Fantasy & Science Fiction: Oct/Nov 2007
February 25, 2008 by Andy
Despite two complete stinkers, the October/November double issue has some real pleasers. It’s also the first time my name has appeared in F&SF. Appropriately, it’s as a dishonorable mention. For the Adapted contest I spliced Star Wars and Of Mice and Men. What can I say? The thought of smushed Ewoks amuses me.
I suppose most people will be more interested in this issue for the cover story, “Urdumheim,” by Michael Swanwick. It evokes Mesopotamian mythology along with the Biblical Nimrod, Babel, and St. John’s “In the beginning was the Word,” telling a creation myth where the War in Heaven is fought using language.
The Judeo-Christian influence is shallow, Swanwick’s story fully original. Nimrod invents language as a way to escape Urdumheim, the nothingness that preceded being. But the Igigi come to recapture the People, and do so by stealing their words. Death is invented in the ensuing siege.
“Urdumheim” is told in first person and I find this clashes with its function as myth. But I doubt that myth without contemporary storytelling sensibilities would work as well (it certainly didn’t for Lord Dunsany), and the aspect of this novelet that works best is the more straightforward story of the narrator and his experience of this gruesome war.
The other big draw this issue is “Against the Current” by Robert Silverberg, which follows a simple premise with a classic feel: a man starts slipping backwards through time. He doesn’t get younger himself, but every time he turns around a few more years seem to have slipped by (we all know that feeling). It’s a well-thought out exercise, and the ending is necessarily dismal.
Other stories I enjoyed include “Unpossible,” by Daryl Gregory, which demonstrates that clarity and surrealism can coexist. It offers a sad, desperate nostalgia, but any story that alludes to Where the Wild Things Are earns a free pass, and the final note is hopeful.
Albert E. Cowdrey’s “The Recreation Room” feels personal, set in his own New Orleans in the aftermath of Katrina, as if it’s Cowdrey’s eulogy for the piece of himself that died with the city, though it took him some time to realize it.
I was thrilled to see another story about Falco and Astolfo, Falco’s sardonic mentor who trades in shadows. Fred Chappell’s “The Diamond Shadow” tells of a caper the two perpetrate on a persnickety countess. Although it doesn’t flow as smoothly as Chappell’s story in the March issue, I love the atmosphere of these shadow trade stories, and the way Falco suffers the brunt of the plot twists, never really knowing what his master has in store.
F&SF only publishes a couple first-time writers each year, but perhaps they should rethink that. “Two Weeks After,” the debut of M. Ramsey Chapman, is the best story in an issue filled with regulars and luminaries. It’s a short, simple, but surprising ghost story about two people trying to make peace with their surviving spouses. It’s also flawless, original, and without affectation.
