Analog, January/February 2023
“The Elephant Maker” by Alec Nevala-Lee
“The Bends” by Rajan Khanna
“Mom” by Bruce McAllister
“Cornflower” by Victoria Navarra
“Octo-Drabbles” by Mary Soon Lee
“The Area Under the Curve” by Matt McHugh
“Direct Message” by Tom Pike
“A Real Snow Day” by M. Bennardo
“EDIE” by James Dick
“Party On” by James Van Pelt
“Ceres 7” by Lorraine Alden
“LEM” by Daniel Peterson
“The Battle of Wanakena” by Meghan Hyland
“Misplaced” by Shane Tourtellotte
“The Echo of a Will” by Marie Vibbert
“Gardens of Titan” by Erik M. Johnson
“Hothouse Orchids” by Harry Lang
Reviewed by Mike Bickerdike
This bimonthly issue of Analog contains a novella by Alec Nevala-Lee, 4 novelettes, 9 short stories and 3 pieces of flash fiction.
“The Elephant Maker” by Alec Nevala-Lee is an SF novella that explores the misuse of biotechnology. In some ways this is an entertaining and engaging story, but overall it’s success is more mixed. An Indian biotechnology company has invented an implantable brain stimulation device to normalise neurological conduction. It is proposed to have utility in patients with neurodevelopmental disorders and is in a clinical trial in India to test this hypothesis. When negative results start to come in that hinder the trial, the company and its researchers take the unusual step of extending the study to elephants. The parts of the tale that involve hunting a specific elephant as a subject for the trial are well done and quite exciting, evoking the land and nature of India in compelling detail. However, good pacing and striking imagery do not mitigate two flaws in the piece. Firstly—and this is a very common problem with SF concerning medical research—the scientific methods employed by the company (such as drawing conclusions from a single subject, and not comparing with untreated ‘control’ subjects) are highly unrealistic and would never be undertaken by any medical researcher with even the slightest competence. Secondly, the moral compass of all the lead characters is badly at fault. The methods of ethical review of the trial bear no relation to modern-day reality (when the story is set), and the ethical choices of the protagonists would get them all fined or imprisoned. The author has clearly obtained advice and information regarding brain physiology as these aspects of the tale make some sense from a neuroscience perspective, but it’s a shame similar attention wasn’t paid to the scientific methods and clinical ethical standards. What’s unusual here is that the characters who exhibit such loose ethics are the ‘good guys’. Of course, some readers may not care that the scientific methods and medical ethics in the story would be untenable in the real world (and they may enjoy the story regardless), but I’m not sure that excuses it. This tale manages an unusual double: it perpetuates the lazy myth of ‘evil medical research’ but in so doing, it actually takes the side of the unethical researchers.
“The Bends” by Rajan Khanna is an entertaining and well-conceived novelette. A diving suit AI aids a diver to manage his depth, regulate his air, and seek and record interesting marine fauna for him. As the diver goes on more diving trips, he seeks greater thrills and starts to interact more and more with the life he encounters. His interference with the sea-life disturbs the AI, leading to a gradually increasing sense of conflict. The pacing is good, and while the idea of an AI questioning its ‘master’ is not an especially new idea, the tale is well-told and offers a new take on AI-human interactions, as well as having something to say about ecology and the preservation of nature. Recommended.
“Mom” by Bruce McAllister is very short flash fiction, providing a snapshot picture of alien family home life, which manages to convey a degree of pathos—quite a feat in a few paragraphs. Not bad.
“Cornflower” by Victoria Navarra is an enjoyable short story set on a space station orbiting Saturn. Earth has been largely abandoned and humanity lives on myriad stations in the solar system, where food is grown in ‘aeroponic’ germination chambers. When the youthful Reza is given his first job as the solo worker on the station’s ‘farm’ he is initially underwhelmed that he didn’t get a better assignment. The story develops quite nicely, and characterisation is good. It ultimately leaps forward with a little too much haste, but the idea and message are nonetheless thoughtful and it’s a decent read.
“Octo-Drabbles” by Mary Soon Lee is five sentences long. A review should probably not be longer than the piece being reviewed, so I’ll leave it at that.
“The Area Under the Curve” by Matt McHugh is a terrific SF short story. With Earth becoming uninhabitable, the cream of the intellectual elite are readying themselves to undertake a trip to other stars on a generational starship. But when one couple discover their child is judged to be normal, not exceptional, and wouldn’t meet the standards required to take the ship, they have a difficult decision to make. The set up is carried out with engaging humour and clarity and then it segues into a more serious and ultimately sombre piece that has real depth of feeling. A superior piece of SF writing, this story is highly recommended.
“Direct Message” by Tom Pike is quirky and rather fun. Late at night while surfing Twitter, a man discovers a new account, posting short nonsense statements with bad grammar. Over time the grammar improves, and the mysterious account posts a poll to ask which region is the ‘least favourite’ that Twitter followers would like to be destroyed with a heat ray. The story is entertaining, told in off-hand accessible prose, and presents a scenario that is akin to Simak’s ‘everyman’ encountering aliens, but told with wry, modern humour.
“A Real Snow Day” by M. Bennardo is a short SF story that is recommended but somewhat challenging to review. Not because it is quirky or experimental—it actually follows a classic SF story approach and is a joy to read—but because it is a story with a slow reveal that it would be a great shame to spoil by presenting a plot summary. Atmospheric in tone and filled with sadness, the story paints a clear and rounded picture, not only of the environment, but also of the two principal characters who are snowed into their house by the blizzard of ’48. Highly recommended.
“EDIE” by James Dick is a well-written and entertaining novelette. EDIE, an acronym for ‘Europa Deep Ice Explorer’, is a robot sent to the Jovian moon Europa to explore its ice for biosignature compounds, and signs of life. EDIE sends telemetry and photographic data back to the mission team on Earth, who watch events unfold with great interest as it reaches Europa and touches down after the long trip out. When events don’t unfold as expected, the ground team is unsure what to make of the data. However, the mission leader’s young daughter perhaps has some of the best ideas. This is brightly told, and the characterisation of the mission leader and her family is good. Solar system stories, when well-told, can both entertain and educate. This tale does both, and the speculative element is quite an interesting idea.
“Party On” by James Van Pelt is an intriguing tale of a man who dimension hops from party to party, in search of the moments of joy and selflessness that can, at times, be found at such gatherings. The unfolding of the story and the principal idea are well done and imaginative, with the tale having a rather existential feel. This felt a little like the kind of story Harlan Ellison might have penned, and albeit rather short, it’s recommended reading.
“Ceres 7” by Lorraine Alden is rather like Godwin’s “The Cold Equations” story, with a twist. Colony ships are sent out from Earth, which is falling to extremist groups and nuclear war. One ship has sustained damage on the way out and unless a resupply vessel reaches them soon there will be either too few cold-sleep berths, or too little food to last the trip with the crew awake. An interesting idea proposed in the story is that the ship’s crew and the first few generations on the colony planet will be all women. This particular idea makes sense, but one cannot help feeling the logical problem of resupply and its solution is less likely and believable.
“LEM” by Daniel Peterson is flash fiction. It’s hard to tell what LEM is, but perhaps she’s a robot of some kind. LEM sips coffee, sleeps between ‘iterations’, is immortal and converses with someone called ‘Watcher’ about the nature of the end of time, all of which makes this short piece a little opaque.
“The Battle of Wanakena” by Meghan Hyland is quite an original novelette, both in its effective prose style and its plot. In a dystopian future Earth, metals have degraded as a result of an air-borne metal-corroding contaminant of some kind, leaving surviving generations living primitive subsistence lives. When one man seeks to raise an army to rebel against his lot in life, mysterious entities from Earth’s more advanced past get involved. The tale is told from the perspective of a woman who’s an antagonist to the ‘army leader’, and it’s recounted in her folksy idiom. The style works well for the piece, allowing both the humour in the story as well as the grim dystopia to come across effectively.
“Misplaced” by Shane Tourtellotte presents an intriguing idea: a survey ship in the Kuiper belt discovers a rocky asteroid where theory indicates only icy bodies should exist. The Kuiper belt surveyors, part of a familial clan who live in the outer reaches of the solar system, report the find but their claims are met with incredulity. However, while the premise is interesting, the plot focusses on the claim more than the mystery of the asteroid itself, which was a slight disappointment to this reader. The tale we do get is quite well told, however.
“The Echo of a Will” by Marie Vibbert shows how much can be conveyed in a short story when it’s written well. Vibbert combines truth and warmth in her characterisation of Zeke—a young man whose husband is in a coma from which he will not awake—with brevity and focus. The story covers only a few hours in the life of Zeke, as he converses with his home AI, presenting a snapshot picture of his troubled life. This tale is recommended; a common occurrence with this author’s work.
“Gardens of Titan” by Erik M. Johnson treads a well-worn plot device—that of technical problems requiring a rescue on a gas giant’s moon in our solar system. The familiarity of the theme to most readers could count against the tale, but it is rescued by significant positives: it’s well constructed and beautifully written. When they are done well, such tales can be exciting and highly engaging. In this case, a recently bereaved engineer runs into trouble on Saturn’s moon Titan. This story, which sensibly takes the time to develop character, is the author’s first published work, and is worth a read.
“Hothouse Orchids” by Harry Lang is a noir detective story, set on Mars, and written in a hardboiled detective style. When a woman’s corpse is discovered, it is clear she was tortured and then buried alive, and the act represents the first ever murder on the red planet. The second-generation Martian detective, Kovak, must solve the case. It reads well and is quite engrossing, managing to succeed in its use of the cross-genre detective style; readers of a certain age will find it hard to read without picturing Humphrey Bogart as the lead protagonist. As a fun novelette that’s a bit different, this is recommended.
More of Mike Bickerdike’s reviews and thoughts on science-fiction can be found at https://starfarersf.nicepage.io/