Gordon Van Gelder

A new year and a new issue of ‘The Magazine Of Fantasy & Science Fiction’ with which to celebrate it. Hurrah!

The first thing I scanned was ‘The Via Panisperna Boys In “Operation Harmony”’, co-authored by Claudio Chillemi and Paul Di Filippo, two fellows clearly not frightened by quotation marks. Unless Germany invaded Czechoslovakia in 1934 and Marconi invented an iconoscope television that lets the watchers be watched, this is set in an alternative history. The lads of the title show more are a bunch of Italian physicists who flee to the USA to develop a weapon to fight Hitler. Quite a nice weapon really. Enrico Fermi is their leader and they enjoy playing music together. The other band members are Ettore Majorana, Emilio Segrè and Bruno Pontecorvo, all of whom can be found in Internet encyclopaedias. One of those stories that are good fun to read and was probably even more fun to write.

These historical fantasies are often entertaining, as is the case again with ‘The Man Who Hanged Three Times’ by C.C. Finlay. Consarn it, if this one ain’t set in the old west. Dagnabit, a fine tale of a drunk and no good citizen, who is accused of killing the Chinese woman with whom he lived in sin. He denies it but is found guilty and they try to hang him. The narrator of this one is interesting and it did not feature Hollywood made-up swearwords. That’s just me.

‘The New Cambrian’ by Andy Stewart is definitely my type of thing and might have been printed in one of those great SF magazines of the fifties such as ‘Astonishing’ (now ‘Analog’), ‘Galaxy’ or even ‘The Magazine Of Fantasy & Science Fiction’. It’s a good old-fashioned story of engineers and biologists working on Europa, one of Jupiter’s moons. Dr Schneider, a female biologist, has been lost in a tragic accident in the ice-covered ocean, the first death on the planet. It shakes everyone. Our first-person narrator is her former lover, Ty. Their affair ceased when his wife Ana came to join them at the base. Human feelings interact with the complexities of life in alien waters to make an interesting yarn that borders on horror.

There’s more Science Fiction in ‘For All Of Us Down Here’ by Alex Irvine which extrapolates the continuing separation of society into the haves and have-nots. Perhaps I should say renewed separation. We got a bit more equal for a while. Anyway, in a not too distant future, the ‘haves’ can upload themselves to the Sing, which seems to be an orbiting computer complex. Their bodies are cared for but they soon lose the knack of using them properly. The story is about an encounter between a lad in Orono, Maine (that crossword puzzle favourite, as Stephen King once called it) and a Singular. It’s a neat family drama, but the context of the story is more interesting and I am sure there are other tales, probably a novel, to be extracted from this fascinating concept. Once the technology exists, I have no doubt there will be people delighted to upload themselves into their favourite computer game and spend eternity there, especially as the condition of planet Earth deteriorates.

Moving from the Sing to Song, Seth Chambers gets the editorial mature content warning for his novella ‘In Her Eyes’ and, rightly so, as the language is crude and direct. That suits the character of the lady in it. The gentleman and first-person narrator is Alex, who works in a museum, and it’s there that he meets Song, a not very pretty woman. He likes her, despite her looks, they go out and then there are some surprises. To say more would be to ruin it for the reader but it is a raunchy yet emotional story based on an interesting Science Fictional concept. A strong contender for the best story this issue, if the magazines still ran polls.

Paul Di Filippo has the regular ‘Plumage From Pegasus’ spot as well as the aforementioned collaboration and gives us ‘The Very Last Miserabilist In Paradise’. Science has solved all mankind’s problems and there is boundless energy, food for all and no work unless you want to, and all the benefits once dreamed of by SF writers. But one SF writer is not happy. Good fun as usual.

Albert E. Cowdrey is a welcome regular in these pages, often with comedy, but ‘Out Of The Deep’ presents him in serious mode. After an incisive description of fifties America, the protagonist, Pete, tells us how he met Alistair McCallistair, a rich kid, whilst on holiday on the Gulf coast. Time passes and Pete is a Viet-Nam vet and a bit messed up. McCallistair has avoided the war, as rich kids did, and now hires his old friend as a bodyguard because one of the bad guys is out to kill him. The fantastical element comes from McCallistair’s cook and concubine, a lady from the Caribbean with that ol’ black magic. It’s a great story with interesting characters, not least, the messed up ‘hero’. Cowdrey is a good old-fashioned storyteller who gives you a definite beginning, middle and cathartic end. You know exactly what’s happened and there’s none of that woolly vagueness that sometimes plagues the genre. He deserves to be on the bestseller lists and many of his yarns, because they are so strong as stories, would make good films, including this one. He could easily write straight thrillers, I think, and achieve mainstream success but clearly, he has a fondness for fantasy. We are lucky to have him.

‘The Museum Of Error’ is a longer entertainment from Oliver Buckram, who has contributed hilarious short stories in the past. Herbert Linden is the Assistant Curator for military history in the museum and is called upon to investigate when the petrified cat goes missing. The cat was turned to stone by the gorgon gun of mad inventor Theophrastus Morhof who accidentally petrified himself, too, and is also an exhibit. Evil rivals at the Science Institute may be responsible for the theft. Buckram’s inventiveness in dreaming up the exhibits for the Museum of Error is almost unbelievable and there’s a good gag in nearly every paragraph. It also works pretty well as a detective story. Thoroughly enjoyable.

‘We Don’t Mean To Be Kind’ by Robert Reed is set in a distant future when the universe is winding down and some creatures catch up with the Creator. The conflict is told from both points of view. An interesting concept at the far reaches of the fantastical and I’m not sure if I liked it or not. I’m pretty sure it’s good and that my hesitancy is based on residual Catholic guilt and the fear that He might be watching me read and judging.

Moira Crone gets away with ‘The Lion Wedding’ one of those fantasies set in the ‘real’ world that are generally written by and appeal to sensitive ladies. Well-crafted and some will like it but not really my type of thing. Likewise ‘The Story Teller’ by Bruce Jay Friedman in which a professor of literature finds himself in an afterlife where a story is demanded from him. It was okay but writers writing about writing should probably be confined to non-fiction.

The stories by Cowdrey, Buckram and Chambers more than compensate for the cover price of the magazine by themselves and the additional worthy material is a bonus. I should also mention the non-fiction articles but my electronic preview does not include the current ones and by the time I get a hard copy the review is done. Generally, they are excellent. The intelligent book reports of Charles De Lint and Elizabeth Hand give me good lists of books I don’t have time to read and so are frustrating. Readers with fewer tomes to be done will find them useful. On the other hand, a movie takes up less lifespan and the film reviews, by various contributors, highlight DVDs to look out for, often ones that have not been commercially successful but are well worth a watch. Also, they are not snobbish and will allow that a half-decent Hollywood action movie of the sci-fi sort can be entertaining, too.

So, ‘The Magazine Of Fantasy & Science-Fiction’ is keeping alive several worthy traditions. For the Creator’s sake buy it and keep them going!

Eamonn Murphy
This review first appeared at https://www.sfcrowsnest.info/ show less

3.48 average... I'll round up to 4.
This collection finishes a lot stronger than it starts. (No, I don't think that decades past were devoid of great fiction; I just don't think that all the older selections here were as strong as they could've been.) Still, there are some real gems here - and overall, this collection gives a good overview of the breadth of the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction's editorial selection.

*** “The Third Level” by Jack Finney (1952)
Well, I liked this better show more than Finney's 'Time and Again.' It has the same sort of wistful nostalgia for the past, which borders on sappy. But I really liked the portrayal of Grand Central (still totally recognizable today), and the idea of getting lost and finding the stairwell down to another level...

** “The Cosmic Charge Account” by C. M. Kornbluth (1956)
Not my kind of thing. An intentionally silly story of a Professor whose scholarly work on a kind of transcendent meditation has apparently had only one devoted reader - who has, unfortunately, turned a huge swath of territory in her vicinity into a stricken land of mindless zombies.

*** “The Country of the Kind” by Damon Knight (1956)
The trials and tribulations of a sociopath in a future society of peaceful, well-adjusted individuals. There's some interesting content here, about how the sociopath, unique in his society, equates his violence with 'freedom' - but he's really just a petty loser and a self-centered bully.

*****“The Anything Box” by Zenna Henderson (1956)
A re-read - previously read in Henderson's collection of the same title, and probably in other anthologies as well. A sweet and beautiful story of a child and her teacher, about the magic and necessity of imagination and hope - for both children and adults.

*** “The Prize of Peril” by Robert Sheckley (1958)
Eerily prescient! The premise here is very similar to Stephen King's 'The Running Man.' We're introduced to a protagonist who has signed up to be on a televised game show - if he can evade hired killers for a certain amount of time, he wins. Call-in viewers can donate gifts or help - much like in 'The Hunger Games.' This is a solid, early entry into this genre, with a nicely bleak outlook on human nature.

* "‘—All You Zombies—’” by Robert A. Heinlein (1959)
In the introduction to this book, Michael Dirda complains about modern readers dismissing older writers like, specifically, Heinlein. With Dirda's direct implication that Heinlein is not actually 'misogynistic,' perhaps a different selection would've been more apropos. This is a time paradox story. It's not specifically *about* gender, but Heinlein's deeply sexist assumptions about how gender affects personality and his assumptions about how even a future society's sexism will not change in any way, are fully on display here. (In the future, women don't become 'spacemen,' they are sent to be 'comfort women' for lonely spacemen who can't control their 'urges.' The possibility of a woman being a competent astronaut isn't even considered.) Unless, of course, she actually becomes a man. Apparently male hormones confer said competence. Ugh.
PS, there are no zombies in this story.
I didn't find the ramifications of the time-travel dilemma, as presented here, as interesting or 'mind-blowing' as other readers have.

** “A Kind of Artistry” by Brian W. Aldiss (1962)
If you like Aldiss, you will probably like this. I've never gotten into his style - I find it a bit rambling and opaque. Here, a far-future human leaves his overbearing and shrewish mother/lover to make contact with a huge and strange alien.

*** “Green Magic” by Jack Vance (1963)
Better than Vance I've read in the past, but not particularly remarkable. An occultist is intrigued by the grimoire left behind by his deceased relative, and uses it to begin researching an entirely new plane of magical existence. Will what he learns change his perspective on what he desires?

*** “Narrow Valley” by R. A. Lafferty (1966)
A tale told with a wink and a chuckle, about a Native American who resorts to magic to prevent his land being taken by the White Man, and the modern-day invaders who try to lay claim to the property, precocious brats and RV in tow...

*** “Sundance” by Robert Silverberg (1969)
A Native American, on a mission to prepare a new planet for colonization, becomes disturbed by the concept that the native life he's exterminating might be sentient. The story starts very strongly, but then tries to squish too many possibilities in, right at the end. I expected a strong statement, but it kind of backed off and sputtered out.

** “Attack of the Giant Baby” by Kit Reed (1976)
A direct precursor of "Honey, I Blew Up The Kid." A scientist father's experiment accidentally results in, literally, a giant baby.

*****“The Hundredth Dove” by Jane Yolen (1977)
Stories like this original fairy tale are what earned Yolen her well-deserved, stellar reputation. The King's fowler sets out to obey his monarch's directive to capture 100 doves for the royal wedding feast - even though the bride protests. Gorgeous and tragic, with that aura of inner truth that sets up a sympathetic resonance of the heart...

**** “Jeffty Is Five” by Harlan Ellison (1977)
A reread - previously read in the 'Locus Awards' collection. A classic, and impressively well-done. I actually disagree with the content of the story: I object to the nostalgia for 'good old days' that it rests on - but it doesn't matter. It's still incredibly moving.
Two boys are best friends. One of them grows up and does all the normal things a young man does. One of them stays five years old, both mentally and physically. They stay friends, even though their dynamic changes... and one realizes that his friend is quite literally tuned in to another time.

**** “Salvador” by Lucius Shepard (1984)
Powerful and hallucinogenic. This piece fully conjures up the moral confusion and social disconnect of soldiers pushed into atrocities. The reader sees the point of view of a Special Forces operative, on patrol searching for Sandinistas in El Salvador, mostly under the influence of weird drugs. It's not really in the SFF genre, but it's an excellent and thought-provoking piece of war fiction.

*** “The Aliens Who Knew, I Mean, Everything” by George Alec Effinger (1984)
Aliens make first contact with earth - and they are insufferable know-it-alls. Yes, life on our planet is changed by our new horizons - but not quite in the way anyone expected. This one definitely brought a smile to my face.

** “Rat” by James Patrick Kelly (1986)
OK, so this is a fairly standard and unsurprising cyberpunk-ish drug-smuggling tale - where the main character happens to be an anthropomorphic rat. I'm really not sure why he's a rat. It's not explained. Is it supposed to be funny? All the other characters in the story seem human-standard. Go figure. Future. Drugs. Violence. Rat. Shrug.

**** “The Friendship Light” by Gene Wolfe (1989)
A horror story. As always, with Gene Wolfe, there's a lot going on here, and a lot of it is in the gradual reveal, which makes it hard to say too much about it. Our narrator, who is probably unreliable, gets a note from his brother-in-law asking for a favor... and from that seemingly normal starting point, things degenerate into creepiness. Wolfe has a very distinctive style - if you like his writing, you'll like this.

*** “The Bone Woman” by Charles de Lint (1993)
Typical de Lint. This is one of his Newford stories. A street musician keeps an eye out for one of his local mentally ill homeless women, so he notices when a strange character starts paying an unusual amount of attention to her. When this new character turns out to be collecting an unusual number of bones out of the trash, the musician finds it somewhat disturbing and ominous, and goes to investigate. What he finds is magical and unexpected.

*****“The Lincoln Train” by Maureen F. McHugh (1995)
A re-read. (Previously read in 'Mothers and Other Monsters.') This is an impressively crafted, emotionally wrenching piece. It worked just as well the second time through, too. In an alternate history, President Lincoln has survived an assassination attempt and decisively defeated the South. Former slave-owners are being forcibly shipped out west in cattle-cars stuffed with refugees. One young woman, evicted from her home, has a terrible time of it... McHugh just twists you around her finger, then twists you back the other way and forces you to look at yourself and examine your assumptions.

**** “Maneki Neko” by Bruce Sterling (1998)
A re-read - but it's been quite a while since I last read this. This may be my favorite piece by Bruce Sterling.
Cyberpunk isn't generally thought of as being optimistic and cheery, but this story really is. It laughs, in a rather good-natured way, at those who are hostile to and threatened by technological change. In this future, members of semi-secret 'networks' are always doing small, easy things at the urging of their pocket computers. These actions are usually to help out someone else - and they get benefits in return. This general attitude of 'pay-it-forward' has helped to set up a functional gift economy - and of course, those who are invested in the traditional economy are threatened.
It's a fun story with a personal feel (and some action!) - but with some radical, sensible ideas.

*** “Winemaster” Robert Reed (1999)
Interesting thoughts on nanotech and issues of time and scale as applied to societies... and the conflicts that may or may not arise when they go out of sync.
A driver stops at a gas station. Some militia/hooligans want to mess with him, but a big man stops them. But what are his reasons? The pleasure of this story is in how it unfolds, so I won't say more...

**** “Suicide Coast” by M. John Harrison (1999)
An exploration of the pros and cons of extreme sports (and life in general) lived through the physical world, and lived through virtual reality. Surprisingly even-handed... and heartbreaking.

*****“Have Not Have” by Geoff Ryman (2001)
Another re-read. I was absolutely blown away by this, when it first came out. Then I read the expanded-into-a-novel version, 'Air.' I didn't feel that the continuation quite lived up to the beginning, but it was still excellent. Upon re-reading, though, I did find myself thinking about 'what happened next...'
The story introduces Mae, an enterprising but not very likable woman who makes a living as a 'fashion consultant' for her remote village. She is aware that her stock in trade is not actually fashion, but information, and as such, she hoards it jealously. However, her livelihood - and the way of life of everyone she knows - is threatened by an incipient technological advance that will affect the whole world.

*****“The People of Sand and Slag” by Paolo Bacigalupi (2004)
I've read this one at least a couple of times before, and have shoved it into people's faces and insisted that they sit down right there and read it. It's a 'Boy and His Dog' story. It's a scathing excoriation of what humanity's doing to the world. It's possibly an extension of the same future hinted as being to-come in 'The Wind-Up Girl.' And it will make you cry.

**** “Echo” by Elizabeth Hand (2005)
Already read, in Hand's 'Saffron and Brimstone.' "A quietly post-apocalyptic tale which compares and contrasts the myth of Echo and Narcissus with a story of a lonely woman living on a solitary island, missing her lover and hoping against hope that he might return to her."

**** “The New York Times at Special Bargain Rates” by Stephen King (2008)
This ghost story has the distinct feel of one of those stories that someone tells you, swearing it's true. "It's happened to my friend's sister's cousin... really!" A woman gets a phone call from her recently-deceased husband... and what he tells her may change her life.

*****“The Paper Menagerie” by Ken Liu (2011)
Already read, in 'Nebula Awards Showcase 2013.' "'The Paper Menagerie' is the first work of fiction, of any length, to have swept the Nebula, Hugo, and World Fantasy Awards." I cried. OK, usually when I say "I cried" I mean one tear escaped my eye... This story made me cry a whole bunch of tears. A story of the disconnect between parents and children, the gap between cultures, and magical origami.

Thanks to NetGalley for an advance copy of this collection!
As always, my opinion is my own. show less

It’s very hard to do Trump-adjacent dystopia without either doing nothing more than reporting or seeming cartoonish, or both. The more successful stories tend to reach beyond ripped-from-the-headlines scenarios. Janis Ian’s story of a white woman who fetishizes the Mexican workers forced to labor in her family’s fields was the most disturbing—it feels accurate about how sexuality can relate to racism but it is dystopic so it may not be something everyone is ready to read. Deji Bryce show more Olukotun’s The Levellers is about ecological levellers with politics that are not standard left or right and thus is more thought-provoking/speculative than many of the other immigration-focused stories. Mary Anne Mohranaj’s Farewell is the best of the human immigration-focused stories, though it isn’t particularly fictional or speculative (it’s about denaturalization of naturalized nonwhites). J.S. Breukelaar’s Glow is an immigration story with a difference, about aliens and humans and the thin skin between. Harry Turtledove’s and Barry Malzberg’s stories are cartoonish; sadly, Yoon Ha Lee’s is as well, and Jane Yolen’s poem; Geoff Ryman’s story from the perspective of a sexist whose wife likes liberal North California better than the guns-and-guns republic in the south is the same. Ray Vukevich’s story about ritualized humiliation of female resistance is the best of the cartoonish/satirical ones—it manages to insert genuine menace and an understanding of what makes people complicit in oppression even when they say to themselves that they disagree. show less

There’s a bit of a southern feel to this issue of ‘The Magazine Of Fantasy And Science Fiction’, southern USA, that is. This is evident in ‘Close Encounters’ by Andy Duncan which seems to be set in 1977 but harks back to an earlier era. Back in the 1950s, there were many UFO sightings in the USA and they became something of a fad. One old critter in his eighties has had his fifteen minutes of fame and retired to his backwoods cabin to live the quiet life. Now there‘s some new show more film out by that Spielberg feller about close encounters of the alien kind. Darned tootin’ if some right purty gal reporter don’t turn up on his doorstep and bring the whole danged business up again. He ends up a-hauling ass off to the wild blue yonder at night and watches a lot of damn fool scientists with gravimeters and spectrometers and who knows what investigating the lights in the night sky. Rest assured that Andy Duncan does a far better job of good ol’ boy US slang than I do in ’Close Encounters’ and delivers a touching tale that‘s more fantasy than SF. It ain’t too heavy on plot, frankly, but the prose and the mood evoked are a pleasure.

Southern California features next. ‘Father Juniper’s Journey To The North’ by Grania Davis is a historical fantasy narrated by the scribe Sandor, a monk who accompanied Father Juniper on a mission to Alta, California in the year of Our Lord 1769. The Franciscans wanted to save the natives from paganism and Jesuits. The Spanish King and the Governor were eager for gold. One monk had a monkey from South America which was very clever, did tricks and rode on the back of a pig. Were the monkey and pig supernatural spirits? Sandor wasn’t sure. History and Sandor tell us that Father Juniper’s noble efforts did not work out so well for the natives. This was a polished piece, like everything in the magazine, but evoked no great joy in my soul.

Back to the American heartlands again for Chet Arthur’s ‘The Sheriff’ but this time set in the wild western past. Jimson is an orphan who works in the town hotel and, though a simple soul, has the gift of prophecy. He see’s bits of the future. So when he tells his foster mother, Bama, that the sheriff is going to be shot, she is worried. Shore ‘nuff, the sheriff bites the dust and the man who takes his place has to track down the varmints what done it. This was a neat, old-fashioned western story, deftly told with nice touches of humour and I thoroughly enjoyed it. One advantage of fantasy is that it allows a broad range of settings and all other genres can be subsumed into it.

‘Where the Summer Dwells’ by Lynda E. Rucker was also set in the remoter parts of the USA. It was a fey, feminine tale about some young people going off to a gothic southern backwater and having something fantastical happen. The narrative was cleverly set up as the protagonist makes a trip now and recalls the past one made with other folks.

There’s a kind of Confederate feel about it when Mars revolts in ‘A Diary From Deimos’ by Michael Alexander. It’s the story of a revolution on an Earth colony world. Told in the form of a patriotic rebel lady’s diary, it echoes and satirises all those successful revolts in Robert Heinlein’s fiction by making the rebels a bit sordid and a bit gun happy, too. Earth has freed the robots and Mars doesn’t want to follow suit, a situation somewhat analogous to the war between the states, at least if you take the simplistic view that it was all about slavery. The diarist is one of those fussy, silly women that Heinlein often mocked in his fiction and there are clever one line references to Asimov’s ‘The Martian Way’ and even ‘Bartleby The Scrivener’ by Herman Melville. Call me Ishmael if this isn’t the most fun a writer can have with an old theme. I loved every word of it.

That same war between the states is looming over all in ‘The Goddess’ by Albert E. Cowdrey, who now appears in this magazine almost every issue and why not. Justin Lamarck is the son, by a slave woman, of a rich and powerful plantation owner. On a trip to London to investigate cotton machinery, he meets up with a Hindoo (the old spelling is used) named Ganesh Srinavasan, who tends him when he is seasick on the voyage back home and becomes his partner in running the plantation when Pa has a stroke. Into this powerful mix is thrown Madeleine Delatour, a dusky-skinned, sensual seventeen year-old that Ganesh finds when he is looking for a female for Justin. He gets more than he bargained for from this worshipper of Kali, but he can cope with powerful women. These ingredients might have gone to make a big, thick southern novel, a bestseller even. Why Mister Cowdrey chose to turn them into a droll, slickly plotted and slightly dark fantasy I could not say. I liked it a lot but you may not. Frankly, my dears, I don’t give a damn.

The other stories in this issue move far away from the Mason-Dixon line. ‘12:03 p.m.’ by Richard A. Lupoff definitely takes us into fantastical territory though the setting is the present day real world. Mister Castleman goes to see a psychiatrist and can tell her exactly how their conversation is going to unfold because he has had it many times before. His life tends to jump from one scene to another, changing when he touches a doorknob to leave a room and then finds himself entering another one for another repeated scene. This unfolds intriguingly and though the ending was one of those indefinite ones of which I am not fond, it was firmly fixed in the genre emblazoned on the cover of the magazine.

‘Give Up’ by Richard Butner is about Everest, in a way. For Jim’s forty-third birthday, he tells his wife, Charlotte, he wants nothing but buys himself a big blue tent that is an Everest simulation, a Backyard Everest. Jim and Charlotte are the local king and queen of trivia competitions, always winning, but he had been stumped a few months before when asked the identity of the two British explorers who died on Everest in 1924. He knew one was George Mallory who famously said, ‘because it’s there’, when asked why he wanted to climb the mountain but couldn’t identify the other bloke. This sparked an interest in Everest that led to the self-bought gift. Jim enters the tent and sets out to ‘climb’ Everest. Simulated Everest climbs are indubitably a good idea as I understand the Nepalese are now begging people to stay away because the mountain is covered in litter and corpses so popular has it become. The story did not, perhaps, live up to the originality of the concept but that might be because it reminded me of the many holodeck tales in ‘Star Trek’, of which I am not fond. (The holodeck tales, I mean. I am fond of ‘Star Trek’, obviously.)

Nonetheless, virtual reality is definitely an SF possibility that‘s becoming real and could have many applications. In ‘Theobrama Valentine’ by Rand B. Lee, it’s used in psychotherapy. The story is set in a far future with multiple alien species interacting on many worlds. Theobrama is a very special planet because of the chocolate plantations. The best chocolate known to sentients is produced there but the wealth this brings and the troubled background of the inhabitants, who started out as plantation slaves, makes it a hotbed of psychiatric troubles. Tuli is a psychiatrist who works with clients using virtual reality. Her last three clients have dismembered her while she was playing her role. An investigation is launched as this is unusual. Rand B. Lee delivers a highly entertaining story which is real hard core Science Fiction, full of weird names, strange terminology and great ideas. The notion that all emotional/rational species are subject to mental health problems is one I have not come across before. Aliens are usually presented as ruthless, evil, kindly, indifferent, logical and so forth but rarely as being as flawed as ourselves. Original.

Paul Di Filippo has a regular department called ‘Plumage From Pegasus’ which he fills with interesting stuff, often in the form of fiction as here. ‘Call Me Ishmael: LIKE/DISLIKE’ is perhaps a prediction of the future of publishing. First, spend years on social networks building up a vast array of ‘friends’. Then announce that you are going to write a novel once your customer base is all set up. Then let them in on it as you write so that it can meet with their approval. Electronic publishing is very probably the way things will be. The fact that the most appalling rubbish can become popular only makes it likely that more people will take up writing in the hopes of fame and cash. I am currently hard at work on ‘Forty Shades of Green’ the story of an Irish nymphomaniac. Note that this idea is now under copyright as it is in print. If anyone else makes millions with it, I will sue them for fifty percent.

‘Arc’ by Ken Liu opens with Lena Auzenne, in the winter of her days, being interviewed by reporters and recalling her life. When sixteen, she was made pregnant by a rich college boy who did a bunk. I didn’t like Lena when she left her baby with her parents to run off with another n’er do-well but, as she points out, the father also dodged his responsibilities and many people didn’t mind that so much, including me. Somehow a mother leaving the baby seems worse. Suitably chastened for my double standards, I read on. Lena eventually hitches up with the founder of Bodywerks, a company which has the formula for a long, healthy life. Meditations on the desirability of near immortality are not new to Science Fiction but this is a good one. Ken Liu impressed me last issue with his story ‘Real Faces’. One to watch.

Onwards. Mari is the seventh child in a big, out-going friendly family of blonde, sporty types who live in Norway, a land where, I believe, the blue parrots are easily stunned. Her fine skin burns in the mildest sun and she is more quiet and introverted than the rest of the family. There is a legend that one of her ancestors mated with a troll centuries before and that a child like her occurs every few generations. The obvious trick here is to make her an outcast but author Peter Dickinson doesn’t do that. In ‘Troll Blood’, she is an integral part of her big happy family. She falls in academically with a professor researching an ancient Norse manuscript and romantically with a hydroelectric engineer from England. When danger comes, she has to rescue the man she loves. This story had a lot of what Stephen King, in ‘Misery’, termed the ‘Gotcha’, at least for me. Pizza blackened in the oven while I read eagerly on to see what happened next. It was also a very good love story in a subtle but powerful way.

‘Contact’ by Sophie M. White

Must be

A poem.

Because the sentences

Are broken up

Into lines.

I prefer

More traditional poems

Which rhyme.

It was clever though

In a way.

I believe the usual way to review products of an anthological nature is to pick out the highlights and dismiss the rest with a line or two. I have done that with lesser magazines but I haven’t yet managed it with this one. Every yarn has some quality that deserves a mention, some impact that provokes a thought. This makes reviewing it a long job but such worthy stories, such worthy writers, should be saluted. In the teeming world market, it’s hard for talent to get noticed and in the declining short story market a magazine keeping quality fiction of this length alive deserves promotion. The electronic edition of ‘MofF&SF’ costs less than a pint of beer and will give you many more hours of pleasure. You can still have beer, mind. They are not mutually exclusive. show less