What are you fighting for?
Your space?
More space?
Your territory?
More territory?
Your reputation?
A better reputation?
A better outcome?
The best possible outcome?— Bianca Lynn Springgs “Plot Twist” from Do Not Go Quietly: An Anthology of Victory in Defiance
Bianca Lynne Spriggs’ volume-closing poem “Plot Twist” challenges the reader with these provocative questions and many more, and had I been doing editors Jason Sizemore’s and Lesley Connor’s job, I would have been sorely tempted to put it first rather than last. However, since this poem’s challenges are as good a return to the real world we’re all stuck in as they are a microcosm of the themes this collection explores, I can absolutely see why they chose otherwise. Which is to say that Sizemore and Connor earned every nickle they could ever conceivably be paid for producing Do Not Go Quietly: An Anthology of Victory in Defiance.
Themed around resistance to oppression, circumvention of unjust rules, and the struggles of maintaining individual identity in an ever more conformist and collectivized — or outright authoritarian — world, this book contains some very strong medicine. In fact, several stories should really have trigger warnings because, phew, I found a few of them very tough to take (and I’m a Tony Burgess fan). Other stories, though, can be taken as a sort of tonic against tough times, saved for those moments when the noose seems to be dangling in your cell or the pitter patter of little jackboots seems to be coming a little too close to your neighborhood. It’s good to be reminded that you’re not alone.
With a book like this, you just have to be careful what you choose and when. Once again, there is not a bad entry in the bunch*, and even the seemingly dullest or least obviously “spec fic” among them still has considerable artistic and expressive merit. Some though, just…. shudder. I’ll start with the good medicine first. There’s a cure, or at least a palliative, to be found for many an ailment of the soul in this bunch!
Serving under a bad boss or for a company or institution that is expecting you to do things that trouble your conscience? I prescribe Karin Lowachee’s “Sympathizer,” a tightly plotted and tense bit of military SF in which a hard-bitten non-com that just might remind you of The Expanse’s Bobbi Draper faces a terrible moral crisis: the captain of the ship that brought her and her crew to a remote assignment on a resource-rich moon gives her an order that could easily provoke humanity’s first space-war with the first alien species it has encountered. There is a bit of a bonus for first contact fans, though this isn’t precisely a first encounter. Perhaps it’s a first friendship? The story hints at a future of such a relationship in an interaction between our heroine and an alien warrior when they find a way to communicate despite barely knowing a dozen words in each other’s languages. I would gladly read this character’s further adventures, and so might you, so I’ll just add this warning: this story absolutely begs to be continued in future stories or expanded into a novel. I, at least, am dying to know what happens next.**
Not feeling quite so defiant as that but still need a pick me up when you’re questioning what’s demanded of you? Marie Vibbert’s “South of the Waffle House” hits the same vein as classic 80s and 80s-analog genre cinema (films like E.T. and Stand By Me and TV series like Stranger Things). It’s a sweet story about friendship, (maybe but not necessarily) Young Love, rebellion against confinement, and clandestine drone repair. The story follows the relationship of two teens in a southern U.S. dominated by a Standard Fundamentalist Christian Authority (for which the Waffle House serves as a sort of synecdoche); their relationship is conducted in secret at a gas station where the kids work part time and dream of freedom. For the girl, such a dream includes not being married off to some “suitable” bachelor at an Authority Approved marriage market as soon as her dad finally gets tired enough of her. Meanwhile, the boy has started to clumsily construct a raft with flying drones that might get them North of the Waffle House. Bonus points to this one for including the lesson that sometimes it’s okay to ask for a little help.
Another delight is Fran Wilde’s “Society for the Reclamation of Words and Meaning,” which pitches a witch of sorts against her politician sister in a battle over meaning itself that is intensely resonant for the current milieu. Both women have a certain magical talent with words and meanings; the politician has chosen to pervert her gift in pursuit of power while the lesser-known sister, seeing the havoc being wrought on Discourse Itself, starts building covens and weaving spells to undo the damage. The relationship drama is as touching as the magical workings are fun and wickedly satisfying to see taking effect. File under Wouldn’t It Be Nice.
Other highlights that are sure to lift spirits are: Maurice Broaddus and Nayad Munroe’s “What the Mountain Wants,” which celebrates the patience to effect gradual but unstoppable change in a lovely metaphor and a vividly weird setting; Russell Nichol’s “Rage against the Venting Machine,” in which the underclass wakes up to the fact that the very installations that simultaneously keep the peace and generate electricity are also just another way for the Man to keep them down, Meg Elison’s “Hey Alexa,” which seeks — and actually finds — a way in which having a helpful digital spy in every home could actually be a good thing (but only under a very particular set of circumstances); and several poems, including my favorite, “Permian Basin Blues,” by Lucy Snyder, which weaves geological metaphors, that sense of crushing forces grinding us down, and the language of vivid precision to remind us that we can, in fact, take the pressure. These and many I’ve not singled out often start and threaten to stay dark but end satisfyingly and strong, mending the wounds that they may accidentally tear.
Others are less uplifting but still very much worth the reading if you’re prepared. A highlight here is Dee Warrick’s “Nobody Lives in the Swamp.” This one features a heartbroken young woman who, before the events of this story, drowned herself in a canal in Amsterdam and is now stuck in a strictly rule-bound afterlife as a creature out of her Ukrainian mother’s culture’s folklore. You don’t need to know the legends of the Rusalka to appreciate this story (I only knew the Dvorak opera), as the gist of her plight is deftly conveyed here, but a little research makes this tale even more poignant. This is especially so after the heroine meets with another heartbroken young woman, who envies her monstrous fate, prompting her to test the limitations of her condition for the first time. Save this one for a rainy evening when you’re in the mood for a little beautiful sadness with your defiance. Trigger Warning for suicide, obvs.
Then there are two stories in here that I passionately admired but may not ever want to read or be reminded of again. Eugenia Triantafyllou’s “April Teeth” is a wicked perversion of the legend of the Tooth Fairy, in which a malevolent being has cast a spell of “protection” over an area at the cost of every adult human having to periodically line up to let a Keeper of the Pliers pull out all their teeth without anesthetic (but, hey, don’t worry, the magic means they’ll grow back). The tooth pulling is both to supply their benefactor with minerals and to feed her with their pain and misery. This story is so gruesome and full of wince-inducing detail that reading it is almost as painful as the sacrifices the characters make in vivid, bloody detail. The fact that someone finds a way to change things is nice, but the effect of reading this story was so brutalizing for me that this wasn’t quite enough. Triantafyllou deserves some kind of award for writing something so exquisitely uncomfortable to read that is still compelling enough to fight through to the end. But I don’t ever want to see inside the brain that cooked this one up. Ow, ow, ow.
Even worse-but-still-remarkably-good is E. Catherine Tobler’s “Kill the Darlings (Silicone Sisters Remix).” Tobler seems to have thoroughly studied both Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale and China Mieville’s Bas-Lag books (with special attention to the Punishment Factories) — and maybe The Human Centipede — and told Atwood and Mieville to hold her beers (she has to have been two-fisting this). It’s not explicitly specified that this is the U.S., but, come on, it’s the U.S., and the struggle between the assigned-at-birth sexes has finally been won: anything with a vagina is unavoidably and forever A Thing with a Vagina. But she’s not just pressed into reproductive or sexual slavery As Is, no no. Because this world has extreme body modification straight out of New Crobuzon, and women’s bodies are considered to be plastic AF. They can be given multiple cunts (and this word appears many times, dear readers) or turned into ovens that you can bang or made to look and feel like they’re made of glass (and are somehow just as fragile (and yes, some people think it’s fun to shatter Glass Girls)). You get the idea. Fortunately, Tobler also saw Mad Max: Fury Road and also told George Miller to hold a third beer (I truly believe Tobler is actually talented enough to three-fist it, folks). Lest this seem to make for a predictable plot, however, there are surprises in store that only a Tony Burgess type can imagine. There are way worse journey endings than a Green Place turned to wasteland, folks. Way worse. But again, there was no way I was going to put this aside until I’d read it.
If I haven’t mentioned a story or poem here, it’s not because they’re in any way less than the ones I named. There just have to be some surprises! Get this anthology and keep it handy for when you need a pick-me-up that isn’t completely hopeless (Or a wallow. Be honest, we all need a wallow now and then). I would recommend against plowing straight through the volume from start to finish, though; while the variations on the theme are indeed varied, the emotions a collection like this is meant to arouse are exhausting when aroused too often. Having had a deadline to meet, I read from cover-to-cover with occasional breaks into other books I’ve got to be ready to discourse about it on podcasts (hooray for Star Wars novels!). Even so, I gave myself a tough couple of weeks. However, I’m going to be glad later on that I have Do Not Go Quietly to turn to when I need a reminder that All is Not Lost. I might even have another look at “April Teeth” or “Kill the Darlings” someday. But I’ve got a note to self warn myself about those, now.
Bravo, Apex. Good medicine!
Do Not Go Quietly: An Anthology of Victory in Defiance was released in May 2019 by Apex Publications. It is available where all good books are sold.
*I don’t review bad anthologies, if you haven’t noticed.
**Fortunately, I was so high off reading this story that I impertinently reached out to Lowachee on Twitter and asked if there was going to be more, and she told me this story is sort of a prequel to her first novel, Warchild. My TBR pile, which already looks like a certain Shel Silverstein illustration, just got a little taller. And yes, I’m totally a Terrible Teresa in that scenario 8).
