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.