The tenth Tesseract

kw: book reviews, science fiction, fantasy, story reviews, collections

The Canadians are at it again. The Tesseract anthologies have been going on for about twenty years, so I was glad to come across Tesseract #Ten: A Celebration of New Canadian Speculative Fiction, edited by Robert Charles Wilson and Edo van Belkom. Packed between two short essays, there are twenty stories and poems.

Threshold of Perception by Scott Mackay – A warm, evocative alternate history in which Percival Lowell predicts that Halley's Comet will hit Earth, and it does.

Frankenstein's Monster's Wife's Therapist by Sandra Kasturi – A cute, short poem with a rather expectable twist.

Puss Reboots by Stephanie Bedwell-Grime – I suspect the title came first. The story revolves around a computer worm that spreads via a modem-sound.

Au pays des merveilles by Wendy Warring – A library really is a land of wonders…

Donovan's Brain by Allen Moore – An oft-repeated theme of someone really getting into his work.

The Undoing by Sarah Totton – An unpleasant story; so far as I can tell, a convict is punished by slow dismemberment. "Eye for an eye, hand for a hand", et cetera.

Blackbird Shuffle (The Major Arcana) by Greg Bechtel – I decided to read this story in sequence, which was a bit of a challenge; some of the sequence indicators are not numerals.

Ideo Radio Poem by Jason Christie – It isn't a poem, I don't know what "Ideo" is, and it ends abruptly. Did I get the point, or not?

Women are from Mars, Men are from Venus by Michèle Laframboise, translated by Sheryl Curtis – Did this title also come before the story? Doesn't matter. A bit of wish-fulfillment, where hidden ingenuity is finally revealed and given its due.

Closing Time by Matthew Johnson – In this story's universe, ghosts hang around for a while so they may be properly mourned. This can pose a problem, or the solution to one.

Go Tell The Phoenicians by Matthew Hughes – The technical point is, imagine an alien species that grows up reversed from our way: the young mature mentally decades before they mature sexually, and the adults are mindless adolescents. The political point had me pumping "Yes!": these "natives" weren't satisfied with one-sided "trade" and had the means to do things their way.

Buttons by Victoria Fisher – A ghost story set in the French revolution and la Terroir. The buttons represent memories.

Findings at the Dump by Nancy Bennett – A poem that Tom Lehrer would love (think of his song "Garbage").

The Girl From lpanema by Scott Mackay – More wish-fulfillment, this time in a computer-generated intelligence. But who is exploiting whom?

The Intruder by Lisa Smedman – Human-size visitors to the planet of the shrews…and that almost gives it away.

Angel of Death by Susan Forest – Apparently a fight-to-the-death story; it starts out rather ugly, so I skipped it.

Transplant by Yvonne Pronovost – I almost skipped this one also. Plants are used to grow organs for transplanting. But the side story is "GAG".

Phantom Love by Rene Beaulieu, translated by Sheryl Curtis – Another one I skipped. Starts out as a visit to a whore.

Permission by Mark Dachuk – What plant could be so valuable as to buy one passage off-planet? This one draws a fellow in.

Summer Silk by Rhea Rose – I stopped about halfway. The mother figure is changing into a spider. I assume she begins eating her mate or offspring at some point.

Some quite lovely stories. Some, well, with the exception of "Permission", the final quarter of the book could have been left on the cutting room floor.