Edited by Gordon Van Gelder
162 pages
Published 2000
Read from May 8 to May 9
Rating: 2 out of 5
CW: My introductory paragraphs discuss real life trauma from my teens, including homelessness, a house fire, and the death of a dear relative.
Like much of my pre-2010 F&SF collection, I got this one through a bulk buy of back issues on eBay. It wasn’t until I began reading “Loyal Puppies,” the first story, that I realized this wasn’t the first time I’d run into this issue.
In March 2000, a few months after F&SF editor Gordon Van Gelder had given me my first positive personalized rejection, I decided to follow the evergreen advice and actually read the magazine to which I was sending submissions. At the Barnes & Noble near the Dayton Mall, I leafed through this very issue. The first couple pages of “Loyal Puppies” were burned into my memory — not only were they the first bit of an F&SF I ever read, they would be the last for a long time to come, because of what happened later in March 2000.
That’s when my grandmother’s house, where I lived when I wasn’t living in my father’s car, was burned down. I escaped, as did my grandmother, though she died of a heart attack just a couple days later. I wouldn’t escape my father for well over a year, only to have to fend for myself without social skills or good emotional regulation in the nightmare of Dubya Bush-era capitalism. I was unable to find the energy to write through most of my twenties. I wouldn’t buy an issue of F&SF for myself until 2016 or so (though by that point I’d been reading F&SF stories in various collections).
Unexpected trauma trigger, this issue! So now I’m heading into this issue with a specific mindset: it’s almost a glimpse of an alternate future I could have had, one where maybe I could have focused on writing earlier on and maybe a little bit less on mere survival. (Though who knows, the poverty, neglect, and homelessness were always part of my childhood; my twenties were probably doomed regardless.)
“Loyal Puppies” by Rick Heller. The best part about this one is Van Gelder’s wonderfully dated introduction: “Here’s a story that takes the current cell phone craze a bit farther…” This story combines two of my least favorite things: “ripped from tomorrow’s headlines” consumer tech sci-fi, and a grown cis dude author writing from the POV of a shallow, boy- and weight-obsessed teen girl. It’s a tale as old as time: chip-implant cellphones, awkward future-teen slang, accidentally overheard conversations, a Hollywood heartthrob, drug dealing, and murder. It’s the kind of story where our narrator, on the run from a kidnapping, takes a moment to worry about her weight. I remember reading the first few pages of this at 17, there in the Barnes & Noble, and finding myself incredulous that this had gotten published in such a prestigious market while my stories had been rejected. Reading it now, in full and with much greater perspective, I can understand why my teenage writing wasn’t published, and can grudgingly admit that this story is at least readable, competently structured, and probably even enjoyable to someone who likes this sort of thing (none of which could be said about my teenage fiction). Since I don’t like this sort of thing, I’ll give it a D
“The Eye in the Heart” by Tanith Lee (from an idea by John Kaiine). A brief but chilling piece about a young woman’s joy in her marriage — and her Sect’s particular practice for young married women. A solid entry in the canon of “Actually this horrifying patriarchal cult is good for us oh-so-flawed women!” allegories, all too relevant here and now. B
“Crux” by Albert E. Cowdrey. Overstuffed and overlong, this sprawling novella (nearly the length of every other story in this issue put together) has a bit too much of everything. Three hundred years have elapsed since all-out nuclear war annihilated most of Earth’s population! Massive domes seal off the radioactive remnants of the old cities! Ninety percent of the Earth is a nature reserve thanks to an eco-conscious dictator! But humanity has spread to other planets and stars, so this story is also kind of a space opera! But also there’s time travel! A stolen wormholer! A rumpled private eye is on the case, doing the dirty work of the galactic empire! And the underground network that stole the wormholer wants to change the past and undo the nuclear war even though it means they won’t exist! Cowdrey’s Worldcity wallows in that problematic pan-Asian medley so beloved by white dudes in this time period, complete with a greedy “Confucian scholar” stereotype straight out of yellowface Hollywood; much of the story revolves around a red light district called Clouds and Rain. I probably would have been in awe of this story and wanted to imitate it when I was 17, but now? I don’t care for it. It’s much less than the sum of its parts. D-
“The Madness of Gordon Van Gelder” by Michael Swanwick. A chummy, humorous bit of yarn featuring the author of this story, the editor of this magazine, and the pandemonium that ensues from the phrase “I’ll buy that for a dollar!” A nice palate cleanser after that last story. As far as industry in-jokes turned into flash-fic go, this one deserves a solid B
“Rossetti Song” by Alexander C. Irvine. “Some people have always wanted to be President, or a baseball player, or a movie star, or a business tycoon. Me, I’ve always wanted to own a bar.” Standard red-blooded American masculine something or other revolving around a widower who runs the neighborhood bar of his dreams but needs ghostly intervention from a dusty old folk record to help him learn what it means to mourn. Not my kind of story, but it’s ably written; aside from taking a smidge too long to get past the mundane setup, it’s briskly constructed and does what it set out to do. And as a fan of dusty old folk music, I can at least buy into that aspect of the story. I suppose that deserves at least a B-?
“The Museum” by Henry Slesar. I grew up devouring Sherlock Holmes stories, yet mysteries are probably my second least favorite genre. At first this one didn’t excite my interest. A private art detective who retired to run a gallery, Mason Graves gets pulled into one last case when a Cellini sculpture goes missing in Vienna. Suddenly a rash of art thefts and missing artwork plagues museums around Europe and America. Fortunately, this one is another brisk, professional piece and was a painless read. And the final twist, while I probably should have seen it coming, was a surprise gut punch. B
“Conhoon and the Fairy Dancer” by John Morressy. Middling humorous fantasy with an early 1980s flavor. It plays with the usual tropes of broad-chested hero, crotchety wizard, fair princess, and tricksy fairies. To give you an idea of the vibe here, the main fairy our heroes pursue is named “Twisty Mike,” and on their quest our heroes spend a night with Mother McCrone. I can’t get worked up to feel one way or another about this. Maybe C-
And that’s it! I had originally meant to read this issue as an introduction to the Gordon Van Gelder era of F&SF, before I got sidetracked by traumatic memories. It’s a definite improvement over what I’ve read from the Ferman years, but — so far — it’s an incremental rather than a categorical improvement.
