Uploaded December 16, 1996 -- Updated January 15, 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.
"Call Me Titan" by Robert Silverberg
[1/13/97]
"One Good Juror" by Mary Rosenblum & James
Sarafin
"Three Hearings on the Existence of Snakes in
the Human Bloodstream" by James Alan Gardner [1/13/97]
"Passing the Torch" by Uncle River
"The Runaways" by Phillip C. Jennings
Miscellaneous Comments (on the magazine as a whole, editorials, columns, etc.)
Raymund Eich: 1/13/97
Story: Typhoeus, a titan imprisoned by Zeus beneath Mt. Etna, breaks loose in the late 20th century intent on revenge. This story was intended as an homage for Roger Zelazny, but falls short in three areas. The tale lacks the dry humor that humanizes Zelazny's (demi)gods; Typhoeus is just a powerful, angry bore. Second, the reader is hit over the head with the fact that the American tourist Typhoeus models himself on for his travels in Greece is Zelazny. The first reference to a man with long nose and high forehead is cute; the third or fourth is annoying. Worse are the references to the man's orderly mind and compassionate demeanor: even if Zelazny were a saint, sf is not meant to be hagiography. Finally, the story has no resolution; Typhoeus neither finds Zeus nor grows beyond his need for revenge.
Raymund Eich
rfe@bioc.rice.edu
http://www-bioc.rice.edu/~rfe/homepage.html
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Raymund Eich: 1/13/97
An allohistory with an interesting historical change (the Christ is not Jesus but either the Virgin Mary or a virgin named Mary, and the Roman influence on history is much lower (viz. a reference to 'Cronus and its rings')) that suffers from the 'sound of thunder is a whimper' fallacy -- Rome doesn't have an empire but, 1500-2000 years later, we have a microscopist named Anton van Leeuwenhoek, a naturalist named Charles Darwin, and a senator named Joe McCarthy. Worse, we have errors of historical fact (Darwin says Leeuwenhoek lived 'five centuries ago' when in our reality it was two). While the story makes an allegorical point--science can be a tool of ideologues--if an sf story is only valid as allegory, it isn't good sf.
Raymund Eich
rfe@bioc.rice.edu
http://www-bioc.rice.edu/~rfe/homepage.html
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