{"id":1151,"date":"2016-04-07T18:43:56","date_gmt":"2016-04-07T18:43:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/?p=1151"},"modified":"2019-10-04T19:57:37","modified_gmt":"2019-10-04T19:57:37","slug":"the-magazine-of-fantasy-and-science-fiction-januaryfebruary-2016","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/?p=1151","title":{"rendered":"The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction #723, January\/February 2016"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"FSF20160102x600\"<\/p>\n

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

Other Reviews:
\nGreg Hullender\u00a0and Eric Wong, Rocket Stack Rank<\/a>
\nNicky Magas, Tangent Online<\/a>
\nLois Tilton, Locus<\/a>
\nSam\u00a0Tomaino, SF Revu<\/a>
\nMark Watson, Best SF<\/a> (forthcoming)
\nVarious, Goodreads<\/a><\/p>\n

_____________________<\/p>\n

Editor, C. C. Finlay<\/p>\n

Fiction:
\nVortex<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by Gregory Benford \u2217\u2217\u2217<\/strong>
\nNumber Nine Moon<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 novelette by Alex Irvine \u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>
\nRockets Red<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by Mary Robinette Kowal \u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>
\nSmooth Stones and Empty Bones<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by Bennett North \u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>+
\nThe White Piano<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 novelette by David Gerrold \u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>
\nCaspar D. Luckinbill, What Are You Going to Do?<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by Nick Wolven \u2217<\/strong>
\nRobot from the Future<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by Terry Bisson \u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>
\nSquidtown<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by Leo Vladimirsky \u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>
\nTouch Me All Over<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by Betsy James \u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>
\nTelltale<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 novelette by Matthew Hughes \u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>+
\nThe Visionaries<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by Albert E. Cowdrey \u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>
\nBraid of Days and Wake of Nights<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by E. Lily Yu \u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong><\/p>\n

Non-fiction:
\nCover<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 Bob Eggleton
\nBooks to Look For<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 by Charles de Lint
\nBooks<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 by James Sallis
\nWelcome to Pleistocene Park<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 essay by Pat Murphy and Paul Doherty
\nThe World, the Flesh, and the Apocalypse<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 essay by David J. Skal
\nCartoons<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 Mark Heath, J. P. Rini, Arthur Masear
\nComing Attractions <\/em><\/strong>
\nCuriosities: The Truth About Wilson, by W. S. K. Webb (1962)<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 essay by Graham Andrews<\/p>\n

_____________________<\/p>\n

This issue\u2019s cover by Bob Eggleton has unfortunately been mutilated by the barcode and display date. I\u2019ve commented on barcode problems before while reviewing\u00a0an Asimov\u2019s SF<\/em> cover. If I were laying out the cover of this one I think I would have a strip at the bottom of the page\u00a0with the barcode and the author names you want\u00a0displayed. Also, I\u2019d move the magazine title to the top of the page leaving non-overprinted artwork in the middle.\u00a0Alternatively, if you can turn the barcode on its side then the Galaxy<\/em> inverted L layout is a possibility. I know that publishers have to labour under various cover-design constraints but God only knows what the artists think when they see this sort of thing done to their artwork.<\/p>\n

According to the introduction for the Benford story this Martian landscape cover has three stories \u2018matched\u2019 to it so I\u2019ll deal with those first. Vortex<\/em><\/strong> by Gregory Benford is from the same series as his novels The Martian Race<\/em> and The Sunborn<\/em>. I suspect this one is probably going to be part of a third but it is self-contained. It tells of various research teams on Mars and of friction between, in particular, the Australian and Chinese teams as the US and Koreans fight\u00a0on Earth. Under the Martian surface there is a planet wide alien organism called the \u2018mat\u2019 which is developing diseased grey patches the scientists cannot explain. The resolution of this problem is relatively straightforward but this is offset by some vivid writing describing this huge alien amongst other things:<\/p>\n

Snottites gleamed in their handlamps, dangling in moist lances from the ceiling. She steered well clear\u00a0of the shiny colonies of single-celled extremophilic bacteria\u2014like small stalactites, but with the consistency of mucus. She waved the team back. \u201cThose mean the Mat is moving a lot of fluid around.\u201d
\nSnottites got their name from how they looked, and their energy from digesting the volcanic sulfur in\u00a0the warm water dripping down from above. Brush one of those highly acidic rods and their battery acid would cut through a suit in moments. A sharp, short ouch, quite fatal. The Chinese nodded, backing away. Good; they\u2019ve learned some of the many dangers here.
\nMeters above in the dim pearly glow she saw Mat sheets hanging in a vast cavern. Under their beams this grotto came alive with shimmering luminescence: burnt oranges, dapplings of vermilion, splashes of delicate turquoise. Another silence. Inside the beast.\u00a0 p.12-13<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

If the novels weren\u2019t 400-odd pages long I\u2019d probably pick one up.
\nNumber Nine Moon<\/em><\/strong> by Alex Irvine is a novelette about three people who go to Hellas basin at the end of a total Mars evacuation to see what they can \u2018recover\u2019. Shortly after their arrival there is an accident that forces them to attempt to use an old fashioned rocket to get into orbit. The fun in this one isn\u2019t the straightforward and slightly unlikely story but the interplay of the characters and the colourful way the story is told:<\/p>\n

Steuby was sixty-two years old, born in 2010, and had only ever seen one other person die in front of him.
\nThat was back on the Moon, where he\u2019d worked for almost fifteen years. A guy named Walter Navarro, looking the wrong way when someone swung a steel beam around at a construction site. The end of the beam smashed the faceplate of Walter\u2019s helmet. The thing Steuby remembered most about it was\u00a0the way Walter\u2019s screams turned into ice fog pouring out and drifting down onto the regolith. By the time they got him inside he was dead, with frozen blood in his eyes from where the shards of the faceplate had cut him. Steuby had gotten out of the construction business as soon as he\u2019d collected his next paycheck. After that he\u2019d run tourist excursions, and seen some weird shit, but nothing weirder than Walter Navarro\u2019s dying breaths making him sparkle in the vacuum.\u00a0 p. 37
\n.<\/span>
\nTogether the compounds would fuel a rocket via a hypergolic reaction. One of Steuby\u2019s favorite words, hypergolic. Like just being golic wasn\u2019t enough.\u00a0 p. 38<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The third Mars story is Rockets Red<\/em><\/strong> by Mary Robinette Kowal, It is a pleasant enough if slight story about the interaction between a mother and son when a fireworks display looks like it may not happen due to a technical failure. This occurs on a parallel-world Mars that was first visited in the 1950s, and is a prequel to the author\u2019s 2014 Hugo winner The Lady Astronaut of Mars <\/em>(first published on Tor.com<\/em>).2<\/sup>
\nAfter the three Mars SF stories there are a couple of fantasy stories. First up is a promising debut by Bennett North, Smooth Stones and Empty Bones<\/em><\/strong>. This is a pretty good tale that tells of a witch\u2019s\u00a0teenage daughter who has a box of stones that can bring dead things back to life:<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a skeleton in the chicken coop. It\u2019s some bare collection of abandoned bones, maybe a former fox, and it\u2019s slishing through the pine needles and bumping liplessly against the gate. The chickens, for their part, don\u2019t look concerned.\u00a0 p. 68<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Her girlfriend\u2019s young brother is missing in the woods, feared dead. This initially gives off the same kind of vibe as Stephen King\u2019s Pet Sematary<\/em> or Keith Roberts\u2019 The Witch<\/em>, but it is its own story and has a couple of interesting occurrences and clever developments up its sleeve.
\nAt the other end of the writer experience range is David Gerrold with The White Piano<\/em><\/strong>. This novelette is a competent ghost story (more of a compliment than you may think) about two children who have lost their mother and the grandmother who has come to stay with them. The boy starts hearing scratching at night and fears it may be a ghost. After a few pages of this narrative arc\u00a0the story veers onto another one. The grandmother tells them a long tale about when she was a child during the war, living in a large house in the north of England. The dead wife of the house\u2019s owner was a pianist so a lot of classical and other piano music subsequently features.
\nThe next three stories\u00a0are back in the SF groove and the first is the only one\u00a0in the issue I didn\u2019t particularly care for. Caspar D. Luckinbill, What Are You Going to Do?<\/em><\/strong> by Nick Wolven is an \u2018if this goes on\u2019 piece about a man who is subject to \u2018media terrorism\u2019. All his phones, TVs, computers, his work sound system, etc., blare out harrowing messages. This comes to a peak when his recently installed home \u2018Ubervision\u2019 system\u2014TV screens on all home surfaces\u2014is activated:<\/p>\n

When I get home, the foyer is dark. But not for long. As soon as I enter, the door begins to weep. The ceiling fills with hurrying flame. Burning people run toward me from within the phantasmal walls. Even the floor is a field of carnage. As I walk to the kitchen, I tread on the faces of the maimed. The kitchen cabinets tell me that churches are burning, that dogs are starving, that a human-rights worker has been killed by forced detegumentation.\u00a0 p. 126<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Unfortunately by this point the relentlessness of all this had worn me out and I was thinking \u2018turn off the TV, dummy.\u2019
\nHe gets free of it in the last chapter but this doesn\u2019t seem to be explained, or maybe by then my attention had drifted. Also not explained (spoiler) is why he finally sends money to the people who were making his life a misery, but perhaps that is some moral point going way over my head.
\nRobot from the Future<\/em><\/strong> by Terry Bisson is about a young boy and his grandfather who try to obtain \u2018gas-o-line\u2019 in a \u2018Greaned\u2019 future for robots that have come back in time and are stranded. This has an offbeat and interesting voice:<\/p>\n

Instead of attacking, the robot stretches out its arms. Then it starts talking. \u201cGas-o-line,\u201d it says.
\nIt has a voice like a lady.
\nI don\u2019t say anything.
\n\u201cGas-o-line, Theodore,\u201d it says. \u201cPlease help.\u201d
\n\u201cHow do you know my name?\u201d
\n\u201cWe just do,\u201d it says. \u201cYou are eleven,\u201d it says. \u201cThat\u2019s a great age.\u201d
\nI agree but don\u2019t say anything. I\u2019ve been eleven for almost three months. It means you can go places by\u00a0yourself and make up your mind about things. It\u2019s totally different from ten.\u00a0 p. 134<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Unfortunately that is all it has because the story doesn\u2019t really go anywhere.
\nSquidtown<\/em><\/strong> by Leo Vladimirsky is an interesting mood piece set in the same series as Collar<\/em> (F&SF<\/em>, March\/April 2014). A released Unionist prisoner in a\u00a0future Islamic State of Texas is back home with his sister in a place called Squidtown. Their conversation takes up most of the piece, complicated by the fact he has had his tongue cut out in prison:<\/p>\n

\u201cYou don\u2019t have to type everything,\u201d she says. \u201cI understood your baby babbling. I\u2019ll understand you now.\u201d
\nTHE WAY YOU\u2019RE SLURRING MAYBE YOU SHOULD TYPE TOO
\nShe yanks the phone out of my hand and starts tapping.
\n\u201cHow\u2019s this?\u201d she asks as she shows me the screen.
\nDON\u2019T BE A DICK
\nShe jabs me in the side\u2014another reminder of home.
\n\u201cWhy don\u2019t you just get a new one? I have money now,\u201d she continues. \u201cThey can regrow it superquick. Like, two days.\u201d
\nPRISON DOCTORS OFFERED IN D\u2019ALLAHS
\n\u201cSo you\u2019d rather suffer in silence?\u201d
\nCAN TALK. PREFER THIS.\u00a0 p. 149<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

An interesting if slightly unlikely background but I\u2019ll dig out the other story.
\nFour fantasies close out the issue, although the third could probably be labelled as SF. Touch Me All Over<\/em><\/strong> by Betsy James is about a primitive-ish woman who is a \u2018twiner\u2019 or weaver. She finds a glass knife at a badger\u2019s sett and from that point on everything man-made she touches falls apart. She leaves her village clothed only in a bearskin and (spoiler) is later discovered by two men, one of whom tries to rape her. All his clothes start disintegrating and the pack falls off his mule. The men flee. Subsequently she finds a bound man on top of the pack. The woman releases the man and they find shelter in a cave. Matters develop between them but ultimately this is a story with a good idea that doesn\u2019t have an ending to match.
\nThe other issue highlight, apart from the North story, is Telltale<\/em><\/strong>, Matthew Hughes\u2019 novelette set in his \u2018Archonate\u2019 universe. I won\u2019t say much about this so I don\u2019t spoil it, but it is a well plotted story about a guild thief called Raffalon who ends up trapped in a cabin in an enchanted forest telling stories to a woman, or something that looks like a woman. A clever and inventive\u00a0traditional fantasy adventure.
\nThe Visionaries<\/em><\/strong> by Albert E. Cowdrey is the one that could be fantasy, SF or horror depending on how you squint. Jimmy and Morrie have a company called Paranormal Services and they need to clear an area of forest that is \u2018haunted\u2019\u2014which results in workmen being injured when tree felling, spooked animals, etc. It has a convincing locale and characters and about three-quarters of the\u00a0way through (spoiler) it pivots into a story about what is to come in the area rather than what might have happened in the past.
\nThe close-out story is Braid of Days and Wake of Nights<\/em><\/strong> by E. Lily Yu. This story involves a young woman with Stage 4 cancer, an estranged husband, and a friend trying to track down a unicorn in Central Park. I suspect readers\u2019 reactions to this cocktail will be wildly variable, from those that find it mawkish and contrived to those who find it enchanting and heart-wrenching\/warming. Myself, I\u2019m somewhere in the middle; I can see what the writer is trying to pull off in this story but don\u2019t think it is completely successful, probably because (spoiler) of a wish-fulfilment element that made me increasingly restless as the tale developed. The final scene pivots to a bleaker ending, but too late for me.
\nWhile I\u2019m discussing this story a word (no, let\u2019s be honest, a fairly long moan) about the dedication in the introduction:<\/p>\n

Our final story for this issue is dedicated in part to Jay Lake, one of the most prolific and promising young writers of the decade that stretched from 2004, when he won the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer in Science Fiction, to 2014, when cancer cut his life prematurely short.\u00a0 p. 236<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I don\u2019t think that short story dedications in a magazine are a good idea, and if you are going to have them then it would be better to put a line or two at the end of the story. If you have the dedication in the introduction it is going to colour readers\u2019 reactions to the story before they even start it: with this one I found myself slowly getting into an emotional crash position and muttering \u2018Brace, brace, brace\u2019 under my breath. My other problem with dedications is this: think of the poor reviewer, writers. If you tell me your story is dedicated to your three god-children who were all wiped out in a terrorist outrage it makes it much harder for me to tell you that your story sucked . . . but not impossible.<\/p>\n

The best of the non-fiction is an interesting science article (again, more of a compliment than you realise) from Pat Murphy and Paul Doherty. Welcome to Pleistocene Park<\/em><\/strong> is about melting permafrost increasing global warming, and a Russian scientist who is attempting to covert parts of the Russian steppe back to grassland to ameliorate this.
\nIn Books to Look For<\/em><\/strong>, Charles de Lint reviews half a dozen fantasy books including the latest two by Stephen King. Sallis reviews collections by Dale Bailey and Tananarive Due in Books<\/em><\/strong>, and Graham Andrews contributes a Curiosities<\/em><\/strong> piece. David J. Skal reviews the movies Air<\/em> and Z for Zachariah<\/em> in The World, the Flesh, and the Apocalypse<\/em><\/strong>.
\nMy other favourite non-fiction items after the science article were the cartoons, which are a distinctive part of F&SF<\/em>.<\/p>\n

This is the first modern issue of F&SF<\/em> that I\u2019ve read for a long time (and although I had both the paper and Kindle issues, I read the latter3<\/sup>). I was pleasantly surprised. The overall quality of this edition is uniformly high with a couple of quite good pieces. Recommended.\u00a0 \u25cf<\/p>\n

_____________________<\/p>\n

1. A couple of rough cover designs so you can see what I’m suggesting. The typeface at the bottom isn’t quite right, but it gives you an idea of what I mean by another letterbox at the bottom and what the art may look like:
\n\"FSF20160102altfx600\"
\nThis is the Galaxy<\/em> one: the inverse L should probably be thinner:\"FSF20160102altgx600\"<\/p>\n

2. Kowal’s The Lady Astronaut from Mars<\/em> can be found at Tor.com<\/a><\/p>\n

3. The Kindle edition of the magazine is not a patch on Asimov\u2019s SF<\/em>\u00a0which lets you choose between two formats: one that looks like a PDF identical to the physical magazine,\u00a0and\u00a0the normal Kindle layout. F&SF<\/em> only offers you the latter\u00a0and\u00a0it is a little broken. Apart from the odd formatting problem involving spaces at either side of a comma, this is what my contents page looks like on my iPad 3:<\/p>\n

\"FSF20160102kindle600\"<\/p>\n

Subscribe: F&SF<\/em>\u00a0subs<\/a>\/Amazon UK<\/a>,\u00a0USA<\/a> \/Weightless Books<\/a><\/p>\n

Edited 4th<\/sup>\u00a0October 2019: formatting changes.<\/em><\/p>\n\"rss\"<\/a>\"rss\"<\/a><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

ISFDB F&SF\u00a0subs\/Amazon UK,\u00a0USA \/Weightless Books Other Reviews: Greg Hullender\u00a0and Eric Wong, Rocket Stack Rank Nicky Magas, Tangent Online Lois Tilton, Locus Sam\u00a0Tomaino, SF Revu Mark Watson, Best SF (forthcoming) Various, Goodreads _____________________ Editor, C. C. Finlay Fiction: Vortex \u2022 short story by Gregory Benford \u2217\u2217\u2217 Number Nine Moon \u2022 novelette by Alex Irvine \u2217\u2217\u2217 Rockets […]<\/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-1151","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-iz","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1151","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=1151"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1151\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11201,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1151\/revisions\/11201"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1151"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1151"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1151"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}