Reviews of Old and New Stories. Mostly Old

Review of “Magical Delicacies for Birthday Girls” by Avra Margariti

Plot:

For Holly’s twelfth birthday, her mother had taken her to the unicorn pen. Her mother went into the butcher shop to get Holly a delicacy. Bored with adult talk, Holly goes to look at the unicorn on display in a glass case outside the shop. For years, she’d been begging her parents for a pet unicorn, a unicorn who “would be her bestest friend and confidante. She would braid flowers through her unicorn’s silky mane, ride on its back, and they would play games together in the garden all day.”

Thoughts:

This is a statement primarily on vegetarianism, but also, at a more profound level, I think it’s a portrayal of selfishness. Holly is not concerned about the welfare of the unicorn. She thinks of the animal’s beauty and of playing with the animal, but not whether it would derive any benefit from her or her actions. The purpose of the animal in her thought—as far as her thoughts go—is to serve her every whim. It has no existence outside of that.

In a small child, this thinking comes naturally. But by Holly’s age, it should be gone except in flashes. The scary thing is that the adults encourage this selfishness in Holly. Indulgence would be annoying, but this sense of entitlement is chilling.

I can’t say this was among my favorite stories, nor that it was particularly profound. Nevertheless, it did capture a glimpse of a little girl’s delight in animals.

Bio:

According to the blurb, author Avra Margariti s a Social Work undergrad from Greece. She enjoys storytelling in all its forms and writes about diverse identities and experiences. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Daily Science Fiction, The Forge Literary, The Arcanist, and other venues. You can find her on twitter @avramargariti.

The story can be read here.

Title: “Magical Delicacies for Birthday Girls”
Author: Avra Margariti
First published: Theme of Absence, June 5, 2020

Review of “U-Phone XV Presents Insta-Post” by James Rumpel

Plot:

Rachel Shommer and her fiancé, Jeremy Nybor, eagerly await the release of U-Phone XV’s instant posting feature. It will allow the user to post thoughts without the hassle of typing. All anyone has to do is merely think, and their thoughts are posted.

“My first insta-post will be one saying how much I love you,” Jeremy tells Rachel. Rachel—but not the reader—is surprised when his first post is actually:

JEREMY NYBOR THINKS THAT SUSAN FROM ACCOUNTING IS WAY HOTTER THAN RACHEL.

The post sends him to a flower shop for roses only to find the shop out of roses. Seems a lot of guys have found themselves apologizing for thoughts they’ve posted.

Thoughts:

Whose idea was it that unfiltered thoughts posted on a public forum would be a good idea? There are reasons we learn early on not to say the first thing that comes to mind, instinctively realizing it’s one way we keep this life of man (and woman) from being unnecessarily solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.

Scenes of the apocalypse play out, and not merely between Rachel and Jeremy. Does the world come to an end?

This is a silly little tale, enjoyable for what it is, but I would not read it a second time.

Bio:

James Rumpel is a retired high school math teacher who has greatly enjoyed using his newfound additional free time to rekindle his love for science fiction and the written word. In an author interview with Theme of Absence, Rumpel says that he’s been writing for about a year since he retired. He’s been thinking up stories and ideas for his entire life but didn’t start writing them down until recently.

The story can be read here.

Title: U-Phone XV Presents Insta-Post
Author: James Rumpel
First published: Theme of Absence, May 29, 2020

Review of “Be Nice to the Butcher” by Danny Macks

Plot:

The unnamed narrator describes the stranger who strikes up a conversation with him: “the friendly type, grey at the temples, with the stocky blue-collar build of a man who never lifted a barbell in his life, but could still bench-press me over his head.”

They talk about this and that, discuss what brought them to town, and swap pictures of their grandchildren. The stranger, a butcher, is looking for a new location for a processing plant. Routine stuff. So why does the narrator feel uneasy?

Thoughts:

There are no surprises here. The ending is telegraphed from miles away, like a joke everyone but the narrator is in on. What makes the story, though, is the telling of it. It is cute. It’s the sort of conversation that might happen in any number of bars between middle-aged guys in just about any place in the world—up to a point, course. And that’s where it gets weird.

What might be worth a second glance is the idea of a shift in perspective, however. Like the garrulous stranger in the bar, many of us take for granted that others are there for our benefit. We can be polite to them or, like the stranger’s daughter, rude to them, but they still exist for us. Hmmm….

Bio:

According his blurb, author Danny Macks lives in southern Indiana surrounded by kids, cats, and dogs. He also has some fantasy book for sale through his site, but little additional info about him.

The story can be read here.

Title: “Be Nice to the Butcher”
Author: Danny Macks
First published: Daily Science Fiction, May 25, 2020

Review of “Morons from Outer Space” (1985)

Saturday night pizza and bad movie night. The pizza was good.

Plot:

Four people on vacation in outer space are getting on each other’s nerves. It’s established early that none of them is in the running for Nobel prizes. While refueling the spaceship—which looks suspiciously like a battered rental RV— Bernard (Mel Smith), the only one whose dimmer switch is anywhere above the “off” position, goes outside for a round of spaceball. The others play with the ship’s controls (which, again, look suspiciously like those of a battered rental RV). Of course, they shoot out of the station uncontrollably and head for parts unknown, that is, a certain blue planet. Their only recourse is to send out a distress signal. Their ship crash lands on the M1 Motorway outside London, running several cars off the road in horrific explosions.

Bernard gets experience hitchhiking in space and lands in a “National Park” in Arizona, which doesn’t look at all like any place in Arizona I’ve ever seen. While Bernard tries to establish contact with trash cans, his three former friends are interrogated by British and American military about the secrets of the universe. Yeah, once more into the breach.

Thoughts:

This is a little slow in the beginning and really, really, appallingly silly. There is a lot of cute satire and homages to other movies, including (surprise) Star Wars, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest, but also The Caine Mutiny, Blade Runner, Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, and probably others that I missed.

I don’t mean to imply that this is packed with intellectual power—hardly. It’s just goofy. But it also pokes fun at the idea of celebrity. These three idiots become overnight sensations not because they’re anything special, but simply because they’re novel. They don’t look novel, however. They even speak English. And they are the epitome of vapid empty-headedness. The military scientists diagnose them as “brainless.” During a television interview, one of the aliens, Sandra Brock (Joanne Pearce), is asked what she read “at university.” Her one-word answer is “Shoes.” The audience eats it up. Pearce is a good enough actress to show surprise and odd delight at the audience’s reaction.

The best part of the movie, however, is the end. It is logical.

I understand that it’s not everyone’s kind of movie, but if you’re looking for a movie for Saturday pizza and bad movie night, this will fit the bill and provide a couple of chuckles.

Title: Morons from Outer Space (1985)

Directed by Mike Hodges

Writing Credits (in alphabetical order)
Griff Rhys Jones
Mel Smith

Cast (in credits order)

Joanne Pearce … Sandra Brock
Jimmy Nail … Desmond Brock
Paul Bown … Julian Tope
James Sikking … Col. Raymond Laribee, CIA (as James B. Sikking)
Dinsdale Landen … Commander Grenville Matteson

Released: September 20, 1985

Review of “Thirst” by K.N. George

Plot:

The narrator tells the reader Danny Trank hanged himself in the garage three days earlier. People say you could hear his mother’s screams from across the neighborhood. It wasn’t a surprise, and after all, it wasn’t like the narrator and Danny were friends. Danny was just another sad sack.

He and his buddy Jay receive an invitation to Isabel’s party. Her parents are away vacationing in Fiji. As expected, they arrive at the party to find everyone drinking and dancing. What they don’t expect are the loud, intermittent bangs that seem to be coming from the basement.

Thoughts:

This was hard to get a read on at first. The feel is nihilistic/hedonistic, almost like a Bret Easton Ellis novel. When the narrator sees the hostess Isabel in a “short pink flowery dress,” he notes, “she beamed at us with those glistening pearly whites.” After some further description of her, he concludes, “I would’ve fucked her right then and there with everybody watching.”

Who says romance is dead?

But he isn’t so wrapped up in her that he fails to notice she deadbolts the door behind them.

Nevertheless, he isn’t completely listless and acts to help an innocent person.

However, some of the imagery is so over-the-top, I couldn’t buy it. It crossed my mind that perhaps the narrator’s experiences could be chalked up to (…dating myself…) bad acid. What makes this story even odder, is that the ending came as no surprise.

While the story is not bad, it was more of a puzzle that turns out to be just what you expected.

Bio:

According to his blurb, author K.N. George is a lifelong lover of the arts. He attended the Art Institute of Washington for animation but found his creative writing classes more rewarding. His passion for storytelling stems from his time as an award-winning actor during his youth.

The story can be read here.

Title: “Thirst”
Author: K.N. George
First published: Theme of Absence, May 22, 2020

Review of “This is How the Rain Falls” by M.K. Hutchins

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Image by Roman Grac from Pixabay

Plot:

The narrator used to love the rain, but then the boy attacked, beat, and robbed her in the rain. Ten years later, she’s at a bus stop, watching bus after bus pass by. She doesn’t want to risk getting caught in the rain, even for a little while. She sees a little girl waiting in the corner of the bus stop.

Thoughts:

Distilling the plot into everyday language makes it sound absurd. It is anything but. The poetry of the language is rich and deep. Yes, it’s rain, but perhaps it’s something more. Something that once brought joy to someone can drain the same person after trauma. It can be something as commonplace as rain.

The strength of the story is in its use of language and metaphor. While there isn’t a lot of action, there is transformation. The narrator comes to a realization about herself and the world.

I can’t say I enjoyed this sad little story, but I certainly admired it.

Bio:

Accord to the blurb, author M.K. Hutchins regularly draws on her background in archaeology when writing fiction. She’s the author of the YA fantasy novels The Redwood Palace and Drift, and she’s written over thirty short stories, appearing in Podcastle, Analog, and elsewhere. She lives in Utah with her husband and four children. Find her at mkhutchins.com.

The story can be read here.

Title: “This is How the Rain Falls”
Author: M.K. Hutchins
First published: Daily Science Fiction, May 18, 2020

Review of “The Deadly Mantis” (1957)

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Image from IMDB

Saturday pizza and bad movie night with a Svengoolie rerun we’d never seen

Plot:

Somewhere in the South Seas, a volcano erupts. Nothing happens in isolation, of course. As they told us in junior high science class, lo, many years ago, “for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.” So, after the volcano erupting in the south, it would naturally follow that ice melts in the North Polar Region. Right? From that melting ice is released a giant praying mantis, who’s been there for millions of years.

The viewer is also treated to an illustration of systems of radar lines in Canada developed during the Cold War to warn of any incoming Soviet attack. They don’t fare so well with a giant insect seeking warming climates south. The bug attacks the outlying military instillations, ripping through roofs, plane fuselages, and one unfortunate fishing vessel before it’s done.

When a five-foot-long… something is found in a wrecked plane, eminent scientists can’t decide what it is. Colonel Parkman (Craig Stevens, soon to be Peter Gunn) calls in (what else?) a paleontologist, Dr. Nedrick Jackson (William Hopper, soon to be Paul Drake), of the Museum of Natural History. Remember how dragonflies used to be bigger and are carnivorous? This bug is the ancestor—distant ancestor—of the praying mantis. And it’s much bigger.

While the help of the Ground Observer Corps,* the Air Force tracks the bug south. Kinda hard to miss, I would think.

Thoughts:

This movie is so serious and so silly, it’s hard not to like it. Granted, the first ten or fifteen minutes is all stock footage of a volcanic eruption, icebergs calving, pilots scrambling, etc., but there was some great footage. Even later, “borrowed” footage appears of a native village menaced by the really big bug, with men leaping into their kayaks and paddling off. (How is that a rational response? Oh, I ask too much.)

The movie speaks both to a natural disaster and the resources used to fight the Cold War.

The single female character of note in the movie, interestingly enough, is the museum magazine editor/photographer, Marge Blaine (Alix Talton). She knows a bit about bugs, correctly identifying the item sent to the museum by Col. Parkman, but mostly she screams. She’s just a girl, ya know.

In short, while the movie does not have a new story to tell, it was fun to watch. This would have been a great flick to watch in a drive-in, with shots of the big bug flying, and, in one shot, crawling up the side of the Washington Monument. It also gave a nod to the Ground Observer Corps, which was dissolved the next year.

It was a delightful Saturday pizza and bad movie night movie.

*The Ground Observer Corps was a civilian defense organization, originally founded during WWII to spot incoming German and Japanese planes. It was disbanded in 1944. A second group was reorganized in 1950 to serve during the Cold War and spot Soviet aerial incursions over the United States.

Title: The Deadly Mantis (1957)
Directed by … Nathan Juran

Writing Credits
Martin Berkeley … (screenplay)
William Alland …(story)

Cast (in credits order)

Craig Stevens … Col. Joe Parkman
William Hopper … Dr. Nedrick Jackson
Alix Talton … Marge Blaine
Donald Randolph … Maj. Gen. Mark Ford
Pat Conway … Sgt. Pete Allen

Released: May 26, 1957
Length: approx. 1 hour, 19 minutes

Review of “Hero” by Harris Coverley

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Image by Dimitris Vetsikas from Pixabay

Plot:

Everyone appears to be dead and unburied except for the narrator, who, it becomes clear, did not kill anyone. He (?) finds ways to fill the time. He drains a stagnant lake (“they’re all stagnant anyway,” he tells the reader) just to see what’s on the bottom. He finds cars, bones, and garbage—about what you’d expect.

Whatever he is, he’s capable of incredible feats, like draining lakes and walking around the planet from Hokkaido to the Falklands. He threw a double-decker bus from Tower Hamlets in East London all the way to Calais, just skirting the edge of the stratosphere and not sending it into orbit. He doesn’t need to sleep or eat. He once tried to bury the dead humans but gave up. The task was just too much. Is he a ghost? A god from Olympus or Asgard?

Thoughts:

Although there are hints of an ecological collapse, the exact nature of the disaster that led to the destruction of nearly all life on earth isn’t given. The reader gets the feeling the narrator has been at this for a while. The moon, for example, is developing a new atmosphere.

Under all the comic book superhero antics, though, there is a sadness as well as a callousness. He is the last person around. He had been alone for a long time, and now he’s killing time. What is he waiting for? That’s never sorted out. Is he treading water, just spending his lonely life? Is he expecting something to change? He says he sometimes feels guilty. Maybe this existence is his Tartarus? Or perhaps I’m reading something where there’s nothing.

Bio:

According to the blurb, author Harris Coverley has short fiction published or forthcoming in Curiosities, Planet Scumm, Horror Magazine, and The J.J. Outré Review. He is also a Rhysling-nominated poet and member of the Weird Poets Society, with poetry most recently accepted for Star*Line, Awen, New Reader Magazine, Clover & White, and The Oddville Press, among many others. He lives in Manchester, England.

The story can be read here.

… apropos of nothing:

And here I am, writing this review for your consideration while I procrastinate my own research into late eighteenth-century forms of address among lower German nobility. Geez, you’d think a ten-minute simple google search would suffice, wouldn’t you?

Title: “Hero”
Author: Harris Coverley
First published: Theme of Absence, May 15, 2020

Review of “Munster, Go Home” (1966)

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Image from IMDB

Plot:

Coming home from work at the funeral parlor one day, Herman Munster (Fred Gwynne) finds the family waiting for him. It seems there’s a letter from some lawyer in England. The late lord Munster has just shuffled off this mortal coil, and left his entire estate, including the title to—yep—Herman.

After bidding goodbye to Spot, the dragon that lives under the front staircase (they’re not going to hire a Spot-sitter?), the Munsters head out across the pond from 1313 Mockingbird Lane: Lily (Yvonne De Carlo), Grandpa (Al Lewis), Eddie (Butch Patrick), and the “ugly” Marilyn (Debbie Watson). They take a cruise ship, not an airliner, which gives Herman and Grandpa amply opportunity to get into trouble.

Meanwhile, in Great Britain, the English side of the family feels rather put out by the arrival of the colonials. Ten seconds with this side of the family and the viewer doesn’t wonder why the old Lord Munster disinherited his children. Another complication arises when, as it turns out, the young man Marilyn met on the crossing comes from a family whose feud with the Munster family goes back decades. It can be settled only by a car race. Plus, there’s something the English Munsters don’t want anyone to know about—perhaps the content of the coffin-shaped boxes that keep coming out of the back door/dungeon of their estate?

Thoughts:

There is not much in the movie one can take seriously. It’s just goofy. The humor is, well, sophomoric. Among the gags are a temper tantrum from a grown man, cousin Freddy Munster (Terry-Thomas), at not being named Lord Munster and applause from Lily and Herman when their Old Country relatives try to scare them away from Munster Manor. The scare tactics have more in common with the carnival than with any haunting, I might add. To top it off, Cousin Freddy walks up to Lily and Herman in a ghost costume that dishonors old sheets. At his first glimpse of the two, he heads for the hills by way of the wall.

In a couple of places, obvious stunt doubles are used, and some minor continuity issues crop up, but the viewer has to be looking for these. None make any difference to the story, such as it is.

Like the television show, it’s intended for kids. It was the first time audiences saw the Munster clan in color. This would have been fun at a drive-in back in the day (yes, I’m dating myself…), but it was also fun—if not exactly hysterical—for pizza and bad movie night with the dearly beloved during the days of staying home and social distancing.

We watched it via Svengoolie.

Title: Munster, Go Home

Directed by … Earl Bellamy

Writing Credits (in alphabetical order)
Joe Connelly …(written by)
Bob Mosher …(written by)
George Tibbles …(written by)

Cast (in credits order) complete, awaiting verification
Fred Gwynne … Herman Munster
Yvonne De Carlo … Lily Munster
Al Lewis … Grandpa
Butch Patrick … Eddie Munster
Debbie Watson … Marilyn Munster
Terry-Thomas … Freddie Munster
Hermione Gingold … Lady Effigie Munster
Robert Pine … Roger Moresby
John Carradine … Cruikshank
Bernard Fox … Squire Lester Moresby
Richard Dawson … Joey

Released: August 6, 1966
Length: approx.. 1 hour, 36 minutes

Review of “A Simple Misunderstanding” by Chris Dean

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Image by Thomas Budach from Pixabay

Plot:

After two hundred years, the Rangarians and the humans have come to a, um, “the successful cessation of hostilities.” This, at least, is how the Rangarians explain it to their people. To the human ambassador, however, the Rangarian ambassador merely says, “You won.”

This confuses the human ambassador, who only recalls that humans have never won a battle in space. The Rangarian technological edge is too great. They exchange surrender stories.

Victory and defeat can be… relative.

Thoughts:

The Rangarian ambassador knows he’s dealing with an inferior being and, at times, has difficulty hiding his contempt. He also readily admits his “side” is beaten. This makes for some amusement.

However, the resolution to this seeming paradox is obvious from a mile off. And frankly, the human ambassador is not the sharpest tool in the shed. His obtuse questions (in effect, “yeah-but…”) serve to irritate the Rangarian ambassador further.

This is a cute little story, but no more than that. Nevertheless, I enjoyed it for what it is.

Bio:

According to the blurb, author Chris Dean travels the American West as a marketing representative and adores Yellowstone, the Klamath, and anyplace the sequoias touch the sky. Chris’s work has appeared in Page & Spine and other publications.

The story can be read here.

Title: “A Simple Misunderstanding”
Author: Chris Dean
First published: Theme of Absence, May 8, 2020