Parsec is a UK-based short fiction magazine edited by stalwart of the UK scene Ian Whates (author, anthologist, owner and publisher of Newcon press), and published by PS Publishing, who produce beautiful small-run hardcovers. They don’t have a website or any sample stories online which is a shame, so here’s a review of the latest issue to give you an idea of what they do, and what I thought.
M.R. Carey’s ‘A Routine Investigation in Downtown Arcadia’ is a strong opener (and he’s interviewed at the end of the issue). In the far future a group of humans live in an Edenic garden controlled by an AI, their every whim catered to, and so kept primitive. A murder occurs, and the AI creates a policeman named Resolution to investigate. Through his inquiries we glimpse the ancient past (our past) of this world, and explore the present, before a strong and classic SFnal resolution to the mystery. Carey leaves us with a suggested future for these humans, but some doubt about whether it will occur.
The strength of this story made me wonder why I haven’t read more Carey in recent years, and the interview at the back only convinced me to track down his more recent stuff. The last I read was the brilliant The Girl with all the Gifts but I’m a huge fan of his Vertigo comics series Lucifer and The Unwritten.
‘The World is What you Make of It’ by E.M. Faulds is one of those stories where I admired the craft and the worldbuilding but felt slightly let down in the end. I think it’s what we’ll call Solarpunk – Euanthe is part of a team of ecologists returning to Earth to try to rescue DNA samples and slowly rebuild its broken biosphere after an ecological collapse. It’s a great setup which Faulds builds perfectly – and her Euanthe is unapologetically neurodiverse without being a type – they are a fully realised character with flaws and who makes mistakes. While on Earth making repairs a mysterious (and impossible, because all animal life is gone) beast attacks, and the second half of the story explores this. It’s the resolution that disappoints because it serves to make the world and the story smaller – I wanted this to open out and give me hints and implications for what will happen to these characters and this broken future. To say more would ruin the story because it is worth reading – I just hope Faulds will tell more stories in this setting, or turn this into a novel.
Kai Holmwood’s ‘A Kiss to Forget Me By’ is a neat little tale set in that mythic fantasyland of taverns and horses, woods and hedge witches, potions and true love. This land is so familiar that Holmwood doesn’t need to give us more than that, and she can concentrate on the characters and how even little magics have a price. The structure is what’s good here – all the best folk and fairy tales have a circularity in form, and a hint of tragedy at the climax, and so does this.
“The Plate of Plenty” by Barend Nieuwstraten III is presented as if it’s an old Chinese folk tale. Tiu-Meng is an artist commissioned to make portraits of the rich. In an Agatha Christie-like gathering, each member of high society present has something stolen, and eventually the blame falls on the lowly artist. I’m not going to spoil the mystery because this is a fun tale where everything fits together neatly. If I wanted to be picky I’d suggest that there is a layer of explanation missing from the climax that would have enhanced the story further, but what is there is enough, and everything is neatly tied away.
There’s another murder in Elana Gomel’s ‘Sky Colours’, and another enclave of the last humans in a future without technology, this time under a dome. The population is kept stable with the random death of a citizen when each baby is born, for unknown reasons. But that’s not the murder being investigated. Petty frustrations may be behind the death, but also the victim was investigating how to get out of the dome. The climax shows us what’s out there, but you’ll want more. My only quibble is I wasn’t convinced by the final actions of our investigator protagonist.
Frank Roger’s ‘The Girl at the Mirage Cafe’ is an odd old-fashioned one that didn’t quite work for me. The Mirage Cafe has hit upon a novel way to keep you coming back for more coffee. The initial lighthearted tone darkens considerably in the final scene, and maybe that’s too sudden.
‘Square Spaces’ by Tim Lebbon is my first experience of this author but won’t be my last. The setting and writing are very powerful – a supernatural apocalypse means that everybody’s dead have returned as ghosts to haunt the world’s buildings. The population of a small town now live in hovels as best they can, but winter is approaching, all hope is lost. The structure of this is well done – some scenes in the main throughline, with flashbacks to the return of the narrator’s wife as a ghost, and through this device we see the beginning of the apocalypse, the reasons why he can’t get back into his house.
The length of the story works against the idea, though, and while the resolution is fitting, it seems to come too quickly. And it only resolves our narrator’s immediate problems, restores some hope, leaving this haunted world unresolved and (hopefully) available for more stories
Rhea Rose’s ‘A Christmas Dirge’ is an odd story that feels a bit unhinged, a bit unbalanced, but is still enjoyable and contains some lovely writing (I’m enamoured with the use of “mantles” in “Our big old house mantles over Portsmouth’s tiny town…”). It plays with some classic Christmas (but non-Christian, to be clear) stories but spends a long time getting there, and then not enough time sorting them out when the reader finds out what is going on.
Michael Moorcock should be the big name of this issue in his ‘Three from Albion’ – a series of auto biographical and fictional fragments from a forthcoming volume of such fragments. I grew up reading those Grafton editions of Elric, Hawkmoon and Corum, but I couldn’t make much headway with these. I’m sure if you’re properly steeped in later Moorcock and the history of New Worlds these will be right up your street, but I just didn’t have enough contexts to enjoy them.
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