Uploaded May 7, 1997 -- Updated May 11, 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.
"The Pipes of Pan" by Brian Stableford
[5/9/97]
"The Macklin Gift" by Pat MacEwen
"Why I Never Went Steady With Heather Moon"
by Ron Goulart
"Graffiti" by Robert Reed [5/5/97]
"Rajmahal" by Kit Reed
"Bright, New Skies" by M. Shayne Bell
[5/9/97]
"Jelly Bones" by Robin Aurelian [5/5/97]
Miscellaneous Comments (on the magazine as a whole, editorials, columns, etc.)
Rich Horton: 5/5/97
Stableford is one of those "two career" authors. He published a great many competent and interesting (if somewhat hurried in execution, and not terribly memorable) novels in the 1970's, then after a brief quiet period, has returned to the field with some intriguing SF-Horror hybrid novels (such as _The Empire of Fear_, _The Carnival of Destruction_, and the long, linked, novellas "The Hunger and Ecstasy of Vampires" and "The Black Blood of the Dead") and also a number of fascinating shorter stories, mostly on biological themes, often quite Eganesque in their extrapolative vigor, including recent award nominee "Mortimer Grey's History of Death".
"The Pipes of Pan" is one of his best recent stories. Indeed, at about the midway point of the year, this is the best SF story I've read in this year's magazines. As with a number of Stableford's recent stories, the central focus is on the consequences of human immortality. This story is told from the point of view of a young girl, constructed by an immortal couple to be a perpetual 13-year old. This idea, that immortals would want children who are always children, is at once logical and really chilling, and Stableford depicts the type of people and society that might want such children quite well, and without making them monsters. Then a virus infects some of the children, and they begin to grow up. A wonderful story.
Rich Horton
http://www.sff.net/people/Richard.Horton/
Mary Soon Lee: 5/9/97
A thoughtful and moving story, beautifully written.
Mary Soon
Lee
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~mslee/hp.html
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Rich Horton: 5/5/97
The amazingly versatile Robert Reed essays horror this time, as two high school boys find the secret of why their town has been relatively crime-free for so long: and put it to unworthy use. Naturally, they eventually pay for their sins: and in a logical and satisfying fashion.
Rich Horton
http://www.sff.net/people/Richard.Horton/
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Mary Soon Lee: 5/9/97
A scientist raised in Siberia has discovered a technique which could adapt species to the ever-worsening environment, but only at the cost of changing those species irrevocably. I found this short story well written and effective. The emphasis on the scientist's personal memories and uncertainties provided a human focus to a grim future.
Mary Soon
Lee
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~mslee/hp.html
Rich Horton: 5/5/97
I've never heard of this author. This is a fun, different, story about a man(?) who is left for dead in the trunk of a car, and when revived has the ability to assume any shape he wants. Cars with dead people in them seem to gravitate to gangsters: when this one does, Jelly Bones becomes an associate (of sorts) of a gangster, but ... The results are funny and oddly touching.
Rich Horton
http://www.sff.net/people/Richard.Horton/
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