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  * * *

  THE MAGAZINE OF

  FANTASY & SCIENCE FICTION

  April * 58th Year of Publication

  * * * *

  SPECIAL GENE WOLFE SECTION

  HOW TO READ GENE WOLFE by Neil Gaiman

  MEMORARE by Gene Wolfe

  THE WOLFE IN THE LABYRINTH by Michael Swanwick

  GENE WOLFE: THE MAN AND HIS WORK by Michael Andrei-Driussi

  NOVELETS

  THE EQUALLY STRANGE REAPPEARANCE OF DAVID GERROLD by David Gerrold

  SHORT STORIES

  A THING FORBIDDEN by Donald Mead

  TITANIUM MIKE SAVES THE DAY by David D. Levine

  POEMS

  ONOCENTAUR by Sophie M. White

  DEPARTMENTS

  BOOKS TO LOOK FOR by Charles de Lint

  FILMS: TIME WARPS, UNDYING LOVE, AND LIVING DOLLS by Lucius Shepard

  COMING ATTRACTIONS

  COMPETITION #73

  CURIOSITIES by F. Gwynplaine MacIntyre

  COVER BY MONDOLITHIC STUDIOS FOR “MEMORARE”

  GORDON VAN GELDER, Publisher/Editor

  BARBARA J. NORTON, Assistant Publisher

  ROBIN O'CONNOR, Assistant Editor

  KEITH KAHLA, Assistant Publisher

  HARLAN ELLISON, Film Editor

  JOHN J. ADAMS, Assistant Editor

  CAROL PINCHEFSKY, Contests Editor

  JOHN M. CAPPELLO, Newsstand Circulation

  The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction (ISSN 1095-8258), Volume 112, No. 4 Whole No. 6560, April 2007. Published monthly except for a combined October/November issue by Spilogale, Inc. at $4.50 per copy. Annual subscription $50.99; $62.99 outside of the U.S. Postmaster: send form 3579 to Fantasy & Science Fiction, PO Box 3447, Hoboken, NJ 07030. Publication office, 105 Leonard St., Jersey City, NJ 07307. Periodical postage paid at Hoboken, NJ 07030, and at additional mailing offices. Printed in U.S.A. Copyright © 2007 by Spilogale, Inc. All rights reserved.

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  GENERAL AND EDITORIAL OFFICE: PO BOX 3447, HOBOKEN, NJ 07030

  www.fsfmag.com

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  * * * *

  CONTENTS

  How to Read Gene Wolfe by Neil Gaiman

  Memorare by Gene Wolfe

  The Wolf in the Labyrinth by Michael Swanwick

  Gene Wolfe: The Man and His Work by MICHAEL ANDRE-DRIUSSI

  The Equally Strange Reappearance of David Gerrold by David Gerrold

  Onocentaur by Sophie M. White

  Books To Look For by Charles de Lint

  A Thing Forbidden by Donald Mead

  Films: Time Warps, Undying Love, and Living Dolls by Lucius Shepard

  Titanium Mike Saves the Day by David D. Levine

  F&SF COMPETITION #73: Merge and Converge

  Fantasy&ScienceFiction MARKET PLACE

  Curiosities: Professor Baffin's Adventures by Max Adeler (1881)

  Coming Attractions

  * * * *

  How to Read Gene Wolfe by Neil Gaiman

  Copyright 2002. First published in The World Horror Convention 2002 Program Book. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  Look at Gene: a genial smile (the one they named for him), pixie-twinkle in his eyes, a reassuring mustache. Listen to that chuckle. Do not be lulled. He holds all the cards: he has five aces in his hand, and several more up his sleeve.

  I once read him an account of a baffling murder, committed ninety years ago. “Oh,” he said, “well, that's obvious,” and proceeded off-handedly to offer a simple and likely explanation for both the murder and the clues the police were at a loss to explain. He has an engineer's mind that takes things apart to see how they work and then puts them back together.

  I have known Gene for almost twenty-five years. (I was, I just realized, with a certain amount of alarm, only twenty-two when I first met Gene and Rosemary in Birmingham, England; I am forty-six now.) Knowing Gene Wolfe has made the last twenty-five years better and richer and more interesting than they would have been otherwise.

  Before I knew him, I thought of Gene Wolfe as a ferocious intellect, vast and cool and serious, who created books and stories that were of genre but never limited by it. An explorer, who set out for uncharted territory and brought back maps, and if he said “Here There Be Dragons,” by God, you knew that was where the dragons were.

  And that is all true, of course. It may be more true than the embodied Wolfe I met twenty-five years ago, and have come to know with enormous pleasure ever since: a man of politeness and kindness and knowledge; a lover of fine conversation, erudite and informative, blessed with a puckish sense of humor and an infectious chuckle.

  I cannot tell you how to meet Gene Wolfe. I can, however, suggest a few ways to read his work. These are useful tips, like suggesting you take a blanket, a flashlight, and some candy when planning to drive a long way in the cold, and should not be taken lightly. I hope they are of some use to you. There are nine of them. Nine is a good number.

  How to read Gene Wolfe:

  1) Trust the text implicitly. The answers are in there.

  2) Do not trust the text farther than you can throw it, if that far. It's tricksy and desperate stuff, and it may go off in your hand at any time.

  3) Reread. It's better the second time. It will be even better the third time. And anyway, the books will subtly reshape themselves while you are away from them. Peace really was a gentle Midwestern memoir the first time I read it. It only became a horror novel on the second or the third reading.

  4) There are wolves in there, prowling behind the words. Sometimes they come out in the pages. Sometimes they wait until you close the book. The musky wolf-smell can sometimes be masked by the aromatic scent of rosemary. Understand, these are not today-wolves, slinking grayly in packs through deserted places. These are the dire-wolves of old, huge and solitary wolves that could stand their ground against grizzlies.

  5) Reading Gene Wolfe is dangerous work. It's a knife-throwing act, and like all good knife-throwing acts, you may lose fingers, toes, earlobes or eyes in the process. Gene doesn't mind. Gene is throwing the knives.

  6) Make yourself comfortable. Pour a pot of tea. Hang up a Do Not Disturb Sign. Start at Page One.

  7) There are two kinds of clever writer. The ones that point out how clever they are, and the ones who see no need to point out how clever they are. Gene Wolfe is of the second kind, and the intelligence is less important than the tale. He is not smart to make you feel stupid. He is smart to make you smart as well.

  8) He was there. He saw it happen. He knows whose reflection they saw in the mirror that night.

  9) Be willing to learn.

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  Memorare by Gene Wolfe

  Fans of the American reality TV show “Survivor” might be amused to know that the winner this past season listed The Book of the New Sun among his favorite books. But this information should not surprise any of our readers. Reading Gene Wolfe is a basic survival skill for life in our times.

  The moment March Wildspring spotted the corpses, he launched himself across the shadowy mortuary chamber. He had aimed for the first, but with suit jets wide open he m
issed it and caught the third, flattening himself against it and rolling over with it so that it lay upon him.

  Bullets would have gotten him; but this was a serrated blade pivoting from a crevice in the wall. Had it hit, it would have shredded his suit somewhere near the waist.

  He would have suffocated before he froze. The thought failed to comfort him as he huddled under the freeze-dried corpse and strove not to look into its eyes.

  How much had his digicorder gotten? He wanted to rub his jaw, but was frustrated by his helmet. Not enough, surely. He would have to make a dummy good enough to fool the mechanism, return with it, and....

  Or use one of these corpses.

  "Remember, O most gracious Virgin Mary, that never was it known...."

  The half-recalled words came slowly, limping.

  "That anyone who fled to your protection, implored your help, or sought your intercession, was left unaided."

  There was more, but he had forgotten it. He sighed, cleared his throat, and touched the sound switch. “These memorials can be dangerous, like this one. As I've told you, this isn't the big one. The big one we call Number Nineteen is an asteroid ten times the diameter of this, which means it could have a thousand times the interior volume. Frankly, I'm scared of it. We may save it for last."

  He had a harsh, unpleasant speaking voice. He knew it; but it was the only voice he had, and the software that might have smoothed and sweetened it cost more than he could afford. Back on his hopper, he would edit what he had said into a script for Kit. She had a voice....

  "There are at least five sects and cults whose members believe the deceased will be served though all eternity by those who lose their lives at his or her memorial. Some claim to be offshoots of major faiths. Some are openly satanic. We haven't seen enough to identify the bunch that built this one, and frankly I doubt we will."

  If the show sold, if it made one hell of a lot of money, it might—it just might—be possible to buy or build a robotic probe. Of course, if that probe were destroyed....

  He began wiggling out from under the corpse and sliding under the next.

  Nothing happened.

  "Memorare....” He had read the Latin twice, perhaps. It was as lost as the English now. No, more lost.

  The blade was set to rupture the suit of anyone who came in. That much was plain. What about going out?

  When he had the first corpse steady and vertical, a gentle shove sent it across the chamber in a position that looked practically lifelike.

  Nothing. No blade, no reaction of any kind as far as he could see.

  Possibly, the system (whatever it was) had detected the imposture. He tried to make the second corpse more lifelike even than the first.

  Still nothing.

  What if a corpse appeared to be entering? A few determined pulls on his lifeline got him plenty of slack. Hooking it to the third corpse, he held the thin orange line with one hand while he launched the corpse with the other. When it had left the memorial, a gentle tug brought it in again.

  The blade flashed from its crevice, savaged the corpse's already-ruined suit, and flung the corpse toward him.

  "You've got a new servant,” March muttered, “whoever you were.” Playing it safe, he went out the way he had come in—fast and high.

  Outside, he switched on his mike. “We just saw how dangerous a small percentage of these memorials are, a danger that poisons all the rest, both for mourners and for harmless tourists who might like to visit them. A program for identifying and destroying the few dangerous ones is badly needed."

  Propelled by his suit jets, he circled the memorial, getting a little more footage he would probably never use. His digicorder had room for more images than he would ever need. Those millions upon millions of images were the one thing with which he could be generous, even profligate.

  "Someone perished here,” he told the mike, “far beyond the orbit of Mars. Other someones, employees or followers, family or friends, built his memorial—and built it as a trap, so that their revered dead might be served.... Where? In the spirit world? In Paradise? Nirvana? Heaven?

  "Or Hell. Hell is possible, too."

  Flowing letters, beautiful and alien, danced upon the curving walls. Arabic, perhaps, or Sanskrit. It would be well, March thought, to show enough of it that people would recognize it and stay away. For the present, the corpses floating outside it might be warning enough. His digicorder zoomed in before he switched it off and returned to his scarred olive-drab hopper.

  * * * *

  There was an Ethermail from Kit when he woke. He washed, shaved, and dressed before bringing her onto his screen.

  "Hi there, Windy! Gettin’ lonely out there in the graveyard?"

  She was being jaunty, but even a jaunty Kit could make his palms sweat.

  "Well, listen up. Have I got a deal for you! You get me to em-cee this terminal travelogue you're makin'. As an added bonus, you get a gal-pal of mine. Her name's Robin Redd, and she's a sound tech who can double in makeup.

  "What's more, we come free! Absolutely free, Windy, unless you can peddle your turkey. In which case we'll expect a tiny little small cut. And residuals.

  "So whadda you say? Gimme the nod quick, ‘cause Bad Bill's pushin’ me to come back. Corner office, park my hopper on the roof with the big boys, and the money ain't hopscotch ‘n’ hairballs either. So lemme know."

  Abruptly, the jauntiness vanished. “Either way, you've got to be quick, Windy. Word is that Pubnet's shooting something similar out around Mars."

  He said, “Reply,” and took a deep breath. It was always hard to breathe when he tried to talk to Kit. Yes, even when she was three hundred million miles away.

  "Kit, darling, you know how much I'd love to have you out here with me, even if it were just one day. I want you and I want to make you a superstar. You know that, too."

  He paused, wishing he dared cough. “I couldn't help noticing that you didn't mention what Bad Bill wanted you for. Knowing you and knowing that there isn't a smarter woman in the business, I know you've found out. It's his pet cooking show again, isn't it? He wouldn't give you a corner office for those kiddy shows, or I don't think he would.

  "So get yourself one of the new semitransparents, okay? ‘Vaults in the Void’ is just about roughed out, everybody in the world is going to want to see it by the time we're finished with it, and nobody who sees it will ever forget you, darling.

  "God knows I won't."

  He moved his mouse and the screen went dark, leaving only the faint reflection of an ugly middle-aged man with a crooked nose and a lantern jaw.

  * * * *

  The on-board had found three interesting blips strung out toward the orbit of Saturn, but Jupiter—specifically the mini-solar system surrounding it—was closer, and every hop took its toll of his wallet. He put the Jovian moons on screen and began speaking, just winging it so as to have something to work over for Kit later.

  "Mightiest of all the worlds, Jupiter has drawn travelers ever since hoppers became a consumer necessity. When the first satellite was launched in nineteen fifty-seven, the men and women who put it into orbit could hardly have dreamed that Luna and Mars would be popular tourist destinations in less than a hundred years. Nor could the pioneers who built the first hotels and resorts there have anticipated that as soon as translunar travel became popular, travelers seeking more exotic locales would come here to the monarch's court.

  "You've got to throw a lot of money in the hopper. That's for sure. But that only makes it that much more attractive to those who've got that money and want to flaunt it. It's dangerous, too—transmissions from tourists whose icoms go abruptly silent make that only too clear, and every edition of the Solar Traveler's Guide strives to make the danger a little plainer.

  "Unfortunately, the striving doesn't seem to do much good. People keep coming, alone or in company. Sometimes they even bring children. Every year, five, or ten, or twenty don't make it back. Do all of them get memorials in space, memoria in
aeterna? No, of course not. But many do, and such memorials are becoming more popular all the time. Some are simple stones. Others—well, we'll be showing you a few. In an age in which the hope of a life after death gutters like a candle burned too long, in a century that has seen Arlington National Cemetery bulldozed to make room for more government offices, the desire to be remembered leaps up with a bright new flame.

  "If not remembered, at least not totally forgotten. We wish it for our loved ones, too. We'd like some spark of them to remain until the sun grows dim. And who can blame us?"

  Now to make the hop. Perhaps he would learn, soon, just what had happened to that poor girl who had tried, for so short a time, to raise her sweetheart and his friends.

  * * * *

  The first memorial he checked was a beautiful little thing. Someone with taste had taken a design intended for the desert and reworked it for space, with no up and no down, a lonely little mission shrine not too near Jupiter that reached up for God in every direction.

  The bright flames inside belonged to votive candles, candles that burned in vacuum, apparently because their wax had been mixed with a chemical that liberated oxygen when heated. They made a glorious ring of white wax and fire around the shrine, burning in nothingness with fat little spherical flames.

  "A shrine sacred to the memory of Alberto Villaseor, Edita Villaseor, and Simplicia Hernandez,” he told his digicorder, “placed here, deep in space, by the children and grandchildren of the Villaseors and the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of Simplicia Hernandez."

  How many thousands of hours had Al Villaseor labored under a broiling sun before he could buy the hopper that had carried him, with his wife and the very elderly woman who had probably been his mother-in-law, to a death somewhere near Jupiter? Their 3Ds were in the shrine; and the mark of those hours, of that sun, was on Al's face.

  Turning off the audio, March murmured a prayer for all three.

  Back on his hopper, clicking Ethermail got him Kit's blue eyes and bright smile. “What's this ‘semitransparent’ bull, Windy? Transparent's only a couple thou more. I've got a good one, and I've been posing for the mirror. No picky-picky underclothes underneath. Wait till you see the pix! You're gonna love ‘em.