Lou Aronica - Full Spectrum 3

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Full Spectrum

Ed By Lou Aronica, Amy Stout,

and Betsy Mitchell

Scanned & Proofed By MadMaxAU

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Contents

Lou Aronica

James Morrow

Nancy Willard

Tony Daniel

Mark L. Van Name and Pat Murphy

Kristine Kathryn Rusch

Peg Kerr

Jack McDevitt

Jolle Wintrebert

Translated by Kim Stanley Robinson

Patricia Anthony

Marcos Donnelly

Ted Chiang

Gregory Benford

Ursula K. Le Guin

Norman Spinrad

Kevin J. Anderson

Wolfgang Jeschke

Translated by Sally Schiller and Anne Calveley

Poul Anderson

Barry N. Malzberg

Karen Joy Fowler

R. V. Branham

Michael Bishop

Elizabeth Hand

David Zindell

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Introduction

LOU ARONICA

RECENTLY FOUND MYSELF under circumstances where I needed to spend about six months without reading fantastic fiction of any kind. My job situation had changed and I needed to shore up my knowledge in other areas of fiction. The experience was a pleasurable one, much like going on a long journey where you see firsthand things you had only read about.

When I began to feel comfortable enough in my new job, I picked up a copy of a manuscript Betsy Mitchell had just finished editing. As I read it, I became rather more emotional than I was accustomed to being while reading. The metaphors, the imagination, the unabashed quest for the unknown, left me literally tingling. My choice for reentry had been well made, as this was a very good novel, but I realized that science fiction and fantasy could do something for me that no other form of literature could do. And I realized all over again how much I loved it.

You, of course, probably dont need to go through an exercise this extreme in order to understand the beauty of fantastic fiction. You have, after all, chosen to read a book with no unifying element at all other than the promise from three editors that the stories within represent excellence in this genre. That means you are open to the demands of variety and to the challenges writers present when they are stretching themselves. In other words, you are open to the fantastic fiction experience in its purest form. I cant promise you that we will give you that experience, only that we believe we will.

As was true with the first two volumes of this anthology series, Full Spectrum 3 is our celebration of the genre that enriches us. There is no agenda here. We read hundreds of stories over the past year and a half, and have chosen these twenty-three as the best of that group. They represent quite a range: magic realism, hard sf, allegory, even a No play.

We have only one regret. In each of the first two volumes of this anthology, we published five writers who had never published fiction before. In Full Spectrum5, there isnt a single story by a previously unpublished writer. We read some very good submissions, but none were at the level of the stories which are included here. I find this unfortunate, but I think it would have been more unfortunate to lower our standards in order to keep our record intact. Nevertheless, it is something we will seek to rectify in Full Spectrum 4.

Thank you for wanting to read this book.

Lou Aronica

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Full Spectrum

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Daughter Earth

JAMES MORROW

ED BEEN TRYING to have another child for over three years, carrying on like a couple from one of those movies you can rent by going behind the beaded curtain at Jakes Video, but it just wasnt working out. Logic, of course, says a second conception should prove no harder than a first. Hah. Mother Nature can be a sneaky old bitch, something weve learned from our twenty-odd years of farming down here in central Pennsylvania.

Maybe youve driven past us, Garber Farm, two miles outside of Boalsburg on Route 322. Raspberries in the summer, apples in the fall, Christmas trees in the winter, asparagus in the springthats us. The basset hound puppies appear all year round. Well sell you one for three hundred dollars, guaranteed to love the children, chase rabbits out of the vegetable patch, and always appear burdened by troubles greater than yours.

We started feeling better after Dr. Borealis claimed he could make Pollys uterus more hospitable to reproduction, as he put it. He prescribed vaginal suppositories, little nuggets of progesterone packed in cocoa butter. You store them in the refrigerator till youre ready to use one, and they melt in your wife the way sugar melts in your mouth.

That very month, we got pregnant.

So there we were, walking around with clouds under our feet. We kept remembering our sons first year out of the womb, that sense of power wed felt, how wed just gone ahead and thought him up and made him, by damn.

Time came for the amniocentesis. After putting Pollys belly to sleep, the ultrasound technician hooked her up to the TV monitor so Dr. Borealis could keep his syringe on target and make sure it didnt skewer the fetus. I liked Borealis. He reminded me of Norman Rockwells painting of that tubby and fastidious old country doctor listening to the little girls doll with his stethoscope.

Polly and I were hoping for a girl.

Thing was, the fetus wouldnt come into focus. Or, if it was in focus, it sure as hell didnt look like a fetus. I was awfully glad Polly couldnt see the TV.

Glitch in the circuitry? ventured the ultrasound technician, a tense and humorless youngster named Leo.

Dont think so, muttered Borealis.

I used to be a center for my college basketball team, the Penn State Nittany Lions, and Ill be damned if our baby didnt look a great deal like a basketball.

Possibly a soccerball.

Polly said, How is she?

Kind of round, I replied.

Round, Ben? What do you mean?

Round, I said.

Borealis furrowed his brow, real deep ridges; you couldve planted corn up there. Now dont fret, Polly. You neither, Ben. If its a tumor, its probably benign.

Round? Polly said again.

Round, I said again.

Lets go for the juice anyway, the doctor told Leo the technician. Maybe the lab can give us a line on this.

So Borealis inserted his syringe, and suddenly the TV showed the needle poking around next to our fetus like a dipstick somebody was trying to get back into a Chevy. The doctor went ahead as if he were doing a normal amnio, gently pricking the sac, though I could tell he hadnt made peace with the situation, and I was feeling pretty miserable myself.

Round? said Polly.

Right, I said.

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Later that month, I was standing in the apple orchard harvesting some Jonafreesa former basketball center doesnt need a ladderwhen Asa, our eleven-year-old redheaded Viking, ran over and told me Borealis was on the phone. Moms napping, my son explained. Being knocked up sure makes you tired, huh?

I got to the kitchen as fast as I could. I snapped up the receiver, my questions spilling out helter-skelterwould Polly be okay, what kind of pregnancy was this, were they planning to set things right with in utero surgery?

Borealis said, First of all, Pollys CA-125 reading is only nine, so its probably not a malignancy.