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On Spec: The Canadian Magazine Of The Fantastic vol 19 no.2 # 68 Summer 2007
01/11/2007 . Source: Neale Monks 
magazine: Copper Pig Writers Society. Price: $ 6.95 (CAN). ISSN: 0843-476X. Distributed in Canada by CMPA and the UK by BAR. Buy On Spec: The Canadian Magazine Of The Fantastic in the USA - or Buy On Spec: The Canadian Magazine Of The Fantastic in the UK  check out website: www.onspec.ca
'On Spec' is a Canadian publication that focuses almost entirely on what the editors call 'fantastic' literature. In this particular issue at least there seven stories, two poems and one slightly tiresome essay by the editor about how the magazine is put together. 'On Spec' contains almost no artwork at all, just the front cover image, in this case a painting by Canadian artist Robert Pasternak. Unfortunately, because of the small physical size of the magazine (imagine a copy of the 'Reader's Digest') the cover art ends up being a bit overwhelmed by the logo, publishing info and list of authors.
Otherwise, the magazine is pretty much plain text through and through and not even very excitingly laid out text at that. We're talking Helvetica for the titles and Times Roman for the body text or, at least, something very like them. Perhaps this is just me, but in the age of desktop publishing, if I'm going to read a plain text journal without any artwork to leaven it, I do expect the editors to make a spend a little effort on the typography.
Be that as it may, what about the quality of the stories? For this reader at least, the impression was one of variety both in terms of subject matter and in literary worth. Of course, some of this, perhaps most of this, comes down to personal taste.
Robert Weston kicks things off with an indigestible lump of forty-three prose stanzas entitled 'Stop Plate Tectonics'. It's apparently about the narrator's love-life, some stuff going on his university, the Hindu god Ganesha and a bunch of other stuff. If there was some SF in there, I didn't find it and nor did I see anything obviously fantastical. It just seemed to go on and on and the stanza format seemed to suggest nothing so much as the author's inability to come up with a single narrative thread to tie together whatever it was he was trying to say.
'The Other Side' by D.T. Mitenko is altogether easier to read and ultimately more satisfying. It's a nice take on a common enough SF trope, that of humans rebelling against insidious, sophisticated alien masters. In this case, the aliens are from Adrocksis and have enslaved the people in part by using something called the Fundament to subconsciously control people's desires, but also by being able to create perfect duplicates of people to use as spies. It's a nicely paced story with just enough detail to make the setting believable but not so much that things get bogged down in exposition. Where 'The Other Side' bucks expectations is with its sombre ending, in this case casting a shadow over the preceding action and the rebellion's actions with the truth that freedom doesn't necessarily imply happiness.
The next story is 'Made' by Paul Hosek. In this world, certain people known as Makers have the ability to control the actions of others by instilling certain desires. Needless to say, these desires are often unhelpful to the poor victim and range from illicit sex through to crime and even suicide. The narrator is an FBI agent on the trail of certain Makers and, to do this job more effectively, the agency is attempting to make her Maker-proof. Of course, it doesn't turn out to be as simple as that and the splicing of past and recent events throughout the story sets the reader up for the unpleasant surprise at the end.
I liked Allen Weiss' 'Making Light' a lot. It's a simple tale in some ways about a Jewish magician and his talking horse. The magician has to perform a certain task, but how the task is to be accomplished is a mystery to him. The depth provided by the religious and mythological references give the tale extra body though, so despite its fairy tale premise, 'Making Light' stands out as easily the most enjoyable story in the entire magazine.
A comic tale comes next in the shape of 'A Day Without Kings' by Adam La Rusic. It's very much a Douglas Adams sort of piece, the basic premise being that there is a satellite-borne super-weapon that can kill anyone it is directed at. When the secret of how to control this weapon is leaked onto the Internet, politicians across the world get vaporised. On the plus side, the absence of politicians and world leaders results in the advent of world peace and this is something the American military is definitely not pleased about. It's a fun story nicely written and the ending, while groan-makingly bad as a joke, fits the rest of the tale beautifully.
'Old People And Dogs: A Death In The Desert' by Jennifer Rachel Baumer draws heavily on Homer's 'Iliad', though in this case the spears are shaken and thrown by bikers and property developers.
'Why The Poets Were Banned From The City' by Jerome Stueart posits a world where people have their emotions controlled by drugs. Literature and music are banned except in the service of the state because they can otherwise elicit emotions in people that the state can't control. The story explores the idea that without artistic culture to contextualise our emotions, we can't understand them. More specifically, the father of a girl who has killed herself can't understand her suicide note, which consists of a line of poetry. Heady stuff.
Bottom line, 'On Spec' is certainly a worthy offering of diverse talents. The humdrum presentation and cramped cover art doesn't case a great first impression but that aside, for the price this particular issue at least contained one or two very good stories, a few perfectly enjoyable ones and really only one tale that simply failed to float my boat.
Neale Monks
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