Issue 66, Volume 6 -- January 2003 Issue 67, Volume 7 will be online 1st week of February. "And if you believe that- you'll buy this watch..." Saint Robere Guilams You are visitor number Since January 27th 1997 Shortcut Links Editorial Novels Serials Shorts Poetry Features Lettercol Aphelion Links Mare Inebrium Stories Mare Starter Kit Review Query FAQ Aphelion IRC Chat Info & Schedule Aphelion Instant Java Chat Exchange Links With Aphelion Aphelion Submissions Guidelines Vote for this page in the eZines Database Aphelion is proud to be associated with: The Aphelion Daily Comics Page Don't miss a single hillarious issue of Bruno the Bandit, Freefall or The Melonpool Chronicles! Check back every day for laughs from Aphelion's featured cartoonists! Editorial Hello and welcome! Its the start of another calendar year, and the end of another year of Aphelion. Next month starts off Aphelion's 6th year! The world has changed many times since we began this little website. No doubt it will change many more times in the future. I found myself wondering what some of those changes will be, so here's a short list of a dozen things I came up with: The laser beams in CD and DVD machines will change color from red to blue, thus allowing each disc to hold four times as much data as they presently do. I predict that there will be a dual system of both red and blue laser drives to make the changeover easier. After a short time, the blue beam systems will become the new standard. Until someone invents something even better, later. Air travelers will begin shipping their luggage by UPS, DHL, or FedEx to cut back on delays caused by increased security procedures at US airports. Railroad and bus travel will increase as air travel decreases. Also, more people will buy their own airplanes. The US will become less free the longer that terrorism continues. Many people will compare the new America to Natzi Germany. Sadly, almost no one will attempt to keep governmental excesses in check. Congress will vote themselves more and more raises and do even less than they do now to earn their pay. Electronic voting from your home computer will be viewed as undesirable by the government, as it might tend to get more people involved with the way their country is run. Automobiles using more efficent gasoline engines will continue to be offered to the public instead of electric or hybred gas/electric engines so that the oil companies will not lose money. China will attempt to colonize Mars, which may draw the US back into space in a big way. If so, Earth's moon will become important as a source for raw materials to construct ships and lower costs by decreasing the amount of material that will have to be launched from Earth's higher gravity. NASA's Apollo landing sites will become historical monuments. Near Earth asteroids will be used as shuttles out to the main Asteroid Belt where mining will become a big industry. Ozone factories will attempt to patch the holes in Earth's ozone layer. (I have no idea how this would work. Quite possibly this will cause something even worse to happen. As if decreasing polution to fight global warming unexpectedly causes a new ice age.) Personal Computers will continue to evolve. They will become even smaller, faster, and more portable. Eventually, PCs will become small enough to fit into jewelry, wrist watches, or sunglasses. I suggest that PC will come to stand for Portable Computer and a new term will be coined for home computers. Internet access will become a standard feature in homes, no different than electrical wiring, telephone service, TV, or plumbing. The internet will become just another common utility. Political Correctness will stand revealed as the bigotry-on-steroids that it actually is. Home schooling through the internet will replace public schools as the major means of child education. Public schools will evolve into day-care centers whose main function will be teaching social interaction and physical education while babysitting for working parents. New cures for old diseases will be balanced by new diseases evolving. Medical schools will be given more funding. Geriatrics will become more important as more wealthy people begin to live longer. The war on terrorism will be won as much by producing more food as by military action. Autopilots will become standard features in automobiles and roadways will be upgraded to allow computer controlled traffic to move faster, with greater safety. Eventually, all vehicles not equipped for computer control will be barred from major roadways. OK, some of these are way off in the future, but some of them very near-term. I'm no psychic, I'm just looking at the world as it is and making guesses as to what could happen. Its up to everyone to work toward the kind of future that they want to see come about. Your life is your own, make the most of it. We now return you to your regularly scheduled fiction... Thanks for your time, Dan I'd like to thank those of you who have sent e-mails or signed into the Lettercol for your feedback. Keep those messages coming, folks! Without those messages we will never know what we need to improve upon. Hope you like the improvements so far! Aphelion Staff: Dan Hollifield Senior Editor, Publisher Iain Muir Poetry/Filk Editor Robert Wynne WebMaven Cary Semar Short Story Editor McCamy Taylor Assistant Short Story Editor Jeffrey Williams Production Editor/Serials Editor Ralph Benedetto, Jr. Assistant Serials Editor Roger Bennett Editor Emeritus Serialized Stories & Novellettes The Questors Part Three By Frederick Rustam Kevin and Marylou continue combining words to retrieve gold from the Internet, and they learn that the closer words are to each other in text the more valuable they are. Powerhouse By Colin Harvey The phone chimed when I was in the shower. I padded into the lounge, still dripping on the carpet, and took the call with a towel wrapped round my waist. It was Gudrun, looking tearful and as haggard as it was possible for her to. "It's Egils," she said, without preamble. "He's disappeared..."

Tales of the Mare Inebrium

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Instead of the back issues the banner below now takes you to the Archives-where all our past stories are available for you to read.

I've decided to ditch the back issues in favor of the Archives. The Archives are easier to use and can be indexed by author or story title. Hopefully this will ease the task of finding a favorite story. We may start a page of our past cover art, if there is a call for it. Thanks for your readership for without you, nothing we do has any meaning.

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