A nice issue with interesting stories.
Footsteps • novelette by Shane Tourtellotte
A dead man is found on the lunar surface. He wears ordinary clothes and he is far too far from any airlocks for a quick suicidal dash. And there are marks on the ground of any vehicle which might have dropped the body. Was it a murder? And if it was, how in hell it was accomplished? A pretty good detective story on moon. The main characters were strangely fascinated and even obsessive about fame. ***½
Death As a Way of Life • [Jack Sawyer's Doppelganger] • novelette by Grey Rollins
A detective who has a few copies of himself running secretly on computer networks studies a case where a man a killed himself in a TV show was not reviewed in a clone body as expected. It was first written down as a machine malfunction, but it turns out there was something else going on. A fairly standard detective story - not great literature but entertaining. ***+
The Inn at Mount Either • shortstory by James Van Pelt
A husband loses his wife in a mystical inn which seems to span several dimensions. He tries to find her, but he is lost more and more. A decent story but stupid characters: wouldn’t the visitors know where there going – even the most basic details? And some extremely badly planned safety features. ***+
Tainted • shortstory by Jerry Oltion
A single intelligent and immortal creature evolves on a planet where life is very different. He/she/it slowly explores the galaxy and fails to find other life until he finds Earth – which is destroyed by a nuclear war fought centuries or millennia ago. A nice bittersweet story. ***+
Tomorrow's Strawberries • shortstory by Richard A. Lovett
In a future earth, the entire surface of the planet is covered by a city – except a largish park. The right to visit is only by lottery. An old man (who body is in pretty good condition due to advanced medicine) gets the privilege. It affects him profoundly. A pretty good and well-written story. ***½
Smiling Vermin • [Jessie and Gus] • shortstory by Ekaterina Sedia and David Bartell
A retired genetic engineer decides to design some small pet dolphins for his wife as a present. Everything doesn’t go well…A light story, but unbelievably indifferent attitude to the spread of new and unpredictable life forms by people who surely should know better. ***+
High Moon • novelette by Joe Schembrie
Remote drones are used for prospecting palladium in moon. The drone operators for a society modeled (very closely ) on the wild west. An Evil Drone run by a Palladium Consortium is a bad guy. A stupid story. It might have worked better with less ridiculous western motives or going even more to the direction of crazy farce. I wonder why the prospectors didn't record the evil works of the evil drone. As they worked using remote viewing it should have been totally trivial. This way they would have had concrete evidence against the consortium – but then there would have been no story. ***+
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