The Buddy System

Short Story by Don D'Ammassa

A cautionary tale of computer systems destroying the world because we put too much faith in them. The idea of how they do this is a bit different, and good, but the explanation of what the computers do is complete gibberish and comes down to Magical Computers. And yet, there is a technobabble explanation anyway. Better to just admit it's practical magic.

I'm also not a fan of the fact that D'Ammassa names the character "Buddy" just so he can have a cutesy title/name for something. The titular computer system has no connection or thematic resonance in the buddy system we all had forced upon us for elementary school field trips. I don't mind cute names for things, but I like them to be relevant to the story or its themes. This story is called "The Buddy System" simply because it contains a System created by computer programer named Buddy.

And predicting elections with only 2 errors out of 1000 elections is absurd. The data doesn't exist for that quality of model. Maybe it only bugs me because I know a bit too much about polling data and election modeling, but it's one of far too many examples where the computers "extrapolate" data to a level of precision which simply can't exist. It's like he has never heard of Sensitive Dependence on Initial Conditions.

My big conceptual problem is two-fold:

1. You can't predict the future so accurately because unavoidable measurement error is often more than enough to decide between radically different results.
2. You can't "Interpolate" entirely new, precise information from data that wouldn't be part of the same equation. You physically cannot calculate someone's face from an image of the back of their head.

I've picked more than enough nits here, but the point is, something annoys me about this story every few paragraphs, making it very hard to enjoy.

The author (or, even more improbably the computer programming narrator) is also biased against nerds and our ability to communicate or know things about the real world. Given the readership of Analog, this seems like a mistake. It also stinks of bad 80's movie cliche.

All told, this is an obnoxious computer-induced-end-of-world story which exists purely to say that carpenters are smarter than scientists and policy wonks. Thankfully, the carpenter-wisdom doesn't save the day, but it does wrap up the story with an over-obvious moral. The only redeeming factor is that the last couple pages are oddly gripping despite my annoyances.

2 magical computer algorithms out of 5.

The Bullfrog Radio Astronomy Project

Short Story by Brad R. Torgersen

A story with a done-before comedy plot, that then takes said comedy plot entirely seriously. Our hero operates a small radio station in the desert, with some extra financing from a reclusive millionaire. The rich man has built his own radio telescope and uses the radio broadcast to provide a more interesting signal into space. One day, the FCC comes knocking, and the protagonist's world is changed forever. It isn't quite as obvious as you might think, but only barely.

Besides the obvious problem in logic that Earth is already broadcasting plenty of material out into space and we don't really need privately funded enterprises to be noticed if any aliens are listening, what strikes me most is just how earnest this story is with a premise where the only originality to it is not being comedic. The writing is good, and the setting well drawn, but the idea is nothing special and the climax is about as anticlimactic as possible. And it doesn't even make any sense either.

2 FCC complaints out of 5.

The Sock Problem

Probability Zero Flash Fiction by Alastair Mayer

Cute ending, and a cute scene with the kid in the car, but I only liked the second half of this flash piece. The first half spent a lot of time explaining how motors work and how dryers are put together. I can't believe I'm saying this, but this flash fiction would be stronger if it were about half as long. I do like the phrase "it isn't Rocket Surgery." I'll be stealing that for personal use.

Tangential Nitpick: while I appreciate a Doctor Who namedrop as much as the next nerd, given the audience I think "The Doctor's TARDIS" would have sufficed instead of "Dr. Who's TARDIS". I'm not going to get into that debate here (1-4th & 9th Doctor credits be damned!) but I'd assume the readers of Analog are nerdy enough not to need the reference spelled out for them, especially at the expense of enjoyment for a pedantic subset of us!

2.5 out of 5 appliance repairmen think their job is rocket surgery.

The Last of Lust

Short Story by Jerry Oltion

Two sexy scientists working on identifying the Lust centers of the brain, and means for selectively turning it on and off, fall into a relationship. Then a group of religious zealots steal their research and engineer a plague that will rid the human race of lust. We get to see how this effects the main characters' relationship.

The science is idiotic, especially the idea that just because you can do something with microwaves, it's possible to quickly engineer an incurable superbug that infects 100% of the human poplulation, that will have the exact same effect biochemically. But I'm probably too annoyed about this, given that it's a story about people. Still, bad science doesn't have to be obnoxiously bad. It would have been more interesting and less facile to deal with a more varied and realistic bioweapon.

Anyway, science aside, the style of the writing is sort of dull and lacking any description beyond "this happened, and then that happened" for the middle portion of the story. Still, Oltion inserts little flashes of humor that made it fun, and much more enjoyable than it could have been. And the protagonist's relationship drama was interesting, especially with the surprising form of happiness he finds. But the greater extrapolation to the general population, and the conclusions he comes to at the end seem stupid, silly, and maybe a little sexist. Really, I'd have liked the story (although I wouldn't rave about it, there was definite humor in the telling), if it weren't for the diner scene at the end, which hurt my perception of the entire piece.

2 lusty lab assistants out of 5.

Asteroid Monte

Short Story by Craig DeLancey

Humans are one of the newer species in Galactic Civilization, and newer species make better policemen, since they have more experience with crime than more advanced, more civilized species. Our protagonist is one such human, sent with his herbivore-hating alien partner, to a system where a rogue species is stealing seeds from a bio-mechanical non-sentient fungus-like species. These seeds could be used as a weapon, and so are a danger to Galactic civilization.

The protagonist predictably uses his knowledge of three-card monte to solve the crime, thus proving that humans are qualified to be part of the police force, and are really omnivores, despite our flat teeth. Amusing, but nothing too deep here.

3 vicious herbivores out of 5.

The Chaplain's Assistant

Short Story by Brad R. Torgersen

The Mantes, or Mantises have been wiping out humanity, but a small human colony remains, walled off and isolated, on a world they control. A Mantis Professor comes to study them one day. In particular he's interested in religion, god, and spirits. Both the other species they've wiped out have believed in gods, and the atheistic Mantes worry they are lacking some kind of perception other species might possess. The assistant in charge of the nondenominational chapel sees this as an opportunity for leverage, maybe this professor can help keep humanity from being exterminated.

I'm a bit torn about this story. I liked the ending, in essence, but it seems artificial, calculated to burn just enough red shirts for some dramatic flair, but not so many as to make the ending bittersweet instead of happy. Frankly, the protagonist has no agency for the events of the back third of the story, just sort of riding along, watching things happen, so the happy ending feels cheap, and weird to ignore all the deaths. Also, my impression would be that the Mantes should be more capable exterminators, given how easy it is, and not prone to drawing things out for dramatic tension. It feels like Torgersen realized that the solution as written was too quick and easy for the narrator, but he fixed it with some meaningless, unmourned deaths and two pages of drama that seem pointless once you're aware of the facts.

Second, I'm torn about how Torgersen handled the delicate dance of Talking About Religion. On one hand, he deserves some props, he didn't spend the story preaching like I was expecting after the first page, and he didn't present one religion as right and the others as wrong. He was delicate, and this should be appreciated. BUT. He didn't really say anything about it, just enough to raise all our hackles in worry, not enough to actually make a point.

Between the mantes, the narrator, and the two other species, it seems the only atheists are killing machines and everyone else acknowledges that they need God in their lives, in one flavor or another. I don't think Torgersen means to offend anyone, he is very delicate, but it's the sort of stealthy, accidental prejudice. Like when the only black guy in a movie is a criminal, or the only woman happens to need a man to rescue her. It isn't deliberate, hell it wouldn't even be offensive if they weren't the ONLY character with that minority trait, but that almost makes it more offensive, like the writers can't imagine black people not stealing, or atheists not murdering or women who don't exist for Prince Charming to rescue. I'd have liked some acknowledgment that atheists actually exist among humans, not just homicidal aliens.

Also, he may have vaguely offended some muslims, by making them out to be the only occasionally intolerant religion. He says some muslims are intolerant, not all of them, but it's hard to miss that all the christians are more tolerant than those muslims. Once again, I don't think it was meant to offend, but it leaves a weird/bad taste in my mouth.

Anyway, I'm not the political correctness police. The writing was decent, and actually funny in places, which was nice. I'd have liked something more interesting to come out of the philosophical/religious debate, and maybe a less artificially dramatic ending, and a more reasonable way to spice things up action-wise. But not a bad story, just not a great one.

2.5 praying mantes out of 5.

Therapeutic Mathematics and the Physics of Curve Balls

Novelette by Gray Rineheart

After his parents die, poor cranium-deformed Joey is sold to a 1940s-era freak show by his uncle. On display for his misshapen skull, no one realizes the two more significant freakish things about him: Joey is a mathematical genius, and he can read minds.

But reading minds hurts terribly, and the only way he can keep the pain at bay is by solving complicated equations and developing mathematical models in his head. One day Joey tries to leave the circus and go to a baseball game for his birthday, where he learns an entirely new kind of math.

Despite the mathematical focus, this story is very character driven, following an abused youth who just wants to be normal, but at the same time is learning to embrace being a freak, in one form or another. I'm glad the telepathy is mostly treated as a disability, with the math being the real superpower. That's psychic power I can get behind!

The ending is extremely ambiguous, possibly too much so for some readers, but thinking about which ending I'd have chosen makes me realize exactly how many plusses and minuses there are to Joey's choice. I know what I'd have done, personally, but it isn't what I think Joey probably did. The neat thing is that neither choice is an entirely happy ending, but both have upsides, too. So I'm glad it was left ambiguous, although the last line makes it a tad more confusing than is necessary, that is my only complaint about the whole story.

4 atomic fastballs out of 5.

Analog July/August 2011

An issue pretty much carried by Richard Lovett

Serial:

Energized, Part II of IV by Edward M. Lerner: NOT REVIEWED

Novella:

Coordinated Attacks by Kristine Kathryn Rusch: 2.5

Novelettes:

Jak and the Beanstalk by Richard A. Lovett: 4

One Out of Many by Kyle Kirkland: 2.5

Short Stories:

Probability Zero: ... Plus C'est La Meme Chose by Arlan Andrews, Sr.: 3.5

Death and Dancing in New Las Vegas by Ernest Hogan: 3

A Witness to All That Was by Scott William Carter: 1.5

Articles:

More Than Plot and Character: The Story-Telling Secrets of Narrative Voice by Richard A. Lovett: A

Before You Get to String Theory by C.W. Johnson: B+

So Long, Proxima Centauri by Kevin Walsh: B

Science Fiction Imagines the Digital Future by James Gunn: D

Schmidt's editorial is a decent enough read, and The Alternative View is better than it often is, but the reviews in this issue are absolutely awful. Painful to read as well as useless.

One stand-out story in Lovett's "Jak and the Beanstalk", one stand-out article in Lovett's "Narrative Voice". The articles are mostly better than the stories, being 3/4 enjoyable, although aside from "A Witness to All That Was", the lesser of the fiction is never really bad. A lot of it is unimpressive, but only one story really bothers me.

Not a great issue of Analog, but not without its merits either.

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+

...Plus C'est la Meme Chose

Probability Zero Flash Fiction by Arlan Andrews, Sr.

The title comes from the French proverb: "plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose" or "the more things change, the more they stay the same." And that pretty well sums up this story.

Matter Transmitting (a la Star Trek Transporters) is a emerging technology, and Choppers are the logical descendants of modern hacking culture. Shenanigans like transporting fossils to the moon to confuse scientists are mentioned in the background of this Chopping competition. The winning entry is pretty funny, and remarkably unsurprising when you think about it. Funny and short, Probability Zero is often one of the highlights of an Analog issue.

3.5 second-order Monty Python references out of 5.

One Out of Many

Novelette by Kyle Kirkland

Neuroscience detective story. Tad is a government science regulator, and one day a criminal kidnaps him to force him to look into NeuroFac, a new street drug that has been approved for over-the-counter use. Several dull and overexplained neuroscience infodumps later and Tad is on the run for his life while trying to solve the mysteries of who is trying to kill him, why the gangster wants him to look into this drug, and what exactly he's expected to find. He finds love along the way, and discovers some neat things about consciousness.

The science behind the story is interesting and fully explained. But Kirkland has a tendency to overexplain these concepts, with more jargon, longer sentences, and several more details than really needed to get the idea across. And he spends too long on these details, and comes back to them too close together, so that it is really hard to keep reading the first part of the story.

On top of that, some background details seemed unbelievably stupid, like government agents not being able to do more than one search a day, or print anything out from the database, and hot air balloons and sailboats for long travel. But these don't make up much of the story, and the gondola/logboat style public transit system is pretty cool. The point is, this story takes a while to get going, it draws you on partly through reveals that everyone but the reader is already aware of, and it jars your suspension of disbelief a bit too hard. The resolution almost went into Philip K. Dick territory, and I would have been happy with that, but it loses courage at the last minute and the whole thing resolves neatly with a scientific discovery and a few big reveals in which our hero has very little agency. I'd have actually liked this story, despite it's other flaws, if it could just take a chance, either with severe long-term effects from the drugs, either on our hero's perception of events, or using split-personalities to better effect for betrayals. As is, this story takes no risks, less risks than the stories it most reminds me of.

2.5 logboat-trains out of 5.

Death and Dancing in New Las Vegas

Short Story by Ernest Hogan

Teodoro Arango a.k.a. Paco Cohen and his band are travelling through the purple landscape of terraformed Mars to a big festival in New Las Vegas. There, a running background theme of corporate greed and cultural appropriation moves to the foreground and tries to ensnare Paco personally. He's too much of a rebel, so he insults the big Mars-owning corporation in song, then runs offstage and flees the city with his band.

This rebellious mocking of tourism and entertainment industries carries a side-plot related to Paco's daughter and her desire to sing with and rescue a mermaid, but the draw of the story isn't its frantic anti-corporate plot so much as the bizarre extrapolation of a purple Mars where people and animals are randomly transformed by nanohudu, purple canal mermaids may-or-may-not be mutation or tourist trap engineering, and AI corporate logos have a threatening sentience of their own. It's a crazy world and a fast moving plot, apparently a sequel to Hogan's April 2001 Analog story: "The Rise and Fall of Paco Cohen and the Mariachis of Mars." I haven't read the earlier story, but I'm not sure it would make the world any less delightfully crazy.

Paco's lyrics aren't that great, although I guess they fit within the Las Vegas mariachi framework. The story is like the lyrics: strange, exciting, danceable, rebellious, but ultimately empty cultural calories. Fun but forgettable.

3 dancing purple yetis out of 5.

A Witness to All That Was

Short Story by Scott William Carter

I should probably remark on style more often, but in much of the SF I read, style floats under the radar. I whine about Kristine Kathryn Rusch's plotting or serialization addiction, but the fact is, she's a competent stylist and I never mention it. This is true for a number of my negative reviews, and sometimes my positive reviews are pushed up half a point further because I'm impressed with the style, but I don't always mention that either. Style is something we take for granted. A few writers, your Zelaznys and your Kij Johnsons stand out as excellent. Most SF writers are decent, not bad, not superlative. This is one of those stories that makes me realize what I'm taking for granted.

The poor writing is about the only thing that stands out about this unremarkable, sentimental short story. A bitter married couple fight in a spaceship. He's an uncommunicative idiot, she's pretty shrewish herself, and they're both mourning the loss of a child. Their marriage falls apart on a desolate little planet where they find a robot, who talks to them and gives them hope. The forward momentum is made entirely from misleading flashbacks/flashforwards between this and another storyline. Cheap tricks from the author make the two threads seem connected. It turns out they aren't and then it turns out they very slightly are. But the curiosity about what exactly the author is doing with this other story thread is the main driving force of the story, and as I said earlier in this very issue of Analog, that is not a good thing. The writing isn't downright awful, my complaints also extend to a nothing plot, artificial narration tricks, and unearned sappiness. On the other hand, I'll forget this one by tomorrow. No harm, no foul.

1.5 space-divorces out of 5.

Jak and the Beanstalk

Novelette by Richard A. Lovett

The Beanstalk is a colloquial name for Earth's new space elevator, and Jak was born in the year it first went up. Partially inspired by the classic tale, Jak latches on to a love of climbing and never lets go. He dreams of climbing the Beanstalk, and in college, with some physics classes, he realizes it might just be possible. The first third of the story is Jak's life up to that point, neither Jak nor the story do anything but prepare for the climb. It's just an athletics or exploration achievement story.

The physics are well thought out, and Jak's solution to the problem is rather clever, but that isn't really what I read fiction for, although I must say I'm impressed by the thought Lovett obviously put into it. The real story begins once Jak is well into his climb, and becomes introspective about just why he is climbing in the first place. A childhood dream becomes a dream of fame and book deals, and history-making. "Because it's there" transitions into a feeling of "because I have nothing else". Jak looks back on the life he wasted preparing for something that no one is even going to notice, and the life he can't have because he's locked into his dream.

Two-thirds of the way through the story, Jak reaches what should have been the climax, and it's deliberately anti-climatic. He gets to the station at the top of the Beanstalk. Jak's thought upon arrival sums up much of the story: "Earth was also the past. Climbing had been the present. and now, unprepared, he was in the future." Jak doesn't know what to expect, but he tries to build a life, and essentially learns that the journey is more important than the destination.

Now I've outlined the plot pretty thoroughly, but there are still some twists, and although I'm not revealing the ending, this story is most worth reading for the path it takes to get there. I've outlined the themes, but the planning and execution of the climb are actually pretty interesting, and the major surprise to this story makes it a bit harder hitting. It's an extremely lonely story about a man so wrapped up in his obsession that he lets the whole world pass him by without leaving a trace. And maybe that's okay.

4 giant Beanstalks out of 5.

Coordinated Attacks

Novella by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

Another forgettable Rusch novella. It takes place in the Retrieval Artist universe, but I haven't read enough of those to notice much significance to this. Nor do I particularly want to. Rusch isn't a bad writer, but I don't think she's terribly consistent. A bit too caught up in making everything into a never-ending series to really get the most out of some of her ideas. This one is set on the moon in the future, but it doesn't feel like the moon and doesn't need the SF setting for anything besides getting a few more Analog novellas out of it. The presumably fit protagonist also struggles overly much with an uphill climb and lifting an injured woman considering moon-gravity. This annoys me, almost as much as my suspicion that the setting is there only to serve a more arching multi-novella plot I'm not that interested in.

Anyway, it's a competent pair of police procedural stories, an investigation into a developing series of terrorist attacks interspersed with flashbacks of a murder investigation from four years ago. The terrorist case is never solved, ending with a crisis averted and a lead to follow in the next novella. The murder case is frustrating in that all the clues observed turn out irrelevant, and aren't dealt with at all, merely resolving the mystery with the guilty party attacking the cops and thus establishing guilt. These aren't so frustrating if we look at the story as a character study of Detective Bartholomew Nyquist, but his transition from disaffected grumpy detective to heroic slightly-grumpy detective is left largely unexplained, details presumably to be filled in with the undoubtedly upcoming novella about an attempt on his life which Rusch mentions about ten times, but refuses to elaborate or give any detail. He is an interesting character, if a bit standard-issue, but Rusch seems to be saving a lot of the interesting bits of characterization to dole out in three or four more novellas.

Despite all my complaining, this is a decent thriller. I was unable to stop reading, even when my primary interest, if asked, was what connection the two mysteries had in common to justify their presentation as one story (not enough). The sort of story you can't put down, but once finished, wonder where your forty pages went. I honestly can't remember what took so many pages, or figure out how I failed to notice or get bored. But the fact is I wasn't bored. I just doubt I'll remember this story six months from now when the first of infinite sequels is published. And I'm a little bitter about the obviously serialization-induced name dropping, excess characters, and lack of detail in backstory, in case you didn't pick up on that. Still, not awful to read, just not worth your time unless you love all Rusch's work indiscriminately. And this is still legitimately more interesting and suspenseful than some.

2.5 assassinated moon-mayors out of 5.

Kawataro

Novelette by Alec Nevala-Lee

A medical mystery, wrapped in a murder mystery, against a backdrop of deaf linguistics and Japanese folklore. Hakaru is assisting in research into a new sign language which has developed in an isolated community with an enormously high rate of deafness. At first I was expecting a tale of linguistic research, or maybe politics when a councilman tries to shut down the research. But then the councilman is murdered, and the tale takes a turn for the strange.

The Kawataro is a water spirit, translated as "river boy", known for causing mischief. Nevala-Lee changes the appearance and behavior of the spirit a bit to suit the story he's trying to tell, but given the variability of folklore from place to place, it's believable. As the name of the story would tell you, it plays a major role in the story.

And aside from a biology-related infodump toward the 3/4 mark, this reads much more like a horror/mystery/fantasy than an Analog hard-SF story. Which is a nice change of pace in the magazine, and shows that Nevala-Lee knows how to stand out from the crowd.

The novelette goes through another sharp change toward the end, after an exciting chase scene it shifts to a sadder, more sciency story and wraps up with a nice resolution to the intellectual mysteries and plenty of bittersweetness for the characters.

I loved the science here, and the well-told story. And my girlfriend-who-doesn't-really-like-Analog enjoyed the hell out of it too. It read a bit like a horror story, a bit like a mystery, and a bit like hard SF. I always appreciate this sort of mix when it pops up in Analog, which is sadly not as often as I'd like.

The second sudden change was a bit too much out of nowhere, and I wish we hadn't been kept in the dark about what Hakaru saw toward the end of the chase. It felt not entirely fair to the reader, and made the subsequent infodump a bit more jarring and out-of-place. But aside from this one page of writing, I enjoyed the story and couldn't stop reading. More like these from both Analog and Mr. Nevala-Lee!

3.5 fish-monsters out of 5 carry knives.

Take One for the Road

Short Story by Jamie Todd Rubin

Our narrator moves in next to an old astronaut from a manned landing on Mercury. The story is this astronaut's slow reveal of what happened to the astronaut who died on Mercury's surface, interspersed with musing on his own cancer, suicide, euthanasia, and murder. The question of "when is it acceptable to take a life" isn't answered, though we're given plenty of food for thought.

I quite liked the quiet storytelling carried through the big reveal and into a maudlin final scene. The big surprise is unexpected, but is sort of trivial and academic. And that might be the story's weak point: I don't really care about the central mystery. I appreciate it as a character-study of an old man with cancer, and I want to hear the end of the man's story, but I don't really care what the end is. He made an interesting moral judgment, but I think the fact that the other astronauts are barely characterized and vaguely unlikable really takes away from any emotional impact of the old man's mission.

For the most part, I liked the writing itself, particularly the awesome metaphor for how difficult it is to orbit mercury. But there where roughly three awkward, misplaced metaphors for each good one. The main character is not an astronaut, and is oblivious to space travel enough to be unaware of a past mission to Mercury.

"... finishing off his bottle and jettisoning it like a spent rocket into the plastic bin to one side of the porch. It clanked softly against its empty siblings, each one a mission of exploration and discovery."

I might not mind this if the astronaut were the narrator, but our space-oblivious narrator, in a future without manned spaceflight feels really bizarre and awkward writing things like this. A short, thoughtfully quiet story. I liked it, but it wasn't a favorite.

3 retired astronaut beers out of 5.

Stone Age

Short Story by Alastair Mayer

A story that reads for much of its eight pages like it should be set in the Stargate: SG-1 universe. An archeologist finds a pyramid in a jungle on an alien world, and hopes it will prove his theories of ancient-but-not-geologically-ancient alien astronauts. This universe is known to have been colonized by "Terraformers", who went around making lots of planets, including Earth, all similar to each other. Down to transplanting mosquitos around the galaxy. But the idea that a more recent species, ten thousand or so years ago, flew around the galaxy is considered completely crackpot for some reason. Although humans are flying around the galaxy right now, and finding square pyramids on nearly every planet.

At the mention of possible flying pyramid-ships in space, I couldn't help rolling my eyes, and I almost put the story down there. It was pretty clunky up to that point, in dialogue and exposition. But then Dr. Daniel Jackson Dr. Hannibal Carson has his hopes dashed by tomb raiders jumping his find and things get more interesting. The tomb plot makes the bulk of the story, and my sympathy for the crackpot scientist really increases by the end. The ending is more-or-less happy, with Carson managing to save some evidence from his find even as he loses most of it.

This story is a bit slight, in character, plot, and ideas, but the world-building is good, and the clunky writing improves in the second half. It actually held my attention pretty well, and was short enough I think it was worth my time for the neat archeological find and snappy second half.

2.5 ancient alien astronauts out of 5.