This is the second edition of Fantasy and Science Fiction that I have received since I purchased my subscription last September. Since then, I have read a lot more fantasy and science fiction through reading my first instalment of my Asimov's Science subscription. My mission was to make myself more familiar with modern literature in the genres that I like best: science fiction and fantasy. It turns out that Asimov's Science is not entirely science fiction, as I had previously guessed.This second copy of Fantasy and Science Fiction that I have received for November consists of two novellas, four novelets, and one short story. In total, that's nearly 82,000 words worth of short fiction for about $1.98 (it's bimonthly). For new work that's filtered and edited by skilled editors, I still think that's a good deal.
After having read the first and more than half of the second of the novellas, I have to say that this November/December edition is much better than the October/September edition which I read last month. A lot of the stories from Asimov and Fantasy and Science Fiction from the last few months have ranged in quality between a bit of poor, lots of mediocre, and a few good stories. The first novella, "Quartet and Triptych" by Matthew Hughes, was hands down the best short fiction I've read out of the five short-story style magazines that I've read of late.
Quartet and Triptych - Matthew Hughes
This story has been around for a little while. Buying it in book form is prohibitively expensive. I have to wonder what Matthew was thinking when he decided to sell this 90 page book on Amazon for about $40. So, really, buying the magazine is a cheaper way to get your hands on the story. I don't think this novella is worth $4, let alone ten times that amount. Wikipedia has a short article on the author, but I couldn't find very much else about the author.
The protagonist of this novella is one Luff Imbry. He is not the stereotypical hero of Hollywood or even the novel. He is a heavy man. Hughes refers to him on one occasion as being of epic proportions. Being a large man myself, I often find common portrayals of large men to be inaccurate and somewhat insulting. That is to say, we occupy the comical arena and little else. I cannot think of any non-comical movie where the hero is of 'heroic proportions.' This story is somethin of an exception.
I say something of an exception because Imbry is a thief by profession. When we're introduced to him, he is described as piggish. He is swilling and stuffing his face. But between that moment and the end of the story, he is transformed from a barnyard animal into a sophisticated and well disciplined thief. He is enlisted to retrieve an item of incalculable worth. He manages to get that thing, but is essentially caught red-handed with it. However, the circumstances of him being caught, in the clutches of the owner of that item called the Triptych, by a high ranking Archon enforcer, suggests that the whole time Imbry has been a tool in an Archon's hands (think of the Archon as a kind of emperor's organization). There is more evidence to support this theory.
The essence of a man or woman can be held in a type of mask. By wearing that mask, one of the living can join the 'essence' or soul of the occupant. Inside the mask he discovers the daughter of the man who ran an estate and owned the valuable art. She agrees to help Imbry if he promises to help her find a certain Broosh, a young man whom she loved and whom her grandfather had covertly killed. This was in exchange for her help through her father's defences which ultimately result in Imbry being caught up and trussed and on the very verge of being dismembered by the robotic spider which housed the essence of her grandfather. In going after the love interest, Broosh, Imbry had to penetrate a great storage complex where the essences of all the high ranking aristocrats were kept. The only way to do this was to go through the very hub of their security. A mysterious caller to the caretakers of this area allows Imbry to secure the essence of Broosh, and lets him finish his mission. Of course, if the Archon emperor (my word choice) was involved, he could have been the one ordering Imbry's access to whatever he wanted allowing him to get further than he really could have otherwise.
Matthew never does name who the emperor is, but I suspect that the person who met with Imbry to send him on this chase was the Archon emperor himself. However, I cannot say this conclusively.
This tale is well told. Matthew Hughes is a talented writer. I really enjoyed the story. His language skills are very good. His play with the plot is very entertaining and well controlled. This was a story I thoroughly enjoyed. I really think Matthew Hughes ought to do something to improve his visibility online. It would probably really help his career.
The Ice Owl - Carolyn Ives Gilman
Gilman is another author who hasn't done much to control her appearance in Google searches using her name as a keyword. In the first 100 items, I could not find a personal website. She has some pages that show bibliographies and reviews of some of her books, but there is no information on Wikipedia or personal page for prospective fans to discover. She has a number of books around for sale.
The story is about a young girl who lives on a planet where cities are built within bubbles. She lives in a bad part of town in the middle of a political upheaval. She's actually about 141 years old. The reason for this is that she has been travelling from planet to planet using lightspeed travel. So, if a planet is 17 lightyears away, she doesn't age, but it takes 17 years for her to get there. The planet is a bit dystopic. The ruling class is far from ideal. It is corrupt, but in its corruption, it allows the underground to thrive provided they pay for that right. Under the incoming system of 'incorruptibles,' they have no place at all. In essence, it's a culture of corruption that is destroying the corruption and everything else in its path.
The little girl, Thorn, from whom the story is told, has been doing this for quite some time. She finds herself an interesting teacher who takes it upon himself to become her mentor. Her mentor turns out to be someone who inadvertently helped in the genocide of a culture. He's trying to make up for it by hunting down the perpetrators of that crime. After he kills his target, in the middle of the revolutionary bedlam, he abandons Thorn.
The title of the story is related to a bird which can survive in hundred year winters and defrost to live again. Thorn is given this bird by her teacher to take care of which is kept in a small freezer. However, through some carelessness and neglect, the freezer is unplugged and the bird dies.
Under Glass - Tim Sullivan
Tim Sullivan is all over the place. He's a director, a writer, and many other things I'm certain. He is a man of many talents, as one may find in any number of databases, including an article on Wikipedia.In essence, the story is told about a friend of an oddball collector who recently died and left the narrator as the executor of his will. After a somewhat interesting character description of the recently deceased, Bob Krovantz, we are led to his more unique collection of souls. That's right... he collects souls which are encased in a type of glass. The essence, as Matthew Hughes would have called it, can be put into a glass container and held indefinitely, or until the glass container is destroyed.
The character of Bob is somewhat interesting. The narrator, a lot less so.
They That Have Wings - Evangeline Walton
Evangeline Walton is long gone. However, some of her unpublished work has surfaced, and this is one of those stories. She has a generous wikipedia article about her that can illuminate her achievements. This is the first fiction of hers that has been published since 1981.
This story is set in Crete circa WWII. A handful of Allied soldiers are stranded on the island. They have no support, no way of returning to their comrades, and are very much on the verge of starvation when a bird of mercy comes to rescue them.
Though, it is not so much of a rescue as it is drawing the prey into the lair of the predator. I sort of saw this one coming a long ways off - but that's not a complaint. As the saying goes, if you can't see it coming, you'll scratch your head and wonder if the author thought of it at the last moment.
Two witches of particularly good craft are shape shifters, and can turn into dark birds at will. However, when they draw in the men, they are half starved and too skinny. The witches then determine to fatten them up before consuming them. However, the younger witch falls in love with one of the men, and dies to protect him. The protagonist and Ronnie, the witch's love interest, manage to escape their fate.
The story is a good old fashioned myth used in a WWII story. It was an enjoyable short piece of fiction.
Object Three - James L. Cambias
James has a short article on wikipedia and a short autobiographical article. It appears that he writes material for games and books.
The story is that of an archaeological adventure. There is an awesome object which is impervious to the great technological efforts of super advanced alien and human study and effort to penetrate. ie., Despite the fact that it lays in space as an object occupying about 32km2.
The main character is hired to secure what is suspected to be the key into the object. To obtain the key, they must first steal it from someone who may not even know what it's supposed to be used for. After an adventure, a fight with her co-thieves leading to their respective deaths, the protagonist is left alone with the key on the object. We do not discover what's inside the object or even if she ultimately manages to win her way inside.
How Peter Met Pan - Albert E. Cowdrey
There is a funny introduction to this story. It's the editor's defence in having a lot of stories set in worlds where global warming has come true. Well, it's true that this is a common and reoccurring trope in this magazine. That's true of this story, which is set in the wilderness near Edmonton, which is now a fairly hot and super urban city (18 million people). Cowdrey is all over Fantasy and Science Fiction. He's been publishing 3-5 stories in it every year for more than a decade.
Somehow, the story seems more like something set in the southern part of the US, due to the accent of some of the characters local to the forested area - the small town's denizens that is. They seem like hillbillies, but not the type you'd find in Canada. More the type you'd find in the US.
Nit picking aside, onto the story itself. Basically, two guys are off hiking. While hiking, they run into a couple. They hear a scream, which is the result of a super sized bear ripping to shreds the second couple. The two guys run to see what's going on, and into the bear, which gets one of them. The other runs off, eventually runs into the girl who also ran off, and eventually they find salvation.
I was not all that fond of this story. I think it's mostly language related things that I didn't like. For example, instead of saying binoculars, he wrote "'nocks." I think I can accept stuff like that in dialogue - after all, the writer is supposed to reflect the character. But in the general descriptive text, I don't think that's the right place.
The Story I didn't Read and Final Thoughts
"The Klepsydra: A Chapter from a Faunary of Recondite Beings" I did not read. I did not read it because it's a sample. Maybe if it was the first of a series, I would have reluctantly read it. As it stands, I refuse to read a sample chapter from a book. I could do that on Amazon's website. Most books have a sample that one might read for free. Why is Fantasy and Science Fiction printing a sample? It really ought to have a better explanation. Here's the deal: if you like it, you can't buy it. That's because it doesn't exist yet. It's either not finished or it's finished and not printed or available in any form. So, even if you do like it, you have a wait, or, at worst, it never gets finished or printed and you'll never hear the end of this story.
I think this was a poor taste choice by the editors of Fantasy and Science Fiction Magazine. I suppose I would be more upset if not for the excellent fiction toward the beginning of the book. In this edition of Fantasy and Science Fiction, there definitely seemed to be a downward sloping curve of quality with the first stories being at the top of the curve, and the last stories being at the bottom.
The first stories of this edition were good enough to keep me signed onto the magazine subscription.
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