It Came from the North by Desirina Boskovich

This is more of an autobiographical story than an SF one-the alien element isn’t really central-but is a compelling read for all that. The creature accepts their sympathy as gently as it can, knowing they cannot understand, knowing they will not help. A passing parade of insects.Īll small of ambition, small of stature, small of mind. Then, reaching out, reaching back, the tiny curiosity of tiny minds: a mole, tunneling beneath. But its psychic overtures are met with silence. The creature oozes and drifts to a small stand of maples, and feathers its mind on the breeze, sending out signals of distress. Parts of this have echoes of Leigh Brackett (the Mennonite community) and Zenna Henderson (the rural setting): One is newly married and pregnant, the other already has a young family and is struggling with both them and an abusive husband. The story then moves to two of the women in the Mennonite community the girl lives in.

It makes an attempt to mentally contact a young girl, but this overwhelms and kills her.

The Voice in the Cornfield, the Word Made Flesh by Desirina Boskovich initially starts with an alien crash-landing on Earth. These anecdotes are not particularly engaging and at the end it just stops this reads more like an extract than a story. It is told by an old wizard to a third party and tells of a youth called Schmedrick being apprenticed and not doing particularly well before he goes on to be famous. Beagle is a prequel to his novel The Last Unicorn. The ending wasn’t what I expected-I thought the disappearance was going to be solved-and I felt slightly short-changed. Gwen’s younger brother went missing while she was a child. The relationship between the two students breaks down when the Eliza gives Gwen a model of her own house for a Xmas present. They are a big success and in some cases the AIs are able to make intuitive leaps that progress the sometimes stalled investigations. Eliza is the brains behind the idea, and Gwen ends up as an employee building the houses. Talking to Dead People by Sarah Pinsker is about two university students who start building ‘murder houses.’ These are models of crime-scene houses with an AI chip so that one can cross-examine the persons involved in and around the crime.

1 I’ll deal with the other fiction first before I move onto that part of the issue. This is a special issue-the first that F&SF has published for some time-featuring David Gerrold. Harris, Danny ShanahanĬuriosities: The Adventures of Hatim Tai, by Anonymous (1830) The Voice in the Cornfield, the Word Made Flesh Greg Hullender and Eric Wong, Rocket Stack Rankĭavid Loyd, There Ain’t No Such Thing As A Free Lunch

It Came from the North by Desirina Boskovich