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On the other hand, even if they don't rise much above the form, the remaining tales are pleasant enough. The best of the rest is "King Rainjoy's Tears" by Chris Willrich, featuring characters that appeared in a previous F&SF (June 2000) story, "The Thief with Two Deaths," the poet Persimmon Gaunt and her "lover and companion on the road," the aforementioned thief, Imago Bone. Their task this time is to free a king under the grip of an evil sorcerer, one Spawnsworth, who has tricked the sovereign literally out of his tears. The intrepid duo restore the king's emotions, and destroy the sorcerer using the king's formerly captive tears. All very metaphorical and enjoyable, but, like those fancy sugared summer drinks with the umbrellas in them, mostly froth.

Albert Crowdey's "The Posthumous Man," is another one of his supernatural tales of New Orleans, this time concerning the comeuppance of an antiques dealer who trades in purloined cemetery statutes. Though predictable, it nonetheless offers some nice characterization, such as this one about an ill-fated underworld lawyer: "The man's large belly preceded him into the shop like the nose of the Hindenburg, and his tread set the bangles on fifty chandeliers tinkling."

Robert Loy's "You Can't Get Turnip Juice Out of an Aorta" may win the prize for most amusing title. While there are points of levity in this tale of an ancient and infirm vampire who gets rejuvenated from sucking on the neck of a vegan animal rights activist and health freak, the ending is no more clever or original than the subject matter.

The conceit of Robert Onopa's "Geropods" is that the decrepitly aged have the legal right to "break out" of institutional care if, by banding together as a collective entity, they can replicate all the sense of a single individual, e.g., a blind man who can walk with a guy in a wheelchair who can hear, with a deaf person who can talk. One such geropod embarks on a mission to show the daughter of one of the members what a no-good bum her gold-digging husband is, and in the course of which discovers love with a female geropod. While the story has its moments, it does get a little old a little too quickly. Maybe that's the point.

Thomas Disch contributes a bit of throwaway fluff with "The Flaneurs of Mars," concerning a religious proof that arises between a philosophical discussion between a machine and some self-styled alien with delusions of godhood. I think the unrelated cartoon that appears at the end of the story is funnier than this.

R. Garcia y Robertson's novella, "Princess Aria," is yet another one of his pulp homages, this one part of a series of tales based in the medieval setting of Markovy. I found the predecessors to be a bit more interesting than this, which relies on a literal deus ex machina to resolve what plot there is. Because the story features a strong woman who mocks the simple-minded barbarity of men, it is not as overtly misogynist as some of his work -- though, admittedly, if you're working in the pulp tradition, you can't avoid it. Still, scenes in which the main character and her allies romp about in the nude serve no conceivable purpose beyond mild titillation for those 12 year old boys who have blocking software on their Internet connections. Again, that's part of the tradition, though I wonder why that's a tradition worth carrying on. Except maybe as something to do until someone makes another round of strawberry margaritas.