Two reviews for the price of one! First, the U of I Alumni Association reviewed my book. The review (in total) reads:

The Mars Run (Lulu Press) by Chris Gerrib '89 LAS. Intrepid heroine Janet Pilgrim needs money for college - how better to earn it than as an astronaut running payloads to Mars?

As promised, here's my full review of the new anthology Visual Journeys, edited by Eric Reynolds of Hadley Rille Books.

My first reaction to the book was "Wow!" The book's concept is unusual - authors write stories based on pieces of space art they've seen. The art - full color - is printed next to the story that inspired it. It's a very impressive package, and chock full of great stuff. There’s not a bad story in the bunch, but some of the real highlights are:

* Cruising on Io (visual art by Bob Eggleton) and Io, Robot (short story by Tobias S. Buckell). It’s the lead-off story, about robotic explorers of Io waiting for humans to return. The question becomes, what is a human?

* Ron Miller, a Hugo award-winning artist, takes a Chesney Bonestell painting, "Funeral on Mars" (American astronauts burying one of their own) and turns in a crackerjack story called “The Funeral.” It’s somewhat of a mystery story, but to help you solve it, here is a hint – Ron is very big on 19th Century SF writers.

* frankwu, another visual artist, gives us his first published short story, Worlds in Collusion based on the painting Impact by Joe Tucciarone. It’s an unusual dual romance. You’ll have to read it to see who is doing the romancing. Edited to add: jaylake says that Frank Wu had a story a few years back in an Australian anthology. I could have sworn that the endnotes said that this was Frank's first. further edited: See Frank Wu's remarks in the comments.

* G. David Nordley takes Wolf Read’s painting Hell Orbit and gives us an interesting short story of the same name. It’s a mix of romance and coming-of-age, set in a star system 30 light years from Earth.

* Bob Eggleton (artist) and jaylake(writer) team up (in a virtual way) in a quirky but interesting short story called After Bonestell. Bob also teams up with jimvanpelt, who uses Bob’s “Of Late I Dreamt of Venus” to create an interesting story of obsession with the same title.

* Richard Chewdyk's story Where We Go isn't so much science fiction as about science fiction, notably the history of it in Chicago of the 1940s. It is, however, quite touching. The artwork for this story, Kronos Jazz Quartet by Delphyne, was actually created for the story, the only case like that in this book. Richard dedicates his story to his father, Joseph, who was a painter and artist.

* Ron Miller contributes a painting, Jupiter Cloudscapes, to the book. It’s used by Christopher McKitterick to write the wonderful story Jupiter Whispers, which is about the exploitation of Jupiter.

Hadley Rille is a new publishing house, and this is only their second book. It’s a real home run, and I look forward to their next effort, a two volume set called “Ruins.” I don't know how much marketing muscle this company has, so you may have to order the book if you want it.