of his loneliness… and a threat to his posi­tion in the magical realm. And Lee doesn’t hold back in showing just how far Creed is willing to go to try and protect not just his position, but the memories and stories that he has from a mother taken from him. Don’t be fooled by the whimsy of the setting – this one is a rather heartbreaking read, though it’s also very good.

The February GigaNotoSaurus features “A Dance for the Dead” by R.J. Howell, which features Teiz, a young man injured and disabled in war who is the last of his generation who can perform a yearly ritual meant to help protect his people, the Weiza. Because of his injuries, though, the task seems daunting, made more so by the belief that the trial he will face is life or death, and that failure means even more of his people’s magic and lifeforce will be lost permanently. What he finds on the island where the trial takes place, though, is not what he expected, and he must confront his fear, his injuries, and most difficult of all, his future, which he’s been avoiding ever since returning home from the war. Howell’s decision to center a dance in the story is a sharp one, as Teiz and readers both are led through the motions, tested, and challenged in surprising ways to confront the beauty and limits of bodies and the magic and limitlessness of human spirit.

Though I’m not always partial to stories with all-caps titles on a purely typographic level, “BUDDY RAYMOND’S NO-BULLSHIT GUIDE TO DRONE HUNTING” by Gillian Secord in the February Diabolical Plots provides an interesting look at a possible and rather chilling future where America has conquered and occupied Canada and keeps its populace in check through the use of surveillance and military drones. The story is framed as a resistance leaflet instructing readers how to fight back against the occupation. What becomes clear as the story details the steps for dealing with American drones, however, is that for the author of the leaflet this is deeply personal. The way that Secord reveals the story beneath the framing of the story is powerfully done, showing both the risks, and stakes, of fighting back against a terrible and oppressive regime.

Beneath Ceaseless Skies celebrates hitting their 400th issue with two double-sized issues in February. These include Natalia Theodoridou’s moving “Tell the King”, which finds a human population living on a rather harsh world after having left Earth. Their survival depends on a Resource found there, which allows humans to live in domed settlements, ruled over by a king who is in turn counseled by a Seeker, who in­terprets the dreams of the dead to try and offer clarity about the future. The narrator of the piece is a trans man, the first man to be a Seeker, who is in love and loved by the king, who is a woman. Together they must face the prospect of extinc­tion, as the Resource that allows them to stay on the planet is running out even as some humans, like the king, have adapted to the planet and now need their own breathing devices to stay in the domed settlements. Leaving the planet with the hope of finding a new world would save the most people, but either way some will be lost, and the king and her Seeker are desperate to avoid that. It’s a yearning and tense story about the weight of expectation, action, and prophecy, and Theodoridou does careful and strong work in making the characters’ hopes, dreams, and suffering a complex and aching knot at the heart of a larger planetary dilemma. R.Z. Held takes a much different approach to the melding of science and fantasy with “Twice-Marked, Wild Against City”, which finds in Ariana a young woman who has been fey marked by Dragon, a powerful force who grants her magic based around technology. It’s a far cry from her biological mother, Scarlett, who was thrice-marked and is now twice-marked by Wolf, a much wilder force. But then, Scarlett left Ariana with her father and disappeared until she was an adult, and her return was hardly a tearful affair. It turns out, that’s in part because of a bargain Scarlett made with Wolf when she bled the third mark from herself – that one of her daughters would take her place as thrice-marked. Since a person can bear only three marks total, that can’t be Ariana, but she’s still dragged into the quest to save her mother from Wolf by convinc­ing a long-lost half-sister to accept the terms of their mother’s bargain. Held does some excellent worldbuilding, weaving magic and primal forces together in a clear and interesting system of magic and influence. But even more, the story is about family, about Ariana and Scarlett and the damage between them, and the choices Ariana has to make about her life and her worth. It’s an ambitious story that comes together well, with an ending that’s bright and warm and freeing.

Recommended Stories
“But From Thine Eyes My Knowledge I Derive”, Phoebe Barton (Lightspeed 2/24)
“Tell the King”, Natalia Theodoridou (Beneath Ceaseless Skies 2/24)
“Twice-Marked, Wild Against City”, R.Z. Held (Beneath Ceaseless Skies 2/24)

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

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