The mid-August Fantasy Magazine Rack
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Looks like Fletcher has been working a lot harder than me in the back half of the month — I thought I was doing pretty well by covering three August magazines (Asimov’s, Clarkesworld, and The Dark), but he’s managed detailed reviews of no less than six: Cirsova, GrimDark, Swords and Sorcery, Lackington’s, Weirdbook, and the newcomer, Red Sun. Here’s Flecher:
It turns out there were lots and lots of really good horror and science fiction short stories published this summer… In its short life, Collins has made GdM a consistently exciting publication, and GdM #8‘s two sci-fi stories are not bad at all. The first, “Viva Longevicus” by Brandon Daubs, is about genetically engineered pets going very, very wrong. It’s told by a colonel in the U.S.S. AeroCorps sent to investigate an infestation on a colonial world. A monster hunt on an alien world just isn’t the most original plot, but if it’s told with verve and intensity (and just the right amount of crazy)… “Burying the Coin” by Setsu Uzumé is about a sky-pirate’s sidekick getting her own ship at her boss’ expense. Nothing extraordinary but well done, decent tension, some real depth of characters, and an ending with real weight.
Finally, we come to newcomer Red Sun Magazine… I really like the first story, “The Orion Incident,” by David W. Amendola. It’s a paranoid excursion into the hull of a ghost starship. Believed lost several years ago, when it makes a sudden reappearance and looks to be on a collision course with Earth, its lone survivor is sent with an exploration team to see what’s going on. Suffice it to say, things goes less well than hoped for. The other story that grabbed me was Brenda Kezar’s “Star Jelly.” We already know from the movies that one blob from outer space is bad. This story explores, in gory detail, what would happen if a whole bunch of blobs fell at once.
Read Part One of Fletcher’s Summer Short Story Roundup here and Part Two here.
I had only one movie on my schedule for Monday, July 18, but thanks to the good offices of the people at the Fantasia Film Festival and at Oscilloscope Laboratories, I ended up able to catch another film first. The Love Witch was a movie that I’d been unable to watch in its theatrical showing at Fantasia due to a scheduling conflict. After seeing it Monday, I’d go on to the Hall Theatre for The Wailing (Goksung), a two-and-a-half hour Korean horror film. The movies made for an odd contrast. In both cases I greatly appreciated them but came away fairly sure I wasn’t part of their primary audience. But movies play to whoever sees them, and perhaps writing about these films will bring them to the attention of people with better perspectives than my own.
