The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, August 2008

Opening the August 2008 F&SF is “Childrun” by Marc Laidlaw in which bard Gorlen Vizenfirthe comes to the eponymous town where all the children have mysteriously vanished, leaving only a fat, monstrous child reminiscent of the huge baby Boh in Spirited Away. This last child is coddled by the villagers and by the schoolteacher, Ansylla, who serves as Gorlen’s guide into the town. But as there is more to Gorlen that meets the eye, so there is more to Childrun…

The setting is a standard medieval fantasy, but I liked the growing sense of creepiness that choked Childrun and Gorlen’s growing fear as he realises exactly what he has been caught in. The ending is wondefully done-save for the coda which purports to explain the title’s meaning and which feels too lighthearted compared with the intense darkness that comes before.

“The Political Prisoner” by Charles Coleman Finlay is a sequel to “The Political Officer,” which was published in 2002 in F&SF. Set on a planet where a rebellion turned the government from religious to secular, “The Political Prisoner” features Max Nicodemes, a political officer who works for the Department of Political Education, which is in charge of propaganda. Max’s boss, Mallove, has political ambitions of his own-especially now that Drozhin, the man who spearheaded the rebellion, reportedly lies dying. When purges shake the city, Max finds himself stranded in their midst.

This is the longest story of the issue, but it certainly doesn’t feel like it. Finlay’s fast-paced narrative makes the pages fly by, and Max’s ordeal is believably chilling, as are the politics underpinning the purges. When the story moves into the reclamation camps, where political prisoners work on terraforming the arid environment, it takes on echoes of similar camps in the 20th Century (gulags, but also penal labour camps such as the Japanese ones in WWII), and thus a special relevance-proving, sadly, that even in space and in the far future, mankind’s ability to inflict pain on one another is boundless. Recommended.

In “An Open Letter to Earth” by Scott Dalrymple, those aliens out there have had enough. They wish to set the record straight on alien abductions and to protest the way they are portrayed in the media-which, they feel, fails to reflect the diversity of all the alien species within the universe.

This is a very short piece, but it’s also very funny. It takes on most of the stereotypes associated with aliens and turns them inside out. Its earnest tone is just a hoot. Recommended.

In “Another Perfect Day” by Steven Popkes, Sam Prokofiev is about to start his day by cleaning his pistol, as he does on every first day of the month, when a disheveled time-traveller appears in his garden. He insists that Sam is the great composer Sergei Prokofiev, and that he is here to prevent Sam from committing suicide. Except, of course, that Sam, despite being a musician like his namesake, has never had such intentions, and furthermore, that his world seems to be slightly off from what the time-traveller expected…

This was a smooth read, but its predictability prevented me from fully enjoying it. It has nothing new to say about the subject of time travel or alternate universes, and I guessed the ending as soon as the time-traveller appeared in Sam’s garden. It’s a well-written story, but not a memorable one.

In “Bounty” by Rand B. Lee, Albert, Binny, Drew, and Ralph have been hunting a “perv” for several days, and now they have finally caught up with him.

This is a brutal story, and I can’t say I really enjoyed it. The shock, of course, comes from realising what the “pervs” really are and why they are being hunted; and even though the future depicted has been done before, the deliberate, cold-blooded nastiness of it is sure to stay with you for a long time. Which, I guess, is a way of saying that it works very well, no matter how unpleasant the reading experience may be.

In “‘But Wait! There’s More!’” by Richard Mueller, Cullin McSherry is an unambitious scriptwriter down on his luck who gets hired by Howard Beale for the purpose of writing infomercials. Cullin hates the idea of this job, but the pay offered is so much that he cannot resist temptation. As it turns out, Beale’s informecial isn’t going to be about selling jewelry or cars but about buying human souls. Cullin’s fellow employee, Erica, is a former Catholic, and as the days go by, she finds it harder and harder to stay with the company.

I loved the premise of this, and the lawsuit over whether buying souls is possible was very clever. However, as the story went on, I found myself bothered by the idea that so many people would be willing to sell their souls for so low a price. Also, I wasn’t quite convinced by Erica’s actions. The ending works, but what happens in the middle didn’t quite convince me either.