Readers
Rich Horton's Market Summaries:
Summary: Flytrap, 2005
The fourth issue of Tim Pratt and Heather Shaw's 'zine Flytrap appeared this year. Heather and Tim got married this year, which pushed back the schedule for #5 -- a darn good excuse if you ask me! So only one issue this year. As I said, last year, Flytrap fits in pretty well with the most common sort of small SF/Fantasy 'zine, similar look, similar mix of poetry and fiction, similar somewhat slipstreamish orientation. And among those 'zines it ranks quite highly in my book.
There were 9 stories this year, all short stories, about 22,000 words total. By my count, three of the stories were short-shorts.
My clear favorite story was Sonya Taaffe's "On the Blindside", about a woman about to get married who is confronted by an old lover who still has a hold on her of sorts ... The nature of the lover is not unexpected, but the use Taaffe makes of what is a traditional fantasy trope is very nice. The Two Jeffreys, VanderMeer and Ford, each also have a nice story: VanderMeer's is "The Secret Life of Librarian Bob Scheffel", about a man who gets ignored by other people; and Ford's is "Holt", about a strange sort of performance artist. Also, Theodora Goss's "The Belt" is a strong story with the contours of a fairy tale but a cold and unexpected resolution. It's about a shoemaker's daughter courted by a rich young man -- and it ends not with their marriage but with the aftermath. One of those stories that grows on rereading.
