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A review by standback
The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, March/April 2017 by Gordon Van Gelder
5.0
A truly excellent issue. F&SF shows off its fantastic variety. This time, most of the stories are light, peppy, fun -- with a few dark, delicious exceptions.
My standout stories:
A Green Silk Dress and a Wedding-Death, by Cat Hellisen. A dark fairy-tale -- where the fey is dark, and humanity is darker.
Heloise copes with life in poverty as best as one can. The story captured me with its description of her near-sightedness:
I remember Hellisen's previous F&SF story very well indeed, and hope for many happy returns.
Ten Half-Pennies, by Matthew Hughes. Hughes writes engaging stories of capers and scoundrels. In this story, he introduces a new protagonist, Baldemar -- a young man with iron will, indomitable patience, and a stoic, matter-of-fact acceptance of the evils of the world he lives in.
This is rather a departure from Hughes' previous running character, the cocky thief Raffalon. Writing engagingly about calm and confidence seems quite a challenge, and likely to yield some unusual stories! I very much enjoyed this first one, in which Baldemar is sent off to one form of apprenticeship, and quietly concludes that he requires quite another.
The Man Who Put The Bomp, by Richard Chwedyk. This is an installment in Chwedyk's "Saurs" series. Both in premise and in tone, think Toy Story, but with dinosaurs -- full of lovable, exaggerated personalities, and madcap run-ins with the big world outside.
I remember the 'saurs way back from the original story in 2001. They're usually a ton of fun, and this one is no exception. The series has gotten a whole lot more hand-wave-y and near-mystical at points -- this story has certainly progressed far beyond "bio-engineered dinosaur toys" as its sole premise, and has several characters as having strange and mysterious powers, which seem more plot devices than anything else. But in a silly, charming story like this, I'm absolutely fine with that.
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The other stories are strong as well. Each one is solidly built, engagingly written, and hits everything it aims at.
Driverless, by Robert Grossbach. Driverless vehicles gain sentience. Happily refrains from spending pages on "Oh no how could this happen!!!", and spends its focus on why it might happen specifically there, and writing strong characters, dynamics and story.
The Toymaker's Daughter, by Arundhati Hazra. Another affecting fairy-tale, this one tragic.
Daisy, by Eleanor Arnason. A silly, silly story, where a mob boss hires a PI to track down a stolen octopus. Zippy and fun.
Miss Cruz, by James Sallis. A musician gradually unfolds his strange talents. This story is weirdly structured -- it feels like it's trying out three different ideas before it settles on one it actually likes. The protagonist's fascination with secrets, his collector friend Jason, the eponymous "Miss Cruz" -- none of them actually seem to relate to the point the story gets to. Nonetheless, it's engagingly written; I breezed right through it, and didn't start scratching my head over it until after I'd finished and enjoyed.
(I will say this is an... interesting selection for a magazine put together soon after Trump's election. I don't know the lead times here, and yet. Not blatant, but firmly in the "wait, are they implying...?" territory.)
The Avenger, by Albert E. Cowdrey. Another of Cowdrey's rollicking crime-y stories, this time about a vengeful country bastard who decides he's owed money and won't give up. This is really a very simple story -- "villain keeps attacking fruitlessly over and over, until he loses everything". The speculative element here is also very minor -- the whole focus is on what a bastard the villain is, with magic just stepping in every now and then to keep the good guys mostly unharmed. Still -- it's engaging and fun.
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All in all, a great issue. I enjoyed the heck out of it, and look forward to the next one.
My standout stories:
A Green Silk Dress and a Wedding-Death, by Cat Hellisen. A dark fairy-tale -- where the fey is dark, and humanity is darker.
Heloise copes with life in poverty as best as one can. The story captured me with its description of her near-sightedness:
Heloise lived life through a veil of blurs and shadows, everything fuzzy at the edges and incomplete. Only if she held something close she could see the intricate wonder of it in perfect detail. Her impression of the world was formed in microscopic snatches, piecemeal. (...)
Back when she'd been knee-high to a toad, and before Mama'd gone and got herself killed. Heloise had believed the world could be better. That one day she'd wear new dresses instead of charity rags, that she'd wake up and the world would have drawn into focus, suddenly clear and crisp. She would know the whole of things and not just the parts she could examine in close up.
I remember Hellisen's previous F&SF story very well indeed, and hope for many happy returns.
Ten Half-Pennies, by Matthew Hughes. Hughes writes engaging stories of capers and scoundrels. In this story, he introduces a new protagonist, Baldemar -- a young man with iron will, indomitable patience, and a stoic, matter-of-fact acceptance of the evils of the world he lives in.
This is rather a departure from Hughes' previous running character, the cocky thief Raffalon. Writing engagingly about calm and confidence seems quite a challenge, and likely to yield some unusual stories! I very much enjoyed this first one, in which Baldemar is sent off to one form of apprenticeship, and quietly concludes that he requires quite another.
The Man Who Put The Bomp, by Richard Chwedyk. This is an installment in Chwedyk's "Saurs" series. Both in premise and in tone, think Toy Story, but with dinosaurs -- full of lovable, exaggerated personalities, and madcap run-ins with the big world outside.
I remember the 'saurs way back from the original story in 2001. They're usually a ton of fun, and this one is no exception. The series has gotten a whole lot more hand-wave-y and near-mystical at points -- this story has certainly progressed far beyond "bio-engineered dinosaur toys" as its sole premise, and has several characters as having strange and mysterious powers, which seem more plot devices than anything else. But in a silly, charming story like this, I'm absolutely fine with that.
---
The other stories are strong as well. Each one is solidly built, engagingly written, and hits everything it aims at.
Driverless, by Robert Grossbach. Driverless vehicles gain sentience. Happily refrains from spending pages on "Oh no how could this happen!!!", and spends its focus on why it might happen specifically there, and writing strong characters, dynamics and story.
The Toymaker's Daughter, by Arundhati Hazra. Another affecting fairy-tale, this one tragic.
Daisy, by Eleanor Arnason. A silly, silly story, where a mob boss hires a PI to track down a stolen octopus. Zippy and fun.
Miss Cruz, by James Sallis. A musician gradually unfolds his strange talents. This story is weirdly structured -- it feels like it's trying out three different ideas before it settles on one it actually likes. The protagonist's fascination with secrets, his collector friend Jason, the eponymous "Miss Cruz" -- none of them actually seem to relate to the point the story gets to. Nonetheless, it's engagingly written; I breezed right through it, and didn't start scratching my head over it until after I'd finished and enjoyed.
(I will say this is an... interesting selection for a magazine put together soon after Trump's election. I don't know the lead times here, and yet. Not blatant, but firmly in the "wait, are they implying...?" territory.)
The Avenger, by Albert E. Cowdrey. Another of Cowdrey's rollicking crime-y stories, this time about a vengeful country bastard who decides he's owed money and won't give up. This is really a very simple story -- "villain keeps attacking fruitlessly over and over, until he loses everything". The speculative element here is also very minor -- the whole focus is on what a bastard the villain is, with magic just stepping in every now and then to keep the good guys mostly unharmed. Still -- it's engaging and fun.
---
All in all, a great issue. I enjoyed the heck out of it, and look forward to the next one.