Hub Magazine, Issues #56-58

Hub #56 leads with Stephen R. Smith’s “Runner,” a fast-paced tale of a fellow who kills a randy cyborg and flees to avoid its owner’s wrath. Hub’s “About the Author” section notes that Smith grew up reading Heinlein, Asimov, and Bradbury, among others. Smith’s nurturing influences show in the story’s Golden Age sensibilities and tight prose, but also in its unfortunate predictability.

Adele, the hopeful widow in David Tallerman’s “Exodus” (Hub #57), has been selected to evacuate a dying Earth. The technology which will save her and hundreds of other people is incomprehensible to her. More than once, she calls it a miracle. And, indeed, it might as well be. In a variation of Clarke’s Third Law, Tallerman’s story asks whether any miracle of transport, sufficiently advanced, is distinguishable from death. The gateway is a blinding white rectangle; prerecorded messages from an overhead speaker urge the evacuees to “go into the light.” Individuals vanish, one after the next. Who wouldn’t be apprehensive?

Eric Brown’s “People of Planet Earth” (Hub #58) begins with a killer first line that I probably shouldn’t repeat here. Suffice to say it’s (A) carnal and (B) anatomically impossible for us mere humans. In Brown’s tale of amorous conquest, the alien invasion is figurative as well as literal. No, this story isn’t for everyone; but if the more outlandishly fantastic letters in Penthouse Forum make you laugh, “People of Planet Earth” is for you. Hard to believe that the creator of Helix penned this delightfully nasty, soiled gem, but there you have it. People are complex—even authors.