Handicapsules: Short Stories of Speculative Crip Lit

by Brian Koukol

Mining the deepest ores of non-belonging with vibrant, often hilarious prose, disabled author Brian Koukol's thirteen harrowing works of speculative fiction, collected here for the first time, subvert disability tropes to delightful and unnerving effect.

Will you flinch at the choices of a man cynically peddling virtual reality inspiration porn extracted from his own miserable life? Can your dignity survive its plunge into a jar, in desperate need of a fluid-change, which hosts a disembodied head looking for his disappeared wife? Will you dare empathize with a myriapod refugee, otherworldly and bristle-legged, as it wrestles with its innate longing to fatally absorb the soul of each human it touches? What of the deformity-leasing friends actively circumventing facial-recognition-based toilet paper rationing? And how might you manage PTSD symptoms emerging off-planet along with a fast-killing vegetation borne from the corpses of your freshly vanquished foes?

Wry, irreverent, and uncommonly wise, meet a new disability fiction. Here Tiny Tim and his ilk are replaced by protagonists far from innocent, passive, or sweet...but defiantly human, instead.

This own voices collection of sci-fi and fantasy short stories featuring disabled characters and protagonists includes the following titles:

– Circling the Brain
– A Rock and a Hard Place
– Propinquity
– Useless Eaters
– Cry Havoc
– Much Abides
– Compost Traumatic Stress
– Pie in the Sky
– Cardiophobia
– Regeneration Gap
– Dedition by Subtraction
– Fish in a Barrel
– Autumn in the Dying Light

Genres: Fiction

291 pages, Kindle Edition

Published February 10, 2021

About the author

Brian Koukol, raised in the suburbs of Los Angeles, now makes his home among the salt breezes and open spaces of San Luis Obispo County on California’s Central Coast.

A lifelong battle with muscular dystrophy has informed the majority of his fiction, which is written with the aid of voice recognition software.

Despite his challenges, Brian maintains an adventurous spirit, a wicked sense of humor, and a willingness to delve into the darker sides of the human experience with his work. There is no genre he won’t explore, but science fiction remains a lifelong favorite.

Reviews

[Thelma · Rating 5 out of 5]

"𝑰 𝒔𝒕𝒂𝒓𝒆𝒅 𝒂𝒕 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒈𝒍𝒂𝒔𝒔 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝒕𝒓𝒖𝒔𝒔𝒆𝒔 𝒕𝒉𝒂𝒕 𝒂𝒍𝒍𝒐𝒘𝒆𝒅 𝒍𝒊𝒇𝒆 𝒐𝒏 𝒂𝒏 𝒐𝒕𝒉𝒆𝒓𝒘𝒊𝒔𝒆 𝒊𝒏𝒉𝒐𝒔𝒑𝒊𝒕𝒂𝒃𝒍𝒆 𝒎𝒐𝒐𝒏. 𝑰𝒕 𝒘𝒂𝒔 𝒋𝒖𝒔𝒕 𝒂𝒏𝒐𝒕𝒉𝒆𝒓 𝒕𝒓𝒂𝒑. 𝑨 𝒅𝒆𝒗𝒊𝒍'𝒔 𝒃𝒂𝒓𝒈𝒂𝒊𝒏 𝒐𝒇 𝒔𝒖𝒓𝒗𝒊𝒗𝒂𝒍. 𝑵𝒐 𝒅𝒊𝒇𝒇𝒆𝒓𝒆𝒏𝒕 𝒇𝒓𝒐𝒎 𝒎𝒚 𝒐𝒘𝒏 𝒋𝒂𝒓. 𝑭𝒓𝒐𝒎 𝒕𝒉𝒂𝒕 𝒔𝒉𝒊𝒑. 𝑭𝒓𝒐𝒎 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒉𝒖𝒎𝒂𝒏 𝒃𝒐𝒅𝒚. 𝑶𝒏 𝒂𝒏 𝒂𝒕𝒐𝒎𝒊𝒄 𝒍𝒆𝒗𝒆𝒍, 𝒆𝒍𝒆𝒄𝒕𝒓𝒐𝒎𝒂𝒈𝒏𝒆𝒕𝒊𝒄 𝒓𝒆𝒑𝒖𝒍𝒔𝒊𝒐𝒏 𝒃𝒂𝒓𝒔 𝒂𝒏𝒚 𝒕𝒘𝒐 𝒐𝒃𝒋𝒆𝒄𝒕𝒔 𝒇𝒓𝒐𝒎 𝒆𝒗𝒆𝒓 𝒂𝒄𝒕𝒖𝒂𝒍𝒍𝒚 𝒑𝒉𝒚𝒔𝒊𝒄𝒂𝒍𝒍𝒚 𝒕𝒐𝒖𝒄𝒉𝒊𝒏𝒈. 𝑾𝒆 𝒂𝒓𝒆 𝒂𝒍𝒍 𝒂𝒍𝒐𝒏𝒆, 𝒇𝒐𝒓𝒆𝒗𝒆𝒓." -𝒉𝒆𝒂𝒅 𝒊𝒏 𝒂 𝒋𝒂𝒓

Handicapsules renewed my love for sci-fi and my will to live. Koukol's own love of science fiction is evident and amplifies his skill at storytelling. The tone throughout captures the shared resentment and resignation of everyone caged in a body.

Media about the handicapped is often reduced to inspiration porn, which Koukol rejects and subverts. Instead of an afterschool special on adversity, meant to inspire hope and pity, the author offers honesty. The characters are allowed their anger and sadness, to tell their own narrative, to exist for themselves and not for public consumption.

My favorite story is "Circling the Brain." The narrator is an insecure lover balancing the trust in his partner with the fear of being burdensome. As the character runs low on benzodiazepines, panic sets in as he becomes acutely aware of being reduced to a head trapped in a jar. His profound existential despair creates an otherworldly moment where you transcend your own body.

A close second is the hilarious and hostile "Useless Eaters." A motley crew of disabled homeless overcharge public toilet users for their illegal services, accessing the retinal scanner for extra allotments of toilet paper. You can't tell who the bigger scum is in this one, and the bizarrity of it makes you laugh hard. I can only compare it to the infamous toilet paper scene in the movie Demolition Man.

Overall this is just excellent science fiction, and the author's choice to use it as the genre to discuss disability is perfect. The blend of everyday voice with the clinical created a believable experience of possible futures. I'm euphoric to have come across Koukol and look forward to diving further into his body of work.

[Douglas Anstruther · Rating 5 out of 5]

I very much enjoyed these stories. They were compassionate, witty, thought provoking and heart wrenching. They were full of interesting characters, and cool concepts with quite a few laughs along the way. Highly recommended.

[Vivaine · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some good, some not so much.