The fantastic North

kw: book reviews, science fiction, fantasy, horror, anthologies

On a day I had to stay home, I had a mostly-enjoyable romp through Open Space: New Canadian Fantastic Fiction, edited by Claude Lalumière. The 21 selections cover the gamut of speculative fiction, fantasy and horror. I skipped a couple of them after the first page or so, as being too profane. Three of the stories stuck with me.

"Growing up Sam", by Melissa Yuan-Innes, explores possible implications of the total loss of habitat for the Bonobo: human-bonobo crossbreeding to produce a creature that can at least live in a human-dominated world. It reminded me a little of Asimov's "The Ugly Little Boy", with a somewhat more hopeful outcome.

Catherine MacLeod's "Postcards from Atlantis" is a mini-collection of short-shorts, with unique twists. An example:

HOLY WATER

"Wait! Come back!"

Mrs. Riley grimaced as the vampire hunters pounded out of the church. She heard their truck go squealing down the street, and considered the bucket she carried ruefully. Too late. They would have been better off getting supplies in a church with a bigger budget, she thought, or at least a sturdier roof. this one leaked something awful when the snow piled up.

Well, she was only the cleaning lady, not a carpenter, and there wasn't much more she could do about it, now, was there?

Though perhaps a prayer wouldn't hurt.

She moved the baptismal font away from the leak and replaced it with the bucket, then whipped a cotton rag from her back pocket. She'd clean the font now. Father Thomas could fill it later.

(It takes a moment…) This is one of eighteen.

Lastly, consider a town in which the children don't age as far as puberty, with very few exceptions. Further, the Line, the boundary between it and a more "normal" place, is not to be crossed with impunity. One ages about ten years per crossing, in either direction. In "More Painful than the Dreams of Other Boys", Derryl Murphy explores this idea, in a police-drama setting.

Just three bits of evidence that there is no loss of imagination when one crosses the northern border of the U.S.