Huw Langridge offers "The Voidant Lance," one of a series of stories he's written about a shadowy organization called Axiom Few. In this piece the hero, Archer, along with his fellows at Axiom Few, must defend Earth against an attack from space. It's decent enough work, but nothing spectacular. Lee Russell's "Swimming in the FastWarm Current" is rather nice, if again fairly conventional. The hero, Spinner, is a dolphin-like creature, placed in opposition to an older male who insists they need to stay out of the title current. But Spinner falls under the spell of a mysterious older creature, and in the end realizes a rather different destiny. The revealed history is enjoyable. Similar, in some ways, is "Bone Song," by Garrett Fincham, probably my favorite story this issue. Much as with Russell's story, the hero is an iconoclastic young male, in love with a potentially similarly iconoclastic young female. This hero, Wember, is part of a society on another planet that for generations has been building chambers for colonization by others of their species. But these colonists have not appeared. Wember rebels against the leader of this effort, and is rewarded by banishment. But in his banishment he learns his real destiny. What I particularly liked here was the revelation of the real nature of Wember's species -- something nicely unexpected.

Jupiter remains a consistent little magazine. A good source of generally old-fashioned science fiction, and a good place to see writers at the beginning of their careers. The stories aren't always as well-written as I could prefer -- but that's what you expect with such new writers. These aren't potential award nominees just yet, but they are doing entertaining work and may improve to really excite us.