Fantasy & Science Fiction 60th Anniversary Issue
The October-November 2009 Issue of F&SF from Spilogale Inc
Sep 8, 2009
The October / November issue sees The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction celebrate its 60th birthday. The magazine is only the fourth to reach the milestone and is in much better shape than Amazing and Weird Tales were at their anniversaries -- only Analog could be said to have been healthier at such a stage in its history.
Elizabeth Hand
Editor Gordon van Gelder opens with multiple Nebula winner Elizabeth Hand's 'The Far Shore.' A ballet teacher laid off after decades of teaching returns to his native Maine to act as a winter house-sitter for his friends' summer camp. Lake Tuonela is shrouded in mist and mystery, and one November night Philip finds a boy freezing in the woods, clearly lost and in distress. It's no surprise that the boy is not all that he seems, and Hand weaves a haunting, magical story.
Albert E. Cowdrey's 'Bandits of the Trace' is another of his Southern stories, this time a tale within a tale. It's interesting for the light it sheds on nineteenth-century Mississippi, but the tale of a river bandit, his hellish bride and their terrified slave is merely competent, and not one of Cowdrey's best.
Robert Silverberg
Returning after an absence of a decade is one of SF's Grand Masters. Robert Silverberg writes too little nowadays, but when he does it's always worth reading. Like much of his recent fiction, 'The Way They Wove the Spells in Sippulgar' is set on Majipoor, a vast planet that allows almost him unlimited scope. In this case a man intent on finding out what happened to his brother-in-law arrives in a tropical city hosting a demon-worshipping cult, headed by a charismatic priest.
Carol Emshwiller's 'Logicist' shares a sense with many of her other stories of a world almost familiar, but not quite ours. This time a teacher taking his class to watch a battle is chased by over-enthusiastic combatents into enemy territory where he meets and falls in love with a local woman.
Geoff Ryman's 'Blocked' returns him to his trademark future Cambodia, this time where humanity is fleeing a ruined Earth about to be invaded by aliens. It's a world already scarred by trying to get there, to dwarf stars and planets of methane ice. Arizona disappeared in an annihilation as matter and antimatter finally met, trying to build an engine. Massive junk still orbits half-assembled, and will one day fall. Even as he writes of interstellar travel, Ryman sticks to his Mundane manifesto, by showing us the cost of pursuing it.
Lucius Shepherd
Lucius Shepherd's marvellous novella 'Halloween' is set in the eponymous small town at the foot of a chasm almost hidden from the world above. It's full of memorable characters, mutants and cats. Shepherd is renowned for his loser-protagonists, most of whom he draws with compassion, but rarely has he depicted any as warmly as he does Clyde Ormoloo and the Willow Wan -- there is a rare sense of hope at story's end, for all the damage done, and it's one of Shepherd's best stories.
Robert Reed's 'Mermaid,' about a crotchety old man and his mysterious female guest is told through sly allusion rather than overt statement, adding to the sense of mystery, but also to the frustration for the reader who likes a plain tale well-told, but it's still one of his better efforts.
Joe Haldeman
'Never Blood Enough' by Joe Haldeman is set on a remote colony planet whose ecology has developed a cornucopia of predators, and when a woman's body is found almost completely exsanguinated, the local cop is unsure whether the killer has two legs - or many more. 'Never Blood Enough' is a creepy, chilling slow-burner that mixes horror, SF and mystery. One of the single best stories of the year.
Ron Goulart shares memories of early editor Tony Boucher, and 'I Waltzed With a Zombie,' could have graced the pages of Unknown in the 1940s sharing the contents list with Boucher. When hack-screenwriter Hix learns that a veteran actor has died but has been brought back to life, he smells money. Wickedly funny.
M. Rickert takes the reader on 'The President’s Book Tour,' weaving a surreal spell as she offers an oblique commentary on our world. Apocalyptic post-war America is filled with mutant children who the President marries, with terrible consequences. Highly recommended.
Ron Partridge contributes the seventy-first 'Feghoot,' and ends the 250-word vignette with the obligatory terrible pun.
Charles Oberndorf's novelette 'Another Life,' echoes Haldeman's The Forever War with its war veterans that can be revived if their service warrants it, or they can pay for it. The emotional consequences for their loved ones provide the core of the story. Highly recommended.
Kate Wilhelm
In Kate Wilhelm's 'Shadows on the Wall of the Cave' a family reunion takes a young woman and her cousin back to the cave where their seven-year-old cousin vanished seventeen years earlier. It's minor by Wilhelm;'s standards, but still ends the magazine on a high.
 |
