mataglap -- an Indonesian word meaning "dark eye" or, probably, "dilated eye." It is an indication that someone is about to go berserk and start killing people at random. Used in Walter Jon Williams' novel Aristoi as the name of a berserk form of nanotechnology that devoured the planet.

You can e-mail Mataglap SF at mataglap@yahoo.com

 
(Asimovs, October-November 2009)


A mildly provocative title reveals a more pedestrian story from the planet Barsoom, and I'm not enough of an ERB fan to know whether it's supposed to be that Barsoom.  It doesn't really matter, as the races and names introduced here borrow from American Indians, Scotland and the Middle East, so Garcia seems to just be having a little fun with the setting.  SinBad happens upon a girl named Pretty Bottom, the two of them being outcast from separate tribes for different reasons, and they team up to fight off some nasty predators and try to stay alive.  Although this isn't Garcia's fault, you can't help thinking of the setting of the Avatar movie while reading this story, but I can't say that it makes a difference one way or the other.

Along come a couple in a spaceship, the Islays, who are rich enough to have hired a guide to lead them on a big game hunt through this primitive landscape.  Naturally they are confident in their abilities and so you know they're going to have problems.  The woman gets captured and Laird Islay ends up enlisting the natives to help him find his wife.  Simba the guide turns out to have his own agenda, but SinBad is able to work everything out just before Pretty Bottom's husband appears to claim his wife.  Garcia sets up some interesting interplay between the different sets of couples and the different cultures, but the wife stealing part (not wife swapping, I keep reminding myself) seems incidental except as plot device, and after it's all over you wonder what was the point he was trying to make.  A nice enough story, but to my mind it could have been either a little more epic or a little more thoughtful.
posted by Mark at 1:30 PM