Silent Screams

Silent Screams is a new anthology, available October 31 for Kindle and shortly thereafter in print.  Bluntly put, it kicks ass.

The book is an unusual one thematically, as its hook is “socially conscious dark fiction”—which is to say, horror and near-horror stories with an emphasis on disadvantaged protagonists.  On the surface, this would put it outside of my comfort zone both as a writer and reader.  I have no particular fondness for horror in any medium (I find it generally gratuitous and artless and it very rarely scares me) and, while I care about social justice conceptually, I am accustomed to seeing issues of “social consciousness” approached in a preachy and adversarial manner that turns me off.

I was therefore surprised when the editors of the work elected to accept my contribution to the anthology, “A Boy and a Soldier.”  My story is a further fleshing-out of Fabrice’s journey to freedom in the company of his child-soldier companions and disembodied advisor, as first chronicled in "The Commander".  This tale is more adult in tone, focuses more extensively on Fabrice’s human allies and adversaries, and goes to darker places.  I wouldn’t categorize it as full-on horror so much as straightforward fiction with dark elements.

I don’t know why the Fabrice stuff sells so much more readily than the rest of my work; if I did know, I’d be a better writer.  Perhaps it’s because it’s more action-forward that most of what I write.  Perhaps it’s because Fabrice is a more immediately sympathetic and admirable protagonist than most of the conflicted, messed up people through whom I speak.  Perhaps the voice is more distinctive, or perhaps we Americans just love us some cultural appropriation.  In any case, it’s a solid story of which I’m proud.

And then I read the whole collection, and I’ll just be damned if my story isn’t maybe the weakest thing in it.

These are STRONG stories, my people.  Rich, visceral, imaginative, well-crafted and emotionally resonant, right across the board.  My initial concerns about the genre approach and possible political angling of the book were blown right out of the water.  These aren’t just horror stories, but stories of every type and style—everything from lit fic to heroic fantasy, seasoned with dark elements but not overwhelmed by the desire to “get dark”.  They’re enjoyable reads in which the nasty side makes you think, as opposed to grossing you out.

Nor are these predictable defenses of progressive orthodoxy against the usual cultural straw-men—there’s a variety of perspectives included, everything from standard feminist to stridently anti-abortion.  The stories have points to make, but they’re never artless in doing so.  The touch of the authors is deft, the allegories clear but subtle, the victims worthy of sympathy regardless of one’s position on the political compass.  If you come away from this screaming about “SJWs”, I daresay the problem is with you, not with the book.

Parenthetically, I will add for the benefit of the high school speech instructors among my readers that there is some very intriguing prose/DI material herein.

I can’t guarantee you’ll love everything in the book, but I’ll bet you respect damn near all of it.  And there’s enough really good writing here that predicting your individual favorite is probably next to impossible.  For me personally, three pieces stand out.

-“THE MAIDEN WITH THE CLOCKWORK HANDS” by Rachel Strnad.  This tale, apparently set in an alternative 19^th century, places a monster hunter from the Pacific Northwest and his motley companions aboard a most unconventional vessel, and turns them loose in search of two quarries—a man with a fondness for silence, and a beast that makes Moby Dick seem tame.  In doing so, it creates a subgenre all its own, a sort of paranormal-infused steampunk.  I’m not overly fond of paranormal OR steampunk, yet Strnad’s world is much better than the sum of its parts; it’s utterly captivating, revealing its wonders and the mechanics of its technological, natural, and pseudo-magical systems in stages.

-“A PRESENTATION TO THE IMPERIAL SOCIETY OF MANCERS” by Stephen S. Power.  Clinical detachment is a prerequisite to successful science and to human progress generally, yet to sever ourselves from our emotions makes us in some respects less than human.  It’s from this dichotomy that the traditional take on the “mad scientist” springs.  Here, the author yanks us in an unexpected direction, creating a world of heroic fantasy into which technology is being slowly introduced, ala Terry Pratchett.  Pratchett, however, never dreamed up a narrator as soul-sick as the twisted bastard Power offers as the author of this scientific journal submission.  Utterly revolting, and disturbingly insightful.

-“RAW” by Shane Simmons.

Oh, sweet Jesus.  Where to begin with this thing?

I’ve already mentioned that I’m not a fan of traditional horror; that I don’t find it scary and that I often find it manipulative.  Well…this IS traditional horror.  And I suppose that, in technical terms, you’d have to call it manipulative.  But HOLY MOTHER OF GOD, did it ever succeed at manipulating me.

It’s about a mobster who visits a restaurant.  More than that I will not reveal, because it would spoil the “fun”, and because I’d rather not think about it any more than I have to.  Suffice to say that, over the course of eighteen pages, I twice had to get up from my computer and go do something else for a while.  This is not a story for the sensitive or the squeamish.  I am neither, and this story WRECKED me.

I hesitate to say that a story in a small-market collection is the best piece of horror fiction I’ve ever read.  That doesn’t seem like it ought to be true.  But I can’t recall another ever having as visceral an effect on me. 

Shane Simmons, you sick f*ck.  You’ll win awards for this.

There’s more, folks.  There’s much, much more.  Twenty-six stories in all, each with a unique style and a particular way of providing a voice to society’s victims.  Every cent you spend on this anthology goes straight to the Salvation Army, to help some of those victims pick themselves back up again.  But believe me, it’s primarily for your own sake that you’ll want to buy this one.  It’s great.

Dear Publisher,

I have received you recent rejection notice.  It is extremely well-written and imaginative, but I'm afraid it's just not what I'm looking for right now.  Consequently, I'm going to have to publish my short story in your magazine/anthology/website/newsletter/loose sheaf of crumpled notebook paper anyway.

Please bear in mind that even an excellent rejection letter will not meet the tastes of every writer.  As I'm sure you're aware, I receive MANY rejection letters, and can only accept a small percentage. I am confident that you will find a home for your work very soon with another reputable author.

Best wishes going forward, and I hope you will bear me in mind for future rejections.

-Steve DuBois

"Sharp Ends" by Joe Abercrombie

Joe Abercrombie has a reputation as one of the grimmest, darkest, most brutal figures in modern heroic fantasy.  His debut effort, the First Law trilogy, opened up readers to characters with deep-seated psychological flaws, empires which were not so much led as jerked in varying ineffectual directions by competing political factions, and utter ambiguity as to who might be the hero or the villain.  After a brief and mostly successful sojourn in Young Adult literature, he has returned to the world of his original fantasy novels, and seems to be seeking to make up for lost time.  Sharp Ends offers up all of the sex and violence his YA Shattered Sea trilogy couldn’t, with a few dollops extra to spare.  With Abercrombie, that’s very much a good thing.

THE GOOD AND THE GREAT:

*VIOLENCE!!!  If there’s anybody writing who’s better at portraying graphic violence on the printed page, I don’t know who it might be.  Abercrombie’s battle scenes are brusque, direct, and precise; the action is smooth and visceral, playing out in continually imaginative and surprising ways.  His style is more hyper-realistic than strictly realistic, which is a bit of a surprise from an author who confines himself so rigidly to realistic motives in his descriptions of human behavior; his point of view characters have always had a capacity to absorb damage or evade blows that verges on the superhuman, and here he goes even bigger, with characters occasionally plucking arrows from midair and the like.  The important thing is that it works.  It works like all hell.  Abercrombie is a very rare author in that he can alter his use of violence to suit the tone of the story, from horror to disgust to ennui even to outright comedy.  If there’s an objection to be offered here, it’s that violence seems to be a lot more “fun” than used to be the case in Abercrombie’s work.  Previous entries consistently kept careful track of the emotionally stunting effect of violence upon its practitioners; this time out, both old characters and particularly new ones seem to be pretty comfortable shrugging off the disembowelments they impose upon others, with the notable exception of old favorite Bremer dan Gorst, who appears to be headed in the opposite direction.  In any case, readers who don’t care for violence should steer well clear.

*PSYCHOLOGICAL INSIGHT.  Abercrombie’s point-of-view characters are consistently complex and intriguing.  Every action that takes place in an Abercrombie story proceeds realistically from the motives of the participants; there is rarely anything forced or any need of a plot McGuffin.  People don’t always know what they want, let alone what’s best for them, and even those who get what they want often find that maybe they didn’t want it after all.  Abercrombie understands both at an intellectual and an intuitive level the many ways in which we disappoint both ourselves and others.  And yet…for all that Abercrombie is celebrated for his grim, dark style, he understands joy and satisfaction equally well.  His characters change and grow; they experience wonderful friendships, achieve impressive things, are celebrated for what’s best in them (though not perhaps as often as for what’s worst in them).  Some may call Abercrombie grim; I call him insightful.

*DIALOGUE.  I maintain that readers don’t want characters that talk like real people; they want characters who talk the way they WISH real people talked.  Well, here are those characters, in great numbers, spouting quote-worthy quips left and right.  Everyone will have a particular favorite, I suppose; of the members of the author’s rogue’s gallery represented herein, I’ll opt for the autistic henchman Friendly and the newly introduced Javre, Lioness of Hoskopp.

*FRITZ LEIBER LIVES!  Abercrombie’s newest revelation, and the best reason to publish this book, is the partnership between the aforementioned Javre, a human wrecking machine and creature of insatiable appetite, and Shevedieh, a master thief who’s never happy unless she’s miserable.  The two of them have a distinct Fafhrd/Grey Mouser vibe going, and a series of short stories is EXACTLY the right manner in which to keep them moving forward together; we’re presented in Sharp Ends with a series of adventures spanning fourteen years of common history, and there’s plenty of room for Abercrombie to fill in blanks with more stories later on.  Two of the Jav/Shev stories, “Skipping Town” and “Two’s Company,” run neck-and-neck for the best thing in the book.  This is fun, fun stuff.


THE MEH:

*POUNDING CONCEPTS INTO THE GROUND.  Yes, Shev, we get it, you’re a lesbian.  It’s not necessary to remind us every third page (and hey, Joe, whatever happened to "show, don't tell", wink wink, nudge nudge).  By the same token:  the “sidekick” gag is very, very funny when it’s first introduced, then gets worn out through repetition--Abercrombie uses it to suggest that Javre is subtler than she appears, but in this case I'd prefer more subtlety from the author as opposed to the character. 

*INACCESSIBILITY.  There is some stuff in here that fans of Abercrombie’s early work will absolutely ADORE but which will completely confuse anyone who hasn’t read the antecedent work.  Notable on this score is the opener, “A Beautiful Bastard,” which provides some very, very revelatory context for the relationship between Salem Rews and Sand dan Glokta (the single greatest character Abercrombie has ever created, and one who I’d love to see get more attention).  It’s impossible to imagine, though, that people who haven’t read the First Law trilogy will get anything out of the story.  The same is true of the last story, “Made a Monster,” which explores the history of Abercrombie’s most popular character from the perspective of an antagonist.  For those familiar with how their relationship ends, the story makes sense.  For an outsider, though, I have to think that there’s not much satisfaction to be gained here.  If you’re having a banquet of Abercrombie, treat “Sharp Ends” as the dessert rather than the appetizer.

*HARD TIMES ALL OVER.  This worked, mostly, as a stand-alone story in George R. R. Martin’s “Dangerous Women” anthology.  It doesn’t work here.  It PARTICULARLY doesn’t work in that it rewrites the dynamic between Shev and supporting character Carcolf which Abercrombie has spent the past hundred and fifty pages establishing.  And no, an “unreliable narrator” isn’t sufficient to explain the differences as they’re presented here.  I’m guessing that Abercrombie wrote this story first, had second thoughts about who Shev was, and wrote her team-ups with Javre later on, then felt compelled to include this story in the volume anyway.  It was the wrong decision.

*COLLECTIONS OF TICS MASQUERADING AS CHARACTERS.  This isn’t really a weakness in Abercrombie’s writing so much as an offshoot of his strengths.  We see so much depth in his point-of-view characters that some of his less developed secondary characters come across as more two-dimensional than they otherwise would.  Carcolf falls into this category.  If we’re being completely honest, Javre does as well, at times, but Abercrombie is clearly having so much fun writing her that the reader won’t care.


OVERALL:  

It’s Abercrombie.  It’s the First Law.  Nobody else does the stuff he does as well as he does it.  Of COURSE you’re gonna want to read it.  My advice, though, is to read it last.  If you haven’t already, go buy “The Blade Itself” and work your way in the direction of this book.  You don’t, after all, begin at the Ends.