The readers is advised to not the editor's anti-fiction tendencies. We've not done a
fiction issue before, and I trust we won't do one again anytime soon. It was staff
enthusiasm for the "ten random words" gimmick that convinced me we could do a
fiction issue in the first place. To say the results were mixed is understatement, as you
will see from my grades.
How I
Inadvertently Redecorated the Church of St. Stephen in Montenegro, by Sawyer
Brown. Creative premise, but somewhat the structure doesn't quite carry
it off. [C-]
The Initiator, by Pedkop Bambera. A
slight bit of lyrical prose that you either swallow in one big gulp and love it, or...
[C+]
One Hundred Square Inches of Blue Sky, by
Michelle Furr. Another startling premise that seems like it needs maybe a
whole novel to develop. Effective nonetheless. [B-]
Petrov the Good, by Ceci Lumley. What
could've been a gripping short narrative suffers, I think, from a like of telling local
color detail, at least enough to convince us that we're in that place at that terrible
time. [C]
White Elephant, by Robert Odom. If
we had an award for weirdness, Odom's story would get it. Yet somehow, even in only a few
hundred words, he sucked me into the weirdness and for a moment I could accept it. [B]
The Calhoun Cure, by Rean Rhyne. You're
either willing to accept the many shortcomings of science fiction as a genre in order to
let fiction writers play with futurist ideas, or you're not. I'm not. The narrative
machinery is just too squeaky, the characters too shallow for me. [D+]
Marion Beauregard Flagler's Last Day, by Sylvia
Sikeston. Difficult as it is, great political fiction is possible (see
Robert Penn Warren). Putting us convincingly inside the head of a 90-year-old bigot in the
U.S. Senate probably requires a lot more words than this. [D]
Dangers of the Orgasm, by Temple Duciel. If
Henry Miller had had a sense of humor? Temple Duciel gets "A" for effort but the
result seems at best lubricious and at worst trivial. [D-]
My Career in Art, by
Jerden Purmort. Our writer tried to set up a clever story that would
allow him to use all ten of his random words at one time. Sort of enjoyable O'Henry
approach to the problem. [C]
Dragstrip Porsche, by Angus Verspeeten.
What are we to make of a short story that starts out automotive realism, veers
into science fiction, and screeches into philosophy in the last sentence. I loved it. [A-]
Hover Craft, by J.M. Pyka. Hovering
dangerously near prose-poem territory, Pyka nonetheless scores some fictive points here.
[B+].
Sleepy Lobster, by Douglas Milburn. So we
get to the one piece that makes the whole exercise worthwhile. A fully realized,
through-composed piece of short fiction. [A]
Treehuggers
at 10, by Diebold Essen. Essen's been watching too much broadcast TV. He
didn't convince me. [D+]
Milles
Boners, by Doc Cuddy. Modesty prohibits my grading my own contribution to our
fiction issue.
Overall Grade for Magellan's Log 20:
[C-/D+]
--Doc Cuddy
Magellan's
Log 20
Magellan's
Log front page |