Galactic Citizen is a little 52-page digest that is seeking go move from being the showcase space for a group of online writers to a general genre mag. It needs a bit more meat to attract readers if it wants to do that, but there's a good start in John B. Rosenman's "To Reign In Hell," an amusing take on the oft-tread "afterlife will be like..." premise. D.A. Houdek offers a science fantasy in "Stormkeeper," which finds the prodigy of an earth woman and the alien planet's stormkeepers ready to test his birthright. There's also the midsection of a serialized novel by Michael Calligaro and a story by Audrey Lawson which attempts to bring together the "maternal instincts" of a human mother trying to shelter her young girl who was once a victim of rape and the instincts of an alien mother on the verge of giving birth. It was an interesting theme juxtaposition that never quite gelled as a gripping story, however. There are also a couple of short stories about writing for writers (imagine that in a mag grown from a writers group!).

-- John Everson

Copyright © 1996 by John Everson. All Rights Reserved.