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INTRODUCTION

“37 DIVIDED BY 3”

It seemed like such a simple request. My publisher wanted me to put together two anthologies featuring short stories by authors from my Borgo Press list. One of the books would include science fiction tales, and the other mystery pieces. The volumes would be distributed as near-gratis ebooks on the internet, with inexpensive print-on-demand versions as well, to help publicize some of the good folks who were publishing full-length books with us.

Easy, right? Well, yes and no.

Getting the material wasn’t difficult at all. I suddenly found myself overwhelmed with quality submissions, both reprints and originals. I quickly adopted a policy of only one story per writer per volume—and still they kept coming! In the end, I received sixty-three tales by sixty-six writers—thirty-seven SF and twenty-six crime stories. The total wordage was enormous. But the books had now become too large. So what to do?

“Divide them into more workable pieces,” was the suggestion, and so that’s what I’ve done. I divided 37 by 3, and the one SF volume became three: Yondering, To the Stars—and Beyond, and Once Upon a Future; the crime book became Whodunit? and More Whodunits, with appropriate linking subtitles.

* * * *

This second anthology in the sequence includes twelve stories, both reprint and original, by a variety of Borgo Press authors.

In Damien Broderick’s haunting tale, “The Meek,” the survivors of humanity’s drive toward racial suicide must pay an awful price for their continued survival. John Glasby’s “Innsmouth Bane” tells how the alien entity Dagon first came to nineteenth-century America. In “Helen’s Last Will,” James C. Glass shows us that death may not always be “the end.” Charles Allen Gramlich’s “I Can Spend You” is a futuristic western which puts prospecting in a whole new light!

“The Voice of the Dolphin in Air,” by Howard V. Hendrix, is a poignant tale of life and death on Mars and the LaGrange space stations. In Philip E. High’s “This World Is Ours,” David Hacket is given the task of revitalizing a declining city (and world), and finds himself facing an alien invasion. James B. Johnson’s “The Last American” is fighting to preserve the memory of the old U.S. of A.—in a last stand at the Alamo! In “Small World: A Small Story” by Michael Kurland, Vanspeepe invents a new transportation device, hoping to change the world—and he does!

“The Channel Exemption: A Sime~Gen Story,” by Jacqueline Lichtenberg, focuses on the tensions between Sime and Gen when a mixed party of humans is stranded on an alien planet. Gary Lovisi’s tale, “My Guardian,” tells how mankind is finally able to end wars and mass killings. “Black Mist,” by Richard A. Lupoff, is a stunning mystery puzzle set at a Japanese research station on the Martian moon, Phobos. Don Webb, in his fascinating tale, “The Five Biographies of General Gerrhan,” demonstrates how easy it is for a professional writer to (mis)interpret, deliberately or otherwise, the story of a space hero.

—Robert Reginald

San Bernardino, California

17 June 2011