{"id":3630,"date":"2017-11-23T13:35:43","date_gmt":"2017-11-23T13:35:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/?p=3630"},"modified":"2017-11-23T13:35:43","modified_gmt":"2017-11-23T13:35:43","slug":"the-magazine-of-fantasy-science-fiction-732-july-august-2017","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/?p=3630","title":{"rendered":"The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction #732, July-August 2017"},"content":{"rendered":"

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ISFDB link<\/a><\/p>\n

Other reviews:
\nSteve Fahnestalk, Amazing Stories<\/a>
\nGreg Hullender\u00a0and Eric Wong,\u00a0Rocket Stack Rank<\/a>
\nJohn D. Loyd,\u00a0There Ain\u2019t No Such Thing As A Free Lunch<\/a>
\nPatrick Mahon, SF Crowsnest<\/a>
\nJohn Siebelink, Amazing Stories<\/a>
\nAdrian Simmons, Black Gate<\/a>
\nVictoria Silverwolf, Tangent Online<\/a>
\nSam Tomaino, SF Revu<\/a>
\nVarious, Goodreads<\/a><\/p>\n

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

Fiction:
\nIn a Wide Sky, Hidden<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by William Ledbetter \u2217\u2217\u2217<\/strong>
\nThe Masochist\u2019s Assistant<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 novelette by Auston Habershaw \u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>
\nThe Bride in Sea-Green Velvet<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 novelette by Robin Furth \u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>+
\nThere Was a Crooked Man, He Flipped a Crooked House<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 novella by David Erik Nelson \u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>
\nA Dog\u2019s Story<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by Gardner Dozois \u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>
\nI Am Not I<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 novelette by G. V. Anderson \u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>
\nAfiya\u2019s Song<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 novelette by Justin C. Key\u00a0\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>
\nAn Obstruction to Delivery <\/em><\/strong>\u2022 short story by Sean Adams\u00a0\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>+
\nAn Unearned Death<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by Marissa Lingen\u00a0\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong><\/p>\n

Non-fiction:
\nThere Was a Crooked Man, He Flipped a Crooked House<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 cover by Nicholas Grunas
\nBooks to Look For<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 by Charles de Lint
\nMusing on Books <\/em><\/strong>\u2022 by Michelle West
\nCartoon <\/em><\/strong>\u2022 by Nick Downes
\nWith the Best of Intentions<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 science essay by Pat Murphy and Paul Doherty
\nGhoulies, Ghosties, Beasties<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 film review by David J. Skal
\nNorthwest Cruise<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 poem by Sophie M. White
\nComing Attractions
\nCuriosities <\/em><\/strong>\u2022 review by Paul Di Filippo<\/p>\n

The fiction leads off with In a Wide Sky, Hidden<\/em><\/strong> by William Ledbetter, which has the narrator arriving (via quantum transportation) on an alien planet where he is met by an eight foot high humanoid robot. He is on a quest to find his sister, a planetary artist who disappeared decades ago (there is life extension in this future as the transportation device can alter the traveller\u2019s reconstructed body to a younger biological age). His last contact with his sister ended with her vanishing:<\/p>\n

I spent the rest of that night getting drunk and slept in the next morning. When I woke up, I found a handwritten note waiting for me.
\nCOME FIND ME. \u2014 Regina
\nI assumed she meant to find her for breakfast or lunch, but as I learned from the local news, she had taken advantage of the media focus on her show and staged a dramatic disappearance. Her statement, sent to the local press and soon spread across all settled space, was simple yet mysterious and teasing.
\n\u201cI have found a world of my own. It will be my masterpiece.\u201d<\/em> p. 14-15<\/p>\n

He has been searching for her ever since.
\nAs he recovers from the journey, the robot tells him that there is no natural life on the planet but that the probes have found something artificial. As the man and the robot investigate this there are a couple of scenes spliced in that limn the relationship between the narrator and his sister, including a disagreement they have about him giving up his ambition to be a planetary explorer for a young woman he is in love with at home.
\nEventually (spoiler) they find his sister\u2019s body and deduce she died forty years ago. She let herself to age naturally and die. He must now decide\u00a0whether to continue exploring.
\nThis is well enough done, but I wasn\u2019t really convinced about the sister deliberately stranding herself on the planet just to motivate her brother to become an explorer.
\nThe Masochist\u2019s Assistant<\/em><\/strong> by Auston Habershaw, according to the introduction, takes place in the same world as his fantasy trilogy, The Saga of the Redeemed<\/em>,1<\/sup> although it is complete in itself.
\nGeorges is the famulus (servant\/assistant) to Magus Hugarth, and has unusual duties:<\/p>\n

This particular morning, though, Georges found his master on his back and stabbed him in the front almost without thinking about it. As his master\u2019s blood soaked through the linen, his mind was on the salon to be held in the Silver Room of Madame Grousand\u2019s ch\u00e2teau that evening. He had responded to the invitation in the positive without his master\u2019s knowledge, hoping that his master wouldn\u2019t want to go and send him in his stead when Georges pointed out that the event was tonight. This happened often enough to be reasonably certain, despite his master priding himself on his unpredictability.
\nGeorges pulled his ruffled sleeve up and away from the bloody linen with his free hand and considered what he ought to wear to the salon while gazing out the open window and over the rooftops of the village and into the vastness of the deep summer-blue sky. He indulged in a daydream \u2014 himself, the center of attention at the salon in his periwinkle doublet, telling riddles that amused an array of highborn ladies. In time, though, he heard his master cough roughly and Georges was pushed away by one meaty hand.
\nMaster Hugarth sat up in bed, blinking in the morning light. His voice was hoarse. \u201cHow long?\u201d<\/em> p. 23<\/p>\n

This passage illuminates two of story\u2019s threads: Magus Hugarth\u2019s quest to reduce the amount of time he remains dead after being killed; and Georges\u2019 desire to advance in the etiquette bound society in which he lives. Unfortunately, Hugarth\u2019s disreputable behaviour (i.e. running naked in the street, saying exactly what he thinks in company, etc.) poisons Georges\u2019 chances at advancement.
\nThe last part draws all these elements together in a satisfying way.
\nThe Bride in Sea-Green Velvet<\/em><\/strong> by Robin Furth begins with Sir Henry buying a woman\u2019s skull from a member of thieves\u2019 guild, then taking it to a man called DeMains. The latter will build up a face on the skull from clay and pins. While they are discussing the project, DeMains questions Sir Henry\u00a0about his plans for his forty-ninth birthday\u2014seven by seven, so a significant occasion\u2014and the sacrifice he must make to the sea goddess. Using\u00a0a local girl for this is problematical, so De Mains asks if Sir Henry intends to use the skull. Sir Henry is reluctant, but realises he may have no choice.
\nLater Sir Henry retires to the catacombs under his chateau. There he selects a favourite skull from his collection and takes it deeper into the caves to see the Abbot, who is long dead and appears as a shadow. Sir Henry asks him for his treatise on turning clay into flesh.
\nThe highlight of the piece (spoiler) is when Sir Henry goes down to the shoreline on the evening of his birthday and starts creating a body for the restored head, with a view to using it as a sacrifice:<\/p>\n

With the deference of a courting suitor, Sir Henry laid the head of his lady upon the sand. Then he set about building her a body.
\nHer spine \u2014 from neck to curved pelvis \u2014 he took from the remains of the amorous mermaid. The bones of legs and feet, arms and hands, lovely fingers and precious toes he built from driftwood and coral. Her lungs were sea sponges and her tendons long strands of kelp wrapped around the muscular innards scooped from great scallop shells. Womb and bladder were sea cucumbers, her ovaries starfish, and her liver a giant sea leach. Her gallbladder was a yellow snail and her innards a writhing sea worm pulled from below the sand, its circular mouthful of teeth snapping. For breasts, two more lovely rounded sea sponges, and for nipples, tiny pearls.
\nAlmost finished, he sat back on his heels and gazed upon the body of his beloved, and at her head, which rested several feet away. She looked like a beautiful saint \u2014 beheaded and flayed \u2014 though the gods this lady served were no Christian ones. Sir Henry sighed. The only missing organ was a heart.<\/em> p. 56-57<\/p>\n

This process becomes weirder and more visceral.
\nFor the first half or so of the story I found this one a bit hard to get into, but the gripping resurrection scene provides a strong second half.
\nIt was only after reading There Was a Crooked Man, He Flipped a Crooked House<\/em><\/strong> by David Erik Nelson that I realised I hadn\u2019t recognised him as the author of Where There Is Nothing, There Is God<\/em>, a \u2018New Guys\u2019 time-travel novella from last December\u2019s Asimov\u2019s SF<\/em>. That one was a lively and entertaining story which I enjoyed, and I liked this one even more.
\nThe obvious starting point for this one is Robert A. Heinlein\u2019s novelette \u201c\u2014And He Built a Crooked House\u2014\u201d<\/em> (Astounding<\/em>, February 1941), the well-known story whose architect protagonist inadvertently builds a house that collapses during an earthquake to become a tesseract. (A tesseract is to a cube as a cube is to a square. Long story short, this leads to a lot of dimensional weirdness inside the house. From Wikipedia2<\/sup>: \u201c\u2014the stairs seem to form a closed loop. There appears to be no way to get back out, as all the doors and windows lead directly into other rooms. At one point, they look down a hallway and are shocked to see their own backs.\u201d<\/em>)
\nNelson takes this basic idea and places his tesseract house in a grittily described Detroit, where the building is about to be cleared, repaired and flipped by a couple of house renovators called Glenn and Lennie. Glenn, who is the narrator, realises there is something wrong with the house while he and his assistant do their survey (during which they are hassled by two cops). The property is in a run-down area but it has an immaculate exterior, and there are\u00a0many intact period features inside.
\nThe pair discovers the building\u2019s dimensional weirdness when Glenn manages to pick the lock of the door and opens it:<\/p>\n

This joint was spotless. And scentless: no mildew or rot or garbage, but also none of the good smells of old wood oil or antique books or mellow, ancient fireplace smoke. No nothing.
\nI started through the doorway, then stumbled, even though the porch and entryway were flush, without so much as a thick threshold. I heard a door clap shut behind me and found myself on my knees in the backyard, nothing before me but dirt, rubble, and the distant Detroit skyline against a flat, gray sky. Somewhere Lennie was shouting his head off. I turned around and was looking at the back of the crooked house. There was a shallow screen porch with a wood-framed door tacked onto its back. Three wooden steps led down to the yard, where I crouched.
\n\u201cI\u2019m back here, Lennie!\u201d I hollered, finding my feet. \u201cCome join me!\u201d
\nI heard Lennie\u2019s workboots crunching through the rubble, and a second later he popped around the corner.
\n\u201cGlenn!\u201d he shouted. \u201cHow\u2019d you get back here?\u201d<\/em> p. 92-93<\/p>\n

Further confusion follows when entering the back door results in Glenn exiting an upstairs window. When he climbs back into the attic room, he ends up on the front porch. They then contact Fleischermann, the owner, and show\u00a0him what they have found. He is less than impressed:<\/p>\n

\u201cWell, fuck.\u201d He sighed. \u201cThis went from dandy to dog shit in record time.\u201d
\n\u201cYou had no clue this place was, um\u2026,\u201d I faltered, then came up with, \u201cSpecial?\u201d
\nFleischermann turned and looked at me like I was an idiot. His face worked oddly as he processed through a string of emotions \u2014 wonder, annoyance, offense, shame, then something akin to grief \u2014 before settling on anger. Then he unloaded with both barrels.
\n\u201cYeah, Glenn, fucking shockingly, I had no fucking notion that I was paying cash money for the only red-stone French Revival in Detroit that\u2019s also a fucking M\u00f6bius strip!\u201d His voice quickly got shrill. \u201cThe buyer\u2019s always the last to fucking know, right?\u201d
\n\u201cNo, no,\u201d I said, hands raised placatingly, \u201cI just meant the condition, that it\u2019s so well preserved, fully furnished!\u201d
\n\u201cOf course it\u2019s fucking fully furnished, Glenn!\u201d Fleischermann shouted. \u201cNo one can get in to loot the fucker!\u201d Lennie had drawn back to Fleischermann\u2019s Jag, hands covering his ears. \u201cI\u2019ve bought a beautiful house you can\u2019t go into on a piece of land that\u2019s less than worthless embedded in a fucking necrotic abscess on the diabetic ass of the most notoriously moribund city in North fucking America, Glenn! We can\u2019t even fucking strip it for the copper and doorknobs!\u201d<\/em> p. 96-97<\/p>\n

Up until this point the story is essentially a contemporary version of Heinlein\u2019s, but it then gets a lot stranger. Glenn gets a set of keys for the house from Fleischermann with orders to lock it up. The story then moves on a week or two: Glenn is at a bar and picks up a woman called Anja with a promise to show her something special. They go to the house where Glenn expects to show her the front door\/back door trick, but he finds that when he unlocks the house using the keys they manage to enter the house normally.
\nThey look around, and find books inside the house with strange titles: A Brief History of Time<\/em> by Warren G. Harding, A Theory of Colour and Palettes: My Struggle<\/em> by Adolf Hitler. There are also unusual views out of the windows which do not match the neighbourhood. And then (spoiler):<\/p>\n

There was a pair of sneakers on the mantel, a pair of like-new LeBron 11s \u2014 the limited edition \u201cWhat the LeBron?\u201d ones, with their crazy blacklight-blender-puke rainbow scribbles and splashes. Ugly, ugly fucking shoes. Still, those shoes are coveted by teens and corner boys alike. They wait in line for hours and then pay hundreds for them, or get them from resellers online for a grand. But there was something off about these shoes: The left sneaker had a weird brown tiger-stripe motif cutting through the hot pinks and glowing teals. I took a couple steps closer and wasn\u2019t shocked to see that the brown was old blood. There appeared to be a healthy portion of a foot still in that left shoe. The sock was neatly snipped off and singed, showing a little slice of dark skin. The exposed cut was blackened like a steak fresh off the grill. The neat end of the bone was glistening ivory sliced with laser precision. I sniffed the air without thinking, but it didn\u2019t smell like a cookout. I was grateful for that.
\n\u201cI think we better go,\u201d I said.<\/em> p. 106<\/p>\n

The rest of the tale involves (more spoilers) the house being sold another developer, the two cops reappearing and exhibiting a particular interest in the house, and, of course, the malevolent alien entity inside which is responsible for the severed human foot. I\u2019ve probably over-quoted from this story already, but I can\u2019t help but add the great description Nelson provides of the creature:<\/p>\n

There was a thing in the room, and I couldn\u2019t figure out what the hell it was. At first I took it to be a shadow, but that wasn\u2019t right. Shadows are flat, cast onto a surface, and this darkness hung in the air. And it was grappling with the man. The thing moved in jagged fits, like a time-lapse film of germination, or video that\u2019s dropping frames. It elongated and contracted, bulging like motor oil floating in zero G, extending and withdrawing appendages of some sort \u2014 arms, maybe? Or roots? Or tentacles? One of these extrusions was a broad, flat wing. Another was spiky, infinitely, infinitesimally branching like a fractal.<\/em> p. 119<\/p>\n

Part time-lapse photograph, part tentacle, part wing, and part fractal\u2014isn\u2019t that a great image?
\nThis is a very entertaining and readable story, and what makes it even better is the sheer amount of incidental detail that Nelson includes. At the end, just when I thought it was coming off the boil a little, there is a neat little twist that pulls it back up again, as well as allowing for\u00a0sequels. One for the \u2018Best of the Year\u2019 collections.
\nA Dog\u2019s Story<\/em><\/strong> by Gardner Dozois is about a dog who finds a woman lying dead in an alleyway, raped and murdered. So the dog goes to see a cat called Talking Pete, and they discuss what is to be done.<\/p>\n

Talking Pete was silent for an even longer time, and then, just as Blackie was wondering if he\u2019d fallen asleep with his eye open, he made a sound as close to a sigh as a cat could make, and said, \u201cAll right.\u201d And cat-sighed again. And a messenger was sent to the basement of an abandoned warehouse near the railroad tracks where the Rat-King dwelled, dozens of rats tied tail to tail to tail.
\nAfter a while, the rats arrived in a rustling tide, and were given their instructions.
\nRats go everywhere, of course, and see everything, so it wasn\u2019t long before one was found who had seen the killer leave the alley and seen where he went, or at least followed him long enough in the right direction that Blackie was able to go to that particular corner and pick up the killer\u2019s scent even with his aging nose.<\/em> p. 145<\/p>\n

This an is unusual and original piece that would shine more brightly if it wasn\u2019t stuck between the very good Nelson and Anderson stories.
\nI Am Not I<\/em><\/strong> is by G. V. Anderson, who won a 2017 World Fantasy Award for her short story Das Steingesch\u00f6pf<\/em> (Strange Horizons<\/em>, 12 December 2016), and I think I can see why from this story. The narrator of this piece, Miss Strohm-Waxxog, is the daughter of a high-society Varian, and is a genetic throwback, or sap\u2014human as they were once known. She has had surgery to change her appearance so she can pass as Varian, and hopes it will fool Madame Qlym, who is interviewing her for a job at her Emporium:<\/p>\n

\u201cYou must be Miss Strohm-Waxxog! Oh, let me look at you!\u201d and before I could protest she was inches away, jerking my chin this way and that to admire the glitter of her lamps in my six eyes, twirling me round to look, to pat \u2014 I flinched. My wings, stale as a new butterfly\u2019s, rustled against my clothes as I moved.
\n\u201cAh,\u201d she said, withdrawing her hands. \u201cNo true flight? It happens, it happens. What a pity. And your poor eye.\u2026\u201d
\nI knew I looked unspectacular. When I\u2019d telephoned to arrange this interview I\u2019d given her my real surname \u2014 a reckless move, but I needed her to employ me; few would turn away a member of the city\u2019s most powerful family. She\u2019d probably spent all morning imagining what beauteous manner of mutation would be walking through her door later. And here I was, with sore, brittle wings and a gammy eye.
\n\u201cIt\u2019s the Strohm gene,\u201d I gambled. \u201cInfections in the third pair are common.\u201d I needn\u2019t have worried. She was so blinded by reverence for my family that she swallowed this without question.<\/em> p. 148<\/p>\n

Madame Qylm is an acristologist, and her Emporium conducts a very specific trade:<\/p>\n

I eased open the door to the emporium and slipped inside.
\nThere was only one aisle, wide enough to spread out my arms and brush the shelves with my fingertips \u2014 not that I wanted to get too close. The shelves creaked under the weight of thousands of dusty jars containing hands tinted amber by formaldehyde; eyeballs trailing optic kelp; and butter bean f\u0153tuses that watched me with milky, unformed eyes. Sap parts, all of them. Collected and sold for the pleasure of Varians.<\/em> p. 147<\/p>\n

Strohm-Waxxog gets the job, and so begins her struggle to get enough money to pay for the surgical repair of her implanted eyes and wings.
\nIn due course she meets the source of Madame Qylm\u2019s sap specimens, the honey man:<\/p>\n

He was more hive than flesh. He wore a loose shirt and pressed trousers, braces slung uselessly about his hips; and every available patch of skin was riddled with deep, black holes. Holes that went nowhere at all.
\nThey obscured his face, his mouth; he had no hair, just tunnels boring into his head. As Madame ushered him through for refreshment, a bee emerged from the depths of a neck-hole and perched in the opening to watch me.<\/em> p. 153<\/p>\n

The honey man soon realises what Strohm-Waxxog really is and, given her society connections, what she would be worth as a specimen. The rest of the story details their conspiracy to cheat Madame Qylm out of her business.
\nThis is an original work, and one which creates a strange but entirely convincing world. The ending allows for sequels, and I hope we will see them. Another one for the \u2018Best of the Year\u2019 anthologies.
\nAfiya\u2019s Song<\/em><\/strong> by Justin C. Key is a long novelette set\u00a0on a slave plantation in 1821, and is mostly concerned with the dreadful treatment of the inhabitants. The two aspects that set this apart from a straight historical story are that it takes place in a parallel world where there was a slave rebellion, and the main character\u2014the person who sets the rebellion in motion\u2014has a magical song that has various properties, including the ability to heal.
\nLater on in the story she teaches one of the male slaves the song with the hope that he will be able to use it in a similar way, but that doesn\u2019t happen. Nonetheless, the song seems to spread throughout the slave community as an anthem-cum-vision.
\nAlthough this is worthy and well enough done there are a couple of problems with it, and those are that both the parallel world and magical song aspects are not entirely convincing. The parallel world rebellion is presented as a given and there is little explanation of how this happened. As for the magical song, I couldn\u2019t quite see the point of this as nothing much ultimately seems to come of it that wouldn\u2019t be provided by a word of mouth rebellion. If you have seen the film Twelve Years a Slave<\/em>, I don\u2019t think you will get anything more out of this piece. Personally, I would have been more interested in a story that was about a parallel world slave rebellion and how it happened\u2014with a view to illuminating why that wasn\u2019t the case in this world.
\nAn Obstruction to Delivery <\/em><\/strong>by Sean Adams is another original piece, a loopy and meandering story about a town where postal workers use\u00a0underground tunnels to deliver the mail because of the behaviour of one of their operatives, Peter Ponducci:<\/p>\n

Peter was known for a variety of troublemaking activities, such as:
\n\u2022 carrying with him at all times a small cloth dampened with sedative to be used on dogs he deemed a danger;
\n\u2022 climbing atop the statue of the city\u2019s founder in the central park, sitting upon its stone shoulders, and delivering sermons on the importance of \u201cabsolute adherence to the postal code, with observance of both the written and unwritten mandates dispensed therein\u201d;
\n\u2022 and enforcing mailbox cleanliness by removing all junk mail left for more than a day and setting fire to it on the recipient\u2019s lawn, just long enough to ensure an appropriate area of charred grass remained to serve as a warning.<\/em> p. 224-225<\/p>\n

Peter goes missing, and then piles of bones start appearing in the tunnels . . . .
\nThis synopsis doesn\u2019t even scratch the surface of this quirky, offbeat, multifaceted and very original tale. That latter comment notwithstanding, I was vaguely reminded of Richard Brautigan\u2019s The Hawkline Monster<\/em>. If you liked that, you\u2019ll love this. Another one for the \u2018Best of the Year\u2019 collections. Oh, and a nice editorial touch to follow this story with F&SF\u2019<\/em>s moving notice:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

An Unearned Death<\/em><\/strong> by Marissa Lingen is a tale about a woman who is a Messenger for the Gods. She goes from village to village with her magic cloak telling the dying which god, if any, will take their souls.\u00a0If a god accepts their soul their bodies go to the cemetery\u2014otherwise they go to the bone yard, and what would seem to be a living death. . . . When the Messenger comes upon a grandmother who appears destined for the bone yard\u00a0she attempts to intercede with one of the Gods, and summons Lora the Just.
\nThe idea of the Messenger and her cloak is a good one, but this story didn\u2019t really grab me and I thought it the weakest piece in the issue.<\/p>\n

I rather liked the cover, There Was a Crooked Man, He Flipped a Crooked House<\/em><\/strong> by Nicholas Grunas3<\/sup>, surprising perhaps given that it is just a picture of a house with a police car in front.4<\/sup> I\u2019d like to see the original as the cover blots out the front of the car with a barcode. I also wondered if the cover designer had overly cropped the left and right hand sides of the work.
\nBooks to Look For<\/em><\/strong> by Charles de Lint covers a number of writers unknown to me (P. L. Winn, Nathan Van Coops, Patricia Briggs, James E. Coplin), and nothing came up when I searched SFE so I may not be the only one. That said, the Coplin book, Creaking Staircases<\/em>, sounded interesting, and the Kindle edition was cheap enough to make it an impulse buy for me. Musing on Books <\/em><\/strong>by Michelle West has one name I recognise, Peter S. Beagle.
\nThere is a Cartoon <\/em><\/strong>by Nick Downes, which I didn\u2019t get the point of.
\nWith the Best of Intentions<\/em><\/strong> by Pat Murphy and Paul Doherty is a science article on honey\u2013 and bumblebee decline. This one didn\u2019t grab me like their articles normally do.
\nGhoulies, Ghosties, Beasties<\/em><\/strong> by David J. Skal is a positive review of The Beauty and the Beast<\/em> remake, a film that would have otherwise slid under my radar. (It is Sky TV’s Xmas Day movie, so I’ll probably have a look.)
\nNorthwest Cruise<\/em><\/strong> by Sophie M. White is a poem about a future when the North-West passage is open, and the view future travellers have of the past.
\nComing Attractions <\/em><\/strong>trails next month\u2019s anniversary issue with, drum-roll, Samuel R. Delaney\u2019s first story for the magazine in four decades (the last was Prismatica<\/em>, F&SF<\/em>, October 1977\u2014even though I can\u2019t remember reading David Erik Nelson\u2019s novella last December, I managed to dredge this one up from memory ).
\nCuriosities <\/em><\/strong>by Paul Di Filippo considers a reasonably modern novel (1972), A Report From Group 17<\/em> by Robert C. O\u2019Brien.<\/p>\n

This is perhaps the strongest issue that editor C. C. Finlay has put together so far, and one of the best I\u2019ve read since I started this blog. If he does not make the Hugo finals next year then there is no justice.<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Auston Habershaw at ISFDB<\/a>.<\/li>\n
  2. \u201c\u2014And He Built a Crooked House\u2014\u201d<\/em> at Wikipedia<\/a>.\"\"<\/li>\n
  3. It looks like Nicholas Grunas\u00a0is\u00a0a mainstream artist. A number of his works can be seen at this site<\/a>. If David Erik Nelson has any sense he\u2019ll buy this cover painting to go with next year\u2019s Hugo \ud83d\ude42<\/li>\n
  4. Another F&SF<\/em> cover with a house (and one which I also liked) is Ron Walotsky\u2019s, which illustrates Fritz Leiber\u2019s serial, The Pale Brown Thing<\/em>, from January 1977:\"\"<\/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":"

    ISFDB link Other reviews: Steve Fahnestalk, Amazing Stories Greg Hullender\u00a0and Eric Wong,\u00a0Rocket Stack Rank John D. Loyd,\u00a0There Ain\u2019t No Such Thing As A Free Lunch Patrick Mahon, SF Crowsnest John Siebelink, Amazing Stories Adrian Simmons, Black Gate Victoria Silverwolf, Tangent Online Sam Tomaino, SF Revu Various, Goodreads Editor, C. C. Finlay Fiction: In a Wide […]<\/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-3630","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-Wy","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3630","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=3630"}],"version-history":[{"count":18,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3630\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14441,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3630\/revisions\/14441"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3630"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3630"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3630"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}