Alice hunts quantum vampires while her friend Jack, a dime store magician, tries to glue together a mysterious girl from various magazine clippings. Can he fix a magic trick gone wrong long ago?
Paul Jessup wrote a a great story about magic, ghosts and vampires without any faux gothic aspirations or Buffy stand-ins. Instead we get quantum physics, beat rhythms and a reference to a Jim Carrey movie (at least that’s what the magazine cut-outs reminded me of). Good stuff.
I’m not sure I understood the story’s ending correctly. I can think of at least two possible interpretations and that’s without having even seen the Alfred Hitchcock presents episode which inspired this story, so I might be missing bits of context. But like with A Word without Ghosts recently, you can sense logic behind the lack of logic, as there are hidden mechanisms to be found behind every magic trick.
In a room full of clockwork animals, the clockwork chickadee bears a deep hatred for its arrogant sparrow counterpart. Alone amongst the animals, the sparrow can fly from a wind-up engine in the chandelier. But Chickadee is determined to bring him down to earth.
This is a fun little steampunk parable whose apparent moral lesson (pride comes before the fall) is somewhat subverted by the cold, calculated nature of Chickadee’s schemes.
A boy, living alone with his mother, sets a trap for the crows in his backyard with shiny mirror pieces laced with poison. As he waits for them to take the bait, as they’re compelled to, aliens arrive with their own pieces of shiny bait.
The story is well written with unflinching characterisations. The parallels between the crows and humans are perhaps a bit too obvious but they do paint a haunting picture.
Through the descriptions of several polar maps up for auction, the story of a lifelong rivalry between two Argentinian cartographers unfolds before our eyes. Nahuel Acuña strives for the utmost precision and realism in his maps while Villalba Maldonado fills his maps with tall tales and fantasies.
This is a great story about realism vs fantasy, told in an original style with a perfect ending. Highly recommended.
