Dell Magazines

Sheila Williams’s editorial¹ discusses past and present winners of the Dell Magazines Award for Undergraduate Excellence in Science Fiction and Fantasy Writing. Robert Silverberg’s Reflections² muses on Persons from Porlock and how he always took great care to allow no distractions when he was working but that Coleridge’s experience did provide him with the inspiration for his first ever sale (for $5) at the age of fifteen. Paul di Filippo’s “On Books” reviews retrospective collections from Nancy Kress and Gregory Benford, a contemporary one from Finnish writer Leena Krohn and novels by Christopher Fowler and Gene Wolfe.
In the fiction we have Suzanne Palmer’s Ten Poems for the Mossums, One for the Man³ which is narrated by a poet set down alone on an alien planet where he discovers the nature of some of its alien life.
Both Filtered⁴ by Leah Cypess andMasked⁵ by Rich Larson are typical ‘push current trends to their logical conclusion’ SF stories. In the former a journalist tries to get his story about the manipulation of everyone’s communication feeds by filter programmes through the filters. The latter has teenagers constantly surrounded by a cloud of appearance created to enhance their real selves. One of them, Vera, has been affected by a virus which turned the “cover” off.
Project Entropy⁵, the latest of the series of stories in Asimov’s by Dominica Phetteplace, explores the ramifications of Angelina having had her Watcher chip removed and the implications of such AIs. Curiously flat in execution.
In Jack Skillingstead’s The Savior Virus⁶ a biologist who lost his legs in a terrorist bombing engineers a virus to remove the notion of God from people’s minds.
In Nobody Like Josh⁷ by Robert Thurston Josh is a town’s secret alien whose spaceship crashed before the narrator was born. This story is curiously similar in premise to I married a Monster from Outer Space which appeared in Asimov’s March 2016 issue, but isn’t anything like as affective or effective.
Webs by Mary Anne Mohanraj is set around the prejudice of ordinary humans on a colony world towards those with adaptations.
In Lost: Mind by Will McIntosh a man has to search for the missing parts of his wife’s downloaded mind after they are stolen. The story is marred by a continuity error in the last quarter page which totally undermines verisimilitude.

¹ graduating with a duel major (dual,) Joan Sloncewski (the correct spelling, Slonczewski, is used later in the piece.) ² Samuel Purchas’ (Purchas’s,) ³ beside (besides,) to not spend (not to spend,) “how good he has always been about putting off things” (about putting things off.) ⁴matrixes (matrices.) ⁵Lawless’ (Lawless’s.) ⁵ canvasses (canvases.) ⁶ symptoms would manifest in mild cold-like symptoms. ⁷ crashed-landed (crash-landed.)

In his column Jonathan McCalmont extols the value of experimental narrative while in hers Nina Allan argues that there is such a thing as a daunting book and they may even be necessary. However is it possible that James Smythe’s position on “difficult” books can be interpreted more favourably? His Twitter quote, “Saying that patience is needed to read those books both demeans the books, and suggests that you’re not mentally able to read them … Here’s a novel thought: stop acting like a book is a mountain. Start acting like they’re a thing people read for fun, in their free time,” might mean that people ought to be encouraged to read them rather than discouraged from doing so. In the Book Zone Jo L Walton praises Catherynne M Valente’s Radiance and Ian Hunter suggests Adam Roberts’s The Thing Itself is already one of the books of the year. As to the fiction:-

Alexander Marsh Freed’s Ten Confessions of Blue Mercury Addicts, by Anna Spencer examines the effects of blue mercury, a drug that slows down time – or speeds you up, the experience is the same – but is addictive.
In Spine¹ by Christopher Fowler, as an outbreak of deaths by sting occurs in Terrance Bay it seems as if jellyfish have become intelligent pack animals.
Not Recommended for Guests of a Philosophically Uncertain Disposition by Michelle Ann King features two workers at a tourist attraction known as the Fracture, a place where physical laws have broken down. This was neatly done and reminded me of the Eagles’ Hotel California.
In Motherboard: a tale from somewhere² by Jeffrey Thomas the rather programmatically named Leep seeks refuge from his life by imagining himself into the world he perceives in the circuit boards he works on.
Lotto³ by Rich Larson is set in a transit camp where applicants wait for their number to come up for a slot on a colony ship.
Andromeda of the Skies⁴ by E Catherine Tobbler has a seven-year old girl fall through ice into a lake and travel two million light years to a cavern by a strange sea.

Pedant’s corner:- ¹a missing “start quote” mark. ²Written in USian – except for the spelling “dialogue”, Down syndrome (Down’s syndrome,) space crafts (space craft,) held the circuit board it both hands (in both hands,) ³would make only the whole thing more exotic (would only make the whole thing more exotic,) stared up at quickcrete ceiling (the quickcrete ceiling.) ⁴the caves darknesses (the caves’ darknesses?)