From richard.horton@sff.net Mon Mar 15 23:40:23 2004 Date: Wed, 15 Oct 2003 22:08:26 -0500 From: Rich Horton Newsgroups: sff.people.richard-horton, sff.discuss.short-fiction Subject: Summary: F&SF, 2003 Summary, F&SF, 2003 F&SF published 83 stories in 2002, for a total of about 598,000 words of fiction, pretty much exactly the same word count as last year. Four stories were reprints, for at total of a bit more than 14,000 words, so about 583,000 words were new. The F&SF stories this year included 5 novellas, 25 novelettes, and 53 short stories. 7 of the short stories were short-shorts (under 1500 words), including a couple of the reprints (in the special Barry Malzberg issue). Novellas My favorite novellas were the two R. Garcia y Robertson Markovy stories, "Killer of Children" (December) and "The Bone Witch" (February). Garcia y Robertson's stories are full of colour and action, just great fun. The other three stories all had their points, but none really excited me. And even the Garcia y Robertson stories aren't likely to make any of my award ballots. Novelets Five novelets seemed especially good to me. Mark W. Tiedemann's "Scabbing" (April) is a strong look at unions in the near future, when workers operate "surrogates" (human-controlled robots) and brain augments further threaten the old ways. The story doesn't take sides or preach, just looks at real people affected by plausible technological changes. M. Rickert's "The Chambered Fruit" (August) is a moving ghost story about a girl killed by an internet-met pedophile. Bret Bertholf's "Alfred Bester is Alive and Well and Living in Winterset, Iowa" (September) is a flashy first sale, with an aging man getting an experimental neurological reliving 1957 along with characters from Bester's stories. And two stories from the October/November double issue impressed: Dale Bailey's "The Census Taker" is a creepy story of a backwoods Louisiana town which has not quite adjusted to the 20th Century; and Robert Reed's "Like Minds" is a wild and imaginative story of parallel worlds and a means for anyone to find their counterpart in any of infinite alternates. There was also enjoyable work by Ellen Klages, Paul Di Filippo, Paolo Bacigalupi, Pat Murphy and John Langan. The Tiedemann and Reed, at least, will be candidates for my award ballots. Short Stories I starred quite a few short stories in my notes for 2003. M. Rickert's "The Machine" (January) is a thoughtful dark retelling of Philomela and the Nightingale. Dale Bailey's "Hunger: A Confession" (March) is a strong horror story about a serial killer's old house and an older brother trying to scare his younger brother. New writer Aaron A. Reed had a nice VR story in March, "Shutdown/Retrovival", while two not so new Reeds had very good stories in May. Kit Reed's "Incursions" is a paranoid fantasy of an ordinary man, alienated from his ordinary life, who leaves the commuter train and ends up in a landscape like the old adventure game Zork. Robert Reed's "555" is a neat piece about a meek minor character in an online soap opera who takes her "life" into her own hands when rating trouble threaten. David D. Levine's "The Tale of the Golden Eagle" (June) is a lovely Cordwainer Smithian story about a far future living spaceship rescued from the junk heap. And Joe Haldeman's "Four Short Novels" is a very clever look at four different futures affected differently by alternate means of immortality. Add good work by Gene Wolfe, Eugene Mirabelli, Esther M. Friesner, James L. Cambias and Albert E. Cowdrey -- a good year for short stories at F&SF. Of all these, the Robert Reed, David D. Levine, and Joe Haldeman stories seem likeliest to make my award ballots.