QUICK REVIEW: The Best American Series

 I've written before, also briefly, about The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy, a yearly publication with a collection of short stories selected from works published in the previous year. I recently read through the 2020 edition, and just now finished reading through a book in a sibling series: the 2019 publication of The Best American Science and Nature Writing. I'm writing this post to re-affirm my earlier endorsement, and expand it to The Best American collection(s) as a whole.

The 2020 edition of Science Fiction and Fantasy stood out to me even more than previous years because of the sheer volume of queer representation it contained. Many times I had to remind myself that I was not, in fact,  reading a collection like Meanwhile, Elsewhere, which set out to be by and about queer people, but a filtered, edited, and selected collection of the best of main-stream sci-fi and fantasy. In that sense it was an absolute relief and revelation to read; it's not the most subversive or most queer content I have encountered, but the sheer prevalence and normalization of queerness with the stories felt like a real paradigm shift. It was a reminder that, despite the setbacks and the ongoing assault on queer people and minority rights, there has been a cultural shift. Progress is not made or lost all at once in every sphere, and we are still very much in the fight for our existence and acknowledgement.

When I picked up the Science and Nature Writing edition, I was not sure what to expect, but I decided on it because, quite frankly, I am at a deficit when it comes to reading non-fiction. As the forward acknowledges, the line between science and nature writing is quite thin, especially in these days of climate catastrophe and global warming. Indeed, the power in this collection is not any individual piece of writing (though they are all great), but in how they paint a collective and stark picture of the state of our world; the state of nature, and the state of our science and human impact. So many of the stories are about either extinction, the ongoing impacts of climate change, or the socioeconomic systems that helped lead to these problems and how they continue to propagate their own.

The most chilling of these essay to read, I think, was the piece "When the Next Plague Hits," by Ed Young. It was published in 2018, but reading it now is not so much an exercise of hindsight but of prophesy. In these few pages, Ed highlights the 'potential' breaking points of the U.S.'s healthcare and global monitor systems, and points to past outbreaks as a warning of how close we were to disaster. And line by line, it is a prediction, blueprint, and explanation for exactly what led to the COVID-19 pandemic, and an infuriatingly naked picture of how visible the fault lines were. Anthony Fauci is even quoted in the story, previewing the disaster he would confront in the following years.

But I don't want to oversell one piece or simply recount what I liked from each of these volumes (which was a lot; they are all very good). I'm writing this short post to recommended the collections, any of their editions, and their sibling series, as I've seen enough to be confidant in their quality.

Reading takes time, and we don't have much of it, but if you want an excellent slice of what is being written here in the United States, the Best American series is worth picking up in whatever genre you are interested in. It is available wherever books are sold.

BOOK REVIEW: The City & The City, by China Miéville

I've read only one other of China Miéville's books, Railsea, but even from my small sampling Miéville's strengths are apparent. In both books, Miéville write about fictional cultures and people, and he crafts them with such care and skill that the fantastic elements of the setting melt together with the mundane. In the same way we take for granted all the details of our lives, so too do the characters in Miéville's work. They are fantastical only to us, the readers, the foreigners, but to his characters they are simply the facts of their lives.

In The City & The City, the reader is a tourist, plopped down on the shoulder of Inspector Taydor Borlú as he stumbles in the early morning into the most important case of his life. A woman has been found dead--clearly murder--and Borlú dutifully starts to piece together what soon becomes a mystery much larger than he could have imagined. The noir aspects are not what is compelling to us tourists, however. They keep the plot moving along, but it is the mundane details of Borlú's life that soon become much more interesting. As he move through his city--Besźel--strange details emerge; people and places he must 'unsee,' mentions of a 'border' with buildings that seem to be neighbors; the enigmatic 'Breach'; but few explanation are offered for our benefit. Borlú is a product of his culture, and sometimes an agent within it, and it is Miéville's deep understanding of how culture and people influence one another that gives life to Besźel and draws us through its streets and into its secrets along with Borlú.

There are two cities in The City & The City; one in which Borlú lives and another in which he does not. They are layered atop one another, yet separated by legal, social, and fantastical means, if not always physical. The cultures of both cities are complex, historied, and evolving, and the rich detail of characters and setting is what make's Miéville worth reading. 'Worldbuilding' feels like a cheap term to apply to what Miéville has done, but that's what makes the book work. His world is real, and lived in, and we are only visitors. It contains the essence of verisimilitude.

This is an excellent book; and compelling because of it's mystery. I don't have much more to say, partially because I am out of practice writing, partially because I am not giving myself much time to write this post, but I wholeheartedly recommend The City & The City. It is a good novel, a neat mystery, and a visionary fantasy.

The City & The City is available wherever books are sold.

Book Review: ARGENT

It's good!

Argent is the debut novel by Siwon Kim; and I am excited to talk about this one as I was friends with the author during college. Thankfully, I don't have to exaggerate any for them; this is a good book! There's nothing groundbreaking here, but it was an absolute joy to read and I am looking forward to what other stories this author chooses to tell in the future.

 

Argent is an urban fantasy story about Carol, a grey-skinned, sharp-toothed 'argent' living secretly amongst humans, and how her life changes as she goes off to college and meets a new friend named Lily. The story is fairly plot-light, but what draws the audience in is some fantastic character building and excellent pacing. The two central characters, Carol and Lily, have good chemistry and vibrant personalities. Their burgeoning friendship and the ways in which they navigate the world make them endearing, compelling, and just downright cute. The plot is a bare-bones mystery, but it could almost have been about nothing and I still would have found these characters delightful, so clearly are they realized in the writing.

The best comparison I can make is that the writing between Carol and Lily feels at the same level as that between characters in Deltarune or Undertale (though the Deltarune influences are strongest). It's all the small details of personality and friendship that Kim brings to life in both dialogue and narration. The exchanges between Carol and Lily feel genuine; sometimes awkward, sometimes blunt, and each always has a distinct voice. Even in text exchanges their voices shine through; Lily's penchant for using expressive emotes ( \(-.-)/ ; (~‾▿‾)~; etc.) is a fantastic use of the medium-with-medium and modern text vernacular that I haven't really seen much of (though I also haven't been reading many modern novels lately). It conveys emotion efficiently and authentically, and builds upon her characterization.

The tone of the novel is fairly light, and it has a great sense of pacing for comedic beats. It also keeps a good pace in its plot reveals and story beats; there is not much complexity in this mystery, and the book feels no need to drag out its revelations after they become obvious. This keeps the story engaging along with the characters.

However, outside of the dynamic between Carol and Lily (which is most of the book), few other characters have substantial personality or purpose in the book. Carol's father and a second friend named Charles are the 'secondary' characters, but are several under-developed compared to the two stars. Charles is a frat bro used for a few comedic cameos, and Carol's father simply doesn't seem as developed as he should be for the dramatic moments he gets with Carol. This is partially due to some clunky exposition at the start of the book, and what I would call 'basic' book-ending at the end. It reads more like checking a box or as prompts to get to later chapters, and less like the genuine results of characters interacting in that situation. It's just not as strong as the Carol/Lily dynamic. 

There are a few technical oddities as well; for example there are some unusual perspective shifts away from Carol then back despite the narration ostensibly always being from her perspective; a few sentences of clunky exposition, as I mentioned, and what appears to be a missed edit on page 142. The narration reads as if Carol and Lily get on a motorcycle and head to Carol's house twice in a row, both before and after the page-break. But these are the minutia of writing.

Overall, I loved this book and these two dumb lesbians. I was smiling throughout my reading, and I would recommend it to anyone who wants some thing short and sweet. A wonderful debut; definitely worth your time.

 Argent is available through Amazon

Book Review: Dracula, by Bram Stoker

Today we have a classic: Dracula, by Bram Stoker, and I'm please to say it still holds up!

We are all, I'm sure, at least passingly familiar with the concept of vampires, as well as Dracula himself. The monsters have existed across cultures long before Dracula was penned, but it is this book's incarnation that lead to our modern conception of them as sophisticated, elite, and sexy.

The story is told through 'found' sources; that is journal entries and newspaper excerpts that have been transcribed, in-universe, by characters within the story. Not only does this allow for easy switching between multiple perspectives, but it gives an air of 'authenticity' to the fiction, much ;ike the aesthetic of 'found footage' films. Both use their framing devices to ask the audience to play along; to pretend, for a moment, that they have stumbled upon this story in reality. Of course, a willing suspension of disbelief is easier when the story itself is compelling, and Dracula is excellent at building tension and characters.

The story itself is divided into three arcs. We start first with the journal of Jonathan Harker, an English solicitor traveling to Transylvania to aid one Count Dracula in purchasing property in England. He stays with the Count and realizes, slowly, that he is trapped with a monster. After growing increasingly desperate and fearing for his life, he tries to escape by scaling down the castle walls to the chamber where Dracula sleeps, and we leave him shortly thereafter, his fate unclear. We then cut to England, and learn about Jonathan's wife-to-be Mina, and her close friend Lucy. This second arc follows Lucy as she deals with personal drama involving a trio of suitors, and then her death at the hands of Count Dracula, who arrives shortly after the perspective shift. It is during the Count's slow predation of Lucy that one doctor Van Helsing arrives, and though he fails to save Lucy, he realizes what is occurring and begins to make a plan to track down and destroy the Count. The third arc centers around the group of Mina Harker, her now husband Jonathan, Van Helsing, and Lucy's former suitors all racing against the clock to hunt down Dracula and destroy him before he can retreat to the safety of Transylvania.

Jonathan Harker, though he doesn't do all that much after returning to England, does an effective job of setting the tone for the rest of the book. We barely see the Count after he reaches England, but through Jonathan's experience we see enough to understand how much of a threat he poses to Lucy and the others back in England. I would say this early portion is the only part of the book that is solidly 'horror' in tone. Jonathan is one man being held hostage by an increasingly inhuman host, and it ends with him going mad from fear.

The tension from Lucy's part of the story derives more from the human drama of her situation, rather than the immediate mortal peril. As Lucy has her blood drained and is turned into a vampire over the course of weeks, we see how it affects both her and those she loves. She has three suitors, and though she chooses only one man to be her husband the story does not use this as a set up for petty revenge of jealously. Instead the three men unite, and repeatedly work together with Van Helsing to try and save her. There is almost a sort of polyamory on display; each man, in turn, gives their blood to Lucy in a transfusion to keep her alive, and each expresses that they are willing to give their life for her, if they could. The novel even points this out when Lucy's would-be husband, Arthur, links the giving of his blood to being "his wife in the sight of God," and the Van Helsing informs him that they have all given blood. The dynamic is refreshing; it would have been all too easy to have the three suitors becomes jealous or work against each other, but instead they each recognize Lucy's desires, accept her decision, and are able to stay friends with her and each other.

In this second portion Dracula is portrayed as a force of nature: he arrives in an unnatural fog, appears only in the forms of a bat and a dog, and then plagues Lucy like an unseen disease until her strength finally fails. This analogy makes Lucy's portrayal much more... interesting, I guess is a good word, because she as a character has very little agency and does little beyond exist to be Dracula's victim. Van Helsing is the only one with a clue as to why she is wasting away, but he repeatedly decides not to share the information with anyone. He insists the women (such as Mina, Lucy's mother, and the maids in their house) not be told about what he is doing or why (such as lining Lucy's room with garlic); and each time he does so someone inadvertently removes or undoes the protections he has put in place. It is frankly comical the extant to which the men's obsession with chivalry kneecaps their efforts to protect their woman, and I believe that irony is intentional, given how Mina is portrayed.

By the time Lucy dies, Jonathan Harker has returned to England and married Mina. He is in denial about his experiences, but after Mina reviews his journal she realizes that they are linked to what happened to Lucy. She expresses this to Van Helsing, and he realizes it is beneficial to let Mina into his confidences; indeed that he must share all he knows with everyone involved. Although Mina is the next to fall victim to Dracula she does not sit idly by and waste away as Lucy did. Each time the men are at an impasse, or Dracula seems to have given them the slip, she is the one to deduce where he must be or to come up with some idea that lets them continue on.

When the men find Dracula attacking her, the scene reads as them walking in on an assault. Though she does declare herself "Unclean!" there is no other language or sentiment of victim blaming; if we read it as an assault allegory, it is relatively empowering, as it does not relegate Mina to being only a victim. After Mina recovers from the shock she is able to use her link to Dracula to help track him down and, as I said, makes critical deductions that allow their group to track him down. As the men rush across Europe to reach Transylvania before the Count, Mina is with them, and even ventures with Van Helsing toward the Count's castle. Although she does not strike the killing blow, Mina is an agent in her own salvation. I would hardly call it 'progressive,' but it is without a doubt a refreshing portrayal of a female character that actively tries to empower her even as she is subsumed by a culture that wants to leave her behind and let the men handle things.

The book is far from perfect, of course. Many things have aged poorly, such as how it portrays anyone of 'lower' class with accents that imply they are illiterate or incapable of speaking 'proper' English (interestingly, Mina points out how their pursuit of the Count is only possible because of their status: "It made me think of the wonderful power of money!"); there are many stereotypes portrayed whenever we are in non-English lands; and although Mina specifically is well-written, the lack of agency given to most of the other woman who appear is grating, even though the novel seems to be somewhat aware that Helsing's chivalrous misogyny helped Lucy die in the first place. However, this may be a case where it is hard to tell irony from a genuine depiction of regressive ideas.

As far as classic go, Dracula has so far stood the test of time and is interesting in its own right; definitely worth a read. It is also worth mentioning that much of the mythological details from Dracula have not, in fact, been adopted by popular culture. So even if you are familiar with modern depictions, I am sure the book will read as its own interesting take on the mythos.

Dracual can be found wherever books are sold.

"Do you not think that there are things which you cannot understand, and yet which are; that some people see things that others cannot?"  -Van Helsing

Commentary: The Last of Us Part II

Although I haven't played the game (I watched someone's livestream), I wanted to share my thoughts on the story in The Last of Us Part II, as I loved the first game and I think the second has a lot going on worthy of analysis.

I think TLoU2 is a good game, but has many flaws and deeply unfitting ending. In fact, I think the ending is so bad it makes the entire game worse as a result, and I want to talk about why. These first few paragraphs will be mostly summary of both TLoU and TLoU2, so if you're familiar with both, you can skim a bit if you wish.


For those who don't know, The Last of Us is a video game, released in 2013, set in a post-apocalyptic world where a fungal infection has turned most of the population into mindless zombies (or 'infected' as the game calls them). As with all good zombie fiction, the story is not about the zombies, but how people react to them and each other. The player follows the journey of Joel Miller, a man who lost his teenage daughter on the even of the outbreak--not to infection, but to the bullets of a desperate and paranoid military. The first game picks up twenty years later, when Joel has become a brutal man and is a gang enforcer/muscle-for-hire type. It is then that he meets Ellie, a teenage girl who is revealed to be immune to the infection. Joel wants nothing to do with her at first, but after his partner dies in an effort to help Ellie he is convinced to look after her and escort her across the country to the Fireflies--a group who claims they will be able to use Ellie to generate a vaccine for the infection.

Review Roundup (I'm back!)

Hello! It's been a while since I've posted, and there's been a lot of reasons. Mostly I fell out of the habit of writing up the books I've read because I got busy in my work and personal life, and since then it's been hard to get back into it. But recently, with the pandemic and all, I have more free time and also am in a good state of mind for once in a very long time. So I'm going to try to post more regularly here, and potentially expand what I write out.

So! To start things off: some short reviews of a selection of some of the books I've read over the past few months.

 To be Taught if Fortunate by Becky Chambers


We'll start with the best of the batch. To be Taught if Fortunate is a sci-fi novella about four astronauts scouting four alien worlds for potential habitability. Each planet has a distinct environment, one nightmarish, one idyllic, and, the last, barren but hopeful. I loved this book. It's very character-focused, and the trials (or lack there of) they find on each planet gives us new insight into their relationships and how they function as a crew.

A lot of sci-fi tends to focus more on the technological requirements of space travel, but To be Taught if Able uses its premise to examine the social requirements, among other things. Our characters do not turn on each other, nor does their mission does not go astray because of human error. It is, ultimately, a very hopeful book, and one that focuses on the potential of human empathy. It is definitely worth a read.

Review: Meanwhile, Eslewhere - A short story collection

I don't read much short fiction—I am not subscribed to fiction magazines or the like—but I will occasionally pick up a compilation if it looks interesting.  So far I have not been disappointed, and Meanwhile, Elsewhere is no exception.

The stories within vary widely in style and substance, but all share similar themes. Weather we are traversing space, living through all manner of apocalypse or post-apocalypse, or simple struggling to survive in whichever dystopia we have found ourselves in, the characters we follow through these journeys are trying to discover themselves as much as they are trying to survive.

And I do not mean that in a vague sense; the characters are trans, as are their authors, and much of the soul-searching they must do is to simply find out what being a man or a woman or neither means in a world where technology can swap people's minds (Rent, Don't Sell by Calvin Gimpelevich), or transforming the body is as simple as downloading an app (Angels Are Here To Help You, by Jeanne Thornton), or body modification is treated the same as switching out parts on a computer (Cybervania, by Sybil Lamb).

Even in the more mundane futures, much of the stories' tension centers around the protagonists' identities and how they navigate the word as it reacts to those identities. Several authors meditate explicitly on the intersections of race, culture, or disability on sexuality (such as Delicate Bodies, by Bridget Liang, No Comment, by Ayşe Devrim, or Schwaberow, Ohio by Brendan Williams-Childs) and how the struggle against the prejudices they face affect them.

Now, I do not want to oversell this point about theme—the book is not just about "trans angst" or any sort of misery porn. As much as their trans identity shapes their stories, it does not limit them or portray stereotypes. There are twenty-five different stories here, penned by twenty-five different authors. Each has a unique voice, and each story feels fresh and original, even as it explores ideas similar to a few others.

I was honestly not sure what to expect when I bought the book, but this is some of the most creative sci-fi I have read. Imago, by Tristan Alice Nieto, imagines a technology that can temporarily revive the recently-deceased, and follows a corpse with memory problems as she tries to solve her own murder. The results are as gripping as they are tragic. Cybervania is an exhilarating blend of Mad Max, Neuromancer, and a rock opera that does more with it characters in 24 pages than many novels can do in their entire length. Notes From A Hunter Boy, by Beckett K. Bauer, is perhaps my favorite of this collection. It has some of the most artful world-building, and uses its framing in a very cleaver way to formulate its thesis. I could go on about these and many more (Kid Ghost, by Nat Buchbinder, The Heat Death Of Western Human Arrogance, by M Téllez), but I want to focus on the book as a whole, and each of these stories are worth experiencing on your own.

There are a few weak stories. Delicate Bodies and Satan, Are You There? It's Me, Laura, by Aisling Fae were both too 'silly' for lack of a better word, and the writing did not give much depth to either of the protagonists in the stories. A few other stories were too short, in that I felt characters were underdeveloped or a larger story was simply stopped halfway through. After The Big One, by Cooper Lee Bombardier is a pretty good story, but there is an almost-rape scene which I felt was somewhat gratuitous. Yet even in the 'weak' cases, there is still a great deal of creativity. They were all memorable.

The one criticism I have of the book as a whole is structural. I felt a few stories were not up to par with the others, but I have felt that way about all the short story compilations that I have read. What is different about this one is that they put a lot of the weaker stories at the start of the book. The first five stories (67 pages) in the book, while not bad, are not as gripping as many of the later ones, I felt. Both Delicate Bodies and Satan, Are You There? are in these five, and the very first story (Control, by Rachel K. Zall) is a short erotica scene. It's a good erotica scene, and there is a lot of thematic depth in those nine pages, but as the very first story it set a weird tone for the rest of the book. By the time I was done with Satan, Are You There? (frankly the weakest story of them all) I was starting to feel a twinge of disappointment. Thankfully, the rest of the book balances the scales. If you pick it up for yourself, I suggest jumping to one or two of the better stories from the above paragraph if you have the same reaction.

Meanwhile, Elsewhere, as its title suggests, is about some of the people we rarely see in fiction. It is a fantastic collection of worlds and characters both familiar and strange, struggles that are all too real even as they are intertwined with the fantastic. If you are interested in sci-fi, fantasy, or short fiction at all, I highly recommend picking this up.

Meanwhile, Elsewhere, is available wherever books are sold, as well as a free PDF via one of the editor's blogs, here.