{"id":10757,"date":"2019-07-19T14:19:09","date_gmt":"2019-07-19T14:19:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/?p=10757"},"modified":"2019-07-19T21:16:54","modified_gmt":"2019-07-19T21:16:54","slug":"the-magazine-of-fantasy-science-fiction-716-november-december-2014","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/?p=10757","title":{"rendered":"The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction #716, November-December 2014"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

ISFDB link<\/a>
\nF&SF<\/em>\u00a0subs<\/a>\/Amazon UK<\/a>,\u00a0USA<\/a> \/Weightless Books<\/a><\/p>\n

Other reviews:
\nC. D. Lewis, Tangent Online<\/a>
\nJohn Loyd, There Ain’t no Such Thing as a Free Lunch<\/a>
\nLois Tilton, Locus<\/a>
\nSam Tomaino, SF Revu<\/a>
\nMark Watson, Best SF<\/a>
\nVarious, Goodreads<\/a><\/p>\n

_____________________<\/p>\n

Editor, Gordon Van Gelder<\/p>\n

Fiction:
\nI\u2019ll Follow the Sun<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 novelette by Paul Di Filippo \u2217\u2217<\/strong>+
\nYeshua\u2019s Dog<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by Tim Sullivan \u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>
\nNanabojou at the World\u2019s Fair<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by Justin Barbeau \u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>
\nThe Judging<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 novella by Rand B. Lee \u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>
\nFeral Frolics<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by Scott Baker \u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>
\nThe Bomb Thing<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by K. J. Kabza \u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>+
\nGolden Girl<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 novelette by Albert E. Cowdrey \u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>+
\nThe Old Science Fiction Writer<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by David Gerrold \u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>
\nHollywood North<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 novella by Michael Libling \u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong><\/p>\n

Non-fiction:
\nCover<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 by Mondolithic Studios
\nCartoons <\/em><\/strong>\u2022 by Mark Heath, Arthur Masear (x2)
\nBooks to Look For<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 by Charles de Lint
\nMusing on Books<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 by Michelle West
\nFilms: On Novelizing Noah<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 by Alan Dean Foster
\nFilms: Coming Soon to a Tablet Near You<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 by Kathi Maio
\nComing Attractions
\nF&SF Competition #88: \u201cAnagram\/Raga Man\u201d (Results)<\/em><\/strong>
\nF&SF Competition #89<\/em><\/strong>
\nIndex to Volumes 126 & 127, January-December 2014
\nCuriosities: The Condemned Playground, by Cyril Connolly (1945)<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 book review by David Langford<\/p>\n

_____________________<\/p>\n

Editor Gordon Van Gelder\u2019s introduction to I\u2019ll Follow the Sun<\/em><\/strong> by Paul Di Filippo sets the tone for the issue:<\/p>\n

There was a time\u2014or so it seems to your editor\u2014when writers turned to science fiction to explore ideas they couldn\u2019t touch in any other medium. A fair number of stories regarded as classics today were transgressive when they first came out.
\nThese days, however, the internet seems to thrive on posts by people who aren\u2019t keen on tolerating viewpoints that differ from their own, and some of those posts focus on the science fiction and fantasy field. They\u2019ve inspired us here at F&SF<\/em> to give this issue an extra helping of stories that deal with touchy themes or go beyond the bounds of Political Correctness.\u00a0 p. 5<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Di Filippo\u2019s story isn\u2019t particularly edgy or transgressive (there are later stories that fit the bill better) but it does offer a different viewpoint to the homogeneity of today due to its time-traveller protagonist from 1964. But I\u2019m getting ahead of myself. The story opens with a student called Dan Wishcup visiting his maths professor Chan Davis1<\/sup> (the science fiction writer) with the news that he has got a draft notice for the Vietnam war, but doesn\u2019t want to go. Davis suggests that Dan claims asylum in Canada, but Dan doesn\u2019t want to do this because of various male relatives who have served in the military, including an uncle killed in the last days of WWI. After some back and forth over the next day or two, Davis suggests that Dan time-travels to the future to wait out the war (Davis\u2019s mathematical research has revealed the secret of time travel). Dan agrees and goes home to arrange his affairs, which include writing to his girlfriend. He also time travels to the past to find his uncle before he joins the army, and saves him from death by taking him forward in time to 1964. After the pair arrive back, Dan abandons him there and goes to see the professor. Davis gives Dan three small gold bars for him to use as money in the future, and they also bury a copy of the first issue of Action<\/em> comics, for Dan to later retrieve and sell.
\nThe rest of the story is set in Dan\u2019s future (our present), and is largely a comedy of manners:<\/p>\n

People appeared at first to be interacting in the manner Dan associated with 1964-era parties. Boozing, flirting, laughing, arguing, showing off, telling jokes. But all the one-on-one interactions looked to Dan to exhibit a telltale shallowness, as if the attentions of the interlocutors were not fully present, not fully engaged. And, indeed, every few minutes each person would pull out his or her phone and obsessively surf to some site\u2014currently, the big social media buzz centered on something called \u201cDawgbutt\u201d\u2014or dash off a selfie or read a text\u2014or even play a few rounds of some video game!
\nWith his Martian Vision, Dan saw a room full of parasitized Pavlovian puppets.
\nAnd when their conversations did sound authentic and enthusiastic, the topics revolved around what to Dan were the most banal and pointless threads, mostly revelatory of trivial, vapid consumerist fetishes. Who discussed anything of high import these days?
\n\u201cDid you see Duck Dynasty Goes to the Golden Globes<\/em>?\u201d
\n\u201cI just bought this great new skin for my smartwatch. It makes it look just like a Blake\u2019s 7<\/em> bracelet!\u201d
\n\u201cYou mean to tell me you haven\u2019t tried the Mappuccino at Starbucks yet? It\u2019s just like drinking a stack of pancakes and syrup!\u201d
\nDan sighed deeply and moved away from his corner to get another beer. One undeniably good thing about the future: the beer tasted much better. But did that compensate for all the ills?\u00a0 p. 29<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Some of the story is more serious:<\/p>\n

The task was not pleasant. In fact, the surfeit of rancid history sickened Dan. He encountered a tapestry of nuclear meltdowns, genocidal slaughters, inauthentic recycled pop culture, social rancor, and crushed utopian schemes. By Dan\u2019s lights\u2014by the hopes and dreams of 1964\u2014the past five decades represented a global litany of failure and disappointment, a catalogue of horror and insults to the human spirit, a trash heap of cheap thrills soon discarded, an abattoir of incessant suffering and slaughter. Humanity had landed on the Moon, then abandoned it, for God\u2019s sake! Oh, sure, there had been shining moments that exalted the human soul, and some debatable technological advances. Medicine had come a long way, that was nice. Lots of bad old prejudices had been unearthed and extirpated. (Or, as current continued instances appeared to show, had they merely been driven hypocritically below public acknowledgement?) On the whole, the world seemed a mingier, more miserable, more frightened and harried place than it had in 1964. Less tenderness, more contention. Fewer vices, more bad habits. Less ease, more stress.\u00a0 p. 27<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

At least future Dan does not have the stress of impending nuclear annihilation, such as in the Cuban Missile Crisis a couple of years before his departure.
\nIn the last section he meets an attractive young woman who he suspects is his daughter (Dan presumes he eventually goes back in time at some point and fathers her), and then has to cope with the unwanted sexual attraction he experiences. He finally tries to resolve matters by going to see her mother and father (Dan thinks the latter will be an older version of himself). When they all meet, Dan realises (spoiler) that her father is actually his uncle, who hooked up with his old girlfriend in 1964. There is also some chat about avatars in this part of the story, and some hand-wavium about time-travel, neither of which made much sense to me, and rather spoiled the ending of the story. A pity, as most of this is quite entertaining.
\nYeshua\u2019s Dog<\/em><\/strong> by Tim Sullivan takes place in in Galilee almost two thousand years ago, and tells of the death of an old storyteller and carpenter called Yeshua. The story then flashbacks to when Yeshua was alive and a Greek traveller visited to collect stories for a book. After this setup\u2014which details the prosaic origins of many bible stories and reveals that Yeshua is most likely Jesus\u2014there are revelations about his early years as a prophet, and his subsequent imprisonment and release.
\nThe final act (spoiler) concerns the death of Yeshua\u2019s faithful dog Judas (this occurs after a period of pining for his dead master), and the dog\u2019s eventual interment alongside him. After this occurs, a bright star rises in the East, The Dog Star, or Sirius, and the villagers decide to check the tomb to see if the dog is still there. They find a miracle has occurred, but not the one the reader expects.
\nThis is an enjoyable if provocative look at Christian history (there is a note in the introduction stating that \u201cthis story is a work of fiction\u201d), but pieces like this always leave me (an atheist, for what it is worth) cynically wondering if the editors and publishers would be as brave with transgressive stories about other religions.2<\/sup> (And no, I\u2019m not sure I would be.)
\nNanabojou at the World\u2019s Fair<\/em><\/strong> by Justin Barbeau is a tale about a Native American spirit\/man who, after he is swindled by a forestry agent, goes to the 1904 St Louis Fair. There, after wandering around for awhile, he gatecrashes a show as a fictional \u201cIndian\u201d:<\/p>\n

Slipping behind the marquee, he summoned his animal allies. \u201cI need you to help me, my allies,\u201d he said. \u201cI need you to make me look authentic. First, I will need a horse.\u201d
\n\u201cI will be your horse, Nanabojou,\u201d said the muskrat. And it became a muscled white stallion tossing its flowing mane.
\n\u201cNow I need a headdress,\u201d said Nanabojou.
\n\u201cI will be your headdress,\u201d said the grouse. It became a noble eagle-feather war bonnet with a long trailer.
\n\u201cA tomahawk.\u201d
\n\u201cI will be your tomahawk,\u201d said the eel, and it became a menacing weapon with a long wooden handle.
\n\u201cBreechclout.\u201d
\n\u201cI will give you my skin for a breechclout,\u201d said the catfish. Its skin became a gloriously beaded garment and its whiskers turned into sumptuous fringe.
\nWhen he mounted his horse, Nanabojou was noble, savage, and thrilling. He looked like no Indian had ever looked before him, though quite a few have looked like that since.
\nThe show had already started, and a whiteman was in the sawdust-carpeted ring demonstrating his lasso tricks when Nanabojou rode into the tent with a blood-curdling yell. He raced around the ring shaking his tomahawk at the children in the front row, making them drop their ice-cream cones and scream in delicious terror. His snorting horse reared on its back legs, and no one suspected he was really dressed in fishskin, with a grouse on his head, riding a rather large muskrat. They were all too entranced with what they thought they saw.\u00a0 p. 77<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This is short and slight piece which recalls R. A. Lafferty and, like some of that writer\u2019s work, doesn\u2019t amount to much. But it is a pleasant enough piece anyhow.3<\/sup>
\nThe Judging<\/em><\/strong> by Rand B. Lee is the sequel (it\u2019s more like the second part of a serial) to Changes<\/em> (F&SF<\/em>, May-June 2013), reviewed in my last post. That story introduced us to a post-apocalyptic world where a Probability Storm has turned the world into a patchwork mosaic of different times, places, and possibilities. We also met the central character Whitsun, a lay brother of an order committed to bringing stability to those parts of the world they visit, a feat accomplished the \u201cwealfire\u201d they host.
\nThe story picks up as Whitsun, his burro Francesca, and an uplifted husky called Treats penetrate a lethal (if you do not have wealfire) mist barrier at the edge of a human settlement. They immediately see a manned barricade and are interrogated by one of the men behind it. The first question Whitsun is asked concerns the recent Fortean-like rain of objects over the settlement:<\/p>\n

\u201cI regret to say that the collapse of the column was my doing, sir,\u201d said Whitsun. \u201cIt was a columnar zone of nullified gravity that did not belong in our world, so the fire within me sent it back where it had come from. In so doing, all the creatures and debris that had been trapped within the column were released into the grip of gravity once more. I apologize if any damage was done on this side of the bridge. The fire within me took action before I could consider the possible repercussions.\u201d
\n\u201cNo harm done,\u201d said the headman slowly. \u201cWe were protected.\u201d He hesitated, then looked Whitsun directly in the eye. \u201cThe fire within you, you say?\u201d
\n\u201cThe Breath of God, sir. The same Spirit that manifested as tongues of flame above the heads of the disciples of our Lord Jesus Christ at Pentecost, and granted them the gift of understanding and speaking languages they had not learned.\u201d
\n\u201cAnd you believe you wield this Spirit?\u201d the headman said.
\n\u201cNo, sir. We of my Company serve the Spirit. It does not serve us. We have no control over what It chooses to do or chooses not to do. But its action is always to heal, never to harm. To seek that which is hidden, to restore that which is lost, to bring harmony out of chaos, and to protect the weak when the strong threaten them.\u201d
\n\u201cHey, Brother!\u201d called a mustached rifleman in a red cap. \u201cCould this magic of yours give me a bigger Juan Gar\u00e7ia?\u201d The men laughed.
\n\u201cWhy, that depends, sir,\u201d replied Whitsun politely. \u201cWould your having a bigger Juan Gar\u00e7ia bring more or less harmony to your community?\u201d The men laughed a second time.\u00a0 p. 81-82<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Writers take note of a neat way of doing a data dump.
\nAfter his preliminary interrogation Whitsun is told to strip, and Sheriff Montoya (Whitsun\u2019s interlocutor) searches his possessions, finding a partially melted crucifix. Montoya pulls out his own nearly identical cross, and Whitsun explains he found the melted one at the site of many burned bodies. Montoya wonders what this similarity means, and dispatches men to investigate. Whitsun, Francesca, and Treats are eventually allowed into the town.
\nHere Whitsun meets Rosalie, one of the settlement\u2019s matriarchs, and there is talk about the Probability Storm that changed the world, and Whitsun\u2019s warning that there is another storm coming. Whitsun meets an old hippy called Hank, and at this point the story starts to drag a little. This is partly because some of the material from earlier in the story is rehashed, and partly because numerous other characters turn up (Hank\u2019s vet son, and his pregnant and near hysterical wife, etc.).
\nWhile all these new characters are milling around, a volatile young gunman called Arthur arrives, pointing a rifle at Whitsun and accusing his of being one of them<\/em>. This sets up the climactic events of the story, which involves Arthur shooting Whitsun. At the moment Arthur fires, Whitsun sees a vision of a woman called Sister Merit. She tells Whitsun she is like him, and was killed by the townspeople for her blood, which they use to protect the town. She says that they will do the same to him. There is also a suggestion in among all this that she may be responsible for the burned bodies.
\nMore crucially she tells Whitsun to choose which version of the future he wants: one where he is killed, or one where Arthur is shot by Sheriff Montoya. Whitsun chooses the latter, time reverses, and Arthur is badly wounded as Montoya arrives and shoots. Whitsun then treats the injured man with his wealfire, the effort making him pass out. When Whitsun comes to he finds himself in captivity.
\nThe rest of the story (spoiler) is about how he escapes what the townsfolk have planned for him.
\nThis is a story that is vivid, original, and very entertaining in parts, but it has major problems, the most obvious that this story and Changes<\/em> should have been published as a single novella. This isn\u2019t a huge ask as together they run to around 31,000 words\u2014doable in the large size issues of F&SF (it would be about 80 pages long)\u2014and in any event the text could do with some trimming (chapter three of this story drags because Whitsun explains his backstory to everyone<\/em> he meets). The other major failing it has is at the climax of the story, which has Whitsun making another timeline choice (I think) but one that baffled me\u2014what exactly happens here?
\nThese two stories feel rather like the rough draft of a superior unbifurcated work\u2014one that could have been a \u2018Best of the Year\u2019 story.
\nFeral Frolics<\/em><\/strong> by Scott Baker4<\/sup> won\u2019t be one for cat-lovers, as it starts with an animal control contractor called O\u2019Callaghan killing cats rather than taking them alive to the shelter. He does this because (a) they make less of a mess dead, and (b) he gets paid more, as they don\u2019t then have to be euthanized. Unfortunately (for him) he is filmed killing a pedigree cat, and prosecuted:<\/p>\n

[The] image was crystal clear. You could see the Persian\u2019s shiny white fur and bright lavender collar, two and a half million volts of blue sparks crawling up and down the baton and crackling off the cat\u2019s nametag each time I zapped it. When I saw the video on the big screen in court, saw myself grinning and giggling and almost hopping up and down with delight, it even creeped me out.
\n[. . .]
\nBecause of the angle you couldn\u2019t make out my features all that well, but my red hair, black clothes, and holstered red-and-black wildlife Taser, not to mention the truck and logo, were there for everyone to see. There was no way anybody could claim it wasn\u2019t me, and my lawyer didn\u2019t even try.
\nInstead, he went for an insanity defense that got laughed out of court. I paid him a fortune and the only thing he accomplished was making people believe that not only was I a sick, evil pervert, I was an insane sick, evil pervert.\u00a0 p. 129-130<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

After his trial he goes to prison, an experience described with more black humour:<\/p>\n

I lost my job and my license, which was no surprise, but I hadn\u2019t expected to be sentenced to a full year in Soledad for aggravated cruelty to animals. The guards despised me even more than they despised everybody else, and there were dozens of crazy-violent cat lovers locked up there. Killing people was okay if you were a psychopath, but you better not touch their fucking cats. Even the Aryan Brotherhood looked down on me like I was some wannabe serial killer pervert without the balls to stand up like a man and kill real people. All of which meant I was lucky the worst that happened was getting raped a couple of times and getting the shit beat out of me whenever somebody was looking for an easy target.\u00a0 p. 130<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The story then moves forward a few years to the present, where O\u2019Callaghan has left behind the notoriety of his crimes\u2014then (spoiler) the furniture company he works for tells him to deliver a couch to a kitty-cafe. O\u2019Callaghan worries that he might be recognised, but this doesn\u2019t happen, or so it seems . . . .
\nThe supernatural ending does not have the verisimilitude of the rest of the story (those green teeth, etc., are\u00a0 little odd), and it suffers accordingly. If the author had treated the cat-humans that run the caf\u00e9 in a more naturalistic way I think this would have been more effective. Still, this is quite a good read and, notwithstanding the unsympathetic viewpoint character, the enjoyment comes from O\u2019Callaghan\u2019s unvarnished and pointed observations about the world.
\nThe Bomb Thing<\/em><\/strong> by K. J. Kabza opens with the narrator Blaine, an employee at Wacko Taco, talking about his buddy:<\/p>\n

Mason is my best friend. He\u2019s about 5\u201910\u201d and 185 lbs., and with the buzz cut and the scar by his eye from that fight in junior year, he looks like a real asshole. And he is, sometimes. But then he smiles, and his whole face lights up, and you feel like everything in the world is gonna be okay. One look at that smile and you\u2019d follow him anywhere.
\nAnd I have, too.
\nBut I\u2019m not gay, or anything.
\nMason works at the university. He\u2019s a janitor, but he\u2019s like the janitor in that movie who secretly solves all those problems on the blackboard in the hallway. Mason says he could make significant contributions to science, if he felt like it, which he doesn\u2019t. That\u2019s one thing that\u2019s so great about him: Mason is his own man, and you can\u2019t tell him what to do. The fight he got into junior year? The other guy was a cop.\u00a0 p. 146<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The story carries on in much the same vein as the pair have their lunch outside the university while eyeing up a female student unloading her car outside the \u201cNerd Department\u201d. After commenting on her physical attributes in forthright terms, Mason goes over and hits on her while Blaine watches. Blaine later finds out that Mason has arranged to give her a private tour of the Math department that evening.
\nOf course, the visit is far from straightforward, and it materialises that Phyllis, the \u201cgirl\u201d, is actually an alien sent to Earth to stop the development of a time machine\u2014but we only discover this after Mason picks up the device and accidentally triggers it, sending all three of them back to 1968. The rest of the story details Blaine and Mason\u2019s adventures there as they hideout from Phyllis in the basement of a frat house. This is all told in a very amusing but politically incorrect manner (when Phyllis correctly identifies Blaine\u2019s secret crush on Mason, he repeatedly protests \u201cI\u2019m not gay\u201d). However, despite this latter aspect, the story manages to have its cake and eat it (i.e. it gives the appearance of being politically incorrect but isn\u2019t really). In the final scene Blaine also manages to have his (not-gay) cake and eat it, but you\u2019ll need to read the story to find out how.
\nOne for my imaginary \u2018Best of the Year\u2019 collection, I think.
\nAnother story for that anthology may be Golden Girl<\/em><\/strong> by Albert E. Cowdrey. This opens with a young woman called Doreen at the home of a man called Valois. She is supposedly there to catalog the old eccentric\u2019s book collection, but really wants to find information about four recent deaths (three insect-related, and one of those her grandmother) in the neighbouring properties.
\nAs Doreen settles into the job she befriends the butler and his wife and, one day, when Valois is out, the butler shows her the secret elevator key that takes them to the third floor and Valois\u2019s private quarters. Later, after she moves into her grandmother\u2019s nearby house, all the staff are fired\u2014a result of her discovered trip to the third floor\u2014and she remains the only one working there.
\nIn the penultimate section the insect theme surfaces again (there are previous mentions of bee-keeping as well as the deaths) when Doreen (spoiler) explores the surrounding properties, and discovers it isn\u2019t smoke coming out of the nearby chimneys but swarms of bees. Valois catches her snooping around\u2014he has become younger since she last saw him\u2014and then imprisons and rapes her, all of which is described graphically. We later learn that his youth\u2014and his insect-like lack of pity\u2014is due to a special kind of royal jelly the bees produce, and which he proceeds to feed to her. There is a biter-bit, or stinger-stung, denouement.
\nIf I have one niggle about the story it is the fact that, despite the fact the pair are supposed to become more pitiless the more jelly they consume, Doreen still gets her grandfather out of the hospital at the end of the story to care for him. That apart, this is an atmospheric and immersive horror story, and one of Cowdrey\u2019s best.
\nThe Old Science Fiction Writer<\/em><\/strong> by David Gerrold is yet another story that has the writer as a character, and has a future version of Gerrold telling his grandson what things were like before the Big Think, what a science fiction writer was, and what they did. It includes modest little snippets like this:<\/p>\n

\u201cI wrote stories. People paid to read them. They gave me their money, sometimes a lot, so I ate every day and wore nice clothes and lived in a big house.\u201d
\n\u201cPeople really paid you for your stories?\u201d
\n\u201cYes, they did. Once they even gave me an award.\u201d
\n\u201cNo, they didn\u2019t!\u201d
\n\u201cYes, they did. And they paid me a lot because I was good at it.\u201d\u00a0 p. 192<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

How modest, but apart from that irritant it\u2019s okay I suppose.
\nHollywood North<\/em><\/strong> by Michael Libling is set in late 1950\u2019s Trenton in Canada, and concerns the narrator Gus\u2019s friendship with another boy called Jack\u2014or Jack the Finder as he is known because of his knack for finding things. The descriptions of these childhood days are very well done, as is shown by the passage where Gus, who hero-worships Jack from afar, first encounters him:<\/p>\n

Jack and I went to the same school. Dufferin Public. I could have told him easy how I felt, but I knew the risks. One ordinary kid declaring fandom to another is a bad idea any way you cut it. It is going to come off as weird. Smart kids nip the inclination in the bud. And I counted myself among them, until the morning my brain turned to Jiffy Pop.
\nI scoured the playground, locked him in my sights, and charged ahead. \u201cYou\u2019re Jack,\u201d I said.
\n\u201cYeah. I know.\u201d
\nAnd without additional formality, my three years of self-restraint and meticulously cultivated anonymity went down the toilet in a sycophantic rush of verbal diarrhea. \u201cI just want to say that uh how I think it\u2019s really neat how you know how like how you find stuff like me too uh five dollars once outside the A&P uh I\u2019m always looking uh Mommy uh my mom uh she said uh uh.\u201d Mommy<\/em>. I\u2019d said Mommy<\/em>. My mastery of the awkward was flawless. Kill me now<\/em>.
\nHis buddies were roaring. I was by far the funniest thing they\u2019d heard and seen since Moe last blinded Curly.
\n\u201cYou got a screw loose or what, kid?\u201d
\n\u201cLook at that, Jack. You found yourself a little girlfriend.\u201d
\n\u201cYou gonna cry? You gonna go tell Mommy<\/em> on us?\u201d
\nJack laughed along with them, and man, I hated him right then like I\u2019d never hated anyone. \u201cIs that so?\u201d he said to me, and returned to his friends and their football, jogging long and deep as he signaled for a pass, leaving me behind, alone, and, in retrospect, shielded from further ridicule.
\nI was never anything more than an average student. But when it came to beating up on myself, I was scholarship material from the get-go. Never took much. A minor setback, the slightest slight, and I\u2019d agonize like nobody\u2019s business. On those days, I knew to avoid Annie. She\u2019d only try to cheer me up. Good thing, outside of school, we went our separate ways.\u00a0 p. 200<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Annie is Gus\u2019s other friend, and in due course all three become close friends.
\nAs Gus and Jack\u2019s relationship develops we find out that Trenton used to have a film industry (hence the \u201cHollywood North\u201d of the title) but that it shut down when the \u201ctalkies\u201d started. More ominously, we also learn that the town has had a disproportionate number of disasters: a train wreck; an ammunition plant blowing up; planes colliding over the town; a landslide; multiple drownings, etc.
\nThe initial arc of the story, however, concerns a set of caption cards which Jack finds (these are intertitles for silent movies, and are presented as images throughout the story). Initially the boys take the cards to the local newspaper reporter Bryan McGrath, who Jack knows well, having been interviewed and photographed by him on multiple occasions about his previous finds. McGrath reacts badly to the intertitles however, threatening the two kids and forcing them to promise to burn them.
\nWhat they actually do is go to the local dry cleaners and talk to a Mr Blackhurst, an acquaintance of Jack\u2019s from his father\u2019s diner. They discover that the intertitles are from films that Blackhurst made during his time in the movie industry (and which McGrath wrote for), and the boys learn about the town\u2019s history of movie production. When Blackhurst comments that it was the fear that closed the studios, not the talkies, they are interrupted by Evie, Blackhurst\u2019s Hollywood-beautiful wife. She makes Jack and Gus leave.
\nBefore the two boys can make any further progress on the mystery (and while avoiding McGrath, who constantly snoops on them), Jack abruptly moves away from the town due to his parent\u2019s divorce. He doesn\u2019t tell Gus he is going.
\nA few years pass before Jack returns to the town and, after some frostiness, all three all end up as friends again. However, there is tension later when Jack and Annie become boyfriend and girlfriend.
\nThe two boys then get jobs at the marina, where they start seeing Mr Blackhurst regularly (he commutes across the water from his house). When (spoiler) he dies suddenly, the boys are told by the dockmaster to return the boat to his wife. They are met by Evie at the house, and she takes them to a private cinema in the basement and shows them Blackhurst\u2019s films: the mystery of the town\u2019s tragedies is revealed.
\nAfter this there is an accident that involves the three children, and then a further section which takes place years later, when Evie dies and leaves Gus the house in her will. Gus is told to watch one final movie, which reveals the horrific events that really occurred during the \u201caccident\u201d that the three were involved in, the details of which Gus has forgotten or suppressed.
\nThis is a very good piece which not only has a satisfying and original supernatural mystery set in a convincing milieu, but also has a coda that chillingly recasts previous events. Definitely one for the \u2018Best of the Year\u2019 collections.5<\/sup><\/p>\n

The Cover<\/em><\/strong> is a fairly bland looking effort by Mondolithic Studios, but the more I look at it (especially at larger size) the more I like it. (I note that no effort has been made to left justify the list of contributors\u2019 names, or move them down the page to avoid overprinting the central image).
\nBooks to Look For<\/em><\/strong> by Charles de Lint has reviews of a comic book superhero mashup, the third in Stephen Jay Gould\u2019s \u2018Jumper\u2019 series, a children\u2019s book, a werewolf trilogy, and what seems to be a novella\/graphic story hybrid from Gaiman & Campbell. The usual random selection, in other words.
\nMusing on Books<\/em><\/strong> by Michelle West starts with a review of The Causal Angel<\/em> by Hannu Rajaniemi, which is the third in a trilogy\u2014not the kind of book to start a column with I\u2019d suggest (it\u2019s an instant turnoff for those that haven\u2019t read the first two). The next review is the fifth of Charles Stross\u2019s \u2018Laundry\u2019 novels (although you can apparently can jump into the series here, as West has). The remaining novels sound like the usual fantasy product (spirits, souls, werewolves, half-goblin emperors, etc).
\nFilms: On Novelizing Noah<\/em><\/strong> by Alan Dean Foster is a conversation between Foster and the voice of God where they discuss the prospective novelisation of the movie Noah<\/em>. A treat.
\nFilms: Coming Soon to a Tablet Near You<\/em><\/strong> by Kathi Maio begins with Hollywood business talk about theatre release vs. video on demand release before discussing the promising sounding SF adventure movie Snowpiercer<\/em> (I haven\u2019t heard of it, or the second more thoughtful film I Origins<\/em>\u2014I\u2019ll have to track them down). Snowpiercer<\/em> features a train that constantly circles a post-apocalyptic world, and which contains a microcosm of our current society and its social inequality:<\/p>\n

The series of battles\u2014most as hand to hand combat\u2014that the rebels must fight are only to be expected in this kind of (literally) linear warfare plot. But Bong Joon-ho is such a skilled director that he adds a ferocious grace, and even a smattering of humor, to the proceedings; each bloodbath is fresh and gripping. It helps that each car offers a striking new backdrop for the next confrontation. From the gray landscapes of the prison car and the manufacturing car where a feverish worker produces the horrific gelatinous protein bars that are the back-car peons\u2019 only form of sustenance, Curtis and his cohorts move forward to increasingly posh and colorful cars where the elite live. These include a botanical garden car, an aquarium car (and sometime sushi bar), a meat locker car, a schoolroom (overseen by a frenetic, pregnant schoolmarm played well by Alison Pill), salon and spa cars, and even a disco car more drug-drenched than the most hedonistic days of Studio 54. \u00a0p. 185<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The film essays are of much better quality than the book ones.
\nF&SF Competition #88: \u201cAnagram\/Raga Man\u201d (Results)<\/em><\/strong> has some submissions that aren\u2019t bad (Blade Runner<\/em> = Beerland Run<\/em>). The new competition, F&SF Competition #89<\/em><\/strong>, requires limericks.
\nThe Index to Volumes 126 & 127, January-December 2014 <\/em><\/strong>reveals four stories each from Oliver Buckram and Albert E. Cowdrey (Van Gelder does have his favourites), two and a half (one collaboration) from Paul Di Filippo, and two each from David Gerrold, Michael Libling, Robert Reed, and Tim Sullivan.
\nCuriosities: The Condemned Playground, by Cyril Connolly (1945)<\/em><\/strong> by David Langford looks at a book which contains, among the other \u201cessays and squibs\u201d, some funny satires.
\nThere are the usual Cartoons<\/em><\/strong>, and Coming Attractions<\/em><\/strong>.<\/p>\n

This is an impressive issue, with one very good supernatural novella, and several other good stories. \u00a0\u25cf<\/p>\n

_____________________<\/p>\n

1. I learned this about Chan Davis from Di Filippo\u2019s story:<\/p>\n

In 1953 Chan Davis had been a professor at the University of Michigan\u2014with an odd sideline as a writer of curious and accomplished science fiction stories\u2014when he had run afoul of the House Un-American Activites Committee for his \u201csubversive\u201d leanings. He had lost his job, been blacklisted from academic employment in the whole nation, and, after some delay in coming to trial, received a short but punitive prison sentence.\u00a0 p. 7<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Davis\u2019s Wikipedia page is here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

2. There is a joke in Steve Coogan\u2019s movie Alpha Papa<\/em> (which features the character Alan Partridge, an inept radio show host, chiding his sidekick Simon)\u2014\u201cNever, never criticise Muslims. Only Christians. And Jews a little bit.\u201d<\/p>\n

3. There is a (very short) review of a second \u2018Nanabojou\u2019 story by Justin Barbeau (Nanabojou and the Race Question<\/em>) by me here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

4. The introduction to Scott Baker\u2019s story states he last appeared in F&SF<\/em> in 1986. His ISFDB page<\/a> shows substantial activity during the eighties and nineties, but not much this century.<\/p>\n

5. Hollywood North<\/em> was a novella finalist for the 2015 World Fantasy Awards.
\nAs the author notes below in the comments, the story has been expanded into a novel and will be published soon (Amazon UK<\/a>\/USA<\/a>). \u25cf<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

F&SF is still being published: F&SF subs<\/a>\/Amazon UK<\/a>,\u00a0USA<\/a>\/Weightless Books<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\"rss\"<\/a>\"rss\"<\/a><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

ISFDB link F&SF\u00a0subs\/Amazon UK,\u00a0USA \/Weightless Books Other reviews: C. D. Lewis, Tangent Online John Loyd, There Ain’t no Such Thing as a Free Lunch Lois Tilton, Locus Sam Tomaino, SF Revu Mark Watson, Best SF Various, Goodreads _____________________ Editor, Gordon Van Gelder Fiction: I\u2019ll Follow the Sun \u2022 novelette by Paul Di Filippo \u2217\u2217+ Yeshua\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10757","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fantasy-and-science-fiction"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Pcj7-2Nv","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10757","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10757"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10757\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10775,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10757\/revisions\/10775"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10757"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10757"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10757"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}