The magazine has some sequels: Those Shadows Laugh by Geoff Ryman is based on Charlotte Perkins Gilman's Herland, Peter S. Beagle has a short story based on The Last Unicorn, and David Gerrold continues Theodore Sturgeon's story with The Further Adventures of Mr. Costello.Out of those, the last one was by far the most interesting. It tells a story of Mr. Costello appearing in Haven, a backwater colony that reminds me of old west. As the story unfolds, Gerrold slowly adds details to both the worl...

7 • Talking to Dead People • 13 pages by Sarah Pinsker Very Good. Gwen helps her roommate Eliza with her newly created business of making models of murder houses. Gwen building the models, Eliza making an AI that answers the questions of viewers. Gwen likes making the models and the money, and is happy supporting Eliza's passion until they have a falling out.20 • The Green-Eyed Boy • 14 pages by Peter S. Beagle VG/Good. A wizard takes on a student. Schmendrink is hard working, follows directions...

Perfect for meEnjoyable, works for me"These Shadows Laugh" by Geoff Ryman [novelet] - An interesting story in dialogue with Gilman's Herland of a female scientist visiting a female-dominated society to assist with medical advances."Talking to Dead People" by Sarah Pinsker - A story of creating haunted house models to help solve crimes. "The Green-Eyed Boy" by Peter S. Beagle - The story of a magician's apprentice."The Voice in the Cornfield, the Word Made Flesh" by Desirina Boskovich - An alien

I enjoy this magazine. It brings a unique, comforting pleasure. This issue showcased two writings from David Gerrold, a famous sci-fi writer, who wrote “The Trouble With Trebles” (Star Trek), and “The Martian Child.” I enjoyed him, and he influenced me in a resonant way, for both reading and writing. I also found some new names I enjoyed.The following breaks down each storyline, some with personal commentary:Talking To Dead People, Sarah Pinsker: A college girl creates doll houses that use predi...

David Gerrold was featured in this issue, and his stories were great! A good dose of humor and philosophy in with the spec fiction. The Peter S. Beagle story was good, too- in fact, I enjoyed most of the fiction in the issue. Usually that's good enough for me, but I guess I look forward to the book columns more than I realized. These fell a little flat, nothing really sparked my interest.

I am counting this as a book due to the length. It was a good issue overall, though I couldn't get into the featured novella. Some of favorite works included:- Sarah Pinsker's "Talking to Dead People." It mixes up model houses, a very famous murder, and some deep personal introspection.- David Gerrold's "The Dunsmuir Horror." Gerrold's partly autobiographical stories in this vein are rambling and often nonsensical, yet also amusing. Plus, I love that he mentions the I-5 turn-off to my hometown,

4.5 stars

"The Further Adventures of Mr. Costello" by David Gerrold - Fascinating world-building both ecological and cultural. Well developed characters and touching relationships. After some interesting build-up, the ending is abrupt and maybe a bit too pat -- but satisfying nonetheless. **** (3/10/17)

There's a lot to enjoy in this issue. At $7.99 it's a good value for readers. It presents some convincing evidence for supporting this on a monthly basis, as there just aren't many genre print magazines like this still around. It's been several years since I have read F&SF, and I now understand why Fantasy precedes Science-Fiction in the title. The overall themes of these stories are fantasy, some with more science-fictional elements included. The reason I picked this up was the cover noting t...

The stories in this issue of F&SF ranged from very good to very bad. I decided to rate the stories individually:Sarah Pinsker - Talking to Dead People - 4-1/2 stars A very good story which touches on the long term emotional effect of losing a sibling.Peter S. Beagle - The Green-Eyed Boy - 3-1/2 stars A very well told story about training a wizard's apprentice.Desirina Boskovich - The Voice in the Cornfield, The Word Made Flesh - 4 stars A unique view of an alien life form and how it affects life...

This David Gerrold special edition of F&SF features two new stories by Mr. Gerrold, both of which are entertaining and highly enjoyable. I particularly liked "The Further Adventures of Mr. Costello", a sequel to Theodore Strugeon's classic tale, "Mr. Costello, Hero". The rest of the issue's tales are all of fairly high quality. The only weak entry is Geoff Ryman's "These Shadows Laugh". It's not a terrible story, mind you. Just didn't grab me the way the other stories did.Still, this issue and t...

F&SF seems to be content to be good but not great. "Talking to Dead People" by Sarah Pinsker was a very strong character oriented piece about a pair of college students who come up with a business model of building model houses where famous murders took place and including an AI that can answer questions about it. But the AI isn't self-aware and if a slight step up from what computers can do now, it doesn't seem like something Google couldn't do today if it really wanted to. This is very well wr...

110 pages of David Gerrold!

2.5/5.0

Standout stories in this issue are:Talking To Dead People, by Sarah Pinsker: Two college friends go into business building perfect recreations of murder scenes. Portrays an odd situation, teases it out, and then stabs at the heart. This story had me constantly thinking of the wonderful Karen Joy Fowler. To some extent, for the subject matter - Eliza and Gwen's houses bear a strong resemblance to the murder-mystery dollhouses of Wit's End. But more than that, it's the understated prose bringing t...

The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction (Sept/Oct 2016)Ten stories and assorted articles, plus one poem. I have what I would consider to be a love/hate relationship with David Gerrold’s works. To be honest, as an original fan of Star Trek: TOS, I liked “The Trouble with Tribbles”, but rarely put it in my top ten favorite episodes. I preferred my episodes to be more emotionally connected, such as “The City on the Edge of Forever” or “The Devil in the Dark” (still my number one favorite episode)...

Enjoyed David Gerrold's The Further Adventures of Mr. Costello and The Dunsmuir Horror.

Great! I enjoyed every story in this issue.

Normally, when reading a collection of short stories, I go through, rate each story, average them out, and come up with my rating. I usually add a comment or two about each as I go. There are a number of good ones here and if I used my regular system I probably would have come to a three and a half star average. But today I am rating the magazine as a book.Here's my reason. Have you ever heard the expression, "Misery loves company"? I sincerely wonder at the state of mind of the acquisition mana...

Again, an issue with quality fiction, very enjoyable. Particularly liked the stories by Boskovich, Cypess and Ryman as well as - against my expectations - the David Gerrold-stories, especially the 'auto-biographical' one.. It's a joy to read MoF&SF again after such a long break and to see the quality is still high.