Another late review, but what the heck… I’ll keep it short.
There are three stories to highlight here. The first is “Colliding branes” by Rudy Rucker and Bruce Sterling, about two bloggers who get together to share the end of the world. The authors have great fun at the expense of the blogging sub-culture.
Next up is the beautiful but melancholy “The bird painter in time of war”, by Carol Emshwiller. Like much of Emshwiller’s work this one requires some emotional preparation to fully appreciate, but is quite rewarding.
The third notable story here is Steven Utley’s “The point”. I started out thinking this was yet another trip to the Silurian Epoch from Utley, possibly with some names changed for contractual reasons; but I was right to stick around for the ending, where a nice twist rescues the story.
Lois Tilton in IRoSF more or less sums up the remaining stories in the magazine: “Pelago” by Judith Berman, “The coldest war” by Matthew Johnson, and “the certainty principle” by Colin P. Davies. It looks as if she and I have agreed about everything here except Emshwiller’s story.
Garbled Signals 