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Saturday, September 4th, 2004
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8:32a - The ghosts you know.
I finished Greg Bear's Dead Lines and I have to say that I admire his focus. Greg Bear takes a horror scenario with all the individual and world-wide focus of a King novel and writes what is essential to his protagonist. A protagonist, whose life has been composed of easy choices, faces some of the most difficult decisions of his life. To let his dead daughter go. To face unearthly horrors. To look at his life with clarity and yet continue it with charm and grace and courage.
And I have to admire Greg Bear's style and pace. Some very very nice sentence structure can be found in the action scenes. Quickly paced, plot elements blend and combine to create and answer questions about being human, about our humanity. Questions about soul and questions about ghosts and questions about life and living it the best we can.
Written and posted by Pam McNew
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8:33a - 55th Anniversary All Star Issue!
Yes, that's right. It says it on the cover and there within the pages, the pages of the Oct/Nov issue of Fantasy & Science, one can find fiction of stellar quality. My favorites, in no particular order:
Gene Wolfe's epistolary tale of a witch in the woods in "The Little Stranger." But this is no true witch, I know because she tells us so, or she tells her dear dead cousin Danny that in her letters to him. Delightful. It's stories like this that make me smile and smile and say, “Hey, Gene Wolfe, that man is a Master, a true and true Master of his craft.”
If you have read "Bronte's Egg" by Richard Chwedyk (and if you haven't why not, it was the 2002 Nebula winner for novella and so worth the reading of it) you will recognize a few of the Saurs (little dinosaurs manufactured in a factory or a lab of a toy company) who have been relocated to a safe house. "In Tibor's Cardboard Castle," within that same safe house, something wonderful is going on. Wonderful and strange and still within the laws of physics. Well, maybe. There is still that leap of faith in the reading of the genre.
I am this greatbigfat fan of the writing of M. Rickert. She has a unique, vivid, kaleidoscopic vision of what story is all about. "Cold Fires" is no exception to this. It's a story about a house bound couple in the coldest of all possible seasons telling one another a story about themselves before the fire. If we are the stories we tell, the telling is painful. No, not just the telling, the hearing, the reading. The recognition.
"The End of the World as We Know It" by Dale Bailey is what it says it is. And, this isn't one more same old, same old production of a tired old theme. It takes an exception while presenting those past endeavors. The story gives depth and emotion and an edgy reality to the quietly hidden fears present today that yes, yes, the world can end and all that will remain will beautiful sunsets. The sunsets aren't the only beautiful part of this story, but the writing of it is as well.
I have to admit that I almost didn't read Robert Reed's story, "Opal Ball." Slow opening. Boy meets girl, boy gets girl, in a world of popular probability voting, boy loses girl. But I did read it, and I'm glad I did because Robert Reed knows how to write short fiction. The ending was poignant and sweet, touching and ever so very right.
"Flat Diane" by Daniel Abraham is a horror story of sorts. A financially struggling, single father makes a life-size paper silhouette of his young daughter and sends it to relatives they cannot afford to visit. He asks relatives to send photos and information of themselves and 'Flat Diane' back to his daughter. Through some odd turn of events, his daughter becomes connected to the life of Flat Diane, dreaming and remembering although not remembering how she remembers moments of the paper silhouette’s life. This is not good and it becomes worse. “Flat Diane” is a story about fatherhood and love and protection. And a verily good story.
And, last, a kiss on the cheek, or just a good firm handshake, or maybe an acknowledging smile and a nod of the head should go to John Morressy for writing a nontraditional fantasy wizard/apprentice/fairy godmother story with a strong, determined, smart female protagonist in "The Courtship of Kate O'Farrissey." And, Lisa Goldstein, she should be smiled upon and praised for her Prince Charming who goes beyond his fairy godmother birthing gifts and changes, in my humble opinion, into a real, a true, an honest-to-God Prince in "Finding Beauty."
Written and posted by Pam McNew
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