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Summary: Son and Foe, 2005
Son and Foe is a new electronically distributed magazine. The editor, Jeremiah Sturgill, is trying another e-publishing concept. At time of publication, the entire contents of the 'zine are available (in .pdf form, I believe) for a modest price ($3). Over the next quarter, the contents are "unlocked" on the web for free reading, though there are associated web ads. The first issue was published this November.
This issue included a generous mixture of new stories with several quite good reprints. The reprints include three Sturgeon stories, and stories by Matt Hughes and Joe R. Lansdale. Their are 19 new stories: 2 shortish novelettes and 17 short stories, of which 11 are short-shorts. About 46,000 words of new fiction.
My favorite stories were easily the novelettes, Nick Mamatas's "Real People Slash", a quasi-memoir of some years in the life of "Nick Mamatas" that morphs into Lovecraftian paranoia; and Michael Canfield's "Super-Villains", one of several stories I saw this year that take slant views of superheroes, and of these perhaps the best. It's about an aging superhero, struggling to remain relevant in a safer world he helped created; and his long-time love object (not a secretary as I said in my Locus review, but a "face" of the hero's media empire), who is frustrated that their relationship remains unconsummated.
Among the short stories I quite liked Carole Lanham's creepy "The Reading Lessons", about a boy and his unusual childhood girlfriend. (Lanham has another story in Trunk Stories with a similar theme.) Also, Steve Watkins's "Critterworld" is a nice piece about one of those seedy Florida tourist attractions, and Timons Esaias's "Bonneville" is a cool weird SF piece postulating that the sound barrier is physically real and needs to be fixed.
