SHORT FICTION
ROBYN IN HER SHINY BLUE COFFIN
Notes: A vague concept had been circling my psyche since the early 90s, when the eldest of my three daughters became seriously ill w
hile in her teens. We were in and out of the Montreal Children’s Hospital for three difficult years, the emotional experience somewhere between rollercoaster and demolition derby. Fortunately, my daughter made it through the ordeal, healthy, happy, positive, and resolute. Today, she’s the mother of three with a thriving theatre company. But we also got to know too many kids and parents who weren’t so lucky, and those are memories you never fully shake. While ROBYN is not my daughter’s story by any stretch, it was inspired by elements from that period: the hospital environment; the sub-culture that flourishes within a children’s ward; and the friends who stuck by my daughter and those that ran the other way.
Opening lines: Jerry is doing about as okay as anyone would expect. He’s with his mother, and they’re cutting through the park with the double-high spiral slide. It’s a terrific slide, too, as Robyn once pointed out, if you’re partial to dizzy or babysitting brats who need to be kept busy. He smiles at the thought, then gets back to business. Watching. Doubting. Hoping.
Reviews:
“In Libling’s story young Jerry’s friend Robyn, an aspiring magician, has died after a long and mysterious illness, but she promised to (magically) contact him from the afterlife. The bulk of the story concerns their friendship, which really only blossomed in the hospital. The story comes off for a while as kind of John Green territory – and well done – but on Jerry’s graveyard visit after Robyn’s burial there is a beautifully set up fantastical twist.” – Rich Horton, LocusMag
“Great story with a perfect ending.” – Sam Tomaino, SF Revu
(Well, not every reviewer loves everything unconditionally, though this reviewer’s name does give me pause:) “I’ll start by saying that Libling’s story is definitely worth a read. For me, however, the conclusion didn’t quite work for me. That said, it still achieved the effect the author had set up, so on that level it was successful.” – Tara Grimravn, Tangent Online
HOW I CAME TO WRITE FANTASY
Notes: The novelette draws from a couple of jobs I had at various times. The first would be my days as a busboy at a Montreal hotel, the characters I encountered, and the tall tales they’d tell, not to mention the regular abuse that came with the job. (64 cents an hour, man!) The second were my years spent as a writer in advertising, a favorite client being The Netherlands Board of Tourism. Thanks to my many trips to Holland, I discovered Oudewater and its witch-weigh history. The nature of truth and guilt are fairly common themes in my fiction and I’d say this story deals with both to varying degrees.
Opening lines: Her name was Shelley. We’d been going together a year when she won a ringette scholarship to McGill, and late in that summer of 1969 I followed her from Toronto to Montreal. Six days into her freshman semester she told me she needed room to breathe, to spread her wings, that her parents never liked me, that Phil was love at first sight …
Reviews:
“I also enjoyed ‘How I Came to Write Fantasy’ by Michael Libling, a good example of voice and point-of-view driving a story, as the narrator tells of a man he knew years earlier, who claimed to be hundreds of years old, though he looked 19. The narrator tells the details of the unbelievable story, involving witches, a botched spell, and a love affair apparently lasting centuries. The resolution is interesting and sensible – it’s a solid story in its bones, enhanced by the angle Libling tells it from.” – Rich Horton, LocusMag
“Finely drawn characters in a lively and emotionally resonant story.” – Gary Tognetti, The 1000 Year Plan (1KYP)
” …The story’s strength is its complexity and surprises, and the discussion of how love changes over time.” – Chuck Rothman, Tangent Online
“Great story with a perfect ending.” – Sam Tomaino, SF Revu
“It’s a very emotional story, whether from the sad fate of Jacob’s mother to the narrator’s loss of his own mother. It also has plenty of comic relief, like the narrator’s ‘gift’ of drawing people into telling him their life stories. The breaking of the curse is unexpected, and so is the aftermath.” – Greg Hullender, Rocket Stack Rank
“The story is long, and somewhat involved, and nothing in it turns out the way you think (okay, the way I thought it would) it will. A nice little romp.” – Steve Fahnestalk, Amazing Stories
AT THE OLD WOODEN SYNAGOGUE ON JANOWER STREET
Notes: Yet another one of those stories that had been kicking around in my brain for years. A companion piece to the story is my blog entry of January 24, 2019: How a Comic Book Ad Taught Me about the Holocaust. This story was also selected for Rich Horton’s The Year’s Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 2020.
Opening lines: It’s hot, as hot as any day anyone can remember, in this small American town on the fringes of an urban somewhere, and suffused with the peace and human decency of a coveted anywhere.
Reviews:
“‘At the Old Wooden Synagogue on Janover Street’ features strong yet subtle character work that examines the American Dream and the injustices of war side-by-side … Libling has illustrated the lost hopes and dreams of those lost to the Holocaust, creating an alternate plane where they didn’t end amidst violence and were able to live full lives. It’s multifaceted and incredibly written.” – Jacob A. Olson, Realms and Robots
“Michael Libling wields the American Dream like a knife in ‘At the Old Wooden Synagogue on Janower Street.’ When Ben/Berko’s dead relatives visit him in his ideal life in small town America, the family declares it a miracle, but the reader soon finds discrepancies in the gap between them now and the family’s brutal separation by the Gestapo.” – Michelle Ristuccia, Tangent Online
“I also really like ‘At the Old Wooden Synagogue in Janower Street’ by Michael Libling, about a young boy sometime in the post-War period, whose parents escaped the Nazis to come to the US. One day an odd trio comes into his father’s store, dressed in old-fashioned clothes … His father’s memory of that terrible time in Poland leads to a truly wrenching conclusion.” – Rich Horton, LocusMag
“Ben Abrams is cleaning the grill in his diner while his son Danny tries to study for his exams. Three people walk in. They are Ben’s father, mother, and sister who had disappeared in the Holocaust. Is this some sort of miracle? I can’t spoil the end to this perfect story.” – Sam Tomaino, SF Revu
And then there is this review from SF fan Austin Beeman on Goodreads. Frankly, I expected more along these lines, but am grateful to have stumbled across only this one. Still, a comment like this is tough to take when a story resides so close to heart: “Poor. Yuck. This gimmick story exploits the Holocaust when a jewish [sic] family walks into a diner.”
SNEAKERS
Notes: When editor Gordon Van Gelder first proposed the concept of his new original anthology to me, I immediately considered the Canadian perspective. How would “making America great again” affect us north of the border? SNEAKERS is my attempt to answer at least part of the question, in keeping with the dystopian theme of the collection. While the story is fiction, much of it was inspired by true events. Alternative title: KAFKA AT CUSTOMS.
Opening lines: I won’t claim Ottawa never warned us. There was no missing the travel advisories. Match a profile, and you had damn well better know Title 19 by heart.
Reviews:
“… I will attempt to introduce you to the stories that struck these chords with me, and have stayed with me even after several weeks … SNEAKERS is a harrowing account of violence against humanity inside and outside its various territories. It’s frustrating and infuriating to place ourselves in the shoes of the hordes of people who are standing in line to cross a border: they are actually waiting for their turn to be interrogated, humiliated, arrested, or killed. The writer manages to capture the paranoia, mistrust, and hatred surrounding citizens of color, minority gender, and minority religion demonstrated at US installations with armed guards, whether in the US or elsewhere.” —Salik Shah, Strange Horizons
“The book opens strongly with ‘Sneakers’ by Michael Libling. Two innocent Canadians go south to buy a pair of sneakers, which are cheaper in the United States. Regrettably, things have changed on the border and their situation becomes difficult, even scary. This has a great kick in the tail and may be a warning for those ex-colonials in the savage north. They should have stayed under the rule of good Queen Bess. We Brits would have taken care of them.” —Eamonn Murphy, SFcrowsnest
Mea culpa! I thought I was simply writing an entertaining, fast-paced story with some pithy observations and a few twists and turns. Apparently not, ffs. Clearly, contemporary writers must possess certain credentials before being permitted to write certain stories: “I have two major issues with this collection: the liberal centering of whiteness and the Satanification of Trump. Let’s start with the former: in Welcome to Dystopia, a number of authors seem to have only been able to imagine dystopia by putting themselves- white, liberal, reasonably woke- in the realities that Black, indigenous, and other people of color already occupied at the time of the writing. This is most egregious in the very first story, where Michael Libling proposes a world where the government is now targeting the average white liberal because they have ‘run out of brown and black people to harass.’ In fact, the author is adamant that the character accused of being Muslim (and literally used in a false flag terror attack) is in fact white. Thus, even though he makes a valiant attempt to nod to racism, the message of the story is ‘oh no, now it’s happening to us!’ Now, of course this was likely written as a warning. The point, you might argue, is to try and show the (assumed white) reader how horrible it is that it’s happening to anyone by forcing them to imagine it happening to them. But this centering of whiteness in progressive efforts treats brown and Black pain as unrelatable, privileges white comfort, and ultimately distracts from the suffering people of color experience on a day to day basis.” —Babas Books
WRETCHED THE ROMANTIC
Notes: In previewing the novelette, Asimov’s Editor Sheila Williams called it an “amusing and irreverent tale”, featuring death and odd jobs. The story was inspired by a stroll along the Old Erie Canal, dinners at the Dinosaur Barbecue in Syracuse, and every TV weather girl in the history of TV weather girls. The finished product is a personal favourite, no matter what anybody else says about it. So there! Most importantly, if the story offends you in any way, please spread the word.
Opening lines: The only reason I watched News Final at 11 was Lucy Levine & The Weather. And not The Weather so much.
Reviews:
“Lots of laughs, albeit macabre ones.” — Greg Hullender, rocketstackrank.com
“This is a black comedy with a deliciously bad attitude and an enviable sense of pacing..” — Simon Petrie, simonpetrie.wordpress.com
“… Richard, a former advertising man forced to find employment mowing lawns. His wife finds his lack of ambition frustrating and soon leaves him. But something happens when Richard is asked to scatter the ashes of the husband of one of his clients: he accidentally inhales. And it begins to change him. The story is quite weird (and I mean that as a positive) and ends up going to places I never expected. Definitely a highlight of the issue.” — Chuck Rothman, Tangentonline.com
“… a novelette of commendably poor taste about a loser who accidentally inhales some of the cremated remains he was given to scatter. He later realises he has developed some of the deceased’s attributes. This is really a gonzo /black humour ‘if this goes on’ fantasy but the emphasis is on the first two characteristics.” — Paul Fraser, SFmagazines.com