F & SF 59th Anniversary Issue
The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction October & November 2008
Sep 13, 2008
The October/November double issue sees Fantasy & Science Fiction enter its 60th Year with book reviews from Charles de Lint and Michelle West, humour from Paul di Filippo, films reviewed by Lucius Shepherd and a science column from Paul Doherty and Pat Murphy.
Short Stories
Albert E. Cowdrey's "Inside Story" is the latest of a series about a pair of New Orleans detectives that's included a World Fantasy Award winner. Wickedly funny, there's an underlying seriousness about the treatment of displaced families still living in FEMA trailers.
Steven Utley's "Sleepless Years" examines a man resurrected in the future as an experimental subject. One of the author's rare stories that isn't a Silurian Tale.
"Days of Wonder" by Geoff Ryman is another Mundane SF story, but belying the idea that there's anything mundane about Mundane. Humanity has left for the stars, seeding its knowledge piecemeal among the animal kingdom: But there are those who would reclaim that knowledge. Literally wonderful.
Stephen King
Stephen King's "The New York Times At Special Bargain Rates" revisits well trodden ground with a story of a widow's call from her dead husband, but King avoids cliche and it's a finely-written piece strengthened by its brevity.
Scott Bradfield shows the reader what happens when "Dazzle Joins the Screenwriter’s Guild." It's an odd story that may appeal to lovers of the quirky.
Robert Reed takes the reader to the sub-genre about SF writers in "The Visionaries," with unusual results, as the reader would expect of this most regular contributor. It's pleasantly warm as well, for all the superficial chilliness of Reed's narrator..
"Going Back in Time" by Laurel Winter examines quantum physics and temporal loops, all in a few hundred words.
Terry Bisson's "Private Eye" is another of his trademark looks at future sex -- no other writer does it quite as well, or quite as frequently. In this case, a professional voyeur picks up a girl in a bar and woos her in a delightfully old-fashioned way.
The charm continues with "Whoever" by Carol Emshwiller tells of a mystery woman who awakes in a doorway with no idea of who she is, or where (or when) she's come from.
The magazine darkens considerably with "Evidence of Love in a Case of Abandonment: One Daughter’s Personal Account" by M. Rickert. In a near-future America, women who have had abortions are publicly executed. Their children are stigmatized, but things are worse for the daughters of the women who abandon them.
Tim Sullivan's "Planetesimal Dawn" starts with a pair of astronauts racing to escape an imminent sunrise on an exposed asteroid that will fry them; so far so Arthur C. Clarke. When one of them falls into a crater, the story changes direction and becomes a very different --and much better-- piece of fiction
Michael Swanwick's "The Scarecrow’s Boy" is a fine piece of retro-styled SF, complete with housebots and aircars, but given a contemporary emotional and political feel. When the eponymous boy is found wandering a corn field near the Canadian border, it starts a journey of self-awakening for the bot.
With the Bisson and Ryman, this is one of the best stories in a very, very good issue. F&SF is no less serious in its intent than Asimovs, but the stories have a deftness of touch missing in the latter.
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