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Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine
January 1998

This month's issue of Asimov's features a personal Reflections column by Robert Silverberg where he talks about his 'hunt' to look at California's Gray Whales. The journey is full of adventure and some seasickness.

Stories featured in this issue are:

• "Approaching Perimelasma" by Geoffrey A. Landis is an amazing journey by a miniature machine (with a personality download) down into one of the most forbidding places in the universe; a black hole. The machine must attempt to enter a black hole (past its event horizon) and emerge again. How it does it will twist your mind, in more ways than one. I would love to show this story to a astrophysicist to see if it can work as it shows a way to defeat the black hole's event horizon and get information out past it.
• "Reflections on Life and Death" by Kristine Kathryn Rusch takes a look at a daughter and her old mother. The daughter must decide whether to put her mother in their small house or put her in a home. But in this world, homes are few and may not treat their patients the way we expect.
• "King Moron" by R. Neube is set in the future where the Earth is radioactive after the last Great War. King Richard IV sits on a throne in an orbiting station and must decide whether to act against acts of atrocities being done.
• "Evolution in Guadalajara" by Kandis Elliot is a wild romp through a future world where conservationist and developers fight to preserve/develop the last remaining parts of nature. The wild part in the story is the rate at which such battles can be won or lost.
• "Taking Care of Daddy" by Brian C. Coad shows how a daughter, in a world where animals are bred to provide organs for humans, will do what it takes to ensure her father is well taken care of.
• "Mother Death" by Robert Reed is another of his stories set in a universe where some human families have been given god-like powers to ensure peace in the galaxy. One family, the Chamberlins, misused it to try to create a new universe, causing the core of the Milky Way to explode. All but one Chamberlain, Ord, has been caught and stripped of their power. This story follows Ord in his attempts to find out from his sister, Alice, what he must do to ensure peace. The ending is open and very dramatic.

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