Chronicles Annual 1986

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Review By Anon

Chronicles Annual 1986 First Issue Edited by Susan Clarke and Joanne Keating Card cover Comb binding 180pp. Australian genzine containing eleven stories, poems, an interview with Michael Keating and various drawings. There are two long stories. "Someday, One Day, Maybe" by Moira Dahlberg uses a Terra Nostra background, an old friend (female ) of Jenna's, and a malevolent entity. The story is cogent enough, but its focus is what happens between the non-Blake's 7 regulars so I never felt very involved in it. "Death of a Wayside Flower" is about Vila's life as a young child. I'm not very keen on B7 childhood stories and didn't enjoy this one, though some of the individual sequences are quite moving. It aims to show the trials of life in the Delta domes but lays it on much, much too thickly. There are also some breaks in continuity which are noticeable enough to suggest some paragraphs got chopped by accident.

"Full Circle" is part of an ongoing serial featuring clones of Blake, Avon and Cally and has also appeared in Interface 11. Whether you like it probably depends on whether you can relate to the cloned characters. There is a superb story by xBryn Lantry, "Little Brothers" only two pages but every word tells. It has Avon talking to Tarrant after Deeta's death, about his own and Blake's brother and why he and Tarrant do not get on. "Strange to Relate ~ or Relatively Speaking" does a comic hatchet job on stories in which everybody is someone else's long dead brother/sister/clone/parent/child/partner or any combination thereof. It probably goes on a little too long to be entirely effective, but the writer has my full support.

Stories by xBryn Lantry, Sheila Tracy, Sue Bursztynski, Robert Jan, Linda Terrell and Ginny Mila, Moira Dahlberg, Rosemary Woodhouse, Y.S.Hintz, and Kathryn Andersen.

Contents

Editors: Susan Clarke and Joanne Keating
Publisher: R. & S. Clarke (Faulconbridge, N.S.W., Australia; authorized North American reprint by Bill Hupe)
Date: 1986

Fiction
xBryn Lantry, "Little Brothers" (S3)
Sheila Tracy, "Long May He Reign" (S5)
Sue Bursztynski, "Full Circle" (Gemini series; S5)
Robert Jan, "Vila Comes Out on Top" (S1 or S2; humor)
Linda Terrell and Ginny Mila, "Image on My Soul" (S3-4)
Moira Dahlberg, "Some Day, One Day, Maybe" (S2)
Yvonne S. Hintz, "Oh No!" (S3; humor)
Sheila Tracy, "Strange to Relate" (S4; humor)
Rosemary Woodhouse, "Death of a Wayside Flower" (S0)

Poetry
Yvonne S. Hintz, "Writer's Pawn"
xBryn Lantry, "Old Enemies" (S3)
Sue Bursztynski, "Betrayal" (S4)
xBryn Lantry, "Waiting for God"
Ruth Waters, "Down and Safe"

Nonfiction
Editorial
Kathryn Andersen, "Avon's Expertise" (essay)
Rosemary Woodhouse, "Interview with Michael Keating"
Sheila Tracy, "Logic Problem"

Art
Tricia Ostwald front c. all crew
frontispiece same as cover
pp. 78, 120
back c.
Elsie Sager p. 6
Lana Brown p. 8
Rosemary Woodhouse pp. 11, 15, 99, 127, 145, 163, 170
Kerrie Hanlon pp. 21, 116
Kathryn Andersen p. 26, 64
Megan Ellem p. 33
Fiona Ellem pp. 36, 70
Robert Jan p. 38
Michael McGann pp. 40, 57, 92, 112, 124
Shayne McCormack p. 46
Michelle Kavazos p. 48
Gayle Rogers p. 103


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