Summary:
These are the top six short stories for the 2020 Analog Magazine Readers’ Awards. They are a mixed bag but worth a read (and are, overall, a slightly better bunch than the Asimov’s selection).
Don’t miss Eric Choi’s The Greatest Day.¹
[Stories]

_____________________

Editor, Trevor Quachri

Hive • short story by Jay Werkheiser ∗∗
Rover • short story by A.T. Sayre ∗∗∗
The Chrysalis Pool • short story by Sean McMullen ∗∗
The Greatest Day • short story by Eric Choi ∗∗∗∗
The Writhing Tentacles of History • short story by Jay Werkheiser ∗∗∗
Wheel of Echoes • short story by Sean McMullen ∗∗∗+

_____________________

Hive by Jay Werkheiser (Analog, January-February 2020) has a three-person Earth team observing aliens on another planet: the insect-like creatures live in hives and use pheromones to communicate, and the story concerns their reactions to the human vehicle that houses the researchers. While this is intellectually interesting for the most part, I’m not clear about what happened in the final scene where (spoiler) the aliens attack the human vehicle.
I’d also point out that the strangled scientific prose doesn’t add to the story’s clarity:

Crawler pheromone trails continue bringing detail from upfield. The markers defining the new body forms suddenly disappear from the information trails. Talkers search the trails closely for more detail. Nest marker pheromones, but appended with a propyl group indicating motion across field lines. Chirality of the propyl branch point indicates motion rotationward.
A moving nest? Could the new body forms be part of a hive? Excitory pheromones roil in the nest’s air. The surge drops off rapidly as directors one by one reach the same conclusion. Inhibitory pheromones dominate, mixed with comm markers, a reminder of the body forms’ lack of identifiable pheromones. How would it self-organize? How would it communicate with other hives? No, these are simply things, predators or prey.  p. 84

Good idea and background, but an awkwardly told story.
∗∗ (Average). 5,500 words.

•

Rover by A. T. Sayre (Analog, March/April 2020) opens with an AI rover prospecting on Mars; we learn that it hasn’t had any instructions from Earth for some considerable time and that it has been evolving during that period:

It had changed somewhat since its creation, as it had needed to take parts of other machinery left on Mars to keep going. A new wheel from the Russian probe, an optic lens to replace its own cracked one, a processor from another to subsidize its own when its performance had started to lag. It had taken solar panels from a Chinese machine with more receptive photovoltaic cells and mounted them alongside its original array to improve energy collection. It added another set of arms from an Indian rover, much better at gripping than its original four, connected by an extension of its chassis that it took from an American probe at the edge of the Northern ice cap.
And as always from the probes, landers, other rovers, it took the processors and data storage units, to keep pace with the increasing sophistication of its system. It grew smarter, more resourceful, capable of more and more complex problem solving and decision making. The rover had learned so much, had grown so much, it was barely recognizable as the simple machine that had touched down on the red planet so long ago.  pp. 171-172

While later traversing a ridge the rover falls over the side and damages a strut and, after the vehicle reboots, it then decides to proceed to a location 90km away, where it hopes to find a replacement part on an abandoned vehicle. While undertaking this slow and arduous journey the rover picks up a signal from what it thinks may be a human-manned ship and diverts course, but when the rover finally arrives at the site it finds a damaged ship and the body of one of the crew. The rover eventually manages to hoist itself up and into the vessel.
The last section of the story (spoiler) has the rover repair itself in the ship’s well-equipped workshop and then contact Earth, only to find that all Mars missions have been permanently suspended. Now that it is free to do as it wishes the rover converts itself into a drone, and the final scene sees it launch itself out of the ship to endlessly fly over the surface of Mars.
This is a well enough done piece, but I got the vague feeling that (for me, anyway) there was something missing. Maybe I just prefer stories where there is more focus on the personality of the AI.
∗∗∗ (Good). 6,100 words.

•

The Chrysalis Pool by Sean McMullen (Analog, September-October 2020)² has as its protagonist a lab technician called Lucian, and who gets a request from a psychologist called Alice Marshall to make a wearable device for Leo Hawker, one of her patients: Hawker apparently sees a naked water nymph whenever he goes near bodies of water. Lucian subsequently constructs a portable electroencephalograph for Hawker to wear but, against Marshall’s express wishes, he also includes a concealed camera to record what Hawker sees when he is having his hallucinations.
The next part of the story details a test run of the device and also gives us more information about the three characters. Then, when Lucian and Marshall are out for dinner one night, Lucian gets a notification that Hawker has gone out on one of his regular runs. Lucian leaves Marshall and goes back to his lab to watch the camera, and subsequently hears Hawker talk to someone who isn’t visible on the video feed. Lucian then sees Marshall fall face first into the pool and rushes to the location to save him, whereupon he briefly sees a woman dressed in a lab coat standing waist deep in the water. Later, when Lucian examines the ECG and the film, he sees no sign of a woman, and realises that what he saw does not match what Hawker has described seeing.
Four weeks after his near-drowning Hawker resigns from his job, sets up an investment consultancy, and starts associating with a more glamourous set of people; he also refuses Marshall’s requests for further brain scans. This change in Hawker’s behaviour (spoiler) prompts Lucian to speculate that there was another personality lying dormant within Hawker—one that revealed itself by the nymph hallucinations, and which was born during the period of oxygen starvation. This prompts Lucian go back to the pond to meet his own lab-coat dressed “nymph,” which he believes will birth, as it did with Hawker, the dormant chrysalis within him. However, Lucian turns away at the last moment, and nevertheless becomes successful anyway.
The problem with this story is that Lucian’s speculation about the chrysalis idea isn’t convincing, it is introduced too late, and ends up essentially unrelated to his concluding personal development (although there is a note of ambiguity at the end). That said, Lucian—a sly, unethical, and slightly chippy character—makes for an interesting narrator. So, in conclusion, a well told story based on an unlikely and/or unconvincingly framed idea.
∗∗ (Average). 6,450 words.

•

The Greatest Day by Eric Choi (Analog, January-February 2020)³ is an alternate world story about the space shuttle Columbia which, in our world, suffered wing damage on launch and broke up on re-entry. In this story’s time-line the operations personnel discover the damage and the narrative arc then works through some intriguing NASA politics, a planned rescue mission with a second shuttle, and (spoiler), when that fails, a bodged repair and attempt at re-entry:

Aboard Columbia
“Altitude 43,000 feet, speed 806 miles per hour,” Willie McCool called out.
Laurel Clark turned and saw blinking redand-white aircraft lights out the left-side window, just past Kalpana Chawla’s helmet.
“Houston, Columbia,”Ben Hernandez radioed. “It looks like we have company.”
“Roger, Columbia,” said Stephanie Wilson. “That would be Mike Bloomfield. He promised to come for you, and here he is.”
.
Mission Control Houston
A new window appeared on the screen, showing the feed from a night-vision camera aboard the T-38 chase plane flown by astronaut Mike Bloomfield. Columbia appeared as a ghostly image in shades of green against a black sky with greenish-white speckles of stars.
Audible gasps went through the room.
Some of the flight controllers stood front their consoles like an honor guard.
The hole in Columbia’s left wing was now an obsidian gash. There were black streaks over the wing and along the fuselage, and dark splatters on the left engine pod and tail—cooled residue of molten metal. The rudder and elevon were deflected, physical manifestation of the flight control system struggling to keep the ship steady.
A chill went down Wayne Hale’s spine. Columbia was mortally wounded, but she was still alive, still fighting to bring her crew home. She was simply a beautiful, magnificent, heroic flying machine.
“Don’t do it.”
Hale blinked. Had he said something aloud?
“Don’t anthropomorphize the vehicle,” said Joyce Seriale-Grush. “She doesn’t like it.”  pp. 99-100

The lean techno-thriller style used here makes this piece the polar opposite of the many bloated and navel-gazing works currently produced (and about which I regularly complain). That said, this story perhaps goes a little too far in the opposite direction (and the footnotes to the story state it is an abridged version of a much longer piece).⁴
If you like the movies Apollo 13, Gravity, or The Martian, then this will be right up your street. It is a very well done and would be in my ‘Year’s Best’.
∗∗∗∗ (very Good). 7,650 words.

•

The Writhing Tentacles of History by Jay Werkheiser (Analog, September/October 2020) opens with two eight-tentacled creatures (we later learn they are evolved squids or octopuses) examining a human hip-bone discovered long after an far-future extinction event for humanity. The dominant one of the pair, Mottled-Brown (they communicate by skin colour changes) is worried about the prospect of his archaeological dig being shut down, and he is due to appear before the Ruling Octet who will decide whether or not this will be the case.
When Mottled Brown appears before the Octet his female nemesis, Blue-Ripples, is also there. During their testimony Blue Ripples states that—despite the human hip-bone Mottled-Brown has just found—his theories are ridiculous, and that the dig is a waste of resources and should be shut down. The Octet decide to have further debate and analysis the next day.
After the adjournment Blue-Ripples approaches Mottled-Brown and tells the archaeologist of her further plans for him:

“One fossil won’t save you,” Blue-ripples said. Her words were tinged with black. “And your conclusion is ridiculous. Two arms indeed.”
Mottled-Brown concentrated on keeping his skin a neutral gray-brown. He wouldn’t let her goad him into a confrontation again. “Well see the words tomorrow.”
He turned to leave, but Blue-Ripples stopped him. “I’ve filed a reproduction claim on you,” she said.
He froze in place, his arms writhing. He felt his skin turn black. “It’ll never be approved. I’m still at the height of my career.”
“And if the octet closes your dig?” Her words shifted blue. “A fossilized historical scientist with little hope of any further contribution? They’ll give you to me before your third heart can finish a beat.”
“Slug slime! My contributions have been—”
“In the past. The only thing you have left to contribute to the next generation is your flesh. Our eggs will grow strong on it.”
He involuntarily pulled himself into an upright fighting posture, an instinct remaining from the presentient past. “The Ruling Octet will see the value of my dig. History is on my side.”
“The writhing tentacles of history have slashed many of your kind,” she said. Her arms began slipping through the port and out of the hall. Her mantle flashed one last thought. “You will be delicious.”
As the last of her mantle slipped through the port, he saw her skin turn bright blue.  pp. 135-136

The rest of the story sees Mottled-Brown talk to his assistant Gray-Ring about the day’s events—and the sexual encounters of his youth. Then, the next day, he appears again in front of the Octet where (spoiler), in an extended debate, he manages to use Blue-Ripples’ own mathematical models against her to suggest that humans may have been tool users and are therefore worthy of further research.
Most of this piece is talking heads (in some respects it’s a bit like an Isaac Asimov story), but the clever debate and conversation between the various players is well done, and I found it an engaging read (having one of the characters threatening to lay their eggs in the other is a novel type of jeopardy!) The only thing that slightly spoiled this for me is the last section, where Mottled-Brown and his assistant Gray-Ring discuss the extinction events that caused the demise of the humans and the reptiles before them. The closing mention of an asteroid impact is obviously meant to mean something, but I couldn’t work out what the point of the comment was. The story is better than my final rating for the most part, and probably would have scored higher but for this.
∗∗∗ (Good). 5,050 words.

Wheel of Echoes by Sean McMullen (Analog, January-February 2020) starts with its voice-actress narrator arriving at a recording company in London, where she meets another invitee, a pompous professor of Shakespearian English. An executive called Elliot greets them, and then takes the pair to listen to, and comment on, several voice recordings:

Elliot [asked,] “What did you make of that fifth actor? Kirsty?”
“From his accent, American. Loads of hiss and crackle, so it was recorded a long time ago.”
“Professor?”
“American, backwoods northeast coast, and recorded in the 1920s. The accents of that region were an acoustic time capsule from seventeenth-century England. “
“Actually, the recording was made in London. Would you like to try again?”
“Maybe Welsh?” I replied.
“London?” said Wilson, frowning. “Probably someone who heard the 1920s recordings from the Appalachian Mountains and was using that accent to do a lash-up of a seventeenth-century English accent. Of course for Shakespeare it doesn’t work. “
“Why not?”
“Listen to Cumberbatch performing Hamlet, then go down to the corner pub and chat to one of the locals. Both are from twenty-first-century London, but they speak quite differently. The Appalachian recordings were of farmers and hunters, not Shakespeare’s actors.”
Have you ever met one of those people who gets his opinion accepted by sheer bluster? When Wilson gave an opinion, he left no room for doubt. Pompous git, I thought. Hope you just screwed up totally.
“Good point,” said Elliot.  p. 74

Elliot then shows them a large clay wheel, and explains that it is a primitive recording device which has been recently unearthed. After a demonstration of machine, which plays a primitive recording, Elliot gives them the startling information (spoiler) that the voice is Shakespeare’s. The professor does not respond well to this as it upends his beliefs.
After this climactic scene, the rest of the story is essentially an extended data dump explaining the details behind what has gone before.
Notwithstanding the story’s slightly odd (early climax) structure, I thought this was a pretty good story, especially if you are interested in stories about lost knowledge. The London setting was a bonus.
∗∗∗+ (Good to Very Good).

•••

Although this group of Analog short stories match or surpass the quality of the Asimov’s finalists, that can’t be said about the overall quality of its short stories.  ●

_____________________

1.  All the stories are available for free on the Analog website.

2. Rather surprisingly, McMullen’s The Chrysalis won the 2020 Analog Readers’ Poll (Analytical Laboratory) for Best Short Story. Or maybe not a surprise, given SF readers’ penchant for latent supermen stories (Slan, etc.). The results are here.

3. There is a podcast of Eric Choi’s The Greatest Day here.

4. Eric Choi kindly provided (email, December 2019) this background information about The Greatest Day:

The story is adapted from a novelette called “A Sky and a Heaven” that was written for an anthology called Other Covenants: Alternate Histories of the Jewish People edited by Andrea Lobel and Mark Shainblum. There are two main differences between the versions for Analog and Other Covenants. First, the anthology version is very much centered on Israeli astronaut Ilan Ramon, who in my alternate history is shot down during the 1981 Israeli air strike against the Osirak nuclear reactor in Iraq and ends up years later in America as the lead NASA flight controller for the ill-fated Columbia mission (instead of Wayne Hale in the Analog story). The second significant thread in the anthology version concerns an Israeli scientist and Holocaust survivor named Joachim Joseph, who as a child at Bergen-Belsen was given a secret bar mitzvah ceremony and entrusted with a miniature Torah scroll that decades later flew aboard Columbia with Ilan Ramon (or in my story, the fictional Israeli astronaut Yael Dahan). So, the Analog short story is essentially a standalone adaptation of the engineering elements of the novelette.  ●