gengelcox's reviews
2006 reviews

Light of Other Days by Bob Shaw

adventurous challenging emotional sad medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated

5.0

This is a lovely story that both introduces a great SF concept and then goes directly to the heart of showing what it could mean to people. While not as surprising today, the emotional arc of the story for the protagonist begins in a very negative space: a couple is unhappy in general and with each other because of an unwanted pregnancy. But that simply sets up the end, however, where their unhappiness is contrasted to the unhappiness of the slow glass seller. The story is simple, but that’s also part of its power. It doesn’t need to be adorned. Anything more would take away from its gut punch. 

That Only a Mother by Judith Merril

adventurous challenging dark medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character

4.5

While our worries about nuclear war and its aftermath have subsided somewhat (although the current state of Russia makes one wonder), for a time in the 40s and 50s, it was household fodder. As one of the few women writing SF at the time, Merril tackled subjects men avoided: pregnancy, childbirth, and rearing. The mother in the story, unfortunately, does show an irrational tendency common to how male writers portrayed women, although in this case, there’s plenty cause. The ending is devastating and quite effective. 

Contagion by Katherine MacLean

5.0

I really enjoyed this story although it took a bit for it to get going and I won’t comment on the worldbuilding which reflects the ideas of the time. Instead, I’ll compare it to Philip K. Dick’s “Colony” in how it develops a situation into something creepy and uncanny, without all the death in MacLean’s case. I’ve read a number of stories by MacLean in the last couple of years and think it’s unfortunate how she’s been forgotten by most in the field, as her stories are easily some of the more thought-provoking ones from that time period. 

The Haunted Mind by Nathaniel Hawthorne

slow-paced

1.5

I’ve read a lot of flash fiction recently and one of the tendencies of writers in that form is to resort to the use of the second person to try and involve the reader. Interesting to note that this is no newfangled idea, as Hawthorne did the same, addressing the reader here as one who awakes from a dream at two in the morning and then ponders on both dreams and nightmares. And, like most stories using second person, I didn’t care for it. 

Flash Fiction Forward: 80 Very Short Stories by Robert Shapard, James Thomas

challenging fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix

3.0

I’ve read a lot of flash fiction in the last three years, partly due to writing a lot of flash and thus needing to make a study of what makes a story under 750 words work. I found this anthology of 80 flash pieces in a Little Free Library and thought it would be interesting to see what short fiction outside of the SFF genre looked like. 

And, to be frank, I was somewhat disappointed, although not surprised. Like their longer counterparts, these stories tended to rely too much on vibe or feeling rather than satisfy any requirement of characterization and plot. The editors talk about this somewhat in the introduction, wherein they compare a flash piece more to poetry than a short story because every word matters and the reader can’t skip any. I agree, but it’s the words selected by the author (and agreed upon by the editor) where we disagree. Every word needs to move the story forward; too many words in these stories simply pile on the vibe. 

Out of the 80 stories, I liked about 15-20, including the first out of the gate, Don Shea’s “Jumper Down,” the title referencing the term paramedics use to describe if the building/bridge jumper is “Up” (and hasn’t jumped yet) or “Down” (and likely out). Peter Mehlman’s “Mandela Was Late” is a strange conceptual piece pondering what if Nelson Mandela had had a parole officer. Typically, I liked the more outre and surrealistic stories, like Ray Gonzalez’ “The Jalapeno Contest” or stories that played with form, like “Currents” by Hannah Bottomy which tells the story backwards. But all the stories are short (duh), so the nice thing is you don’t have to commit too much to any one before it’s done and you move on to the next, which meets today’s readers’ low attention spans. 

Call Me Joe by Poul Anderson

challenging emotional tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

If you get past the ludicrous idea of life on Jupiter and think of this as set in a different planet and…no, it’s still ludicrous. Okay, think of it as a fantasy. It’s a product of its time, what with the cigarette and cigar smoking on a space station, but the underlying story of the mind of a person who has a debilitating injury who can project their mind into that of a healthy body is both obvious and affecting. The psychologist Cornelius reads the tea leaves wrong initially, partly to throw the reader off the obvious, but the ending helps make this work and resolve the story well. 

When I Was Miss Dow by Sonya Dorman

challenging medium-paced

2.0

A new wave story in which aliens take on the forms of humans. The protagonist loses her—him—itself in the process, becoming connected with the scientist it works with. There’s lots of metaphor and analogy going on here, like any good New Wave story, but I’m old school and while I appreciate the style and the idea, the execution didn’t excite me much. 

Slow Tuesday Night by R.A. Lafferty

adventurous funny lighthearted fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

I usually don’t understand Lafferty stories. But not this one. It’s absurb, but absurb with a point. If the pace of progress increases, then, Lafferty says, eventually it will be so fast that someone could make and lose a fortune multiple times a night. While this is not a realistic story by any account, it’s amusing for what Lafferty points out as the preoccupations of humans freed from the constraints of time. 

Of Mist, and Grass, and Sand by Vonda N. McAntyre, Vonda N. McAntyre

challenging hopeful sad medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? N/A

5.0

We talk a lot in SF about worldbuilding, the creation of a unique setting for a book that is different from the world we live in. Of course, there’s always some connection to our world, for it would be impossible to understand a world that was completely new, but good worldbuilding is about changing enough for us to find a new way to examine our own thoughts and beliefs. This story by McIntyre does that splendidly and does it by showing you the world, never telling you. When writing teachers advise students to “show, don’t tell,” they should use this story as an example. Snake, the protagonist, is a healer, but of a different group than the family and sick child, and that means they struggle to understand even though they’ve asked for her help. Highly recommended. 

Gentlemen Prefer Blondes by Anita Loos

funny lighthearted fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

 

The book came first, and then the play featuring Carol Channing as Lorelei, and then the movie starring Marilyn Monroe, and those things created the earworm “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend.” But the book established all that, and while it may not have the same qualities as a song, it has plenty of charm. Written as if entries into a diary, it’s all told in Lorelei’s breathless prose, which often runs on for longer than it should, complete with misspellings and repetitions that makes it seems she’s talking directly to you. You quickly discover that Lorelei isn’t as naîve as she portrays herself, but it’s her friend Dorothy who steals the show with her one liners rendered faithfully by her friend. 

 

This is comedy in the style of P.G. Wodehouse or Thorne Smith, although favoring the latter in its playful sexual implications. (Wodehouse’s characters aren’t sexless, but sex is only a way to differentiate the characters rather than imply any kind of bedroom sport.) Lorelei and Dorothy, sometimes in their “negligays,” are much more up front with their gentlemen, although Lorelei only describes talking late into the night rather than anything more amorous. But they are somehow able to wheedle dinners, shows, nightclubs, and gifts of all kinds from their admirers. From New York to London to Paris to Vienna and back, the two girls live a life of Riley on their ability to be “charmant,” as the French say. Along the way, many “instants” happen to keep you smiling. 

 

There’s something revealed in the book about Lorelei’s past that presages the story of the musical Chicago, in about the same manner when she describes her experience in the courtroom. And the ending is kind of a surprise but flows naturally (I won’t spoil it) from what went before. I’d hesitate to call this great literature, but it was more than a pleasant diversion and really shows Loos’ ability to construct comic scenes.