The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction for August 2003

Since I let my subscription to F&SF lapse, there are a few things I miss. Actually, there are a few writers I miss, ones which editor Gordon Van Gelder features fairly often, namely Terry Bisson, Robert Reed and Nina Kiriki Hoffman. None of them are in this issue, which has a dragon on the cover. I really wish it didn't have a dragon on the cover. I wouldn't have paid for it, since it has a dragon on the cover, but since it was part of my booty from the World Fantasy Convention I didn't have to.

Basically, I don't feel like I'm missing a lot by not subscribing. There is a whacked-out and wonderful story by Benjamin Rosenbaum called "Red Leather Tassels," and a decent coming-of-middle-age story by Harvey Jacobs, but that's really about it. Not the strongest issue. I can't figure out if GVG has really good taste but feels pressure to buy a lot of conventional stories that he thinks his readers will appreciate, if he has really bad taste but a few gems manage to slip through, or if the magazine fully reflects his taste which only intersects with mine about ten percent of the time. Whatever the case, I find F&SF a hugely frustrating magazine to read.