Uploaded May 1, 1996 -- Updated October 18, 1996
Here is the list of stories in this issue. If you have any comments or reviews, send them to jbailey@sff.net. Please indicate which issue and/or story you're referring to in the subject line, and try to keep comments for different stories separate in you letters so I can place them properly.
"Foreign Devils" by Walter Jon Williams
"Pyros" by George M. Ewing [10/15/96]
"Bettina's Bet" by L. Timmel Duchamp
[10/15/96]
"Invasion" by Joanna Russ
"Cider" by Tom Purdom [10/15/96]
"The Temptation of Dr. Stein" by Paul
J. McAuley
"Live from the Occupation" by Eric T. Baker
Miscellaneous Comments (on the magazine as a whole, editorials, columns, etc.)
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Rich Horton: 10/15/96
"Pyros" was great fun, about a group of graduate students and engineers who like blowing things up. Naturally, things get a little out of hand! (The story features a neat punctuational joke in addition!)
Rich Horton: 10/15/96
Pretty clearly, any L. Timmel Duchamp story is going to be provocative, and this one is no exception. Duchamp postulates a future wherein great parts of peoples lives are spent in cyberspace, interacting with others. Maintaining a special persona in cyberspace (one that may have little to do with one's actual persona) is regarded as psychologically healthy, so much so that it becomes a crime to be unwilling to take on unusual personae. Bettina becomes involved with a man in cyberspace, and is unable to be anyone but herself.
I must say, I think a societal reaction to Bettina's "problem" as extreme as the reaction Duchamp posits is very unlikely. In my opinion, right now (I concede this could change in the coming decades), the more likely reaction would be the opposite, that is, a harsh reprisal against people who take on excessively non-real personae in cyberspace. Still, she asks the right kind of questions, and she made me think. That's 90% of the battle.
Another quibble about Duchamp: every story of hers that I can remember has been told in some variety of "journal" form. It usually seems to work: it just seems quirky looking back at her entire oeuvre.
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Rich Horton: 10/15/96
Tom Purdom has been rather quietly turning out some striking stories: I think "Cider" is his best yet. This story features a near future where more and more species of animals are becoming extinct. A special thrill for some hunters is to be the "last straw" for a species, as it were. Chilling and pointed. (Perhaps it was unnecessary to make his protagonist so clearly a monster in other ways than a 'cider: I would suggest that otherwise outwardly normal folks might get a thrill from 'ciding. A little more chilling, that way, I think.)
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