Fantasy and Science Fiction, November/December 2018

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Rating: 3/5 Stars

An above average issue with interesting stories by Y.M. Pang, Hanuš Seiner (translated by Julie Novakova), Nina Kiriki Hoffman and Bo Balder.

• “Thanksgiving” by Jeffrey Ford: a Thanksgiving dinner takes a strange turn when the members begin to realize that one of their visiting relatives isn’t really known by anybody there at all. Various hypotheses are provided for his presence, but it all comes to a head when he appears at the next Thanksgiving and their probing questions begin to reveal that all is not what it seems.
• “The Lady of Butterflies” by Y.M. Pang: an interesting story about a lady who suddenly appears in the garden of an Emperor with little memory of who she is or how she got there. The viewpoint character is the Emperor’s swordperson, who is assign the task of educating the lady. When a violent confrontation occurs after a foreign king appears, more is revealed about the origins of the strange lady and the apparent attraction of butterflies to her. In the end, the swordperson must decide where her loyalties lie: with the Emperor whom she is to protect or with the lady with whom she had developed at attachment to.
• “Extreme” by Sean Mcmullen: a man who likes to push himself to extremes meets an unknown, possibly very rich woman, who offers him an extreme assassination job. But that would only prove to be a test, for the woman wanted to see if he was a fit candidate for a coming change to the world where his skills at surviving in extreme conditions would be needed.
• “The Iconoclasma” by Hanuš Seiner, translated by Julie Novakova: a fascinating tale of a future where a geometric form of life can be summoned into existence. With their help, mankind can leap for the stars. But with the lifeform comes danger in the form of a predator of that lifeform that would now also like to devour humanity. In the end, humanity has to decide whether the ability to travel to the stars is worth the danger.
• “Overwintering Habits of the North American Mermaid” by Abra Staffin-Wiebe: flash fiction about mermaids in winter.
• “Every Color of Invisible” by Robert Reed: set in a future with other Reed stories where a young Native American boy is getting an education while remaining ‘hidden’ from the rest of the world. In this one, the repercussions of the rescue of a rich man’s children in another story would be revealed when the boy learns that his hiding days may be over.
• “This Constant Narrowing” by Geoff Ryman: an uncomfortable tale of a time when women have vanished, leaving behind men, some of who unleash sexual-tinged violence on the remaining men. In this tale, the protagonist is injured by a sexual predator as a ‘trophy’. As he recovers and tries to avoid the predator’s attention, he reflects on his life without women, with other men, and with a world where other groups of people are gradually vanishing unpredictably. One odd thing about the story is how the rest of the world seems to go on much as it is, despite huge numbers of people vanishing without a trace.
• “Other People’s Dreams” by Nina Kiriki Hoffman: an interesting tale about an artist and apprentice whose job is to weave together dreams made up of threads and ‘living dream energy’ for their customers. Then an unusual job with a high payoff arrives involving a person from the artist’s past arrives, and we get a deeper look into the world of dreams and what it is capable of doing to the living. A nice tale with a background that bears revisiting with more stories in the future.
• “The Baron and His Floating Daughter” by Nick Dichario: the usual fairy tale setting where a Prince sets out to woo the daughter of a Baron. The daughter really floats, and the Prince has made it his goal to find a cure for her condition. But when time runs out, the tale takes a twist and subsequent events show that this story’s happily ever after may not involve the Prince at all, or a cure for the daughter.
• “When We Flew Together Through the Ice” by J.R. Dawson: a gritty story of a mother who escapes into space with her daughters for a life among the stars. But this life may not all be sweet as the daughters rebel in their own ways, when fitted out with an AI control who whispers commands to her consciousness. As time goes on and their lives change, it becomes harder to tell which actions are by the daughters and which by her controller, leading to a final action that will change their lives.
• “The Island And Its Boy” by Bo Balder: a fascinating tale about a village that lives on an island that can actually move, react and communicate with its inhabitants. The island circles the world near the arctic north, giving the people an Inuit like culture. But change comes when a ‘baby’ island is spotted, signalling that the current island has grown too big and will move south with the currents, and the people make plans to move to the new island. But one boy, in this culture where women are dominant, has other plans as he has grown used to the big island and wants to stay there as it goes south. The story looks at his secret plans to stay put along with other followers while his ruling mother plans the move to the baby island. Secrets, traps and counter plans pile up until the moving day arrives.

Magazine read from 2018/11/04 to 2018/11/26