Writers of the Future vol. 31, edited by David Farland

Published by Galaxy Press on May 4, 2015

If these are the writers of the future, I'll stick to the writers of the past. The stories are chosen from the "L. Ron Hubbard Writers of the Future" contest. David Farland, who judges the contest, calls them "gleaming and flawless." I'd call most of them "not quite ready to be published."

One of the few highlights in this volume is Auston Habershaw's "A Revolutionary's Guide to Practical Conjuration." It tells an engaging story about the lessons learned by a young man who endeavors to improve a dark world by mastering a book of magic that is also a magical book.

"Switch" by Steve Pantazis is a direct-link-between-mind-and-internet story about a cop who investigates a homicide. The killer took a drug called Switch that slows the perception of time, enhancing the ability to react quickly. The cop uses it too, which is the only interesting thing about the cop. The story is full of clichéd ideas and it drags on too long before leading to a predictable climax.

"The God Whisperer" by Daniel J. Davis is an amusing but half-formed story about a guy who enlists the help of a "god trainer" to help him cope with an egocentric god of war and strife who lives in his back yard. Set in a future Vietnam, Tim Napper's "Twelve Minutes to Viet Quang" would be an excellent first chapter about a heroine who stands up to an oppressive society, but it is insubstantial as a stand-alone story.

Childbirth, childcare, and the blossoming (or not) of womanhood are the focus of "Stars that Make Dark Heaven Light" by Sharon Joss. The theme of socially mandated copulation has been done before, and better, although the female who must copulate has gills, which unevolved humans might regard as a turn-off. Some of the story, about bonding with brainy alien bugs that other colonists view as a threat, is mildly interesting, but too much of the story consists of starry-eyed romantic musings that fans of romance fiction might find more appealing than I did. The ending is just cheesy.

Krystal Claxton's "Planar Ghosts" is a post-apocalyptic story. A character named Pup has a friend named Ghost who is invisible to others but "faintly purple" to Pup. Maybe Ghost isn't really a ghost but the explanation of Ghost's existence is, like the rest of the story, contrived. As an adventure story, it isn't bad, but it could have been better.

"Between Screens" by Zach Chapman has a young nerdy guy skipping around the universe with the hot girl who gives him his first kiss. If you aren't a young nerdy guy who has fantasies about getting laid by a hot girl, you can skip this story without missing anything. "Half Past" by Samantha Murray tells of a girl who must leave her imaginary friends, except they aren't imaginary since they were created by magic during moments of intense emotion. It isn't my kind of story but it does take a surprisingly clever twist. If you like stories like this, it isn't a bad one.

Martin L. Shoemaker's "Unrefined" is an undistinguished "who sabotaged my nuclear reactor?" story, which might have made for a good plot if the story hadn't gone in a completely different and tragically dull direction. "Purposes Made for Alien Minds" by Scott R. Parkin is written in sentences of exactly five words. Gimmick gets old really fast.

"The Graver" by Amy M. Hughes is about people who absorb memories of the dead. That's a concept I've seen before. The story isn't bad until it buries its drama in a lot of silliness about releasing a dead person's soul. Kary English's "Poseidon's Eyes" is a mundane story about spirits that failed to hold my interest.

Mental health counseling for people who do strange things under stress (like turning into smoke, becoming invisible, or increasing in mass and weight) is the subject of Michael T. Banker's "Wisteria Melancholy". Had it been played for laughs, this could have been a great story, but the author took the subject matter more seriously than I did.

L. Ron Hubbard is too dead to be considered a writer of the future but the volume includes a story and an essay about art that he wrote when he was still alive. I guess that's because his name is on the cover. Larry Niven, Orson Scott Card, and Kevin J. Anderson are not dead, but a Card essay and stories by Niven and Anderson (Anderson's is co-written with his wife) are also featured here for reasons I cannot imagine, unless the intent is to give the volume a sense of professionalism by adding writers of the past. Each story has an illustration and there's an article about illustrators of the future and another on "the direction of art" that both seem to serve as page-fillers.

NOT RECOMMENDED

The State We're In by Ann Beattie

Published by Scribner on August 11, 2015

The stories in The State We're In are snapshots of women at different stages of life. Nearly all of the action takes place in New England (mostly in Maine) although some memories and peripheral events occur in California and New York. Several of the stories are linked by characters or events. Each can be read without reference to any other story, but reading them together gives them additional weight.

Some stories are about young girls who are unraveling the mysteries of life. The first entry delves into the mind of Jocelyn, a high school student who can't quite wrap her mind around the future, isn't terribly engaged with the present, and doesn't know what to make of magical realism. "What Magical Realism Would Be" is one of my favorites in the collection. Jocelyn is still wondering about magical realism in "Endless Rain into a Paper Cup" but the perspective shifts to third person and the story -- more eventful than the first -- broadens to include her ill mother, the kindly uncle and batty aunt who are taking care of her, and a friend who tried who commit suicide. Jocelyn also narrates the last story, "The Repurposed Barn." She still can't pull a "B" on her English essays (punctuation puzzles her) and her aunt is upset that Jocelyn's mother, freshly out of the hospital, is dating a recovering addict, but Jocelyn has an epiphany that helps her make a connection between life and literature while she watches Elvis lamps being sold at an auction.

Other portraits of youth involve a girl who ponders what to do about a baby bird that fell from its nest ("The Fledgling") and a girl who learns that life is "a rocky road to death" from an aunt who attends Gatsby-like parties and wears the wire baskets that hold champagne corks in place under her bra to enhance her nipples ("Aunt Sophie Renaldo Brown").

Two of my favorites deal with older women. In "Yancey," a 77-year-old poet discusses poetry, her annoying family, and her aging dog with an IRS agent. The 74-year-old writer in "Missed Calls" has a gossipy lunch with a young writer who interviews her about her brief encounters with Truman Capote, but the woman's glimpse of the young man's anguish over his goddaughter's odd behavior provides the story's drama, showcasing the difference between a woman starting adulthood and a woman nearing the end of hers.

The narrator of "Duff's Done Enough" is an author who explains the pinprick of inspiration after her landlady, a woman of 74, introduces her to a story-filled neighbor of 82 who just changed his name from Chip to Duff. The narrator of "Elvis Ahead of Us" ponders the life of the neighbor who moved away after putting his house on the market, leaving behind his collection of ... you guessed it ... Elvis lamps.

Some stories are about the power of memories. A woman reflects upon the summer she turned 21, finding symbolism in a pair of deliberately overturned Adirondack chairs ("Adirondack Chairs"). Another woman looks back at a summer in her younger life and the casual friendship she had with her male roommate ("Major Maybe").

"Silent Prayer," a sweet story told in the third person, is largely a coded conversation between a husband and wife -- the kind married couples have that only make sense to them. Another strong story, consisting almost entirely of dialog, is a bedroom conversation by aging parents who are glad that their children do not visit too often ("The Stroke").

Rounding out the collection are two stories that felt less substantial. In "Road Movie," a woman who checks into a motel with a man who is cheating on his girlfriend can't get the man to talk about their relationship and, on the telephone, can't get her mother to stop talking about it. "The Little Hutchinsons" introduces a woman who feels guilt when her refusal to do an odd favor for a friend has unintended consequences.

None of these stories are duds and the best of them are masterful. Exquisite prose and startling observations make the entire collection worth reading.

RECOMMENDED

Barefoot Dogs by Antonio Ruiz-Camacho

Published by Scribner on March 10, 2015

The linked stories in Barefoot Dogs provide a different perspective on immigration. Many of the characters left Mexico to escape the country's problems, but they are not the impoverished workers sneaking over the border who dominate the news. Rather, the characters were doing well in Mexico -- some family members brought their servants with them when they came to the United States -- and they miss the relatives and friends and culture they left behind.

Having emigrated, the characters are generally not doing well. "Deer" is about two Mexican women who work at a McDonald's in Austin -- or they would be working, but for the bear that wandered in at breakfast time and began eating all the McMuffins. The woman narrating the story fears losing her job (and her ability to send money home to support her children) more than she fears the bear.

Two stories in the collection are excellent. "Origami Prunes" tells of two displaced Mexicans who begin an affair in an Austin laundromat. It is a story about the desire to escape, the pain of escaping, and the impossibility of escaping the past or the forward movement of time. Confrontation (or not) of fear and anxiety, by both children and adults, is the theme of "Okie." Bernardo feels isolated and out-of-place in his new home in California, but leaving Mexico was the only choice his parents could make.

The title story provides the connecting thread. It tells of Mexicans, now living in crowded quarters in Madrid, who moved after body parts of a kidnapping victim kept arriving in the mail. The narrator is challenged by caring for a baby and a vomiting dog in a strange land. Other stories also involve or touch upon the kidnapping, including one in which a woman needs to explain (or avoids explaining) to her son why her father has been absent for weeks. Another, "It Will Be Awesome Before Spring," is sort of a crime story, or a potential crime story, or a fear of crime story, told by a young woman who anticipates a visit to Italy without realizing that Mexico is no longer a place she can live. Much of the story is told with a curious detachment that causes it to lose its punch when it finally works its way around to a dramatic moment.

Some stories experiment with form, but not in a way that makes them inaccessible. One story, told entirely in dialog between a brother and sister staying in a shabby New York apartment, didn't work for me at all. Another story is a large block of text with no paragraphs. One is interrupted by single lines with phrases like WOW and WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS TO ME. One that I didn't particularly like is written from the perspective of a ghost. A key sequence in the title story might be a dream, but that isn't clear.

While the stories in Barefoot Dogs are uneven, they join together to form a larger story that exceeds the sum of its parts. The collection is worth reading for that reason, and for the unusual perspective it provides on expatriate Mexican life.

RECOMMENDED

Justice Done by Jan Burke

Published digitally by Pocket Star on September 15, 2014

Justice Done is the fifth of six short collections of Jan Burke's crime stories. Although the collection is uneven, the stories are representative of Burke's unusual and engaging approach to crime fiction.

Boniface "Bunny" Slye, a shell-shocked veteran of the First World War, stars in "The Quarry," a murder mystery narrated by his friend Dr. Max Tyndale. They are sort of a Holmes/Watson duo who are featured in other stories by Burke. The story is reasonably entertaining although it goes on a bit too long.

A party on the Queen Mary provides the setting for "Miscalculation." A nerdy girl named Sarah confronts the mystery of a death that occurred two generations earlier, when the Queen Mary was used as a troop carrier during World War II. The story is unconvincing and its ending is disappointingly uneventful.

"Two Bits" is a quiet story of a boy who was kidnapped while his brother roamed through a store in a strange town with the shiny new quarter the kidnappers gave him. Not a conventional crime story, "Two Bits" is an affecting examination of the crime's impact on the brother who was duped.

Written from the perspective of a man living in horse-and-carriage days, "An Unsuspected Condition of the Heart" tells of a man who married for money, whose in-laws openly plot each other's murders, and whose new wife finds herself in an unhappy situation. The story fits within the book's title and reveals the charm with which Burke often writes.

RECOMMENDED

Mystery, Inc. by Joyce Carol Oates

Published by MysteriousPress.com on April 7, 2015

"Mystery, Inc." is Joyce Carol Oates' contribution to the Bibliomysteries series from Mysterious Press. Each short story is the creation of a crime writer. The stories are blurbed as "short tales about deadly books" but they more broadly address deadly authors, deadly bookstores, deadly libraries, and other deadly aspects of the literary world.

The owner of several mystery bookstores would love to acquire Mystery, Inc. in Seabrook, New Hampshire, the finest example of a mystery bookstore he has ever seen. To obtain the store at a good price, however, the current owner will have to die. How unfortunate.

"Mystery Inc." is as much an homage to mystery bookstores and mystery booksellers as it is a mystery story. Atmosphere is everything in a narrative that takes us for a loving stroll past cabinets filled with first editions of Poe and Doyle, pulp magazines filled with Hammett and Chandler, and a variety of art and memorabilia relating to death and crime.

Oates also delves into the philosophy of the mystery story and its relationship to the mystery of life. Mystery books, a character opines, allow us to see the many mysteries of life more clearly, from perspectives that are not our own.

Of course, a reader expects to encounter murderous perspectives in a murder mystery. Oates does not disappoint; the bookstore has a dark history. And of course, good mysteries deliver plot twists. Oates does that, and if the twist is not unexpected, it is nevertheless satisfying. "Mystery Inc." lacks the depth of Oates' best work but her stories never fail to entertain.

RECOMMENDED