Review of “Glass Bottle Dancer” by Celeste Rita Baker

This short fiction work is a finalist for the 2021 World Fantasy Award, published in Lightspeed in April of 2020. Celeste Baker is a Virgin Islander currently living in New York City and seems well established as a short story writer. She is the author of Back, Belly and Side, a collection of short stories, some written in Standard English and some in Caribbean Dialect. This review contains spoilers.

Mable DelaCourt works at the Department of Consumer Affairs. She’s an solid, married woman with a husband and children, and she yearns for something different. She has visions of herself dancing across colored glass bottles. The vision prompts her to collect beer and soda bottles, which she hides under a casha bush in the yard. Late at night, she lays the bottles out in the grass and practices dancing across them. Meanwhile, a population of roaches takes up residence in the bottles and enjoys her nightly adventures. Eventually Mable’s husband Franklin discovers what she’s doing and is inspired enough by her dance to get her a gig at the local Calypso tent night. They make up a costume, and as Mable and family head off to the performance, the roaches follow and set up to watch. From Mable’s point of view, the performance goes poorly. The first bottle she steps on breaks against the hard stage surface and cuts her foot, and the music goes wrong, but she manages to finish to wild applause. Afterward she becomes Da Roach Lady, and gives up her job to lure roaches out of people’s homes with her dance.

This is a different story. First, it’s written in dialect, and next, it represents a diverse worldview. There’s no mention of where Mable lives, but the story mentions Harbor Market, which may refer to a venue on Tortola Island. This is also body-positive, as Mable admits she is a heavy woman, but carries on with her vision to dance regardless. There’s no explicit sex, but it’s clear that both humans and roaches are very interested in this subject. The touching, beating-heart theme under all of it is, of course, the midlife crisis, and how an aging, working housewife and mother finds a way to revitalize her life.

On the less positive side, the bottle dance sounds odd and dangerous, and I can’t connect this with the pied-piper effect on the roaches. Is this absurdist? I went on a search for bottle dancers, but it seems they normally balance the bottles on their heads instead of dancing across unsecured glass bottles on a stage. Also, I would have liked to hear something about exhilaration in Mable’s stage performance instead of it being all about her of fear of failure.

Three and a half stars.

Review of Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

This dark fantasy novel is a finalist for the 2020 Nebula Awards. It was published by Del Rey/Jo Fletcher Books in June 2020 and runs 321 pages. Silvia Moreno-Garcia is well established as a novelist. She has several award nominations, and edited the World Fantasy Award-winning She Walks in Shadows. This review contains spoilers.

Glamorous Mexico City socialite Noemi Taboada gets a disturbing letter from her cousin Catalina, who’s recently married and asking for help. With her father’s urging, Noemi goes for a visit and finds Catalina living in a crumbling, moldy country house that looks imported from England. Her husband Virgil’s extended family is unwelcoming, and Noemi has to force her way into to see Catalina, who seems listless and whispers about ghosts and poisonings. As Noemi extends her stay, she develops a friendship with the old patriarch’s youngest son Francis and a local doctor. She begins to have disturbing erotic dreams about her cousin’s husband and about Ruth, one of the family’s women who went crazy and killed herself. Infected by the gloom of the house, can Noemi get Catalina safely away?

There’s a lot going on here. This verges on horror, as Noemi fails to realize the danger of staying in the house until it’s almost too late. Moreno-Garcia has transported an English gothic mansion into the heart of Mexico and infected it with a dangerous symbiotic mold that takes over the inhabitants, extending their lifetimes. There’s mention of eugenics, and this family turns out to be highly inbred. The old patriarch has a breeding program to produce sons suitable for his consciousness to transmigrate into when his body dies, and he has designs on Catalina and then Noemi as new blood for his breeding program. The house is decorated with recurring symbols of Ouroboros, the snake eating its tail, a symbol of infinite death and rebirth. All the characters here are strong, if not especially likable, and the horror develops gradually as Noemi goes from thinking her cousin needs to see a psychiatrist to becoming infected herself, unable to tell dreams from reality.

On the less positive side, the amount of mold in the house is a warning it’s unhealthy. It seems like Noemi or her doctor friend would have realized this and that she might have found a place to stay in the local village early on. Themes and subthemes are unclear. The issue of eugenics is introduced fairly early in the story, and there’s indication the old man thinks most of the local Mexicans are inferior. However, rather than being into genetic purity, he turns out to be breeding a bloodline that’s suitable for the mold to inhabit. The question of import from England suggests colonialism, but it turns out to be more of a literary device to identify the novel’s genre. There are also mixed messages in the symbols. The family is of English ancestry, but Ouroboros is an Egyptian symbol adopted by alchemists, which I don’t see here at all. And last, the relationship between Noemi and Francis is left hanging. All the erotic dreams have been about Virgil, but Francis is worth saving? Somebody needs to make a commitment here.

Three and a half stars.   

Review of “Where You Linger,” by Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam

This sort of science fiction novelette is a finalist for the 2020 Nebula Award, published in Uncanny Magazine 1-2/20. Stufflebeam is an established writer, has previously been a finalist for the Nebula Award and won the Grand Prize in the SyFy Channel’s Battle the Beast contest. She has three cats. This review contains spoilers.

Narrator is going in for a very expensive procedure and is filling out the doctors forms, which require a detailed listing of all sexual encounters, mistakes or not. Narrator is consulting their journals in order to amass all the information. They review various bisexual encounters by age beginning in high school, and the resulting relationships, or not. Once these are reviewed, they go in for the procedure, talking to the doctor beforehand. The machine looks like a MRI system, and it whirs and takes them back through the memories. Somewhere along the way, they find they are escorting their younger self, guiding them around pitfalls of abusive relationships and aiming to come to rest in the most stable and monogamous relationship in their life. Will it be enough?

This includes a lot of sex, as Narrator seems to have been fairly promiscuous as a young adult. There’s not much in the way of world-building or imagery, but the narrative has a smooth flow, and there are enough details of the characters to round them out somewhat as people.

On the less positive side, it’s hard to identify any kind of theme or lesson in this. Actually, the whole thing is pretty vague. For a procedure that takes up most of Narrator’s bank account, this one is really nebulous both in operation and results. The treatment looks like only a tour through the past that may repress some memories and emphasize others. The story reveals Narrator as shallow and faithless, jumping from encounter to relationship to encounter and basically shooting theirself in the foot every time, without offering any real solutions or indication of what they need to do instead. They manage to establish a good, solid, long-term relationship, but eventually they mess it up the same way as always, cheating again on their partner. Because of the vacuum of meaning here, I’m almost forced to think this is just about the sex.

Three stars.

The Armed Services as Equal Opportunity

Since I’m discussing the topic of women’s roles in the armed services, I’ll also have a look at the other side of this question. Mary Robinette Kowal’s The Calculating Stars makes the point that women who were restricted to non-combat roles in WWII suffered afterwards because they were kept from developing the skills and resumes that would allow them to enter plumb civilian roles after the war. This particular novel addresses pilot and astronaut positions, but military service members also get benefits beyond the training and employment experience they receive in the service. Retirees get benefits like health and disability pension benefits through the VA and education benefits through the GI Bill. Plus, people who achieve rank in the service are often chosen for government and corporate positions that require leadership and organizational skills. Combat experience is often required for advancement in rank.

This employment function of the armed services sets up the dissonance in goals that Tucker Carlson has recently pointed out. On the one hand, the primary goal of the services is expected to be defense of the homeland. This means constant evaluation of worldwide challenges and adjustments in readiness to meet these threats. Warfare has changed a lot since WWII, moved to guerrilla tactics, terrorism, indoctrination, cyber and economic warfare and long-distance attacks. These changes require adjustments, and recent developments suggest the US is failing to meet the challenges on a lot of fronts.

On the other hand, the armed services are highly attractive for young people who have few other options to succeed. Once accepted, they receive training, employment and benefits. The armed services had 1.3 million active duty personnel in 2017 and employed 142.5 million US civilians. Approximately another million personnel were reservists and National Guard not on active duty. This makes the military the biggest jobs program to reduce unemployment in the US currently in operation. It’s a great opportunity for young people, but unfortunately service, and especially service in combat, also comes with risks.  

In recent years, armed services management has come under a lot of pressure to provide equal opportunity for women and LGBTIQ applicants. This includes what particular groups are allowed to enter the service, what medical benefits will be provided, what physical standards the applicants have to meet, and similar changes to what was once a demanding all-male service. The latest is now discussion of flight suits and body armor so pregnant warriors can engage in combat during their pregnancies. Meanwhile, studies show that all-male units continue to have the best performance. The question is whether the equal opportunity changes make sense in the current social climate, given current threats to the US homeland.

Tucker Carlson, ever controversial, has pointed out the question of focus. Should the US armed services now be considered just another equal opportunity employer? Are young, pregnant US women in big enough supply that they can be risked in combat? Or is the current focus on the armed services as an employer reducing the US capability in dealing with worldwide threats?

Clearly the current administration is moving forward with equal opportunity changes, and the Tucker Carlson tweetstorm shut down pretty abruptly, leaving the issue unsettled. Should this be something that requires a broader conversation? Or is everybody really fine with it?

Pregnant Service Members in Combat Now?

Again, I am totally amazed at how SFF writers seem to have their fingers on emerging hot button trends within society. Last summer I reviewed the high fantasy short story “Do Not Look Back, My Lion” by Alix E. Harrow, which was a finalist for the 2020 Hugo Award. The story features the warrior-woman Talaan who rides off to a war of conquest while pregnant with her fifth child. I pronounced her “pretty tough,” haha, but that’s just a fantasy warrior woman.

So last week the subject of pregnant service members fighting in combat missions hit the Twitterverse. This was apparently provoked by a comment from President Biden during a promotion ceremony for female generals that the military was now working on designing maternity flight suits and body armor so service members could work combat missions while pregnant. Then Tucker Carlson of Fox News checked in with an opinion that this wasn’t the best idea, and that the military seemed to be losing its focus on mission integrity in favor of identity politics. Cue firestorm. Amazingly, this attracted a number of apparently active duty military accounts that seemed to be posting political comments and even slurs in defiance of regulations. I haven’t seen all the fallout from that at the time of writing, but presumably there will be something. Or maybe not. Carlson is right that the military seems to have changed its focus just lately.

So this brings me back for a look at Talaan and whether or not it was a good idea for her to saddle up her war horse and ride off on an extended military campaign while carrying her fifth child. Talaan is described in the story as a solid, heavy woman, and presumably she has no record of problem pregnancies that result in miscarriage after heavy lifting or strenuous physical activities. Additionally, I expect she does not suffer from conditions like hyperemesis gravidarum, gestational diabetes, high blood pressure or preeclampsia, all of which can result in serious health crises for either or both mother and child. As a big woman, presumably she doesn’t gain much more in the way of weight as the pregnancy progresses, but she’s still going to have the skeletal shifts that change gait and leave women waddling like ducks in their ninth month. Also, since Talaan is an older woman with four prior pregnancies, I’m wondering about changes in her muscle tone that will make it more likely the baby will sit on organs like her bladder, for example, or nerves that might make her legs go numb and useless. Next, after four kids, labor and delivery might happen in less than an hour—best not do that on the battlefield. And last, by going into battle in this condition, Talaan is risking not just her own life, but that of her child, as well.

So, are pregnant warriors really just a fantasy, or should we be moving along to implement this plan in real life? There is a historical precedent. Soviet women served in combat roles during WWII, and some did fly missions until well into their pregnancy. This was based on ideals about equality, on one hand, and on a shortage of men, on the other. The USSR lost about 11 million service members to casualties during the war, which almost forced them to put women into combat roles. The US, on the other hand, attempted to provide protections for women (which have recently been denounced as discriminatory by works like the Lady Astronaut series by Mary Robinette Kowal). The fact that these Soviet women served mainly as pilots is a clue to how pregnant service members might be safely employed during combat. Warfare has changed since the high fantasy days. It’s no longer about swords and shields on a bloody battlefield. War is more about logistics now, naval ships and bombers and even virtual warfare with drones and robots, so the operators are at a distance from the mayhem and fairly well protected. Given this distance, people without problems in their pregnancy could well serve on active duty on some posts until well into their pregnancies. However, where does the question of choice feature into this? Will everyone now be forced to serve? And isn’t that ninth month always going to be a problem?

Are Women Being Erased from SFF?

Since the change in administration in the US this year, I’m noticing what looks to be strong moves toward erasure of women as a separate sex and/or gender. For example, in the first 50 days of the Biden administration, the president signed an executive order removing any distinction between women and trans-women in sports, opening the doors for anyone who identifies as a woman, regardless of phenotype or testosterone level. The Equal Rights Amendment is back for ratification. And the Biden administration broadened International Women’s Day in the US this month to include LGBTQ and disabled persons. Move over gals. Presumably, these people have their finger on the larger trends.

In publishing there’s been a fairly obvious discrimination against white men in recent years, justified as payback for all those decades when white men dominated the science fiction market. For a little while, it was a competitive advantage to be a woman science fiction writer, as progressive publishers opened the gates and searched for female talent to fill their bookshelves. But now I’ve looked back at my most recent review of the Hugo Awards, and I suspect the market is closing down for women. In 2020, for example, about 50% of the Hugo finalists were LGBTQ and about 30% were men, which leaves only 20% of the spaces for writers who identify as cisgender straight women of any ethnicity. This strongly suggests that just being a woman, or even a woman of color, isn’t enough to get you published any more as a writer and that you need to look for intersectionalities to make yourself trendier and more attractive for a publisher.

You can see this in development of C.L. Polk’s bio, for example. When Witchmark was published in 2018, Polk was described as a black woman, and used “she” for a pronoun. Now, I notice Polk is advertised as black, queer, disabled and nonbinary, having shifted to “they” as a pronoun. There is apparently even more pressure for white than minority women, as you can see a strong trend to fabricate minority ethnicities (a.k.a blackfishing) in order to gain advantage. For example, note Elizabeth Warren, Hilaria Baldwin, Rachel Dolezal, Jessica Krug and CV Vitolo-Haddad, all of whom have been recently exposed as fakes. In a related squabble, cancel culture went after J.K. Rowling last year for insisting that cis women should be recognized as a separate gender category. In response, I see there’s now a Harry Potter game where you can choose your preferred gender and ethnicity.

So, where is this headed? Is the only successful writer of the future “other” ethnicity, LGBTIQ, disabled and nonbinary? Or is there a way to manufacture more intersectionalities?

Review of “Scars” by Anatoly Belilovsky

This is another flash fiction piece from Daily Science Fiction, which posts short fiction online and also sends it out by email for busy people through a subscription service. This story is on the long side at 1065 words. Belilovsky was born in what is now Ukraine, and says he learned English from Star Trek reruns. This review contains spoilers.

Frank was blinded in an nuclear accident, and but that means he’s developed sharper senses in other ways. He runs the Heart of Darkness, a venue for blind trysts on the Ring. Because it’s a small community, government officials and professionals can’t have affairs that would affect their positions or their staffs, so the make use of his service to hook up. Because of his sharper senses, Frank identifies the doctor who saved him when she comes in and her date, a member of the Ethic Board who has been asking too many questions just lately. He’s brought a hidden camera today. How can Frank deal with this?

This is traditional SF, a heart-warming tale about scars and need. The characters and relationships are very well developed and the setting and background very vivid. The hookup service also feels like an original concept, a projection from the kind of scandals going around in the last few years where even female officials lose their jobs for having affairs with staff. Frank and the doctor have a close relationship, but he doesn’t take advantage. This also has something of a sexual charge.

There’s not much to say on the less positive side, except that maybe this seems a little to pat. Doesn’t anyone ever recognize their date? I’d love to read a longer story or a novel in this setting where Frank has to deal with more in the way of intrigue and temptation.

Five stars.

Review of Smoke Bitten by Patricia Briggs

This novel is also titled Mercy Thompson #12. It was published by Ace on 17 March 2020 and runs 351 pages. This review contains spoilers.

Mercy is having a bad day. Tilly, the spirit of Underhill, has installed a gate in her back yard that has to stay for a year and a day. Her werewolf alpha husband Adam is having a fight with his daughter Jesse and his ex-wife about where Jesse will go to college. The strange and dangerous vampire Wulfe seems to be watching the house. And things just aren’t going well in Mercy’s marriage, in general. She leaves the house for a walk and finds the neighbors Anna and Dennis are dead of an apparent murder-suicide. Mercy talks to the Anna’s ghost and suspects a rabbit she saw leaving the house might have had something to do with it. Something malevolent has escaped from Underhill, a smoke weaver that bites and then controls its victims. Can Mercy defeat it? And can she fix what’s wrong with her marriage?

This is a quick, easy read. It features Briggs’ trademark style and the familiar cast of characters that have been developed through the last 12 books of the series. Adam’s werewolf pack tends to pick up motley, diverse strays, and with a few bumps along the way, they all look after one other, plus a few other odd friends. Mercy solves the mystery of the escapee and sends him back where he came from, and then deals with the leftovers of a witch’s curse that’s affecting Adam. She also makes a lot of chocolate chip cookies.

On the less positive side, readers really need to enjoy listening to Mercy’s inner voice because there’s very little to this plot, maybe three significant events in 351 pages. We meet all the members of the pack again and touch bases with her favorite friends. We review the last novel in the series to make sure everyone is up to speed on what’s recently happened. Mercy reviews her origins and consults with other recurring characters, giving us background on them. Presumably this also sets up the next novel, because the vampire Wulfe still hasn’t gone away.

Two and a half stars for all the padding.

Review of “I Sexually Identify as an Attack Helicopter” by Isabel Fall

This story was published by Clarkesworld Magazine in January 2020 and subsequently removed after the author felt unsafe due to responses from the SFF community. It was followed by an apology from publisher Neil Clarke to readers who felt it was insensitive. The story is fairly long, coming in at approximately 7750 words. For anyone who is interested, it’s still available to read in the Internet archive here.

Note 6/21: now deleted from the archive, too.

Barb is a somatic female who has had her gender identity modified by the US military so that she identifies as a Boeing AH-70 Apache Mystic attack helicopter. Her gunner Axis, apparently a somatic male, has also been modified to identify as armament, and the two of them are harnessed and catheterized into a sort of marriage as pilot and gunner. They are now airborne to carry out a mission against a Pear Mesa Budget Committee target. They take out a high school of unknown strategic value in the Mojave Desert, but Axis hesitates over the shot. Barb has already detected signs of stress, and wonders if Axis is questioning their gender identity as a gunner. Returning from the mission, they are detected by a fighter jet. Barb initiates evasive maneuvers, but fails to shake the jet. How can they survive long enough to get back to base?

This is one of the sort of creative, artistic, postmodern works that seems to be popular lately, where the author writes about seeming unrelated issues and the work eventually comes together to produce themes and meaning. Gender identity as an attack helicopter is actually an Internet meme that was designed to cast aspersions, but Fall has developed it into a story. In this case, there are two well-defined, solid characters and a gripping and effective plot, where the Apache takes out the target and then has to deal with pursuit from the fighter jet in order to get safely home. I have no experience at all to help me judge, but the flight jargon here sounds authentic. Besides this, we get a dash of world-building, background on how the US government ended up making war on a credit union’s AI, and a lot of discussion about gender identity issues—what it was like to be a woman; what it’s like to be a helicopter, non-binary, gay, trans; Barb’s relationship with Axis, and various other issues. One passage equates sex with violence.

This is a fairly complex project. As an action-adventure fan, I was pleased with the adventure story, and also the symbolic romance between pilot and gunner and the equation of sex and war. I was also entertained by the absurdist world where the US ends up making war on a credit union. The gender identity element was harder to integrate, though, and I didn’t think it worked that well. Identity is more than just gender, so the basic premise of mixing gender identity with military equipment didn’t quite work for me. Although it wasn’t showcased, this is an example of transhumanism enforced by the military.

There were some questions about who Isabel Fall might be. I’m sort of with the faction that believes this is an established writer using a pseudonym. Although it was only briefly published, I expect this one might be in the running for an award next year. Recommended for the creativity and ideas.

Four stars and a half stars.

Sales!

Happy Thanksgiving to all in the US!

I have to give myself a little pat on the back here, as I’ve been really productive this fall. I did some painting and made a decent profit at a local art show. I also got my butt in gear and submitted some stories, so now I’ve got sales that will be appearing in upcoming books, magazines, etc. Here’s the list, so please check them out!

“Zombie Love,” a short poem to appear in Liquid Imagination at the end of November 2019.

“The Investor,” a dark fantasy short story to appear in the anthology Afromyth2 from Afrocentric Books in 2020.

“The Mending Tool,” a steampunk erotica short story to appear in the anthology Sensory Perceptions from Jay Henge in 2020.

“Wine and Magnolias,” a lesbian romance short story to appear in Mischief Media: A Story Most Queer Podcast