Noise Abatement by Carol Anne Davis
reviewed by Lisa DuMond
Oozing, slimy, mutant monsters don't scare Lisa anymore. It's the human monsters among us that keep her constantly wary. These hidden killers are the actual horror that lashes out every day -- and the author knows it. No wonder hers is among the most terrifying fiction in existence; it could just as easily be true. And that ought to scare the hell out of anyone.

Zeitgeist by Bruce Sterling
reviewed by Hank Luttrell
This fantastic, hilarious novel provides a solid dose of nostalgia for Y2K. Remember when your brother-in-law refurbished his ammo reloading gear and bought a generator? Which he kept in the living room? And everyone's spouse had a job involving Y2K "compliance," as it was called? Including Marge Simpson?

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...

Babylon 5.1
TV reviews by Rick Norwood
Rick offers us tips on what's worth watching on television during January -- brand-new episodes of Star Trek: Voyager, The X-Files and what seminal SF character may have the same name as Agent Doggett (Robert Patrick) of The X-Files.

Marrow by Robert Reed
reviewed by Peter D. Tillman
In the far future, humans discover a derelict starship the size of Jupiter, out on the galactic rim. They claim salvage rights and get some of the Great Ship's machinery running. The owners put the Great Ship into service as -- the galaxy's grandest cruise-liner! 50,000 years later, there are some 200 billion passengers and crew aboard, a fifth of the way through a leisurely circumnavigation of the Milky Way. Then a Mars-size "planet" is discovered, somehow suspended at the very core of the Great Ship!

January Books
compiled by Neil Walsh
New books of the new millennium include titles by Tim Powers, Mike Moscoe, S.L. Viehl, Jim Butcher, Deborah Chester, and Richard Paul Russo, plus anthologies from Jack Dann & Gardner Dozois, and Martin H. Greenberg & Brittiany A. Koren. Retrospectives on the past century include the complete short stoires of Arthur C. Clarke, and an illustrated history of horror by Robert Weinberg.

Dykstra's War by Jeffery D. Kooistra
reviewed by Peter D. Tillman
James Dykstra is the greatest scientific genius of the 21st century, but at 126 years of age, he's starting to slow down. Until the mysterious Phinons attack a human ship out in the Oort. A wrecked alien ship hints at a possible FTL drive... and the Phinons seem to have some curious blind spots.

Smoke by William Sanders
reviewed by Rich Horton
This mystery novel features a Cherokee woodcarver from Oklahoma named Hosea Smoke. He is spending a week at a small college in Oklahoma City, at a Native American art fair, exhibiting his carvings. Among the other exhibitors is a rather obnoxious man named Esau Brown, suspected by many of faking his claims to Indian ancestry. When Smoke and his nephew Mason Littlehorse discover the dead body of Esau Brown, there are plenty of suspects, including a man who was trying to get him thrown out of the exhibition for being a phony Indian, his ex-wife, and possibly even Justin Hatner, the very rich oilman who had earlier felt defrauded by Brown.

Three Poetry Chapbooks by David C. Kopaska-Merkel
reviewed by Trent Walters
His poetry is almost always conversational and playful in the best sense of the term, yet ranges at times from too opaque to too shallow. But at his most capable, he stands alongside David Lunde and other SF poetry giants in writing some of the most emotionally poweful and meaningful genre poetry.

The Land of Laughs by Jonathan Carroll
reviewed by Rodger Turner
Thomas Abbey was a lonely child. Grown up, he's still fascinated by the work of Marshall France, a legendary author of children's books. France had retreated from the world and hidden himself away in tiny Galen, Missouri, before dying of a heart attack at age 44. Tom Abbey meets a fellow France aficionado, Saxony Gardner, while browsing a bookstore and finding a rare title he covets but that she's reserved. He mentions a desire to write a France biography and Saxony offers to help by doing research. Together, they arrive in Galen on a slow, summer day; expectant, delighted, and a little trepidacious of what they might find. To their surprise, the town has been waiting for them.

Shadow and Claw by Gene Wolfe
reviewed by A.L. Sirois
Combining The Shadow of the Torturer and The Claw of the Conciliator, this is hefty work with precious little padding. Anyone familiar with Gene Wolfe's work knows what to expect -- strange doings, complex and troubled characters, no guarantees of happy endings for anyone, images and events that stick in the mind long after the book is put down, and a command of the language beyond the ability of 90% of writers working today in or out of the SF field.

Dune
a TV mini-series review by Rick Norwood
Dune, by Frank Herbert, first appeared in John W. Campbell's legendary Astounding Science Fiction magazine. Actually, by that time Astounding had changed its name to Analog, the Astounding gradually fading out, the Analog gradually fading in, over the space of the year.

Now Wait For Last Year by Philip K. Dick
reviewed by John Berlyne
Set in a  fairly standard space war near-future, our protagonist, Dr Eric Sweetscent, an artiforg surgeon, is employed by Virgil Ackerman, an elderly tycoon he keeps alive by replacing various essential organs as they give out. Ackerman is a wealthy eccentric with powerful connections and he invites Sweetscent and his other senior staff along with him to Mars to visit Wash-35, a reproduction on of the nation's capital as remembered from Ackerman's childhood. This trip, though, is not all it seems.

Bill The Galactic Hero by Harry Harrison
reviewed by A.L. Sirois
Bill is a big, dumb farm boy, minding his business on a distant world when he is shanghaied by a passing recruiting officer and his band of gleaming robots. Before you know it, Bill finds himself in a Catch-22 world of rules and regulations, where it's almost impossible to get ahead and where the slightest infraction can earn you the enmity of your commanding officer.

The Collapsium by Wil McCarthy
reviewed by Rich Horton
One of the time-honoured SF themes is the exploration of what we might call "edge science": ideas that are current in the scientific world, but far from established, often very speculative, sometimes even close to kooky. This novel is built wholly around such wacky scientific speculations.

Alien: The Complete Illustrated Screenplay by Dan O'Bannon
reviewed by Marc Goldstein
It's not news to science fiction fans that Ridley Scott's Alien was a smash hit. The film yielded 3 sequels and has been adapted countless times in the form of novels, comic books, computer games, and RPGs. Like the best SF stories, it spawned a culture: a loyal base of fans eager to revisit the gritty, surreal blend of technology and horror that the film pioneered. It's a bit surprising, then, that the publication of the screenplay marks the first time that the script has been made commercially available to the public. The wait was worth it.