Tag: science-fiction

Vicki Regan, The Children of Copperhead Road, (2025)

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/244648404-the-children-of-copperhead-road

Appalachian horror folktale novella

The Compton boy is lost in the mountains; the dogs lost the scent. But something’s been found, just past the Calhoun place. Multiple children, and they ‘aren’t right’. Earl says, ‘Don’t put this on the radio.’

He’s decided one thing—they’re not going up there at night.

Kelly says, ‘My daddy told me to stay off Copperhead Road.’

The reek hits them as they climb, animal musk, weathered animal bones. ‘Kids don’t do this,’ says Kelly.

The children are all ‘wrong’ in bizarre ways, and they’re all humming—the same note. They take the sheriff and his deputy to see ‘Mama’, a vision of horror, yet she has none. She’s blind. A helicopter comes to take them to the hospital, but their condition defies the doctors. They have ‘anomalies’. Dr Wallace takes over.

They’re taking the children back to Mama, sending a young teacher up the mountain to homeschool them—Miss Dorothy. Dorothy sends weekly reports, but they cease. The last one says, ‘Caleb won’t take no for an answer.’

Over and over, Earl does nothing. He watches the treeline.

2024, there’ve been four disappearances in five years. There’s a new sheriff now. Something moves through the trees.

We begin to understand that the law enforcement people are related to some of the children. I thought this might have been done as more of a Big Reveal.

Skilful at the building of suspense, Regan knows how to write horror. This echoes the ‘inbred hillbillies’ stereotype, but Mama and the ‘wrong’ children are more horrific than Banjo Boy in Deliverance.

I chose this book after enjoying Regan’s sci-fi trilogy Midnight Frequency series. She seems to be a versatile author, writing sci-fi, backwoods horror and vampire fantasy.

Joan Smith, Unfortunately, She was a Nymphomaniac, (William Collins, 2025)

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/211051402-unfortunately-she-was-a-nymphomaniac

The durability of ancient Roman misogyny

A misogynist myth about women has been going round for millennia. That some women are infected with a psychological madness, an evil insatiable appetite for sex called furor uterinus, a disease which was supposed to originate in the womb.Accusations of sexual promiscuity, true or not, were used as justifications for femicide (the killing of women because they are women).

Girls were often forced to marry as early as age 12, even before menarche, and death in childbirth was common. The husbands could be in their 30s, 40s or 50s. Divorce was easy, and the children remained with the father.

The brilliant title of this book came from the mouth of a tour guide at the Palazzo Massimo museum in Rome. He was talking about Julia, the only child of Augustus, whom the all-authoritative ‘sources’ so maligned and who is the main subject of the first few chapters of this book. Augustus exiled his ‘nymphomaniac’ daughter Julia to Pandateria, then her ex-husband Tiberius locked her in a room and starved her to death, while her mother Scribonia had to listen through the walls to her anguished cries.

We’ve taken so many of our assumptions about this dynasty from Robert Graves’ highly fictionalised and sensationalised I, Claudius (who can forget the terrifying G-g-grandmother?), which Smith calls ‘a misogynist’s fever dream’.

But the real history is not much nicer. If the Julio-Claudians weren’t poisoning their women or stabbing them to death in the uterus, they were exiling them to distant rocky islands and starving them to death. Smith comments, ‘It’s impossible to overestimate the durability of Roman misogyny.’[1]

From Nero to Henry VIII, all a ruler had to do to justify bumping off a wife or a mother was to accuse her of infidelity. The empress Messalina, according to the satirist Juvenal, had a second career as a brothel madam, about as credible as Anne Boleyn’s incest with her brother.

The final chapter, outlining the violence against women that is still going on today, is harrowing.

We’re all somewhat familiar with the history of these people, but Smith exposes the shocking prejudices of the ‘sources’ and rights some of the myths. Contains copious footnotes, from the author’s own researching Latin sources, and includes many choice exactly translated phrases. Scrupulous scholarship, with the ability eloquently to cut to the gist of things. This is especially appreciated with ancient Roman history, with its plethora of names, dates and complex and inter-related family trees.

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[1] p. 224.

B T McCusker, Short Stories from a Tall Man, (TN Traynor Publishing, 2025)

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/243790755-short-stories-from-a-tall-man

Innovative stories of ‘quiet humour’

A couple goes on holiday to France, their first holiday since the kids had all grown up. She used to crush on her French teacher, who would greet her with, ‘Bonjour, mademoiselle’.

On the beach, on the tip of a peninsula is a red house with a white gate. The man at the door invites her in, ‘Bonjour, mademoiselle’.

***

Archbishop De Grey tells Tom, ‘it’s a very big job.’ 524½ ft x 222 ft with a tower 235 ft tall, and 36 bells. ‘Can you build it?’ Tom says his guys can handle it.

In 250 years’ time, York Minster would be considered an architectural masterpiece.

***

Three coachloads of elderly ladies visit a hotel on the northwest coast. A explosives engineer, discharged from wartime service, sees enemies all around him. On the beach, a genuine emergency, one of the ladies has drowned, and it’s up to him to get the others all ashore safely.

‘That’s what I like about coach trips,’ he says, ‘every day is new.’

***

Grandad Wilson shows George and Oliver about magnets and about knots. ‘It’s not magic, boys; it’s science,’ he says.

Years later, their daughters hold a box tied with a double fisherman. It’s so old, the knot crumbles in their hands.

‘Magic,’ says George.

***

These mini-synopses give a flavour of the excellent stories in this anthology.

Many of the stories are short, two pages or shorter. They tend to have low-key endings, no big punchlines or dramatic twists, quite artful. The subtitle boasts ‘quiet humour’, and I found that description quite apt. Little vignettes–quirky encounters by the seaside, elders reflecting on their youth, the Shrubs family debating Greek philosophy and geometry, an umbrella hooked on a peg in the hallway. Wonderful, innovative ideas, beautiful writing.

I’m looking at anthologies of short stories at the moment, as our writers’ group has just published one.[1] Short stories can be hard to get your teeth into for the first few paragraphs, as the reader has to suspend disbelief to become hooked into a new world, but their restricted length allows for a concentration of the writer’s skill.

Each story has an adorable colour illustration in pen and crayon.

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[1] All Points Imagination.

Jonathan T Jefferson, The Outhouse, (Kindle, 2025)

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/223853636-the-outhouse

Not a wardrobe, it’s an outhouse, a magical door into other worlds

Milton’s great-grandfather built the farmhouse in the late 1800s. There was no plumbing. Over the decades, a kitchenette and bathroom was added, and the well was sealed up. They had almost forgotten the old outhouse was still there. Until Milton’s son Madison sought a place of privacy to kiss his girl Katie.

He opened the outhouse door, suspecting this would be no place to kiss a girl, and couldn’t believe his eyes. No lavatory, there was instead a grand vista, the Grand Canyon, a winding river with red rock cliffs. Madison enters the magical world. Coming down the river is a native girl in a canoe. ‘Gam’yu,’ she greets him, and he finds he can speak Hualapai.

When he next opens the magical door, it’s a different place, a lush jungle. A trekking couple informs him they’re on the Inca Trail, on their way to Machu Picchu. At the Sun Gate, he runs to keep up with the tour guide, but the stones are wet and he slips, falling into the abyss. But – he’s back in the outhouse.

The next time, it’s Egypt.

Madison’s brother Harry is squirting water on the outhouse. Madison says, ‘Want to build a cover for the snake pit?’

The snake pit behind the barn. Could it, too, be a magical portal?

It’s probably involved enough for a children’s story, but I really wanted a bit more of a character arc, and I wanted Madison to go into the magical worlds a bit deeper. CS Lewis wrote whole volumes on Narnia, complete with the spiritual development of the children. We weren’t clear on what time period the worlds were. Is he travelling in time as well as space?