Analog, March 2008

The first science fiction magazine I ever bought was the January 1955 issue of Astounding Science Fiction. The issue featured a Christmas cover by Kelly Freas. I had been reading SF about 5 or 6 years and up to then had been content with books, mostly paperbacks. My taste for short fiction was satisfied, I thought, with anthologies.

ASF was edited at that time by the legendary John W. Campbell who, more than ten years earlier had, with the help of such writers as Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, Lester del Rey, Ted Sturgeon, Henry and Catherine Moore Kuttner, and George O. Smith, transformed science fiction from scientific romance to social realism. In 1955, Campbell was no longer the innovator and master of the field he had been back in the 1940s, but as the lead story of that issue was “The Darfstellar” by Walter M. Miller, Jr., I think I can safely say that Campbell was not down and out yet, either.

Time, as time will, marched on; Astounding changed its name to Analog, but the magazine and I have somehow managed to remain faithful to each other in our fashion. However, I notice as I lift the March 2008 issue off the table, that it doesn’t make those strange clicking noises my knees seem to insist on when I get up. The spine is straight, the layout crisp, the typeface neat and readable. If anything about the magazine shows signs of aging, I suppose it is the artwork. The cover is by George Krauter, who also has an interior illustration. Nicholas Jainschigg has the other. That long ago issue of Astounding that introduced me to the magazine had at least ten, possibly more. And though Krauter and Jainschigg are quite good, the cover at least does not come up to the standards set by Kelly Freas, John Schoenheer, Hubert Rogers, and H.R. van Dongen of long ago memory. Or is that me? Has nostalgia reared its ugly head to cloud my judgment? Don’t be silly.

Stanley Schmidt is editor and has been for longer than anyone else in the magazine’s history with the exception of John W. Campbell, so I suppose by now he pretty much has the magazine going in the direction he believes it ought to go in. So with that in mind (among other things), let’s take a look at the March issue.

“The Spacetime Pool” by Catherine Asaro is a novella and the first story in the book.

Imagine, if you will, an Earthling who is suddenly and without immediate explanation transported to another world, plunged into political intrigue among primitive people. There are warring factions that fight with strange weapons and ride strange, unearthly animals. The plot is rife with action, fisticuffs, romance, kidnappings, rescues, and narrow escapes, and the heroine runs around for most of the story’s 20,000 words in the sort of space-going harem costume that used to show up on the covers of Thrilling Wonder Stories, Planet Stories, and Captain Future.

When I think of Analog, to tell you the truth, I don’t usually think of stories where the plot bears quite this much similarity to Edgar Rice Burroughs and A Princess of Mars (or, for that matter, Flash Gordon). But don’t take that as a complaint. This is a very good adventure story, appears to be the first part of a proposed novel (and I hope the other segments will appear in Analog as well), and I suspect you will enjoy it immensely. Janelle Aulair, the heroine who is transported to that alien Earth (it won’t give away too much to tell you it is an alternate universe), plays the roles of both John Carter and Dejah Thoris, by cracky, and does a bang-up job in both of them.

And Catherine Asaro does a bang-up job as well. The story entertains, surprises, and moves at a good pace. Of course, being in Analog, it needs something scientific to justify its inclusion. That turns out to be abstruse mathematics. Aulair is a freshly graduated mathematician and among the mysteries posed by the story (not all of them answered in this novella) are why this culture is barely technological yet conversant at the same time with advanced math.

I suspect you’ll get a kick out of this one even if you don’t ordinarily think Analog is quite the magazine you want to read.

The novelette this issue is “Not Even the Past” by Robert R. Chase, a murder mystery set aboard a car rising into orbit on a beanstalk cable. Since the trip takes several days, it’s a bit more elaborate than the average elevator car. The passengers are representatives of a joint venture to develop a project to explore the solar system, their aides and a security agent posing as the chef and waiter for the ride. When the Chinese representative—a man who has gone out of his way to be unpleasant and politically provocative—is found dead, it’s up to the security agent to solve what appears to be a traditional locked room mystery.

Both the science fiction and impossible crime aspects of the story are well handled, especially for the short length, and Chase turns out a nice piece of entertainment, handling the ending especially well.

There are three short stories this issue, the first and shortest being “The Bookseller of Bastet” by John G. Hemry. It is also the big disappointment of the issue. Some distance in the future, on a planet colonized by people from Earth, politics seem to be shaping up rather as they are today. The point of the story seems to be that War is Not Good, something I suspect a lot of science fiction readers have figured out for themselves, and it makes this point without the intervention of any plot or story. Didn’t we used to term such efforts, “Essays with figures?”

Don’t, however, skip reading it on my say so, because it features an interesting, even memorable characterization of the titular bookseller and is just a few lines over three pages in length.

Right upon the heels of Hemry’s story comes the issue’s second True Gem, “Knot Your Grandfather’s Knot,” by Howard V. Hendrix. It’s one of those convoluted time travel stories where just a few elements—Mike Sakler, nearing his eighties; his family; a classic car; a message handed down from Mike’s grandfather; the 1939 World’s Fair; and a conversation with Albert Einstein—are used to tell a story that threatens to burst out of its corset like an out-of-control A.E. van Vogt plot.

The fun of such stories is watching the author keep that from happening. And Hendrix certainly knows his job. Some story elements seem less than they turn out to be while others turn out to be more, but in the end, everything fits neatly into its eleven pages without so much as a bulging seam.

Family matters also play their part in “Helen’s Last Will” by James C. Glass. The story details a legal battle arising from a woman’s decision to have her body cryogenically preserved, and I’d tell you more but you’d rather learn about the complications in the story rather than in this review. I can safely say that legal problems, to say nothing of family matters, can be just as complex sometimes as time travel paradoxes, and Glass does a nice job of keeping things moving, interesting, and clear.

The issue also includes the second part of Joe Haldeman’s serial, “Marsbound”; a science article, “Project Boreas: A Base at the Martian North Pole” by Stephen Baxter; and the usual features. In one case, the same feature as last issue. “Upcoming Events” by Anthony Lewis, on the last page of the issue, seems to carry the exact same copy as “Upcoming Events” on the last page of the issue. Either that or there aren’t as many conventions going on out there as I think there are.