[EN] By Force Alone, by Lavie Tidhar

Power and ideology

I approached By Force Alone with both excitement and trepidation. I enjoy seeing new takes on Arthuriana and the time after the Romans withdrew from Britain is a fascinating period. At the same time, I tend to be wary of cynical and brutal stories because they run a risk of devolving into an exercise in empty misery that masquerades as profoundness.

Overall, I'm happy to say that my worries were unfounded. Don't get me wrong: it's a pretty bleak story. It's just that the bleakness has a purpose and isn't all there is to the book.

I've seen Tidhar describe the book asessentially King Arthur for the Brexit era and you can see that in the book's preoccupation with myth-making, with the way people and events get turned into stories – and the fact that the stories are tools made by someone for a specific purpose (and not a good one, of course) – as well as in its focus on the tensions between the various groups that dwell or arrive in Britain.

It's also a book that doesn't fall for romanticism of conquests, warriors, kings, the glamour of fighting and fucking. In fact I'd say it's completely disillusioned with power, and absolutely clear about how base the drive for power is, how utterly miserable it makes the world.

But it's not just shit and mud and misery. By Force Alone is in a way a reversion of the Clive Owen King Arthur movie. Where the latter was gritty 'realism' masking a typical Hollywood yarn that sands off all the edges (including Lancelot dying so that Guinevere can't cheat on Arthur), the former is historical materialism coated in a mish-mash of absolutely buck wild ideas. Some of them are deep cuts from Arthurian legends (such as Cath Palug, a ghost mer-cat), some are taken from folklore (like the Fae) – and then there are elements from other genres that Tidhar mixes in (Lancelot knows kung fu in this one, and where Tidhar ultimately goes with the Grail is best left unspoiled, although earlier parts might remind readers of Jeff Vandermeer's Reach Trilogy).

Those elements disrupt the bleakness and make the book very entertaining. And while everyone is a murderous asshole to an extent because everyone is willing to go along with Arthur in order to climb the ladder, there are characters who also exhibit sympathetic traits. Arthur himself seems most consumed by the lust for power and it's interesting that the reader always sees him at a remove. But there is Gawain who's dragged into stuff against his will; Lancelot who's torn between desire for riches and more elusive pursuits and who's increasingly Done With Shit; sir Pellinore chasing after his Questing Beast; and possibly the coolest Guinevere I have ever encountered. It was also really cool to see some gay and lesbian characters, as all too often fantasy books that pretend to a degree of historical realism mistakenly assume queer people did not exist in the past.

The book is long, but moves at a brisk pace, jumping in time, switching perspectives, never overstaying its welcome. It occasionally can feel a little disjointed and certain characters seem to just drop out of the narrative (I would have loved more Guinevere); but the novel feels very purposeful in how it stays very little in Camelot once it's established. The characters can't really enjoy the wealth and splendour they chased after – nearly as soon as they've 'made it' a rot sets in and the time comes for a doomed fight against another young upstart who wants a shot at the crown. I also really enjoyed the prose style: it's concise and not too ornate, but has a slightly elevated register that brings to mind epic poetry.

By Force Alone is a very cool revisionist take on Arthurian legends, one that seems to come from a similar place to Kieron Gillen and Dan Mora's Once & Future. It skillfully mixes a bleakness of outlook with some pleasantly bizarre ideas and a touch of humour in a very enjoyable way.

Note: I received an electronic review copy from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

[EN] Doctor Mirage, by Magdalene Visaggio, Nick Robles, Jordie Bellaire

 Doctor Mirage used to see ghosts – including her late husband, whim she tried to resurrect – but something went very wrong. Now she’s on a journey with a pill-popping teenager. Will she break free or is a fate worse than death awaiting her?

I like Magdalene Visaggio’s writing for anchoring the trippy weirdness of her premises to emotional and existential arcs of her characters. Doctor Mirage is no different and an expedition into the land of the dead is intimately connected to the protagonist’s loss of powers and her husband. At the same time it introduces tension between her and Grace, a teenage girl who maintains that they are in hell and need to get out: Mirage is tagging along, but with her own agenda. This occasionally leads to conflict between the two characters, which with time becomes a tad repetitive, as it largely hits the same beats issue-to-issue, but at the beginning at least makes their dynamic more interesting.

It would be a spoiler to say what the purpose of the journey ultimately is, as there are a few twists and turns along the way. I will say that Visaggio never loses sight of the human element and ties the story to struggles all of us experience. The ending has interesting things to say that are uplifting, but quite different from the trite sentiments we usually hear.

As for the visuals, Nick Robles does a great job with the design, particularly of the monsters, and I am in love with the work of Jordie Bellaire, who makes the transition from ordinary world (or what passes for it) to the realms of the deat absolutely incredible. The colours in the latter are very psychedelic purples, yellows, pinks, blues, strange smears and blobs that don’t conform to the linework. It’s a fantastic effect and made the comic a joy to look at.

If you’re a fan of Visaggio’s work on Eternity Girl, you’re going to love this. If you’re into gnostic, psychedelic weirdness – you’re going to love it, too.

I received an electronic review copy via NetGalley. This is an honest review.

[EN] Everyone on the Moon Is Essential Personnel, by Julian K. Jarboe

 Warren Ellis said that we already live in the future, we just don’t notice it. It makes sense, therefore, that Julian K. Jarboe uses the future in their stories in order to better illuminate the present.

Although the stories in this collection vary strongly in terms of length and genre, the dominant note for me is near-future dystopia. Climate change drowning cities and rich tourists moving in to gentrify everything that’s left (plus the underwater ruins), locking the citizens in strictly controlled zones, while late capitalism sends precarious part-cyborg employees to work on the Moon with no holiday (after all, everyone is essential personnel). It sounds wild, but for many people it’s already part of their lived experience.

As such, the characters mostly focus on survival rather than fighting to change the world they live in. It frequently feels too vast, complicated, and powerful to be changed by a small group of individuals. The best one can do is to cling to the communities one has for as long as they last; particularly since the characters frequently don’t quite realise the extent of the abuse and exploitation they are subjected to: it’s usually taken in stride and described very matter-of-factly (see for example the family abuse in the title story). It’s a very effective way of making the readers feel for the characters.

The fantasy pieces – “The Seed and the Stone” and “We Did Not Know We Were Giants” – seemed to me to be the few more outwardly positive stories in the collection, as there seemed to be more that the characters were able to do to change their situation, particularly in the latter, with its themes of apotheosis and wrenching control away from inscrutable and unpredictable powers.

Among the stories written in a more literary realist fashion (I’m thinking slice of life, not strongly driven by plot, focused more on personal epiphanies, such as “Self Care” or the titular “Everyone on the Moon is Essential Personnel”), there are also a few that utilise strong central metaphors to talk about certain experiences. “The Heavy Things” has been a favourite of mine ever since I read it in Transcendent 3 and it’s a frankly terrifying portrait of reproductive violence that removes the bodily autonomy of people experiencing periods. “Estranged Children of Storybook Houses” is a similarly affecting story about a neuroatypical person searching for their place in the world (and what a great idea to use a metaphor of the changeling, given that a popular theory is that they were a figure representing neuroatypicality), while “I Am a Beautiful Bug!” is a playful riff on Kafka’s “Metamorphosis” that talks about the alienation (not to mention oppression) that befall you once you undergo a significant alteration of your body. This is a great use of the fantastic and I enjoyed all of those stories very much.

Aside from full-length short stories (some of which probably cross over into novella territory), there is also flash fiction that borders on prose poetry and some poems. They showcase Jarboe’s facility for beautiful, poetic language*, though of course the longer stories are also full of sentences you want to underline and re-read over and over.

* See for example a bit from “The Android that Designed Itself”: Make me large and soft and rolling: a photovoltaic mucus that envelopes all it touches. Make me edible but make me poisonous. Give me one of every face that has ever been called ugly. Give me one of every skin that has ever been called excessive. Give me a way of moving that no space can admit or accommodate, and then reshape the entire world to hold me. I could go on.

This is a collection that captures very well what it’s like to live under capitalism while (gender)queer, disabled, mentally ill, when you are unwilling or simply – particularly – unable to climb higher in the great chain of oppression. But it also offers moments of joy and liberation that come with the possibility of self-expression and with finding your community. The rareness and fleetingness of those should make us all the more determined to fight the forces that threaten to take those things away from us.

Thank you to the author for sending me an e-ARC of this collection in exchange for my honest thoughts.

Conchita

To wasza wina mówią chłopcy
w czarnych i brunatnych koszulach

nie dochowałyście czujności zamieniłyście
pochodnie na neony
mundury na cekiny
waszym wieczorowym sukienkom
brakuje kieszeni gdzie palce
mogłyby czule
zaciskać się na spuście

a jednak klucze sterczą
z waszych zamkniętych pobielałych dłoni

same widzicie:
jak moglibyśmy żyć
bez wzajemnie gwarantowanego zniszczenia
kiedy świat jest pełen
ludzi takich jak my?

same rozumiecie
musimy to robić:
po roztańczonej Europie
krążą już widma ojców
carów kaiserów
führerów

więc palić tęcze golić brody
zdjąć sukienki

niech przejeżdżając
czują się jak w domu

[EN] Homesick, by Nino Cipri

 I encountered Nino Cipri’s stories twice recently – in the Transcendent anthology of best transgender-themed speculative fiction and in Capricious magazine’s Gender Diverse Pronouns issue. In both cases Cipri’s stories were among the highlights for me, so I didn’t hesitate much before requesting Homesick. They are a writer I want to read more of.

Homesick is a very tight collection. It doesn’t just present every story the author’s written up to publication – the nine stories contained in the book share some thematic concerns, as well as a general emotional vibe of unsettling strangeness. More than science fiction or fantasy, Homesick brings to mind ghost stories or weird fiction: sure, there is a time machine in one of the stories or superhero/magical girls in another. But more often than not, the characters have to contend with something inexpicable: a poltergeist in the closet, vomitting up iron keys, the ocean behind their clients’ couch – and the magical girls have all been resurrected after meeting tragic fates.

When I think of homesickness, I think of profound unfamiliarity; of being in a place or situation that is not mine; of not having any company I could rely on for help or comfort. That is the vibe I largely got from Cipri’s stories, where the characters are frequently lonely and have to deal with alienation in their professional and personal lives, as well as in a larger existential sense. The best example might be Presque Vu, where the protagonist’s job as a driver for an Uber-like company leaves him shunning the company of most people, and where all the characters are haunted, both by strange objects turning up out of nowhere (keys you have to throw up, cassette tape tangled in your hair when you wake up, strange phone calls) and by mysterious wraiths that crowd the streets of their city.

This is not to say that the stories are necessarily always sad or cynical. While they are often fairly unnerving and frequently end before a complete resolution, the characters do sometimes manage to achieve some connection, however temporary, that provides them with a measure of comfort. There is also a lot of humour in dialogues (which sometimes sounds like the characters speak nothing but one-liners, but not frequently). And playing with form! One story is a magazine quiz, one a trascript of audio recordings, one contains excerpts from documentary interviews. This also imbued the collection with a sense of playfulness that relieved the often difficult emotional content.

Homesick is a very strong collection that offers a wonderful dose of speculative fiction from the more literary, border-blurring end of the spectrum. If you enjoyed stuff like Carmen Maria Machado’s Her Body and Other Parties, I think you will enjoy Homesick as well.

Thank you to the publisher, Dzanc Books, for sending me an electronic review copy in exchange for my honest thoughts.

[EN] Algorithmic Shapeshifting, by Bogi Takács

 

Playful, rich, and inventive, this first poetry collection from Bogi Takács tackles the problems of the world head-on while also inspiring to rise above them.

Algorithmic Shapeshifting is a varied book; the earliest poem in it was first published in 2011, with the latest ones being new to the book. The situations and stories described within range from secondary-world fantasy to outer space, to distant past, to modern-day Hungary. But in some ways it also feels like one story, or maybe like it forms a pattern on a tapestry: clear thematic strands weave through and reemerge, uncontained by the four sections into which the books is divided.


The first thing that struck me about Takács’ poetry is that it’s intensely trans-personal. There is a desire for transcendence, framed not as a way of detaching oneself, but quite the opposite – as contact with the world. This can mean the joys of collaboration (The Iterative Nature of the Magical Discovery Process) or forming a family, bodily transformations that have an element of kink to them (Gently Chew to Soften the Ridges, Overlays), but also an attachment to history and tradition (Six Hundred and Thirteen Commandments), or the numinous in nature (Outside-in / Catalytic Exteriorization). There is an interplay between wanting to leave the body – even if only temporarily – or have it transformed and the body being the medium through which you can feel and realise that want. It’s a joy that wants to burst forth, carried by the richness and sensuality of the language:

“I stagger through a nighttime landscape
of power lines while the light of the full moon
scatters, flickers in pools of groggy dark water
and the grid hums inside my chest cavity”

– from Outside-in / Catalytic Exteriorization.

This exuberant, fluid mode of being encounters certain challenges when confronted with the world. There are institutions that will bring their absolute best (meaning: worst) to control you because you’re only valuable if you’re of use to them (The Handcrafted Motions of Flight) and, currently, in many places of the world (including – though not limited to – the US, where the author lives, Hungary, where e comes from, and Poland, where I live) there is a rising tide of intolerance and outright fascism: a movement for a tightly confined and prescribed existence that wants to annihilate any deviation and transgression. And so in certain poems the lyrical language is poured into forms we don’t necessarily associate with poetry – most notably in The Oracle of DARPA, where a transcript of an interrogation is being disrupted by bursts of poetry, transformed and trans-scribed. The rules and conventions belonging to certain forms can be more than a tool of oppression: they can be a game. Some poems become more or less reliable guides and sources of advice that can lead you in interesting directions or save your skin (Seven Handy Ideas for Algorithmic Shapeshifting; The Tiny English-Hungarian Phrasebook for Visiting Extraterrestrials). Takács’ poetry is infused with a sense playfulness, levity, and humour, and so the formats become a source of fun and subversion that breaks even the constraints of the book as a medium and object (You Are Here / Was: Blue Line to Memorial Park, a transcript of an interactive poem which you can – and in my opinion should – proceed through here).

As it progresses, the collection seems to dip steadily closer to present-day Earth, with the third section ending with the striking Two-Tailed Triptych: a melancholy look of an emigrant at a homeland drifting increasingly rightwards (I can certainly relate). But then the last part is once again a reaffirmation of the radiant Being whose manifestations recurred in different guises throughout, as well as the possibility of love and connection. Algorithmic Shapeshifting tells us that we – as members of gender, sexual, and ethnic minorities, as migrants, as people – are so much larger than everything that would reduce us to spare parts or fuel for the machines of hate. We cannot be contained.

Disclaimer: I received an electronic review copy from the author in exchange for an honest review.

Do hoplofili

czy próbowaliście
postrzelać sobie

gumką z majtek?