The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, October 1983. Cover by Thomas Kidd

“Downtown,” a short story by Thomas M. Disch

First published in F&SF, October 1983
Read the story in the original magazine here

A waitress notices a very strange customer: a woman who orders the same pancakes and wears the same pantsuit every day. She never gets to know the enigmatic customer, until one day, the stranger appears to collapse and die in her booth. The waitress flees from the restaurant, not wanting to deal with the situation. She enters a department store, where she is summoned to two staff-only upper floors, where she discovers a strange alternate world. The woman in the green pantsuit is there, alive and much younger and more communicative. The story takes place against a backdrop of urban decay and declining business activity in midtown St. Paul, and presents an eerily surreal, but still compellingly readable riddle.

Rating **** (Excellent)

[Click the images for the Best versions.]

“Please Stand By,” a short story by Ron Goulart

First published in F&SF, January 1962
Read the story in the original magazine here

Max is an artist with an interest in the occult, and his friend, Dan, turns to him for help with an alarming problem: Dan turns into an elephant for twenty-four hours on national holidays. It turns out that an amateur magician cast a spell on Dan at a party as an ill-judged lark. But despite the alarming nature of the situation, Dan is advised to be grateful for his were-elephant status, because he may be able to help the woman he loves, Anne, when she needs him. And that’s exactly how it turns out! This one is mildly amusing fluff, but for my money it could have been shorter and less complicated.

Rating **+ to *** (Average to Good)

The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, March 1878. Cover by Chesley Bonestell 

“The Persistence of Vision” by John Varley

First published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, March 1978
It’s available in this Special All-Star Issue

A near future tale in which a major nuclear accident has led to a greatly increased number of children born deaf and blind. A number of them form a self-sufficient community, seen through the eyes of a neo-hippie narrator who comes across them in his wanderings and becomes part, and in some ways not quite part, of their community. In parts moving, and an affecting and plausible depiction of a truly different, yet not utterly far fetched, type of human society.

Rating **** (Excellent)

“The Manor of Roses,” a novella by Thomas Burnett Swann

First published in F&SF, November 1966
Read the story in the original magazine here

Medieval bildungsroman in which the bookish, pallid John, aged twelve, and the much more brawny Stephen, a villein on John’s father’s estate who’s a bit older, decide to run away from home and go on a crusade all on their own. On the way they are joined by a mysterious girl who claims not to remember her own name. They call her Ruth. On the way to London they have a close call in the forest, when they are attacked by mandrakes (scary root creatures), but Ruth saves their lives by sacrificing her golden crucifix. On their further journey, they discover the Manor of Roses, where they are welcomed by Lady Mary, who has lost both her husband and son. Mary suspects that Ruth is in fact a mandrake, and the mystery deepens.

Gardner Dozois called this Swann’s masterpiece, and the storytelling is indeed absorbing, although my immersion in the story never quite reached fever pitch, and it took several days to complete.

Rating **** (Excellent)

The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, October 1983. Cover by Thomas Kidd

“Another Orphan,” a novelette by John Kessel

First published in F&SF, September 1982
Read the story in the original magazine here

A Chicago commodities broker, Fallon, wakes up to find himself a crew member aboard the Pequod, the whaling vessel featured in Melville’s Moby Dick. All the other characters in the book are there as well, with the notable exception of Ishmael, the narrator in the novel. Fallon struggles with the reality of his situation, especially after a brief episode back in 20th century Chicago. When he finds himself on the Pequod once again (there is no suggestion whatsoever how this happens), he toys with the idea of a mutiny, since he knows how things turn out in the novel if Ahab is allowed to pursue his obsession.

I enjoyed the story a lot, partly because I was still reading Moby Dick in small increments at the time of this reading (which I think was my second, although there is no record of my first reading).

Rating **** (Excellent)

The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, November 1953. Cover by Mel Hunter

“The Silken-Swift,” a short story by Theodore Sturgeon

First published in the collection E Pluribus Unicorn and later the same year in F&SF, November 1953
Read the story in the original magazine here

A high fantasy love triangle in which a heartless hussy called Rita, daughter of a squire, whips a hunky young guy from the local community, Del, into a frenzy of desire, only to dump him down the steps of her manor, while boasting that no man will ever “touch” her. Bruised, battered and temporarily blinded by Rita’s potions, he stumbles into Barbara, a local lass who lives in seclusion in the woods. Barbara has long had a crush on Del and tries to help him, but he mistakes her for his tormentor and rapes her in revenge. This episode is so obliquely stated, that I wasn’t completely sure what had happened, but the implication is fairly clear. Only when the silken-swift — a unicorn — enters the picture, is the twisted love triangle resolved. But there is a price to be paid for happiness.

The story put me in mind of Harlan Ellison’s “On the Downhill Side”, which may well owe a debt to this story. Or perhaps that’s just because it’s also a unicorn story.

Rating ***+ (Very Good)

The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, July 1977. Cover by Frank Kelly Freas

“Jeffty is Five,” a short story by Harlan Ellison

First published in F&SF, July 1977
You can borrow a copy here

Harlan Ellison’s much loved story is about a little boy who remains five years old while his friend, Donny, the narrator, and the rest of the world, age normally. It gets better — for Jeffty lives in a sort of time bubble in which he can listen to exciting Old Time Radio shows (mysteriously updated with contemporary allusions). But Jeffty’s world is fragile, as we soon find out when Donny draws him out too far beyond it.

It’s an unabashed exercise in nostalgia and a yearning for what all of us imagine to have been simpler and better times. Still, on a first reading the story seemed to lack some of the emotional punch which so many of Ellison’s best works packed. Or so it seemed to this reader, anyway, but on a second reading the intended impact came through much more clearly, so I guess a **** is in order.

The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, May 1972. Cover by David Hardy

“Sooner or Later or Never Never,” a novelette by Gary Jennings

First published in F&SF, May 1972
Read the story in the original magazine here

Crispin Mobey, a Southern Primitive Protestant missionary, reports to his erstwhile mentor at the seminary. His mission? To convert the Anula tribe in the Australian Outback to his particular blend of Christianity. In a nutshell, everything goes wrong, with frequently hilarious results.

He learns an Outback language with great difficulty (his teacher is German), and the millions and millions of glass beads he buys and transports to the Northern Territory at great cost, are of no interest to the Anula whatsoever. Worst of all, he undergoes circumcision (to “fit in”), only to discover that the tribe has abandoned the custom!

And so it goes on. The story is well done, and open to interpretations of white arrogance and such-like, and as I say, it’s pretty funny in many places, but somehow overtly humorous SF or fantasy just doesn’t particularly impact me as a reader.

Still, I rate it ***+ (Very Good)

The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, August 1875. Cover by David Hardy

“San Diego Lightfoot Sue,” a novelette by Tom Reamy

First published in F&SF, August 1975
The story can still be read in the original magazine here

After the death of his mother, John Lee Peacock (age 15), takes a bus from Miller’s Corners, Kansas, and migrates to L.A. There, he naïvely walks into a gay pick-up joint and meets a delightful pair of queens, who offer him a place to stay (with no strings attached). Their neighbour is the title character, and so begins Johnny’s doomed affair with a woman 30 years his senior. But Sue has a magic spell or two lying around somewhere, and she thinks there may be a way for them to become the same age.

The story is quite beautifully written, and utterly engrossing all the way through, and yet, I enjoyed it somewhat less than on my first, fondly remembered reading (which must be soon after my edition of Nebula Award Stories 11 came out in 1978), probably because of the downbeat ending, and especially because of the unnecessarily seedy course of Johnny’s further life. None of the action is set in San Diego, by the way. Sue is so nicknamed because she once lived there and makes one or two offstage return visits.

Still, a fine story.

Rating **** (Excellent)

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Piet Nel’s last article for us was a look at the Asimov’s Science Fiction 2024 Readers Poll. He is an administrator for Best Science Fiction and Fantasy Short Fiction Group on Facebook, where these reviews first appeared. He lives in South Africa.