Analog, June 2008

One of the more irritating pitfalls for any practitioner of the noble art of science fiction writing is to work out some idea that you’ve noticed should have been worked out years ago, to take your time to do it right, and then, on the eve of writing it into a story (or, worse, mailing the story off), picking up the new issue of your favorite science fiction magazine and finding that some rat bastard has just managed to beat you to it. Why the so and so couldn’t have published that story earlier and saved you the labor of working out all those tedious details, you’ll never know.

I imagine a few writers felt that way about Richard A. Lovett a year ago when he published “The Sands of Titan” in the June 2007 issue of Analog. A carefully worked out survival story set on Saturn’s largest moon, it really offers little more in the scientific arena than you might find in the reports on the discoveries of the Cassini probe. It offers it, however, in a pleasantly entertaining novella (or short novel, in case English is your language) about a miner in the Saturn System whose space tug crashes, forcing him to hike to the moon’s nearest scientific station, which might be a bit farther away from where he came down than his life support can cope with.

The idea that the ever reliable Mr. Lovett explored so well in “The Sands of Titan” was the nature of the personality of the kind of man who will be drawn into working and exploring in the frontier of the solar system when we finally get there. The hero and narrator of the story is Floyd “Phoenix” Ashman. Ashman is a frontiersman, less Wyatt Earp than Daniel Boone, a loner, and, to an extent, prefers to be a loner.

Not that he really is, mind you. Floyd is possessed of an AI implant and, as sometimes happens to AIs, though not often, his has gone sentient. “Her” name is Brittney, and she has the personality of an 18- or 19-year-old girl. Between the two of them, they figure our how to get to the station before Floyd’s air supply gives out.

Now, in the June 2008 issue of Analog, Lovett is back with Floyd and Brittney in a short novel set on another of Saturn’s moons, Iapetus. Floyd is still the reclusive pioneer sort; at one point he wistfully thinks about moving on to Uranus where it’s less crowded. But the story is narrated not by him this time, but by Brittney. They’ve been hired to guide a speculator in search of something-he won’t tell them what it is even when they find it-and when he does find it, he tries to kill Floyd to protect the secret. He almost succeeds, and Floyd is totally incapacitated, unconscious with a serious brain injury.

Once again, Lovett is careful and entertaining in his handling of background and plot details-and character. Brittney, a mere implant with no resources other than her ability to think and talk, has to find a way to save herself and the comatose Floyd.

A year ago, Lovett had in the same issue with “The Sands of Titan” a fascinating article on new discoveries about the Saturn system. This time he offers “Peroxide Snow, Ejected Moons and Deserts that Create Themselves,” which explores some of the more recent (and somewhat outrageous) theories about the development of planets in the entire Solar System.

Saturn has a lot of moons, and if Lovett intends to have Floyd and Brittney get in trouble on each one of them, I certainly intend to keep reading about it.

In Ben Bova’s “Waterbot,” a novelette, we’re still mining, though this time in the asteroid belt. JRK49N is a waterbot, a space ship intended to find and retrieve ice, which is the main source of water in the Belt. Our narrator (I think Bova gave him a name, but I neglected to write it down if he did, and I can’t find it) is a technician who’s piloting JRK49N-referred to not so lovingly as “Jerky”-because he’s low man on the totem pole. Jerky is an old ship, about half a voyage away from the junk heap. When it’s attacked by a freebooter after its cargo, our hero evaporates the ice and vents it to give the ship some maneuverability. This way he escapes being killed by the pirates, who decide to leave the ship alone because once the water is used up, they have no more interest in it. And once the water is used up, the ship has no more propellant. So there it is, floating in space with no hope of rescue.

While I think I enjoyed Lovett’s story somewhat more than I enjoyed this one, don’t take that as criticism; if there is anyone around the field right now who qualifies as an “old pro” in the best senses of the term, it’s Ben Bova. He first showed up back in the February, 1960 Amazing with “A Long Way Back,” has been a reliable contributor of hard SF in books and magazines ever since, and spent a term as editor of Analog. This is an almost textbook example of how to do a good, solid, hard SF space story in the modern sense, and that, after all, is what Analog is all about. We’re off to a rousing start here.

Speaking of professionalism and old pros, Lovett’s story cops the cover, which is by David Hardy, who also contributes a two-page interior illustration for it, and “Waterbot” gets a nice (if too clean looking) Vincent di Fate illustration as its frontispiece.

The illustration (another two-page spread) that opens Craig DeLancey’s “Demand Ecology” is an even nicer drawing by William Warren, but the story, while well-done, is not on a level with its predecessors in this issue.

Earth’s first interstellar voyage is to a gas giant planet where it’s hoped the ship might mine matryoshka carbon balls from the atmosphere. These are buckyballs wrapped in layers of carbon, useful in building highly advanced nano-computers. When they reach the planet, they find an alien species has already arrived there and is busily engaged in a project of its own. Since the alien species ignores us, the ship’s military captain decides to go ahead with the assigned mission despite the fact he doesn’t know what the alien’s reason for being there might be. The ship’s civilian science officer suspects that’s a mistake and tries to warn the captain, who ignores his warnings.

That’s where the story falls apart. Just ignoring the fact that the military martinet who refuses to listen to reason is a cliché out of the dime novels, it’s also not very logical. I assure you, West Point, Annapolis, and the Air Force Academy don’t turn out very many of those, and the psychological evaluations necessary to get a command as important as our first extra solar voyage would include a number of tests expressly designed to prevent such a personality from making the grade. For this reason, the story isn’t very believable.

But it is professional in other respects, and if you can get past that problem, or don’t agree with me that military officers understand the seriousness of diplomatic disasters, you might enjoy this one.

“On the Evolution of God” by Robert Lundy is a poem about evolution, and this issue’s requisite swipe at religion. I can assure you that this is getting to be so familiar, repetitious, and pointless a gesture that even this old, unapologetic agnostic is getting sick of the childishness of it.

“Back” by Susan Forest is so nicely written a short story-one of those familiar little time paradox stories we’ve been enjoying in Analog lately-that I’m almost ashamed to have to point out that the ending requires the story’s hero to forget a truly obvious detail. Read the story, you’ll enjoy it, but I’m not going to suggest rereading it.

“Finalizing History” by Richard K. Lyons opens with Earl Stanley Gardner, the mystery writer who created Perry Mason, receiving a phone call from John W. Campbell, editor of Analog Science Fiction-Science Fact. Why would Campbell in the 1960s phone a man who hasn’t written any science fiction since 1932? It seems Campbell and several other people have been having identical dreams in which they all are gathered at a meeting with an extra-terrestrial being. Those other people include Ronald Reagan, Robert Heinlein, Edward Teller, Gen. Douglas MacArthur, and Jacquelyn Kennedy. Seems they have to solve a small puzzle in order for humanity to get invited into intergalactic civilization.

Nice story, don’t look for the sharpest characterization of the historic figures (though I find it disturbing that I’m required to think of people I knew and went to convention parties with as “historic figures”), but expect to have fun. The last paragraph might, I warn you, send you back to reread the story and see what you might have missed. But it’s a very good story, maybe the best in the issue.

This brings us to the final story in the issue, Bud Sparhawk’s “The Late Sam Boone.” This is part of a humorous series about a not very bright Earthman wandering among intergalactic civilizations, trying to earn a livelihood and not get killed in the process. His current job is negotiating a settlement between the warlike giant Sith and the little, furry, game-loving Arasoes. It seems the Sith, in addition to being really, really big are short-tempered religious fanatics who have set out to convert the Arasoes to their religion. Or kill them. And if Sam doesn’t negotiate the whole thing in a way the Sith find suitable, they may declare war on Earth as well. Good natured, raucous humor. It gets my mark of approval.