Book Review: Resurrections, by Ada Hoffmann
Resurrections shows a wide range of subject matter, themes and topics; nearly all of the pieces are interesting and engaging, and some of them are breathtakingly gorgeous and moving.
Book review: The Blood of Four Gods and Other Stories, by Jamie Lackey
The adjectives that come to mind when I start describing the stories in Jamie Lackey’s latest collection — “graceful”, “elegant”, “accomplished”, “economical”, “beautiful” — all trouble me a bit, because they all come straight out of the 19th century’s idealization of Womanhood, but I just can’t help it. They all apply, and to every one of these tales.
Carmen Maria Machado’s Her Body and Other Parties (reviewed by Penny Reeve)
Carmen Maria Machado’s writing has — very rightly so — been receiving a lot of attention recently. Readers have been champing at the bit for more of Machado’s work since she set the literary world alight in 2014 with the incredible short “The Husband Stitch” and now we’re rewarded with a collection of her short stories with Her Body and Other Parties, which I’m already slating as one of my top reads of 2017. Machado has some serious literary strings to her bow, having written for NPR, Electric Literature, VICE and the New Yorker. Her short stories have appeared numerous anthologies including Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy and Best Woman’s Erotica. The new collection, featuring the aforementioned “The Husband Stitch” — which was nominated for both the Shirley Jackson and Nebula awards, as well as being longlisted for the James Tiptree Jr. and winning a Pushcart Prize special mention — has received praise from just about everyone, including author du jour Roxane Gay, LA Times and Kirkus, which shortlisted Her Body and Other Parties for their annual titular prize, despite it only being published October 3.
Book Review: A Passport to a Nation of Talking Slugs by Andrew Kozma
In all honesty, this should really be called a booklet review, or, to be fancier, a chapbook review, because this is a slight little thing that a person could easily read all the way through while waiting in line at the DMV, still having time to start on another short story collection or anthology before her number was called. Which is to say that A Passport to a Nation of Talking Slugs could actually fit into a passport, as its amusingly apt cover might suggest. But though it be little, it is fierce, is this collection of Kafka-meets-Ionesco-as-Introduced-by-Borges bits. With just four wee stories, Kozma manages to sneak a few emotional wallops among what seems like whimsy, and, to readers like me who have been trained on Gene Wolfe for so long, he’s managed to suggest a degree of intertwined meaning that he might not have intended but feels like it’s there.
My Superpower: Chris Caldwell
My Superpower is a regular guest column on the Skiffy and Fanty blog where authors and creators tell us about one weird skill, neat trick, highly specialized cybernetic upgrade, or other superpower they have, and how it helped (or hindered!) their creative process as they built their project. Today we welcome Chris Caldwell. I’ve always been fascinated by illusion and transformation; the concepts of changing a thing into something new, and something appearing to change but remaining the same, go hand in hand. My stories The Beekeeper’s Garden (Fiyah, Spring 2017) and Serving Fish (‘Fantastic Stories of the Imagination, People of Color Take Over’ Issue 2017) explicitly deal with illusion and transformation as they apply to the experiences of marginalized people. I am a skeptic who deeply wants to believe. I know the magician is palming the coin while still hoping she has conjured it from the ether.
