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beccaelizabethI am very behind in reading my magazine subscriptions.
This issue was sort of October spooky, and quite a lot of bits are not to my taste.
I didn't follow the mathy bits of 3-adica (by Greg Egan) so the ending didn't feel like payoff, just a puzzle box, but the setup was interesting. Like someone watched The Matrix and decided it was being boring. A system running many different games has the dreamers wake up, but the dreamers are computer programs made on the cheap by, if I followed it, mix and matching human scans. Only some of them realise their own nature and set out to do something about it, free themselves. The story starts in a horror game and goes to a mathy game, and neither particularly grabbed me, but it was doing interesting stuff.
The Secret City (Rick Wilber), as the last story in the issue, ended up being why I spent most of the afternoon staring at the ceiling making bits of story in my head. Because I am Done with alternate histories involving nazis. I just... I am done. No, thanks.
There was a whole section on the futility of building a wall, and lots of running around having adventures, and some baseball.
But as a series I am really quite bored, because alternate nazis, no.
Also I have no idea what is going on with his memories, which only sometimes exist, and at this point have decided I don't care.
Not for me.
The Huntsman and the Beast, Carrie Vaughn
Gender swapped Beauty and the Beast. Competent, interesting beast.
Denali, Robert Reed
... I don't know, didn't grab me.
The Wrong Refrigerator, Jean Marie Ward
Time travel story where a woman's ordinary married life problems get tangled with a time travel element that gives her a way out at the end.
... it's nice that she has a way out and gets those years back, but it isn't exactly satisfying when she just runs away, and I've read/written enough time travel and/or memory loss stories to feel like running the same years again without remembering them is just going to get really depressing. But hey, she chooses a different guy this time, so you never know...
I don't know, my objection is basically this isn't how I would write it.
I haven't read it written this way either, exploring a past through things you find in the fridge. Good stuff I feel my lit teachers would have liked, and interesting enough SF elements.
I think I liked this best out of the issue.
The Witch of Osborne Park, Stephanie Feldman
Not my sort of thing and not sure how to describe it.
RUR-8? Suzanne Palmer
Feels like fanfic I haven't read the canon for. Not bad, just feel like I don't get it.
The Grays of Cestus V, Erin Roberts
Very artistic, with the colors and all, but 'artist gets very depressed in mining colony, tries to end the world' is a bit more of a downer ending than I am in the mood for.
Definitely makes a mood and some vivid pictures. Makes you think of monochromes a whole new way.
The Callisto Stakes, Doug C Souza
Dangerous moon race from the point of view of the nanites tasked with keeping the driver alive.
Now this one has an up ending. Like, trigger warnings for attempted suicide and child abuse, but the ending has hope.
Survivors, Sheila Finch
Sort of a ghost story, sort of a time travel thing, about PTSD. TW for suicide and violence and war.
I am not the target audience.
In the Sharing Place, David Erik Nelson
Suicide is a recurring theme in this issue, here triggered by a song.
Also, big nope, too creepy, do not want.
Like, it does what it sets out to do in the creepy mood, but, no thank you.
... though it occurs to me this would be much, much, nastier as an audio...
Best Served Slow, Leah Cypess
Now this one I liked. Vivid characters, interesting mix of the domestic and the magical. How you get hope into a story about a ghost compelled to take vengeance for their own murder, told from the ghosts point of view... well this one somehow manages it. Good trick.
The sort of dark tone isn't where I want to go with stories, but, I am happy to have read like half a dozen of these, including novelettes, so that's probably most by length.
This issue was sort of October spooky, and quite a lot of bits are not to my taste.
I didn't follow the mathy bits of 3-adica (by Greg Egan) so the ending didn't feel like payoff, just a puzzle box, but the setup was interesting. Like someone watched The Matrix and decided it was being boring. A system running many different games has the dreamers wake up, but the dreamers are computer programs made on the cheap by, if I followed it, mix and matching human scans. Only some of them realise their own nature and set out to do something about it, free themselves. The story starts in a horror game and goes to a mathy game, and neither particularly grabbed me, but it was doing interesting stuff.
The Secret City (Rick Wilber), as the last story in the issue, ended up being why I spent most of the afternoon staring at the ceiling making bits of story in my head. Because I am Done with alternate histories involving nazis. I just... I am done. No, thanks.
There was a whole section on the futility of building a wall, and lots of running around having adventures, and some baseball.
But as a series I am really quite bored, because alternate nazis, no.
Also I have no idea what is going on with his memories, which only sometimes exist, and at this point have decided I don't care.
Not for me.
The Huntsman and the Beast, Carrie Vaughn
Gender swapped Beauty and the Beast. Competent, interesting beast.
Denali, Robert Reed
... I don't know, didn't grab me.
The Wrong Refrigerator, Jean Marie Ward
Time travel story where a woman's ordinary married life problems get tangled with a time travel element that gives her a way out at the end.
... it's nice that she has a way out and gets those years back, but it isn't exactly satisfying when she just runs away, and I've read/written enough time travel and/or memory loss stories to feel like running the same years again without remembering them is just going to get really depressing. But hey, she chooses a different guy this time, so you never know...
I don't know, my objection is basically this isn't how I would write it.
I haven't read it written this way either, exploring a past through things you find in the fridge. Good stuff I feel my lit teachers would have liked, and interesting enough SF elements.
I think I liked this best out of the issue.
The Witch of Osborne Park, Stephanie Feldman
Not my sort of thing and not sure how to describe it.
RUR-8? Suzanne Palmer
Feels like fanfic I haven't read the canon for. Not bad, just feel like I don't get it.
The Grays of Cestus V, Erin Roberts
Very artistic, with the colors and all, but 'artist gets very depressed in mining colony, tries to end the world' is a bit more of a downer ending than I am in the mood for.
Definitely makes a mood and some vivid pictures. Makes you think of monochromes a whole new way.
The Callisto Stakes, Doug C Souza
Dangerous moon race from the point of view of the nanites tasked with keeping the driver alive.
Now this one has an up ending. Like, trigger warnings for attempted suicide and child abuse, but the ending has hope.
Survivors, Sheila Finch
Sort of a ghost story, sort of a time travel thing, about PTSD. TW for suicide and violence and war.
I am not the target audience.
In the Sharing Place, David Erik Nelson
Suicide is a recurring theme in this issue, here triggered by a song.
Also, big nope, too creepy, do not want.
Like, it does what it sets out to do in the creepy mood, but, no thank you.
... though it occurs to me this would be much, much, nastier as an audio...
Best Served Slow, Leah Cypess
Now this one I liked. Vivid characters, interesting mix of the domestic and the magical. How you get hope into a story about a ghost compelled to take vengeance for their own murder, told from the ghosts point of view... well this one somehow manages it. Good trick.
The sort of dark tone isn't where I want to go with stories, but, I am happy to have read like half a dozen of these, including novelettes, so that's probably most by length.