F&SF December 2008 Reviewed

The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, # 678 From Spirogale Inc

Oct 30, 2008 Colin Harvey

Fiction from Eugene Mirabelli, John Langan, regulars Robert Reed and Albert E Cowdrey, a reprint of a 1973 story from Edgar Allen Poe award winner Warner Law, and reviews

Fantasy & Science Fiction is one of the most successful genre SF magazines, and achieves remarkably consistent levels of quality. If the magazine ever dips, it's usually just after the Anniversary Double Issue. In the magazine's defence, however, it's also consistently featured many subsequent award winners in its December issue, and reviews by Lucius Shepherd, humour from Paul di Filippo and cover art by such as Bob Eggleton are always plus points.

So the reader should approach the December issue with an open mind, and remember that while reviewers try to be balanced, they too have likes and dislikes.

Wayne Wightman's 'A Foreign Country' features a presidential race contested by two dullards and a Ross Perot-type third candidate. Unexpectedly the third candidate wins, and both the country and the narrator's problems really begin. Wightman is undoubtedly a fine writer, but the story is essentially smoke and mirrors, substituting legerdemain for real characterization and plot as Wightman pulls narrative rabbits out of hats, leaving some readers feeling cheated.

Eugene Mirabelli

Much better is 'Falling Angel' by Eugene Mirabelli, which takes the reader back to a heat wave-stricken 1967. Mirabelli is better known in the words of the editors, "for his literary stories about the history of science," including the Nebula award nominated 'The Woman in Schrodinger's Wave Equations,' than for blending a revisionist take on Milton's Paradise Lost with the Summer of Love. Yet this 3000-word short story works surprisingly well, refusing to bow to either saccharine or to traditional fallen angel tropes.

Robert Reed

Robert Reed's 'Leave' ducks and weaves through the lives of a pair of anti-war protestors who become --and stay-- friends. The introduction of aliens is so unexpected that it threatens to jolt the reader out of the narrative, but Reed just about keeps his story on its tracks. The end, though surprising seems inevitable with hindsight. It's one of Reed's better stories, but his omnipresence is a gamble - risking losing those readers who don't like his fiction.

'The Alarming Letters from Scarsdale' by Edgar Allen Poe-award winner Warner Law sees F&SF return to one of its most venerable traditions -- that of reprinting stories that may have been missed by most readers; the magazine was over five years old before it published its first 'All-New' copy. This time non-genre stories have been replaced with older ones. Law's enchanting story about a lonely writer adopted by a stray dog and its unexpected consequences comes from the April 1973 issue, but wouldn't have seemed out of place in The Saturday Evening Post of a few years earlier. It's a gem with an unexpected twist, and is easily the best story in the issue.

Albert E. Cowdrey

Albert E. Cowdrey's 'The Sceptical Spirit' is another of Cowdrey's trademark Southern-set fantasies, this one in Mississippi rather than his usual New Orleans. It's readable enough, but the narrator expends considerable effort to reach a conclusion that's insufficiently foreshadowed, leaving an ending that feels as pinned on as Eeyore's tail.

John Langan

'How The Day Runs Down' by John Langan is the last and longest story in the issue, and was originally intended in an anthology edited by assistant editor John Joseph Adams. It's about zombies, a sadly over-used sub-genre. With that clear statement of the reviewer's dislikes, it will be obvious that Langan's story needs to be exceptional to overcome prejudice, and in terms of setting (a theatre that's actually the entranceway to the afterlife) it almost succeeds. But Langan's narrative ignores Damon Knight's advice to remove hesitations and repetitions, and the reader must endure sometimes rambling and repetitious discourses that rob the story of momentum at crucial moments, eliciting only a 'who cares?' shrug.

It's a limp and rather sad end to what's been a good year. Perhaps 2009 will be better.

The copyright of the article F&SF December 2008 Reviewed in Sci-Fi/Fantasy Fiction is owned by Colin Harvey. Permission to republish F&SF December 2008 Reviewed in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.

'The Moment' by Bob Eggleton