A Switch To Sci-fi: Reviewing Switchboard Rot by Michael Gerard

This book is from the relatively new publisher, Anxiety Press.  I haven't read any other book from that press so I had no idea what kind of books they published.  It's the most recent book from Michael Gerard.

The cover is quite striking. It's completely chartreuse with a single fly sitting underneath the title.  The title and the author’s name are in a font that looks like something you’d see in a 1950’s horror b-movie.  This evoked a sense of dread.  I first thought that it might be a collection of science fiction horror. 

It starts off with a couple of sci-fi stories.  Both are fairly short.  The opener, “Hilarity” is an absurdist, dystopian story that is completely original.

“Run The Gamut” steps away from the sci-fi and gives us a first-person narrative about a writer trying to get published, while living at his parents’ place, and trying to convince his girlfriend that he’s going to get published soon.  It’s an all too real scenario for any writer at the beginning of their career.  This is one of the longer pieces in the collection and the style reminds me of stuff I read in my American Literature class.  Nathaniel Hawthorne comes to mind. 

Overall, the collection is a blend of absurdist flash fiction and longer stories with more developed story telling.  Half of the stories I’d label as science fiction.  A common thread is characters with mental health issues; depression, a sense of identity, and grappling with what they perceive to be reality.    

My favorite story is “Feelings Bundled Tightly Into An Engine Block (And Beyond)”. This is a great piece of micro fiction.   I reveled in everything that it doesn’t tell us.  Jerald’s age, the kind of neighborhood he lives in, his political beliefs.  Everything left out, the reader must fill in and that might explain why he thinks his car engine is a piece of shit. 

In “Heat Low” we find Carter dealing with his depression during a heat wave.  That alone sounds like hell.  After weeks of gloom a phenomenon occurs that raises his spirits.  The ending is so ambiguous you will have to read it again.    

The last story, “Broad Mind”, is straight up science fiction.  It’s about a reconnaissance team clearing out an abandoned city and they encounter something not from this planet. It reminded me of Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer and A Scanner Darkly by Philip K Dick.  Reality begins to blur when members of a reconnaissance team start taking hallucinogens.  Soon you can’t tell what is real and what is just in their heads.  The ending leaves you wanting to know more.  I could see this story being expanded into a novel. 

All together I found I enjoyed the longer stories in this collection.  Michael Gerard clearly knows how to write and his strengths seem to be in longer tales that allow for more world building and character development.  It would be nice to see a collection of novellas or a novel from this writer.  I know he has other books published and I’ll be on the look out for them.  This one you can find on Amazon. For more book from Anxiety Press visit www.athinsliceofanxiety.com.