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Reviews:
City Colors by Zoran Milich
Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury
Dazzle Joins the Screenwriter's Guild by Scott Bradfield
December 22, 2012 by Sophie M. White
For the Love of Books by Ronald B. Shwartz
The Free Fall of Walter Cummings by Tom Bodett
Genuine Men by Nancy Bruno
Going Back in Time by Laurel Winter
Hold Me Tight by Dr. Sue Johnson
Horns and Toes and In Between by Sandra Boynton
The Idiot Girls' Action-Adventure Club
A Jolly Good Fellow by Stephen V. Masse
Lion's Pride by Debbie Jordan
Killing Time by Caleb Carr
The Mark of Zorro by Johston McCulley
Mouse's Halloween by Alan Baker
A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway
The New York Times at Special Bargain Rates by Stephen King
Past Perfect Present Tense by Richard Peck
Pharmakon by Dirk Wittenborn
Private Eye by Terry Bisson
Pug Hill by Allison Pace
Queen for a Day by Albert E. Cowdrey
Red Orc's Rage by Philip José Farmer
Sea Glass by Laurence Yep
The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd
Sheep on a Ship by Nancy E. Shaw
Sheep Take a Hike by Nancy E. Shaw
Sleepless Years by Steven Utley
Turtle Moon by Alice Hoffman
The Visionaries by Robert Reed
Where Angels Fear to Tread by E. M. Forster
Whoever by Carol Emshwiller

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The Visionaries: 10/15/08

Robert Reed's story "The Visionaries" takes a look at the science fiction industry and his own career. It's both humorous and mind bending.

The story at first reads much like the early chapters in Stephen King's memoir On Writing with the tales of the ever-growing rejection pile. Reed's stand-in, though, finds a benefactor to purchase his first novella about a man named "Merv."

According to "The Visionaries" a small set of writers are pulled to write about someone near to them in many ways but different in a "thousand other ways." I guess this calling would explain all the Mary-Sues running around in genre fiction.

Although Reed never names names one will probably be reminded of King, Bradbury, Asimov among others.

Reed continues to be one of my favorite regulars in F&SF.

I have also reviewed these stories by Robert Reed:

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