From Strange Horizons:

If Surrealism was a revolutionary movement representative of the liberation of a previously dormant collective imagination, A Field Guide to Surreal Botany, edited by Jason Erik Lundberg and Janet Chui (who also contributed striking illustrations), a lovely little book encompassing a vast collaborative collage of imagined plant specimens, is a quiet inversion, a patient investigation of the fantastic in literature. Too much attention to the actual tenets of Surrealism as a framework for understanding A Field Guide to Surreal Botany would probably do the book a disservice, as, due to its necessary subscription to formula, it doesn’t necessarily align itself with the more disorganized, chaotically free expression of “the real functioning of thought” (as Andre Breton defined the movement in his seminal Surrealist Manifesto). Surreal, in this instance, is a stand-in for unreal, a signifier of the presence of the fantastic, and the book, counting among its contributors a number of writers closely associated with the community of speculative fiction, succeeds as an investigation of the idea of fantasy and its purpose, generally, within the literary community at large.

The book contains 48 entries, each written by a different author and describing a different variety of surreal plant, a project similar to that of Jeff VanderMeer and Mark Roberts’ The Thackery T Lambshead Pocket Guide to Eccentric & Discredited Diseases which chronicles an imagined medical history playfully constructed by an impressive list of bestselling and award-winning writers. The entries in A Field Guide to Surreal Botany are perhaps not meant to be read all at once, or even in sequence, as the uniformity of presentation and often relatively minor deviations in content (for example, the dimensions of the plants themselves and the size and color of their leaves and flowers begin to feel redundant as one ventures further through the slim volume) undercuts the inherent beauty and import of the project itself. Reading the book cover to cover, as I did, invites the impression that the individual entries are perhaps inherently slight and the project itself too whimsical. As a whole, however, the endeavor assumes a general responsibility greater than the sum of its parts: that of the creation—through the accumulation of painstaking physical descriptions, elaborately contrived anecdotes, and clever origin stories—of a new world that strives to simultaneously infiltrate and fantastically reimagine the one in which we currently reside.

Also, it seems like I’m coming down with the flu, or sickness, or something resembling the first steps of a horrible death.

We can only pray it’s the last.

Strange Horizons have posted a second review of Paper Cities, but this one isn’t nearly as amusing as the last. About ‘The Funeral, Ruined’, Maureen Kincaid Speller wrote:

Some stories come closer, sometimes much closer, in the way they examine the interconnectedness of the city and its people… In contrast, Ben Peek’s “The Funeral, Ruined,” a rare science-fictional story in the collection, queries the relationship between people and city rather than merely accepting it, as does Jay Lake’s “Promises; A Tale of the City Imperishable.” Peek’s Issuer is a city of transients, close to the huge cremation Ovens, and created by a speculator who services the temporary needs of those bringing their dead to be disposed of. It is, as Peek says, a city of purpose. Linette, living among the dead, dying and transients, can no longer fulfil her role as a soldier, but neither can she yet join the dead. She does not belong, but given she sees herself as being as good as dead, why would she leave?

Not nearly as fun as the previous review, is it?

Speaking of which, there was some confusion among people as to which was the bad line and which was the good line in the L. Timmel Duchamp review, so I’m going to throw it open to voting. Just like any democratic election, you will have only two choices to make:

1) With hard yanks, she tightly wound the frayed black laces of her boots up. On the right boot she missed a hole, and on the left, two.

2) Her skin, however, sagged around her jaw, wrinkled over her face, and continued to do so down her neck until it was covered by the brown gown she wore.

Remember, it’s only with voting that your opinion can be heard, and mostly discounted.

And, lastly, I’m trying to help a friend find an album or link to a UK band called Livingston. Anyone heard of it? I have vaguely, but any search I do comes up with a thousand other things, and I figure there’s an easier way to solve this. Most appreciated if you got something for me.

L. Timmel Duchamp reviews Paper Cities at Strange Horizons, and doesn’t, in truth, like the book at all.

Here’s what she says about my story:

Though Ben Peek’s “The Funeral, Ruined” is marred by its author’s apparently shaky grasp of grammar, his tale concerns an interesting protagonist in an unusual setting, that of a city of crematoria. The narrative is at times disorganized, however, and doesn’t quite come together. Because it occasionally gives us very fine sentences, all the clunky ones were especially maddening. How, I wondered, could someone who writes sentences like these—”With hard yanks, she tightly wound the frayed black laces of her boots up. On the right boot she missed a hole, and on the left, two” (p. 177)—also write sentences like this: “Her skin, however, sagged around her jaw, wrinkled over her face, and continued to do so down her neck until it was covered by the brown gown she wore” (p. 180). Given its promise, it’s a shame it didn’t get a couple of more rewrites before publication.

Occasionally I get reviews like that, and I couldn’t begin to tell you why she loved the first line but hated the second–outside the fact that the first is neater–but it’s all good. Good and bad, I take it all.