She talks to wolves...

Last week, I began working through the stories freely available online from the 2009 Locus Recommended Reading List. My first choices were a bit random: I chose Catherynne M. Valente's "The Radiant Car Thy Sparrows Drew" because I've been interested in it. I accidentally clicked on Kij Johnson's "Spar" and then could not turn away, its text inexorably drawing my eyes onward in horrifying train-wreck style. I finished the week off with "On the Destruction of Copenhagen by the War-Machines of the Merfolk" by Peter M. Ball because it was the first story on the list.

If one were to look for an unofficial theme to this unintended triumvirate of stories, I think it would be this: "bizarre steps to the left of everything."

Let's start with the least radical story and work up from there.

"On the Destruction of Copenhagen by the War-Machines of the Merfolk" by Peter M. Ball (Strange Horizons, 07/06/09)

In this short piece, we have a fellow dissatisified with his life and dallying with a younger woman under comfortably false pretenses for them both; concurrent with their affair, Copenhagan (where the fellow's sister has been traveling) is attacked by salvage-built merfolk-mech. That last bit is compelling in itself, except for the part where that aspect of the story unfolds indirectly through reported news reports and the narrator's casual neuroses. I finished this story indifferent to the narrator and wanting to know more about his sister, which would probably deepen the narrator's depression.

"The Radiant Car Thy Sparrows Drew" by Catherynne M. Valente (Clarkesworld, 08/09)

There was much to appreciate in this one: beautiful and satiating language, a competently constructed mystery fraught with cosmic importance, and a bold, adventurous female filmmaker who manages to be the protagonist without ever appearing directly on screen, so to speak. (Directly on screen within the context of the story, certainly, but always through screens and images within the meta-screen of the text.) Unfortunately, I found it undercut by the juxtaposition of science fiction and its close adherence to the early forms of film. I could not reconcile extensive space travel and colonization with old film reels and vinyl soundtracks. And the balloons - I don't understand the exact details of the balloon-use, and the vague details of their use related to the story's space travel drove me to distraction. I'm in the curious position of appreciating the atmosphere, but being unhappy with the mechanical details.

That said, the closing image is completely killer.

"Spar" by Kij Johnson (Clarkesworld, 10/09)

I don't even know. I read this story in a mad rush because I couldn't believe what I was seeing and it left me feeling slightly ill and mildly distraught. What does it mean? Does it mean anything? The very questions that plagued the narrator plague me, except I'm not trapped in a tiny world of incessant barbarism and interspecies copulation and faceless rape and the eroding memories of Shakespeare. I don't really feel like I can recommend other people read this story; however, it is on the Locus Recommended Reading List and was a real contender for the 2010 Nebula Ballot (whether it made it still remains to be seen).



Since this is my make-up post for last Friday's free fiction offerings, you get another one this week!

This entry was originally posted at Livejournal on February 17th, 2010. You can comment here or there.