. . .bring May flowers, in the form of this review from Tangent Short Fiction Review of my story, "Ten With a Flag," in Interzone #203. After the dark clouds of April, it's nice to start off the next month like this:

Given to expecting mothers, the 99% accurate CDP test returns a ranking to ten and a binary flag. The ranking determines the child’s potential value to society. The flag indicates whether or not the parents should be given the option to abort the pregnancy due to potential problems. As you might expect by the title, the dilemma for the parents in “Ten with a Flag” by Joseph Paul Haines is what to do if you discover there are likely to be problems with a child who could be the next Da Vinci, Newton, Leibniz, or Pasteur when living in a Huxley-esque regime.

“Ten with a Flag” was written with a sparseness that well befits the dystopian nature of the story. Attention is given to the characters and their dilemma rather than the incidental details of their surroundings, and I never found myself wishing it were otherwise. The portrait of the parents-to-be felt real and satisfying to me, though as a chronic bachelor I admit a happy lack of experience in matters pertaining to impending parenthood. The ending doesn’t hit quite as hard as I would like it to, but it still worked well. All in all, it’s an excellent story, and one that adds the name of Joseph Paul Haines to the rapidly growing list of authors I’ll be keeping an eye out for in the future.

Yeah, that'll keep me happy for a bit.

Joseph Haines, signing off from