Edited by Edward L. Ferman
162 pages
Published 1989
Read October 7
Rating: 1.5 out of 5
Here we are, back at it again with another entry in my F&SF collection. I've been wavering between reading my back issues in chronological order and simply skipping to the more current publications. For now, my plan is to alternate between older issues and current ones (within the last calendar year) until I either read through my entire F&SF shelf or I get bored of the enterprise.
Last time, the September 1989 issue was a dire affair. The one good story, Ray Aldridge's "Steel Dogs," was essentially "Westworld but make it fairy tale fantasy." The rest wouldn't be making anybody's best-of lists, unless you specifically wanted a list of stories by racist sex criminals. Looking at the table of contents here, I feel some trepidation, especially for the Esther M. Friesner and Mike Resnick stories. Wish me luck.
"The Old School" by Ramsey Campbell. The name sounded familiar, so I searched to find what I'd read from him before. There were two stories: "The Other Side," collected in 1988's The Year's Best Fantasy, which was insipid shock horror; and "The Changer of Names," reprinted in 1978's The Year's Best Fantasy Stories, which was a slightly satirical sword & sorcery piece. Today's tale is a disjointed attempt at boarding school horror, as our hero -- a modern, more enlightened school teacher -- follows ephemeral children through the woods to the ruins of a particularly abusive boys' school, where the residue of children's fear remains as a palpable thing haunting the classrooms. There's a vague idea of generational trauma here; mean old people who only want to see kids-these-days properly punished make an appearance, offering a blatant echo of "The Other Side." But honestly there isn't much of substance here. And worse, this is the 1980s, so no male author was capable of describing an 11 year old girl without mentioning her "budding breasts." A sour start to this issue. I'll give it a D-.
"Misbegotten" by Michael P. Kube-McDowell. What I've always loved about F&SF is the wealth of different SFF subgenres coexisting in the same magazine. Kube-McDowell is a workmanlike writer, the sort of writer with several Star Wars Expanded Universe novels to his name; this story is a workmanlike effort as well, a modestly entertaining xenobiology piece that wouldn't have been out of place in Analog. Coming as it does immediately after the British boarding school horror of the previous story, it feels fresher, somehow, the contrast accentuating the mild pleasures of the alien ecosystem, the laboratory airship studying it from above, and the parasite that worms its way into our hero Eric Kimura. The characters are interchangeable, the plot nothing new, but nonetheless, I found it enjoyable. Maybe a C+.
"Where Have All the Graveyards Gone?" by Dean Wesley Smith. The year is 1991. Society collapses in the immediate aftermath of a "limited" nuclear exchange. Abandoned as their caretakers leave to look after their own families, the residents of a nursing home must fend for themselves. This story feels especially bleak here and now, after the countless COVID horrors in nursing homes, as nuclear tensions rise, as the collapse of society seems inevitable, whether next month or twenty years from now thanks to climate change. This story was competently written and did what it set out to do, but it's a fucking bummer. C.
"Poe White Trash" by Esther M. Friesner. The editorial blurb above this story promises "the funniest story we've read in many months." The best thing I can say about it is that it's brief. It's an eyeroll-worthy retelling of "The Cask of Amontillado" populated with the broadest hillfolk stereotypes this side of Hee Haw. I'll be generous and say F+.
"Little Worker" by Paul Di Filippo. A bioengineered bodyguard who's part human, part wolverine, and entirely into jelly and toast, Little Worker protects the Prime Minister of North America, but also has her own troubles to solve -- namely, anyone who gets in between her and the Prime Minister of North America. The editorial blurb above this story says, somewhat leeringly, that this is "one different and disturbing story." I found it to be a bit of a shrug; the vibe of "childlike bioengineered killer who is altogether too obsessed with her charge" was oily and somewhat putrid in its 1980s-ness. Maybe a D.
"The Cheval Glass" by Reginald Bretnor. Here's a challenge for all cishet male authors, especially those in the 1980s: Write a story involving a tween girl without using descriptors like "unripened" and without some mention of growing breasts. Clearly, this challenge is impossible. This is, overall, a mild tale of a girl growing up with neglectful parents and an emotionally abusive mom, a story of a girl who uses a magic mirror to find her heart's desire. But the author just couldn't help getting sweaty over his 12 year old protagonist, and it's gross. D.
"The Wound That Would Not Be Healed" by Eric Carl Wolf. This issue seems to have a loose theme of sorts, or at least there is an abnormal number of stories that center on either kids or old folks. This one is a vaguely spiritual urban fantasy, or vaguely Christian "inspirational" tale, whichever way you'd like to phrase it. Drawing a rather vacuous allegory with the wounds of Christ, our tale finds an old woman wasting away in a hospital, the abscess on her hip a constant source of pain, never getting any better. Until [makes magical whooshy hand motions] the wound takes away her pain, glows with an inner light, gives her a lovingly merciful death, and makes a few small miracles happen on her way out. Not my cup of tea, but at least it isn't actively offensive on any level. Maybe I'll give it a D+ (the plus added solely because there are no budding breasts).
"Freezer Madness" by Patricia Ferrara. I know about child abuse. I was abused all through childhood; it's been a recurring motif in some of my own stories. The way it was employed as a plot device throughout the 1980s, though, feels skeevy, exploitative, a cheap way to wring pathos and horror from the audience, much like the use of homeless or mentally ill people as a plot device during the same period. That's how this one feels. It's a child's-eye horror story about a mom who drinks too much, a kid who remembers things he shouldn't, and a Gramma who's been in the freezer a bit too long. It's well-written, but left me with a freezer-burned aftertaste. [ba-dum-tiss] Maybe a C-.
"For I Have Touched the Sky" by Mike Resnick. I've been dreading this one. Apparently, Resnick, a white guy from Chicago, made an early name for himself with a series of stories "inspired" by (read: appropriated from) "African backgrounds." This story is set on a planet terraformed to resemble Kenya, a slice of Afrofuturism that would delight me in the hands of any number of actually African or Black authors who could handle it with the sensitivity and authority it deserves. Instead, we have a white American author wrestling with questions of Kikuyu cultural identity, cultural reclamation, and whether or not old traditions are worth preserving, which just feels unsavory. (Additionally, continuing one of the unpalatable themes of this issue, a young girl character is introduced, and immediately the narrator comments on how she's "not yet of circumcision age," which feels culturally stereotyping as well as predatory.) Overall, this is one of the better-written and well-structured pieces in this issue, and I'm sure at the time it must have struck F&SF's (white, American) audience as brilliant, innovative, and thought-provoking. But I can't say it aged well at all. I'll give it another F+.
There were some doozies in this issue, and I don't mean that in a complimentary way. I think my high esteem for F&SF in the 1980s may have been mistaken. It was cultivated through best-of anthologies, after all, which wouldn't be a representative sample of what its month to month issues were like.
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