{"id":1422,"date":"2016-06-10T09:49:59","date_gmt":"2016-06-10T09:49:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/?p=1422"},"modified":"2017-04-20T23:12:05","modified_gmt":"2017-04-20T23:12:05","slug":"the-magazine-of-fantasy-and-science-fiction-725-may-june-2016","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/?p=1422","title":{"rendered":"The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction #725, May-June 2016"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"FSF20160506x600\"<\/p>\n

Other Reviews:
\nGreg Hullender\u00a0and Eric Wong, Rocket Stack Rank<\/a>
\nKevin P. Hallett, Tangent Online<\/a>
\nSam\u00a0Tomaino, SF Revu<\/a>
\nMark Watson, Best SF<\/a> (forthcoming)
\nVarious, Goodreads<\/a><\/p>\n

Fiction:
\nMore Heat Than Light<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 novelette by Charlotte Ashley \u2665\u2665
\nLast of the Sharkspeakers<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 novelette by Brian Trent \u2665\u2665\u2665+
\nThe Nostaligia Calculatro<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by Rich Larson \u2665\u2665
\nCoyote Song<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 novella by Pat MacEwen \u2665\u2665
\nThe Great Silence<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by Ted Chiang and Calzadilla and Allora \u2665\u2665\u2665
\nCaribou: Documentary Fragments<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by Joseph Tomaras \u2665\u2665\u2665+
\nSteamboat Gothic<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 novelette by Albert E. Cowdrey \u2665\u2665
\nAsh<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by Susan Palwick \u2665\u2665\u2665\u2665
\nThe Secret Mirror of Moriyama House<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by Yukimi Ogawa \u2665\u2665
\nThe Long Fall Up<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 novelette by William Ledbetter \u2665\u2665\u2665+
\nThe Stone War<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 novelette by Ted Kosmatka \u2665\u2665\u2665+<\/p>\n

Non-fiction:
\nThe Stone War<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 cover by Max Bertolini
\nCartoons<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 Bill Long, Arthur Masear, Nick Downes
\nBooks to Look For<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 by Charles de Lint
\nBooks<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 by Elizabeth Hand
\nF&SF Competition #91: \u201cIt\u2019s All Relative\u201d<\/em><\/strong>
\nCompetition #92: Updated <\/em><\/strong>
\nComing Attractions <\/em><\/strong>
\nCuriosities: Twilight Stories, by Rhona Broughton <\/em><\/strong>\u2022 essay by Paul Di Filippo<\/p>\n

This month\u2019s fiction leads off with More Heat Than Light<\/em><\/strong> by Charlotte Ashley. This novelette is set \u2018in a parallel world where the French Revolution has come to Quebec and revolutionaries take up arms against the English in the monster-ridden wilderness\u2019<\/em>. After an\u00a0initially promising start\u00a0that involves the capture of an English officer by Davy, one of the revolutionaries who is a woman disguised as a man, she (spoiler) falls foul of internal revolutionary politics and leaves the camp to exchange him for ransom. This is interesting enough for the most part but the \u2018monsters\u2019 aren\u2019t ever really explained or integrated into the piece: for instance, there are dire-wolves and huge bears\u2014the latter of which seem impervious to rifle fire\u2014but there is also a flying beast called a Culloo that is never sufficiently described. It is also rather open-ended, so no doubt we will find out more in due course.
\nThe second of five novelettes is next. Last of the Sharkspeakers<\/em><\/strong> by Brian Trent is part of the author\u2019s \u2018War Hero\u2019 series but is a self-contained story that tells of porcupine-like human mutants who are captured by \u2018normal\u2019 humans as they attempt to steal from one of the human \u2018voidsharks\u2019. These are organic flying creatures that can transport humans and cargo\u00a0internally. The mutants are subsequently taken to the human city, at which point they find out they are living inside a vast asteroid, and they and the rest of their group\u00a0are given food and medical treatment. In return the humans want the pod to communicate with an \u2018icari\u2019 voidshark. The icari are enemies of the humans and the icari voidsharks, unlike the human ones, can travel in space.
\nThis is all narrated by the \u2018alpha\u2019 of the group, who subsequently finds that not only is communicating with the captured voidshark difficult, so is determining the humans\u2019 true purpose.
\nThis is a vivid and immersive adventure but I have two minor criticisms: first, the initial skirmish could be more clearly described; second, I could have done with a bit more detail about the internals, size and appearance of the voidsharks. I hope we see more of this series.<\/p>\n

The Nostaligia Calculatro<\/em><\/strong> by Rich Larson is the first of the short stories and is about a man who monitors nostalgia and notices that waves of nostalgia are coming in exponentially decreasing waves….
\nFor most readers the fun in this rather slight piece will probably be in the telling:<\/p>\n

The nostalgia calculator was waiting for him, display thrown up on the wall, showing all the squiggling waves of low-rise jeans, Cheetos, neuro-linked iPods, beehives. The status lights blinked soft baby blue, like always. Noel pulled out his Slate, which was loaded with the hack-app he\u2019d bought off Casey late last night, and plugged it in. <\/em>
\n\u201cDownload, motherfucker,\u201d Noel said, because it was jazzier to say it than tap the screen.<\/em>
\n\u201cDid you say, mother of her?\u201d the voice-reco buzzed. Noel pursed his lips and tapped the screen. <\/em>
\nIt took all of thirty seconds to put the entire recorded history of nostalgia onto his phone, and all of thirty-five seconds for security to arrive.<\/em> p.66<\/p>\n

Coyote Song<\/em><\/strong> is a novella by Pat MacEwen that gets if to a pretty good start with a CSI<\/em>-style investigation of the death of a young Vietnamese man:<\/p>\n

The body lay in a shallow grave behind the garage. Someone had wrapped it in an old shower curtain with a tropical-island motif\u2014clownfish, tangs, and dolphins swam among squid and translucent jellies. The contrast between the bright colors and the contents was stark, and a little bit weird. At the near end, the plastic was torn and a foot poked out. It was missing three toes on account of the neighbor\u2019s pit bull, which had broken through the fence on my left when the body began generating enticing aromas. It was the dog\u2019s owner, horrified by his pet\u2019s grisly snack attack, who\u2019d called it in. Otherwise who knows how long it might have taken to find the remains? <\/em>
\nI was just happy it wasn\u2019t high summer yet. In California, the Central Valley sunshine bakes everything to a crisp from late June into mid- September. That dry heat can mummify or skeletonize a body in a couple of weeks with the help of local wildlife, insects, and pit bulls. With this guy, it wasn\u2019t that bad. The maggots hadn\u2019t really gotten started.<\/em><\/p>\n

It soon turns into something more sinister when another man in the family is found dead\u2014and in the autopsy it appears as his heart has been cooked, as if it had been\u00a0microwaved…. The narrator\u2019s Native American ancestry and magical knowledge starts coming to the fore as does her colleague\u2019s Voodoo skills. Their suspect would seem to be the Vietnamese grandmother but she insists the killer is the \u2018Angel of Death\u2019.
\nUp to this point the fusion of the three magical traditions works quite well but at the half way stage there is an incident which\u00a0stretches credulity a little. The story still worked for me past this point but in the climactic scene the explanation of who did what and why doesn\u2019t really convince. So, overall, this one is a bit of a mixed bag.
\nOne minor point about that final scene is that there are too many people and\/or entities talking to\/at each other, and a related criticism is that the narrative style is sometimes too garrulous, which\u00a0is particularly noticeable during action scenes:<\/p>\n

Something\u2014the droplets my tortured nose put out, or some herb or chemical in the powder, hell, maybe the pure power in the stuff\u2014flew out of me along with that sneeze. When it hit her\u2014well, it stuck. Like a million points of glitter, it sparkled, all colors, but mostly red, and the points made a picture. You ever seen that kind of Impressionist painting? All tiny dots and tidbits of color? No real lines at all? What\u2019s his name did that. Seurat, maybe? Van Gogh, too, sometimes. I\u2019ve seen \u2018em in the museums my Irish gran used to haul me through, trying to civilize my ass. <\/em>
\nPointillist\u2014yeah, that\u2019s what they call it.<\/em> p.128<\/p>\n

I would suggest the second part of that needs some trimming. That said, this story has an interesting idea and some good sections of narrative, and other readers may find its deficits less problematic than me.<\/p>\n

The Great Silence<\/em><\/strong> by Ted Chiang and Calzadilla and Allora is a short story that grew out of an art installation created by the second and third \u2018authors\u2019. Ted Chiang says:<\/p>\n

One screen would show footage of the radio telescope in Arecibo, while another would show footage of the endangered Puerto Rican Parrot. They asked me if I would write text that would appear on the third screen.<\/em> p.134<\/p>\n

It is short, affecting piece\u2014told from the viewpoint of the parrot\u2014about communication, speech and extinction.<\/p>\n

Caribou: Documentary Fragments<\/em><\/strong> by Joseph Tomaras is a gritty political story about the sexual torture of terrorist suspects and a biological memory wipe administered to those who have done\u00a0the torturing:<\/p>\n

The interrogation method was simple enough. Bring in a female MP, preferably big chested, wearing the\u00a0tightest cut of uniform. You pop open the top two buttons of your shirt to show some cleavage, then rub yourself all over the detainee, talking dirty as hell. The detainees were fully clothed in their prison-issue. The point was not to fuck them, it was to fuck with them. None of us was hot for hajji. Even with the clothes on they were rank. By the time the interrogators brought us in they\u2019d been denied showers for weeks, smelled like camel ass.
\nI don\u2019t know exactly how many I did, but it was a few. After the wipe, what\u2019s left runs together in my mind.<\/em> p.139<\/p>\n

The story plays out as a compelling series of interviews conducted for a documentary. I found it gripping.<\/p>\n

The next of the novelettes is Steamboat Gothic<\/em><\/strong> by Albert E. Cowdrey and, as with Charlotte Ashley\u2019s story, this also gets off to a good start but tails off later. It concerns a \u2018pragmatic\u2019 Louisiana sheriff who has to deal with the multiple murder of a visiting film development crew in a gothic mansion and it is told in a colourful and readable style. Unfortunately, (spoiler) the plot of Satan murdering the crew is developed in the most perfunctory way and not really explained at all, or not in a substantial way at any rate. At the end of the story the focus is on the Sheriff\u2019s family ties, casual corruption and business arrangements. Also, although this is not the fault of the story, it was an editorial mistake having another CSI\/supernatural-type tale in the same issue\u00a0as\u00a0the Pat McEwan novella.
\nIt has one good amusing line though (if you are not from the state in question):<\/p>\n

Louisiana was fortunate in possessing many more people who could write books than people who could read them.<\/em> p.171<\/p>\n

I hope the author owns a tin hat\u2026.<\/p>\n

Ash<\/em><\/strong> by Susan Palwick is a lovely fantasy and the story of the issue. It starts with a woman, Penny, who has been forcibly decluttered by a house-fire. She decides to build a smaller replacement house and stay downsized. However, the autumn\/fall after her new house has been built the nearby rowan tree not only produces berries but several items she lost in the fire:<\/p>\n

Penny stared. She stood. Straining on tiptoe, she reached for the earring; she had to tug to free it, although it came away cleanly. And now she saw, among the red berries the tree always bore, other things that shouldn\u2019t have been there: flashes of gold, the gleaming edge of a favorite coffee mug, a square of paper with blurry blotches she suspected would resolve into a photograph, like a Polaroid developing in the air.<\/em> p.175<\/p>\n

She rationalises that the tree is somehow recycling the ashes from the fire and the tale\u00a0proceeds onward….
\nAt times this felt as if the author had written this story\u00a0for me personally, and I suspect many others will have a similar reaction: a pertinent and at times emotional read.
\nThe Secret Mirror of Moriyama House<\/em><\/strong> by Yukimi Ogawa is another fantasy, this time about a young woman who becomes involved with an elderly lady neighbour. Over a period of time, the woman discovers that the neighbour patches up dead people who come through a mirror she owns before they finally move on. Unfortunately this is lightly developed and ends up feeling a bit anti-climactic.<\/p>\n

The last two novelettes close out the issue. The Long Fall Up<\/em><\/strong> by William Ledbetter is about a woman called Veronica Perez who leaves Jinshan station, an L-5 habitat, to have a baby\u2014illegally\u2014in zero gravity. J\u00e4ger Jin, one of the asteroid defence picket-ship pilots, is sent by the Jinshan corporation to kill her.
\nInitially, Jin is keen to do his duty (spoiler) but his attitude changes, partially due to events and partially due to comments made by his onboard AI, Huizhu. Eventually he decides to attempt a rendezvous with Perez but, although the AI is sympathetic, she is bound to carry out orders sent from the Jinshan corporation. That said, Huizhu works around direct orders when she can, such as when Jin tries to gain control of the ship engines:<\/p>\n

You would have to cut these eight wires,\u201d Huizhu said, and the lines crisscrossing the screen flashed on and off rapidly. My hands shook and I tried to memorize that entire circuit, just in case. \u201cUsing just the replacement-part printer, could you build me a manual control adaptor?\u201d<\/em>
\n\u201cNo,\u201d she said. My pulse slowed and I steeled myself for doing it the hard way. Then she spoke again. \u201cI have already designed the module and fed the information into the printer, but I can\u2019t actually send the command to make it.\u201d <\/em>
\n\u201cSo that means\u2014\u201d <\/em>
\n\u201cI can explain the logic behind that limitation, or you can just go press the button.\u201d<\/em> p.222<\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t entirely buy the evil corporation or the childbirth laws\u2014although I suspect the basis for these is the Chinese \u2018one child\u2019 policy\u2014but if you can swallow these points the rest of the story is suspenseful and touching.
\nThe final\u00a0story is The Stone War<\/em><\/strong> by Ted Kosmatka. This is about a stone man who crouches in the hills and who is immobile unless he is attacked, whereupon he stands and kills the aggressor. The story details the hundreds and thousands of years that pass with various groups of people passing by and camping at the stone man\u2019s location. Every now and then someone strikes at the stone man and pays with their life. Matters only change significantly when a war-mongering king learns of the stone man and comes to see for himself. Eventually (spoiler) this turns into a clever tale of mutually assured destruction. A bit slow to get going but ultimately a pretty good fantasy and one that\u2019ll probably be in the \u2018Best of the Year\u2019 anthologies.<\/p>\n

There is also the usual selection of non-fiction in this issue with interesting book review columns by Charles de Lint, Books to Look For<\/em><\/strong>, and Elizabeth Hand, Books<\/em><\/strong>. De Lint reviews, amongst other things Bookburners Season One<\/em>, a serially published book, and the Nebula Awards Showcase 2015<\/em> by Greg Bear. In the first review he mentions not trying a similar serial book from the same publisher because \u2018I\u2019m on a budget\u2019, which I found rather strange as I would have thought that they would have been delighted to give him a review copy for free if he had asked. When he comes to the Nebula anthology he says of one story:<\/p>\n

Kenneth Schneyer\u2019s \u201cSelected Program Notes from the Retrospective Exhibition of Theresa Rosenberg Latimer\u201d is told entirely in program notes, as the title suggests. They describe each painting and are\u00a0accompanied by suggested discussion sessions. I didn\u2019t quite get the story\u2014it seemed to flit just out of my\u00a0reach\u2014but it\u2019s a fascinating and somewhat eerie narrative that made me wish I could both see the paintings and know more about the artist\u2019s life.<\/em> p.75<\/p>\n

If he doesn\u2019t get it, what chance do we amateurs have?
\nIn Alternating Currents<\/em><\/strong> David J. Skal reviews Amazon Video\u2019s new series The Man in the High Castle<\/em>, which I have already seen. He does a good job of looking at some of the sometimes necessary differences between the book and the TV show. Curiosities<\/em><\/strong> by Paul Di Filippo looks at Twilight Stories<\/em> by Rhona Broughton. I suppose I should also mention this issue\u2019s cover by Max Bertolini, which I don\u2019t like for a couple of reasons: first, it has a limited colour palette that makes for a rather bland offering; second, I am not a fan of the blurry figure, which ends up looking like a production mistake. The Kindle cover version of the magazine once again has what looks like a mesh filter overlaid on the low-resolution image.<\/p>\n

In conclusion, this is a strong issue. Not only do you get a memorable fantasy from Susan Palwick but there are also four superior novelettes. I\u2019d also add that the stories that didn\u2019t entirely work for me are worth reading for the parts that do, something you cannot always say about the less favoured stories in any given issue of a SF magazine.<\/p>\n

This magazine is still being published!<\/b> Subscribe: Kindle UK<\/a>, Kindle USA<\/a> or physical copies<\/a>.<\/p>\n\"rss\"<\/a>\"rss\"<\/a><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Other Reviews: Greg Hullender\u00a0and Eric Wong, Rocket Stack Rank Kevin P. Hallett, Tangent Online Sam\u00a0Tomaino, SF Revu Mark Watson, Best SF (forthcoming) Various, Goodreads Fiction: More Heat Than Light \u2022 novelette by Charlotte Ashley \u2665\u2665 Last of the Sharkspeakers \u2022 novelette by Brian Trent \u2665\u2665\u2665+ The Nostaligia Calculatro \u2022 short story by Rich Larson \u2665\u2665 […]<\/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":true,"_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-1422","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-mW","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1422","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=1422"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1422\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14198,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1422\/revisions\/14198"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1422"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1422"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1422"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}