Fantasy & Science Fiction - April 2006
Apr 02 '06 (Updated May 05 '06)
The Bottom Line Another winner of an issue. All of the stories were interesting, and a couple were standouts.
Fantasy & Science Fiction - April 2006
The Stories
"Gardening at Night" - by Daryl Gregory (novelet) 23 pages
"Iklawa" - by Donald Mead (novelet) 44 pages
"Starbuck" - by Robert Reed (short story) 14 pages
"Cold War" - by Bruce McAllister (short story) 5 pages
"The Moment of Joy before" - by Claudia O'Keefe (novelet) 39 pages
The April issue seems very short on stories, but that's because all of them have a bit of length to them. In fact, in terms of page-count, it would seem that there were some novellas in here, but I don't have a word-count, so I'll trust that the descriptions are accurate. Thankfully, editor Gordon Van Gelder has given us a great series of stories to make them worth the length. I enjoyed every one of them. Van Gelder even throws some interesting science fact into the issue to top things off.
The stories
"Gardening at Night" - by Daryl Gregory
This story follows Reg, an engineer in a university program to create mine-detecting machines (called "mytes"). He's ostensibly in charge of the project, supervising a group of students, because his mentor, Eli, is sick with TB. The mytes were originally developed by Eli and it turns out that he did a lot more with them than he has ever admitted to. The mytes seem to be having a problem because they begin bunching up at the edges of the squared-off area where the test mines were planted. Eli had some interesting theories on evolution and on the whole Adam & Eve thing, and who knows what he may have planted in the robots when nobody was looking? This was an interesting story with intriguing allusions to the meaning of our existence. Were Adam & Eve kicked out of the Garden, or did they choose to go out to see what was out there? Gregory doesn't go overboard on the philosophy, though, giving us a lot of good characterization too. Reg has lost himself in his work so often that he's now separated from his wife, but they do have a good enough relationship that they can still act as a family for their son. All in all, this is a great story.
"Iklawa" - by Donald Mead
This is a story that adds magic to history. The Zulus are struggling under the colonial rule of the British, and the battle of Isandlwana is the last victory for the Zulus before their inevitable defeat. The Zulus are led by Cetshwayo, current head of the dynasty formed by Shaka Zulu, and Shaka's legacy still lives on. Cetshwayo is not a strong king, and he must balance the ambitions of his other relatives as well as the British, but he's having dreams of oceans of blood, and this scares him. One woman seems to know what he's dreaming, and she suggests using a sorcerer to bring final victory. Cetshwayo may win the battle against the British, but will it come at the cost of their ultimate destruction? This is an interesting meld of fantasy and history, giving a possible reason for historical events. It becomes hard keeping everybody straight at the beginning of the story, as Mead keeps mentioning different people who may want Cetshwayo's throne, and Cetshwayo's advisors seem to blend together at times. The imagery in the tale is strong, however (too strong, possibly, for those with extremely squeamish stomachs, but if you're only slightly squeamish, you should be ok). Mead succeeds in giving us an interesting story, but it does seem to drag at times. I especially found the inclusion of things like the lizard beings to be rather pointless given the rest of the story.
"Starbuck" - by Robert Reed
This is Reed's interesting take on the current controversy of drugs in sports. It's the future, and all sorts of enhancements are available to baseball players, from genetic engineering that would give just that little bit extra, to the ability to know almost every move a pitcher makes by practicing against holograms of that pitcher. The owners want offense, at the expense of everything else. A chance encounter in an elevator with a robot who would like to see the pitchers have a chance again gives Starbuck, a scrupulously honest pitcher, the possibility of matching up against all enhancements, and succeeding where no other pitcher can do so. Perhaps the mind is the ultimate enhancement? The world Reed creates, where baseball is almost nothing but offense, is almost frightening to any true baseball fan. Reed gives Starbuck a down-home character that is ultimately charming, and the solution that the robot gives Starbuck is quite fun. While this isn't one of Reed's best works, it is definitely interesting and a good read.
"Cold War" - by Bruce McAllister
It's the 60s, the time of Sputnik and other satellites, before men went to the moon. A young boy and his mother are taken on a field trip by his father, to a shack out in the middle of nowhere. This is where the United States is monitoring Soviet satellites, knowing that the Soviets are watching them just as they are watching the Soviets. All the boy sees is a laboratory with a machine, a machine with needles similar to that which does brain scans, the needles of this machine drawing straight lines before they go crazy, ink filling the page in sharp, wavy spikes. Surely it can only happen once a night? But no, it happens again, and both boy and mother are fascinated by what the father is showing them. This story doesn't seem to have a point to it, until you think about it for a moment. When you do, you get the same feeling of awe that a young boy being exposed to this sort of thing might feel, the idea that *something* may be out there, watching, and it's not necessarily the bad guys. You'll never know what that thing is (and the story never tells us), but just the wonder is there, and that's all you need.
"The Moment of Joy before" - by Claudia O'Keefe
Felice has moved her family (mother and daughter) to the hills of West Virginia to escape a mysterious man who keeps showing up on her doorstep. He never wants to come inside, and he talks to her for hours, but she can never remember what he looks like or what they talked about afterward. However, a mutant strain of the flu breaks out in Asia and spreads quickly worldwide, devastating the world. Felice tries desperately to survive, sending her daughter off to be with other children in a mountain retreat, but then desperate to find her when she can't get any news of her during the outbreak. Her mother catches the disease, and then the mysterious man shows up again. Who is the man, and will Felice finally remember her secret? The imagery in this story is horrible (in a good way) as the disease flattens everything around them. The town is empty, and Felice's panic-stricken drive to find some kind of aid for her mother is very vivid. The fear is palpable, almost wafting off the page. The identity of the man is kind of obvious, especially as the story goes on, but O'Keefe gives it a different aspect so that it's still kind of new, and Felice's secret is rather startling. O'Keefe's prose hooks the reader into the story and won't let go. This issue definitely saved the best for last.
The Articles:
"Books to Look For" - by Charles de Lint
Elsewhere - by Gabrielle Zevin
The Brief History of the Dead - by Kevin Brockmeier
Already Dead - by Charlie Huston
The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Science Fiction & Fantasy - edited by Gary Westfahl
"Books" - by James Sallis
Looking for Jake - by China Mieville
Eternity and Other Stories - by Lucius Shepard
Transformations: The Story of the Science Fiction Magazines from 1950 to 1970 - by Mike Ashley
"Films" - by Lucius Shepard
Shepard eviscerates Stay, starring Naomi Watts and Ewan McGregor
Also, a couple of recommendations for small, much more satisfying horror movies. The movies he mentions are Cookers, by Dan Mintz, and Soft for Digging, a movie made for a thesis project from NYU by J.T. Petty. Lastly, there is The Descent, directed by Dog Soldiers director Neil Marshall. These movies he liked a lot better than Stay
"Science" - by Pat Murphy and Paul Doherty
An interesting demonstration of Relativity and time dilation, explaining it in layman's terms. This was a great article.
“Curiosities” – by Gregory J. Koster
How to Write "Scientific" Fiction by Hugo Greenback (1930). A pre-cursor to the Patricia Cornwell/CSI craze
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