Now 2023 Previous Articles Road Essays Road Reviews Author Black Authors Title Source Age Genre Series Format Inclusivity LGBTA Portfolio Artwork WIP

Recent posts

Month in review

Academic Discourse at Havana by Wallace Stevens
All-of-a-Kind Family by Sydney Taylor
Arabella by Georgette Heyer
The Big Pony Race by Erica David
Blue Hat, Green Hat by Sandra Boynton
Borders of Infinity by Lois McMaster Bujold
Bye-Bye, Big Bad Bullybug by Ed Emberley
Camp Buccaneer by Pam Smallcomb
Charlotte Gray by Sebastian Faulks
Child of the Owl by Lawrence Yep
Creole Ladies, Marti the Smuggler, Bullfighting by Maturin M. Ballou
Cuban Sketches (excerpt) by James Steele
Dancing Above the Waves by Susan Walerstein
The Dark is Rising by Susan Cooper
Evergreen by Belva Plain
Enfant Terrible by Scott Dalrymple
Everybody Needs a Rock by Byrd Baylor
Flight of the Goose by Lesley Thomas
The Frog Prints by B. L. Harwick
Fullbrim's Finding by Matthew Hughes
A Grief Observed by C. S. Lewis
Havana Letter by William Cullen Bryant
If You Give a Pig a Pancake by Laura Numeroff
King Solomon's Mines by H. Rider Haggard
LoveHampton by Sherri Rifkin
Marlin off the Morro by Ernest Hemingway
The Minister's Wooing by Harriet Beecher Stowe
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie
My Pet Virus by Shawn Decker
Nana Volume 1 by Ai Yazawa
Native Tongue by Carl Hiaasen
The Penthouse Mystery by Ellery Queen
Reader's Guide by Lisa Goldstein
Red as Blood by Tanith Lee
The Roberts by Michael Blumlein
The Rule of Four by Ian Caldwell and Dustin Thomason
Salt: A World History by Mark Kurlansky
Sea Gift by John Ashby
Sin in the Second City by Karen Abbott
Singing to Cuba (excerpt) by Margarita Engle
Spiders and Scorpions: A Look Inside Series by P. D. Hillyard
Things I Overheard While Talking to Myself by Alan Alda
Unholy Domain by Dan Ronco
Virus Games by G. L. Sheerin
Zen of Fish by Trevor Corson

Miscellaneous:
Good Thing We Didn't Have Any Plans

Previous month


Rating System

5 stars: Completely enjoyable or compelling
4 stars: Good but flawed
3 stars: Average
2 stars: OK
1 star: Did not finish



Privacy policy

This blog does not collect personal data. It doesn't set cookies. Email addresses are used to respond to comments or "contact us" messages and then deleted.


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.

Comments (2)


Lab puppy
Name:
Email (won't be posted):
Blog URL:
Comment:

Twitter Tumblr Mastadon Flickr Facebook Facebook Contact me

1997-2023 Sarah Sammis


Comment #1: Thursday, July, 24, 2008 at 08:08:12

Matt Hughes

I'm glad you liked the story and that you got the Heart of Darkness connection. You'd probably like the Hapthorn novels. Come by my web page and see."



Comment #2: Thursday, July, 24, 2008 at 11:55:12

Pussreboots

I think I would. Thank you for stopping by."