GigaNotoSaurus, Diabolical Plots and Hexagon Fall ’24: Short Fiction Reviews by Charles Payseur

GigaNotoSaurus 9/24
Diabolical Plots 9/24
Hexagon Fall ’24

September’s GigaNotoSaurus is Monte Lin’s “Here in the Glittering Black, There is Hope”, which introduces Kavita, the captain of a ship contracted out to the ultrarich to go out and bring back previous materials from the reaches of space, staying young thanks to cryo-sleep while generations pass on Earth. She’s part of a tradition, a movement to the stars in chase of freedom and hope that are in very short supply on Earth’s surface. But with each trip Kavita and her crew find their prospects and their numbers dwindling, as circumstances push them back to the grind of their home planet. Lin captures the weight of expectation slowly crushed by corporate greed and moving goalposts that always find her a little worse off than before – and a little more alone. I appreciate how the story handles time, pacing things very slowly, the bleakness creeping rather than arriving all at once, capturing the plight and tragedy of the setting and Kavita specifically in a bittersweet and moving way.

Sarah Pauling imagines a past, present, and future where humans have been contacted by an alien ship on their long way to visit Earth in Diabolical Plots’ September “Letters From Mt. Monroe Elementary, Third Grade”. The story is framed as letters written largely by children to these alien travelers known as the Pilgrims, who set course for Earth long before they were able to directly communicate with the people there. The letters reveal the fear, anger, and general uncer­tainty of the people of Earth thinking about the day decades and decades out when the ship will finally arrive. There are xenophobia and curiosity in equal measure, some children inspired by the school project to get more involved with prepar­ing for the Pilgrims’ arrival while others try to warn the aliens away. Again, time is something the story is very aware of, skipping decades to show both the changing realities aboard the Pilgrim ship and also the ways the children’s reactions change as the arrival gets closer. Paul­ing shows humanity at its best and worst, pass­ing along our insecurities, prejudices, and fears along with the knowledge they might need to break free of the cycles of hate and aggression to reach for a better future for everyone.

I’ll finish with the Fall Hexagon, which opens strong with Adialyz Del Valle Berríos’s “A Death Rattle’s Chime”, which finds a fish butcher named Fabi living in a coastal town that’s been slowly dying for a while now. Ever since the Devouring, which claimed all of the town’s adults, leaving the children to try and pick up the pieces, fishing for tuna and more to send inland for consumers willing to eat food tainted by the Scale. For those in the town, though, things are even more dire, as the Scale is climbing their bodies, robbing their sense of touch as well as their hope. It’s an aching read, slow and relentless, revealing this gnawing hunger that is not sated, that in many ways cannot be sated because of the damage that’s been done to the world, inherited by people like Fabi who can do little but ride the waves and wait for the Scale to claim them. And the issue closes with “The Gold Coast: At One with Fun!” by Aggie Novak, another rather grim story this time about Soph, a kind of guide at the Gold Coast, where she shows tourists the landscape of a cursed theme park. What she knows and the tourists find out, though, is that this trip is by no means safe, and sometimes the park requires a sacrifice – or sac­rifices. It’s what claimed Soph’s younger brother, and when one of the tourists reminds her of her lost family, she decides it might be time for an act of rebellion. Novak keeps the story tense and punchy, the action when it happens visceral and unsettling as the true nature of the Gold Coast is revealed more and more. And it shows that even against overwhelming and terrifying opposition, not everything is doomed, and human hope and resilience are powerful indeed.

Recommended Stories

“A Death Rattle’s Chime”, Adialyz Del Valle Berríos (Hexagon 9/24)

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

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