The New York Review of Science Fiction

NYRSF 340 Editorial: The Cruelest Month

The last time I heard from Michael Levy was in mid-March. I’d sent out a round of jog letters to reviewers, and I was surprised that list included Mike, usually our fastest and most reliable reviewer. I soon got back a very short reply, apologizing and saying that things had been “horrible” for him of late and that he hadn’t had time.

I don’t know if he knew how little time he had left. Despite our amiable relationship, I wasn’t the type of friend to whom he would confide if he suspected that things were going to end very soon.

Issue 340 (December 2016) Table of Contents

John Foyster: Gregory Benford: Science Fiction and Scientist Fiction

Lee Weinstein: In Search of the Vegetable Caterpillar

Michael Andre-Driussi: Alas, Babylon and the Cuban Nukes

Andy Duncan: A Master’s Thesis, 1995

Brian Stableford: An Isle of Amour and the Human Paradise: The Futuristic Fiction of Nicolas Ségur

Victor Grech: Avatar Dances with Wolves

Donald M. Hassler: The Tangled Bank that Writers Inhabit: New Windows on Jules Verne

Wynonna Earp, Season One, reviewed by A. P. Canavan

Photos

Editorial The Cruelest Month

Brian Stableford: An Isle of Amour and the Human Paradise: The Futuristic Fiction of Nicolas Ségur

In a previous article in these pages (“Technology and Liberty in French Utopian Fiction,” NYRSF #334, based on the 2016 Thomas Taylor Lecture), I identified two interwoven threads in the development of French Utopian fiction in the nineteenth and early twentieth century which addressed the roles to be played in a hypothetical utopian society by advanced technology and sexual liberation. That analysis paid particular attention to a train of thought inspired by the political philosophy of Anarchism reflected in Joseph Déjacque’s L’Humanisphère, utopie anarchique (1858–61; partially tr. as “The Future World of the Humanisphere”), Paul Adam’s Lettres de Malaisie (1898; tr. as “Letters from Malaisie”), André Couvreur’s Caresco surhomme, ou le voyage en Eucrasie (1904; tr. as Caresco, Superman; or, A Voyage to Eucrasia), Gaston Danville’s Le Parfum de volupté (1905; tr. as The Perfume of Lust), Han Ryner’s Les Pacifiques (1914; tr. as “The Pacifists”) and Marcel Rouff’s Voyage au monde à l’envers (1920; tr. as Journey to the Inverted World).

Andy Duncan: A Master’s Thesis, 1995

[When Andy Duncan asked me whether NYRSF would be interested in reading the introduction to his master’s thesis, I responded yes instantly even though I had never read an MFA thesis and thus had no true idea what it encompassed. I was delighted to find so much of Andy present even in this formal document—his love for the written word, for voices, for the fantastic and the star-crossed all pour out as he lays his stories down for judgment. Enjoy.—kjm and the eds.]

Abstract

DUNCAN, ANDREW ROBERT. Our Stories Thus Far. (Under the direction of John J. Kessel.)

This is a collection of five stories both fantastical and historical. “From Alfano’s Reliquary” is a tale of skullduggery in the medieval Church of Rome. “Beluthahatchie” depicts the travels of a Depression-era blues guitarist who dies and goes not to Hell but to the next railway station past Hell. “Grand Guignol” is about backstage intrigue at the 1920s Parisian theater of gore. “Liza and the Crazy Water Man” is a romance set amid the Charlotte country-music industry of the 1930s. Finally, “The Chief Designer” is a speculative and mystical portrait of the guiding genius of the Soviet space program.

Lee Weinstein: In Search of the Vegetable Caterpillar

Back when I was a young teenager, I came across an intriguing item in Robert Ripley’s first Believe It or Not! book (1929). The text read “The pepe-aweto of the Maoris. Strangest insect on Earth. A caterpillar that turns into a plant.” It was accompanied by a drawing of a caterpillar with a long stem rising vertically from one end, with some feathery looking branches at the top. Below the drawing the text continued: “Is it an insect or a vegetable?”

As someone who was eventually to become a biology major in college, my curiosity was greatly sparked by the cartoon, but, at the time, I was a 14- or 15-year-old with little in the way of either research skills or reference materials. I did know that Ripley promoted himself as a man who could prove every statement he made, but it wasn’t until years later that I was to discover that Ripley would consider something “proven” if he could point to something in print that provided a source, whether or not that source was reliable. In this case, even though he did not cite a source, I sensed both at the time and later on that the cartoon referred to something quite real.

David V. Griffin: “Where’d You Get Those Eyes?” Creepshow, Romero & King’s Satirical Pseudo-homage

Creepshow (1982) Directed by George A. Romero; screenplay by Stephen King; starring Hal Holbrook, Adrienne Barbeau, Ed Harris, E.G. Marshall, Carrie Nye, Leslie Nielsen, and Ted Danson.

It’s not often that a decade is summed up in advance by a single film and even less so that the film in question is in fact an ostensible homage to an even earlier decade. Yet that’s exactly what happened with George A. Romero and Stephen King’s Creepshow (1982), one of the deftest and most savagely adroit horror satires to hit the screens after the ’70s. It wasn’t the first time that the two men had worked together—King and his wife Tabitha had made cameo appearances in Romero’s Knightriders the previous year as spectators at an Arthurian motorcycle joust (don’t ask)—but it was King’s first filmed screenplay and one of the times where a director and a writer’s joint sensibility seem to be in near-perfect sync.

NYRSF 339 Editorial: Some of Our Favorite Comics from 2016

Here, a bit late, is my survey of the comics published in 2016 likely to be of some interest to sf&f readers.

Ta-Nehisi Coates, fresh off winning the MacArthur Foundation Fellowship for his nonfiction memoirs and reporting, wrote his first-ever comic, Black Panther #1, which became the best-selling comic magazine of the year. T’challa, the premiere African super-science hero, celebrated his fiftieth anniversary in style. In collaboration with artists Brian Stelfreeze and Chris Sprouse, Black Panther is a complex (and complexly told), subtle examination of power, loyalty, nation, and love that rewards attention.

NYRSF 339 (November 2016) Table of Contents

• The Cornelius Quartet by Michael Moorcock, reviewed by Mark Scroggins
• Invaders: 22 Tales from the Outer Limits of Literature, edited by Jacob Weisman, reviewed by Joe Milicia
• Darrell Schweitzer: An Interview with Albert E. Cowdrey
• Mike Barrett: “A Story to Be Read for Its Own Sake”: The Worm Ouroboros
• Year’s Best Weird Fiction, Volume 2, edited by Kathe Koja, reviewed by Kris Dikeman
• Brian Stableford: The Angel Asrael: S. Henry Berthoud and the French Tradition of Literary Satanism
• David V. Griffin: “Where’d You Get Those Eyes?” Creepshow, Romero & King’s Satirical Pseudo-homage
• Then: Science Fiction Fandom in the UK, 1930–1980 by Rob Hansen, reviewed by Martin Morse Wooster
• David Langford: Random Reading 17
• Gustavo Bondoni: When the Shoulders of Giants Are Missing
• Donald Mack Hassler: Mutation Sonnet
• Photos
• Editorial: Some of Our Favorite Comics from 2016

Gustavo Bondoni: When the Shoulders of Giants Are Missing

It’s a truism in the literary world that each new piece of writing published owes its existence to thousands of years of literary tradition. Everything is influenced by and to a certain degree shaped by what came before. Even the avant garde, in attempting to break free of the shackles of the past, gives a nod to everything from Gilgamesh to Leopold Bloom. Nothing truly exists in a vacuum, and we are all standing on the shoulders of giants—the great literary minds that paved our way.

Year’s Best Weird Fiction, Volume 2, edited by Kathe Koja, reviewed by Kris Dikeman

Pickering, Canada: Undertow Press, 2015; $18.99 tpb; 328 pages

I begin with a confession: I can’t offer a very specific definition of what Weird Fiction is. Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart’s threshold test has always been good enough for me: I know it when I see it. But circumstances change. Having skated by on this flimsy old chestnut for years, one day, the editor of a prestigious science fiction newsletter holds a weaponized iguana to your head and tells you to stop futzing around.