Sci-fi and Heroic Fantasy discussion

This is the discussion of the 2014 Nebula Award nominated Novelette:


The Devil in America by Kai Ashante Wilson

You can read it free on-line @Tor.com, or in the free eBook collection Some of the Best from Tor.com: 2014.

This story seems to have been one of the most uniformly loved and buzzed story of last year. Not a story that people read and though Ohh well I can see why people liked it but a story that seems to really have connected with people.

Really keen to read this as I have been meaning to for a long while and what better excuse than a S&HF discussion.

Ben wrote: "This story seems to have been one of the most uniformly loved and buzzed story of last year. Not a story that people read and though Ohh well I can see why people liked it, but a story that seems to really have connected with people...."

Well, I'm not really feeling all that much love. I thought it was an okay supernatural story (not my favorite style, but good enough.) It's one of those "the Devil comes to visit with the deal you can't refuse" stories mixed with an old though apparently unrelated family curse. (I'm not sure the to really work together to complement each other all that well.)

It drives the story with the premise of white people like shooting black people, specifically citing the horrific Ku Klux Klan raids of the primary time period (1870s). Bracketing annotation relates it to current events (of which we could write I'm even more recent annotation.) What's the take away to that? The Devil made them do it?


Ben wrote: "I struggle with stories that jump about in time or time and characters - particularly if they do not make it simple and easy to follow..."

Well, The Devil in America jumps around in time. It also uses a technique I don't really care for, which is to place a date in front of the section to indicate when the section occurs. 1955. August 23, 1877. 1871. 1908.... This technique always forces me to remember the dates were each story element took place so I can mentally sort them.

The narration is generally solid, which makes up for the jumping around a little bit.

G33z3r wrote: "narration is generally solid"

But loaded with errors - "must of been", "should of been" and all that authentic slang is driving me mad.

Andreas wrote: "But loaded with errors - "must of been", "should of been" and all that authentic slang is driving me mad. "

"must of been" / "should of been" not really errors, though — just part of the narration being in the dialect of the period & culture. Other times you'll sometimes see musta been and shoulda been ("I coulda had class. I coulda been a contender. I coulda been somebody".) Just attempts to phoneticize everyday sloppy diction.

Narration in slang can sometimes be annoying, and it can slow down my reading process. Sorry, readin' process.

International Talk Like a Pirate Day is on Sep 19 :)

I guess that authenticism was one of the problems I had with the novelette.

Synopsis: Some time after U.S. Civil War, charming little girl Easter grows up on a tobacco plant in the South. Her life is filled with inherited African magic, full of helpful Angels. When some self-inflicted catastrophe comes up, she takes a pact with the Devil which will be repaid some years later.

Review: Wilson tries a literary device by throwing in chunks of a narrator’s voice every now and then. In addition, the author tries to strengthen authenticity by using slang like “y’all, must of been, should of been” or a couple of French sentences. It didn’t work at all for me: I was constantly thrown out of the narration, stumbling over those constructs.