Richard Fein is a Brooklyn resident whose poetry has appeared in many publications on and off the Web. Dark Planet is designed and edited by Lucy A. Snyder. If you spot any errors, or if you have any comments, please contact her at lusnyde@cyberus.ca. All materials copyright 1996-2000 by their respective creators. No stories, articles, poems or images from this webzine may be posted or published without the written consent of their creator(s).

Koinophilia by Richard Fein Beauty is not in the eye of the beholder; it's in the eyes of a hundred beholders. Helen's face did not launch a thousand ships, but the thousand faces of Helen can launch any ship. Beauty is a regression to the mean, the line that cuts a bell curve into symmetrical halves. Koinophilia, the true answer given by the magic mirror when it was asked, "Who is the fairest of them all?" To behold Helen, to dream of Snow White, use your mouse. Drag a thousand noses, eyes, chins, and cheeks across the computer screen, and stack them in virtual layers, then click on the merge icon. There before you is the statistical average, a face of uncommon beauty. Beauty is the algorithm of the mundane. If beauty is truth, then truth is as common as the collective mother smiling down lovingly at her collective infant's face.