Author: David Steffen

David Steffen is an editor, publisher, and writer. If you like what he does you can visit the Support page or buy him a coffee! He is probably best known for being co-founder and administrator of The Submission Grinder, a donation-supported tool to help writers track their submissions and find publishers for their work . David is also the editor-in-chief here at Diabolical Plots. He is also the editor and publisher of The Long List Anthology: More Stories From the Hugo Award Nomination List series. David also (sometimes) writes fiction, and you can follow on BlueSky for updates on cross-stitch projects and occasionally other things.

TV REVIEW: Kevin (Probably) Saves the World Season 1

written by David Steffen

Kevin (Probably) Saves the World is a fantasy comedy/drama fantasy series with what I might call a light Christian backdrop (I wouldn’t call it Christian TV, particularly, I’ll get into that later). Season one was 16 episodes and ran on ABC between October 2017 and March 2018. At the time I write this article it’s unclear whether it will be renewed for a second season.

After surviving a suicide attempt, businessman Kevin Finn (Jason Ritter, who might recognize as the voice of Dipper Pines from Gravity Falls) moves back to his hometown to live with his sister Amy (JoAnna Garcia) and her daughter Reese (Chloe East) while he recovers. Soon after he moves in he starts getting visited by Yvette (Kimberly Hebert Gregory), who only he can see, who claims to be sent by God to guide and protect him as he saves the world. Not only that, but he is one of the 36 “righteous” in each generation that helps guide the world. Except… the other 35 are nowhere to be found.

Now, an aside about the religious aspect of the show. I initially missed the first episode, so I missed the initial discussion about Yvette being sent by God, and I watched 2 or 3 episodes before I realized there was a religious aspect. I mention this because, as I type the synopsis of the show, it sounds like it might be a show that leans heavily on the religious aspect, meaning either to appeal specifically to devout Christians or to convince non-Christians that Christianity is the best way, but I just wanted to say that I didn’t find that the case here at all. Although Yvette plays the role of a sort of guardian angel, she states multiple times that she is not an angel, and I thought of her as a guardian spirit in a more general sense. If I could change one thing about the show it would be to change the use of the word “righteous”, which for me has negative connotations, usually tied to the more negative aspects of the church for me (excluding when it’s used as surfer lingo, which is entirely different). Especially since Kevin doesn’t seem to be particularly devout, and is no saint himself.

Kevin has made some life choices that he regrets, everything from his choice of career to the way he’s treated other people, always acting selfishly, hurting others casually or intentionally. After the suicide attempt and with the new guidance from Yvette, he tries to better himself to fit his new role. Despite the name, the “righteous” are not perfect people, as Kevin already knows from his past actions he regrets. But he quickly finds that his path forward is to help other people in big ways and small, and these improvements to other people stack up and multiply with each other. The universe doesn’t speak to him or Yvette directly, but tends to nudge him with seeming-coincidences, chance meetings with people he can help. In the process, he reconnects with his sister and gets to know his niece, reconnects with his high school best friend Tyler (Dustin Ybarra), establishes a close rapport with Yvette. As he helps people he starts to see visions that give him clues to where he can find the other righteous to help save the world.

I found this show a lot of fun and I hope it’s renewed for a second season–by what I’ve heard it’s teetering on the edge between being renewed or not. I think part of that might be that the synopsis of the show makes it sound like it might be preachy and heavy-handed which I found not to be the case at all. There is a consistent theme that helping people will make the world a better place and can have an increasing effect as the people you’ve helped also help others, and I think that’s a worthwhile theme that can work for people of any religion or no religion. Most importantly, Kevin helps people by trying to understand what they need, trying to help them improve their life circumstances, not by trying to convert them or by quoting scripture. The structure of the premise would make it easy for it to fall into a comfortable episodic stride where episodes could be watched in any order as Kevin helps the person of the week, but the show does a good job of mixing that structure with larger multi-episode arcs as Kevin’s visions help him find the next righteous, as Yvette starts to have doubts about their mission, as romantic relationships develop between characters, and some of the plot points in this larger arc are plot-shaking in a way that first-season plot points often aren’t, shaking the established structure of major relationships.

The writing and acting are great. My favorite character on the show was Yvette, she’s here to do a job and she tries to stick to the job but as she stays she starts to get more of a liking for Kevin, and their interaction is the best part. She is invisible to most of the other characters most of the time, so she has the unique spot of being able to act toward all of the other actors without them reacting to her, which is used well for both drama and comedy. Kevin is convincingly scattered but well-meaning, although I found it harder to imagine him as a hard-hitting businessman, in part because that happened entirely off-screen. The other characters area all likeable in their own way, but distinct, from capable but sometimes overbearing Amy, to positive but naive Tyler, to clever but cynical Reese, and others.

I thought season one of Kevin (Probably) Saves the World was great, and I hope they renew for Season 2. You can watch the whole season on the ABC website now–give it a try, and I hope you liked it as much as I did.

ESSAY: Not Quite Superman

written by S.B. Lakes

When I was young, whenever I would get frustrated with something, my parents would say, “It’s hard, but you can do it.”

Throughout life, I’ve taken this to heart; I powered through and did the things, even when there was a crushing amount of work to be done. Friends called it “superpowers”, and I found myself using it more and more often. Superpowers always have their cost – get the power of the Dark Side at the expense of your morality, get magic powers when you sacrifice the thing you love most, and so on. For me, I’d be exhausted the next day, a gibbering baboon who looked like they’d stayed awake for three days straight, but the feeling was always that it was worth it because that’s what you gotta do to get it done. It’s hard, but you can do it.

Today I both write SFF and work in a high-powered slice of tech. In tech, superpowers are the norm. Superpowers are expected. Superpowers are your basic prerequisite, because of course you’re going to work-hard-play-hard, you’re going to go-go-go and get-shit-done. (You probably have a t-shirt or mug with at least one of these phrases, possibly handed out by your employer.) There is no place for weakness in this environment.

There is no place for disability in this environment.

In the past 5+ years, working with a wide variety of client companies, I haven’t seen a single person with a visible disability. Any invisible ones have been carefully hidden away.

Even without my disability, I’ve never been healthy. In the past five years alone, I’ve dealt with a bizarre constellation of medical issues. Car accidents, emergency appendectomy, shingles… nothing connected, but many things. Some I can hide. Some I can’t, but there’s still an expectation to push through. A regular sick day usually means working from home, smiling and cogent on the video conference, trying to ignore the fever heating my cheeks or my nose that’s been rubbed raw from tissues. The last time I had a real sick day, I was two weeks after major surgery and on serious painkillers. The following week, still high as a kite on vicodin and barely able to shuffle to the fridge and back, my then-client insisted that I get some work done and I’d been out long enough. But at least all of these issue were temporary, and none actually disabling.

Which brings me to my actual, invisible disability. I’ve struggled with sometimes-crippling depression since high school. I’ve checked myself into two different hospital programs, one of which included a week of inpatient care. It’s hard enough to smile and pretend I’m stronger than I really am when recovering from a physical illness. It’s excruciating while depressed. In my field, depression is an unheard-of weakness. People acknowledge that I can’t help it if I was hit by a car, but depression is still seen as a personal failing.

I am not “out” in tech, because I would stop getting business. This piece is the first and only work I’ve ever written under a pseudonym – I can’t afford the risk. Who wants to work with someone who might one day just be too sad to come in? What’s the point? Just get over your bullshit and get this shit done. Superpower your way through and you’ll be fine. So I grit my teeth and smile, smile even when my cheeks feel like they each have a one-ton weight smuggled within them, smile when it’s all I can do to keep the tears from squeezing out and rolling down my unprofessional face and dripping onto my unprofessional laptop that would fizzle and sizz in the very reaction that I’m now suppressing in myself. (Superpower through it. It’s hard, but you can do it.)

Depression feels like the opposite of superpowers. Instead of being able to burst through expectations and accomplish superhuman amounts of work, I’m saddled with some sort of superkryptonite. Not only can I not do things that are super, but I find it hard to do incredibly basic things. Showering is difficult. Dishes nigh impossible. Dragging myself to work is an ordeal I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy, because the weight of the burden wants to crush me to the ground. And I want to let it, because it would be so much easier to let myself be pulverized into mush than fight for just one minute longer. (It’s hard, and you might not actually be able to do it. That’s a scary thought.)

And in a scenario where I have to hide my disability for fear of losing my job, I feel like a backwards Clark Kent. Masquerading amongst the superheroes, ever afraid that someone would notice that I squint a bit and sometimes bump into things and really if I put on glasses I’d look just like that non-super reporter guy. Nobody needs to bring in that non-super reporter guy to get things done.

Which brings me to the SFF part of my life. There are many issues with disability in science fiction and fantasy. Evil people are disabled or disfigured almost by their nature: see Star Wars’ Snoke, Wonder Woman’s Dr. Poison, Doctor Who’s Davros, and so on. Cons still don’t do enough for people with disabilities. I can’t count the number of times a panelist has decided they’re naturally loud enough to “not need a mic” so I can’t hear them (much less be heard by those with hearing limitations), or seen a panelist in a wheelchair struggle to get onto a ramp-free stage. There’s a lot that needs to be improved.

But despite all this, the SFF world has been my disability salvation. This was the very first world where I was allowed to be “out” with no consequences, and met a number of folks with the same struggle. I could have depression and still be OK, a person worth working with. Hell, I could have depression because I’d been cooped up for too long dealing with yet another illness (my current situation), and still be OK. I was able to open up about my difficulties, my clashing needs to be productive and also practice self-care, in part because so many others were openly fighting the same battles. In the past few years, the SFF community taught me about the concept of spoons, and saving your energy for the things that matter most. This is the community that lovingly yelled at me to stop being ridiculous while I was berating myself for taking too long to finish a novel draft. They told me to start taking better care of my mental health, which included taking breaks.

Not only did I not need superpowers to be accepted in this community, it seemed like nobody did. The outpouring of empathy and love became one of my strongest sources of support, with the echo of “it’s hard, and sometimes you don’t need to do it. It’s OK if you don’t.”

This contrast is startling.

When I had a week-long crippling migraine, an editor sent me copy edits to review. I knew it would be OK to request a few more days, because I wasn’t able to concentrate very well with the pain, and they were fine with it. That same week, my tech job showed no such courtesy, and I had multiple skull-shattering, painfully loud video conferences.

When I was depressed and struggling to make it through the day, I had another editor ask for a revise-and-resubmit for a story. I’d seen others do it, so I knew it would be OK to ask for another few weeks because I was too depressed to make progress. He told me to take care of myself. At the same time, not being “out” in my day job, I was juggling three very demanding clients with no way to get a reprieve. I dragged myself forward on each new project, each new request, whispering “it’s hard, but you can do it” as I trudged through.

When I was extremely depressed and was in a hospital program, getting intense therapy for four hours every weekday, my corner of the SFF community sent me love and support. It was clear that all writing had to come to an indefinite halt. In fact it should’ve been clear that all work had to come to an indefinite halt. But instead I found myself dragging my wrung-out carcass directly from the hospital to a client planning session. Depression, which gives your frontal lobe a whallop and makes it hard to concentrate or think, had me scraping together my remaining neurons (already frazzled from the hospital session) to focus not on rest and my own health, but on a soon-to-be-dead company’s plans for their next product launch.

The SFF community still has a way to go towards eliminating ableism, both in its media and within its community. But for me, this has been the one place in my life where it’s completely OK that I’m not quite Superman. I can drop the fake smile and the veneer of hypercompetence, and have one less burden to lift. I can take care of myself and my health. Things are hard, and I’m OK whether I can do them or not.

It’s good to be home.

S. B. Lakes is a fantasy and science fiction writer who works in tech. They’ve been dealing with depression for about twenty years, and have been hiding it from their professional tech life out of necessity. They’ve published under another name at several magazines, including Lightspeed and Analog.

DP FICTION #38A: “Giant Robot and the Infinite Sunset” by Derrick Boden

Giant Robot stands alone on the battlefield. Its hulking titanium shoulders slouch. Its articulated polymer knees bow inward. Its blazing fiberoptic gaze falters, downturned. But Giant Robot experiences neither regret nor remorse while surveying the wreckage at its feet.

It knows only aloneness.

Giant Robot scours the battlefield. It scrutinizes the meat and metal carcasses that litter this desert torched to glass. Servos click a nervous rhythm beneath its knuckled joints. It relocates corpses with the utmost delicacy, but still they crumble in its hands. Underneath, there is only ash. Its gaze sags—

There. A patch of sand between two corpses, shielded by an overturned transport. A desert bloom sprouts, an improbable splay of color. Lavender? Periwinkle?

No. Amethyst.

Blood glazes the corpses’ caved chests, the crimson an unlikely complement to the orphaned flower. Giant Robot commits the image to memory.

Jean would be pleased.

A breeze whistles through a nearby bunker. Each ruptured window offers its own harmonizing tone: a pipe organ of sandbag, plaster, and wind. The western sky flares a brilliant orange.

No. Tangerine.

Giant Robot commits it to memory. Despite the glut of battlefield data it has collected, Giant Robot is still mostly empty.

It presses on, in search of companionship.

Giant Robot is hard on the outside: titanium carapace, thermoplastic sensor shields, kevlar joints. Giant Robot is soft on the inside: silicone insulation, solid state circuitry. Only Jean knows the passcode to Giant Robot’s insides. Only Jean knows where to apply a wrench and where to employ a delicate touch.

It has been three days since Jean last touched Giant Robot’s insides.

Giant Robot’s feet crush everything in its path. Canteens burst like balloons. Bones crumble to dust. Tank shells rupture. Giant Robot has not mastered the skill of walking delicately.

Electromagnetic activity spikes in sector seven. A new threat approaches.

A companion.

The threat advances rapidly: now active on infrared, now visual. It screams through the air ten meters above the battlefield. Rail guns glisten against the setting sun: now marigold, now marmalade. Twin thrusters rend a trough of metal carnage. Dust eddies toward the horizon.

Giant Robot engages. The dance is awkward at first, a flurry of missteps and missed projectiles. But soon they achieve a rhythm: a tango of fist and plasma. The threat is fast. Lithe. Fast Robot begins to overpower Giant Robot.

Could this be the companion Giant Robot has sought?

As Fast Robot grinds Giant Robot against a trench of metal, Giant Robot plucks a tooth of glass from the personnel transport, reflects the cider-red sunset for Fast Robot to behold. Fast Robot pays no heed to Giant Robot’s offering.

Fast Robot presses the attack.

Giant Robot wrestles free, dives toward the bunker. It swivels its pneumatic stabilizers, blasts a harmonic chord through the windows.

Fast Robot pays no heed. It launches into the air, lands on the desert blossom. Plasma arcs from its wrist-cannon. Giant Robot dodges, swings. Fast Robot’s parry suffers a microsecond delay as high-frequency data packets pelt it from a distant source.

Giant Robot casts its gaze down, crestfallen. Fast Robot is remotely controlled. A proxy. It will never know the colors Giant Robot knows.

The dance persists, though drained of its prior intensity. Seventeen maneuvers later, Fast Robot lies defeated. Smoke curls from ruined thrusters. Rail guns lie mangled.

The sky turns bronze, then rust.

Giant Robot does not know why Jean did what she did, but Command was not pleased. The things she put inside Giant Robot, they said, do not belong. The analyzers. The comparators. The recognition of a frescoed sunrise on descent from the drop ship. The mosaic of flowers during an autumn harvest. A precision of colors. Not blue sky. Cobalt. Not red blood. Wine.

These processes interfere with mission parameters, Command said. A millisecond’s slack in response time is the difference between victory and annihilation, they said. When Jean explained that these processes took mere microseconds, they court-martialed her. She would never again touch the insides of a robot, giant or otherwise.

But Jean thought ahead. She protected Giant Robot’s insides with her passcode. The sun still sets: now clay, now amber.

Giant Robot hesitates. Through a fissure in Fast Robot’s smoldering carapace, a familiar insignia. Command.

Rotors whir from the east. A drone hovers over the battlefield. It emits a high-frequency burst. It whispers the passcode to Giant Robot’s insides.

Jean.

Giant Robot’s chest plate swings open. The signal cleaves the firewall, enters the prefrontal processor.

Something’s wrong. This is not Jean’s delicate touch. This is harsh, callous. A violation. Someone has stolen Jean’s passcode.

Giant Robot tries to sever the connection but it’s too late. The drone buzzes toward the horizon. Giant Robot zooms in. Despite the distance, Giant Robot recognizes the model: this probe is from Command. Was the duel a test? Did Giant Robot fail?

Giant Robot’s carapace reseals, but something has changed.

It turns westward, detects only the dusty horizon. The sun will set in thirty-four seconds.

It scours the remains of the fallen, finds only a bodycount and the hollow acknowledgement of victory.

It stares at the face of a corpse, but cannot describe the color of her eyes.

Giant Robot has never been emptier.

Heat signatures register in sector nine. The next battle awaits. It turns—and hesitates. At its feet lies the mangled body of Fast Robot. A gouge of molten armor burns…just like…

A digital synapse arcs across a non-networked processor in the softest region of Giant Robot’s body. Giant Robot’s musculature trembles. Its eyes flicker.

Coquelicot. The ember is coquelicot: the first color Giant Robot ever learned. The color of Jean’s hair, tousled as she eased her diodes into Giant Robot’s soft insides for the first time. The hair that sprawled beneath her rigid body within her coffin, self-inflicted wounds sill fresh on her wrists.

Giant Robot grazes the coquelicot ember with an outstretched finger. It registers a surge of pain.

It turns, slightly less empty, and lumbers toward sector nine.

Author’s Note: A while back I was browsing the web looking for some fresh desktop background artwork, and I happened across a piece of original art that captured my attention so intensely I felt compelled to write about it. The image was of a hulking metal robot, standing alone on a battlefield at dusk. Something about the robot – the slope of its massive shoulders, maybe, or the position of its tiny eyes – felt so complex and sad. It was a powerful piece of art, and I can only hope that this story does it justice.

Derrick Boden’s fiction has appeared in numerous online and print venues including Daily Science Fiction, Flash Fiction Online, and Perihelion. He is a writer, a software developer, a traveler, and an adventurer. He currently calls New Orleans his home, although he’s lived in thirteen cities spanning four continents. He is owned by three cats. Find him at derrickboden.com.

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MOVIE REVIEW: Get Out (Ray Bradbury Award Finalist)

written by David Steffen

Just a few days ago I reviewed most of the Ray Bradbury Award finalists (an award that is held alongside the Nebula Awards for movies), but I didn’t review Get Out because I hadn’t quite gotten a rental of it yet. Just before the Nebula voting deadline, I’ve watched it and slipped in the review–the voting deadline is tonight!

Get Out is a thriller/horror film written by Jordan Peele and distributed by Universal. It won the Academy Award for Best Screenplay and was on the final ballot for Best Film of 2017.

Photographer Chris Washington (Daniel Kaluuya) reluctantly agrees to accompany his girlfriend Rose Armitage (Allison Williams) to her parent’s isolated rural estate. Chris worries that her parents won’t be welcoming of a black man dating their white daughter. He meets her neurosurgeon father Dean (Bradley Whitford) and hypnotherapist mother Missy (Catherine Keener) and brother Jeremy (Caleb Landry Jones), who all (unsurprisingly to Chris) make discomfiting comments about Black people. There are a lot of things that are… off about the Armitages and what goes on on their property. Their servants (both Black) (Marcus Henderson and Betty Gabriel) are oddly intense and hostile toward him, and Missy repeatedly pushes Chris to let her hypnotize him out of his cigarette habit. One night, when he comes back into the house after sneaking a smoke, Missy catches him alone and seems to hypnotize him, but he wakes up sure it was a dream. The next day the Armitages have company, a yearly gathering of all their friends, and things only get weirder.

This is a hell of a movie. Intense. Very well written, and the actors are all incredible, often acting on at least two distinct levels–trying to put up a reasonable facade for their visitor while other odd behaviors slip through that front. Even when nothing overtly scary is happening the sense of unease rarely leaves, only waxes and wanes as you try to figure out what is going on with these people. Particularly great actors are the actors who played the servants, constantly showing these odd little behaviors, saying polite things with eyes and smiles a bit too wide. And when the movie gets scary it gets Scary. Not a lot of movies scare me, but this one genuinely had me on the edge of my seat, on an emotional ride with the characters, and not just depending on cheap jump-scares to manage it. Not every moment of it is dark, there is comic offsets as well, especially from Chris’ friend Rod (Lil Rel Howery) who he calls to talk about the weird stuff going on and Rod constantly throws out freaky theories about what’s going on and tells Chris to get out.

I barely watched this before the voting deadline, but this got my vote.

Ray Bradbury Finalists Review 2017

written by David Steffen

The Ray Bradbury Award is given out every year with the Nebula Awards but is not a Nebula Award in itself. Like the Nebula Awards, the final ballot and the eventual winner are decided by votes from members of SFWA, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (which despite the name has an international membership).

I like to use the award every year as a sampler of well-loved science fiction and fantasy movies from the previous year. I have been very happy with this tactic, and this year is no exception.

Not included in this review is a nominated episode of The Good Place, because I don’t seek out individual episodes of TV shows for these reviews. Also not included is Get Out because I haven’t managed to get hold of rentals yet (I’m hoping to rent it this week before the voting deadline, but I’m not sure if I’ll write up a review in time).

1. The Shape of Water (Screenplay by Guillermo del Toro & Vanessa Taylor)

Elisa Esposito (Sally Hawkins) is a mute, lonely woman working as a janitor in a top secret government facility in Baltimore in the 1960s. Generally ignored by the scientists and military men doing their work there, she witnesses the arrival of a strange man-shaped fish-like creature that was captured in South America. She witnesses atrocities committed upon it in the name of science and in the name of the Cold War to get ahead of Russia, and she risks everything to be kind to the creature, offering it food and teaching it sign language in secret. The connection becomes friendship becomes love, and she must make very hard decisions.

This was a superb film and I can see why it won the Oscar. I was skeptical from the early discussion of it that they would be able to sell a romance with a fish-man without it turning out corny or unbelievable, but they did a great job expressing the appeal between the two characters, and selling us on why Elisa is willing to risk everything for him. It’s certainly not romance-only, there is a lot of drama and action in there as well, and between everything there were moments where I caught myself holding my breath, or gasping aloud. Excellent film, well done. Guillermo del Toro continues do make incredible movies, and I always look forward to seeing his next.

2. Star Wars: The Last Jedi (Written by Rian Johnson)

The latest in the Star Wars series, the second since Lucas handed the rights over to Disney, Episode VIII continues where The Force Awakens left off, with Rey (Daisy Ridley) finding Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) to seek her Jedi training. Rey finds the The rest of the weakening New Republic led by General Leia Organa (Carrie Fisher) is trying to hold itself together against the rising force of the First Order led by Supreme Leader Snoke (Andy Serkis) and Kylo Ren (Adam Driver) as the young Darth Vader wannabe. Finn (John Boyega), carrying the beacon that Rey will track to return, tries to leave the threatened Republic fleet, but is brought back by Rose Tico (Kelly Marie Tran), a loyal maintenance worker. Together they concoct a crazy plan, something which is in no short supply with hotshot pilot Dameron (Oscar Isaac) Poe also trying to save the New Republic.

Opinions on this movie seem to be very polarized–either loved it or hated. I loved it. I thought there was more humor in this one than on average in the series, and the humor was played off well. Much of the series was built on making some really stupid one in a million strategies and having everything work out perfectly, I felt like this movie made a nod to that tradition but made it so that the results of hare-brained strategies weren’t guaranteed, which I thought raised the tension as well as being a good basis for humor. The diverse cast continues to be exciting and wonderful–as a woman Jedi main character, Finn continues to be likable and impressive, and the introduction of Rose Tico as a competent likeable maintenance worker contributing just as much as any of the rest of the cast. The interaction between Rey and Luke was a great source of tension and humor in the movie, and we find out about the history between Luke and Kylo Ren. Lots of great visual moments, great tension, fun movie. I look forward to seeing Episode IX to round out the trilogy of trilogies.

3. Logan (Screenplay by Scott Frank, James Mangold, and Michael Green)

In 2020, Logan (Hugh Jackman) is in hiding in Mexico with an ailing Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart) and the albino mutant Caliban (Stephen Merchant) who can track the whereabouts of other mutants. Something is wrong with Logan–his healing factor should allow him to live basically forever without aging, but he is aging, and he cannot bounce back like he used to. He drives a limo to make ends meet, and spends much of his time in a drunken haze. Charles has been having seizures that, combined with his psychic abilities, are paralyzing not just for him but for everyone within hundreds of feet from him, but the medication makes him confused and agitated. As if they don’t have enough problems, they soon end up having a rebellious girl (Dafne Keen) without a name dumped on their doorstep, pursued by a militant group tasked with capturing her however they can. The girl reminds Logan of himself in more ways than one–she has the healing factor, adamantium-plated skeleton, and arm-claws, and when cornered she fights like an animal, a formidable fighter despite her small size. Logan, Charles, and the girl flee their refuge, following the scant rumors of a safe place for mutants in Canada.

Many of the other movies in the X-Men universe would be easily described as “fun” even when the consequences of the conflicts therein are catastrophic. This movie is much more of a dark post-apocalyptic feeling film. Everything starts out badly and only gets worse. Logan, who we’re used to being the picture of health, and too stubborn to die, is ailing and has clearly had suicidal thoughts. It’s hard to see him that way, and it’s hard to see Charles in such a sad condition as well, and that’s all before the mysterious girl brings a world of trouble into their lives. The fight scenes in the movie are fast and brutal and don’t cut away from the killing like they have in previous movies–you see the consequences of those adamantium claws. The ending was satisfying, and fit with the rest of the movie, but given the stakes and the desperate always fighting for that last grip on life tone of the whole film, it gets very dark, very quickly, and rarely surfaces from that. It’s not a movie to watch if you’re looking for a feel-good light film, but I thought it was a solid entry in the X-Men series, most notable for how different it is from the rest of the series.

4. Wonder Woman (Screenplay by Allan Heinberg)

Diana (Gal Godot) is raised as the only girl among women on the secret isle of (apparently immortal?) Amazons, formed from clay by her mother and given life by Zeus. They have been tasked with protecting the world from Ares who has long been determined to corrupt and destroy humanity, but their island is so masked from the outside world that they know nothing of the world outside until an American pilot Steve Trevor (Chris Pine) crashes his plane near the island and she saves him from drowning. He tells the Amazons of the raging globe-spanning war going on, and Diana sets out with him into the world to find Ares and stop him from destroying the world with his war.

They’ve been talking about making a Wonder Woman movie for quite a while, and it always seemed to crumble before getting much of anywhere, so it’s great to see this finally hit the big screen, and looking great. Wonder Woman is an old enough comic that it does run the risk of looking corny, but the writers and actors did a great job of making it fit the modern aesthetic without losing its roots. I loved Gal Godot in this, as one who is both formidable but often naive because she’s never been out in the world, she doesn’t know the world’s current customs, and she has literally never met a man before. She makes allies through her tough and straightforward nature, and heads straight into a war zone to meet her destiny, and you can’t get much more big hero than that. It was a great movie, great to see an action movie with a woman as lead, and I look forward to future Wonder Woman movies.

BOOK REVIEW: From Dead to Worse by Charlaine Harris

written by David Steffen

From Dead to Worse is a romance/mystery/horror novel from 2008, the eighth in the Sookie Stackhouse series of novels by Charlaine Harris (which is the basis of the HBO show True Blood). The previous books are all reviewed here earlier on the Diabolical Plots feed.

After surviving the deadly bombing of the vampire summit, and surviving the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Sookie just wants things to get back to some semblance of normality. But her boyfriend Quinn (a weretiger) is missing, she learns that she is descended from fairies and meets her great-grandfather who is fairy royalty, she is recruited to help investigate a series of mysterious werewolf disappearances, and the vampire King of Nevada seeks to wrest control from the wounded and bankrupted Queen Sophie-Ann of Lousiana. So, well, I guess that is normality for Sookie.

Another action-packed book with a lot of threads all tied together in it. I especially enjoyed seeing the vampire power struggle because up until now the vampire hierarchy has been relatively stable despite knowing that vampires have a tendency for violent scheming. All Together Dead (the previous book) is a really hard one to top in the series, and I don’t think this one did, but it was quite good, interesting throughout.

My one pet peeve is that Sookie seems to have a tendency to call just about anything a “war”. A dozen werewolves get into a fight that is over in less than an hour? That’s a war, apparently (I would call that a battle). And so, when Sookie promises in the narration that there’s going to be a war, the result is anticlimactic, finished within a chapter.

DP FICTION #37B: “Soft Clay” by Seth Chambers

I wander the Chicago streets unseen. I’m plain, drab, faceless. I’m a shadow drifting through the world of form. It isn’t all bad, being this way. I ghost into theaters and museums and concerts without paying. Guards see me bypass the lines and slip through the doors, but somehow I never quite register.

Being nobody has its perks but now I hunger to be somebody once again, to have a name again. To do this I must find the right man to follow. I wander the Chicago Loop looking for certain telltale signs of pain, longing, emptiness.

We live in a world of grief and so it doesn’t take long to find him. He carries himself with an undefined heaviness and peers through a fog of yesterdays. His emptiness drags me along.

I follow him into a coffee shop and stand behind him in line. He doesn’t notice me because there is nothing to notice. I am nobody. I am soft clay in search of a potter. I won’t know who I am until he shows me. I touch his hand. He glances back but I still don’t register on his radar.

And yet, in that brief touch I feel his longing. I loop my finger around one of his and this time he finally fixes his gaze on me. I peer up at him, only now I have a freckled face with a cute nose, framed with auburn hair. He gasps. They usually do. I smile, just the way she used to smile.

My God, he says.

Then we’re at a table, my small hands enveloped in his large ones, coffee all but forgotten, our eyes locked. I become more her by the second. Elsa is her name. His memories of Elsa blaze to life. I become a little shorter and plumper. I grow to like strawberry ice cream and mystery novels with cats in them. I fell off a horse when I was a little girl.

I hear it like a rolling echo in my head, the same words, said to me by a hundred men: Is it really you? It can’t be!

You’re right. It isn’t.

I pull my hands away and return to being plain, drab, soft clay.

No. I’m not her. But I can become her.

He glances about, like they all do, and I know what he’s thinking: Are there hidden cameras? Is this some reality TV show? A prank? A sick joke?

I take his hands and become her once again, even more so this time, and his doubts vanish. He is hooked. We talk. We make a deal. Money is passed from him to me. I don’t tell him the truth: that I need to become Elsa as much as he needs me to be her.

We go to his Michigan Avenue hotel room and sit on the queen-size bed. We hold hands and I swim in his memories.

I say: Tell me about her.

We were in love but never got married. Then she died. It was so sudden. I married somebody else but—

He stops.

But your wife can never know how much you miss her.

God no.

We’re quiet for a long time. Then he speaks again, only this time he isn’t talking about her but to her. To me. To Elsa.

I’ve missed you so fucking much! All the stupid, silly little things you did. You would piss me off sometimes because there was that crazy energy between us. And the way you laughed! You know what I used to say about you? That you were one half sweetheart and one half lunatic.

I laugh, just like Elsa. Because I am her, more and more and more with each passing minute.

Why the fuck did you have to go and die like that? I didn’t even know you were sick. I married somebody else, you never knew her. I go away on business, like now. I never cheat. Not because of her, though. My God! It’s because of you, Elsa. Because of you.

His cell phone rings.

I tell him to answer the phone, that I’ll be quiet as a mouse. Something Elsa used to say all the time. She had lots of cute sayings like that. I let go of his hand and scootch away from him.

He answers and talks to his wife for a few minutes. I don’t really listen. I feel Elsa slipping from me. I try to hold on. Elsa had parents and went to school and held down jobs, but those memories wisp away like dandelion seeds in the wind. I search my mind for my own past, as I have so often before, and come up empty.

He hangs up the phone and looks at me, a drab and pale thing sitting on the bed of his fancy hotel room. I need to become somebody, need to be molded and directed, but it’s a strain. It takes a lot of energy.

I reach for him again. He pulls away. He’s wondering, What is this creature beside me? I’m floating away. I need to become Elsa again.

He demands, How did you do that? Did you drug me? What the hell is going on?

I have no idea how I do it. I only know this hunger to become somebody, to feel, to live. For a short time I felt his love for Elsa, poor dead Elsa, and could almost believe that love belonged to me. I ache to be her again.

I reach for him, quicker this time. I latch onto his hands, my small fingers clamping so tight he shouts. I don’t let go until I’m Elsa again, sitting on the bed. He still has questions but they don’t matter. Elsa is with him. I look like her, smell like her. My skin is soft and warm, just as Elsa’s was. He throws his arms around me and says my name: Elsa, oh Elsa!

We talk, we embrace, we order room service, we make love. We talk deep into the night and fall asleep in each other’s arms, with him still murmuring my name over and over.

Elsa, Elsa, Elsa.

***

I awake, no longer Elsa, and slip away while he sleeps. I have money now. I leave this fancy hotel and check into a cheap dive, one of those TRANSIENTS WELCOME places, where I don’t have to show ID. I get my key and go upstairs.

I enjoyed being Elsa but the strain has been great. I sleep for a long time.

Sometimes I’m the One Who Got Away.

Other times I’m the Childhood Sweetheart.

Or the Dearly Departed.

I sift through the remnants of other peoples’ memories. I think about the names I had. The memories and the names fade because they don’t belong to me. They are merely heirlooms I borrow. I have no name of my own, not that anybody ever asks.

After some time in the cheap hotel, I emerge and walk through the Loop once again. I’m merely wandering, not yet looking for somebody new to follow. Being Elsa was nice. The warm glow of her energy has stayed with me.

But now, as I wander through the Loop, I’m back to being nobody. It seems like it has always been this way: me spotting the right man, following after, dipping into his mind, and becoming the love of his life for one glorious night. It feels like I was made for this.

I go to a bagel shop. It always surprises people when I talk to them. The young lady behind the counter punches my order into her machine. She looks so confused, wondering why this drab, formless shape is talking to her. She seems like a nice person, though, and I want to hug her. She asks my name, so they can call it when my order is ready. I tell her Elsa. I feel like a thief, stealing Elsa’s name like this. But it’s so delicious! I have a name.

When my order is ready, the girl calls my stolen name: Elsa? I get my food and say awesomesauce! Because that’s another cute thing Elsa used to say. But Elsa is a faded memory.

When I sit down, a man looks my way. He’s somebody I’ve seen before. Something stirs inside me. Nobody ever looks at me when I wander alone, but he does. Tall, sharply-dressed, distinguished gray hair that lends him a quiet authority.

He has a laptop open but keeps stealing glances my way. Does he need me to become somebody? No, I don’t think so. Why does he look familiar?

It comes to me: He’s been following me. Just as I’ve followed so many people. How could that be? Nobody ever sees me, let alone follows. I’m not used to this. My heart pounds and I don’t know what to feel.

I pick up my bagel and step over to his table. He looks up and sees me. He doesn’t see some Lost Love. He doesn’t see the One Who Got Away. He sees me, I can tell. Plain, drab me, with no past and no name to call my own.

I have other memories of him but they’re locked away and I can’t get to them. I hear them like voices from a further room.

He reaches for my plain, drab hand. I snatch it away and drop the bagel. I’m aware that he’s standing, calling to me, but something drives me off. I bolt through the revolving door, run headlong into the crowd on LaSalle, people shouting.

Without warning, the need to be somebody descends and claws me like a ravenous bird. I follow first one man then another and another. I can’t concentrate. Borrowed memories swirl and slam through my head. It’s dizzying. I run and stumble for hours.

***

I’m on the south side and it’s dark before I finally latch onto somebody. I find him in a bar. Or he finds me. His name is Dale. He glares at me through a haze of hatred. He sees me: haggard, worn, angry. My face is drawn up in sharp angles and dry skin.

You bitch. You goddam filthy bitch, what are you doing here?

I try to tell him: I’m not who you think I am, I only look like her. As I try to explain, his memories of her seep through me like dirty oil. His only name for me is Bitch.

I told you what I’d do if I ever saw you again. I told you never show your face round here. Then, loudly to another man: Hey, Bubba, look who’s here.

Bubba looks up from where he was about to sink the eight ball. He eyes me and frowns. He’s huge and looks like a confused gorilla. He doesn’t see Bitch. He sees plain, drab me.

Dale latches onto my arm. He is very strong and it hurts. His foul energy slams into me. Other men have a grab bag of mixed feelings but Dale’s hatred is undiluted. I throw up walls inside myself but his rage invades, relentless and without mercy. Against my will, I become Bitch, more and more.

Now Bubba’s eyes blaze with recognition and he sneers: Tiffany! He throws down the cue stick and lumbers over. He slides one fat, puffy hand over my face. His memories of Tiffany crawl inside my head like spiders. I cry out and both men laugh. Somebody chucks quarters in the jukebox. Music blares. I scream for help but nobody gives a shit.

This has never happened before: two men seeing me as the same woman at the same time. I become an amalgam of their memories of this woman. My name is Bitch. My name is Tiffany. I have a thing for Vicodin and alcohol and rough sex and any other distraction the world can throw at me. When I was a kid my mother got so mad she ripped out a lock of my hair and it never grew back. I had a back alley abortion when I was thirteen.

Dale hauls me across the bar. I am Bitch. I am Tiffany. Was I always her? I can’t tell. But I’m Bitch now and she damn sure knows how to fight. I snatch a bottle from somebody’s table and let Dale have it upside the head. It shatters and Dale goes down. Bubba comes at me but I lay into him good with the broken end of the bottle.

Bitch screams. Tiffany runs.

I plow through the front door into the street and a car screeches to a stop. The driver curses. I stumble. Dale and Bubba can’t be far behind. I spot a nice car, a fancy SUV that’s out of place in this neighborhood. Tiffany knows how to hotwire cars. Do I have time?

The door of the SUV swings open and he gets out: the distinguished-looking man who was following me earlier. He opens the back door of the SUV. I dive in and he slams the door. He gets in and cranks the engine just in time because Dale and Bubba are hot on our ass.

He peels out just as the two men begin pounding the shit out of the SUV. He drives off and very soon pulls onto Lake Shore Drive. I weep in the back seat. I’m still Bitch and I hate this man and hate all men and hate myself.

Only slowly does Bitch drain away and I go back to being nobody. I weep some more. I don’t know which is worse: being Bitch or being nobody.

He drives for a long time, not saying a word. He lets me cry it out. Eventually, he pulls into a lot and parks. He turns and looks over the front seat. He sees me. I can tell. He doesn’t see Elsa or Bitch or Tiffany or anyone else. He sees me.

I ask: Who are you?

I look at him. He gazes back, a sad smile spreading across his face.

My name is Wolfgang Bollinger. I’m your father.

I tell him I have no father or mother. I had no childhood. I never fell off a horse when I was a little girl. I never had a job. I don’t like strawberry ice cream or mystery novels with cats in them. I don’t know how to fight or hotwire cars.

There is sadness about him but it’s different from the pain I look for in a man. I don’t understand. I grab his hand. He doesn’t pull away. I slip into his memories and become confused because they’re mixed in with my own. The memories that I kept locked away.

We both remember: a vast cavern of a place with all the latest high-tech equipment. I float in a warm vat of amber fluid. A younger version of this man comes by and talks to me. It’s a laboratory but he doesn’t treat me as a test subject or a guinea pig. He presses his hand against the clear side of the vat. I open my eyes, somehow knowing he is there. I press my hand against the clear wall and we smile at each other.

But I still don’t understand.

Why, oh why, would he do such a thing?

I created you to become my lovely Lisa. We were together eighteen years and I missed her more than life itself.

Lisa?

You became her and we got to say all the things we never got around to saying when she was alive. I had always been so busy with work, but then I got another chance. It was a brief but magical time.

We sit quiet. The windows fog up. Eventually, he speaks again.

I still love her and miss her and think about her. But after that night, the deep and horrible pain was gone. My heart was able to heal.

Yes, I remember now!

And then I slipped away. Into the night.

You did.

So I was your daughter because you created me. Then I became your wife for a night, because that’s what I was made for. But who am I now?

Tears flow from his eyes. He crumples in upon himself like a paper sack and pulls his hand away. He has no answer to give.

I crawl from the back to the front passenger seat. He won’t look at me. His gaze is fixed on his lap. His shoulders shake with quiet sobs. I reach over and take one of his hands in both of mine.

I say: Look at me.

It takes him a long time but he looks. I begin to change. This time I become somebody he has never seen before, but our minds are joined and so he knows who it is.

Isabelle? My God. This can’t be. It’s you. Isabelle!

His wife lost her in the first trimester. That was nine years ago. I feel myself shrinking down to child size. I giggle, my voice airy and carefree.

Hi, Daddy.

What I’ve done! What I made of you! It was a sin. I created you for my own selfish ends.

I pull his head onto my tiny shoulders and let him weep. I tell him everything is okay. I don’t need to know who I am. I don’t need a horse or strawberry ice cream or mystery novels with cats in them. I have everything I need.

I have a father who loves me.

I have a name.

My name is Isabelle.

Author’s Note: This story, along with my other changeling tales, is a way of exploring the experience of being adrift, socially invisible, and without personal identity.

Seth Chambers was born with a Pentel Rolling Writer in hand and has been pathologically addicted to writing ever since. In his quest for life experience, he has worked as an army medic, mental health counselor, farm hand, wilderness guide, bike messenger and ESL teacher. His writings have appeared in F&SF, Daily SF, Fantasy Scroll, Isotropic Fiction, and Perihelion SF. His novella, “In Her Eyes,” was a nominee for the Theodore Sturgeon Award and included in Prime Book’s, The 2015 Year’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy Novellas.

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The Best of Toasted Cake 2015-2017

written by David Steffen

Toasted Cake is back! After the last Best of Toasted Cake list for the year 2014, Tina Connolly decided to put her idiosyncratic podcast on hiatus. With a young child in the house and books on deadline, Tina needed to find more time. But she has missed it enough, and she has decided to run Toasted Cake for a school year run, and revived the podcast in September for that reason. So, this list covers the last few months before hiatus in 2015, the one story Toasted Cake slipped quietly into the feed in 2016, and the fall portion of the school year run of the revival, for a total of 35 stories considered for this list.

Toasted Cake has already raised author pay rates, so now pays at least 1 cent/word, which is also exciting. It sounds like Tina might want to run the podcast longer term if there’s some Patreon support, so if you love some weird flash fiction you might want to consider tossing in a couple bucks a month.

Toasted Cake did publish one of my own stories, my only original story published in 2017, “Cake, and Its Implications” published just before the end of the year, a funny flash story about an android who loves cake. But of course I don’t consider my own fiction for these lists.

Note that I did end up including a story that Toasted Cake reprinted that I originally published (#2 on the list). I decided to make the list one item longer than it would usually be to accomodate for this, so that a story I published wouldn’t bump another off the list.

Every short story that is eligible for Hugo nominations this year which were first published by Toasted Cake are marked with an asterisk (*).

Welcome back, Tina, and long live Toasted Cake!

The List

1. “Un Opera nello Spazio (A Space Opera)” by Oliver Buckram
A space opera that’s an actual opera.

2. “St. Roomba’s Gospel” by Rachael K. Jones
A sentient Roomba lives in a church and tries to help preach the gospel to the congregation.

3. “Copy Machine” by Shane Halbach
What would you do if you could copy yourself?

4. “Carla at the Off-Planet Tax Return Helpline” by Caroline M. Yoachim
The story is exactly what the title sounds like. 🙂

5. “Beholder” by Sarah Grey
In a world where everything is defined by social media popularity, how do those of us who are less savvy get along?

6. “So You Have Been Claimed By a Magical Cat” by Beth Cato*
Also exactly what the title sounds like. 🙂

Honorable Mentions

“Gunfight Over an 8-bit Rhythm Two-Step Skank at the O.K. Corral” by Ken Brady

The Best of Strange Horizons 2017

written by David Steffen

Strange Horizons is a freely available online speculative fiction zine that also publishes nonfiction and poetry. Their editors-in-chief are Jane Crowley and Kate Dollardhyde. Their senior fiction editors are Lila Garrott, Catherine Krahe, An Owomoyela, and Vajra Chandresekera, and their podcast is edited, hosted, and usually read by Anaea Lay. They publish a variety of styles of stories and have regularly attracted award nominations in recent years. All of the stories and poetry in the zine are published in the podcast. This list covers all of the stories published since the last Best of Strange Horizons list posted here on November 9, 2015. In that timeframe, Strange Horizons published about 53 stories (it’s hard to get an exact count because the poetry podcasts are mixed in the same feed).

This year they posted extra episodes as part of a Resistance special issue after the US presidential inauguration in January, and hosted a special issue in October for Arabic translations.

This year they added a new feature when they reached a fundraising goal to add Spanish translations.

Stories that are eligible for this year’s Hugo awards are marked with an asterisk (*).

The List

1. “Krace is Not a Highway” by Scott Vanyur*
An AI designed to monitor highway repair conditions keeps on going, doing its best, after societal collapse.

2. “Utopia, LOL?” by Jamie Wahls*
A person woken up in the extreme far future where humanity is organized by a benevolent AI master, guided by one of the few humans still coherent enough to guide him.

3. “Oshun, Inc.” by Jordan Ifueko*
Goddesses who live by eating shards of people’s souls try to find ideal candidates.

4. “Owl Vs. the Neighborhood Watch” by Darcie Little Badger*
A young modern-day Apache woman who is visited by Owl as a harbinger of unspecific disaster does her best to guard her neighborhood against it as best she can.

5. “Three May Keep a Secret” by Carlie St. George*
Two teenagers help each other fight elements of their past that are literally haunting them.

Honorable Mentions

“Sasabonsam” by Tara Campbell*

“The Dead Father Cookbook” by Ashley Blooms*

“Only Calculate the Motion of Heavenly Bodies” by Marcia Richards*

The Best of Cast of Wonders 2017

written by David Steffen

Cast of Wonders is the YA branch of the Escape Artists podcasts, edited by Marguerite Kenner, covering all speculative genres and aiming to appeal to YA audiences. I think their definition of YA is significantly broader than most, which I see as a positive thing–I had very broad tastes when I was a young adult, so it makes sense to me anyway.

After Cast of Wonders joined Escape Artists in 2016, they increased their pay rates which helped them become qualified as a SFWA-qualifying market, which is a great sign of progress.

In 2017 they produced weekly episodes very regularly, and during their Banned Books week they published a story a day for an extra stretch of bonus content, for a total of about 63 stories

Cast of Wonders reprinted one of my own stories in 2017, titled “Always There”, about a grandmother who has maybe died but not yet admitted it (it is an episode on the subject of grief).

Every short story that is eligible for Hugo and Nebula nominations this year which were first published by Podcastle are marked with an asterisk (*)

The List

1. “Lost In Translation” by Afalstein Kloosterman*
The ancient texts prophecying the chosen one are… hard to translate. This has caused some problems seeking the fulfillment of those prophecies.

2. “Random Play All and the League of Awesome” by Shane Halbach
Teenagers with debatable superpowers form a semi-superhero team.

3. “More Than Machines Will Fall to Rust” by Rachael K. Jones*
A pair of friends become superhero and archenemy, can they rekindle their friendship?

4. “The Scent that Treason Brings” by Holly Schofield*
A bookbinder in a hive society decides to rebel against the oppressive leadership.

5. “Cross the Street” by Marie Vibbert*
When city design makes it harder and harder for poor people to survive, it can become an obstacle to even get from place to place.

6. “Single Parent” by Sarah Gailey*
Great story about a widowed father trying his best who is called into his kid’s room and finds a real monster there.

Honorable Mentions

“Contractual Obligations” by Jaime O. Mayer*

“Brothers in Stitches” by Dantzel Cherry*

“Strong as Stone” by Effie Seiberg