Other Articles: Analog July/August 2011

More than Plot and Character: The Story-Telling Secrets of Narrative Voice

Special Feature by Richard A. Lovett

Lovett discusses the danger of taking the "show, don't tell" dictum too seriously. "Telling" is what constitutes a lot of narrative voice and style. I do find it odd that he worries some SF readers are afraid of/opposed to the very concept of "style" in writing. I'm not sure if he is underestimating SF readership or I'm overestimating them. Anyway, with several examples, most useful of which is a before-and-after bit of editing from a story Lovett collaborated on, he shows how sentence length, and variety among sentence lengths can be used to achieve various different voices. A very specific advice article, refreshing in that most narrative voice advice is vague to the point of being useless. By being extremely specific, Lovett gives everyone some useful advice, and limits himself to a scope achievable in a magazine article.

Rating: A

Science Fiction Imagines the Digital Future

Special Feature by James Gunn

Not worth reading. I'm not sure how, but this article took me 45 minutes to read. I just couldn't stay focussed on it. Gunn comes across as more curmudgeonly and old-fashioned than I'd have expected. I think his take-away point, that we should all expect that some future outcomes will be unpredictable, is a good one. As is his advice to writers to look at technological advances in terms of what unintended negative side effects they cause, rather than the more predictable benefits. But these are both sort of things we've heard before, and that a lot of people know, and Gunn doesn't add much besides a lot of words.

Rating: D

The Deficiency of Black Holes at the LHC

Alternate View Column by John G. Cramer

Simple reportage on a paper stating that no black holes have thus far been found at CERN in the LHC, a short review of the physics of why we might expect black hole to form, and paraphrasing the paper's discussion of what this means (that if gravity behaves in extra dimensions than the other 3 forces do, and thus the minimum black hole size is lowered, it must be greater than at least certain numbers). Pretty much straight reportage with a bit of background.

Rating: B

Division of Labor

Editorial by Stanley Schmidt

Thoughtful as usual. Schmidt gives us the history of the term "multitasking", its rise in popularity and possible origins in the "MultiFinder" application for early Mac computers. The whole editorial seems to be brought on by recent studies contradicting earlier ones and psychologists making sweeping, unfounded statements (as psychologists are wont to do) about Multitasking Is Bad, mmkay. This a reverse from it being the best thing ever in the 90s. Schmidt argues that the question we should be researching are "when, how, and for whom does multitasking work?" A couple engaging autobiographical anecdotes and he ends by pointing out that everyone is different, so we should beware employers and pushy parents coming to demand multitasking if it is better understood and cycles back into popularity. SF story idea, check. Thoughtful, but not his most thoughtful.

Rating: B-

The Reference Library

Book Reviews by Don Sakers

The reviews this month are all anthologies. Of this I approve, since I prefer short fiction to novels. But the page-and-a-half introduction to the reviews confuses and annoys me. First, Sakers explains the merits of the short story. Fine, I guess, since he admits he is preaching to the choir, and he is introducing a bunch of short story collections. Then he gives us a history of SF anthologies as a publishing form, which is vaguely interesting, but overlong and not actually relevant (I thought I was done with the fact articles). Finally, he closes by defining a 'novelette' as a "long short story". Thanks Don. The readers of Analog, with 2 NOVELETTES IN THIS VERY ISSUE weren't clear on that term. And besides pissing me off with unnecessary condescension, I don't think you need to know the difference between a novelette and a short story in order to appreciate either one of them.

Nebula Awards Showcase 2011 ed. by Kevin J. Anderson: Sakers explains what the Nebulas are, and that this anthology contains short stories nominated for these mysterious "Nebula Awards."

Dark Futures: Tales of SF Dystopia ed. Jason Sizemore: Sakers doesn't seem to like dystopias, but "enough variety here to keep the various dystopias from becoming too oppressive." Not a helpful review at all, but I guess this is either positive, or damning with faint praise. I'd be better able to tell if Sakers weren't mostly talking about dystopian stories in general.

Welcome to the Greenhouse: New Science Fiction on Climate Change ed. Gordon van Gelder: Most of the "review" on this book is a discussion of how it's okay if you don't believe in climate change. Very little about the actual book, aside from it being about climate change. Sakers does give a recommendation to the anthology, but it almost gets lost in all the talking around how he doesn't believe in climate change. I know Analog's readership tends to the conservative, but I didn't realize you had to spend most of a book review on whether or not you believe in climate change. I'd have bought this anthology on Gordon van Gelder's editorship alone (F&SF being his main project), and Sakers doesn't do much to enhance or diminish what I get from the title page of this book.

By Other Means ed. Mike McPhail: Finally a real review, a positive recommendation with enough detail to know I probably won't be interested.

Golden Reflections ed. Joan Spicci Saberhagen & Robert E. Vardeman: Theme anthology in honor of Fred Saberhagen, a good history of how this anthology came about, what inspired it, and the contents. A positive review I probably agree with.

Jar Jar Binks Must Die ... and Other Observations about Science Fiction Movies by Daniel M. Kimmal: I really liked having a themed review article, too bad Sakers couldn't stick with the theme and reviewed a collection of essays about movies. A positive review.

A good concept for a review column that ended up profoundly unhelpful and actively annoyed me to read.

Rating: D-

So Long, Proxima Centauri

Analog Fact Article by Kevin Walsh

A tad bit dull, but still an interesting discussion of Brown Dwarfs, the mission of the new WISE orbiting telescope, and what sorts of stars and planets WISE is capable of discovering. Also included is a lot of information about the potential for life on such planets, and what sort of conditions would be needed to get life-supporting planets in orbit around a brown dwarf.

Rating: B

Before You Get to String Theory

Analog Fact Article by C.W. Johnson

A look at physics history, and a walkthrough of the development of physics from Relativity to String Theory. Obviously this can't go into enormous depth, and it covers some of the same ground as many popular physics books (Brian Greene's in particular), but that is pretty good for a magazine article. The physics discussion is interesting and I learned something from it. But more important is the writing itself, I found myself taking notes. Maybe it's just nostalgia for college or something, but not all fact articles have me taking notes in a notebook.

Besides the physics itself, Johnson gives readers some crucial advice:

"A Theory of Everything isn't everything. As a scientist, I prefer process over product, and am more interested in the logic and experimental evidence behind a theory than in the final equations. I am always taken aback when I meet students who profess a desire to be String Theorists and yet exude indifference with the story behind string theory."

...

"What we really need is not more theory but more experiments and observations. Experimental discrepancies led to the blooming of general relativity and quantum mechanics. The clues to the Next Big Theory likely lie hidden in the experimental topics of the Higgs boson, proton decay, neutrino masses, and non-baryonic dark matter. String theory may be the dead end of the quantum-particle-exchange paradigm. Or it may indeed be the fabled theory of everything. But for physicists it's not the Final Theory that matters, but every step of the puzzling, frustrating, and thrilling journey, wherever it may lead us.

It's not a complicated graphic, but the highlights of the article, for me, were the Dirac Sea diagrams as well as the various older ideas from the 1930s that you don't see much discussion of in modern physics texts.

Rating: B+

Science News with J.J. Campanella 2010

A summary of J.J. Campanella's Science News articles in Starship Sofa for the year 2010.

#114, 12/23/09, Rating: A: Contagious Emotions, Caterpillar-Ant Trickery, Tumor Suppressors, Ebay Shrimp Naming, Marijuana as Addiction Cure.

#118, 1/26/10, Rating: A: Tasmanian Devil Facial Tumor Disease, Sea Urchin Sight, Environmental Causes of Lupus Evidence, Whiskey Hangovers.

#122, 2/23/10, Rating: B: Dinosaur Coloring, Sea Slug Photosynthesis, Cigarette Bacteria, Prion Function.

#125, 3/17/10, Rating: K:

Looking Back at Genre History with Amy H. Sturgis 2010

A summary of Amy H. Sturgis' Genre History articles in Starship Sofa for the year 2010.

#112, 12/9/09, Rating: C: Captain Nemo, 20,000 Leagues, and The Mysterious Island.
#115, 1/5/10, Rating: B: Anthony Trollope and a discussion of his 1882 novel The Fixed Period.

#120, 2/9/10, Rating: A: Ishmael, an unusual 1985 Star Trek novel by Barbara Hambly.
#123, 3/3/10, Rating: A+: Margaret Cavendish, 17th century poet, scientist, and SF writer.

Film Talk with Rod Barnett 2010

A summary of Rod Barnett's Film Talk articles in Starship Sofa for the year 2010.

#113, 12/15/09, Rating: A: Negative review of The Box, discussion of Richard Kelly's other films.
#116, 1/12/10, Rating: B: Semi-positive review of Avatar.
#122, 2/23/10, Rating: B: Daybreakers and Book of Eli, both somewhat positively reviewed.
#126, 3/23/10, Rating: K:

Explained in 60 Seconds with Megan Argo 2010

A summary of Megan Argo's Explained in 60 Seconds pieces for Starship Sofa in the year 2010.

#118, 1/26/10, Rating: C: Red Dwarf Stars.
#123, 3/3/10, Rating: D: Black Holes and Escape Velocity.

Starship Sofa Episodes 111, 112, and 113

Episode #111
Brief Intro by Tony, and a brief outro by Larry Santoro discussing his writing process, his inspiration for the story, and his love of throwing in puns, anachronisms, and subtle pop culture references. Actually this is pretty interesting.
But the bulk of the episode is just Part 1 of Lord Dickens's Declaration.

Episode #112

Poem: Safe in Their Cryogenic Chambers by Lyn C.A. Gardner

An SF take on Safe in Their Alabaster Chambers by Emily Dickinson, the resurrection they are waiting for here is to wake from cold sleep on arriving at the destination of their presumably slower-than-light spaceship. It's only okay in a vacuum, but the correlation with the Dickinson poem definitely adds something, at least for me. If you are going to listen to this episode, and haven't already, I'd read the poem linked above, and think about it for a bit before listening to Gardner' s version. You'll definitely appreciate it more that way. It wasn't written to stand alone, and it's frankly better when Dickinson is there to supplement, but this is a good tribute.

The Sofanaut Awards by Mark Bormann

Announcing the shortlist for the 2009 awards, and a bit about the voting process.

Looking Back At SF History by Amy H. Sturgis - Captain Nemo

A long look at one of the first proto-steampunk protagonists, Jules Verne's Captain Nemo is "A classic Byronic hero ... mad, bad, and dangerous to know... an early emo-boy, action hero, and scientific genius." Perhaps too much time is given to a list of all the actors who've portrayed him, movies, TV episodes, and musical tributes, but this is an enthusiastic, loving tribute to Captain Nemo and a pretty good analysis of his character. It was interesting to learn that He was changed (for the better, in my opinion) after the first draft so as to sell more books in Russia, a funny motivation for a good decision, and a nice bit of trivia. I'd urge everyone to read (for free) the two books in which he appears: 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, and The Mysterious Island.

Recap of Part I by Lawrence Santoro

Thank Larry for this recap, I missed about half of this on my listenthrough of last episode.
Lord Dickens's Declaration Part II

Update by Spider Robinson

An update on the health of his wife Jeannie and their financial status. Sad but thankful.

Episode #113

Fact Article IPv4 by Simon Hildebrandt

A fascinating article about how we assign our current 32-bit IP addresses, which we're expected to run out of in the next few years. IPv4, our current plan, can only have 6 billion addresses, while IPv6 could assign 10 to every single molecule on the face of the planet. We currently just keep going using a bunch of tricks and stopgap measures, but it will not be enough. We have the technology to fix the problem right now, and most software and hardware is set up to deal with the changes we'll need to make, but countries and large companies are too slow and unlikely to address the issue until serious problems have already happened. The solution is IPv6, and it's something we'll all need to adopt in the next few years. Google, Apple, Microsoft, and router manufacturers know this, as do the Internet protocol guys, but countries aren't getting the hint yet. Hildebrandt gives us a look at the way the system works, the changes that will have to be made, the need to encourage early adoption, and the fact that it probably won't happen fast enough. Great stuff. Rating: A

Film Talk by Rod Barnett - The Box

Barnett opens with a discussion of Richard Kelly's first two films, before he directed The Box. Kelly made a name for himself with Donnie Darko, a film I loved, and Barnett felt he should have loved, but just didn't. Many years later, he followed up with Southland Tales, an unholy abomination of a movie. Which puts the pressure on him for The Box, his third film: does it indicate a comeback from a sophomore slump, or another failure in a likely one-hit wonder career?

The Box is based on Button Button by Richard Matheson, but of course, being a big Hollywood movie, completely screws it up. It's the classic idea of "If you press this button, you'll get a million dollars, but someone you don't know will die." It isn't hard to find negative reviews of "The Box", but I think most of them miss some of the points Barnett gets, possibly due to his awareness of SF tropes and literature. The problem isn't in the initial idea, it is that, in order to stretch it out long enough, Kelly comes up with a bunch of surreal bullshit that isn't in any way relevant. He doesn't add any depth to the plot or the themes or the central moral dilemma, he just throws a bunch of random, unconnected things at the wall in an attempt to give an illusion of depth. I find too many reviewers are unwilling to call people out on this sort of thing, and just attribute their hatred of the movie to other things besides it not making any sense. Barnett's ability to call out this bullshit endears him to me, this is a good review. Although I'm disappointed he can't get behind my Donnie Darko apologetics, I rather have Rod Barnett than Roger Ebert.

P.S. Here is a much better film along the same theme.

Recap of Parts I & II by Lawrence Santoro

Lord Dickens's Declaration Part III

Wrap Up by Lawrence Santoro

Starship Sofa Articles: January 2010

Episode 115

Extra-long introduction this week about the future of the podcast and the effort to help Spider Robinson and his wife with her cancer.

Fact Article: Looking Back at SF History by Amy H. Sturgis

An interesting biographical piece on Anthony Trollope and a discussion of his novel The Fixed Period, a book that is apparently very hard to find, with few reprints since it's publication in 1882. The novel deals with mandatory euthanasia and imperialism and seems very interesting, especially in an historical sense. I'll be keeping my eyes open for this book, and I certainly look forward to more articles on semi-obscure old SF like this one. Reminds me of Curiosities from F&SF.

Sofanaut Award Winners

Results are online here.

Episode 116

Fact Article: Meat Opera by Fred Himebaugh

Excerpts from and pimpage for the awesome sounding jazz opera rendition of the classic story They're Made Out of Meat. I really enjoyed this sample, and the full version is excellent as well. Very enjoyable noises from blowing all this air through meat.

Fact Article: Film Talk by Rod Barnett

A more-insightful-and-nuanced-than-average review of Avatar. Summed up by: "I have to admit, I ended up liking this film, but the road was rocky." Interesting as Mr. Barnett has the same component opinions I do, but the semi-opposite conclusion.

Episode 117

Fact Article: Transcribers by Robyn Bradshaw

Biographical info on each member of the group transcribing old Starship Sofa podcasts into text. And a bit of discussion on the project's progress. Not interesting listening, but a worthy project.
Extra Story: The Good Detective by M. John Harrison

I guess I should put this here. It is an extra story at the beginning of the episode, and honestly much better than the main story, A Weeping Czar.... It isn't a fact article, but I wanted to put a link to it here for the sake of completeness with the end-of-year summary since it isn't listed as a piece of main fiction for voting purposes, but it improves the overall quality of the episode.

Episode 118

Fact Article: This Week in Science Fiction by Tony C. Smith

Aurealis Awards, BSFA Awards, Philip K. Dick Awards, Ann VanderMeer's promotion to editor-in-chief at Weird Tales, and probably some other bits that I missed in the Tony-jabber.

Fact Article: Explained in 60 Seconds by Megan Argo

Red Dwarf Stars - Basically just what they are and why they are cool, small, and have long lifetimes. I didn't know about the slower rate of fusion, but it makes sense. A useful bit of trivia but mostly this was nothing I didn't already know. Still definitely worth including at this length.

Fact Article: Science News by J.J. Campanella

Devil Facial Tumour Disease and how it is wiping out the Tasmanian Devil population. Interestingly, all the tumors are identical, and the same cloning cell transfers itself from one devil to another through bites. This is a sad, important, and very scientifically interesting news story and I'm glad to see it given a better treatment here than it was in the New York Times.

In other news, Campanella discusses the recent discovery that eyeless sea urchins can actually see, using their spines and their entire body to see. Also lupus that affects one "identical" twin and not the other, based on environmental factors; and experimental evidence that whisk(e)y may give you a worse hangover than vodka, but no more mental impairment.

J.J. Campanella's Science News is easily the most interesting, with Amy H. Sturgis' SF History in second and nothing else really appealing besides the They're Made Out of Meat advertising. But two good articles a month isn't bad.

Futuropolis: How NASA Plans to Create a Permanent Presence on the Moon

Analog Fact Article by Michael Carroll

Best fact article of 2009. A look at NASA's plans to build a long-term base on the moon that would serve as a staging area for a lot of other expeditions. Goes in depth about new rovers, what sort of habitats you would have to use, and how all of this compares to the McMurdo base in Antarctica. The last couple pages are devoted to the reasons why we need to set up a moon base if we really want to succeed in Mars exploration.

This article dealt with the current state of affairs at NASA and provided a lot of information that hasn't been out there much before. The author is writing an entire book on the subject, and based on the quality of writing and informational content of this article, I will seriously consider buying it. The article covered several major areas of current research/development and even touched on the long term expansion of such a base. But with all the things it dealt with, all in sufficient depth by the way, Carroll managed to do something I've been noticing is all too rare in these fact articles: HE STAYED FOCUSED ON HIS TOPIC without wandering off into less interesting, irrelevant tangents.

From Token to Script: The Origin of Cuneiform

Analog Fact Article by Henry Honken

The origins and early history of written language, comparing Sumerian, Egyptian, and Akkadian to Chinese and Japanese. A bit about logographic writing systems in general in the begining as well. And the article ends with a discussion of the current problems in linguistics and archeology and how the record is spottier in the 4 other places where written language developed independently. Are there any universals to language evolution?

It turns out there is decently good archaeological evidence for the theory that tokens used for commerce eventually evolved into written language with clay tablet stamping as an intermediary. This was an extraordinarily information dense article that manages to hold the attention and not get too dull.

Ribbonland

Analog Fact Article by Kevin Walsh

The first half of this article is about the habitability of world that are tide locked to their star. It turns out that based on some mathematical simulations, if you have enough ocean on the sun-side of such a planet, there is a "ribbon" of habitability just a bit sunward of the terminator. This part of the article is really neat and I would have liked to see it expanded upon more.

Sadly, the final half of the article is just a waste of space: a laundry list of inhospitable planets, and some information about where brown dwarfs might be and how solar flares affect life. These are interesting topics, but they deserve enough depth to get their own articles, and they certainly need to NOT BE SERVING AS SPACE-FILLER IN THIS ARTICLE ABOUT A MORE INTERESTING AND UNRELATED TOPIC. I'd have been happy to see more climate simulations on ribbonworlds or speculation about how life might work on such worlds, rambling about brown dwarfs and the fact that we used to think such and such a star was a binary system but it turns out it isn't, not so much. A great start, then a great disappointment.

The Large Hadron Collider: A New Era

Analog Fact Article by Dr. Don Lincoln

A nice, informative article about the LHC, what we hope to discover, what results would indicate what, and the importance of looking out for non-specific discoveries. The diagrams were good, and despite having read a decent amount of this before, there was a very good description of "curled-up" dimensions and how this would make gravity behave differently on a small scale. Most important though, was the graph of what we would expect to see for Higgs-boson decay, I haven't seen a popular article with this graph before, and it makes me really happy. A very nice science article overall, and written by one of the actual physicists involved.

Preserving the Memory

Analog Fact Article by Janet Freeman

An over-broad summary of Alzheimer's research and our current state of knowledge and treatment options. Besides being very dry, new terms were introduced throughout and there was not enough depth on any one topic, instead taking an overview on everything. There was 0 editorial content to this article. You'd be better off reading review articles on PubMed.

Starship Sofa Episode #114

Not much to this episode, just one article, the story, and an introduction to the story.

First up is Science News with J.J. Campanella:
Australian Deep Sea Life Survey Discovers New Species Of Shrimp, Sells Naming Rights On Ebay
Marijuana As Substitute To Ween Patients Off Harder Drugs
Contagious Emotion Silliness
Caterpillars Tricking Ants Into Feeding Them
Loss of Heterozygosity May Be Worse For Cancer Than Lacking Tumor Suppresser Genes Altogether
Rating: A

The bit on why the Contagious Emotion study is ridiculous is the most valuable thing in this episode, this bad science has been getting a little too popular and I wish more scientists, much less the news-consuming public could understand one simple concept: CORRELATION DOES NOT IMPLY CAUSATION. 100 thank yous to Mr. Campanella.

The Caterpillar study is one of the more interesting things I've learned in some time, and the cancer study is worth watching where it leads in the future. One of the better Science News pieces.

Next up, Jeff Carlson's Introduction: WHITE GUYS IN SPACCCEEEEE
A bit of patting himself on the back about having a black woman who is brilliant and sexy in his story and how stupid it is that some people got angry that this (and this alone) made the story sooooo liberal and politically correct. It's a point worth making. Also a Star Wars joke.
Rating: B

Then the story, A Lovely Little Christmas Fire by Jeff Carlson, narrated by Amy H. Sturgis.

I already recommended the story when it was in Asimov's, to the tune of a 3.5, and Sturgis is a good narrator for it. The editorializing by the author was a bit longer than it needed to be, and wasn't all that interesting, although it was worthwhile, I guess. Honestly I think the highlight of this issue was Science News. As a whole, I give the issue a B.

Geology, Geohistory, and "Psychohistory": The (Continuing) Debate Between Uniformitarians and Catastrophists

Fact Article by Richard A. Lovett

Lovett looks at the theory that the Minoan civilization on ancient Crete was wiped out by volcanoes or an "earthquake storm" rather than slow decay of civilization. He also writes about J Harlon Bretz's struggle to convince other geologists that the scablands of Washington state were the result of a giant flood. It is a rather sad story how other scientists treated him, but Bretz's flood eventually became the accepted view (an enormous glacial lake formed by an ice dam in Montana drained all at once).

The theme of the article is that scientists, in this case geologists and archeologists, tend to latch on to an over-broad idea and then ignore evidence to the contrary, even if it is one contrary case that wouldn't disprove the idea. He compares Asimov's Foundation series and Bradbury's "A Sound of Thunder"in order to link the discussion to scifi, and then does a little hedging at the end as to his own like of gradualism.

The information in the article was interesting, but I have a few problems with it overall. The science fiction references were unnecessary, besides the point, and dragged the article out for no reason. The conclusion I thought he was leading up to: that Chaos Theory (Vibrating String History, etc) type ideas can be a sort of middle ground and are generally more correct than sticking blindly to the idea that either catastrophes don't matter or gradual trends don't matter, is something I heartily agree with, and where most of the article seems headed. And then in the last line, he takes back everything interesting he said: "Scientifically, I like grand unifying theories like gradualism. In fiction? Give me a little bit of vibrating-string chaos, any day." I mean come on, grow a pair Dr. Lovett. So you prefer your science blinkered, but at least Ray Bradbury was a good writer, and Asimov wasn't stupid. How insightful.