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    Galaxy's Edge Magazine: Issue 18, January 2016 - Featuring Leigh Bracket (scriptwriter for Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back): Galaxy's Edge, #18
    Galaxy's Edge Magazine: Issue 18, January 2016 - Featuring Leigh Bracket (scriptwriter for Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back): Galaxy's Edge, #18
    Galaxy's Edge Magazine: Issue 18, January 2016 - Featuring Leigh Bracket (scriptwriter for Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back): Galaxy's Edge, #18
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    Galaxy's Edge Magazine: Issue 18, January 2016 - Featuring Leigh Bracket (scriptwriter for Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back): Galaxy's Edge, #18

    By Robert J. Sawyer, Todd McCafffrie, Janet Ian and

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    A Magazine of Science Fiction and Fantasy

    ISSUE 18: January 2016

    Mike Resnick, Editor

    Jean Rabe, Assistant Editor

    Shahid Mahmud, Publisher

    Stories by: Jennifer Campbell-Hicks, Robert J. Sawyer, Lou J Berger, Rene Sears, Janis Ian, Robert T. Jeschonek, Jack Skillingstead, Dantzel Cherry, Effie Seiberg, Todd McCaffrey, Laurie Tom

    Serialization: The Long Tomorrow by Leigh Brackett

    Columns by: Barry Malzberg, Gregory Benford

    Book Reviews: Jody Lynn Nye and Bill Fawcett

    Interview: Joy Ward interviews Joe Haldeman

    Galaxy’s Edge is a Hugo-nominated bi-monthly magazine published by Phoenix Pick, the science fiction and fantasy imprint of Arc Manor, an award winning independent press based in Maryland. Each issue of the magazine has a mix of new and old stories, a serialization of a novel, columns by Barry Malzberg and Gregory Benford, book reviews by Jody Lynn Nye and Bill Fawcett and an interview conducted by Joy Ward.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPhoenix Pick
    Release dateDec 24, 2015
    ISBN9781612422961
    Galaxy's Edge Magazine: Issue 18, January 2016 - Featuring Leigh Bracket (scriptwriter for Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back): Galaxy's Edge, #18
    Author

    Robert J. Sawyer

    Robert J. Sawyer is the author of Flashforward, winner of the Aurora Award and the basis for the hit ABC television series. He is also the author of the WWW series—Wake, Watch and Wonder—Hominids, Calculating God, Mindscan, and many other books. He has won the Hugo, Nebula and John W. Campbell Memorial awards—making him one of only seven writers in history to win all three of science-fiction’s top awards for best novel. He was born in Ottawa and lives in Mississauga, Ontario.

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      Book preview

      Galaxy's Edge Magazine - Robert J. Sawyer

      ISSUE 18: JANUARY 2016

      Mike Resnick, Editor

      Jean Rabe, Assistant Editor

      Shahid Mahmud, Publisher

      Published by Arc Manor/Phoenix Pick

      P.O. Box 10339

      Rockville, MD 20849-0339

      Galaxy's Edge is published in January, March, May, July, September and November

      Galaxy’s Edge is an invitation-only magazine. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts. Unsolicited manuscripts will be disposed of or mailed back to the sender (unopened) at our discretion.

      All material is either copyright © 2016 by Arc Manor LLC, Rockville, MD, or copyright © by the respective authors as indicated within the magazine. All rights reserved.

      This magazine (or any portion of it) may not be copied or reproduced, in whole or in part, by any means, electronic, mechanical or otherwise, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

      ISBN (Digital): 978-1-61242-296-1

      ISBN (Paper): 978-1-61242-295-4

      SUBSCRIPTION INFORMATION

      To subscribe to the digital (EPub, MOBI or PDF) edition, visit www.weightlessbooks.com.

      To subscribe to the paper edition visit www.GalaxysEdge.com/sub.htm.

      ADVERTISING INFORMATION

      Advertising is available in all editions of the magazine. Please contact advert@GalaxysEdge.com.

      FOREIGN LANGUAGE RIGHTS

      Please refer all inquiries pertaining to foreign language rights to:

      Spectrum Literary Agency

      320 Central Park West, Suite 1-D

      New York, NY 10025

      Phone: (1)-212-362-4323

      Fax: (1)-212-362-4562

      www.spectrumliteraryagency.com

      LIST OF Contents

      THE EDITOR’S WORD – Mike Resnick

      THE BONE-RUNNER – Jennifer Campbell-Hicks

      WIPING OUT – Robert J. Sawyer

      FULL SKIES, NO WATER – Lou J Berger

      THE PRESS OF THE INFINITE BLACK – Rene Sears

      SECOND PERSON UNMASKED – Janis Ian

      THE LITTLE ROBOT’S BEDTIME PRAYER – Robert T. Jeschonek

      LIFE ON THE PRESERVATION – Jack Skillingstead

      LOVE, YOUR WOLPERTINGER – Dantzel Cherry

      THUNDERGOD IN THERAPY – Effie Seiberg

      COWARD – Todd McCaffrey

      CONFIDENCE GAME, A Sargasso Story – Laurie Tom

      BOOK REVIEWS – Bill Fawcett and Jody Lynn Nye

      SCANDALS: BEING TRUE TO OUR OWN IMAGINATIONS – Gregory Benford

      FROM THE HEART’S BASEMENT – Barry N. Malzberg

      THE GALAXY’S EDGE INTERVIEW, WITH JOE HALDEMAN – Joy Ward

      THE LONG TOMORROW (PART 1) – Leigh Brackett

      -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

      Heinlein

      The Heinlein Prize Trust

      Celbrating accomplishments in commercial space activities

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      GALAXY'S EDGE MAGAZINE IS PUBLISHED BY PHOENIX PICK, THE SCIENCE FICTION AND FANTASY IMPRINT OF ARC MANOR, AN AWARD-WINNING INDEPENDENT PRESS BASED IN MARYLAND.

      PHOENIX PICK PUBLISHES NEW STORIES AND CLASSIC REPRINTS FROM AUTHORS LARRY NIVEN, MERCEDES LACKEY, ERIC FLINT, KEVIN J. ANDERSON, MIKE RENSICK, ROBERT A. HEINLEIN, NANCY KRESS, HARRY TURTLEDOVE AND MANY MORE.

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      The Editor’s Word

      by Mike Resnick

      With this issue, we conclude our third year of publication, which is a couple of years longer than most people predicted for it. We had two Hugo nominees and a Campbell nominee in 2015, and we hope we can do as well, or better, in 2016.

      We’ve got our usual mix of new and old, with new stories by relative newcomers Laurie Tom, Lou J. Berger, Jennifer Campbell-Hicks, Robert T. Jeschonek, Rene Sears, Dantzel Cherry, and Effie Seiberg, plus some older stories by some older friends, including Janis Ian, Robert J. Sawyer, Jack Skillingstead, and Todd McCaffrey. And starting in this issue, we’ll be serializing the classic The Long Tomorrow, by the late, great Leigh Brackett.

      In addition, of course, we have our regular columns, with Bill Fawcett and Jody Lynn Nye handling the book reviews, Gregory Benford’s always-interesting science column, and Barry N. Malzberg’s thought-provoking essay. And this issue Joy Ward interviews the acknowledged science fiction superstar, Joe Haldeman.

      * * *

      The following is the third of four columns I wrote on Forgotten Treasures, which I think is probably even more helpful today than when it appeared some twenty years ago.

      This column’s stated purpose is to direct you to some wonderful science fiction and fantasy books that had low-priced paperback editions and shouldn’t cost an arm and a leg when you find them. But let me expand upon that just a bit further.

      I frequently find myself in Orlando for a variety of reasons, and from time to time I stop by the MGM/Disney theme park. It’s always fun and frequently fascinating, but when twilight comes, I have no urge to remain there, or to return the next day. No, what I want to do is drive to the nearest Blockbuster video store and rent the entire Classics section.

      I don’t want this column to make you want to read more such columns. What I’d like it to do is make you want to (selectively) buy out the Dealer’s Room at the next Worldcon.

      I suppose there are nobler purposes, but I can’t seem to think of one.

      If you were to ask me to name the single greatest science fiction novel of all time, I don’t think I’d be able to do so—but if you were to ask me to name the single most important science fiction novel of all time, then Olaf Stapledon’s Star Maker wins in a walk. I would imagine that 95% of all science fiction writers since 1937 have, knowingly or (usually) unknowingly, cribbed from it...for never was a book so laden with science fictional concepts.

      Star Maker is nothing less than the history of this and every other universe from the beginning to the end of time—which is a mighty tall order, even when you are Olaf Stapledon, whose first excursion into science fiction produced Last and First Men, a novel that covers the comparatively minor story of the next eighteen evolutions of Man until the death of the race.

      Now, no one ever accused Stapledon of being a prose stylist, and sometimes the going gets a little turgid—but stick with it, and when you’re finished you’ll wonder how one man managed to put so many concepts into a single manuscript.

      For as long as people have been asking me about All Judgment Fled, by James White (author of the famed and beloved Sector General series) I have been explaining that it is Rendezvous With Rama done right.

      Consider:

      In Rama, a strange construct of alien origin enters our solar system. In All Judgment Fled, a strange construct of alien origin enters our solar system.

      In Rama, some carefully-chosen men fly out to examine it. In All Judgment Fled, some carefully-chosen men fly out to examine it.

      In Rama, the men are presented with a series of puzzles. In All Judgment Fled, the men are presented with a series of puzzles.

      And there the similarities end, because James White solves the puzzles he presents, fairly and logically and dramatically—and you don’t have to wait for the (nonexistent) sequels to find out what those solutions happen to be.

      Humor is in short supply these days. This wasn’t always the case. The first few decades of this century saw a goodly number of popular humorists, ranging from Damon Runyon to Dorothy Parker to Robert Benchley. But the funniest of them all was Thorne Smith, who just happened to be a fantasy writer as well.

      Smith’s very worst books—Topper, Topper Takes a Trip, and The Passionate Witch—were all turned into rather mediocre movies, and Topper became a slightly-less-than-mediocre television series. His best books—Skin and Bones (about a man who becomes a skeleton), The Glorious Pool (about a swimming pool that gives eternal youth), The Night Life of the Gods (in which the Roman gods come bawdily to life)—were too bizarre and too risqué to be of any interest to Hollywood.

      Probably the funniest of them all is Rain in the Doorway, which saw three paperback editions from the 1940s through the 1980s. It concerns a totally repressed, mild-mannered businessman, Hector Owen—the typical Smith protagonist—who wanders into the most unusual department store anyone ever saw. There are three totally mad partners, a love interest named Satin who manages the pornography department, an eel, a whale, a meeting of the Kiarians (who are just like the Kiwanees and the Rotarians, only more so), the wildest trial ever set to print, and enough other things to amuse the most jaded of tastes.

      While we’re on the subject of humor, let me talk to you about Robert E. Howard. Yeah, the same guy who created the totally humorless Conan and Kull and Solomon Kane. The poor guy who went out into the desert at age thirty and blew his brains out right after his mother died. That Robert E. Howard.

      Funny?

      Actually, hilarious.

      Let me refer you to the collected tales of one Breckinridge Elkins, a frontiersman with the strength of Babe the Blue Ox and maybe half the brainpower. Or, to describe some action in his own words: I riz up and taken Joe by the neck and crotch and throwed him through a winder as gentle as I could, but I forgot about the hickory-wood bars which was nailed acrost it to keep the bears out. He took ‘em along with him, and that was how he got skint up like he did. I heard Glory let out a scream, and would have hollered out to let her known I was all right, but just as I opened my mouth to do it, John jammed the butt-end of a table laig into it.

      Pure, delightful, bigger-than-life characters fighting and shooting and charming their way across the pages of three books: A Gent from Bear Creek, The Pride of Bear Creek, and Mayhem on Bear Creek. If you tried to buy them in hardcover—they were all originally published in limited editions by science fiction specialty publisher Donald M. Grant—I suspect you’d have to pay close to $250.00 for the three. But fortunately, they were all combined in one enormous paperback entitled Heroes of Bear Creek.

      (Gentle suggestion: don’t read them all at once.)

      Life is too short to constantly re-read books, even your favorites. There are too many still to be read for the first time.

      That said, I must confess that I have read Barry N. Malzberg’s Herovit’s World half a dozen times, and fully expect to read it a few more before I die. It’s that good.

      What Barry has done is give the reader an inside view of the science fiction field, how it works, and how it fails to work. His protagonist is Jonathan Herovit, a hack writer who is drudging his way through his 92nd Survey Team book about space hero Mack Miller, and slowly going crazy in the process. He writes under the pseudonym of Kirk Poland, and he is sure that Kirk Poland, if he actually existed, is the kind of guy who either wouldn’t have Herovit’s problems, or could solve them with minimal effort.

      There comes a point in the narrative when the now-schizoid Herovit cracks and becomes Poland...

      …and Poland can’t handle the problems of Herovit’s daily life—and missed deadlines—any better than Herovit can. Poland finds his resentment building. Things like this, he tells himself, wouldn’t happen to a hero like Mack Miller.

      And, not surprisingly, he cracks again and becomes Mack Miller, space hero and leader of the Survey Team.

      Does it help?

      Read the book—quite possibly the field’s best novel of the 1970s—and find out.

      Does every fantasy novel have to have an heroic quest? Must they all have swords, and lords and ladies, and ridiculous archaic English?

      Well, there are days when I’m hard-pressed to say No, but then I look at a pair of marvelous debut novels from the early 1980s—Lisa Goldstein’s The Red Magician, and Jonathan Carroll’s The Land of Laughs—and realize that not all fantasy novels have to be Tolkien rip-offs or unillustrated barbarian killer comics.

      The Red Magician takes place in a rural Jewish village in Eastern Europe in the days leading up to World War II. It seems to be a battle between the village’s rabbi and a red-headed magician who wanders in to warn them of the coming holocaust, but it is in fact a powerfully and beautifully told allegory of good and evil, of change, of growth, and of love. It won an American Book Award, deservedly so, and was like a breath of fresh air in a field where 95% of the books are set in a past that never was or on worlds that will never be.

      The Land of Laughs was set even closer to home. It’s half-fantasy and half-horror (though not, thankfully, of the giggle-maniacally-and-disembowel-them type), and concerns the efforts of the protagonist and his ladyfriend to find one Marshall France, the legendary author of a number of classic children’s books, including one that bears the same title as this novel. Slowly, entertainingly, believably, they find out that Marshall France’s books were not works of fiction or fantasy, that the Land of Laughs, and all its bizarre characters, actually exists. One of those rare and wonderful books that makes you continue suspending your disbelief long after you’ve finished reading it.

      The late Jack Finney wrote a lot of novels that sold to Hollywood. Yet to me, the very best book he ever signed his name to was not a novel but a collection of short stories entitled The Third Level.

      You want to talk about sense of wonder? Here’s Of Missing Persons, a tremendously moving tale that elicits the emotional response John Campbell was trying for when he wrote the classic Twilight. Here’s the title story, The Third Level, and a story in a similar vein, Second Chance, which may well have been the precursors of Finney’s wildly successful time travel novels. There are well-remembered stories as Such Interesting Neighbors, I’m Scared, and Quit Zoomin’ Those Hands Through the Air.

      If you’d like to read the best work of a man whose fiction took him far beyond our ghetto, and one of the few fantasy authors for whom the word escapism is not a pejorative, give this one a try.

      Cyberpunk’s not as new as you might think. Well, let’s redefine that a bit, because while the cyber part—men tying into machines—existed back in the 1950s, there are precious few punks in science fiction until the last two decades. And those punks that did appear tended to have exceptionally short life spans.

      One of the most interesting novels to pre-date the cyberpunks was Daniel F. Galouye’s Simulacron-3 (which you may also find under the title of Counterfeit World).

      What would you do if you were to find out that you—and your entire world—were simply a computer construct, an electronic analog? Once armed with that knowledge, how could you prevent the operator from turning off the machine in which you existed? Could you escape to the real world—and once here, how would you know this world didn’t also exist inside an even larger computer?

      That’s the task facing Galouye’s hero, and in the thirty-plus years since it first appeared, no one’s handled it better.

      Yeah, I know, I said in the last column that there was no need to direct you to anything by Asimov or Heinlein or Clarke, because if you’re reading this magazine you certainly know about them.

      And if that holds true for that trio of hard science writers, it holds doubly true for Ray Bradbury, perhaps our greatest fantasy writer. So why I am telling you about a Bradbury book?

      Because this one is occasionally overlooked, quite possibly because of the title, which doesn’t evoke images of Mars, or rockets, or space, or book burning.

      But trust me, Dandelion Wine is one of the half-dozen most beautiful books of this century, in or out of any definable literary category. It is a moving, joyous, heartwarming evocation of summer, and boyhood, and the Midwest of a simpler, gentler era, and imagination, and compassion, and a boundless curiosity about all things.

      Is it fantasy? In places.

      Science fiction? Probably not.

      Art? In spades.

      If you haven’t read Bradbury in a few years—or if you’ve never read him—pick this up, and see what this man, at the absolute peak of his truly awesome powers, could do with images and words.

      That’s it until next time. Good luck treasure-hunting—and remember, every one of these books had at least one paperback edition, and should be available for a reasonable price at your local paperback resale shop or the dealers’ room at a nearby science fiction convention.

      Jennifer Campbell-Hicks is a Writers of the Future Finalist. Her recent sales have been to Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show, Flash Fiction Online, and Nature Futures. In her day job she’s a newspaper editor. This is her second appearance in Galaxy’s Edge.

      The Bone-Runner

      by Jennifer Campbell-Hicks

      Skip and I used to run the bones together.

      I asked him once why it was called that, not long after our parents died and we came to the Outskirts. We were cutting through the trenches and old munitions craters of no man’s land, where nothing had grown for centuries, under a sky scorched to the color of ash.

      Skip pointed at the City. Look out there, Sis. At the tallest buildings. Do you see? They look like a field of bones.

      I peered through the chemical fog that lay over the City, and I saw what he saw. Time had stripped the metal frames of their skins of stone and glass. In places, the metal had rusted and snapped, leaving jagged stubs.

      The City was a graveyard, but those broken, bare frames still held hidden treasures. Scavengers could smell death a long way off and follow the scent to pick clean the meat. Skip and I were scavengers, too, but we picked clean the City.

      How did people live there? I asked. How did they stand it?

      It wasn’t always like this. Before the war and the Fall, it was beautiful. The buildings touched the sky. Millions of people lived here.

      No they didn’t, I scoffed.

      There weren’t millions of people in the entire world, let alone one city.

      It’s what the books say, he said.

      I was skeptical, but Skip knew better. He was older—how much older we didn’t know because we didn’t know our ages—and he had gotten some schooling before the last outbreak shut the schools for good.

      He ruffled my hair. Enough talk. Suit up.

      We fitted on our gas masks and thick leather gloves that covered my arms to my elbows, and we made the descent. The City was deadly, but I was never scared with Skip. He took care of me.

      Until I betrayed him.

      Now I run the bones alone.

      * * *

      The day promises to be a hot one when I head out at dawn, sweat beading on my neck. Halfway across no man’s land, I stick two fingertips between my lips and blow a shrill whistle. Jewel bounds across the field toward me. She moves like a dancer, like the gypsies whose caravans come through the Outskirts. Surefooted and graceful. I love to watch her run.

      She stops beside me, bumps her whiskered cheek against my side and almost knocks me down. She doesn’t know her own strength.

      Good to see you, I say. Did you hunt well?

      I take a protein nugget from my pocket and toss it into the air. Jewel is ready. She snaps it up before it touches the ground. I scratch behind her ears, and I notice that she stinks.

      What did you get into? Did you find a skunk? I laugh when she gazes at me with innocence in her shining eyes.

      Lions don’t live here naturally. Legend has it that long ago, the City kept a park of exotic animals. After the Fall, the animals escaped, and the predators survived to breed. Not just lions but other animals, too. Bears, snakes, wolves.

      I found Jewel as a cub, deep in the City. She would have died without me, and she has returned the favor many times over. We make a good team. In a way, she reminds me of my brother.

      Skip.

      My hand stills on Jewel’s fur. I see his kind smile and green eyes under dirty brown hair. My chest starts to hurt, as if pressed under the weight of a huge boulder. My throat tightens. It’s always like this. I force his image from my mind and focus on the ground. I count grains of sand until the hurt eases, leaving only a dull ache, like an old injury, painful but controllable.

      I drop my burlap sack from my shoulder to take out my gas mask, goggles, and leather gloves, and put them on. Under the mask, I lose some peripheral vision, and my breathing is amplified in my ears. I take out my crossbow and a quiver of bolts, which I sling across my back, and I tuck the now empty sack into my belt.

      I look at Jewel. Let’s find some treasure.

      * * *

      Tell me a story, Skip.

      He poked a stick at the old planks burning in the fireplace. Fingers of flame leaped upward, crackling. Rain battered the shutters of the house where we had been squatting for days. No one had lived here for some time. Thick dust coated the floor, squirrels nested in the rafters and the chimney smoked. The Outskirts authorities would find us eventually and drive us out, but for now we had shelter.

      I wondered whose house this had been. The previous occupants hadn’t left many clues, only some shattered clay crockery and a doll whittled from a piece of wood. Sometimes when we found artifacts, I made up stories about them. I imagined the doll had belonged to a girl like me. Maybe her parents had died in the last outbreak, or her family had gone, traveling east to find a better life.

      I picked the last meat from my leg of rabbit and

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