Ted Reynolds. View through the Window. (Asimovs August 2013)

Reynolds is welcomed back to Asimovs after a gap of some 31 years. I had to admit a slight frisson of apprehension when I read this in the story introduction, as that often does not augur well. And, indeed, the story reads like one written some 50 years ago. The protagonist had good reason to swear, having had three of her four limbs squished in an accident in space, but her oaths – ‘..the dratted spin..’ and ‘..the blessed window..’ and ‘..the damned arm..’ do jar as being quite outdated.

The story itself has a touch of Hitchcock’s ‘Rear Window’, but whereas that conceit worked with a wheelchair bound man in a house, an astronaut in space would have any number of ways to communicate with others. There’s a twist in the tale, but the last sentence left me nonplussed as the perspective suddenly swings entirely round with a character who has just appeared expresses her feelings about how the protagonist, whom she has just met, will cope with her crisis, which just comes across as a non-sequiter.