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The Ramshead Algorithm and Other Stories
Ramshead Jones has a billionaire father, a dysfunctional family, and a shocking secret nestled in the hedge maze in his backyard: Earth’s only portal to hundreds of other realities. When Ramshead’s unwitting father decides to rip the hedge maze out, Ramshead is forced to use dangerous magic to move the portal before it’s destroyed, too—unless the deadly maze of other family secrets that come to light destroys him first.
In THE RAMSHEAD ALGORITHM AND OTHER STORIES, sand cats speak, ghost bikes roll, corpses disappear, and hedge mazes are more bewildering than you’ve ever imagined. These 11 fantasy and science fiction stories from KJ Kabza have been dubbed “Sublime� (Tangent), “Rich� (SFRevu), and “Ethereal� (Quick Sip Reviews) and will take you deep into other astonishing realities that not even Ramshead has discovered.
Cover design and interior illustrations by Dante Saunders.
In THE RAMSHEAD ALGORITHM AND OTHER STORIES, sand cats speak, ghost bikes roll, corpses disappear, and hedge mazes are more bewildering than you’ve ever imagined. These 11 fantasy and science fiction stories from KJ Kabza have been dubbed “Sublime� (Tangent), “Rich� (SFRevu), and “Ethereal� (Quick Sip Reviews) and will take you deep into other astonishing realities that not even Ramshead has discovered.
Cover design and interior illustrations by Dante Saunders.
354 pages, Paperback
Published January 16, 2018
20 people want to read
About the author
K.J. Kabza
45Ìýbooks13ÌýfollowersOver 80 of KJ Kabza's fantasy and science fiction stories have appeared in four different languages in online venues, print anthologies, print magazines, ebooks, podcasts, and subscription email lists, in such places as Tor.com, Strange Horizons, Nature, Motherboard, F&SF, and many, many more.
KJ goes by his middle name, Jack, in his "regular people life" outside of writing circles. "I started selling fiction before I transitioned, and I wanted to have a gender-neutral byline," he explains. The byline stuck a little too well in that area of his life, but he accepts this with graceful resignation.
KJ lives in sunny Tucson, Arizona, which is lovely for most of the year but rather like death in an oven for a few unfortunate months in the middle. He is not great at hiking, running, and weightlifting, but he enjoys all of these activities and does them regularly anyway. He shares a home with one husband, zero pets, and a number of trees that he is determined to sustain.
KJ goes by his middle name, Jack, in his "regular people life" outside of writing circles. "I started selling fiction before I transitioned, and I wanted to have a gender-neutral byline," he explains. The byline stuck a little too well in that area of his life, but he accepts this with graceful resignation.
KJ lives in sunny Tucson, Arizona, which is lovely for most of the year but rather like death in an oven for a few unfortunate months in the middle. He is not great at hiking, running, and weightlifting, but he enjoys all of these activities and does them regularly anyway. He shares a home with one husband, zero pets, and a number of trees that he is determined to sustain.
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
March 15, 2018
I received a free copy of this book from LibraryThing
So I made an effort to read the first few stories in this anthology, but after that I pretty much did a lot of skimming because I just could not get into it at all. There's nothing necessarily wrong with this book. I mean it's well written and there are no obvious glaring grammatical errors that I noticed, but I just could not pay attention when I was trying to read it. I think it's because I want to know what a story is about before I read it, like I want a summary or if there's no summary then I want a pretty good idea of what the story is going to be from the first few paragraphs. But these stories are just ...I mean I don't want to say they're purposely confusing, but they're definitely something that you have to go into realizing that you are not going to know what is going on until the very end of the story [and maybe not even then]. That's not really my cup of tea, especially with so many of them in a row, but I know a lot of people will find more enjoyment in this than I did.
So I made an effort to read the first few stories in this anthology, but after that I pretty much did a lot of skimming because I just could not get into it at all. There's nothing necessarily wrong with this book. I mean it's well written and there are no obvious glaring grammatical errors that I noticed, but I just could not pay attention when I was trying to read it. I think it's because I want to know what a story is about before I read it, like I want a summary or if there's no summary then I want a pretty good idea of what the story is going to be from the first few paragraphs. But these stories are just ...I mean I don't want to say they're purposely confusing, but they're definitely something that you have to go into realizing that you are not going to know what is going on until the very end of the story [and maybe not even then]. That's not really my cup of tea, especially with so many of them in a row, but I know a lot of people will find more enjoyment in this than I did.
October 10, 2017
KJ Kabza seems to specialize in altered states, dream states, and has a range from flights of fancy to gut-wrenching terror. I have to say I really liked the black-and-white, full-page pen-and- ink illustrations, which were enticements to read on.
We begin with “The Leafsmith in Love,� a charming clockpunk story with a bit of alchemy and magic thrown in at the right places. I enjoyed it. Usually a collection starts with the best story, so I was almost prepared to be disappointed by the next one. Nope. I laughed aloud with delight at “The Color of Sand.� You should buy this book for that story alone.
Didn’t think I’d like the title story, “The Ramshead Algorithm� at first, as it was set in the one place in a confusing clash of universes where our laws of physics applied, but the protagonist was soon back in our world, and dealing with a tangled mess that slowly revealed a secret past that made the first odd location make sense. It resolved in a way I’ll be thinking about for a long time.
“Night and Day� asks serious questions about whether a man’s dream-life or his human life…are real. It turns out they are intertwined and the fulcrum is someone’s second sight. Then after an illustration in which a horse has cut gems for eyes, “The Flight Stone� tells the chilling tale of an orphan girl who never wants to stop riding air horses, and will do absolutely anything to herself to keep her position.
Oooh! “Steady on Her Feet.� In this clockpunk tale the characters, the expected complications, the unexpected resolution� bright with promise and peril –left me breathless.
“The Soul in the Bell Jar� is a sort of mash-up of a gothic horror story and Frankenstein’s monster, but with animals and eccentric, wealthy relatives, told from the viewpoint of a visiting child. As I stated at the beginning of this review, Kabza excels at dream states. Such things viewed by a child certainly qualify as such.
In “Heaventide,� which is a bit of a gender-bender tale, a tribe has persons grows up to be either a man or a woman, and our protagonist has been misgendered but is being forced into the female role. S/he fights to be who s/he knows to be with every weapon available.
Laurel, the Passenger who is the POV character in “WeDon’t Talk about Death� is a companion for Allie, a Pilot who needs an alert person to be with her and anchor her when she experiences Unreality in piloting a spaceship across dimensions. They cross a war zone in the present—and for Allie—past, emotional tense. And they come out more honest on the other side.
The haunted Ghost Bikes in “All Souls Proceed� weave in and out of a Southwestern town as it yearly experiences The Day of the Dead and the wisps of the dead in between each season. This is more of a mood piece than a story, but then the subject sort of requires it.
Ah, the grand finale. The opening illustration for “You Can Take It With You� is a series of rock climbers tied together, with a wildly oversized one who seemingly jumps and takes the rest with them. That’s sort of an analogy for the story’s crappy, short-term digital afterlife. This novella (novelette? Hard to do a word count in digital form) is about how one newly-uploaded resident copes with it. “…there is no justice in a world into which everyone comes confused, isolated, and frightened—and which tries to keep everyone that way.� So they go on a quest to find justice. It’s rather like Phillip K. Dick’s Ubik meets Ready Player One.
You will treasure this collection by KJ Kabza.
RECOMMENDED
We begin with “The Leafsmith in Love,� a charming clockpunk story with a bit of alchemy and magic thrown in at the right places. I enjoyed it. Usually a collection starts with the best story, so I was almost prepared to be disappointed by the next one. Nope. I laughed aloud with delight at “The Color of Sand.� You should buy this book for that story alone.
Didn’t think I’d like the title story, “The Ramshead Algorithm� at first, as it was set in the one place in a confusing clash of universes where our laws of physics applied, but the protagonist was soon back in our world, and dealing with a tangled mess that slowly revealed a secret past that made the first odd location make sense. It resolved in a way I’ll be thinking about for a long time.
“Night and Day� asks serious questions about whether a man’s dream-life or his human life…are real. It turns out they are intertwined and the fulcrum is someone’s second sight. Then after an illustration in which a horse has cut gems for eyes, “The Flight Stone� tells the chilling tale of an orphan girl who never wants to stop riding air horses, and will do absolutely anything to herself to keep her position.
Oooh! “Steady on Her Feet.� In this clockpunk tale the characters, the expected complications, the unexpected resolution� bright with promise and peril –left me breathless.
“The Soul in the Bell Jar� is a sort of mash-up of a gothic horror story and Frankenstein’s monster, but with animals and eccentric, wealthy relatives, told from the viewpoint of a visiting child. As I stated at the beginning of this review, Kabza excels at dream states. Such things viewed by a child certainly qualify as such.
In “Heaventide,� which is a bit of a gender-bender tale, a tribe has persons grows up to be either a man or a woman, and our protagonist has been misgendered but is being forced into the female role. S/he fights to be who s/he knows to be with every weapon available.
Laurel, the Passenger who is the POV character in “WeDon’t Talk about Death� is a companion for Allie, a Pilot who needs an alert person to be with her and anchor her when she experiences Unreality in piloting a spaceship across dimensions. They cross a war zone in the present—and for Allie—past, emotional tense. And they come out more honest on the other side.
The haunted Ghost Bikes in “All Souls Proceed� weave in and out of a Southwestern town as it yearly experiences The Day of the Dead and the wisps of the dead in between each season. This is more of a mood piece than a story, but then the subject sort of requires it.
Ah, the grand finale. The opening illustration for “You Can Take It With You� is a series of rock climbers tied together, with a wildly oversized one who seemingly jumps and takes the rest with them. That’s sort of an analogy for the story’s crappy, short-term digital afterlife. This novella (novelette? Hard to do a word count in digital form) is about how one newly-uploaded resident copes with it. “…there is no justice in a world into which everyone comes confused, isolated, and frightened—and which tries to keep everyone that way.� So they go on a quest to find justice. It’s rather like Phillip K. Dick’s Ubik meets Ready Player One.
You will treasure this collection by KJ Kabza.
RECOMMENDED
January 10, 2018
I got this book for free as part of the LibraryThing Early Reviewers program. Now that I've gotten that out of the way..
This book was amazing. It's been a long time since I've given a book of short stories a try because I've been burned by them in the past. These stories were all so vastly different. They went from bittersweet to hopeful to freaking weird to mind blowing to so surreal that I begin to question my own reality. I can't recommend this book enough - just prepare to think to yourself "wait.. what?" a lot. I will admit there was one story I couldn't get through ("The Soul in the Bell Jar"). It was too graphic in weird ways for my overactive imagination and I had to skip it. I think my favorite stories from the book are probably "The Color of Sand" and "Steady on Her Feet" - though I thoroughly enjoyed them all ("You Can Take It With You" is also amazing).
This book was amazing. It's been a long time since I've given a book of short stories a try because I've been burned by them in the past. These stories were all so vastly different. They went from bittersweet to hopeful to freaking weird to mind blowing to so surreal that I begin to question my own reality. I can't recommend this book enough - just prepare to think to yourself "wait.. what?" a lot. I will admit there was one story I couldn't get through ("The Soul in the Bell Jar"). It was too graphic in weird ways for my overactive imagination and I had to skip it. I think my favorite stories from the book are probably "The Color of Sand" and "Steady on Her Feet" - though I thoroughly enjoyed them all ("You Can Take It With You" is also amazing).
February 6, 2018
Kind of picked this one on a whim, and was actually really pleasantly surprised. Here's a place I'm sad it's taken me so long to get to these, especially now that my energy and memory are both being messed with by post-surgery recovery, because I have strong impressions of lots of these stories, but can't remember the names to refer you to them, or what have you. I do know that many of these stories sketch out surprisingly well-formed worlds in their brief lives that I would love to see many of them expanded into longer stories, especially the longer novella that ends the collection, which takes "trapped in a rich person's personal digital afterlife" to some really interesting places. I hadn't heard of Kabza before, but I'm a fan now; anyone who can produce this many rich, diverse settings and characters and make all of them ones I'm interested in is worth following.
December 6, 2017
When the very first story makes you feel mushy in a very nice way ,you have some hopes from the book. And then the author takes you on all sort of feeling rideswith views as varied as you can imagine. This book redefined Sci fic for me in a way that I can like this genre too. Every story was a delight to read the setting and still so close to real feelings and reactions. good research has been done in places and other areas are shining with brilliant writing.
May 2, 2018
[Note: I got the book via the Early Reviewers program of LibraryThing]
The short stories in this book are quite strange. I am not sure where to put them: it's a mix between sci-fi and fantasy with a good part of horror, at least in the first stories. I found some of them a bit disturbing, but this is a problem of mine; the prose is quite good and Kabza is really able to set up the atmospheres, even if sometimes the endings are disappointing. Among the stories, I liked The Ramshead Algorithm, the setting of Heaventide and the space travel of We Don’t Talk About Death: all of these stories have something non standard. The last story, You Can Take It With You, is a novelette; its end is a bit too quick, which is unfortunate since the idea and the plot in the first 80 pages or so were really good. Overall, a very good book.
Keep in mind that for people like me for whom English is not the mother tongue, the language Kabza uses is sometimes difficult: it could took me some pages before I grasped the meaning of a key word.
The short stories in this book are quite strange. I am not sure where to put them: it's a mix between sci-fi and fantasy with a good part of horror, at least in the first stories. I found some of them a bit disturbing, but this is a problem of mine; the prose is quite good and Kabza is really able to set up the atmospheres, even if sometimes the endings are disappointing. Among the stories, I liked The Ramshead Algorithm, the setting of Heaventide and the space travel of We Don’t Talk About Death: all of these stories have something non standard. The last story, You Can Take It With You, is a novelette; its end is a bit too quick, which is unfortunate since the idea and the plot in the first 80 pages or so were really good. Overall, a very good book.
Keep in mind that for people like me for whom English is not the mother tongue, the language Kabza uses is sometimes difficult: it could took me some pages before I grasped the meaning of a key word.
February 25, 2018
Sub-par fantasy shorts. Didn't finish. Maybe it's just not my thing.
July 7, 2020
3.5. really incredible imagination at work. It's almost disorienting to be transported to Kabza's many worlds, all of them full of their own languages and customs. A true hulk of creativity.
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