Nearly every story in Andy Duncan’s collection The
Pottawatomie Giant is Duncan’s unique blend of Southern literature
and either fantasy or science fiction.
In practical terms, this means there is a darkness, of a
naturalistic rather than horrific nature, that is rare in modern
fantasy. Duncan also incorporates an unapologetic ruralness into his
stories in a genre which tends to be much more urban-focused, resulting
in stories set in a world which may be extremely alien to many readers.
As Duncan indicates in his afterwords, nearly all
of the stories included in the book were inspired by historical events
and individuals. Buck Nelson, of “Close Encounters” really did claim
to have encountered aliens and visited Mars and Venus. The titular
character of the book, the boxer known as Jess Willard and “The Great
White Hope,” really did have an encounter with Harry Houdini. However,
Duncan takes these events and introduces his own twists ranging from
Nelson’s internal dialogue to the elements of quantum physics in
Willard and Houdini’s meeting.
The
two stories which most thoroughly exemplify Duncan’s style are the
paired stories about Pearleen Sunday, “A Diorama of the Infernal
Regions, or The Devil’s Ninth Question“ and “The Dragaman’s
Bride.” The former serves as an origin story for a young girl who
seems like she is nothing special who learns that she has special
powers. In the latter, she has learned how to use and channel those
powers to help not only an missing girl, but also her entire community,
which has been dismissed as “rednecks” and unworthy by the
government which is supposed to serve them. The underlying inspiration
of eugenics just adds to the horrific aspect of the story.
Even
Duncan’s most humorous story is a veneer overlaid on a dark world.
Playing with the similarity of names of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Bilbo
Baggins and Mississippi Senator Theodore Bilbo, Duncan transposes
Senator Bilbo’s racist philosophy to a world in which there actually
are a plethora of races for a bigot to rail against.
Two of the stories, “Daddy Mention and the Monday
Skull” and “Zora and the Zombie” draw their initial inspiration
from the works and life of Zora Neale Hurston with a generous mixture of
foreign beliefs, whether the superstitions of Southern Blacks or Haitian
voodoo practices. Duncan seems to handle the material respectfully and
has produced two memorable, if atypical, stories.
The final story in the collection is a lengthy look
at the career of Sergei Korolev, the mastermind behind the Soviet
Union’s early space program in the 1950s and 60s. Although nothing
science fictional happens in the course of the story, which is a study
of human ingenuity and ambition towards space, the tale is designed to
appeal to the same type of person who enjoys science fiction and
provides an excellent conclusion to the fiction of the collection before
Duncan bundles his brief discussions of his inspirations in an
informative afterword.
Duncan has a distinctive style in speculative
fiction, giving rural and southern areas a clear voice that few other
authors can offer with such mastery. He manages to portray the
culture in a way that provides an alienness and a familiarity at the
same time while being respectful of southern culture. At the same
time, Duncan does not infuse the culture with a sense of nostalgia or
sentimentality. He is aware of the difficulties, as well as the
strengths of southern society and both are reflected in his stories.
