Fantasy and Science Fiction, March/April 2018

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Rating: 3/5 Stars

An above average issue, with interesting stories by Charlotte Ashley, Ted Rabinowitz and G.V. Anderson.

• “The Satyr of Brandenburg” by Charlotte Ashley: an interesting tale set in historical France with supernatural elements. A competition of duels is called, but one of the participants is an unusual Satyr who would appear to have no sword skills but has the skill to seduce people into doing his bidding. This would be used to terrible effect on the other competitors until only one is left to resist his charms.
• “Deep Sea Fish” by Chi Hui, translated by Brian Bies: set on Titan, a moon of Saturn, this tells the story of a rush to record ancient alien artefacts found there before they literally melt away via efforts to terraform the cold moon to make it more comfortable for humans to live (by heating things up). As so often happen in such stories, disaster strikes the environmental modification effort and mankind has to learn to live with the consequences.
• “The Next to the Last of the Mohegans” by Joseph Bruchac: a short story about dealings with the Little People as seen by Native Americans: one who tries to get the better of them and ends up in a strange position, the other being his friend who has to get him out of the twisted position.
• “Likho” by Andy Stewart: a girl investigates the history of a strange phenomenon reported in Pripyat during the Chernobyl disaster. In the course of the investigations, she stumbles into people keen to investigate the secrets of a room: a room to which she may be connected to in her own mysterious past.
• “The Beast from Below” by William Ledbetter: a short, fun ‘animals mutated into monsters by radiation’ story featuring a down-to-earth Sheriff and a lady mayor of the town keen to commercialize the monsters.
• “Hideous Flowerpots” by Susan Palwick: a light fantasy about an art gallery owner whose dark secret is revealed by a new acquaintance: she fears to do art. But her acquaintance offers to help her overcome her fear with the help of a strange set of equipment, and ends with the offer of a flowerpot.
• “A Swim and a Crawl” by Marc Laidlaw: a story of a man who goes for an apparently suicidal swim before crawling up a cliff wall, only to become one with nature in an unexpected way.
• “Plumage From Pegasus: The Varley Corps Wants You” by Paul Di Filippo: a dead author wakes up, apparently snatched from the past at the point of death by people from the future who have bred talent out of the human race in an attempt to make people conform to a peaceful idea and now need him to re-introduce artistic talent back. That he does, but only with the help of other artists from the past (and our present) and by changing the future civilization.
• “A Dog of Wu” by Ted Rabinowitz: an assassin trained to follow the orders of his master is given the task of finding out who is broadcasting recordings of rocket flights: for that way would lead to disorder in the human civilizations that rose out of the chaos before the current order. But what he discovers would lead him to re-examine his life and to consider whether obedience to his master is the only way.
• “The Harmonic Resonance of Ejiro Anaborhi” by Wole Talabi: an African girl who loves SF tales stumbles on to a device that allows her to expand her mind. She and the device would get caught up in a confrontation between her father and local authorities that would end up changing the world.
• “Down Where Sound Comes Blunt” by G.V. Anderson: a daughter searches for her father, who has gone missing during his research on mermaid-like species found in the oceans. When she traces him and gets involved with the local matron of a mermaid group, she would get her answer; but in an unexpectedly horrifying way.

Magazine read from 2018/03/05 to 2018/03/27