Let's talk about the stories!

We're coming up on summer, and nothing says summer like forest fires and a cybernetically-enhanced humanoid with a death wish to fight them. That's the premise of K.D. Julicher's "Burnover." A real scorcher of a tale.

Summer is a good time for kids to leave home, go out into the world and start making their own way. It's been that way since the advent of the modern age--may it ever be thus. (I have a graduate-as-of-one-week-of-this-writing, and am alternately terrified and overjoyed at the prospect of having fewer people in the house come college-time.) Maxwell Petersen proposes a different kind of story--one in which the child-who-is-no-longer-a-child returns home under strange circumstances to see "My Father's Life, Furnished in Stars."

Aimee Ogden's protagonist, Sveth-ban-Ara, is all alone. As a knight should be, even though she hunts the last god on the face of the world. In "A World Without," the heat of the hunt, of ferocious battle, of chances untaken, is enough to make the strongest god perspire. And if that doesn't do it, the sight of Sveth-ban-Ara's blade will.

"Comrades in Arms" is Bud Sparhawk's gritty military sci-fi short story about the search for an AI in the middle of a war-torn battlefield, where the battle may not be as distant as the survivors want, and comrades much farther away than they're comfortable with. Welcome back to IGMS, Bud! We missed you.

Dan Stout's charmingly titled "Sin Titulo" is much like summer: a bit of growing up, some mischievous fun, a taste of romance with someone WAY out of your league, a little yard work, and a home invasion by a demon in a cowboy hat. Standard summer fare, you know?

Our audio feature this month is Jamie Lackey's "The Life Cycles of Goldfish." While summer is usually a great time to get out of doors and wander about the world, that's not a priority--or advisable--during a zombie apocalypse. Or is it?

This issue, we are pleased to reprint James Beamon's "The Rhythm Man," which first appeared in the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.

Remember sunscreen!

Scott M. Roberts
Editor
Orson Scott Card's Intergalactic Medicine Show