The fiction in the July issue of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction does not reach the heights of the last issue, but is of a more consistent level. In addition, there are the usual departments -- book reviews, from Charles de Lint, and James Sallis, film reviews from Kathy Maio, and the usual quirky columns from Paul di Filippo and this month's archeologist of an obsure text in 'Curiosities,' F. Gwynplaine MacIntyre.
Matthew Hughes
"Fullbrim's Finding" by Matthew Hughes opens the fiction, with a re-appearance of an F&SF favourite -- Henghis Hapthorne is the foremost discrimator of Old Earth.
For those unfamiliar with his work, Hughes is clearly influenced by Jack Vance: Hughes' Old Earth is in it's penultimate age, as science is just giving way to the magic of Vance's Dying Earth; both writers give their characters dazzingly baroque names, and both share a wry sense of humour. Nonetheless, Hughes with such verve that he appeared on this year's Nebula ballot with a Hapthorne story. This one, concerning the disappearance of a man a little too interested in the nature of reality, is only a minor piece, but is still entertaining.
Lisa Goldstein
Lisa Goldstein's "Reader's Guide" is made up of crypto-story notes, a technique which so distances the reader, it's hard to be sure whether the lurch in point of view from second to first person -and back again-- is a good or bad thing.
The cover story "The Roberts" by Michael Blumlein is, unsurprisingly, the pick of the stories. It charts the life of Robert Fairchild, an architect who loses an eye in an accident. Robert's chief problem is one that he shares with many men; he loves his work so much that successive women in his life feel neglected. To remedy this, Blumlein has a genetic engineer design him the perfect woman, whose qualities must be that she be able to not have her feelings hurt by him. Of course, as Blumlein points out, the very act of not being hurt means that she may have evolve strategies of coping that hurt him back. The emotions roller-coaster in this complex, detailed examination of one man's character.
Scott Dalrymple's "Enfant Terrible" is an impressive first sale about gifted children, and one of the oldest SF tropes of them all, linked in a novel. To say any more about it would be to spoil the plot, which would be unfair on the author.
Albert Cowdrey
Albert Cowdrey is another F&SF regular who has been building a career since gaining wider attention in the late 1990s with a range of versatile, genre-spanning stories. "Poison Victory" is an alternate universe story with an unusual setting. The story's main difficulty is in persuading the reader that simply winning Stalingrad would have given the Germans victory, but that aside, it's a convincing and well-written story, and oddly poignant, considering it's journal narrative.
James L. Cambias' "The Dinosaur Train" rounds off the issue with another alternate reality story, this time revisiting the 'what-if-the-dinosaurs-had-survived-on-an-isolated-island' theme. To safeguard it's environment , the UN has quarantined the island. With no further supplies of dinosaurs, Sullivan's Dinosaur Train exists on borrowed time, with an owner who refuses to face reality. The generation clash between Sean Sullivan and his grandfather is at the core of the story.
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