Marilee J. Layman

There were a couple of straight-forward SF stories this time:

1. "Immunity" by Susan Forest -- not enough vaccine for the entire dome, who doesn't get it?

2. "The Golden Record" by Ian Creasey -- conspiracy and danger in bringing home the early space probes.

Robert Reed offered up a very strange story, "Plausible," which I can't describe, but enjoyed.

I also liked Michael Swanwick's "Lord Weary's Empire," right up to the end. Faerie people in the tunnels are in danger from the normals up top, and a normal outcast helps them fight back.

For the first time, I particularly liked a couple of poems:

1. "Copyright Notice, 2525" by David Livingstone Clink is what you might think.

2. "An Eccentric in Orbit" by Laurel Winter details a woman running for a bus achieving escape velocity.

This is the book group book for tomorrow and well, it's not as wonderful as it was when I first read it. I reread it several times before 1987 and I guess I've grown up.

An Earth ship finds an artifact in Saturn's rings and it turns out to be Gaea, a God who runs her own large space world. The ship team is affected in different ways by their transit into Gaea but the captain, Cirocco, and her faithful companion, Gabi, climb the 600km spoke to the hub where they meet a puppet of Gaea. There's lots of new critters, new ideas, and so forth, but they don't seem so new now. I've started on the sequel, _Wizard_ and so far, it's mostly weird sex.

I dunno, this is a classic, but it's hard to recommend now.

I should expect some things I learned from books years ago to be wrong, but this was more than I expected. The views I had of the Americas have been updated with new research. Why the Indians died off, how the environment was managed, when civilization was established, etc. A fascinating book with 100 pages of notes, bibliography, and index.