Tales of Magic Realism by Women: Dreams in a Minor Key

The 15 stories in this unusual collection--by turns humorous, frightening and bizarre--aren't proper science fiction but rather realistic tales with a bit of English. In Lucy Sussex's ``The Man Hanged Upside Down,'' artists duel with paintbrushes instead of pistols, but the results are just as deadly. For a young vacationer in ``Old Night'' by Stephanie T. Hoppe, the ``bright magical landscape'' of a European grand hotel turns nightmarish when the sun sets. In Batya Weinbaum's ``Bapka in Brooklyn,'' a Jewish girl from the Midwest inherits her grandfather's apartment in Brooklyn and sets out to search for her roots, but life turns decidedly odd when God and Bapka's late grandfather appear on television. A woman comes to a Navajo reservation to learn the art of sand painting in Conda V. Douglas's ``Hearts of Sand,'' but when a man is found dead her knowledge of Navajo culture makes her an effective sleuth. In ``Flora's Complaint'' by Kathleen J. Alcala, a shrewish woman learns, to her chagrin, that life and the afterlife are what you make them. Sturgis edited Memories and Visions--Women's Fantasy & Science Fiction. (Apr.)