“The Crystal Tower” by Owen Crawford

Illustration: “Self-Portrait” © 2007 by Robert Sorensen

The sun was sinking beyond the grotesque spires. There were times when Jacob wanted to topple them. In a few years, maybe the Venus sands will have corroded them enough that a good loud shout would fell them. Somehow, though, he doubted that.

No matter how far he traveled, he couldn’t seem to get away from the spires. They rose into the blood-colored sky like flat-tipped, colored fingers embedded with specks of glass.

* * *

“Didn’t they say there were supposed to be jungles here?”

Stepping off the rocket a month earlier, Jacob had felt ready to slap the speaker, a man named Eddie. Jacob had been ready thousands of miles before they had even reached the planet. Being around Eddie was like traveling in a car with someone who reads aloud every road sign. Jacob would have avoided him, but the others aboard spoke incessantly of the golden days before the War, which had devastated almost all of the world. So long to the countries of leadership; it was every person for himself in the aftermath. There wasn’t a can of food to be found on Earth that one person wouldn’t slay another for in the hours and days following the devastation. Those who survived the War and found their way back to civilization had been lucky enough to find enough canned food — usually in or next to the hands of the dead. It was just two weeks after the War that the first rocket started to be built. They had to start from scratch; the War had turned the other spacecraft into fused pieces of metal.

“They said a lot of things back there,” Jacob replied to Eddie, feeling the hot air on his exposed face and hands, and looking around at the rocky baked ground. Still, not bad, he told himself. The terraformers did a pretty good job, considering the challenge.

Website: Free Podcasts from Odyssey Workshop

As of February 1, 2007, the Odyssey Writing Workshop is offering free podcasts on its website, www.odysseyworkshop.org.

Odyssey is an intensive, six-week workshop for writers of fantasy, science fiction, and horror whose work is approaching publication quality. The workshop is held each summer in Manchester, New Hampshire.

The podcasts are excerpts from lectures given by guest writers, editors, and agents at Odyssey. Every month or two, Odyssey will release a new podcast. Each one is ten to fifteen minutes long. The first podcast is an excerpt from a lecture Charles L. Grant gave in the summer of 2000 on characterization. Future podcasts will feature lecture excerpts from Robert J. Sawyer, Melissa Scott, Jeff VanderMeer, Gardner Dozois, and others.