Lostronaut

By Jonathan Lethem

This is a great short story told as a series of e-mails (letters?) from a female astronaut to her boyfriend (husband?). She is on a space station that has been blockaded from the planet by a few thousand Chinese mines, and she relates matter-of-factly how her and her colleagues are getting by trapped so far from home.

The story weaves together the technical challenges they face with her desire to not be forgotten or to 'dissolve' in his memory.

This issue also has a great article on the 'Joshua Generation', or the post-Civil Rights generation, and their leader, Barack Obama.

I like the cover too.....