Keen Science Fiction! #2 May 1996
Classic Science Fiction, written by Writers who love it
Monthly, $4 per issue or $36 for 12 from
Editor Teresa Keene,
907 West 17th Ave.
Spokane, WA 99203

This is a bare-bones little digest produced by an editor who obviously loves and misses the classic time traveling, spacefaring, robot-using golden age science fiction yarn. There are seven stories in this issue, which make use of those themes with varying degrees of success.

Stephen Woodworth's "Keepers of the Light" opens the volume with one of the more unique SF concepts for enslavement I've come across: colonists are lured to a planet with promises of quick riches, but are instead enslaved by their need for light. Since there is no sunlight on the planet, the colonists invariably go into debt buying time in the Light Centers. There is an old Asimov influence present in the architecture of this story, which is unfortunately marred by a rushed, confused ending.

Our own Market List master Christopher Holliday contributes "Noah," a quick vignette that postulates a future Noah who uses time travel to save remnants of the decimated, smog-overrun world of 1999. Not to be prejudiced, but this is the best-written of the issue's offerings. Many of the remainder of the stories share a problem all too often encountered in amateur fiction, especially amateur science fiction where the author is building a completely different world from what the reader knows: intrusive narrated history lessons. Or, as Barry B. Longyear describes it in his writing workshops: backfill. With the short maximum story length limits of Keen (4,000 words), the authors rush to tell the reader "what has happened to the world" to bring it to the point of the events of the story. And then, in a page or two, the actual story action happens and wraps up. It's the classic fiction sin of "telling, not showing."

Ross T. Hogan's "A Conscience For All" has a wonderful ending: sentient dolphins (or some such aquatic animals) are confronted with the horror of their responsibility for turning man into a warring destructor. But the first two and a half pages of the story are a thinly veiled history lesson of how the dolphins ruined mankind, doled out to the reader in a long speech. If the concept of the story had been taken and expanded into a 10,00-20,000 novelette with developed characters and some real action, it could be a truly moving tale. As it is, it's basically a speech with a powerful punchline.

Michael G. Branda's "Loneliness Interrupted" shares a similar problem: the story deals with Gerald, who has his arm cut off and is the recipient of a new cloning procedure to restore the arm. Why he's not under major security for this ground-breaking experiment, we won't question. But why he suddenly gets it into his head to escape with the equipment and clone himself a "brother"... that's a big question. The character build-up doesn't explain his rash actions, and the deus ex machina ending seems contrived and too easy. Again, this is an outline of a story that needs much more careful development.

I would have totally loved Lee Clark's "Babel" if I could only have gotten past one completely un-buyable (and central) plot hurdle: that people could be infected with a virus simply by hearing or reading words spoken or written by others infected with the virus. Huh? In "Babel," a virus spreads through the Internet and every other communication medium rendering any human or machine who encounters "infected" communication incapable of intelligible speech. Our "hero" is hiding out from a band of survivors who are slaves to a non-infected computer that is seeking to round up all "talkers" to form a new society. If the viral transfer method was just a little more believable, this would be a great story.

Keene sprinkles the issue with interesting "Keen Fact!" boxes that contain little snippets of history and science info (one lists the stars closest to earth). Now if she can find some stories that not only use "golden age" themes, but use them well, she'll have a great little magazine.

Copyright © 1996 by John Everson. All Rights Reserved.