{"id":2880,"date":"2017-05-12T12:39:25","date_gmt":"2017-05-12T12:39:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/?p=2880"},"modified":"2017-05-28T14:24:44","modified_gmt":"2017-05-28T14:24:44","slug":"the-magazine-of-fantasy-science-fiction-731-may-june-2017","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/?p=2880","title":{"rendered":"The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction #731, May-June 2017"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

Galactic Central link
\nISFDB link<\/p>\n

Other reviews:
\nGreg Hullender\u00a0and Eric Wong,\u00a0Rocket Stack Rank<\/a>
\nJohn D. Loyd,\u00a0There Ain\u2019t No Such Thing As A Free Lunch<\/a>
\nVictoria Silverwolf, Tangent Online<\/a>
\nSam Tomaino, SF Revu<\/a>
\nVarious, Goodreads<\/a><\/p>\n

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

Fiction:
\nA Thousand Deaths Through Flesh and Stone<\/em><\/strong> \u25cf short story by Brian Trent \u2665\u2665\u2665
\nWitch\u2019s Hour<\/em><\/strong> \u25cf novelette by Shannon Connor Winward \u2665\u2665\u2665
\nDirty Old Town<\/em><\/strong> \u25cf novelette by Richard Bowes \u2665\u2665\u2665+
\nThe Prognosticant<\/em><\/strong> \u25cf novelette by Matthew Hughes \u2665\u2665\u2665
\nThe History of the Invasion Told in Five Dogs<\/em><\/strong> \u25cf short story by Kelly Jennings \u2665\u2665\u2665
\nWhat the Hands Know<\/em><\/strong> \u25cf short story by Gregor Hartmann \u2665\u2665\u2665
\nThe Woman with the Long Black Hair<\/em><\/strong> \u25cf short story by Zach Shephard \u2665\u2665
\nMy English Name<\/em><\/strong> \u25cf novelette by R. S. Benedict \u2665\u2665\u2665\u2665
\nThe First Day of Someone Else\u2019s Life<\/em><\/strong> \u25cf short story by John Schoffstall \u2665\u2665
\nNeko Brushes<\/em><\/strong> \u25cf short story by Leah Cypess \u2665
\nRing<\/em><\/strong> \u25cf short story by Nina Kiriki Hoffman \u2665\u2665<\/p>\n

Non-fiction:
\nThe Prognosticant <\/em><\/strong>\u25cf cover by Maurizio Manzieri
\nCartoons<\/em><\/strong> \u25cf by Bill Long, Arthur Masear and Nick Downes
\nThe Path of Peace<\/em><\/strong> \u25cf poem by Mary Soon Lee
\nBooks to Look For<\/em><\/strong> \u25cf Charles De Lint
\nBooks<\/em><\/strong> \u25cf Elizabeth Hand
\nPlumage from Pegasus: Happiness in a Worn Gunn<\/em><\/strong> \u25cf humour by Paul di Filippo
\nRobots on the Road<\/em><\/strong> \u25cf science essay by Pat Murphy & Paul Doherty
\nWestern Histories<\/em><\/strong> \u25cf film review by David J. Skal
\nF&SF Competition #93 & 94<\/em><\/strong>
\nComing Attractions<\/em><\/strong>
\nCuriosities<\/em><\/strong> \u25cf book review by Mark Esping<\/p>\n

There are (at least) three series stories in this issue of F&SF<\/em> and, depending on readers\u2019\u00a0attitude to this category of fiction and the series in question, that will either be a good thing or a bad one. Even if one\u2019s\u00a0attitude is broadly positive, like mine, there always seems to be a tension between (a) meeting these old friends again and (b) the sometimes fragmentary nature of the tales on offer. We\u2019ll see to what extent this affects the following contributions.
\nTaking the series stories in the order they appear, the first is The Prognosticant<\/em><\/strong> by Matthew Hughes. This is an \u2018Archronate Universe\u2019 story, and the second episode featuring Baldemar following his introduction last issue. It has an engrossing start:<\/p>\n

Baldemar knew something was wrong when he heard the got-you-now muttering to itself. Of course, the predatory tree could not actually speak, neither to itself nor to any other creature. But whenever it had sprung at something and failed to catch it, its barb-thorned twiglets would chafe against each other as they returned to coiled-up readiness. That sound was not audible when the tree succeeded in catching prey; the<\/em> rubbing of twigs was drowned out by the noises that its victims made while it was feeding.<\/em> p. 103<\/p>\n

This\u00a0is another readable tale that goes on to tell how Baldemar catches a young thief called Raffalon (the character of a previous F&SF<\/em> \u2018Archronate\u2019 series) reconnoitring his master\u2019s property at\u00a0the dead of night. Later, Baldemar is sent by the wizard that employs him (along with Oldo, his supervisor) to recover a helmet called The Helm of Sagacity. This section, with platform-bearing imps, a near-lethal guardian, and omnipotent Helm, is inventive and absorbing stuff but the ending peters out somewhat.
\nI note in passing that we are given a hint that the series may be science fantasy rather than straight fantasy:<\/p>\n

The skintight suit that bent light around itself was a relic of a bygone aeon when, according to legend, magic had been unreliable and people had to invent machines that could do what spells and cantrips could not.<\/em> p.106<\/p>\n

The second of the series stories is a follow-up to Gregor Hartman\u2019s A Gathering on Gravity\u2019s Shore<\/em> in the January-February issue. His fourth \u2018Franden\u2019 story, What the Hands Know<\/em><\/strong>, has him at an off-world fight club where, after an initial scene-setting bout, two miners challenge their Cold Arrow employers. One of the latter turns out to be the nephew of Franden\u2019s Upheld (planetary elite) friend Maya and, when she spots this on social media, she implores Franden to help protect the nephew by joining him in the ring as his fight partner\u2014at least until she can work out another way of stopping the contest.
\nThis could probably be set in the present day as nearly everything (well, maybe not the skarmour\u2014active body armour) has a present day analogue, up to and including the way the fight is ultimately illuminated by the light of the spectators iPhones, sorry, oMos. As with the story above, it also peters out a little at the end. Nonetheless, it is a pretty good read for all that, and I really must go back and dig out the first two stories.
\nI\u2019m assuming that Ring<\/em><\/strong> by Nina Kiriki Hoffman, the last story in the issue, is also a series story, this being the first episode. It starts on a train on an alien planet with a woman called Aris who is accompanied by a man called Firen. He wears a ring that Aris controls, and it materialises she has just bought him at the slave market in the city. This first part of the story, the journey back to Aris\u2019s home, is quite slow moving if intriguing as a strange male-slave\/sexual partner owning society is sketched out. It picks up pace on arrival at their destination, where they are met by Aris\u2019s mother, who insists they go to the temple to have their union consecrated. After the ceremony (conducted\u00a0by deeply buried and long-forgotten planetary tech) is complete two things occur: the first is that circular marks appear on the couple\u2019s\u00a0hands; the second is that Firen regains the power of speech and tells Aris and her mother that he did not lose ownership of himself in the casinos, but was speech-locked and removed from the ship where he was a first officer attempting to remediate a dysfunctional crew.
\nEven though I enjoyed this one it is even more open-ended than the two above, too much so in fact. In this case I think it would have been better to ask the writer to use this as the beginning of a longer novelette or novella with more significant development in it. I would also add that, given its open-ended nature, it is not really a story to end an\u00a0issue with.
\nAt the start of this column I mentioned the possibility of fragmentary episodes with series stories: I would say that in F&SF<\/em>, C. C. Finlay makes a reasonably good job of making sure that they are self-contained, more so than you usually find. I hope he manages to keep it up as these series get longer and the readers more involved\u2026.<\/p>\n

The other stories include A Thousand Deaths Through Flesh and Stone<\/em><\/strong> by Brian Trent. This is about a soldier from the Martian Order of Stone sent to the Moon to assassinate a Partisan war criminal called Sabrina. She is responsible for, among other things, a nuclear attack on Mars. What complicates this straightforward storyline is that a saved version of the soldier has been downloaded into a new body on the Moon, one with several combat enhancements (a \u2018blurmod\u2019 is similar to the combat wiring that Gully Foyle used to speed up his physical functions in Alfred Bester\u2019s Tiger! Tiger!<\/em>). This new body meets another version of himself who has been downloaded several days earlier into a slightly different and modified body type. Together they get on the train to kill the four copies of Sabrina they are tracking. Much mayhem ensues.
\nI had one existential reservation about the storyline, which is that if you can download people into new bodies then trying to kill a particular person can rapidly degenerate into a game of whack-a-mole. That minor observation notwithstanding, the story is an entertaining, fast-paced piece, albeit one that ends pretty much as you would expect it to.
\nWitch\u2019s Hour<\/em><\/strong> by Shannon Connor Winward concerns Esmerelda, who works in a castle as what would seem to be\u00a0a witch-cum-cook, given her magical use of special spices and herbs in cooking. She has previously used these talents to poison the previous occupant of that job, a man who raped and abused her. However, she is now haunted by his ghost, and he\/it is increasingly able to manifest as a physical force, and is continuing the abuse. It is against this backdrop that the new king commands her to prepare a meal that will impress a visiting duke. Esmerelda, after the ghost then destroys her stock of spices and herbs, has to go to the Wanderers for replacement stock. She reveals herself as one of them and asks an elderwoman for information that will help her exorcise the ghost.
\nThis is well enough told and developed, but it is a fairly dark story on the way through tending to pitch black at the end.
\nAnother fantasy novelette, albeit more of a borderline case than the previous story, is the elegiac\u00a0Dirty Old Town<\/em><\/strong> by Richard Bowes, which is narrated by a writer who has some magical ability. However, the core of the story isn\u2019t about the magic elements of his life but his relationship with a childhood \u2018friend,\u2019 Ed Mackey, an actor who has had some success as a TV and film star. Their tale takes them from their childhood together in a tough area of South Boston to the present day, and the narrative, which doesn\u2019t easily lend itself to synopsis (it is a mosaic of many scenes and anecdotes), moves back and forth\u00a0from its immersive account of those early days in Boston to the relationship that develops between the two men in later life. The second-best story in the issue.
\nThe History of the Invasion Told in Five Dogs<\/em><\/strong> by Kelly Jennings is a post-alien invasion dystopia told through the device of five dogs from the narrator\u2019s life. I liked this short, grim and\u00a0absorbing story.
\nThe Woman with the Long Black Hair<\/em><\/strong> by Zach Shephard is a short fable (or as the introduction says, sigh, \u2018flash fiction\u2019) about a black haired woman called Korlova who asks various people about herself. The ones who have bad things to say about her are rewarded…<\/p>\n

The standout story of the issue for me was My English Name<\/em><\/strong> by R. S. Benedict. This is an impressive debut that starts with a diminutive Chinese woman entering a room and changing into, or adopting the external form of, an Englishman in China called Thomas Major. The rest of the story follows this man\/creature as he becomes a TEFL (foreign language) teacher, and of the local Chinese man he later becomes friendly with. While the focus of the piece is on the aspirations of this creature for a relationship with another being\u2014this is perhaps meant as a more universal metaphor\u2014there are various\u00a0visceral flashes of how alien he\/it is throughout. Thomas avoids physical contact as he\/it cannot take the risk of exposing the artificiality of his\/its carapace, or the damage that may ensue.<\/p>\n

I have no trouble with chopsticks. But putting food in my mouth, chewing it, and swallowing it are not actions that come naturally to me. This tongue of mine does not have working taste buds. My teeth are not especially secure in their gums, having been inserted one by one with a few taps of a hammer. This stomach of mine is only a synthetic sack that dangles in the recesses of my body. It has no exit. It leads nowhere.<\/em> p. 174<\/p>\n

What I also found interesting in this piece was the description of the rather dissolute expat\/foreign language community in China, and how Thomas\u2019s status as a foreigner mirrors his experience of trying to fit into wider human society.<\/p>\n

Our train plunges deeper and deeper into miasma as we approach the city. The sky darkens even as the sun rises. It\u2019s late autumn and the coal plants are blazing in preparation for winter. Maybe it is the air. Maybe it\u2019s bad enough to affect even me. Maybe the new skin wasn\u2019t ready when I put it on. Maybe it\u2019s just the standard decay that conquers every Westerner who spends too much time in China. Whatever the reason, Thomas Majors is beginning to come apart again.<\/em> p. 184<\/p>\n

This story reminded me somewhat of the recent film Under the Skin<\/em> and, although it is\u00a0not an SF thriller or horror, there is a final scene (spoiler) where the catastrophic decay of Thomas\u2019s external form causes quite a scene. One for the \u2018Best of the Year\u2019 anthologies.
\nThe First Day of Someone Else\u2019s Life<\/em><\/strong> by John Schoffstall is an information-dense story set in an almost unrecognisable future where a man wakes up in a body that isn\u2019t his. He can hear a female voice speaking to him.
\nAfter some workplace\/company\/political manoeuvring he is (spoiler) rumbled by the company that employs him as a spy whose mind has recently been reprogrammed with another personality. This is competently done but in the end I\u2019m not sure it really amounts to much.
\nI would note that I have a vague dislike of ultra-dense cyberpunk type narratives. It is\u00a0probably just laziness but I find they are hard work to read and process, and this one wasn\u2019t helped by some complicated vocabulary\u2014two of the (many) words I stumbled over weren\u2019t even in my OECD and I had to look them up online (the first was pareidolic<\/em>, p. 209, I think the second was maybe decathexis<\/em>, p. 222).1<\/sup>
\nNeko Brushes<\/em><\/strong> by Leah Cypess is about a young boy who paints cats. After a samurai arrives at the monastery where he lives, he is taken away. At his new home he is told by the lady of the house to continue paint cats and, later, one comes to life and climbs down off a hanging scroll. After this he is asked to paint a magical sword, which the samurai and the lady plan on using to oust the current shogun.
\nThis is an engaging story up until the ending, which was all over the place (spoiler: the sword is flawed and they lose the battle, the boy paints a picture of the lady but she does not come to life, the lady escapes from her prison cell by painting a door of the wall).<\/p>\n

The Prognosticant <\/em><\/strong>has a pretty good cover by Maurizio Manzieri, although the electronic\/PDF edition of the magazine has the usual crappy low-resolution image (which appears poorly cropped this time as well, look at the cut through the CC on the left hand side of the title).2<\/sup> Fortunately, whoever put the PDF together left in a cover proof by mistake, which gives a much nicer image to look at as well as the back cover advertisement.3<\/sup> Why can’t they use this quality of image all the time rather than what appears to be a low-resolution scan\u00a0of a physical cover? Yes, I know, I’ll get off my high horse.
\nThere are Cartoons<\/em><\/strong> by Bill Long, Arthur Masear and Nick Downes in this issue, none of which did anything for me.
\nThe Path of Peace<\/em><\/strong> is an OK poem about kings, princes and dragons by Mary Soon Lee
\nBooks to Look For<\/em><\/strong> by Charles De Lint and Books<\/em><\/strong> by Elizabeth Hand are the review columns. We get another flash of political angst from the latter column:<\/p>\n

I\u2019m writing these words in the shadow of a year that ominously presages a future out of the darkest worlds conjured in<\/em> Literary Wonderlands: that of books like <\/em>1984, Fahrenheit 451, The Handmaid\u2019s Tale, Brave New World, Never Let Me Go.<\/em> p. 93-94<\/p>\n

And then there is this from Western Histories<\/em><\/strong>, the TV\u00a0column by David J. Skal covering The Man in the High Castle<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Unless you\u2019ve been living in an alternate universe yourself, you may already have taken note that Dick\u2019s parallel reality tale in which Germany won World War II has found an almost daily resonance with media reports and analysis of the disturbing drift toward strongman rule in the United States and Europe.<\/em> p. 204<\/p>\n

They are all beginning to sound like my (almost) namesake Private Frazer, from the British television show\u00a0Dad\u2019s Army<\/em>: \u2018We\u2019re doomed, Captain Mannering.\u00a0Doomed, I tell ye, doomed!\u20193<\/sup>
\nPlumage from Pegasus: Happiness in a Worn Gunn<\/em><\/strong> by Paul di Filippo is a humour piece about an open carry law that is passed in the near future, but one that applies to books.
\nRobots on the Road<\/em><\/strong> by Pat Murphy & Paul Doherty is a fascinating column about self-driving cars that has a number of interesting points. Two of these are:<\/p>\n

Pedestrians with their eyes on the phone screen stumble, fall, walk into things, and even step right into traffic. Thanks to this ubiquitous technology, urban pedestrians had to go to the hospital for emergency\u00a0<\/em>treatment ten times more often in 2014 as they did in 2006.<\/em> p. 199<\/p>\n

In a situation where the car has to crash into something, what will it choose to crash into? Suppose a car has a choice of running into a crowd of pedestrians or missing them and hitting a concrete pillar. Running into the pillar is more likely to injure the people in the car, while running into the pedestrians is more likely to injure them. What should the car be programmed to choose?<\/em>
\nWhen surveyed, people say a car should take action to save the most lives. But when these same people are asked to make a choice between two cars, their answer changes. Car #1 will save the most lives, even if that decision kills the car\u2019s passenger. Car #2 will make the decision that saves the passenger, even if that means wiping out an entire troop of Girl Scouts. It doesn\u2019t surprise us that people almost always picked Car #2. <\/em>
\nFor another perspective on this dilemma, Paul discussed the ethics of self-driving cars with a group of Buddhist monks when he was in India. His workshop group of monks instantly suggested a consideration that hadn\u2019t occurred to Paul: the people in the car had chosen to be in the car. The pedestrians, on the other hand, had made no such choice. So perhaps, the monks said, the car should favor saving the pedestrians, who were essentially innocent bystanders.<\/em> p.200<\/p>\n

The winning entries for F&SF Competition #93<\/em><\/strong> are published which, like the cartoons, I mostly didn\u2019t get.
\nComing Attractions <\/em><\/strong>mentions two stories from the magazine on this year\u2019s Nebula Award ballot: The Liar<\/em> by John P. Murphy (March\/April), which was nominated for Best Novella, and The Long Fall Up<\/em> by William Ledbetter (May\/June), nominated for Best Novelette.4<\/sup>
\nFinally there is the Curiosities<\/em><\/strong> column, this time by Mark Esping. No reflection on this contributor, but I think this column and its tenuous filler is way past its sell-by date. I\u2019d rather have a page on a significant back issue of F&SF<\/em> (like C. C. Finlay does with his Throw Back Thursday<\/em> posts on the F&SF<\/em> blog5<\/sup>).<\/p>\n

Another solid issue, which is more of a compliment than you might think.<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Google gives the meaning of pareidolia<\/em> as: \u2018the tendency to perceive a specific, often meaningful, image in a random or ambiguous visual pattern.\u2019 Although decathexis<\/em> wasn\u2019t in my OECD, cathexis<\/em> was (which is why I think it may have been another word): \u2018the concentration of mental energy on one particular person, idea, or object (especially to an unhealthy degree).\u2019<\/li>\n
  2. The cover proof:\u00a0\"\"The original low-resolution cover, which is quite blurry compared with the one above: \u00a0 \u00a0\"\"<\/li>\n
  3. I note in passing that there are no short stories or novelettes from either F&SF<\/em> or Asimov\u2019s SF<\/em> on the Hugo ballot (Tor.com<\/a> has the list), which seems strange. This was explained to me as a possible backlash against straight white male writers, but I think it is more complicated than that. There may be a small Puppy effect on the ballot, and possibly a much larger free versus paid content one (at least for the two categories mentioned: the novellas look like they are going the way of novels and being decided by the publication of individual books). I was also rather surprised that while Shelia Williams deservedly made it onto the final ballot, C. C. Finlay didn\u2019t.<\/li>\n
  4. A Throw Back Thursday<\/em> post<\/a>\u00a0from C. C. Finlay on the January 1957 issue of F&SF<\/em>.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    This magazine is still being published!<\/strong>\u00a0Subscribe:\u00a0Kindle UK<\/a>,\u00a0Kindle USA<\/a>,\u00a0Weightless Books<\/a>\u00a0or\u00a0physical copies<\/a>.<\/p>\n\"rss\"<\/a>\"rss\"<\/a><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Galactic Central link ISFDB link Other reviews: Greg Hullender\u00a0and Eric Wong,\u00a0Rocket Stack Rank John D. Loyd,\u00a0There Ain\u2019t No Such Thing As A Free Lunch Victoria Silverwolf, Tangent Online Sam Tomaino, SF Revu Various, Goodreads Editor, C. C. Finlay Fiction: A Thousand Deaths Through Flesh and Stone \u25cf short story by Brian Trent \u2665\u2665\u2665 Witch\u2019s Hour […]<\/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-2880","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-Ks","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2880","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=2880"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2880\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2980,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2880\/revisions\/2980"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2880"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2880"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2880"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}

  5. Private Frazer can be heard uttering his catchphrase from Dad\u2019s Army<\/em> on YouTube<\/a>. Despite innumerable utterances he survived the war. And while we are comparing everything in the current American political scene to Nazi Germany, here is Adolf Hitler on YouTube<\/a> when he hears about the new Dad\u2019s Army<\/em> remake.<\/li>\n