Fantasy and Science Fiction, Winter 2024

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Rating: 3/5 Stars

An above average issue with interesting stories by Moustapha Mbacké Diop, Bonnie Elizabeth, Clara Madrigano, J. A. Prentice, Dane Kuttler and Will McMahon.

• “What Kills The Stars” by Alex Bisker: a person goes to interview a physicist, and get infatuated by her. He reminisces about his ex-wife during the interview, where the physicist talks about the possible ways the universe may end. By the next day, they will discover it is a lot closer than expected.
• “The Ndayaan Sea” by Moustapha Mbacké Diop: an African witch goes on a journey after her sister, who has usurped her power. When they meet, monsters also approach, and what happens next determines their fate.
• “The Icy Wasteland At Her Feet” by Deborah L. Davitt: a lone survivor of an expedition to the moon, Enceladus, struggles to keep the place working and herself alive. But she suffers from survivors morose over the decisions she, and the others, could have taken to avoid the situation she is now in.
• “Guilt Can Wilt The Sweetest Flower” by Veronica Henry: the caretaker of a library lets an apparent homeless person into the library, against the rules. Then strange things begin to happen as the person is revealed to be not who he thinks she is. But then his life in the library is upturned, and he now has to decide whether to follow her back to her home, which may not be on our world.
• “Mackson’s Mardi Gras Moon Race” by David DeGraff: featuring a long-distance race on the moon, one person bets his chances on winning it on taking an unexpected route. But the route is filled with dangers, including an unsporting opponent.
• “The Wizzzer” by Scott Nicolay: a young boy gathers his gang of followers and tells them of a strange ‘Wizzzer’ that had eaten his family, and it is now up to them to kill it. At the end, one of the followers senses something is not right, but it may be too late.
• “Burned Like Coal” by T. R. Napper: two people attempt to sabotage a coal plant, in an attempt to make a corporation pay for global warming. But it does not go as planned.
• “The Diamond Factory” by Phoebe Barton: on a space station due to be destroyed, one final check reveals an apparent stowaway on board. But the stowaway may not be who she appears to be.
• “The Body-Part Woman” by Bonnie Elizabeth: about a woman at an unusual shop that houses body-parts. But it is no horror story, for the body parts are willingly given, at the point of death, and are kept at the shop to be passed on to others. In this story, she faces a hostile customer who demands (in her opinion) the wrong body parts, and she has to convince him to take the body part that he really needs.
• “How To Care For Your Domestic God” by Clara Madrigano: a fascinating tale of a couple who move in a house that may be too good to be true. And it turns out to be that when they discover a god inhabits it and if they don’t satiate its hunger, it will make their lives miserable. The birth of their baby would cause a change in their accommodation with the god.
• “Big Trouble In Sector C” by Robert Friedman and Barry N. Malzberg: in a virtual world, an avatar hunts for an elusive malware. But the final confrontation doesn’t go as expected.
• “All Our Better Angels” by Jack Neel Waddell: a time travel story about saving various world lines. But in this one, the protagonist gets tangled up into saving her own past due to her past actions.
• “Puzzle Pieces” by Jennifer R. Povey: in a dystopian future, a child’s mind is being manipulated, taken apart and put back together, so that she can look ‘normal’ to the outside world, while still hidden inside is the child that just wants to be left alone.
• “Zariel: Parable Of A Gifted Black Child” by Denzel Xavier Scott: the story of a black child gifted with strange powers, and tells her mother of all the abuses that her family have suffered at the hands of white society, before leaving with a higher power that has come to claim her.
• “The Wounded King” by J. A. Prentice: in a ruined castle, a former king waits the arrival of knights who have come for help to save their country from a comet that is laying waste to their land. But the price the king, wounded but kept living with the help of mystic forces, asks for may be too much for the knights to accept.
• “The Interspatial Accessibility Compact’s Guidelines For Cross-Cultural Engagement” by Dane Kuttler: an alien botanist at a flower shop gets a visit from a human scientist with a human problem: falling in love. But the love interest is a fellow alien scientist, making the problem more complicated.
• “Do Not Hasten To Bid Me Adieu” by Will McMahon: an old man waits for letters from his son who is fighting in the Spanish Civil War. But what he finds are letters from his great-great-granddaughter from the future, asking him for help from an arranged marriage she does not want. He gives what advice he can, but when tragedy strikes, his last advice to her would involve a leap of faith from the granddaughter.

Magazine read from 2024/02/28 to 2024/03/04