In the Eyes of Jack Saul, by Richard Bowes

[F&SF]

★★★☆☆

(Dorian Gray Pastiche) In the world of Oscar Wilde’s novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, a young male prostitute makes his own plans to take Dorian down. (3,609 words; Time: 12m)

Dirty Old Town, by Richard Bowes

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(Modern Fantasy) The narrator describes his childhood in 1950s Boston, the boys who bullied him, and the magic he used to defend himself. (8,636 words; Time: 28m)

Rating: ★★★☆☆ Average

Rascal Saturday, by Richard Bowes

The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, September/October 2015; 9,730 words
Rating: 3, Good, ordinary, story

A late-21st-Century young woman lives in a New York that's dying from climate change, and she wants to escape to a lightly-populated alternate reality that her family can access--but she's not on good terms with her family.

Mini-Review (click to view--possible spoilers)

F&SF reports that the author has set other tales in the same universe, and we definitely get the feeling from reading "Rascal Saturday" that there is a lot we don't know about. A lot of high-tech ideas get tossed in here--such as storing a mind in a box--but not really used for much in the story. It also suffers a bit from the fact that it takes a long time before we know what Janina is actually trying to accomplish.