Thanks again to Sam Tomaino of SFRevu for his review of our October issue. He summarizes by saying, "All the stories are well-worth the time spent on them," and I couldn't ask for anything more.

I should note that he says of "Dani-Girl" that "If there was any fantasy element here, I missed it." He's right: We don't only publish speculative fiction, although we like to when we can.

Turnabout being fair play, I noted a few good items in SFRevu while I was checking out Sam's review.

First, I noted another Sam's review of Kaleidotrope #5 -- and spotted an old friend there: Barbara A. Barnett, who wrote "Lucky Clover" (our St. Patrick's Day special) from our March 2008 issue.

I like to read short non-flash fiction in my spare time, so I found Colleen Cahill's review of Tesseracts Twelve, edited by Claude LaLumiere, to be worthwhile -- I'll probably pick up that volume somewhere along the way.

I'm a big fan of Orson Scott Card, so I read Sam Lubell's review of Ender in Exile as well.

Finally, Mary Rose-Shaffer wrote an essay called "Exploring Genre: Dark or Gothic Fantasy". It made me think, and it was a valuable contribution to any discussion of genre. I wonder, though, whether trying to pin down attributes and characteristics is really a fruitful way to approach a complex tradition. I would have liked to see an exploration of the way Gothic Fantasy developed rather than simply identifying its traits and then using earlier authors as examples (e.g., Poe); although trait identification feels scientific, it tends to highlight how fuzzy the boundaries of the genre are rather than show how (say) urban fantasy can be a natural extension of the tradition. She clearly sees the relationship, but it's harder to explain it outside of its tradition.

Don't believe me, of course. Go read it!