Friends of Apis Radio

"You may not be prepared for the repeated whomps upside the head assembled in this striking collection of fourteen stories. Completely unpredictable shifts and turns, sudden confrontations with ever-changing new realities (sometimes taking place within the space of a single sentence) provide repeated mind-warps. d'Arc's charged, rapidly moving prose has a dreamlike fluidity, but these dreams have been fully enlivened by an extravagant CGI mistress. Yet they're not simply vivid visual journeys; the worlds they propose or assume have implications larger than the plots." "The author is fully at ease and conversant with her worlds, and this assured touch translates to the reader. She is also adept at changing styles to suit individual stories, which is a considerable skill. If you are looking for something that is genuinely original and, at times, mind bending, then you will find plenty to enjoy in this book." "An imaginative and diverse collection of short tales. Some were quite relevant to topics of the times, others bizarrely strange with a humorous edge, or tantalizingly reminiscent but with a twist, and also some that are quite creepy." "What stands out about this volume in contrast with other short story collections in similar genres is the satirical edge. One of my faves, The Mainsplain, is about two squids who live in some ocean somewhere, and who peer into their Mainsplain and Pocketsplain offering a hilarious running "roast" of Earth's horrific history." Friends of Apis Radio by Joan d'Arc is a work of fabulism and supernatural horror. Fabulism is a form of magical realism in which fantastical elements are imposed onto an everyday setting. This sub-genre combines science fiction, horror, realism and fairytale. It looks at the mundane through a magical, supernatural lens as it moves through multiple planes of reality. It brings fables, folk tales and myths into contemporary social relevance. Fed from a deep-rooted dread of death and an uncomfortable sense of humor regarding taboo themes, Joan d'Arc's fabulist tales lure the reader into an aberrant world, ferried by a surrogate psychopomp in an unconventional transport, such as a pneumatic tube, a carpet of bees, or an antique locomotive. Once in the sway of the untrustworthy other, the characters are beguiled, misled on a fantastical trip. In a writing style rich in aerial movement and numinous trickster guides, this fabulist short story collection from Paranoia Magazine's Joan d'Arc squeezes you between the elevator doors and yells, "Going up!" Here are fourteen tales featuring monstrous honeybees, murderous ghost girls, squid computer geeks and hungry teenage aliens-surrealism and supernatural horror never used this much super glue. Joan d'Arc's fabulist fiction has appeared in Danse Macabre, The Wedding Cake House Anthology and Huntergatheress Journal. Her speculative fiction follows decades of writings on supernatural, occult, UFO and Forteana subjects, dozens of which were published in such collections as Paranoia, UFO Magazine, Namaste (UK), Secret and Suppressed II, The Universal Seduction, Wake Up Down There!, UFO Digest LaGazette Forteenne (in French) and Hellraiser Homemaker, the Gonzo Domestic Survival Guide. She is the past publisher of Paranoia Magazine (1992-2012), Newspeak Katazine (1995-1997) and HunterGatheress Journal (Vol. 1, 2008, Vol. 2, 2009), published in Providence, Rhode Island. She is the author of Space Travelers and the Genesis of the Human Form, and Phenomenal World, both published by The Book Tree, and Conspiracy Geek, published by Sisyphus Press. She is the co-editor of The Conspiracy Reader and The New Conspiracy Reader, translated into Japanese and Romanian.