From richard.horton@sff.net Mon Mar 15 23:41:02 2004
Date: Wed, 10 Dec 2003 19:27:35 -0600
From: Rich Horton <richard.horton@sff.net>
Newsgroups: sff.people.richard-horton, sff.discuss.short-fiction
Subject: Summary: Strange Horizons, 2003

Summary, Strange Horizons, 2003

Strange Horizons (www.strangehorizons.com) has now been around for
more than three years. To my mind, the quality of their fiction
continues to improve -- they are a reliable source of strong short SF,
probably the second best SF fiction webzine behind Sci Fiction.
(Infinite Matrix is another contender but has not published enough new
longer short fiction, though plenty of short-shorts, some quite good.)

I counted just about 185,000 words of new fiction this year, almost
exactly the same count as 2002. There were a total of 59 new stories,
and a few reprints. Of the new stories, 12 were part of Jay Lake's
linked series of short-shorts collectively called "Rushes". Four more
were 1000 words or less, so could reasonably be called "short-shorts".
Only one was a novelette, though that story, at 12,000 words, was the
longest story SH has ever published.

The novelette, Beth Bernobich's "Poison", is a strong story, in the
tradition of Ursula Le Guin and Eleanor Arnason, or for that matter SH
regular M. C. A. Hogarth, in concerning gender roles among aliens with
somewhat unusual sexual physiology. "Poison" is about a pair of
tikaki, who can change their sex at will once they reach maturity. The
narrator has not yet "ripened", but his/her companion, Yenny, has, and
this ability makes Yenny a valuable prostitute. A new client, however,
is using Yenny is some way as to make him/her ill, and the story turns
on finding out what this client is plotting, which also reveals some
of the story behind the tikakis' place in this alien society. 

Among the short stories several were very fine. My favorite was
probably Bill K'Tepi's "Start With Color", an affecting story about a
man charged with curing the plague of "dreams turned real" that has
greatly harmed the world -- but also led to beauty and perhaps other
valuable things. Other favorites: David Moles's "Fetch", a sentimental
but effectively so story about a slightly alternate space program, in
which we send a chimp trained to speak up in an early capsule; Douglas
Lain's "Shopping at the End of the World", a both a wacky working out
of a wild idea (a paper shredder with far reaching effects), and a
sharp critique of consumerist culture; and Theodora Goss's "Sleeping
With Bears", an arch story about a woman marrying a bear. Other
stories worth mention: Karina Sumner-Smith's "Drowned Men Can't Have
Kids", a very nicely done spooky ghost story about a girl dealing with
stress apparently caused by problems with her parents' marriage; Dean
Francis Alfar's "L'Aquilone du Estrellas (The Kite of Stars)", a
colorful magic realist sort of thing about a young woman who falls in
love with an astronomer and determines to become a star to gain his
attention; Benjamin Rosenbaum's "The Book of Jashar", a funny take on
the Old Testament -- with vampires; Severna Park's "The Island of
Varos", about a conquered people who have literal souls; Tobias
Seamon's "contemporary Odysseus" story, "The Siren of Ocean Park";
effective humorous stories by Jennifer Pelland ("Snow Day") and Wade
Albert White ("See Jack Run: An Intergalactic Primer"), and good work
by Tim Pratt, Jay Lake, Rudi Dornemann, Aynjel Kaye, Erika Peterson,
Greg van Eekhout, and Heather Shaw.