Joe Haldeman's "Doing Emily" (short story, virtual reality)

A virtual reality machine that let's you become, in your mind, a character in machine's database, a database that includes simulations of many historical characters.

The story is about a man becoming Emily Dickinson... rather too realistically...

Fact sheet.

First published: F&SF, May/June 2013.
Rating: B.
Related: Stories of Joe Haldeman; virtual reality fiction.

Manly Wade Wellman's "O Ugly Bird!" (short story, free): Hero frees a town of a curse

This is not science fiction; it's witchcraft. I loved it because of beautiful language - content didn't really matter!

Story summary.

Penniless hero is taking a long walk along a trail. On the way he sees & hears stories about the evil Mr Onselm & his Ugly Bird. Mr Onselm can hex anyone, & whole town is scared of him.

Of course, by the end of the story, hero will vanquish the villain.

Fact sheet.

First published: F&SF, December 1951.

Download full text from Baen Ebooks or Oregon Literary Review.

This is the first of the author's "Silver John" series.

"there was a Silver John movie made back in 1972, sometimes found under the title The Legend of Hillbilly John, but it bombed at the box office. It was originally released as Who Fears the Devil?"

Rating: A.

Clifford D Simak's "Final Gentleman" (novelette, illusion)

This is the kind of plot normally associated with PKD now-a-days: which of the two equally vivid realities experienced by a man is the real one?

I didn't really like it, though I didn't find it boring either.

Story summary.

A very successful writer suddenly has a feeling there is no more writing left in him. And the world he knew all his life is no longer there: university he went to has no record of him; the house his mother lives in & he frequently visits no longer houses his mother & never has; the grave of the woman he once loved & now often visits exists but is someone else's grave; the fancy restaurant in the neighborhood he frequented is a very ordinary dump; ...

Story is of him slowly unraveling the puzzle.

Collected in.

1. Groff Conklin (ed)'s "Six Great Short Science Fiction Novels".

Fact sheet.

First published: F&SF, January 1960.
Rating: B.   
Related: Stories of Clifford D Simak.

Judith Merril's "Project Nursemaid" (novella): Government's difficulties enrolling unwanted babies

I cannot point to any clear flaws in the story, but I kept putting it down frequently. Took me over a dozen sittings to finish it.

Story summary.

Set up is: For space exploration, babies raised in special low gravity environments are necessary, low-gravity environments not being very conducive for ordinary earth-raised adults.

So government has a program where it creates orphans to raise (on moon)! Because of moral issues involved, the program is a secret one.

So a certain military camp in the US has certain targets: so many babies to deliver (means recruiting young mothers of unwanted pregnancies), & so many "foster parents" to deliver (older women to nurse the babies).

Story is from the point of view of Colonel Edgerly whose job it is recruit both babies & their nursemaids.

Collected in.

1. Groff Conklin (ed)'s "Six Great Short Science Fiction Novels".

Fact sheet.

First published: F&SF, October 1955.
Rating: B. 
Related: Stories of Judith Merril.

Ken Liu's "The Paper Menagerie" (short story, fantasy, free)

This may not be a bad read, provided you have a taste for emotional tearjerkers.

It's the sad story of a Chinese peasant girl - losing her parents to lawlessness during Cultural Revolution, being sold as a slave to a Hong Kong household, being sold as a "wife" to an American man, & finally being rejected by her American son who dislikes his Chinese origins.

Fact sheet.

First published: F&SF, March/April 2011.
Download full text from Random House.
Rating: B.
Nominated for Nebula Award 2011 in short story category.
Related: Stories of Ken Liu.

James H Schmitz's "The Hub: Dangerous Territory" (ed Eric Flint) (collection, free): Annotated table of contents & review

Whole book is online at Baen Books. Includes one novel & nine short stories.

Table of contents (10 stories, best first).

1. [novel] "The Demon Breed" aka "The Tuvela" (A); download; Analog, September/October 1968: Humanity has secret super-human rulers!
2. [novelette] "Grandpa" (A); download; Analog, February 1955: A group of early explorers on a newly opened world is trapped by a local lifeform. Only the ingenuity of our teenage hero can save the group's life...
3. [novelette] "Trouble Tide" (A); download; Analog, May 1965: Detectives burst a smuggling operation.
4. [novella] "The Searcher" (B); download; Analog, February 1966: Human heroes fight off an evil alien.
5. [ss] "Balanced Ecology" (B); download; Analog, March 1965: A jungle world knows how to defend itself against greedy humans.
6. "The Other Likeness" (B); download; Analog, July 1962: A small band of humans thinks redesigned, human-looking, aliens have penetrated the human worlds - to destroy the human civilization. So they're doing what they can to catch the aliens...
7. "Attitudes" (B); download; F&SF, February 1969: Sole survivor of an accidentally destroyed human world has has come to civilization seeking help - he's carrying brain dumps of a lot of his dead compatriots. He wants Federation to supply him with many artificially created human bodies which he will animate with his dead friends. He also wants help colonizing a new world with this crowd. Federation helps, but someone is wondering...
8. "The Machmen" (B); download; Analog, September 1964: "Machmen" are machine-men, some medically-induced transformation that turns them into "Homo
   Superior". Only, it's illegal & unsafe. One of the would-be victims being chased for forcible transformation into machman turns out to be someone more capable than strongmen expected.
9. [novelette] "The Winds of Time" (B); download; Analog, September 1962: A man & a woman are trapped, kidnapped, & ... harassed ... by ... aliens.
10. [ss] "A Nice Day for Screaming" (B); download; Analog, January 1965: One of the early exploration ships in "pseudospace", a kind of parallel space, is chased by ... something.
    

Related: Stories of James H Schmitz.

Free fiction: Two Robert Reed stories from F&SF, May-June 2011

"Stock Photos" (download) & "The Road Ahead" (download) at Suvudu.

Related: Fiction from F&SF; of Robert Reed.

Peter David's "Bronsky's Dates With Death" (novelette, free): A man's death-wish is fulfilled

Much of it is actually humor - an old man's obsession with his impending death, & the exasperation of his family members with it. But it has a grim & somewhat longish ending.

Fact sheet.

First published: F&SF, July/August 2011.
Download full text from Suvudu. (Note: Recent fiction  from F&SF tends to be online only for a couple of months. Save it locally if you intend to read it later.)
Rating: B.

Couple of 2011 stories

Neither particularly impressive. None crappy either. Both dark.

Note that recent F&SF fiction tends to be online only for a couple of months. Save it locally if you want to read it later.

1. [ss] Chris Lawson's "Canterbury Hollow"; download; F&SF, January/February 2011: Love story of a "balloted" couple - in world with too much population & too few resources; so periodically, ballots are drawn to decide who is to be prematurely killed!
   
   Kurt Vonnegut's "2 B R 0 2 B" (download) is a much crisper variant on essentially the same theme.
2. [ff] JR Hume's "The Last Station"; download; Every Day Fiction, 18 January 2011: Humanity has achieved immortality by getting transformed in to androids. But some people remain the original organics ("folks"). This is the story of the last days of one of the last "folks".

Reginald Bretnor's "Bug-Getter" (flash fiction, humor, free)

Ambrosius Goshawk, an unsuccessful painter, makes a trade with an alien: in exchange for some of his paintings no one wants, alien will get rid of the pest bothering the painter. Only, alien misheard a minor word...

See also.

1. Isaac Asimov's "Two-Centimeter Demon"; download: Similar misunderstanding in another funny story.

Fact sheet.

First published: F&SF, January 1960.
Download full text.
Rating: B.
Related: Stories of  Reginald Bretnor.

Sean McMullen's "The Precedent" (novelette, environmental dystopia, free): "Victims" of global warming witch-hunt its culprits

It's an easy read, but is very dark. Modeled after any number of class-persecutions in history.

Story summary.

In the year 2035, the world has turned green, everyone born before 2000 is automatically a "climate criminal", those born after the tipping year are the "victims" & current rulers. To keep their conscience clear, the current rulers don't summarily execute the older folk; they instead hold monkey courts that sentence most to death with trials sometimes lasting just a minute.

This story is narrated by Dr Jason Hall, an 80 year old climatologist facing such a court. Through his eyes, we will see the horror of concentration camps. He will be the first individual pardoned by such a court, but will discover that this is not a happy outcome...

Fact sheet.

First published: F&SF, July/August 2010.
Download full text from Suvudu.
Caution: Recent F&SF fiction tends to be online only for a couple of months. Save it to a local file if you want to read it later.
Rating: B.

"The Magazine of Fantasy", Vol 1 No 1 (Fall 1949) (eds Anthony Boucher & J Francis McComas) (magazine, free): Annotated table of contents

This is the inaugural issue of F&SF, subtitled "An Anthology of the Best Fantasy Stories, Old and New", & the only issue that carries this title. Next issue will be named "The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction".

Scans of the magazine in the form of a CBR file are available online as part of a larger package.

Publisher, Lawrence E Spivak, in his introduction tells us of the magazine's focus: "whatever our senses may reject, but our imagination logically accepts." His invitation to authors solicits material "sufficiently out of this world to contradict the laws of man's logic -- while adhering firmly to a freshly created logic of their own."

Note that this is not all-original; it includes reprints, in addition to original fiction.

In the past, I've read at least two of the stories - "Private--Keep Out!" & "The Hurkle is a Happy Beast" - but don't remember much of the either. Later, I think, is widely anthologized.

Table of contents (11 stories).

Where I'm aware of alternate download links for individual stories, I include that too. Links on author, publisher, or year fetch more matching fiction.

1. [original] Cleve Cartmill's "Bells on His Toes": "broad farce-fantasy".
2. [reprint] Perceval Landon's "Thurnley Abbey"; download; Raw Edges (collection), 1908: "plausible cold terror". "merely one of the three most terrifying stories in the English language." "in the supernatural field, things are not always what they seem ... or even what they seem not to be."
3. [original] Philip MacDonald's "Private--Keep Out!".
4. [reprint] Fitz-James O'Brian's "The Lost Room"; download; Harper's Magazine, September 1858.
5. [original] Theodore Sturgeon's "The Hurkle is a Happy Beast".
6. [original] Anthony Boucher' "Review Copy" (as by H H Holmes): "supernatural vengeance".
7. [reprint] Guy Endore's "Men of Iron"; 1940 (where?): "social irony". "the implications of the machine age".
8. [reprint] Stuart Palmer's "A Bride for the Devil"; 1940 (where?): "horrible hilarity".
9. [reprint] Oliver Onions' "Rooum"; download; The Fortnightly Review, December 1910: "the story of the craneman Rooum, the lone wolf of the construction world who was never quite alone."
10. [reprint] Richard Sale's "Perseus Had a Helmet"; Argosy, 5 February 1938: "border-line humor". "somewhere on the borderline between logical crime & a world gone mad."
11. [original] Winona McClintic's "In the Days of Our Fathers": First published story of the author.

Related: Fiction from F&SF/1940s.

Ian R MacLeod's "Recrossing the Styx" (short story, immortality, free): A machine that forces your partner to love you!

Mostly an average read, but gets more interesting & Kuttnerish near end.

Story summary.

Frank Onions is a tour operator aboard Glorious Nomad, a tourist ship currently sailing the Mediterranean. Guests are mostly zombies, rich old men resurrected from dead but still frail, along with their "minders".

Warren & Dottie Hastings are among the guests. Warren is the zombie who was seriously rich when living, & Dottie is his young, beautiful & still loving wife he married just a short while before his death.

As Frank gets attracted to Dottie, he will learn that she cannot love anyone while Warren is around - her mind was "imprinted" by a machine in the marriage deal she cut with Warren before he agreed to marry her.

So we get a murder motive. Together, Frank & Dottie will kill Warren & will happily ever after. Murder goes well, & they live happily ever after too - both of them, but ... here comes a Kuttnerish twist...

Fact sheet.

First published: F&SF, May/June 2010.
Download full text from Suvudu Free Library.
Caution:  Recent F&SF fiction tends to be online only for a couple of months. Save it to local disk if you want to read it later.
Rating: A.
Related: Stories of Ian R MacLeod.

Some recent B-fiction (16 May 2010)

I've dropped very crappy stuff, but there is nothing excellent here either; all B-stories, & on the lower side of my B-pile. Better reads tend to come early in list below.

1. Dagoberto Gilb's "Uncle Rock"; download; The New Yorker, 10 May 2010; non-genre: A poor Mexican woman in US receives passes from all kinds of men. Told from the perspective of her 11 year old son.
2. Denise McCune's "Shuffle Up and Deal"; download; JBU, #23 (February 2010); humor: This plot probably has been done 10,000 times in various garbs.
   
   Aliens have landed & one of them requested the government to let him play an about to begin
   
   Poker tournament. Someone overhears an alien delegate as saying the winner takes Earth! So panic sets in, & everyone must ensure the alien loses the tournament!
3. [ff] Duncan Shields' "Shuffler"; download; 365tomorrows, 10 May 2010: Using a teleporting device to make humanity more tolerant of interracial differences!
4. Steven Popkes' "Crocodiles"; download (online only for a couple of months); F&SF, May/June 2010; zombie: Germans, during World War II, have created zombie soldiers that can turn enemy into zombies by biting.
   
   Very nasty & dark story. European & US readers might identify with it in ways I cannot.
   
   Also included are standard prejudices of many US sources: Americans are smart, Germans are evil, Russians couldn't care less for their own.
5. Jacqueline Rochow's "The Truth Will Out"; download; 365tomorrows, 5 May 2010; fanfic: Effectively retells an episode from Pierre Poulle's "Planet of the Apes", but without explicitly naming the original: A few scientists have evidence that their ancestors were merely lab animals of humans, & are debating the social implications of making the information public.

Related: Fiction from 2010.

Henry Kuttner & C L Moore's "Android" (as by C H Liddell) (novelette, paranoia, free): Androids are quietly replacing humans!

The idea is not new - a conspiracy of things non-human to quietly impersonate humans, sometimes killing the originals they're replacing; see, e.g., John Campbell's "The Brain Stealers of Mars" (read online), or Philip K Dick's "The Father-Thing" (read online). Stylistically, there is some similarity with Kuttner's own "Don't Look Now" (download) about a man's paranoia that Martian imposters among humanity are driving our destiny.

We also see here a favorite theme of Kuttner: children think in ways that are fundamentally different from adults.

Story summary.

James Philips Bradley has incontrovertible evidence that his boss, Arthur Court, is an android rather than human! In fact, his work has convinced him that a sizable number of people he sees around are actually androids. And he thinks they're working towards eventually replacing humanity, though their numbers may not be that big today.

This is the story of his quest (to save humanity). And its strange climax.

Fact sheet.

First published: F&SF, June 1951,
Download full text.
Rating: B.
Related: Stories of Henry Kuttner, C L Moore (as by C H Liddell); fiction from 1950s.

Free fiction: F&SF's two Nebula 2009 nominees

1. [novella] Carolyn Ives Gilman's excellent under water adventure "Arkfall" (download) has been available elsewhere for reading online for almost a year now; now it's also available as can-save-to-local-disk HTML from F&SF.
2. [novelette] Richard Bowes' "I Needs Must Part, the Policeman Said" (download): I gave it up within first 15% - a sick old man is having strange dreams.

[via Gordon Van Gelder]

Gordon Van Gelder lists all anthologies that collect fiction from F&SF magazine

At F&SF Forum. All anthologies issued so far, from various editors.

"eholst" adds an additional entry via two separate posts.

Related: Fiction from F&SF.

Marc Laidlaw's "Dankden" (novelette, fantasy, racism, free)

A swampy town called Dankden, peopled by amphibians called "phibs". Humans come, hunting phibs for their hides. Overtime, there is a group of half-breeds too - partly human, partly phib. And some humans hunt the half-breeds' children too. So we have a conflict, eventually resulting in division among humans & burning of a half-breeds' township.

Not exactly my kind of story, but not boring either.

Fact sheet.

First published: F&SF, October/November 1995.
Download full text from publisher's site (I think this link won't work after a month or so).
Rating: B.
Related: Stories about racism.

F&SF's online reprints

A few days back, I noted that F&SF's occasional reprint posts at their site are now replaced with new fiction posts at Suvudu. Looks like I was wrong.

New fiction posts at Suvudu are in addition to reprint posts at their own site. Bot SF feed picked up the latest reprint at their site today - Marc Laidlaw's "Dankden" (download). If history is any indication, this too will be online only for a couple of months.

F&SF's monthly online short fiction moves to Suvudu

A while back, F&SF used to post 1 story each month (or was it alternate month?) on their site - the story that stayed online for a while, & then was taken down. These used to be reprints.

They've now made them from current issue, & moved them to Suvudu Free Library - but still the story won't be online forever (so any links to it will break after a couple of months). Currently online is John Langan's "City of the Dog" (download) from January/February 2010 issue.
Update: Oops - I seem to have linked their icon as "download" link! Fixed now.
Update 13 January 2009: I've now read "City of the Dog". Mostly the story of a man's troubled love life - girl he loves also loves another man & he knows it. There is a small sf thread beginning about half way through the text - an underground city of tunnels exists under the city where the story is set - an ancient underground city of dog-like creatures who hunt humans, keep human women, & have a human priest who can turn ordinary humans into these Hounds by doing something to their soul. To me, it was a waste of time.

Note: My Bot SF feed used to pick up these stories from F&SF site. This feed also picks up fiction from Suvudu's fiction feed - so unless the posting method for these stories changes at Suvudu, Bot SF subscribers should continue getting these occasional stories in their inbox (I label them "[limited time]" because they'll soon go offline).

[via Grasping for the Wind]