Edited by Sheree Renée Thomas
258 pages
Published 2022
Read from October 9 to October 13
Rating: 4 out of 5
When I originally bought this issue, I was excited because it was the first time someone I knew (a writer who is a Twitter mutual of mine) had been published in F&SF while I knew them. Since then, three more of this issue's contributors have become my Twitter mutuals; it's a bit dizzying, really, that I know four people featured in this one issue, at the very least on a parasocial level.
I haven't read this issue before now, despite my excitement, because ADHD made picking it up and reading it through feel impossible. With a couple back issues (terrible, terrible back issues) under my belt, I feel less overwhelmed. Time to read!
"Dancing Little Marionettes" by Megan Beadle. After all the sweaty, unsavory writing I read in my old F&SFs, it's such a joy to read a story like this. This is exactly what my old idea of the magazine had been like: a mix of melancholy and whimsy, a small-scale personal drama steeped in atmosphere, a tender and deeply personal examination of grief.
"Void" by Rajeev Prasad. Amare, a doctor, works in a space station orbiting Mars, saving soldiers and POWs wounded in the war below -- or, when necessary, chucking them into the void of space for a quick merciful end. The colonialist powers exploiting Mars order Amare to void two POWs from the Martian Resistance. Caught between his desire for vengeance and his moral obligations as a doctor, Amare must make a choice.
"The Mule" by Matthew Hughes. My favorite aspect of this novelette is its setting. It's a pastiche of Early Modern Europe steeped in John Dee-esque occultism and planar sorcery, a lovely mix featuring a handful of my own historical and fantastical hyperfocuses. I've been working on my own Early Modern Magical setting for several years, so encountering this one was a delight. The story itself has a touch of the 1970s fantasy serial about it. I have no idea if there are other stories in this setting, but there are hints of other adventures before and after this one. One could imagine it sitting comfortably in an anthology with Phyllis Eisenstein's Alaric stories or something from Avram Davidson's Scythia-Pannonia-Transbalkania milieu. The characterizations were a little skimpy, but overall it was an absorbing story and an entertaining romp.
"These Brilliant Forms" by Phoenix Alexander. This one hooked me right from the first page. A tale of deep space salvagers and bioengineered "vacuumorphs" inspired by Dougal Dixon's Man After Man, all of it lovingly queer and proletarian, all of it rendered in bewitching prose. This story checks so many boxes for me. I crave more.
"Done in the Mire" by Adriana C. Grigore. Rumors of treasure lure generations of thieves and fortune-seekers to a boggy island, where a being called the Morasser deals with them by throwing them into a well. A young woman suffers this fate, but survives for fifty years on the well's healing waters, counting the stones and rattling the bones of those who perish. This is a marvelous tale, delectably weird, languid, dreamy with fairy tale logic.
"From This Side of the Rock" by Yvette Lisa Ndlovu. Having fled a homeland that became a graveyard, Rasika has waited long for the naturalization ceremony in the land on the other side of the rock. But the naturalization priests always take something away from you, the price always more, always crueler than you can imagine. An elegantly-structured work of devastating beauty.
"Lilith" by Ethan Smestad. After the last few bombshell stories, this one arrives as a brief shrug. Standard "Lilith and Adam are the last two humans on a terraforming Mars" bit. Could it be that Lilith is not who she appears to be?? Gasp!
"Maker of Chains" by Sarah A. Macklin. Another all-time great story, this one in a magic post-apocalypse setting brimming with place and character. Mr. Ezekiel must retrieve jewelry from a thief who occupies a lair in a former office building. But it's no ordinary thief, and no ordinary jewelry. And Mr. Ezekiel is no ordinary jeweler. A superb little tale.
"Where God Grows Wild" by Frank Oreto. The best part of this story is its setting: a laconic, vaguely New England-ish community of farmers and congregants, in a world where all animals -- chickens, cows, humans -- rely on plants to produce young for them. I liked the restraint in the worldbuilding; it's never explained how or why any of this came about, and the story is all the better for it. The Goddess plants birth out Cabbage Patch children, the old folks bliss out on orgy pollen until they become mulch, and that's just the way it is. A solid effort.
Of the three poems that follow -- all of them quite lovely -- my favorite was "We Feed on Stone and Light" by Deborah L. Davitt. It's very close to my own poetry aesthetic!
"Woven" by Amanda Dier. A sweetly sad tale of a neglected, abused boy and the injured boggle he befriends. In any of the F&SF back issues I read recently, it would been a standout, but in the brilliance and magic of this modern iteration of the magazine, it's just a tiny bit overshadowed. A solid entry nonetheless.
"The Epic of Qu Shittu" by Tobi Ogundrian. Speaking of magic and brilliance, this novelette crackles with both. Ogundrian makes worldbuilding, characterization, and description seem effortless here, each flowing naturally into the next. Within the first few pages I had been drawn deeper in this world than some novels ever bring me. An intrepid (or foolish) bard sneaks about the ship of a notorious sorcerer, and the plot unfurls with wonderful clarity and efficiency from there. Wonderful story.
"Nana" by Carl Walmsley. A maudlin tale of grief, holographic replicas of loved ones, and having to learn how to let go. Fine enough, I guess, but not my favorite sort of thing in a general way. The twist ending felt too calculated, too manipulative.
"Spirit to Spirit, Dust to Dust" by Anna Zumbro. A brief little story of rusalkas, the Dust Bowl, and ecological debts that need to be paid. Slight but charming.
"The Living Furniture" by Yefim Zozulya (translated by Alex Shvartsman). A translation of a Russian allegorical story over a century old, in which the wealthy and powerful use human beings -- regardless of their other skills or aptitudes -- as living furniture, wheel spokes, living books, and wallpaper. Pretty good as allegories go, and all too applicable to the horrors of modern capitalism.
And that's it! All in all, that was the best issue of a spec-fic magazine I've read in my adult life. (I remember being similarly blown away by issues of Asimov's and Analog as a teen, but I hadn't read much short fiction back then, and was easier to impress.) The bravura energy and verve in modern sci-fi and especially fantasy is like nothing else the genres have seen, and this issue is a gorgeous microcosm of the new SFF.
No comments:
Post a Comment