| Title | : | The Best of Bizarro Fiction: Volume 1 (Best of Bizarro Series) |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | - |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Kindle Edition |
| Number of Pages | : | 200 |
| Publication | : | First published December 9, 2022 |
A CLASSIC TALE OF LOVE, FAMILY, AND BETRAYAL. PERFORMED BY SOCK PUPPETS.
A JEALOUS WOMAN VISITS A SPECIAL TREE TO GET A BABY. THE BABY IS NOTHING LIKE HER NEIGHBOURS’.
A WIFE RETURNS HOME TO FIND HER HUSBAND CUT IN HALF VERTICALLY. HE’S COMPLETELY UNAWARE OF IT.
THE BEST OF BIZARRO VOLUME 1 FEATURES TWELVE INSANELY MEMORABLE TALES. YOU’LL NEVER LOOK AT LIFE THE SAME WAY AGAIN.
FEATURING STORIES BY MIKE JAMES DAVIS, LEO X. ROBERTSON, MADELEINE SWANN, BILL PURNELL, LEON SAUL, JAMIE KORT, XAVIER GARCIA, MEGAN STOCKTON, JAMES L. STEELE, BEN FITTS, SHAWN WAYNE LANGHANS, AND KEVIN SHAMEL
The Best of Bizarro Fiction: Volume 1 (Best of Bizarro Series) Reviews
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A fantastic selection of Bizarro shorts. Whoever selected these must be somewhat of a genius. Man, I wish I could meet that person and give them a high five. I'll bet he lives an incredible life, living it up on some sun-soaked beach surrounded by Tiki bars and chocolate. I wish I could be that cool.
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Lots of great new bizarro shorts here. My favourites being - ‘New faces of Mt Rushmore’ by Mike Davies - well told craziness about a mysterious sculptor. ‘A Puppet Scorned’ by Jamie Kort - a crazy surreal sock-puppet family and the naughty run-away dad. ‘Sorry Mom, I didn’t love you’ by James Steele - some great slow sad body-horror morphing here. And ‘Ezekiel 2’ by Kevin Shamel - God is an alien in a spaceship, and the prophet Ezekiel fights the cruel Old Testament God. Those are some great stories.
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The New Faces of Mt Rushmore (Davis): The US has expanded into an empire encompassing all of North and South America, so it’s time to update Mt. Rushmore. But when the new faces are revealed, nobody can agree on what the artist put there, and the ensuing debate sparks hyperviolence across the country as everyone fights to assert their view is the correct one. As we enter a post-truth era, where everyone is arguing their own perception is reality, this is an amusing, meandering tale of sweet revenge against the participants of online debate.
The Other Half (Robertson): A woman’s husband comes home missing skin and most of his muscles, half his body a floating mass of neurons and blood vessels. Nobody seems to see this except for Marion, and there’s a reason for that. Unconditional love... Why is the wife always expected to accept the man for the monster he is? Beauty and the Beast without the happy ending.
Everything Will Be Fine When the Squibbies Are on Fire (Swann): Housekeeping at a hotel that’s traveling through dimensions. The guests have peculiar needs. Wouldn’t be out of place in a sci-fi collection. Leaves me tantalized, and I’m keen to see more rooms.
A Shed Full of Pebbles (Purnell): When a person reaches a certain age, one must do certain things to take care of one’s health. Everyone knows your digestive system begins to fail past age 50, so it’s time to take action to keep it in good condition by swallowing... something that is not a pill. A mundanely bizarre story, one of the big standouts, and I wish it had gone even further.
Freaks (Saul): As one of the only humans in a world full of mutants, Arthur is the outcast. All he needs is a chance to prove he can be a freak, too. This chance caught me by surprise, and it is good to see how the outcast becomes accepted.
A Puppet Scorned (Kort): A story of love and abandonment, of a father refusing to take responsibility for his child, and the mother seeking vengeance. A story of... sockpuppets in an attic. It manages to be sexual without showing any bits. Visceral without blood or gore. Yarn and fiber. Knitting needles and desire. Clever, riveting, brutal, and one of the big standouts in the anthology.
Sow Beach (Garcia): When they’d both separately heard about the TV show being filmed inside of the giant space pig, they were both intrigued. Two tapeworms take a romantic walk on the beach as the stomach acid laps gently on the sand. All they want to do is get a bite to eat. It shouldn’t be difficult to find some food around here. Amusing setting and perfectly mundane events in a weird locale. And since the two characters are tapeworms with arms and legs, this counts as a furry story. I don’t make the rules.
I Dream of a Roger (Stockton): Jealous of her perfect neighbors, Beth goes to the baby tree to get a perfect child of her own. All too late she realizes it is not what she wants. She tries to give the baby back, only to incite the ire of the crowd. Intriguing concept and I think it could have gone much further with the idea that she is repulsed by the sight of her own baby. The thought of being a mother makes her cringe; she only got one because she felt pressured.
Sorry, Mom, But I Didn’t Love You (Steele): my story. I don’t have mommy issues. I swear.
Preview this story on my blog.
My Winter Lips (Fitts): When the weather gets cold, it’s time to get new lips from the parts store. All he wants is normal lips, but the clerk has other plans, and Brandon finds himself in a high-pressure sales situation. Interesting to see how she manages to upsell him on a vampire look, which opens his mind to body alteration.
Vicariously (Langhans): A grown woman retreats to the fantasy world she made as a child while people on the outside try to pull her back in. She wants to stay, and she is willing to kill anyone who tries to bring her back.
Ezekiel 2 (Shamel): Ezekiel understands what he’s looking at now, and he know exactly how to defeat this alien being orbiting the planet in his ship raining death and destruction down upon the population for not doing everything he says. After stealing one of God’s ships, the job is easy.
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A few of these stories could have gone even further with their ideas, but they do go just far enough to be weirdly memorable. Well done. -
Definitely bizarre. Update: I came across this anthology because of Jamie Kort, the author of the short story A Puppet Scorned. Planet Bizarro picked up this short story to include in their anthology, so when Jamie told me I could grab a copy, I had to have it. I mean, look at that fabulous cover! Doesn’t it make you curious as to what is inside?
Of course, A Puppet Scorned was my favorite of the shorts. Who doesn’t remember sock puppets? BUT, I never had any like these.
It started out a bit flat for me, but anthologies can be like that. I may not care that much for all of them, but most of the time I can find a few that stand out. Another that stood out was the Special Tree. I felt what was coming, but it was a novel take on keeping up with the Jonses’.
It you are looking to be taken outside your comfort zone, you may find that special gem inside Planet Bizarro. To be sure, it kept me reading and I like that I could pick it up and put it down without losing my place. If you are a horror lover, I recommend giving these twelve shorts a try.
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Yup, this is definitely a bizarre collection, rest assured!
I did struggle a bit as not all the stories were to my taste (just over the top ridiculous to the point I couldn’t follow what was happening). I did have some absolute favourites though: A Puppet Scorned, The Other Half, & My Winter Lips.
The cover art is absolutely gorgeous, so you won’t regret adding this cool collection to your bookshelf! -
I reviewed one of the short stories in this collection separately. So when I was offered a review copy of the entire thing, of course I accepted!
There was a bit of a stumbling block out of the gate with the very first short story. It seemed overall mean-spirited and came across more like a political meme on Facebook than a story using the nature of absurdity to say something. Thankfully, I found other stories I really enjoyed farther in the collection. I particularly liked the ones like A Shed Full of Pebbles and My Winter Lips that leaned more towards fabulism than absurdism. I also appreciated how other stories used absurdism to create deeper analogies.
The one thing to note is the sheer amount of gore in the collection. The first story alone has it in spades, but it pops up more often than not through the rest of the list. There's a lot of viscera and murder. I was partially warned, as I'd read the sock puppet horror tale first. But I would caution anyone else going into it to brace yourself for a large amount of sudden death treated very casually by the text.
Overall... I'm not sure exactly who to recommend this book to. Readers who like weird things, obviously. Maybe those who also enjoy humor books and fabulism. But be prepared: the contents match the cover. -
Brilliantly imaginative and definitely shocking here and there. Some stories fell flat but that's always going to happen with such a mix of authors. Particular favourites were the other half, everything will be fine when the squibbies are on fire, my winter lips, a puppet scorned and sorry mom I didn't love you. The rest were pretty decent mostly but just needed something extra to bring it up for me. For example a shed full of pebbles felt a bit vague and short but enjoyed the idea.
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Most of these short stories are honestly pretty bad, it feels like the authors are trying to be as random a possible a lot of the time while having very little to say. a lot of them are also terrible writers. The one's that I liked were effective in their weirdness in a way that I found entertaining or had a serious dramatic through-line.
The New Faces of Mt Rushmore by Mike James Davis - 2/5 - After I read Naked Lunch last year I wrote a story in my journal that I think is honestly no better than this. The problem is is that thing I wrote was just a brain exercise for myself to write random shit just to get something out of my brain without any intention of writing a story. It was also terrible. The fact that this is a published story by a real author is laughable to me.
The Other Half by Leo X. Robertson - 2/5 - Just never worked for me, the point of this could be easily be made without the weird surrealism.
Everything Will Be Fine When the Squibbies Are on Fire by Madeleine Swann - 1/5 - Hated it, it revels in animal and child abuse without saying anything meaningful about it, which I think is just utterly repulsive.
A Shed Full of Pebbles by William John James Purnell- 2/5 - initially I found this to be cute until I thought about it more and I realized there really isn't any point to any of this story at all.
Freaky by Leon Saul - 2/5 - felt like a bad episode of Rick and Morty
A Puppet Scorned by Jamie Kort - 3/5 - Probably the most interesting use of it's weird absurdity that genuinely got under my skin at times while also being absurdly funny by default.
Sow Beach: A True Story of Love and Sex Inside the Stomach of a Giant Space Pig by Xavier Garcia - 1/5 - About as gross as the title implies.
I Dream of a Roger by Megan Stockton - 2/5 - A surreal story that seems to me to be about Postpartum depression which I don't think really works even though it had me laughing at times.
Sorry, Mom, but I Didn't Love You by James L. Steele - 2/5 - I love my mom so I couldn't connect with the story.
My Winter Lips by Ben Fitts - 3/5 - The author was just like, "Wouldn't it be cool to be able to change your body features like we change tires and give yourself cool vampire lips that self bleed 😎". Maybe a little immature but it still made me laugh once it got to the end
VICARIOUSLY by Shawn Wayne Langhans- 4/5 - Caught me off guard with it's initial dramatic weight which was highly effective until it became more unnerving and didn't go in the direction I wanted it to. Despite this I still think it was effective overall. Easily my favorite.
Ezekiel 2: Ezekiel Thinks God's a Dick by Kevin Shamel- 1/5 - while the prospect of God fucking hookers is funny to me, it's terribly written and feels like a high school incel wrote it. -
Anthologies are hard to rate. Do you let one weak story hose the rating for the whole book or one excellent story pull the others up from one or two measly stars? Playing it safe and giving it three, though most of the stories here were amusing throughout. Good satire, plenty of weirdness, and yeah, explicit everything...including sock puppet and tapeworm sex.
