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Salvador by Lucius Shepard

Posted on by Paul Fraser

Salvador by Lucius Shepard (F&SF, April 1984)1 opens with a scene that will be familiar to anyone who has seen any of the many Vietnam War movies that were released from the late 1970s onwards2—except that in this case the conflict is in Central America, and the soldiers use combat drugs to enhance their abilities and supress their fear:

The platoon was crossing a meadow at the foot of an emerald-green volcano [. . .] when cap-pistol noises sounded on the slope. Someone screamed for the medic, and Dantzler dove into the grass, fumbling for his ampules. He slipped one from the dispenser and popped it under his nose, inhaling frantically; then, to be on the safe side, he popped another — “A double helpin’ of martial arts,” as DT would say — and lay with his head down until the drugs had worked their magic. There was dirt in his mouth, and he was very afraid. Gradually his arms and legs lost their heaviness, and his heart rate slowed. His vision sharpened to the point that he could see not only the pinpricks of fire blooming on the slope, but also the figures behind them, half-obscured by brush. A bubble of grim anger welled up in his brain, hardened by a fierce resolve, and he started moving toward the volcano. By the time he reached the base of the cone, he was all rage and reflexes. He spent the next forty minutes spinning acrobatically through the thickets, spraying shadows with bursts of his M-18; yet part of his mind remained distant from the action, marveling at his efficiency, at the comic-strip enthusiasm he felt for the task of killing. He shouted at the men he shot, and he shot them many more times than was necessary, like a child playing soldier.  p. 8

After this we learn more about DT (presumably the platoon’s psychotic NCO) and see his craziness at first hand when he throws a young prisoner (who says his father is a “man of power”) out of the chopper on the way back to base.
The next section sees Dantzler (whose anthropologist father did field work in Salvador) talking to his buddy Moody about the spirit world of the local Sukias (magicians). When Moody asks why the Sukias aren’t helping the natives, Dantzler tells him that they don’t believe in interfering in worldly affairs. However, after the platoon raze a village to the ground and kill all the occupants, Dantzler has a supernatural experience that proves this isn’t quite correct—as the men camp for the night in a cloud forest, a dark shape comes towards him and a voice says that Dantzler killed his son. Dantzler realises that it is the Sukia from the young man’s village, and he opens fire indiscriminately; the blackness disappears, and he sees he has killed several members of his platoon. Then he notices a girl in the golden light that has replaced the darkness and, after she speaks to him for a while, she asks him to “let them know about the war” when he returns home. Dantzler subsequently comes upon Moody and DT, shoots the former and drowns the latter:

Darttzler planted a foot in the middle of his back and pushed him down until his head was submerged. DT bucked and clawed at the foot and managed to come to his hands and knees. Mist slithered from his eyes, his nose, and he choked out the words “…kill you….” Dantzler pushed him down again; he got into pushing him down and letting him up, over and over. Not so as to torture him. Not really. It was because he had suddenly understood the nature of the ayahuamaco’s laws, that they were approximations of normal laws, and he further understood that his actions had to approximate those of someone jiggling a key in a lock. DT was the key to the way out, and Dantzler was jiggling him, making sure all the tumblers were engaged.
Some of the vessels in DT’s eyes had burst, and the whites were occluded by films of blood. When he tried to speak, mist curled from his mouth. Gradually his struggles subsided; he clawed runnels in the gleaming yellow dirt of the bank and shuddered. His shoulders were knobs of black land floundering in a mystic sea.
For a long time after DT sank from view, Dantzler stood beside the stream, uncertain of what was left to do and unable to remember a lesson he had been taught. Finally, he shouldered his rifle and walked away from the clearing. Morning had broken, the mist had thinned, and the forest had regained its usual coloration. But he scarcely noticed these changes, still troubled by his faulty memory. Eventually, he let it slide — it would all come clearer sooner or later.  p. 20-21

The last part of the story (spoiler) takes place back in the United States, and the final scene sees Dantzler entering a night club with a knife after popping two combat ampules:

[He] felt a responsibility to explain about the war. More than a responsibility, an evangelistic urge. He would tell them about the kid falling out of the chopper, the white-haired girl in Tecolutla, the emptiness. God, yes! How you went down chock-full of ordinary American thoughts and dreams, memories of smoking weed and chasing tail and hanging out and freeway flying with a case of something cold, and how you smuggled back a human-shaped container of pure Salvadorian emptiness. Primo grade. Smuggled it back to the land of silk and money, of mindfuck video games and topless tennis matches and fast-food solutions to the nutritional problem. Just a taste of Salvador would banish all those trivial obsessions. Just a taste. It would be easy to explain.  p. 23

This is an immersive story, an impressively descriptive and atmospheric piece which also manages, unusually, to combine its near future SF setting (the combat drugs, etc.) with supernatural events to produce an effective anti-war/revenge fantasy.
***+ (Good to Very Good). 7,450 words. Story link.

1. This story won the Locus and SF Chronicle (both SF news magazines) polls for Best Short Story; it also placed 4th in the Hugo Award for that year and was a Nebula Award finalist too.

2. Military Times’ 10 Best Vietnam War Movies.

The Store of the Worlds by Robert Sheckley

Posted on by Paul Fraser

The Store of the Worlds by Robert Sheckley (Playboy, September 1959)1 opens with Mr Wayne passing a pile of rubble and coming to a tumbledown building at the end, The Store of the Worlds. Inside, Wayne meets the proprietor, Mr Tompkins, who can supposedly transport people (by means of the rusty hypodermic needle on the table, and “certain gadgets” in the back of the store) to the world of their deepest desires. Tomkins gives a “Many Worlds” explanation to Wayne:

“What happens then?” Mr. Wayne asked.
“Your mind, liberated from its body, is able to choose from the countless probability worlds which the earth casts off in every second of its existence.”
Grinning now, Tompkins sat up in his rocking chair and began to show signs of enthusiasm.
“Yes, my friend, though you might not have suspected it, from the moment this battered earth was born out of the sun’s fiery womb, it cast off its alternate-probability worlds. Worlds without end, emanating from events large and small; every Alexander and every amoeba creating worlds, just as ripples will spread in a pond no matter how big or how small the stone you throw. Doesn’t every object cast a shadow? Well, my friend, the earth itself is four-dimensional; therefore it casts three-dimensional shadows, solid reflections of itself, through every moment of its being. Millions, billions of earths! An infinity of earths! And your mind, liberated by me, will be able to select any of these worlds and live upon it for a while.”

The rest of this lengthy but absorbing setup goes on to cover the cost of the service, which is very high, and the health implications (a year in the world of desire costs ten years of the traveller’s life as there is a strain on the nervous system). Then, when Wayne asks if the transition can be made permanent, Tompkins says he is researching that possibility using the money he gets from selling the service.
Wayne eventually tells Tompkins that he needs to give it some thought, and the story cuts to his journey home to Long Island. There we see that Wayne has a wife called Janet, a son called Tommy, and a comfortable middle-class existence. Over the following days, and against the background of his work on Wall Street and a sailing trip with his son Tommy, Wayne thinks about Mr Tompkins, The Store of the Worlds, and the sort of world he might desire.
The final scene of the story cuts back to the store, where Wayne is waking up. Tompkins asks him if he is okay and whether or not he wants a refund. Wayne replies that the experience was quite satisfactory but, when Tompkins probes further, Wayne will only say that his world of desire was in the recent past.
The story closes with Wayne paying Tompkins for the trip with “a pair of army boots, a knife, two coils of copper wire, and three small cans of corned beef” before he leaves the store:

[Wayne] hurried down to the end of the lane of gray rubble. Beyond it, as far as he could see, lay flat fields of rubble, brown and gray and black. Those fields, stretching to every horizon, were made of the twisted corpses of buildings, the shattered remnants of trees and the fine white ash that once was human flesh and bone.

We realise that Wayne’s comfortable, unexceptional middle-class life with his wife and son was the world he desired, and that he is actually the survivor of a nuclear war. The few remaining paragraphs of the story hint at what this entails, and ends with Wayne resolving to get back to his shelter before the rats come out and he misses his potato ration.
The story’s ending is a gut punch, even if you guess what is coming before you get to the reveal (I figured out where it was going just before Wayne handed over the payment2).
A very good—and well-constructed—story,3 and one that makes you reflect that there are much worse options than living in modern day Western society, for all its failings.
**** (Very Good). 2,400 words. Story link.

1. This story was first published under the title The World of Heart’s Desire.

2. There are several clues before the reveal: the rubble strewn street, the dilapidated building, the rusty hypodermic, and the year Wayne spends thinking about whether or not to take the trip (the experience is described as a year long in the setup).

3. I’d definitely put this in a Best of Robert Sheckley collection, along with Specialist and Pilgrimage to Earth.

Retention by Alec Nevala-Lee

Posted on by Paul Fraser

Retention by Alec Nevala-Lee (Analog, July-August 2020)1 is in the form of a customer service call where the caller is continually fobbed off when he tries to cancel his contract:

Thank you, Perry. How can I help you today?
I want to disconnect my security system and close my account, please.
I see. Just so we’re on the same page, you’re saying that you have some issues with your current service, and you want to explore your options?
That’s not what I’m saying. I’ve decided to disconnect my security system and close my account.
I understand. We know that your needs can change and that you want your services to reflect this. But we appreciate your business, and we hate to lose you. To help you figure out your options, I’d like to ask you a few questions. Okay?
I’m not sure why you need to ask me anything. I just want to cancel.
It helps me put together a package that meets your budget and your needs.
The price isn’t the problem.
You see, it helps me to know that. What do you value the most in your current package?
Again, I don’t see why you need to ask this.
Well, my job is to have a conversation with you about your service.
With all due respect, I don’t think your job involves having a conversation with me at all. I’d just like to cancel my account, please. Is that something you can do? Yes or no?

It soon becomes apparent that (a) the answer is “no” and (b) that he is talking (spoiler) to an AI. Then we discover that the caller isn’t human either, but an algorithm that reflects his dead owner’s tastes and needs. The story ends with the two still going round in circles hundreds of years later.
This has an amusing beginning, and becomes pleasingly and quirkily existential later.
***+ (Good to Very Good). 2,750 words.

1. Nevala-Lee notes on his blog that there are three versions of the story available (two are audio recordings).

The Atheling’s Wife by Keith Taylor

Posted on by Paul Fraser

The Atheling’s Wife by Keith Taylor1 (Fantastic, August 1976) is the second story in the writer’s “Bard” series, which is set in sixth century Celtic Britain, and begins with Felimid mac Fal arriving at the hall of King Cedric, looking for passage across the sea and away from the island:

The walls were gigantic timbers adzed and fitted together like the ribs of a ship. The corner-posts were carved like frowning gods, and it would have taken three men to stretch their arms around one. The roof was tiled with scales a foot across, from a sea-dragon the king had hunted down. They glittered like beaten metal, green shading into grey at the edges. Felimid could have ridden through the doors without ducking the lintel, and a comrade could have gone either side of him without scraping the posts. The doors themselves were sheathed in bronze, with silvered iron hinges marvellously wrought. Hinges long as he was tall, nearly.
The double portal, huge as it was, was framed in the naked white skull and jaws of the sea-dragon whose scales covered the roof. Teeth half as long as a man’s arm shone like white salt. Bereft sockets under blunt bone ridges were caves of deep shadow. They seemed to glare with menace yet. The notion of riding under them did not enchant Felimid even as an image.  p. 92

After the guard tells Felimid that the jaws will snap shut if he intends any misdeeds, Felimid passes through into the interior, and later finds himself sitting at a lowly place at the king’s table. At the top are King Cedric, his wife Vivayn, and the king’s brother Cynric.
Felimid realises that he will have to be careful as he is fleeing from Cedric’s father, King Oisc of Kent,2 but it does not stop him intervening when a number of the men start tormenting a dwarf called Glinthi, who they then try to throw in the hearth. Felimid intervenes, efficiently seeing off the other men and rescuing Glinthi, and bringing himself to the notice of King Cedric. Felimid briefly speaks to the king and then performs for him, flattering him shamelessly with the songs he sings. Then, after his performance is over, Felimid sleeps with Eldrid, one of Vivayn’s ladies in waiting.
Felimid’s smooth progress is subsequently interrupted when one of the reasons he wants to leave the island—Tosti, a shapeshifter/werewolf from King Oisc’s court—turns up at the camp. After a confrontation between the two they appear before the king, but Tosti unexpectedly refuses to fight Felimid (Felimid has a silver inlaid sword, and Tosti is more likely to lose any duel in his human form). Then, later that evening, Vivayn, wearing a glamour to make her look like Eldrid, comes to his bed. Felimid sees through the disguise but sleeps with her anyway.
The story comes to a climax (spoiler) when Tosti ambushes Vivayn/Eldrid when she leaves Felimid’s bed the next morning. He tells Felimid to lay down his silver sword, and the bard complies as he doesn’t want Vivayn killed, her glamour to disappear, and everyone to see that he has slept with the king’s wife. Fortunately, the bard is saved when Glinthi intervenes. Tosti initially fights but then flees, and we see one of his henchmen killed by the dragon’s jaws when he rushes to the hall to summon help, lying about what has actually happened.
Felimid subsequently tells Cedric that Tosti is a shapeshifter and, realising the complex situation he is in (the two women who share their lovers, Glinthi’s earlier treasonous comments), departs the camp to pursue Tosti.
This is a well enough plotted piece of Sword & Sorcery but it could have done with another draft as it is a little rough in places (some of the point of view changes are also a little odd—the first story was told in the first-person and you can see the author is still getting to grips with the third-person transistion3). That said, the protagonist’s occupation and the story’s convincing setting are strengths.
*** (Good). 9,200 words. Story link.

1. This was first published under the pseudonym Dennis More. ISFDB lists this series as two separate ones, Bard and Felimid, but they are the same sequence.

2. The events that cause Felimid’s problems with King Oisc are detailed in the first story of the series.

3. Ted White’s introduction to the piece has this:

This story is a direct sequel to the author’s Fugitives in Winter (October, 1975), but unlike that story this one is told third-person. As More explains it, “To write in the first-person about a sixth-century Celtic bard, even a fantasized one, is something I just couldn’t keep up. And it’s easier to juggle a number of characters this way.”

Lovers on a Bridge by Alexandra Seidel

Posted on by Paul Fraser

Lovers on a Bridge by Alexandra Seidel (Past Tense, 2020) opens with Gretchen looking at a painting (Woman at the Window by Caspar David Friedrich) which is displayed in a place she does not recognise. Then, as she tries to work out where she is, there is the sound of footsteps in the darkness that surrounds her. She flees, and later comes upon another painting (Rembrandt’s Philosopher in Meditation), and sees a man sitting on a bench in front of it. He tells her that she is no longer in the Louvre. Shortly afterwards, he adds:

“I’m The Curator, by the way. It is very nice to meet you.”
“Gretchen,” Gretchen says.
“Oh. That reminds me of the fairy tale, the one with Hansel and Gretel, lost and alone, and a witch, no less alone, but a good quantity more hungry.” The Curator smiles warmly at Gretchen. He indeed sits there as if it were a sunny Sunday afternoon in Central Park, not pitch black night in a strange room with a painting that shouldn’t give off light but does anyway.
“Ah . . . ”
“Heh. In case you worry I might eat you, don’t. After all, you walked into The Gallery because you could, and that makes you a guest.”
Gretchen’s hands roll themselves tight. “Out of curiosity, can guests leave whenever they want to?”
The Curator’s face drops, not in an angry way. He looks almost like a beaten dog, and Gretchen, for some silly reason, finds herself feeling sorry for him. “They can. Whenever they so desire.”

The rest of the story sees the pair wandering around this strange place looking at other works (The Starry Night by Vincent van Gogh; Impression, Sunrise by Claude Monet; The Luncheon on the Grass by Edouard Manet; Witches at their Incantations by Salvator Rosa; The Lovers by Sandro Botticelli; Bacchus and Ariadne by Titian; The Ambassadors by Hans Hohlbein the Younger, etc.), all of which give the impression they may be portals to other places. During the tour Gretchen becomes attracted to the curator, but also starts having flashback images and fears she may be dead.
Finally (spoiler), the man reveals to her (a) that the Gallery (a supernatural entity, I presume) must have a curator who is not an artist, and that person cannot leave until they recruit a replacement, and (b) that she is his. The Curator baulks when it comes time to leave her though, and his exit closes. The story ends with an artist painting the now-lovers and joint curators standing at the apex of a bridge.
This is an okay piece but a slow moving one, and I’m glad it didn’t go for the obvious switched persons ending. That said, its multiple painting and mythology references will probably be of more interest to fine arts graduates than they were to me (I could only visualise one, the van Gogh).
** (Average). 4,900 words.

The Moon Fairy by Sofia Samatar

Posted on by Paul Fraser

The Moon Fairy by Sofia Samatar (Conjunctions #74, 2020) begins with a moon fairy arriving in the life of a young girl called Sylvie. Most of the rest of the story details their relationship (as well as Sylvie’s domestic arrangements):

[Poor] Mittens, whom no one loved more than Sylvie, was given away to the neighbor children soon after the fairy’s arrival. From the window on the landing overlooking the neighbors’ garden, Mittens could be observed in her new circumstances, mewling piteously as the children forced her into doll clothes, tied her up in a wagon, and dragged it over the grass. “Poor creature!” Sylvie was heard to murmur, standing at the window. However, she made no attempt to rescue the cat, which had scratched her darling’s wing, leaving a gash that took days to heal. As she looked down, holding the curtain back with one hand, the Moon Fairy curled up in its customary place on her shoulder, sighing placidly and nuzzling her neck.
It really was a charming creature. It smiled, laughed, turned somersaults in the air, played hide-and-seek among the clothes on the line, danced when Ellen played Chopin—did everything but speak. In the evenings, when its energy tended to rise, it would fly round the room up close to the ceiling, emitting a happy buzzing sound. Sylvie said it was singing, but Uncle Claudius, who often dropped by in the evening to have a drink with Father, opined that the buzzing was caused by the movement of the fairy’s wings, “in the manner of a bumblebee or other insect.” “Nonsense,” said Sylvie, frowning. She disliked hearing the fairy compared to an animal. Since the fateful evening when the young man she’d been walking out with that summer (the son of some family friends, a law student with excellent prospects) had rashly referred to the Moon Fairy as “your new pet,” he had been forbidden the house, and the increasingly desperate telephone messages from him we wrote down were crumpled up unread.

Sylvie’s intense relationship with the fairy eventually starts to unravel (Sylvie becomes possessive—she ties a thread to its ankle—and the fairy later turns on her). Then the fairy returns to the Moon, leaving the girl broken-hearted and inconsolable, a condition that still pertains years afterwards.
It is hard to see what point this is trying to make, unless it is an allegory for love affairs in general (dump your current attachments—the cat and the suitor—then get dumped yourself and pine away). If it is about that then the twee tone and content undermine the message.
** (Average). 3,150 words. Story link.

Fog and Pearls at the King’s Cross Junction by Aliya Whiteley

Posted on by Paul Fraser

Fog and Pearls at the King’s Cross Junction by Aliya Whiteley (London Centric, 2020) begins with some parental backstory about the narrator’s unhappy family life and how she runs away from home after receiving a letter from a Mr Roderick, who lives in 1950’s London and wants to employ her as his assistant. After Roderick picks her up at a grimy, post-Blitz railway station, he takes her to his unique home, the “lighthouse”, where they eat oyster stew, and he tells her about his research:

“Did you know that I used a dozen oysters in the preparation of this dish? Well, of course, you couldn’t know. That’s why I’m telling you. Have you eaten oysters before? They’re fresh from the Thames this morning.”
“I haven’t,” I said. That explained the rubbery texture.
[. . . ]
“Oysters. They have a marvellous defence mechanism. When a tiny piece of grit or a parasite slips into their shell they begin to coat it in a substance called nacre. Nacre slowly takes the painful and makes it bearable. More than that, nacre makes it beautiful. It creates a thing of perfection. Do you understand what I’m trying to tell you, Miss Prisman?”
His tone grated on me, I’ll admit. I replied, letting my smart mouth get the better of me, “You’re telling me that you’ve let me, an irritation, into your shell. But you’ll wear me down and change me over time into the perfect assistant.”
To my surprise, he laughed out loud. “No no no! Not at all! What an imagination you have. I’m telling you that I collect and categorise pearls.”

She is then taken to another part of the lighthouse and shown the pearls Roderick has collected. In addition to the usual white ones there are gold, silver, black, blue, pink, and, finally, blood red varieties. Later, after she has been working for Roberick for some time, she learns how he obtains the pearls during a dense and life-threatening London fog. During this, they climb up the lighthouse and turn on a flashing device that Roderick’s uncle invented, and individuals lost in the fog then turn up at their door. Once inside they are provided with air canisters and facemasks to aid their breathing, but lapse into unconsciousness due to a secret anaesthetic. Roderick then tells her (spoiler) to scrub up and help him with an operation:

Roddy opened up the man’s mouth and lowered in his scalpel. I was determined not to wail and scream, and I’m proud to say I didn’t. I watched the whole thing from beginning to end, and even passed Roddy the needle and thread when he asked for it.
But the sewing up was not the exciting part, of course. The best bit was when he said, behind his little white mask, “I can’t quite believe this,” and used a long pair of tongs to reach far into the throat and produce a small red ball that he dropped into the palms of my hands.
I rolled it between my fingers. The colour didn’t come from the blood in which it was coated. It truly was red, as bright and as brilliant a red as I’d ever seen. Just like the ones in the cabinet down in the basement.

The rest of the story eventually telescopes forward in time to a period where London smog is eliminated by the Clean Air Act, and Londoners stop producing pearls. Then Roderick dies. Finally, she notes that red pearls from China have started coming onto the market. . . .
This is an original and entertainingly offbeat story—a genuinely weird idea, but one that is anchored by its convincing narrative voice (she sounds like someone from the 1950s) and historical setting. The only drawbacks are (a) the pearls would presumably also be found in normal post-mortems, and (b) there is a social justice message shoe-horned in right at the end, where she says that they were robbing the poor, just like the city does (“It takes from the poor, and seals their wealth in basements, never to be seen again”). This introduces a discordant note at the end of the story, even though it recalls the mother’s comments at the beginning. Still, not bad, and a pleasure to read something that is written in a British voice for a change (rather than the American or mid-Atlantic tone adopted by so many other Brits).
*** (Good). 6,200 words.

The Ethnomusicology of the Last Dreadnought by Yoon Ha Lee

Posted on by Paul Fraser

The Ethnomusicology of the Last Dreadnought by Yoon Ha Lee (The Sunday Morning Transport, 5th February 2023) starts with this:

It is not true that space is silent.
The darkness between stars is full of threnodies and threadbare laments, concertos and cantatas, the names of the dead and the wars that they’ve fed. Few people are unmoved by the strenuous harmonies and the strange hymns. Fewer people still understand their significance, the decayed etymologies and deprecated tongues.
It is your solemn task, as an archivist of the last dreadnought, to preserve its unique ethnomusicology for rising generations.

After this portentous start the rest of the story develops the idea of a space dreadnought as a musical instrument and its battles as performances:

In any case, the plan directed the last dreadnought, with its hypertrophied weapons, to open with a power chord against the more discordant forces of the Diamantines’ enemies. The orchestration manuals of the day called for a ratio of a single dreadnought to one hundred battle cruisers or equivalent. The percussion line alone should have demolished the other side, especially with the chimera missiles deployed as a basso continuo.

An unconvincing idea, and one made worse by the style, which seems to be a weird mix of pretentious academese and instruction manual.
* (Mediocre). 1,500 words. Story link.

The Monogamy Hormone by Annalee Newitz

Posted on by Paul Fraser

The Monogamy Hormone by Annalee Newitz (Entanglements, 2020) opens with the narrator, Edwina, smearing bacterial slime on the wall of a preschool lunchroom: this introduces one of the two pieces of SF decoration in this essentially mainstream story (“twenty years ago, nobody would have believed that smearing germs on the walls of schools could save a whole generation from asthma and irritable bowel syndrome”). The other piece of decoration appears when Edwina discusses her love-life problems with two of her friends at lunch1 (Edwina has two lovers), and they suggest that she take a magic pill (sorry, a “Eternalove” hormone pill) to help her work out which one she truly wants.
Edwina then spends the weekend with her girlfriend Augie and decides she is the one. However, after subsequently spending time with Chester, Edwina realises she is equally in love with him.
Edwina calls her friends for more help, and Alyx puts her right:

Edwina could feel tears in her eyes, and her contacts started to drift off her irises with an annoying string of error messages. She blinked them back into place and used one finger to draw circles on the bar with a blob of water. “I want to have kids. Nobody will let you marry two people and have kids with them.”
Alyx looked more serious than she had ever seen them. “You know that’s bullshit, right? I can’t think of a better place to raise kids than with grownups who love each other.” They drummed their fingers on the bar and seemed lost in thought for a moment. “Marriage is like every other brand that has staying power. Think about YouTube. It used to be part of a private company, and it was full of really bad stuff, like Nazis and crazies talking about rounding up gay people. But then YouTube spun off and became part of the public broadcasting network, and now it’s all educational programs and people gardening and stuff. That was a major rebrand, but it worked. Most people don’t even know that it used to be dangerous for kids to go there.”
“And this is related to my situation how?” Edwina drained her glass.
“Marriage is another changing brand. It used to be only for cis heterosexuals, but now gay people can get married—at least, in a lot of places. People don’t think of marriage the same way anymore. Even in North Carolina, where they have those Family First laws, people are protesting. Here in California, you can create an indie brand marriage. And you know what happens to indie brands, right?” Alyx winked. “They get appropriated by giant megabrands. Pretty soon, ProTox will be marketing a placebo for people who want to fall in love with more than one person. I guarantee it.”2

Fortunately, when Edwina later discusses the matter with Augie and Chester (each of who know about the other), they are both super fine with the arrangement because Edwina can do things with the other person that they don’t want to. And they all lived happily ever after.
This is a modern day relationship story pretending to be an SF one, and the fact that it is also inane and naïve (its view of human relationships reads like something written by a bright 14-year-old that has never had one) makes it even less attractive. It is also, ultimately, dramatically flaccid as it turns out there is no problem to solve here other than the one in Edwina’s head. At least it is breezily written.
* (Mediocre). 5,200 words.

1. A fellow Facebook group member remarked that, in this type of story, none of the characters ever seem to have a particularly demanding job and spend most of their time hanging out.

2. Mmm, I’m not sure YouTube is “full” of Nazis, etc.—I only ever see a lot of very useful clips that help people accomplish all sorts of different things. I also doubt there is a huge pent-up demand for polyamorous relationships.

Stepsister by Leah Cypress

Posted on by Paul Fraser

Stepsister by Leah Cypress (F&SF, May-June 2020) opens with King Ciar’s friend, “Lord” Garrin, telling tales of his youth in a tavern. During this we get a chunk of backstory about his royal castle upbringing and, in particular, the story of how Garrin was once whipped for hitting the prince too hard (they were practise-sparring with wooden posts). We also learn that Garrin is a potential claimant for the throne. Then, towards the end of this scene, he is summoned by King Ciar and told to go and retrieve the Queen’s stepsister.
We don’t actually see Garrin set off on his quest but instead see a twisty plot set in motion, during which we learn that (a) the Queen had a cruel step-family who tortured her, and that she ordered them stoned to death after she got married, (b) the King intervened and ordered Garrin to take one of the step-sisters, Jacinda, far away and hide her from the Queen, and (c) that Garrin once danced with Jacinda after meeting her as she fled from the castle on the night of the Fae Ball:

We all grew up knowing that we shared our world with the fae. They lent magic and wonder to our grinding lives, favored us with the occasional sprinkle of miracle or tragedy, and all they asked in return was for us to dance. Once at midsummer and once at the winter solstice: a grand ball, for royalty and commoners alike, where the dancing gets wilder all through the night and our movements shimmer with beauty and abandon. Nights when the ugly appear beautiful and the beautiful transcendent, when the melancholy turn joyful and the happy go insane, when romance turns into a solid reality and princes fall in love with peasant girls.

I knew her name by then: Jacinda. And I had seen and recognized the token tucked into the bodice of her gown, a lock of golden hair bound with silver thread. Ciar gave one like it to every girl he fancied.
But she had left Ciar and danced with me, and though I knew I should not have allowed it, I was filled with a tender joy. It was the music and the magic strumming through my skin, turning my mind inside out and making me forget the rule my safety was built around: You must never take anything from Ciar.
But she was so fierce and so real, and for the first time in my life, I wanted something so badly I didn’t think about the consequences. (A foolish mood, not a brave one. The consequences, like the morning, would come anyhow.) I reached for her hand and pulled her closer, and her dark eyes watched me, then slowly closed as I bent my head to hers.
Our lips barely touched. She made a small, pained sound and stepped back.
“Oh,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

Jacinda subsequently explains that what he is feeling isn’t love but fae magic (she has enchanted her glass slippers with her own “blood and pain, to ensnare a suitor of royal blood”). After she leaves Garrin remains smitten.
All of this, and more that follows, has led many commentators to refer to this as a Cinderella story, but you could change some of the previous details (the step-sisters, the glass slippers, etc.) and you’d pretty much have the same story—one which, if you are looking for literary comparisons, probably has more in common with Game of Thrones given its tale of bastards, royal succession, and palace intrigue.
The rest of the tale (spoiler) further complicates the story, and sees Garrin get a note from Jacinda asking him to stay away, and the Queen’s maid trying to stab him to prevent him going on his journey. Then the Queen tries to get Garrin to betray the King while the latter is in earshot. Garrin manages to avoid this trap, and listens outside the door as the King and Queen argue about her inability to conceive and how they need to go to Jacinda to undo a fae curse.
The last scene sees the King and Queen, Garrin, and Amelie the Queen’s maid go to Jacinda’s cottage (and before they leave Amelie reveals to Garrin that she is fae and tells him how Queen Ella got her own enchanted slippers).
At the cottage they find that Jacinda has a baby boy, which is obviously King Ciar’s child—but Garrin saves the boy’s life by claiming it as his own.
This is a readable piece with well-drawn characters (Garrin’s endless vigilance is particularly well done) and a satisfyingly twisty plot. The fae magic and the Cinderella references are also well integrated into the story and don’t distract from the main thrust of the tale.
***+ (Good to Very Good). 14,000 words.