Synopsis:
When a strange tear in the cosmos appears within Earth’s annual path, the consequences are disastrous. For one night a year, the vast majority of humans now undergo a frightening mental change, transforming into hateful, rage-fueled zombies who will stop at nothing to satiate their desire for brutality.
While not much is understood about this horrific mass hysteria, the demographic it effects is very specific: cisgender straight people.
A few years after the first of these tragic events, four friends from across the queer spectrum look for safety in solitude, hunkering down in a remote desert cabin for what is now known as Saturation Day. With a vaccine available for straight people to curb their violent episodes, some predict the worst is over. Others aren’t so sure.
As night falls, it becomes clear that survival isn’t guaranteed this Saturation Day.
This is the first horror novella from two-time Hugo Award finalist Chuck Tingle.
Review:
Zombies have always been political, at least since George Romero’s casting of Night of the Living Dead transformed a gory survival story into an allegory for racism. And zombies, those uniquely empty vessels, are always ready to take on whatever meaning we’re ready to load them up with. This trend has actually become a near phenomenon in recent years, with the trope of the mysterious “virus” that transforms your friends and neighbors into violent agents of terror becomeing a regular staple.
More importantly, it continues to work. American Rapture uses this device to tell a story about America’s dangerously fractured ideas about sex. Your Shadow Half Remains gives us a world where direct eye contact creates homicidal monsters, so we’re left to navigate a world of calculated (and not so calculated risks) in our interactions with others.
This new breed of zombie is so popular that it might just supersede the old-school mindless shamblers of yesteryear.
Enter Chuck Tingle, whose 2021 novella Straight plays with this conceit in unique and sometimes troubling ways.
In the world of Straight, some cosmic anomaly strikes once a year, passing over the earth and turning all the straight people into, yes, you guessed it, vicious zombies. There’s some cute conspiracy theory talk amongst our little car full of queer characters who are heading out to Joshua Tree to ride out this year’s installment of the Gay Purge, but we’re not meant to think too much about the plot device. It just is, and that’s enough for me.
Of course, things go wrong almost immediately, and the slavering straights attack, and the novella goes all out in a propulsive, and remarkably bloody, chase across the California desert. Along the way, they pick up a reluctant straight ally, who gets to experience the horror of being hunted for something beyond your control for himself.
Story-wise, this is all fine. It’s short, bloody, and sweet, but Straight also contains a fair amount of exposition that borders on the essayistic. Tingle doesn’t quite trust his readers to recognize this allegory about solidarity and the shortcomings of allyship, so the authorial voice breaks in to explain it to us, and that felt both unnecessary and a little insulting.
There’s also something more than a little troubling about the concept of a strictly binary, and seemingly biological, distinction between the queers and the straights. Kinsey be damned, in the world of this novella, you have to choose a side.
Now, I’m reading Straight after the triumphs that are Camp Damascus and Bury Your Gays, and the novella predates both of these, so it is more than a little possible that my expectations were a bit too high, but I also know what Tingle can do with a whacky horror premise.
So, while I’m always happy to have another entry in Tingle’s horror universe, this strikes me as a minor entry, but if you want a fun, and ultimately upbeat bit of nastiness, it’s well worth your time.
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