Hugo Short Story Review: “Totaled” by Kary English

written by David Steffen

“Totaled” by Kary English was first published in Galaxy’s Edge magazine, edited by Mike Resnick.  Galaxy’s Edge posted the story for free after the announcement of the Hugo ballot so you can read it for yourself if you like.

The story is told from the point of view of a disembodied brain extracted from a woman’s body after her body is “totaled” in a car accident.  Before the accident she had been a member of the research team that made this possible.  A rider on her insurance dictated that if she died or got totaled her tissues would be donated to her research lab–including her brain.  At first she can only sense from the outside nerve by feeling vibrations in the vascular tissue, but as the experiment advances she is connected to more peripherals, including sensory apparatus, and she can find ways to communicate outward as well because they are scanning her brain.  She tries to communicate with her research partner Randy, who doesn’t know that the brain he’s using was his partner’s.

I enjoyed this story.  The character is thrown directly into a difficult situation where she literally has only her brains as an asset and has to figure how to get through this situation with nothing on her side.  To me it felt kind of like a golden age science fiction story where it’s all about a scientist pitted against a brain problem, but with the un-golden-age characteristic that the protagonist is an intelligent woman scientist, so that’s a bonus.

There were high stakes and a difficult problem to solve, but although the stakes have plenty to keep the tension up, I didn’t feel emotionally connected to it the way that I really want to connect to a story.  I don’t know exactly why that was–perhaps the focus on the intellectual problem over other factors, or I just wasn’t feeling the personal stakes for personal reasons, I’m not entirely sure.  So, in the end I enjoyed the story but it didn’t blow me away the way I really want from an award story.

 

Hugo Short Story Review: “A Single Samurai” by Steven Diamond

written by David Steffen

baenbookmonsters_“A Single Samurai” by Steven Diamond was first published in The Baen Big Book of Monsters published by Baen Books.

In this story a mountain-sized kaiju has arisen in Japan, rising from beneath the land itself where the landscape had built up around it.  The monster is moving across the countryside, crushing everything in its path.  A samurai has survived its uprising where so many others haven’t by riding the kaiju as it rose up and climbing up its back even as the soil and trees and rocks shift off the kaiju as it walks.  To save Japan he has to finish his climb and find some way to kill the monster.

This was my favorite of the category, and earned my vote.  I am not well-versed in Japanese culture, so I couldn’t say how authentic the viewpoint was, but from my layman’s eye it worked well enough for me.  The story is very short, and doesn’t overstay its welcome–it kept me interested from beginning to end.  The resolution made sense in retrospect but I didn’t see it coming.  The story is so short and the premise is relatively simple, so that there’s not a lot else I can say about the story without spoiling it.

The Hugo packet included the entire collection, but this is the only story in the collection I read, so I can’t comment on what I think of the volume as a whole–if you didn’t register for WorldCon and get the Hugo packet, I think that the collection is the way to get the story.

DP FICTION #5: “Not a Bird” by H.E. Roulo

The baby’s crying woke me from dead slumber. My heart pounded, but I didn’t move. I dreaded holding my baby. Guilt, it seems, overpowers fear. I draped my feet over the edge of the bed to search for slippers.

The screaming reached pitches no human throat should emit. I winced, accidently brushing Sean’s sleeping shoulder. He’d turned off his audio inputs, since he had work tomorrow. My maternity leave lasted another eight weeks, and we’d agreed I’d handle nights but I was tempted to shake the bed so he’d awaken.

My slippers slapped the cold floor. Ocean lay in her bassinet, her howls rising in peaks and valleys above and below my ears’ range.

Sean couldn’t hear her. I could return to bed and cover my head.

Ashamed, I steeled myself. Pinfeathers prickled my palm as I supported her head and lifted.

Vague green eyes searched beyond my face.

We’d checked the box for tetrachromat vision—an easy choice. Once we were dreaming of our future child, it was hard to stop. Designing her became like adding options on a new car. After all, our after-market mods had attracted us to each other.

Sean’d said, “We chose to be transhuman, Chrissy. She’ll have the best gifts from birth.”

In the rocking chair I pressed her to my chest and she latched. Parrot-blue feathers lined her scalp, difficult and potentially traumatic to add later in life. Her eyes slid past me, tracking light, or infrared, or magnetic fields that lead birds south.

“Except I didn’t want a bird,” I said.

I pressed my nose to her, using my electrically stimulated sense of smell. Inhaling dusty fluff, I snorted and recoiled.

She grumbled and reattached. It wasn’t fair to her, but her extraordinary modifications left me wondering, “How much of me is left in her?”

I tipped my head, too weary to watch her nurse now that she’d gotten a good latch. My fingers rubbed her bare foot.

It wasn’t that she needed to carry my genes. People loved their adopted children. My fingers slowed on the pink skin of her foot. Sometimes I didn’t feel she was of the same species.

“Transhuman!” Sean liked to say, as if knowing the label meant he’d joined the club. “That’s where we’re all headed. Ocean will be envied.”

Maybe I cried because I was tired of feedings every two hours, but how could I complain? It was my own doing. When I’d handed Ocean to my mother, she’d pulled the newborn away, as if protecting her from parents who would do this to their child, who would make her into something new.

So we’d suffer on, together, trying to connect in the long hours of the night.

“Honey?” Sean said from the doorway. The scales grafted over his shoulders glimmered. He’d left them off his cheeks, since his employers frowned on mods, but he was sure the world would be more ready when Ocean grew up.

I sniffed.

“You’ve been gone a long time.” He kissed the baby and set her into her crib. We held our breath, but she exhaled and remained silent.

As we left, he slipped the door nearly shut.

“I can’t…” I clutched him, speechless. He’d think I blamed him, even though we’d both made choices.

“You’re tired.”

“And I expected that, but it’s supposed to feel worth it … She isn’t anything to me. She’s barely human.”

“All babies are barely human. You’re tired and second guessing yourself. I’ll stay home, and you can rest. Okay?”

“You have to go in,” I protested.

We returned to bed.

Sean said, “All parents gets scared. That we won’t be good parents. That we didn’t do everything right. But what she needs now is food and sleep. And when she needs the next thing, we’ll see she gets it. She’s just a baby—our baby.”

“Our baby,” I repeated.

“And our baby could never have been ordinary.” He rolled onto me.

I slid him to the side, glad Ocean had fed.

He nuzzled my neck. “Bodies change, that’s not what matters, right? We’re going to get old, but you’ll still love me?”

“I’ll love you,” I agreed, grabbing a tissue off the headboard. I wiped my nose then squirmed beneath his comforting weight. “Mods and all.”

He stopped kissing my tattooed circuits. “You like some of my mods best. Want me to show you?”

I giggled.

Ocean skipped a feeding, letting us sleep for four solid hours. Suddenly forever didn’t seem so insurmountable. And when her pinfeathers grew in, they were beautiful and unique, just as she was.

***

“Mama?” Ocean asked.

I clutched my granddaughter, finding it hard to look away as I remembered Ocean at that age. I shook my head, amazed forty years had passed.

My glance flickered to Ocean, surprised her feathers were lifted.

“What’s wrong, darling?”

Tears glistened in her eyes. She pushed the baby’s blanket back to show eyes, a hazy baby-blue, and pink skin.

Since Ocean’s birth, they’d outlawed pre-birth modifications, and frowned on adaptations before the age of sixteen unless illness applied. Cases of genetic enhancement had gone to trial as child abuse, though we’d luckily never suffered more than strange looks and clucks from judgmental teachers. Bioconservative legislation had outlawed designer genes. Sometimes, at the playground, I’d regretted making the choices for her, but I’d never again regretted having her.

Ocean’s green eyes measured fields I couldn’t see. “She’s…”

“Lovely.” I smoothed her cheek.

Ocean sighed. “She looks nothing like me. As if we come from separate worlds.”

The newborn seemed to fit in my arms—because I knew how to hold a baby. Being a grandmother suited me, better than being a mother had.

“Oh, darling, let me tell you a story,” I said softly, standing to place the newborn in her bassinet.

© 2015 by H.E. Roulo

 

Author’s Note: Transhumanism, the artificial advancement of mankind, fascinated me and I knew there was a story there. In my research, I focused on technology and recent advances. Fortunately, I attended a panel on the topic. Many of the participants admitted that, like a lot of new technologies, sex was a major motivation for body modification. However, they explored larger questions of self-improvement and experiencing the world. I was impressed by the counter-culture feeling, and their awareness that what they wanted might not be right for everyone. I left thinking more about the people than the technology.

 

HERoulo_Headshot_200x300Heather Roulo is a Pacific-Northwest author. She has been published in more than a dozen magazines, anthologies, and podcasts. Recent short stories have appeared in Nature and Fantasy’s special Women Destroy Fantasy issue. Her podcast novel Fractured Horizon was a Parsec award Finalist in 2009. The first book in her Plague Masters Series will be released from Permuted Press in April 2015. Find out more at heroulo.com or on twitter @hroulo.

 

 

 

 

 

 

If you enjoyed the story you might also want to visit our Support Page, or read the earlier story offerings:
DP Fiction #1: “Taste the Whip” by Andy Dudak
DP Fiction #2: “Virtual Blues” by Lee Budar-Danoff
DP Fiction #3: “In Memoriam” by Rachel Reddick
DP Fiction #4: “The Princess in the Basement” by Hope Erica Schultz

Hugo Graphic Story Review 2015

written by David Steffen

The Hugo Graphic Story category is the one that I look forward to the most, because I enjoy the medium, but I don’t really keep up with them on a regular basis, so the Hugo packet catches me up on some of the popular comics of the previous year.

I only read the stories that were included in the Hugo packet, so did not read Zombie Nation #2, which was not included.


msmarvel1.  Ms. Marvel Volume 1: No Normal, written by G. Willow Wilson, illustrated by Adrian Alphona and Jake Wyatt, (Marvel Comics)

Kamala Khan is a sixteen-year-old Pakistani-American Muslim living in Jersey City with her family, trying to figure out how she fits into the world, at least when she’s not reading comics or gaming.  She doesn’t feel that she fits in with her peers who she has trouble relating to, but she also doesn’t feel in place at the mosque and she doesn’t feel comfortable in some of her family’s strict traditions.  One night she sneaks out of the house to go to a friend’s party and begins to exhibit strange abilities after she passes through a strange fog.  That first night she takes on the appearance of Carol Danvers in her old Ms. Marvel costume (Carol Danvers is now Captain Marvel), and she saves someone’s life.  She experiments with her newfound abilities and finds that she can alter her body’s size and shape in a variety of ways.  Taking on the name Ms. Marvel, and with a new costume built from a burkina (a traditional swim garb her mother bought for her which she has been too embarrassed to use)  In this first volume, she tries to decide what to with her abilities as she hones her skills.

Kamala Khan is one of Marvel’s most memorable characters in their recent push to diversify the stars of their comic lines.  Most of the original lines were made in the 1960’s and mostly star white men as the stars, so it’s a refreshing change to see more women, more varied ethnic backgrounds, and (for me at least) particularly interesting is to see a character with not only a religion, but a non-Christian religion–even in fiction in general it’s too rare to find religion as an element which is neither preached nor villified.  To see religion (and, again, a non-Christian religion especially) as an element in a comic book in that fashion is wonderful.

But I don’t like it merely for its diversity.  I found Kamala to be a very interesting and compelling character.  She’s a gamer and a comic fan, just like me, and I had my share of social difficulties at that age.  In some ways her situation remains me a young Peter Parker–with the split between high school social things and the superheroing, the reason that I think Spider-Man proved as popular as he has.

There are lots of fun little in-jokes for long-time science fiction fans to reward careful reading and examination of background art, as well as just some other jokes such as the cereal brand “G-M-Oh’s!”

I highly recommend reading this, whether you’re a long-time comics fan or new to the medium.  This is a rare comic that has made me want to get my first comic book subscription.

 

sex-criminals-vol-01-releases2.  Sex Criminals Volume 1: One Weird Trick, written by Matt Fraction, art by Chip Zdarsky (Image Comics)

Suzie is a librarian who discovered at a young age that she is different than other people in one important and secret way–whenever she experiences an orgasm, for a while afterward the world around her freezes and she is the only moving thing in this shimmering and immobile place she calls “the quiet”.  As an adult she finds another like her, a man name Jon, only realizing after they have sex and he is not frozen like the rest of the world.  This first volume covers both of their sexual histories, their meeting, their experimentation with the connection they’ve found over this strange shared ability, and their choice to rob a bank–the bank that is foreclosing on her library, the bank that he works for.

I enjoyed this quite a bit.  Because of the lewd subject material, it’s a hard book to make a blanket recommendation for.  It’s not a book that I’d bring up at a family reunion, for instance.   But I found the frank discussion of sex from both a woman and man’s point of view to be refreshing, including the discovery of sex when they were younger–a topic that is often near-taboo even though it’s a natural thing for children to discover masturbation long before they reach sexual maturity.  Some elements of it are pretty corny, but I thought they were corny in a good way–they hung a lantern on it and used it for laughs instead of trying to take everything too seriously.  I thought the volume was funny, refreshingly honest, and entertaining to read.  I found the choice to rob the bank a bit of stretch, but maybe not considering the powers that they have.  I’m curious to see where the series goes after this volume.

I really wish they’d chosen a different title, though.  I see what they were going for, since their bank-robbing relies on their sex-triggered ability, but usually “sex criminal” means a rapist or a child molester, not exactly what you’d consider the hero of a comic book.

 

rat-queens-vol-01-releases3.  Rat Queens Volume 1: Sass and Sorcery, written by Kurtis J. Weibe, art by Roc Upchurch (Image Comics)

The Rat Queens are a quartet of women adventurers hailing from the town of Palisade.  The group is made up of the elven mage Hannah, the dwarven warrior Violet (who has shaved her beard), atheist human cleric Dee, and the halfling thief Betty.  When they’re not out adventuring, they spend their time carousing, doing drugs (and candy in the case of Betty) and having large-scale destructive bar fights.  The town of Palisade has a bunch of mercenary/adventurer teams that are assigned tasks from time to time by the city government–after a particularly damaging barfight, the Rat Queens and other merc groups are all sent out on simultaneous missions but the missions turn unusually deadly–somebody has set ambushes to take out the mercs.

This comic was inspired by D&D games, and it shows–there’s a lot of fun, a lot of humor.  An all female fighting cast is refreshing, and it’s good to see a variety of body types of both men and women characters.  The characters were interesting and I liked to see the mix of men and women characters who treated each other as equals without sex having to be an element between them (but of course sometimes it is).  I liked some of the humor, other of it was a miss–I guess I’m not much of a carouser myself so that angle didn’t really interest me as much as the comic seemed to be aiming for.  The fight scenes were pretty cool to a degree but they often dialed up the violence to the point that it got to be a bit much for me at times, it felt a little bit like a Tarantino film here and there.

 

Saga_vol3-14.  Saga Volume 3, written by Brian K. Vaughan, illustrated by Fiona Staples (Image Comics))

Volume three, as with the earlier volumes, mostly focuses on Alana and Marko, a husband and wife of warring extraterrestrial races, and their newborn daughter.  They are fugitives from both bounty hunters and from the Android known as Prince IV of the ruling android royalty.  In this volume Alana and Marko and their ragtag crew take refuge at the home of revolutionary novelist D. Oswald Heist.

I read Volume 1 in the Hugo packet a couple years ago.  Volume 2 wasn’t in last year’s Hugo packet and I didn’t seek it out, so I’m sure I’m missing some important background for this story.  I was a little lukewarm on the first volume, but this one I warmed up to a little bit more.  There’s certainly some real personal stories told here, with Alana and Marko trying to figure out practical things like caring for a baby and trying to find an income stream when they are traveling fugitives, as well as having some more action-packed elements when different hostile groups cross paths.  I liked the art design of most of the characters, incorporating people we would recognize as varying races, but giving them further inhuman embellishments like horns, wings, single cyclopean eyes, etc.  The androids I still found rather hard to take seriously with their cathode-ray-tube TV heads, a design which is already outdated in our present, let alone in any future.

 

 

Review of Hugo Best Dramatic Presentation Long Form 2015

written by David Steffen

All of the nominees for this Hugo category this year were also nominees for the Ray Bradbury Award that goes with the Nebulas, which I reviewed over here.  At the time, Interstellar wasn’t available to rent yet, so I didn’t review that.  So, these are all repeats of that previous set of reviews, except Interstellar which I’ve watched since then.

1.  Edge of Tomorrow, Screenplay by Christopher McQuarrie and Jez Butterworth and John-Henry Butterworth (Warner Bros. Pictures)

Earth is under attack from an alien force known only as mimics, viciously deadly enemies that humans have only one battle against.  Major William Cage (Tom Cruise) works in PR for the US military and has been ordered to the frontier of the war in France.  The general in charge of the war effort orders Cage to go to the front lines to cover the war.  When Cage attempts to blackmail his way out of the mission, he is taken under arrest and dropped at the front with the claim that he had tried to go AWOL and so is quickly forced into service, given only the most passing training in the mechsuits that are standard issue, and dropped into battle with everyone else.  This area was supposed to be fairly quiet, but the battle here is intense.  Cage manages to kill one of the mimics, but dies in the act, only to wake up earlier in the day when he’d woken on the base in handcuffs after the general had him arrested. He dies again, and again, and again.  No one else has any memory of reliving the day except for Rita Vrataski (Emily Blunt), the super-soldier nicknamed “Full Metal Bitch” after she wreaked havoc against the mimics in the only battle against the mimics that the humans have won.  She confides that she had won that battle because she had gone through the same thing he had–as long as he dies he will always restart at the same time and place.

I avoided this movie in theaters, because I haven’t really gone to any Tom Cruise movies since he kindof went publicly nuts.  But I rented this one since it was nominated.  I thought Tom Cruise was back to old form in it, and even if you don’t like it, well you get to see him die literally dozens of times.  I thought Emily Blunt was especially good in her role as Rita, powerful but still affected by the PTSD of dying over and over and seeing so many die around her over.  The looping-after-death element makes for a cool dynamic when well-plotted and when placed against large enough obstacles, which was well done here.  Good spec FX, good casting all around, solidly entertaining.

2.  Interstellar, screenplay by Jonathan Nolan and Christopher Nolan, directed by Christopher Nolan (Paramount Pictures, Warner Bros. Pictures, Legendary Pictures, Lynda Obst Productions, Syncopy)

Widespread crop blight has put the world’s food supply in jeopardy, and the sustainability of life on earth is in serious question.  Much of the population is focused on farming efforts, pushing back against the inevitable as the Midwest turns back into a dust bowl.  Cooper (Matthew McConaghey) is a widowed farmer living with his father-in-law, son, and daughter.  His daughter Murphy believes she has a poltergeist in her room that knocks her books from her shelf, and though Cooper doesn’t believe in ghosts, he encourages her to measure and record the things she sees.  They find that there are binary coordinates coded into waves of gravity–they follow those coordinates and find a top secret research facility led by Dr. John Brand (Michael Caine).  A wormhole has opened up near Saturn that opens to an unknown location in another galaxy, and they have been working in secret to colonize any inhabitable planets they may find on the other end of the wormhole.  Some people have already been sent through to scout, and some information has been relayed which suggests some of the planets might be inhabitable.  They recruit Cooper to pilot the mission.  He reluctantly agrees, for the sake of saving his family, even though he will miss his children growing up while he is gone.  He goes on the mission with two others, Dr. Amelia Brand (Anne Hathaway) and two other scientists, as well as two repurposed military robots, TARS and CASE.  While Cooper and the others continue on their mission, Dr. Brand and the other scientists on Earth try to solve the remaining problems necessary for the colonization effort to be successful if Cooper and the others can find a habitable planet.

I was skeptical of Matthew McConaghey, because I haven’t seen him in a lot of things that I thought he was particularly good in, but this was probably the best acting I’ve seen from him–I thought he was very convincing.  The casting all around was very good, no complaints there.  I thought as the movie progressed that the convenient reveal of the wormhole was kind of a deus ex machina in terms of this universe, not in terms of the movie, since it appears early in the movie.  It’s clear that the people in the movie in general are of no better preparation for the end of humanity than we are in our world, but in their world a convenient solution shows up right when it’s needed.  This ends up making some sense later on, but it kind of had me skeptical as well.

The robots were kind of weird.  I like robots, don’t get me wrong, but they were rectangular prisms that usually seemed to be too awkward to be threatening military units, though they did show their mobility and abilities better later in the movie.  I was often distracted by the weird design, though, when I was supposed to be paying attention to other things.

There are a lot of good, convincing special effects, tense moments, a lot of good emotional tension with family’s split by the tension and especially with Cooper fighting so hard to succeed at his mission–even if he can never see his family again he is fighting for their survival.  This is a major theme in the movie, used to good effect, the discussion of of how family love like that, while we generally think of it as positive, can make you consider only your personal relationships over the fate of humanity, choosing personal connections over the survival of the species.

3.  The Lego Movie, Screenplay by Phil Lord & Christopher Miller  (Warner Bros. Pictures)

Emmett Brickowski is just a regular guy, pretty much the poster child for averageness in a world of Legos.  He does everything exactly the way he’s supposed to do, but no one pays much attention to him.  He meets a strange woman name WyldStyle who tells him he is the subject of a prophecy, the most interesting person in the world and the one who will save everyone from President Business who rules over all of Brickburg.  WyldStyle is a master builder, a rare class of lego person who can take random Lego parts and turn them into a variety of imaginative things.  She is part of an organized rebellion of master builders, and Emmett joins them in their fight.

I enjoyed this story thoroughly from beginning to end.  The voice acting is great all around (particularly that of Chris Pratt as Emmett, Nick Offerson as Metal Beard, Will Arnett as Batman, and Liam Neeson as Good Cop/Bad Cop).  Lots of fun, weird imagination, and as they see out of the worlds they travel and into the real world there’s actually a relatable real life story tied into it.  Great stuff all around.

 4.  Guardians of the Galaxy, Written by James Gunn and Nicole Perlman (Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures)

I hadn’t heard of this Marvel franchise until this movie came out, one of the more obscure ones.  In 1988 a young Peter Quill is abducted by aliens by a band of space pirates and is raised as one of them.  In the present day he has his own ship and has grown up to be a bounty hunter (Starlord by name), taking whatever odd jobs he can find for money.  After taking what seems to be a pretty straightforward job to find and deliver an orb, he’s suddenly the focus of attention from the assassin Gamora as well as the bounty hunters Groot (a tree person) and Rocket (a one-of-a-kind genetically modified raccoon) who are all after the orb.  In the scuffle for the orb, they are all arrested and locked in a prison. Gamora tells them of her adoptive father Thanos who wants the orb for nefarious plans. They decide their only chance of escape is to work together, with help from another prisoner Drax the Destroyer, and stop Thanos.

Solidly fun, another Chris Pratt work, probably my favorite role that I have seen him in.  Great casting all around, with Bradley Cooper memorably voicing Rocket.  Action-packed, solidly fun popcorn movie.  Lots of memorable lines, memorable fights, really no complaints all around. 

5.  Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Screenplay by Christopher Markus & Stephen McFeely (Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures)

Two years after the Battle of New York (depicted in The Avengers), Captain Steve Rogers aka Captain America (Chris Evans) is working for Nick Fury at SHIELD, and trying to adjust to modern society.  SHIELD is on the brink of completing one of its most ambitious projects, a set of three helicarriers that fly in low orbit and link to a network of spy satellites that are meant to find and kill threats to society all over the globe.  Not long before the project comes to fruition, Nick Fury is hit with a large scale and no-holds-barred attack led by a mysterious assassin known only as the Winter Soldier.  Despite all of Fury’s security measures, he barely escapes with his life to warn Rogers that SHIELD is compromised.  Rogers works together with Natalia Romanoff aka the Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) to get to the bottom of it.

This was one of my least favorite Marvel movies in the recent years of the franchise, which almost always produces movies I enjoy.  There was certainly a lot going on, but the movie was quite long and it seemed like the fight scenes were drawn out way way too long, as if the director thought the movie needed to be padded.  Neither the fight scenes nor the non-fight scenes did a lot to hold my attention.  It might just be because I’m more interested in the superheroes with more fun powers instead of just the shield.  For me the highlight of the movie was the platonic friendship between Rogers and Romanoff–a fun dynamic there.

DP FICTION #4: “The Princess in the Basement” by Hope Erica Schultz

I woke when the boy came through the window. He looked about eight, all dark eyes in a brown face.

“Don’t touch the floor,” I said.

He startled. “Why not?”

“The monster under my bed will get you.”

He relaxed. “I’m too old to believe in monsters. You need a better lock for your window. And bars. Everybody in the neighborhood has bars.”

I tried to imagine bars on the window. Would it be more a prison?

“It’s not safe for you here. You need to go home.”

He shrugged, settling cross-legged on the dresser below the window. “My parents are fighting. I’ll go home in a few hours.”

It was dark outside. It was always dark when I woke. “What’s your name?”

“I’m Carlos. I’m the youngest. What’s yours?”

“I’m Jane. I’m the youngest, too.” Or I had been.

Carlos swung his legs. “You don’t talk like you’re from Boston.”

“I’m not, originally.” Was Boston even in England? Where had my curse taken me?

“What’s on your leg?” He hopped to the floor, and I cried out. Fürst rumbled from under my bed, and Carlos jumped back onto the dresser. “What was that?”

“I told you.” I swallowed hard. “You need to go, now, Carlos. This isn’t a safe place for you.”

He opened his mouth, and one green claw came out from under the bed. It could have encircled a cantaloupe, or a man’s head.

“Go,” I repeated, and he went, out into the night.

I slept.

**

I woke when the man entered the window. Moonlight glinted against a knife in his hand. He slipped to the floor and Fürst slid out from under the bed, scales glinting green. Fürst unhinged his jaw, grasped the intruder with his claws, and swallowed him whole. The knife clanged against the floor, but the man never had a chance to scream.

I slept.

***

I woke when the boy came through the window. It was Carlos, grown older.

“I thought perhaps I dreamed it all, but you’re still here. I don’t think you’re any older. Is the monster still here, too?”

There was a tiny rumble from Fürst under the bed, and I smiled reluctantly. “You shouldn’t have come back.” I hesitated, fighting curiosity. “How long has it been?”

“Four years.” He leaned forward, carefully. “There was something around your leg. I tried not to remember that, but I did.”

I shrugged. “There’s a monster under my bed, and you’re worried about my legs?”

He looked at me with the straight look I remembered. “It looked like a chain.”

I sighed. “It is a chain, Carlos. It’s mostly for show; I’m only awake when someone enters the room, and Fürst won’t let me leave the bed.”

His brow wrinkled. “Fürst?”

“It means Prince. My guardian, my jailor…my monster.”

He nodded as though that made sense.

“I’ll be back,” he said, turning to go.

“You sho—” I began, but he was gone.

I slept.

***

He was older again. He tossed me a small cloth bag.

“They’re lock picks. I’m going to teach you how to use them.”

I blinked. “Why?”

He shook his head. “Chica, it’s easier to get out if you’re not chained.”

I looked at the bag, at him. “How long?”

“Another four years. I had to learn how, so I could teach you.”

“Will you be hanged, if you’re caught with these?”

Carlos shook his head. “We’re not much on hanging people.”

He demonstrated the picks and I struggled to mimic him. The lock resisted my best efforts, but he only nodded. “I’ll be back,” he said again.

I slept.

***

The next few times he brought me locks to practice with. When I conquered the easiest, he replaced it with a harder one, and one harder still. I noted that his clothing changed—light clothing to heavy, then to light again. A mustache had grown in on his upper lip, then a small beard. He was man now, not boy.

The night that I opened my manacle he carried a leather bag. I stared at my free ankle. “Now what?”

“Will Fürst hurt you, if you touch the floor?”

“No, he’ll just carry me back to the bed.”

“Good.” He opened the bag, pulled out a hammer. “Catch.”

I caught it, then a box of nails. Last he sent the edge of a rope ladder. “You’ll need to nail this into the bed frame to anchor it.”

He demonstrated and I mimicked him, nail after nail. When I pushed against it, it held my weight.

Carlos waited as I pulled myself up onto it. A step, two—I slipped, and my foot brushed the floor.

Fürst erupted, tail lashing, and gathered me up in his great claws. I smelled carrion on his breath as he set me gently onto my bed. My prison.

I was angry, suddenly, and barely waited for Fürst to settle before starting again. One step, two, three, four. I slipped but held on grimly, regaining the rung with my bare foot. Five, six, seven…then Carlos caught my hand. I scrambled up beside him onto the dresser, then up, out, through the open window.

The night was cold but brilliantly lit with balls of fire perched on metal trees. Carlos closed the window behind us and led me to a strange low carriage without horses.

“Where are we going?” Should I have asked before? Did I even care?

“To my mother’s apartment. Mom always told me a woman didn’t need a prince to rescue her. She needed a friend, to help her rescue herself.” He grinned. “You already had a Prince, and he didn’t look like a keeper to me.”

No kiss, no guarantee that there would ever be one. No castle, no piles of gold. I sighed happily as he helped me into the carriage.

© 2015 by Hope Erica Schultz

 

Author’s Note: Boston is, to me, the natural setting for fairy tales in America.  The old brownstones look timeless, as though they have seen centuries pass.  (They have.)  Many have basement windows, and most of these have wrought iron bars across them.  To my younger mind, they looked like prison cells, sinister and strange.  It was the perfect place for Jane’s story to unfold.

 

Hope Ring 2 M.D.Hope Erica Schultz writes Science Fiction and Fantasy for teens and adults.  Her stories have appeared in Fireside Magazine Issue 18, Siren’s Call Issue 13, and the YA anthology Stepmothers and the Big Bad Wolf. When not reading, writing, tramping through the woods, or pretending to be someone else, she keeps busy at 1 1/2 jobs, a happily chaotic family, one dog, four cats, and a flock of wild turkeys who think they own the back yard. Follow her on Facebook at www.facebook.com/hope.schultz.14 and at her website.

 

 

 

 

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Anime Review: Parasyte -the maxim-

written by Laurie Tom

parasyteThough I have a lot of affection for Parasyte, my experience is colored by having been a huge fan of the manga for years. I recognize that adaptations need to make changes and that doesn’t bother me. There are some things that I think were improved by having done so, but at the same time, there are others that absolutely did not bother me in the manga that just felt flat when translated into the animated medium.

Parasyte is the story of Shinichi Izumi, a high school senior who is the victim of a failed attempt by a parasyte organism to take over his brain. Instead of burrowing into his brain, the parasyte landed in his hand and matured partially up his arm. The result is that he and Migi, the parasyte, are two sentient beings that share one body, with Migi controlling Shinichi’s right hand and arm while he is awake.

Normally parasytes gain self-awareness when they take over and mature in their host’s brain, and at that time they gain the urge to feed on their host’s species as prey. Needless to say, when the parasytes first appear, it looks like there’s a rabid ax murderer on the loose leaving body parts all over the place, but with time the parasytes learn to clean up their act to avoid drawing attention to themselves and their feeding grounds.

The parasytes are every bit as intelligent as humans without being entirely human themselves. They do not have emotions, relying on what is practical and what is instinct, and they are able to distort the parts of the body they assimilate into a living weapon (so when parasytes fight it looks like the formerly human heads of their hosts turn into bladed tentacles). But despite being powerful predators of humanity, they have a great deal of difficulty in understanding how human behavior works, which is a debilitating weakness for creatures who rely on disguise to avoid attention.

This is the crazy reality that Shinichi finds himself grappling with when everyone else in Japan doesn’t have the slightest idea that there are real monsters going around eating people. The only reason he knows is because of Migi, who is both friend and foil. Though Migi possesses the cold logic of parasytes, he also understands that if he is to survive, he must convince his human host to work alongside him, which results in Migi having a better understanding of how humans tick. At the same time, Shinichi teaches Migi about compassion and how complicated humans are when emotions and practicality intersect.

It’s an interesting play between them, with Migi being willing to give Shinichi possibly false reassurances simply because he knows it will make him feel better, and Shinichi explaining to Migi why using a wall of people as a shield against another parasyte is an unethical tactic. Arguably the relationship between Shinichi and Migi is really what makes the show, as both of them gain the understanding and empathy for each other’s kind.

The themes in parasyte are thoughtful; about humanity’s place in the world, about each species’ right to exist, about the nature of coexistence and who gets to set the rules.

But the pacing is off, and this is where I don’t like the anime so much.

Parasyte follows the manga surprisingly closely, with many shots being drawn from the same angles as the original panels. Its devotion to following the source material even results in episodes where the biggest moment happens in the middle of the episode, or shortly after the beginning, and I can’t help feeling that part of the reason is a lack of desire to trim or expand the original story.

This problem will likely be mitigated for future viewers who can watch as many episodes as they like in one sitting, but waiting a week between simulcasts made the pacing annoying.

I also think that Parasyte loses a bit of its edge from the sanitization needed to get it on TV. The first episode is fairly faithful to the manga and left quite a bit in (though with minimal blood), but after that point most of the gore is off-screen with characters reacting to it.

While I’m rarely a fan of gore, I’d argue that it’s important in Parayste because one of the key points is how much of what makes us human doesn’t make sense, and our sensitivity to what a predator instinctively does in nature is a part of that. The gore isn’t created because the parasytes are sick bastards. The gore is created because the parasytes are going about their business and doing what’s most practical (for them). By not showing this, the anime’s impact is blunted in its ability to widen the gap between what the audience tells itself it believes, and what the audience actually believes.

But there are good parts to the adaptation too.

There weren’t a whole lot of changes made, but when the anime did deviate from the manga, the show was noticeably stronger. Yuko was promoted from a one-off character to an actual member of the supporting cast, which paid off in the Shimada arc since the viewer had additional emotional investment in her survival. And the anime made Kana much more sympathetic, taking a character I really didn’t care for and making her someone worth worrying about.

The manga was written in the late 80s/early 90s in the pre-cell phone era, but Parasyte for the most part makes the transition to modern day well. School uniforms and hair styles are updated and a scene where camera film needed to be destroyed was easily revised to where the camera itself was taken apart. The only part that really didn’t work and too easily telegraphed that something bad was going to happen was when a character forgot her cell phone, whereas there was no cell phone to worry about in the original.

I think the anime has less to offer those already familiar with the manga, but for those who have never experienced the manga in the first place, it’s a good entry point with substantially less gore for those sensitive about on screen violence. There really isn’t anything else quite like it, particularly if one does not mind mulling over the nature of existence in the same series as human-chomping monsters.

Number of Episodes: 24

Pluses: faithful to the original award-winning manga, poses interesting questions about the nature of human morality, Shinichi/Migi dynamic owns the series

Minuses: strange episode pacing with oddly chosen cliffhangers, in a couple cases the update from the 80s to present day results in characters being stupid in order for plot to happen, music score is uneven with some scenes have emotionally jarring musical selections

Parasyte -the maxim- is currently streaming at Crunchyroll and is available subtitled. Sentai Filmworks has licensed this for eventual retail distribution in the US.

laurietomLaurie Tom is a fantasy and science fiction writer based in southern California. Since she was a kid she has considered books, video games, and anime in roughly equal portions to be her primary source of entertainment. Laurie is a previous grand prize winner of Writers of the Future and since then her work has been published in Galaxy’s Edge, Strange Horizons, and Crossed Genres.

Anime Review: Death Parade

written by Laurie Tom

deathparade

The concept of Death Parade is nothing new. Stories of people being judged after death goes back to the earliest religions. But what makes it special is watching the various souls who pass through for judgment and how the judgment process itself is potentially unfair.

Death Parade has some manic customers, but the series itself is understated, letting peoples’ lives, and deaths, unfold for the audience at the same time as it does for the mysterious woman who is Decim’s assistant; Decim being the arbiter who decides the fate of the people being judged.

The woman without a name has no memories and serves as the audience’s surrogate because she does not know what she is doing in this purgatory world where the staff look like elevator attendants and barkeeps, and the souls of the deceased come to be judged.

All the inhabitants there are neither alive nor dead, having been created specifically for the purposes they carry out. Decim is an arbiter who works in a bar called Quindecim (Latin for “fifteen”) where he periodically receives two souls that died at the same time, which means they will be judged together.

While this sometimes means they died in the same event, other times it’s just coincidence and they do not know each other at all.

The memories of the dead are partially suppressed, leaving them unaware of being dead and how they died. Once in the bar, they are convinced to play a game with their freedom and their lives at stake. The game is typically competitive, designed to bring out the worst in the players as all their regrets return and they come to realize that their lives are already over.

But still, people are complicated. Death doesn’t change that, and even after death there are surprises.

The first episode is a whopper of plot twists and revelations, focusing on a married couple, their history together, and how they ended up dying. But the real stinger comes in the second episode, which shows the same story from the perspective of Decim’s assistant and turns everything on its head once more.

Though there is a certain episodic-ness to the story, with new characters constantly coming and going for judgment, there is an larger overarching storyline. I don’t really care for the higher level scheming, because I think it raises too many questions about how the whole afterlife system works and who put it there in the first place, but I do like the friendship between Decim and his unnamed assistant.

It takes some time to grow during the early episodes, but it becomes clear that the inhuman Decim is being changed by his amnesiac companion, who clearly wasn’t created in the same fashion he was. Her history and her beliefs become the emotional core around which the rest of the series revolves as she becomes increasingly disillusioned with the idea that it’s possible to judge a person without having really known them.

Death Parade surprised me, largely because the woman’s progression is so gradual I didn’t think too much about it until the last few episodes. When I started this show, I did not think I would end up needing a tissue in the end, but I think anyone’s who has experienced the loss of a loved one will be able to relate.

I highly recommend this series. It does get a little lost in the middle, but it’s short and packs a powerful punch.

Number of Episodes: 12

Pluses: judgment games are interesting to watch, facial animations are top notch and really drive home the emotions spilling out of the characters

Minuses: meanders a bit in the middle, worldbuilding outside of Decim’s bar isn’t really that interesting and not well addressed

Death Parade is currently streaming at Funimation and Hulu and is available both subtitled and dubbed (though dub requires a Funimation subscription). Funimation has licensed this for eventual retail distribution in the US.

laurietomLaurie Tom is a fantasy and science fiction writer based in southern California. Since she was a kid she has considered books, video games, and anime in roughly equal portions to be her primary source of entertainment. Laurie is a previous grand prize winner of Writers of the Future and since then her work has been published in Galaxy’s Edge, Strange Horizons, and Crossed Genres.

Anime Review: Magic Kaito 1412

written by Laurie Tom

magickaitoMagic Kaito 1412 is a largely episodic series centered around the adventures of Kaito Kuroba, a high school junior who moonlights as a gentleman thief to thwart the people responsible for the death of his father, the original Kid the Phantom Thief.

The source manga was started in the 1980s and only went three volumes before Gosho Aoyama launched the much more successful Detective Conan (known in the US as Case Closed), and despite efforts to modernize the setting, there are still plot sensibilities that feel much more at home in the 80s than modern day, such how easily and quickly Kaito becomes the new Kid the Phantom Thief. In a play on words, Kaito the protagonist’s name and “kaitou” the word for “phantom thief” are pronounced almost the same. It’s that kind of show.

Magic Kaito 1412 quickly runs through the origin story of the second Kid the Phantom Thief and from there mostly follows a stand-alone format, featuring a new heist or personal adventure of Kaito’s each episode (barring multi-parters). Sometimes characters are introduced and come back in a later episode. Sometimes they are never seen again. But this isn’t a particularly deep show, or a realistic one. It’s all about having a good time as Kaito tries to deal with the thefts and his double life.

As a gentleman thief, Kid always sends advance warning that he’s going to steal something, and then proceeds to do. Nothing stops him; not traps, not guards, not even a date with his not-really-girlfriend (though he does have to get creative with the last one). And because he’s the son of both a magician and a thief, many of his thefts involve a high degree of showmanship, making use of misdirects, disguises, props, and other tricks to help him set up the theft and get away.

A lot of what he does is not humanly possible, but are the kinds of things that the kid in us wishes we could do. Kaito is cocky, hyper-competent, and gets away with almost everything.

Then, because Kaito is only stealing things to stay one step ahead of the crime organization that killed his father, he returns the stolen gems afterwards when they turn out to be different from the one he and his enemies are looking for. (I guess it’s understood that if Kid gives it back, it’s obviously not the right gem, because we don’t hear about those gems being stolen again later.)

Despite the fact the premise is structured around his father’s death and thwarting a crime organization in search of immortality, Magic Kaito is generally a light-hearted show that’s eager to please. Most times, the reason why Kaito is constantly stealing things isn’t even brought up, and he doesn’t wallow in the negative emotions behind his motivation (though the two-part finale does raise the question about how he really feels about what he’s doing). And while Kaito’s double life is not a new topic in storytelling, I love that it’s more often a source of comedy than the drama it could have been.

The episodic nature of Magic Kaito also makes this series lovely when time commitment is a problem, since there’s little need to remember storylines from one episode to the next, but it does have a flaw that has nothing to do with how individual stories are presented.

Detective Conan and Magic Kaito are conveniently set in the same world, and Aoyama never forgot his earlier creation. Kaito in his Kid persona has made several appearances in Detective Conan, which is a franchise juggernaut with more TV episodes than The Simpsons. By the time this review is posted, the 19th Detective Conan movie will have released in theaters featuring a face off between Detective Conan and Kid, who takes up as much space on the movie poster as Detective Conan himself. Awareness of Kid is huge among the Japanese fanbase.

This leads to the problem where Magic Kaito 1412 just can’t cut the apron strings to its more famous brother. The first time Shinichi Kudo shows up in Magic Kaito (before his transformation into Conan) it’s a fun nod to the genius teen detective and a real pain in the butt for Kaito, when he realizes just what he’s up against. It’s definitely one of the better episodes because Kaito has to work so much harder for his win.

But someone must have decided that the show needed more Conan, so there are subsequent crossovers which directly correlate to episodes of Detective Conan that were never licensed in the US. While it’s nice seeing Kid match wits with Conan, the handling could have been a lot better, leaving me feeling like I had missed something because there was a Conan version of the story that the episode assumes I’ve already seen.

It’s particularly egregious that the episode where Kid and Conan first meet face to face is not in Magic Kaito 1412, leaving newcomers to assume they had met at some point before. Fortunately, in this case, interested Americans can watch episodes 78-79 of Case Closed streaming on Funimation to get up to speed (they fit in right after episode 6 of Magic Kaito 1412).

All said and done, I really liked Magic Kaito 1412 to the point I can safely say it’s my favorite show to have come out of 2014. It’s not perfect, but it’s the sort of thing where you know exactly what you’re going to get and it delivers. Watching Kaito steal things as Kid and parade around friends and enemies rarely fails to put a smile on my face. He really sells the show and everything that comes along with it.

I can see why Kid is a perennial favorite among Conan fans, and the show seems to have done well in the TV ratings, so I’m hoping that it will return sometime in the future, though there is very little manga material left to work with.

But if there is next time, please, more Kid and less Conan.

Number of Episodes: 24

Pluses: doesn’t take itself too seriously without being completely preposterous, Kaito in his Kid persona is really fun to watch, almost as much focus on Kaito’s life out of costume as in it

Minuses: no definitive ending since the manga is unfinished, Kaito is so skilled a protagonist he’s rarely in substantial danger, crossover episodes with Detective Conan/Case Closed are not newcomer friendly

Magic Kaito 1412 is currently streaming at Crunchyroll and is available subtitled.

laurietomLaurie Tom is a fantasy and science fiction writer based in southern California. Since she was a kid she has considered books, video games, and anime in roughly equal portions to be her primary source of entertainment. Laurie is a previous grand prize winner of Writers of the Future and since then her work has been published in Galaxy’s Edge, Strange Horizons, and Crossed Genres.