PRO CONNECT
Paxson’s collection of SF and speculative fiction short stories ranges from the unsettling and humorous to the outright bizarre.
In this book’s opening tale, “Here Our Steps Faltered,” Ali belongs to a group of online roleplayers. The internet allows them to play as different people throughout various places on Earth, but for Ali, there’s soon a blurring of his flesh-and-blood existence and the virtual world. Many of the tales herein likewise unfold in other worlds, in dystopian futures or on other planets entirely. The author, who breaks these stories into categories, sets five of them in an underground city on the planet Tarnus, including the novella-length “Lejina’s Song.” This tale finds Lejina, in desperate need of medicine for her father, agreeing to double for a popular local singer, Winjilles Thringe. At first, she’s simply posing to pass herself off as the performer. When Thringe is injured, however, Lejina’s continued portrayal gets her closer to the singer’s band members and more entangled in whatever shady things Thringe may have been doing. Other categories include stories set on the planet Mudball and in a near-future New York “where the law didn’t work anymore.” In the former section, three species (gorgons, crocodilians, and humans) more or less learn to co-exist; in the latter, the Pure Sons of God deliver their own justice by shooting people who won’t work for them—or who they merely don’t like. Capping off the book is a handful of one- and two-page stories, including “Pie and Wings,” in which a guy at a diner instantly falls in love with a waitress.
Paxson often playfully animates these speculative settings with more familiar plots. For example, in “Trizark,” Nedrillo Goodrin, a gorgon farmer on Mudball, attends his very first wedding—his son’s union with a human woman. With gorgons, humans, and crocodilians bumping elbows, there’s a very good chance that a fight will break out. “Troupe” is about a government agent, Gordon Axelrod, who jumps onto the H.M.S. Pinaforewith clawed Tyrakians in pursuit. They want the mysterious metal egg that Gordon has and threaten everyone onboard if he doesn’t hand it over. When Gordon is mistaken for an actor in an upcoming musical, that’s just one more thing for him to worry about. Some of these tales are dark, and even grotesque, though never excessively so. In “From the Wall,” a long-imprisoned creature escapes and vows to kill myriad humans, starting with the man it feeds on and whose “flayed skin” it wears like a suit. The author’s razor-sharp prose aptly depicts these strange places and diverse species; even a situation as recognizable as a man reacting to a Dear John letter generates a memorable passage: “I sat in the big cushion for a long time letting sweat run down over the letter and dissolve its words. My thumbs rubbed until most of the writing was a bleary mess and the paper was soggy. I ripped it into limp shreds and tossed it against the wall. Another damn lovely day.”
Wonderfully detailed worlds propel these enthralling stories.
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