Fiction Reviews
Moon Falling: Short Stories
(2024) edited & Introduced by Ben Moore, Flame Tree Press,
£20 / Can$40 / US$30, hrdbk, 430pp, ISBN 978-1-804-17445-6
Though independent of it, and you can easily read one volume without looking at the other, this can be seen as a counterweight volume to Flame Tree’s Sun Rising anthology, edited by Ravit Helled, and also reviewed by myself for SF²Concatenation this edition. Much of my feedback on that book also applies here.
Myths are drawn in from round the globe. The Kono People of Sierra Leone tell of 'The Coming Of Darknes's. A bat was assigned the task of delivering darkness as a gift to the Moon from God, but bandits attack him and tear the parcel causing darkness to escape. Bats now flit round the night sky trying to gather back the darkness so the mission can be completed. Science obviously got things wrong in missing such facts.
Soumya Sundar Mukherje writes of 'Chakora’s Mother'. A tale of relief from grief. Baby Chakora has died. His distressed mother won’t let his spirit go, from her attachment and love, causing other angry spirits to eclipse the moon and cause a terrible drought in the land. A Moon bird comes to the mother who grows to love it, but as it sickens and prepares for death, she learns to let it go to the Moon again, and knowing it will look after her son, she finally lets go of Chakora too. Sadness gives way to a bittersweet sense of emotional relief in this story.
An Indian Fable in the Hitopadesha tells the terribly sad tale of 'The Vulture, The Cat And The Birds'. An ageing vulture with failing eyesight, guards the nestlings and eggs of various birds. A cat arrives and while initially guarded, the vulture is impressed by the way the cat spins words of wisdom, and peace and promises to help protect the birds, but then betrays the trust the vulture gives to it and decimates the bird population. The story is about blind acceptance and belief. It really has little to do with the book’s theme but a great story nevertheless.
Jack London is among the most recognisable authors, and his story, 'Moon-Face' takes a different slant on the book theme, in centring on a man with a near perfectly round moon shaped face. He is irrationally despised by the narrator simply for his perpetual smiling happiness and optimism. The spiteful narrator begins to try to ruin his joy from sheer spite, even burning down his house, before putting more murderous plans into action. A clever fable on how many resent others being contented in life and just ruin it for no really apparent reason.
A. Y. Lu’s 'Jade Hare' centres on the gods who live on the Moon. They lament that the Earth is overpopulated with immortals, as every time someone did something noble or heroic, they were granted immortality. The Jade Guardian has for eons, brewed divine tea for all immortals, but she now feels overworked and seeks a successor. Three sisters set out to find someone from Earth. One stumbles on a timid hare who is so scared of her that he throws himself on the fire but she interprets his suicide as a sacrifice to make himself into a meal for her and resurrects him as a divine being. He rises to great power on the Moon, but he is jaded by the truth of his origins in cowardice rather than nobility, and centuries on, humans are coming to the Moon too, so he has ideas. A fascinating look at how myths are created, re- and mis-interpreted and changed over time.
H. G. Wells is included with A Moonlight Fable, in which a boy given a wonderful suit, and drilled with instructions to never get it dirty, one moonlit night runs out in inclement weather, cutting through bracken, traipsing in mud, swimming in the suit, and eventually being found dead in its ragged state, but happy that he was free from the restraints of materialism.
Lovely, beautifully bound volume, with stories old and new proving that such tales are timeless.
Arthur Chappell
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