Monday, September 06, 2004

F&SF; Jigsaw Puzzles

The past few days I've been reading the double-sized October/November issue of THE MAGAZINE OF FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION. After two pretty good issues in a row, I was a little disappointed in this one. There was no stand-out story like Cowdrey's "The Tribes of Bela" or Denton's "Sergeant Chip", and most of the stories were fantasy rather than SF. I like fantasy; I just like SF better most of the time. And too many of them were plotless, literary-type stories that just left me saying, "Hunh?" Still, there were several stories I liked quite a bit, such as Lisa Goldstein's "Finding Beauty" and Michael Bishop's "The Angst of God". My plan now is to read the September 1951 issue of STARTLING STORIES next, which I suspect I'll find more enjoyable overall. What can I say? I'm just a pulp kinda guy.

I spent a lot of the day at my folks' house and got a little work done on the laptop. I also checked on those jigsaw puzzles, which Cap'n Bob Napier asked about in a comment on a previous post. I said I thought they were made by Whitman, but I stand corrected. They were actually made by Built-Rite.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Personally James, I don't think I've read any of the digests such as S&SF since the 70's when I found out about the earlier stuff. I could probably find something I like but my preference would certainly be for that Startling that you mentioned. I'll bet I'd really enjoy almost every story.

By the way, how did you like the Mountain Man story you mentioned a while back?

Best,
Steve Everett

James Reasoner said...

I enjoyed the Mountain Man book. I've enjoyed most of the Johnstone Westerns I've read. I think I prefer the Eagles series and the Last Gunfighter series a little more than the Mountain Man books, but I like all of them.