NewCon Press, 2023, 228 p.  Reviewed for ParSec 9.

This is the author’s first collection of stories, twenty-one in all, plus one poem. Sixteen of them were culled from appearances in a variety of outlets over the past ten years, five are making their first appearance in print. The contents range in genre over SF, fantasy, myth and horror, with stories sometimes crossing over their borders.

In general, literature deals largely with the themes of love, sex and death. Science Fiction tends to be more restrictive (love for example tends to be bypassed and sex for the most part avoided) but its signature feature is in making its metaphors literal. (The outstanding example of that here is the title story, about the bond between a daughter and her mother.) Fantasy, myth and horror act more as warnings and as stripped-down guides to human relationships.

In the first few stories here the theme of death seems to be a connecting thread but this does not then extend to the collection as a whole.

The poem, Icarus Dreams, opens proceedings and partly sets the tone by inviting Icarus to heed his father and rewrite his story. Smits is more than adequately equipped to provide new shapes to old tales. To that end there are herein updated treatments riffing on the Blackbeard and Theseus stories, while the Baba Yaga of Russian folklore meets an AI.

But the author has further strings to her bow. Elsewhere, moles on the skin are a marker of long, perhaps immortal, life, and carry the threat of incarceration to unravel their genetic secrets. We meet an AI repairman whose encounter with his charge becomes reminiscent of 2001: A Space Odyssey. One story (not narrated by Dr Watson) features Sherlock Holmes, but only in a bystanding part as he asks his psychic investigator – and female – cousin to help him. We have tales where a psychological decline follows the break-up of a relationship which had settled into routine, the Green Man appears to rescue a ravaged future Britain, a woman inherits a bookshop with an unusual kind of ghost, AI/human hybrids question each other over their origins – and the nature of God. One story centres on the reliving of bottled memories. There is an African inspired SF/fantasy cross-over. A woman falls in love with her witness protection AI android bodyguard, another tells of the lengths she went to in an attempt to get pregnant, a brother and sister hatch a plot to rescue their twin siblings from VR addiction in a warehouse, a female painter who sells pictures under her brother’s name finds she cannot hide her expertise from J M W Turner (with whom she shares the same reverence for sunlight,) two people celebrate their involvement with the commercial start-up of nuclear fusion at Sellafield, a woman on the point of death remembers incidents from her life while subjectively traversing a fantastical purgatorial maze.

Their telling requires a comprehensive array of authorial registers and Smits handles them all well, with very few infelicities. She is a talent to watch.

Pedant’s corner:- Theseus’ (x 2, Theseus’s,) focussing (x 2, focusing,) a missing comma before a piece of direct speech,  Holmes’ (x 2, Holmes’s, which appeared later,) shrunk (shrank,) focussed (x 3, focused,) sunk (sank,) Geena Davis’ (Davis’s,) “legs akimbo” (I doubt it. It’s extremely difficult to put your feet on your hips,) “and laid down again” (lay down again,) data used as a singular noun (that would be datum, data is plural,) Jesus’ (Jesus’s,) “the settings on each gamer’s capsule isn’t” (the settings … aren’t,)  “‘it’s okay to chop down all the forests and poison the soil.’?” (has that question mark in the wrong place. It ought to be where the full stop is,) “him and Kel had looked to the stars” (he and Kel,) James’ (x 3, James’s; annoyingly employed a few pages later.) “A trail of soapy bubbles stream after his fleeing form” (a trail streams.) Plus points, though, for using maw correctly as a stomach.

Itchy Coo, 2002, 90 p.

This slim volume contains retellings of tales from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, reimagined in a living, vibrant Scots.

The first piece, The Hoose O Haivers by James Robertson introduces the eponymous Hoose, a place where earth, sea and sky meet and the whole world can be seen. A house of rumour and tale telling, of scoom, scandal, clatter, claik, crack, claivers, clish-clash and clype.

Phaethon’s Hurl in the Sky by James Robertson
Phaethon, the mortal son of Phoebus the Sun god, boasts so much about his father that he is challenged to prove the relationship. He asks to drive Phoebus’s chariot across the skies. The task is beyond him.

The Weavin Contest by Susan Rennie
The goddess Athena hears of Arachne’s skill with weaving and challenges her to a contest. She doesn’t like the result.

King Mehdas by Matthew Fitt
Takes as a starting point Midas’s famous greed for gold but elaborates on the theme of his thoughtlessness.

The Cave o Dreams by James Robertson
Is where Hypnus sleeps and where all manner of dreams lie. But when his son Morpheus comes to you, is what you see real?

Echo An Narcissus by James Robertson
Echo and Narcissus.

Ariadne in the Cloods by Susan Rennie
Tells of how Ariadne helped Theseus to slay the Minotaur and escape the Labyrinth but then her dancing attracted the attention of the god Dionysus who took her up to Olympus where she dances on the clouds still. With a side serving of Dædalus and Icarus.

The Man That Made a Meal o Himsel
Starts with a discussion on the pronunciation of Erystichthon’s name before relating how he angers the goddess Ceres by cutting down her favourite oak tree. She then arranges for him to be afflicted with constant hunger, which no amount of food can assuage.

Orpheus an Eurydice by Matthew Fitt
Orpheus and Eurydice.

The Aipple Race by Susan Rennie
Atalanta can run so fast she can dodge even Eros’s arrows. These miss her and go on to hit others who as a result moon over her. One such, Hippomenes, engages the services of the goddess Aphrodite who provides him with enchanted apples to distract Atalanta so that Hippomenes can beat her in a race and so marry her. His lack of gratitude for this annoys Aphrodite.

The Twelve Trauchles o Heracles by Matthew Fitt
The labours of Hercules. Trauchles however is more nuanced than labours. A trauchle is an unavoidable and difficult task that “ends up daein yer napper in.” This story contained the wonderful phrase, “fair ripped Hera’s knittin’,” (which can be rendered much less pithily as “discommoded Hera greatly.”)

The Hoose o Pythagoras by James Robertson
Is a companion tail to The Hoose O Haivers’s tip. A discussion on the necessity of change and on whether the fantasies in this book are any more unreal than things we commonly take for granted.

This is a delightful little book but anyone without experience of spoken and written Scots will likely struggle with its content. The writing does however show what a vital, earthy and vigorous language Scots can be.