Erika Holt

Anthologies are strange beasts, because they give you many different stories and so you can find pearls and pebbles all together. Occasionally, you get lucky and get an antho which offers you mostly pearls.
This is the case with ‘Brocken Time Blues’.

I really enjoyed this collection of dieselpunk stories. Dieselpank isn’t a genre that focuses on storytelling so it’s not often that you get to read stories in this genre. This is a collection of very interesting authors, themes, different alternate histories and places. There’s something for everyone and a lot for lovers of the fantastic.

The anthology opens with one of my favourite pieces, ‘The Sharing’ by James L. Sutter set in a Prohibition America where Prohibition has been passed to stop aliens from annoying humans, since they get a very strange power when they get drunk. So unusual. The second story is probably my least favorite, ‘Chickadee’ by Frank Ard, about a giant, human-like chicken and his falling in love. Not really my thing.
But from here on, I enjoyed most of the stories. Some of my favourite: ‘Button Up Your Overcoat’ by Barbara Krasnoff, a very mild dieselpunk about a peculiar way of ‘passing’; ‘Nor the Moonlight’ by Andrew Penn Romine, a hard-core dieselpunk set in interwar Paris, with a fantastic noir atmosphere and one Salvador Dalì turned into a wizard; ‘A Drink for Teddy Ford’ by Robert Jackson Bennett, another atmosphere piece presenting a very unusual idea for a cocktail; and probably my favourite, ‘The Purloined Ledger’ by Ari Marmell, which blends dieselpunk and more proper fantasy in a seamless way and has at his core a very ingenious idea.

Well worth a try if you are a lover of the fantastical.
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Broken Time Blues: Fantastic Tales in the Roaring '20s collects a set of short stories based around the '20s and '30s. Stories include Lovecraftian horror ("The Automatic City," "Madonna and Child, In Jade"), urban mythic ("Semele's Daughter," "A Drink for Teddy Ford"), psychological thriller ("Fight Night"), and hard-boiled mystery ("The Purloined Ledger.")

Perhaps more interesting is the inclusion of stories that look beyond the usual boundaries of urban fantasy and fantastic alt-history. Frank Ard's "Chickadee" gives us an anthropomorphic Chicken, and "Jack and the Wise Birds" by Lucia Starkey explores rural folklore. While the problem of passing has frequently been an implicit theme of supernatural literature, Barbara Krasnoff's "Button Up Your Overcoat" explicitly connects the dots between Nella Larsen's Passing and fantasy narrative.

Gay and lesbian characters and history are a central feature of three stories. "Semele's Daughter," focuses on witches and witchhunters in an alternate history where both magic and booze are banned. "Der Graue Engel" is comic sci-fi story set in the Wiemar Republic, similar in tone to Spider Robinson's Callahan's stories. "Nor The Moonlight" offers alt-history body horror in post-WWI Paris.

As with most collections, I found the stories to be a mix. "The Automatic City," is the perfect blend of Lovecraftian and steampunk horror. "Jack and the Wise Birds" does a brilliant job of mimicking oral history. "Chickadee" is just plain weird, and "Nor The Moonlight" satisfying in its horror. Overall the collection is well worth the $3 ebook price.

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