What’s in Issue 95

Bewildering Stories News

Novels	In Gaia, Tala Bar begins part II of chapter 2, “The Forest.” Dar and Nim have gradually moved away from the scene of ecological apocalypse. In installment 1, they venture onto a high plateau where the landscape is competely new and strange to them. In installment 2, they find that it is inhabited... Ian Donnell Arbuckle brings Made It Way Up to a searing climax in part 13, “Lane.” In part 14, “Barnyard,” which is Lane’s nickname for Bernard, and part 15, “Kelly,” two of the main characters must face the consequences of Lane’s flight.
Serial	Thomas Lee Joseph Smith sympathizes with the people of Jumble, South Dakota, who don’t have a shopping mall. Let’s see, what does their trusty Sears & Roebuck catalog have in the way of monsters out of Greek mythology... And delivery is prompt, complete with an egregious pun: “A Minotaur-So After High Noon.”
Short Story	By a curious coincidence, new contributor Claire Yvette Colón joins veteran Thomas L. J. Smith in giving a new twist to old mythology. “Prince Charming and the Lady Syncyre” retells a fairy tale with gentle humor and irony. Now, the genre of the modernized fairy tale, which is popular these days, has a way of replacing old clichés with new ones. This story demolishes them.
Poetry	Thomas R. is back with a poem that suggests a mystery: what is the history of the history teacher, “Mrs. Frog”?

Departments

Challenge	Challenge 95 asks Is there a monster in the house?
Letters	Taking up the thread of a previous conversation, John Thiel sketches out the premise of one of his stories. It has to do with electronic voting, which suggests the thought that no story is so truly bewildering as reality.
The Reading Room	Jerry Wright reviews Peter F. Hamilton’s Pandora’s Star.
Editorial	Continued from the previous rock

In Times to Come

Ian Donnell Arbuckle’s characters find their lives shattered in the aftermath of Lane’s loss in Made It Way Up, and Tala Bar’s Gaia will lead us ever deeper into a world out of Romanticism, where mystical possibilities come to life. Thomas Lee Joseph Smith will finish the showdown with the Minotaur by invoking a modern myth... Or is it all that modern? In an interview, Eric S. Brown talks with the editors of Nocturne Press.

Perhaps we will expand our Google ads beyond the Readers’ Guide. We shall see. One thing is sure, though: we’re agreed that although the ads are meant ultimately to benefit our contributors, they’ll appear only on “departmental” pages; none shall appear on pages that carry an author’s byline.

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