Fullbrim's Finding: 07/23/08

The month of July is nearly over and I'm only now getting to reviewing the stories from the July issue of Fantasy & Science Fiction. I read far more books in June than I could possibly review in a sane amount of time. Working through that backlog has delayed my fun reading: namely, this magazine!

The first story in the July issue is "Fullbrim's Finding" by Matthew Hughes. It's the second story of his I've had the pleasure of reading. Back in January I enjoyed and reviewed "Petri Parousia." Henghis Hapthorn sets out to help a wife find her missing husband and ends up having the mysteries of the universe revealed to him.

I needed about two pages to lose myself in the story. "Fullbrim's Finding" starts with Hapthorn describing his role in life as a "freelance discriminator of Old Earth." As I'm not familiar with his Hapthorn novels, I'm still not sure what it is he does. In this story, he seems to do the job of a private investigator. With the help of an "integrator" which seems to be a hand held device with some limited AI capabilities, Hapthorn follows Fullbrim's trail when he starts off on some unknown quest.

Fullbrim is your typical eccentric. He's fascinated with patterns and the bell curves of life. Something drives him from looking at the micro to the macro. The last thing he says to his wife is "Ahah!" before jumping on a ship to parts unknown. Like Marlow on the trail of Kurtz, Hapthorn's search for Fullbrim takes him not only on a journey to a remote location but one that also forces him to look inward too.

What Hapthorn finds at the end of his journey makes my inner geek smile. Anyone who has beta tested anything or bodged together something in order to make progress on a larger project will nod at the ending.

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