Speculative Fiction Reviews

Gauging Moonlight, by E. Catherine Tobler - Sci Fiction, 20 July 2005

reviewjournal@patricksamphire.co.uk — Fri, 29 Jul 05 14:05:00 UT

Gauging Moonlight, by E. Catherine Tobler

E. Catherine Tobler's Gauging Moonlight is one of the shorter pieces from Sci Fiction, yet it carries more power and emotion than many longer stories. The narrator is an alien time-traveller, whose role is strictly limited to observation. Although possessing the immense power to change history, to wipe people from history's stream, he is forbidden to do so.

Yet when he encounters an English woman, Alice Oxbridge, he is drawn to the glimmer of her light in the darkness, and he violates these tenets to remove from her history the man who would break her heart and ruin her life. Over and over, the time traveller visits the same parts of Alice's life, her birth, her death, and so her life becomes entwined with his. And the time traveller who looks down at the stupidity of the time-locked life-forms discovers himself to be as fallable and as human as they are. By the process of observation, he is drawn to interfere with the woman he observes, and he cannot avoid becoming part of Alice's life.

Gauging Moonlight is a love story, one that is tinged by melancholy, because the time-traveller and Alice can never truly be together. He, sweeping back and forth across time, able to return again and again to the same events, she, limited to a short, linear life. In this there are echoes of Audrey Niffenegger's The Time Traveler's Wife.

Tobler's writing is subtle, clever and as well-formed as the bloom that Alice is in the time traveller's eyes. The story is full of beautiful images, such as "the golden dust of African plains" or the lilac branch the time traveller carries from the garden where Alice is being born to her deathbed. Gauging Moonlight is a wonderful addition to the time-travel sub-genre. E. Catherine Tobler shows enviable skill in balancing this finely-crafted, gentle piece. It is a charming, fragile story, and an example of form perfectly fitting function; the delicate construction reflects the delicacy of the love story at the core. If it is not on at least one of the award shortlists at the end of this year, it will be a crime.

--Patrick Samphire, 29 July 2005

She Called Me Baby, by Vylar Kaftan - Strange Horizons, 30 May 2005

reviewjournal@patricksamphire.co.uk — Mon, 6 Jun 05 15:07:00 UT

She Called Me Baby, by Vylar Kaftan

Vylar Kaftan's She Called Me Baby is only the author's second published story, but it shows a remarkable tightness of writing and a complexity of storytelling that one expects from a far more experienced writer. "Baby", the narrator of the story, is a clone, made from her mother, both created and raised to continue her mother's modeling career after her mother has retired. As a teenager, however, she rebelled against her overbearing mother who, she thinks, saw her only as a possession and ran away. Now, as an adult, Baby puts herself through painful and extreme body modifications to make herself look less like her mother, and she makes her own career by satirising the projects that made her mother famous. But now her mother is dying, and Baby is going to face her for the first time in years.

This story is an intimate look at a defective mother-daughter relationship, and at how the objectification processes both of having a child and of fame can twist a family. The addition of the science fictional elements of cloning and extreme body modification serve to throw a brighter spotlight on this sad relationship.

Kaftan intersperces the story with extracts from Baby's autobiography, which Baby is promoting during the story. This device works extremely well in this context, showing the cause of Baby's bitterness that the story explores. The story reminded me most of Stephanie Burgis's Inside the Tower published in Strange Horizons earlier this year. Both stories deal with relationships scarred by years of bitterness and misunderstanding and how the death of the mother leads to a reassessment. What Burgis achieved with a reimagined fairy tale, Kaften achieves in the guise of science fiction.

She Called Me Baby is an accomplished, confident and successful story. I recommend it.

--Patrick Samphire, 6 June 2005

TANGENT REVIEW: Lone Star Stories, Issue No. 8, April 1, 2005

reviewjournal@patricksamphire.co.uk — Thu, 14 Apr 05 16:55:00 UT

I reviewed this issue on Tangent Online here:

Lone Star Stories, Issue No. 8, April 1, 2005

TANGENT REVIEW: Asimov's April/May 2005

reviewjournal@patricksamphire.co.uk — Thu, 24 Mar 05 08:51:00 UT

I reviewed this issue on Tangent Online here:

Asimov's Science Fiction - April/May 2005

Tales of the Chinese Zodiac: Rooster, by Jenn Reese - Strange Horizons, 21 February 2005

reviewjournal@patricksamphire.co.uk — Tue, 15 Mar 05 11:50:00 UT

Tales of the Chinese Zodiac: Rooster, by Jenn Reese

The second of Jenn Reese's series of short-shorts appeared on Strange Horizons back at the end of February, but I missed it at the time. Each of the tales takes a sign of the Chinese zodiac for its theme and spins out a short tale. This month was "Rooster". For nine nights, Chen dreams of a giant rooster destroying the land. He is convinced it is a portent from the gods, and he tries to warn everyone of it, but no one will listen. So he decides to take matters into his own hands and begins to hunt down and kill roosters. Chen was right that this was a portent from the gods, but he has misunderstood it rather badly.

As I commented in my review of the first story in this series, short-shorts are difficult to manage. Once again, Reese has managed to squeeze an entire story into, in this case, less than 500 words. Her protagonist is believable and the story arc nicely complete.

I marginally prefered the first story in this sequence, Monkey, but both stories have been excellent. On the strength of these two, the series is more engaging and interesting than Jay Lake's Rushes series, and at least as good as Ben Rosenbaum's Other Cities.

Finally, I should note that Jenn Reese's illustrations that accompany her stories are also excellent, being both simple and evocative.

--Patrick Samphire, 15th March 2005.

The Jenna Set, by Daniel Kaysen - Strange Horizons, 14 March 2005

reviewjournal@patricksamphire.co.uk — Tue, 15 Mar 05 11:22:00 UT

The Jenna Set, by Daniel Kaysen

I'll be quite open in saying that I'm rarely impressed with the quality of humour in speculative fiction. There are writers who do it superbly: Connie Willis, Terry Pratchett, Robert Rankin, Paul Di Fillipo, and several others. Most, though, either fall flat or fail to integrate the humour into the story. I was relieved, then, to discover that Daniel Kaysen did such a good job with The Jenna Set.

The story concerns a telephone sales rep who finds herself on the wrong end of the conversation when she phones a teenage girl who persuades her to sign up for a new telephone service, Palavatar. This telephone service not only comes free but uses the latest in neural networks to handle calls and even deal with the calls for Jenna, if she decides she doesn't want to talk to someone. At first this works wonderfully, as Jenna lets Palavatar deal with her mother and vet her dates. But Palavatar is not quite that good, and it has trouble with the appropriateness of the call contents.

This is indeed a very funny story. Take, for example, the following:

"All the customer service numbers were disconnected, and Google drew a blank on Palavatar apart from a part-word match in some Finnish pdf files. But Kelly said every word ever gets a partial match in Finnish pdf files. It's that kind of language."

Of course, if you do google Palavatar, that is exactly what you'll get.

Kaysen is brilliant at dialogue. His story moves along with ferocious pace and the situations complicate impressively. The characters are both likeable and believable. The most obvious comparison for this story would be Connie Willis's work, and although Willis is better, Kaysen does not come off poorly from the comparison.

The story perhaps goes on too long, and lags a little towards the end, but it is nonetheless a very funny, very well-written piece. Kaysen is a new writer who is making an impact very quickly. I'll be looking out for more work by him.

--Patrick Samphire, 15 March 2005

Little Faces, by Vonda N. McIntyre - Sci Fiction, 23 February 2005

reviewjournal@patricksamphire.co.uk — Tue, 1 Mar 05 16:15:00 UT

Little Faces, by Vonda McIntyre

It is rare to find a far-future SF story that is at once truly alien, completely believable and unique. Vonda McIntyre manages it in Little Faces. Some vast span of years from now, humanity is entirely spacebound. Solitary women fly from star to star in their sentient spaceships, rarely coming together. The part of the male of the species is played by companions, small creatures embedded in the flesh of the women, little more than sharp-toothed faces, genitals and memories of the lovers who donate them to their hosts.

The story concerns Yalnis, a (relatively) young woman who has decided (along with her spaceship) to give birth for the first time. It begins with Yalnis the most recent victim of the predatory Seyyan, an older, nearly-legendary woman. Seyyan and one of her companions have murdered Yalnis's favourite companion and want to replace it with a companion grown from Seyyan, which would contain Seyyan's memories. Grief-stricken, Yalnis rejects Seyyan and shuns her, and thus a showdown is set up which will draw in dozens of others.

If there is one thing to criticise, and in truth any criticism is unjust in this story, it is that the story itself does not rise to the same magnificent heights as the world building. That is not to say that the story is bad; it certainly isn't. It is a fine story. It is simply that against such a grand, imaginative canvas it seems a little ordinary.

Little Faces is wonderfully unique. If one was to look for others to compare it to, one might come up with a blend of Benjamin Rosenbaum's stories Droplet and Embracing-the-New, the latter of which is on this year's Nebula ballot. McIntyre's story, too, deserves a place on that ballot next year.

As you grow older, sense of wonder is an increasingly rare commodity, so that when you find it, you treat it like the gold it is. With Little Faces, Vonda McIntyre has mined that vein and offered its product to us. Had the story itself matched the universe McIntyre has created, this would have been one of the great classics of modern SF. As it is, it is merely fantastic.

--Patrick Samphire, 01 March 2005

TANGENT REVIEW: Fantasy & Science Fiction, May 2005

reviewjournal@patricksamphire.co.uk — Tue, 1 Mar 05 01:01:00 UT

I reviewed this issue on Tangent Online here:

Fantasy & Science Fiction, May 2005

Lone Star Stories, February 2005

reviewjournal@patricksamphire.co.uk — Sun, 13 Feb 05 17:33:00 UT

Lone Star Stories offers three original pieces of fiction for February, and it continues to meet the high standards it has set for itself over recent issues.

Winged Victory, by Sarah Prineas
First up is Sarah Prineas's Winged Victory, set in an intriguing alternative history/alternative world. The aging Great Leader of the unspecified country in which the story is set receives a visit from the statue of winged victory that hovers above his own statue in the square beyond his palace. The quickened statue tells him that there is a plot against him and that someone he loves and trusts is a spy for the plot. Further portents shake the city and unease grows in the palace.

Sarah Prineas has an enviable talent for creating a highly-believable country, one whose greatest glory--the excitement of heroic deeds and expansion--is over and which has settled into a middle-aged statis, and she plays her story out against this background. The pace of the story is a little flat in the early parts, but it soon picks up and there is always enough going on that it is never in danger of losing interest. The greatest strengths of the story come in the blend of beautifully created characters (the Great Leader's secretary is particularly well-imagined), a setting that is both familiar and unique, and the sadness that underlies the inevitability of the conclusion to the story. For this is a story about a man whose time is long past but whose passing we regret.

Prineas is a skillful writer, who has recently published fiction in Strange Horizons and Realms of Fantasy, and Winged Victory is the strongest story in this issue of Lone Star Stories.

Maenad, by Angela Boord
Maenad, by Angela Boord, is more of a prose poem than a story. It starts beautifully:

My love is a fox on the hunt, dapple-silver in the moonlight, rippling in and out of shadows. Rabbit and squirrel tunnel in the creepers, and my love hunts.

My love is a lithe-built man, lean as a willow and as wiry-strong. He sits in the touch-me-nots beneath my window with his dulcimer and sings soft until I fall asleep.

In the summer, the narrator follows her fox into the woods and there they make love. But now it is fall, and when she tries to follow, he flees and she gives chase.

There really is little in the way of plot in this story; that's not the point of it. We are supposed to admire the craft and beauty of the language and the images Boord conjures. And for the most part we do, although the story slips in this towards the end.

It may have been difficult to decide whether to publish this as story or poem (which Lone Star Stories also publish), but it has been presented as Fiction rather than poetry, and in this it is not wholly successful. However, it is a pleasure to read and there is much to be enjoyed, particularly in the first half of the story.

Time, As Seen in a Merry-Go-Round Blur, by Michael Kelly
Lone Star Stories often publishes tales which resonate to the tune of sadness and regret. Michael Kelly's Time, As Seen in a Merry-Go-Round Blur takes both as its central theme. The protagonist is Evelyn, a middle-aged woman who, lying awake one night begins to think of how her life has changed since she and her new husband bought their house, before they had children and when everything seemed good. Now that her children have left, she realises that she has lost everything that she used to have.

The hollowness that can be left in a relationship when children leave is a familiar topic for non-genre fiction, although it is less so for genre. Kelly's short story is only fantasy in its denouement, but this allows the author to provide a degree of ambiguity about the outcome that would not be possible in a non-genre piece. The stylistic device of punctuating the story with the ticking of a clock, symbolising the loss of the past, is a good one. Overall, a satisfying short piece.

Summary
All three stories in this issue of Lone Star Stories are decent ones, and Sarah Prineas's Winged Victory is outstanding. I have long believed that the magazine deserves higher prominence than it has. Part of the reason why it does not enjoy such prominence may be that the magazine does not archive the fiction, unlike most of the online magazines (although the editor is considering doing so). As such, there is relatively little for visitors to see on each visit. Another reason may be that the website itself is fairly utilitarian in its appearance. A design that reflected the quality of its content would undoubtedly draw visitors in. I expect, however, that the main reason that the magazine has not yet reached the readership it deserves is that there is a lot of competition in the online magazine market (most of which does not come close in terms of quality) and it takes a long time for a magazine to make its mark. Lone Star Stories deserves to do that. I hope it soon will.

--Patrick Samphire, 13 February 2005

TANGENT REVIEW: Fantasy & Science Fiction, April 2005

reviewjournal@patricksamphire.co.uk — Mon, 7 Feb 05 01:01:00 UT

I reviewed this issue on Tangent Online:

Fantasy and Science Fiction, April 2005

A Man of Light, by Jeffrey Ford - Sci Fiction, 26 January 2005

reviewjournal@patricksamphire.co.uk — Fri, 28 Jan 05 15:37:00 UT

A Man of Light, by Jeffrey Ford

Jeffrey Ford's A Man of Light on Sci Fiction this week is a rather old-fashioned story. Set, presumably, in the late nineteenth century, it concerns a young reporter, August Fell, who has been granted an exclusive interview with the reclusive Man of Light, Mr Larchcroft. Larchcroft has come to fame through his art of perfectly illuminating tableaus or people. His alchemy of light has allowed Larchcroft to make corpses on a battlefield seem like sleeping angels, a bank appear to float off the ground, and a dead woman's eyes seem to move back and forth during her funeral, among other miraculous deeds. For the most part, the story consists of Larchcroft telling the story of his life and his researches--gone terribly wrong--to the reporter.

Stylistically, the narration of the story to the reporter belongs more to the early part of the twentieth century than to the twenty-first. The story, as scientific-investigation-that-went-to-far, is also the type of tale which was once more popular, before the scientism--science as infallible--became a more dominant motif in the pages of Analog and its predecessors.

Ford is, of course, a fine writer. His prose is smooth, the story he tells interesting. If the ending is a little too easy to see coming, it isn't over-telegraphed. It seems somewhat churlish to criticise such an accomplished work, but in the end, despite Ford's skill, I was left feeling that we had been here before, not often as well as this, but often nonetheless.

This piece is fine as a retro exercise, and is entertaining in an old-fashioned way. It just doesn't stand out as much as some of the other fiction that I've read recently, such as Merrie Haskell's Huntswoman or Alex Irvine's The Lorelei. I enjoyed it, but I wasn't blown away, and from a writer of Ford's stature, that is unusual.

-Patrick Samphire, 28 January 2005

Huntswoman, by Merrie Haskell - Strange Horizons, 24 January 2005

reviewjournal@patricksamphire.co.uk — Thu, 27 Jan 05 10:25:00 UT

Huntswoman, by Merrie Haskell

This week's Strange Horizons story is the strange and beautiful Huntswoman by Merrie Haskell. Although dressed in the clothes of a retold fairy tale, this story is something else entirely.

A huntswoman has been employed by a king and queen to track down the king's daughter, who has disappeared into the forest beyond the castle. All the fairy tale elements are present: the stepmother, the enchanted princess, the castle, the strange woods. But none of them are as they appear. The castle is shrinking around them. Time flows oddly. The huntswoman herself is subdued and non-commital, lost in her task and not knowing her purpose. The enchanted princess--Snow White--lies unwoken, the seven dwarves all dead except one. And the violent, bloody climax of the story forces us to re-evaluate everything that has happened and our assumptions about the fairy-tale roles.

In the end, this is a powerful story about growing up and reconciling oneself to that growing up. I won't pretend to have understood everything that happened in this story. It is highly nuanced and subtle. If you read it just once you probably won't understand much of it at all. But it is a story that deserves to be reread, and with each re-reading it will offer more to you.

The fiction at Strange Horizons has been excellent so far this year, and Merrie Haskell's piece is no exception. If you haven't read it yet, do yourself a favour and do so.

Tales of the Chinese Zodiac: Monkey, by Jenn Reese - Strange Horizons, 17 January 2005

reviewjournal@patricksamphire.co.uk — Thu, 27 Jan 05 08:47:00 UT

Tales of the Chinese Zodiac: Monkey, by Jenn Reese

Strange Horizons has made a feature of their series of thematically-linked short-shorts over the last few years, with Ben Rosenbaum's Other Cities and Jay Lake's Rushes. This time Jenn Reese is providing the stories, one based on each of the signs of the Chinese Zodiac. First up is Monkey.

When lightning hits a widow's tree, twelve monkeys fall out. She gives all except one away to her neighbours and relatives. Over the months, all of these others bring luck and fortune to the people the widow has given them to. While the widow's own monkey is helpful, it doesn't seem to have brought her any particular luck. And each night she hears crashing and screeching in the kitchen from the monkey. Only when she hears a scream one night and goes to investigate does she find out the luck the monkey has been bringing her.

Short-shorts are hard to do well. Often, at the end, they seem to have been rather pointless, to have been more of a vignette than a story, or not to have been developed as fully as they should have been. In other words, good flash fiction is harder than it looks. Reese avoids all of these drawbacks, managing to give us a full story, with a good main character and a neat end. She draws a culture sparely but clearly. It is an impressive achievement and a neat story. I'm looking forward to the rest of this series.

F&SF, January 2005

reviewjournal@patricksamphire.co.uk — Fri, 10 Dec 04 15:07:00 UT

The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, January 2005

I read this issue some time ago but haven't had time to post a review until now. Apologies.

The Lorelei, by Alex Irvine

January's F&SF opens rather magnificently with Alex Irvine's The Lorelei. The story takes place in turn of the (19th) century New York. A young man, Charles Pelletier, comes to the city, determined to become an artist. There he meets the obsessive, deranged genius that is Albert Pinkham Ryder and becomes a disciple of the great man.

Ryder's great obsession, in Irvine's story at least, is painting the Lorelei, a Germanic representation of the muse taken from Heinrich Heine's 1823 poem, Die Lorelei, and as Ryder's paintings develop, he feels the Lorelei is drawing closer.

"I feel sometimes as if I've been noticed, as if a slow eternal gaze fallen upon me with a world of magic and danger,"

Ryder tells Pelletier. Then, one day, Ryder believe he has found his Lorelei in the form of a young woman who lives in the same apartment block. When his friends convince Ryder to go abroad with him, though, he loses his muse and his decline begins. Pelletier's guilt at his role in this decline and his sadness form the emotional canvas on which Ryder's more vivid shades are painted.

The story is beautifully told, the voice genuine and believable. Irvine also touches the narration with humour, such as in Pelletier's first meeting with Ryder:

We entered my room and he went directly to the canvas I'd left to dry that afternoon. For a long time he stood looking, and I exerted my energy not to interrupt him.

At last he turned away and looked at me. "Keep at it," he said, and walked past me to the door.

Ryder, of course, is an historical figure, and there are always dangers in fictionalising accounts of well-known historical figures, but Irvine managed to convince this, admittedly non-expert reader, with his representation of the artist.

The story does stumble towards the end, much like the crumbling of Ryder's genius, as it takes too long to reach its conclusion, but it never quite falls. Despite this, this is a masterfully written, enchanting tale. Those of us who merely paint pictures can only look on in awe at the artist who created this piece.

Keyboard Practice, consisting of an Aria with diverse Variations for the Harpsichord with two manuals, by John G. McDaid

John G. McDaid's Keyboard Practice... is a simple story obscured by a complex structure. It is set, for the most part in 2023 at a piano competition in which the ghost of a previous winner perhaps puts in an appearance. Like Irvine's piece, this is a tale of a damaged genius.

The conceit of this story is that it is structured in a parallel manner to Bach's "Goldberg Variations" (the original title of which McDaid uses as the title of the story). Like those variations, this story takes a basic theme and spins off into divertions and variations on the original theme. While this may be a wonderful structure for a musical piece, it works less well for a story. In the first half, the plot is barely touched upon and the variations become tiresome fairly quickly. This is coupled with an affected writing style that is at times nearly impenetrable. As a result, much of the earlier part of the story was wearing. If I hadn't read this story with the intention of reviewing it, I wouldn't have finished it.

Which would have been a pity, because in the second half, and increasingly towards the end, the plot takes off, the story becomes more focused, and I finally became involved.

This is a story where the inspiration and conceit end up working against the story rather than for it. Thirty two variations was too many. The story would have benefitted from a closely-wielded knife hacking off the flab, yet in attempting to closely parallel all 32 variations, the author seems to have been unable to carry out the operation.

A further problem, which might not have bothered me so much if I hadn't been distracted by the style, relates to the technology. This story is set only 19 years in the future, yet the technology is too far removed from today's. It's not that the technology itself is unlikely, more that the penetration of the technology into the society is too great. For example, the narrator is supposedly one of the few remaining people who can type. Some of the story is set only nine years in the future, but again the technology there is nearly unrecognisable. Arguably, the author would have been better served by pushing the events back by a couple of decades.

In the end, this is a story where the style obstructed the substance rather then elevating it. Keyboard practice... was not entirely a failure, particularly towards the end where it peaks briefly towards the glorious, but I could not help but find this more of a chore than a pleasure.

Born Bad, by Arthur Porges

Born Bad by Arthur Porges is a short-short in an issue of novelets. Perhaps that was not the right place for it. Short-shorts are wont to seem slight in any context, but sandwiched here, this story seems even less, while not lasting long enough to provide a break between the novelets. I'm not a fan of the short-short form--I have read a few great pieces, but a very few--and Born Bad has done little to change my mind. While, thankfully, this doesn't end with a pun, it does end with an exclamation mark (point), which has nearly the same effect. It shouts, "look at me," when there is nothing of substance to look at.

The writing was fine, but I saw little point to the story.

The Blemmye's Stratagem, by Bruce Sterling

The Blemmye's Stratagem by Bruce Sterling offered the most difficulties for me as a reviewer. In part this may have been because I subscribe to F&SF through Fictionwise, and Fictionwise appear to have decided not to include any section breaks in this story. In part, this resulted in The Blemmye's Stratagem feeling curiously unstructured. I'm still not sure, even after rereading, how much of this came about from the formatting cock-up and how much from the story itself.

The story is set during the crusades. The Abbess Hildegart and Sinan, leader of a group of assassins, are both employed by their Silent Master, a deformed man known as the Blemmye. Together they work to produce wealth for their master, and to bring him sacrifices. For the Blemmye has married a demon, and it needs feeding.

Sterling has meticulously researched his era and its myths, and he builds on them with his always-unconventional imagination, particularly in respect to the horrific weapons the Blemmye has constructed. The Blemmye--in this story a native of Preston John's kingdom, but whose name is taken from a Nubian tribe who seem to have disappeared well before the time period we are in--appears to have been directly inspired by the strange, twisted humans who populate the extremes of some medieval Mappae Mundi. The world that Sterling envisages, then, is both fictional and a representation of the contemperous myths of the period of the crusades.

The characters are rather sketchily drawn for such a long piece. Sinan is a little bit of an Orientalist stereotype--hot-blooded, violent and raucous beneath a civilised veneer. Hildegart, despite the backstory given to us, remains essentially unmoved, emotionally, and oddly unmotivated throughout.

The story, too, lacks. Sterling has a habit of telling events, as though they were incidents seen from a distance, rather than dramatising them. As such, this piece almost reads like a novel proposal rather than a story.

There is much to be interested in here: the sketched bookends story; the inventive setting; the fascinating historical and mythological details. But in the end, Sterling's storytelling is the weak link, and this story did not satisfy as a story.

Last Man Standing, by Esther M. Friesner

By contrast, there is little to fault in Esther Friesner's Last Man Standing, the final story of this issue. Namtar is a slave of the Sumerian king Gilgamesh. Upon Gilgamesh's death, Namtar is included as one of the thirty-two slaves to be sacrificed to serve their master in death. Namtar's luck, when he manages to get himself exchanged for an arrogant young soldier for the sacrifices, lasts only until he drunkenly tells the goddess Inanna that he would have given up his life for one of the other slaves, and she decides to take him up on the offer.

Some of the other stories in January's issue were distinctly heavy going. Friesner has a light, easy touch that keeps this story ticking over at a fine pace. Namtar is a likeable, involving character who has been dealt a bad hand but who deserves both his problems and his redemption. The research is well done--as with all of the historical stories in this issue--and the setting described with spare, clear detail.

I was occassionally pulled from the story by Friesner's use of anachronistic humour, such as, for example, Namtar's reference to

"the Gilgamesh Early Retirement Plan for Slaves, Concubines, and Show Folk".

Nonetheless, this is more a question of preferred style than a genuine weakness in the story, and I can't imagine any fantasy reader not liking Last Man Standing. This won't ever be considered a great story, but it is thoroughly enjoyable and a lot of fun to read.

Summary

January's issue of F&SF contained four novelets and one short-short. Four of the stories were fantasy, one--arguably--both fantasy and science fiction (the McDaid piece).

For my taste, the issue was skewed too greatly towards the longer pieces, and the single very short piece was poor.

The stand-out story was Alex Irvine's The Lorelei. Esther M. Friesner's Last Man Standing was also excellent.

Overall, this issue seemed slightly weaker than some recent issues.

The Great Old Pumpkin, by John Aegard - Strange Horizons, 25 October 2004

reviewjournal@patricksamphire.co.uk — Fri, 29 Oct 04 13:22:00 UT

The Great Old Pumpkin, by John Aegard

John Aegard creates an unlikely blend of H.P. Lovecraft and Charlie Brown in The Great Old Pumpkin, the seasonal offering from Strange Horizons. It's a story that really shouldn't work, but does, and gloriously.

In this story, our hero, like so many of Lovecraft's protagonists, is drawn into horror and madness when his investigations into the eldritch (in this case, The Great Old Pumpkin) lead him to seek out this lord he has chosen to serve.

The greatest fun for the reader of the story comes in the word-perfect parody of Lovecraft and in teasing out the various Charlie Brown references. Too ofen in humour, the writer allows the jokes to interfere with the story, but Aegard has avoided this well, and in any case, the humour is not mainly in one-liners. Instead, he keeps the story rolling along at a fine pace to its inevitable end.

This is (obviously) a light-hearted piece, something to read by firelight. Share it with your friends. It's hard to imagine that anyone won't like it.

--Patrick Samphire, 29 October 2004