Speculative fiction anthology review
Body of Work: Review
Lions and tigers and bees, oh my!
The latest anthology from the Canberra Speculative Fiction Guild was released at the Australian national science fiction convention (Conflux 17) recently held in Canberra and I managed to get my eager hands on a copy.
Full disclosure: I have a story in this book and any links in boldface are affiliate links from which I receive a few cents from Amazon. Or order the book from the CFSG and avoid Big Booker.
I mentioned last month that I had a story accepted and in what must be record time, I have the actual paper and ink book in my hands today.
I’m biased but it’s brilliant. The cover art by Red Saunders is rather disturbing, echoing the theme of the human body as a shifting source of wonder, horror, and delight. Look closer, though, and that gaping body cavity is full of things that shouldn’t be there.
Or perhaps they should. There is an element inside that tortured flesh for every story in the anthology.
Red, who along with editor C Z Tacks, co-hosted an after-dark convention panel on how to write (or perhaps how not to write) smut in spec fic titled It Can’t Bend Like That, is possessed of an earthy, quirky, impishly penetrating sense of humour.
You really had to be there but I suspect that the after-party convened in the ER for treatment of cracked ribs, outraged sensibilities, unstoppable giggling, and hives.
Top teamwork
Seventeen short stories and four poems, with pocket bios of the writers and some brief comments by editor C Z Tacks, who found her own body the subject of some surgical invasion in the middle of the editing process.
In fact, the whole process of moving the project from pitch to published paperback took only six months, and that involved sorting through an open slush pile of several hundred submissions arriving through April and May.
Tacks’ meticulous sense of organisation and leadership kept the thing under control, as well as a firm eye on a launch date during Conflux 17 on 30 September. She had a team of readers — at least two per submission — working their way through the pile of “de-identified” stories and poems.
One assistant personally read over a hundred. From my own days wading through slush, I think that calls for a special medal and round of drinks.
Here’s where having the skills and resources on tap of a veteran group of speculative fiction writers and editors pays off, I guess. Unpaid volunteers all, members of the CSFG, working together and coordinated by a series of spreadsheets tracking readers and ratings.
Every submission was checked against the guidelines, basically summarised as original as-yet-unpublished human work from Australians and New Zealanders less than 5 000 words (or 40 lines for poetry) on the broad theme of “body”.
On reading, pieces were assigned to as diverse a pair (or trio) of readers as could be found (male and female, senior and junior, YA and horror fans etc.) with disputes settled by a senior reader and the editor having final say.
The members of the reading team all reported some difficult choices and a desire not to reject pieces of excellence but there was only so much they could fit in and inevitably some top-notch stories had to be turned down because they didn’t meet the guidelines (a few entries came from overseas, another was obviously AI, several were mainstream literature, and some did not meet the theme). Or there were multiple stories on the same sub-topic (shapeshifting, birth, cyborg implants, etc.) and they couldn’t all be included without skewing the theme away from the target.
Rare, at least in my experience, the slush readers all had smiles on their faces and not just the euphoria produced when you stop beating your head against a wall. The high of a good intellectual gym session or the triumph of climbing Everest, it seemed.
A triumph of vision and leadership, judging by the results.
Probably best not to try this at home alone, people. Enthusiasm alone will only get you so far. Laser focus, the skills of a diplomat, a broad knowledge of speculative fiction and a close acquaintance with a good barista are more on point.
And writers, as an editor myself, let me underscore the importance of reading the requirements. It might be the best and fairest sonnet in all the world but if the editor wants limericks, don’t send anything but.
The stories
I’ll say a few words about the poetry — and this project had an expert poetry assistant editor — later. The body — so to speak — of the book opens with a poem and three more are sprinkled throughout, providing a pleasing texture to the text.
The discussion on the slush pile process uncovered the fact that some stories were what is known in the trade as “trunk work”. Pieces that had been submitted to and rejected by various publishers and consigned to the trunk until a new opportunity opened up.
Some experienced and acclaimed writers had submitted but either they had not quite met the requirements or they were something like cyborg story number five and only one or two could be accepted.
Hive — C Z Tacks
The first story is by editor C Z Tacks. When I noticed this I was wondering about the wisdom of such a “captain’s call” but after reading it, I think both the story and its placing are inspired.
Tacks puts the science into science fiction here, with the words backed up by scientific references. An article from the specialist Psittacine Conservation publication dated 2023 deals with parrot nesting sites and I felt no need to look this source up but when the references began to be dated 2026, 2027, 2029 … I started to question my reality framework.
Couched in the protocols and jargon of a research project with a questionable ethical basis, this description of the nesting habits of Apis ossivorus had me intrigued at the premise and eventually howling with delight at the absurd method of organic control of this invasive pest.
At best, this is pseudoscience with some marvellous sound bites. You can almost hear the chomping of bones and flesh.
I was the one who found the link that bound us all together. It was late at night. Most of us were still there, buzzing with caffeine and with our bees.
There is some wonderful wordplay along the way and I am quite sure that I did not pick up all the scholarly jokes buried in the straight-faced delivery.
Top marks, Tacks! There may well be a Nobel Prize in your future. Possibly for literature rather than biology.
One Version of Yourself, At the Speed of Light — Freya Marske
Freya — yes, that Freya Marske with a string of awards, New York Times reviews and so on — read a portion of her story at the book launch. I was intrigued to find she claimed that one of her characters was based on naval surgeon Stephen Maturin from the twenty-and-a-bit volume Aubreyad novel saga by Patrick O’Brian.
Set aboard a spaceship commanded by a soon-to-be naked and blood-streaked admiral, prisoner Etienne Carrel finds himself in a difficult position.
“Carrel, if I haven’t stabbed you for being wrist-deep in my genitals, I’m hardly going to start for some rude questions.”
This is prose poetry. Every word perfectly chosen and precisely placed. The story unfolds in a series of turns with a final twist. Military SF with solid roots and links to some wider worldview.
I’ll have to read more of Freya’s fiction.
This is Spärkle Tap — Britni Pepper
My story, submitted three minutes before the 31 May deadline. I haven’t actually written much that could be described as science fiction, at least not since some excruciatingly awful stories and songs in my teens, some of which were published in the fanzines of the day by editors keen to indulge a young writer full of herself, but as I’ve mentioned earlier, I had this idea about a robotic body aid that just needed a plot, and when Body of Work was announced, my penny-dreadful dropped.
Tacks was able to grant me a revision or two and though now I read it months later I can still see a couple of loose threads that have escaped several eyes, I am quite happy with it.
It’s a fun little read, there’s a fair amount of sex occurring just off the page in the mind of the reader — the best place for it, I’ve found — and it raises a few questions about bodily autonomy and AI.
Quite frankly, I don’t think most of the human race has yet grasped the awful potential of machines that both know more than and can out-think us.
Right now the average Australian has enough electronics pulsing information into the net that, properly used, could make our lives one long pleasure party.
You’ve had a hard day, your heartbeat and blood sugar levels indicate you could really use a caffeine jolt about now, and you coincidentally receive a text that advises that a courier is two minutes away with a jumbo flat white and a double-choc Tim Tam, only $4.99. Plus delivery fee, GST, bank surcharge and surge overcharge, of course. Do you want it?
Push that YES button, Pavlov.
Follow me up and down with my boyfriend Jason and his unusual skills. And then, once you have stopped wincing, ponder the future.
Until that one day, Jase came home with a big “Achievement Unlocked” grin all over his face.
“This is something good, Brit,” he said. “There’s a new module on the app. I need to try it out. On you. Take off your clothes.”
When I discovered that my story had been included when more luminary writers had been politely rejected I again questioned the editor’s choices but I am glad that I made the cut.
This story might be light-hearted and fluffy but to call out another groundbreaking speculative anthology, this is my own dangerous vision. I might want the reader to laugh at my antics but I also want them to think about what road to ruin Tesla AI is driving us on our human journey.
As a species we have some difficult decisions ahead — or to be honest, Right Bloody Now! — or we face being devoured by our own creations.
Maintenance Phase — A D Ellicott
Here is beauty. Here is delight. Here is the link between soul and body.
I was in tears when I finished this, gasping through tightened passages as the words blurred before my eyes.
The shape of this story shifts as you read it. It starts off one thing, appears to be another a page later, and threatens to turn into something different and disturbing all the way through.
A D Ellicott — and the “A D” could equally well indicate “Absolute Darling” or “Artful Dodger” — teases the reader through the tale.
But now Mary faced the oncoming implosion of the separate lives she had carved out of her body. It would be best if she left before those façades crumbled.
This story — and I mean this in every sense of the word — is delicious. A gem.
Precisely paced, the reader is led on, always wanting more, always savouring the taste lingering on the mind’s tongue.
Honestly, I went back for seconds on this one, flipping back to the first words after I finished and rose for a necessary cuppa. My eye fell on the clock and I felt unreal. Could that really be the time?
Ah, daylight saving. I had an hour less than I thought I had but still I wanted another bite of the cherry.
In this story reality shifts slightly. It’s a world in which we are at home, sure, but there is just this one thing …
How would you use it if you had this extraordinary power? What would you do with it? Would you lash out at those who laughed at you — and I suspect it is no coincidence that one of the characters is named Carrie — or would you turn against yourself in self-loathing at what you had become?
Most of all, this is a story about love. A perfect ten in my blurred vision.
Dearest reader, do not start on this story without a dry hankie or box of issues ready for use.
Sacculina — J M Voss
This story opens with a quintessential Aussie scene. Beach, surf, esky full of booze, lazing on beach towels …
Something weird in the water that night. The morning train to regular programming starts to run off the rails with a tiny wobble and by the time the narrator notices, things are too far gone to get off at the next station.
Everyone knew that the human mind snapped as easily as a pencil — but it was no fun experiencing it firsthand. I decided to go to the ER after all. I wasn’t going to sleep now anyway, and if I was about to go insane, then I at least wanted a nurse there to hand feed me drugs like sugar cubes to a horse.
I love the way that the trip to the ER is every bit as awful as the imaginings. And as helpful in slowing down the onrushing disaster. Eventually, the narrator takes matters into her own hands. This will fix things!
Does that work? You’ll have to read on to find out but, Dear Reader, I would not be too sanguine about the result, though “sanguine” is exactly the right word to use at this point.
This is one story that has a little variety and poetry in its physical structure. It’s not a slab of text, in other words. Nor even regular alternations with dialogue to break up the flow.
It’s, well, bold and disturbing.
Appropriate considering what happens on the final page.
Not for the squeamish at heart. Or screamish. Me, when I was reading the final words I had one hand over my mouth.
And the other over my eyes.
I love the craft in this story.
Mother — Claire Fitzpatrick
Like a fart in a lift, this story is wrong on so many levels.
Don’t misunderstand. It is firmly crafted, a strong narrative direction, grammar and spelling and everything. We’re talking wrongness of content here.
In one way, it is a story about fairness and equity. In another it is about rich and poor, privilege and poverty, pain and comfort,
And when you really get into it, it’s about something completely different. After a while it starts to show:
When I reach my car at the bottom of the hill I plunge my hand into my pocket, retrieving a two-dollar coin, a rusty hair clip, and a used tampon. I hold the treasures to my nose and inhale.
Wait, what?
Where is this going? Maybe I’ll hang on for the ride.
It’s worth it. Things get crusty quickly.
One of the things that bothers me is the way that inequality thrives in Australia. More so now than when I was younger. This story pokes a finger at the problem, exposes some of the injustices. Yes, it’s a mainstream theme but how fair is it that corporate bosses get millions in bonuses when those on the bottom of the tree are literally struggling to get from day to day.
Regardless of whatever strange child this mother is carrying, society should be on her side, not kicking her in the guts.
When the title’s promise is delivered on the final page, it’s not so bad, really. But you know, in the implicit next chapter, things are going to be a lot worse than sleepless nights and dirty baby bottoms.
Just what is this sweet child bringing? Like ChatGPT and Midjourney, is this the end of the world dressed up in pastel pink and cutesy innocent smiles?
Thank you, Claire, for this triple-barreled horror story.
Jimmy Flip Brings his Little One to Work and it Comes My Turn to Hold it — C H Pearce
Another story dealing with motherhood. That makes four, so far. Each one very, no, wildly different from the others.
This, I think, is the best of the lot. Or do I mean the worst?
There’s a lot of pain and vomiting and uncertainty in parenting. This book has all that and more. Bring a mop.
Blood trickles from my left ear, hot on my neck, spotting my collar. The baby smells my weakness and fear. I should have performed better. I should have made an effort. My skin prickles hotly. Sweat makes my shirt stick to my ribs. I really, really want to give it back.
In this story, a pool of thick black bodily fluids leaking out from a wider world, not everything is explained. The Human Resources section at the office have a set of horrors that is not just the regular lot in binders and whiteboards and spreadsheets, but things that make your skin crawl as weird moist objects pop under your feet and nobody ever turns the light on, and what office-worker Earl has behind his desk is not a pathway to promotion.
In a book full of unsettling tales, this is a leaky boat on a stormy sea after a diet of rancid worms. Bring your own bucket and try not to get any of that black stuff on your skin. It burns.
Provenance — D J Goosens
I like magic stories. They don’t work if the magic is always pure and beautiful, always working flawlessly. There has to be conflict, some unforeseen effect, some problem with the third wish …
Here is the thing. In this story the magic works just fine. No problem at all.
Reya squinted into the mirror and continued to peel off the thick layer of magic. Had the magescherman lied? She tugged at her nose and a patch of the gluey second skin, like cooled beeswax, grudgingly came away. Perhaps it had transformed the layers beneath. She dared to hope.
It’s the world that goes awry. There are problems and dramas and difficulties aplenty before at last the hapless Reya returns to the magescherman to get a refund.
And then things are resolved. Kind of.
A lovely little sting in the tail here. Grittily told, the story follows our transformed podlid through a world that doesn’t care for her type and just when we think we can find an unsatisfactory conclusion, we are ripped away.
Growing Pains — J Lagrimas
This story starts off painful, gets worse and worser, and finishes on an unexpectedly high note.
I’ve had a couple of wisdom teeth removed. The first one, the groans from the chair were matched by the moans from the waiting room as the next patient studied their watch. The dentist said with some pride that it was the hardest extraction he’d performed with both feet on the floor.
So this story hit a nerve and continued jarring.
It’s been two years, and you’ve had eight operations per wisdom tooth. … The dentist mentions irritatingly often that you’re his favourite patient. It makes you uncomfortable, but at least he’s stopped hinting at exhibiting you at medical conferences.
There is no relief. It is one unending medical horror.
But like all stories of magic, there’s a twist. I’ll leave it to you, Bold Reader, to find it for yourself but rest assured it’s worth all the pain. It’s like Midas blessed with a gift of wealth that comes at a price, except in reverse.
Um. This story is perhaps best not read unprepared by the squeamish. Take a couple of painkillers and a good belt of something peaty beforehand.
The Gift Certificate — Rebecca Fraser
The theme is body, not wholesomeness.
I could quibble over details but the emotion I experienced — naked horror — was genuine.
“Never mind how I afforded it,” Julia leaned in closer. “When you look like I do now, money is never a problem. You don’t even have to open your legs to get ‘em to open their wallets.”
Not a word out of place. The reader is taken by the shortest but, well, most scenic route to the destination where the reader’s feelings contrast with the joy of the protagonist. With freckles.
Touch — N G Hartland
Out of the whole book, this story was the one I found most disturbing. Not a bit of technology, not some magic, not a parasite of some kind, Touch is about our species changing in a fundamental manner and altering the world to suit.
To get home I had to navigate through unimproved lanes with old style surfaces that had enough friction for me to walk on. My routes through the city changed regularly as one by one my old streets or footpaths were clad with nano-smart material.
What saves the story for me and made it worth the re-read was love. The bodies may have changed but the all too human minds and thoughts and feelings remain.
We can relate to others that we can see and hear and be near, but cannot touch. Not without pain or awkwardness.
How does that feel?
Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow? — Valerie Y L Toh
Call me softie but there are tears in my eyes reading this story. It’s another tale about love and a different view of the body and again the familiar is extended into something wonderful.
Mistle and I stared into the peaceful horizon. The stars blinked in the neverwhere, just as they had done for thousands of years. I found that comforting. Perhaps there was time to stay here for a while before descending to the earthly plane. It felt too soon for another adventure.
I love the way this story changes and redefines itself. Just when you think you have nailed down what’s going on, think again. Valerie swaps the goalposts around.
Familiar and shifting and yet the message is right there in the heart. I don’t think anybody can read this without at least a twinge.
Now, kindly pass me another tissue, please. This one really hit me deep.
In the Deep Dark Woods — by Seaton Kay-Smith
It wouldn’t be a speculative fiction anthology without vampires or werewolves, I guess.
But both at the same time?
“And am I to eat [this rabbit] as it is, without seasoning? My kingdom,” of which the wolf has none beyond the forest itself, “my kingdom for some paprika or rosemary. A potato for a stew.”
And just how paleo do werewolves get, anyway?
This is funny and disturbing and poetic and beautiful.
Technologie Über Alles — Geraldine Dark
It was inevitable, I guess, that someone else would walk the same path as my story. An itty-bitty teeny-weenie tech implant with enormous consequences.
I need not have worried. The two paths diverge and hurry away from each other. One couple laugh and play and love and act goofy. The other are at war. And at love.
Owen cries out and lurches forward, his wine glass smashing to the floor as he lands on his hands and knees. “FUCK!” he shouts. “Fuck!” Panting and gripping the rug with his fingers.
It’s a wild ride and it’s one that so many take every day in our bodily unaugmented reality. One of control and domination.
What happens when you add technology into the equation?
Not what you expect, that’s for sure.
There’s a world more tension and drama in these few pages than any of the other stories, I think, and it’s almost all on the inside.
We are only a few years — if that — from the imagining becoming reality. How come the whole eight billion of us are not running down the road in terror and despair?
Death Interrupted — Pamela Jeffs
The human body wears out. The idea of replacing the failing parts with gleaming steel and plastic machinery is an old one. No twists left on this trope, right?
I rub my stubbled chin. “Full-mechs run the national government now and entire body replacements are mandated. You don’t get a choice. I needed to get out before I was herded up with the rest of the bionics and modified.”
This very Australian take on an old theme has echoes of Mad Max. And something darker. Stephen King as consulting scriptwriter, perhaps.
What makes us human? Body? Brain? Soul? Ability to identify bicycles?
Apparently, one of the characters notes, you can download memories if you have the right technique. I think I am on safe ground in saying that in this story we learn the details of the technique and please don’t try this at home, Gentle Reader.
One of those stories where we learn that no good deed goes unpunished. Enjoy!
Gallow Girls — Louise Pieper
Oh, this is glorious! I read the story and pondered over what sort of bodily theme it had included. Nothing really out of the ordinary, I thought. No implants, no cyber limbs, no shapeshifting, no parasites chewing the fat.
Was this a “normal” story that had somehow escaped Editor Tacks’ strict rules?
“A metal business card? How very chic!” Medora forced her voice to stay calm although her insides felt like a bottle of sarsaparilla her sister had just shaken hard.
And then it hit me. A very clever twist. A different way of looking at the body entirely. Very pertinent to this anthology book, launched in what turns out to be an intermammary sulcus of the Old Ones.
There is magic here. Life and, especially death. A fragment of a greater dream — or nightmare — in a land of arcane rules and deadly duels powered by the dark energies of dying things.
I think this book, published by the Canberra Speculative Fiction Guild, comes home in this story. If you love the Brindabellas, know what organ rises on Aspen Island, can explain the significance of the Mawson-Dickson Line, and feel the strange power of the great flat lake that comes and goes, this is your comfort zone.
As a Melbourne girl, it’s all a little foreign to me but I can hear the locals chuckling with delight over the details here.
Under the Shade of a Coolabah Tree — Mark O’Flynn
A girl dressed as a boy casting sheep sangers into a scummy pool of tears.
A bit of an oddity to round out the journey. The final story steps out to one meeting full of implicit delight and is waylaid by a haggard figure croaked in a pond, hungry for sustenance and thirsting for an audience,
A dammed odd meeting, if you ask me.
There are echoes here: ripples of old songs, old tales, poetic forms and antic language. Old bones and decaying trolleys.
Two fingers now rose above the water, beckoning to me, then a whole hand emerged which wafted gently like a hand conducting an orchestra from an armchair, albeit a submerged and saturated armchair.
In modern Australia we walk on old land. Land full of bones, country echoing stories of people past. The hills, the forests, the scrubby creeks and sweeping plains: each bump in the landscape a braille of an ancient story.
A ghostly voice talks to us in this closure, a corporeal spirit of a greater body of work.
We look forward to spaceships and technomarvels, we glance sideways at magic and shapes shifting, of other beings invading our body.
But how often do we stop in our tracts and survey where we have been, where our forebears have gathered around a fire in the evening to tell tales?
Thinking of the stories of the land, as told by a voice in a body perhaps stranger than any other found in this collection, I think we can welcome these new additions to our collective narrative, each a way of looking with new eyes at things strange and familiar, each dip of our toes in the water of tears a chance to feel something wonderful.
Mark’s story is an oddity but also a fitting conclusion to our odyssey, tying together strands old and new, giving us a pause to contemplate our discoveries, giving us a thrill of horror as the bony fingers beckon, giving us a sense of anticipation for what is to come.
Poetry
- The Chittering Moon — P S Cottier
- A Master’s Craft — Elizabeth Pendragon
- Dance With Me — Kel E Fox
- Estrangement — Harry Liantziris
I won’t attempt to analyse and quote. These one-page garlands are amuse-yeux pausing the flow of prose. Those who know, know. Savour these morsels, come back to them for a second and third taste, swirl the words around in your mouth, for poetry must be spoken to live, and thank the poets for their gems.
Wrapping up
I’ve read the book. I’ve enjoyed the stories, though “enjoyed” may not be the exactly perfect word to use for some of them. I’ve spent a lot of time walking down paths of thought and speculation after the words themselves came to an end — often in a pretty lonesome or awkward place.
This work of body opens up the mind, a cavity of thought and dreams and worries about what is to become of us and our familiar flesh-encrusted frames.
Will we evolve in strange new directions, our DNA shifting to cope with microgravity or nanotech? Will we be doing the shifting, creating our own visions of the perfect body for us or our odd offspring?
Or will some darker force be in charge?
Some of the stories deal with magic and in a kind of perverse horror, that is more comforting than many of the technotrauma gobbets dreamt up in these pages. Magic, at least, has rules.
I thought, as I read through, that I could hardly be expected to like every offering here. In effect it’s a science fiction fan group putting out a quick collection of stories. A 50% reading rate would be good and I could skip over anything I didn’t like, right?
There was no skipping in this book. I have no qualms about skipping something I don’t like. I don’t have time to read every book published, even in genres I love. I was drawn into each of these tales. Some I read two or three times until I’d soaked up all the juicy bits and crafty phrases.
I am lifted to be in such company. I’m going to hunt down some of the other works of some of these writers.
For at least one writer, it was their first published work and I sincerely hope that they keep going in the same vein.
For editor Tacks, I believe that this is her first anthology and going by the quality on display here — the planning, the organisation, the discipline, the enthusiasm, the leadership, the selection and arrangement all rolled up together — I’m putting my name down on the pre-order list for the next one.
I’ll say it again. Body of Work is extraordinary. It is carefully constructed to push the mind of the reader in different directions, all important, all worrisome, all entertaining. If this does not win a shelf full of awards I will be astonished.
Whether it attains a deserved landmark place in the wider speculative fiction world or not, it is a book that is well worth reading and savouring and contemplating. It is a dark and disturbing joy.
Get your thinking gear wrapped around this.
As for my own flimsy little story, I get the rights back in a twelvemonth and I’ll reprint it here.
For those who cannot wait …
I snapped up one of the special editions with the silver-embossed cover and I am so glad I did. Not just a first edition of what will become a classic but a shiny as well!
Get your own copy here:
CSFG — straight from the source at AUD15 for the ebook, $25 for the paperback, or thirty for both.
Barnes and Noble — USD17 for the paperback.
Amazon — my affiliate link and I get the merest taste of cream in my coffee in return. USD23.90
Britni
