7. Weird Tales Nov/Dec 2007

"The Messenger" by Darrell Schweitzer
I skipped this one.

"Bufo Rex" by Erik Amundsen
Toad and man. Man and toad. The story uses a repetitive beat to build to its climax, and it was quite effective. I've seen this story on Year's Best lists, I think? It's deserving of that, for sure. This had the feeling of a fairy tale retelling without actually being a tale that I knew. For that, it gets big marks with me. This story seems to signal a theme of sickness and death for the issue.

"Figure 5" by M. Thomas & Paul G. Tremblay. A story of an artist/doctor, and the strange disease that he studies. Deeply unsettling, but well-written and the figures form a nice framework to the story. Definitely weird, and reminiscent of China Mieville's stuff. This was my favorite of the issue.

"Catch" by Amanda Downum
As soon as I realized this story was about angels, I put it down. I'm just not interested.

"The Blank Card" by Jonathan Wood. A slightly more literary tale than anything else in the collection. Experimental in its imagery--using an unusual tarot reading as the framework, like the figures of "Figure 5." Ultimately a little dissatisfying, but I'm not sure why. Felt more like a bad dream than a story in the end, in that way that everything in nebulous and vague, but depressing.

"The Yankee at the Sitting-Up" by Clayton Kroh. Short, told from the perspective of a corpse at its viewing. Some interesting culture here, (Southern, I am assuming), but too short to really build to anything for me.

"Excision" by Scott. H. Andrews. Another story dealing with sickness and disease. Vivomancers heal the wounded created by war with brutal barbarians. They also replace lost limbs with animal ones, using their magic to make the limbs stick. I quite liked this one for its ideas, but the story of the teacher and it's secret, and how the protagonist becomes involved, left me a little cold. I would like to read more in this setting. It's weird to see magic tackle human health that way. We know that disease is created by infections--how does magic deal with that exactly? The magic system addresses it in a kind of generalized imagery of energies and darkness, which didn't seem as cool as the general idea of the vivomancers. Something a little too easy about it, even if it takes a lot of energy out of the vivomancers. All they have to do is eat and rest and they are fine. Ultimately, what is the cost? Still, I liked this one.

"A Father's Work." by Michael Boatman. A plague turns children into raving zombies that stream blood out of their mouth. This story's central concept seemed like a mash-up of 28 Days Later and Warren Ellis's Black Gas comic. The somewhat new element being that it only infects children, and then there are the Takers. This story was brutal, violent, bleak, and despairing. It's interesting in the way that car accidents are interesting. It offers nothing but spectacle. I did not much care for this story.

Overall, I thought the issue was quite good, despite its weird emphasis on diseases. I have to wonder if there are so many stories about plagues lately as some kind of subconscious reaction to the bioterror after September 11th. The general tone is dark, leading me to believe that the magazine under VanderMeer will mostly be about horror, which is not really my bag. I've got nothing against it generally, except for stories like "A Father's Work", where the story's whole purpose seems to be about presenting gory spectacle with no other purpose. I'll withhold making a firm judgement on the style of the magazine until I see another issue.

Was Weird Tales always this dark? I really only started reading recently.