Internet Review of Science Fiction August 12, 2006 – Posted in: Aberrant Normalcy, Sybil's Garage

Sybil's GarageSybil’s Garage was reviewed in this month’s issue of IROSF by Lois Tilton. Lois says:

“Another small (70 pages) literary speculative fiction zine, this one a miscellania, including poetry, interviews and illustrations, as well as some pieces of prose that are not stories. Most of the fiction is quite short, but imaginative and intriguing, even if not all of it is SF.”

She recommends reading a couple of the stories. Of Brian Conn’s “Six Questions About the Sun,” she says:

“And you thought the sun was a giant flaming ball of hydrogen gas! Conn discloses the truth in a surreal catechism:

 We are all creatures of the sun. Although it is not correct to say that we are part of the sun, the heat and light that sustains us and nourishes our food comes from the sun, and all the heat and light that is in us was once in the sun. Therefore, if we want to know ourselves, we must look directly into the sun.”

Of Yoon Ha Lee’s “So That Her High-Born Kinsmen Came,” Lois says:

“The second-person narrative is particularly suitable for a tale of insanity, when you talk to yourself, when the stream of your consciousness flows uninhibited. The post-partum mind, swept away from itself on a flood of hormones, experiences the world in strange ways, but this is ‘how your mothers and grandmothers have told it,’ and how any mother will be able to recognize it, the sleepless hell Lee describes, with its distorted time, measured by the interval of the baby’s cries.

Just as you will follow your mother, who brought you out of hell, following her mothers before her. The choice is no choice. ‘She’s mine,’ you say, meaning all of them, all the sun’s days and sin’s days and the days in between, every wail and wet diaper, every blink, every hoarse bedtime lullaby.”

For more information about Sybil’s Garage No. 3 click here.

The full IROSF review is here (login required).