“One Lone Mountain, Shining White” by Richard Parks
“Spacer’s Gamble” by Josepha Sherman
“Another Fine Messiah” by F. Gwynplaine MacIntyre
“Parallel Moons” by Mario Milosevic
“Barbara Bloodbath” by Chet Gottfried
“The Tortoiseshell Cat in the Dark Box” by Tim W. Burke
“The Hungry Wind” by William Gerke
“In the Dreaming House” by Darrell Schweitzer

  Reviewed by C. L. Rossman

Space and Time is a long-running, semi-pro, quarterly magazine. This issue features some writers whose names are becoming known in the field, as well as some who are already well known. This issue features eight new tales, all of them, as usual, illustrated.

“One Lone Mountain, Shining White” by Richard Parks opens with two not-quite-antagonists, one of whom “what once had been a man” and the other which is “currently a demon,” sitting on a stony mountainside. Between them stands a magnificent sword, Shadow Cutter—and the two are waiting for the next questing soul who will try to win the sword. This has been going on for a long time and the sword remains where it stands, so obviously no-one has been successful. Suddenly the demon says to his companion, “I think this time I will tell the absolute truth”—about the sword, to see if that makes any difference. Usually they have fought each newcomer to the death, telling him the sword is invincible in battle. Truth is, nobody can hold the sword for very long. It always returns to its place on the mountain. Will knowing that help the newcomer to make a better decision? Will he even want the sword then? The two guardians will try the truth to see what happens.

This short fantasy is actually a parable, like Aesop’s Fables, within which the characters are subsumed to the “lesson” the author is trying to teach. Usually this kind of approach comes off as rather heavy-handed, though Parks manages to avoid that, and it is written solely to lecture mankind on some folly. I do better where the writer’s hand is light, and the lesson is submerged in a full-dress story. Who reads may understand without being hit between the eyes.

“Spacer’s Gamble” by Josepha Sherman stands at the opposite pole from the moralizing previous tale. It’s a short science fiction story told for the pleasure and action of the yarn. Kinsarin Courier Service is a fleet interstellar delivery service which, like UPS, can get your package there faster than the average starliner run. It’s made up of two unlikely partners, interplanetary art historian Sharra Kinsarin, representing the human species and her tall, tough partner, Krahelk, a Gratarik male warrior, outcast from his own people. When the team is hired by Ser Durik San to transport an invaluable gemstone to the planet Kharth, they jump at the chance (literally, hyper-jump) But when they get there, the buyer has fled and the local police are looking for him. With little money for the return trip, they enter a casino and Sharra decides that she can win some funding at a game called Spacer’s Gamble—since she’s the only pilot playing it.

But even with help the pair’s troubles have just begun — and we are treated to a space chase and a double-dealing smuggler in pursuit.

The linkage of human and non-human—the warrior of course subscribes to a warrior code—is an interesting combination, and I have the feeling that Sherman has more adventures in mind for these two. The story never lacks for action and can be read for the fun of losing yourself in another world.

“Another Fine Messiah” by F. Gwynplaine MacIntyre, might be called an alternative history with time travel, in this case playing with the question “If Jesus Christ was never crucified, what would happen to Christianity?” It also pre-supposes that Jesus was a con-man with an elaborate bag of tricks, and a homosexual to boot. The title comes from an old Laurel and Hardy gag where Ollie fumes to Stan, “Well, here’s another fine mess you’ve gotten me into!”

(Caution: devout Christians may find this story extremely offensive.)

To make a short story even shorter, Jesus is spared by Pontius Pilate on that crucial day, and the mob is given Barabbas instead. Pilate warns the Nazarene to return home and never again claim he is the Messiah. He and his lover do just that, and he makes a quiet living as a carpenter.

Until, years later, a time traveler appears and claims that his presence on the day of judgment upset the plan of things and Christianity just didn’t happen. Billie Bob, the obnoxious redneck time traveler, demands that Jesus sacrifice himself and set the stage for Christianity.—or he, Billie Bob, will make it happen.

You get the impression that the writer was bouncing this idea around and trying to upend as many taken-for granteds about the Crucifixion as possible. I couldn’t decide if he was trying to be funny or ironic, or just contemptuous of religion in general.

Which brings up this question for me: “What is the writer’s duty to his readers?” Is it to shock, to tell a story, to mock, to move, to entertain? Surely storytelling and entertainment are in there someplace. But my own personal code says the story has to have a meaning beyond the keystrokes which comprise it. Writing is an art form and art is passion. If you cannot bring passion to your art, then it can have no heart. Writing entails as much faith as a religion does; and somewhere that story has to have a higher purpose. And the writer must be truthful, tell the truth about how his characters react, even in a fantasy setting. I think this story falls short on all counts, humor and passion and truth.

“Parallel Moons” by Mario Milosevic, an SF tale, poses the question: “What if we lost the Moon? What if it was no longer there?” and develops several neat little scenarios showing how this might happen. In one: a multi-billionaire is “erasing” the Moon’s face by peppering it with fine, non-reflective dust; in another, mysterious alien spacecraft land on the Moon and begin terraforming it, eventually removing it (for their own purposes) from the Earth and solar system entirely; and in another, a group of nerds wants the Moon reclassified as a planet, as our “sister planet” named Luna—which will effectively change our way of thinking about it. What happens to humanity then? Does it gain or lose something precious?

After the space race in the 1960’s, topped off by actually reaching the Moon, man has not bothered to return. Everyone has seemingly given up on going there or making anything of it.

Remove the Moon, Milosevic says, and only the astronomers might be happy, because its light no longer interferes with their deep space telescopic views. Would anyone else even care? What about poets and lovers, Romantics? Dreaming youngsters? This is a fine and thoughtful story, provoking a larger question which I think can be partly answered: What would mankind do if it lost the Moon’s big round cheerful face, riding up there in the sky to open our eyes with wonder? Without it, humanity might never have dreamed there were other worlds out there. The stars are only distant sparks, seemingly not allied to the full hot blazing sun. But the Moon is a cheerful traveling companion, inspiring us to poetry, story, and song, giving us a new place to stand and look out upon the universe. This is what I mean by “a higher purpose.”

What happens when your magic sword breaks and you have a tournament coming up in a few days and you really can’t afford to get a new weapon? You might go to someone like “Barbara Bloodbath” in this humorous fantasy by Chet Gottfried, and attempt to haggle on prices. Jurric does that, meeting the redoubtable Barbara in a local tavern. She offers him magic swords which are priced beyond what he has to offer—or, she can have her craftsmen fix his current, broken sword, a rare Grubby (doesn’t sound like much, does it?). If he can’t pay the price asked, he can either fight a duel right there and then, or maybe he can work it off by say, cleaning up a bit? A poor choice for a proud young warrior.

I enjoyed the light-heartedness of this story, and was intrigued by the array of magic swords offered by Barbara. Each had a different power, and some were not exactly user-friendly. Gottfried has a great title on this one, and a name he can use in future stories.

“The Tortoiseshell Cat in the Dark Box” by Tim W. Burke, a combination of science fiction and ghost story, is a beautifully-written tale reminiscent of the old English masters like Benson and James. In it, the young protagonist tells us in the first person about his conning Thatcher Corrugate ((inventor of cardboard boxes) into believing that in a replica of the Schrödinger’s Cat experiment—the cat disappeared. Actually, the protagonist “lets the cat out of the box” when the multi-millionaire isn’t looking. Now he’s basking in the good life while he persuades Thatcher to poison hundreds of cats in an attempt to repeat that first experiment. He’s also convinced the man he has psychic powers.

But the murdered cats remember. And soon spectral paw-steps begin to whisper about the millionaire’s mansion—until suddenly one day all the cats disappear from the boxes—and the conman hasn’t touched them. It’s a very well-written short story, setting up the mood and the atmosphere quite nicely—one of the best stories in the magazine, I think.

In “The Hungry Wind” by William Gerke, a boy and his sister wander into Praecordia, City of Spires. When they seek a crude shelter the first night, his sister leaves it temporarily and is snatched away by the hungry wind. The boy doesn’t know that and searches the city next day until he meets Nissa, a tinker’s daughter. Who first tells him about the hungry wind and where it comes from—a vast deep pit in the city’s heart. Out of the pit rise airships from hell, carrying a valuable cargo of weapons. In fact, Boy (as he is called) has one of them: a handgun he has been carrying. But once he knows where the wind comes from, he is baffled as to how he can rescue his sister. He learns that the tinker himself, Nissa’s father, is building a trap to catch the wind—and if he catches it, Boy will have to confront the Devil in order to make his demands.

This is an imaginative story with some dark symbolism to it, and the reader should expect a dark ending; for some things lost can never be found again.

“In the Dreaming House” by Darrell Schweitzer—Older knight and warrior Vandos is outside his castle on a moonlit night searching for his grandson’s pet goat when he sees a mysterious golden light at the horizon. To his shock, he can see in it ramparts and towers, vast rooftops and windows. Surely this is Kar-ad-Theon, the Dreaming House of the Gods, where all the Thousand and One gather in good company to feast and drink and then lie down to dream new worlds into being. No mortal man has ever been able to reach it. But it looks no farther away than Vandos’ farthest barn, so he races back to his castle, forgetting about the lost goat to wake his wife and struggle into his old set of armor, then slips back out into the field, avoiding the servants’ eyes and taking with him his wife’s ringing words, “Be brave. Be a hero.”

Thus begins a strange and fantastical journey for Vandos in this lyrically told fantasy. He gains the Dreaming House, walks past its many windows and sees multiple worlds beyond them. But when he comes to the great banquet table where the gods once feasted, he finds no one there. His journey becomes stranger as he goes on to meet three young companions (soldier-friends of his youth, perhaps?) and they venture to find the gods. They battle strange beings—dark Titans, one with “a head like a hillock” and eventually Vandos is left alone to carry a wrenching message to mankind. But time has slipped away from him and years have passed since he returns to his own land.

I found this a moody tale, dealing with archetypes and things out of legends, another fable or parable story, very well done, where the reader becomes part of the eerie dreamtime through which the knight struggles. A very few short stops—one where Vandos’ grandson asks him if he has found the goat, “and gave a name.” Vandos doesn’t know the goat had a name. Here, I think it would be better to plug in a name, any name, for the goat, rather than leave it an unanswered question which disturbs reader progress.

The writer does very skillfully speak the “high language” of fantasy, and handles the dreaming sequences where Vandos’ early life and memories flow back to him quite well. It brought to mind a fragment of poem—don’t remember the poet, but the words describe this story and its effect on you:

“—To beat one’s hands against the gates of Fairyland all day…only to find the country empty and its kings gone hence.”…and the deep disappointment, the loss of the dream, which that describes. The last sentence of the story is pure gold.

Space and Time‘s website is here.