Science Fiction & Fantasy Remembrance

Celebrating the genre magazines, one story at a time…

  • Things Beyond: August 2022

    (Cover by Hubert Rogers. Astounding, February 1940.)

    Picking stories to review can be pretty hard. Imagine simply reading fiction in your free time: novels, short stories, whatever. There are so many things you want to get to, things you’ve heard good things about, things you’ve been meaning to reread (because rereading is important), and yet there are only so many hours in the day.

    Now I must, for August, limit myself to writing about three short stories, two novel serials, and two novellas. And not just anything; these will be the first to charge into battle, the first guinea pigs for me to test on and see what this site will be all about. The stories that will help me find my footing the most.

    As such, all the stories this month will at least be Hugo nominees, if not winners—with one exception, and even then it’s by a two-time Hugo winner. Speaking of which, we have, for the serials:

    1. The Demolished Man by Alfred Bester. Published in three parts in Galaxy Science Fiction, January to March 1952, and it would win the very first Hugo for Best Novel. I’m fond of Bester’s short fiction, and The Stars My Destination is still a delightfully hardboiled and experimental novel. Alas, I’ve yet to read The Demolished Man, his debut novel, but that’ll change pretty soon.
    2. If This Goes On— by Robert Heinlein, published in two parts in Astounding Science Fiction, February to March 1940. An early and defining work by one of my absolute favorite authors, though I’m ashamed to say I haven’t read it before. It would win the Retro Hugo for Best Novella. I know, it’s technically a novella, but hey, if it’s serialized, it gets a serialized review.

    Now for the novellas. I must confess, dear reader, I have a huge soft spot for novellas, especially when it comes to SFF. Hell, SFF is the only field of literature nowadays where novellas still get written and published regularly. Still, two novellas for this month. I had to choose wisely. Here they are:

    1. “The Big Front Yard” by Clifford D. Simak. Astounding Science Fiction, October 1958. Winner of the 1959 Hugo for Best Novelette (the Best Novella category didn’t exist yet). Aside from his Hugo-winning novel Way Station this is probably the quintessential Simak story, so we’ll be giving it a deep dive and see how Simak works his magic.
    2. “The Lineman” by Walter M. Miller Jr. The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, August 1957. You may know Miller as the author of A Canticle for Leibowitz, but did you know that he also wrote… OTHER STUFF? He even won another Hugo with “The Darfstellar,” but I’m more interested in checking out this one.

    Finally, we have the short stories for this month. Two of these are rereads (one I’ve reread more times than I can count), but as you know, rereading is important. And the one I haven’t read before has me very curious. This month’s short stories are:

    1. “Bears Discover Fire” by Terry Bission. Asimov’s Science Fiction, August 1990. Winner of the Hugo, Nebula, Locus, God knows what else, and I’ve read it about as many times as it’s been reprinted—which is a lot. A fine choice for the inaugural short story.
    2. “Welcome to Your Authentic Indian Experience™” by Rebecca Roanhorse. Apex Magazine, August 2017. Hugo and Nebula winner. This will be my first time reading this short story, and by extension anything by Roanhorse. Very excited about it.
    3. “With Morning Comes Mistfall” by George R. R. Martin. Analog Science Fiction, May 1973. Hugo and Nebula nominee. Martin is one of the most famous fantasy authors ever, but readers will be less familiar and thus pleasantly surprised with his SF.

    I’ll be linking to the source magazine issues when available/convenient. I want my readers (all five of you) to be able to read these stories without going through much hassle, and besides, you get to discover or rediscover some stuff that’s really worth reading. I won’t always be able to provide a digital zine link—occasionally I’ll have to track down used print copies, like some kind of literary raccoon.

    Won’t you read with me?

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  • Why We’re Here

    (“A Long Way from Home” by Frank Kelly Freas. Omni, March 1980.)

    Howdy, partner.

    This is an SFF literature blog that’ll tackle science fiction, fantasy, and horror published in the magazines—print, digital, you name it. No books, only zines. We won’t be reviewing whole novels except when I say so at a time but novel serials. Partly this is because I more often love SFF writing in shorter bursts, and partly I’m acknowledging my limitations; I’m not that fast or thorough a reader. My eyesight is incredibly poor and I have a bad back, which may sound surprising given I’m not even thirty years old yet.

    Now I know what you’re thinking. Why start a blog about fiction from SFF magazines, specifically? Why dedicate a blog to SFF magazines and not books? Surely more people read books: novels, anthologies, single-author collections, and so on. You’re certainly right, but I have my reasons.

    Time to lay down some ground rules, which admittedly are subject to change. Here’s how it’ll all work:

    1. On the first day of each month, I’ll post a short editorial about stories I’ll be reviewing for the rest of that month, called Things Beyond. I’ll alternate between short story and novella reviews starting on the 3rd and continuing weekly (so the 10th, 17th, etc.), while serials will be covered part by part starting on the 6th, and again continuing weekly. If I haven’t finished the last part of a serial on the 27th, I continue it on the 6th. If I’m set to review a novella on the 31st of the month, that novella gets replaced with a COMPLETE NOVEL, i.e., a story running 40,000 words or longer—with the necessary educated guesses.
    2. Each review will be an in-depth look at the given story, regardless of the story’s length. I’ll try to get all I can out of each experience, for the sake of improving my reading comprehension skills (which are not great, honestly), and giving these stories the time I think they deserve. Writing fiction, even trash (and we will sometimes be reading trash), takes a lot of time and effort. You won’t get a post from me saying, “Yeah I thought this short story was just fine, okay bye bye now.”
    3. If a story has never been published in a magazine, it’s not eligible for this blog, sorrrrrrry. Preferably I want to cover magazine originals, but if a story was originally published in book form (or in a magazine that doesn’t seem to be available digitally anywhere) and then reprinted in an available genre magazine at any point, that’s eligible as well. Novels that have never seen print in the zines are, naturally, excluded.
    4. What is a magazine, anyway? Basically we’re talking about periodicals that go issue by issue, be it professional, semi-pro, or even fanzines that happen to publish fiction. Print and online magazines are equally valid (except, of course, serials are a thing of the past, and thus are mostly relegated to the print magazines). “Bookazines” like Destinies are an odd breed that blur the line between books and zines, but I’m ultimately counting those as magazines too. Some webzines are clearly modeled after magazines while some, like Tor.com, function more like blogs, with content being dished out one at a time as individual posts rather than in issues or volumes; as such I’m excluding the latter model of webzine from review (again sorry).

    That’s it, I think.

    If you want to reach me at my Twitter, here it is. I took a break from it for a few months but now I’m back. Also my Mastodon, although I have to admit I don’t look at it nearly as often and it’ll mostly just be posts I would be making for Twitter. Finally I made a Bluesky account, which despite still being in beta has given me more traffic than Mastodon. Sad!

    “What about SFF movies? Won’t you ever review those?” Maybe, but probably not. If you really want you can read about my dumb movie and TV thoughts on my Letterboxd page.

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