Nothing else in July/August rises to quite this level of quality, although there is some other good stuff. New writer Betsy James gives us an unusual Afterlife fantasy in “Paradise and Trout,” about a young boy who finds that he loves the material world around him so much, even after death, that he’s reluctant to leave it for the austere afterlife of his ancestors, and Matthew Hughes gives us another entertaining Vancian swords & sorcery adventure in “The Curse of the Myrmelon,” set in the world of Raffalon the Thief, although Raffalon himself plays only a supporting role in this one.
The rest of the stories in the issue are science fiction, and, as is usually the case in F&SF, are somewhat weaker than the fantasy stories. The best of them is probably Richard Chwedyk’s “Dixon’s Road,” about an old lover who returns to visit the home of a world-famous poet, now turned into a museum/shrine, long after he left her and long after her death—the emotional content here is expertly handled, but the problem is that it could easily have been told as a mainstream story with only a very few changes, as the fantastic element, that the lover had been away on a long voyage through space, is hardly necessary to produce the same scenario. Chwedyk also makes the mistake of quoting some of the poetry of the universally respected, world-famous poet, usually not a good idea unless the author himself happens to be a world-class poet, which Chwedyk is not. Oliver Buckram’s “The Quintessence of Dust” reminds me strongly of some of the stories that Brian W. Aldiss used to write back in the early ‘60s, about futures where humans have died off but their robot servants continue on, assuming the roles of their absent masters. Gregor Hartmann’s “Into the Fiery Planet” is a satirical look, reminiscent in some ways of some of the stuff Frederik Pohl and C.M. Kornbluth used to write, about a PR man whose job it is to come up with a reason to convince galactic bureaucrats not to abandon the colony on the unpleasant volcanic hellhole of a world that he lives on. James Patrick Kelly’s “Oneness: A Triptych” is rather minor Kelly, a clever finger exercise about the bizarre mating customs of the galaxy, more ingenious than involving. Naomi Kritzer’s “The Silicon Curtain: A Seastead Story” is another installment in her long-running de facto novel serialization. Van Aaron Hughes’s “The Body Pirate” sets up an extremely unlikely system where people can separate their souls into the bodies of birds, and also into multiple human bodies; the text here is meant to be fragmented, but in the issue I have, sloppy proofreading seems to have scrambled some sections of text unintentionally, which didn’t make it any easier to read.
It is, of course, far too early to begin seriously evaluating C.C. Finlay’s tenure as F&SF editor. Magazines have big inventories, which makes it impossible to tell which stories were bought by Finlay and which were bought by former editor Gordon Van Gelder. About all that can be said is that the number of SF stories per issue has gone up in the issues that Finlay has edited—but that their quality has remained uneven, with the fantasy stories in the issue usually stronger than the SF stories. Lack of strong science fiction has been a weakness of F&SF’s for several years now, and I hope that Finlay can turn this around down the line.
The August Asimov’s has some good stories in it, although most of them are rather melancholy—in fact, the best word to describe the overall mood of the stories in this issue would probably be “regret.” Strongest story here is probably Paul McAuley’s “Wild Honey,” set in a future America that has undergone a partial apocalypse of some kind, probably driven by climate change, which has reduced civilization to small-town enclaves menaced by Mad Max-like outlaw gangs. One old woman struggles to keep technology alive with the aid of genetically manipulated hives of bees, but the tide is against her; the bee technology here is fascinating, and totally plausible (McAuley was a biologist before he became a writer, after all). The old woman regrets the state that society has fallen to, but not her own life choices; the young woman she attempts to adopt as her apprentice doesn’t know enough yet to regret her decisions, but will probably come to regret them somewhere down the line. Also good, and probably the least melancholy story in the issue, is Karl Bunker’s “Caisson,” for the most part a very well-detailed and accurate historical about a penniless immigrant struggling to cope with the dangers of a job building the Brooklyn Bridge, in a caisson deep under the East River. There is ultimately a fantastic element here, although it comes close to being a subliminal one; the fantastic element is never shown on the page, but it’s left to the reader to figure out what it must be from clues embedded in the text. “Caisson” is the only story in the issue where the characters are left happier and better-off by the end of the story than they were at the beginning, although there is a strong element of regret for one character’s loss of a child that motivates his actions throughout. Also engrossing, although drenched with regret for lost opportunities and wasted lives from beginning to end, is Nick Wolven’s “No Placeholder For You, My Love,” about two people meeting, then losing each other, then finding each other again, then struggling against the odds to hold on to each other while trapped in an illusionary world (either afterlife or Virtual Reality surround, or perhaps a little of both; it’s left a bit in the air) of constant lavish parties and celebrations of all sorts, parties that they have both grown weary of long before. Old-timers like me may be reminded of an old movie called Between Two Worlds, although, unlike in the movie, there’s no last-minute reprieve to rescue the protagonists from their fate.
Kristine Kathryn Rusch’s “The First Step” is also awash in regret, the protagonist’s regret over missed chances and neglected moments of his life driving him to time-travel not to change things, but just to catch a glimpse of what he’s missed. There’s also plenty to regret in Will McIntosh’s novella “A Thousand Nights Till Morning,” which starts out with its protagonists in such desperate straits, stranded in a tiny Mars colony after an alien race has conquered Earth and destroyed human civilization, that their only viable option is to crash an asteroid into Earth (how they do this is never quite explained) and kill off almost all life there, including most of the aliens. The plausibility of the science strikes me as dubious in several places here (such as building a new spaceship out of scraps found in the ruins of Chicago after their original one is destroyed during a rescue mission to Earth), but it’s fast-paced and exciting, and carries the interesting twist that the humans must somehow compel one of the surviving aliens to help them in order to save the human race from extinction; the protagonist is also unusual for this sort of story, being so anxious and full of fears and doubts of his own worth that he’s paralyzed with indecision most of the time and tends to shit his pants at times of high stress, hardly the usual hero of a Military SF story. Regret and a hopeless longing for things to be different and better than they are also subsumes Kelly Robson’s “Two-Year Man,” which goes beyond melancholy to downright sad.
Another candidate for the title of Best Collection of the Year, in a year that’s turning out to be a very strong one for short-story collections, is The Best of Nancy Kress, a huge (almost 600 page) volume that’s pricey at $45.00, but worth it for the extensive amount of really first-class fiction you get here, including several Nebula and Hugo Award winners. Almost all of the stories here are core science fiction, and much of it rigorous Hard Science Fiction at that, with the emphasis on the impact of biological science on human society—although the strongest element of any Kress story is the complexity and vividness of the characterization. Just about everything here is first-rate, but if I had to pick favorites, I’d say that the best stories include “Dancing on Air,” “Pathways,” “The Flowers of Aulit Prison,” and “Margin of Error.” Kress does some of her best work at novella length, and even in a book of this length there’s not room to include all the good novellas she’s written, but the collection does contain some of her best ones, including “And Wild For to Hold,” “Trinity,” “Shiva in Shadow,” and, perhaps her most famous story, “Beggars in Spain.”
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Lightspeed, March.
Lightsp
eed, April.
Lightspeed, May.
Lightspeed, June.
Clarkesworld 102, March.
Clarkesworld 103, April.
Clarkesworld 104, May.
Clarkesworld 105, June.
The online magazine Lightspeed has had a mixed year so far, with a number of entertaining stories, but, with only a couple of possible exceptions, nothing really extraordinary either.
The strongest story in the March Lightspeed is probably “Hot Rods,” by Cat Sparks, set in a desolate future Australia, ravaged by climate change, in a drought-stricken village where there’s nothing to do but try to squeak by somehow, race hot rods aimlessly on the salt flats, and pray hopelessly for rain. The plot follows a young woman whose lover has, out of desperation, gone off to work in the nearby American military base, a foreboding place surrounded by barbed wire and armed guards that he’s unable to leave until his contract is up—if he survives that long, as there’s a war going on (none of the villagers know with whom, or much care), and the base comes under periodic high-tech attacks, which the villagers watch uncomprehendingly from a distance, like field mice watching the bombing of an artillery range. By the end, the young woman and all the villagers are left in a desperate position—Jesus has failed them, the climate has failed them, technology has failed them, and love means nothing set against the blank uncaring forces of the world. In fact, they have no hope left. Uncompromisingly realistic, and a way all too many of us are likely to end up in years ahead, but hardly inspiring. The March issue also features another of the always-entertaining “Erm Kalso” science-fantasy stories, “A Face of Black Iron,” which is almost bouncingly optimistic after the Sparks.
The major story in the April Lightspeed is a long, bleak Afterlife fantasy, “The Ministry of the Eye,” by Dale Bailey—well-written but depressing, showing that there’s no hope of relief even after death. Jason Gurley’s “Quiet Town” also shows its characters in a hopeless situation, but the dominate mood here is “quiet resignation” rather than despair, as the inhabitants of a small town glumly watch their town start to be swallowed up by rising sea levels, knowing that there’s nothing they can do about it, and that soon the town will be gone beneath the waves and they’ll be forced to start over. This is emotionally affecting, but barely science fiction, since this is already beginning to happen in many place around the world, and is only going to get worse in the years to come.
The best story in the May Lightspeed is “The Myth of Rain,” by Seanan McGuire, another excellently written, emotionally affecting, and even moving story that’s not going to be science fiction for long, as a scientist struggles to save a rare spotted owl, part of an effort to catch and relocate as many of the animals in a forest in the Pacific Northwest as possible before developers from drought-ravaged California, looking for new places to build condos, raze it to the ground. She doesn’t succeed, and it’s clear by the end, in spite of an effort to strike a wan note of optimism for the long run, that there’s little or no hope for the world, which is going to end up clear-cut and paved in spite of the heroic efforts of the dedicated environmentalists. Matthew Hughes contributes the last of the “Erm Kaslo” stories (at least for now; I have a feeling he’ll be back) with “The Blood of the Dragon.” C.C. Finlay tells the mildly amusing tale of a nerd trying to create a bubble of stopped time with his girlfriend inside it in “Time Bomb Time,” a story that reminds me strongly of an episode of the old Angel TV show from years back with an almost identical plot. Helena Bell’s “Mouth,” about a girl who accidently rips off her brother’s mouth and loses it, is listed as SF, but I’d list it as fantasy instead, a problem I often have with the classification of stories in Lightspeed.
Lightspeed’s strongest issue of the year to date is the June Lightspeed, the special “Queers Destroy Science Fiction!” issue, in which all the stories are by gay authors. The best story in June, and perhaps the best story Lightspeed has published all year so far, is Chaz Brenchley’s “The Astrakhan, the Homburg, and the Red Red Coat.” This is a flamboyant and highly entertaining kind of Martian Steampunk, set in an Alternate World where Victorian England has colonized Mars, and dealing with a group of clandestinely meeting gay colonists (homosexuality was illegal in Victorian times, and transgressors were subject to severe punishments), including a thinly disguised Oscar Wilde, who are genteelly extorted by authorities into participating in a dangerous attempt to mentally communicate with the mind of a Martian—a mind which turns out to be vaster and more alien than anyone could have imagined. Great stuff. There’s a lot of minor stuff in the issue too, but also very good here is Amal El-Mohtar’s poignant “Madeleine,” about a woman whose dreams are haunted by an imaginary friend who turns out to be not quite so imaginary after all. There’s also two good stories about the difficulties military cyborgs face adapting to civilian life, Rose Lemberg’s “How to Remember to Forget to Remember the Old War” and “(Influence Isolated, Make Peace),” by John Chu, with the Lemberg being slightly the more effective of the two. In “Trickier With Each Translation,” Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam tells the complicated story of a woman who keeps being yanked back and forth in time by a would-be lover with the ability to control time, who hopes to arrange things so that she falls in love with him rather than with the people she does fall in love with.
The online magazine Clarkesworld has had a similarly mixed year to date, with some first-rate stories and a number of more routine ones. The strongest issues for Clarkesworld so far were the January issue, which featured Aliette de Bodard’s “Three Cups of Grief, By Starlight” and Naomi Kritzer’s “Cat Pictures, Please,” the February issue, which featured Rich Larson’s “Meshed” and Kelly Robson’s “The Three Resurrections of Jessica Churchill,” and the April issue. The best stories in the April issue, Clarkesworld 103, and among the best stuff published there all year, were Robert Reed’s “The Empress in Her Glory,” in which, unbeknownst to her, invisible aliens invest a woman with powers that make her effectively the de facto ruler of the Earth, and “Let Baser Things Devise,” by Berrien C. Henderson, set in a slightly Alternate World, in which an uplifted chimp is selected for a mission to the Moon, and finds himself torn between his new world and the old primal, instinctual world of the jungle. There’s also a cute parody of Godzilla movies here, Emily Devenport’s “Postcards from Monster Island,” which is amusing, but goes on too long.
Many worthwhile stories appeared in other issues of Clarkesworld, but none of them quite at the level of quality of the stories mentioned above. The March Clarkesworld, Clarkesworld 102, Mike Buckley’s “An Original Brightness” is a sentimental tale about future soldiers so badly injured that they are reduced to life in a Virtual Reality Surround, and what happens when government cutbacks threaten to pull the plug, and what sacrifices they willing to make to stay together; also in March are a slow-building (perhaps too slow-building) tale about people who are socially ostracized because they were born without the ability to communicate empathically which each other that everyone else has, “Slowly Builds An Empire,” by Naim Kabir, a tale which reminds me a bit of Ian R. MacLeod’s “Entangled,” from 2013; and a quirky, kind of bleak superhero tale, “Cassandra,” by Ken Liu.
Truth be told, I didn’t warm to anything particularly in the May issue, Clarkesworld 104. Best here is probably Matthew Kressel’s “The Garden Beyond Infinite Skies,” although it is sort of an extended Shaggy God Story at heart.
The June issue, Clarkesworld 105, features “Asymptotic,” by Andy Dudak, an audaciously amusing story about a universe where the Speed of Light is not just a natural law but a Law as well, enforced by cosmic “traffic police” who arrest and punish those who break it by going Faster Than Light; slight stuff, but fun. Kris Millering’s “The Wanderer, in the Dark of the Year” is an intense story about a reporter who is captured by political extremists who also happen to have captured a crashlanded alien; the reporter is put in close confinement with the alien so that she can form a symbiotic bond with it
, although how the extremists know this going to happen, since nobody’s ever seen an alien before, is unclear. Eventually, after a long painful process, she does form such a bond with it—unfortunately for the extremists. “Somewhere I Have Never Traveled (Third Sound Remix),” by E. Catherine Tobler, is a story trembling of the verge between cosmic and silly about a woman aboard a space station who is haunted by and eventually forms a deep telepathic/emphatic bond, almost erotic, with the planet Saturn—with surprising long-term results.
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