Analog Science Fiction and Fact September/October 2017 by Trevor Quachri

Analog Science Fiction and Fact September/October 2017 Reviews

• 
  Timo Pietilä

  A pretty good issue; most of the stories were at least pretty good, a few were very good.
  
  My Fifth and Most Exotic Voyage • novelette by Edward M. Lerner
  Gulliver describes his latest travel - to the future. Future scientists wanted to capture a person from the past, and they got the Gulliver, who claims he himself wrote the famous book about his travels. The scientists don't believe him, as he clearly isn't Jonathan Swift. And he claims that his travels are true, not fiction. Did they capture a madman? A very good story, once you get past the oldish writing style. There was one very stupid scientific mistake, though. The carbon dating tells the age of an object - not the year it comes from. There is a difference, especially if your dealing with time travel. An object brought from the past should seem new, if it were tested by C14 dating. It is almost a spoiler for me to say that very a similar plot idea was used earlier by Larry Niven. ****-
  I Know My Own & My Own Know Me • novelette by Tracy Canfield
  The story is told as chat logs. An expedition tries to find out why a colony of humans has reverted to almost mindless animals, whose brains don't even accept brain implants. Someone has used an implant for a cat, who can now take part in the discussions in broken language. And it has eaten all of the lab rats. A pretty nice story, but perhaps a tad too long for the idea. ***+
  Ghostmail • short story by Eric Del Carlo
  A man is connected to his wife, who is fighting in a war, through some sort of direct subspace link. Then his wife is killed in action. To his surprise, he continues receiving messages. Is he mad? A pretty good and moving story. ****-
  The First Trebuchet on Mars • short story by Marie Vibbert
  A short story about what the title says. It turns out that there is a use for such a thing in Mars. A short and amusing story. ***
  Climbing Olympus • short story by Simon Kewin
  Another story about Mars. A man whose father was an avid mountain climber also used to climb mountains, but they never did it together, as they were never at the same skill level. Now he is taking part on a Mars expedition, and tries to climb Mount Olympus, the highest mountain in the solar system. A pretty good story, which explores a failed father-son relationship. ***+
  A Tinker's Damnation • short story by Jerry Oltion
  The nano-machine which was supposed to create all of the required high-tech items on a colony on another planet is broken beyond repair. It was supposed to be able to create almost anything, with the correct instructions. But, as it isn't working, the colony must use old-fashioned methods to survive. An apprentice for the mechanic of the colony has tinkered with it, but it seems to be beyond repair. A good story, but with such strong Luddite overtones that I wonder why such people would have moved to another planet. ***½
  The Old Man • novelette by Rich Larson
  A criminal is thawed out from cryostorage. He is made an offer: if he hunts down an even worse criminal, he will get a pardon. He knows the criminal intimately and hates him; the criminal in question is his father. Not bad story, first seemed like a retreated old movie, but ended up being something really different. ***+
  Orphans • novelette by Craig DeLancey
  A mission to Betelgeuse 2 is approaching a planet. It appears to bear a lot of life, but there are no signs of intelligence. They discover subterranean lines, which appear to be artificial, but there are no other signs of civilization. Several probes they sent to the planet failed soon after landing for unknown reasons. And then there is an accident. Another pretty good story, where the "enemy" is unexpected, but the crew is very clueless and makes extremely stupid risks. ***+
  The Absence • short story by Robert R. Chase
  A smart man has succeeded in almost everything. Now he is building a space elevator. It turns out that, as a student, he took part in an experiment which was designed to boost brain activity. It seemed to be a failure, but now some participants have reported some strange and worrisome effects. A bit of a fractured story. I didn't really get the connection between the drugs and impending catastrophe. ***-
  Arp! Arp! • short story by Christina De La Rocha
  A marine biologist examines why a sea farm, which is supposed to produce high-quality algae extract that can be fed to animals, used as food, or even as fertilizer, is failing. She finds what is going on, by a very big coincidence. And the guilty ones apparently did what they did mainly because they are evil. ***
  The Mathematician • short story by Tom Jolly
  Life among aliens who are essentially immortal, but are able to combine their bodies, but usually lose their memories and knowledge in the process. One manages to circumvent that partially. A too-short story, which was fairly hard to get, as a lot of the pretty unusual life cycles were crammed into too few pages. **+
  The Sword of Damocles • novelette by Norman Spinrad
  The Galactic Eye is a giant telescope which is built in space. It is tended by people who have been modified to live in free fall. The main purpose of the telescope is to find alien civilizations. And it finds several of them, but all seem to be restricted to their own solar systems. There are no interstellar empires. Why? There isn't a lot of story here. The novelette is mainly fairly philosophical discussions of the main theme, but it was good, nevertheless. ****-
  Heaven's Covenant • novella by Bud Sparhawk
  A planet has been colonized by humans possibly centuries ago. They ready to use the old colony ship to send a new colony on another star. The government is apparently ruled by religious fanatics, who are pushing for the extermination of a "lesser" race who is apparently used for menial tasks who are called Folk. Even the moderate factions have not the slightest doubt of their inferiority. A woman whose family has died is tending a large farm. She takes good care of her Folk, but she meets a man with whom she falls in love. She is also asked to take part in the new expedition. At the same time, the more strict factions are pushing for the genocide of the Folk. A well-written story, but a bit too long, and the racist and narcissistic husband was very grating. There were some hints that the normal humans were Folk, and the protagonists were members of a “better” race, but that was not stated explicitly. ****-
  Abductive Reasoning • short story by Christopher L. Bennett
  An advanced alien must land on Earth to make repairs to her ship. She encounters a UFO fanatic conspiracy theorist whose theories about aliens make her think that humans must be lunatics. A fun little story. ***½
  Coyote Moon • short story by James Van Pelt
  A poor couple, who works at several jobs at the same time and still can't make the ends to meet, sells everything to get a place on a clandestine flight to the Moon. They hope that, since they will be some of the first people there, they will be in a better position. Well, the exploited usually will be exploited. The story could be slightly longer. The emotional attachment to the characters isn't powerful enough. ***
  Invaders • short story by Stanley Schmidt
  A man goes to a remote hotel to watch a total eclipse of the Sun. Some of the other inhabitants of the hotel seem slightly strange. It turns out that a total eclipse is really rare, and some of the watchers come far away. A nice humorous story. ***½
• 
  John Loyd

  8 • My Fifth and Most Exotic Voyage • 20 pages by Edward M. Lerner
  Excellent. A time travel observation startles Lem and his horse. As he chases after his horse he trips and hits is head on a rock. The observers take him back to Chicago of 2022 and learn that he [thinks he] is Lemuel Gulliver, the fictional character created by Jonathan Swift. They think between the concussion and his having just read the book is the cause. Within two sentences I could tell this was a continuation of Gulliver's Travels. I read that forty years ago, but the writing style was spot on. Great story, characters, style, time travel paradoxes, all of it.
  
  36 • I Know My Own & My Own Know Me • 16 pages by Tracy Canfield
  Excellent. Five researchers are trying to figure out why a colony of humans became feral. Lost the ability to speak and intelligence. One of them uplifts the cat including language module and it is hooked into the communications system. Really funny, especially the cat! As the group works on the problem of the feral humans.
  
  52 • Ghostmail • 8 pages by Eric Del Carlo
  VG/Excellent. Kushal loses his wife in the war. Before Svetlana was KIA aboard the Born, they were tangled. He is still receiving mail from this connection with his dead wife. Others have called this ghost mail. Kushal thinks these are messages from a parallel dimension where she didn't die.
  
  60 • The First Trebuchet on Mars • 4 pages by Marie Vibbert
  Good+. A medieval enthusiast builds a trebuchet. She gives a demo. The grumpy neighbor thinks it's dangerous, and doesn't like it. Stops by her habitat the next day to reinforce his opinion.
  
  64 • Climbing Olympus • 5 pages by Simon Kewin
  OK. Florian and his father are climbing Olympus Mons. Flashbacks of son and father. The father always tackling another mountain, the son happy to see him when he made his infrequent return.
  
  70 • Emergency Protocol • 2 pages by Lettie Prell
  OK+. A description of the title. A bit humorous and maybe a bit disturbing.
  
  72 • A Tinker's Damnation • 9 pages by Jerry Oltion
  Very Good. Henry works in the colony's repair shop with Neil, one of the founders. The colony is slowly losing its technology as their nanofab stopped working years ago. Instead of everything being easily produced the colony has had to start working as pioneers.
  
  82 • The Old Man • 13 pages by Rich Larson
  OK. A dangerous criminal escapes during transfer. They thaw out his son to bring him in, dead or alive. During the chase into the bayou we get flashbacks.
  
  96 • Orphans • 8 pages by Craig DeLancey
  Good+. A human crewed mission has been sent to Betelgeuse 2 to followup on the probes that have failed well before they should have.
  
  108 • The Absence • 8 pages by Robert R. Chase
  OK+. Hollowell in the lead scientist on the Highway to the Stars project. He had been part of an LSD trial in college and now has an inner demon that helps him make the technology work.
  
  116 • Arp! Arp! • 6 pages by Christina De La Rocha
  Good. A marine biologist visits a phytoplankton facility to determine why tanks are filled with dead organisms. This being the third time they've died off.
  
  128 • The Mathematician • 4 pages by Tom Jolly
  OK. The Keltki are hive organisms composed of many beetle-bodies. They often mix. Cilketat is feeling great mathematical thoughts and wants to avoid mixing, really wanting to hone its math skills by selecting out some of the bodies that are not helping.
  
  132 • Coyote Moon • 6 pages by James Van Pelt
  Good. Emigration to the moon is halted because of the selection process. A coyote gets a shipload of illegals to the moon. When they get there their status is illegal, but they can't really send them back to Earth.
  
  138 • Abductive Reasoning • 8 pages by Christopher L. Bennett
  Very Good. A damaged alien ship makes a forced landing on Earth. The alien encounters an ardent ET conspiracy believer. Very funny.
  
  146 • Invaders • 9 pages by Stanley Schmidt
  Good/OK. Abe takes a visit to rural Tennessee to watch the total solar eclipse. He starts by telling us about the traffic, he listens to the news on the radio and eventually finds the out of the way place that he booked. He is pleasantly surprised by the accommodations. The next morning he meets the other guests and they all watch the eclipse together.
  
  155 • The Sword of Damocles • 15 pages by Norman Spinrad
  OK+. Humanity has expanded throughout the solar system and has created the Order of the Eye. The order are genetically modified to live in microgravity. Their mission is to discover intelligences around other stars. From those observations they may be able to determine the direction we are taking. They've found a hundred systems now, and each discovery means less. Carla Destry visits Marco 31 to change the mission, past discovery, to understanding the ones they've already found.
  
  170 • Heaven's Covenant • 25 pages by Bud Sparhawk
  Excellent. Humanity is pushing to the stars. The Hand are preparing the ship that brought their ancestors to Heaven to take a colony to Meridian. Larisha has run her family's holdings since the death of her parents and brother in an accident when she was thirteen. The Folk were a big help. To her surprise she has been selected to be on the Covenant. After marrying Tam she gets a major role. She loves Tam, but his family are Separatists. While visiting she learns of a plan to eradicate mongrels. This is worrying. She wants to protect the Folk, and bring her Folk to Meridian. A lot of tension. A big decision for Larisha, she wants to go to shape a new world, but she wants to stay and make sure Bushold thrives. Once the ship leaves there will never be any contact between them again.
  
• 
  Benn Allen

  An excellent issue all around. Not a bad or terrible story in the lot. Many of the tales are laced with humor, such as Edward M. Lerner's "My Fifth and Most Exotic Voyage" (Lemuel Gulliver is snatched from the past and brought to the future, but he's a fictional character, right?) and Charles L. Bennett's "Abductive Reasoning" (a UFO conspiracy theorist encounters a real extraterrestrial).
  
  Stanley Schmidt's "Invaders" deserves special mention. A story about watching a solar eclipse, its timing is a little off (might have been better to publish it in the previous issue - before the recent solar eclipse happened), but how it closely paralleled much of the recent eclipse event (people journeying to get to a vantage spot to watch it, the weather condition [in my area of the country anyway. Lots of clouds as in the short story]) makes it an uncanny reading experience.
  
  The only real disappointments in this issue are Lettie Prell's "Emergency Protocol", which while interesting to read is not in the least bit a story, and Christina De La Rocha's "Arp! Arp!" which had bit of a silly, unlikely solution. It's not that these two entries were bad, they just weren't as strong as the others this go round.
  
  But like I said, this is a good strong issue. With the two exceptions I named - and even those weren't terrible, these are all damned good science fiction stories. No, they're all great works of fiction. Kudos to all the writers this time around!
• 
  Wilson Goodson

  Too many attempts at lame predictable humor. Of the Five Novelettes only two are of the quality I expect from Analog. The Sword of Damocles by Norman Spinrad is an interesting variation on The currently popular Dark Forest image of the universe a place full of predators mixed with speculation about the future of human genetic engineering. I Know My Own & My Own Know Me by Tracy Canfield is a near perfectly structured story indirectly feeding us all the information we need to understand the story with no trace of info-dump.
  Of the eleven short stories I really enjoyed one The Absence by Robert R. Chase. As a Christian I found the final reward of the Satanist quite believable.
• 
  Seth Kennedy

  Standouts were "Ghostmail" by Eric Del Carlo, "Coyote Moon" by James Van Pelt, "I My Own & My Own Know Me" by Tracey Canfield, "The Old Man" by Rick Larson and "The Sword of Damocles" by Norman Spinrad.
• 
  Ryan

  Some really good stories here - Lerner’s, Oltion’s, ‘Trebuchet on Mars’ - but the last two in the issue, a novellette and the only novella (by Spinrad and Sparhawk respectively) are so full of typos and stilted prose I honestly wondered if I was reading the rough drafts.
• 
  Boku

  This was going to be a four star but Bud Sparhawk's story alone knocked off two stars. I can't remember the last time a piece of science fiction has turned my stomach so violently.