Magazine Review: Cosmic Crime Stories July 2012

Magazine Review: Cosmic Crime Stories July 2012 edited by Tyree Campbell

If you want to stand out in the crowded field of speculative fiction, one of the ways is “genre-blending,” taking two different popular genres and splicing them together.  For example, horror and romance to create the vampire love stories so immensely popular in recent times.  This twice-yearly magazine blends science fiction and crime fiction.

“Suttee” by Tyree Campbell leads this issue off.    (When you’re the editor you can decide what order the stories go in.)  Sweeney is a smuggler whose husband was recently killed.   She’s going on one last run, but what’s her end game?  Much of the story is her verbal sparring with an authority figure who doesn’t understand her motivation.

“The Price of Selfishness” by Robert Collins is set on the frontier of space, as a merchant’s prank results in murder.  Captain Jason Ayers must investigate the matter, and determine what sort of justice the alien perpetrator will face.  The local law enforcement shoves the matter off on him, and then doesn’t like the result.

“Perfect Vengeance” by Kellee Kranendonk takes place in a society where the aged are despised.  Shae was one of the few space captains left over forty; until her crew mutinied, shooting her and stranding her and her younger lover on a supposedly barren planet.  Said planet is not nearly as deserted as it appeared, and the locals’ society has an important difference that allows Shae a kind of revenge.  This story suffered badly from not having the background better explained.

“All Tomorrow’s Suckers: Robert Bloch’s Speculative Crimes” by Daniel R. Robichaud.   This short article looks at some of the Psycho author’s more speculative crime fiction, including the series about Lefty Feep, a not quite successful con artist whose schemes always involved science fiction or fantasy gimmicks.

“The Faithless, the Tentacled and the Light” by Mary E. Lowd concerns Nicole Merison, captain of the Hypercube and a rescue mission the government asks her to undertake.  The mission evokes complex emotions, as the captured person is her ex-friend who got her fired from a dream job.  Turns out Cora misinterpreted an important detail of alien biology/technology, so she may deserve to stay….

“No Good Deed Goes Unpunished” by Wayne Carey stars an attorney named Murph, who is called in to defend his cousin Tom Finnegan from charges he carelessly activated an experimental device that destroyed the space station he was on and killed dozens of people.  Murph isn’t really that good of a lawyer, having only won one case before via applied bribery.  That won’t work here, and it gets worse when he discovers that a) Tom’s employers have bailed on the scientist, leaving him holding the bad, and b) local laws requite the attorney to suffer the same penalty as his client.  The locals still have the death penalty for murder.   The fun is watching Murph dig himself out of this hole and win the case mostly honestly.  It feels good, but remember the title.

“Rarified Air: Big City Policing, Year 3000” by Marilyn K. Martin is a police procedural.  In the overcrowded future, only the wealthy can afford to live in buildings high enough to see the sky.  They’re somewhat insulated from law enforcement by the politics of the day, and when a multiple widow reports that her latest husband has gone missing, the cops must tread lightly.

There are a few house ads for Sam’s Dot Publishing and a couple of illustrations by Denny Marshall which don’t go with specific stories.

The Wayne Carey story is the best of the lot, which are mostly middling good.  This magazine might be worth looking up if you like the intersection of SF and crime.