Farrago's Wainscot
Entry updated 18 February 2021. Tagged: Publication.
US Online Magazine of experimental fiction and estrangement produced by Darin Bradley of Greenville, South Carolina. It ran for twelve loosely themed issues between Winter (January) 2007 and October 2009, and was then revived in January 2015 for four quarterly online issues before folding. Most of the fiction and poetry was some form of the fantastic, often surreal, post-modern, rarely traditional, and it attracted many new, young fantasists, amongst them Forrest Aguirre, Hannah Wolf Bowen, Jay Lake, Yoon Ha Lee, Ekaterine Sedia and Catherynne M Valente. Whilst the magazine's desire for unconventionality tended to produce the weird and the strange, it also demonstrated the flexibility of science fiction that could take advantage of literary abstraction. Yoon Ha Lee's "Notes on the Necromantic Symphony" (Fall 2007 #4) may or may not be Fantasy but it hints at multi-layered worlds just beyond our grasp but not necessarily our minds. "Mr. Water Bones and His Wife" (January 2008 #5) by Paul Jessup is a delightfully absurdist tale of a Scientist's extreme way of attaining Immortality. "Running the Road" (April 2008 #6) by Nancy Jane Moore takes us to a world where everything is virtual (see Virtual Reality), which makes reality that much more dangerous. C L Brussel's "Annabel on the Eighteenth Floor" (July 2008 #7) is about transformation, both physical and psychological, whilst "Nadya" (July 2008 #7) by Zdravka Evtimova is about a planet of illusion. Throughout its run Farrago's Wainscot has presented challenging but rewarding new fictions. [MA]
see also: Rhysling Award.
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