TANGENT reviews Lou Antonelli & Edward Morris' "Stairway To Heaven."

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“Stairway to Heaven” by Lou Antonelli and Edward Morris

Our narrator Tom Di Salvo, a small town newspaper editor who lives in East Texas, has a problem: Laurie McKenzie, daughter of the deceased owner of his house, keeps popping up in odd places. Like on his doorstep. Or in his office, and she comes bearing a futuristic weapon, determined to take him somewhere in space where she’s been staying for the past fifty-some years, and never ageing a bit. Why? Because her drunken mother died in a car crash—after first killing Di Salvo’s wife.

Laurie and her buddies have been chosen from the hippie generation by the Telians, the “People” who are keeping an eye of Earth. But Laurie has something entirely different to prove to Di Salvo, that time travel works and that sometimes one is privileged enough, or lucky enough, to go back and make things right.

This SF/time-travel story begins with a bewildering question—why is she doing this, and why now?—and ends quite beautifully with a scene that pulls it all together. It’s an example of a story told with heart, and, along with its prose, qualities that make all the difference. The authors have dedicated it to Ted Sturgeon and Trent Zelazny, and fittingly so.