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A review by mary_soon_lee
The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, July/August 2018 by Corey Flintoff, William Ledbetter, Rachel Pollack, Ashley Blooms, L.X. Beckett, R.S. Benedict, C.C. Finlay, Cassandra Rose Clarke, James Sallis, Matthew Hughes
I liked every one of the ten stories in this issue of F&SF, and also appreciated their diversity. There are two science fiction stories with a backdrop of space exploration to accompany Bob Eggleton's wonderful cover art of Mars and its moons; there's dystopic science fiction; there's fantasy of the magic variety and of the encountering-magical-beings variety; there's time travel, and a very original take on summoning monsters, and a not-quite-ghost-story.
Five of the stories particularly appealed to me. Corey Flintoff's "The Queen of the Peri" is a very nicely told story that combines race car driving, Dubai, and djinns. The start of L. X. Beckett's "Freezing Rain, A Chance of Falling" confused me, but, once I sorted it out, I found this a darkly compelling and disturbing vision of what social media might do to us. Rachel Pollack's "Visible Cities" turns what might have been an underwhelming idea into a beautifully-rendered, gently-paced story. R. S. Benedict's "Morbier" raises the old question of whether you would kill Hitler as a baby, and makes it largely new through strong characterization and an alarming glimpse into the horrors of food catering. Ashley Blooms's "Hainted" draws on her knowledge of coal-mining to create a haunting not-quite-ghost story.
Those five were all fine stories, but if I were forced to pick my favorite from this issue, it would be William Ledbetter's novelette, "Broken Wings." It's one of the two stories to accompany the Martian cover art, and that's a setting I'm drawn to. It's a fun, gripping, adventure where the heroine faces off against a villainous customs inspector. I liked both the heroine and the friend she's trying to help, each of them misfits in their own way. There's a sweetness to the ending that sealed the tale perfectly.
Five of the stories particularly appealed to me. Corey Flintoff's "The Queen of the Peri" is a very nicely told story that combines race car driving, Dubai, and djinns. The start of L. X. Beckett's "Freezing Rain, A Chance of Falling" confused me, but, once I sorted it out, I found this a darkly compelling and disturbing vision of what social media might do to us. Rachel Pollack's "Visible Cities" turns what might have been an underwhelming idea into a beautifully-rendered, gently-paced story. R. S. Benedict's "Morbier" raises the old question of whether you would kill Hitler as a baby, and makes it largely new through strong characterization and an alarming glimpse into the horrors of food catering. Ashley Blooms's "Hainted" draws on her knowledge of coal-mining to create a haunting not-quite-ghost story.
Those five were all fine stories, but if I were forced to pick my favorite from this issue, it would be William Ledbetter's novelette, "Broken Wings." It's one of the two stories to accompany the Martian cover art, and that's a setting I'm drawn to. It's a fun, gripping, adventure where the heroine faces off against a villainous customs inspector. I liked both the heroine and the friend she's trying to help, each of them misfits in their own way. There's a sweetness to the ending that sealed the tale perfectly.