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eBook Category: Science Fiction Nebula Award(R) Preliminary Ballot Nominee, Hugo Award Nominee
eBook Description: When science fiction writer Carl Lambclear's death is announced, a young fan visits his webpage and decides to send his idol one last email. But a reply from the deceased writer leads to an odd mentoring relationship ... and the question of just exactly what has happened to Lambclear.

eBook Publisher: Fictionwise.com, Published: Analog, 2003
Fictionwise Release Date: May 2004

761 Reader Ratings:

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Available eBook Formats [MultiFormat - What's this?]: ePub (EPUB) [40 KB] , Rocket/REB1100 (RB) [23 KB] , Adobe Acrobat (PDF) [92 KB] , Palm Doc (PDB) [25 KB] , Microsoft Reader (LIT) [72 KB] , Franklin eBookMan (FUB) [93 KB] , hiebook (KML) [83 KB] , iSilo (PDB) [20 KB] , Mobipocket (PRC) [26 KB] , OEBFF Format (IMP) [37 KB]
Words: 8266
Reading time: 23-33 min.
Microsoft Reader (LIT) Format: Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud ENABLED
Adobe Acrobat (PDF) Format:  Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud DISABLED
All Other formats: Printing DISABLED, Read-aloud DISABLED

"Paying It Forward" by Michael A. Burstein is the first of our novelettes, and is set in the year 2070, focusing on a science fiction writer dying from an inoperable brain tumour. It's told in first-person POV through which the writer is reflecting on his life, career, and long-term online relationship and email correspondence with an older sf writer who became his mentor and friend. There's only one slight twist to this--the other author had died before they began the relationship (ironically also from a brain tumour), so how is this possible? We don't find out until the end of the story, but along the way we see a nice relationship developing between the two, with some amusing touches to the story. In one scene we find out that unfortunately spam still exists in 2070, and is possibly even worse than it is now. In one session, out of twenty-seven email messages to the writer, only one isn't spam, so it doesn't look like things are going to get better in future. And we also hear of the Second Golden Age SF Rennaisance (gimme a time machine, quick!), and the new generation of kids raised on the fantasies of J.K. Rowling and Tamora Pierce turning to SF (I thought this was *very* funny)."--Phil Friel, Tangent Online (Learn more about Tangent Online, the Internet's leading SF&F short fiction review website)

I'm dying.

No one knows it yet. Having never married, I have no family to mourn my passing. I do have my fans, who would probably turn out in droves to say farewell if I had chosen to let them know in advance. But in the twilight of my time, I want to face this final passage alone.

Of course, I'm not completely alone. I still have my mentor, Carl Lambclear. I'll email him tonight, and he'll email me back, and just remembering how much he helped me will keep me going until the very end. We'll exchange our latest story ideas, and share more turns of phrase that we both find appealing. Carl Lambclear is the one person I could open up to about my condition, and I'm glad that I did.

It's the ultimate irony, I suppose, that once more I find myself having something in common with Lambclear. He, too, is familiar with the emotional gamut that accompanies an inoperable brain tumor; after all, many years ago, he died of the same thing.

It started long ago, at the beginning of the century. I think it's almost impossible for anyone who didn't live through it to fully appreciate the swinging moods that the world experienced. For the months before and after New Year's Eve 2000, everyone all over the world seemed to harbor a quiet expectation that things would become new and different. The twenty-first century, a century of imagination and great wonders, was arriving, and optimism was the order of the day.

Of course, most of us sobered up after the economy tanked and September 11 happened and the other events of the ohs came to pass. With each tragedy, small or large, it was as if a curtain had plummeted down over another hope that was now irrevocably gone.

For me, the curtain came down when Carl Lambclear died.