Fantasy & Science Fiction, Winter 2024
“What Kills the Stars” by Alex Bisker
“The Ndayaan Sea” by Moustapha Mbacké Diop
“The Icy Wasteland at Her Feet” by Deborah L. Davitt.
“Guilt Can Wilt the Sweetest Flower” by Veronica G. Henry
“Mackson’s Mardi Gras Moon Race” by David DeGraff
“The Wizzzer” by Scott Nicolay
“Burned Like Coal” by T. R. Napper
“The Diamond Factory” by Phoebe Barton
“The Body-Part Woman” by Bonnie Elizabeth
“How to Care for Your Domestic God” by Clara Madrigano
“Big Trouble in Sector C” by Robert Friedman and Barry N. Malzberg
“All Our Better Angels” by Jack Neel Waddell
“Puzzle Pieces” by Jennifer R. Povey
“Zariel: Parable of a Gifted Black Child” by Denzel Xavier Scott
“The Wounded King” by J. A. Prentice
“The Interspatial Accessibility Compact’s Guidelines for Cross-Cultural Engagement” by Diane Kuttler
“Do Not Hasten to Bid Me Adieu” by Will McMahon
Reviewed by Victoria Silverwolf
Unforeseen circumstances delayed the appearance of the magazine, which is why it is known as the Winter 2024 issue instead of the January/February 2024 issue. The reader’s patience is rewarded with seventeen new works of imaginative fiction. With only one novelette of modest length, the issue definitely emphasizes short fiction. Most of the authors are new to the magazine.
The narrator of “What Kills the Stars” by Alex Bisker interviews a physicist, eventually learning the unexpected fate of the universe. The revelation causes her to look back on her marriage and divorce.
The speculative content of this story serves mostly as an excuse for the narrator’s introspection. As such, it is not surprising that the characters are more interesting than the minimal plot.
“The Ndayaan Sea” by Senegalese writer Moustapha Mbacké Diop features a woman who journeys to a supernatural realm to reclaim the magic stolen from her by her stepsister. The quest involves many strange encounters and dangerous entities.
Based on Senegalese folklore, this story offers an exotic flavor to those from other cultures. The background is intriguing and often surrealistic. Fans of horror fiction, dark fantasy, and heroic fantasy will best appreciate it, even if some aspects of the tale may confuse non-African readers.
The protagonist of “The Icy Wasteland at Her Feet” by Deborah L. Davitt is the only survivor of a mission to Enceladus, a moon of Saturn. She struggles to survive while recalling the fate of her companions.
The author does a fine job of depicting the setting and the main character’s desperation. The reason she is the only one left alive involves multiple human failures; so many that the resulting disasters are melodramatic and strain credibility.
In “Guilt Can Wilt the Sweetest Flower” by Veronica G. Henry, a psychologically damaged veteran of the Vietnam War barely hangs on to a low-level job as a library custodian. Replacement of the building’s heating system means the loss of his employment. A meeting with a homeless woman who is much more than she seems to be offers the possibility of a better life.
The non-speculative aspects of this story are much more powerful and realistic than its fantasy premise. Readers are sure to empathize with the protagonist, even if they find his experiences with the mysterious woman hard to accept.
The title of “Mackson’s Mardi Gras Moon Race” by David DeGraff refers to a grueling journey from one pole of the Moon to the other that requires several days. The narrator plans to win the race by taking a different path than the other contestants, offering the chance to escape his poorly paid job and the cramped room he shares with his lover. Besides the potentially deadly hazards of the untested route, he has to face cutthroat competition from a rival racer and a dangerous solar flare.
The author creates a great deal of suspense and a highly believable portrait of a gritty, realistic Moon colony. The outcome of the race is both unexpected and fully satisfying.
In “The Wizzzer” by Scott Nicolay, a boy claims that the toy named in the title ate his mother and brother. He convinces a group of other children to carry weapons to the pit (dug for an intended swimming pool) where it resides; but that might not be the only danger they face.
This is a subtle horror story, with an open-ended conclusion that forces the reader to imagine what happens next. The presence of a strange child named Fauve (French for wild animal, among other meanings) adds to the mystery. The author creates an effectively eerie mood, but some readers may be left with unanswered questions.
“Burned Like Coal” by T. R. Napper deals with a team consisting of two women and a portable artificial intelligence infiltrating a polluting power plant in order to destroy it. The narrator believes that this act of sabotage will not take any human lives, but her companion is more ruthless. Things go badly wrong from the start, and the narrator has to rely on the AI to complete the mission.
This is a grim, violent story, featuring characters with whom it is difficult to sympathize. (The narrator’s reluctance to kill people is the only reason she is the “good” member of the team.) The AI has the personality of a stereotypical Australian man of the 1980s, which adds an odd touch of whimsical humor to an otherwise deadly serious story.
In “The Diamond Factory” by Phoebe Barton, the protagonist assists in the final inspection of an abandoned space station near Saturn. The station had a repressive government from which she escaped. To her surprise, there is a survivor still inside the station; but is she a victim of the former government or one of their agents?
The main character, having been abused by the government, is understandably angry and bitter. Readers may differ in whether this justifies her action at the end. In any case, this is a hard-hitting tale that raises questions about justice and revenge.
The narrator of “The Body-Part Woman” by Bonnie Elizabeth, as the title implies, deals in many different parts of human bodies. (Although this may sound like the kind of organ transplants found both in real life and science fiction, the story is pure fantasy.) A customer deals with her in a violent way, taking what he wants by force. Later, she gives him what he truly needs.
Sensitive readers should be warned that the story contains explicit violence, as well as a great deal of physical suffering on the part of the narrator. In other ways, it resembles the familiar kind of fantasy tales dealing with strange little shops. Some readers may wonder if the conclusion is fully satisfactory, given the narrator’s extreme agony.
“How to Care for Your Domestic God” by Clara Madrigano is the magazine’s only novelette. Newlyweds move into a house containing an entity that demands to be fed blood and raw flesh. It also uses its powers to prevent them from living elsewhere. When the woman becomes pregnant, it even threatens to take the baby.
This synopsis makes the work sound like a horror story, and there are some aspects of the plot that resemble dark fantasy. For the most part, however, the mood is lighter, although not openly comic. The entity can be reasoned with to some extent, even if it seems stubborn and frightening at times. Like many stories in this issue, the rich characterization is more enjoyable than the plot.
In “Big Trouble in Sector C” by Robert Friedman and Barry N. Malzberg, a man’s body remains in a paralyzed state while a copy of his consciousness enters cyberspace. His mission is to find and destroy destructive programs. In cyberspace, his duplicate mind takes the form of a traditional hardboiled detective of the 1940s, but the setting is a simulation of New York City in the 1970s. The private eye faces an enemy more dangerous than he suspects, threatening the man in the real world.
Much of this will seem familiar, and even a little old-fashioned, to readers familiar with cyberpunk fiction. The detective story part of the plot also features traditional elements, such as a femme fatale. Although not very original, the work reads smoothly, indicating that the two authors work well together.
The narrator of “All Our Better Angels” by Jack Neel Waddell uses time travel to visit herself as a young woman. She tries to convince her younger self to adopt an even younger version from an abusive foster home.
Without revealing much else about the plot, I can say that it will inevitably remind one of Robert A. Heinlein’s famous 1959 story “‘—All You Zombies—‘” (or the 2014 film Predestination, which was a faithful adaptation.) Heinlein is even mentioned in the text, along with other science fiction writers. Although not quite as cleverly plotted as its predecessor, the present work has great emotional power.
“Puzzle Pieces” by Jennifer R. Povey features a neurodivergent child who is placed into virtual reality in an attempt to cure her. She experiences it as torture, and learns how to simulate the behavior others want from her in order to escape the torment.
The story takes place in a spacefaring future society in which the child is more valued as the heir to a business conglomerate than as an individual. This brief work is obviously intended as a protest against those who would force others to conform. The theme is a worthy one, but some may find the handling of it heavy-handed.
“Zariel: Parable of a Gifted Black Child” by Denzel Xavier Scott takes place at a time when a giant object approaches Earth, apparently threatening destruction. The child named in the title has a connection to the thing, evidenced by the fact that they both produce the same glowing rainbow colors. The mother faces the possibility of losing her child to the object in order to make the world a better place.
The author is a poet, and the story is full of metaphoric language; so much so that at times it is difficult to follow the writer’s intent. In addition to the basic plot overly simplified above, the text deals to a great extent with the violence suffered by African-Americans. The combination of a serious social issue with a genuinely bizarre plot and poetic language makes for highly original, if obscure, reading.
In “The Wounded King” by J. A. Prentice, two knights and a servant approach a ruined castle, where the monarch mentioned in the title has lived in exile for many years. The king believes he was unjustly deposed by his daughter, now dead, and enlists the aid of an evil entity in an attempt to restore him to the throne. The struggle between the king and the visitors reaches a climax when the servant reveals her true identity.
The story is firmly in the tradition of medieval fantasy, with a nod to the Arthurian legend of the Fisher King. Readers may be able to predict who the servant really is, and be otherwise unsurprised by the plot.
In “The Interspatial Accessibility Compact’s Guidelines for Cross-Cultural Engagement” by Diane Kuttler, an alien florist helps a human who is in love with a different kind of alien. This brief comedy is quite silly, but inoffensive.
Set during the Great Depression, “Do Not Hasten to Bid Me Adieu” by Will McMahon features a man who receives messages from a remote descendant living in a galactic empire in the far future. She is about to enter into an unwanted marriage, in order to bring peace to the galaxy. The man has painful memories to deal with. They offer each other comfort in their letters across time and space.
This is a sentimental tale, with characters who face the future bravely despite their suffering. The galactic empire depicted in the story is straight out of old pulp science fiction, perhaps a reflection of the fact that the story takes place in the 1930s. Even so, readers are likely to find it a cliché, and much less believable than references to FDR and the Spanish Civil War.
Victoria Silverwolf ate leftovers last night.