Uploaded May 7, 1997 -- Updated May 7, 1997
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.
"Frank's Tricer Run" by Ernest Hogan
"Ecopoiesis" by Geoffrey A. Landis
[5/4/97]
"Your Eyes, My Darling, Black and White and
Blue" by Karen Haber
"The Sunhouse Trap" by George Walker
"The Voice" by Gregory Benford
"Broca's Choice" by Mark W. Tiedemann
"The Firefly Tree" by Jack Williamson
Miscellaneous Comments (on the magazine as a whole, editorials, columns, etc.)
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Rich Horton: 5/4/97
This is both an hard-sf murder mystery, and a commentary of sorts on the recent rash of Mars fiction, and successful on both counts. A team of three are sent to Mars to investigate the disappearance, and apparent violent death, of two researchers, studying the "ecosystem" of Man-changed Mars. The team are the narrator, pilot Frank Tinkerman, the "hotshot scientist" Leah Hamakawa, with whom Frank is rather hopelessly in love, and weapons expert and bodyguard Tally Okumba. These character are interesting: they have what I take to be a purposely traditional set of roles (traditional in pulp SF, that is), but Landis plays with the roles: not just by having two women, which is after all hardly unusual in contemporary SF; but more in the relationships and individual characteristics of the three: particularly the relationship between Frank and Leah.
The story centers on understanding the "ecopoiesis" of Mars, which is depicted with a certain cynical but still intriguing realism. In contrast to the explicit terraforming which Kim Stanley Robinson depicts, the ecopoets of Landis' Mars have tried to create an "appropriate" Martian ecosystem: not an Earth duplicate or analog. As Landis writes "... diversity was their creed. They looked down in contempt on unimaginitive humans who believed that humans were the pinnacle of evolution. ... [They wanted] not to make a copy of Earth, but something new..." However, the effort foundered on economic grounds, and also in the face of those who felt that any alteration of pristine, lifeless, Mars was a criminal act. But an "ecopoiesized" Mars still has resulted, and two scientists are dead. Frank, Leah and Tally's investigation provides us with an interesting look at a very different ecosystem than that Robinson imagined, and leads to a solution of the mystery that is logical (even solvable), and also which nicely dovetails with the scientific themes of the story.
Rich
Horton
rrhmah@aol.com
http://www.sff.net/people/richard.horton
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