Scifantastic Magazine Issue #5: Summer 2006. Volume 2, Issue 2
Guest Reviewer : Gareth D. Jones

There are two things I like about Scifantastic. First, it’s packed with short stories, 12 in this issue. I like the odd interview or review, but when I buy a magazine it’s for the fiction. Second, it’s packed with short stories. This means you can read an entire story when you’ve only got a few minutes free, and if you don’t like a particular story you haven’t invested too much time in it.

Editor’s choice is Referendum by Peter Tennant. The Referendum is an annual election whereby everyone gets to vote for the five people they’d most like to see dead. An excellent idea, you may think at first. The author explores the social and ethical implications through the eyes of one unwilling constituent. I thought a couple of the sexual references a tad unnecessary, but nonetheless a memorable tale.

The Bathing Bells by Rhys Hughes is an intriguing story about bells and, strangely enough, toffee. Halfway through I realised that I recognised the style from another of Hughes’ bewildering yet beguiling stories in Universe Pathways. Both stories have a charming fairytale air and would not look out of place among the Tales from the Thousand and One Nights.

The excellent title Fast Freddie and the Pilot from Mars is followed by the equally great opening line: “My name is not Freddie and I’m not particularly fast.” The story is partly about wormholes and heroics, but also about love and destiny. The only slight disappointment for me was that the story was told yet again through the eyes of that mainstay of space stations everywhere – the bartender. The captivating story makes this forgivable though.

Richard Hudson’s The Sandmen is also about some kind of wormhole-type travel, but again it’s not the technology that’s important. There is some brilliantly confused description of the bizarre affects on the pilot of travelling outside space / time, and the enigmatic ending is perfect.

I’m not too fond of stories written in the second person, but you shouldn’t hold that against Luke Jackson’s No Pets. The perspective from which it’s written means that you don’t get much physical description but the experiences of familial feelings and of prejudice comes through and we are given an interesting insight into another, strangely familiar, culture.

Alan Heal’s Hitchhikers starts off like it might be part of The Sheep Pig, but quickly turns into a slightly gory, yet friendly, alien invasion. It’s written with an enjoyable light tone that makes the plot seem entirely reasonable.

A Tale from the Fifteenth Memory by Alison J Littlewood refers to the fifteenth in a series of tapes wherein unwanted memories can be downloaded and stored. The story of an aged man trying to uncover the secrets he has hidden from himself includes an involving series of twists packed into a short space and comes to a fitting and poignant end.

Enjoy the Silence, by Matthew Spaull is the wacky tale of a noisy nocturnal town where everyone has the same name, and the reclusive inventor who just wants a bit of piece and quiet. The story kept me grinning all the way through, and the mysterious alien race – the Nil – have a fantastic name. How can such a short name make them sound so menacing? I loved it.

Now, I’m not really one for fantasy, so when Lee Moan’s Groghol’s Staff opened with a young man’s apprenticeship to a wizard, I was momentarily put off. That was before remembering that Sarah Dobbs has yet, in five magazines, to have included a boring or unoriginal tale. So I continued on, and the light-hearted tale of an embittered old wizard and his fight against both evil and obsoleteness soon grew on me. In the end it turned out to be rather enjoyable.

My first thought on seeing Amarillo Dreams by Andrew Hook was (everyone join in): “Is this the way to Amarillo?”. I still though the same by the end of the story, as I couldn’t see a good reason why it was set there. It ‘s a well-written story about relationships and dreams, but maybe I missed something; there didn’t seem to be a fantastic element to the story. The final line is excellent though.

Losing It by David Ireland is another tale told in a bar, so it was a way into the story before the stench of smoke and alcohol cleared and the reason for the story became apparent. Having the story told this way misses out the action or excitement of a direct narrative story, but the history between the two characters ties the story together and allows Sam, the woman listening, to become an active participant. The story finishes up leaving us with a satisfied sense of poetic justice.

Bhaskar Dutt’s Dreams to Dust is a little jewel to complete the collection. It’s a well-crafted story about our dreams and ambitions and succeeds not only as a satisfying story, but an uplifting end to the magazine.