Fantastic Worlds #1, Summer 1996
48 pages / $5.00 from $4.95 per issue
Editor Scott A. Becker
P.O. Box 910
Greenfield, MA 01302

This debut issue opens with a many-layered fantasy by Steve and Melanie Tem, which with a rare poignancy and touch of the surreal, looks into the beauty and tarnishing of the soul. "The Perfect Diamond" opens with Christopher, the protagonist, walking away from a stint in jail. He thinks a lot about the "diamond" in his pocket which he's had since he was a kid, and how it keeps getting more and more ruined and flawed. He searches for a way to repair it, but only makes its blemish worse. But sometimes, he will discover, it is from the imperfections that beauty is spun.

The next piece of fiction, "Spraying for Bugs" by Stepan Chapman, follows a glowing article by Jeff Vandermeer on the unpublished novel of Chapman, of which "Bugs" is a part. The story is a strange stream-of-consciousness ramble by a machine whose actions as an exterminator have become far more dangerous than those mutated insects it was designed to destroy. In Chapman's world, humans have become superfluous in a mechanized cities war on pests. It's a bizarre and certainly unique vision, and one that leaves you wondering if it could possibly sustained at novel length. Perhaps someday we'll know.

T. Winter-Damon's slipstream "Do Deadheads Dream of Shock-Pulsed Meat...?" is a disappointing experiment in storytelling through transcripts. In this case, the transcript comes in part from Dead Heads: drone humanoids on a mission a la Robocop. The narrative style is simply too splintered and abrupt to follow with any kind of enjoyment. Unless your one who likes to sit and piece together a story by listening to police scanners all night.

Bryan Linderberger provides "Last Stand," a futuristic story of a sort of SWAT raid on the President's Mansion to retrieve a Rembrandt.

There are also good stories by W. Gregory Stewart (about a sphere that can create worlds), James S. Dorr (a lark about a magician's assistant whose spelling goes awry), Mark Rich (a mystical fantasy) and Brian Plante (about the relationship between a boy who can transport himself out of body and his teacher).

If this issue is any indication, editor Scott Becker prefers an almost equal mix of militant SF and classic fantasy. And his breadth of taste is laudatory.

Copyright © 1996 by John Everson. All Rights Reserved.