I don’t actually read many sf magazines. I am a subscriber to Interzone (which arrived yesterday) and occasionally pick up F&SF or Asimov’s or Analog if I see them in the bookshop (rare) and have the impulse. Finding time to get though them is difficult, and I tend to leave my short stories reading to a) the Nebula nominees (some of which are usually pretty dire), b) the Hugo nominees (fewer of which are usually dire) and c) the various Year’s Best compilations (which often seem to make better selections than the awards processes).

posted about Gordon Van Gelder’s offer of a free copy of the next issue of Fantasy and Science Fiction a couple of weeks ago – free, in return for a commitment to blog about it. (Incidentally I thought Van Gelder’s instructions were pretty clear – “email me, I send you the magazine, you blog about it” – and it is a bit depressing how many people misinterpreted the instructions). But I digress.

I don’t think I would have necessarily bought this issue on impulse if I had seen it in the shop. The cover art – an imagined landscape of one of the moons of Saturn – is striking, but I only really feel familiar with one of the six authors listed, Terry Bisson, and while sometimes I like his writing, sometimes I don’t. However I’m glad to have read it. As well as eight (not six) stories, it also includes Charles De Lint’s short reviews of three new books, James Sallis’ (entirely right-minded) rave review of Ian McDonald’s River of Gods, and a rambling, poorly written film column by Kathi Maio that turns out to be about Nanny McPhee while making some fair points about nannies on page and screen.There are also four one-frame cartoons, of which the only one worth reporting here has the tag line, “My client is a zombie, Mr. Davis. He’s not intimidated by threats of mind-numbing protracted litigation.” As I recall, both Asimov’s and Analog tend to have more non-fiction material, and it is usually better.

The quality of the fiction is, however, pretty good – up to the average for the Hugo nominees in the shorter categories, I would say, which makes me wonder what is wrong with the system. In brief, my thoughts on each story:

• R Garcia y Robertson’s “Kansas, She Says, Is the Name of the Star” is a story of interplanetary sex slave traders, loosely structured around the plot of The Wizard of Oz
• Steven Popkes’ “Holding Pattern” is a nearer-future story of international crime and cloning, which didn’t quite hold together for me.
• Terry Bisson’s “Billy and the Unicorn” packs a nice amount of lyrical weirdness into only five pages.
• I also liked Matthew Hughes’ “The Meaning of Luff”, which has some Resnick-style criminals in a decadent far-future Earth setting, and a wonderful gizmo called the “salience indicator”, which reveals your true purpose in life and therefore causes chaos and dismay to those who use it.
• The longest story in the magazine is “The Lineaments of Gratified Desire”, by Ysabeau S. Wilce, a lushly described story of dynastic misbehaviour in a magical city which seems to include roughly equal meaasures of Byzantium, Regency London, and the sinister fantasy environment of your choice. I see this is the second story in this setting; I hope there will be more – Ms Wilce’s control of world-building from such disparate elements is impressive.
• Robert Onopa’s “Republic” tells an old story of the astronauts who go to explore a planet and are fundamentally changed by it, with a couple of new riffs; done well enough but not spectacular.
• I had the oddest feeling of deja lu with Jerry Seeger’s “Memory of a Thing that Never Was”, an obliquely told story of two veterans of a hidden war. Some great scenes, assembled out of sequence to good effect, but (even though it is such a short story) I felt he had run out of steam by the end.
• Heather Lindsley’s “Just Do It” is a near-future tale of injectable mind-control: this dystopic situation is told for laughs, and it very nearly works – and probably will work for people who are bigger fans of, say, Connie Willis than I am. (For whatever reason, she and Seeger are not named on the front cover.)