The New York Review of Science Fiction

NYRSF 341 Editorial: The Time Warp

The eagle-eyed among you may well have noticed that we have skipped the cover date of this issue several months forward from the previous issue—this is June 2017, reflecting the actual publication date, as opposed to #340’s December 2016, which came out in mid-April.

Issue 341 (June 2017) Table of Contents

• Steve Carper: Beyond “Deadline”: Three Additional WWII Atomic War Stories and the Office of Censorship
• Brian Stableford: The Fantastic Fiction of Maurice Magre, Part I: Claire d’Amour
• Read This: recently read and recommended by Anne Zanoni
• Ron Drummond: Days of Rising Salt: Artistic Choice and Critical Distinction
• Mike Barrett: Tales of a Ghostly Design: The Fiction of T.G. Jackson
• The Terrorists of Irustan by Louise Marley, reviewed by Anne Leonard
• Victor Grech: Doctor by Doctor: Dr. Leonard Horatio McCoy
• Read This: recently read and recommended by Darrell Schweitzer
• Michael Andre-Driussi: Notes on “The Prophets’ Paradise” of The King in Yellow
• David Drake: Paths Through Dark Woods
• Photos
• Editorial: The Time Warp

The Terrorists of Irustan by Louise Marley, reviewed by Anne Leonard

New York: Ace Books, 1999; $13.00 tpb; 323 pages

1.

When a girl in Irustan turns eight, she puts on a veil with three layers: the drape, which hangs to her waist and frames her face, covering neck and shoulders; the verge, which covers the mouth and nose; and the rill, a light fabric which covers her entire face, barely allowing her to see. At home, woman are not required to wear the rill, but everywhere else they must. The only man who can see a woman unveiled is her husband.

This is the world of Louise Marley’s The Terrorists of Irustan, first published in 1999. It is a cousin to Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale; like Atwood, Marley has created a world where women live cloistered and inferior lives inside draconian theocracies. Like Offred, Marley’s protagonist Zahra is in the household of a man of power; her husband, Qadir IbSada, is the Chief Director of the ExtraSolar Corporation, which rules Irustan.

Read This: recently read and recommended by Darrell Schweitzer

Of Eggs, Chickens, and the Fall of Rome

Macrobius (or Macrobius Ambrosius Theodosius) was a writer of the early fifth century ce, about whom little is known, save that he may have been a Romanized Greek from Egypt. He wrote, in Latin, the Saturnalia (available in three volumes from the Loeb Classical Library), which is part of a genre popular in late antiquity, descended from the dialogues of Plato but devolved into light reading. The Saturnalia is in the form of a lengthy imaginary dinner conversation between (mostly) real people, who were not necessarily acquainted or even alive when the book was written. It is a vast compendium of curious lore somewhat akin to the Attic Nights of Aulus Gellius or The Learned Banqueters of Athenaeus, filled with discourses on the divinity of the Sun, the universal wisdom of Vergil, arcane points of grammar, and even speculations on the workings of the human digestive system.

Read This: recently read and recommended by Anne Zanoni

The Queen’s Thief series by Megan Whalen Turner:
The Thief, Greenwillow Books, 1996
The Queen of Attolia, Greenwillow Books, 2000
The King of Attolia, Greenwillow Books, 2006
A Conspiracy of Kings, Greenwillow Books, 2010
“Thief!”, Disney Adventures, August 2000 (prequel short story)

I fell in love with this series in 2013. By “fell in love” I mean I slammed headlong into the series, became an utter fangirl, and never looked back. From my blog (25 June 2013):

I have read The Thief itself twice already, and the ending at least six times, probably more. (I initially got it from the library perhaps four weeks ago.) I read The Queen of Attolia once but skimmed through it again multiple times. And reread the ending several times. Because.

Steve Carper: Beyond “Deadline”: Three Additional WWII Atomic War Stories and the Office of Censorship

On June 28, 1943, Bryon Price, director of the United States Office of Censorship (OoC) and former executive news editor of the Associated Press, sent out a confidential note to 2,000 daily newspapers and 11,000 weeklies as well as all radio stations in the U.S. The note requested that editors prevent any articles or broadcasts from mentioning:

Production or utilization of atom smashing, atomic energy, atomic fission, atomic splitting, or any of their equivalents.

The use for military purposes of radium or radioactive materials, heavy water, high voltage discharge equipment, cyclotrons.

The following elements or any of their compounds: polonium, uranium, ytterbium, hafnium, protactinium, radium, rhenium, thorium, deuterium.