Axle-Bust Creek by John Shirley (plus two NEW short stories)
352 pages, Paperback
Published by Pinnacle Books September 2022
Sacrificial Drones (short story) in the Nov/Dec Issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and SF.
The Lost City of Los Angeles (short story) in the 2022 issue of Startling Stories
So this is a three-in-one interview featuring the latest releases from John Shirley who anyone following my reviews is one of my favorite authors. I am reviewing his Western novel and two Science fiction stories that appeared in classic magazines.
Starting with the Western, Axle Bust Creek. I was surprised as I started to read a couple of the reviews of this novel that most of the readers of this book are Western readers who are new to John Shirley. I follow authors more than genre, and that is why I was here. This is not Shirley’s first Western he wrote an excellent historical novel Wyatt in Wichita, about the famous gunslinger Wyatt Earp. Seems like a history lesson might help here. With more than 80 books across genres ranging from Science Fiction, and horror to media tie-ins Shirley is a legend in more than one genre disciple. While William Gibson is normally the writer most associated with cyberpunk it is John Shirley that Gibson labeled patient zero of the genre. Check out his groundbreaking decades ahead of its time SF classic City Come A’Walkin’ if you don’t believe Willie.
While John Shirley also has many screenwriting credits from Star Trek Deep Space Nine to the Real Ghostbusters he is most famous for putting a Guitar in The Crow’s hands. As the initial screenwriter of The Crow, it was John Shirley that sold the goth, rock and roll vigilante to the industry when no one had heard of the IP. He has written Alien, Predator, John Constantine, and Batman novels. The years and experience of storytelling brought to this western novel is evident on the page.
Authors known for genre fiction have a history of writing historical novels that they consider some of their best work, and often they end up pleading with their readers to pay attention to these books. David Morrell a thriller writer known as the father of Rambo (First Blood) had this experience with the Last Reveille and F.Paul Wilson with Black Wind (However The Wilson novel fits into his mythos and doesn't feel like a departure to me). Joe Lansdale Crossed horror and western over with his Dead in the West early in his career but his Paradise Sky was a powerful intense historical western. John Shirley’s first historical Western has more in common with that Lansdale book. Both are excellent reads. Forget genre and fall into the hands of a master storyteller.
Axle-Bust Creek is John Shirley’s first totally invented Western and in a good way it has a pulp western feeling. Shirley is a pioneer of punk rock and the most extreme of music and fiction. As hardcore as songs like his band Sado-nation got with songs like Johnny Paranoid his horror did the same. Novels like Cellars and Wetbones are fiction with teeth. His fiction however always has a sense of justice, perhaps the best examples are Demons (an environmental horror novel) or his Song called Youth trilogy which predicted the rise of the Tea party and MAGA in the 80s.
Given all that John is from the generation that had constant Westerns on TV, who read Western pulp novels and he always had a western story or two in his heart. Axle-Bust Creek is the first of a series this novel serves to set the table for his hero Cleve Trewe. A vet of the union comes west to Nevada to make a claim on a gold mine founded by his Uncle.
When he gets to the west he finds he is still dealing with trauma and has to deal with the corruption and violence that is common on the edge of civilization. Of course, various forces claim the mine, and Cleve finds various forms of injustice. It only makes sense when he starts to make things right in the western tradition he is made Sheriff.
Early in the novel, Shirley does a good job establishing the characters. Not just Cleve, but the seeds for a sidekick have well planted Leon a former confederate soldier who had been his prisoner. There are plenty of moments that feel traditional, like gun fights, and verbal stand-offs. Shirley plays with the language and tropes in a way that makes the novel feel comfy for fans of the genre.
The best example of this is a fantastic scene halfway through the book when Cleve is offered the job of Sheriff. The give and take is very traditional Western. It is a fantastic give-and-go of dialogue.
“You let me do it and I’ll do my damnedest for you. I’ll chase runaway pigs if you want me to. I’ll chase badmen into hell.”
It is later in the novel when Shirley brings in elements that are unique to his talents and a sense of justice comes into play. Outside of official law, the miners take one of Cleve’s prisoners nicknamed Scrap who they accused as a thief. This brings up Cleve’s haunted memories from the war when he saw a deserter hung. “Legally hung, according to military law, but it had never felt like Justice to Cleve.”
The description of the hangings are the moments when you most clearly show Shirley’s genre roots. The anger Cleve feels at seeing Scrap hung sets off the motion of the final act. It is where the novel really feels like a work by John Shirley. Also, the novel explores sexism and Racism towards Chinese immigrants and the women who end up in the brothels.
That is where the sense of Justice drives the narrative. I have a feeling that the next two books will go even deeper as Shirley has the set-up out of the way.
Speaking of activist themes in fiction the last two short stories by John Shirley have appeared in two of the all-time classic venues for science fiction. I am a subscriber to The Magazine of Fantasy and SF so a new John Shirley story in the mailbox was as welcome as the same magazine gave us a Norman Spinrad cover story earlier in the year. I admit I didn’t know that Wildside Press had breathed life back into Startling Stories with an annual issue. Glad that I know now.
Sacrificial Drones is a powerful story with a global feel. The tone of the story reminded me of a Gattaca-style Science Fiction. At the heart is a very interesting relationship between Kayla who is a young person in this future and a charming, young seeming man named Jacob. The reality is an old man who has been able to deage himself. The story is about tiny nano-drones, little medical droids. Of course, Shirley has been exploring this type of prediction SF for decades, there are reasons why masters are identified as such.
I read all the stories by younger authors and many of them are great but there is something to this generation. Spinrad’s story a couple months ago had the same top-notch skill.
Of the three things Shirley has released lately, the Starling Stories was the pulpy tongue-in-cheek best. The Lost City of Los Angeles is a great SF story. A first-person narrative of a man named Ryan who is frozen on UCLA campus as he dies from disease and wakes up the only survivor of the anthro-ark thousands of years in the future.
This story is both CLI-FI and satire as Shirley projects a post-ecological collapse in LA where primitive survivors in the ashes of LA rebuild new culture based on the bits and pieces of the past they find. Wait til you meet the Botoxians.
The Startling Stories is really good for any SF reader but Shirley fans will want this because it has a great interview with Shirley as well. The fictional activism and angry storyteller is in perfect form so pick it up.
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