{"id":5074,"date":"2018-06-05T15:22:51","date_gmt":"2018-06-05T15:22:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/?p=5074"},"modified":"2018-06-22T11:10:29","modified_gmt":"2018-06-22T11:10:29","slug":"uncanny-15-march-april-2017","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/?p=5074","title":{"rendered":"Uncanny #15, March\/April 2017"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

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

Other reviews:
\nGreg Hullender and Eric Wong, Rocket Stack Rank<\/em><\/a>
\nCharles Payseur, Quick Sip Reviews<\/em><\/a>
\nAnne Crookshanks, Tangent Online<\/em><\/a>
\nVarious, Goodreads<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

_____________________<\/p>\n

Editors, Lynne M. Thomas and Michael Damian Thomas; <\/span> Managing Editor, Michi Trota<\/span><\/p>\n

Fiction:
\nWith Cardamom I\u2019ll Bind Their Lips<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by Beth Cato \u2217\u2217\u2217<\/strong>
\nRising Star<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by Stephen Graham Jones \u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>
\nAuspicium Melioris Aevi<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by JY Yang \u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>
\nAnd Then There Were (N \u2013 One)<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 novella by Sarah Pinsker \u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>\u2217+<\/strong>
\nAn Abundance of Fish<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by S. Qiouyi Lu
\nThe Red Secretary<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 reprint novelette by Kameron Hurley \u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong><\/p>\n

Non-fiction:
\nCover<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 by Julie Dillon
\nPoetry<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 by Cassandra Khaw, Brandon O\u2019Brien, Bogi Tak\u00e1cs, Lisa M. Bradley
\nThe Uncanny Valley<\/em><\/strong>\u2022 editorial by Lynne M. Thomas and Michael Damian Thomas
\nResistance 101: Basics of Community Organizing for SF\/F Creators & Consumers, Volume One: Protest Tips and Tricks<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 essay by Sam J. Miller
\nAct Up, Rise Up<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 essay by Elsa Sjunneson-Henry
\n#beautifulresistance<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 essay by Shveta Thakrar
\nA Work of Art Is a Refuge and Resistance<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 essay by Dawn Xiana Moon
\nFandom in the Classroom<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 essay by Paul Booth
\nInterview: Stephen Graham Jones <\/em><\/strong>\u2022 by Julia Rios
\nInterview: Sarah Pinsker<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 by Julia Rios<\/p>\n

_____________________<\/p>\n

With the 2018 Hugo Awards voting deadline rushing towards us I thought I had better get on with reading the other finalists.1<\/sup> As this magazine has an impressive six stories on the award ballot this year I figured that reading the appropriate issues would be a good place to start catching up and, in any event, I\u2019ve been thinking about having a look at this publication for  while.
\nThis magazine\u2019s stories and articles are, like most of the other online oriented publications, available for free on the magazine website. Nevertheless, I bought a PDF copy of the magazine on Google Play,2<\/sup> both for reviewing ergonomics (note taking, quoting, etc.) and because these magazines need the money to pay their bills.<\/p>\n

The fiction leads off with With Cardamom I\u2019ll Bind Their Lips<\/em><\/strong> by Beth Cato. This story starts with a girl called Vera helping Lady Magdalena seal the lips of her dead uncle, who has come back as a ghost from the war:<\/p>\n

\n

I dipped my pointer and middle fingers into the butter mixture and reached to the face of the apparition before me. My uncle. He looked much as he did in life, though strangely gaunt from a winter in the trenches. He swayed in place, his body transparent, his eyes blank white.
\n\u201cSaints, please let the bombs miss us, please. Oh no, that one fell close.\u201d He unceasingly repeated his last words from life, as all ghosts do. His voice still trembled with terror. I wanted to sink to the floor and sob, but even more, I wanted to silence him. Mama and I had lived with Uncle Ivan\u2019s mantra and his stumbling presence for days, and it had nearly driven us mad.
\n\u201cIvan,\u201d I whispered. Names had power; love had power, too. I pushed months of worry and love and mourning into the word. My fingers met his lips, and encountered bitter cold like I\u2019d touched an icicle. I smeared the butter across his lips as if to prevent them from chapping. His swaying slowed.
\nI felt the magic then. The tie. His soul was tethered to mine by blessed spice and a solitary word.
\n\u201cNow guide him aside,\u201d said Magdalena.
\nUpholding my cardamom-freckled fingers, I led Ivan\u2019s ghost the way I might tease a carthorse with a carrot. I positioned him in the corner of the room where we would not pass through him and be shocked anew by cold and grief. I willed him to remain standing there, quiet. He stayed motionless. Breathless.  p. 13-14<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

After she performs this ritual satisfactorily, Vera is apprenticed to Lady Magdalena. The rest of the story details her work with Magdalena, and her discovery that the latter\u2019s husband apparently deserted from the army. However, Vera later learns (from talking to the local animals) that this was not the case, and that he was actually killed and eaten by dogs in the town. Vera goes to find his ghost, thinking that she can do her employer a good turn by getting her a war pension. Matters do not turn out as expected as (spoiler) Magdalena was the one who killed him.
\nThis comes off the boil a little at the end but it is a pretty good fantasy until then. I hope this is the first of a series of stories.
\nRising Star<\/em><\/strong> by Stephen Graham Jones takes the form of an academic proposal, and rather reads rather like an Analog<\/em> piece. The suggestion is to use a time travel device to send humans back in time, where they would place caches of human bones where palaeontologists could find them today.
\nAuspicium Melioris Aevi<\/em><\/strong> by JY Yang (the title means \u201comen of a better age\u201d) posits a future business \u2018Academy\u2019 that clones various political and business leaders and sells the copies to various companies as advisors:<\/p>\n

\n

The hall resonated with the sounds of young people in exertion. Copies sparred, played ball, or swam laps in a gently-warmed pool. These were faces familiar to anyone who had lived through the early twenty-first
\ncentury: Leaders and thinkers, a catalogue of genetic excellence carefully curated and propagated by the Administrator himself. Pod-grown like heirloom tomatoes, they were made-to-order for clients, spending years in algorithmically-tailored training programs. Each one came with the Administrator\u2019s mark of quality assurance.
\nIf there was proof of the consistency of their training and genetic integrity, it lay in the patterns which emerged in their interactions. The Suu Kyis and the Hillaries seemed to get along well, for example, but the Modis and Merkels never did. And sometimes there were surprises, like the frequent friendships between the Gateses and the Ahmadis. Harry had an interest in judo, and Volodya was rather good at it. They met three times a week to practice.  p. 36-37<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The \u2018Harry\u2019 is the passage above is Harry Lee Kuan Yew,3<\/sup> or rather his fiftieth copy, and he is failing the simulated situation tests he undertakes as part of his training: rather than doing what is expected he has started doing what he thinks is right:<\/p>\n

\n

Consider: This copy of Harry Lee had something the original did not\u2014foresight. He knew what awaited the other men at the end of their journey.
\nHe knew about the dirty sand soaked in blood, he knew about the shallow unmarked graves, he knew about the generation lost to war, cut out of the fabric of history.
\nIf the original Harry Lee Kuan Yew had known all this, he would definitely have done something. The fiftieth new Harry Lee understood this with a certainty that filled his gut and filled his blood. And his blood was the same blood that had run in the veins of the original. He knew he was right.
\nHe turned towards the doomed men on the lorries. \u201cThey\u2019re going to kill you! It\u2019s a trap.\u201d
\nThe men stared in confusion. Shouting facts at them was pointless. What they needed were instructions. A clear path of action.
\n\u201cRun,\u201d Harry Lee said. \u201cRun.\u201d
\nSomething grabbed Harry by the shoulder. He saw the soldier\u2019s face and the fish-glint of a blade. Then there was searing pain. He was on the ground, lying in mud-caked filth, and when he looked down he saw rivers running red, the gleaming pink of intestines, his pants drenched and stained. His mouth filled with blood and bile, sour and coppery, and he couldn\u2019t breathe. He couldn\u2019t get up. He couldn\u2019t move his arms and legs. The sun was burning his eyes out\u2014
\nClick.  p. 34<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

He eventually confronts the Administrator of the Academy.
\nThis is a readable and engaging piece for the most part but there are too many implications that are not addressed: for instance, the copies are essentially slaves who are culled if they do not measure up. What kind of world would allow that? The lack of detail on this and other background questions means it doesn\u2019t really convince. It is also too open-ended.
\nAnd Then There Were (N \u2013 One)<\/em><\/strong> by Sarah Pinsker is, according to the Editorial<\/em>, the first novella the magazine has published.
\nThe story takes place at a convention of Sarah Pinskers who come from hundreds of parallel worlds, and the Sarah who narrates isn\u2019t the Quantologist who discovered the science that enables this, or the Nebula Award Winning SF writer, but an insurance investigator from another timeline. After some initial convention and hotel setting she is asked to put her skills to work when one of the other Sarahs is found dead in the nightclub area on the top floor of the hotel. The rear of her head has been bashed in (Sarah thinks this was done using a Nebula Award from the display table!). There is a storm raging outside so the authorities cannot get to the island where the hotel is to investigate. She is own her own.
\nHer initial approach is to begin interviewing the Sarahs who were last seen with the victim before moving on to the convention organising committee. At the end of the story she deduces who the murderer is and confronts her, and discovers the motive for the killing (spoiler: in the killer\u2019s world\u2014as well as that of several other Sarahs\u2014Seattle was destroyed, and a group of her friends killed. In the murdered Sarah\u2019s world they are alive, but that Sarah didn\u2019t keep in touch with them, and was otherwise squandering her life). To be honest, the murder mystery is the weakest part of the story\u2014the solution doesn\u2019t unfold but is presented (I certainly didn\u2019t spot any clues on the way through).
\nThe weak mystery plot won\u2019t spoil it for most readers though as the meat of the story is really the idea of the road not taken, a concept present in other \u2018many worlds\u2019 stories but perhaps intensified here given the multiple versions of Sarah present at the convention. This alternative lives idea is particularly emphasised in a long passage that details an incident from Pinsker\u2019s teenage years, and the more positive outcome that occurred in one of the other worlds (as narrated by another Sarah in one of the convention program items):<\/p>\n

Part of me wanted more than anything to trade places with this barn manager. To have had sixteen years with a horse I loved, to have made a decision based on gut instead of practicality. I knew that ship had sailed, but I still wanted it. That one change had defined her life. She was happy. I was happy too. I\u2019d left that incident alone as a disappointment but not a defining one, or maybe a defining point but one that had shaped me without tearing me down. The weeping Sarah might argue otherwise. Divergence points. Divergence points were the key to everything.  p. 90<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This autobiographical detail (or purported autobiographical detail) is another entertaining aspect of the story. Some of it is quite substantial, as above, some is lighter, amusing stuff:<\/p>\n

\u201cSo why are you here?\u201d Orange Curls was the chattier of the two [Sarahs].
\n[. . .]
\n“I looked back at Orange Curls. \u201cCuriosity. I guess I\u2019m here because I\u2019m curious. And maybe a little because if I stayed home I\u2019d always wonder about it.\u201d
\nThe smokers shot each other a satisfied look.
\n\u201cShe\u2019s asked twenty-one Sarahs that question now,\u201d No Good Deeds said, \u201cand that\u2019s been the answer every time. Even the same phrasing.\u201d  p. 56
\n.<\/span>
\nTonight featured a keynote speech by the host, followed by a DJ\u2019ed dance. Normally that wouldn\u2019t be my thing, but the thought of a dance with a self-curated song list\u2014I pictured upbeat soul, Bowie, 80s pop\u2014and an entire room full of enthusiastic but uniformly terrible dancers, excited me more than I\u2019d admit. There\u2019d be nobody to watch who wouldn\u2019t understand. Maybe I wouldn\u2019t even be the worst dancer in the room. A girl could dream.  p. 57<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It\u2019s fun trying to guess what is real and what isn\u2019t.
\nAll in all, this is an interesting and enjoyable piece, but it is more uneven and less polished than her other Hugo finalist Wind Will Rove<\/em>.
\nAn Abundance of Fish<\/em><\/strong> by S. Qiouyi Lu is the only one of the stories that didn\u2019t work for me at all. It is a short squib that starts with a couple in their apartment before it segues to a scene where a plague of flying fish wreck devastation on the country. During this, (spoiler) one of the couple dies. More prose poem than short story.
\nThe Red Secretary<\/em><\/strong> by Kameron Hurley (Paetron<\/em>, 2016) takes place in a far-future war, and involves a military negotiator called Arkadi arriving at a situation where rogue soldiers have taken an installation called the Red Secretary hostage:<\/p>\n

\n

From this distance all that was visible of the Red Secretary were three twining spires jutting into the crimson sky, so high that the tops were not visible. Arkadi\u2019s research on the facility told her those spires were high enough to touch the outer atmosphere. They were pretty things, though the prettiness was a secondary characteristic. The spires had a far deadlier purpose. That was likely why the soldiers had taken the thing. Arkadi flipped through her notebook again to review her notes. By all counts no one had been in contact with the rogue squad yet, or received a list of demands, though all frequencies were being monitored.
\nNow that the war with the enemy was over, not every soldier embraced their contracted end. Some ran away and tried to blend in and forget their crimes of violence and pray to the gods that history would forget them. The government sent Justicars after those ones. But for the more dangerous ones, the soldiers trying to make a statement by blowing up someone or something in protest of the fate they signed up for when they enlisted, the government called in Arkadi to negotiate.
\nThis was her sixty-first negotiation with rogue soldiers.  p. 101-102<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

When she arrives at the forward base she is briefed on the situation: there is concern that the soldiers will destroy the facility and the vast quantity of methane underneath it, and that this will imperil the entire province. Arkadi then goes to the Red Secretary with a six-legged dog to talk to the soldiers (she hopes that, while the soldiers may shoot her on sight, they will hold fire if they see the dog, and this calculation proves correct). Once at the door to the facility she begins a conversation with a soldier.
\nThroughout the story there are intriguing background details: the story is set at the end of a cyclical three hundred year war; the soldiers employed in that war use strange enemy tech; after the fighting ends those who have killed must walk into the Incinerators.
\nThis is a dark but readable piece, and I\u2019ll be interested to see the other stories in this series.4<\/sup><\/p>\n

The Cover<\/em><\/strong> for this issue is by Julie Dillon: this one is more muted than the brighter dayglow ones the magazine often uses. The cleanly designed \u201cUncanny\u201d title echoes the comet-tail titling of the 30s and 40s pulps; I don\u2019t like the excessive lettering at the bottom of the cover (they seem to have gone down the Galaxy\u2019s Edge<\/em> route by shotgunning all the contributors\u2014and in this case, editors\u2014onto the page).
\nThere are four poems in the magazine and, although I didn\u2019t particularly like any of them, I thought time, and time again<\/em><\/strong> by Brandon O\u2019Brien and The Axolotl Inquest<\/em><\/strong> by Lisa M. Bradley were okay. The Size of a Barleycorn, Encased in Lead<\/em><\/strong> by Bogi Tak\u00e1cs seems to be a mashup of Jewish history and nuclear weapon management (I think). Protestations Against the Idea of Anglicization <\/em><\/strong>by Cassandra Khaw has a lot of swearing and attitude, and reads like something written by an angry sixth-former for an A-level assessment.
\nI\u2019d add that, on the whole, they all strike me as being closer to what my idea of poetry is than those which appear in Asimov\u2019s Science Fiction <\/em>(and which I generally dislike).
\nThe editorial that leads off the magazine, The Uncanny Valley<\/em><\/strong> by Lynne M. Thomas and Michael Damian Thomas, starts with a game of \u201cThe Exquisite Corpse\u201d from Twitter:<\/p>\n

\n

Because Michael was procrastinating about writing this issue\u2019s editorial, he decided to ask Twitter to do it. This section is The Uncanny magazine Exquisite Corpse Editorial<\/em>. The Exquisite Corpse was an old Surrealist game where you build off of what the previous person created, but you never see the whole. In this case, each writer only read the previous sentence before writing their sentence. Then their sentence and only their sentence was passed to the next person, and so on. On that note, enjoy this editorial by nearly 40 writers!  p. 5<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Although the first couple of hundred words isn\u2019t bad it turns into four pages of gibberish, and strikes me as a remarkably lazy and self-indulgent way to open the magazine. If you have nothing to say, say nothing. This section is not helped by what is either (a) poor proof reading after cutting and pasting from Twitter, or (b) deficient typography: there is no or little space after some of the commas and fullstops (a problem present elsewhere in the issue).5<\/sup>
\nWhat is even more self-indulgent is the political rant that follows:<\/p>\n

\n

What matters most of all about the Exquisite Corpse is that it was created by almost 40 writers. I made the joke on Twitter, and people quickly lined up to play. I had to actually cap the participants! You see, the Space Unicorn Ranger Corps is a Community. A glorious community of tens of thousands of people from a tremendous number of backgrounds\u2014people who love fun, art, beauty, and kindness. They are Space Unicorns who appreciate each other, and will fight the fascists together with everything they\u2019ve got.
\nI\u2019m writing this during the first month of the current regime. The assholes have created a swirling mess of malice and incompetence. Every day, there are dozens of stories that make anybody with basic human empathy upset and angry. It\u2019s easy to despair. It\u2019s easy to be overwhelmed. But we\u2019re here for each other. Collectively, we can fight this.
\nIn early February, I made an open call for essay pitches about how we can fight the current darkness. We received a gigantic number of ideas from so many amazing people, and you\u2019ll be seeing the first batch of political essays in this issue. These essays are filled with passion, strategy, and bold resistance. As we said last issue:
\nTHESE UNICORNS FIGHT FASCISTS.  p. 8-9<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The \u201cSpace Unicorn Ranger Corps\u201d stuff above (it appears elsewhere as well) struck me as twee, and the \u201cFascists\u201d is\u2014and I say this as a disinterested foreign observer\u2014just ridiculous (never mind minimizing the experiences of those who have suffered under genuinely fascist regimes).6<\/sup>
\nIt gets worse: there are no less than four<\/u> political essays at the end of the issue, with catchy titles like Resistance 101: Basics of Community Organizing for SF\/F Creators & Consumers, Volume One: Protest Tips and Tricks<\/em><\/strong> by Sam J. Miller, Act Up, Rise Up<\/em><\/strong> by Elsa Sjunneson-Henry, #beautifulresistance<\/em><\/strong> by Shveta Thakrar, A Work of Art Is a Refuge and Resistance<\/em><\/strong> by Dawn Xiana Moon. This ranges from the banal (\u201cCharge your devices before leaving [for marches or demos]. Bring an external battery if possible\u201d) to the emotionally incontinent (\u201cI watch, and my heart hurts\u201d). I can\u2019t recall this level of political belly-aching in any other SF magazine that I\u2019ve ever read.7<\/sup>
\nThis all seems curiously self-defeating too: those who agree will want to moan themselves, not listen to others do so; those who do not share this view or are apolitical will be either irritated and\/or bored, and will perhaps stop reading the magazine. This is not a problem, I suppose, if you are giving it away anyway, and you have the added bonus that you don\u2019t have to put up with the messiness of actually trying to communicate with those who do not agree with you.
\nThere is a final essay that is worth reading, Fandom in the Classroom<\/em><\/strong> by Paul Booth. It starts with this:<\/p>\n

\n

When I tell people that I\u2019m a professor who teaches classes on fandom, I\u2019m usually met by one of two reactions. One reaction is disbelief, as if I had just told them I teach classes on juggling, origami, or beer pong. This stems from the perception that the academic classroom is a hallowed space where deep discussions lead to meaningful discoveries (and popular culture, the thinking goes, just doesn\u2019t get us there)\u2014think Mr. Chips, not Mr. Miyagi; epic poetry, not fanfic; Twain, not Twilight. The other reaction is jealousy, usually accompanied by a plaintive sigh and \u201cI wish they had courses like that when I was in college!\u201d For these green-eyed friends, studying fans and fandom is meaningful because popular culture reveals the intricacies of contemporary life and the influence of the media on our cultural (and individual) consciousness. (There is a rare third reaction to my fan studies classroom, as most mechanics ask, \u201cV-belts or serpentine?\u201d)  p. 148<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

This too is political to an extent but, unlike the others, isn\u2019t a moanfest. It is dispassionate, shows a sense of humour and, crucially, it has something of interest to say.
\nThere are two short interviews. The first is Interview: Stephen Graham Jones <\/em><\/strong>by Julia Rios. The author is described as Blackfeet Native American (identity politics is the magazine\u2019s other big thing, played out in the author notes with increasingly reductive minority labelling). I smiled at the author pushback to this (reasonable enough, it must be said) question:<\/p>\n

Uncanny Magazine<\/em>: You\u2019ve said before that you don\u2019t want to be pigeonholed \u201cas an Indian writer,\u201d which is understandable, and which seems to be something you\u2019ve successfully avoided so far. While it\u2019s definitely true that people should be able to write about more than just one facet of their lived experiences, there are also a lot of good arguments for the importance of stories about marginalized people told in their own voices. What are your feelings on that, and how do they manifest in your work?
\n.<\/span>
\nStephen Graham Jones<\/em>: I just figure I am Blackfeet, so every story I tell\u2019s going to be Blackfeet. Also, there\u2019s not just one \u201cBlackfeet\u201d story, of course. There\u2019s not a single American Indian narrative. And every single one\u2019s valid. Also, I\u2019m from West Texas, so every story I tell, it\u2019s a West Texas story. You can\u2019t really escape where you come from, and you always inhabit the political space you inhabit. Just, what you have to figure out, it\u2019s what you want to sell, what you don\u2019t want to sell.  p. 171-172<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The second is Interview: Sarah Pinsker<\/em><\/strong>, again by Julia Rios. This is mostly about her story and it touches on its personal elements:<\/p>\n

\n

Sarah Pinsker<\/em>: There is a bunch of autobiographical information in here, mixed in with stuff that is not true, stuff that I wish was true, and stuff that I most definitely don\u2019t wish was true. I don\u2019t know if it matters which parts are which, other than the stipulation that I have no homicidal intent and I wish Seattle the best of all possible futures.  p. 176<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

In conclusion: it is notable that nearly all the stories in this magazine have a recognisable plot, or narrative or other arc (something that a number of publications should perhaps emulate) and, if the generally good standard of fiction here is typical, I look forward to reading future issues. \u25cf<\/p>\n

_____________________<\/p>\n

1. I registered to vote for the Hugo Awards this year as I think some of the selections in recent years have been, ah, \u2018interesting\u2019 choices to say the least. I doubt my solitary vote will swing anything but that isn\u2019t really the point, is it?<\/p>\n

2. The PDF runs to 181 pages (they are all marked \u201cDigitized by Google\u201d, and before the cover image there is an annoying page of blah from them):<\/p>\n

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

This issue has approx. 43,000 words of fiction (8,200 reprint).
\nThe Google Play ebooks edition is the cheapest, \u00a32.25, compared with Amazon (\u00a32.25-\u00a33.20) and Weightless Books ($3.99, around three quid at the current exchange rates).<\/p>\n

3. Lee Kuan Yew is a former prime minister of Singapore. His Wikipedia page is here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

4. According to the ISFDB page<\/a> for Kameron Hurley\u2019s The Red Secretary<\/em>, there is at least one other story in this series, The Judgement of Gods and Monsters<\/em>. ISFDB says in was first published via Patreon.com in July 2016, but it was published earlier than that in Beneath Ceaseless Skies<\/em> #200, 26th<\/sup> May 2016. The story has a 2015 copyright notice on the BCS<\/em> site, so perhaps the ISFDB note has the wrong year.<\/p>\n

5. This is what p. 6 looks like (the highlighted commas and fullstops seem to have no space at all between them and the next word, and some of the others are far too close to the following words as well\u2014I suspect the type tracking hasn’t been set up correctly: look at how everything is jammed close together on the fifth line):<\/p>\n

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

6. The Wikpeida page<\/a> definition of fascism: \u201cFascism is a form of radical authoritarian nationalism, characterized by dictatorial power, forcible suppression of opposition and control of industry and commerce.\u201d<\/p>\n

7. There has been political comment in SF magazines before though: Campbell wrote a number of editorials about US political events in Analog<\/em>  in the early 60s (and maybe earlier too); Ted White gave a running commentary on Nixon and Watergate in the editorials and the letter columns of Amazing<\/em> (and possibly Fantastic<\/em>, I forget). \u25cf<\/p>\n

Uncanny is available from Google Play<\/a>, Amazon UK<\/a>\/US<\/a>, and Weightless Books<\/a>.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\"rss\"<\/a>\"rss\"<\/a><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

ISFDB link Other reviews: Greg Hullender and Eric Wong, Rocket Stack Rank Charles Payseur, Quick Sip Reviews Anne Crookshanks, Tangent Online Various, Goodreads _____________________ Editors, Lynne M. Thomas and Michael Damian Thomas;  Managing Editor, Michi Trota Fiction: With Cardamom I\u2019ll Bind Their Lips \u2022 short story by Beth Cato \u2217\u2217\u2217 Rising Star \u2022 short story by […]<\/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":[34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5074","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncanny"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Pcj7-1jQ","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5074","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=5074"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5074\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5271,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5074\/revisions\/5271"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5074"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5074"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5074"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}