Indigenous Fiction #3

Indigenous Fiction -- Issue 3

Edited by Sherry Decker

I. F. Publishing, P. O. Box 2078, Redmond, WA 98073-2078, USA; $6 per issue or $11 for two issues

Digest, 76 pp, colour cover

ISSN 1521-2351

In issue 3 of Indigenous Fiction Sherry Decker makes it clear where she's aiming the magazine. Her editorial is a chunk of advice on starting to write a novel.

Mainstream fiction predominates here, though there's genre work too, and poetry. The poetry is less consistent than the fiction, however -- my favourites being 'The Night-Hag's Embrace' by Douglas M. Stokes, in which a traditional demon is given a new twist, and 'Glass Holes' by Steve Dimeo, who uses subtle parallels to evoke the sorrow of disease-wrought changes in a loved one.

A. Del Vento's 'Watching You' is a story about an obsessive observer who witnesses the comings and goings of a doctor he suspects of murder, and persuades his sister-in-law to consult him in order to find out more. Unfortunately she falls under the doctor's spell and our hero fears for her life. Despite the jarring second-person narration, this kept me guessing to the end.

After an unpromising beginning, 'The Good Trip' by Mark Rich becomes a moving tale of transcendence. A curious malady is afflicting people, allowing them to read minds; the consensus view is that it's the result of an alien invasion. Then the main character finds he's caught the bug.

In the well-written but despairing, 'A Sound Like Thunder', Paul Lewis speculates on what it would be like if the Day of Judgement were to come upon our modern world. Mary Larkin's fresh and direct 'Unraveling' adeptly pursues an unusual metaphor of 'the psyche as knitting' in a story about a woman's anxiety when her regular analyst is away and she has to talk to a locum.

Steve Beai's 'In Lopez Canyon' has the protagonist finding he can predict the immediate future. He takes up with a hostess in Las Vegas, and uses his foresight to win at the slot machines. But when he contacts his ex-wife things take a turn for the worse. Well characterised and concise.

There are also good stories here by M. M. O'Driscoll, Stepan Chapman, Jeffrey Thomas and Scott Belan. Across its range of styles and genres, Indigenous Fiction serves up consistent quality.

Note: This review originally appeared in Zene: The Definitive Guide to the World's Independent Press.