John Thiel writes...

Revered and Esteemed Sirs:

Certainly a fine issue this time, as you notice and point out. Yes, it is, a “crackerjack” issue; there’s a lot of crunch to it, and a special snap to the stories. I am especially liking Alex and Lou’s stories, both of which were thought-provoking, novel, and gripping as to content — fault-free stories, considered in terms of publishability. I’d encourage both of them to develop their themes into longer stories, perhaps include reader feedback in the text. (That’s so they’ll continue to have that “Bewildered” appearance.) Bob’s story fell a little short of the other two, but was also highly readable and effective.

I’m in the process of reading the Cyrano story all the way through, so I’ll be catching up with the afterword. Printing it out, too, as it will make a splendid addition to my computer sf files, along with the FANCYCLOPEDIAS and assorted other first-class materials. Don did a good job in bringing this work to us.

Best ever,

John Thiel

Thank you, John! It’s always good to hear from you. We’d also love to receive another story or poem of yours!

We dote on compliments and yours are much appreciated. We’re enthusiastic about that issue generally. I think Bob Wend intended “Deep Smoke” not to compete with Lou Antonelli’s “Whatever Remains” but to look at somewhat the same subject from a... complementary... angle.

Thanks, too, for your interest in and appreciation of The Other World. Just a little note, though: you don’t mean you're going to “print out” the novel on those flat white things... what are they called, again? You’ll lose the hypertext. My recommendation is to save each page.
In Netscape: “Save Page As” —> Format: Web page, complete.
In Internet Explorer: “Save As” —> Format: Web archive —> Options: Download images (they’ll be mostly names).
That way you can peruse each episode off line, if you like. Not pretty, I guess, but the translation is intended for the Net; I don’t think it’ll work well in print. In the future, I may collect all the episodes into a single archived file. That should be a big timesaver.

Yours Bewilderingly,
Don W.