Review: The Lamb Will Slaughter the Lion by Margaret Killjoy

Communing with Deer in the Era of COVID-19 and Isolation

We hope this review is reaching everyone safe, well, and suitably socially distanced. Here in Ontario we are headed for increasing Covid-19-related restrictions on the ways we engage in public spaces, with all non-essential services closing tomorrow at midnight.

I am feeling extremely lucky to live where I live — at the edge of a semi-rural development between city and conservation area. We’ve been seeing more deer lately and after reading Margaret Killjoy’s The Lamb Will Slaughter the Lion, my deer encounters trigger a little frisson of morbid excitement.

Readers, this is our chance to do what we love and model civil responsibility. If you’re looking for a new read to pass the time in self-isolation, maybe Killjoy’s novella is just what you need?

Books We Love

The Lamb will Slaughter the Lion was published in 2017 by Tor.

This creepy bit of sylvan horror is the kind of thing we’d like to see in our slush pile: a story about the inhabitants of an anarchist commune in Freedom, Iowa, who summon Uliksi, a blood-red three-antlered deer god, in order to deal with their hierarchy problems. Uliksi “turns predator into prey” when he “hunts those who wield power over others”.

Though Uliksi is originally summoned to deal with a violent sociopath who has seized control of the commune, the summoners soon realize that the act of summoning an “endless spirit” to dispatch Freedom’s unwanted leader results in the deer god’s gaze falling, inevitably, upon them.

We love the complex commentary on power relations in this book. Uliksi’s presence raises questions about the difference between violence enacted to seize power and that enacted in self defense, and — when the police bear down on Freedom and the squatters dread the slaughter that will ensue should Uliksi and the officers meet — the violence that upholds an unequal and oppressive society.

That this narrative about violence — and its opposites, peace, freedom, and community — takes place in an environment isolated from big cities and in which the spirit and animal realms intermingle, underscores the ways in which humankind has betrayed ecological relationship in seeking power and status.

Killjoy’s book is fundamentally about belonging. This theme is brought up again and again as animals escape their taxonomies and humans struggle against the simultaneous desire to exist in the “safe” place outside connection, and to find a place that feels like “home.” Killjoy’s conceptualization of violence is a part of this push and pull. We (especially in the West) are invited repeatedly into relationship and make the choice, again and again, to accept or deny the summons.

/ / All, Books We Love, Novella, Reviews

Announcement: Stelliform Acquires Michael J. DeLuca’s Night Roll

Image of tweet by Michael J. DeLuca announcing Night Roll, on a background image of brambles, in black and white. The Stelliform earthstar logo is at bottom middle.

We are pleased to announce that Stelliform Press will be publishing Michael J. DeLuca’s novella, Night Roll, later this year. DeLuca is the editor-in-chief of Reckoning Magazine (which we have reviewed here and here) as well as an author of short stories published in Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Apex, Mythic Delirium, and many other places.

In Night Roll, new mother and climate refugee Aileen Dupree has been abandoned by her partner in post-industrial Detroit. Her neighbor, Virgil, comes to her rescue, bringing useful cast-offs and much needed friendship. Virgil is Aileen’s only connection to the outside world, a refuge for an insomniac newcomer who is overwhelmed by the turn her life has taken.

But then Virgil borrows Aileen’s prized possession—a chrome and leather royal blue fourteen-speed bike—and disappears. Aileen doesn’t know if Virgil’s disappearance is an accident or another abandonment.

When she ventures out to look for answers, Aileen finds friendship and support in a vibrant community she didn’t expect, surrounding a mysterious figure,  the Elf: a timeless being who has always fought the colonizers and capitalists of Detroit, and who now leads Night Roll, a wild race through the city’s disintegrating streets.

It is up to Aileen to bring Virgil back to his friends and family. But what can the Elf teach her about her new life? And what must she pay for that knowledge?

Follow us on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram for updates on Night Roll. In the coming months we will have a cover reveal, author interviews, and giveaways. If you are a reviewer of climate change related titles, contact us for an ARC.

Announcement: Stelliform Acquires Sim Kern’s Depart, Depart!

Sim Kern tweets a video of novella signing and announces Stelliform’s first book, coming September 2020.

Yesterday we acquired our first novella, Sim Kern’s Depart, Depart! Kern’s book depicts the aftermath of a violent storm, and the ways in which climate change affects society’s most vulnerable people. Kern describes their novella in a series of tweets:

When an unprecedented hurricane destroys Houston, Noah finds shelter in the Dallas Maverick’s basketball stadium. To make matters worse, he keeps seeing visions of his great-grandfather Abe at the age Abe was when he fled Nazi Germany inside a duffel bag.

Noah doesn’t know if he’s haunted or hallucinating, but the visions keep saving his life and lead him to a found family of other queer refugees. But as tensions mount in the stadium, Noah fears that being trans and Jewish may put him at risk with certain “Capital-T” Texans.

To understand Abe’s visions, Noah delves into Jewish mystical lore and his own family’s intergenerational traumas. But the climate crisis is intensifying across the country, and as his shelter falls apart, Noah must decide what he’s willing to sacrifice in order to survive.

Follow us on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram for updates on Sim Kern’s book. In the coming months we will have a cover reveal, author interviews, and giveaways. If you are a reviewer of climate change or LGBTQ+ titles, contact us for an ARC.

Review: “Hello, Hello” by Seanan McGuire

Stories We Love

Seanan McGuire’s “Hello, Hello” was published in Lightspeed 112, September 2019. It was originally published in 2015 in Future Visions: Original Science Fiction Inspired by Microsoft, edited by Jennifer Henshaw and Allison Linn.

Seanan McGuire’s “Hello, Hello” is a science fiction short story which bridges the gaps between several human and inter-species categories to illustrate that while future technologies will facilitate communication in ways that we cannot now imagine, technology alone is not enough.

“Hello, Hello” is a quiet family narrative in which two sisters — the narrator, a linguist, and her sister, an ornithologist who is deaf and communicates through American Sign Language (ASL) — solve the mystery of several anonymous phone calls placed from the ornithologist’s house. The phone calls, transmitted through an avatar-based video conferencing program which the ornithologist uses to communicate vocally with others who do not know ASL, are intercepted by her sister, niece, and nephew — to the delight of the children. While the story’s narrator (the children’s mother) is alarmed at the idea of a stranger calling her children, the children are captivated by the puzzle of the strange avatar that at first says little more than “hello” but gradually learns through their conversation. Who is this woman who keeps calling? What does she want?

Discovery at the Intersections

This story does a wonderful job of demonstrating the ways in which we need people with different perspectives, different life experiences, to interact with technology — and be a part of development and testing. It is Aunt Tasha’s disability, and the children’s positions as intermediaries between the world of deafness and hearing, which results in the crossing of boundaries to make a significant scientific discovery. Over the course of the story, the children discover that the strange caller is able to understand more of the attempts at communication if they can see the children’s gestures. These gestures, which the translation software has learned through Tasha’s use of ASL to talk to friends, family, and colleagues, bridge the gap between human language and learning and that of birds.

McGuire’s focus on disability, technology, and learning beyond species categories only hints at the wider implications of inter-species communication. We’re reminded of another excellent bird communication story that makes obvious the effects of climate change in shrinking knowledge and possibility: “The Great Silence” by Ted Chiang — one of the final stories in Chiang’s latest short story collection Exhalation. The narrator in Chiang’s story is a parrot who laments the seemingly inevitable extinction of his kind, linking the Fermi Paradox to the Sixth Mass Extinction. The opening lines of the story read:

The humans use Arecibo to look for extraterrestrial intelligence. Their desire to make a connection is so strong that they’ve created an ear capable of hearing across the universe.

But I and my fellow parrots are right here. Why aren’t they interested in listening to our voices?

We’re a nonhuman species capable of communicating with them. Aren’t we exactly what humans are looking for?

“The Great Silence” by Ted Chiang, from Exhalation

Perhaps McGuire’s story makes clear why humans are more inclined to look across the universe than to what creatures live with them, side by side, on this planet: It takes a different perspective than the ones we generally cultivate to counteract the encouragement toward extravagance in exploration and scientific discovery, particularly within the context of our capitalist culture. McGuire underscores the importance of admitting all kinds of people — people with disabilities, people of colour, women, and even children — into the Halls of Science, of broadening our definitions, of learning to listen to these stories before we no longer can.

Close-up of a crow's head and beak, facing left. The beak is open as if the bird is calling.

Further Reading

Wet’suwet’en Land Protectors & the Canadian National Narrative

A Publisher’s Note

Stelliform Press is a Canadian literary publisher focused on stories that challenge North American (and, more broadly, Western) attitudes toward nature. Our hope is that if we support and disseminate enough of these stories, they will help change the values and behaviours that have contributed to climate change.

To demonstrate the small ways this is already happening, we have been collecting positive stories of shifts toward relational ideologies and active environmentalism in local communities, and in wider national and international contexts. Our intention in collecting these stories was to give people some hope, to demonstrate that small-scale action can have an effect.

Then the RCMP raided Wet’suwet’en territory, arresting dozens of Wet’suwet’en land protectors in an effort to clear the way for the Coastal Gas Link pipeline. This action by Canadian authorities has since resulted in nation-wide protests, and further arrests. The settler response to these nation-wide protests — and the blockades and resultant rail shutdown in particular — has reinvigorated not only economy-over-environment rhetoric, but also racist arguments which prevent diplomacy and incite violence toward already vulnerable people. It seems inappropriate to post good news eco-stories when this is happening in Canada; but this always happening in Canada. And every other colonial state. This is the perpetual context of environmentalism in the West.

A History of Violent and Unequal Conflict

Iconic image of Canadian soldier and Anishnaabe warrior during the Oka crisis
This photo of Patrick Cloutier (left) and Brad Larocque, taken during the Mohawk resistance to development at Oka, Quebec in 1990 is an iconic image depicting the results of a Candian national narrative. Photo by Shaney Komulainen of the Canadian Press – more info here.

Violent and unequal conflict between the agents of “progress” and those that live in close connection to the land and want to protect it is a story Canada has told before. The RCMP raid on Wet’suwet’en has historical precedent in Unist’ot’en (a nearby camp), in Oka Quebec in 1990, when developers wanted to build a golf course on contested land, in the Ipperwash Crisis, and even close to the land that Stelliform calls home, in Caledonia, during the Douglas Creek Estates conflict in 2006. All of these incidents occurred within the larger context of the ongoing Indigenous/settler conflict that is Canada itself.

“Taming the wilderness” and “living off the land” in peace and contentment are Canadian national narratives that cannot exist without these conflicts. These narratives are predicated on the idea of terra nullius (nobody’s land), a damaging myth about a land that was always alive with community and relationship. These are beguiling and false narratives, which spring from a conception of life on this continent which did not consider First Nations, Métis, and Inuit as human beings of equal value to the European colonizers and settlers. Continuing to uphold these stories as a part of Canadian identity locks us in not only to more cruelty, but also into a future in which communities and ecosystems suffer from profound disconnection and failure.

A Call to Justice

Anyone visiting this website is probably already concerned with environmental justice issues, and we hope that you will continue to challenge the stories you tell about yourselves and your nations, particularly if you are settlers. But questioning stories is insufficient action for this moment. If you have the resources, please check out the Wet’suwet’en Supporter Toolkit and do or give what you can.

If you cannot give, please speak out about what is happening in British Columbia right now, and all across Canada. Talk to friends and relatives who might have a different view of these events than you do. Write letters to the editor, call in to radio shows, and engage on social media to show your support for Wet’suwet’en and Tyendinaga. The Wet’suwet’en land protectors are defending their land, but they are also modelling justice for the rest of us.