July 2023 Indie Book Review

Impossible Fruit by Gary J. Mack

An Indie Book Review by Joseph Poopinski
Variety, Intersections & Food for Thought
4 stars

Maybe I’m mistaken but the separate short stories in Impossible Fruit could occur in one vast universe of the author’s exceptional imagination.  Thereby they’d all be nominally interconnected, subjected to its laws & principles.  However, despite my overarching theory, many tales are billed as stand-alone material.  Several categories permit finicky readers who may dislike robots, for instance, to avoid any positronic brain-related inconvenience or discomfort by skipping those specific tales & yet partaking freely of the magical curses.

Since I usually read novels, I tackled all the various categories numerically beginning with the first page without jumping around or omitting anything.  Much of the book’s universe qualifies as interesting, if not amazing, with—something many writers miss their marks by explaining in either too much detail or too little complexity—proper portions of information left for readers to infer, interpret or otherwise creatively supply.  Some evocative examples:  1. A planet’s inhabitants were part horse, part crab & the remainder human-like.  How would you visualize them?  No wrong answers.  2. When?  “Moonday.”  A flawless pun, if ever.  3. Maybe a tale’s title, too, needed figured out.  4. I read this—my favorite, albeit risky (How does one accurately describe the Ultimate Evil?)—line, like an algebraic equation where I could choose the variable’s value, thereby solving it however I wished personally & correctly: “This thing was beyond evil. It had evil for breakfast & expelled horror from its faecal end.”  5. Here’re the good guys; there’s the bad guys, but don’t forget those who traffic & travel between the two.  Where does Bargo or whoever fit?  I’m not convinced there’s one right answer.  Take a bite of this Impossible Fruit & you’ll have plenty to ponder & digest for many meals.