Julian Lawler’s Prophet of Dreams is about 20 yards from the goal line. Addigo’s misadventure in chapter 11 is paralleled, in a way, by Wolfgang Neverfolt’s disillusionment in chapter 13: “Wolfgang, Wolf.”
In the Prologue to Gaia (issue 88), Tala Bar put her heroine, Dar, into a fairly comfortable biosphere called the Shelter. And then something seemed to go wrong outside. In the first part of chapter 1, “The Land,” Dar finds out that the mysterious events defy imagining, and she can find no shelter at all.
Ian Donnell Arbuckle starts a novel in a very non-traditional style. Bernard and Lane are building something, and Kelly is a sensitive, artistic child with a surrealistic view of the world in Made It Way Up.
In “The Cat” (issue 87), Fran Jacobs portrayed a teenage boy who had fallen prey to a creature out of ancient legend. Now it’s the turn of a girl of about the same age; only, her boyfriend comes from a somewhat more recent legend. The story implicitly asks whether relationships are what they are or how they’re perceived... on “Friday Night.”
Do you worry about “identity theft” these days and shred your credit-card receipts? How about an identity that disappears completely while gradually erasing all traces of its existence? Ásgrímur Hartmannsson gives us the opening chapter of a mystery that will Challenge the reader in “The Missing Person.”
John Thiel is a master of tales based on abstract philosophy. This one has to be his funniest ever. What if matter and energy are, in their own ways, sentient and can form artificial intelligences? What if Adam (matter) and Heloise (energy) fall in love, get married, and have... aww, it’s so sweet! Don’t try to pronounce “Adam S’th’rical,” but don’t miss it, either!
A new contributor, A. R. Yngve, argues that the current taste for “generic fantasy” is a “bubble” and that science fiction is really where it’s at. One of your editors joins in and shifts the focus from today to, oh, week before last, give or take a thousand years or three in The Tolkien Bubble.
Challenge: Challege 88 offered some practical ideas on what a novel is. It has also prompted discussion. In this issue, Kevin Ahearn looks at writing from a literary agent’s viewpoint while one of your editors offers a practical tip to both writers and readers while discussing the economy of words and time in On writing novels today.
The official Challenge is to imagine a larger story in The Cheshire Cat Identity
Letters: Mark Koerner asks what the government might do with abandoned buildings in a buildings strategy. One of your editors points out that private enterprise has had great success in one instance. Only, it was all the more profitable for being highly illegal. This topic could easily enter the realm of science fiction.
The Reading Room: Jerry Wright reviews Arthur C. Clarke and Steven Baxter, Time’s Eye.
Editorial: Late for the Sky
In issue 90, Ian Donnell Arbuckle, Tala Bar, Fran Jacobs, and Julian Lawler will be back, along with Thomas R. and others!
Readers’ reactions are always welcome. Please write!
Copyright © 2004 by Bewildering Stories
