ISFDB link
Other reviews:
Greg Hullender and Eric Wong, Rocket Stack Rank
Charles Payseur, Quick Sip Reviews
Sam Tomaino, SFRevu
Stephanie Wexler, Tangent Online
Various, Goodreads
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Editor, Amy Sturgis; Editor in Chief, Jason Sizemore
Fiction:
Welcome to Your Authentic Indian Experience™ • short story by Rebecca Roanhorse ∗∗∗+
If a Bird Can Be a Ghost • short story by Allison Mills ∗∗∗+
Skinny Charlie’s Orbiting Teepee • short story by Pamela Rentz ∗∗
The Trip • short story by Mari Kurisato ∗
Non-Fiction:
The Fire • cover by Dana Tiger
Words from Guest Editor Amy H. Sturgis • editorial by Amy H. Sturgis
Interview with Author Allison Mills • by Andrea Johnson
Indigenous Wonderworks and the Settler-Colonial Imaginary • essay by Daniel Heath Justice
Interview with Cover Artist Dana Tiger • by Russell Dickerson
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I read this issue for a number of reasons: it is short, with four stories of roughly equal length totalling 20,000 words (lately I’ve been busy reading the Hugo nominees as opposed to magazines); it was generously provided by the publisher as part of the Hugo Award finalists reading package;1 it contains Rebecca Roanhorse’s Hugo finalist short story; it was a special guest-edited “Indigenous American Fantasists” issue2 (I’ve always been curious about this sub-genre since reading Craig Strete’s work3 in the mid-seventies); and, finally, I’ve been meaning to look at this magazine for a while anyway—recent issues have had some striking covers.4
The issue opens with Words from Guest Editor Amy H. Sturgis, an editorial that starts with a section about the editor’s indigenous heritage:
I was raised in Oklahoma, the state that once was U.S. “Indian Territory,” by parents who took seriously both our family heritage and the region’s other many cultures. They exposed me not only to history but also to the present-day societies around me. I was fascinated by great figures of the past (and later wrote books about some of them), but I also had contemporary heroes.
[. . .]
It took me by surprise, then, when I began to write and teach about Indigenous subjects as a scholar, to learn that many of my students and even some of my colleagues had locked Native America safely away in the museums of their minds as something both exotic and extinct. p. 4-5
The fiction gets off to a good start with two good stories. Welcome to Your Authentic Indian Experience™ by Rebecca Roanhorse concerns a man called a Jesse who works as a host in an Indian (the story’s term) VR business that offers tourists various native experiences, and the setup has him providing a session for a client (who he eventually names White Wolf) that does not start well:
You plant your feet in a wide welcoming stance and raise one hand. “How,” you intone, as the man stops a few feet in front of you.
The man flushes, a bright pinkish tone. You can’t tell if he’s nervous or embarrassed. Maybe both? But he raises his hand, palm forward, and says, “How,” right back.
“Have you come seeking wisdom, my son?” you ask in your best broken English accent. “Come. I will show you great wisdom.” You sweep your arm across the prairie. “We look to brother wolf—”
The man rolls his eyes.
What?
You stutter to a pause. Are you doing something wrong? Is the accent no good? Too little? Too much?
You visualize the requirements checklist. You are positive he chose wolf. Positive. So you press on. “My brother wolf,” you say again, this time sounding much more Indian, you are sure.
“I’m sorry,” the man says, interrupting. “This wasn’t what I wanted. I’ve made a mistake.”
“But you picked it on the menu!” In the confusion of the moment, you drop your accent. Is it too late to go back and say it right?
The man’s lips curl up in a grimace, like you have confirmed his worst suspicions. He shakes his head. “I was looking for something more authentic.”
Something in your chest seizes up.
“I can fix it,” you say.
“No, it’s alright. I’ll find someone else.” He turns to go. p. 16-17
Jesse can’t afford another black mark on his work record and attempts to recover the situation, but fails, and the man leaves.
After work Jesse goes to the local bar for a drink, and is surprised to meet White Wolf on his way out. They talk briefly (during which White Wolf claims that he is part Cherokee) and the man reappears in one of Jesse’s VR sessions the next day. They later become drinking buddies and, in due course, Jesse thinks, friends.
The inflection point in the story comes when Jesse misses not only work due to sickness but his regular Tuesday night meeting with White Wolf. When he is also unable to meet him the following Friday, Jesse sends his wife Theresa to let White Wolf know why he isn’t there. She arrives back later that night, having obviously enjoyed herself (Jesse and Theresa have had their troubles in the past).
The rest of the story (spoiler) charts Jesse’s displacement by White Wolf in not only Theresa’s affections but also with his friends and at work. The final scene has him jobless, at the end of a two-day drunk, and getting thrown out of his home. His trajectory is, of course, a metaphor for what happened (and may still be happening) to the indigenous American people. It is a sobering ending.
Equally as good, in my opinion, is If a Bird Can Be a Ghost by Allison Mills:
Shelly’s grandma teaches her about ghosts, how to carry them in her hair. If you carry your ghosts in your hair, then you can cut them off when you don’t need them anymore. Otherwise, ghosts cling to your skin, dig their fingers in under your ribs and stay with you long, long after you want them gone.
The story, as is probably obvious from above, is about Shelly and her grandmother. The latter is a ghost catcher who deals with ghosts who have not “moved on”.
The first half or so of the story consists of some interesting scene setting:
Grandma did a cleansing for a nice white family to get rid of a mother-in-law once. They paid her three hundred dollars and gave her a lasagna for the freezer. Three hundred is a lot for a ghost. Most of Grandma’s clients pay in knick-knacks and favours and food. Grandma doesn’t charge much because if people know they have a ghost they might pay anything to get rid of them—do anything.
“You’ve got to be responsible,” Grandma tells Shelly. “You can’t charge people through the nose to get rid of a ghost. We’ve got to undercut the frauds so people come to us.”
Mom looks over from putting her hair up to go to work, her uniform shirt all nicely pressed. She points a finger at Grandma.
“You could charge a little more.”
“It’s a nice lasagna,” Grandma says.
Mom shrugs because Grandma’s right. It is a nice lasagna. p. 38
Later Shelley’s mother dies, and the rest of the story has Shelly searching all over for her ghost but (spoiler) it becomes clear that she has not remained behind and has already moved on. In the meantime, Shelley causes trouble for herself and several ghosts, and her grandmother eventually has to take her in hand.
This is an absorbing piece about letting go of the dead and the past. If I was editing a ‘Best Fantasy of the Year’ anthology it would be on my short list.
The story is followed by the informative Interview with Author Allison Mills by Andrea Johnson, and addresses why (spoiler) Shelly’s mother did not stay behind:
For me, Shelly’s mom not sticking around is her way of taking care of Shelly. Short term, Shelly would be happier if her mom was there, but long term she might be hurt by it. Shelly’s mom knows about ghosts and what their afterlives are like, and that’s not what she wants for herself or her family. When we see Shelly’s mom in the story, she’s trying to keep Shelly from focusing too much on ghosts, and I think coming back to haunt her daughter would be counterintuitive to everything she wanted for her in life. Shelly’s mom loves her, so she doesn’t come back. p. 65-66
The interview covers other matters, including an interesting section on how copyright applies to recordings of indigenous people:
A common problem with recordings in archives, and why field recordings can seem like material archives should digitize and allow unrestricted access to, is that when a researcher records a traditional song, copyright of that recording belongs to the research, not the people singing it. Western law considers those songs public domain, and so the researcher, who owns the recording, could grant someone permission to take the recording, remix it, and release a single they make money off of without ever having to compensate or ask permission from the original performers. That happened with the 1992 house album Deep Forest. p. 70
Skinny Charlie’s Orbiting Teepee by Pamela Rentz is about Charlie, who is one of the inhabitants on a spaceship containing emigrants from Earth. Unfortunately for Charlie the spaceship authorities seem to have turned life on the ship into a bureaucratic nightmare, and the story details his struggle to get a sign supplied for an upcoming cultural celebration. He eventually gets some help from Chief Rufus’s right hand man Zane, and events develop from there.
This is lightweight, pleasant stuff, but doesn’t entirely convince.
The Trip by Mari Kurisato is another starship story (this time a generation starship one) featuring a virtual reality engineer/technician called Corie. Unfortunately this one pretty much lost me at the start, when Corie’s partner Amy is introduced:
Why did Amy have cancer? Wasn’t this the future, with flying cars and solar-powered space elevators, where everything had a nanocure pill? Where there were people living on moons and getting off Earth as fast as possible? p. 113
This passage did not help me get past (a) the incongruity of her disease in this high-tech future or (b) that Amy would have been allowed to go on the ship with Corie in the first place. I could also have done without Corie having breakfast with a VR simulation of her dead mother every morning. (If you are the kind of reader that enjoys mawkish stories featuring heroines who feel sad about things, this will be right up your street). The VR sections also feel like material I’ve read a million times before. That said, and if none of this puts you off, it moves along well enough, and the writer has a certain technical ability (i.e., they can tell a story, I just wish it hadn’t been this one).
I’m not entirely sure what the magazine’s production team have done with The Fire, Dana Tiger’s cover: normally the Apex cover artwork goes all the way to the edges of the page,4 but here there is a white border around the left hand and top sides. A production snafu I suspect, but one you think they might have sorted for subsequent electronic sales.
As for the artwork, it is an attractive and delicate piece which is unfortunately overpowered by the coloured text blocks on the left hand side. (And do we really need all that text on the cover anyway? There is a contents page.) Compare the actual cover below left and the quick edit I did below right:
See what I mean?
There is also an Interview with Cover Artist Dana Tiger by Russell Dickerson. Parts of it sound like something from Pseuds Corner:5
APEX MAGAZINE: “The Fire” is made of clean lines and colors, with a nice flow of movement to entice the viewer into more complex interpretations. How do you balance the message you are offering to the viewer with the amount of imagery you paint, and have viewers interpreted it differently than you would have expected?
.
DANA TIGER: The swirling lines and colors attempt to allow an entrance for the viewer to witness the undercurrent or source of power that my people, the Muscogee People, have danced for since the beginning of our time. The fire or “Totkv” is eternal and burns, is honored, fed and respected each year. My message of continuance is conveyed through a balance of delicate lines and soft colors implying movement and rhythm crucial to the flow necessary to maintain the dance. The woman’s place is central and provides an undercurrent of strength, also eternal, in maintaining our ties to where we came from. A viewer is left to contemplate the historical, the mystical and the reality of a people. p. 136-137
The remaining piece of non-fiction is Indigenous Wonderworks and the Settler-Colonial Imaginary by Daniel Heath Justice, a chapter from a forthcoming book which is rather strangled by its academic jargon:
But even with those hard-won advances, deeply entrenched settler-colonial biases mean that our literatures already aren’t “literary” enough for many whitestream scholars and critics; adding the pathologization of fantasy and the scorn of genre snobbery on top of it is hardly something to be relished. Deficit remains the defining trope for Indigenous peoples in the settlercolonial imaginary. In this construction, “real” Indigenous peoples are always Other, always diminished, always the reduced shadow of our former greatness. So if the “real” is that which is passed away or gathering dust on the museum shelf, the “real” of Indigenous experience must therefore only be about deficit and loss. p. 77
This passage above (and some of the material that follows it) essentially asserts that “realistic” fiction can only portray indigenous people as outsiders and losers: this is only the first questionable assertion in the essay.
He goes on to suggest that fantasy can “[open] up and [expand] the range of options for Indigenous characters (and readers)”, before examining the genre’s limitations:
Yet we must acknowledge, too, that fantasy carries its own representational burdens that these writers are also working against. The savagism vs. civilization binary that has so deformed colonial understandings of Indigeneity is very much the world-building template in fantasy fiction. Indeed, if any literature can be said to be the safe haven of this intellectually and morally bankrupt concept, it is that nebulous textual archive known variously as genre, adventurer, or heroic fantasy, wherein largely white heroes possessed of courage and, sometimes, strange talents struggle to challenge evil and reaffirm the values of social conservatism and right order—namely, might is right.
Civilization is bad or good; savages are noble or brutish; yet in either case, the conflict between a simplistic primitivism rooted/trapped in the past and a contemporary progressivism of technological complexity is the superstructure undergirding the narrative content of most genre fantasy.
[. . .]
[Until the appearance of Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings] the genre had largely been dominated by the amoral and violently misogynistic and racialized phallic fantasies of Robert Howard, creator of the Hobbesian barbarian Conan and the Puritan witchhunter and soldier-of-fortune Solomon Kane (and whose own work was influenced in no small degree by H.P. Lovecraft’s literary eugenics).
Yet while the pipe-smoking Catholic don of Oxford University and the tough-talking Texas libertarian would seem, at first glance, to have little in common, their secondary worlds are in some ways complementary, for each presents a cosmos where heroic/tragic acts of righteous conquest affirm the right of chosen men to lay claim to lands, resources, and peoples, a world where manly virtue is ordained and, for a time at least, rewarded (although in Tolkien’s legendarium power accompanied by hubris always collapses in upon itself, with other power only occasionally surviving). There are more women in positions of authority in Tolkien’s work, and far less sexual violence than in Howard’s, and Tolkien was a widely tolerant man whose politics were far from those of Howard’s racial fantasies, but together and in different but sometimes complementary ways the two men’s work influenced the ideological template for the bulk of fantastic literature produced today. p. 80-81
And there we go . . . from Tolkien and Howard to “the bulk of fantastic literature” in one bound. A ridiculous assertion, but I’d be interested to see the author produce an article on, say, the influence of Conan the Barbarian on magical realism fiction, or on Harry Potter, etc. Or try. He goes on to provide his own “solution”:
“Fantasy” as it’s commonly understood for us is dangerous, because it’s so deeply entangled in settler-colonial logics of dead matter, monolithic reality, and rationalist supremacy. But we can offer our imaginations as something entirely different.
Terminology is just one issue—imaginative orientation is the more significant challenge. And, I think, the one that promises a better way forward.
So here I want to suggest a different term in place of fantasy, speculative fiction, or even imaginative literature, as all are burdened by dualistic presumptions of real and unreal that don’t take seriously or leave legitimate space for other meaningful ways of experiencing this and worlds: through lived encounter and engagement, through ceremony and ritual, through dream. I suggest that “wonderworks” is a concept that offers Indigenous writers and storytellers something very different, and something more in keeping with our own epistemologies, politics, and relationships—in English, admittedly, and limited by its generic applicability, but no less useful, I think, for that. p. 83-84
“Reinventing” and “wheel” are the words that come to mind.
Overall, and with the exception of the article above, this is an interesting issue. However, I’d note two things in passing. First, I have reservations about magazine special issues being used to showcase specific minorities (Whatever Destroys SF, etc.). I can see why you might want to do this, but I’d personally prefer to see these stories published alongside other ‘mainstream’ SF (like Craig Strete’s stories were in the mid-70s If and Galaxy). Second, this issue has a female editor and four stories by women: if the issue had had a male editor and four stories by men there would have been much rending and tearing of garments. So it goes. ●
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1. As part of supporting membership of Worldcon you get the right to nominate and vote for the Hugo Awards—and also receive a good size digital package of material from the finalists to help you make up your mind (which, among other things, includes a lot of short fiction and even a novel or two).
2. “Native American” seems to have changed to “Indigenous American” since I last looked. A couple of the writers here refer to “Indians” in their stories.
3. The Craig Strete stories I saw mostly appeared in Galaxy and If. His ISFDB page is here, SFE page is here and Wikipedia page is here. His first collection The Bleeding Man and Other Stories is available on Kindle (UK/USA).
4. The covers for the recent issues of Apex are here. The full size image for issue #105 is here: that is what I mean by “striking”.
5. A description of Private Eye magazine’s Pseuds Corner can be found here. ●
This magazine is still being published! Magazines and subscriptions are available at the Apex website, Weightless Books website, and at Amazon UK/USA.
