Fantasy & Science Fiction, July/August 2014, part 4

This is the final installment of my blogging through the July/August 2014 issue of Fantasy & Science Fiction, guest-edited by C.C. Finlay.  The earlier parts are here, here, and here.

I enjoyed "The Aerophone" by Dinesh Rao, but not as much as I would have liked to have.  I love the mixture of different wordls:  An Indian scholar, working in Mexico, interacting with indigenous Mexicans, coming in contact with a world beyond ours entirely.  But the architecture of the story just didn't work for me.  It felt like the beginning of a novel that had just been truncated and an attempt made to pass off as a novelet.  In a way a hope that's what it is:  All things that I think make it a flawed novelet would make it an excellent chapter 1 of a full-length novel.

I was eventually able to forgive Ian Tregillis for not actually including diagrams in "Testimony of Samuel Frobisher Regarding Events Upon His Majesty's Ship Confidence, 14-22 June 1818, With Diagrams" because it's just such an excellent blend of the weird and the nautical (two of my favorite genres).  But, considering that the diagrams are mentioned both in the title and the story itself, I'd really love to see a chapbook edition of this that actually included diagrams.

I'm still not entirely sure what to make of "Five Tales of the Aqueduct" by Spencer Ellsworth.  It's a cluster of smaller stories that go together to make a larger whole, but I'm afraid I'm still not at all clear on exactly how they fit together.  Still, the quality of the individual pieces is such that I don't begrudge it a second reading to try to figure it out.

This issues movie column, "Girl Power in Dystopia" by Kathi Maio, examines the Twilight movies, the Hunger Games movies, Divergent, and other recent cinematic examples of YA heroine's tales - a very nice synthesis of a topic that's certainly worth a bit of thought.

I was looking forward to "Belly" by Haddayr Copley-Woods, as I've been friends with the author for years and she knew I was reading this issue and refusing to skip ahead to her story.  For starters, be sure to heed the warning in the biographical blurb at the beginning of this story:  Do not read this story while you're eating.  That being said, I don't want to give the wrong impression of this story - the disgusting elements aren't added for "mere" shock value.  This is a viscerally powerful story (pun intended) and one that I won't be forgetting anytime soon.  I challenge anyone to read this story and not have their feelings about fairy tale witches changed.

"The Only Known Law" by William Alexander reminds of Arthur C. Clarke's Childhood's End.  Leaving your home planet is definitely going to change a species, and Alexander here shows one possible outcome of that change.

Based on the title, I never expected Alaya Dawn Johnson's "A Guide to the Fruits of Hawai'i" to be a vampire story.  But don't let that description mislead you and if you're the sort of person who doesn't like vampires, don't let that that keep you away from this story:  This is not like any other vampire story I've ever read.  For that matter, Johnson's vampires are like no other vampires I've ever encountered - she manages to capture the psychological distance between humans and vampires in a way that I've never experienced before (and in a way that, paradoxically, also highlights their psychological closeness).  Highly recommended.

So to sum up:  Would I recommend July/August 2014 issue of Fantasy & Science Fiction?  Definitely.  Would I recommend Fantasy & Science Fiction in general?  Probably.  Keep in mind that this is the first issue of F&SF that I've read in over a decade, and that Finlay is a guest editor here.  Still, he wouldn't have been invited to guest edit without the approval of the regular editor, so I'm inclined to look positively on the regular editor so long as they don't give me a reason not to.  That being said, in the event that the F&SF ever needs a new editor, they could certainly do worse than offer the job to Finlay.

Fantasy & Science Fiction, July/August 2014, part 3

I've been blogging my way through the July/August 2014 issues of Fantasy & Science Fiction, guest edited by C.C. Finlay.  You can read parts 1 and 2 of this series here and here.

I didn't expect to enjoy Chris Moriarty's "Books" column this time around.  My first reaction was "Another tribute to Iain (M.) Banks?"  But I suppose it's a tribute both to Banks and Moriarty that I did enjoy it.  I daresay people will be writing about Banks for quite some time to come.

Next up was "The Traveling Salesman Solution" by David Erik Nelson.  This story impressed the hell out of me, not only for the strength of the ideas in the story because also for the protagonist.  The protagonist of "The Traveling Salesman Solution" (whose name I don't remember at the moment and can't find on flipping through the story just now) is in a wheelchair, but the story isn't about him being in a wheelchair.  There are details of the story that play out a certain way because he's in a wheelchair, but that isn't the focus of the story.  Very well done.

Cat Hellisen's "The Girls Who Go Below" is a fairy tale retelling, but so much more than that.  I didn't even recognize it as a fairy tale retelling - despite being very familiar with and fond of the fairy tale in question - until very near the end of the story.  And no, I won't tell you what story it is:  You'll have to read it and find out for yourself.

And this installment comes to a close with "The Day of the Nuptial Flight"by Sarina Dorie.  This one was just amazing - a classic science fiction story like they supposedly don't write anymore, told from the point of view of an alien.  When humans come to a new planet, maybe terraforming isn't the way to go.  Maybe there's another option.

Fantasy & Science Fiction, July/August 2014, part 2

I've read some more of this issue, so here are some further impressions: (part 1 of this series is located here.)

When I started Paul M. Berger's "Subduction," my initial reaction was "Great, another protagonist with amnesia."  But the amnesia turned out to be an integral part of the story, not just authorial laziness, and the mystery is such a big part of the story that I really can't say any more about it without giving something away.  Just go read the story - trust me on this one.

Next up was Annalee Flower Horne's "Seven Things Cadet Blanchard Learned From the Trade Summit Incident."  I enjoyed this one while I was reading it - the light, comedic style that Horne used for this story perfectly suited it - but afterward I kept thinking about it and becoming more and more dissatisfied with it.  The story begins with a cadet on a spaceship being wrongly accused of a practical joke that released stink bombs into the ship's ventilation system.  In an effort to clear her name, she discovers bigger, darker things afoot.  And that's where everything fell apart for me.  The villains weren't over-the-top evil and incompetent in a humorous way (think Dr. Doofenshmirtz from Phineas and Ferb), which would have been great for this story.  They were just evil in a bland, corporate way, as well as being incompetent.  I started out really liking this story, but at some point it zigged where it should have zagged.

At one point in this issue's installment of Charles De Lint's "Books to Look For" column, he makes a point about how so much of the urban fantasy being published now is just kind of more of the same.  Case in point:  This issue he reviewed four novels that fall in or near the label of "urban fantasy," but after setting the magazine aside for two days I had to reread the reviews to see which was which.  I mean, they all sounded like perfectly charming books but none of them really jumped out at me in a way that made me want to read them right away.  He also reviewed a new "writers on writing" type book which, while not really my cup of tea, he seemed to really like.

Still to come:  Four more novelets (I still don't think I like that spelling), 5 short stories, the other book review column, and the movie review column.  Looking over the table of contents for the rest of the issue, I must confess I'm kind of skeptical about Ian Tregillis's contribution:  When the title of your story promises "With Diagrams" but there are no diagrams, you've just made your work that much harder.

Fantasy & Science Fiction, July/August 2014, part 1

It's been years since I read any of the SF digests regularly - occasionally I'd pick up an odd issue here and there, but I hadn't really read them regularly since the late 1980s. So when C.C. Finlay, the guest editor for the July/August 2014 issue of Fantasy & Science Fiction came on Twitter saying he had 8 copies of the issue to send to people who were willing to blog about them, preferably people who generally didn't read the digests, I figured I'd give it a shot. I was thrilled to be chosen, and about a week later I was pulling the issue out of my P.O. box. First impressions: The first thing I noticed when pulling the magazine out of the envelope was that it was huge. I've bought novels smaller than this! (Back in the days before page inflation.) The second thing I noticed, as I happened to be pulling it out of the envelope upside down, was that someone other than the Science Fiction Book Club had purchased the ad on the back cover! Back when I was reading the digests regularly, SFBC pretty much had a lock on the back cover and inside back cover of any SF magazines, so this was a huge shock for me. Finally, I turned it over and looked at the front. The front cover art (by Mauricio Manzieri) is pretty awesome. It's got kind of a retro feel - not a steampunk sort of retro, but a 1970s-80s sort of retro. If I had seen this artwork on a book at any point in my life, I would have immediately known the book was SF, and I probably would have bought it. Late last night, I started to actually read it. Normally, I'm someone who reads magazines strictly in order, from front to back. I generally even skip the table of contents, so that I'm surprised by whatever comes up next. But when I was flipping through the issue, my eye was caught by "End of the World Community College" by Sandra McDonald and I started reading that, out of order. After about a page, I was so caught up by the humor it that I convinced my wife to let me read it aloud to her. While I continued to find the story amusing, she found it depressing and sad. So apparently I've got a much darker sense of humor than her - either that or story's not funny at all and I'm just a horrible person. At any rate, I still recommend the story. After that, I checked out the classifieds (there's usually something interesting in there; this issue it's an Easter egg for "End of the World Community College") and Paul Di Filippo's "Curiosities" column. This morning I got up, made a pot of coffee, and started in to read the rest of the magazine. The first story in this issue was "Palm Strike's Last Case" by Charlie Jane Anders. I admit I was kind of hesitant about starting this one. Not because of anything in particular about the story, but because I'm used to starting a magazine with an editor's column, or at least a short story. To start out with a novelette (or "novelet" as this issue's of contents spells it) seems to be demanding I pay a bit much attention to one particularly story right from the start. But I dove in, and I don't regret it. The story moves so quickly that I didn't really notice its length. I don't want to say too much about the story itself, as there's a large mystery component to it, but I think I can say without giving too much away that fans of SF or superheroes will love this one. And that's all I've read so far. More posts to come once I've read more. DISCLOSURE: I was given a copy of this issue by C.C. Finlay, the guest editor, in exchange for agreeing to blog about it.