TransVersions #5
$4.95 from Island Specialty Reports
1019 Colville Rd., Victoria, BC
Canada V9A 4P5
72 pages, digest size, 4-color cover
edited by Dale L. Sproule and Sally McBride

If you haven't seen a copy of TransVersions yet, and you enjoy intelligent SF/F/H, you'd best make out your check and send for a copy. TV is to Canadian fiction mags what Talebones is to American: a well-collected, pleasingly designed mix of short fiction and poetry that rarely stumbles. That said, I found issue #5 to be slightly weaker in memorable stories than #4, but still above the quality of most small press digests. TV seems a bit poetry heavy this time out, with eight poems (one which winds on for pages) from the likes of Errol Miller, John Grey, and TV Poetry Editor Phyllis Gotlieb.

As for the stories: the strongest fiction closes out the issue. Gemma Files' "Hidebound" is an understated were story that interweaves its "creepy creature" element with descriptions of the failing relationships of the main character, a female security guard. Because the horror element of this story occurs, for the most part, in the background, its effectiveness is intensified. My second favorite piece in this issue was Adam Corbin Fusco's "Pearl," wherein we dive into a strange fantasy culture of people who literally grow pearls beneath their tongues, and strive to protect them (and their young) from marauders.

Jeff VanderMeer opens the issue with "David Pangborn Takes A Walk," a bit of quiet apocalyptic terror. Again, in this story, the horror remains hidden, or backgrounded, for much of the piece, peeking out from behind surreal waking visions of the main character, and only coming out at the endgame to scream "ah ha!" It's an effective piece, if not exactly original in conception.

Nancy Kilpatrick checks in with a wisp of a story of a girl who apparently melts away pounds with each hour of rain in "Sweet." Cliff Burns' "Son of Nixon" is a political farce about a politician who sheds, not weight, but years, with each false campaign promise.

Derryl Murphy's "Day's Hunt" is a Waterworld-meets-Moby Dick sketch: whalers cavort through the yellow seas of garbage to hunt the ocean's food factories. And Michael Payne's "Excelsior" reads like a "Star Trek: TNG" episode up to its end: a human and a dog are trapped in a holodeck-style VR experience of mountain climbing. As it turns out, their problems in the VR experience aren't really crux of the story at all, this was merely a meeting place for business (a futuristic version of a day at the golf course?). The human isn't really human, and the dog is some type of genetically engineered creature that is trying to help "anthrops" gain full citizenship.

With its mix of SF, fantasy and horror, not to mention a taste for stories that transcend those genres, TransVersions makes for a good evening's read.

Copyright © 1996 by John Everson. All Rights Reserved.