timemidae

Another older slash zine this time: Exposures (1). This one was a quick read - the spacing is wide and there are only 3 stories in its 166 pages.

Overall, I would recommend it, primarily for the first story, Some Kind of Friend, by Rettig Holt. This was my favorite of the trio, and luckily it's the heftiest as well, coming in at 80 pages. It's a fairly heavy angst story (vague spoilers:containing discussion of sexual violence and suicide), but it doesn't wallow. The tension between Illya and Napoleon is well drawn out - I tend to enjoy stories where they find themselves in conflict - and there's a look at Solo's manipulative side that's really interesting. He's willing to be cruel to Illya in the interests of protecting him, which I think rang true for the characters. The dialogue was effective throughout.

The second story, Friday Night by Steven J. Keller, is a humor piece that didn't quite land for me, but had some charming moments.

The remaining story, Stormy Weather by Candace-anne Clarke, is essentially a PWP. I have no issue with that, but the athleticism displayed somewhat beggared my belief, given that one of the characters allegedly has a recent brain injury at the time. 

Aside from the cover art, there are no original illos as far as I can tell, just reprints of images from the show. Some of these have been doctored by someone named Steve (unclear if this is the same person as Steven the author) into mildly amusing cartoons.

That's a wrap on Exposures 1, here's hoping I'll get my hands on Exposures 2 and 3 someday.

The Man from U.N.C.L.E. is my fandom security blanket, and Star Trek is one of the few pieces of media that can reliably make me feel hope for the future, so I bid on this crossover zine the week before the US elections as something of a 'Break Glass in Case of Emergency' purchase. Well, consider the glass broken.

I had fairly high hopes for this zine, given the reviews reprinted on Fanlore. Overall, it was solid comfort reading and I would recommend it, although there were some elements I didn't love. It tries to be a big ensemble piece, but I think it would have benefited from picking 2 or 3 POV characters and sticking with them. The shifts of POV were frequent enough to be somewhat jarring, especially among the Enterprise crew.

Accents are written out phonetically in a way that I know some readers find irritating, but which I don't really mind. 

Overall, I think the Enterprise crew members adapted to the past just a little too easily, given how out of their element we see them in The Voyage Home. For instance, in an early scene, Uhura needs some cash, so she pops into a pawn shop to sell her earrings. I had an immediate 'Not in My Post-Scarcity Utopia' reaction to the supposition that a future person, used to the economic systems of the Federation, dumped into the past, would immediately recognize the utility of a pawn shop. I can, however, be convinced that the Star Trek characters fit into the '60s because they are, on some meta level, creatures of the time. There is a blink-and-you-miss-it bonus crossover towards the end that I found extremely unnecessary, your mileage may vary.

Like many 1980's and 90's zines, the narrative shows a marked preference for Illya over Napoleon. I have no problem with that, just feel obligated to warn Napoleon fans (and I do count myself among your number), that there's not much here for you. I've also noticed a fan tendency to (imo) overestimate Illya's intellect. I love the dude, but I don't personally see him winning any Nobel Prizes, if you know what I mean?

All of these quibbles may make it sound like I didn't enjoy this zine, but on the whole I did! The mystery element is well handled in that the solution is telegraphed enough to make it fun for the reader, but not so much that the characters seem like fools for taking 80 pages work it out, and there's one little twist at the end that I thought was particularly fun. Anyway, this story brought me through (? it seems too early to say that) a dark time, and I have to appreciate it for that. Also, the illos, by Gennie Summers, are quite nice!

This week I finished two zines, both by the same pair of authors, Diana Smith and Pat Dunn. Overall, I would definitely seek out works by these two again - it's clear that they know their stuff and do good character work. 

1. The French Songbird Affair 
I bought this primarily because it is situated in the St. Crispin's Day Universe (set right after Warriors), a place I always love to visit. In terms of the story, Napoleon and Illya are sent to protect the widow-in-all-but-law of a murdered UNCLE agent  in the 1960s, a tale unfolds involving her espionage activities in occupied France in the '40s. If you are at all familiar with the way fiction works, you will not be surprised to learn that the flashback eventually becomes highly relevant to the series timeline A-plot. 

I found the zine to be very well done. It's clearly extremely well researched. You spend a lot of time with original characters, especially in the flashback sequences, which are roughly 1/2 the text. The original characters are well drawn and I found their story to be engaging, but if you are someone who loses interest when the focus is not on our guys, this may not be the zine for you, despite its definite quality. 

2. The String Theory Affair (The Man from Uncle/Quantum Leap 1989 Crossover)
I saw that this won a FanQ, and I like both fandoms, so I figured I'd give it a shot. 

This zine is split into two pretty distinct parts, although the two halves do come together at the end through a recurring antagonist (if you, like me, read this in conjunction with The French Songbird Affair, you may notice a bit of a structural pattern, but not a bad one, imo.) The first section, 'A Mole in the System,' I found highly enjoyable. Sam Beckett is a really fun outside POV character, because his is very much an outside perspective, but at the same time he is right in the action, and experiences everything that Illya or Napoleon would (he occupies both of their bodies at different points in the plot - if you don't know what Quantum Leap is, don't worry about it). I also thought there was a really nice balance between scenes set in the MFU universe and scenes set at the Quantum Leap base. I wasn't expecting to see much of the 90's characters at all, so that was a nice surprise and there are a few scenes with Illya and Ziggy that are really delightful. 

This zine almost lost me in the second half though -- 'Part II: The Americanization of Illya,' in which Illya goes undercover in Elk Ridge, Indiana to look over a young Sam Beckett. This part didn't work for me for reasons that I expect have more to do with me than with it. As a queer Jew, the concept of 'Americanization,' and the plot of an outsider character acculturating to a normative Midwestern [read white, Protestant, straight] family made me a bit itchy, especially the scenes set at church. While there were some moments of cultural exchange, all the American characters seemed to get out of the experience was a stronger feeling of 'oh boy, we're sure glad we don't live in the USSR,' which is perhaps fair but felt somewhat incomplete, and I would have liked to see more depth into Illya's feelings about the way he presented himself and his background while undercover. The Becketts were somewhat aggressively wholesome in a way that, again, made me uncomfortable, but may not have the same effect on you. 

The story picked up towards the end, when Napoleon arrived, and I did enjoy the conclusion. TLDR, it's a fun story, I liked 2/3 of it, and might have liked all of it if not for my own particular identity complex.