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pearseanderson's review
2.0
Sorry F&SF, this issue just provided me with so many stories I didn't finish I felt like a two-star made sense. The longer pieces didn't capture my attention around the characters or why we should care about motivations, while the short pieces . . . also didn't capture my attention around the characters. This issue taught me you can have a hundo brilliant ideas but if you can't illicit sympathy or empathy that's difficult. I had NO idea Samuel R. Delany was still alive, but I'm glad I guess I was proven wrong, his story was pretty interesting and I didn't understand lots of it, but the world and development was interesting. Another winner was "Tasting Notes on the Varietals of the Southern Coast" by Gwendolyn Clare, "Hollywood Squid" by Oliver Buckram, and I guess "Bodythoughts" by Rahul Kanakia. The Swanwick story was alright, the length didn't match the weight for me. That was often true for these pieces. This is the first issue of F&SF I read, and though the variety of fantasy and science fiction stories was interesting, I also picked up on the age range of the authors (indirectly) and how the magazine is still pretty rooted in the pulp era, from the paper quality to the advertisements for the F&SF website, where you can do anything from "change your address" to "blog and forum." Wow! The difference between a speculative magazine like this and one like Uncanny or Shimmer is really a lot. I'm excited to read Analog later and see how that compares.
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