Analog Magazine April 2016

Seven Ways of Looking at the Sun-Worshippers of Yul-Katan by Maggie Clark - 020/150/2016 - I really don't know what to make of this opening story.  At first, I felt as if I might be missing something, as if this might be a recent installment in a series of stories.  It was very much in the Space Opera genre in that there were multiple cultures, religions and points of view.  Much like Star Wars there was one overarching governmental power, the Allegiance.

A small scientific crew hears an old distress call from the small moon they are surveying.  They discover it is coming from a pod, containing a sun-worshiping cleric, who is many star systems removed from where he should be.  Trying to solve the mystery of how he got to where he is proves dangerous and complex.

My Star Wars reference was intentional; just like that movie, the reader is given a bit of background and then dropped in the middle of a story.  It's a small story that takes place in a large universe filled with societies, religions, politics and danger.

After chasing the author down to her website I discovered this was her intention from the start, to make the reader feel that the story takes place in a vast and complicated world.  The only only aspect of the story that I struggled with is that I am attracted to science rather than theology.  Although there was a lot in the story that I did like; small exploration ships, a space-based military establishment, large space cruise ships, long-duration stasis pods, large economies and rules of law.  The religious framing of the story made me impatient.

In my case, the story may benefit from being reread.

Maggie Clark - https://respace.wordpress.com/

Soap Opera by Edward M. Lerner - 021/150/2016 - Set in a Manhattan radio station in the 1920's the engineer is asked to help a lovely young actress stop the unwanted advances of a sponsor.  It was a charming story and I loved the nostalgia of the period.  It came complete with a high-tech solution too.

Edward M. Lerner - http://www.edwardmlerner.com/

Alloprene by Stephen R. Wilk - 022/150/2016 - Hmm.  It's an interesting story about a man who is recounting his experience in a lab experiment which included social interaction with a robot.

I'm not sure I really get this one, other than what is presented. Perhaps it's trying to answer the question of how to best integrate machines into our lives.  I liked it.

Stephen R. Wilk -  http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?192332

Early Warning by Martin L. Shoemaker - 023/150/2016 - A man goes back in time where he feels his life pivoted by making the wrong decision.  He warns himself to change his decision.  I loved how the advice was followed.  Wonderful and unexpected.

Martin L. Shoemaker -  http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?159203

Sleep Factory by Rich Larson - 024/150/2016 - A beautiful, dark and sad story.  Two co-workers are in love and planning for the future.  This was a fully-realized world that grabbed me in seconds, was over in just a few minutes and stayed in my mind for days. The best one so far.

Rich Larson -  http://richwlarson.tumblr.com/

Most Valuable Player by Eric Choi - 025/150/2016 - This was another heart-warming, human story.  Being a baseball fan, I enjoyed it very much.  I am not entirely sure it's science fiction but I am happy it has seen print.  It can easily be submitted to other fiction publications.  

Choi has a gentle way of telling this story. Well done.

 Eric Choi - http://www.aerospacewriter.ca/

Diamond Jim and the Dinosaurs by Rosemary Claire Smith - 026/150/2016 - With a title like that I was expecting an irreverent action story, why I got was Jurassic Park coupled with time travel.  For some reason this story simply did not work for me.

Rosemary Claire Smith -  https://rosemaryclairesmith.wordpress.com/

Playthings by Stephen L. Burns - 027/150/2016 - This is my favourite genere: SF Detective fiction.  In a rigid, class-based society we follow Officer Blank as he is assigned to uncover the recent murders of local "regulators" those individuals who offer services from lower classes to upper classes.

The mystery Blank is assigned to solve is intersting in and of itself, but it is the uncovering of the world Officer Blank lives in.  Navigating this strict society was fasinating to me.

I would love to think that this short story will serve as an introduction to a novel.  I woukd love to dig into that.  I envisioned the Los Angeles of the movie Blade Runner for the look and feel in this story.

An excellent read.

http://www.hillwoman.com/stephenl.htm

Q Are Cordially Uninvited ... : Star Trek: The Next Generation by RudyJosephs

019/150/2016

This was a fun story of Q giving Picard and Crusher a gift on the eve of their wedding. 

As tends to happen in the Star Trek literary world, a minor character is brought back to play a role in the story. This is part of the fun and serves as a tip of the hat to fans who might remember the character in question. 

The story was charming and the pay-off was well done. My only complaint was the lack of Q in the story.  He's there to get the story started and at the end but otherwise he was nowhere to be enjoyed. 

It was a shame, really.  But, as I mentioned, he is terrific in the end.

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Vol 1 by Alan Moore (writer) and Kevin O'Neill (artist)

019/150/2016

I don't normally post about graphic novels but this one stood out so much that I felt it deserved mention.

Having never read the classics of adventure novels and knowing this was once made into a movie, I thought it would be a fun romp.  And it was.  Mixing Allan Quartermain, Captain Nemo, the Invisible Man, Jekyll & Hyde and others from the period the reader is treated to a fantastic, Victorian tale of derring-do.

It was a charming story piquing my interest in H. Rider Haggard's stories of Quartermain's adventures.

There was also a treat at back the of the volume.  In keeping with the way these stories would have originally been published, Moore wrote a serialized, six-part adventure that explained how Quartermain found his way to opium den in Cairo.  It is there where he is introduced to the adventure of the graphic novel itself.  Moore's wonderfully ornate purple prose gave it the feel that it was lifted directly from a penny dreadful.  This made for a nice bookend to the whole thing.

Since the six-part story was prose I am counting it towards my short story reading challenge.

Alan Moore - writer.

Kevin O'Neill - artist.

Analog Magazine March 2016

013/150/2016 - The Coward's Option by Adam-Troy Castro - Wow!  I was first hooked when this looked like a SF court room thriller then the story takes a sinister twist right in the middle, just when I was getting to like the main character too!  The story was exciting, terrifying and so, so satisfying.

I was happy to learn there are more stories with Andrea Cort plus two novels.  I've got to dig into these stories for sure.

http://www.adamtroycastro.com/

014/150/2016 - Unlinkage by Eric Del Carlo - Part military SF part underground sports.  I like the way this story played with the tele-operated/augmented soldier trope and how it turned into something completely unexpected.

 http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?14471

015/150/2016 - The Perfect Bracket by Howard Hendrix and Art Holcomb - This was a fun nearly comical story of scamming the NCAA basketball brackets.  Once the nature of the scam showed itself my head began to swim. But it was lighthearted enough to be mearly an interesting twist and I found myself smiling at the end of it.

Howard Hendrix - http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?1691
Art Holcomb - http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?224628

016/150/2016 - Elderjoy by Gregory Benford - A quick and strange read. How do you keep a health care system funded?  By taxing behavior, of course.  Interesting, even though it's a bit creepy.

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?109

017/150/2016 - Snowbird by Joe M McDermott - I kept feeling like this would be the kind of thing Steven Spielberg would tackle.  The setting is a rural orchard where RVs, driven by AIs, start arriving en mass.  Why?  Why here?

It was very well done.  It provided the sense of there being a much bigger world, just around the other side of the mountain.

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?201397

018/150/2016 - Drummer by Thomas R Dulski - At first this story of a traveling salesman caught my attention for how unique it was.  I'm always a sucker for a mundane SF tale.  The day-in-the-life kind of thing grabs me.

Here our narrator meets a younger fellow "Drummer", what those in the business are called, in a bar and he engages him in conversation.  After a bit if time he gives the younger man the advice that he might be happier in some other kind of work. 

We then follow our man through the years and to other meetings with with the younger one.  

The story sort if lost cohesion for me as the younger guy kept making more radical moves as our narrator kept progressing in a more natural, tried-and-true career path.  Perhaps that was the point of the story.  Maybe you never know how a conversation, or a chance meeting will pivot a person's life trajectory.

Hmm, just by writing this entry I think I'm coming to understand it more.

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?Thomas_R._Dulski

Inhuman Garbage by Kristine Kathryn Rush - A Short Story Review.

013/150/2016

Set in the Retrieval Artist universe and available from Asimov's website for free while the readers' choice awards are still in the voting stage.

It is a straight-up murder mystery involving the main characters of her earlier novels plus a crime boss who is the main suspect.

It was well done with a good twist and a surprising conclusion.  It also does the added work of expanding her RA universe.

Not being a reader of the series I can say that it works very well as a stand alone story.

Cold War by Adam Christopher - A Short Story Review.

012/150/2016

I was captivated by this story.  It is set in a larger world that Christopher has written about in a book called The Burning Dark.

A small group of marines are set on a frozen world for a search and rescue mission, only there is a secret secondary objective that puts the group in peril.

Wonderfully done.  I was heart-thumpingly scared for the group when a monstrous threat appears.

I was reminded of the scenes in the movie Aliens when the group is trapped in a room and the radar shows the aliens coming closer and closer and .... wait!

They're in the room!

But we don't see them ....

Yea, like that.

What fun.

Adam Christopher

Analog Magazine, January/February 2016 - Part Three

Theories of the Mind by Conor Powers-Smith

006/150/2016 - A common subject in SF is exploring communication.  Its plausible even likely, that first contact will not come with a handshake and a "How do you do?"

In this story the direct method is not the only aspect explored.  There is the question of logic and individuality to be answered too.

I enjoyed this one, it had the feel of a 1950's classic science fiction, especially in the description of the aliens.  That 50's sensibilities won out when it came to good-old human ingenuity to win the day.

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?133997

Nature's Eldest Law by Alvaro Zinos-Amaro

007/150/2016 - This was another first contact story.  A team of scientists are exploring a planet when they suddenly discover a grove of plant life that wasn't there before.  These plants have an ability to enhance mental acuity.

It was a good story with believable characters and an ominous ending.

http://myaineko.blogspot.ca/p/home-page.html

The Heat of Passion by Grey Rollins

008/150/2016 - One of my favourite genres the SF Mystery.  Murder and cops in the future are a potent mix.  This one also involved the implications of genetic modification which made for a fresh approach to solving a crime.

Well written with excellent dialog. Rollins is an author to watch.

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?11629

Woundings by George Zebrowski

009/150/2016 - I think it's a post-apocalyptic story but, I really didn't get it.  No.  I couldn't even understand it.  I'm pretty sure it was in English.  I mean all the words were English ...

Wow!

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?George_Zebrowski

The Shores of Being by Dave Creek

010/150/2016 - Part X-files part first contact, but not really.  There are alien artifacts in the woods, that's the X-files part. 

Two alien races are at war and Earth is caught in the crossfire.

 http://davecreek.net/Explore_Dave_Creeks_fictional_worlds/Home.html

An Industrial Growth by David L Clements

011/150/2016 - Post-apocalyptic with nanotechnology run amok.  A small team must confront a large concentration  nano-machines hidden away in an abandoned industrial plant.

This was a well-realized story that I enjoyed it very much.

https://davecl.wordpress.com/

# # #

As a whole this issue was a solid read and a good start to 2016.

Onward.

Analog Magazine, January/February 2016 - Part Two

We Will Wake Among the Gods, Among the Stars by Caroline M. Yoachim and Tina Connolly

002/15012016 - Remember how the big reveal of Planet of the Apes was that it was not the distant past but the distant future?  This is that same kind of thing.

Seven ships land in different parts of a habitable planet.  One is never heard from again and becomes a thing of legend, like Atlantis.  We are generations past the initial landings and find the descendants have reverted back to kingdoms and blind religious faith.  In this story we are following an expedition to find the lost Seventh City.

The story was well written and interesting enough but this kind of dystopian future is not my rusty tin cup of muddy tea.  These tales are best set right here on Earth, for the simple truth that we understand implicitly how tings were, we are invested in the past of the story.  For this very reason I found the story fell flat.  It may have worked better had it been a novel, making the end of the story even more powerful.

Caroline M. Yoachim -  http://carolineyoachim.com/

Tina Connolly - http://www.tinaconnolly.com/

Farmer by Joe M. McDermott

003/150/2016 - Another dystopian story, this time set on Earth.  A New York brownstone is converted into an urban farm.  Not because it's trendy but necessary for survival.  Things are not good in this future.  We are never told exactly what happened to cause the infrastructure to collapse as it has, only that this type of urban farming is not unique.  People live in squalor and are ever-fearful of superbugs, drug resistant infections.

It is such an infection of one of the farm's customers that threatens the livelihood of the two men who own and operate it.  The government still functions and now the men are under threat of an inspection to see if they are the cause of the infection.  Were they doing something illegally?

I liked this one.  It was very vivid in my mind's eye.

Joe M. McDermott -  http://jmmcdermott.blogspot.ca/

Rocket Surgery by Effie Seiberg

004/150/2016 - What happens when you give a guided missile artificial intelligence? 

This was a cool story.  I enjoyed how the AI evolves.

 http://www.effieseiberg.com/

Saving the World by James Gunn

005/150/2016 - An exploration about genre fiction.  How does reading Science Fiction affect the brain.  Can reading science fiction save the world?

This is a well argued story.

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?1162

The Persistence Of Memory by Rachel L. Bowden

006/150/2016 - A quick story about a memory of a time and place that changed the direction of the narrators' life. 

I could picture it as a short film. Well done. 

Analog Magazine, January/February 2016 - Part One

Wyatt Earp 2.0 by Wil McCarthy.

001/150/2016 - In Dawes Crater City, Mars, a facsimile of Wyatt Earp is printed. The head of security needs a bit of help to control the miners and convinces his superiors that a lawman from Earth's history is the correct choice to bring about a bit of order.

Earp wakes up complete with his memories and personality intact. At first we get a fish-out-of-water story but it doesn't take long before he gets his footing and starts asserting himself.  At first he struggles with whether he is a real person since he is a manufactured copy of a man long dead.

There is a fair bit of exploration of the meaning of life when you are the 2.0.  The old saying, The More Things Change The More They Stay The Same came to mind in the final action sequence.  The last scene made me happy for its cleverness and made me wish the story was longer.

An excellent start to the issue.

Wil McCarthy's website is here:  http://www.wilmccarthy.com/

Wil McCarthy

2016 Reading Goals

The theme for this year is

 - SPACE! -

This will apply to fiction and non-fiction.

On the non-fiction front I have dozens of books to satisfy my needs.  I have been a giant NASA geek for my whole life so I will dedicate this upcoming year to reading about the agency.  I also hope to read a bit of speculation on where space exploration, both government and commercial, will go in the near future.

I really loved my 100 short stories in 2015 challenge and I will try to read 150 shorts this year.  I will primarily accomplish this by following a secondary goal; to read each issue of Analog Magazine with a 2016 publication date.

I cannot control what is published in Analog but they tend to stick to Hard Science Fiction which will satisfy a reading focus I'd like to attempt on the fiction side; that is to read fiction without FTL travel.  The massive best seller, The Martian by Andy Weir, has re-awakened a market for "plausible" SF.  Let's face it, without a breakthrough in propulsion, humans will not see another star system in anything resembling the near future.  I want to concentrate on fiction within our own solar system.

Kim Stanley Robinson, Ben Bova, Kristine Kathryn Rusch,  Robert J Sawyer and Michael Flynn are authors that immediately come to mind that have written novels in our home solar system so my focus should not be difficult.

Just to keep things symmetrical I will set a goal of 15 books (fiction or non-fiction) and 150 short stories.