At the Planned Parenthood Book Sale last year, I found two groups of science fiction and fantasy magazines tied together, for sale for a few dollars per bundle. This week I pulled out one of those and read some stories from it.
These stories come from the October/November 2000 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction.
"Dreamseed" by Carolyn Ives Gilman
This is a novelette about the discovery of a young man found in a box in a warehouse, hidden there for fifteen years, placed in a induced state of perpetual sleep. His name is Aspen, and he is the son of Dr. Semic, who developed a theory of dreams and how people could share dreams and develop realities in their sleep. But while Aspen has been dreaming all these years the world has been taken over by a contagion that has caused conflict between different groups.
This was my first story by Gilman, but I am definitely interested in reading more by her. Per Goodreads, in her professional career, "Gilman is a historian specializing in 18th and early 19th-century North American history, particularly frontier and Native history."
"The Devil Disinvests" by Scott Bradfield
A very fun short story in which the Devil decides to leave his business of torturing and bartering for souls and live a normal life in a beachfront cottage in California. He falls in love, marries, and has two kids. One of his disgruntled ex-employees comes back for revenge.
"Earth's Blood" by Kate Wilhelm
This is the story I was most interested in. Kate Wilhelm has written two mystery series and many stand alone novels in the mystery and science fiction genres. She was married to Damon Knight, also a very well-known author of science fiction. Yet this is the first piece of writing I have read by Kate Wilhelm. Kate Wilhelm's fiction was first recommended to me by Todd Mason at Sweet Freedom.
"Earth's Blood", a novelette, did not disappoint. The protagonist is a down on his luck photographer who picks up a low-paying job to scout for a suitable location for a low-budget horror story. He is looking for a ghost town with a good setting. The build-up seems like the story will be about ghosts and horror, but the plot goes in a different direction. The story has lots of depth and detail and a great ending.
"Magic, Maples and Maryanne" by Robert Sheckley
This was another humorous short story, about a man who worked in a department store and practiced magic at night, alone in his home. The floor manager at the department store catches him doing some magic at work, and persuades him to let a few friends make some money on the magic.
"Auspicious Eggs" by James Morrow
This is a much darker story, a novelette that mixes technology, religious beliefs, and reproductive rights and ends up being a very uncomfortable story. Interesting but I would not want to read it again.
I'm very glad you found most of these to be good stories, Tracy. I'm going to have to tell my husband about this; he's our family speculative fiction fan, and I'm pretty sure he'll be interested.
ReplyDeleteMargot, I was glad I read all of the stories in this post, but some were less my type of story than others. And all were new authors to me.
DeleteI wish I had more time to read science fiction in addition to mysteries, and all the other types of books and stories I want to read.
F&SF has been publishing for 75 years; the first issue was dated Fall, 1949. Over the years it has consistently published high-quality, literate stories and has been a leader in its field. It has published many classic and award-winning stories and won the Hugo Award for Best Magazine many times back when that category of the Hugos still existed. The decline in magazine readership overall has hit the magazine; current circulation is well below 15,000, from a high of over 60,000. With the latest issue F&SF has been forced to go to a quarterly publication (it had gone from a monthly to a bimonthly publication in early 2009). Over its 75-year history the magazine has seen 771 issues (the one you are reading is issue 600), with nearly forty anthologies taken directly from its pages. I my opinion, the magazine still offers the most varied content in the field. I hope you enjoy the rest of the stories in the magazines you picked up.
ReplyDeleteJerry, Thanks for that history of Fantasy & Science Fiction. The oldest one I got in that bundle was an issue from 1968. Most of them are somewhere in the 1990s. I do have more F&SF than others like Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction. I would love to get a subscription, I will look into that. I read that the readership was going down as it is for other magazines of the same type. And I can look for more back issues.
DeleteAlways like Kate Wilhem's writing.
ReplyDeletePatti, I only have one book by Wilhelm (a mystery), although I probably have more than one science fiction anthology with one of her short stories. But I would like to find a collection of her stories.
DeleteI've read THE MAGAZINE OF FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION for over 60 years. I agree with Jerry that F&SF is a quality magazine who publishes a variety of stories. You've got a lot of Good Reading from buying that bundle!
ReplyDeleteGeorge, with those science fiction magazines I have plus all the science fiction anthologies, I will never run out of science fiction stories to read.
DeleteKate Wilhelm. I haven't thought about this writer in I don't know how long. Always meant to read her and Earth's Blood sounds like a good story to begin with.
ReplyDeleteKathy, I did not know much about Kate Wilhelm and especially not that she had written so many mystery novels. It does seem like a lot of her short stories are long ones (novelette length).
DeleteI've never read this magazine, but it sounds like a fun way to learn about new authors. I've read most of the Sci-Fi anthologies published by the British Library and edited by Mike Ashley. They're filled with Golden Age/Classic stories, many of which were published in magazines like this.
ReplyDeleteDid you read the Ray Bradbury story? He's always been a favorite of mine.
Kelly, I will have to look into some of Mike Ashley's science fiction anthologies. My husband has bought a few of those, mostly from the Tales of the Weird, which maybe are not science fiction but fantasy. But I have seen some of the science fiction anthologies at a reasonable price for ebook versions.
DeleteIt is funny you asked about the Ray Bradbury story. I did go read it after I saw your question, and then I looked into whether it had been reprinted. And I do have a copy of an anthology of Bradbury's stories from 2002 that contains that story.
I have found that I have mixed reactions to Ray Bradbury's writing, both novels and short stories, but I did like this one. It was very short and a time travel story; the title was "Quid Pro Quo".
Dreamseed sounds pretty good. I don't follow sci-fi much but I wonder if people could be kept in an induced sleep for 15 years and not age and then wake up ... it seems the world would be pretty different.
ReplyDeleteSusan, that is a reasonable question, but I think science fiction is like fantasy, you just have to accept the world that is set up in the story and the possibilities that go with it (and hope that the author does a good job of convincing you that it all makes sense). The fact that this story was two-three times as long as shorter stories gave it more space to develop the idea.
ReplyDeleteI've been reading that magazine since I was a pre-teen, and over the years it pointed me to lots of really good genre writers. I love the fact that it has survived the print-purge and still manages to publish such good stories in every issue. This sounds like a good issue of theirs for sure,
ReplyDeleteSam, I remember reading short stories by Theodore Sturgeon, Harlan Ellison, Robert Silverberg in my early twenties but I don't think I ever read the science fiction magazines (or even the mystery magazines) for short stories. It is amazing that Fantasy & Science Fiction is still in print. I have the same problem with those magazines now that I have with all the old paperback mysteries that I have collected, the print is too small to read comfortably for long.
DeleteI download the latest issues from my library and blow the print up to a size that's comfortable for reading on my computer or phone. There might be a way to get them to a kindle that way, but I've not discovered it.
ReplyDeletePer the website you can get them as kindle books in a subscription but I haven't decided if that is the way to go. They can also be accessed via Kindle Unlimited, which I don't currently have. I did get one older issue as a kindle from Amazon and I am looking forward to trying that.
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