Black Gate

Eccentric stories stick with me better than classifiable ones. Robert Heinlein’s great time travel piece, “All You Zombies,” for example, was eccentric within the category of time travel stories, so much so that it felt like an outlier. It didn’t fit. Even now, where time travel as a premise is way more prevalent, “All You Zombies” startles.

I like teaching that story to high schoolers. It’s a great in-class science fiction IQ piece. I have them read it silently. The kids who can do the sideways thinking that the best science fiction asks of us all gasp at the same place in the story (really! They react physically). They want to turn around in their seats to talk to a neighbor. “Do you get it?” they ask. “What a mind trip!”

Here’s a one-question quiz to test whether a first time reader of “All You Zombies” understood the story: What do the bartender, the unwed mother, the city slicker and Jane have in common?

The eccentric stuff is better. Harlan Ellison’s “Croatoan,” Connie Willis’s Lincoln’s Dreams, Kelly Link’s “The Faery Handbag,” Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere, and just about anything by Howard Waldrop are hard to lump in with their peers.

So, when I want a straight dose of the eccentric, the memorable, I often turn to a small-press magazine, the Hugo finalist Abyss & Apex, edited by Wendy S. Delmater.

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Cover by Elinor Mavor

Coming in after Asimov’s, Amazing Stories is a svelte 130 pages. One thing that really stood out to me in this issue was that almost everyone in it was a novice writer — many of the stories were first sales. It isn’t the ‘theme’ of the magazine, or of this issue or anything, but it is a thing I noticed. There is something refreshing about a quality amateur story, a certain unpolished plunging-ahead that can sweep the reader along.

That said, there are some of the stories that are, honestly, not that good. Others have said it better, but if you had picked up this issue back in the day (or pretty much any day), and thought to yourself “Hell, I could do this!”, you’d be right.

Here’s a look at the contents.

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Interzone 279, January-February 2019; cover by Richard Wagner

When I was young, books addicted me. I read incessantly, imprudently, and in an unhealthy manner. My mother used to come into my room to check on me after bedtime by putting her hand on my reading light to see if it was warm (what she never knew was that I could read by my closet light that she didn’t check).

I finished novels in uninterrupted binges, starting one when I came home from school, and then reading until dawn. One year for Christmas, I asked for the Tom Corbett: Space Cadet books, which I had just discovered. Two weeks before the holiday, my parents left the house for an all-day outing. I hunted and hunted and hunted until I found the wrapped books, carefully unwrapped them, read them, and then rewrapped and returned them to the hiding place.

When I was in college, I found a dog-eared copy of The Fellowship of the Ring on a table in the student union. Four days of missed class later, I finished The Return of the King and then to my delight discovered that there was a prequel, The Hobbit, which is why I missed the fifth day too.

I was a sick puppy, drunk on story.

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