Another wonderful, mind-bending, soul-searing collection of history-based, character-driven speculative fiction. This is volume two of tales told in Val Hall, where people designated as "superheroes, third class"  come to terms with their memories and experiences after living through, and sometimes ameliorating, historical crises. But in some instances, their actions made events immeasurably worse. As one character asks, as he approaches Val Hall, "Would they take a villain?" 

This collection is edgier than The Even Years, as befits its Odd title. The historical events that come under scrutiny include the 1945 bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki; the Oklahoma dust bowl years; the abandonment and fall of Saigon; and the Y2K computer programming crisis that nearly crashed communications and commerce worldwide on New Years' Day, 2000, which continues to sabotage present and future programming. One thing all these stories have in common is showing the power and significance of perception. We shape and even change the world by how we interpret events, how we regard others, and how we see ourselves. Sadly, sometimes perceptions are based on the will to see the world in ways that favors the advantage of the stronger. But there are light-hearted stories here as well.

For example, "The One About Her Voice (1919)" features a centenarian woman who was alive when the 1919 Bill was ratified that finally allowed women in the United States the right to vote. In 2019 she insists on attending the Women's March, in order to perform a private leap across time to see her younger self and to share a certain pink, emblematic icon. By the way, were you aware that Washington State passed the law before the nation did?

Then there is the last story, "Coda: The One About Passing The Torch". The central character, Eddie, has worked at Val Hall for years, but it is time for him to move on. He has in his keeping photos and mementoes dating back to the founding; even more importantly, he has foreknowledge of future residents, based on the true Dreams of a former resident. These can only be entrusted to someone who perceives their significance, who will see to it these people are not neglected, not overlooked. Only then can Eddie be free to see what awaits him elsewhere.

In between, there is "The One About The Dust Dragon (1935)" which shows with awful realism the desertification of Oklahoma -in the wake of farming techniques that absolutely failed to take into consideration the consequences of erosion.  (It is more than a little ironic that, if the nominally religious people who settled Oklahoma hadn't ignored several of the Ten Commandments and exterminated the First Peoples, or had at least obeyed the Old Testament commandments to let the land lie fallow in seven-year-rotations, the Dust Bowl would have been averted.) When a girl discovers she can shield homes from the dust storms, the neighbors are divided into those who accuse her of being devil spawn and want to kill her, and those who beg her for protection from the choking, smothering dust.  

"The One About The Last Prayer (1939)" has my favorite frame story. Klaus Kellerman is one of the Val Hall residents who shares his skills via classes. His skills are those of a pastry chef, and "Kellerman Days" are one of the high points of the month. The story proper is about Klaus as an orphaned German boy, sent to live with an uncle who digs the graves in the local churchyard. Young Klaus' only solace are the novels about the American Wild West written by the hugely popular German author, Karl May. And then one day he starts seeing ghosts. Not just a few ghosts, revenants of the graveyard, which would make sense.  He is seeing hundred of ghosts pass by, hearing them, even speaking with one, the ghost of a young girl, who stops to answer his questions. She explains that not all of them are dead yet, but they soon will be, and for souls time is not a linear thing. Knowing they are about to die, the souls are already departing the world for their destination. She points out that it is not only the Jews of Germany and Europe who are being murdered; there are also the Slavic peoples who live on lands that warlords desire, and Gypsies, and men who love each other. At the sight of two men holding hands, Klaus realizes he is like them.

"The One About Radiant Shadows (1945)" recounts the memories of a man who survived the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and managed to save the life of a young woman. The crisis activates superpowers in him: for a few days, Hikaru has foreknowledge of the intent of subsequent attacks, and the ability to fly. But Naga-saki is not the next intended target, only a secondary backup, so Hikaru is too late to prevent the second detonation. In what happens next, the author may be resorting to fictional license to diverge from history, for to the best of my knowledge there was no attempt to drop a third bomb dropped over Japan, and while there were indeed plans in place to bomb more Japanese cities if the Emperor refused to surrender, Tokyo was strictly off limits. In this story, however, Hikaru heroically deflects a bomb dropped over Tokyo. In the process he is so injured that he loses his powers, but the woman whose life he saved saves his life in turn.

"The One About Truth in Beauty (1975)" is a tale acid-dipped in sideways irony, the one that includes but is not limited to the Viet Nam War and the last days of Saigon. The central character informs Eddie that he used to be a reporter, and he goes on to explain what he did, and how he did it. He had The Voice. Whatever he said or wrote became canon, the official version, which no facts or evidence could ever contravene, and he spun news according to the agendas of the politicians who hired him. He describes several real incidents of that war; other horrors he only alludes to. After the war, the reporter becomes a commentator, and his superpower continues. As the character explains to Eddie: "If I touched someone and said, 'You are successful,' all good things came to them. If I said 'You are beautiful,' cameras the world over loved them. If I said 'You are famous,' they were, even if there was nothing to be famous for except being famous." (p 104.)  This story shows, in the form of one man, what has happened to nearly all news coverage in this country over the last 50 years. 

"The One About Just Another End Of The World (1999)" is a Y2K story that peeks under the lid of that turn-of-the-millennium global crisis. Andrzej is a young programmer in Seattle who, in 1997, gets assigned to a project: preventing the computers that manage most of the world's economic transactions from going buggy and crashing when 1999 turns to 2000. On Dec 31, 1999, Andrzej turns down an invitation to a party. He knows that the job isn't done; the pieces just aren't fitting together to make a solution that will hold. Once again, crisis triggers activation, and he becomes Code Red, transforming into a genii of the ones and zeroes.  Great story! Except that there is no mention of the fact that all of Apple's original coding was done with an eye on what would happen when the first two numbers of the calendar year shifted from 19 to 20 - and beyond. All the billions of dollars, all the hundreds of thousands of programming hours it took to kludge and modify Microsoft and cloneware programs not to crash on January 1, 2000, and Apple computers never had the problem. That reality check aside, the story is an eye-opening account of what programmers contended with in those Almost End of (Microsoft's) Days.    

The author, Alma Alexander, is not a young woman, and she has experienced losses and hardships comparable to those of the real life counterparts of her fictionalized characters. These books are her gift to us, hard won victories in the teeth of Time and Loss. After all, even readers who do not attain superhero, third class, status need places where they are safe and accepted, need people who fearlessly accept their strangenesses, who care about them and care for them. It takes an extraordinary degree of courage for a writer to depict what people are most afraid of, and a real gift to do so fearlessly, with love and kindness, faith and grace.

Alma Alexander has been prolific, and she is well worth discovering. That's great news for readers, and it gets better, because with Amazon discounts and publisher's epub editions, her books are very affordable.  - Chris Wozney

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