Galaxy's Edge #19 by Mike Resnick
A review by Sandra Scholes
As it's in its fourth year of publishing, editor Mike Resnick has a lot to be happy about after others might have predicted otherwise. People like us, the readers know full well the work that must have gone into the issues before this as it takes time to edit and design the cover and content as well as trying to cater to a new and existing audience. I think partly its reason for using stories that have been published before is that they have already got a readership to take them in.
Here, our editor thanks its readers and writers who have become regulars to the magazine and made it what it is, but he should also thank himself as where would this be without its editor? This issue has Janis Ian, David Drake, Jean Rabe, Robert Silverberg and Leigh Brackett. Mike's The Editor's Word comes with one of his columns he wrote for The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction twenty years ago.
The monthly does of fiction is set off by Sylvia Sprich Wrigley with her story, To Catch a Comet where the entire story is set out as emails. Dr Samantha Schandin is an astrophysicist who is employed by NEOWatch in Cambridge where she is trying to get Brussels and Paris to acknowledge they need to do something serious about the impact of an asteroid coming their way. Not everyone, however thinks there is a sense of urgency to her pleas and in the end, she can only do one thing. Never before has a story started out serious only to end on a comical note. What if you could kill the one alien who cured what ails you? In Pretty Pictures at War by Larry Hodges, one man intends to do just that due to the way he used him and the fact that the operation was televised for all to see. Larry writes it as a comedy which works perfectly well with the subject matter. In c/o The Village of Monsters Past by Dantzel Cherry, Armand Griffin sends a letter to his son, Mardo who has since left the village to make a new life for him and the kids. After a falling-out, it seems obvious Mardo hasn't visited or even written in a ling time back to his dad, but there could be other reasons for that.
Galaxy's Edge is a success due to Mike selecting some of the best stories to come from the pen of the best writers both today and from the past, some are short and sweet while others are much longer, yet intriguing that expected.
