FSF, October-November 2006

by Spilogale, Inc

  * * *

  Spilogale, Inc.

  www.fsfmag.com

  Copyright ©2006 by Spilogale, Inc.

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  NOTICE: This work is copyrighted. It is licensed only for use by the original purchaser. Making copies of this work or distributing it to any unauthorized person by any means, including without limit email, floppy disk, file transfer, paper print out, or any other method constitutes a violation of International copyright law and subjects the violator to severe fines or imprisonment.

  * * *

  THE MAGAZINE OF

  FANTASY & SCIENCE FICTION

  October/November * 58th Year of Publication

  * * * *

  NOVELLAS

  ABANDON THE RUINS by Charles Coleman Finlay

  NOVELETS

  EL REGALO by Peter S. Beagle

  POP SQUAD by Paolo Bacigalupi

  POL POT'S BEAUTIFUL DAUGHTER (FANTASY) by Geoff Ryman

  SHORT STORIES

  REVELATION by Albert E. Cowdrey

  KILLERS by Carol Emshwiller

  ...WITH BY GOOD INTENTIONS by Carrie Richerson

  DEPARTMENTS

  EDITORIAL by Gordon Van Gelder

  BOOKS TO LOOK FOR by Charles de Lint

  BOOKS by Elizabeth Hand

  FILMS: THE GLOBALIZATION OF LEAPING KICKS by Kathi Maio

  SCIENCE: HAPPY BIRTHDAY BEN FRANKLIN by Paul Doherty and Pat Murphy

  COMING ATTRACTIONS

  COMPETITION #72

  CURIOSITIES by Paul Di Filippo

  CARTOONS: Arthur Masear, J.P. Rini, Tom Cheney

  COVER: “WHITE GODDESS” BY MAX BERTOLINI

  GORDON VAN GELDER, Publisher/Editor

  BARBARA J. NORTON, Assistant Publisher

  ROBIN O'CONNOR, Assistant Editor

  KEITH KAHLA, Assistant Publisher

  HARLAN ELLISON, Film Editor

  JOHN J. ADAMS, Assistant Editor

  CAROL PINCHEFSKY, Contests Editor

  JOHN M. CAPPELLO, Newsstand Circulation

  The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction (ISSN 1095-8258), Volume 111, No. 4 & 5, Whole No. 655, October/November 2006. Published monthly except for a combined October/November issue by Spilogale, Inc. at $3.99 per copy. Annual subscription $44.89; $54.89 outside of the U.S. Postmaster: send form 3579 to Fantasy & Science Fiction, PO Box 3447, Hoboken, NJ 07030. Publication office, PO Box 3447, Hoboken, NJ 07030. Periodical postage paid at Hoboken, NJ 07030, and at additional mailing offices. Printed in U.S.A. Copyright © 2006 by Spilogale, Inc. All rights reserved.

  Distributed by Curtis Circulation Co., 730 River Rd. New Milford, NJ 07646

  GENERAL AND EDITORIAL OFFICE: PO BOX 3447, HOBOKEN, NJ 07030

  www.fsfmag.com

  Editorial by Gordon Van Gelder

  The TV show Star Trek is celebrating its fortieth anniversary this year, and since it made its debut in the world at large on the same day I did, I thought I'd use the occasion as an excuse to reflect on a few of the things I've learned from running F&SF.

  1) Don't name a company after a genus of skunk unless you want people to ask why.

  It's a tribute to my father, whose doctoral dissertation was a taxonomic revision of the genus spilogale. Now you know.

  2) Editing is child's play.

  Really. I became a father in March and Zoe enjoys sitting in the submissions pile. Sometimes she drools on a manuscript and those get published. The ones she spits up on, well...

  3) Be sure to include all the punctuation when you publish an issue.

  People still marvel at copies of the April 2001 issue that were printed without any periods. I remain grateful to the person who dubbed us “the unperiodical."

  4) Even Jove nods. But readers don't.

  Never ever think you can put one over on the readers.

  5) Give good value for the money.

  Our cover price goes up with the next issue. The guy wearing the publisher's hat around here (that would be me) was sweating over it until someone took me by the hand and showed me what paperbacks and other magazines are selling for now.

  6) Almost no one reads the classified ads.

  Either that, or the fake ads we've been inserting for the last two years aren't as funny as I think they are.

  7) You're never as funny as you think you are.

  I learned that from a classified ad.

  8) Make sure you have something to appear on every page of every issue.

  Yeah, this one sounds obvious, but it still needs to be said often. And it leads to the next one:

  9) Hire well.

  Without my sharp-eyed, hard working colleagues, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction would probably deserve a new name: Shambles.

  10) The world changes fast.

  Three months ago, I tried an experiment in the blogsphere and gave away copies of F&SF to the first fifty people who offered to blog about the issue. Within minutes, the news of the promotion was all over the internet. Within hours, the copies were claimed. And within two weeks, it seemed like the experiment was forgotten.

  11) ... the more they stay the same.

  After editing this magazine for almost ten years (can you believe it?), I go back occasionally and reread issues from the ‘50s and ‘60s. I hope we're still on the same basic track we set out on in 1949.

  12) The work remains.

  Okay, I knew this one before I started running F&SF. But it was driven home again by the recent deaths of John Morressy and Arthur Porges. There are some issues I can't look at without thinking of departed friends like Ron Walotsky and Judy Merril. I like to think that contributors who are no longer with us still help determine the direction the magazine takes.

  13) This business is fun.

  Sure, there's a lot of hard work involved. But whether it's reading a new story, talking with a subscriber, or getting into a particularly spirited discussion on our message board, I'm reminded of this little lesson every day.

  Revelation by Albert E. Cowdrey

  Despite having had to spend several post-Katrina months in a rented home, Albert Cowdrey hasn't let the hurricane affect his writing output. His new story is a sharp one that's liable to have special appeal to anyone who ever took a course in the art of writing fiction. Your editor notes that when this story arrived in our offices, it bore a cryptic note at the end: “A-. Not incoherent enough. Addle that yolk more."

  Gorshin joined Drea at his usual table in the Federal City Wine Cellar, inhaled a dark red half inch of Mondo Rosso Cabernet from a Wal-Mart goblet, and began to denounce his patients.

  "Phil, you don't know what it's like, having to listen to a bunch of goddamn nuts all day."

  He had a bass-drum voice and a build to match. His drinking buddy was thin, waspish, and bitter as only an overage campus radical could be.

  "I have to read the rubbish my students write,” protested Drea, “and I get paid roughly ten percent of what you make."

  Gorshin paid no attention. When soliloquizing he was as unstoppable as Hamlet.

  "Even my favorite screwball is getting to be a pain in the butt. I mean, here I am, one of a tiny shrinking band of Freudians—no pun intended—encircled by the howling Indians of drug therapy. So I finally get the perfect patient, intelligent, good rapport, with a truly original paranoid delusional system and a huge bank account, but I can't seem to break through to him."

  "What's original about paranoia?” Drea demanded. “All the paranoids I've ever known have been dreadful bores. They all think Monsanto's poisoning the water supply, or there's a Jewish plot to rule the galaxy, or the KGB's trying to control their brains by beaming radio broadcasts to the fillings in their teeth, or—"

  "My patient thinks,” said Gor
shin slowly, “that the Earth is an egg."

  * * * *

  That got Drea's attention. “The Earth is an egg?"

  Involuntarily he raised his eyes and looked over the hump of Gorshin's left shoulder. At the opposite end of the Cellar a Sony HD was broadcasting the evening news to boozers at the bar. A picture sent back by the Mars Orbiter stared from the screen like an inflamed eye. Okay, thought Drea, finding a grain of logic in the fantasy, planets are slightly ovate—and come to think of it, ovate means egg-shaped—

  "Yes, an egg,” Gorshin rumbled on. “It was laid gazillions of years ago by a huge cosmic beast that my patient calls the Mother Dragon."

  "Look, if a Freudian can't make something out of that, you ought to take down your shingle."

  "All the inner planets are eggs,” he continued, flattening Drea's interjection like a Hummer ironing out a motorbike. “That's why they're so different from the outer planets. Only one's hatched so far—that's where the Asteroid Belt is today. He thinks Mercury and Venus probably won't hatch at all, because they're too close to the sun and the embryo dragons—he calls them ‘dragonets'—have gotten cooked inside their shells. But the Earth is sort of like the porridge in the Goldilocks story that wasn't too hot and wasn't too cold: it was just right."

  "So if we're just right, why haven't we hatched yet?"

  "That's why he's got acute anxiety symptoms. He thinks we're just about to. He says global warming is a sign. He says it's not caused by greenhouse gases at all, it's caused by the friction of our dragonet moving around inside its shell, preparing to bust out. Every time my patient hears about another earthquake or tsunami he thinks the dragonet's tapping the Earth's crust with its egg tooth."

  "What's an egg tooth?"

  "It's a bump that young crocs get on the ends of their noses to help them break out of their shells. I tell you, Phil, I love this guy. His delusional system is such a welcome break from the usual run of crap I have to listen to, it's almost a shame to cure him. But that's my job, and he really wants help, he wants to be freed from his crippling fear that the Earth will disintegrate when the dragonet breaks out at last. He's paying me a ton of money to help him shake it, and I feel like I'm failing in my duty, which, because of my anal-retentive upbringing, is a real issue with me."

  "You drink enough red wine,” Drea assured him, “and you won't be any kind of retentive, believe me."

  * * * *

  A week had passed and the conversation at the Cellar had been forgotten when Drea greeted the first session of the new semester's seminar in Creative Writing.

  In the English department of Aaron Burr University (Silver Spring Campus) he was known as Dr. Dread, a reputation he treasured because it kept his classes from becoming overcrowded. His current crop numbered nine, and he gazed at them with distaste.

  Most were as grungy as Serbian Army conscripts. But not quite all. One black guy displayed precise cornrows, a sculpted goatee, and little pale blue expensive-looking shades; he had a touch of the lean dark Malcolm X look, as if he'd started life as an AK-47. Farther down the scarred seminar table sat a white guy looking neat and earnest as a Mormon stockbroker. A Brooks Brothers label was almost visible through the nubby cloth of his conservative jacket, and his well-scrubbed face shone limpidly fair, like an acolyte of some suburban preacher.

  Briefly Drea fantasized having the two of them dipped in bronze and displayed in a campus chapel dedicated to the great god Diversity. Their names fit them neatly: when Drea, calling the meager roll, reached U. Pierson Clyde, the stockbroker made a strangled sound that might have been “here.” When he reached Inshallah Jones, the AK-47 didn't answer at all—just raised one long beige hand about three inches off the tabletop and let it drop soundlessly back.

  The students had been instructed to bring a sample of their work to the first class, and Drea watched gloomily as a growing heap of paper slid toward him along the table like a gathering wave. Most of the manuscripts were fat as American children in training for a diabetic future, and—Drea was willing to bet—florid with the acne of adolescent prose.

  But U. Pierson Clyde, bless him, contributed a plastic-jacketed manuscript that was thin to the point of bulimia, while Inshallah Jones tossed down a tubular scroll secured by a rubber band. Drea conceived a faint hope that good things might come in small packages.

  Well, he'd find out soon enough. Right now it was time to put the class through the get-acquainted ritual. One by one, they rose to mumble their names and backgrounds and longings for World Peace, while he, like an experienced teacher, dozed.

  He woke twice. The first time when Jones revealed that he'd grown up in the Anacostia Project, which was truly impressive; in that neighborhood, a kid who contracted literacy was marked for almost certain death. Drea woke the second time when U. Pierson Clyde, his voice trembling yet under tense control, revealed that he'd joined the class at the urging of his shrink.

  "Dr. Gorshin said that if I wrote things out, I might find it easier to objectify my fantasies and see them for what they are,” U said.

  This confession drew only bored glances from the other students, most of whom had been seeing therapists since they wore Huggies. But it enraged Drea.

  That goddamn witch doctor, he thought, his small bloodshot eyes getting smaller and redder yet. He's getting paid five hundred bucks an hour for curing this nut, and now he wants me to do his job for him! Resentment rising inside him like acid reflux, he resolved to hit U's work with comments so scathing that he'd drop the course and join the queue at the lobotomy counter in Gorshin's clinic.

  Fifteen minutes later, the class dismissed, Drea entered his musty office with its thrift-store furnishings, its odor of dead pipes that lingered though he hadn't smoked for a decade, its thousand or so dust-veiled volumes of literature and criticism and other rubbish he'd studied for his Ph.D. in 1971, and never opened since.

  He sat down in a semi-defunct swivel chair, prepared to do execution, flicked back the neat plastic cover of U's work and gazed with remorseless eye at the title, “Revelation.” The byline gave the author's full name—Uriel Pierson Clyde—and unexpectedly his rage began to abate.

  A passionate liberal reformer in his youth, Drea had almost exhausted his lifetime supply of empathy before the age of forty. Yet a few tiny drops lingered in the dry chambers of his heart: racism still made him fume, and he still pitied people who had to go through the hell of childhood additionally burdened with an oddball name. The reason was his own: Philbert. His namesake, shrewd Aunt Philberta who'd founded a string of weight-control salons that successfully thinned bank accounts, was supposed to (but didn't) leave him a bunch of money. All she'd left him was the joy of being known as Filbert the Nut until he was old enough to vote.

  Now, gazing at Uriel's paper, he tried to imagine what life must have been like for a kid who had to fight his way through school being addressed as Urinal Pee. Was this the root of the lad's psychiatric problems?

  His tide of bile receding, Drea began to read “Revelation,” now rather hoping that he would not have to flay its author alive.

  * * * *

  The cosmic egg has an addled yolk—Henry Miller, read the epigraph. Drea liked that; he'd often thought the same thing.

  Alas, the story itself was a mishmash. The hero, Jamie Cassandra, was a Poor Little Rich Boy with a menu of all the usual symptoms—sexual confusion, obscure phobias, chemical dependency—the sort of baffled youth without whom Gorshin wouldn't own his condo at Cozumel.

  At unpredictable moments, however, Jamie morphed into an unrecognized prophet, trying to warn the human race about a danger only he could see: the Earth was going to hatch. After some pointless plot complications (inconclusive fondling by an elderly male relative, quarrels with a ditzy wife he'd married at seventeen to convince himself he wasn't gay) Jamie came to realize that warning the world was pointless. He couldn't save it, and it couldn't save itself. On that note the story didn't exactly end—it petered out.

  Tho
ugh tempted to live up to his Dr. Dread image by scrawling across U's paper This is the most incoherent farrago of rubbish I have encountered during decades of scanning undergraduate drivel, Drea put “Revelation” aside for mature consideration. And not only because of U's presumably miserable childhood. Despite its gross deficiencies, there was something about this battered torso of a tale. Some quality of ... authentic ... desperation? Something, anyway, that made it stick.

  Among Drea's most deeply guarded secrets was the fact that he still hoped, sometime before he died, to find and nurture a real talent. U seemed a most unlikely candidate, but still he wanted to think “Revelation” over, and meanwhile went on to the other papers.

  In general they covered a narrow range from babbling fluency to utter incoherence. Inshallah's was, as he'd hoped, an exception. The man actually could spell, though where he'd learned was a mystery to Drea, who like most residents of Montgomery County believed firmly that District of Columbia public schools taught only two things well, Shooting and Shooting Up.

  Still more improbably, his student had been reading Kipling, from whom he filched his title, “The City of the Dreadful Night.” Drea was dazzled by what followed. Inshallah's account of one stifling August night under the staring vapor lamps in the concrete-and-sooty-brick maze of the Anacostia Project was like listening to what rap might be if it lacked rhyme and possessed a soul. No wonder the man resembled an assault rifle; that was how he used language. Drea was able to write at the end of the paper the rarest of all professorial comments—"With minor changes, this ought to be publishable."

  Finally, as the shadows of evening lengthened over Silver Spring—a traffic-throttled Maryland burb conspicuous for its lack of either silver or springs—he got back to Uriel, or U as he'd begun to think of him. The basic problem, he concluded, was that U was mixing up his story with his analysis, thus creating a sort of chimera that was false as a confession and incoherent as a tale.

  On the last page of “Revelation” Drea wrote, “Forget Jamie's damn sex problems and tell me why a rather banal young man with limited intelligence and an unlimited trust fund came to believe in the existence of a cosmic dragon."