Puss Reboots: Blog: August 2008: The Dinosaur Train

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Amore by Laura Wolf
Andromeda on the Street of Ducklings by Judi Hendricks
Another Dawn by Sandra Brown
Another Perfect Day by Steven Popkes
Bad Manners by Chris Manby
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Click edited by Arthur Levine
Collected Ghost Stories by M. R. James
A Day in the Life of my Great Brit Book Tour by Adriana Trigiani
Deja Dead by Kathy Reichs
The Dinosaur Train by James L. Cambrias
Doomsday Book by Connie Willis
El Tigre by John H. Manhold
Five by Julianna Baggott
Flip and Flop by Dawn Apperley
The Fourth Watcher by Timothy Hallnan
The Geography of Bliss by Eric Weiner
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Howl's Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones
I Know a Woman by Quinn Dalton
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Lifetime Loser by James Ross
Moving Day by Cindy Chupack
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Persistence of Memory by J. M. Snyder
Poison Victory by Albert E. Cowdrey
The Political Prisoner by Charles Coleman Finlay
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The Regent's Knight by J. M. Snyder
Shades of Darkness, Shades of Grace
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Smoky the Baby Goat by Mary Elting Folsom and Veronica Reed
There's a Cow in the Cabbage Patch by Clare Beaton and Stella Blackstone
The Truth About Nigel by Jennifer Weiner
The Two-Month Itch by Sarah Mlynowski
Voodoo Dolls, C-Cups and Eminem by Melissa Senate
Yoga Babe by Lauren Henderson

Previous month

The Dinosaur Train: 08/06/08

"The Dinosaur Train" by James L. Cambrias in the July 2008 issue of Fantasy & Science Fiction reminds me of "Bread and Circus" by Steven Popkes (FSF February 2008). Here, though, the saguaros aren't playing football; they are performing in a traveling circus in 1980. They are struggling to hold on to the hey day of the traveling act by including a laser light show and disco music. Unfortunately, Brenda, the star of the show, is off her feed and no one knows why.

Cambrias describes 1980 better than many nostalgic stories do. He sets the scene with generic brand cola, disco and Ronald Regan. There's also that lingering feeling that the golden age of American culture was over.

Then there is Brenda the brachiosaurus Imagine if Winsor McCay's Gertie had been real and had gotten that chance to tour the United States and sixty years later, he and she were still touring.