CHIZZUM

Taylor (Phantasmagoria, 2018, etc.) offers a new episode in the wartime adventures of Chizzum and Chuck in this sci-fi short story.

Chieftain Chizzum is a supersoldier, “a product of biological and genetic engineering” built to defeat the army of Autoimmune Cloned Occupants, who threaten mankind. Both Chizzum and the Autoimmunes are clones of Chuck Chisholm, a former newspaper reporter–turned–U.S. Army war correspondent. As Chuck’s men rush him to a medical center, Chizzum is along to provide a blood transfusion as Chuck waxes philosophically, at great length, on his own life and on the state of the world. Chizzum is much pleased when Chuck is finally sedated, thus preventing him from jabbering, but the transfusion process nearly kills Chuck, causing him to have a terrible vision from the past. After the war ends, it’s decided that Chuck should be allowed to return to his native Chicago, although he’ll have to do so under an alias. Taylor drops the reader into the middle of the action with little explanation about who the characters are or what they’re trying to do. His peculiar prose style, which strings dialogue by multiple characters into paragraphlong, run-on sentences without quotation marks, makes things even more confusing: “So does anyone actually know anything about this place, yes! I do, okay Aldo so what’s the lowdown on this place, well I should say that this was the modus of operations, where I and Butu and Ponchette were unofficially and psychologically profiled sir.” Nearly the entire text is made up of such exchanges, and as a result, the plot, such as it is, is sparse and difficult to follow. The stakes, in particular, are unclear, giving the reader little emotional incentive to parse the text. That said, there’s clearly a lot of imaginative worldbuilding mythology here. However, the opaque nature of the story’s presentation will make it an alienating experience, particularly for new readers.

A wordy and esoteric sci-fi tale.