Seven Days of Online Fiction, Day 4: Ideomancer Speculative Fiction

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Today, in the fourth installment of this project,we turn our attention to Ideomancer.  Or more correctly Ideomancer Speculative Fiction.  This one has received a bit of critical acclaim if my memory is serving me correctly.  I don’t recall where all I’ve seen the acclaim, so I might be getting two different sites confused.

Anyway, there were three stories in this issue, along with some poetry and features such as reviews.  One of the stories was science fiction and the other two were fantasy.  Since science fiction and poetry isn’t really the focus of Seven Days of Online Fiction, I’ll look at the two of the stories which are fantasy.  Both of them are short.

One of the nice things about this site is a box (I’m not sure what you call it) at the top of the ToC which rotates the first few lines of each item in the ToC.  This allowed me to quickly realize that one of the stories was science fiction, and so I didn’t need to read it for the purpose of this series.  It also showed enough profanity in just a few lines that I knew I wouldn’t be reading it period.  But I digress.  I think is a cool idea.  It allowed me to sample the first paragraph (or the first few lines in the case of the poetry) and get an idea of whether or not I would want to read the rest of the story.

The first story I read was “Just Be” by Sandra M. Odell.  It was a short and melancholy piece, almost a vignette, without a great deal of plot.  Most of the conflict and tension revolved around the two characters discussing the fact that the second of them had to take the other’s place on the job while the first took his turn on vacation.  The fact that the two people involved, the first initially a man and the second initially a boy, are taking turns being Satan was what made this a fantasy. 

The story takes place in the rural South. It was written in a down-home, Southern voice that bordered on stereotype.  Since my family comes from the South originally, I could have chosen to be offended.  What kept me from being offended was that I know that there is a basis in fact for many of the stereotypes of life in the South.  Not all of them but many of them.  (I am NOT talking about racial stereotypes here, but stereotypes of diction, diet, etc..)  The stereotype of Southern dialect does have some basis in fact.  I’ve known people who’ve talked that way.  This story reminded me of them.

The story had a bittersweet almost nostalgic tone somewhat reminiscent of Ray Bradbury, which to me was a point in its favor.  Still, not a lot happened in the story.  If the author had made the conversation between the boy and the man longer and more confrontational, I think it would have made the story stronger.

The second story was “Ascension” by Su-Yee Lin and is more magic realism than straight fantasy.  It concerns a parent and daughter who continue to make trips to the park after things have begun to fall into the sky.  At first it was the birds.  When the story opens, it’s the leaves.  They’re all falling up.  By the end of the story, it’s the little girl.  Not the parent.  As a parent myself, I know I wouldn’t be so calm about such an event and neither would my wife.  Or any of the other parents we know.

I guess I assumed the parent narrating the story, whose gender is  never stated, was the girl’s mother because the two of them spend their days in the park, and even with many mothers working full time these days, they are still the majority of stay-at-home parents.

The author bio at the end of the story says Ms. Lin is a student in fiction in an MFA program.  This story reads like something that might come out of an MFA program.  It’s all mood and imagery.  There’s not a lot of plot, and frankly I didn’t find the character of the parent very well done.  Just not believable enough.  I know a lot of people like this kind of thing, but it’s not what I read fiction for.  At least not fantasy.

From the perspective of the Seven Days, one of the annoying things about this issue of Idoemancer was that there was a link to a very long story published last year which appears, at least at a glance, to be a much more traditional fantasy than either of the stories I’ve looked at from the current issue.  Unfortunately one of the rules of this project is to only consider stories first published in the current issue of an online magazine, not reprints.  Also, length could possibly be a factor if I’m going to stay on schedule.  It’s one I’ll probably come back to.

I’ve always been a little leery about the term “speculative fiction.”  It seems to be used a lot by people who act as those they are ashamed to be reading fantasy or science fiction and seem to think that by calling genre fiction “speculative fiction” they are giving it some sort of literary respectability.  I’ll not get into that here.  It’s off topic and would make this post too long.  “Ascension” certainly had fantastic elements, but I wouldn’t call it core fantasy.  The fantastic elements merely served to provide a mood.

So, in terms of quality:  These stories were well written, but neither of them had much in the way of story, at least as far as characters and plot are concerned, although “Just Be” wasn’t far off.  While some people prefer this kind of thing, I suspect most of the regular readers of this blog do not.  This is the second venue I’ve looked at that I haven’t read before.  Using the same criteria as previously, would I read more of Ideomancer based on what I’ve read here?  Sadly, no.  While I liked “Just Be”,  “Ascension” more than offset its appeal.  However, I will probably come back and take another look, to read the reprint story if for no other reason.  Every publication, whether print or electronic, can have an off issue, so I’ll might check some of the other stories as well.

For the purposes of this project, total quality count (high, low), Day 4:  5-2

Regarding Tom Reamy: An Open Letter to Bud Webster…

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…because I don’t have Bud’s email address.

Dear Bud,

I wanted to let you know how much I appreciated your profiling Tom Reamy in your inaugural installment of “Who?!” in the new issue of Black Gate.  I’ve enjoyed your “Past Masters” columns for years.  You have a tendency to profile most of my favorite writers from my teenage years.  I assume you know which ones to pick because you have exemplary taste.

I was especially pleased that you chose Tom Reamy.  He is an author who is sadly neglected, and I wish someone would bring him back into print in an archival edition.  His work could easily fit into a single volume, and given the size of some of the retrospectives being published these days, it shouldn’t be that hard.

The reason I’m glad you chose him is because, although it’s rather tenuous, I have a personal connection to Tom Reamy.

You mentioned in your article that Tom was born in Woodson, Texas.  We lived in Woodson in the 1970s, from about 1972-1976.  I was only in 3rd grade when we left, so I hadn’t yet discovered science fiction and fantasy, nor would I have known who Tom was.  If I had been a little older, I probably would have made an obnoxious fanboy of myself.

I realize by this time that Tom had moved on, but he still came back from time to time and briefly lived in Woodson circa 1972-1973.  Howard Waldrop writes about visiting Tom in Woodson in 1973.  (Although I’ve met Howard numerous times, my mind boggles that we were that close geographically back then.)  My parents knew the Reamys, but I don’t think they ever met Tom. 

When Blind Voices was published, I had started reading science fiction, although I hadn’t gotten into fantasy very much yet and so didn’t read it until a number of years later.  It wasn’t until the mid-1980s, after someone had dropped off almost a decade’s worth of F&SF at the local used bookstore in Breckenridge that I read some of Tom’s work.

I was impressed.  Somewhere, and I don’t recall where, I found a hardcover of San Diego Lightfoot Sue.  At the time I was (and still am) an aspiring writer with a fondness for short fiction.  Knowing Tom had written some of his stories  in a half horse town not far from where I was attending high school (Woodson wasn’t and isn’t big enough to have a whole horse), as well as the stories themselves, served as an inspiration to me.  There’s one story (that will never see the light of day) that I can trace back to Tom’s work as its inspiration.

In his Afterward, Howard Waldrop writes about the gas station the Reamys operated on the highway between Breckenridge and Woodson.  As soon as I read about it, I knew exactly the gas station Howard was talking about.  It sat in a curve in the road just inside the county line.

The gas station is gone now, but the house is still standing.  That’s it in the photo on the right.  I’d read on the Black Gate blog that you were going to write about Tom and I took the picture when I was visiting my parents in Breckenridge last Christmas.  I think the gas station was where the two pine trees are now, but I’m not sure.

Your article made me do some looking on the internet, Bud, and I learned that Tom is buried in the family plot in Woodson.  I’ll try to pay my respects the next time I’m in the area.

Anyway, I wanted to thank you for your article.  It brought back memories.  Of all the ones you’ve written, this one is the one I can relate to the most. 

Best regards,

Keith

Seven Days of Online Fiction, Day 3: Electric Spec

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For the first two days of this project, I looked at two sources of online fiction with which I was already familiar and read regularly, Beneath Ceaseless Skies and Heroic Fantasy Quarterly.  For Day 3, I turned my attention to a site I haven’t read before, Electric Spec.  This is a quarterly publication which publishes “schockingly good short works of science fiction, fantasy, and the macabre.”  That’s a pretty big statement.  So just how well does the magazine live up to its own billing, at least as far as the fantasy is concerned?

We’ll look at two stories and see.

The first story in question is “A Touch of Poison” by Jaelithe Ingold.  It’s fairly short, but powerful.  In fact, while the author could have made it longer, I think that would have only weakened the story.

 This is the story of Arys,  who nine years previously was betrayed and imprisoned because she has a special ability.  After the man she loved, an ambitious creep named Callum, had her take the test to see if she had the ability, all those who did were killed or imprisoned by the Queen.  Callum went on to marry the Queen.  Arys found herself locked in a cell.

Callum and Arys grew up together in the same village.  He is the one who convinced her to come with him to the Queen’s court.  He is the one who convinced Arys to take the test.  Arys thinks the Queen was the one who outlawed the Catevari, the women who share Arys’s gift.  I suspect Callum may have been behind it.  Up until this point Arys had acted from love of Callum.  And while she still has feelings for him, she knows now not to trust him.

Now Callum needs her ability and comes to her promising she’ll be given her freedom if she’ll just do one little favor for him.  And the Queen.

Spoiler Alert – Skip this paragraph if you don’t want to know part of the ending.  The ability the Catevari have is to take the sickness from one person and give it to another.  The Queen, who is pregnant with Callum’s child, is near death.  Arys’s task is to take the sickness and transfer it to a criminal volunteer whose family will have all their needs taken care of.  The criminal, of course, will die.  Arys reluctanlty does as she is asked.  But she does a little more than she’s asked and transfers her ability to the unborn child.  What we are never told is whether Callum honors his promise to Arys or not.  I may be reading more into the story than was there, but I don’t think he will.  None of his actions are honorable up until this point.  To me this lack of resolution made the story more powerful by ending on a note of uncertainty, leaving the reader with a sense of dread that Arys will simply be killed now that her usefulness appears to be over.  Whether Callum honors his word or not, Arys will have the last laugh.  That, and the fact that Callum is totally oblivious to what is to come, I found very satisfying.

The second fantasy story was “Birth of a New Day” by Fredrick Obermeyer.  There’s also three science fiction stories, but since I’m focusing on fantasy, I’ll not be discussing them here.  This was an odd little story about a world in which men give birth to day and women to night through slits in their sides.  The background is sketchy, but the story was well told about a man, an outcast in his village, who is having some trouble birthing the new day.  There was more action in this one than I expected, and while I had mixed feelings about the premise, the author did a good enough job in the telling that I would read more of his work.

Electric Spec has a page with information about and links to the blogs and websites of its editors and contributors.  There’s no information given for Jaelithe Ingold.  That’s unfortunate because I would be interested in reading more of her work.  (I’m assuming Jaelithe is a feminine name; it’s not one I’ve encountered before.)  An email address was provided for Fredrick Obermeyer along with a brief bio, although I’m not sure of the correct spelling.  His name was also spelled “Frederick.”  Most of the contributors I didn’t recognize, but one stood out.  Nina Kiriki Hoffman.

At this point in previous posts, I’ve said whether or not I would read more of the particular online venue I was reviewing if I were not already familiar with it.  In this case there’s no “if”; I hadn’t read Electric Spec before.  But I will again.  And soon, since it’s a quarterly publication, and the next issue is due in a couple of weeks.  The two fantasies I read were well written, and I while I enjoyed one more than the other, both were worth reading.  Electric Spec lives up to its own billing.  I’d say these two stories were shockingly good, especially since the authors seem to be pretty early in their careers.  

Total quality count (high, low), Day 3:  4-1.

Seven Days of Online Fiction, Day 2: Heroic Fantasy Quarterly

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For the second day of Seven Days of Online Fiction, we’re looking at Heroic Fantasy Quarterly.  You might remember that one of the editors, William Ledbetter, sat down with us a few months ago in the first Adventures Fantastic Interview.

There are three stories in this issue.  One of them, “The Dome of Florence” by Richard Marsden, is a novella.  I really like the novella length.  This would have been the story I would have preferred to look at here, but because of its length, it’s broken up into two parts.  This is the first part.  For that reason, I’ll have to examine it another time. 

That leaves the two short stories.

The longer of the two, “Demon Song” by A. R. Williams, is the tale of Nobuyashi, a samurai seeking vengeance.  It’s also a tale of loss and forgetting, how sometimes the things we strive for cause us to lose sight of the reasons we’re striving.  There’s plenty of supernatural action and swordplay in this one, as well as some philosophy about the differences between honor and justice.  There’s more depth to this story than initially appears.  It’s obvious early on that some of the characters are ghosts, but the question is which ones?

This story develops the characters in a slightly different way.  Instead of backstory or infodumps about what came before the opening line, Williams develops much Nobuyashi’s character through the conversations he has with the people he encounters on his quest for vengeance.  These conversations often take the form of a series of questions asked to him. 

One thing I did find a little annoying was that we aren’t told any of the details that led to Nobuyashi’s desire for vengeance, nor are we given many details about Uyeda, the man he seeks vengeance against.  For this reason, pay close attention to what the woman in the opening scene tells Nobuyashi about Uyeda.  Once I thought over that exchange, the role Uyeda played in events made much more sense.

This is a story with hidden depths, but it will reward the patient reader who is willing to think about what’s going on rather than just follow the action.  This story, to use the rule of thumb I invoked on Day One, would make me read more from Heroic Fantasy Quarterly if it were the first story I ever read there.

The second story is much shorter, and frankly was a bit of a disappointment.  I was expecting something longer and more involved.  The story is “The Baroness Drefelin” by David Pilling.   It’s quite short and concerns a knight in love with the Queen of England.  Which one, we’re not told, but we are given enough information to know this is fairly soon after the Norman Conquest.  When accused of less than a pure desire for the Queen, he kills his accuser and flees.  While in Wales, he is told of a baroness who is too beautiful to look upon.  Of course, he has to go look.  Things, needless to say, aren’t what he is expecting.  They weren’t what I was expecting either.

The ending, while different and original, was a bit of a letdown at least to me.  I don’t know that this particular tale alone would make me want to read more from this site.

That being said, the two stories when considered together are more than strong enough to make me return to this site.  Not that I need them to do that.  I already read Heroic Fantasy Quarterly.  I’m just saying a random look at the quality is overall high.

So, total quality count (high, low), end of Day 2:  2-1.

Seven Days of Online Fiction, Day 1: Beneath Ceaseless Skies

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The first story we’ll be looking at in our Seven Day of Online Fiction is”Buzzard’s Final Bow” by Jason S. Ridler in the May 5 issue of Beneath Ceaseless Skies.  This is issue number 68 for those of you who are counting. The other story in the issue is “The Finest Spectacle Anywhere” by Genevieve Valentine.  It’s the second in a series.  Since one of the rules of The Seven Days is to only look at standalone stories, it won’t be considered here.  It looks intriguing, though, so I may post about it after The Seven Days.

“Buzzard’s Final Bow” concerns an aging former gladiator, Buzzard, an old wrong for which he’s been trying to atone for years, and an evil task he’s been given.  The story is well told, and while it doesn’t hold any great surprises or unusual twists, it’s compelling. 

Buzzard is a flawed hero.  He carries a tiger around in a cage, to which he’s chained.  And this is the only problem I had with the story.  We’re not given a lot of detail about the cage, but he’s chained to it.  The chains seem to be quite long, because he is able to go into another room without taking off the chains or taking the cage with him.  Having drag this cage and tiger around with him everywhere went pushed the limits of my suspension of disbelief.  If that’s what he actually does.  I may be misinterpreting things a bit.

Anyway, the plot is fairly simple.  Lady Astra is the regent for the young Lord Konrad, a weak and sickly lad.  She wants him out of the way so she can assume the throne, as regents are wont to do.  She knows Buzzard was once Bazzar Kiln, a slave who won his freedom in the arena, where she once watched him perform.  Buzzard’s freedom is in some way tied to his tiger companion, Lady Razor, and it’s her life Lasy Astra uses as leverage.

For a short story, this one is deep and surprisingly moving.  As we learn more about the circumstances under which Buzzard gained his freedom, he becomes more and more sympathetic.  There’s also more to the young Lord Konrad than we’re first led to believe.  He has unplumbed depths of courage. 

I’ll not say more because I don’t want to spoil the ending.  Ridler doesn’t take the easy way out.  He’s set up a situation involving guilt and atonement, and he doesn’t flinch from the harsh reality of either of those things.  This is one that will stick with me.

I’ve not read any of Mr. Ridler’s work before, but he’s published in a variety of smaller venues.  If this story is typical of his work, then I expect his name will be appearing on the tables of contents in the venues with wider circulation soon.  I’m certainly interested in reading more of his work.

This series, Seven Days of Online Fiction, was started to see just how high the quality of short fiction online is.  Over half of the short fiction with multiple award nominations this year were published online.  While I won’t even attempt to pick award nominees, much less award winners, I will say that this story is of high enough quality that if I weren’t familiar with Beneath Ceaseless Skies, and this were the first story published there that I’d read, I would read more.

Quality count (high, low), end of Day One: 1-0.

Apologies

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OK, when I posted “Announcing Seven Days of Online Fiction” a few minutes ago, I did something that screwed up the labels on that post and the two preceding.  I have no idea what.  Anyway, I went back and fixed them.  When I did, the software reposted those two articles ahead of the new one.  Rather than try to put the posts back in order, I’m going to leave them.  With my luck, I’ll just screw things up more.  I apologize for the snafu, especially to anyone who follows the blogs and gets notification of updates.  Follow the link above to the newest post.

The Battle of the Sexes Continues

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Now that grades are finally in, I’m looking forward to getting some rest.  I had hoped to last night, but before dawn Ragnarok erupted.  There were flashes of light and loud noises, and it seemed the end of the world was imminent.  Turned out it was only a thunderstorm, not Armageddon.  It’s been so many months since we’ve had any rain here on the South Plains that I’d forgotten what it was like.  But I digress.  The point is I’m not going to have anything new ready for a day or so, at least as far as reviews or in-depth essays go.

A couple of months ago I wrote a post entitled “In Defense of Traditional Gender Roles in Fantasy” which I expected to generate some heat.  Instead it sank like a stone.  Although in the last month it’s gotten 20 hits, 10 of them in the last week.  It may resurrect itself, zombie-like.  It seems like someone is taking an interest.

Then this morning, over at the Home of Heroics blog, Jonathan Moeller wrote about anachronisms in heroic fiction.  Since he only has 1000 words, he limited himself to women warriors rather than making an exhaustive list.  Can you say “firestorm”? (He did hint in one of his replies that athiesm in fantasy societies was a possible future post.)

Of course, the new issue of Black Gate, which should be in the mail to me even as I write, is a themed issue.  What is the theme?  Warrior women, of course.  I was planning on reviewing each story individually, although not necessarily giving each story its individual post.  Have to wait and see about that, depending on story length.

But this whole brouhaha over at HoH is making me itch to read the stories.  You can bet I’m going to read and review them very carefully now.

In the meantime, I’m going to be reading history, looking are references to female warriors.

Announcing Seven Days of Online Fiction

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I’ve held for a while that the online sources for short fiction are providing quality fantasy and science fiction, and in many of a quality at least as high as, if not higher than, the traditional print sources.  Apparently I’m not alone in this view.  Karen Burnham, at the Locus Roundtable posted a list of the works which have received more two or more award nominations this year.  While (not surprisingly) none of the novels on the list were published online, the short fiction of all lengths is a different matter.  Two of the four novellas, all three novelettes, and two of the three short stories on the list were published online.

There are multiple sources of online fiction.  In fact the online landscape can change suddenly.  New websites arrive and disappear quickly.  If you’re not paying attention, you could miss something.  I thought this would be a good time to survey some of the sources of short fiction on the web.

There are several reasons behind the timing on this.  One, I’m not going to start any novels for a couple of weeks.  I’ve got some anthologies I need to read (not to mention the new issue of Black Gate, which arrived yesterday), and since I’ll be reading short fiction, it won’t be a huge deal to mix up the sources of my reading.  I haven’t kept up with the online fiction markets the way I should over the last year.  Since it will be to my benefit to broaden my online reading, I thought I’d share with you what I found in the hopes that you might find it useful as well.

So, what exactly are the ground rules going to be?

First, I’m going to look at one source of online fiction a day for the next seven days.  Or rather I’m going to post one look a day.  I’ll probably need to get a little ahead since I may be on the road before the end of the seven days.  The first post will go up later today, and if all goes according to plan,  the next will go up tomorrow, the third on Monday, and so on.  We’ll see if I can pull this off. 

Second, since this blog emphasizes fantasy and historical adventure more than science fiction, there won’t be much science fiction, if any.

Third, I’ll choose which sites I visit by a complex system of analysis involving mood, time available, fatigue level, and the phase of the Moon.  In other words, it will be pretty random.  While I’ve got some in mind, and have already looked at the first one, which I’ll post later today, I’m not aware of all the sites out there.  If there’s a site you want me to look at, please feel free to let me know.

Fourth, because my time is somewhat limited, I’ll restrict myself to the current “issue” of the sites I visit, and not consider anything in the archives.  This will remove the temptation to go read the award nominees I’ve haven’t gotten to yet.  Furthermore, I don’t promise to blog about more than a single story per site.  Time is a factor here, after all.  While I might, if time allows or the stories are short enough, examine more than one per site, I only promise to look at one.  I may go back later and blog about the other stories.  Also, I will try to avoid discussing any stories that are parts of series simply for the reason I don’t have time to go back and read the preceding stories. 

Fifth, I will restrict myself to sites that are free.  That way everyone who reads these posts can access the stories if they wish.

This should be a lot of fun.  Of course I thought that a few months ago when I got on my son’s ripstick and ended up pulling a groin muscle.  But I really don’t think this will be that bad.  If it’s not a total disaster, I’ll try the same thing with the print magazines in a month or two (assuming I can find seven print magazines that publish fantasy).

Blogging Kull: The Curse of the Golden Skull

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Kull:  Exile of Atlantis
Del Rey
trade paper, 317 p., $17

Once again, a story so brief it’s almost a vignette.  And like the last one we looked at, “The Altar and the Scorpion,” Kull doesn’t actually appear in it, although he is mentioned.  Only this time not with respect, but hatred and venom.

The story opens with the sorcerer Rotath of Lemuria dying from a fatal wound.  He had been struck down by Kull after having been betrayed by the unnamed king of Lemuria, a man he had thought he had controlled.  At least until he turned to Kull for aid.

As he dies, Rotath, who Howard shows to be a vile, evil creature, curses all men, whether alive or dead.  Here is one of those passages that is frustrating by what it doesn’t tell.

One of the most effective techniques an author can have is that of hinting.  Here’s what I mean.  Howard lists the deities Rotath curses mankind by.  They include ” Vramma ad Jaggta-noga and Kamma and Kulthas …the fane of the Black Gods, the tracks of the Serpent Ones, the talons of the Ape Lords, and the iron bound books of Shuma Gorath.”  That’s a pretty exhaustive list, and it doesn’t include the major deities of Valusia that were listed in the paragraph previous to the one in which these appear.

Now we’ve encountered the Serpent Ones in “The Shadow Kingdom“, but who is Jaggta-noga?  And what’s in the books of Shuma Gorath that would require the books to be bound in iron?  See what I mean?  Hints and questions implying a deeper, richer background than what is actually shown, making the reader want to know more.  It’s little touches like this that make Howard the writer he was.

As he’s dying Rotath places a curse on his own bones.  Then he passes into eternal torment.

Howard does something at this point I don’t recall him doing anywhere else.  He injects an interlude, entitled “Emerald Interlude”, in which millenia pass.  It was atypical of Howard to do something like this in the middle of a narrative. The mountaintop on which Rotath dies eventually sinks into the sea to become a swamp infested island.

What this accomplishes is to tie Kull’s era with contemporary history.  Howard had linked Kull’s time with ancient history through the character of Karon the ferryman in an untitled draft.  But that was ancient mythology.  In this case, the connection is with the modern world. 

An archaeologist is exploring the ruins when he comes across Rotath’s remains in a decaying shrine.  The skeleton hasn’t crumbled to dust because part of his dying curse was to turn his bones to gold.  As he picks up the golden skull, an adder hidden within strikes him and he dies.

A grisly, and unfortunately predictable little horror story and by no means one of Howard’s best.  It’s not even included in The Horror Stories of Robert E. Howard, although it probably should be.  Still the writing is effective, the prose setting a mood of impending doom.  It’s different and certainly not a cornerstone of the Kull canon, but an interesting addition nonetheless.