The Magazine Of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Sep/Oct 2023, Volume 145 #769 (magazine review).

Maybe it’s the time of year that makes editors turn towards horror, the creepy and the macabre. Certainly, this issue of MF&SF has a high proportion of stories that would fit that description.

‘Shining Shores’ by Max Firehammer starts innocently enough with Lissa going to the seaside town to check on a friend whose mother is concerned that he isn’t answering his phone. What she discovers is an awakened Water God is possessing and killing inhabitants. It has many of the ingredients of a classic horror story.

‘Teatro Anatomico’ by Getty Hesse is set in a fantasy world where during the dark winter months, the dead do not die. As entertainment, a breathing corpse is dissected in front of an audience. It has a gruesome element as’ after the dissection, the doctor’s apprentice returns to the theatre and begins to reassemble the corpse.

The horror on ‘Night Haul’ by Andrew Crowley is set in a future where road haulage is on the way out. Anteater is driving an unspecified load at night through the darkest part of the countryside that has no satellite signal. The outdated CB in his cab does work and he makes contact with another trucker, someone who for good reason does not want Anteater’s load getting through because he knows what the horror is in the back of the trailer.

‘Sugar Steak’ by Jenny Kiefer is a different kind of horror. The narrator is taken for a meal on a first date to a restaurant where they serve Sugar Steak. Afterwards, she finds strange things happening in her mouth, teeth falling out and wires protruding from her gums. While her dentist claims there is nothing wrong, she knows that she is descending into nightmare.

For the narrator in the flash fiction piece ‘To Pluck A Twisted String’ by Anne Leonard, the nightmare is trying to find out why her son has been imprisoned.

Not all the stories in this issue are horrific, there is SF and fantasy here, too. Christopher Mark Rose’s novelette, ‘Three Sisters Syzygy’, is surreal SF. Syzygy is when three or more astronomical bodies line up. NASA has sent astronaut Shyale Rogers to observe the conjunction of sun, Earth and Moon at close quarters. Something strange happens as the moment approaches. She suddenly finds that there are three moons aligning and that the spacecraft is manned by three sisters. Told from the differing points of view of the sisters, they visit the three moons, two of which are surreal in themselves. The suggestion is that more is in syzygy than the three celestial bodies.

Another SF story is ‘Upstairs’ by Tessa Yang. Sadie, Eileen and their son, Cal, win a housing lottery which means that they can move out of the polluted, crowded Lower Michy to the elevated, clean new development. Sadie knows that the lottery is rigged because the company that has built the new town of Upper Michy value Eileen’s skills. All of them have to grow into their new lives and learn to leave the past behind.

While this story dwells on the issues of making a new start, ‘On The Matter Of Homo Sapiens’ by Kel Coleman, translates some of our current fears of AI. This is set in a future populated by sentient robots and mankind is extinct. A group of the robots are gathering data, in a kind of treasure hunt looking for clues that might lead them to resurrect the human species.

One of the most original stories in this issue is ‘Sort Code’ by Chris Barnham. After a crash, two people who haven’t met before the accident find themselves in different times and places. It is though some process is trying to sort them and to find out where they belong.

‘What We Found In The Forest’ by Phoebe Wood is a rite of passage fantasy. Two girls are sent into the forest where they are expected to find themselves and become women. Instead, they find each other. This is flash fiction but it is also poetic.

This issue contains other stories, as well as the usual book and film reviews. The science article from Jerry Oltion explains that old piece of tech called a slide rule, a staple for space exploration before calculators and computers became ubiquitous. As usual, there is something here to suit most tastes.

Pauline Morgan

November 2023

(pub: Spilogale Inc. 260 page A5 magazine. Price: $10.99 (US), $11.99 (CAN). ISSN: 1095-8258)

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