Call and Response: Stories of the Fantastic by Christopher Caldwell

The collection's governing idea is echo. Caldwell has said that he noticed how many of his stories already existed in pairs, with a later story picking up a possibility that an earlier one had only hinted at. He then built the book around that habit, so the two halves work like a musical exchange. A statement in “Call” gets an answer in “Response,” and the answer is rarely a neat resolution. It is more often a consequence that arrives later, in another register and sometimes in another place.

The table of contents shows the shape. The first half contains “Femme and Sundance,” “The Lonesome Sea,” “The Beekeeper's Garden,” “Serving Fish” and “If Salt Lose Its Savor.” The second half contains “The Calcified Heart of Saint Ignace Battiste,” “Deep Like the Rivers,” “Counting Her Petals,” “Canst Thou Draw Out the Leviathan” and “Miz Boudreaux's Last Ride.” Publishers Weekly points to two of the clearest links. The outlaw couple who open the book in “Femme and Sundance,” a story of queer fugitives pursued by magical law enforcement, come back for a last encounter with magic in the closing story. Cleo, the young girl who listens to flowers recounting their origins in “The Beekeeper's Garden,” returns as an adult in “Counting Her Petals,” following her trans girlfriend into a simulated utopia built as a refuge from a harsh world. The first of these pairs is a fast, voice-driven western chase. The second moves from an allegory about who gets to keep history to a close study of intimacy and escape. Together they show that the sequel stories change genre and emotional temperature as well as plot.

The publisher's description names personhood, gender, slavery and war as subjects the stories work through, and the advance praise the publisher reprints mentions whaling voyages, saints, gods and betrayals. Several story titles borrow biblical or liturgical phrasing, which fits the Black church tradition the title invokes. The tone ranges from playful to mournful. A reviewer at Reactor's short-fiction column had singled out “Femme and Sundance” and “The Calcified Heart of Saint Ignace Battiste” before the book appeared, which suggests how varied the stylistic range is across the halves.

One original story, “The Lonesome Sea,” is included alongside the previously published work. The author's story notes at the back give readers a view of how individual pieces came to be. A reader can approach the book in three ways. It can be read straight through, so the echoes land in order. It can be read in pairs, jumping from a “Call” story to its response. Or it can be read as ten self-contained fantasy tales. The book is designed to reward the first approach, but it does not require it. What Caldwell is demonstrating is that fantasy can carry history and desire at once, and that a short-story collection can behave like a conversation between its own parts.

Consequence and echo is the structural theme. Choices made in the first half do not stay in their stories, and the book treats action as something that keeps sounding after it has been taken.

Queer and Black life in the fantastic is the second. Publishers Weekly describes the protagonists as Black and mostly queer, and describes the book as an exploration of the collision between the natural and the supernatural. In these stories the supernatural often exposes social realities instead of replacing them.

Memory and the control of history runs through the garden allegory and other stories. Who tells the origin story, who is forgotten, and who benefits from the telling are recurring concerns.

Escape and its limits appears in fugitives on the road and in a simulated utopia built to shelter someone from a cruel world. The collection asks what refuges cost and what they leave out.

Faith and ritual shape the vocabulary of the book. Saints, scripture-like titles and the Black church model of call and response all signal that belief, whether sacred or communal, is part of how the characters make meaning.

Slavery and war are named by the publisher as subjects. Caldwell approaches them through fantasy and the sea, not through documentary realism.

The collection belongs to the recent growth of Black and queer speculative fiction, particularly the short-fiction magazine ecosystem. Most of these stories first appeared in outlets such as FIYAH, which is dedicated to Black speculative fiction, along with Strange Horizons and Uncanny Magazine. The author's profile on the Uncanny site also names the Octavia E. Butler Memorial Scholarship and the Clarion West workshop, two institutions closely tied to the training and recognition of writers of colour in science fiction and fantasy.

The book's title draws on call-and-response, a communal pattern of speaking and answering found in Black church worship and in much African American music. The author also ties it to the structure of sea shanties, which connects the collection to maritime work songs and to the long history of the Atlantic as a space of both labour and violence. That connection fits the publisher's reference to slavery and to the sea imagery in the advance praise.

Neon Hemlock Press is a small independent press focused on queer speculative work. Its publishing of this debut shows how much of the field's recent short-fiction energy comes from independent publishers. The collection's reception includes the Crawford Award, which is given by the International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts to a writer whose first fantasy book appeared in the previous calendar year.

The collection suits readers of literary and contemporary fantasy who like stories that treat the supernatural as a way into questions about race, gender and desire. Readers who follow the magazines that first printed these stories will find the work gathered in one place, and anyone interested in the debut of a writer with a distinct voice will find it a useful starting point.

It also works for readers who like formally designed collections. Those who enjoy tracing how one story answers another, as in linked-story books or song-cycle structures, will get the most from it.

It may be less suitable for readers who want a single sustained plot or a conventional epic-fantasy world with maps and long arcs. Readers who prefer quiet, realistic fiction may also find the genre shifts demanding. The publisher's and critics' descriptions point to adult material, including desire and violence, so it is not aimed at young readers.

The language is lyrical and changes from story to story, with voice-led narration in some pieces and a more formal register in others. Reviewers and the book's early readers describe the prose as sophisticated, and readers should expect to adjust to each story's voice. The book is short, at around 188 pages and roughly 51,000 words according to one ebook listing, so it can be read in a few sittings.

The conceptual difficulty comes from the pairing structure. A reader who forgets a character from the first half may miss the weight of their return in the second, so reading in order and keeping brief notes helps. No specialist knowledge is needed. The stories are available in a paperback and as ebook editions, and the print book includes illustrations.

No preparation is required, but a few areas will deepen the experience. Some familiarity with call-and-response as practised in Black churches and in African American musical traditions helps explain the title and the two-part design. Readers who know the Atlantic slave trade and maritime history will recognise more of the sea imagery. Several titles echo biblical language, so some acquaintance with scripture, including the Book of Job's reference to the Leviathan, adds texture without being essential.

It also helps to know the short-fiction magazine scene that first published most of the stories. The book's story notes at the back are best read after the stories, as commentary rather than as introduction.

The strongest reason is its design. Few collections build a reading experience out of the relationship between stories, and here the pairing changes how each piece is read. A reader who finishes a “Call” story is left with an open question, and the “Response” half supplies a consequence that reframes it.

The second reason is range inside a coherent project. Caldwell writes western-flavoured outlaw tales, allegory, sea stories and speculative romance, yet the collection keeps returning to the same ethical concerns. That makes it a good sampler of what contemporary fantasy short fiction can do.

Third, it has been recognised by peers. The Crawford Award judges described the book as a collection of queer joy and rage in lyrical prose, and the publisher lists further award recognition, which gives readers an independent signal of quality besides the publisher's own claims.

A careful reader may come away with a clearer sense of how a story collection can be structured as a dialogue, and of how sequels can deepen a story instead of merely continuing it. They may also reconsider how fantasy handles history: the supernatural here is often a way of asking what has been remembered, owned or silenced.

Readers may notice how often the book pairs tenderness with danger, and how refuges in these stories, whether a road, a garden or a simulated world, come with conditions. Finally, the call-and-response model may change how readers listen to communal and musical traditions outside the book.

The organising idea is original and executable, and it gives a short book more cohesion than many collections achieve. The prose is varied without losing a recognisable authorial sensibility, which is a harder balance than it sounds. Publishers Weekly gave the book a starred review, and the Crawford Award judges singled out the way the stories are selected and arranged.

The collection also treats Black and queer characters as fully realised protagonists instead of symbols. The book's apparatus, including story notes and illustrations, gives interested readers a way to see how the stories were made, and the mix of previously published and new work is clearly disclosed.

A ten-story book can only give each theme limited room, and readers who want to follow slavery, war or faith in sustained depth may wish for longer forms. The pairing device depends on attention: a reader who dips in out of order, or who skips the first half, will lose some of the effect. The tonal range, from playful to grave, will not suit every taste, and readers may prefer some stories to others.

The book's strong critical reception comes mostly from genre-press and trade sources, many of them sympathetic to its aims, so readers should treat praise as a guide and not as consensus. Some bibliographic details differ between sources, notably page counts, and the award shortlists listed by the publisher use slightly different wording in different places. Content involving violence and sexuality means it is best suited to adult readers.

Call and response: the pattern from Black church worship that gives the book its title and its two-part structure. The author also links it to sea shanties.

“Call” and “Response”: the two halves of the collection. The first introduces characters and disruptions, and the second revisits some of them.

Christopher Caldwell: the author, a queer Black American writer living in Glasgow, who is a Clarion West alumnus and an Octavia E. Butler Memorial Scholarship recipient. He should not be confused with the journalist of the same name.

“Femme and Sundance” and “Miz Boudreaux's Last Ride”: the opening and closing stories, which follow a queer outlaw couple pursued by magical law enforcement and bracket the whole book.

Cleo: a character who appears first as a child in “The Beekeeper's Garden” and later as an adult in “Counting Her Petals.”

“The Lonesome Sea”: the one story written for the collection, not reprinted from a magazine.

Neon Hemlock Press and dave ring: the independent publisher, and the person the author credits with the conversation that shaped the collection. Ring is also credited with the cover design.

Matthew Spencer: the illustrator of the interior art.

Crawford Award and the International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts: the award and the scholarly organisation that recognised the book as an outstanding first fantasy book.

FIYAH, Strange Horizons and Uncanny: the magazines where most of the stories first appeared.

What happens after a magical encounter ends, and who pays for the choices made during it? How do stories about the past get controlled, and what does it mean for a character to inherit or resist an official version? Can a refuge, whether a hideout or a built world, be both a genuine shelter and a form of avoidance? How do faith, ritual and community shape the way people respond to danger? And what can a formal pairing of stories show that a single story or a novel cannot?

The collection suits a two-session discussion, with the first five stories one week and the second five the next. Groups may prefer to read each “Response” story immediately after its “Call” partner, then compare the two orders. Ask members to keep a list of characters and settings that return, since the connections are the book's main engine.

A useful opening exercise is to have each member pick the story they found most surprising and explain whether it worked better alone or in context. The story notes at the back can be used to compare the author's intentions with the group's readings, ideally after the first round of discussion. Because the book contains violence and sexual content, groups should check that everyone is comfortable with the material.

1. How does knowing the book is arranged as “Call” and “Response” change the way you read the first half?
2. Which pairing of stories felt most like a true answer to its partner, and which felt most like a disruption?
3. What does the fantastic let Caldwell say that realistic fiction might not?
4. How do the stories treat refuge, whether a hideout, a garden or a built world? What does each refuge protect, and what does it hide?
5. Why might the author compare the structure to both church call-and-response and sea shanties? What do those two forms share?
6. How do the book's different voices and registers affect your sympathy for the characters?
7. Which story would you have wanted to see extended into a longer work, and why?
8. How do the biblical or liturgical echoes in some titles shape your expectations?

Bibliographic details such as the title, author, publication date, format, ISBN and page count were taken from the publisher's own pages and checked against a trade review record and retailer listings. Descriptions of the book's structure and the story pairings draw on the publisher's materials, the Publishers Weekly review, a published author interview and a reviewer's blog post. The author's background comes from a magazine author profile and a convention member profile. Award information comes from the Locus news report on the Crawford Award and from the publisher's awards pages. Page counts vary by source (188 and 190), and the profile uses the publisher's figure. The full text of the book was not read for this profile, so descriptions of individual stories are limited to what published sources state.