Locus, March 2013 Read online

  Time Out of Joint, Philip K. Dick (Brilliance Audio, $14.99, 7 CDs, 7 hours: 34 minutes, 978-1-4558-1458-9) Unabridged audio recording of Time Out of Joint read by Jeff Cummings.

  Vulcan’s Hammer, Philip K. Dick (Brilliance Audio, $14.99, 5 CDs, 5 hours: 48 minutes, 978-1-4558-1460-2) Unabridged audio recording of Vulcan’s Hammer read by Mel Foster.

  Dark and Stormy Knights, P.N. Elrod, ed. (Brilliance Audio, $19.99, 9 CDs, 10 hours: 36 minutes, 978-1-4692-8040-0) Unabridged audio version of Dark and Stormy Knights read by Renee Raudman, et al.

  Forge of Darkness: The Kharkanas Trilogy: Book One, Steven Erikson (Brilliance Audio, $34.99, 27 CDs, 32 hours: 17 minutes, 978-1-4692-3042-9) Unabridged audio recording of Forge of Darkness: The Kharkanas Trilogy: Book One read by Daniel Philpott.

  Mona Lisa Overdrive, William Gibson (Brilliance Audio, $19.99, 9 CDs, 10 hours: 57 minutes, 978-1-4558-6159-0) Unabridged audio recording of Mona Lisa Overdrive read by Jonathan Davis.

  Edmond Hamilton Collection: City at World’s End; The Stars, My Brothers, Edmond Hamilton (Brilliance Audio: Speculative! $14.99, 7 CDs, 8 hours: 8 minutes, 978-1-4692-5953-6) Unabridged audio version of Edmond Hamilton Collection: City at World’s End; The Stars, My Brothers read by Jim Roberts.

  The Work of the Devil, Katherine Amt Hanna (Brilliance Audio, $9.99, 2 CDs, 2 hours: 11 minutes, 978-1-4692-5241-4) Unabridged audio recording of The Work of the Devil read by Nick Podehl.

  Death World, Harry Harrison (Brilliance Audio, $14.99, 5 CDs, 5 hours: 54 minutes, 978-1-4692-5949-9) Unabridged audio recording of Death World read by Jim Roberts.

  Death World 2: The Ethical Engineer, Harry Harrison (Brilliance Audio, $14.99, 4 CDs, 4 hours: 22 minutes, 978-1-4692-5950-5) Unabridged audio recording of Death World 2: The Ethical Engineer read by Jim Roberts.

  Planet of the Damned, Harry Harrison (Brilliance Audio, $14.99, 6 CDs, 6 hours: 20 minutes, 978-1-4692-5992-5) Unabridged audio recording of Planet of the Damned read by Jim Roberts.

  Beyond This Horizon, Robert A. Heinlein (Brilliance Audio, $19.99, 7 CDs, 7 hours: 47 minutes, 978-1-4692-8033-2) Unabridged audio version of Beyond This Horizon read by Peter Ganim.

  A Memory of Light, Robert Jordan & Brandon Sanderson (Macmillan Audio, $79.99, 33 CDs, 42 hours, 978-1-4272-1024-1) Unabridged audio recording of A Memory of Light read by Kate Reading & Michael Kramer.

  Steampunk Specs, Allan Kaster, ed. (AudioText, Inc., $36.99, 8 CDs, 8 hours: 30 minutes, 978-1884612-18-3) Unabridged audio recording of Steampunk Specs read by Tom Dheere, Vanessa Hart & Nancy Linari.

  The Angel’s Cut, Elizabeth Knox (Brilliance Audio, $29.99, 11 CDs, 12 hour: 56 minutes, 978-1-7431-1697-5) Unabridged audio recording of The Angel’s Cut read by Edwina Wren.

  The Telling, Ursula K. Le Guin (Brilliance Audio, $19.99, 6 CDs, 7 hours: 1 minute, 978-1-4692-8062-2) Unabridged audio recording of The Telling read by Gabra Zackman.

  Nightmare, Stephan Leather (Brilliance Audio, $19.99, 11 CDs, 12 hours: 33 minutes, 978-1-4558-6645-8) Unabridged audio recording of Nightmare read by Ralph Lister.

  Murray Leinster Collection: The Pirates of Ersatz; The Aliens; Operation Terror, Murray Leinster (Brilliance Audio, $14.99, 11 CDs, 12 hours: 52 minutes, 978-1-4692-5986-4) Unabridged audio version of Murray Leinster Collection: The Pirates of Ersatz; The Aliens; Operation Terror read by Jim Roberts & Ran Alan Ricard.

  The Call of Cthulhu and Other Stories, H.P. Lovecraft (Naxos Audiobooks, $28.98, 4 CDs, 4 hours: 23 minutes, 978-184-379-425-7) Unabridged audio recording of The Call of Cthulhu and Other Stories read by William Roberts.

  The Merchant of Dreams, Anne Lyle (Brilliance Audio, $19.99, 12 CDs, 14 hours: 17 minutes, 978-1-4692-5007-6) Unabridged audio version of The Merchant of Dreams read by Michael Page.

  Area 51: Excalibur, Bob Mayer (Brilliance Audio, $19.99, 7 CDs, 7 hours: 50 minutes, 978-1-4692-5230-8) Unabridged audio recording of Area 51: Excalibur read by Eric G. Dove.

  Area 51: Nightstalkers, Bob Mayer (Brilliance Audio, $19.99, 7 CDs, 7 hours: 32 minutes, 978-1-4692-5816-4) Unabridged audio version of Area 51: Nightstalkers read by Eric G. Dove.

  Area 51: The Sphinx, Bob Mayer (Brilliance Audio, $19.99, 8 CDs, 9 hours: 40 minutes, 978-1-4692-5238-4) Unabridged audio version of Area 51: The Sphinx read by Eric G. Dove.

  Scarlet: The Lunar Chronicles, Marissa Meyer (Macmillan Audio, $39.99, 9 CDs, 11 hours, 978-1-4272-2964-9) Unabridged audio recording of Scarlet: The Lunar Chronicles read by Rebecca Soler.

  Iced, Karen Marie Moning (Brilliance Audio, $29.99, 13 CDs, 14 hours: 55 minutes, 978-1-4558-1769-6) Unabridged audio recording of Iced read by Phil Gigante & Natalie Ross.

  Tears in Rain, Rosa Montero (Brilliance Audio, $19.99, 12 CDs, 13 hours: 54 minutes, 978-1-4692-0987-6) Unabridged audio recording of Tears in Rain read by Mary Robinette Kowal.

  The Mote in God’s Eye, Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle (Brilliance Audio, $19.99, 17 CDs, 20 hours: 40 minutes, 978-1-4558-8363-9) Unabridged audio recording of The Mote in God’s Eye read by L.J. Ganser.

  Storm Over Warlock, Andre Norton (Brilliance Audio, $14.99, 6 CDs, 6 hours: 47 minutes, 978-1-4692-6009-9) Unabridged audio recording of Storm Over Warlock read by Jim Roberts.

  Alan Edward Nourse Collection: The Coffin Cure; Image of the Gods, Alan Edward Nourse (Brilliance Audio, $9.99, 1 CD, 1 hour: 10 minutes, 978-1-4692-5937-6) Unabridged audio version of Alan Edward Nourse Collection: The Coffin Cure, Image of the Gods read by Ben Hurst.

  Dead Spots, Melissa F. Olson (Brilliance Audio, $19.99, 8 CDs, 9 hours: 5 minutes, 978-1-4692-4703-8) Unabridged audio recording of Dead Spots read by Amy McFadden.

  The Shield Maiden, Michael ‘‘Tinker’’ Pearce & Linda Pearce (Brilliance Audio, $9.99, 2 CDs, 2 hours: 12 minutes, 978-1-4692-8954-0) Unabridged audio recording of The Shield Maiden read by Mary Robinette Kowal.

  Immune: The Rho Agenda: Book Two, Richard Phillips (Brilliance Audio, $19.99, 13 CDs, 15 hours: 59 minutes, 978-1-4692-1922-6) Unabridged audio recording of Immune: The Rho Agenda: Book Two read by MacLeod Andrews.

  Wormhole: The Rho Agenda: Book Three, Richard Phillips (Brilliance Audio, $19.99, 11 CDs, 13 hours: 18 minutes, 978-1-4692-1812-0) Unabridged audio recording of Wormhole: The Rho Agenda: Book Three read by MacLeod Andrews.

  Hunter’s Prayer, Lilith Saintcrow (Brilliance Audio, $29.99, 9 CDs, 9 hours: 59 minutes, 978-1-4418-8695-8) Unabridged audio version of Hunter’s Prayer read by Joyce Bean.

  Night Shift, Lilith Saintcrow (Brilliance Audio, $29.99, 8 CDs, 9 hours: 16 minutes, 978-1-4418-8689-7) Unabridged audio recording of Night Shift read by Joyce Bean.

  Hybrids, Robert J. Sawyer (Brilliance Audio, $19.99, 10 CDs, 11 hour: 50 minutes, 978-1-4558-6157-6) Unabridged audio recording of Hybrids read by Jonathan Davis.

  Bitter Seeds, Ian Tregillis (Brilliance Audio, $19.99, 12 CDs, 14 hours: 21 minutes, 978-1-4692-8035-6) Unabridged audio recording of Bitter Seeds read by Kevin Pariseau.

  The Lion in Chains, Angus Trim & Mark Teppo (Brilliance Audio, $9.99, 2 CDs, 1 hour: 52 minutes, 978-1-4692-5234-6) Unabridged audio recording of The Lion in Chains read by Luke Daniels.

  Madouc: Lyonesse III, Jack Vance (Brilliance Audio, $19.99, 17 CDs, 19 hours: 53 minutes, 978-1-4692-8056-1) Unabridged audio recording of Madouc: Lyonesse III read by Kevin T. Collins.

  Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. Collection: The Big Trip Up Yonder; 2BR02B, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (Brilliance Audio: Speculative! $9.99, 1 CD, 1 hour: 45 minutes, 978-1-4692-5974-1) Unabridged audio version of Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. Collection: The Big Trip Up Yonder; 2BR02B read by Emmett Casey & Kevin Killavey.

  The Blight of Muirwood, Jeff Wheeler (Brilliance Audio, $19.99, 12 CDs, 13 hours: 57 minutes, 978-1-4692-5017-5) Unabridged audio recording of The Blight of Muirwood read by Kate Rudd.

  Fireblood, Jeff Wheeler (Brilliance Audio, $19.99, 11 CDs, 12 hours: 30 minutes, 978-1-4692-5020-5) Unabridged audio recording of Fireblood read by Michael Page.

  The Scourge of Muirwood, Jeff Wheeler (Brilliance Audio, $19.99, 9 CDs, 11 hours, 978-1-4692-5029-8) Un
abridged audio recording of The Scourge of Muirwood read by Kate Rudd.

  The Wretched of Muirwood, Jeff Wheeler (Brilliance Audio, $19.99, 8 CDs, 8 hours: 59 minutes, 978-1-4692-5036-6) Unabridged audio recording of The Wretched of Muirwood read by Kate Rudd.

  PUBLICATIONS RECEIVED

  Mythprint Vol. 49, No. 12 (December 2012), monthly bulletin of the Mythopoeic Society, with news, reviews, etc. Non-member subscription: $25.00 per year US, $32.00 Canada and Mexico, $41.00 elsewhere. Information: Mythopoeic Society Orders Department, Box 71, Napoleon MI 49261-0071; e-mail: ; website: .

  The NASFA Shuttle Vol. 33, No. 2 (February 2013), monthly newsletter of the North Alabama Science Fiction Association. NASFA news, reviews, etc. Single copy: $2.00. Membership: $25/year; subscription only: $15/year. Information: NASFA, Inc., PO Box 4857, Huntsville AL 35815-4857; e-mail: .

  Prometheus Vol. 30, No. 2 (Winter 2012), quarterly newsletter of the Libertarian Futurist Society with news, reviews, fiction, classifieds, etc. Non-membership subscription $20.00 per year US, $25.00 international. Information: Libertarian Futurist Society, 650 Castro St. Suite 120-433, Mountain View CA 94041; e-mail: ; website: .

  Star*Line 36.1 (January 2013), bimonthly journal of the Science Fiction Poetry Association, with poetry, news, reviews, market information, etc. Membership: $24 per year US, $28 Can/Mex, $30 elsewhere. Information: Deborah Flores, SFPA Treasurer, PO Box 4846, Covina CA 91723; e-mail: ; website: .

  Vector #271 (Winter 2012), the critical journal of the British Science Fiction Association, with articles, interviews, reviews, etc. Single copy: £4.00. Organization information: Membership Services, Peter Wilkinson, Flat 4, Stratton Lodge, 79 Bulwer Road, Barnet, Hertfordshire, EN5 5EU, UK; e-mail: ; website: . Also with Focus No. 59 (Winter 2012/13), biannual bulletin of BSFA with essays, articles, and poetry. Information: Alex Bardy, 6 The Crescent, Kexby, York YO41 5LB UK; e-mail: ; website: .

  CATALOGS RECEIVED

  DreamHaven Books; 2301 E. 38th Street, Minneapolis MN 55406; phone: (612) 823-6161; e-mail: ; website: . Catalog #264 (January 2013) with new/recent SF, fantasy, and horror books and magazines, plus used, rare, and collectible books, many first editions, hardcovers, and paperbacks.

  Return to In This Issue listing.

  GARDNERSPACE: A SHORT FICTION COLUMN BY GARDNER DOZOIS

  F&SF 1-2/13

  Asimov’s 1/13

  Eclipse Online 1/13

  Clarkesworld 1/13

  The best story in the January/February F&SF is probably Alex Irvine’s clever ‘‘Watching the Cow’’, about an experimental technique used in a video game that inadvertently causes all the kids of a certain age who happen to be playing the game to go blind… and, it turns out, rewires their brains in weirder ways as well. The story deals with the efforts of the father of some of the afflicted children to find some kind of cure, and is a pretty satisfactory read. The only quibble I have with it is that it seems like it takes the FBI an awfully long time to get around to investigating the father, as he is the brother of the woman who accidentally blinded millions of children and who subsequently goes on the run as a fugitive; you’d think her immediate family would be the first people they’d look into in an effort to find her. In ‘‘Ten Lights and Darks’’, Judith Moffett also manages to make a satisfying human story out of the rather unpromising subject matter of pet whisperers, psychics who make telepathic/emphatic contact with dogs. Robert Reed tells a subtle, complicated tale of alien observers who lurk mostly unnoticed in human society, in ‘‘Among Us’’. Ken Liu gives us a moving story of the uncounted price of great human endeavors in ‘‘A Brief History of the Trans-Pacific Tunnel’’, an engineering project on a sufficiently gosh-wowish scale… although it seems a bit incautious to build a underground tunnel across the most tectonically active region on Earth, and my guess is that it wouldn’t function for long without disaster.

  The rest of the stuff in the issue is somewhat less successful, although there are few outright failures. F&SF regular Albert E. Cowdrey contributes another comic adventure of his pair of mismatched ghostbusters, Jimmy and Morrie, as they tackle ‘‘A Haunting in Love City’’. David Gerrold takes us aboard the ‘‘Night Train to Paris’’ for an atmospheric and well-told, if rather predictable, horror story. Matthew Hughes tries a bit too hard in ‘‘Devil or Angel’’, about the conflict for the human soul that goes on between the good angels who sit on one shoulder and the devils who sit on the other, both whispering advice (yes, just like in all those cartoons). The humor is labored and it goes on much too long. Dale Bailey tells a glum afterlife story in ‘‘This Is How You Disappear’’, and new writer Desmond Warzel spins a tale about a haunted car that also goes on much too long, in ‘‘The Blue Celeb’’.

  •

  After a strong year in 2012, Asimov’s starts 2013 with a rather weak January issue. The two best stories here are probably James Van Pelt’s ‘‘The Family Rocket’’ and Nancy Kress’s ‘‘Mithridates, He Died Old’’. The Van Pelt is an exercise in Bradburian nostalgia for the glory days of the US space program (set, rather oddly, in a future where interplanetary travel is common, although it is said to be affordable only by the rich), featuring a possibly delusional father who’s building a spaceship out of scrap in the junkyard out back. (Much the same idea is used in Lavie Tidhar’s ‘‘The Integrity of the Chain’’ from 2009, although with considerably less Bradbury mixed in.) Whether or not the cobbled-together spaceship actually works is deliberately left unclear – although the odds are that it does not. Kress’s story is a sensitively characterized study of a woman in a coma reviewing her life’s mistakes while undergoing an experimental treatment to wake her up – one with a bitterly ironic twist at the end; not Kress at the top of her form, but still worthwhile.

  New writer Suzanne Palmer’s ‘‘Hotel’’ is an entertaining knockabout thriller/farce about a rundown, seedy hotel in a remote area where the down-on-their-luck residents, most with secret pasts they want to conceal, turn out to be secret agents or criminals who chase through the corridors shooting at each other or hitting each other over the head in scrambling competition to get the MacGuffin they’re all after. Amiable and amusing, although it’s hard to see what’s really gained by having the hotel be on Mars, as the plot would not be essentially affected if it was a rundown rural hotel in Utah or Oregon instead. Will McIntosh’s ‘‘Over There’’ is a literalization of the famous Two-Slit Experiment, one which splits the consciousness of its observers into two separate but parallel universes, with the observers experiencing life in both realities at the same time – cataclysmic effects caused by the experiment itself soon cause the realities to begin to diverge, although the observers continue to experience both at the same time, with some interesting and ultimately dire results. New writer Alaya Dawn Johnson’s ‘‘They Shall Salt the Earth With Seeds of Glass’’ takes us to a future Earth that is being ruled by draconian conquerors called ‘‘glassmen’’ – presumably aliens, although that’s never made entirely clear – whose main preoccupation seems to be forbidding human women from having abortions. It’s a glum story, and the obsessive focus of the glassmen on forbidding abortion and making it punishable by death comes to seem like a rather heavy-handed political allegory. Kit Reed tells a droll story about feral girl scouts in ‘‘The Legend of Troop 13’’.

  •

  F. Brett Helmut’s ‘‘The Amnesia Helmet’’, one of the two stories from the January Eclipse Online, is another nostalgic story clearly influenced by Ray Bradbury – although there’s an understated, almost subliminal, hint of child abuse and perhaps even child molestation that you certainly wouldn’t find in anything by Bradbury. The main story line is full of fine, evocative details about being a kid who
se fantasy life revolves going to see Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon serials at a movie house, although the nostalgic stuff is undercut by the presence of a menacing father and the ominous hints of child abuse, not only of the protagonist but of her friends, and there’s the feeling that the story is building toward a climax that it never quite reaches. As in Van Pelt’s story from the January Asimov’s, the fantastic element here – the eponymous ‘‘Amnesia Helmet,’’ inspired by a gadget from the Buck Rogers serial – may or may not be real; that’s left deliberately ambiguous.

  The other story in the January Eclipse, Genevieve Valentine’s ‘‘The Advocate’’, is somewhat disappointing. I think she was trying for ironic postmodernism here, but the core idea, that a handful of alien microorganisms found on Mars would be named ‘‘The Martian Ambassador’’ and given an embassy building and a staff, although they are totally non-sentient, and that everybody else in the diplomatic community would solemnly go along with the charade, never struck me as anything other than silly. It didn’t help improve my impression of the story that Valentine makes the basic error of having radio conversations taking place between people on Earth and people on Mars without any time lag whatsoever.

  •

  The best story in the January Clarkesworld is probably Ian McDonald’s moody, enigmatic fantasy, ‘‘Drifting’’, in which a beachcomber collects plastic toys and other plastic refuse washed into the Pacific by the Japanese tsunami and uses them to create strange works of art, collages of found items glued together. He meets a mysterious girl at the seaside, and soon odd, ominous things are happening, including rains of sea water, impenetrable fogs, sugar that turns to salt, and an evil stench that smells like rotting seaweed and dead crabs, all eventually prompting the artist to give his most recent found objects back to the sea. This is a heavily symbolic story, but I think it’s more or less clear what’s going on, although McDonald never spells it out – but I must admit that the last paragraph, in which the artist returns to his room and finds it filled with long, rippling, dripping hair, confuses me, and I’m not really sure what its import is.