A Place Between Waking and Forgetting by Eugen Bacon
Unsettling, Playful and Profound: Bacon's Speculative Fiction Short Story Collection Challenges Expectations
Eugen Bacon’s sixth and most recent collection of short stories A Place Between Waking and Forgetting (2024, Raw Dog Screaming Press) is a magical, mysterious tour de force, offering evocative prose, vivid landscapes and unforgettable characters. I often found my footing uncertain, traversing these beautifully rendered realms of speculative fiction. As a newcomer to this genre – sometimes labeled Black speculative fiction and Afrofuturism – I initially struggled, but perseverance brought immense rewards, even when not immediately obvious.
Amongst these seventeen stories – eight of which were published between October 2020 and March 2023 – Bacon presents a rich array of characters, each reflecting the vast diversity of Blackness. These figures traverse gender, age, location and time, venturing into futuristic, historical and current settings. Many are insecure, often flawed and conflicted, yet remain immensely relatable.
The early stories in the collection may challenge readers. For example, the opening tale, ‘The Devil Don't Come with Horns’, a finalist for the World Fantasy Award, may unsettle those unaccustomed to confronting surreal prose. Dialogue is rich with slang and euphemisms from across the English-speaking world, often delivered in fragmented sentences, with smatterings of the N-word.
But beneath these linguistic layers, the story delves into childhood friendships, whilst grappling with themes of parental loss, poverty and gender expectations via the meta-physical. Even after reading the entire collection, this tale remains a challenging, layered experience. The second story, ‘Naked Earth’ – a futuristic slant on global warming exploring discrimination and (sexual) longing – similarly serves as both a primer and a dare for readers to persist.
The collection’s title serves as a signpost. A place between waking and forgetting is not straightforward, nor does it offer clear markers. Therefore, as readers, we must abandon our presumptions and expectations. Predicting the outcome of a story from its beginning, or even at the sentence level, is impossible. In several ways, this collection feels like a journey through the author’s mind, navigating the liminal spaces suggested by the title. If we approach the work on the author’s terms, and not our own, a uniquely immersive fiction experience awaits.
The second half of the collection offers some of the most captivating stories, particularly those featuring animal protagonists. In ‘Sleuthing for a Cause’, Ja is the village raven left saddled with an offspring by a roaming lothario male. However, “Her fledgling Chi has settled only too well into her new role as a witchdoctor’s familiar. Well, a witchdoctor’s apprentice’s familiar, to be exact.” Hilarity ensues as the belligerent witchdoctor encounters a series of unexplainable maladies and misfortunes befalling his fellow villagers. It turns out Chi’s absent father has played a part in these doings. To reverse this magic, Ja exacts a modicum of revenge on the bird that left her “with egg.”
‘The Fable of a Monkey’s Heart’, another animal world set story, is among the shortest and most playful with language. In the best tradition of fables, it features a clever monkey, a gullible crocodile and a wise elder, with prose that dances on the page, inviting us to join in the fun and revel in the storytelling.
Particularly thoughtful moments appear with ‘Paperweight’ and ‘The Lightning Bird’. Whilst lighter on the fantastical elements compared to other stories in the collection, Bacon returns to recurring themes of greed and longing. Here, she does not merely condemn her protagonists for their flaws, but allows space for readers to reflect on why these characters are the way they are. Central to Bacon’s work is the tension between nature and nurture. Her characters are products of their environments as much as they are individuals with their own malevolent tendencies.
Each story in the collection demands something of the reader, inviting us to question literary form and definitions of “good” fiction. The challenge may be difficult at times. On occasions, you will laugh; sometimes there will be moments of confusion and wonder. Yet Bacon, a multi-award-winning African-Australian author, shows us that language is malleable and playful, and that fiction can be as wild and boundless as the space between waking and forgetting.
Read our review of Bacon’s 2021 novel Danged Black Thing here.
pine breaks (uncapitalised)
Identifies as a Black man, non-dualist, meditator, Afro-Caribbean, east-Londoner, ruralist, bread-baker, grower of vegetables, pro-alternative economies, musical snob, bare-footist, sometimes media academic, freelance writer and author of race and social-class based fiction.
He is most content when identifying as a being from the Universe.
Reach him at pinebreaks.com and X=@pinebreaks_me