Innsmouth Free Press, $15.00, ISBN 978-0-9916759-3-7
Horror, 2012
Ah, fungus infestation. Whether it’s Zuggtmoy or Fungi from Yuggoth, the spreading rot of a fungal infestation is an integral trope of cosmic horror. Hence, Fungi: an anthology of horror stories of the mycelium kind. There are 23 stories here, so let’s not waste further words and get straight to them, or else I’d still be here come Christmas.
John Langan’s Hyphae is the most overt horror story of the lot. Those sneaky editors, they want to fool readers browsing through the first few pages of this anthology into thinking it’s a really scary one, I’d bet. Our protagonist comes to visit his estranged father, only to discover that his father’s longtime “eccentricity” and lack of personal hygiene, let’s just say, have mushroomed into some far more bizarre, one that will send that fellow and perhaps some readers screaming like that bloke at the end of Troll 2. I like this one, it’s succinct, full of spooky tension, and offers a deliciously gruesome payoff for all that delicious build-up.
Lavie Tadhar’s The White Hands… well, this author must have seen the call for submissions for this anthology and think to himself, “You know, I can be really quirky too!” This is because this story is practically a cliché in every anthology: it’s that story that offers various snippets and vignettes like disjointed entries from some “historical database” thingy. The author will pat himself in the back for succeeding in being so quirky, while I’m roll up my eyes and mutter, “Who cares!” before moving on.
Camille Alexa offers a story that is not for those who are claustrophobic: it’s about an ill-fated underwater venture of using hollowed giant fungal puffballs as submarine-like structures to explore what is really down in the depths of the ocean. Predictably enough, some huge monster goes yum-yum-yum on the puffball bearing our protagonist and other doomed crew members. Actually, the premise of His Sweet Truffle of a Girl isn’t anything I’ve never read or seen before, but this is one of the most gorgeous jumbles of words I’ve ever write in a while. Seriously, there is a hypnotic cadence to the narrative, a beautiful doomed kind of tinge to everything, so much so that death from both drowning and broken heart comes off as something simultaneously haunting and even erotic. My only issue is with the title of this story. I mean, what is that? This one deserves a title that reflects the nature of the story more accurately, if you ask me, not some play on what seems like a generic country song title.
Now, I like Andrew Penn Ramine’s Last Bloom on the Sage as a slice of supernatural Western tale, but this story doesn’t seem particularly fungus-y, if I am making sense here. Replace the supernatural fungus elements with anything else—viral infection, nanomite infestation, whatever—and the story will still stand as it is with some minor adjustments. In other words, this one feels like any supernatural Western tale with some serial numbers adjusted to fit the submission brief for this anthology. Well, good for the author for getting in, and I hope the royalty check buys something nice (yes, I’m actually being nice here), but this is one of the more forgettable stories here because it feels rather generic, for the want of a better word. I won’t mind reading more stories set in this particular era and place, though!
So far, after the first story, there isn’t anything particularly frightening here. Well, Kristopher Riesz’s The Pilgrims of Parthen isn’t bucking the trend, but it is also the story that manages to capture old school HP Lovecraft the best. Our protagonist, Austin, knows that his sweetheart Macy is going to leave him. He accepts that, as he knows that he has nothing exciting or even good to offer her; Macy has talents that would allow her to be snapped up by employers in the big city, and she will be destined for things far greater than anything he can give her. However, when they both discover that eating a type of mushroom causes them to visit some kind of dreamscape. Together with other people that have eaten the parthen mushrooms, they make their way towards a magnificent city. Soon, each time they wake up, they find themselves longing to be dreaming again, to resume making their way to that city. And what will they find there?
This is more of a parable than a scary story, as in the end, it tells us that no matter how terrible we think our Earth is, the grass isn’t always greener at the other side. This story isn’t didactic or heavy-handed, though. If anything, it brings on the feels, as Austin is living out his own version of Cyndi Lauper’s Time after Time: he loves Macy, but he can never keep up with her end, even to the bitter end—but he will still go after her, hoping to finally catch up with her. This one is easily one of my favorite stories in this lot, as it hits hard in the feels while presenting a fascinating tapestry of a dream-like pilgrimage that is never what it seems to be.
Despite its title Midnight Mushrumps, which hints at some naughty vulgarity, WH Pugmire’s story is the usual patchwork of dreams, drugs, and bizarre fantasia sequences, the gimmick that many authors resort to each time the brief is “cosmic horror”, because, really, this is the easiest way to purge out a short story without having to really explain anything or make sense in the first place. So, this one has people becoming giant mushrooms that eat one another… or something. I’d like to think that this is just a peek into the brain of someone high on said mushrooms.
Kum, Raúl (The Unknown Terror) by Steve Berman is a super short story about yet another ill-fated excursion by civilized folks into the primitive corners of Mexico in the 1940s, those corners where there is always some forbidden temple or cave or whatever that contains dangerous ooga-ooga stuff. Here, it’s a cave called, most imaginatively, Cueva Muerte, and basically, we have a bunch of idiots from America fighting one another for power and what not, eventually killing themselves and inadvertently saving the world from the dangers lurking in that cave. The natives, meanwhile, are probably wondering whether there is any way they can build a wall to keep those unwanted Americans out of their lands. Make no mistake, this is actually a pretty fun story, but the fungal aspects of the story seem tacked on solely to get this story to meet the brief of the anthology. It’s still somewhat cosmic horror in its core, so I guess it’s alright.
Next up is Jeff VanderMeer’s Corpse Mouth and Spore Nose, which is the story of a detective in a vaguely “We’ve all been overrun by weird stuff!” version of Earth looking into some murders and then completely becoming too dumb for words by firing at an ominous giant mushroom thing and getting spores splattered all over him. Guess what happens next. All that build-up and tension, only to waste it all on the protagonist proving that he is indeed too dumb to live.
Goatsbride by Richard Gavin should have belonged in some anthology called Goat, because it touches on girls getting hysteria and people claiming that these girls are having orgies with a horny goat beast. The word “diabolism” even shows up here. Indeed, the protagonist is a lady that is having congress with such a beast, which may or may not be a manifestation of the land. Or something—you know how people will come up with all kinds of excuses to justify the things they are letting into their bodies. Sure, fungal infection of the crops may have been a scientific explanation for the hysteria, so this story belongs in this anthology if we want to grasp at Cthulhu’s slimy tentacle, but seriously now, this story is just taking up space that could have gone to a more interesting story. As it is, this one is just here to fill up a few pages.
Molly Tanzer and Jesse Bullington present Tubby McMungus, Fat from Fungus, which is basically Cats covered in fungus. The cat in the title is a tailor that, in an effort to out-fashion his rivals, ends up being blamed for unleashing a deadly plague. Actually, an actual noble cat is responsible for that, but you know how it is. Why blame a privileged cat when you can finger a replaceable working class wretch instead? This is another story that exists just to take up space. I mean, when the editors ask for tales that explore “fungal fiction” beyond mere body horror, plague-infested furries gone Animal Farm makes perfect sense, right. I look at the cover of this anthology and wonder why they put up an artwork that promises things that the editors never intend to deliver.
Jane Hertenstein’s Wild Mushrooms is actually a navel-gazing “I’m a woman in my mid-thirties that have nothing to do than to gaze endlessly into my navels, pondering about how my parents’ antics shape me to become this angst-filled adult that I am today, unable to feel anything aside from artistic moroseness!” story that just happens to have mushrooms here and there. Sure, this one is well-written enough in a “Take the Lifetime script, slap an arty title and cover over it, and now it’s a literary gem!” way, I suppose, but I am not sure that, when the editors claim to want to go beyond mere body horror, “whiny me-me-me story by young women experiencing premature midlife crisis” is the way to go.
Paul Tremblay’s Our Stories Will Live Forever is another tale that wants very much to be mistaken for those pretentious Hugo award-winning twaddles they churn out every other month. This one describes the mounting hysteria of a fellow that is afraid to fly, while he’s on a plane. All of a sudden a mushroom is shoved into the story towards the end—maybe in an effort to sell the story to this anthology after it’d been rejected by more literary outlets—and then the plane crashes with the mushroom and I can only see in my head Nicolas Cage screaming about the bees. The protagonist describes himself as: “a minor author, much to my consternation, but a proud autodidact”. I can only hope that this character isn’t a self-insert or something, but I have to admit: this whole story smells of the content of an unwashed navel.
AC Wise shows up to remind me that it’s still okay to read genre fiction without collapsing in shame. Where Dead Men Go to Dream is a tragic, sometimes poignant, sometimes chilling story of a man haunted by his love of a woman that, from all appearances, had committed suicide. This story is more about the consequences of stubbornly retaining painful memories, and the fungal aspect of the story seems like it’s tacked on to meet the brief. Still, this one tells an actual story, with efforts made to draw the reader into the head and heart of the protagonist in order to share his pain and dread. This is not a trip that drags the reader screaming into the plunging abyss of the author’s navel, so here’s to that.
Dust from a Dark Flower by Daniel Mills is a good old scary story about mysterious deaths and even more mysterious changes to the corpses and tombstones in the local graveyard. Are these sinister incidents tied in any way to the arrival of Reverend Ambrose Cooper? I tell you, after the try-hard last few stories, I am ready to fall onto my knees and sob in relief because at last—at last!—here is another story that has the good old fit and feel of old school cosmic horror. This one is genuinely macabre, scary, and on point. I like this one a lot, and seriously, I need to read this one after the last few stories that made me shudder and heave for all the wrong reasons.
Next up is Julio Toro San Martin’s A Monster in the Midst. Yes, that’s “Midst”; I didn’t make a typo. This is a charming steampunk story of an inventor, Vicomte Triste, whose efforts to tackle what seems like a deadly fungal infestation. Unfortunately, this one is also riddled with pretentious gimmicks of an author that desperately want to appear smart enough to win a Hugo award: we have deliberately obtuse chronology, unnecessary narrative gimmicks, and perhaps unintentionally, amateurish overuse of the exclamation point at the end of every other sentence. Perhaps the intention all along is to make Vicomte Triste appear easily excitable, but still, I am getting amateur hour realness here. To top it off, the whole story is basically a parable about how humans suck and probably deserve to be eliminated for the sake of all that is good and holy. How original, I must say.
Dear lord, how many more stories are there?
Let’s see, next is Lisa M Bradley’s The Pearl in the Oyster and the Oyster Under Glass. Our protagonist, who appears human, shows up to star in some eye-rolling parable about the environment (especially marine environment), sustainability, and being trapped in the wrong body. Seriously, this story is like an effort to tick off as many items on the “Win a Hugo… progressively!” list. I would have liked this one more if there had been more details given to help me make sense of some of the developments in this story. As it is, this one resembles a longer story with key scenes hastily chopped off to meet the smaller word count, or the effort of an author that greatly underestimates her readers’ ability to read her mind.
Every anthology typically has a story presented as a letter to someone or something, in what is meant to be a humorous way, and I’m surprised it took this long for Polenth Blake’s Letters to a Fungus to show up. This is a letter written by someone beleaguered by a fungus spreading around the house and killing pets as well as neighbors and family members. I read this one and can only sigh, because come on, if the author wanted to utilize this done-way-too-many-times narrative gimmick, at least have a story that is genuinely macabre, interesting, original, really funny, or all of these. Instead, I get a “fungus eats everything… and then you… LOL kthxbye!” thing. Ugh.
Oh god, Nick Mamatas is next. Of all the authors that show up in anthologies, this is one fellow that always tries his best to win a Hugo for every word that is messily purged onto the page, and I’m pretty sure there is a meta joke to the title, The Shaft Through the Middle of It All. Fungus spews up and explodes from the author’s crusty belly button, as some POC kid and his mother use magic mushrooms to take revenge on the meanies and yet, everything is kept opaque despite the author using ten words when one would suffice. Ugh.
I can do this. Just a few more.
Right, up next is Simon Strantzas with Go Home Again. Is the anthology openly taunting me now? This is another story of some adult woman gazing into her navel, poking at it to conjure up the face of her father while she jabbers endlessly about her daddy issues. Sure, there are fungi all around, and daddy may be a monster, but seriously, lady, nobody cares. Can the fungus kill something or somebody, please? I feel like I’m trapped in a Hugo award ceremony that just won’t end.
Chadwick Ginther’s First They Came for the Pigs has some idiots brainlessly being led into a trap by some smug, so-obviously-untrustworthy POS in some plot involving a killer fungus-thing. Okay, I may care more about this one, as heaven knows, it’s actually a story and not an explosion of belly button cheese, but oh my god, these characters are all so bloody stupid, and I feel stupid for having to sit through their antics.
Ian Rogers, bless him, presents a no-nonsense fun story in Out of the Blue. A womanizing real estate, Jerry, who specializes in properties that are reputedly haunted, needs help when his new interior decorator Julie doesn’t respond to calls after working late at the newest property Jerry picked up. He asks his friend, Felix, who is a detective that specializes in supernatural cases, to come accompany him as he peeks into the property to see if Julie is still inside. Well. as Harry D’ Felix will soon learn that fungal disinfection of a new property is something that one should never neglect to carry out. This one is an alright read. It’s too short to make much of an impact, although I personally won’t mind reading more of Felix’s adventures. Still, after the last few stories, I welcome this one with open arms.
Gamma by Laird Barron, of course, just has to ruin my mood. This is the male version of those “women whining about their daddy issues while pretending to be starring in a ghost story” stories that plagued this anthology earlier, and as per those stories, I don’t care about this one. So the protagonist believes himself to be in hell by the end of the story. Good, he deserves it for being such a bore.
The last story, oops, “story” here is Ann K Schwader’s poem Cordyceps Zombii. Yeah, yeah, spores come, zombies come, and I do hope somebody else comes because I’ve had enough and I am out of there.
How an anthology, which is going swimmingly in its first half, can quickly degenerate into an interminable SFWA’s Got Talent-like auditions of authors that need a Hugo award, I will never know. If they really want it that bad, maybe they can petition to the organizers to remind them that winning is an ableist concept and it is only right that everyone gets a Hugo award every year in the name of diversity, inclusivity, and whatever else that is the rage in that community at this moment. Just don’t subject me to such pretentious, desperate twaddle, please.
