Only three longish stories + a serial. A pretty mediocre issue.
Hunt the Hunter • shortstory by Kris Neville
A ruthless rich hunter travels to on alien planet to hunt a legendary and dangerous beast. The planet is on the territory of hostile aliens, but the hunter doesn't let that stop him. He is even ready to use one of his aides as bait. But there are baits and there are baits... A nice old fashionable entertaining story with a slightly open ending. ***
Angel's Egg • novelette by Edgar Pangborn
A secret diary of a man who adopts "an angel", which is a member of an incredibly advanced race. The race is also so ethical that it used million year pondering if it is ethical to travel in space. It looks like a small naked fairy. It is able to record and absorb a personality of another being. A badly overlong and boring story where little happens. Writing was adequate. **+
Don't Live in the Past • novelette by Damon Knight
There has been an accident: several items have fallen in the past. A man is sent to make sure they won't cause any harm. He observes when first items appear at inappropriate moment. Eventually he gets stranded in the past and finds that things he has learned about history aren't as accurate as he thought, and that his future isn't such a utopia he had thought. He eventually ends up just where it was certain to end from the beginning. About in the first page he is said to resemble the revered "father" of the future world who naturally turns out to be a mad dictator. All problems the stranded visitor from the past faces are solved by an almost literal deus ex machine style of plot device: just right things fall from the future at just right times. A pretty bad story. **
No comments:
Post a Comment