The Sunday Morning Transport, The Deadlands, and The Dark: Short Fiction Reviews by Paula Guran
The Sunday Morning Transport (9/22/24 – 12/01/24)
The Deadlands Fall ’24
The Dark 12/24
The Sunday Morning Transport publishes outstanding fiction weekly. All the stories are commendable, but here are my favorites of their fall offerings. If, as I did, you felt sympathy for Hermione’s muggle parents, “F*** These Wizards” by Alex London (9/22) is a story you will enjoy. And even if you aren’t a Harry Potter fan, you’ll appreciate this witty look at the other side of being recruited to a magical academy.
Long after humans and the metal shells they drive have disappeared, Lot C46 is maintained by various neuromechs in “Three Views of a Parking Lot” (10/6). Ken Liu brilliantly tells a trio of tales: one of artistic epiphany, another of an unauthorized repair, and finally one in which C46 is a place of ritual where the lot “is cradle, grave, hostel, station… a portal between worlds, between segments of life, the held breath that promises everything.”
“A Taste of Justice” by John Wiswell (10/16) is a well-crafted fable about standing up – and spitting – against injustice. Leanna Renee Hieber’s eerie “Die Ravanche” (10/27) was also published earlier this year in Castle of Horror Vol. 11: Revenge. As one might expect of a ghost ship dubbed Die Ravanche – German for The Revenge – the phantom vessel delivers vengeance for the dead who have been wronged. But for the ghost of Greta, retribution is not quite enough.
“Margeaux Poppins: Monster Hunter” by L. D. Lewis (11/3) combines art and monsters with a winning heroine – Margeaux, an “art witch” who can enter paintings and dispose of the beasts that have invaded them – for a truly delightful tale. I’m sure I’m not the only reader who would like to see more of Margeaux. Mary Robinette Kowal’s “Infinite Branches” (11/24) is a slight but engaging story about a woman who is graced with a visit from her future self. The visitor from tomorrow offers solid advice and sound financial investment.
My preferred stories from The Deadlands #36 include two stories with ghosts and one with crabs. Vivian Shaw artfully builds a feeling of dread in “The Empty Ones”, a story with an unusual setting – a crab boat in the Bering Sea – and unconventional supernatural creatures: pure-white “empty” crabs that spread death to a catch and beyond. Throw in tales of “drowned-dead people” who come back when “they don’t die clean” and you’re rewarded with some good creeps. “On the Existence of Ghosts, As If” by James Van Pelt is a charming story told by a narrator in fragile health who seeks to communicate with the ghosts he sees but with whom he cannot connect.
On a future settled Mars, a festival of saints and ghosts is celebrated annually. But Maya, in the poignant “The Feast Night of Vengeful Ghosts” by Lavie Tidhar, has no ghosts of her own and hates Feast Night. Most folks have their ghosts: “jumbled memories, long-term storage, traces of a personality – digital debris left in the node that intertwined with their squishy biological brain since birth.” The majority of souls go to “the Public Heavens. But some were decanted into miniaturized automata….” Maya’s loved ones died swiftly in an avalanche and “not even a memory” was left when they retrieved the bodies. On a visit to their graves, she encounters a robot that points out robots are “nothing but ghosts, inhabiting a body.” Considerable food for thought provided.
R.L. Summerling’s “A Little Bit of What Killed Auntie” was published in The Dark #115. Whatever one might expect from a story that begins with the elderly Mrs. Fernyhough being found inexplicably murdered, it is highly doubtful that those expectations are correct. It’s nice to be surprised.
Recommended Stories
“Margeaux Poppins: Monster Hunter”, L.D. Lewis (The Sunday Morning Transport 11/3/24)
“Three Views of a Parking Lot”, Ken Liu (The Sunday Morning Transport 10/6/24)
Paula Guran has edited more than 40 science fiction, fantasy, and horror anthologies and more than 50 novels and collections featuring the same. She’s reviewed and written articles for dozens of publications. She lives in Akron OH, near enough to her grandchildren to frequently be indulgent.
This review and more like it in the January 2025 issue of Locus.
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