Charles Payseur Reviews Short Fiction: Subterranean, Worlds of Possibility, Flash Fiction Online, and Zooscape

Subterranean 8/27/23, 4/21/24
Worlds of Possibility 4/24
Flash Fiction Online 4/24
Zooscape 4/15/24

Subterranean has been releasing individual short stories for a while now, and I recently had the chance to catch up, including with Josiah Bancroft’s rather charming 2023 story “The Small Hands of Chokedamp”, which focuses on Captain Isolde Wilby, the inaugural head of the Office of Ensorcelled Investiga­tions. Though Wilby had hoped the platform would help to spread legitimacy for the craft of hexes, of which she is a practitioner, the reality is that the office has become the place other more established departments send the cases they don’t want, in order to blame the OEI for their own failures. That doesn’t stop her from stumbling onto a mystery involving counterfeit pocket watches, an impending union strike, and an abandoned coal mine, however. Bancroft keeps things fast and fun, providing the broad strokes of worldbuilding an interesting setting but not getting lost in the details as the action follows Wilby into a series of near-catastrophes. Especially for fans of gaslight fantasy, it’s well worth checking out. More recently, 2024 brought Tade Thompson’s “Immortal, Invisible”, which finds Robin and Gita both imprisoned in a strange place by a mysterious jailor, Buki, who claims to be a world-class assassin who doesn’t like to kill people. Instead, he disappears them and keeps them in relative comfort but without hope of escape. The pair form an unlikely al­liance as two of only people actively trying to free themselves, and so begin to unravel the web of lies and power that Buki has woven over the environment. Thompson’s character work pops, finding in the alternating perspectives two very different people, but also two wills and two intel­lects that complement each other and prove that two minds really are better, and more wily, than one alone. And the story aptly avoids the pitfalls of many incarceration narratives that focus on a feeling of slowing time to give a sense of scale, instead providing a rather brisk and satisfying tale of cooperation and action.

The April Worlds of Possibility features a num­ber of stories linked by a focus on family and care, as in Aimee Ogden’s “A Simulacrum of Self”, which finds Caroline as a child building a simulacrum of herself for a science project. When she sees how much better her family responds to the magical replica, however, she decides to change course, instead using the sim­ulacrum to replace herself in situations she feels ill-equipped to handle. The longer she builds versions of herself to please others, though, the more and more her own life fades into the back­ground. Ogden carefully reveals the benefits and drawbacks to having a kind of functional copy to better live up to people’s expectations, especially for those people with disabilities and/or neurodiverse people whose best efforts often are met with derision and strife. But at the heart of the story is a process not of replacement but of self-acceptance, and it’s beautifully realized. Ali Trotta also joins the issue with “The Doors Open”, in which the narrator has gone through a bad breakup that not only has left them unable to support themselves, but convinced of their own lack of value and ability. That is, until they find an ad for a job as a house minder and host that seems tailor-fit to their needs. As they begin their work, though, they find that the job isn’t quite as it was advertised, and they have to make a choice about whether they will stay at their new post or take a chance on the wider world. Trotta does a wonderful job of capturing the narrator’s dilemma without condemning them for either their trauma or their need for space. The story brushes against what some might consider a “waste” of a life, and yet the story challenges that valuation, showing that for some, a quiet and focused life is full of warmth and purpose. It’s lovely.

Lettie Prell makes her Flash Fiction Online debut with “Please Click”, a surprisingly philosophical piece hinged on an authentication question on a concert ticket ordering website. Answering “Are you a robot?” wouldn’t have been an issue for Joyce, a professor of computer sciences, but definitely is an issue for her AI assistant currently using a robotic body. When Joyce’s frustrations inadvertently lead to an on­tological crisis, it’s up to the AI to parse things as best they can… to interesting results. Prell doesn’t try to dig into the specifics of how or why this AI has created and embodied, leaning instead into the humor of a sentient AI navigat­ing the sometimes arbitrary ways humans use language and meaning, and it’s a decision that pays off well – it’s delightful!

April’s Zooscape, which includes A.P. Golub’s “The Last Life of a Time-Traveling Cat”, which tries to set the record straight about the different lives of cats, who don’t in fact live mul­tiple times but can, when pressed, move through time itself to find safety. Or, er… cream, for the particularly food-motivated, as is the case for a cat who almost dies flinging themself through time and ending up in Yugoslavia in 1930, res­cued by a man who gets involved in revolution­ary politics. For a sentient cat story, Golub keeps things rather sober and harrowing, touching on the history of the area and the hopes of one man and his cat as time delivers tragedies and difficulties to them both. The careful balancing of the man’s hopes and the cat’s aching attempts not to add to his sorrows, even if it keeps them apart, is rather emotionally devastating, but keeps a feeling of warmth and compassion all the same, finding peace at last after times full of unrest, upheaval, and loss.

Recommended Stories
“Immortal, Invisible”, Tade Thompson (Subterranean 2024)
“Please Click”, Lettie Prell (Flash Fiction Online 4/24)
“The Last Life of a Time-Traveling Cat”,  A.P. Golub (Zooscape 4/24)

This review and more like it in the July 2024 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.