Tangled Strings

by Adam-Troy Castro

There are few authors who consistently turn out magnificent novella-length stories. Adam-Troy Castro is one of these authors. His stories are evocative and far-reaching. Among the stories featured in the collection are: The Funeral March of the Marionettes, Unseen Demons, The Tangled Strings of the Marionettes, The Magic Bullet Theory,and Sunday Night Yams at Minnie and Earl's (winner of the AnLab award for best novella).

344 pages, Hardcover

First published August 2, 2003

About the author

Adam-Troy Castro made his first professional sale to Spy magazine in 1987. Since then, he's published 12 books and almost 80 short stories. Among those stories are "Baby Girl Diamond" (nominated for the Bram Stoker Award) and "The Funeral March of the Marionettes" (nominated for the Hugo and Nebula Awards in 1998). "The Astronaut from Wyoming," a collaboration with Jerry Oltion, appeared in Analog and was nominated for the Hugo and Nebula Awards in 2000, before winning the Seiun (Japanese Hugo) for best translation in 2008.

His "Of A Sweet Slow Dance in the Wake of Temporary Dogs" was nominated for the 2003 Nebula. His original short story collections include Lost in Booth Nine (published by Silver Salamander Press in 1993), An Alien Darkness and A Desperate Decaying Darkness (published by Wildside Press in 2000), Vossoff and Nimmitz (2002), and Tangled Strings (2003). He is also the author of the Spider-Man novels—Time's Arrow: The Present (written in collaboration with Tom DeFalco), The Gathering of the Sinister Six, Revenge of the Sinister Six, and Secret of the Sinister Six—as well as the nonfiction My Ox Is Broken! The Andrea Cort novels include, Emissaries from the Dead, The Third Claw of God, and a third installment currently in progress, tentatively titled The Fall of the Marionettes.

Castro, who married the divine Judi on 25 December 2002, lives in Florida with his wife and four cats: Maggie, Uma Furman, Meow Farrow, and the latest acquisition, Ralphie, an orphan of 2005's hellacious hurricane season.

Reviews

[Tasha · Rating 4 out of 5]

Many years ago, in Days of Yore, I read The Funeral March of the Marionettes in an issue of Fantasy & Science Fiction and I was bowled over, just flat-out in love with this poignant, heart-wrenching story. Recently I wanted to revisit it, and was able to procure a pricey, used copy of this collection of Adam-Troy Castro's novelettes/novellas (never entirely sure when one ends and the other begins), containing that story, and its loose sequel, The Tangled Strings of the Marionettes. Some context around the first story's title: it's a direct reference to "The Funeral March of a Marionette", an orchestral piece written in 1872 by Charles Gounod, but is probably best recognized as the theme music from Alfred Hitchcock Presents. It's also an alluring name all by itself, appealing to our human curiosity. Why would a marionette need a funeral? The story is about a race of beings on their own home world, called the Vlhani, who appear as large spheroid beings covered in long tentacles that act as legs and arms and general tools for communication. Every year, several thousand Vlhani voluntarily gather in one location and perform a frenzied dance that ends in all of their deaths from tentacle lashings, dehydration, and utter fatigue. Other sentient species come to watch the spectacle. Eventually, a single human attempts to take part, having been surgically altered to move her body in ways that more closely match the movements of the Vlhani. The viewpoint character of this story is one Alex Gordon, a human stationed on the Vlhani's home world. He is horrified when he realizes there's a human milling about with the gathered Vlhani and the story takes off from there. Re-reading it all these years later (about 24?), I found myself far less moved than I had been when reading in my late 20s, and I don't know why. Have I lost some amount of creative connection with what I was reading? Has the pandemic and the march of time stripped me of some imaginative empathy? I don't know the answer, but I was really disappointed by that realization. The other stories in this collection were equally immersive, but while I enjoyed them, I didn't have that same fervent reaction I'd had in the 90s. I do think it's more a me-problem than the fault of these stories. I do recommend this author highly still. I want to mention one other story here before I sign off: The Magic Bullet Theory is worth a read by anyone who has a soft spot for weird Western-themed stories (like myself).

[Carolyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Three fantastic stories, one pretty good story, and one story I didn't care for. My advice for this collection is read the last two first, then the first three in order, so the enjoyment level just gets higher and higher.

All in what the author calls historical fantasy. Castro is another writer I discovered through that triptych I read this summer (here's the first one). I would real full length novels of the characters/worlds presented in the first three stories (stories 1-2 are in the same world, story 3 is a different world but seems like same universe).

[Veach Glines · Rating 5 out of 5]

Every one of these stories/novellas are ATC's best. Three are Alien SF (one of which is an Andrea Cort short), one a humor-horror, and the last a "historical future" (his term) touching Speculative Fiction of the highest caliber.

[Megan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting stories about some interesting aliens and their ways. 3 out of 5 stars.