|
Bookshelf:Recently finished:
 Next up:
|
Analog 2001I've been reading Analog Science Fiction and Fact for a little over a year now, and thought I'd review the 2001 issues of that magazine. I'm going to use the same format I used last April: Comment on what I thought was the best single story in each issue (and maybe make one or two other notes on the issue). Indeed, some of the comments below are directly taken from my April entry. So read on...
 January: The featured novella was also the best story in the issue: "Relic of Chaos" by G. David Nordley. Hartigan O'Reilly is chief security officer of the vicinity of Saturn, and he's called in to investigate the theft of a valuable relic from Earth which has supposedly been brought into his region. The result is a near-future noir detective story which hits O'Reilly close to home and includes some clever twists and turns, such as a fight for control of the local computer net. Its "gosh wow" factor is relatively low, but it's an engaging yarn. February: "Or Die Trying" (short story), by Grey Rollins, is another detective yarn, this time with a different riff on the "reincarnated detective investigating his own death" idea I'd first been exposed to in John Varley's "The Phantom of Kansas" (in his collection The Persistence of Vision). This time the hero/victim is reincarnated as a computer program, and the resolution takes a very different tack from "Kansas". March: "Creative Destruction" (novelette), by Edward M. Lerner, is yet another SF mystery, but this time with higher ideas content. The conceptual hook is that humanity has contacted other alien races, but only through lightspeed transmission; we can't actually visit them, but we can exchange information. Such exchanges can make trillions of dollars for corporations, but contact is handled only through global governments, which ban certain exchanges. Xenotechnomist Justin Matthews discovered that his best friend Alicia Briggs has been killed, and perhaps not by accident. His investigation of her death leads to an interesting plot to circumvent certain interstellar regulations that have been imposed. As a bonus, the vision of this near-future world is pretty well realized in details of the technology which is an everyday part of Matthews' life. April: Rob Chilson's "Talking Monkeys" (novelette) is a fascinating story involving the colonization of a planet with a very high fraction of diamonds in its crust. Imagine the damage that dust could do if it were composed of diamonds rather than silicon, and were blown around by the wind. The lead characters all have "pocket brains" to help them in their thinking and memory, the nature of life on the planet is of a curious sort, and the lead character must deal with both these scientific issues and the introduction of a disruptive individual into the nascent colony. Unfortunately the story has trouble figuring out how to integrate these issues, and leaves several of them frustratingly unresolved. Moreover, it's left unclear whether the characters in the story are humans or are actually "talking monkeys". I never did figure it out. An enjoyable read, but needed more to be satisfying. May: Edward M. Lerner returns this month with "Hostile Takeover" (novelette), a sort-of sequel to March's "Creative Destruction" (and apparently an earlier chapter in this "InterstellarNet" universe appeared in the November, 2000 issue). This story involves humanity adopting a computer technology which obsoletes printed circuitry, but which humanity doesn't fully understand. Sound like a bad idea? Soon enough, the in-system AI representing the aliens who developed the technology threatens Earth with shutting it all down if they don't pay exorbitant fees to keep using it. It's a clever exercise in negotiation and truth verification. I think I'll have to hunt down some more of Lerner's work. The feature piece in the May issue, by the way, is the first installment of Ben Bova's new novel, The Precipice. It's far from a solid piece of work: It features frequent comments - by both the characters and the narrator - on the physical attributes and attractiveness of the female characters, and appears to be both yet another "Humanity pushes the Earth's environment too far and things break down" story and yet another "How can we mine the asteroid belt?" story. Arguably the weakest piece of the whole year, I couldn't bring myself to read the second installment in June and skipped the rest. June: I thought this was perhaps the weakest issue of the year, as none of the stories truly stood up and grabbed me. I guess I'd pick Pauline Ashwell's novelette "Elsewhere" as my favorite of the five stories herein; it's the latest in her series about a base outside our time and space which is plucking useful people who are due to perish from their place in history to help terraform and colonize an alien world. This particular story focuses on a marine biologist in what I presume is China who acclimatizes to working in Elsewhere. However, though the story is okay, Ashwell's previous entry in the series, "Out of the Fire" (March, 2001) was a better story. July/August: A double-sized issue, "Happy Deathday" (short story) by Robert Scherrer stood out among the mostly lighter selections herein. In the early 21st century, an alien ship has arrived and has been orbiting Earth for several years, not meaningfully contacting humanity except to broadcast the death dates (month and day only, no year) of every individual alive. What's going on? The answer is slightly obvious, but the means the protagonist takes to find out is rather clever. September: An above-average issue, picking just one story is tough. I think I'll go with "The King Who Wasn't" (novella) by Lloyd Biggle Jr. Reminiscent of some of H. Beam Piper's social science fiction, this one's about a planet with an unusual form of government, which reaches a flashpoint when one city-state's elected leaders are lynched and an undercover offplanet observer is selected as its king. This man, Lefarn, has to figure out how the government here really works, while protecting himself from dangers both indigenous and from his bosses who are irate because he's interfering in the culture's government. October: "Lost Moments" (novelette) by David Phalen is about an immortal man and his life and times since the dawn of man. Featuring his relationships with the only other immortals he knows (his father and his son), it's both an engaging contemplation on what it's like to be immortal, and it provides a satisfying explanation of the immortality the protagonist possesses. November: "The Return of Spring" (novelette) by Shane Tourtellotte is about a near-future cure for Alzheimer's and the disconnection that someone recovering from such a syndrome might feel. In a sense it's similar to stories where someone travels into the future and has to adjust to the strange new world, but since a person with Alzheimer's continues to age, continues to interact - with however much difficulty - with his loved ones, it casts a different shadow on the circumstances of his return to the present. It's a poignant story. December: "The Rabbit Hole" (novelette) by James Gunn rounds out my picks of the year. This one's about a group of people who build a spaceship from plans sent to them by aliens, and end up trapped in a wormhole, dealing with the disruption of the laws of causality which occur therein, and trying to reason their way out of their situation under those circumstances. It's a well-crafted story with a satisfying ending. (Apparently it's a sequel to three earlier stories from Analog, all of which appeared before I began reading it.)
I've been enjoying reading Analog for the most part. Editor Stanley Schmidt's taste in humorous and lighthearted stories doesn't really coincide with mine, I suspect, but his selection of serious stories is generally okay by me. The factual articles vary widely for me. Sometimes I'm interested in reading the whole thing, and sometimes the basic idea is all that interests me, and the details of the implementation aren't really all that exciting to me. The best article of the year in this category is Dean McLaughlin's "He Who Carried the Moon" from the July/August issue, which is part science article, part historical document, and part biography. If you're curious, Analog costs me $3.50 a pop and each issue is around 140 pages (some of which are letters, ads and the editorial). I buy each issue from Kepler's rather than subscribing, partly to patronize the bookstore and partly because reports I've gotten from other readers say that the Post Office often damages the magazines in the mail, which would annoy me to no end. But since I'm often up near Kepler's (and now live pretty close to it), it's easy enough to check periodically if a new issue has come out.
|
||
