"Alien Archaeology" by Neal Asher
"News from the Front" by Harry Turtledove
"Three Days of Rain" by Holly Phillips
"Studies in the Field" by R. Neube
"Don’t Stop" by James Patrick Kelly
"Tideline" by Elizabeth Bear
"Scrawl Daddy" by Jack Skillingstead

"Marrying In" by Carrie Vaughn

Asimov’s Science Fiction leads off its June issue with Neal Asher‘s novella, "Alien Archeology." Rho, a former criminal turned xeno-archeologist, has made a startling discovery—the means to restore the intelligence of creatures who renounced that attribute long ago. Despite Rho’s attempt to limit knowledge of his discovery to his employer, a thoroughly contemptible dealer in anything profitable named Jael, comes looking for it. She tortures Rho, uses a truth serum to get the information she seeks, and leaves him for dead. But Rho survives to chase down Jael and the results of her subsequent deals, which prove surprising to them both.

This is a taut adventure tale, full of violence and double-dealing. Asher effectively uses first and third person narratives to separate sections alternately told from Rho’s and Jael’s points of view, allowing simultaneous action to flow easily.

It is no wonder Harry Turtledove warns in the introduction to "News from the Front" of the perils of guessing at an author’s politics from his work—I was sorely tempted to conjecture. Told in a series of faux news articles, this novelette offers a thought-provoking alternate history of the American home front during World War II. The articles, spanning the six months between December 1941 and June 1942, deride the Roosevelt administration and the U.S. military for ineptitude and adventurism, and divulge details of the conduct of the war as the situation goes from bad to worse. Parallels between the story’s scrapbook narrative and current events can hardly be missed. For many of us, these parallels are uncomfortable; they disturb our worldview. We may want to counter, "But it didn’t happen that way," and, "This is different." In presenting an alternative vision of that storied era, Turtledove turns the present problem on its head and asks, "What if it had?" and "What if it isn’t?", challenging us to truly think about our assumptions, whatever our political leanings might be.

Six short stories round out this issue:

Climate change has taken its toll in Holly Phillips‘s "Three Days of Rain." The lake is dry, leaving only a shimmering mirage beneath the bridge.  The Assembly is debating whether to stay and eke out the last of the water, or to abandon the pumps and move the town. Santiago, a workingman, as well as his wealthier friends, must also decide for themselves whether to stay or to go. Filled with stirring descriptions, this story evokes a sense of place and of the love of that place, even at its ruin.

In "Studies in the Field" by R. Neube, a human "xenopologist" finds himself caught up in the classic dilemma of the supposedly neutral observer. He is living among and studying a nomadic, arctic-type alien culture he calls "doughboys" when a village of these doughboys is attacked, and everyone within slaughtered. The xenopologist determines who perpetrated the attack and eliminates the threat, at least for the time being.

"Studies in the Field" introduces an engaging narrator in the xenopologist, and provides many interesting cultural and physical details regarding the doughboys. However, the initial conflict seems to be solved too easily, and paradoxically, there is a sense that the larger conflict is insoluble. The story seems unresolved, as the narrator’s oft-expressed opinion that the doughboys are doomed is neither borne out nor disproved.

In James Patrick Kelly‘s "Don’t Stop," Lisa Schoonover has an imaginary friend. But she’s forty-two, and even though Lisa is the only one who can see him, Crispin is not imaginary. He’s been following her around since the car accident that killed her father when she was a child. Lisa also sees dead people. But "Don’t Stop" is more than a ghost story; it is a poignant tale of loss, grief, and gathering the strength to move forward.

In "Tideline," Elizabeth Bear presents a moving tale of an intelligent machine assisting in the continuance of life and remembrance of the dead as she faces her own end. Chalcedony is a broken-down war machine. She knows that her power cells will soon fail, abandoning her to a fate of seawater and corrosion. Yet, her programming suggests that she should honor the dead, so she combs through the rubble for trinkets with which to remember her fallen human comrades. Here she meets a small human, whom she guesses is a child. Chalcedony protects the boy, tells him stories of adventure and honor from her memory banks, and eventually offers him his own quest.

Jack Skillingstead’s “Scrawl Daddy” is a dark modern fantasy with a satisfying dose of redemption. Joe is a former ward of the state living in Fairhaven, where they give him drugs to ease his nightmares, and he occasionally talks to Dr. Statama. His only solace is thinking about Scrawling, a sort of future 3-D graffiti for which he has a talent. When Joe and another patient, Faye, escape Fairhaven, he meets Anthea and is able to Scrawl again, but his nightmares persist. Faye knows what the nightmares are and that Dr. Statama is not just a psychiatrist, but Joe only knows that he’s beginning to have choices, and he makes them.

Skillingstead effectively intersperses newsy, italicized sections of information about Dr. Statama and his work throughout the tale, so the reader can piece together what is happening to Joe without the character’s knowledge. I found the first of these somewhat jarring, but by the second they became integral to my understanding and full enjoyment of the story.

Carrie Vaughn presents a future in which state residency, in Colorado at least, is heavily restricted. Alice is a new resident by virtue of "Marrying In," and has second thoughts as she encounters her in-laws’ attitudes toward outsiders.

I recognized the sometimes off-putting pride of place exhibited by the in-laws, the familiar attitude: "Welcome to [insert name of western state]. Now go home." The arguments about the place of outsiders and just how many should be let in are common in the American West, maybe more so today than in times past. But "Marrying In" seems only to present those familiar arguments, time-shifted into a not-so-distant future. I hoped that something more would happen, that the story would go somewhere new or unexpected, but was disappointed.