IASF Magazine, June 1991

It is almost a given that any issue that contains a George and Azazel story by Isaac Asimov starts off with a handicap. I don’t think I ever found one of those stories cute or funny. But someone somewhere did I’m sure.

Isaac Asimov’s monthly editorial titled “Untouchable” started off on a discussion of the music of Gilbert & Sullivan and a song parody Asimov had written, then tore headlong into a defense of freedom of speech and the Bill of Rights. There was a bit of “fire in the belly” there.

James Patrick Kelly’s “Standing in Line with Mister Jimmy” received a 1991 Nebula nomination. The story felt a bit like the earlier “Mr. Boy”. It’s about a street smart dude on the dole who’d like to continue that way and not work. His encounter with a very long line of folks waiting before a big white door gets the story rolling. He’s got a portable AI with him, “Mister Jimmy” who plays him music, hands out advice, and leads him along. When he gets called in to report for parole the easy life takes a turn for the worse. Desperate, he goes to investigate and join the line. There is a certain snappiness to the tale, but it didn’t really do much for me, and came close to boring.

“Lichen and Rock” by Eileen Gunn was the next short story, a sort of fable that almost begins with “Once Upon A Time” but instead begins with “Once, some time ago, …”. Lichen is the name of a child, named for the lichen that clings to rocks near the shore. “Some time ago” is apparently somewhere far to the future of us where, apparently, aliens quietly run the planet and the sheeple graze. Lichen goes away from her family to school and returns some years later. It’s a weird tale, but enjoyable. Maybe the best in this issue.

The next story from this issue made Gardner Dozois’s 9th annual best of the year collection, the novelette “Living Will” by Alexander Jablokov. It is an interesting story with a brilliant man trying to prepare for the future and impress his personality onto a cutting edge computer as he fears the onset of senility and then enters it. Good but not great.

“Consequences”, by Lawrence Person is a bit of a twist on the asylum for refugees dilemma.

“Baby, It’s Cold Outside” is another in a series of George and Azazel stories by Asimov and the less said the better.

“Celilio” by Mary Rosenblum was an interesting story idea about folks dealing with loss and trying to eke out a living along the Columbia River Gorge after an extended drought has made even that big river go dry, as well as trying to fight the group that controls the remaining water supply, “The Project”. Unfortunately the story was marred by a clipped narrative style and some glitches, not to mention some odd character behavior that threw me out of the story several times and spoiled what could have been a good character study.

“The Man Who Invented Lawyers” by Alexis A. Gilliland is an amusing, odd tale about a Colonel who is under interrogation for something that probably doesn’t matter. He diverts the interrogation into a study of the creation of Greek law, and eventually lawyers, so as to avoid discussion of his own predicament. Is this science fiction? I dunno. Probably not. More Kafka-esque than anything.

The novella and cover story “Candle” by Tony Daniel finished the fiction portion of the magazine. This is a creative story, one I have mixed feelings about. One has to buy into a certain amount of mysticism to go with the premise that Indians sailed their birchbark canoes light-years away to the stars before Columbus arrived in America. If you manage to suspend your disbelief you might be able to enjoy the story, a future western kind of, with both a surplus as well as a lack of imagination in it! Odd writing style to boot.

Norman Spinrad’s lengthy non-fiction essay is a good one on Utopia and discusses a number of books including Orson Scott Card’s “Folk of the Fringe”, David Brin’s “Earth” and Kim Stanley Robinson’s “Pacific Edge”.

Overall this was a sub-par issue with only “Lichen and Rock” being a highlight for me. ( )