2022 read #42: The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, March/April 2022.

The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, March/April 2022 issue (142:3-4)

Edited by Sheree Renée Thomas

258 pages

Published 2022

Read from October 9 to October 13

Rating: 4 out of 5

When I originally bought this issue, I was excited because it was the first time someone I knew (a writer who is a Twitter mutual of mine) had been published in F&SF while I knew them. Since then, three more of this issue's contributors have become my Twitter mutuals; it's a bit dizzying, really, that I know four people featured in this one issue, at the very least on a parasocial level.

I haven't read this issue before now, despite my excitement, because ADHD made picking it up and reading it through feel impossible. With a couple back issues (terrible, terrible back issues) under my belt, I feel less overwhelmed. Time to read!

"Dancing Little Marionettes" by Megan Beadle. After all the sweaty, unsavory writing I read in my old F&SFs, it's such a joy to read a story like this. This is exactly what my old idea of the magazine had been like: a mix of melancholy and whimsy, a small-scale personal drama steeped in atmosphere, a tender and deeply personal examination of grief. 

"Void" by Rajeev Prasad. Amare, a doctor, works in a space station orbiting Mars, saving soldiers and POWs wounded in the war below -- or, when necessary, chucking them into the void of space for a quick merciful end. The colonialist powers exploiting Mars order Amare to void two POWs from the Martian Resistance. Caught between his desire for vengeance and his moral obligations as a doctor, Amare must make a choice.

"The Mule" by Matthew Hughes. My favorite aspect of this novelette is its setting. It's a pastiche of Early Modern Europe steeped in John Dee-esque occultism and planar sorcery, a lovely mix featuring a handful of my own historical and fantastical hyperfocuses. I've been working on my own Early Modern Magical setting for several years, so encountering this one was a delight. The story itself has a touch of the 1970s fantasy serial about it. I have no idea if there are other stories in this setting, but there are hints of other adventures before and after this one. One could imagine it sitting comfortably in an anthology with Phyllis Eisenstein's Alaric stories or something from Avram Davidson's Scythia-Pannonia-Transbalkania milieu. The characterizations were a little skimpy, but overall it was an absorbing story and an entertaining romp.

"These Brilliant Forms" by Phoenix Alexander. This one hooked me right from the first page. A tale of deep space salvagers and bioengineered "vacuumorphs" inspired by Dougal Dixon's Man After Man, all of it lovingly queer and proletarian, all of it rendered in bewitching prose. This story checks so many boxes for me. I crave more.

"Done in the Mire" by Adriana C. Grigore. Rumors of treasure lure generations of thieves and fortune-seekers to a boggy island, where a being called the Morasser deals with them by throwing them into a well. A young woman suffers this fate, but survives for fifty years on the well's healing waters, counting the stones and rattling the bones of those who perish. This is a marvelous tale, delectably weird, languid, dreamy with fairy tale logic.

"From This Side of the Rock" by Yvette Lisa Ndlovu. Having fled a homeland that became a graveyard, Rasika has waited long for the naturalization ceremony in the land on the other side of the rock. But the naturalization priests always take something away from you, the price always more, always crueler than you can imagine. An elegantly-structured work of devastating beauty.

"Lilith" by Ethan Smestad. After the last few bombshell stories, this one arrives as a brief shrug. Standard "Lilith and Adam are the last two humans on a terraforming Mars" bit. Could it be that Lilith is not who she appears to be?? Gasp!

"Maker of Chains" by Sarah A. Macklin. Another all-time great story, this one in a magic post-apocalypse setting brimming with place and character. Mr. Ezekiel must retrieve jewelry from a thief who occupies a lair in a former office building. But it's no ordinary thief, and no ordinary jewelry. And Mr. Ezekiel is no ordinary jeweler. A superb little tale.

"Where God Grows Wild" by Frank Oreto. The best part of this story is its setting: a laconic, vaguely New England-ish community of farmers and congregants, in a world where all animals -- chickens, cows, humans -- rely on plants to produce young for them. I liked the restraint in the worldbuilding; it's never explained how or why any of this came about, and the story is all the better for it. The Goddess plants birth out Cabbage Patch children, the old folks bliss out on orgy pollen until they become mulch, and that's just the way it is. A solid effort.

Of the three poems that follow -- all of them quite lovely -- my favorite was "We Feed on Stone and Light" by Deborah L. Davitt. It's very close to my own poetry aesthetic!

"Woven" by Amanda Dier. A sweetly sad tale of a neglected, abused boy and the injured boggle he befriends. In any of the F&SF back issues I read recently, it would been a standout, but in the brilliance and magic of this modern iteration of the magazine, it's just a tiny bit overshadowed. A solid entry nonetheless.

"The Epic of Qu Shittu" by Tobi Ogundrian. Speaking of magic and brilliance, this novelette crackles with both. Ogundrian makes worldbuilding, characterization, and description seem effortless here, each flowing naturally into the next. Within the first few pages I had been drawn deeper in this world than some novels ever bring me. An intrepid (or foolish) bard sneaks about the ship of a notorious sorcerer, and the plot unfurls with wonderful clarity and efficiency from there. Wonderful story.

"Nana" by Carl Walmsley. A maudlin tale of grief, holographic replicas of loved ones, and having to learn how to let go. Fine enough, I guess, but not my favorite sort of thing in a general way. The twist ending felt too calculated, too manipulative.

"Spirit to Spirit, Dust to Dust" by Anna Zumbro. A brief little story of rusalkas, the Dust Bowl, and ecological debts that need to be paid. Slight but charming.

"The Living Furniture" by Yefim Zozulya (original story published 1919; translated by Alex Shvartsman). A translation of a Russian allegorical story over a century old, in which the wealthy and powerful use human beings -- regardless of their other skills or aptitudes -- as living furniture, wheel spokes, living books, and wallpaper. Pretty good as allegories go, and all too applicable to the horrors of modern capitalism.

And that's it! All in all, that was the best issue of a spec-fic magazine I've read in my adult life. (I remember being similarly blown away by issues of Asimov's and Analog as a teen, but I hadn't read much short fiction back then, and was easier to impress.) The bravura energy and verve in modern sci-fi and especially fantasy is like nothing else the genres have seen, and this issue is a gorgeous microcosm of the new SFF.

2022 read #41: So This Is Ever After by F.T. Lukens.

So This Is Ever After by F.T. Lukens

345 pages

Published 2022

Read from October 9 to October 11

Rating: 2.5 out of 5

This one is a high fantasy rom-com in which, after defeating the Big Bad Evil Guy and fulfilling the prophecy, the Chosen One and his band of adventurers settle in to rule the kingdom they accidentally inherited -- and also the Chosen One needs to find true love or he'll die. It's a charming set-up for a book and I had high hopes for it. Further, the cover is absolutely lovely.

Alas, Ever After eschews any real tension (romantic, humorous, or otherwise) regarding who Arek's soulmate is going to be. We know who it's going to be from the first chapter. That's not so bad in and of itself. This could have been a charming novella, a comedy of courtly manners as one complication after another impedes the course of True Love. What sours the book for me is how it stretches out a straightforward premise and places the burden of that extra length on our two romantic leads being absolutely oblivious idiots who can't communicate to (literally) save a life. That's a tried and true rom-com scenario, of course, but it long outlasted its welcome for me.

Beyond our two romantic leads, the main band of adventurers is a delightful cast. I'd happily read novels about Bethany's lusty adventures, about Sionna learning to loosen up and have fun, or Rion being the kingdom's sweetest himbo paladin. And I have to admit, when our two numbskull leads finally make things right at the end, I cried at how sweet and winsome it all was. The journey to get there could have been considerably shorter, though. Or maybe the focus could have been spread more evenly across the cast.

2022 read #40: Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia.

Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

304 pages

Published 2020

Read from October 6 to October 9

Rating: 4 out of 5

I haven't dabbled much in the Gothic category before now. There was The Secret Skin, which was lovely and gay, a love-letter to the genre that refused its misogynistic roots. Before that there was Dunleary, which was godawful, seriously one of the worst books I've ever read. And long ago I read Jane Eyre (though none of the other foundational Gothic texts). I like the general aesthetic of the business, but haven't ever sought it out, unlike my partner R, who has a shelf full of tawdry old "woman stumbling away from a house" paperbacks and has begun to collect modern queer revisions of the genre as well.

Mexican Gothic is one of the best books I could add to this meagre list. It unfurls a world of decadence and decay, delightfully unsettling and fantastically rendered. The descriptions of place, the rotting edges of reality coming undone in a remote colonialist's manorhouse deep in the mountains, linger in the mind and the lungs. The buried family secrets, a requisite of the genre, are wonderfully morbid and imaginative.

2022 read #39: The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, December 1989.

The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, December 1989 (77:6)

Edited by Edward L. Ferman

162 pages

Published 1989

Read October 7

Rating: 1.5 out of 5

Here we are, back at it again with another entry in my F&SF collection. I've been wavering between reading my back issues in chronological order and simply skipping to the more current publications. For now, my plan is to alternate between older issues and current ones (within the last calendar year) until I either read through my entire F&SF shelf or I get bored of the enterprise.

Last time, the September 1989 issue was a dire affair. The one good story, Ray Aldridge's "Steel Dogs," was essentially "Westworld but make it fairy tale fantasy." The rest wouldn't be making anybody's best-of lists, unless you specifically wanted a list of stories by racist sex criminals. Looking at the table of contents here, I feel some trepidation, especially for the Esther M. Friesner and Mike Resnick stories. Wish me luck.

"The Old School" by Ramsey Campbell. The name sounded familiar, so I searched to find what I'd read from him before. There were two stories: "The Other Side," collected in 1988's The Year's Best Fantasy, which was insipid shock horror; and "The Changer of Names," reprinted in 1978's The Year's Best Fantasy Stories, which was a slightly satirical sword & sorcery piece. Today's tale is a disjointed attempt at boarding school horror, as our hero -- a modern, more enlightened school teacher -- follows ephemeral children through the woods to the ruins of a particularly abusive boys' school, where the residue of children's fear remains as a palpable thing haunting the classrooms. There's a vague idea of generational trauma here; mean old people who only want to see kids-these-days properly punished make an appearance, offering a blatant echo of "The Other Side." But honestly there isn't much of substance here. And worse, this is the 1980s, so no male author was capable of describing an 11 year old girl without mentioning her "budding breasts." A sour start to this issue. I'll give it a D-.

"Misbegotten" by Michael P. Kube-McDowell. What I've always loved about F&SF is the wealth of different SFF subgenres coexisting in the same magazine. Kube-McDowell is a workmanlike writer, the sort of writer with several Star Wars Expanded Universe novels to his name; this story is a workmanlike effort as well, a modestly entertaining xenobiology piece that wouldn't have been out of place in Analog. Coming as it does immediately after the British boarding school horror of the previous story, it feels fresher, somehow, the contrast accentuating the mild pleasures of the alien ecosystem, the laboratory airship studying it from above, and the parasite that worms its way into our hero Eric Kimura. The characters are interchangeable, the plot nothing new, but nonetheless, I found it enjoyable. Maybe a C+.

"Where Have All the Graveyards Gone?" by Dean Wesley Smith. The year is 1991. Society collapses in the immediate aftermath of a "limited" nuclear exchange. Abandoned as their caretakers leave to look after their own families, the residents of a nursing home must fend for themselves. This story feels especially bleak here and now, after the countless COVID horrors in nursing homes, as nuclear tensions rise, as the collapse of society seems inevitable, whether next month or twenty years from now thanks to climate change. This story was competently written and did what it set out to do, but it's a fucking bummer. C.

"Poe White Trash" by Esther M. Friesner. The editorial blurb above this story promises "the funniest story we've read in many months." The best thing I can say about it is that it's brief. It's an eyeroll-worthy retelling of "The Cask of Amontillado" populated with the broadest hillfolk stereotypes this side of Hee Haw. I'll be generous and say F+.

"Little Worker" by Paul Di Filippo. A bioengineered bodyguard who's part human, part wolverine, and entirely into jelly and toast, Little Worker protects the Prime Minister of North America, but also has her own troubles to solve -- namely, anyone who gets in between her and the Prime Minister of North America. The editorial blurb above this story says, somewhat leeringly, that this is "one different and disturbing story." I found it to be a bit of a shrug; the vibe of "childlike bioengineered killer who is altogether too obsessed with her charge" was oily and somewhat putrid in its 1980s-ness. Maybe a D.

"The Cheval Glass" by Reginald Bretnor. Here's a challenge for all cishet male authors, especially those in the 1980s: Write a story involving a tween girl without using descriptors like "unripened" and without some mention of growing breasts. Clearly, this challenge is impossible. This is, overall, a mild tale of a girl growing up with neglectful parents and an emotionally abusive mom, a story of a girl who uses a magic mirror to find her heart's desire. But the author just couldn't help getting sweaty over his 12 year old protagonist, and it's gross. D.

"The Wound That Would Not Be Healed" by Eric Carl Wolf. This issue seems to have a loose theme of sorts, or at least there is an abnormal number of stories that center on either kids or old folks. This one is a vaguely spiritual urban fantasy, or vaguely Christian "inspirational" tale, whichever way you'd like to phrase it. Drawing a rather vacuous allegory with the wounds of Christ, our tale finds an old woman wasting away in a hospital, the abscess on her hip a constant source of pain, never getting any better. Until [makes magical whooshy hand motions] the wound takes away her pain, glows with an inner light, gives her a lovingly merciful death, and makes a few small miracles happen on her way out. Not my cup of tea, but at least it isn't actively offensive on any level. Maybe I'll give it a D+ (the plus added solely because there are no budding breasts).

"Freezer Madness" by Patricia Ferrara. I know about child abuse. I was abused all through childhood; it's been a recurring motif in some of my own stories. The way it was employed as a plot device throughout the 1980s, though, feels skeevy, exploitative, a cheap way to wring pathos and horror from the audience, much like the use of homeless or mentally ill people as a plot device during the same period. That's how this one feels. It's a child's-eye horror story about a mom who drinks too much, a kid who remembers things he shouldn't, and a Gramma who's been in the freezer a bit too long. It's well-written, but left me with a freezer-burned aftertaste. [ba-dum-tiss] Maybe a C-.

"For I Have Touched the Sky" by Mike Resnick. I've been dreading this one. Apparently, Resnick, a white guy from Chicago, made an early name for himself with a series of stories "inspired" by (read: appropriated from) "African backgrounds." This story is set on a planet terraformed to resemble Kenya, a slice of Afrofuturism that would delight me in the hands of any number of actually African or Black authors who could handle it with the sensitivity and authority it deserves. Instead, we have a white American author wrestling with questions of Kikuyu cultural identity, cultural reclamation, and whether or not old traditions are worth preserving, which just feels unsavory. (Additionally, continuing one of the unpalatable themes of this issue, a young girl character is introduced, and immediately the narrator comments on how she's "not yet of circumcision age," which feels culturally stereotyping as well as predatory.) Overall, this is one of the better-written and well-structured pieces in this issue, and I'm sure at the time it must have struck F&SF's (white, American) audience as brilliant, innovative, and thought-provoking. But I can't say it aged well at all. I'll give it another F+.

There were some doozies in this issue, and I don't mean that in a complimentary way. I think my high esteem for F&SF in the 1980s may have been mistaken. It was cultivated through best-of anthologies, after all, which wouldn't be a representative sample of what its month to month issues were like. 

2022 read #38: Flowers for the Sea by Zin E. Rocklyn.

Flowers for the Sea by Zin E. Rocklyn

107 pages

Published 2021

Read from October 5 to October 6

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

It's been a bit since I read what might be termed artsier, more literary prose. This novella begins dense, making you navigate a wall of backstory that vanishes in wisps of abstruse prose the moment you try to find a fingerhold. I struggled with it, but that's on me as a reader, out of practice as I am; Rocklyn's way with words is considerable. When we finally settle into the immediate perspective of our narrator, the prose becomes fiercely, almost frightfully embodied, a subcutaneous experience of muscle, salt, urine, breath, and heaving bone.

As with so many novellas I've read recently, I think Flowers could have benefitted from an additional 20-30 pages, particularly to help pace out and expand upon the whirlwind beginning. Even so, there is no denying the magnificence that Rocklyn achieves even in this brief space.

2022 read #37: Perception Check by Astrid Knight.

Perception Check by Astrid Knight

479 pages

Published 2022

Read from October 2 to October 5

Rating: 3 out of 5

This is a self-published New Adult fantasy about a deeply traumatized college student setting out into a Legally Distinct From Dungeons & Dragons world to rescue her friend and confront the evil mage who snatched her away from Michigan one fateful night ten years before. I like the idea of supporting self-published titles; someday I'll likely take the self-pub route with my own novellas, maybe even my own novels. It's hard to discover self-pub titles that I'll actually read, though. I've bought a handful of self-published books over the last year, and just haven't been able to power through and finish them; the prose has always been too iffy for my snobbish tastes. (One exception worth mentioning: Cute Mutants.)

Knight's prose is decent, as good as anything you'd find in most modern YA fantasy (though if I never read the words "sneer" and "smirk" again, it will be too soon). The story is absorbing and does exactly what it says on the label, plunging our heroes into fights with goblins, into dingy taverns with bad food, brushes with the royal guard, and an epic quest to retrieve a Maguffin and save their friend while saving the world. It was perfectly satisfactory in that regard.

I did find it a bit off-putting that every human, elf, and halfling character is coded as white -- most of them with blue eyes; some of them singled out as "pale white" -- except for one guy coded as Japanese, who (spoilers!) turns out to be morally suspect. I'm guessing it was an unconscious oversight, or perhaps a conscious effort to avoid appropriation. (One might position Check as the diametric opposite of Wake of Vultures, another fantasy written by a white woman, and an example of well-intentioned but perhaps dubious "I'll take it upon myself to write diverse characters" saviorism.) I'm in favor of avoiding appropriation, but making every character white -- humans from a fantasy world setting as well as humans from a city in Michigan -- swings way too far in the opposite direction.

2022 read #36: The House in the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune.

The House in the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune

398 pages

Published 2020

Read from September 30 to October 2

Rating: 4.5 out of 5

Refreshingly sweet, maybe even saccharine -- but it's saccharine in an aching and beautiful way that more than earns the right to be sugary. Gently heartwarming, bustling with wonderful characters you can't help but sweep into your arms and defend at all costs.

I knew little about the plot or vibe before I plunged into this book, beyond a general idea that it was lovely, queer, and feel-good, and I'm glad I knew so little about it. The heart of the book is its conviction that love and understanding can bring light and hope to even the grayest, most bigoted of worlds, that change begins with ordinary people opening up from their bubbles of habit, rule-following, and prejudice. Perhaps it lacks the revolutionary fervor of Confessions of the Fox; it certainly slips into the Disney Liberal trap when the sole Black character spends much of the book in animal form. Despite its flaws, though, there's so much room for this earnest joy and found family love on my bookshelf. More of this, please.