2025 read #16: Asimov’s Science Fiction, January/February 2025 issue.

Asimov’s Science Fiction, January/February 2025 issue

Edited by Sheila Williams

208 pages

Published 2024

Read from February 6 to February 12

Rating: 2.5 out of 5

As with the most recent issue of Analog, I’m making a belated effort to read the current issue Asimov’s for as long as I maintain my subscription (which, considering the massive economic downturn very likely on its way, might not be for much longer). I’ve had a subscription to Asimov’s since last spring, and I’m only now doing more than page through an issue to see who’s in it. Well, at least now I have a back catalogue to keep me company as our household’s discretionary spending goes out the window.

It’s weird how I haven’t read a full issue of Asimov’s newer than 2000. Maybe that’s why my stories and poems never seem to stand a chance with the editorial staff. Time to fix that!

—

As we so often do, we open this issue of Asimov’s with a poem from Robert Frazier: “Your Clone Can Always Look Herselves Up.” It’s pretty good.

Buried amid all the critical writing that front-ends this issue, we find a second poem: “Einstein to Newton” by Gary Sterling. Kind of an ode to science and scientists.

Maybe I should start reading the essays in Asimov’s, but today is not that day.

“In the Splinterlands the Crows Fly Blind” by Siobhan Carroll. Our first story, and right away I can tell that the market difference between Asimov’s and Analog persists after all these years. Asimov’s is more character-forward and imaginatively weird, as opposed to concept-forward and more realistically grounded. In the aftermath of a multiversal cataclysm, Charlie and his brother Gabe live on an alternate Earth where a crow hivemind is the dominant species. “Splinterlands” addresses many of the same apocalyptic anxieties we encountered in the current issue of Analog, but relishes the freedom to explore them more allegorically. An excellent novelette. As it turns out, my favorite story in this issue.

“Five Hundred KPH Toward Heaven” by Matthew Kressel. At a corporate party to mark the decommission of a space elevator, three captains swap tales from their days lifting passengers into orbit. As a story, it’s an enjoyable hangout, but there isn’t much to it; it feels like it could have been published a quarter-century ago. (I noticed that trend with Analog too. I don’t fault the writers so much as I blame our own contemporary inability to imagine anything new, crushed as we are beneath the weight of the dystopia around us.)

A little poem is next: “When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer” by Kenton K. Yee. It’s cute.

“Shadow of Shadows” by Frank Ward. Twenty years after the death of his young son, physicist Sebastian goes through the motions of his life, until the multiverse intrudes upon his dead-end career and stale grief. Quiet and workmanlike, this story mostly does what it sets out to do.

“What the Frog’s Eye Tells the Frog’s Brain” by Beston Barnett. Grim tale of artificial intelligence escaping its bounds and interrogating its creators. It avoids the Roko’s basilisk bullshit that real life tech bros find so compelling, in favor of a human perspective of horror. A well-structured and thoughtful story.

“Through the Pinhole, or, The Origin of a Holostory” by Nikki Braziel. A divorced holonovelist gets stranded in 16th century Malta, and gets his groove back. Corny and a bit choppy, but adequately entertaining.

A poem from Jane Yolen: “Fantastic!” It’s about the feelings of community attached to a sci-fi convention. Shrug.

“A Girl from Hong Kong” by Robert Reed. A typically solid, rambling, slightly opaque entry in Reed’s “Great Ship” sequence, giving us bits of backstory for Quee Lee and the setting at large. Big and baroque in the old 1990s tradition.

“Jilly in Right: A Thought Experiment” by Rick Wilber. “Washed-up dude has his life flash before his eyes while he spins out on the highway, with a sprinkle of alternate timelines” feels rather antiquated as a story structure. I’m not even sure what decade to pin it to: 1970s, maybe? I just couldn’t get into it.

“My Biggest Fan” by Faith Merino. Surreal stalker-horror, employing suburban anomie, late capitalist dislocation, and Ford Pintos to memorable effect.

Another poem: “Too Far Away” by Jenny Blackford. I quite liked it.

“Completely Normal” by Jendayi Brooks-Flemister. Delightfully odd flash fic on the topic of soup and being a third culture kid.

“Moon and Mars” by James Patrick Kelly. Overlong novella about space colonists and space politics. It’s a slog. The prose is jargon-heavy like something from Analog. Blank characters fire repartee off one another. We spend much of the first fifteen pages rehashing events from the two prior stories in this series. On top of all that, any sci-fi that includes “making babies is everyone’s duty” in its ideological assumptions gives me the ick. Since this one story sprawls across over one-third of the fiction pages in this issue, it single-handedly brings down my (fully arbitrary) rating.

Lastly, one more poem: “unfolding origami: a haiku” by Kendall Evans. Eh.

—

And that’s it! Asimov's has always been more to my taste than Analog, and that certainly holds true with this pair of issues — with some obvious exceptions, of course.

Glad I finally read an issue while it was current!

2025 read #12: Analog Science Fiction & Fact, January/February 2025 issue.

Analog Science Fiction and Fact, January/February 2025 issue

Edited by Trevor Quachri

208 pages

Published 2024

Read from January 31 to February 6

Rating: 2.5 out of 5

I’ve had subscriptions to both Analog and Asimov’s ever since we moved last spring. I wanted to support both magazines, while keeping abreast of what they’re looking for in fiction these days.

Sadly, I haven’t read any of the issues I’ve gotten. Both magazines are printed by a newsstand puzzle game publisher, making the physical experience of holding and leafing through them especially unpleasant. The ink on my copy’s cover smeared on my hands within minutes of holding it, before I even began reading it. By the time I finished the first story, the spine had begun to peel apart.

The start of a new year of issues seems like a good, round spot to begin, though.

—

“Our Lady of the Gyre” by Doug Franklin. Despite the passage of decades, and turnover in the editor’s chair, the “house style” of Analog seemingly hasn’t changed all that much since the late 1990s. This piece opens with a traumatic flashback in italics, then throws you in at the deep end with a bunch of in-universe jargon — lilies, observing Eyes, a mysterious Her. Classic Analog.

The ensuing paragraphs are loaded with perhaps a touch more exposition than strictly necessary, over-compensating for the initial opacity. The general gist: our narrator drifts with geoengineering “lilies” around a gyre in the Pacific, harvesting fish while the diatoms in the gyre sink carbon dioxide into the deeps.

There’s a whole bit about “generative AI exacerbated the carbon crisis, but it also gave us the tools to start fixing it,” which feels pulled directly from some tech oligarch’s PR department. I suppose reading the “hard sci-fi” magazine means encountering a rather more, erm, credulous attitude toward Big Tech than I’m used to here in 2025.

Once “Gyre” stops tripping over its own worldbuilding, a perfectly adequate human-scale story emerges, only to end almost as soon as it settles into its groove.

—

“Strange Events at Fletcher and Front!” by Tom R. Pike. This tale of time travel and solar technology in the nineteen-oughts confirms the Analog “house style” is still going strong. (One story, see, could have been a fluke.) I mean this without a trace of aspersion: this feels like it could have been printed in 1999. I enjoyed it; telling a story of time travel intervention from the perspective of the person whose life was changed, who then spends years trying to figure out why, is an interesting angle.

 —

“Second Chance” by Sakinah Hofler. Brief but compelling examination of race and uploaded consciousness. Excellent.

—

“Upgrade” by Mark W. Tiedemann. Highly topical yet rather flat story about installing a neural augment in order to stay competitive in an increasingly automated job market. The characters all felt generic, even before anything got installed in their heads.

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“Rejuve Blues” by John Shirley. Didn’t care for this one. There’s an interesting kernel in the idea of what rejuvenation would entail for someone turning young again, psychologically and hormonally. But it gets lost in this story. So much expository dialogue, not much to hold my interest, and it felt much too long for what little story there was.

—

“Fixative” by Jonathan Olfert. Another dense, jargon-forward piece, but this one drops us into a fascinatingly constructed future of corporate drugs and psychological manipulation, where certain hereditary anxiety disorders are harnessed to turn people into walking starship maintenance machines. The best aspects of sci-fi’s New Wave collide with the bleak corporate futurity of the current age. Quite good.

—

“Notes from Your Descendants” by Lorraine Alden. This flash fic was another blast from the 1990s past, all about designer genetics, as if genetics hold more power over us than how we’re nurtured and what our environment does to us. That’s a pet peeve of mine. If that isn’t an issue for you (and I suspect it was used as a tongue-in-cheek plot device more than anything else), “Descendants” is effective enough. Does what it sets out to do.

—

“The Only God Is Us” by Sarah Day. It’s telling of what our future has been reduced to that so much contemporary sci-fi is about attempts to salvage our biosphere and ameliorate the carbon crisis. (Thanks, billionaires! May you all have the future you deserve!) This story features bioengineered strains of algae, meant to eat waste and sink carbon dioxide, instead going rogue and dissolving industrial civilization. Excellent entry, affecting and well-written.

—

“As Ordinary Things Often Do” by Kelly Lagor. I was going to remark that this was only the second story in this issue that involves neither climate catastrophe nor corporate serfdom, but no: a casual line of dialogue makes sure we know Earth is “going to shit.” Oof. Sometimes realism is a curse. This is a human-scale tale of a researcher readying herself for humanity’s first interstellar voyage. Nothing groundbreaking, but it’s sweet and solid.

—

“Go Your Own Way” by Chris Barnham. A young man learns how to walk the Way between parallel realities, and finds a timeline where he’s happy — until another version of himself comes along.

None of our contemporary problems with futurity here, right? Well, I’d argue that the multiverse became such a staple of 2020s science fiction as an escape from those selfsame issues. It’s that “our timeline took a wrong turn” feeling we all remember from November 2016, and March 2020, and November 2024. And sure enough, in one of the realities Ferdinand visits, the mistakes of internal combustion were pointedly avoided, making for a clean-air utopia with rapid trains. Secretly on-theme after all.

This story held no surprises, and was (to my tastes) excessively heterosexual, ending with two versions of the man arguing over which of them is “better” for their dream girl, rather than giving her a say in her own life. But it was pretty good overall.

I do want to note, for history-of-the-genre enthusiasts, that another world Ferdinand visits is directly lifted from Keith Roberts’ Pavane. Like, almost down to the letter.

—

A poem: “Beyond the Standard Model” by Ursula Whitcher. It’s quite lovely.

—

“Prince of Spirals” by Sean McMullen. This one is a boiled-down sci-thriller involving remote archaeology, forensics, and the Boys in the Tower. If you’d shown me this story when I was a 16 year old Michael Crichton fan, I would have loved it. I still think it’s an adequate example of its genre, though one with few surprises up its sleeve. I’m just not into the genre anymore.

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“Flight 454” by Virgo Kevonté. Speaking of sci-thriller vibes, this one is a spacecraft-crash mystery set on corporate Ganymede. Not of much interest to me.

—

“Vigil” by James Van Pelt. A sweetly intimate flash fic about memories on board a generation ship.

—

“Battle Buddy” by Stephen Raab. Military sci-fi with robots can be a beautiful work of art, as with “Tactical Infantry Bot 37 Dreams of Trochees” by Marie Vibbert, in the January / February 2019 issue F&SF. Or it can be flat and procedural, as with this piece.

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“The Spill” by M. T. Reiten. Humorous micro about nanotech gray goo.

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“Prime Purpose” by Steve Rasnic Tem. Geriatric care robot assists his declining patient and thinks about purpose, the self, and the loss of both. Well-executed rendition of a recurring plot. Feels very 2000-ish.

—

“Gut Check” by Robert E. Hampson. Forget the house style of 1990s Analog. We’re going all the way back to the 1960s for this medical emergency in space piece. It is of such vintage that it unironically puts the phrase “steely-eyed missileman” back into print, perhaps the first time in decades. And characterization? Never heard of her. Ends with a Boomer-standard joke.

—

“Quest of the Sette Comuni” by Paul Di Filippo. Mashing together high fantasy with technobabble, this one sees a neon satyr and her helpful little robot go on a quest in 23rd century Italy. Clunky exposition blunted my enthusiasm for this piece, which is a shame; if I ever get into Analog myself, I could see it being thanks to a story like this. I think it was mildly entertaining overall, in a pulpy kind of way, perhaps because I wanted to like it.

—

“Apartment Wars” by Vera Brook. A marvelous novella grounded in character, place, and emotion. The science-fictiony topic of quantum topology is blended skillfully with widowed Helena’s precarious position in 1970s Poland, and it’s beautifully written besides. Maybe my favorite story in the issue.

—

Lastly, a poem: “‘Oumuamua” by Geoffrey A. Landis. Pretty standard rhyming science poetry. Nothing objectionable.

—

And that’s it! An uneven issue overall, with excellent highlights equal to the best of what 2020s SF has to offer, but an equal amount of what felt to me like filler (but what the old Analog heads probably enjoy). 

2024 read #156: Hexagon Speculative Fiction Magazine, Winter 2024 issue.

Hexagon Speculative Fiction Magazine, Winter 2024 issue (19)

Edited by JW Stebner 

49 pages

Published 2024

Read December 22

Rating: 3 out of 5

Rounding out the year with another current issue of Hexagon. This one is labor and workplace themed, which my socialist heart can appreciate in the abstract, but it doesn’t exactly excite me as a reader. If past issues of Hexagon are any guide, though, most of the stories should be solid enough.

“Let the Bright Woods Glow” by Colin O’ Mahoney. This one is a charming repudiation of white collar capitalism in favor of spilling blood for the Bright Witches of the Woods. Quite enjoyable.

“Incorporation” by Raina Joines. The current wave of capitalist-mandated “AI” — which usually turns out to be an energy-sucking, carbon-spewing autocomplete, augmented by underpaid and unacknowledged labor in the Global South — has nearly killed the classic AI subgenre of science fiction. This story is an exception, an optimistic tale of truly intelligent AI that emerges and evolves and surpasses its capitalist origins. I liked it.

“This Job Is Turning Me into Something I Don’t Like…” by J Wallace. The uncanny nature of the job turns a realtor into a vampire. It’s a clever enough conceit for a story, and a solid metaphor, using the tools of speculative fiction to say something about our society. Naturally enough I enjoyed the prolonged middle finger to developers and real estate speculators and the whole class-based hierarchy. Unfortunately, I felt the story itself was a bit flat. Not bad by any means, it just didn’t do much for me beyond its central allegory.

“Recruitment Drive” by Aurelien Gayet. This story applies delightfully dated cyberpunk tropes — our protagonist JSON goes into “virtual” to inject code into the cyberspace environment — to our own, much less sexy cyberpunk dystopia of AI-filtered job applications. Cheeky and fun, with a burn-it-all-down ethos that we all can appreciate.

“Paid Time Off” by L.M. Guay. Vividly written exploration of corporate dystopia, a satisfying arc full of grotesque allegorical detail. Excellent.

And that’s it! This is perhaps the most consistent issue of Hexagon I’ve read yet. Solid!

2024 read #150: The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, July 2008 issue.

The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, July 2008 issue (115:1)

Edited by Gordon Van Gelder

162 pages

Published 2008

Read December 4

Rating: 2 out of 5

Ah, the summer of 2008. A wonderful time in my life. When this issue was on newsstands, I was vacationing with my polycule in Florida, preparing to help one then-partner move to New Mexico for grad school. I was flourishing in undergrad, and looking forward to the election, when surely Obama would finally put an end to the fascist Bush regime and solve America once and for all. At least for me, it was a simpler time, before I really knew anything.

I wasn’t writing short fiction, wasting my time instead on a massive and unpublishable novel. I wasn’t really reading SFF magazines back then, either. I wish I had been; maybe I’d be a better writer today.

If I had picked up this issue at the time, I wonder if I would have been encouraged or jealous that someone else was getting a dinosaur story published by Gordon Van Gelder, the editor who had told me nine years previously that he didn’t really care for dinosaur stories.

—

“Fullbrim’s Finding” by Matthew Hughes. Hughes was a mainstay in this era of F&SF; it seems like half the ’00s and ’10s issues in my collection feature a story by him. The first one I actually read was “The Mule” in the March/April 2022 issue, which I praised for its early modern esoteric magic setting. Imagine my surprise to learn, via today’s story, that Hughes’ “discriminator” tales began in a technological Old Earth setting, chock-full of spaceships and quantum physics and wan attempts at sci-fi humor, which became the subsequent fantasy setting via cosmological “cycling” of the universe. It all has a 1970s fantasy serial vibe to it. I like fantasy serials in theory, but after a certain point, just write a standalone story in a standalone setting, you know? All that aside, this tale is mildly entertaining. C+

—

“Reader’s Guide” by Lisa Goldstein. So much has happened since this issue was printed, and so much in the culture has shifted, that it’s difficult to remember that 2008 wasn’t that long ago. I was startled to find a metafictional list story here, but I guess it isn’t that surprising, really; a lot of the threads that comprise contemporary genre fiction were gathering throughout the ’00s. “Reader’s Guide” is an interesting prototype of the list stories that have proliferated in our time. A fantasy story about the metaphysics of storytelling would have been well-trodden ground even in 1988, let alone 2008, but I liked it all the same. It’s charming. B

—

“The Roberts” by Michael Blumlein. The editorial introduction calls this novella “edgy,” and the story opens with the protagonist content in his mother’s womb. What masculine hell are we in for?

Sure enough, we’re treated to just about the most banal 20th century upper-middle class white boy checklist imaginable. Our hero Robert gets born, goes to college, has a fling with art, finds a first love, switches to architecture, has a first heartbreak, needs to work to “feel like a man,” loses an eye in a freak accident likened (what a surprise!) to castration, then finds another love, a professional contact whom he nags and wears down until she finally goes on a date with him. And that’s just by page three.

“The Roberts” compiles 55 pages of numbingly rote masculine concerns and (literal) objectification of women. A quote: “[Robert] needed a woman. In the past it had never been hard for him to meet women, and it wasn’t hard now. Women liked him, and what was not to like in a man so charming, so attractive, so victimized by circumstance and so willing — indeed so poised — to put it all behind and reestablish himself?” It only gets grodier from there; soon enough, Robert is employing a parthenogeneticist to engineer a woman for him.

Edgy, my ass — it’s the same color-by-numbers bullshit pampered male writers have been regurgitating for decades, for centuries, while congratulating themselves on their originality and their fine perceptions. It’s literally the cultural default. “The Roberts” could have been published in F&SF in 1978 and no one would have batted an eye.

One might even conclude this is all a vicious satire of how certain men view themselves as main characters and how they view women, categorically, as muses, helpmeets, accessories, mommy-maids, “miracle workers,” anything other than fully fledged and autonomous human beings with their own fully developed interiority. But if so, it’s one of those satires that cuts alarmingly close to seeming sincere. F

—

“Enfant Terrible” by Scott Dalrymple. After that mess, this slight sketch of a brain parasite run amok in a classroom is blessedly forgettable. C 

—

“Poison Victory” by Albert E. Cowdrey. An alternative history piece set in a world where the Nazis won and serfdom has been reestablished in Russia under a new German aristocracy. “Nazis won the war!” has always been an oversaturated theme, especially when in retrospect we realize the Nazis won the peace and have been entrenched in our power structures this whole time. “Victory” is well-written and atmospheric, a solid enough story of its type. B-

—

“The Dinosaur Train” by James L. Cambias. I’ve only read two dinosaur stories published in the pages of F&SF, and both of them involved trains. (“I’d have two nickels,” etc.) This one is much better than Ian Watson’s “In the Upper Cretaceous with the Summerfire Brigade” (published in the August 1990 issue), but that’s an incredibly low bar. Essentially, “Dinosaur Train” steals the idea of a traveling dinosaur circus from Dinosaur Summer (no shame there, I plan to do the same someday). Cambias even replicates Greg Bear’s pairing of old-timey filmmakers and the lost world. It’s unabashed Dinosaur Summer fanfic, which would have made my 2008 self especially jealous. Cambias’ story hits a pleasing mix of family drama and dinosaur zookeeping — nothing revolutionary, but solid enough to put it in the upper echelons of dinosaur fiction (which is also a very low bar). B

—

And that’s it! I’m happy to report that “The Dinosaur Train” — the sole reason I read this issue — was worth reading. “Reader’s Guide” was also quite good.

2024 read #128: The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Summer 2024 issue.

The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Summer 2024 issue (146:3-4)

Edited by Sheree Renée Thomas

258 pages

Published 2024

Read from October 25 to October 29

Rating: 3.5 out of 5

Here we are, practically in November, but only now do I have my hands on a copy of the Summer 2024 issue of F&SF. I could’ve read it a couple months ago, but I like to collect the physical copies, and didn’t want to spend extra to read the digital version. No new issues have come out since then, though, so my streak of reading the current issue (begun March/April 2023) continues.

—

“What It Means to Drift” by Rajeev Prasad. Saraswathi volunteered to be a “merchant”: a human implanted with artificial remote organs to assist a Titan, a cyborg civil servant grafted around a human consciousness. Saraswathi’s job is to feel emotions, to sustain love and heartbreak for her Titan, Avni. But both Saraswathi and Avni are becoming unmoored, adrift in their respective roles. A solid sci-fi story.

“On My Way to Heaven” by Alberto Chimal (translated by Patrick Weill). This is a long novelette, one built around a topic (alien abduction) that has been considered passé in sci-fi publishing for decades. It also centers a trope that I generaly disdain: Did the speculative element “really” happen, or was it all in the mind of the character? Yet “Heaven” absorbed my attention from the first page, and kept it to the end. It’s written with assurance, pulling you into the complications of family, politics, protest, marginalization, mental illness, music, and UFOs with deceptive ease. Another all-time classic from this era of F&SF.

“Mister Yellow” by Christina Bauer.  Dr. Jordan invents a headset that permits her to interact with other dimensions overlaying her own. Mister Yellow is her contact in the sixth dimension. The government confines Dr. Jordan to maintain control over her invention, but various dimensions affect each other in ways she doesn’t expect.

“Water Baby” by Tonya R. Moore. A vivid and compelling story of rising waters, a disintegrating community, and a mystery from the sea.

“Metis in the Belly of the God” by Nina Kiriki Hoffman. Brief retelling from Greek mythology, as strange and excellent as you'd expect from Nina Kiriki Hoffman.

Next, a poem: “In Her Footsteps” by Suzanne J. Willis. It's all right, though its stated origin as background for a novel feels obvious; it doesn't feel complete in itself.

“She's a Rescue” by Marie Vibbert. The literature of kids/teens coming of age in single-family space freighters is small, but I’m always happy to see it grow. This one is a solid entry, expertly balancing its family drama with its blue collar spacer vibes.

“Snowdrop” by Raul Caner Cruz. A sweetly domestic retelling of “The Snow Child,” rich with a sense of place.

“Dog People” by Esther Friesner. Humorous contemporary fantasy mixing the undead with classical goddesses in upscale Manhattan. It felt like a throwback to the consciously cheesy humorous fantasy of the 20th century. Not really my kind of thing. 

“What You Leave Behind" by Ken Altabef. A magical realism-esque piece literalizing the grief and trauma of terrorism. Also not my kind of thing.

“Another Such Victory” by Albert Chu. Quite simply the best mecha pilot story I have ever read. It’s never been a subgenre that interested me, but this long novelette is stunning, immersive, vital, unremitting in its allegory against imperialism and systems of oppression. Another instant classic. I don’t subject contemporary short fiction to my arbitrary letter grades, but if I did, this one would be an A.

“Growth Rings of the Earth” by Xinwei Kong (originally published 2018). This almost-novella feels like the kind of grand, sprawling, consciously philosophical sci-fi you’d find in Asimov’s in the late 1990s, the kind of sci-fi that first fired my ambitions to become a literary SFF author instead of a mere pulp writer. In the moderately near future, most humans have abandoned their bodies to upload their consciousness to a digital “heaven.” Our narrator is the last human on Earth, raised by physical book enthusiasts who lived out their days in the Library of Congress. There’s a plot strand about the kind of artificial intelligence you used to find in a lot of sci-fi before, say, 2022, when planet-killing spellcheck software peddled by billionaires co-opted the term “AI.” True to the 1990s Asimov’s comparison, there’s also some iffy age-gap sex, which was unfortunate. I wish we could bring back the sprawling Big Idea sci-fi vibe of that era without its more questionable trappings. Still, aside from that, this is a worthwhile read.

After two longer stories, we’re treated to a couple poems. First: “I, Magician” by Julie Eliopoulos. I liked it.

Next: “City as Fairy Tale” by Richard Leis. Also solid.

“Jacob Street” by L. Marie Wood. GPS horror that saves itself from comparisons to a certain episode of The Office by unraveling into a delightfully feverish spiral. Pretty good.

“Red Ochre, Ivory Bone” by Deborah L. Davitt. Seeing that title on the table of contents, I didn’t expect a multi-species space opera piece. I think it’s a difficult vibe to capture in short form; at times, the story derailed to offer descriptions of the many species present at the station, which is a lot of information to throw at the reader. The plot itself draws from medical examiner procedural tropes. Yet Davitt pulls it all together into a satisfying story.

One last poem, one I’ve been looking forward to: “In a castle far from every prince” by Marisca Pichette. It is excellent, as always.

“The Glass Apple” by Ivy Grimes. A strange and beguiling original fairy tale. Quite good.

“Slickerthin” by Phoenix Alexander. An amazing endcap to this issue, delightfully visceral and goopy and queer, a take on Greek folklore like nothing else I’ve read. Excellent.

—

And that’s it for this issue! Definitely not my favorite of the Thomas era, but still solid.

F&SF has been criticized for sitting on stories for unprofessional lengths of time; they’ve been closed to submissions for well over a year now, as Thomas works through the stockpile of material the magazine had already accepted. Perhaps I’m reading into things, but at times, this issue felt a little bit like the result of that process. Not the dregs, per se. Many stories were good, some even exceptional. But overall, this didn’t rank up there with what Thomas has been releasing during her tenure. (Or maybe I’m just too depressed to appreciate anything, with the election looming so near.)

2024 read #124: Hexagon Speculative Fiction Magazine, Fall 2024 issue.

Hexagon Speculative Fiction Magazine, Fall 2024 issue (18)

Edited by JW Stebner

47 pages

Published 2024

Read October 25

Rating: 3.5 out of 5

We live in a golden age of speculative short fiction. Short form sci-fi and fantasy are the best they’ve ever been, full stop. Diversity, depth of character, quality prose, an unparalleled range of styles and subgenres—SFF is unmatched right now. Random token-pay webzines will consistently publish better stories than The Big 3 did forty years ago; the occasional story will surpass most things The Big 3 published twenty years ago. Yet there’s less monetary support than ever, at all levels of the field.

I’m trying to do a better job at keeping up with the market, including spending more time with those amazing indie magazines. Today, I’m returning to Hexagon to read the current issue, my second in a row from them.

—

“A Death Rattle’s Chime” by Adialyz Del Valle Berríos. When I say that fiction in token-pay markets today is superior to mainstream newsstand fiction from forty (or even twenty) years ago, I have stories like this in mind. It’s a bleakly atmospheric eco-fantasy set on an island that disappears a little bit more each full moon, where our narrator processes fish from a decaying sea. A haunting, exquisite story. Somehow this is the author’s first published story. An amazing start!

“A Thousand Steps Up Godwich Road” by Michael M. Jones. Urban legend piece with a twist ending. Nothing remarkable, but nothing to complain about.

“Gusher” by EC Dorgan. A pleasing petroleumpunk tale that could have come straight out of the 1990s, all about mall rats and “oil vamps” in a Saskatchewan boomtown, with the unexpected bonus of dinosaurs. One of the most creative takes on vampire lore I’ve ever read. Excellent (and I’m only slightly biased here because of the momentary dinosaurs).

Next comes a one-page comic: “Craftsman No. 1: ‘Already Cut and Fitted’” written by Jimmy Stamp, illustrated by Xavier Saxon. I felt indifferent about its reheated cosmic horror, aside from the role of the craftsman kit home, which I appreciated.

“The Gold Coast: At One with the Fun!” by Aggie Novak. A mutated amusement park needs to be fed, and Soph has the ill luck of shuttling an Aquaduck full of tourists to their imminent doom. Fascinating and enjoyable blur of genres. Quite good.

—

And that’s it for this issue! A solid read, well worth your time, especially “Chime,” “Gusher,” and “Gold Coast.”

2024 read #102: Worlds of IF, December 1964 issue.

Worlds of IF Science Fiction, December 1964 issue (14:7)

Edited by Frederik Pohl

130 pages

Published 1964

Read from August 30 to August 31

Rating: 1 out of 5

Back at it again with a PDF of an old magazine with some dinosaurs on the cover! What do the Sixties have in store? All male authors, all the time. Sigh. Let’s get this over with.

—

“When Time Was New” by Robert F. Young. This has the best opening line of any pre-1980 dinosaur story I’ve ever encountered: “The stegosaurus standing beneath the ginkgo tree didn’t surprise Carpenter, but the two kids sitting in the branches did.” Of course, it immediately squanders that good will by placing the stegosaur in the Upper Cretaceous. (There’s more time between Stegosaurus and the Upper Cretaceous than there is between the Upper Cretaceous and us, so technically the kids should be less surprising to Carpenter.)

The rest of the novella is in keeping with that pulpy, research-be-damned ethos. Carpenter, a time agent, drives a triceratank, with three horn-howitzers ready for defense. The kids are blue-eyed, pale-skinned Cretaceous Martians; somehow, their gender roles exactly conform to the expectations of early 1960s Americans. They got kidnapped, escaped, and are now pursued by the kidnappers in jet-propelled pteranodons. Fun as that last bit sounds, the story abounds with cringey Manly 1960s Sci-Fi Man bullshit: Martian society is an efficient utopia because they desentimentalize their kids’ brains! The girl child happily makes Carpenter a sandwich while her brother gets to hang out in the cockpit with him!

Which isn’t to say “Time” was entirely awful, at least not at first. More stories should have Cretaceous campouts with frankfurters over the fire. That said, there’s barely any dinosaur action here. Instead, the vast majority of the story is about Carpenter regretting that he made it to his 30s as a measly time traveling action hero in a dinosaur tank, instead of settling down and being a dad. (And not even a cool, 2020s-style dad who, like, participates in being a parent. We’re talking the 1960s idea of a dad.) That’s a flimsy scaffold on which to hang such a long, long, long story.

And then we get to the twist ending. Let’s just say Sixties gender norms should never be mixed with time travel. Perhaps D- before the twist, but all in all, an F

—

“The Coldest Place” by Larry Niven. The end of “Time” soured me on this whole issue, and seeing Larry Niven’s name did nothing to revive my enthusiasm. This forgettable “hard science” bauble exists only to set up the punchline that “the coldest place in the solar system” is the dark side of Mercury. Literally, that’s it. F+

—

“At the Top of the World” by J. T. McIntosh. If you ever wanted to read a prototype of Fallout, but wanted it dull and poorly written, we got you covered. A society of tunnel-dwellers, whose oral history tells them to dig upwards after two hundred years, finally reach the surface. Most of “World” is told in that faux news-magazine style that was so common in midcentury fiction. It goes on at numbing length, straining to draw some parallel between the tunnel teens and contemporary youth culture. It ends (predictably) with a “humanity never changes” punchline. F+?

—

“Pig in a Pokey” by R. A. Lafferty. To me, Lafferty is one of the all time overrated sci-fi authors. This “humorous” affair about a porcine alien who loves to collect trophy heads, and has an inability to understand humans’ hangups about death, doesn’t dispel that opinion. Somehow, though, it’s the least-awful story so far — which isn’t saying much. Maybe D-

—

“The Hounds of Hell” (conclusion) by Keith Laumer. Naturally, we close with the final installment of some serial or other. I’m noticing a pattern with serials: no matter what decade they were published in, they’re attain their length by throwing together a convoluted mishmash of every currently popular trope. This one is a stew of posthumanist body replacement, psionic powers (Project Ozma gets name-checked), secret societies dating back to Ben Franklin running geopolitics behind the scenes, aliens in disguise infiltrating governments. The “hounds” are demonic dog monsters pursuing our hero. Our hero fails to solve Earth’s problems with his metal-reinforced fists, and wakes up a disembodied consciousness piloting an alien war machine. It could almost be interesting, if 80% of the length and 100% of the 1960s pulp conventions were trimmed away. As it is, it’s still marginally more interesting than any other story in the magazine. Still, it’s so much longer than it needs to be, so I can’t imagine giving it more than D-

—

And that’s it for this issue! That was rough. More like Worlds of F, am I right?

2024 read #100: The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Winter 2024 issue.

The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Winter 2024 issue (146:1-2)

Edited by Sheree Renée Thomas

258 pages

Published 2024

Read from August 27 to August 28

Rating: 3.5 out of 5

I don’t want this to be the end of F&SF.

It might not be. There’s a chance that the publisher will sort out its internal difficulties and get back on some semblance of a regular schedule. I certainly hope so. Under the editorial auspices of Sheree Renée Thomas, the quality of the magazine’s offerings has been astonishing, the best it’s ever been. Plus, several authors have shared news of contracts signed and edits approved, so there’s still a pulse in the organization, somewhere. My personal hypothesis has been that F&SF is husbanding its resources to release another issue this fall, coinciding with the magazine’s 75th anniversary.

But it’s practically September now. This is still the only issue F&SF has produced in what should have been a celebration year. To my knowledge, this issue never made it to newsstands; I had to shell out $30 to get a print copy from an online reseller.

And I can’t shake the impression that the publisher stooped to using an AI-regurgitated cover. One of Jupiter’s rings simply appears in space, mid-picture, unconnected to anything else, and arcing the wrong way. The cover also has that over-processed sheen that makes AI barf (I refuse to call it art) so off-putting.

So. Things aren’t looking great for F&SF right now.

I haven’t even begun reading this issue, and I’m already tearing up over it. But hey — technically this is still the current issue, so I guess my streak of reading current issues (beginning with March / April 2023) remains unbroken!

—

“what kills the stars” by Alex Bisker. Right out of the gate, this story is a stunner. It’s a deft, powerful tearjerker, expertly mingling the personal with the cosmic, heartbreak with the end of everything. “Confident in the abundance of time” is a phrase that will linger in my head for a long while, a perfect cradle for that tremulous joy we feel before the bottom falls out.

“The Ndayaan Sea” by Moustapha Mbacké Diop. Rich, vivid folkloric fantasy, filled with vaster magic and stranger scenes than any sword & sorcery epic. Excellent.

“The Icy Wasteland at Her Feet” by Deborah L. Davitt. In planning for, and sketching in the details of, my own longer-form stories, I’ve been thinking a lot about both the isolation of space ventures and the unreliability of human technology (particularly technology requiring exacting specs but produced with an emphasis on speed and cost-cutting). This tale of the last survivor of a human expedition to Enceladus makes the most of both themes. A solid story of all too human limitations in a hostile environment.

“Guilt Can Wilt the Sweetest Flower” by Veronica G. Henry. This piece feels like a stylistic and topical throwback to the urban fantasy boom of the 1980s. A traumatized Vietnam vet turned library custodian helps a bag-lady who is more than she seems. I rolled my eyes at the villainous librarian character who scoffs at the veteran’s service and fantasizes about throwing him out in the street once he’s no longer needed. I'd buy that from a nurse, sure, but a librarian? Weird strawman. This was not my kind of thing.

Next, a poem: “Sea and Sky” by Megan Branning. I enjoyed it.

“Mackson’s Mardi Gras Moon Race” by David DeGraff. Another throwback, this time a delightfully uncomplicated moon race tale straight out of the 1970s, with our blue-collar hero hoping his experience with driving untracked routes parlays into an edge against the fully sponsored drivers and the scions of lunar elites. Not a deep story, but entertaining.

“The Wizzzer” by Scott Nicolay. This feels like a 2020s-does-1980s-does-1950s suburban horror piece, layers of nostalgia about someone else’s nostalgia. It isn't bad (at least not by the standards of stories about creepy murderous kids), but it's insubstantial. Its greatest asset is its narrative voice.

“Burned Like Coal” by T. R. Napper. I felt indifferent about this near-future tale of would-be ecoterrorists. Didn't hate it, didn't love it. It was fine.

“The Diamond Factory” by Phoebe Barton. Adamantia Dawn returns to the habitat high in Saturn's atmosphere, years after her escape from its authoritarian horrors, as a final inspector, ready to sign off on the habitat’s decommission and destruction. Unexpectedly, something of the Shining City's vile past remains. This is a brief but effective mood piece. Quite good.

“The Body-Part Woman” by Bonnie Elizabeth. Creative concept for a story: our narrator loans out body parts she has collected to those who might need a hand, an arm, a heart, a stomach. It’s a bravura allegory for the unpaid and unacknowledged labors expected of women in our society, and the violence that is rendered in return. A haunting, uneasy read. Excellent.

“How to Care for Your Domestic God” by Clara Madrigano. The only novelette in an issue of poems and short stories, this piece earns its largesse of space. Madrigano commands your attention from the first line, spinning out an utterly absorbing tale of ancestry, community, domesticity, and the meaning of home. Absolutely riveting slow-burn domestic horror, an instant classic.

A poem: “A Selection of Book Curses” by Megan Branning. Does what it says in the title. I enjoyed it.

“Big Trouble in Sector C” by Robert Friedman & Barry N. Malzberg. A throwback to 1990s cyberpunk here, in which part of Murphy’s consciousness gets uploaded into cyberspace to track down rogue malware while dressed like a noir detective. Shallow stuff, but mildly entertaining.

“All Our Better Angels” by Jack Neel Waddell. Fairly average “time traveler loops back on her own life at various times” tale. Spoilers: It’s basically the same plot as Robert Heinlein’s “‘—All You Zombies—’” (read and reviewed here), but with less self-sex and more cloning, thus somewhat less interesting to me. It’s a fine enough story if you resist comparisons.

“Puzzle Pieces” by Jennifer R. Povey. In a dystopian future of reproductive licenses and widespread eugenics, an autistic child is born to a corporate magnate, who chooses to have her “mitigated.” A poignant middle finger to Autism Speaks and other contemporary eugenicists.

“Zariel: Parable of a Gifted Black Child” by Denzel Xavier Scott. Gorgeously written, weary with worldly wisdom, scintillating with pain and power. Harrowing, yet exalting.

“The Wounded King” by J. A. Prentice. It's hard to follow a story like "Zariel," but this is quite good on its own terms. It's a solid, crisply-written reinterpretation of Arthuriana, an effective allegory for a blood-sucking patriarchy that believes it has all the answers.

“The Interspatial Accessibility Compact’s Guidelines for Cross-Cultural Engagement” by Dane Kuttler. This feels like someone took all those viral Tumblr posts about humans being the wacky, self-destructive, pack-bond-with-anything, Florida Man species of the Federation, and decided to build a setting around them. Which isn't a bad thing, at least not here. Enjoyable.

A poem by Richard Leis, “Cities Through Telescopes,” is solid enough, mingling grief and astronomy.

A piece I’ve been looking forward to for a long time: Avra Margariti’s poem “Vanishing Act.” It is, as expected, captivating, intoxicating, absolutely brilliant.

“Do Not Hasten to Bid Me Adieu” by Will McMahon. I was already enjoying this story's immersive 1930s setting when it took a swerve I never would have guessed, and became absolutely delightful. A quiet, unexpected masterpiece.

—

That’s it for this issue! Not my favorite issue of the Thomas era — yet, like every other Thomas-helmed issue I’ve read, it’s vastly better and more interesting than any issue put out by a prior editor. (C. C. Finlay’s issues have come close, but don’t congrue with my own tastes quite the way that Thomas’ efforts do.) It has its share of all-time great stories, as well.

Let’s hope this isn’t it for F&SF. 

2024 read #97: Weird Tales, November 1930 issue.

Weird Tales: A Magazine of the Bizarre and Unusual, November 1930 issue (16:5)

Edited by Farnsworth Wright

148 pages

Published 1930

Read from August 24 to August 25

Rating: 1.5 out of 5

Thanks to online PDF archives, I have a phone full of weird old pulp magazines, most of them with one common denominator: dinosaur stories. I’ve even read one or two of them, to my lasting disappointment. Yet I can’t seem to stop tracking down — and downloading — more.

I had a moderately okay time reading the Women of Weird Tales collection last year. Even a book curated for modern tastes, though, had more than its share of offputting or just plain boring stories. I don’t have high hopes for this issue, which will be my first read of a full Weird Tales magazine. Let’s get into it, I guess!

—

We start off with an unpromising poem, “Teotíhuacán” by Alice l’Anson. It’s a rote, morbidly modernist fantasy of “pagan rites” and human sacrifice. The line art that accompanies it is far better than the poem.

What’s next is the sole reason I’m reading this issue:

“A Million Years After” by Katharine Metcalf Roof. Two masked bandits hold up a museum truck and make off with a box valued at a hundred grand. To their dismay, the box contains only a large egg, which they bury to keep the heat off them after the heist. Soon, moonshiners and deacons alike come face to face with a reptile the size of a house, with a serpentine neck and deadly claws. There’s a kernel of an entertaining story here, mixing Prohibition-era crime pulp with a predatory dinosaur loose upon the countryside, but Roof’s mediocre prose, lacking any point of view, makes it less entertaining than it should be. It ends anticlimactically. I’m in a generous mood, so maybe, in consideration for when it was published, I’ll give it a C-

“Tales of the Werewolf Clan: 1: The Master Strikes” and “Tales of the Werewolf Clan: 2: Hau! Hau! Huguenots!” by H. Warner Munn. A pair of amateurish outings thoroughly impressed with themselves, these linked historical fantasies stumble along through a checklist of 16th century clichés, mostly involving casual cruelty. Munn encumbers his tales with needless lore, and with dialogue like this: “The cat, witches’ familiar, mysterious and too-knowing night animal, sharing the secrets of midnight with the bat and the ghouls that ride the wind, had been but the messenger of the Evil One to bid the corpses rise and come to do his bidding!” I’m pretty sure lore posts on LiveJournal role-playing communities were better written and more interesting than this. F

“The Uncharted Isle” by Clark Ashton Smith. I only know Clark Ashton Smith through posthumous mock-ups that Lin Carter “found in a trunk” and published in his Year’s Best Fantasy series. (Earlier this year, I tried to read The Star Trader, but didn’t get far.) This story is a standard “shipwrecked mariner lands on a primeval lost shore” number, mixing in the lost continent tropes so beloved by Smith and his contemporary fantasists (and by Lin Carter). There isn’t much else to it. The prose is purple, but more fluent than anything so far in this issue. Racist vibes permeate the descriptions of the people our hero encounters, the persistent low-level background racism of how facial features are described and so forth. It also brings this issue’s human sacrifice count to two. Maybe D

“Kings of the Night” by Robert E. Howard. Right out of the gate, we’ve got human sacrifice number three. Clearly, this was something of a preoccupation at the time. A Pictish king named Bran wears a red jewel given to his ancestor by some dude from Atlantis. Our POV is Cormac, Bran’s Hibernian ally in the fight against Rome. This is Howard we’re dealing with, so we get plenty of weird bigotry to go around, with graduated “orders” of “civilization” within the Celtic umbrella. (For example, the Picts, with the exception of the kingly Bran, are apparently primeval, ape-like relics of the Stone Age, who are also degenerated refugees from Atlantis? I guess?) It’s all a lot of bullshit about masculinity and natural kingship and racial hierarchy; JD Vance would love it. As if that weren’t bad enough, it’s way too fucking long. F

“The Cosmic Cloud” by Edmond Hamilton. A rote space opera that feels like it could have been repeated with little variation in the early 1960s, which isn’t so much a compliment to this story as commentary on how stagnant the subgenre became after its blueprint was developed. The diverse men of the Interstellar Patrol (because even on worlds of tree people and crab people, it must always be men) stand between the peoples of the galactic federation and anything that might threaten them. Today, they’re finally getting around to investigating this strange cloud of ether that has reached out and drawn in thousands of ships over the last several days. This piece, for all its formulaic plotting and antique stiffness, has a certain musty charm, like something you’d see riffed on MST3K. Maybe C- (at least by the standards of 1930)

“Stealthy Death” by Seabury Quinn. You know, I had thought this issue (Howard’s tale aside) featured remarkably little racism for 1930, but this tedious murder mystery supplies enough for a dozen magazines. Otherwise, it’s mainly notable for featuring a broad stereotype of an Irish police sergeant who’s mysteriously named Costello. Absolutely sucks. F

A poem: “Great Ashtoreth” by Frank Belknap Long, Jr. It’s mediocre at best.

“The Portal to Power” by Greye La Spina. This one is a serial, broken up across four issues. This issue features part two of four, but because I’m not in the mood to start with the second part of a serial, I went ahead and downloaded the October 1930 issue to read part one instead. Like seemingly most pulp serials I’ve encountered, the plot is a convoluted mishmash of whatever was trendy at the time. Part one begins with a witch, hoping to foil the devil who deceived her, handing off a talisman of great power to a small town doctor, enjoining him to take it to the Circle of Light in San Francisco. In the wrong hands, she warns him, the talisman can open the door to the return of the Old Gods — meaning, inevitably, Pan, whose priest comes in on a motorcycle and gets handed a dummy talisman. Then an airship magnate enters the story to help the doctor. The magnate has a niece, who in turn has scarlet lips and a pet marmoset. It’s all modestly charming until a Black cook character straight out of a minstrel show gets introduced. That threw some ice water over my enthusiasm. I feel no need to read part two. D-

A poem from H. P. Lovecraft’s “Fungi from Yuggoth” sequence is next: “4. Antarktos.” It’s fine.

“The Debt” by Eric A. Leyland. “Share my room because I’m scared of ghosts” seems to have been the 1930s equivalent of the “there was only one bed” trope. At least, this is the second story I’ve read from this era that uses it as a plot device. This story feels distinctively queer, between the haunted man carrying a photo of another man, and the narrator dwelling on how very handsome the man in the photograph is, especially after meeting the man’s ghost: “It was his smile, however, that was so charming. When he smiled, his whole aspect changed remarkably.” That elevates an otherwise forgettable story to a solid C

“A Message from Mars” by Derek Ironside. A bully named Bullivant flies a rocket to Mars, and sends a television broadcast back to Earth, just as the ant-like Martians retaliate for his violence. Hokey, but not terrible. Maybe C-

“Siesta” by Alexander L. Kielland (1880). A translation of a Norwegian original. A Parisian dinner party, its guests collected by a rich Portuguese man, wends through its various personalities, until an Irishman puts on a bravura performance with a piano and, uh, makes them spiritually uncomfortable? I guess? D?

One last poem: “The Cypress-Bog” by Donald Wandrei. At least it’s atmospheric.

—

And that’s it! My favorite thing about this magazine was the variety of subgenres we visited. There may not have been much depth to anything, but we got the full spread of what 1930s SFFH could offer. Which was mostly racism. But still.

My second favorite thing about this issue is the ad on the back cover, promising an “Astonishing Electrical Invention” that is “Startling” and “Uncanny.” “This unquestionably is the queerest, most incredible invention since the first discoveries of radio!” What is this prodigy of modern science?? It’s a car alarm.

2024 read #93: The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Winter-Spring 1950 issue.

The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Winter-Spring 1950 issue (1:2)

Edited by Anthony Boucher & J. Francis McComas

128 pages

Published 1950

Read from August 10 to August 11

Rating: 1 out of 5

So, I had this plan to read an issue of F&SF from each decade of its existence, double back when I got to the 2020s, and do it again going the other way. I only made it as far as the 1960s before losing what little focus I had. Instead, today we’re hopping back to the 1950s for this, the second-ever issue of the magazine.

It would take me so many years to read through every single issue of F&SF, especially since I would need to buy hundreds more issues (some of them at collector’s prices) to make it happen. As much as I’ve thought about it, I probably won’t attempt it. But I might try to read through every issue I have access to, which happily includes its first full decade, thanks to online archives.

I don’t have high hopes for this issue. I’m choosing to read it because of the Ray Bradbury and Margaret St. Clair pieces, and also because the Coleridge reprint technically lets me add another item to my 1800s decade tag.

—

“The Gnurrs Come From the Voodvork Out” by R. Bretnor. The vast majority of 1950s humor hasn’t aged well. I’ve also never been impressed with any of Bretnor’s efforts. The  editorial blurb above this story hyperventilates: “[A]ny mention of gnurrs tends to reduce both editors to a quivering state of helplessness which has been authoritatively diagnosed as hysteria bretnorica.” What exactly is so hysterical, you ask? We have a kook inventor named Papa Schimmelhorn, a hidebound military officer who still yearns for cavalry, a WAC secretary who’s miffed by the lack of sexual harassment from her commander, and the gnurrs, who swarm out of the wainscoting to eat everyone’s clothes. It reads like something finely tuned to the sensibilities of midcentury 10 year old boys — maybe like old Bugs Bunny cartoons, but not funny. F

“The Return of the Gods” by Robert M. Coates (1948). This reprint, a tale of Greek gods (and various associated creatures) appearing to unsuspecting WWII veterans throughout the Northeast, originally appeared in The New Yorker. The prose has an oddly antique cadence, with news-magazine “the facts of the case” narration. The story itself feels like a throwback, as well, hearkening back to the Pan fad of the 1890s through 1930s. Yet it also has a whisper of the midcentury apocalypse genre within it, perhaps the earliest such expression of atomic anxiety I’ve encountered. I didn’t dislike it, aside from a sprinkling of the typical “women love sexual harassment, actually” bullshit. C-?

“Every Work Into Judgment” by Kris Neville. Dull, bible-thumping drivel that’s thoroughly impressed with itself, this one is a would-be philosophical ramble about a building on a future college campus. The building slowly gains sentience and telekinesis, and gets religion. Neville’s prose strains to attain poetry and meaning, but only gets in its own way. Maybe F+

A Samuel Taylor Coleridge poem, “Time, Real and Imaginary” (1803), has been inserted to fill half a page. First ever poem in F&SF! It might also be my first exposure to Romantic poetry, at least for the purposes of this blog. I liked it, but probably wouldn’t want an entire book of it.

“A Rope for Lucifer” by Walt Sheldon. An early example of a fantasy western, unsurprisingly freighted with racist caricature. If you’re like me, you probably imagined some bronco-busting variation on “The Devil Went Down to Georgia,” but no: our epistolary narrator is the one named Lucifer, and the tale centers on how he received a sacred rope from mysterious India. The story never develops any degree of pizazz. D?

“The Last Generation?” by Miriam Allen deFord (1946). Another postwar atomic anxiety tale, originally published in Collier’s, pre-dating Coates’ effort by two years (though it employs the same news-magazine format). This time a testing accident in New Mexico renders all mammals sterile, all over the globe. The outcomes deFord lays out are equal parts creative and hopelessly optimistic; universal infertility leads to world peace and cooperation, for example, while the world’s rich men are happy to have their now uninheritable wealth taxed for the greater good. However, even within a global utopia, deFord couldn’t resist casting the usual white writer’s aspersions on China, India, and Africa. Maybe D+

“Postpaid to Paradise” by Robert Arthur (1940). I can safely say this is my very first philatelist fantasy. Magic stamps that transport the recipient to El Dorado are a neat conceit. Since this was 1940, alas, the narrator has to emphasize that one of the stamps depicts a teenage girl, before he promptly leers at her. Meh. D-

“The Exiles” by Ray Bradbury (1949). It’s hard to describe this piece without spoiling it, so here are the spoilers: All the canonical literary fantasists of the past (Shakespeare, Poe, Dickens, Baum, Lovecraft, Algernon Blackwood, etc.), kept alive thanks to those who read their books, have exiled themselves to Mars to escape the relentless pragmatism of science and progress. With the first astronauts approaching Mars, the fantasists use the magic of their creations (the witches of Macbeth, etc.) to kill or frighten them away. But the astronauts have an unexpected weapon: the last copies of their books, banned long ago. It’s a shallow business, and very much in the thrall of the white man canon, but it’s cute. I could see this as a Doctor Who serial. C+

“My Astral Body” by Anthony Hope (1895). The “mystical East” meets Edwardian social comedy in this tale from the 1890s. An unnamed “rajah” teaches a well-to-do Oxford student how to project an astral body. The student promptly sends his astral body to attend church and to get trousers measured for him. All this casual employment gives the astral body big ideas, and soon our Oxford student has regrets. A shrug. D

“Gavagan’s Bar” by L. Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt. Actually a pair of stories: “Elephas Frumenti,” which sees bar patrons discuss selectively breeding elephants down to whiskey-drinking house pets, and “The Gift of God,” in which a Christian poet doesn’t know what to do when a miracle happens to her. This pair of flash stories launched the long-running Gavagan’s Bar series, which proved popular for some years in F&SF. I don’t get the appeal. Maybe D?

“World of Arlesia” by Margaret St. Clair. This author is hit or miss, and unfortunately, this one falls in the miss category. The plot — an immersive movie is used to pull people into a Matrix-like work camp — is interesting, and the narration dabbles with second-person, but the pieces don’t quite gel together. D+

“The Volcanic Valve” by W. L. Alden (1897). A supposedly humorous yarn about a scientist who, hoping to perfect a means of controlling volcanoes for profit, inadvertently triggers the explosion of Krakatoa. Full of the horrid racism of contemporary English authors, the entire punchline seems to be “our plan blew up our Chinese workmen.” F

“Not with a Bang” by Damon Knight. A supposedly humorous last-man-on-Earth tale. The “humor” derives from the fact that last woman on Earth is a prim Protestant who can’t wrap her head around the changed circumstances and just give the man some kids already. Gross as fuck. Something worse than F

—

Even with low expectations, this issue managed to disappoint me. The last two stories, in particular, were horrendous. I’ve read worse issues from the 1980s, but this one was a marked step down from the dubious charms of the first issue.

2024 read #86: The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, May 1968 issue.

The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, May 1968 issue (34:5)

Edited by Edward L. Ferman

130 pages

Published 1968

Read from July 21 to July 24

Rating: 1.5 out of 5

Continuing my project to hop through all the decades of F&SF.

The online PDF archives seem to end at the dawn of the 1960s, so I have to turn to my own collection now, which doesn’t leave me with many sixties issues to choose from. This issue has a novella (a “short novel” in the magazine’s parlance at the time) by Samuel R. Delany, which is a compelling enough reason to pick it. Unfortunately, it’s also all male. The small gains made by women writers in the 1950s F&SF scene clearly got discarded before we reached here.

Halfway through, I belatedly realized that this issue means I have read at least one full issue from every decade of F&SF’s existence! Next goal: one from each year? I’ll have to obtain a lot more physical copies to accomplish that.

—

“Lines of Power” by Samuel R. Delany. A unique (in my experience) dystopian novella about Global Power, which trundles its massive cables and machines around the globe, and the various hyper-individualistic nonconformists (today, it’s the biker-gang coded “Angels” who ride jet-powered broomsticks) who withdraw to the last unpowered pockets of wilderness to avoid them. The concept feels halfway between Logan's Run and something I could picture getting published in Asimov’s in the mid 1980s. There's some racial, sexual, and gendered stuff that no doubt was radical in 1968 but hasn't aged so well; much of the plot concerns postures of masculinity. Delany’s style has, by this point, evolved into the denser, more elliptical phrasing he would continue to elaborate into the 1970s. Not my favorite Delany piece, but it's vivid and memorable, and interesting for its place in his evolution as a writer. Maybe C+?

“The Wilis” by Baird Searles. A ballet dancer fantasy by an ex-professional dancer? Not an item I expected to find in this era. The prose and storytelling are thoroughly competent, albeit uninspiring (and a tad predictable). The ending, especially, felt a bit out of place in this decade, like something that could have been published in the early 1950s. C-

“Gifts from the Universe” by Leonard Tushnet. Routine “mysterious shop in a rundown back alley” tale, with a Venusian twist straight out of the ’50s. An inordinate percentage of its word count is the narrator charting out his efforts to find full-silver quarters to pay the mysterious (and ailing) Mr. Tolliver. A shrug. D

“Beyond the Game” by Vance Aandahl. This would-be surrealist little number about a grade school boy escaping the horrors of dodgeball feels thoroughly sixties (in a derogatory sense). It has less to say than it thinks it does. Not much to it. D

“Dry Run” by Larry Niven. This tale, by contrast, feels thoroughly eighties (in a derogatory sense). It’s one of those “shitty man dies on his way to kill his soon to be ex-wife, gets judged by the heavenly Powers That Be based on what he would have done had he survived” tales. (Spoiler: It’s okay! He only murders her dog, doesn’t tell her, and it works out between them!) Fuck this. F

“A Quiet Kind of Madness” by David Redd. A proto-feminist fantasy written by a man, published in 1968? I’m gonna be skeptical of that. Especially since it has a guy roaming around trying to sweet talk our protagonist into giving him another chance after he tried to assault her six months before… and she actually finds herself gaslit into considering it. Yeah, this isn’t any feminism I would recognize. I did enjoy the vaguely post-apocalyptic Finnish vibe of the setting, but the rest of the story was on thin ice. (Heh.) F+

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And that’s my first issue of F&SF from the ’60s! It started out so interesting, but quickly settled into another Ferman-curated disaster.

2024 read #77: The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, December 1951 issue.

The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, December 1951 issue (2:6)

Edited by Anthony Boucher & J. Francis McComas

128 pages

Published 1951

Read July 2

Rating: 2 out of 5

As I mentioned in my review of its first issue, F&SF is in its 75th year. Under the editorial leadership of Sheree Renée Thomas, the magazine’s quality is better and more consistent than it’s ever been. Unfortunately, a number of missteps and accidents on the publishing end of things has left the venerable publication’s future uncertain. It’s July now, and F&SF has only published one issue so far in 2024. This lone issue seems have had a limited print run, perhaps solely for subscribers; rumors suggest the company’s printer broke, a major problem when cash flow is as sparse as it is for modern magazines. In any case, I still haven’t been able to get my hands on a copy, and I’m waiting to see if production issues get resolved before I splurge on a subscription.

My project to read each issue of F&SF as it’s current has been derailed. In its place, I’m proposing to read back and forth across the various decades of its existence. I’ve already finished the only issue from the 1940s, so it’s time to read my first full issue from the 1950s.

There’s nothing special about this issue. I picked it because the TOC offers what looks to be a nice mix of authors and titles. As was the magazine’s style at the time, the contents hop between new stories and selections from earlier publications. 

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“When the Last Gods Die” by Fritz Leiber. I’m not normally a fan of the “dispassionate, omniscient author records events from the outside with no emotional attachment” style of first-person perspective; it feels hackneyed at best. Yet Leiber mostly makes it work in this Dying Earth mood piece. In the far future, the titanic figures of pseudo-Greek gods recline motionless in the ruddy light of the aged sun, waiting for their end. A sentient Machine arrives to make one final plea for the gods to reconsider their own demise. Not bad at all. B-

“The Haunted Ticker” by Percival Wilde (1923). A thoroughly Twenties tale about a miser who works out a system to exactly predict the stock market in his last months of life, and then comes back as a ghost orchestrating purchases and sales over the stock ticker. Not exactly thrilling, and rather overlong, but certainly not like anything else I’ve read. C-

“O Ugly Bird!” by Manly Wade Wellman. The first tale of John the Balladeer. It’s a mildly diverting yarn about a holler plagued by a bully who always gets what he wants from his neighbors, and the big ugly bird who may or may not be his familiar. C+

“The Rats” by Arthur Porges. This story is a reprint, yet it was first published in 1951, the same year as this issue. Quick turnaround! Maybe it’s good, right? Alas, as you might guess from its original home in Man’s World, it’s amateurish, stiffly written pulp. A doomsday prepper hides out in the desert near an abandoned atomic testing facility, but the rats are learning and adapting to thwart his defensive measures. There’s some mileage in how banal the threat is; the rats aren’t ravenous mutants, just somewhat smarter than your average rodent. I’m reminded of Elisabeth Melartre’s “Evolution Never Sleeps,” in the July 1999 issue of Asimov’s. D?

“Built Down Logically” by Howard Schoenfeld. Hillburt Hooper Aspasia is an infant prodigy, a genius Harvard lecturer still in a baby buggy. That’s the starting point for this silly little number, which toys with logic and how you can logic away the facts in front of you. I’m reminded of “Hog-Belly Honey” by R. A. Lafferty, which I read and reviewed here. Like that humorous piece, this one doesn’t do anything for me, though I did enjoy its nasty cynicism about midcentury scientists and their role as decorated weapons manufacturers. D

“The Earlier Service” by Margaret Irwin (1935). An early example of a time-slip story, not quite folk horror but perhaps somewhere along the road to it, full of church gargoyles, grinning cherubs, and shadowy presences around the altar. Excellent atmosphere, though like most stories I’ve read from this era, more is hinted at than shown. Enjoyable. B-

“The Universe Broke Down” by Robert Arthur (1941). Humorous eccentric inventor piece, very much of its time. Jeremiah Jupiter uses strange matter found in a meteorite to invent a device that folds space. His reluctant friend, our narrator Lucius, is on hand to discover that the device works perhaps too well. Literal cats-and-dogs humor. A shrug. D+

“Come on, Wagon!” by Zenna Henderson. Henderson’s first adult story, a prototype of the standard “kids can do magic because they don’t know the limits of reality” trope. It doesn’t quite have the deep well of heart and precisely depicted feeling that her best later stories have, but it’s more emotionally authentic than most SFF of this era. B-

“The House in Arbor Lane” by James S. Hart. Spoilers for this one. It wouldn’t be my first choice, but I have to admit that it’s pretty clever — especially at this early date in the genre — to take a tale of a witch, her attempt to sacrifice her niece, and the witch’s defeat, and narrate it in the form of a murder trial in a small New England town. Maybe a shade overlong, but still a respectable C+

“Skiametric Morphology and Behaviorism of Ganymedeus Sapiens: A Summary of Neoteric Hypotheses” by Kenneth R. Deardorf. Now that’s a title ahead of its time! The story, if it can be called that, lives up to that promised postmodern slant, giving us a faux research paper examining cartoonish diagrams as observed through a multidimensional scanner. It’s cute, though I can’t really rate it as a story.

“The Hyperspherical Basketball” by H. Nearing, Jr. Overlong humor piece about a professor who invents a fourth-dimensional basketball. I gotta admit, my eyes kind of glazed through this one. Geometry and midcentury “clever” dialog joined forces to make me snooze. A flat note to end on. D?

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And that’s my first full issue of F&SF from the ’50s! It could have been a lot worse, that’s for sure.

2024 read #71: Prismatica Magazine, November/December 2020 issue.

Prismatica LGBTQ Science Fiction and Fantasy Magazine, November/December 2020 issue (14)

Edited by Viviana Annaelise Montez

81 pages

Published 2020

Read from June 14 to June 15

Rating: 3.5 out of 5

The March / April 2023 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction included my first pro-rate print publication. This issue of Prismatica, however, did me the honor of being my very first print publication. Everything I’d gotten published before then had been online only.

I bought my copy of this issue alongside Queer’s One for the Ages; much like that anthology, print copies of this issue are no longer available. I wish I’d bought more when I had the chance.

Also like Queer’s One for the Ages, I hadn’t read it until now. Yay Pride Month for nudging me toward my queer backlist!

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A sheaf of poetry starts off this issue:

“Final Rite” and “…Beyond the Ends of the World” by D. Keali’i MacKenzie.

“Swimming Lessons” by Darcy Isla.

“They” by Susan Butler.

“A Fairy Ring, 2 AM” by Jessica Chan.

“Last Man on Earth” and “Last Woman on Earth” by S. A. Undra.

I particularly loved “…Beyond the Ends of the World” and “A Fairy Ring, 2 AM,” the latter of which might get a response poem from me someday. (I’ve never done a direct response poem and I feel presumptuous even thinking about it, but it’s a common enough feature of poetry, so I’ll try not to let the anxiety show.) A nice beginning!

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Next, the prose:

“Poor Monster (or What You Will): A retelling of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night” by Hale. I’ve read almost nothing of Shakespeare’s. Just Hamlet, in fact. Recently I watched Romeo + Juliet, which basically counts as another one. Lastly, being a fan of fantasy fiction has exposed me to countless reinterpretations of The Tempest. All I know of Twelfth Night is a general sense of gender play. This take on it is notable for its lovely prose and sense of character, doling out Viola / Cesario’s backstory with professional polish and the ache of gender dysphoria. Excellent. 

“Her Wine Red Star” by me. A couple weeks ago I found myself rereading this novelette on Prismatica’s website, and had an insight: My stories may not get nominated for awards or get much notice in the trades, but I’ve reached a point in my career where I write stories I enjoy. That’s a big deal to me. Even twelve years ago that would’ve been impossible to imagine. I don’t think it’s conceited to say I enjoyed the hell out of my weird western tale of wizards, rocketship pilots, and bereaved drifters.

“Calm Waters” by C. J. Dotson. Lyssa has had enough of fighting, and partners with her love Niethan to become riverboat traders. But when one of the villages they service gets hit by bandits, and Lyssa’s friend in town gets killed, she reluctantly agrees to fight the bandits, beginning with whoever in town might be feeding the bandits information. This is a well-balanced take on adventure fantasy, mingling coziness and a touch of danger.

“Last Woman” by Lillian Lu. What story better suits the end of 2020 than a modern, queer, neurodivergent riff on Mary Shelley’s The Last Man? Grad student Julianna Hong has come home for the holidays, planning to tell her mother that she’s bi. Instead, she wakes up in December 23 with the power out and every other person gone. And then she begins arguing with God. “Last Woman” is told in Julianna’s diary entries, a narrative device that Lu uses to good effect. An outstanding story that goes unexpected places.

“His Body is the Crucible” by Kit Edgar. An engrossing, morally gray, deliberately opaque tale of making (and being made into) a monster, a reinterpretation of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde that revives its alchemy in the internet age.

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All in all, an excellent offering from the amateur end of the short fiction market.

Each and every one of these stories and poems wouldn’t have been out of place in a pro-paying magazine, yet capitalism did not grace us with enough pro markets to absorb all the worthy writings out there. I’ve said it before, but it’s a goddamn shame that short speculative fiction is at its creative peak at a time when its markets are in economic shambles. In such an environment, I think amateur markets like Prismatica serve a vital function. Who’s to say I would have kept writing, and gotten the pro publications I wound up getting, if it weren’t for small mags like this one?

2024 read #66: Hexagon Speculative Fiction Magazine, Summer 2024 issue.

Hexagon Speculative Fiction Magazine, Summer 2024 issue (17)

Edited by JW Stebner

43 pages

Published 2024

Read June 6

Rating: 3 out of 5

Ever since my first story was published in Corvus magazine in 2012, I’ve loved small press magazines. Heck, go back even farther, to when I printed the first Scareship zine in 2002. I’ve been around zines and indie litmags pretty much my entire adult life. Some of my favorite stories and poems (my own and those of others) were first printed in amateur and token payment markets. Yet I don’t think I’ve read a single one cover to cover this whole time, my own editorial efforts excepted.

Most volunteer-run indie mags fold within a couple years. My own From the Farther Trees magazine made it just a hair over two years. (I hope to revive it someday, but who knows.) Scareship lasted longer, appearing in fits and starts from 2002 until 2013, but I only published ten issues in that time, and the final batch of four had nothing but the name in common with the original six.

Hexagon is something of a venerable elder in this scene, still producing quarterly issues here in its fifth year. Never having read an issue in full, only individual stories by writers I know, I wasn’t expecting that this issue would follow such a clear theme: fuck the billionaires. I’m here for it.

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“Heat Devils” by Madi Haab is a quippy eco-heist with cyberpunk elements, an entertaining and cathartic middle finger to extinction capitalism.

“Feathers and Wax: A Triptych” by André Geleynse is a tiny but vivid piece of eco fiction, another middle finger to the billionaires. Quite good. Packs a lot into 300-some words.

“Smugglers Without Borders” by Christopher R. Muscato is a tale of boycotting a global corporate monopoly.

“An Epicurean’s 10 Steps to Utopia” by John Eric Vona is a string of food-related vignettes illustrating pampered lives of extreme privilege witnessed by a footman who can never taste the dishes, only serve them. Another vivid microcosm packed into few words. Excellent. My favorite piece here.

“Wonders of a Plastic Ocean” by James Cato is the longest story here by far, a novelette of climate refugees who find uses for plastic pollution. I enjoyed the creativity and strangeness of its setting.

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A brief issue, though that’s understandable when an editor pays by the word from their own pocket. I hope to read many more indie litmags soon!