Planet Magazine No. 29

Originally published as Planet Magazine No. 29 (March 2001) on the classic Planet Magazine site.

Planet Magazine

March Quarter 2001 * Issue No. 29 (Vol. 8, No. 1)
Wild Science Fiction & Fantasy on the Web — Since 1994
Price: 1 Vincent
“Tony” by Shelton Bryant

Painted close-up of a man's face with piercing blue eyes behind a restraining face mask
Cover illustration: “Tony” by Shelton Bryant

Table of Contents

Editorial & Letters · About the Authors · About the Artists · About this Magazine

Fiction

Poetry

Editorial & Letters

Planet: The fave zine of teen stars Broccoli Spears and Kitsch-N’Sync!

FREE(PRAT)FALL

With this editorial I am unveiling my “Real Millennium Art Project for 2001”. This will be even more daring than my previous exploits — it should be nothing less than an exhilarating kaleidoscopic Nantucket sleigh ride through the meaning of The Material World, Heaven, Hell, Love, Truth, Death, and, of course, Taxes. In other words, the scope of this work simply includes everything, which means that no other art projects will be needed this year, anywhere. So all of you artists out there are just going to have to go into music or acting or corporate Web-page design for at least the next several months, although I am told that the Brooklyn Museum in New York is still accepting submissions of Naughty Art through April of 2001.

Now, here’s my concept, and how it will play out. Picture me in outer space (if you don’t know what I look like, imagine a white, 1970s-era tube sock filled with peach-flavored gelatin, shaped into a rough humanoid form, quick-frozen, laid gently onto a chopping block, shredded lightly, sprinkled with garlic, black olives, onions, and thistle, quick-liquefied, rolled into a perfect cone, marinated in vinegar and jimson weed for 23 hours, quick-gassed, and then inhaled in one, master-yogic breath through the left nostril — as you collapse to the floor, an image should come into your stilled mind of exactly what I look like, probably).

So, there I am in outer space, inside my brilliant-white space suit, hanging against the jeweled black curtain, as if I’m sitting on an overstuffed easy chair. For a while, perhaps two days or so, nothing happens. Abruptly, I move my hand and switch on my rear aerosol thrusters, inching forward and positioning my right spaceboot exactly over what we now can recognize as a high-tech, frictionless synthetic banana peel made of bright-yellow Turbonium(TM), the peel held “in place” with the help of surplus Star Wars-era technology. I stand more or less erect, and then “step” forward, my right foot slipping up and away on the banana peel, while my left foot now pushes down on the banana peel, seeking traction yet finding none. I then begin falling backwards, there in outer space, each foot slipping in turn on the peel, yet I never completely fall over due to the absence of gravity. By pacing myself carefully, I expect to enter into a “State of Sustained Pratfall” — which I have termed “Freepratfall”.

At that point, art lovers the world over may tune into my intercom, as I yell “Whoaaaaaaaa!” This sound will immediately be recorded onto a DAT tape loop in the purpose-built med-evac Space Shuttle hovering several meters “above” me (this craft also houses my support entourage as well as control gear for my patented untethered SpaceArtCam, which will beam streaming video of this event to the planetmag.com Web site); this sound loop will continue to play as I maintain my perfect equilibrium between falling and not falling, an “eternal slipping”, so to speak. I intend to keep this up as long as I can — hopefully for 72 hours straight — with the help of a flexible feed tube extending “down” from the Shuttle and supplying my mouth with a constant dribble of buckwheat-pancake batter.

To me, this freepratfall represents Life/Love Itself, a “Falling in Lo-V”, if you will. Certainly, there is the surface entertainment of it all, yet even that should teach people some deeper truths. I expect that those watching will experience a full, virtuous “funny/not funny” cycle, the key principle of comedy, which, in my opinion, is only tragedy turned upside down. In other words, someone watching me will find my slip-sliding-in-place to be, by turns, funny, then funnier, peaking with funniest, then less funny, then not funny, then boring, moronic, disgusting, revolting, abhorrent to Mankind, then, suddenly, puzzling, then absurd, then surreal, then magical realist, then whimsical, then quirky, then cute, then simply adorable as a mouse wearing a wristwatch, then amusing, then funny again, and right on to hilarity, etc. — or something along those lines.

Over the full 72-hour period, I anticipate that these series of changing emotions in the viewers of my Real Millennium Art Project (co-funded by the Planet Magazine Foundation and the Rev. Jesse Jackson’s Space Art Coalition) will begin to cycle faster and faster, till viewers experience the whole range of feelings outlined above within 7.2 seconds (according to the super-smart, monocle-wearing Great Dane, Prof. Bonelick, who runs the Planet research facility).

At the end of it all, those few art lovers who survive this process will be able to walk away from my project with the certain knowledge that the entire thread of their lives is woven deeply into the tapestry of the universe, which in fact is a metaphor for my childhood, and that we are all bound together into complex pictures telling us What Love Is, Who We Are, Where Do You Think You’re Going, Why Are You Wearing That Shirt With Those Pants, and What’s For Dinner.

It’s all very stupid, perhaps… but that has never stopped us before.

See You in Space,
Andrew G. McCann, Editor
March 2001

LETTERS TO THE EDITORS

Dear Editor: The first issue of E-GENRE (THE NEWSLETTER OF GENRE E-PUBLISHING) http://e-genre.tripod.com/index.html has premiered and was well received. I’d like to thank you for allowing us to reprint “Mars” by Gryffyd Eamonn Dempsey. I want poetry to have a place at E-G. One thing you might like to know is that our readers have spoken, and E-GENRE will go weekly in March. Same great reviews and overviews but spread out over a month.
GW Thomas

Dear Editor: I recently had the opportunity to see your site online and I was very impressed. I am glad that there is a site like this. It gives writers and readers of Science Fiction and other genres a place to go. I have recently written a novel, it is called Exterminance Cometh, ISBN # 0-59509-607-7, it is a paperback, and is available at Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble.com, Borders.com, Elliot Bay Books, etc. And, there is a link at http://hometown.aol.com/brooklynboy59/index.html. It is a
book about prophecies and disasters that test the human spirit. I believe that your readers will enjoy it very much. I look forward to visiting your site, and reading the latest issues.
Sincerely,
Robert Segarra

Dear Editor: I have been enjoying your e-zine for some time now. You and AnotheRealm are my favorites. I have my own zine, GateWay S-F Magazine, now into its second Issue, and this is just to let you know that I have put a link to your site on my Links Page. You can check out this link by going to: http://www.gateway-sf-magazine.com/links.html
Thanks for leading the way for us new guys.
Yours truly,
B. Joseph Fekete, Jr.

LETTERS TO REJECTED LoTR ACTORS

Dear Bob Hoskins as Frodo: I once knew an evil guy who had an oil portrait done of himself — he hung the picture secretly in the attic (and also had a GIF of it on his Web site, by the way). And you know what? The portrait never changed (neither did the GIF), yet this guy grew older with each passing year! His name? Strangely enough, it was “Gray” Dorian, because his hair had turned gray at an earlier age. I guess the Dorian part is just his family name. Let this be a lesson for all of us.
Evil Never Wins,
E. Ville Neff-Ervins

Dear Wilford Brimley as Gandalf: What is wrong with the Post Office?! It sucks! I have not had one single letter delivered by those incompetent nincompoops in more than a year! I’m writing to you, an SF zine, about this matter because I’ve tried just about everyone already, except of course Bill Clinton. By the way, I always mail my letters by dropping them in a garbage can; also, I write them on the scaly sides of day-old, uncooked fish. I just mention those details in case they might be pertinent.
Regards,
I. “Del” Hans

Dear Andrew McCarthy as Saruman: I’m a polysyllabist — I believe that the lord’s name should have more than one syllable. Well, gotta go catch some sleep — I had a little film festival at the house yesterday and then had to stay up all night rewinding my DVDs.
Best,
Manny Thotz

Dear Mario Cantone as Old Man Willow: People often ask me, “Who is your hero, and why?” And I always tell them, “Don’t you mean ‘what’ is my favorite hero, and why? And that would be a chicken parmigiana hero with extra mozzarella, ‘cuz they are soooo deeeelicious!” Hope that helps, because it’s almost dinner time. I feel your stomach pangs.
Regards,
Bill Clinton

Dear Anthony Hopkins as Sam Gamgee: It’s terrible what the psycho media fascists and their goose-stepping dinosaurs-of-rock lapdogs have done to Napster! Don’t they understand that Napster actually INCREASES CD sales?! Look at me, for instance: After I downloaded for free all of the music I ever wanted to buy but couldn’t afford, and then after I downloaded all of the out-of-print stuff I ever wanted but couldn’t find, and then after I downloaded all the new stuff I wanted to check out, and then after I downloaded a lot of stuff just to check it out ‘n’ trash it, and then after I downloaded gigabytes of stuff that I think is just OK (but I’d already downloaded everything I could think of), and THEN, after I burned it all onto a foot-long stack of CDs for my PC, my CD Walkman, my Dad’s CD player, and my car CD player, then, uh… CD sales went up! Or so I’ve read. It puzzles me, too. Anyway, my point still stands that music should be free. I also want to download for free all the girlfriends of everyone who is reading this.
Awesomeness,
Mett “Al” Icka

Dear Nathan Lane as Gollum: I had the strangest experience the other night. Everything was dark, and then it was as if I were moving through a fog, and ahead of me I suddenly saw an indistinct light. Well, the light got brighter and brighter, and I felt it was telling me to move, beckoning me to come closer, and finally it became clearer. And I could plainly see the white letters… spelling out WALK, which told me I would very soon be at the other side of the crosswalk. And indeed I got there quite safely enough, with little adventure. I then continued on my little stroll during that moonless, foggy night. Later, when I got home, I was pleased to see a “Friends” marathon on Channel 9 — but, that adventure can wait for another of my letters to the editor.
Regards,
Ray Mayne N. Lighte

Dear Andy Dick as Legolas: I’ve just written a play that takes 10 years to perform. However, since I was able to work on it for only 8 hours a day, it took me 30 years to finish. Although I admit this work might seem unreasonable in its length, I merely ask that playgoers trust me and attend the premier next month in my living room of this solo perfomance by me. The ending of the play is great — really worth the wait. I don’t want to give too much away, but I can tell you that the plot revolves around a man who loves to type letters and words all day long, in any order and any language (old, new, or invented), and how his mean wife never understood him and unfairly left him, and how he had to stop typing after a solid three decades of joy and then painfully get a job. Also, please note that I will not be taking reservations from anyone over the age of 90. Statistically, they’re just not going to make it to the second act. One more thing: I do not accept checks and will need your credit card numbers for the monthly deductions to keep the play going (and keep us all in pizza) over the many years to come that we shall spend together in my living room.
Sincerely,
Jess E. “Jack” Sonne

Dear Bobcat Goldthwaite as Elrond: In the new Army of One commercial on TV for the US Army, it looks like the soldier is basically running away from where all the tanks are going — so he’s either deserting, doesn’t know what he’s doing, or is going to take on the enemy like he’s Schwarzenegger. Any of those options appeals to me! So I’m going to go steal a car right now and drive over to enlist (even though the recruiter is only a few blocks away)! This will indeed be an Army of One — at least, it will be once I’m through with it!
Sincerely,
“Colonel” F. Korn

Dear David Duchovny as Tom Bombadil: Mother and I just read your Planet Magazine and had quite a good laugh about it, there in the formal garden, just in front of the maze, sipping Lady Grey tea from our Ming dog bowls and positively chomping on cucumber sandwiches with the crust removed, while Jeeves, ever the butler, stood alert, nude, as Mother had whimisically ordered him to do, while she threw actual darts at his bottom, where she had drawn a crude-but-lovely red target with some Chanel lipstick she no longer cared for. I think it was that very morning we saw father fall, drunk, from the uppermost turret of the maison — come to think of it, we never did look for the body! Anyway, it doesn’t much matter now, does it, as Mother remains at The Laconic Sanitarium with young Dr. Hernandez, who now controls the family Trust through that turncoat Jeeves (too bad we didn’t pay any attention to his constant late nights with that Web-based legal studies course!). And as for me, well, the old house is quite drafty, and I’ve burned all the furniture (quite whimsically, it seems, since the heating oil tank has 500 gallons in it) — my only companions a tiny family of dung beetles, who cook for me and live in the wall near the terrace doors. They are so kind. Well, turnabout is fair play, or something like that. Say, could I borrow five dollars (American)? I don’t need it, I’d just like to borrow something from someone.
Yours,
Wim Sickle

Dear Keanu Reeves as Sauron: I’m sorry to be the one to abruptly announce pending layoffs at Planet Magazine ­ after all, I’m a fictional character buried in the fake letters section. Still, I enjoy it. As you know, risky tech stocks like Planet Magazine’s have brought the economy to the edge of the abyss. So, to placate our venture capitalists, we’ll have to start decimating the staff. But we’d like it to be voluntary, so anyone ready to leave, please let us know by Friday. Severance pay will be exactly zero dollars for each week worked. Please be aware that those choosing to stay will be forced to accept stock options in Planet Magazine — note that Planet’s options have weakened so sharply that anyone holding them actually must pay money to a general stock market fund for widows and orphans of penny-stock traders. Our goal is to have no employees by next quarter, which should drastically slash our operating costs. Beyond that, we haven’t a clue.
Regards,
D. Manne-Agement

Dear Ted McGinley as Aragorn: Hi, I’m writing in to tell you what my favorite scene in an SF movie is. in “2001: A Space Odyssey”, I love the part when the pod bay door opens, and you see the slow emergence of a backlit container of Microsoft Office 2001 for the Macintosh. Although what any of this SF stuff has to do with San Francisco is not clear to me.
Cheers,
Bill Gates

Dear Editor as Himself: I just got back from France, and it turns out that the French do NOT like Jerry Lewis. It’s all been a mixup due to translation errors.
Sincerelement,
Dee N. Martinn

About the Authors

Graham Adair (“Temporal Exile“) is 31 and lives in a small village called Gifford that’s twenty miles outside Edinburgh, in Scotland. He works in the IT industry as a kind of internal IT consultant within a large finance company. He’s married with a 10-month old daughter, Kirsty. Graham has been writing (SF, fantasy, and speculative fiction mostly) since he was 22 and has been honing his style ever since.

Andy Brill (“Floating Lightly in the Void“) is a “lighthearted” Minnesotan currently transplanted to Dallas, TX, where he works “lightheartedly” with youth.

Dennis Calero (“Family Business“) was born the son of a barber and a woman boxer. He currently makes a living as a writer and painter, but he has worked at a meat-packing plant, a bookstore, as a dancer on a cruise ship, and was a midshipman in the US Navy before being busted for robbing the ship’s ATM. He’s been in several car chases, been shot at, but has never been drunk or high. He currently resides in New York with his wife, Kristin, an illustrator of children’s books and former Soviet assassin. Valentine’s Day is always interesting at the Calero’s. Web site: http://hometown.aol.com/atomiceo/myhomepage/main.html.

Tony Chandler (“Dark Energy“) has news about the publication of his first novel as an e-book and paperback, along with his detailed biography, on his Web-site, http://www.tonychandler.com.

Candi Chu (“I Remember October“) is a musician who tends to spend more time at the computer keyboard than the piano keyboard these days, some by choice (writing), others not (day job). To date, Candi’s work has been published in Crimson, genrEzone, Twilight Showcase, Dragonlaugh, AlienQ, Fantasy, Folklore & Fairytales, Alternate Realities, and Foxfire (June 2001).

Ray Dangel (Associate Editor, Planet Magazine) takes his work home from the office. As this awesome issue of Planet was birthed, Ray was finalizing plans to watch NASA’s Mars Odyssey launch in Florida. Being a native of Venus, he briefly considered asking the space agency to let him hitch a ride, but relented when he realized NASA would have to drop one of its three science experiments from the mission to accommodate his potbelly. These blue Venusians are such chubby little guys! Cute but chubby.

Romeo Esparrago (“2001 Haiku“, “Year of the Serpent Tanka“; Graphics Consultant, Planet Magazine) will soon be departing with the traveling aliens of X-Files, Close Encounters, and the Abyss to see if they can help bring the Voyager back home from the Delta Quadrant. Be on the lookout this year for additions and announcements on his Web-site at http://www.romedome.com.

Andree Gendron (“Beacons of Deceit“) has had science fiction, horror, and inspirational short fiction and poems accepted for publication in several online and small press zines — The Fifth Di, The Sixth Sense, The Martian Wave, Star Anthology, New England Writers Network, Star Leaper, Blood Roses — but Andree makes pen money from writing humorous slogans for novelty companies. Andree enjoys reading Best of the Year anthologies, especially early sci-fi collections from the sixties.

Guy Hasson (“A Star-Studded Sky“) is a playwright and a director. His first SF e-book, “In the Beginning…” was published earlier this year by 4goodbooks.com. His second SF novel, “Hope for Utopia”, will soon be published by Fictionworks.com. He has also published short stories in the webzines Anotherealm, Millenium Fantasy and Science Fiction, and Aphelion.

Andrew G. McCann (Editor) came pretty darn impressively close to meeting the deadline for this issue — as a reward, the Aliens (the Medium-Sized Orange Ones, in this instance), who founded and have funded Planet Magazine over the years, have revealed to him that they don’t exist.
editor@planetmag.com

Christine O’Leary-Rockey (“Concentric“) is a writer and poet residing in the backwater of Harrisburg, PA. She holds degrees in Philosophy and Religion and is still combing the want ads weekly for that ad that reads “philosopher wanted for our busy office — will pay well”. As this has not happened, she is back in school working on yet another useless degree, and freelancing. She is a member of The (Almost) Uptown Poetry Cartel, most recently published in The Ultimate Hallucination, The Experimental Forest, The Literary Lion, and The Poet’s Cut. She is the author of a book, “A Human Auction”, which is now in its second printing.
She can be e-mailed at .

Mike Velichansky (“Milder“) lives in Maryland but was born in Russia, and left when he was five years old (which means he speaks his native language with an American accent). Mike loves to read, and began writing after seeing his high school’s Illiterary Magazine; he decided he might enjoy writing some short stories to fill the space between bad teenage poems. Figuring that the secret to Asmiov’s success was being Russian, he assumed that writing would be great fun — only to discover it was hard work. He never wrote again, and is actually taking credit here for the work of a different Mike Velichansky. Currently, Mike is working toward getting his Cisco Networking Certification, and looking forward to next year, when he’ll be attending the University of Maryland with most of his friends. To be really current, he’s now trying to type up his bio while the family cat attacks his keyboard, crawls on him, and walks in front of the monitor.

s.c.virtes (“Future Memories“) was last seen at a Cat Show in San Diego, zapping poems around the world from a fur-contaminated laptop. Recent stories and poems can be found at Ideomancer, Dreams & Nightmares #58, Cafe Irreal #2, Eotu online, and an anthology of creepy tales from FiveBadgers Press. Web-site: www.scvs.com/scv/fic/

Tom Wagner (Associate Editor, Planet Magazine) needs a proper bio somethin’ fierce.

Philip B. Young (DUI) is 47years old in body, but still cutting classes in school. He’s married (26 years in March, miraculous) to the “Finest Person I’ve Ever Met”, his wife Maria. They have two children: Joel, who is currently writing a symphony, and Kiel, who wants to spend his life flying the friendly skies. Phil, who is originally from New York, has been living in Alpharetta, Georgia, for the past seven years. He owns a small company that does corporate training for big companies. He is looking to leave that rat race and fulfill his lifelong dream of writing full time. He is currently working on two full-length books, “Halley’s Conundrum” and “The Death of Dreams and The Birth of Reality”.
E-mail him, he wants input!

Planet Magazine is made with love!

(although it’s a “controlling” kind of love at times.)

About the Artists

Shelton Bryant (Cover Illustration, “Future Memories“, “I Remember October“, and “Milder“) is a graduate of East Carolina University with a BFA degree in commercial illustration. He currently freelances for a number of magazines, including The Spectator, The Independent Weekly, and In These Times. You can e-mail him at .

Dennis Calero (“Family Business“) was born the son of a barber and a woman boxer. He currently makes a living as a writer and painter, but he has worked at a meat-packing plant, a bookstore, as a dancer on a cruise ship, and was a midshipman in the US Navy before being busted for robbing the ship’s ATM. He’s been in several car chases, been shot at, but has never been drunk or high. He currently resides in New York with his wife, Kristin, an illustrator of children’s books and former Soviet assassin. Valentine’s Day is always interesting at the Calero’s. Web site: http://hometown.aol.com/atomiceo/myhomepage/main.html.

Romeo Esparrago (“2001 Haiku“, “A Star-Studded Sky“, “DUI“, “Year of the Serpent Tanka“; Graphics Consultant, Planet Magazine) will soon be departing with the traveling aliens of X-Files, Close Encounters, and the Abyss to see if they can help bring the Voyager back home from the Delta Quadrant. Be on the lookout this year for additions and announcements on his Web-site at http://www.romedome.com.

Carl Goodman (“Concentric“, “Floating Lightly in the Void“, “Dark Energy“) is dangerously close to 40, married with one son, lives in Surrey, UK, and has been doing computer graphics for a living since the late 1980s. A lot of his work has been based around fairly technical visualistion projects, but a while back he joined a computer animation company as director of graphics research and development, which means that basically he gets to evaluate all the leading-edge technologies associated with CGI and provide due diligence for venture capitalists on various projects.

Carl has had a fair bit of material published in consumer media in the past, including animation work for Reuters on the Shoemaker-Levy 9 impact, which was shown on news channels in 22 separate countries. He also had some illustrations of this event published in New Scientist magazine.

Carl is also an avid reader of what might be thought of as “hard core” science fiction, with a strong bias towards the Clarke-Asimov-Heinlein-Niven stable, and enjoys the opportunity to visualise concepts. Web-site: www.peppersghost.com

Charles McChesney (“The Goldilocks Zone“) is from New Orleans and studied art at LSU. He has been a freelance artist off and on for 20 years. For a long time he worked with charcoal, pastels, and oils. His subjects were primarily people, and he worked for a long time in New Orleans’ French Quarter. Charles has gotten more and more involved with computer art and loves working with Pov-Ray and inexpensive computer programs that sculpt 3-D art on the computer. He also loves developing ideas with pencil and then finishing them up with a paint program on the computer. Charles can create both illustrations and videos. A sampling of his work
can be seen at http://www.homestead.com/charliemc/

Patrick Stacy (“Of Humans and Insects” and “Temporal Exile“) hails from Germany, and like many before, started young. His main emphasis in childhood was comics and he soon became an excellent tracer. Never content, the challenge was then to illustrate freehand; now that would be talent. Early influences are still inspirational today, such as the legendary Frazetta, Vallejo, and Parrish. Classical influences were Rubens and Caravaggio. The goal of course is, with any luck, to break into the book cover and magazine markets. As mentioned earlier about never being content, currently in the process of learning to create webpages through HTML and Photoshop. In the process of updating website to include upgrades as well as new illustrations. Winner of the L.Ron Hubbard’s Illustrators of the Future contest in 1996 as well as two illustrations within the volume. Web-site: http://members.nbci.com/pstacyart/

Remember, Space Travelers: “Ragnartizz’s Ammonia Tastes Best! “

About this Magazine (Masthead)

Planet Magazine: Edited in a vacuum, breathlessly awaited!

Planet Magazine, Vol. 8, No. 1 (the 29th issue)

Home Site: http://www.planetmag.com

Mirror Site: http://www.etext.org/Zines/planet

Chief Wizard
Andrew G. McCann
editor@planetmag.com

Seer of Visions
Romeo Esparrago

Master of Runes
Ray Dangel

Keeper of Lore
Tom Wagner

WHAT IN THE WORLD IS PLANET MAGAZINE?
Planet Magazine is the free, award-winning quarterly Web-zine of short science fiction and fantasy by emerging writers and artists, whom we hope to encourage in their pursuit of the perfect tale or illustration. There could be other reasons we’re doing this, of course, motivations that are obscure and uncomfortable; instincts linked perhaps to primal, nonreasoning urges regarding power and procreation — the very same forces, no doubt, that sank the Atlanteans and their alabaster-towered oceanic empire. And the Dark Gods laffed.

Planet is available electronically via the World Wide Web (see the clickable links at the top of this page) and Tin-Foil-Hat Receptron. Total circulation is “thousands ‘n’ thousands” per issue worldwide. Feel free to download this zine or make a single printout, as long as you don’t charge for it or alter it in any way. That would be not only illegal but also “not nice.” Submissions are welcomed (see below). Planet does not carry advertising or offer a subscription service, but issues are always available at our Web site. Letters to the editor are also welcome and are likely to be printed.

SUBMISSIONS POLICY & WRITER GUIDELINES
Planet accepts original, unpublished short science fiction and fantasy stories and poems, as well as digital art, from anyone famous or unfamous (use the lengths in any recent issue as a guideline). We are open to the experimental but will not publish anything we judge to be porno, gore, or in violation (as far as we are able to tell) of any copyrights (such as stories that use Star Trek, Star Wars, or Babylon 5 characters). Since Planet is free and carries no ads, we can’t pay anything except the spirit-sustaining currency of free publicity and life-enhancing good vibes.

* E-mail text submissions as plain, unformatted files (either as an e-mail attachment or, if short enough, in the body of the e-mail message) to editor@planetmag.com. One submission at a time, please.

* E-mail illustration submissions separately as e-mail attachments, but Stuff or Zip them first. Alternatively, you could send the URL for an image, and we can go look at it. Images should be 256-color, 16-color, 16-gray, or B&W GIFs or JPEGs only. Send any questions about illustrations to editor@planetmag.com.

DISTRIBUTION SITES
Planet Magazine is now distributed only in Web (HTML) format, which can be read best with any version 3.0 or above Web browser, such as Netscape Navigator, Internet Explorer, Opera, NeoPlanet, or iCab. Earlier issues of Planet are also available at our Web site in four other electronic formats: TEXT-ONLY (for any PC or Mac word-processing program), ACROBAT .PDF (a full-color version for PC or Mac using the free Acrobat Reader), DOCMAKER (a full-color, self-running file with sounds for Mac only), and PALMPILOT .PRC (a text version that requires a PalmPilot PDA and a DOC reader like freeware CSpotRun). The main place to find Planet is on the Web, either at our home page http://www.planetmag.com or our mirror site http://www.etext.org/Zines/planet.

COPYRIGHTS, DISCLAIMERS
Planet Magazine as a whole, including all text, design, and illustrations, is copyright © 2001 by Andrew G. McCann. However, all individual stories and poems in this magazine are copyright © 2001 by their respective authors or artists, who have granted Planet Magazine the right to use these works for this issue in both electronic form and any resulting print-outs by readers for noncommercial, individual use. All people and events portrayed in this magazine are entirely fictitious and bear no resemblance to actual people or events. This publication, along with every past issue of Planet Magazine, is registered with the Copyright Office of the U.S. Library of Congress. Since our first issue, dated January 1994, Planet Magazine has been freely available via the Internet and has consistently used the names “Planet Magazine”, “PlanetZine”, “PlanetMag,” and “McCann’s Planet Magazine” to refer to itself. You may freely distribute this magazine electronically on a noncommercial, nonprofit basis to anyone and print one copy for your personal use, but you may not alter or excerpt Planet in any way without direct, written permission from the publisher, who can be contacted at editor@planetmag.com. Any unauthorized access, reproduction, or transmission of Planet Magazine, in whole or part, is strictly prohibited by U.S. federal law and international copyright law. Planet Magazine is published by Cranberry Street Press, Garden City, N.Y., USA, Andrew G. McCann, publisher.

COLOPHON
These Web pages were designed with Adobe PageMill 3.0. Some of the artwork was designed and created by Romeo A. Esparrago, Jr., using Adobe GoLive 4.0 and ImageStyler. The text is Arial/Helvetica/Geneva; the logotypes are Arquitectura. Some illustrations were done in Painter 4. Equipment used: an iMac DV, an Apple PowerMac 6400, a Wacom ArtZ tablet, and a MicroTek ScanMaker IISP. Please visit the guest artists’ Web pages to learn about the tools they used for their illustrations. This issue of Planet is sponsored by a big stack of waffles slathered in syrup (boy, am I hungry).

Planet Magazine ISSN: 1526-1840