Omphalos
Orthodox Herbertarian
Many, many years ago, when I was but a relatively recent graduate, having but two or three years under my belt, and still full of hope for my fellow man, I encountered a story in the January, 2001 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction called The Capetmaker's Son. At that point in my life I was really starting to get into SF again, after a several year hiatus that coincided with my education. During my (long) schooling, I kept up with my favorite literature only by reading short stories; tales that I could get into and finish easily enough, with a minimum of time-drain. By 2001 I was starting to get back into full length novels, when I could. The only kind of learning I had to do was on-the-job-training, but law firm life absolutely dominated my time. I kept my subscriptions up even though by that time I had pretty much given up on the short story medium as a viable way to tell SF stories - in my opinion modern short fiction just cannot hold a candle to the old stuff. I eventually let the subscriptions that I had lapse in 2004, but even by 2001 the only stories I was reading were those by Robert Reed, Tony Daniel, Michael Swanwick and a few select other authors. Then along came Andreas Eschbach's The Carpetmaker's Son and it was literally love at first read. I don't remember ever being moved more by a short story. It was obvious from The Carpetmaker's Son that Eschbach had a lot more to say about this world. Gordon van Gelder's introduction to this story ended with these words:...Please click here, or on the book cover above, to be taken to the complete review..