Moon Baby
                                My most recent short story, "Moon Baby," appeared in
                                the Summer 2000 issue of Artemis Magazine.
                                Here's what Tangent Online reviewer Steven H. Silver
                                had to say about it (read the complete review here):
                                "Moon Baby," by Edward Willett is the story of
                                Scott Morgan, the first child born on the moon,
                                who has been assigned the task of escorting an
                                earth tourist around the moon. Scott suffers from
       Cover art by
                                typical teenage anxiety and rebelliousness,
      Randy Asplund
                                exasperated by his disdain for Earthers. Willett's
                                story bounces back and forth over a period of a
                                few days, which is disconcerting at first, but the
                                reader rapidly gets used to the time disjuncture. A
                                well-written story, although Scott's change at the
                                end seems a little too contrived.

                          Copyright 2000 by Edward Willett

The moonquake wasn't much, as such things went; back in Apollo City it wasn't felt at
all, though of course it registered clearly on the hordes of seismographs that recorded
every twitch of the moon's thick, cold crust. But here, near the epicentre, it was enough:
enough to send Scott Morgan reeling across the rock-strewn plain like a drunk;
enough to make Pamela Ash gasp and then say a most un-ladylike word as she
staggered and fell on her moonsuited rear; enough to raise a thin miasma of dust that
hung above the surface like mist over an Earthside swamp; and enough to topple a
half-dozen medium-to-large chunks of basalt that had probably stood balanced on the
crater's rim since before there was life on Earth. While Scott watched in horror, they
tumbled down the towering crater wall in dust-shrouded slow motion and slammed
soundlessly into the transporter, tipping it almost gently onto its side, where it lay like a
dying cockroach, half-buried in rubble.
Then it was over. "Scott, what's going on?" Pamela cried.
"Shut up," he said, eyes on the transporter. "Tour One, Scott here. Do you read?" He
paused. Pamela bounded toward him with giant steps, and he snapped, "Pamela, you
idiot, you want to hole your suit?"

She pulled up, slipped, and fell on her rear again. He turned back toward the
transporter. "Jack? Al?" Nothing.
"What's wrong?" Pamela picked herself up, trying to brush the dust off her suit, but it
clung as if glued there. Her voice wavered. "Why don't they answer?"

Scott stared at her. Dust was still slowly settling on the overturned transporter, and she
asked what was wrong? "Earthers!" he muttered.
                                             #

"Earthers!" Scott growled in disgust as he watched the twenty-four tourists disembark
from the Lunar Shuttle. They squealed and bounced up and down in the one-sixth
gravity as though the moon had been put there just so they wouldn't have to buy a
trampoline. You'd think after three days in zero-G and two days in slow-spinning
Gorbachev Station, the novelty of low gravity would have worn off, Scott thought sourly.
And most of them were old enough to be his parents. Or his grandparents.