SF/Fantasy/Horror Notes

SF veteran Spider Robinson (The Callahan Chronicals) gathers 10 tales, most from the 1970s and '80s, into a collection that seems to owe more to the past (i.e., Robinson's 1960s sensibilities) than it does to the future. God Is an Iron and Other Stories includes the Hugo and Nebula Award–winning but dated "Stardance," in which the beautiful Shara must save the world through her dancing skills, as well as the slight and comic "Orphans of Eden," in which a character sharing the author's name helps a time traveler determine humanity's fate. (Five Star, $24.95 210p ISBN 0-7862-4162-4)

He's not your typical teenager: sure, Ethan has crushes on girls and he wants to be popular, but he also has weird parents, gargoyles living in his basement and daily visitations from a dead, blood-covered boy. In JV Harlee's Gargoyle Tears, an earnest teen gothic plagued by hackneyed prose ("by the dull look in her beautiful eyes, Ethan knew that her heart just wasn't into cheerleading") and language misdemeanors (rumors, for instance, is spelled "roomers"), Ethan must stand up to mean jocks and save the endangered gargoyles, who await their savior in the form of Ethan's unborn sister. (Tarbutton [www.tarbuttonpress.com], $12.95 paper 160p ISBN 0-9714086-5-3)