"Equalization" by Richard A. Lovett
"The Human Dress" by David Alexander
"Persistent Patterns" by Shane Tourtellotte
"The Pristine Planet" by Lloyd Biggle, Jr.

The fiction in this issue of Analog is made up of the second part of Rajnar Vajra's serial "Shootout at the Nokai Corral", which I won't be reviewing, two novelettes and two short stories. There is no Probability Zero short-short piece this issue.

The first novelette, "Equalization" by Richard A. Lovett, is an unsettling tale strongly reminiscent of Kurt Vonnegut's "Harrison Bergeron". It's set a couple of hundred years in the future in a Big Brother society in which the form of state control is much more subtle than overt military oppression. Everyone in this society is, from their mid-teens onwards, subject to a process called "Equalization" which uses mind transfer between bodies to "equalize" intellectual and physical talents so that there are no marked differences between the abilities of people in general. There are no under-talented people, but neither are there extraordinarily talented people. If anyone shows that he/she is potentially more talented in a certain area than the average person, their next body (mind transfer is usually once a year) will be chosen to even out that talent.

At least that's the way things are supposed to work. However, the occasional exception slips through the net, such as the protagonist in this story, who is a young athelete with the potential to break the 10,000 meter world record (if he isn't prevented from doing so by the Equalizers). He has been shielded and helped by individuals hostile to the ruling Equalizer elite (I assume the Equalizers are not themselves subject to Equalization) who want him to break the 200 year-old world record as a middle-finger in the air to the Equalizers, showing them that no matter how hard they try, they can never truly suppress individualism and talent, and that they would be defeated in the end. The young athelete breaks the world record, and then breaks his own new world record, and becomes a hero to the public. The Equalizers, for now, back off from punishing him due to fear of public backlash.

But public adulation is fickle and short-lived, and the athelete is soon forgotten after injury stops any more record-breaking exploits. However, the Equalizers never forget, and the athelete's punishment is that his next mind transfer is into a body crippled by a stroke. Still, there is hope for the future. He beat the odds and gave the Equalizers a giant raspberry. More will do the same in the future until equalization is eventually overthrown.

This story gives us a glimpse into frightening future potentialities similar to those discussed in Shane Tourtellotte's "Persistent Patterns", futures in which benign technologies developed by science are warped into repressive means of social control by unethical ruling elites. The mind transfer technique was originally used only in tourism, but when the military and social applications of the technology became apparent, governments soon adopted it as a method of control. As someone who has a deep distrust of almost any form of government — I believe strongly that only the most corrupt and unethical examples of our species get involved in the rat race to attain power over everyone else — I find such scenarios distinctly unnerving and all too close to potential future possibilities.

David Alexander's novelette "The Human Dress" is an entertaining space adventure set on board an interstellar space freighter carrying a very interesting cargo — a sentient, self-aware machine and its scientist creator. The ship is on route to the planet Centralia but has to stop off at a space station orbiting another world, Beloved, to load and offload cargo. Here it is hijacked by Gandar, the deposed despot of the world below, and a group of his followers, all of whom are a bunch of religious fanatics and nasty eugenics master-race types, guilty of mass murder on their own world.

These people are being pursued by a ship crewed by followers of the group that has overthrown them, and they need the freighter to help them escape. Gandar is a ruthless murderer, directly responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands, and he takes exception to the very existence of the sentient machine, which he views as an abomination, one which he intends to destroy. Things soon start to heat up, and as the story approaches its climax the freighter's First Officer has to make a very difficult and important decision if he's to protect the lives of his passengers.

This is an entertaining space adventure with a focus on a deeper question: what is life? Is a sentient machine really "alive" in any sense that we know it, and is the innocent and harmless sentient machine in this story more (or less) deserving of life than a ruthless human murderer? Interesting questions about the nature of life and the prejudices of the various human characters make this an enjoyable and more complex than average space adventure.

"Persistent Patterns" by Shane Tourtellotte is a short story dealing with the controversial topic of scientific research into altering the chemical and physical composition of the brain to cure various disorders such as violent crime and drug addiction. There are many ethical objections to such procedures, foremost being the potential for unethical groups or individuals to use it for "mind-wiping" and "mind control", and these objections are epitomized in the story by the fears of the politicians and general public, fears which could culminate in funding for the research being cut off.

The main protagonists in the story are two scientists — Pavel Patrusky and Lucinda Peale — through whom we get two radically different scientific points of view on the matter. Lucinda believes strongly in the existence of free will, and has strong reservations about the medical procedure being proposed, arguing that any possible change to the make-up of the brain would alter who and what a human being is. Pavel, on the other hand, strongly believes that free will does not exist and that we are ruled by determinism, and that the brain is nothing more than a biological machine, to be repaired when it doesn't work right. He firmly believes that the procedure in question can do nothing but good, helping cure violent criminals and drug addicts of their afflictions. An added bonus is that it can also be helped to cure other neurological problems such as stuttering (he suffers from a severe stutter) and Attention Disorder Deficit.

But how to prove this before funding gets cut? The climax of the story involves Pavel putting himself through the operation — against the wishes of fellow staff members and various politicians. Part of his intention to go ahead with the operation has been to score political points in favour of the procedure in the face of imminent political and public opposition. Now that it has turned out to be a success, much of that opposition should hopefully be defused.

I found most fascinating the ongoing ethical debate between Pavel and Lucinda, which reflects much of the general ethical dilemma inherent in such controversial research. Yes, the public and politicians are mostly pathetically ignorant about the real science and ethics behind major research like this, and are often subject to mostly ignorant and uninformed irrational fears and knee-jerk reactions against such work. But scientists are also blissfully blind to the fact that their great discoveries, done for the betterment of the human race, are more often than not used for negative and harmful purposes by unethical governments, military, and terrorists — nuclear power and biological research into diseases and pathogens being two of the most topical. Should delicate scientific research stop? Most certainly not — we might as well go back to living in the caves if it does. Scientific progress is essential to our development as a species. But it is our responsibility, scientists in particular, to be very, very careful that well-intended work does not introduce the risk that it may be put to far more harmful ends by less scrupulous groups.

This is an interesting, and thoughtful story, and I found myself in a quandry in that I have strong sympathies with both sides on many issues. It's a very delicate subject, and one we should pay much greater attention to, both in fiction and in real life. The current fears over misuse of nuclear and biological weapons by terrorists or hostile governments show just how relevant it is.

Lloyd Biggle, Jr.'s short story "The Pristine Planet" is the latest in his sequence of Interplanetary Relations Bureau stories that have appeared in Analog over the previous couple of years. A series of natural disasters on an IRB recreational world have left a large number of people dead. The sole survivor of the latest disaster becomes the focus of research by a scientist with a wild theory that the planet is alive and killing vacationers in an attempt to drive them away, and that the survivor wasn't killed because he has subconscious predictive powers that saved his life. The scientist persuades the young man to visit a number of other prime candidates for the next natural disaster, and, sure enough, each one of them is due to have a catastrophe Real Soon Now. Convinced by this evidence, the IRB orders all members to vacate the planet, leaving the scientist and his team to do their research. It all turns out to be a ruse, however. The scientist, who wanted to be rid of the pesky vacationers, had concocted the whole thing. The young survivor catches on to the ruse before he leaves, and, to the delight of his boss, has the last laugh on the scientist.

This story reminds me a lot of the classic '60s Star Trek episode, "Shore Leave" (written by Theodore Sturgeon) — crewmembers vacationing on an idyllic resort planet where nasty things start happening to them in weird and mysterious ways, but all is explained and turns out okay in the end. There are some notable differences in this story — it isn't aliens that are responsible, but the sneaky human scientist, and the poor unfortunates who are killed remain dead rather than coming back to life. But the feel of the story is very similar. It's a light, fun story, although nothing to write home about, and it'll never win any awards. A nice bit of light reading, though.

Overall, this was another good, solid issue of Analog. Three above average stories and one okay story make this issue an entertaining read. The only possible overall criticism I can think of is that, in the four issues of Analog that I've reviewed (Nov 2002 and Jan-Mar 2003), I haven't come across a really outstanding story. There have been no real turkeys, and most of the stories have been decent reads. But that's the problem. "Solid" and "above average" has been the norm, and even several "very good" stories, which is even better, but there hasn't been anything yet that has jumped up and smacked me in the mouth screaming "this is fantastic!". I'm still looking for that "killer" story, one that I just know for sure is going to be in my top half dozen of the year. Maybe next issue.

Phil Friel lives in the city of Derry, in Northern Ireland. He's been reading SF since the late 1960s (his first SF novel was The Time Machine when he was eight years old), and his tastes range the spectrum from space opera to the hardest of hard SF. He's always looking to expand those tastes, and reckons that the SF magazines are the perfect place to do just that. He likes both novels and short fiction, but prefers the shorter forms.