The New York Review of Science Fiction

Pointing and Seeing (Editorial, NYRSF 313)

A miscellany of thoughts this time.

Last month’s editorial on the World Fantasy Award statuette crowded out any other concerns, so I wanted to note that NYRSF has now completed 26 years of monthly publication, 2 full years in electronic publication, and 1 full year in our less eyestrainy layout. Thank you, all, as always.

NYRSF Issue 313 (September 2014): Table of Contents

• Brian Stableford: Putting Flesh on the Myth of the Final War: A Parable of the Limitations of the Speculative Imagination
• Bernadette Lynn Bosky: Underground and Secret Spaces in Peter Straub’s Fiction
• Bravo by Greg Rucka, reviewed by Alec Austin
• The Madonna and the Starship by James Morrow, reviewed by Darrell Schweitzer
• Christopher S. Kovacs: The Raw Emotion Behind “A Rose for Ecclesiastes"
• Patrick L. McGuire: The Most Accurate Space Movie Before Destination Moon
• Ursula Pflug: Around the Gyre: Ruth Ozeki’s A Tale for the Time Being
• Photos
• Editorial: Pointing and Seeing

Bravo by Greg Rucka, reviewed by Alec Austin

New York: Mulholland Books, 2014; $26.00 hc; 291 pages

It’s San Diego Comic Con in 2001, and Greg Rucka has all but accused me of buying the ARC of Critical Space that I’m holding via eBay. Off-balance and fighting against my stutter, I manage to explain that I got it from my godmother, who’s an assistant manager at Cody’s Books, and mumble something about admiring his novels and his comics work. Rucka’s anger subsides, and his gracious inscription includes the phrase, “This is a dark ride.”

It’s true. It’s dark as hell. I loved it.

Ursula Pflug: Around the Gyre: Ruth Ozeki’s A Tale for the Time Being

Ruth Ozeki’s A Tale for the Time Being recently won the Kitschie Red Tentacle, which rewards “the year’s most progressive, intelligent and entertaining works that contain elements of the speculative or fantastic.” A UK award, its aim is to “encourage and elevate the tone of the discussion of genre literature in its many forms.” Ozeki was unable to attend the February award ceremony, lamenting that “When I wrote myself into my novel, as the character Ruth, I failed to anticipate the consequences, and now, like Ruth, I find myself marooned on a remote island in Desolation Sound, trapped in a fictional world of my own creation, unable to get away. It is a conundrum that you, at the Kitschies, will no doubt understand.”

Bernadette Lynn Bosky: Underground and Secret Spaces in Peter Straub’s Fiction

Peter Straub’s body of fiction is noteworthy for, among other strengths, its combination of coherence and development from work to work. Previously, I have looked at this coherence and maturation in terms of the structure of his novels, his handling of metafiction, genre creation and reframing, and themes such as personal and socio-political guilt. Here, I’ll continue this exploration by examining the specific tropes of the bad place—a location where evil things are done or have been done that continues to resonate with horror—and the secret place, of which the bad place is often an example. These tropes have continued to develop in Straub’s fiction, in ways corresponding very roughly to the time and genre of each work so far. Specifically, I’ll examine the appearance of the bad place as an underground site, primarily in the Blue Rose books and how this transforms into two different places in Straub’s more recent fiction.