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standback's review
5.0
Great issue, with multiple excellent, powerful, and highly unusual stories.
My standouts from the issue:
Jesus Has Forgiven Me, Why Can't You?, by Betsy Phillips. Idiosyncratic, irreverent, fun, and just feels so real and down to earth even though everything is absolutely crazy.
Just to give you a sense of it, well, this snippet is self-explanatory and highly representative:
Later on, there's also wrestling!
The Vanishing Kind, by Lavie Tidhar. An alternate history where the Nazis won is the backdrop for a moody noir story.
Tidhar makes it sing. In this setting, the familiar noir tropes take on new meaning, with everyone out to protect themselves, and willing to see others as less than human.
Vishnu Summer, by David Prill. A marvelously evocative piece. It mixes and matches between rural county life and Hindu mythology, between young one-armed Audrey trying to care for her mother and a mysterious Three-Armed Man brought in to stand trial, between illness and disability and identity and murder and magic. It draws strange connections and evokes powerful tension.
I did find the last page or two bewildering, but I enjoyed the story so much I can even forgive it for not sticking the landing.
Spells Are Easy If You Have the Right Psychic Energy, by Dominica Phetteplace. Disjointed and spellbinding. Here, magic is so tied to your personality and behavior, it's hard to tell the two apart. Spells can be incredibly powerful, but most of the time they remain humble, down-to-earth, matter-of-fact. And with both the incredible spells and the trivial ones, you're never quite sure if they've worked or not.
(This is one of several great pieces by Phetteplace I've seen this year; she looks like a writer to keep your eye on!)
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The Desert of Vanished Dreams, by Phyllis Einstein, is as fine a specimen as you'll see of fun, pulpy bardic adventures.
Trustworthy, Loyal, Helpful, by Gregor Hartmann, is a straightforward "Our brilliant science had horrible consequences" story. The topic is fairly innocuous, although it's a cool concept.
An Open Letter to the Person Who Took My Smoothie from the Break Room Fridge, by Oliver Buckram, is a cute gimmick story. YMMV.
Last One Out, by K. B. Rylander, has A.I.'s shepherding the last remaining humans through their last remaining days. Sentimental and effective.
Killer, by Bruce McAllister, has angels and demons on Earth, with humans hunting down the angels. Doesn't really find its feet.
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The Thing on the Shelf, by David Gerrold, was the one story that really rubbed me the wrong way. It's a style Gerrold writes in frequently - endless memoir-style digressions and diversions, hung very, very loosely around an exceedingly simple SF/F conceit. The conceit, or plot, can't possibly hold together a story with a wordcount of 15K; the value is meant to be in the autobiographical, fannish, clique-ish, industry-insider digressions.
And I guess either those work for you, or they don't. They might have worked better for me in a shorter piece, or one making less pretense of telling an actual story. But two pages to explain that when you saying "bad luck trails behind this guy like a trailing feather boa" you mean "a really really REALLY long feather boa," and then another going "here's some random bad luck I had that wasn't related to this guy in any way, but was at about the same time as I met him" - well. It's not my thing. Not for so many pages.
I enjoy a lot of Gerrold's stories. I've enjoyed some of his memoir+supernatural pieces, like this one, even though it's not really my thing. I don't want to reject the style entirely. But here, it felt particularly aimless, particularly arduous, and too damned long.
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All in all - wow, it's just such a mix of great pieces. I happened to bring a whole bunch of friends into subscribing to F&SF with this issue, thanks to a recent great deal on a Kindle subscription (Go now! Subscribe! So worth it!), and I think this was a good one for them to leap into :)
My standouts from the issue:
Jesus Has Forgiven Me, Why Can't You?, by Betsy Phillips. Idiosyncratic, irreverent, fun, and just feels so real and down to earth even though everything is absolutely crazy.
Just to give you a sense of it, well, this snippet is self-explanatory and highly representative:
Finally he got fed up. "Betsy, Jesus has forgiven me. Why can't you?"
Did Jesus fuck you, Larry? Because if not, I don't think Jesus and I are in the same boat here. I didn't say that, because I'm not that clever that quickly, but when I thought of it twenty minutes after I hung up on him, believe me, I was tempted to call him back and get it out there.
But here's the thing. Jesus and I go way back. I've known him since I was a kid, since my dad works for His Dad. So I was like, well, if Jesus is running around forgiving Larry for doing me and his wife wrong, I want to know why.
Later on, there's also wrestling!
The Vanishing Kind, by Lavie Tidhar. An alternate history where the Nazis won is the backdrop for a moody noir story.
Tidhar makes it sing. In this setting, the familiar noir tropes take on new meaning, with everyone out to protect themselves, and willing to see others as less than human.
Vishnu Summer, by David Prill. A marvelously evocative piece. It mixes and matches between rural county life and Hindu mythology, between young one-armed Audrey trying to care for her mother and a mysterious Three-Armed Man brought in to stand trial, between illness and disability and identity and murder and magic. It draws strange connections and evokes powerful tension.
I did find the last page or two bewildering, but I enjoyed the story so much I can even forgive it for not sticking the landing.
Spells Are Easy If You Have the Right Psychic Energy, by Dominica Phetteplace. Disjointed and spellbinding. Here, magic is so tied to your personality and behavior, it's hard to tell the two apart. Spells can be incredibly powerful, but most of the time they remain humble, down-to-earth, matter-of-fact. And with both the incredible spells and the trivial ones, you're never quite sure if they've worked or not.
(This is one of several great pieces by Phetteplace I've seen this year; she looks like a writer to keep your eye on!)
---
The Desert of Vanished Dreams, by Phyllis Einstein, is as fine a specimen as you'll see of fun, pulpy bardic adventures.
Trustworthy, Loyal, Helpful, by Gregor Hartmann, is a straightforward "Our brilliant science had horrible consequences" story. The topic is fairly innocuous, although it's a cool concept.
An Open Letter to the Person Who Took My Smoothie from the Break Room Fridge, by Oliver Buckram, is a cute gimmick story. YMMV.
Last One Out, by K. B. Rylander, has A.I.'s shepherding the last remaining humans through their last remaining days. Sentimental and effective.
Killer, by Bruce McAllister, has angels and demons on Earth, with humans hunting down the angels. Doesn't really find its feet.
---
The Thing on the Shelf, by David Gerrold, was the one story that really rubbed me the wrong way. It's a style Gerrold writes in frequently - endless memoir-style digressions and diversions, hung very, very loosely around an exceedingly simple SF/F conceit. The conceit, or plot, can't possibly hold together a story with a wordcount of 15K; the value is meant to be in the autobiographical, fannish, clique-ish, industry-insider digressions.
And I guess either those work for you, or they don't. They might have worked better for me in a shorter piece, or one making less pretense of telling an actual story. But two pages to explain that when you saying "bad luck trails behind this guy like a trailing feather boa" you mean "a really really REALLY long feather boa," and then another going "here's some random bad luck I had that wasn't related to this guy in any way, but was at about the same time as I met him" - well. It's not my thing. Not for so many pages.
I enjoy a lot of Gerrold's stories. I've enjoyed some of his memoir+supernatural pieces, like this one, even though it's not really my thing. I don't want to reject the style entirely. But here, it felt particularly aimless, particularly arduous, and too damned long.
---
All in all - wow, it's just such a mix of great pieces. I happened to bring a whole bunch of friends into subscribing to F&SF with this issue, thanks to a recent great deal on a Kindle subscription (Go now! Subscribe! So worth it!), and I think this was a good one for them to leap into :)
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