Alan, our narrator, is very keen to help a woman who has arrived on Earth as a tourist, despite the fact that she appears quite capable of taking care of herself (she’s had her mind copied into a combat android for the trip); he’s keen because the tourist trade is all that Earth has left. In a few pages, Dedman sketches in the elaborate details of a future Earth controlled by aliens. But the resolution depends almost entirely on those details, and I find there isn’t time to digest them in order to then feel the emotional impact of the ending.

Rating: **½

This is one of a series of posts on the anthology Not the Only Planet.