The first thing you notice about issue two of Darwin’s Evolutions — and I’m sure you’ve noticed it already — is just how flipping amazing the cover is. Like the first issue, Darwin’s Evolutions has produced a magazine cover that can be judged alongside the best professional markets out there — and one can only hope that Darwin’s Evolutions will one day find its way onto newstands where such alluring images can work their magic.
This is the first issue of Darwin’s Evolutions I’ve read as a paper-and-staples real-life magazine and not a .pdf on a backlit computer screen, and the experience is much improved. Filled with great art and a variety of things to gawk at like a comic and big images of books and manga, it’s a stimulating ‘zine with an appealing layout.
But it’s the stories you want to know about, and Darwin’s Evolutions again does a great job of selecting an eclectic mix of science fiction that is just a bit skewed away from the typical. There’s C. Mitchell O’Neal’s near future juxtaposition of theosophy and genetics ‘The Angels of St. Ambrose,’ and the hauntingly off-kilter holographic ghost tale ‘Ghost Chimes’ by Nancy Fulda. Other stories feature a tense action SF piece, a tale of an AI dog and his programmer, and even a vampire on another world. Fusion and cross-genre scrambling seem to be the order of the day for Darwin’s Evolutions # 2, producing a combination of stories that work very well together.
Click here for Darwin’s Evolutions Issue 2 at Lulu, and choose either the free .pdf or hardcopy
Of course, there’s at least one more story I didn’t mention, a far-future peice told by a slangy spacer that tells of his crew’s encounter with a mysterious castaway entitled ‘20,000 Light Years to Lilliput.’ I was rather impressed with it, if I do say so myself.
