Analog Science Fiction and Fact March/April 2019 (Vol 139, Nos. 3\u00264) by Trevor Quachri

Analog Science Fiction and Fact March/April 2019 (Vol 139, Nos. 3\u00264) Reviews

• 
  Gary

  Sarina Dorie's novelette "A Mate Not a Meal" made my list of the best short SFF of March 2019:
  https://1000yearplan.com/2019/03/31/t...
• 
  John Loyd

  10 • Beneath a Red Sun • 14 pages by James C. Glass
  OK/Good. A survey ship on a forty year mission found three uninteresting planetary systems. On the fourth try they send landing parties. The planet is not tidally locked, there is some unfrozen surface and a one percent oxygen content in the air. John, Carol and Mike find some caves with oxygen content several times higher than the ambient and other interesting phenomena.
  
  32 • Hop and Hop with Gleepglop-Geep! a Bedtime Reader • 8 pages by Tim McDaniel
  Fair/OK. A race of creatures fight for dominance starting at an early age. Siblings who aren’t followers fight amongst themselves to the death. The winner doing the same with the parent. After the first page I truncated their names in my head to keep from stumbling along.
  
  40 • Negotiating Traffic • 8 pages by Brad Preslar
  Good/VG. Jeff is in the middle of a meeting when a driverless car swerves to miss him and instead kills a homeless person. He is racked with guilt, especially when he finds out his billion dollar company has raised his value in the accident avoidance algorithms.
  
  48 • The God of All Mountains • 8 pages by Jo Miles
  OK+. Claudia has no climbing challenges left on Earth, so it’s on to Olympus Mons. She just happens to get there at the same time as Derek. He’s got all the sponsorship money he can handle. He’s got a team of Sherpas and robots to go with him. Claudia is on a shoestring budget and has to go it alone. I was worried about this being another mountain climbing story full of tedious descriptions, but that was kept to a minimum and it didn’t slog down to a crawl.
  
  56 • Parenting License • 7 pages by Leah Cypess
  OK. Melanie gets pregnant before she has finished parenting courses. Her friend Linda thinks they’re foolishness anyway, but her husband is a staunch believer in the program.
  
  66 • Fine-Tuning • 3 pages by Bond Elam
  Good. Ray thinks Ava is too imprudent, but the didn’t give him the code word to fine tune her programming. There’s a twist which you may see coming.
  
  69 • Running the Gullet • 5 pages by Vajra Chandrasekera
  Poor. An elder describes a game to four children. I don't know the point of the game and the rules seem very convoluted. The story has several turn offs for me. Existentialism, religion and some unimaginable time span. At first I think I'm thinking human creatures, but seven million years, player one gets buried alive and dies. At the end there was a direct allusion to identity theft, but I was still confused.
  
  74 • Second Quarter and Counting • 8 pages by James Van Pelt
  Good. Todd has always been after any way to keep old age at bay. After this race he’s going to check himself in for Spinback treatment. Grace met Todd through swimming, and they’ve stayed in touch through the years. Now they arrange to go to the same swim meets.
  
  82 • Final Say • 9 pages by Eric Del Carlo
  Good+. Ry works as a revitalization tech. It's a business that allows a terminal individual to have five or six minutes of coherent speech before dying. Whether they have dementia, are comatose, etc. Ry meets a girl. They hit it off, but he doesn't want unload his history. His dad was a musician that was never around even when he was.
  
  92 • Dangerous Company • 11 pages by C. Stuart Hardwick
  OK/Good. A lunar reenactment excursion goes bad when the Etienne hijacks the controls and [crash] lands the craft. Christina is left with a damaged ship pointed in the wrong direction, no radio and not enough supplies to wait for help. Great job maintaining a level of tension, but I would have liked the story more if I could've visualized it better. Using the rovers to try to lift the ship. Into what position? I’m picturing an egg with legs, but with one of the legs broken off it’s never going to balance on its end. Not exactly but that’s the gist. Multiply that by every improvisation.
  
  103 • Tea Time with Aliens • 9 pages by Jack McDevitt
  Good/vg. Margo and Clyde have their maintenance mission changed to an investigative one. A presumed asteroid made a course change, it has to be a ship of some sort.
  
  112 • The End of Lunar Hens • 4 pages by M. K. Hutchins
  Good/OK. Researchers are trying to create a self sufficient habitat on the moon. First the chickens go crazy, the replacement rabbits don't survive and then the crop yields start getting worse. Hailey is trying to figure all this out before funding is cut off.
  
  116 • The Invitation • 2 pages by Bud Sparhawk
  OK+. A strange customer comes into Sam’s with an invitation. Fred tells him the professors usually come to the bar on Wednesday, never on Tuesday. Good twist.
  
  118 • Rising Stars • 6 pages by Elisabeth R. Adams
  Good/Very Good. Leah barges in on Dee and asks her to put her dissertation defense on hold to see this incredible cave in South Africa. Dee accepts, goes into the cave, alone into the last chamber where only her small body will fit and discovers some more secrets.
  
  124 • The New Martian Way • 11 pages by Brendan DuBois
  Good/VG. One of the three geologists at Outpost 2 is dead. Luke is sent in a rover to find out what happened. Was it just a suit malfunction? A love triangle gone bad?
  
  135 • Slow Dance • 10 pages by Jay Werkheiser
  OK/Good. Three couples are the crew of a ship to the Kuiper belt. The bodily functions and aging of the six have been slowed to one-twentieth normal. There has been a death on board. Anya was murdered. The investigator is on the moon and has to rely on statements and recorded conversations due to the time lag.
  
  146 • The Walk to Distant Suns • 12 pages by Matthew Kressel, Mercurio D. Rivera
  OK/Good. Shandi is an engineer on the wormhole that sends people from Earth to a beautiful new world. In just three more months Shandi will have saved enough to buy passage for her family and herself. Except the company raised their prices again. I can't help thinking about Lies, Inc. because damage to the wormhole means only data can come back.
  
  158 • Better • 20 pages by Tom Greene
  Good. Nick is a returning vet, having fought against the Pancakes. He has been treated for a slow acting poison, but probably only has a couple days left. He’s put to work supervising a group of Morphos. A race that wasn’t as lucky as Earth, one that had their world destroyed.
  
  178 • A Mate Not a Meal • 20 pages by Sarina Dorie
  Excellent. Malatina and her sister are molting when a male sings to their mother. It is a trickster. It ends up eating her mother and sister and damaging four of her limbs. She plays a melancholy song and hears one from outside. The player of that song comes to her. She is afraid but also longs to mate. Sofia learns to communicate with Malatina. Amazing job of presenting an alien so that it remains understandable to us.
• 
  D Dyer

  3.5 stars
  Another solid entry in the long-standing magazine. This one features A collection of fiction, none of which is particularly bad but only a few of the stories are really stellar, and the usual collection of reviews, reader write-ends, and nonfiction pieces, all of which are OK and none of which qualify, for me, as absolute must-reads.
  Some of this issues stand-out stories are “a mate not a meal” deals with an arachnid’s interaction with a member of what she at first believes to be a representative of the opposite sex of her own species and the misunderstandings and friendships that can come from such an interaction, “The God of all mountains” the story of a Chilean woman’s attempt to be the first to summit the tallest mountain on Mars and to reconnect with her love of climbing, and “parenting license” which address is a woman’s ambivalence about the need to gain societal approval to become a mother. All of these stories feature a distinctive voice and clear, unique characters. They make the issue one worth examining.
  But while none of the stories in this issue are really bad not all are as successful as the ones mentioned above. “The new Martian way“ is an interesting-enough murder mystery set on Mars, but doesn’t offer anything new or striking. I don’t think I’ll remember much about the story past writing this review. “Fine-tuning“ plays with the idea of human and robot pairings on a mining site but the twist is one I saw coming long before it was actually revealed. Again, not a bad way to spend a few minutes but not a story that left any sort of distinct impression or brought up any new ideas.
• 
  John Oswalt

  This is a much better than average issue. I liked all the novelettes, and most of the short stories.
• 
  Karl

  Final Say, Eric Del Carlo (5 stars). Haunting little meditation on the end of life.
  Slow Dance, Jay Werkheiser (5 stars). This is a nicely complex science fiction mystery.
  “A Mate Not A Meal,” Sarina Dorie (5 stars). The author does a nice job of getting into the thoughts and perceptions of a very alien creature.
  
  “Beneath A Red Sun,” James C. Glass (4½ stars)
  “Hop And Hop With Gleepglop-Geep! A Bedtime Reader,” Tim Mcdaniel (2½ stars)
  “Negotiating Traffic,” Brad Preslar (2½/3 stars)
  “The God Of All Mountains,” Jo Miles (3 stars)
  “Parenting License,” Leah Cypess (2½/3 stars)
  “Fine-Tuning,” Bond Elam (2½ stars)
  “Running The Gullet,” Vajra Chandrasekera (2 stars)
  “Second Quarter And Counting,” James Van Pelt (3 stars)
  “Dangerous Company,” C. Stuart Hardwick (3½/4 stars)
  “Tea Time With Aliens,” Jack Mcdevitt (3½ stars)
  “The End Of Lunar Hens,” M.K. Hutchins (4 stars)
  “The Invitation,” Bud Sparhawk (3½ stars)
  “Rising Stars,” Elisabeth R. Adams (4 stars)
  “The Walk To Distant Suns,” Matthew Kressel & Mercurio D. Rivera (4 stars)
  “The New Martian Way,” Brendan Dubois (4 stars)
  “Better,” Tom Greene (4 stars)
• 
  Milda Jensen

  3,5
  
  "A mate, not a meal" - wow.