"Alfred Bester Is Alive and Well and Living in Winterset, Iowa" by Bret Bertholf
"I Killed Them in Vegas" by Esther M. Friesner
"The Only Known Jump Across Time" by Eugene Mirabelli
"White Cloud" by Elaine Stirling
"Tropical Nights at the Natatorium" by Richard Paul Russo
"Pictures from an Expedition" by Alex Irvine

"Alfred Bester Is Alive and Well and Living in Winterset, Iowa" by Bret Bertholf
"Alfred Bester…" etc. is far and away the most stylistically ambitious story in this issue. Berthoff incorporates icons, shifting fonts and capitalization, icons, and cartoon images, both free-floating and contained by a traditional panel structure. It's the New Wave come again, flavored with traces of Situationalism. This aspect of the story works quite well, since when the story begins, it seems to be about an older man with nanotechnology implants who is having difficulty negotiating both his organic memories and the technological enhancements. I say "seems to be" because the story shifts, and shifts again, and the shifts in style and delivery match the uneasy shifts in mental structure that the character is suffering, so that I found myself unexpectedly sympathetic with the lead. After all, if he was half as confused as I was, he was in a terrible situation.

The story also works as an homage to Bester, and as metafiction about the science fiction. There are only two linked weaknesses here. One is that when all the reality shifting is done, I'm less clear on who to sympathize with, as our lead seems to evaporate. The other is that the core SFnal idea is pretty old—another riff on the "Now that everything's virtual, how do we know what's real?" (I know, technically, it's an AI downloaded into a human body, but experientially, for the protagonist and reader, it's almost the same thing.) But I applaud the story's boldness, and enjoyed Berthoff's attempts to refresh the question.

"I Killed Them in Vegas" by Esther M. Friesner
Spoiler warning: a great deal of the this story's appeal comes from its central concept, and it's impossible to review without naming that concept, so if you dislike spoilers, skip the next paragraph.

Still with me? "I Killed Them in Vegas" is about a vampire stand-up comic. It is intended as comedy, and if you accept the premise of undead situation comedy, all jokes flow from that premise. The vampire is trying to have both love and a career, and, like any living person in a sitcom, finds the two at odds. Having an undead lead allows Friesner to play the performer's language of killing an audience/dying on stage, as well as clichés about agents being bloodsuckers, the inhumanity of Hollywood, etc. All of that said, I found this a minor story at best. It tried too hard, and was commentary mostly about humor, rather than being funny itself. (Some parts would work much better as a live skit, especially since Friesner comments so often on the comic's delivery being what makes his jokes work.)

"The Only Known Jump Across Time" by Eugene Mirabelli
This is a beautiful story. Technically, I'm not sure it has a fantastic element, but it is so infused with a genuine sense of wonder and so informed by reflections on the nature of science and history, who cares? There are two premises to "Jump." One is common, almost banal, but made magical by the second. The first is that time travel to the past is useless, because the past is fixed and we cannot change it. The second is a poetic consideration of the power of chance meetings to fuel the love and dreaming that makes a tailor build a time machine out in the back yard. I'm still not sure if the fire that jumps from the tailor's chest to scorch the bosom of the professor's daughter is literal, and the couple "really" leapt forward in time, or if it is a metaphor for their magical love/sex connection. I don't care. The writing is poetic, and it works perfectly by its own logic. Thank you, Mr. Mirabelli.

"White Cloud" by Elaine Stirling
White Cloud, the lead character who gives this story its name, is a Native American who is also an alcoholic in recovery, and a seer who runs a New Age book and paraphernalia store. All that sounds terribly dangerous; there are clichés looming around every corner. But Stirling does a nice job with this story. There are nice lightly amusing riffs on the spiritual poseurs in the New Age movement, the clash between market realities and spirituality, and a few other topics. In the process of delivering these, Stirling develops one character nicely (White Cloud), and sketches two more (a boy in search of his missing mother, and a cute "spiritual" customer) into fairly vivid being. I sympathized with all three of them at various times in the story. There were weaknesses to the story, though, and they seemed all to boil down to Stirling including really nice touches that didn't get fully developed. White Cloud's spiritual vision is real—but what about that dark shadow he sees around the girl? I want to know, just as I want to know what the kid's going to do with the knife he's holding at the story's end. These frustrations didn't ruin the story, but they are there.

"Tropical Nights at the Natatorium" by Richard Paul Russo
This is a starkly lovely story. Russo has an eye for the grotesque, and also for documenting how humans can connect despite it. This story is set in a fairly near-future in which global warming has continued. It's scorching the United States, but what angers the story's protagonist (and, I suspect, Russo) is the growing gap between rich and poor, and how the rich believe that their wealth will allow them to ignore the ecological crisis and continue to enjoy their insulated diversions, like the Natatorium. If taken literally, the story is a little preachy, and a little far-fetched; how likely is it that the old man fishing by the river is going to be an economist with a social conscience who will engage the protagonist in philosophical dialogue? But if read as a cautionary fairy tale, it works very well indeed.

"Pictures from an Expedition" by Alex Irvine
This story is just barely science fiction. Oh, all the trappings are there—it's set on the first mission to Mars, where life is discovered, and that hasn't happened yet. VR rigs play a part in the story, and as the expedition heads to Mars, it is discussed online as much as it is in person. In addition to the technological trappings there, the genre trappings are there. The ethnic make-up of the crew, and the sexual tension, are an updated nod to the crew in Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land; the headlines and Vegas betting echo any number of John Brunner novels (and through him, Dos Passos). And Irvine includes many highly informed references to the sort of infighting in both science and politics that the science fiction community tends to track; I particularly enjoyed the way NASA and the Cato Institute ended up aligned at one point, due to their respective kneejerk self-defensiveness.

But Irvine is careful not to be too specific about the science, and I suspect it's because his focus is really on two or three other intertwined elements. One is the psychological distance that rare experiences put between those who have them and the rest of humanity. This could be space travel, but it could also be travel on earth, as Irvine signals with a reference to a sailor's diary. It could also be the second element, which is the distorting effect that fame puts on people. In "Jimmy Guang's House of Gladmech" (SCI FICTION, April 2002), Alex had reworked the television show Battlebots to comment on interpersonal combat; here there's more than a touch of Survivor, as bets mount to see who is thrown off the island…which in this case means the mission, and life. This story works much better than the earlier one, and Irvine's social critique is right on target. And, lest I fail to mention it, this story is a good read.

Greg Beatty was most of the way through a PhD in English at the University of Iowa when his advisors agreed that letting him go to Clarion West 2000 would be a good idea. Bad idea. He finished his dissertation on serial killer novels, then gave up on traditional academia and returned to his original dream of writing fiction. He's had a number of stories published, since then, with acceptances by SCI FICTION, 3SF, Palace of Reason, The Fortean Bureau, Would That It Were, deathlings.com, Abyss & Apex, Paradox, Oceans of the Mind, and several anthologies. For more information on Greg's writing, visit http://home.earthlink.net/~gbeatty/.