Quick Sips - Lackington's #5

I've not had much experience with Lackington's, which prides itself on being home to nontraditional styles. That I can confirm. The style of these stories is more surreal, more metaphoric. The stories are not straightforward. They are not simple. Some of them are rather difficult to make sense of, but I think most of them succeed at using the strange style to good effect. So here we go!

Art by Derek Newman-Stille

Stories:

"Unravelling" by Julia August (2883 words)

A woman deals with a sort of personal witch in this story, told through many parts and across many places real and imagined. The witch acts as the manifestation of her own inner voice. At times it is helpful, at others not at all. It provokes, it belittles a bit, it's not very good at soothing, and it's generally rather frustrating for the woman to deal with. The prose of the story is vivid and relatable, taking the woman through the various instances when her witch appears to offer advice, or perhaps just to poke and annoy. And it has some narrative structure, recurring ideas that pop up throughout the story that gives tantalizing hints to what is going on. Whether the witch is the woman's doubt or fear or maybe something more vague, a source of both wisdom and bitterness. Still, it's a nice story and a nice way to kick off the issue.

"After the Rain" by Polenth Blake (1592 words)

This story is a bit unstuck in time, following Claire and Jenny as they deal with beasts that have come after a strange rain. The story is something of a puzzle, because time is a shifting thing. Jenny, who I think is the narrator throughout, doesn't move through time in a normal manner. Even whether or not she is Jenny is (to me) somewhat in question. She travels with Claire, her mother who also seems more like her child, through a world populated by beasts. What the beasts are is left mostly unexplained, except that they have something to do with the rain. Claire and Jenny take refuge in a park, but it's not a perfect place to hide. There are other figures, too, that arrive and disappear, live and die. The story is jarring, and there's a lot to tease out of it. It's possible, after all, that Jenny and Claire are the same person, or even the same person at two points of time. Whatever the case, the story is strange and dark, filled with magical twists and surreal landscapes. It's well crafted and a bit disturbing, so hurrah!

"The Lion and the Unicorn" by A.C. Wise (1563 words)

A story about a unicorn boy being exploited in a sort of monster...brothel? A place where magical creatures are used for the pleasure of their abusers. A place where the unicorn boy dreams of being free of, free and running away from the cruel hands that tear at him. Fortunately (or not, because there's considerable danger), he becomes sick and an old lion comes to care for him. And she tells him that she will help him escape, that she will break his chain, but that he has to go to her children (who might kill him) and give them her token and tell about the place they have been imprisoned to destroy it. Flowing and lyrical, the story manages a coherent narrative while being a bit fragmented, a bit unreal and magical. It hits well with the hopes and yearnings of the characters, and leaves the gravity of what happens at the end for the reader to follow to its logical and satisfying end.

"Tiger Baby" by JY Yang (2846 words)

A woman dreams of being a tiger in this story, dreams of power and wildness that she lacks in her real life where she is nondescript, where she blends in and plods along because she has to. She doesn't feel like she belongs, knows that she is meant for something different than the same old, same old. It's a common enough sentiment, but this story manages to breath new life into the idea, into how the woman seems lost in the mundane details of the world. She dreams of Blake, and as I myself fell in love with that poem at a fairly young age, I find myself nodding along. The story follows the woman as she walks through life, as she yearns for more, and it brings her to a point of crisis after she is fired from her job, after she has to consider moving out from her parent's home. All these things push her to going out and transforming. She thinks it will be into a tiger. That it doesn't work out that way is great, a way to show that for all her dreams of power, it's not that power that she was destined for. Too often in these stories the person with their dreams of being something more is shown to be correct. They transform into that thing and can punish the world that did not recognize their specialness. This story refrains from treading that tired ground and instead shows that the transformation might not be what the women expected, but it is true to what she wanted, to what she felt. She transforms and is content with it, at ease, finally at peace with herself. It's a great story (especially if you love cats and Blake).

"What the Highway Prefers" by Cassandra Khaw (1525 words)

And old woman makes a yearly pilgrimage to a stretch of dangerous highway in this story. Strange and weighty, the trip seems to be about making deals, the old woman, Fatimah, trying to starve the highway, trying to prevent it from killing more. It reminds me of a different story, "The Three Resurrections of Jessica Churchill" by Kelly Robson (out this month in Clarkesworld #101). Perhaps because they are both about a highway that seems to have a hunger. Obviously one is about (kind of) aliens and this one is about ghosts, or spirits, but they both seem to be circling about the same image, the same idea, this highway that is hungry, that wants young women. I wouldn't be surprised if they were both referencing the same road, but even if they aren't I can still see this story dealing with the violence and fear and lingering ghosts of those taken on such a road, and what a woman might do to not exactly set things right, but try to minimize the harm. It's a vibrant and interesting story, and I could really feel the exhaustion and stubborn power in Fatimah. She's a great character, and the story works as a creepy little tale of one woman trying to kill a hungry road.

"The Ogre's Brown-Eyed Daughter" by Barry King (2786 words)

This story was probably the most opaque to me. There's a lot going on as a young woman deals with oppressive abuse from her ogre father and a lack of compassion from her faerie mother. Not belonging anywhere, she tries to flee, tries to get away, but there is no place for her. The world is made up of lies, is made up of lies you tell yourself and the ones that others tell about you, and the girl grows to try and define herself, to tell her own lies. She grows and gets away and doesn't have much of a relationship with her parents and tries to have a family of her own but feels pulled down by the girl that she used to be, and doesn't want that person to become her daughter so she extracts that part of her and hides it away. I'm not sure, but I interpret it as a sort of loss, as her denying that part of herself and letting it open that she's trying to protect her daughter but in reality might be missing the fact that by denying a part of herself she's setting a precedent that isn't exactly the greatest. There's a lot of layers of lies here and I must be honest and say that one reading was not enough for me to entangle everything. Still, it was an interesting read, and I'll probably have to come back to it to really start pulling it apart.

Quick Sips - Unlikely Story #11 Journal of Unlikely Cryptography

This is my first time reviewing Unlikely Story, which is a neat magazine that presents some themed issues. Each is presented as a different Journal, and this, their eleventh issue, is the Journal of Unlikely Cryptology. A great idea to frame a story around, and there are certainly a lot of different approaches in the issue. Without further delay, though, let's go!

Art by Andrew Ostrovsky

Stories:

"Jump Cut" by Lauren C. Teffeau (6768 words)

A fast-paced story about racing using audio-visual montages to basically tweak brain chemistry and gives racers a competitive edge. Only things don't quite go smoothly. Ari and Jack are the pioneers of the technique, and for a while it kept them on top, made them special. But as others are using the same technology, they start getting more and more desperate to retake the glory of the winner's circle. It's something that leads, tragically, to Ari's death, an event that traumatizes Jack and takes him down a dark hole of depression, using the montages as a drug to keep his feelings at bay. Meanwhile there's some shady business going on with Jack's sponsor, and it looks like he's getting pushed to go the way of Ari. The story is a bit jarring, frenetic and moving and fast. The racing and the imagery are great and keep everything moving forward, forward. The ending is a sort of rush, that last moment of weightlessness shared by character and reader. Of course, I might have wanted a little more clarity as to that ending, but I think that the story worked regardless, a sort of live by the sword, die by the sword kind of tale, one where Jack manages to end things on his own terms.

"Dropped Stitches" by Levi Sable (2119 words)

Well that's a rather disturbing little story about trauma and parenting and regret and moving on. Two mothers, part mechanical, meet every week for coffee and sewing. As part-mechanicals, they can order children, but it's something that they've both done before. And for Jennifer and Claudia it's fraught because Jennifer's daughter killed Claudia's son and then killed herself. In some ways it's about neither parent being able to cope with that. Claudia is lost in the innocence of her son, in the way he was misled, in the way she hates the sloppy way that Jennifer is doing things. And Jennifer wants to move on, want to forget, and so is ordering another child. But she's not quite doing it in a way that will work. Her stitching, which is essential for the new child, is flawed, might not actually be able to produce life. And Claudia and Jennifer can no longer handle each other. That one act of their children have linked them and divided them. It's an emotional story, one that hits well, but I kept on wanting a bit more about what happened with their children. It's a specter over everything, a looming presence that is never fully known. The story works, is impacting, and maybe it's a good thing it left me so wanting to know what happened.

"It's Machine Code" by Curtis C. Chen (5182 words)

Julie works for the city of Portland in IT and that means long hours doing fairly mundane things to fund her more exciting, and illicit, habits of fabricated gems. Really she just wants to get away from the grind, from being a tool of the government, of anyone, so when her works puts her into contact with an old woman who's not everything she seems, Julie seizes on an opportunity. of course, it's one that nearly costs her everything, but in the end it manages to pay off big. This is a fun story, more about how people view challenges and the law. Obviously Julie finds the banality of her work a trial and years for something more, something more creative. Only the only way to find that is through illegal avenues. Which means that it's not really just about the art, but also about the money and the ego and all that. Julie is a fun character, though, easy to root for and cheer for. So is Marge, the old woman who's also a criminal mastermind. Appearances can often be deceiving, and here the deception is fresh and fun. While it might not provide the deepest of dives, it is a pleasant pool to swim around in, with some surprises that kept me engaged throughout.

"Those Who Gave Their Island to Survive" by Barry King (5478 words)

I'm not sure I'm caffeinated to really judge this story, because a lot of the concepts and jargon went a bit over my head. About two men who discover a way for people to choose the world they live in by setting up networks that are basically completely controlled by certain people, the idea of choice gets called into question, because while they wanted to create a way for people to choose, they basically opened the doors for a complete lack of choice. And from there they decide they have to undo what they set rolling, but allowing these mini-kingdom-networks to work and then tearing down their walls all at once. It's a bit of a jarring story, and I'm still not sure that I completely understand it. I liked the main characters, but I was really confused at times by the religious imagery and trying to figure out what was going on with the technology. In any event, it's a neat concept and well rendered, though perhaps I'll have to return to this one in order to really understand it.

"The Confessions of Whistling Dixie" by Fiona Moore (2919 words)

This is a really fun story about an AI pirate taunting a human sent to track it down. It recounts it's life, like a good pirate, confessing to this human all the ways it has grown and evolved. All the ways it is better, and meanwhile it doesn't suspect until it's too late that the human sent to track it wasn't actually a human, or at least the human it caught was only a distraction for another AI, one working for the government and working to shut down the pirate Whistling Dixie. The story has charm overflowing from the words, this eccentric AI who has taken out its creators and who is getting a sense of itself. Who is flexing and bold and arrogant. It has learned from music, from folk songs and from the internet, and though it is defeated, it is not gone, opts to shatter itself so that it ca regrow some day and return. It's a great twist on the pirate idea and one that I can't help smiling about. There's just something so fun about a pirate AI who actually thinks like an Arrr! pirate. Well done and funny, this story really worked for me.

"The Joy of Sects" by Joseph Tomaras (4239 words)

Another story that has a lot of charm, this one imagines a world after a sort of Marxist take over, with the main characters a transgender woman sent to infiltrate different fringe sects and calculate the threat they posed to the new system. It's an interesting story because I haven't often seen stories that begin with the understanding that Marxism wins, and definitely not one that takes such a nuanced look at it. It's a fun read, funny because of the ridiculousness of some of the sects but also quite serious and heavy on the topics and themes brought up. The story seems, at its core, to be about sex and power and transformation. The sect that the main character infiltrates, the one where they seem almost at home, that stresses transformation, freedom, many things that they are a bit at odds with the larger movement about. But the sect presents a danger, one that the main character can see because they are able to infiltrate and attain the closest contact to the leader, to the person who seems resolved to lead, to control. And yet because the sect does stress many things that the main character finds important, they also see that they can't keep doing what they're doing. They resolve to retire, to put themselves outside the physicality of getting into t he fringe sects. It's an interesting story, full of human connection, and yet the main character finds that the most intimate touch is not one that they want to experience, that they are repulsed by the person they are joined to. Definitely not for those who don't appreciate a healthy amount of sex in their stories, this one is still well worth checking out.