Fantasy and Science Fiction, September/October 2022
“In the Dream” by Meg Elison
“Wolf Shape” by C. B. Blanchard
“One Day I Will” by Phoenix Alexander
“The Witch of Endor” by Karim Kattan
“A Songstress in the Rain” by Lucas X. Wiseman
“The Cottage in Omena” by Charles Andrew Oberndorf
“Déjà Vu: Eu de Parfum for Men” by Remi Martin
“The Summer Dives” by Samantha Murray
“Le Sorcier de Lascaux” by Douglas Schwarz
“You and the Wolf Boy” by Linda Niehoff
“The Charcoal Man” by Constance Fay
“Tangle Her in Quicksilver Breath” by Gerri Leen
“Les Chimères: An Ode” by Molly Tanzer
Reviewed by David Wesley Hill
This issue of F&SF starts with “In the Dream” by Meg Elison, which takes place aboard the Koyash, a spaceship bound for Mars. Presumably to enable the crew to remain on duty for extended periods of time during the two hundred and ten day voyage, they are injected with “sleepjuice,” which eliminates their need for slumber and keeps them “fresh and alert for at least thirty days.” Sleepjuice is harvested from the brain of the ship’s “designated sleeper,” who typically remains in dreamless unconsciousness throughout the entire trip—only this DS is dreaming strange dreams, and then awakens…. An interesting take on interplanetary spaceflight that kept me intrigued after several readings, although I did wonder if the crew were being paid union scale for all the overtime they put in.
We’re back on Earth in “Wolf Shape” by C. B. Blanchard, where young Isobel sees a wolf in the local park—or something that looks like a wolf, as if “someone has carved a hollow in the world where the idea of a wolf can enter.” Her parents don’t believe her, of course, but the principle of Chekhov’s Gun applies, and by the end of the story, Isobel does indeed encounter the thing—and is forced to chow down on a rather unappetizing breakfast … A pleasant bit of revisionist folklore—and definitely not your parents’ fairy tale!
Next up is “One Day I Will” by Phoenix Alexander, the sequel to “Notes from the Laocoön Program,” originally published in Metaphorosis. In this future universe, apparently, some planets are sentient, and the world XUNTIAN-a has “expressed the distinctly human notion of wanting ‘company’.” For unexplained reasons (at least, I couldn’t figure them out from the text—maybe you need to read the first story?), the Laocoön Program is attempting to cure the planet’s loneliness, and sends it offerings of people with “proclivities toward dissociation, narcissism, megalomania, [and] delusional fantasies.” Once in orbit, the spaceship ferrying the sacrificial couples is barraged with palpable waves of erotic longing, which lures one voyager, Christos, down to the surface, where he is overwhelmed by a horde of creatures with “little bodies like worry dolls … homunculi rendered in the crude image of a human being.” … A moody meditation on relationships, friendship, and parenthood, this unnerving tale of alien contact almost, but not quite, hangs together.
We return to fantasy with “The Witch of Endor” by Karim Kattan, which takes us to the world of the Summerlands, where an ancient race, the “elder people,” have been displaced from their homes by arrivals from across the sea. An ancient prophecy warns that a witch will return to “wreak death and disaster” on the invaders—but two thousand years pass and she does not arrive. At least until the narrator attends a ritual ball, and unleashes the vengeance of his long dead ancestor … An atmospheric piece that tries to fit a little too much world-building into too short a story.
Continuing with fantasy, we come to “A Songstress in the Rain” by Lucas X. Wiseman, a breezy tale about a siren, Marleen, who works at a speakeasy called—wait for it—The Siren’s Parlor. Apparently, siren songs aren’t “one-way conduits…. When a Siren loses herself to the song, people get hurt,” which is why it’s illegal for Marleen and her ilk to sing in public and why they are forced to perform instead in quasi-legal venues like The Parlor. On this inclement evening the speakeasy is crowded with an audience that includes both the bachelor and the bachelorette parties being thrown for an affianced couple. Holding such parties in close proximity is probably not a good idea in any world, and it’s a particularly bad idea when the entertainer is a siren, and when the groom’s best man harbors unrequited love for the bride…. A whimsical urban fantasy that unwisely includes almost fifty lines of lyrics from the siren’s song.
We’re back to science fiction with the strong offering “The Cottage in Omena” by Charles Andrew Oberndorf, a novella set in a dystopian near future where pathogens are mutating so furiously that you need a new regimen of “vaccines and prophylactic treatments” each time you go on a road trip. Claire is returning to the family cottage overlooking Lake Michigan in order to show it to a developer interested in purchasing the property, which has been vacant for five years, ever since her husband, Mark, drowned in Grand Traverse Bay—and returned from the dead. This tragic backstory is illuminated as Claire reacquaints herself with the family homestead, leading us to an equally horrific denouement involving the “drowner” child of the real estate agent…. A melancholy story of overwhelming heartbreak, as well as a dire environmental parable, “The Cottage in Omena” is well-crafted and worth reading.
“Déjà Vu: Eu de Parfum for Men” by Remi Martin, is also set in the near future, albeit in one less bleak. Claudia Crane, a recent widow, visits a medical clinic for help with the depression to which she’s succumbed after her husband’s passing. The protocol includes tailored psychedelics, and uses a familiar aroma—in this case, dead George’s titular aftershave—to trigger hallucinogenic episodes in which, for therapeutic purposes, Claudia is able to relive memories of her life with her deceased husband…. A touching story of moving on with life after loss, based upon a plausible science fictional premise.
Returning to fantasy, “The Summer Dives” by Samantha Murray, transports us to the seaside village of Aberfy, where twice each year the local girls and women dive into the water, seeking out the “truths drifting like coiled smoke in the sea.” These truths “never prove false,” and although some are inconsequential or of only personal significance, other truths—such as where to dig a new well—are of vital importance to the entire community. Of course, there’s a catch: each year one girl or woman—and sometimes two—are never seen again, a sacrifice the villagers make in order to protect their homes from “the towering waves that wanted to sweep all of them into the sea.” This year, teen Lila and her best friends, Vess and Brin, join the semi-annual ritual even though one of them is not commonly recognized as a girl, and despite knowing that they all might not return to shore…. A curious, engaging fable constructed around a delightfully poetic metaphor, although, perhaps unfairly, I couldn’t help but speculate why the inhabitants of Aberfy didn’t simply move their village to a less perilous location.
Fans of L. Sprague de Camp’s and Fletcher Pratt’s fantasies will appreciate the next story, “Le Sorcier de Lascaux” by Douglas Schwarz, in which Danielle, a young American artist of French lineage, joins a project replicating, stroke for stroke, the ancient cave paintings on the walls of an exact duplicate of the original cavern, which has been closed to visitors in order to preserve the prehistoric artwork. Wearing a shell necklace inherited from her mother, Danielle falls into “some type of trance, unaware of the passage of time” as she draws, recreating the extinct animals that roamed the Paleolithic landscape so precisely that they are borne magically out of time into the modern world. Not all her subjects, however, are innocuous ibex and deer—she also draws a woolly rhinoceros and a giant cave lion. When these dangerous creatures begin stalking the countryside, Danielle reaches out to the one person who can restrain the apparitions—to Le Sorcier, the original creator of the Lascaux paintings…. A deftly plotted and lighthearted story, “Le Sorcier de Lascaux” is sentimental in a good way.
Weighing in at less than one thousand words, “You and the Wolf Boy” by Linda Niehoff, comes at you like a jab to the chin—short and sweet. The story takes place on Halloween, and is a disturbing reminder that it’s probably best not to hand out candy to trick-or-treaters too late into the evening. You never know who—or what—will be knocking at your door…. A tasty tidbit of flash horror fiction.
We circle around to fantasy again with “The Charcoal Man” by Constance Fay. Shade—not his real name—is a strange young boy growing up “in a cold gray town, on a cold gray shore of a cold gray sea.” As might be expected, Shade sees the world as “a stark symphony of blacks, whites, and what comes in between.” Like many children, he also “hates the dark.” Then he discovers that he can collect from dying creatures, including people, “the glow that is not a glow,” which keeps the dark “from pressing quite so close.” As Shade matures into an adult, he transitions from collecting to harvesting, and travels from town to town stealing “deaths” from otherwise healthy people. What he doesn’t realize, however, is there is a cost to this murderous practice, and that the glows he takes may actually belong to someone else… A quirky fantasy and an interesting read despite somewhat perfervid language.
It’s fantasy once more—and another fractured fairy tale—with the penultimate story of the issue, “Tangle Her in Quicksilver Breath” by Gerri Leen, which relates the well-known history of Snow White from the viewpoint of the magic mirror. This enchanted object is an evil thing, and it feeds by poisoning its owner’s mind with half truths—and by poisoning its owner’s flesh with quicksilver vapor, driving “her mad on the way to causing her death.” According to the mirror, “in this tale, no one ever lives happily ever after.” Readers, however, will be happily amused by an eccentric read.
Finally, “Les Chimères: An Ode” by Molly Tanzer, carries us into a distant future, where a monumental act of hubris—the Confluence—has caused galaxies to collide … and Earth to disappear, never to be seen again. Ketrichlor, a quasi-human near deity from the world Cynav, is out near the galactic rim, the Blackveld, hunting welkinval for their baleen in her æther-chariot, which is pulled through space by Two-Taps, an “ancient, sinuous celestopod.” Coming upon a derelict ship in a degrading orbit around an obscure moon, Ketrichlor boards the distressed vessel—and is immediately trapped in a virtual world generated by a device known as “pocket utopia.” Luckily, she is able to use her “lyrebox” to summon help, and then she and her friend, Tharn, “a tenured professor of post-Convergence galactic economics” as well as a “smuggler, thief, and bank-hacker,” set out to unravel the mystery of the abandoned space ship—and to discover the origins of the mummified corpse that had been its passenger… A rollicking space opera in the tradition of E. E. “Doc” Smith, “Les Chimères” will leave you wishing the author had chosen to write a full novel instead of only a novelet.