New Worlds 1

Originally a British science fiction magazine edited by Garnett, New Worlds is here reincarnated as a collection of short fiction, the first in a series of volumes. The variety presented ranges from the fantastic to the amusing to the chilling. Kim Newman muses on what would have happened if Superman's rocket had landed in the Black Forest instead of Smallville, U.S.A. The answer: Germany still loses the war--the last son of Krypton ``lost his taste for National Socialism when the stench of ovens was all he could smell.'' Storm Constantine envisions a brave new kind of computer hacker: one who ``hears'' the dreams of mainframes, one who can trap her lover's spirit in the emptiness of cyberspace. And Matthew Dickens conjures a world where people spend their lives falling from the sky, not knowing whether they will land on the mythical Earth or in Hell; quantum physics and religion are both turned topsy-turvy when an engineer propels himself down at the speed of light into a black hole. All in all, a breathtaking trip that would be even more impressive without the self-indulgently idiosyncratic black-and-white author photographs. (Dec.)