The Rhinoceros Times is proud to publish, for the first time anywhere, the opening of Orson Scott Card’s newest novel, Crystal City, which will be published in November 2003. It’s 1825, in a version of America’s past in which folk magic really works and instead of one nation, there are three – puritan New England in the north, the slave-holding Crown Colonies in the south, and the half-slave, half-free United States between them. This story takes place in Nueva Barcelona, or “Barcy” – a city once called New Orleans back when the French owned it. To Barcy comes Alvin Smith,...