28 November 2010

Trawling Andromeda Spaceways. High recs

In issue #46 and the current issue #48, the editors have emphasised the horror in the mix, but in both issues, there is also much, much, else.

I'm first bringing up Issue #46 from the depths of the Back Issue Sea. #46 was unfortunately released along with #47, and so it sunk deeper than a wobbegong carpet shark, and seems to be as camouflaged because it has really only been noticed by readers looking for horror. The otherwise has been treated by them with the disdain prawn trawlers give to spider crabs.

In Issue #46
First, I'm recommending yet again " 'The Laughing Girl of Bora Fanong' a Tale of Colonial Venus" by John Dixon and Adam Browne. It's a much bigger and brighter fish (lit by lamplights, and bleary-eyed and probably tar-lunged from second-hand pipe smoke) than the description of it, "dark SF". I would say of the editor Mark Farrugia who was more caring about the contents of this issue than many a mother crocodile, her young, "He has chosen bloody well, but labelled poorly." (A secret about consumption: I had the pleasure of consuming this story first raw, in manuscript form — and that it was a pleasure, is a rare pleasure indeed.)

Issue #46, in pdf and/or hard copy.

Also, I wouldn't do it for myself, mind you. But on behalf of a story that is not horror (unless I have no sense of horror) I must mention that the story with my byline, "How Galligaskins Sloughed the Scourge", does not fit in the horror genre either (unless you flee from gingerbread) but does fit like a sardine into a tin, into the Tambourian genre (and for those post-docs and international conference-goers, needing an answer to the Call for Papers, the subgenre of Tambourian Medlarania; and going even deeper, the subbasement genre of Tambourian Medlarania Poetasterosity ).


Onward, to Issue #48
The only reason I didn't write earlier about two stories in particular in this issue is that I wanted to make a splash about them, so I was waiting for a splashy page to appear on the ASIM site with the whole Table of Contents, and the links to purchase. That hasn't happened, so I won't wait any longer.

Issue #48, in pdf and/or hard copy.

Two very fine authors have stories here that I highly recommend. In fact, I urged both of them to submit the very stories I recommend, and though I never twist arms, I am delighted that editor Juliet Bathory had such good taste. She chose them both. (This was no shoe-in. She didn't choose another one by another friend because she already had one about a chicken.)

Anyway, I highly recommend
  • "Radioactive Gumshoe Blues" by Jamie Shanks
  • "To Stand and Stare" by Jayaprakash Satyamurthy (also known and published as Jayaprakash Sathyamurthy, just to keep us on our toes.)
Jamie Shanks is one of my all-time favourite still-breathing authors. He was quite popular amongst readers when we were both elbowing each other in issues of Elsevier Science's HMS Beagle: BioMedNet. See some stories and humor by him in the HMS Beagle archive. He could make Chandler crack a giggle, and steal a line. In not too long from now, I'll announce something else by Jamie Shanks. He has a ripper of a detective-romper-science-fiction novel in late stages of birth, and the scars of my boots up his insides from birth-induction midwifery. A fine publisher is pacing, ready to take that baby as soon as it screams.

As for JP, I think he's been too unknown. I recently published an excellent horror story , Come Tomorrow, in my Virtuous Medlar Circle. Here's another by him that is in quite another vein. "So I posted a request for the name and author of a book about a schoolboy-wizard who carved replicas of King Arthur and his Knights out of potatoes rather than do his homework and was eventually banished to Hades ." JP posted it on his blog in a fit of impatience. I know. Silly him. Only one rejection. This Is Not The Story No One Wrote.

And now a funny story about this issue. Editor Juliet Bathory worked so hard on it and was so careful, that she was especially worried about the quality of the cover, getting the colours of the cover to match that of the superb artwork, getting the author list placed nicely, and a terrifying thing that haunted her: spelling Jayaprakash Satyamurthy right. The author just below him in the list, Jamie Shanks, somehow became James Shanks.

2 comments:

JP said...

>>Jamie Shanks, somehow became James Shanks.

I feel very guilty now. I should probably adopt a simple pen-name like Jay Murphy and end all this confusion.

Thanks for the nod!

anna tambour said...

Don't you dare feel guilty! But it would be helpful if you settled on one spelling that you boringly prefer. How do you like your t's? I think it should be up to you, not thinking of others, but using your name to be proud of as you prefer. Me, I prefer parallelism. As in parallellism.

A short name is no better than a long one. Indeed, it brings its own problems. It often sounds like a clod crushed underfoot, rather than a lovely rolling poem. And it's common in more ways than one. I was with someone who lost his pre-purchased airplane seat at check-in because someone with the exact same name (all three barrels of it) checked in first. The staff just deleted what looked like a computer glitch. And then there is the embarrassment of people who forget names. At a party, my mother asked someone whose name she couldn't remember, "And how do you spell your name?" The answer cut through the noise: "S-M-I-T-H".

You have a beautiful name. Revel in it. And from what I can see, it's not so common, is it? I ask that in all ignorance. A very dear friend of mine, and an inspiration for my novel "Crandolin" is a certain Abhijit Bhattacharya. I could tell you all sorts of juicy stuff about him and feel just fine because you'd never know which Abhijit Bhattacharya he is.