Fantasy and Science Fiction, March/April 2021

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Rating: 4/5 Stars

A better than average first issue under the new editor, Sheree Renée Thomas, it features interesting stories by C. L. Polk, Madeleine E. Robins, Molly Tanzer, Robin Furth and a fascinating story by Marie Brennan based on the legend of “The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter”.

• “Crazy Beautiful” by Cat Rambo: in a world of self-aware AIs, one AI is created to generate art. But what it does instead is to make art ‘free’, with world changing consequences.
• “The Music of the Siphorophenes” by C. L. Polk: a famous singer hires a space pilot to take her to see the Siphorophenes, strange melodic space organisms that inhabit the outer solar system. But then they encounter space pirates who have discovered a way to put some Siphorophenes to criminal uses, it would take her musical skills and the pilot’s detection skills to save one and resolve to rescue the rest from the pirates.
• “The Bletted Woman” by Rebecca Campbell: a strange story of a dying woman who is offered an unusual chance of living in a kind of afterlife.
• “Mannikin” by Madeleine E. Robins: a mother who does not want her son to grow up only to give up his life in the army disguises him as a woman. But as time passes and the disguise grows thin, she sees a witch with the power to make everybody think he is indeed a woman (including himself). But this magical disguise would be put to a test when the town he/she is living in comes under siege, and it would require her skills to negotiate a settlement that would not involve her being seen as a man.
• “Our Peaceful Morning” by Nick Wolven: in a future where most forms of life are now aware, one man must deal with his self-aware cat who is creating an insurrection against humans for the perceived slights it had to put up with in the past.
• “In the Garden of Ibn Ghazi” by Molly Tanzer: a writer tells of encountering the story, “In the Garden of Ibn Ghazi” in a H.P. Lovecraft story is mysteriously contacted by a person who is apparently staging a play based on the story. But things take a fantastical turn when the writer is asked to stand-in for a sick actor for a script rehearsal and the line between reality and acting become blurred.
• “Minstrel Boy Howling at the Moon” by B. Morris Allen: a Native American stuck in a small town with nowhere to go suddenly finds that playing the harmonica is able to conjure up native spirits. Now he has to figure out what to do with his skill.
• “Speak to the Moon” by Marie Brennan: a fantastic and fascinating story that starts with Japan’s first manned landing on the moon takes an unusual turn when one of the astronauts abandons the mission on the Moon to go on a personal quest related to the princess as told in the legend of “The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter”.
• “Jack-in-the-Box” by Robin Furth: a reporter who goes to the estate of a famous surgeon gets more than she bargains for when the grandson brings her to see his playroom. Along the way, the grandson tells her stories about the grandfather which would turn out to have been family secrets that were never meant to be said about the grandson’s real father and what happened to his uncle.
• “Character” by Harry Turtledove: a character within a story comes to ‘life’ when a story forms around him, leading him on an adventure in medieval Japan. But the character would prove to have some agency of action when he affects to story taking place in small but significant ways.
• “The Pizza Boy” by Meg Elison: the story of a pizza delivery boy who delivers pizza in a region of space for combatants. As he tells of his troubles getting and growing ingredients for his pizza and his run-ins with soldiers, the story gradually reveals that despite his neutral and non-combat actions, he still acts as a messenger through his deliveries.

Magazine read from 2021/03/04 to 2021/03/20