Winter by John Marsden
reviewed by Georges T. Dodds
Winter, a 16-year-old orphan with attitude to spare, is troubled with a mystery of her own childhood. Returning to her biological parents' homestead in the outback, she is unhappy to find that little has been done to keep the place up in the 12 years of her absence. She gradually discovers more about her father's accidental death, and something of her mother's death several months later, but people are being very closed-mouth about the whole thing.

Other Voices, Other Doors by Patrick O'Leary
reviewed by Rich Horton
The author seems to be a novelist primarily, but while readers wait for his next novel, we are offered this fine collection, which brings together 8 short stories (5 of them new), several essays, and a number of poems, most of the latter having been published in "little" magazines -- all worth reading as they buzz with neat images and nice wordplay. A few are even better than that.

Zeitgeist by Bruce Sterling
reviewed by David Soyka
Leggy Starlitz is a cynical, middle-aged, amoral promoter whose latest brainstorm is G-7 -- an all-girl band of interchangeable and easily replaceable personalities known to their adoring fans only by their country of origin, e.g. "The American One" or "The French One." The joke here is that G-7 is the term used to refer to the 7 governments that comprise the world's economic powers. The less charitable would describe them as capitalist countries looking to exploit less developed nations.

SF Site's Readers' Choice: Best Read of 2000
compiled by Neil Walsh
For the past 6 weeks or so, we've been soliciting your votes on what you thought were the best books of the year 2000. The result is this, the third annual SF Site Readers' Choice Best SF & Fantasy of the Year Top 10 List. And once again, SF Site readers know what they like. The number one choice was the clear winner very early on, and the votes just kept pouring in. Thanks to everyone who voted!

Analog, March 2001
reviewed by Marc Goldstein
Highlights of the issue include "Creative Destruction," an absorbing pot-boiler by Edward M. Lerner; David Phalen's "One for the Road," a conversation between a barfly and God on the nature of time and fate; J. Brian Clarke's "Wet," in which there is a covert invasion by aliens; and Brian Stableford's "The Milk of Human Kindness," which follows a parental argument over whether to feed their infant a new genetically modified milk product.

Shapestone by James Bibby
reviewed by Lisa Brunetta
Marauding orcs, a novice magician, an attractive damsel in distress, the Guild of Assassins, incompetent officers of the law nipping off for a pint during working hours, and a rollicking, hilarious adventure set in a sprawling metropolis with numerous pubs and back alleys. Does this sound familiar to you? It will if you're a fan of Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels -- but in that case you should enjoy this book, too.

LC-39 #3
reviewed by Steven H Silver
This issue feature stories by Mark Rich, A.R. Morlan, Laurent McAllister, Mark Siegel and Alan De Niro, whose "Crossing the View of Delft" is an existentialist story in which we are given several basic assumptions about 2 protagonists and then the author proceeds to demolish most of those assumptions, leaving us with a story completely different from the one originally presented.

The Graveyard Game by Kage Baker
reviewed by Victoria Strauss
The story opens as Literature Specialist Owen Lewis witnesses a time anomaly in which Mendoza, heroine of earlier volumes, moves briefly forward in time, from 1862 to 1996. This is something that's not supposed to happen: one of the disadvantages of time travel is that you can only go backward. But Mendoza is a generator of Crome radiation, an indicator of paranormal abilities no cyborg is supposed to possess, so there's no telling what she might be able to do.

Babylon 5.1
TV reviews by Rick Norwood
Rick has watched the first 2 episodes of The Lone Gunmen and has a warning to impart. He's also been DVD shopping. New discs in his player are episodes of The Prisoner and The Complete X-Files. One fared better than the other.

Asimov's Science Fiction, February 2001
reviewed by Nick Gevers
Highlights of this issue include Bruce Sterling's "User-Centric" and Eleanor Arnason's "Lifeline," another in her Lydia Duluth cycle, "Ice and Mirrors " by Brenda Cooper and Larry Niven and "The Gods Abandon Alcibiades," an intriguing sortie into the classical past, by Joel Richards.

Heat, Vol. 0
reviewed by Georges T. Dodds
This is a collection of short tales, in a number of genres, which have graphic sexual relations between married heterosexual couples as a common thread, along with a smidgen of romance. The sex, while not always well-integrated into the story, is not flagrantly gratuitous. As for whether it is hard- or soft-core, erotic or pornographic, that all really depends on your point of view.

Forthcoming Books
compiled by Neil Walsh
Here's a sampling of some of the F&SF books that are headed our way in the coming months...

The Forever War by Joe Haldeman
reviewed by Lisa DuMond
Private William Mandella is a man about to embark on a journey that will traverse space and time, war and uneasy peace. By the close of the book, the reluctant soldier will have travelled over twelve centuries. That can be traumatic enough, but it is the changes in society, mores, and norms that will be the most difficult barriers facing him. No work before or since this novel has so successfully portrayed the emotional toll of what is, essentially, time-travel.

The Empire of Isher by A.E. Van Vogt
reviewed by Jayme Lynn Blaschke
The National Rifle Association should give out a copy of this book with every new membership. Seriously. They're fools if they don't. Jayme has never come across anything that more closely resembles a NRA-envisioned utopia than this. Before you roll your eyes and scoff at the absurdity of it, consider the backdrop of the Isher universe. Even the Weapon Shops' credo could be adopted by the gun lobby today without much fuss: The right to buy weapons is the right to be free.

The Wanderer by Fritz Leiber
reviewed by Marc Goldstein
It kicks off when an artificial planet, quickly nicknamed the Wanderer, materializes from hyperspace within earth's orbit. The Wanderer's gravitational field captures the moon and shatters it into something like one of Saturn's rings. On earth, the Wanderer's gravity well triggers massive earthquakes, tsunamis, and tidal phenomena. The multi-threaded plot follows the exploits of a large ensemble cast as they struggle to survive the global disaster.