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Unidentified Funny Objects 6

4/19/2018

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Unidentified Funny Objects 6 is last year’s edition of an annual anthology of humorous science fiction and fantasy shorts, edited by Alex Shvartsman. There are 20 stories in this one, so prepare for rapid-fire overviews with a brief touch on the comic stylings. This won’t be a thorough review, but I bolded my personal five favorites.

Game of Goblins by Jim C Hine
  • This one is a parody of Game of Thrones /A Song of Ice and Fire, featuring an elderly goblin chef caught up in a kingsmoot where the great houses squabble for power
  • Humor: Cranky old lady goblin navigating a parody of A Song of Ice and Fire

The Breakdown of the Parasite/Host Relationship by Paul R. Hardy
  • This story documents a feud between a fungal alien parasite(Kirireg) and its human host (Chen) as told through chat logs with the ship’s captain, who is mediating. The parasite controls Chen’s body while the he sleeps; both work opposite shifts on a spaceship. Chen is annoyed that the Kirireg isn’t taking care of his body. The parasite is annoyed that Chen is being a needy host.
  • Humor: The ridiculous complaints both put forth and the ways they fight each other while living opposite schedules; body horror based on the nature of hosting the parasite. Apparently body horror can be funny.

From This She Makes a Living? by Esther Friesner
  • A dragon invades Chem, a mythical Yiddish town of fools, and the ruling council is trying to figure out what to do about it.
  • Humor: Characters sniping at each other; the narrator giving condescending footnotes explaining Yiddish words and customs to the ignorant reader.

Twenty-Nine Responses to Inquiries About My Craiglist Post: Alien Spaceship For Sale. $200, You Haul. by Tina Connolly

  • This one was very short and exactly what the title says it is.
  • Humor: The inquiries aren’t included, so much of the humor comes from the reader imagining the full story. It feels like something you’d read on McSweeney’s.

Tyler the Snot Elemental Scours the Newspaper, Searching for Change by Zach Shephard

  • A snot elemental is trying to find fulfillment in an uncaring world.
  • Humor: A bit of gross-out (in case the title didn’t tip you off). It relies on the silly concept to do the heavy lifting.

Agent of Chaos by Jack Campbell

  • Suzanne and her muse (a literal spirit of inspiration) is put under a geas to deliver a world-ending manuscript to a publisher.
  • Humor: The muse torturing Suzanne to inspire her; a full-world parody of the publishing industry.

Display of Affection by P. J. Sambeaux

  • In a world where everyone’s brain is directly connected to social media, a man needs a minute to process the death of his mother.
  • Humor: Social satire. This one comments on social media without falling into the curmudgeon trap.

The Great Manhattan Eat-Off by Mike Resnick
  • A bookie and his crew try to fix an eating competition in an urban fantasy version of Manhattan. The story ties in to Harry the Book, which is a series of comic fantasy short stories.
  • Humor: Mobster story with a silly premise played straight.

An Evil Opportunity Employer by Lawrence Watt-Evans

  • A contract lawyer (who happens to be an unspecified superhero’s secret identity) consults a supervillian’s henchman who wants to break his contract.
  • Humor: Mixture of the superhero genre and the banal, reminiscent of The Venture Brothers and its Guild of Calamitous Intent.

Common Scents by Jody Lynn Nye
  • A PI with an alien symbiote is conducting a smell-based murder investigation.
  • Humor: Police procedural with an unorthodox method. The symbiote gets high through interesting scents.

A Mountain Man and a Cat Walk Into a Bar… by Alan Foster
  • Part of the Mad Amos Malone series
  • Mad Amos is a no-nonsense mountain man trying to get a drink. A cat befriends him just before a total dick of a wizard shows up and declares intent to kill the cat. Mad Amos is displeased, leading to a magic duel.
  • Humor: This one was more dryly funny. The narrator gets some good comic phrasings in, and the wizard duel, which I won’t spoil here, is the highlight.

Lost and Found by Laura Resnik

  • The Lost Tribes of Israel return from space, which at first looks like an asteroid headed for earth, then an alien contact, and so on. It’s written as a series of news articles of various biases to show how the contemporary U.S. would react.
  • Humor: Political satire. Disclaimer: the right gets hit harder than the left in this one.

A Crawlspace Full of Prizes by Bill Ferris

  • A second-person narrative where you start winning acrade-style tickets for doing your chores and stumble upon a prize counter in the crawlspace. The prizes largely play on your regrets and past choices, offering ways to improve your life. The XBox One is also pretty tempting.
  • Humor: This story was lightly amusing and pretty poignant.

Return to Sender by Melissa Mead
  • A series of letters between the giant from Jack and the Beanstalk and his brother.
  • This one was very short and didn’t leave much of an impression on me.

The Friendly Necromancer by Rod M. Santos
  • A necromancer trying to break stereotypes joins an adventuring party to raid a deceased rival’s hidden tower and steal a mystical doomsday device from within.
  • Humor: A dysfunctional adventuring party braving a series of silly traps

An Open Letter to the Sentient AI Who Has Announced His Intention to Take Over the Earth by Ken Liu
  • A short, groveling letter from a man trying to explain to a sentient AI why he’s worth keeping around in the new world order. He was very respectful of his Macbook and bought the extended protection plan, for example.

Approved Expense by David Vierling

  • A series of e-mail correspondence between a secret agent and the accounting department regarding his lavish expenses in a recent mission.
  • Humor: Corporate bureaucracy vs irresponsible spending; the details of the mission are slowly revealed as background info.

Alexander Outland: Space Jockey, An Alexander Outland Series Short by Gina Koch, Writing as G.J. Koch
  • A space pirate on a quest to get laid, recruit a new crewmate, and get out of a bar without paying his tab.
  • Humor: The MC is a pervy scoundrel who can’t help but make things worse for himself.

Dear Joyce by Langley Hyde
  • An epic fantasy told via the main players writing in to an advice column.
  • Humor: Watching the story be completely derailed by Joyce’s sensible advice.

Impress Me, Then We’ll Talk About the Money by Tatiana Ivanova (Translated by Alex Schvartsman)

  • An out-of-work pharmacologist invents a pill to change hair color to attract an unethical potential employer (and keep his lazy, self-absorbed girlfriend), then invents a pill to undo the side-effect mutations. Things spiral from there.
  • Humor: Watching things get increasingly out of hand.

Overall, this was a really fun anthology and it was tough to pick a top five. Only a few of the stories were misses for me. I definitely recommend a read, and this one is great to have in your back pocket for a time when you only have a few minutes to read something and want to knock out something quick, light, and entertaining.


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Trench: A Fantasy Novel of Epic Inconsequence by Ethan Childress

4/11/2018

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Trench: A Fantasy Novel of Epic Inconsequence by Ethan Childress is a series of vignettes about a group of soldiers trying to get by in the fringes of the Thoussand Years War. The origins of the war are hilariously explored in the prologue--basically, humans, dwarves, and elves teamed up against the trolls, goblins, and orcs and please let’s not dwell on who ate who first. The war has been going on for a thousand years and shows no signs of ever ending, which leaves our band of soldiers living in the trenches well outside any sort of civilization. They have no hope of ever going home, so they just try to take care of each other and make it until the next regularly-scheduled sneak attack. One day they’re trying to sneak a hungover goblin across The Grinder (think No Man’s Land) without breaking a holiday ceasefire. One day they’re trying to impress dignitaries from an inbred, stupid, bigoted and more importantly wealthy and generous family in order to keep the shipments of mutton coming. Of course, it’s still a war story so expect some loss and tragedy along the way. It’s basically M*A*S*H set in a fantasy-themed World War One.

Childress has a lot of fun with the setting and black humor flows out of it. Miller and his best friend Doug Treesinger gamble over which new recruit will foolishly get himself killed first. Fairies on the front turn feral because they’ve been trapped in a place bereft of beauty. Animals evolved to survive life on the trenches, such as crows who evolved to become evil and try to goad soldiers into the Grinder for a feast. Even the sentient races are affected.

It was no great secret that the first people to rush onto the Grinder were going to die horribly, torn to pieces by the magical wards given dragon form. The real trick was deciding who would be the one to do it. Originally, it had been presented as a brave and noble sacrifice, a great honor of personal sacrifice given to only the most selfless and noble of soldiers. But, after the centuries of brave, noble, selfless soldiers being ripped limb from limb for no real gain, the traits had, by in large, been selectively bred out of the common soldier.

But the real draw is the characters and their friendships.

This is an ensemble cast and most characters have their moment to shine, but the protagonist is Sergeant Jeremy Miller, who is smarmy, jaded, lazy, irreverent, and drunk if he can help it. He is in charge of integrating a band of new recruits including the spunky tinker Brenda Kettleblack, Moregrave the famous arch-mage who got bored with civilian life, and Caleb Witchslayer, whose name matches his job title, a hyper-zealous religious fanatic who has no shortage of trouble fitting in with a more relaxed, pragmatic army--for instance, the witches who run the healing tent.

"These are the symbols of my religions," Witchslayer answered defensively. 
"Plural?" asked the elf. 
"Well, yes," the young man said. "Each has important messages to give to us about the world we live in." 
"Such as?" pressed Miller. 
"Well, this one," Witchslayer indicated a small bent line in a circle, "tells us that we are to kill witches with fire. And this one," holding up something that looked like a star crossed with a heart, "tells us how to find witches using salt and holy earth. And this one…"


It’s the character relationships that really sell this book and a great deal of the humor comes from good-natured pranks and banter. For example, Miller is locked in a will they or won’t they flirtation with his commanding officer, who never misses an opportunity to hit on him with a double entendre. Good thing his best friend Doug Treesinger has implemented what he calls The Great Prank to cockblock him.

First, the elf had explained his "Great Prank." Brenda had zoned in and out of the explanation favoring to watch the elf's delicate lips moving deftly with the words and allowing her mind to drift as to what else they would be good at. But she got the general drift. The elf told them that their captain, Bozeman, had been making advances to their sergeant, Miller, for the better part of a year, and that every time she did Treesinger talked Miller out of it by explaining away the advance as nothing more than military double-speak. This had bothered her a little, but it seemed to make the elf happy, so if Miller couldn't figure "The Great Prank" out, that was on him.

All in all, this book hit a lot of the right notes for me: a serious setting taken to comical extremes, character banter, and a lot of heart. 

Unfortunately, there was one major negative: This book needed another round of proofreading. All too often I caught questionable punctuation and use of the wrong homonyms, such as “gate” instead of “gait.” I highlighted about a dozen myself and I wasn’t exactly on the hunt. They were a distraction and don’t stop this book from being excellent.
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