The magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction enters a new decade; its seventh, with nine stories from more-or-less regular contributors, plus book reviews from Charles de Lint and occasional fiction contributor Chris Wilrich, and film reviews from Lucius Shepherd.
Robert Reed
Robert Reed has contributed perhaps more stories than any other writer for the last twenty years, since taking his bow with "The Bird Looking In" in 1988. His latest novelette, 'The Long Retreat,' shows symptoms of a regular failing. He often takes a well-used idea or setting and gives it a new twist. In this case the narrator is (understandably given the eventual ending) a cipher, and for that reason Reed fails to emotionally engage the reader, another of his common characteristics. All too often characterization falls too far a second to the idea. Nonetheless, it's a reasonable start.
Robin Aurelian's 'Bait' is a wickedly funny little fantasy involving a family hunting expedition. Aurelian subtly updates some venerable archetypes in the three and a half thousand words, and the character arc is nicely drawn. Recommended.
Charles Oberndorf offers a vision of a future Mars in 'Writers of the Future' in which 'books' are far more immersive, and in which population control has limited each person to having only one child. Gale wants to write a story speculating what the world would be like if that limit were abolished, but unlike most such stories, it's not necessarily a tragedy.
Marc Laidlaw
'Songwood' by Marc Laidlaw takes the reader back to the world of Gorlen Vizenfirthe, the bard reappeared in 2008 after a twelve year absence. In his last appearance Gorlen stole a gargoyle's
hand, and Laidlaw's latest offering carries on the saga - but from the gargoyle's perspective. Fleeing across the sea, Spar (the goyle) finds an unlikely ally when he stows away in the hold. Beautifully written, it's a poignant love story about two very different characters. Highly recommended.
Paul Park's 'Ghosts Doing The Orange Dance' is the longest story in the issue, but sadly not the best. Editor van Gelder bills it as a mix of 'memoir, family history and science fiction' but the SF could have been delineated a little more clearly and earlier and some of Park's longer, more rambling sentences trimmed.
'The Secret Lives Of Fairy Tales' by Steven Popkes takes a fresh look at some old favourites, from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs to Cinderella, from a modern perspective, linked by a pair of recurring characters. Highly Recommended.
Kate Wilhelm
In Kate Wilhelm's 'The Late Night Train' a woman who has moved back home in with her mother and abusive father hears a supernatural train at irregular intervals. Wilhelm has been appearing since January 1962, but while it's as elegantly written as all Wilhelm's fiction, but there's a feeling that the story at the centre of that luminous prose has been told too many times to make the whole offering truly memorable.
Dean Whitlock's 'Nanosferatu' blends SF and traditional horror very well as an aging tycoon chases extra profit from drugs testing and instead ends up on the brink of immortality - of a sort. Whitlock displays a dry, mordant wit, even if the title does rather telegraph the ending.
John Langan's 'City Of The Dog' is another of Langan's gritty urban horror stories, this time in a secret Albany necropolis haunted by lycanthropic creatures called ghuls. Langan's characterization is detailed, precise and entirely credible. Recommended.
As a first issue of the decade, to be honest this installment is below par, although one or two of the stories may well find wider recognition, but at a time when every magazine is struggling to hold onto its subscriber base, F&SF needs to up the level of its fiction offerings if it's to survive.
Colin Harvey - Author six novels, and editor of four anthologies; professional reviewer since 2003, including six years at Strange Horizons. Member of ...
