Analog, May 2008

The May, 2008, issue of Analog starts off with a novella called “Test Signals” by David Bartell. There’s not much plotting here, despite a strong idea. Our hero, who is born with a defect—an extra pair of arms—learns that the company he works for is trying to patent the genetic material which gave him that defect. To do this, they trick him into having the arms removed and signing a document giving away the discarded tissue. This permits them to research the material and patent any medical or genetic discoveries they make as a result.

Bartell is a good writer, and the complexity of the idea is helped by the expert way in which he organizes his subject matter. He also shows a real talent for characters and, toward the end of the story, a better than average grasp of human nature. But as I said, the idea is complex, and he doesn’t help his cause by making all his characters self-absorbed and not very likeable. His scenes are also not more than perfunctorily realized. As a result, this is not exactly a page-turner. But stick with it if you can, because there are some rewards.

“No Traveller Returns” by Dave Creek is something of a surprise. Old-fashioned space opera. The lead character, Mike Christopher, has appeared in five previous stories in Analog, but this is the first I’ve read.

Mike is returning to his own starship and hitches a ride with an alien named Votana who, as it turns out, is being pursued by someone the alien fears. The reason probably has to do with the contents of a stasis case Votana is carrying. When Votana’s ship can go no farther, they seek refuge on a gigantic space station, mainly populated by outlaws and fugitives, where Votana has arranged for them to take passage on yet another ship. But the species Votana represents regards itself as superior to all others and isn’t confiding in Mike about much of what’s going on.

Dave Creek isn’t really as good a writer as some of the great space opera writers like Edmond Hamilton or Poul Anderson or Catherine L. Moore—not to mention Jack Vance or Leigh Brackett. He tells too much that he ought to show, and his characterization is not just thin, it’s sheer. Yet “No Traveller Returns” is a lot of fun, and a pleasant change of pace from the usual Analog story. Just squint your eyes as you read and you might not notice how similar his universe—to say nothing of the setting, at least for this story—is to the Babylon 5 TV series.

The story is enhanced by a pretty good two-page illustration by John Allemand, but the next storyt, “The Ashes of His Fathers” by Eric James Stone features a double spread by Vincent Di Fate. It shows a spaceship approaching a space station above a planet, and I swear I’ve seen Di Fate do this drawing a dozen times before (and John Berkey another dozen), but it is oh, so beautiful. If Analog’s covers looked this good, the magazine would probably sell better on the newsstands.

And if all of Analog’s stories were as good as “The Ashes of His Fathers,” the magazine might sell substantially better.

A ship comes to Earth from a colony more than 37,500 light years away. It is September 27, 2999, and the purpose of the return to the home planet is to bring the ashes of the planet’s original colonists back to the world of their birth for burial. Settled by a Christian group, the colony’s culture is still deeply defined by their religion. Earth culture, of course, has long since abandoned religion.

Here’s another space story, and while this one might not be space opera like “No Traveller Returns,” it’s clearly in the tradition of writers like Arthur C. Clarke, Poul Anderson, and the older, more philosophical Edmond Hamilton. The captain of the starship finds himself at his destination only to be bogged down in so much red tape that it might not be possible to land the cargo by the deadline prescribed by their religious beliefs, the start of the new millennium in 3001. The ship’s captain and a customs official, technically on opposite sides in the dispute, set out to find a solution to their problem.

Some readers may not agree with the solution they come up with, but it’s one I think is at least feasible. This story works on many different levels, and is very well written, indeed, by Eric James Stone. It was accidentally omitted from the table of contents, and that’s a shame. Don’t miss this one, especially if you like to be reminded, occasionally, that people can work together to overcome problems.

I mentioned that I liked Vincent di Fate’s illustration for “The Ashes of His Fathers,” but Sarah K. Castle’s “Still-Hunting” opens with a double-spread by Broeck Steadman that’s even nicer. I still find it sad that Analog is using fewer drawings per issue than was used at one time on a single short novel in the magazine, but with these three illustrators and the double-spread format, the magazine is very well illustrated indeed. And there are four of them this time.

But I find it exciting that Analog still carries stories as good as “Still-Hunting.” It’s a small drama about polar bears a few years into the future as they and humans reluctantly join forces to survive environmental changes. Written from the point of view of a male named Rariil, it is well told and the portrayal of the bears is completely convincing. Hurrah for Sarah Castle! When some old-timer like me assures you in the future that “They don’t write stories like they used to,” just point to some story this good and say, “So what?” But you might have to search to find many this good.

Darrell Schweitzer contributes this month’s “Probability Zero,” an obvious vignette that takes up almost a full page of type, about dinosaurs in the Garden of Eden. It’s padded out to two pages by a title, a blurb, a house ad for subscriber assistance, and some white space.

The fourth double-spread drawing in this issue is another by John Allemand, and it graces “Petite Pilferer Puzzles Piedmont Police” by Walter L. Kliene, and, I’m pleased to say, the story graces back.

The story is narrated by a cop named Stan, a twenty-nine-year veteran, retired from the Oakland, California, police department and now working a quiet patrol car beat in Piedmont, an upscale community that never has any crime. Until now. A short, skinny woman is somehow breaking into people’s homes and stealing the oddest things. Jewelry, candlesticks, Tupperware. She’s chased a few times but never caught. She seems able to disappear from anywhere. So one day, Stan comes home and finds her in his living room, where all his furniture—antiques selected by his late wife and himself over the years of their marriage together—has vanished. It quickly reappears, and trying not to scare the thief, he sits down and talks with her. But when he tries to arrest her, she runs into his kitchen. Despite the fact that the back door is locked and the window doesn’t open, she escapes.

Kliene gives us a nicely relaxed story with great characters—Stan is the most likeable first person narrator I’ve encountered in some time. There’s real professionalism in the way this story is constructed and developed. Kleine makes it look easy, too.

Good lord, what’s wrong with this issue? I haven’t had anything to grouch about since the lead story, and I felt guilty about complaining there.

In “What Drives Cars?” by Carl Frederick, Paul Whitman is selected to drive one of the new Victor class automobiles, cars with computerized brains that can drive themselves and are connected to one another by a cell phone network. This produces a more intelligent automobile than the manufacturers counted on, and when the cars learn that the state legislature is about to vote down a bill making ethanol (their fuel) more readily available, they decide en masse to drive to the capitol to protest—carrying their drivers with them. In order to stop this, the manufacturer arranges to link them to a website that suggests ethanol plants might be harmful to humans. The cars are programmed, of course, with the three laws of robotics, so their reaction is to head to the closest ethanol plant to destroy it. Here’s another pleasantly written, clever story. It’s nothing more than a problem story, but the problem is interesting and the solution satisfies. The May, 2008, Analog scores again.

It’s been a while since I’ve read a good generation-ship story, though I usually enjoy them. Ronald R. Lambert offers up one in “Consequences of the Mutiny,” and it works at the level of most of the stories in this issue, which is to say it’s solidly entertaining.

A generation ship carrying fifty thousand colonists in stasis undergoes a mutiny when some of the crew decides they do not want to be forced to live on a planet, which will happen once the ship reaches its destination. They devise a plan to build another ship but decide to keep the colonists in stasis until they reach the destination world. But another problem has arisen. The original crew numbered 1,000, and the ship had planned space and resources for another thousand. But the population has already reached 2,000, and it has become necessary to deal with additional children by putting them into stasis. They will be released, of course, when the sleeping colonists are awakened to go down to the world they are to colonize. But they have not yet reached that world, and they are threatening to fill up the available space in which to store people in stasis—meaning there will be no more room for children.

The story is about Aaron and Cynthi Land, who have just seen their first child placed in stasis, and their reactions as a new mutiny is stirred up and how they deal with it.

I am so tired of this issue of Analog. Of course, if I were reading as a paying customer, I’d be very pleased. But I’m a critic for crying out loud. Hey, Stanley Schmidt! Couldn’t you show a little consideration and slip in something for me to criticize somewhere?

Lambert does a solid job of imagining the society that might crop up aboard a generation ship, and indeed, especially considering this is only a short novelette, his ship is quite well realized. At novel length, I suspect he could do as good a job as Arthur C. Clarke did in designing Rama. Or as Robert A. Heinlein did in the two “Universe” novelettes. His characters are well done, his plot nicely crafted, not too contrived, not too loose. It’s a shame I’ve already said something to the effect of “solid professional work” in this review, because I find I’m tempted to repeat myself.

And Edward M. Lerner’s “The Night of the RFIDs” is no help, because it’s well told, well written, and, well, completely engrossing.

RFIDs are radio frequency id devices, simple chips, imbedded into everything from clothing and packaging to folding money. Tim Anderson, attending community college in his home town of Hadley, South Carolina, works in a used book store with a mysterious man he knows as Marc Kimball. When a computer virus puts most of the state’s computers and computer-run operations out of business for a couple of days, the federal government responds by quarantining the entire state. Homeland Security is searching for the person responsible, and it quickly develops that the man they’re after is Marc Kimball. It also turns out that there’s more to the virus than there first appeared, and Tim Anderson begins to learn about things like loyalty, responsibility, and higher causes.

Back in the September, 2007, issue of, Analog, Lerner published an article on RFIDs which suggests he’s been giving some thought to the subject. There are already (and have been for a few years) conspiracy theories that suggest microchips are already hidden in everything we own, enabling government agencies such as Homeland Security to keep track of our every movement. Lerner doesn’t seem to be going so far as that, but he makes a good case that they could be used in that way in the near future. It’ll be interesting to watch the letter columns in future Analogs to see if this story generates any debates.

If you generally avoid Analog because of its tendency to publish stories that are bottom heavy with technological detail, you might want to give this issue a try. This is still a hard SF magazine, but this issue does a superb job of balancing story and characterization into the equation—without subjecting you to the math. The usual political one-sidedness that many consider the magazine’s chief charm—or chief annoyance—is subdued this time out, also.

Speaking of which, “Brass Tacks” this issue features a long letter in which a reader complains about the emphasis on political content in the stories. Stanley Schmitz replies that it just isn’t so, and anyway, if the reader feels his viewpoint isn’t represented, then all he has to do is write a good enough story espousing his point of view, and it will get published. Isn’t that simple? Makes one wonder why no one has managed to do that.