Uploaded July 16, 1997 -- Updated July 28, 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.
"A Spy in Europa" by Alastair Reynolds
[7/3/97]
"The Cobain Sweater" by Paul di Filippo
"Mother Tongue" by Catherine Mintz
"Sun God" by Stephen Baxter [7/3/97]
"Thigmoo" by Eugene Byrne
Miscellaneous Comments [7/15/97] (on the magazine as a whole, editorials, columns, etc.)
Rich Horton: 7/3/97
This is a nice SF thriller. A spy from Ganymede visits Europa to rendezvous with a planted agent and fetch some important information. (An oddly similar setup to Paul J. MacAuley's "Second Skin" (Asimov's, May), which also features a spy visiting the moon of an outer planet.) But the agent has a different agenda than her employers, and the spy meets unexpected difficulties in a nice twist ending.
Rich Horton
http://www.sff.net/people/Richard.Horton/
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Rich Horton: 7/3/97
I'm becoming increasingly enamored with Baxter's alternate histories of 20th century space exploration. He has created several alternate history scenarios now: in the novel _Voyage_, and in the shorts "Prospero One", "Moon Six", and now "Sun God". This story features a maverick future inhabitant of one of Saturn's moons, after the Sun has become a Red Giant, who explores Earth and becomes convinced that it's long dead inhabitants must have tried to reach space. He tries to simulate how such weak, carbon/water based creatures could have done so, with several different variations on historical conditions. The alien isn't believable, but the alternative space exploration scenarios are interesting.
Rich Horton
http://www.sff.net/people/Richard.Horton/
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Interview: "From the Dirac Sea to the Dark Lady", Geoffrey Landis interviewed by Aimee Kratts
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