Summary: Talebones, 2008

Talebones published two issues in 2008. There were 17 stories, three of them rather short novelettes (by my count -- they could have been long short stories), the rest shorts (one a short-short) for some 78,000 words of fiction. This is a lot more fiction by word count than last year -- the issues were noticeably stuffed, to the point that the leading was adjusted. The editor is Patrick Swenson.

From the Spring issue I particularly liked James Van Pelt's "Rock House", a creepy story about a man and his sister who seem to become almost part of the remote house they live in. This story evoked Poe in a sense, and even more directly Jason Wittman's enjoyable SF story from the same issue, "In Castle Montressor", evoked Poe. From Winter, Van Pelt impressed again with "Floaters", in one of my favorite sub-sub-genres, the time viewer story. Here a scientist has figured out how to view the future, with the help of a virtual reality system. Alas, all he sees is the end of the world, only a few years in the future. The story is told from the viewpoint of a VR programmer he hires, who is dying of an AIDS-like disease, which might perhaps (but doesn't really) change his perspective on the world ending in a few years. No heroism here, but small and affecting victories. Other good stories came from Paul Melko, William Mingin, M. K. Hobson, Mark Rich, and Edd Vick.

I count 9 SF stories out of 17 total, just over half -- consistent for the magazine (which is subtitled on the cover "Science Fiction and Dark Fantasy", though the masthead subtitle reads "Fiction on the Dark Edge"). In fact, this was the exact same count as last year. 4 of the stories were by women (23.5%), a bit lower than usual (last year the percentage was 35%).
 

Tags: 2008, magazines, yearly summaries