Edited by Sheree Renée Thomas
268 pages
Read from June 19 to June 20
Rating: 3.5 out of 5
Doing my best to read each new issue of F&SF while it’s technically still current, as mentioned in the March / April 2023 issue’s review.
“On the Mysterious Events at Rosetta” by Fawaz Al-Matrouk. Epistolary narratives are dicey. They can be evocative, centering you into a point of view or a setting better than almost any other literary device. They can also be difficult to get invested in. This tale of a murderous mummy curse during Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt features a little bit of both extremes: the opening is a stiff exchange between two Frenchmen, making for a slow start, but once we get to a letter from local witness Zakaria Hafez, the narrative becomes absorbing, a worthy modern update of classic mummy horror tropes and an excellent commentary on colonialism and its violence.
“The Dire Delusion” by Matthew Hughes. Hughes has been a fixture of F&SF tables of contents for two decades. I enjoyed his story “The Mule” in the March / April 2022 issue, but since then I’ve paged through my collection of back issues and found him in about one-third of my ’00s and ’10s issues, which feels… excessive. (Especially to my younger self — I was trying my hardest to get my stories into F&SF without success for much of that time!) Like “The Mule,” “Delusion” follows the serialized adventures of Cascor the discriminator; unlike “The Mule,” too much of the story here is fantasy private-eye boilerplate. I dig the conceit of reviving 1970s-style fantasy serials, but “Delusion” feels more antiquated and actually ’70s-ish than I would like. The prose, in particular, is mustier than it was the first time I encountered Cascor and his pals, closer to de Camp than to Vance. The city of Gephrire seems to have lost much of the Early Modern Europe / Hermes Trimegistus occultism vibe I liked so well; it feels more like any interchangeable tabletop setting here, complete with a grandiloquently named thieves’ guild, generic guards, and a forgettable grand duke. Also, this story is numbingly long, almost a full novella, sprawling out messily without much really happening, and no character development for any of the assorted “employees” Cascor has accumulated on his adventures. Maybe that’s a lot of grumbling about what is, in the end, merely an indifferent old-school magical misadventure. I didn't hate it. I'm disappointed in it, though.
“Amrit” by Kiran Kaur Saini. Sweetly sad near-future sci-fi that posits the unlikely fantasy that Medicare will still exist (and also that senior-care robots will be a thing, which is much more plausible). A solid, moving story, professionally structured and freighted with the small details of life.
“In Time, All Foxes Grieve Westward” by Lark Morgan Lu. One of the delights of reading stories in order is finding, and appreciating, the editor’s thematic flow for the issue. This story is brilliantly positioned to follow up “Amrit.” Josephine agrees to accompany her friend Todd to visit his aging mother in China, fully aware — thanks to her Sight — that Todd is a fox being and his mother is a more powerful fox spirit. (My partner R pointed out how perfect “Todd” is for an American name chosen by a fox spirit, à la The Fox and the Hound.) Filial duties and expectations clash with Todd’s frustration and disgust over his mother’s need to hoard bygone glories. “Time” is a brief but effective story, filigreed with exquisite description, including the most sinister depiction of a bowl of noodles I’ve ever read.
Two poems by Gretchen Tessmer, “By Starlight” and “Silverlocks,” smoothly transition us via foxes into fairy tales.
“A Conjure-Horse in San Ouvido” by Ferdison Cayetano. The lives of two magic-users — a freedom fighter and a soldier from an all-Black American unit — intersect amid the horrors of America’s invasion of the Philippines. This story is haunting, dreamlike, soaked in the atrocities of white supremacy and colonial warfare. Quite good.
“Highway Requiem” by T. R. Napper. Taking on the classic 1970s and ’80s trope of a blue-collar perspective on near-future tech dystopia. I was skeptical about this one at first. But what separates this from earlier small-c conservative working-man fic (such as Russell Griffin’s “The Road King” in the February 1986 issue of F&SF) is our current proximity to real-life tech dystopia. “Requiem” is Mad Max with driverless trucks, yes, but it’s rooted in what the rich are actually doing to us. Napper presents a world of green-washed capitalism, of the lower classes pitted against each other to benefit the billionaires, of regulations ostensibly designed for safety and sustainability but actually geared to maximize profit for the investor class. The law mandates that state of the art medical kits are available in every truck, but if you use one it’s deducted from your paycheck. A heartbreaking and all too fucking close-to-home story.
“The Lucky Star” by Dr. Bunny McFadden. The Lucky Star, somewhere in the sand dunes and methane lakes of Titan, is the sole gay bar in the outer solar system. That’s a promising setup, but sadly, this wisp of a tale doesn’t have the space to amount to much beyond some world-building exposition and back-and-forth banter (which isn’t fun without a foundation in well-established characters). It isn’t much, but it’s cute enough, I suppose.
“For the Benefit of Mr. Khite” by Zig Zag Claybourne. This story oozes late ’90s sci-fi energy. Intelligences (no mere AI!) have created a vast utopian biome called New Tangier. Bena Khite is a clone intermediary between the ineffable Intelligences and New Tangier’s human population, made to maintain the station and its inhabitants. Two hundred years of being a therapist for humans and a clearing-agent for Intelligences departing for the stars has left Khite restless and alienated. It summons a BDSM “synth,” a sensate machine, who observes “We have become a society of sadists” in order to satisfy the human need for curiosity. Khite wants to ascertain what, if anything, is worth saving of this ultimate society, and what, if anything, it wants for itself. It sounds so dated summarized like this, but still — it’s a solid story.
“Time and Art” by Barbara Krasnoff. A customer visits a miracle-worker to find time to create. A crisp modern fable, moving despite its brevity.
“I Paint the Light with My Mother’s Bones” by K. J. Aspey. A+ title, and a solid flash fic of isolation, loss, and the things that come from our heads to hurt us. This piece has strong indie litmag energy (complimentary).
“We Are Happy to Serve You” by Margaret Dunlap. An even briefer microfic on the inevitable outcome of automation in the service sector. Mildly amusing, too short for any other reaction.
“Titan Retreat” by Ria Rees. A sad, effective little tale of grief and escape.
“The Wren in the Hold” by Shaoni C. White is one of the best poems I’ve ever read in F&SF. A second White poem, “Without Any Sound but the Sea,” is also excellent.
“Knotty Girl” by Melissa A. Watkins. A magnificent retelling of “Rapunzel” in the age of global warming. Creative and vivid and creepy, written with an exquisite voice. Possibly the best story in this issue.
“Project Exodus” by J. A. Pak is a decent enough poem of space sci-fi and appreciating where we are.
“A Truth So Loyal and Vicious” by Fatima Taqvi. A dense and evocative fantasy of twin sisters and their divergent destinies. I saw the central twist coming a long way off, but that didn’t lessen this story’s charms in the least. Possibly my second favorite story of the bunch.
And that’s it!
Of all the Thomas-era F&SF issues I’ve read, this is the first one that didn’t completely blow me away. I didn’t dislike anything here — the overall quality and consistency is still far beyond that of any prior era of the magazine — but only the Watkins and Taqvi stories were all-time greats. Past Thomas-era entries spoiled me with several all-time bangers each issue, which makes this one feel just okay by comparison. Still, this issue was solid!
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