Finisterra 12/29/07
The December issue rounds out with a lovely novelet, "Finisterra" by David Moles. The story takes its inspiration from an illustration done in a Vermeer style by Lara Wells called "The Engineer."

Moles put a lot of work into "Finisterra" an it shows in how much a part of the world his characters are. Sky is more than just an exotic backdrop to his story; it is a fully realized world with history, culture, geography, biology and so forth. To learn more about the process of writing "Finisterra" I highly recommend the interview on John Joseph Adams's blog. I must admit to grinning where Moles described trying to remember his trig to figure out how big Sky had to be because I did the same thing for Hale when working on Tangent for this year's Nanowrimo.

"Finisterra" with its celebration of flight set against a hostile world and pre industrial technology reminds me quite favorably of Bob Shaw's novels The Rugged Astronauts and The Wooden Spaceships.

This ends the reviews from the December issue. The full list of reviews is as follows:

• "Osama Phone Home" by David Marusek.
• "Stray" by Benjamin Rosenbaum and David Ackert
• "The Bone Man" by Frederic S. Durbin
• "Don't Ask" by M. Rickert
• "Who Brought Tulips to the Moon?" by S. L. Gilbow
• "Finisterra" by David Moles

fantasy science fiction magazine | fiction | short story | david moles

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