Analog“Kagari” by Ron Collins
“Music of a Different Sphere” by Stanley Schmidt
“From the River to the Moon” by Kelsey Hutton
“Game, Set, Match” by Robert Friedman and Barry N. Malzberg
“Homesick” by H. A. B. Wilt
“Sluggish” by Martin L. Shoemaker
“The Handmaiden-Alchemist” by Marie Vibbert
“Places You Have Never Been” by David Cleden
“Song of Nyx” by Sam W. Pisciotta
“Barreira do Inferno” by Madeline Barnicle
“The Invariant Speed of Destiny” by Phoebe Barton
“The Most Expensive Family Vacation on Record” by Sheldon J. Pacotti
“For Every Bee, a Hive” by Benjamin C. Kinney
“Hull Run” by David Goodman
“Paytron of the Arts” by Raymund Eich
“You’re 16” by Steve Ingeman
“Tepid War” by Jay Werkheiser
“Thin as Blood” by Eric Del Carlo
“A Vintage Atmosphere” by Hûw Steer
Reviewed by Victoria Silverwolf
With no less than nineteen original works, and with settings ranging from the past to the near future to millennia from now, this issue is sure to offer something for every reader of science fiction.
The narrator of “Kagari” by Ron Collins is an avian extraterrestrial. One man is the only survivor when a human spaceship crashes on the alien’s planet. He becomes the narrator’s pet. When they learn to communicate, each learns something about freedom and duty.
Although the aliens are physically very different from humans, their culture is almost indistinguishable from medieval feudalism. The narrator is referred to by the alien word prueaxe, but there is no reason why this could not be replaced by prince or heir. His problem is that he must give up true love to marry a fellow aristocrat, for the good of his country. Such a dilemma might be found in any story set in the Middle Ages.
Readers are likely to empathize with both the human and alien characters, but may wish they were less similar in psychology. (It is also difficult to believe they could learn to speak about abstract concepts, when they begin with nothing but gestures.)
In “Music of a Different Sphere” by Stanley Schmidt, an orchestra visits a human colony planet cut off from Earth for some time. The world’s atmosphere is slightly different, making it impossible to properly tune certain instruments. The problem leads to cooperation between the two estranged planets.
This story can be thought of as hard science fiction in which the science is musicology. The author, a musician as well as writer and former editor of the magazine, makes the technical details convincing. This gentle work makes for pleasant, if minor, reading.
“From the River to the Moon” by Kelsey Hutton features a Native American woman who leaves Earth to join her daughter on a space station. It seems that the planet has suffered severe environmental damage, and indigenous peoples were among the last to leave. The woman mourns for the lost beauty of Earth, compared to the relatively sterile environment of space, but learns there is still hope.
The details of the flight from Earth to the space station are described in a realistic fashion. It is, of course, hard to accept that a large percentage of the planet’s population could be shuttled into space this way. The main character’s memories of her native land, told in flashback, are the most effective parts of the story.
“Game, Set, Match” by Robert Friedman and Barry N. Malzberg takes the form of messages between the two authors. Friedman wonders why a large banking company bought a software company that lost money. Malzberg offers various suggestions. Their correspondence itself reveals the answer.
This is a clever, if superficial, little bagatelle. Malzberg may be deliberately parodying his own sardonic writing style, which is actually part of the plot. Those familiar with his unique work will best appreciate this tale.
“Homesick” by H. A. B. Wilt consists of an interview with an astronaut that reveals why she and her companions faced serious danger on their return to Earth, and what the situation means for the future of space travel. Only two pages long, the story involves a problem predicted in 1978. There is little to this brief work other than its premise, which is fairly interesting.
The protagonist of “Sluggish” by Martin L. Shoemaker works gathering valuable material on an alien planet inhabited by giant slug-like creatures. Her vehicle gets stuck in the world’s swampy environment, leading to a struggle to survive.
Despite the main character’s serious dilemma, there is a tongue-in-cheek tone to the story. The dialogue is informal and full of wisecracks. The planet’s ecosystem is intriguing, but the lighthearted mood creates little suspense.
“The Handmaiden-Alchemist” by Marie Vibbert takes place in France in the early 16th century. The main character is the daughter of an alchemist. She uses her knowledge of chemistry to prevent a sexually aggressive man from raping her.
The speculative content of this work of historical fiction is minimal, in the form of a concoction created by the protagonist. The author creates a convincing portrait of a time when women were at the mercy of violent men. Multiple footnotes give the modern chemical formulae of substances mentioned in the text, which is distracting.
“Places You Have Never Been” by David Cleden involves invisible but solid bubbles that appear, seemingly at random, in a city. When they vanish, they take whatever is inside them along. A young man assists an older man in mapping these bubbles, partly to help curious onlookers avoid the danger, and partly to understand their behavior. The arrival of a young woman who has her own motive leads to a dramatic conclusion.
The story is expertly plotted, with a flashback early in the text proving to be relevant to the climax in a surprising but logical way. The premise is interesting and the characters are fully developed.
The characters in “Song of Nyx” by Sam W. Pisciotta are a scientist facing the possibility of his wife leaving in order to accept a better job and the last surviving humpback whale on Earth. Neural implants allow the two to communicate. During a dangerous storm at sea, a crisis causes both of them to make important decisions in their lives.
The author makes the whale an intriguing character, without neglecting the importance of depicting the human protagonist in an equally compelling manner. As a bonus, the main narrative alternates with a creation myth told by the whale. These sections of the text are imaginative and poetic.
The title of “Barreira do Inferno” by Madeline Barnicle refers to a real rocket launching site in Brazil. In this story, it is used in the future to send lottery winners to a colony on Mars. The protagonist realizes that extremely hot weather threatens to turn the next launch into a disaster. (The name of the site can be translated into English as “Hell’s Barrier,” which may be intended as a symbol of the problem.) He struggles to convince a bureaucrat to cancel the launch, even though that would mean making the lottery winners wait two years.
The plot is straightforward, the only suspense being whether the launch will take place or not. The Brazilian setting adds interest for readers outside that nation. One small aspect of the story that is pleasing is that the protagonist pays a very realistic price for his whistleblowing.
Barely over a page long, “The Invariant Speed of Destiny” by Phoebe Barton deals with a pair of lovers separated when one travels to Alpha Centauri through a warp in space. The fact that the warp sends the traveler back in time adds a poignant note when tragedy strikes.
The premise may be difficult to comprehend (the text itself says more than once that the situation doesn’t make sense) but this tiny work is effective as an emotional prose poem. (The use of second person narration, often overused, seems appropriate here.)
The narrator of “The Most Expensive Family Vacation on Record” by Sheldon J. Pacotti has a very difficult relationship with his father, who rejects his son because he is gay. When the father suffers from dementia, the son uses advanced neural regeneration technology to restore the old man’s brain function. The problem is that he is now essentially a new person, needing to learn everything all over again.
Obviously, this is a very emotional story. The way in which father and son change roles can be seen as a metaphor for children becoming caretakers for their parents. The author manages to create a powerful work in not much more than two pages, with not a word wasted.
“For Every Bee, a Hive” by Benjamin C. Kinney takes place at a time in the future when artificial intelligences are hostile to human beings. The protagonist is aboard a spaceship, out to salvage damaged AI devices near Neptune, in order to supply a human colony on the moon Nereid. The place of salvage turns out to be infested with a deadly weapon. The main character’s survival depends on reactivating a small AI found in the area, with all the risk that entails.
The story has a complex background, with much speculative content I have not mentioned. The protagonist has neural enhancements that allow her to communicate directly with her companions, the spaceship’s computer, and the reactivated AI. Much of the story consists of mental conversation. This creates the sense of a highly technological future, but can be difficult to follow. One of the protagonist’s enhancements reveals her emotional state to her, which seems both odd and unnecessary.
The main characters in “Hull Run” by David Goodman are adolescents living in a gigantic airship floating high in the atmosphere of Venus. They amuse themselves by running a dangerous race from one end of the outside of the huge vessel to the other. Unusually heavy winds make this particular race even more hazardous than usual, leading to a battle for survival.
The author does a fine job depicting believable young people. The setting is vivid, and the race that goes wrong creates genuine suspense. Even given the fact that teenagers often think of themselves as immortal, the protagonists’ actions seem foolhardy. In particular, flashbacks reveal that one character’s mother died when an accident caused her to fall from the airship. It seems unlikely that she would run a similar risk for fun.
“Paytron of the Arts” by Raymond Eich begins with what seems like a scene from an old-fashioned science fiction story. It turns out that this is the end of a novel by the protagonist. In this near future, writers can be supported by payment from anonymous patrons. When the main character’s patron suggests a drastic change in the novel, threatening to cut off payments if this is not done, the writer uses computer skills to discover the patron’s identity. A visit to the man reveals something about his motives, but the reader learns more than the writer does.
The premise is interesting, if somewhat implausible. It depends on the assumption that the theme of a science fiction novel could have so powerful an effect on society that a patron would be willing to pay the author enough money to ensure there is no need for any other income. (This is certainly flattering to SF writers!) The story has a twist ending, which readers are likely to predict.
The protagonist of “You’re 16” by Steve Ingeman is a teenage girl who undergoes a procedure that makes her part of a powerful computing system. Although she becomes something much more than an ordinary human being, she is drawn back into her former life.
The way in which the author depicts the main character’s enhanced mind is awe-inspiring. Rarely has superintelligence been described in such a sublime way. The story has an ending that carries quite an impact.
“Tepid War” by Jay Werkheiser takes place in a near future when advanced military technology makes civilians safe, even when battles are taking place all around them. Weapons attack only military targets with perfect precision. Civilians may be inconvenienced by traffic jams and the like as side effects, but they put up with these annoyances. The plot deals with office politics against this background.
This is a bitingly satiric tale, in which typical American corporation workers worry about ordinary problems at their jobs while the nation is at war with Russia, China, and India. They fight for parking spaces while military drones attack each other in their vicinity. The story can be read as an allegory for those not directly involved in warfare paying little attention to it. Tellingly, the last words of the text are “It didn’t matter.”
(As a side note, the author reveals in an afterword that he wrote about Russia invading Ukraine before it happened, in a tragic example of science fiction’s power of prediction.)
The antihero of “Thin As Blood” by Eric Del Carlo deals in armaments in a galactic empire at a time when certain symbolic happenings suggest to the superstitious that an all-encompassing war is imminent. He also reluctantly cares for a young boy because he is the child’s sole surviving relative, eventually abandoning him. When the devastating war is over, he discovers that the boy was more important than he thought.
Frankly, I did not understand the ending of this story. That may be because a note at the beginning of the story states that the child appeared in an earlier tale. Those familiar with the previous work are likely to get more out of this story than I did.
The main character in “A Vintage Atmosphere” by Hûw Steer makes a living by raising lichen and algae that produce oxygen on a series of connected asteroids in an alien solar system. He takes the product to a huge marketplace in space. When disaster strikes, he uses his resources to save as many lives as possible.
The story can be divided into three parts. In the first, the reader learns, in great detail, how the protagonist (only called “the farmer” throughout the text) raises his “crop.” The middle section deals with the catastrophe. The third part involves the friendship between the farmer and an adventurer, who becomes his partner. The first section is leisurely, the second one is dramatic, and the third is anticlimactic. Each part is worthy in its own way, but they do not always fit together gracefully.
Victoria Silverwolf has been having some busy nights at work.