Fantasy & Science Fiction, June 2000

by Gordon van Gelder (Editor), Joyce Carol Oates, Gregory Benford

Novelets
The Birthday of the World - Ursula K. Le Guin
Three Merry Pranksters at the Louvre - N. Lee Wood
In Shock - Joyce Carol Oates
The Thief With Two Deaths - Chris Willrich

Short Stories
Le Morte D'Volkswagyn - Tim McDaniel
The Foster Child - William Browning Spencer
Skullcracker - Gary W. Shockley

Genres: Fantasy

160 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 2000

About the author

Gordon Van Gelder (born 1966) is an American science fiction editor. From 1997 until 2014, Van Gelder was editor and later publisher of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, for which he has twice won the Hugo Award for Best Editor Short Form. He was also a managing editor of The New York Review of Science Fiction from 1988 to 1993, for which he was nominated for the Hugo Award a number of times. As of January 2015, Van Gelder has stepped down as editor of Fantasy & Science Fiction in favour of Charles Coleman Finlay, but remains publisher of the magazine.

Reviews

[Kevin Phyland · Rating 3 out of 5]

On a planet inhabited by humans who elevate gods from within (like the Egyptians) a prophecy of the death of their world may come true when some very strange visitors arrive from the skies in Ursula LeGuin’s “The Birthday Of The World”; while a wealthy patron of the Arts who hooks up with two very different artists finds that his friendships were not what they seemed in “Three Merry Pranksters At The Louvre” by N. Lee Wood. When a 34yo woman tries to help a boy on a bicycle “In Shock” after riding over a downed powerline she wakes up in hospital. Believing she saved the boy’s life she finds that there is no boy and she seems to have touched the line herself. Her life devolves into a succession of things she sees but nobody else does and it quickly gets out of control in this dreamlike tale from Joyce Carol Oates. The thief Imago Bone has earned the wrath of two kleptomancers, Remora and Vine, who each will a death upon him. Fortunately for Bone, in their wrath, the they gift him mutually exclusive deaths which has actually prolonged his life. Only an accursed tome might free him from this stalemate in “The Thief With Two Deaths” by Chris Willrich.

[John Loyd · Rating 3 out of 5]

7 • The Birthday of the World • 30 pages by Ursula K. Le Guin
Very Good. Took me a while to give this some sort of context. The term god made me think they had extra powers. A made up term for pharaoh or leader would have been better. Anyway god is one male and one female, brother and sister, and passes down to one male and one female of their children. Ze is the only daughter and she is to marry Tazu when the time comes. When the time does come the older brother Omimo wants to become god.

47 • Three Merry Pranksters at the Louvre • 21 pages by N. Lee Wood
Good. Kermit is different, not sure how, meets up with artists Andy and Collin. They pull some pranks, but after a while go their separate ways. They meet again years later and we get more answers.

68 • Le Morte D'volkswagyn • 3 pages by Tim McDaniel
Fair/Gimmicky. Written phonetically with olde tyme spellings on half the words and changing the vowel on the other half. Kind of cute, but took extra time to decipher every sentence. A couple of knights get into a jousting contest with a car and driver.

71 • The Foster Child • 12 pages by William Browning Spencer
Good/Fair. Lena is held captive by Nulson, but when freed doesn't seem to be all there. A switch of settings and Lena is a withdrawn child who spouts poetry--that she's never heard before. Wilson finds he can say a line of a poem and Lena will continue it. It's just a parlor trick she is still withdrawn.

88 • In Shock • 31 pages by Joyce Carol Oates
Fair/OK. Readable but no answers. Rachael gets shocked from a downed electric wire. She thought she saw an injured boy, but after the accident found no trace of him. In interactions with her friends she starts seeing weird things, and starts seeing her ex-husband. There's no explanation--is she really dead? Is it just a dream? Is she seeing the future a la Dead Zone? Maybe the 10 year old boy was her son from an alternate reality? One where she didn't miscarry.

131 • Skullcracker • 6 pages by Gary W. Shockley
OK. TZ-ish. Starts off kind of humorous, but the end is really creepy. Especially if it's just that Skullcracker thinks there are no ill effects, rather than that being actuality.

137 • The Thief with Two Deaths • 25 pages by Chris Willrich
Good. Imago Bone was cursed independently with two deaths. Joyblood taking him when a lover takes Bone's life, and Severstrand when he dies in pain. Bone holding both deaths at bay by threatening to kill himself so that neither could take him. I couldn't quite grasp the rules of this world, what the kleptomancers and goblin librarians and everything fit together. So the resolution may have been very clever but left me wanting an explanation.