Subversion: Science Fiction & Fantasy Tales of Challenging the Norm edited by Bart R. Leib
Crossed Genre Publications, 172pp, $11.95, tp, 9780615533292.
Note: Unavoidably, this review contains some plot spoilers. (The intent is not subversion.) Tread carefully.
“The mad dogs of repression have kneed us in the groin.” —attributed to Harlan Ellison
Subversion, an original anthology of 16 sf/fantasy stories of “challenging the norm… striking back at the status quo—whatever that might be,” arrives serendipitously at an especially timely juncture. The past year has witnessed a wide range of dissent, rebellions and uprisings from the “Arab Spring” to Occupy Wall Street (and the Tea Party, too, is “striking back at the status quo”), and Time has even named “The Protestor” its Persons of the Year. Edited by Bart R. Leib, and featuring short fiction (very short—the stories average 11 pages) from RJ Astruc, Kay T. Holt, Jean Johnson, Barbara Krasnoff, Daniel José Older, Cat Rambo, and a dozen other writers, the targets of defiance range from the political to the more personal, from governments to corporations to religious strictures, as well as cultural or societal norms and conventional familial bonds, what has loosely been called “the forces of oppression.”
Science fiction and fantasy, perhaps more than any other genre, are plot-driven by events—or technological developments—that alter, transform or revolutionize the status quo, politically or culturally, far-ranging and often suddenly. The canvas is—the stakes are—commonly the whole of humanity, vast realms or entire galaxies, and the villain clear-cut, sometimes one man (or demon warlord). Readers, however, looking for high-tech firepower in space or in land combat, or massed eldritch armies battling with swords and sorcery, or grand-scale acts of terrorism, or the chains of explosions that climax action films will be sorely disappointed. The “challenges” or revolts in Subversion are, like most decisions to mutiny against conformity or authority gone wrong, on a more individual level, and putting them into action, with several notable exceptions, non-violent, more subtle, and the consequences and resolutions not world-shaking.
The rebellion most familiar to us is the political, and the failed “contract laborer” (slave) uprising in Kelly Jennings’ “Cold Against the Bone” inspires a revolution from above. On the colony world created by Camille Alexa in “And All Its Truths,” Machines programmed to ensure efficiency for the survival of the settlement have ironically, if inevitably, eliminated nearly all of the humans for imperfections or “personality irregularities.” (The co-protagonist, to our relief, is a chatty nun who ministers to the dead, and not Captain Kirk convincing the Machines to self-destruct due to their own imperfection.) Jean Johnson’s “The Hero Industry” amusingly considers the public relations problems of revolutionaries, here the Free Mars separatists who have kidnapped a group of Earth diplomats. Set in a future that has decreed that Earth be cleansed of all traces of humanity, from art to buildings and even graves, with violators summarily executed, the rebels in “To Sleep with Pachamama” (which, we are informed, means Mother Earth) are Bolivian Indians excavating skeletons who find that they cannot abide all manmade beauty being irrevocably destroyed.
In Kay T. Holt’s “Parent Hack” the subverting is of the programming of a couple of boys’ social welfare-assigned android Guardians, though not for the motive one might think; its nominal subversion (“tampering with government property”) is, perhaps ironically, an assertion of traditional family. “Pushing Paper in Hartleigh” by Natania Barron offers a legendary knight defying the rules of the bureaucratic job into which he’s been shoved to deal with outlaws and a treasonous conspiracy, while Daniel José Older’s “Phantom Overload” takes us to Brooklyn, where a “mostly dead” (his resurrection was “botched”) Puerto Rican soulcatcher must go renegade against his own afterlife bureaucracy to end a street fight between groups of ghosts. (Well, it’s been said that “only the dead know Brooklyn.”)
In C.A Young’s “The Dragon’s Bargain” the rebellion is both political and personal as second-born royals resist the titular pact that would trade their lives for their respective kingdoms’ heirs held hostage by the beast. Likewise the political and familial intersect in Barbara Krasnoff’s story, “Red Dybbuk,” in which a Boomer mother watches her college-student daughter suddenly become a fired-up radical political activist after being possessed by the spirit of her (that is, the girl’s) late Yiddish-spouting, Old Left great-grandmother (a subversion of another kind). There is even minor rebellion among the tormenters of the Underworld, “A Tiny Grayness in the Dark,” as Wendy N. Wagner entitles her fantasy, where demonic parents exhibit a small kindness to their son.
Religion is the other most-portrayed (and familiar) force of oppression, and the religious dictatorship (“New Nazareth”) on a Martian settlement in Melissa S. Green’s entry, “Pushaway,” is the stuff of cliché. Saved from the fanatics by the authorities, a teen rebuilds her self, and “pushes away” from Mars’ gravity, and ultimately Earth’s, as she sets her sights on a voyage to the stars. In “A Thousand Wings of Luck,” Jessica Reisman presents an exotic culture obsessed with Luck, the stuff of Luck believed to be embodied in “luck moths.” A girl, seeking to reverse her school’s Luck, which has turned suddenly to bad (her fault, she believes), transgresses Luck Law when she uncovers an ancient ritual in an unorthodox text. “Seed” by Shanna Germain depicts a post-apocalyptic society whose mores are the reverse of ours—sex, or “lying with” is a communal activity, offered by houses reminiscent of temple prostitution in exchange for food, while eating is a highly private thing (an idea touched on in a Heinlein juvenile), and mouths “secret inner places,” with violation of the taboo shockingly perverse.
Beyond the fringe of society, in Cat Rambo’s “Flicka” we encounter a town settled by rebels, an uneasy mix of white supremacists and hippies, into which moves a community—a herd—of genetically-modified “freaks” altered into a human-equine amalgam (bipedal, with manes, hooves and tails). A sensitive artist, a son of both demographics (making him a hybrid of sorts), and his bigoted chum react differently to the newcomers, particularly to the lead stallion’s daughter, the Flicka of the story’s title, with a calamitous outcome. (A “pony” girl named Flicka, of course, conjures up, with a smile, My Friend Flicka; making it even more apt, flicka is “girl” in Swedish.)
Anyone who has ever worked in an office might be amused by RJ Astruc and Deirdre M. Murphy’s satiric “Scrapheap Angel” in which a drone at an Indian call center rebels against conformity, slowly creating a sculpture out of twisted paperclips and broken bits of computers and printers (“Dreams are important!… There’s more to life than” office work, he declares), inspiring his co-workers to their own quiet revolution, to personalize their desks with dolls, origami, and travel photos. The story most in tune with current events, resentment of the disparity between the very wealthy and the rest of society (what the Occupy movement calls the 1% and the 99%), is Timothy T. Murphy’s “Received Without Content.” “The rich are different—they have more money;” here the privileged are able to obtain advanced nanotechnology that gives their kids “an unfair advantage in information, education, health, fitness, and beauty,” further broadening the gap between us and them.” An “ordinary” bright teen is recruited into the fight to strike back against the “re-engineered” to even the playing field, only to learn the unforeseen, terrible consequences of his act. As in the real world, some of the stories’ subversive actions and acts of rebellion triumph, whereas others fail; some are heroic, while others are tragic blunders that make situations worse.
As with any anthology, the stories in Subversion are a mixed bag, and, like their various acts of striking back at authority, some succeed and some don’t. But, while no Dangerous Visions, and not achieving its full potential, its overall theme superbly suits today’s national mood, making it well worth a look. Just about every status quo could stand to face some subversion.