Realms of Fantasy for December 2002

This was among the freebies I got at the World Fantasy Convention in October. There were some things I didn't keep from the big bag, but I held on to all the magazines for market research. I haven't read ROF in a few years, so this was a refresher for me. The fiction section is well put together--if short--with very nice art. Several other articles and reviews did little to add to the appeal, in my opinion, although a sidebar called "Nicola Griffith's Reading . . ." was a nice surprise. I'm not sure if it's a regular feature.

Patrick Samphire's "Dawn, by the Light of a Barrow Fire" begins awkwardly, but this story of an archaeologist who hasn't come to terms with a young son's death picks up with the discovery of a child's skull from hundreds of years past. The ending is a little neat, but satisfying.

"It Comes and Goes" is a reprint of a Robert Silverberg story originally published in Playboy in 1991. The mysterious house to which the title refers to is the perfect foil for the protagonist, whose alcoholism seems to make him its perfect victim. Not a terrifying story, but it raised some goosebumps, and the ending was suitably creepy.