Edited by Sheree Renée Thomas
258 pages
Published 2023
Read from August 20 to September 5
Rating: 4 out of 5
Awkward timing…
So. After the August 1990 issue of F&SF, I needed a palate-cleanser. What better way to rinse out the rancid aftertaste of the ’90s than with an issue from the best era of F&SF?
Halfway through reading this issue, I learned that F&SF had inadvertently accepted a story by a known white supremacist author, and (so the word initially went) wouldn’t walk back the publication upon receiving this information. It was a hugely disappointing development that negatively impacted my view of the magazine.
But as so often happens with these online cacophonies, a bunch of (mostly white) opportunists dog-piled on editor Sheree Renée Thomas, a Black woman who (obviously) would not deliberately platform a Nazi — instead of going after the actual Nazi in question, or the publisher who initially refused to pull the story. Thomas has published more Black and queer authors during her brief tenure than the rest of the magazine’s seventy-plus years put together. As many Black authors have pointed out, Thomas deserved grace and the benefit of the doubt — and received neither from all too many internet activists.
Eventually, the publisher — the one with the real power at F&SF — begrudgingly agreed not to publish the piece and made a half-hearted apology through a proxy. I fear some sort of professional reprisal against Thomas, who, again, has been the best editor in the magazine’s 75 year history. Even worse: white supremacists are already threatening violence, because terrorism has always been a tool of white supremacy.
So it was with some conflicted feelings that I (after a hiatus of a couple weeks) read the back half of this issue.
“Cowboy Ghost Dads Always Break Your Heart” by Stefan Slater. Absolutely killer title for an ethereal tearjerker of a story. As someone who’s often felt see-through, this one hit me right in the chest. Plus: ghost T. rex! Excellent.
“A Creation of Birds” by Tegan Moore. A languid, surreal, occasionally unnerving journey through an evocative afterlife. Much to my liking, there are birds everywhere. All the women Rose meets have a Secret, a bird whose name becomes theirs; Rose’s is a Hoopoe. (I’ve often mentioned how much I want more bird-centric fantasy.) But all is not well beneath the pleasant, empty, banal small talk affected by the other bird-named women. Something (or someone) is tearing the bloody heart out of Secrets, and the others don’t seem to like that Rose keeps getting called back by her mother’s memories. The posthumous murder mystery is less compelling to me than the setting and its mutable unreality — but, of course, the two quickly prove intertwined. Overall, I found this novelette most enjoyable.
“Dzherelo (The Source)” is a poem by R. B. Lemberg, author of The Four Profound Weaves, one of my faborite books. It is fully as compelling as you would hope.
“Floating on the Stream that Brings from the Fount” by Prashanth Srivatsa. As a teenage sci-fi writer, I had the misfortune to read one of those “how to write and sell a novel” self-help books. One bit of advice was particularly etched into my brain: magic systems rooted in creativity, said the book, were old-hat, tiresome, on the same level as “it was all a dream.” No editor would ever want to read your book if the setting’s special magic was worked by singing, or writing, or dancing. That admonishment sank so deep into my teenage brain that, not only do I avoid creativity-magic a quarter century later, I actually have to remind myself that it's okay when someone else uses it. I had to fight that internalized skepticism to get into this novelette, a sprawling space opera set in a galactic Empire where stories are fed into an all-important Engine to create starship fuel. Captain Draupadi is dispatched by the Empire on the Marammat to hunt for a lost Library said to exist in the far edge of the galaxy. The Library is rumored to hold enough Old Earth stories to power the Engine for three centuries. But the loyalties of the motley crew are far from alignment — least of all Draupadi’s. The concept of a monolithic entity squeezing creativity into a product is reminiscent of Ai Jiang’s excellent I AM AI. Clearly, there can be life left in any trope — so long as you have something interesting and relevant to say with it. Quite good.
“The Past Is a Dream (The Launch of a Blacktopia)” by Maurice Broaddus. This story is an oral history of the namesake character of Broaddus’ Astra Black series, which I haven’t read. An oral history format for the backstory of a character I’ve never encountered feels like a double dose of narrative distance, an emotional arm's length. But this is Broaddus, so the setting — and how he links it to our modern colonialist-capitalist world — is compelling, with his usual mix of humor, a righteous stand against exploitative injustice, and classic funk references.
So, it was right in between these stories that I learned that F&SF had accepted that piece by a known Nazi author; the retraction wouldn’t be made public for a full week, while the publisher dragged his feet and let Sheree Renée Thomas face the outcry without support. That isn’t the fault of the authors here, of course. It isn’t Thomas’ fault, either. It does sour my opinion on F&SF as an institution, especially when you consider how many heinous authors it published without equivalent protest during its lengthy history. Only the Black woman editor got singled out, for some strange reason…
“To Give Moon Milk to a Lover” by Madalena Daleziou. A wondrous and lovely tale of moons and magic inspired by Greek folklore, full of herbs and self-discovery and delicate glints of feeling. Excellent.
Two poems by Beth Cato and Rhonda Parrish: “The Deal” and “Lucky Shot.” Of the two, I liked “The Deal” best.
“The Bucket Shop Job” by David D. Levine. This is a tale of illegal deals and backroom baits-and-switches set in the industrial wastelands of Titan. Our narrator Kane, stranded on Titan with no way to afford a ticket out, lives in the refinery stink and makes his living with his fists. Imagine the libertarian space utopias of Heinlein, but reevaluate them from the perspective of the proletariat indentured and forced to labor off their corporate oxygen debt, and give them a not-quite-noir flavor of space-tommyguns and organized crime. I dig where this novelette is coming from, but I never quite gelled with it. Quippy heists never were my favorite trope, not even when paired with low-gravity fisticuffs and a socialist ethos. Honestly, this just goes to show the quality of the Thomas era of F&SF. This would have been a standout story in any given issue from the Ferman or Van Gelder eras. Here, it just recedes into the background excellence.
“Oracle” by Morgan L. Ventura. Haunting, lyrical, brief microfic. Gorgeous.
“Sis’ Bouki: the Hyena Gifts” by Rob Cameron is a staggering standout of a poem, one of the very best I’ve ever read in F&SF.
“Off the Map” by Dane Kuttler. It’s especially harrowing to read this near-future tale of corporate-bureaucratic “family values” now, as right-wing authoritarians around the country continue to innovate new ways to destroy queer and BIPOC families and cycle their children into the prison-industrial complex — and as real estate grifters profit in the aftermath of climate catastrophes. A gripping story that doesn’t go where you expect.
“Save Me, Sister, You Said” is a poem by Gerri Leen, retelling (and reframing) the story of Ariadne and the Minotaur. Quite good.
“Persephone’s Children” by C. B. Channell. This mythological retelling reframes Melinoë as a moody goth teenager who reluctantly accompanies Persephone up to the sunlit world to hang out with her half-brother Dionysus — who, in the way of gods, is up to something shitty. The prose skews a bit YA. Not my cup of tea, but I didn’t dislike it.
“Best, Last, Only” by Robert Reed. A novella in full late ’90s mode, a sprawling depiction of a vast starship older than any galaxy, technological immortality, recreational cannibalism, and alien beings resembling Quetzalcoatlus imbued with boundless arrogance. Tens of thousands of years pass; species and invasions rise and fall. I’ve never read any of Reed’s Great Ship stories, but Reed is enough of a professional to convey the setting’s strangeness and scale without requiring familiarity with what went before. That imagery is the main strength of this story, which doesn’t offer much in the realm of emotional connection. Still, a fine experience that brought me back to being a teen, enthralled by the rococo vastness of galaxy-spanning stories fashionable at the time.
And that’s it. Another strong entry from what remains F&SF’s finest era. I’ve debated whether to continue to support this magazine after glimpsing the cavalier attitude behind the scenes, but I continue to believe in Sheree Renée Thomas, at any rate. So far she hasn’t let me down.
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