Big Fish in a Small Pond

Once upon a time, we used to be younger. We didn't take our world quite so seriously. Life was at least a little bit funny, and expectations were not so ridiculously high. Instead of wringing our hands and shaking our fists so much, we laughed. We cried and joked. We witnessed absurdities and tragedies, but tried to appreciate the present; failing that, we hoped for a better tomorrow.

Not so today. Fun, and its co-conspirators levity, frivolity, and gaiety, seem alien in the midst of this arduous year. As we trudge through 2020-which history may look back upon as being The Most Somber, Humorless Year on Record - these joyous elements are sorely lacking from our days. It often seems like The Zombie Apocalypse is upon us, only without all the zombies. With apologies to David Byrne, perhaps The Talking Heads Apocalypse rings truer. We are a planet of paid and unpaid pundits.

Something in the Middle by A. I. Wand offers us a paranormal - slash - extranormal reprieve of sorts from the Big Serious Issues of Our Day - at least for a few hours. It is a contemporary fiction anthology designed to surprise and delight. It pays gleeful tribute to legions of its Science Fiction, Horror, Satire, Parody, and Romantic forebears from the last century.

The subtitle - Small Stories from the Far Side of Consciousness - alludes to the book's atypical architecture and often surreal tone. Once it may have been dubbed Post-Modern or even Experimental, but today SITM is happy just to think of itself as a grateful homage to its myriad inspirations, albeit one which falls 2 or 3 standard deviations from the mean. As we learn in Chapter 1, SITM "is not exactly a normal book."

Its companion volume, Big Fish in a Small Pond - Selected Stories from Something in the Middle, is a bargain-priced sampler of some of the longer stories from the anthology. Many of SITM's fictions could be confused with microfictions for their length - but they are part of a larger, cohesive arc that binds them all together. Most of the short stories stand-alone very nicely, thank you very much. Six of SITM's yarns were cloned then relocated to Big Fish purely for promotional purposes. There was nothing artistic about the decision other than to select stand-alone stories that didn't spoil too many surprises.

Drawing thematic elements from Aesop's Fables, The Twilight Zone, and classic Silver Screen Horrors, these quirky, fast-paced fictions are also indebted to cartoons and comic strips, TV sitcoms, as well as to rock opera and pop music song suites. At times dramatic, humorous, and occasionally even poignant, they present a skewed, often sideways view of our world and its inhabitants.

Inside, we encounter a diversity of characters - witches, a voodoo practitioner, a mad scientist, a demented surgeon, a sadistic psychiatrist, a crazy clown, and even pets. In other words, just another typical day in 2020. The difference is, in SITM and Big Fish, all these weirdos are supposed to be acting strangely. Despite being too much to ask of reality anymore, we still crave normalcy. When it evades us, we make a game of seeking strangeness which we can, to some extent, control. After all, it's up to us whether we binge the next season or turn the page.

These atmospheric short fictions are sometimes self-aware, sometimes break the fourth wall, and frequently deliver satisfying, thought provoking endings that linger for awhile and invite a second look. Loaded with stunning, enigmatic visuals, SITM and Big Fish, are modern fiction anthologies for both the Twitter Generation and the Twister Generatio