Gordon Van Gelder (editor) Fantasy & Science Fiction 676 (2008)
Back in 2008, I decided to educate myself regarding what science-fiction* there was to be had beyond Philip K. Dick - of whom I'd already read a fair bit - and Who novels. I'd taken to picking up whatever I could find which looked interesting, mostly from charity shops, and so became familiar with Asimov, Simak, van Vogt and others; but still I felt the need to know what was going down on the mean streets of science-fiction literature right now, right at this moment, or right at that moment in this case, so I got my ass to Borders and picked up the September issues of Analog, Asimov's Science Fiction, and this one, Fantasy & Science Fiction, which seemed to be the best of the bunch.
This issue featured Paolo Bacigalupi's Pump Six, which I thought was fucking amazing, and which compelled me to buy at least a couple of his other books, and which seems even more amazing twelve years later, not least because it describes the sort of profoundly sickening environmental decline which has actually been coming true right outside our windows.
Even better was Carolyn Ives Gilman's Arkfall which makes fairly profound observations about the human condition and specifically how we relate to each other, but makes them quietly and without any shouting in one of the weirdest, most unsettling environments you could imagine, at least without invoking quantum theory. This one really affected me when I read it, and I've just noticed my having failed to read anything else by the woman, so I'll try to put that one right.
Elsewhere in the mag, Jim Aiken's Run! Run!, Robert Reed's Salad for Two, and Laura Kasischke's Search Continues for Elderly Man are decent, and probably in that order; leaving us with one of those tales told as a series of letters sent back and forth between the two protagonists which I couldn't be arsed to read, and Rand B. Lee's Picnic on Pentecost, which opens with the planet has a face like a dead circus performer, but then did nothing else to keep me from skipping ahead. To be specific, the story is mostly told by means of that Claremont-speak which attempts to fakesimulateinvoke thought by running words words words together in a cloying-annoying way - sillystupidcrappy - and which once endangered the narrative integrity of many an X-Men comic back in the day, so I couldn't be arsed to read that one either. All the same, with Pump Six and Arkfall together in this single volume, you tend not to notice a couple of duds. This issue may not quite be where it all began for me, but it was certainly where something began.
*: Referring here to the written word because I generally couldn't give a shit about film or TV, or at least ceased to do so around this time.
Back in 2008, I decided to educate myself regarding what science-fiction* there was to be had beyond Philip K. Dick - of whom I'd already read a fair bit - and Who novels. I'd taken to picking up whatever I could find which looked interesting, mostly from charity shops, and so became familiar with Asimov, Simak, van Vogt and others; but still I felt the need to know what was going down on the mean streets of science-fiction literature right now, right at this moment, or right at that moment in this case, so I got my ass to Borders and picked up the September issues of Analog, Asimov's Science Fiction, and this one, Fantasy & Science Fiction, which seemed to be the best of the bunch.
This issue featured Paolo Bacigalupi's Pump Six, which I thought was fucking amazing, and which compelled me to buy at least a couple of his other books, and which seems even more amazing twelve years later, not least because it describes the sort of profoundly sickening environmental decline which has actually been coming true right outside our windows.
Even better was Carolyn Ives Gilman's Arkfall which makes fairly profound observations about the human condition and specifically how we relate to each other, but makes them quietly and without any shouting in one of the weirdest, most unsettling environments you could imagine, at least without invoking quantum theory. This one really affected me when I read it, and I've just noticed my having failed to read anything else by the woman, so I'll try to put that one right.
Elsewhere in the mag, Jim Aiken's Run! Run!, Robert Reed's Salad for Two, and Laura Kasischke's Search Continues for Elderly Man are decent, and probably in that order; leaving us with one of those tales told as a series of letters sent back and forth between the two protagonists which I couldn't be arsed to read, and Rand B. Lee's Picnic on Pentecost, which opens with the planet has a face like a dead circus performer, but then did nothing else to keep me from skipping ahead. To be specific, the story is mostly told by means of that Claremont-speak which attempts to fakesimulateinvoke thought by running words words words together in a cloying-annoying way - sillystupidcrappy - and which once endangered the narrative integrity of many an X-Men comic back in the day, so I couldn't be arsed to read that one either. All the same, with Pump Six and Arkfall together in this single volume, you tend not to notice a couple of duds. This issue may not quite be where it all began for me, but it was certainly where something began.
*: Referring here to the written word because I generally couldn't give a shit about film or TV, or at least ceased to do so around this time.
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