Edited by Sheree Renée Thomas
258 pages
Published 2023
Read from September 25 to September 26
Rating: 3.5 out of 5
As I hinted at in my review of the January / February 2023 issue, I’m continuing to stay current with new issues of F&SF as a gesture of support for Sheree Renée Thomas, the finest editor in the magazine’s nearly 75 year history. I may be deeply skeptical of the institutional structure of the magazine now, but Thomas is putting together an unparalleled run at the editorial helm, and needs more readers behind her.
“Shining Shores” by Max Firehammer. Slow-burn eldritch horror in a coastal resort town. It’s a promising story, full of creepy imagery: colossal sea gods, gouged eyes, joints popping out of socket, a shotgun battle in the back of a cop car. You know, the classics. It escalates into one of the goriest pieces I’ve ever read in F&SF. To my personal taste, while the bones of the story are quite good, “Shores” has too much of the developing author tendency to transcribe every action of the narrator’s progress instead of trusting the reader to fill in the blanks. (Sample: “I had the name of Paul’s hotel punched into my phone, and before long, I was there.”) It’s something I struggle with in my own writing, but still, I found it harder to slip into the rhythm of the story as a result.
“Bayanihan” by Maricar Macario. Atmospheric and absorbing tale of culture, immigration, and family bonds across two worlds. It is heavy with the loss of language, the loss of place, the dislocations inflicted by colonialism and its influence. Our second-person narrator’s childhood in what little global warming has left of the Philippines leads to an alienating teenhood on cosmopolitan Mars, where a galaxy of beings intermingle with humans — but the rich and privileged, alas, are still the ones in charge of everything; the world with money culturally colonizes the world that lacks it. Great story, vulnerable and moving. One of the best Mars colony stories I’ve ever read.
“Sort Code” by Chris Barnham. I’m tired of men who slip “bitch” into their stories — and damn, they just love finding ways to jimmy it in. This one checks it off the basic male lit to-do list on the first page. (What is this, 1990?) It predisposed me against this story right from the get-go. “Code” is competent enough, a standard tale of dying and finding oneself unstuck in time with a manic pixie dream girl, but it didn’t rouse sufficient interest to overcome the odor of Dude Writing 101. Any story along these lines is going to have to distinguish itself against Kim Stanley Robinson’s “A Short, Sharp Shock” (reviewed here), so it had an uphill battle even without that “bitch.”
“What We Found in the Forest” by Phoebe Wood. This one is gorgeous, a spore-clouded journey of self-discovery and love that feels much vaster and more immersive than its mere three pages would suggest. Outstanding!
“Three Sisters Syzygy” by Christopher Mark Rose. Ordinarily, I appreciate a good thematic through-line in a magazine issue. However, presenting another “I’m in a different timeline and I don’t quite know who these people are or what I’m doing here” story so quickly after “Sort Code” was a touch monotonous, at first. This tale of reality-hopping astronauts finding themselves among the sisters they had always wanted, the three of them exploring Earth’s three moons during their rare alignment, is far superior to “Code.” In fact, it’s quite good: technicolor, strange, moving, thematically interesting. It’s threaded with old pulp imagery — rocketships! moon banquets! robots! space pirates! Plus, syzygy was one of my favorite words growing up, so I’m pleased to find it in a title. As far as the “what universe am I in?” repetition goes, I suppose it’s understandable. We’ve all felt dislocated to an alternate universe since early 2020; multiversal stories touch a deep, collective trauma in our lives, and they’ll keep popping up until our culture finds new ways to approach and process that trauma.
“Mixtapes from Neptune” by Karter Mycroft. Another brief but evocative piece that feels more substantial than its length would suggest. Hard science fiction that feels as sentimental and dreamy as the best fantasy.
“To Pluck a Twisted String” by Anne Leonard. Another solid though short piece, a sharp-edged domestic fantasy of parenthood, loss, and the pressures of the world.
“My Embroidery Stitches Are Me” by A Humphrey Lanham. A lyrical flash fabulist piece that examines generational trauma, abuse, and learning to separate ourselves from what our parents have pressed upon us. Heartbreaking and beautiful, a three-page story that left me weeping. F&SF has truly come into its own as a market for transcendent flash fic.
“Upstairs” by Tessa Yang. This is an excellent piece that thrums with the tension and tragedy of our stratified future. Our narrator Sadie has “won” the housing lottery — i.e., her wife Eileen was recruited by Recyclon, a vast capitalist conglomerate, so their family just happened to get selected to move into the climate-controlled habitats of Upper Michy, towering above the concrete and pollution of old Lower Michy. Yang draws domestic details with an emotional precision that heightens the uneasiness, winding us into Sadie’s misgivings, her suspicions that the elevated world will get pulled out from under her family, her need to whatever it takes — even selling out — to keep them all up there. Small spoilers: The “organized criminals smuggling meat into a vegan dystopia” plot feels like it should be silly, a throwback to the “EPA is out to get us!” libertarian strain of late ’80s sci-fi, yet the emotional groundwork is established with such care that it all has real stakes. (Pun only partially intended.) 1980s dystopian writers could never put together anything this nuanced.
“Teatro Anatomico” by Getty Hesse. This is half of an excellent story. Hesse presents this macabre mood piece in a somewhat archaic cadence, most reminiscent of 1920s modernists approximating a florid Victorian style. It works well with its scene, an Early Modern anatomical theater exhibiting a dissection during Carnival, when the dead don’t truly die. I’m a sucker for fantasy with an Early Modern setting. This tale was doing so well up until some male-gaze pseudo-incestuous BDSM creeps into the narrative. It feels like it would be right at home in a 1990 issue of Asimov’s Science Fiction. Oh well.
“Night Haul” by Andrew Crowley. This one, meanwhile, feels like it could have come from a 1989 issue of F&SF. (Or else maybe a tossed-off tale from Stephen King's cocaine days.) It’s the voyage of the Demeter but make it a big rig, complete with CB radio. It's moderately entertaining.
“On the Matter of Homo sapiens” by Kel Coleman. A wonderfully sweet little tale about two robot friends who go geocaching together. An unexpected tearjerker.
“Sugar Steak” by Jenny Kiefer. Absolutely revolting (but ghoulishly entertaining) piece of dental horror. The strength of this story is in the specificity of the descriptions. Made me dry-heave a few times, in a fun way!
“Growths” by Nina Kiriki Hoffman. A sharply described story of growing up different, learning that you can't always rely on your parents, and refusing to make things easier for yourself by giving in and blending with everyone else.
Two poems by Alexandra Elizabeth Honigsberg: “Expedition” and “Shapeshifter.” Of the two, I like the latter best.
“If I Should Fall Behind” by Douglas Smith. Some spoilers: Tumble has the power to jump between branching multiverses of possibility; Piph has been tagging along with him, on the run for six years, ever since he saved her from a boat accident at the summer-camp they shared as foster kids. They're being chased because, unbeknownst to either of them, Tumble's probability jumps are destabilizing the multiverse. This story feels like an artifact of late '60s or early '70s sci-fi, not quite New Wave but clearly inspired by it, moving in an artsier direction with its prose but still telling stories of steely supermen (and the babes who love them) eluding enemy toughs in something approximating the modern day. Not a bad story, but it isn't my favorite thing, either, particularly once Piph's life becomes a plot device.
We close out this issue with “Crossing the Universe,” a poem by Vanessa Taal. Some nice imagery.
This issue was more of a mixed bag than most from the Thomas era. Several amazing stories, some all-time favorites, but also quite a few tales that felt stale, dated, like leftovers from another time.
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