"Flower of the Void" by James Killus
"Intelligent Conversation" by Shane Tourtellotte
"Birthright" by Edward Muller
"To the Rescue" by Lorren Stiles
"Representative Sample" by Will Ludwigsen
"Foggy Acre Blues" by Thomas A. Easton
"Je Me Souviens" by Edward Willett

I love magazines that have clear visions of what they are trying to do, and Artemis is certainly that. Artemis is published by LRC Publications (the Lunar Resource Company), and they want to go to space. Scratch that. They want us all to go to space, and, in addition to fiction on the topic, they provide science education articles and related non-fiction. While not all the stories are great, many are good, and I love the feel of the magazine. Editor Ian Randal Strock knows what he is trying to do, and is largely succeeding. I look forward to many more issues.

"Flower of the Void" by James Killus
"Flower of the Void" is intelligent, clearly written, and rich with scientific detail. And if the editor of Artemis says that it is a story, I'll take his word for it. I, however, did not find it a story, or at least, not a satisfying story. The fact that it is almost completely exposition does not bother me, nor the fact that there are no human characters in the story. What kept this brief piece (two and a half pages long) from working for me was the extreme degree of emotional distance. Killus gave us only microscopic machines as characters, and these machines lack motivation, volition, and sentience. The result was as cool and distant a story as I can imagine. "Flower of the Void" works as what it is, a realistic and pro-space thought experiment, and might even be offered as a textbook example of such an experiment. However, I suspect most readers will want a deeper emotional connection with their protagonist than Killus allows.

"Intelligent Conversation" by Shane Tourtellotte
"Intelligent Conversation" is another short short, this one only a page long. Like other works by Tourtellotte published here and elsewhere, this story is competently written. However, it is essentially a shaggy dog story from the Golden Age. If you like such stories, I won't spoil it by giving away the ending. If you are impatient with such stories, I'll feed your attitude by telling you that from the second paragraph on, I was impatient with the main character; he seemed a stereotype more than a scientist. I will give Artemis this, though; this story shows that they are willing to poke fun at their own deep devotion to space exploration.

"Birthright" by Edward Muller
"Birthright" is a science fiction mystery. This hybrid genre has always attracted and repelled me. On one hand, science fictional settings and SF's accent on reason fits well with certain types of stories. On the other hand, alien settings, like "Birthright"'s of the moon, require a lot of exposition. Muller does his best to slip the exposition into the dialogue as the story unfolded, but at times the info-dumps still stuck out, straining credibility. Would life-long lunar residents really explain orbital mechanics and the radiation risks suffered by pregnant women in such detail? I think not; like everyone familiar with their established environment, they'd speak in more of a shorthand. That quibble aside, "Birthright" is a good story. It blends a genuine mystery with a genuine SF setting, and in fact, not only was the murder method specific to the environs of a lunar colony, the motivation was at once deeply human and specific to the setting. Nicely done, and I look forward to more.

"To the Rescue" by Lorren Stiles
"To the Rescue" is a good story told badly. Let me explain what I mean by that. The biographical sketch of author Lorren Stiles indicates that he is a former Air Force pilot with a lot of experience flying helicopter rescue missions. I not only believe that, I would have suspected it from the authority with which he writes in the sections set in the past, when he's remembering a specific past rescue attempt brought to mind by his current efforts. The details there are right on target. However, the details of the space-based rescue, and the creaking machinery of the story, aren't nearly so finely tuned. Some technical details are over-explained, or simply off-target (In the future, will automatic computer messages speak of "souls" in danger?). Other, more visceral details simply fall out of the story (apparently the shift from two g worth of thrust to zero gravity doesn't affect the pilots physically at all, even though one is only a pilot in training). The personal details are even more unlikely. I simply did not believe that the senior pilot would go into an extended flashback in the middle of an emergency rescue operation; the memory seemed to unroll solely so the story could be set up. As a result, even though the structure of a good story is there, this story held no tension, and the ending was telegraphed from the beginning of the first flashback.

"Representative Sample" by Will Ludwigsen
"Representative Sample" is another short short, this one two pages long, and another shaggy dog story of sorts. This one's humor is more fully integrated into the story, and more ambitious. Ludwigsen manages to satirize most of American "culture" in the process of lodging a deeper barb into the short-sightedness of those who undercut the American presence in space. I was highly suspicious when the story started with an order for 150 kilograms of Juggs magazine, but Ludwigsen turned me around and had me on his side by the end of the second page.

"Foggy Acre Blues" by Thomas A. Easton
"Foggy Acre Blues" is fun and surprising. I had to read the first lines of the story three times to figure out just how much of a twist Easton had given things, and from then on, I knew I was in good hands. Easton tells a story that takes a familiar idea, the aging of our society, and extrapolates it in several original directions. Unlike most of the stories in this issue, "Foggy Acre Blues" communicates the details of life vividly; Easton reminds us that humans have bowels that rebel, and noses that run. But he does something else too: he reminds us that no matter what circumstances we find ourselves in, or how the world conspires to limit us, and to turn our attention inward and downward, to narcissism and despair, ambition and glory are always possible. This is a good story in any case, and especially fitting for Artemis, given its mission.

"Je Me Souviens" by Edward Willett
Translated from the French, "Je Me Souviens" means simply "I remember," and, in its most literal meaning, fits this story about a man keeping his lonely vigil over a shrine on the moon quite well. However, all reflexive verbs carry an echo of "this happens to me" or "I do this to myself." "Je Me Souviens" is also the title of the American-French Genealogical Society's publication. All of these connotations fit; Willet's story is about a man who is dedicating himself to keeping the memory of Earth alive, after it has been destroyed. Since we're told that eight billion were killed, the catastrophe was a near-future event— but fortunately, occurs after humanity has placed colonies throughout the solar system. It is there that humanity survives, and it is clear that these colonists are forgetting where they came from, as visitors to the shrine are rare. This quiet story was laced with melancholy and full of dignity.

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 dozen stories accepted since September, with acceptances by Ideomancer.com, 3SF, Palace of Reason, Would That It Were, deathlings.com, and several anthologies. Greg's non-fiction appears fairly regularly in Strange Horizons and the New York Review of Science Fiction.