SHORT STORY REX August 2023
C.B. Blanchard, Alice M, Harry Harrison, and some dipshit named NM Whitley or something
1. “Mycophilia”, C.B. Blanchard
I was very glad to see the positive response to this exceptional piece by C.B. Blanchard and it’s got me thinking. I’m a bit embarrassed to say I kind of slept on "Mycophilia" when issue 7 of Seize The Press arrived in my inbox back in April. I suppose I read the first paragraphs, had something else come up and didn’t get back around to it till months later.
Its also probably because I was so enamored of "Endless Yearning" by Judith Shadford, which appears in the same issue. Why, though? Well, because of a difference between the two which I think is illustrative.
“Endless Yearning” is a story that jumps right out and grabs you with its radical stylistic choices and conceit. “Mycophilia”, by comparison, works via a patient buildup of characterization and atmosphere and so requires more patience from the reader (which I apparently did not have the first time)...which points to something ive long suspected of happening in the slush piles of various mags (and I say this as someone whose done his share of slush reading): "grabby" (I hesitate to say 'gimmicky') stories stand out while less fastpaced stories potentially get passed over
Not to slight the former type of story, im just glad to see the latter type of story finding its place and its readership
Tl;dr Read "Mycophilia" folks
2. “At the Very Center of You is Nothing,” Alice M
I clicked on the link to this story in X-R-A-Y and my browser warned me the link was unsafe (something something certificate something something) and for a second it felt like I'd blundered into some forbidden realm which is entirely apropos for this gross little gem of a story
It's a story about a writers' retreat, told from the POV of that ancient mythical archetype, the writer who doesn't write much and actually doesn't even seem to like writing very much. Also, it features something known only as a 'flesh room'. There is, I repeat, a 'flesh room’.
It's by Alice M whose writing is exquisite, and aer editorial tastes are equally so, read www.bodyfluids.org if you dont believe me, I fucken dare you (more on that below)
3. “Portrait of the Artist”, Harry Harrison
I recently found the collection Eight Tales and Two Tomorrows for a buck at my local used bookstore, my first encounter with Harrison's work, and i was immediately struck by how clearly in the mid-60s he foresaw our current grim future of AI art.
If you have not been in loving contact with the green grass of mother earth and have instead spent the last several months being very online, then you are no doubt broadly familiar with the debate over the use of “AI” (please note the use of scare quotes) in art and writing, wherein one side goes, “hey, wtf, this is going to be very bad for the people working in these industries” and the other side snickers into the teacup which they are holding near ther lips with their pinky sticking out and say, “please don't complain so loud, its really quite gauche, don’t you know, and also its a foregone conclusion that this is what the future is going to look like, its simply inevitable, my dear chap” or something.
Harrison had a background of working as an artist in the comics industry, which informs this story in a big way, and is evident in the loving detail with which he describes the work of our protagonist Pachs, himself a comics artist who, in his daily labors, has come to depend on his Mark VIII machine perhaps a bit overmuch.
It even works on a word-based prompt system, not unlike what you’d use with Midjourney or whatever dumb bullshit:
MAN, HEAD, FULL FRONT, SAD, HERO brought a smaller stamp banging down on the other circle that topped the stick figure. Of course the script said angry but that was what the raised fist was for, since there were only happy and sad faces in comics.
Pachs’s job is mainly adding filigree to the panels drawn by the machine— “The girl wasn’t unhappy enough; he dipped his crowquill into the ink pot and knocked in two tears, one in the corner of each eye”. But then the Mark IX machine arrives and things take a turn. Without wanting to give too much away, Harrison seems less than optimistic about the working artist’s fate when this type of technology is in the hands of the owner class.
Worth seeking out if, like me, you want a different perspective on the debate surrounding AI and art, and for all that it might be a mid-20th c. perspective, I say it’s a surprisingly keen one.
More recs:
I am a day late (my clock currently reads 12:39 AM, 9/1/2023) and a story short, as this month I’ve been on vacation and busy parenting and sipping drinks poolside and what not, but I did manage to pick up and polish off a copy of Wounds by Nathan Ballingrud, and I recommend every single story from that book, every story that man has ever written, if I’m being honest. Perhaps less bleak in spots than North American Lake Monsters, with a little bit more space for levity, even whimsy, amid the doom and desperation, but when he decides to bring the emotional hammer down (“The Diabolist”, “The Visible Filth”), watch out.
August has however, been a busy month in that not one but two stories of mine have seen publication (been awhile since that happened in such a reduced span). To wit:
my story “Wraith, Nonetheless” was published by Body Fluids, edited by the aformentioned Alice M. This piece received nearly 40 rejections over the course of about nine years subbing it out there. (The early versions that went out on sub sucked pretty bad, if I’m being frank.) It remains, to this day, the only story I’ve ever written that’s received feedback from an editor saying it was, and I quote “problematic”, so I’m very grateful that Alice “got” what I was trying to do and gave the story a final resting place.
If you’ve not read Body Fluids before, here are just a few pieces that I’ve enjoyed from them:
The Half-Eaten Sausage Would Like to See You in his Office, by Michael Allen Rose (title’s pretty self-explantory I think)
or this poem, something about the repeated use of a word like “gorge” just fascinates me: I LOVE IT WHEN YOU ASK ME TO SIT ON YOUR FACE, by Christine Hou
and of course this achingly bleak exploration of zombie sisterhood from their first issue: it who wears my sister's skin, by Samir Sirk Morató
August also saw the publication of “With the Virion” in The Café Irreal, a venerable institution on the online literary scene if ever there was one. (See my previous post about the Café Irreal for more recommendations of delightful pieces from their archives.) This one was inspired by my bout with Scarlet Fever (which, in a previous post I erroneously referred to as ‘Spanish Fever’ for some reason? what can I say, Spain on the brain). It’s very short, read it!