Broken Time Blues by Various

The cover illustration of BTB is
spot on

My day job is farming. My evening and weekend job is writing stuff for table top roleplay games (TTRPGS), you know, like Dungeons and Dragons. A while ago I wrote an adventure set in a fantasy world (with elves, goblins et al), but with technology akin to our 1920s, and plenty of Lovecraftian influence to boot. (Shameless plug you can find it here.) Another writer, Martin Mullan (check him out here) saw Broken Time Blues in a second hand book store and as it reminded him of my 20s/fantasy/eldritch horror/comedy mash up very kindly bought it for me.

Broken Time Blues is a collection of 12 short stories mixing speculative fiction with a 1920s setting. It was published by Absolute XPress, an imprint of Hades publications from Canada. XPress seems to have fallen by the wayside, but Hades still continues and I think I am right in saying is Canadas leading Sci Fi and Fantasy publishers.

The stories are varied, featuring aliens, fae, witch-hunters, and all the speak-easy, jazz age trappings one would hope for. With two exceptions the stories are set in America (France and Germany being the outliers). 

The interior art is fine as and of itself,
but I never (or at most, seldom) like
illustrations dropped in the middle of 
prose.

As we may expect from an anthology, especially one who features a lot of lesser known writers there is a mixed bag in terms of quality. There is only one real dud, while a couple poke their heads above the pack. By far my favourite was Button Up Your Overcoat by Barbara Krasnoff a simple tale of a dancing girl who receives an unexpected visitor after a show one night - this contained all the period feel one could wish for, and the protagonist was drawn with a light touch, Krasnoff didn't attempt to force their life story into a couple of thousand words, and told us just what we needed to know to convey her character. The action in Button Up Your Overcoat is also kept to a bare minimum, we get only one act in a story which must otherwise construct for ourselves.

There is artwork scattered through out, two pieces per story I think. There is nothing wrong with the art, but the printing doesn't do it justice and I personally found it just distracted me from the prose.

I was not aware of any of the individual writers (or artists) before reading this anthology. Having looked them up it seems James L Sutter is the best known, but more for his work on the (ironically given my introduction to this book) TTRPG Pathfinder. Indeed several of the authors seem to have been involved with TTRPGs at some points. None of them have gone on to stir up the literary world since their contributions here, a couple seem to have dropped off the radar. Both the artists (Galen Dara and Evan Jensen) are still working in the field and Galen in particular is producing some amazing stuff, especially her personal work. (While we are indulging in links, check out her stuff here - I'm told links are good for my algorithms.) 

BTB was edited and curated by Jaym Gates and Erika Holt, who seem to have been regular co-conspirators when Absolute XPress was active, and both still work in the industry now. The pair did a good job, both in selecting a broad variety of works, and in honing them into a professional product.

Overall, Broken Time Blue is a solid book, a couple of stories will make you think, a couple of stories will leave you cold, but nearly all of them will immerse you for a short time in gin-soaked, trench-coat-wearing, dieselpunk world.

★★★☆☆