Profiles of February 1998 Issues

New York Review of Science Fiction February 1998 Damien Broderick considers Mary Doria Russell's The Sparrow at length, mindful of the perils of criticism and criticizing anyway. • Grania Davis presents excerpts from unpublished personal works by Avram Davidson. Autobiographical anecdotes: uttering a perfect riposte during a discussion at a writers' conference; bitter experiences trying to get paid from a certain publisher dubbed Doublecross and Company in the early '80s; discovering his true calling in life via an aptitude test in the '50s. • An essay explores the 'other' vampire novel of 1897, an obscure but worthwhile book by Florence Marryat. • A look back at classics by Ward Moore. • Gwyneth Jones considers why fantasy writers writer children's books, by way of Philip Pullman's The Golden Compass. • Bill Sheehan admires Greg Bear's Slant. (posted 4 Apr 98)

Interzone February 1998 American critic Gary Westfahl worries that sf's common vision of the future -- humanity exploring space, meeting aliens, colonizing the galaxy -- is a lie, since it has not, apparently, already happened. The answer may lie in something like Vernor Vinge's 'singularity': intelligent beings find something else to do than colonize space, something we cannot imagine. Traditional sf, meanwhile, is a pretty myth, little better than a fantasy. • Stephen Gallagher is interviewed about directing the TV adaptation of his own novel Oktober. • Nick Lowe gains insight to the New Disney through a perceptive analysis of the animated Hercules. • In fiction, Alastair Reynolds considers the fate of frozen heads, Douglas Smith imagines a virtual reality Year 2000 crisis, and Elizabeth Counihan characterizes the state of Britain. (posted 15 Mar 98)

F&SF February 1998 Gregory Benford's science column outlines radical solutions to global warming: seeding the oceans with iron dust to stimulate plankton growth; increasing Earth's albedo by shooting dust into the stratosphere. • Rob Killheffer reviews three time travel novels, while Ian R. MacLeod's time travel novelette takes us to Scott's doomed expedition in Antarctica. • James Blaylock goes shopping in small-town northern California, Rob Chilson dismantles Kansas, and Rebecca Ore probes the minds of artists' wives. • Paul Di Filippo's column ''Plumage from Pegasus'' satirizes the current publishing industry with a hard-boiled vignette about a desperate writer holding an editor hostage. (posted 12 Feb 98)

Analog February 1998 ''Sex in Space'' is the uncharacteristically salacious cover headline, but the article inside is pure Analog: a clinical discussion of the effects of weightlessness on fertility, pregnancy, fetuses, and infants, plus, oh yes, the problems of ''successfully performing coitus.'' There are reports, the article mentions, that such success has already occurred in orbit. • Editor Stanley Schmidt compares his first published story to the recent Mars Pathfinder rover named Sojourner, and weighs in on the minor controversy over the cutesy names scientists gave to rocks on Mars. (He's for them.) • John G. Cramer's ''The Alternate View'' (his past columns are available here) describes how developments in understanding nature's biological clock could result in a ''cure'' for human aging. • Fiction by Poul Anderson, Paul Levinson, Bud Sparhawk, and others. (Fri 9 Jan)

Asimov's February 1998 Excellent hard SF by Greg Egan and Michael Swanwick, and diverse entertainments set on Earth from Walter Jon Williams, Eliot Fintushel, and others. Robert Silverberg offers a balanced (if somewhat belated) perspective on the cloning controversy. Paul Di Filippo's review column covers everything from Freeman Dyson and Thomas Pynchon to Piers Anthony and John Shirley. Letters include a response from Ian MacLeod describing the impetus of his story ''The Roads'' in the April issue. And a poem by W. Gregory Stewart describes how to instill ''the first primitive, reptilian thoughts of possible gods''. (Wed 24 Dec)