{"id":13634,"date":"2021-05-13T18:12:08","date_gmt":"2021-05-13T18:12:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/?p=13634"},"modified":"2021-05-13T18:12:24","modified_gmt":"2021-05-13T18:12:24","slug":"asimovs-science-fiction-mid-december-1995-edited-by-gardner-dozois","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/?p=13634","title":{"rendered":"Asimov’s Science Fiction, mid-December 1995, edited by Gardner Dozois"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Summary:
\nThis is a worthwhile issue of the magazine, and includes Robert Silverberg’s Hot Times in Magma City<\/em>, a good (and atypical for this writer) novella which has a group of recovering addicts doing emergency work in a volcano blighted Los Angeles. The gonzo setting and the sparky character interactions make it a fun read.
\nProviding good support is Bibi<\/em> by Mike Resnick & Susan Schwartz, which looks at the AIDS epidemic in Africa, and John McDaid\u2019s Jigoku No Mokushiroku<\/em>, another gonzo piece (this time about an elevator AI) which went on to win that year\u2019s Sturgeon award. The rest of the stories are more mixed but the Brunner is a decent enough read.
\n[ISFDB link<\/a>]<\/p>\n

Other reviews:
\nVarious,\u00a0Goodreads<\/a><\/p>\n

_____________________<\/p>\n

Editor, Gardner Dozois; Executive Editor, Sheila Williams<\/p>\n

Fiction:
\nBibi <\/em><\/strong>\u2022 novella by Mike Resnick and Susan Shwartz \u2217\u2217\u2217<\/strong>
\nEx Vitro<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by Daniel Marcus \u2217<\/strong>
\nAll Under Heaven<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 novelette by John Brunner \u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>
\nJigoku No Mokushiroku<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by John G. McDaid \u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>
\nTiger I <\/em><\/strong>\u2022 short story by Tanith Lee \u2217<\/strong>
\nHot Times in Magma City<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 reprint novella by Robert Silverberg \u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>+<\/p>\n

Non-fiction:
\nCover (Hot Times in Magma City) <\/em><\/strong>\u2022 by John Maggard
\nInterior Artwork<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 Steve Cavallo, Mike Aspengren (x2), Laurie Harden, Pat Morrissey, Slava Kisarev, Ron Chironna, uncredited
\nOld Enough to Vote<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 essay by Robert Silverberg
\nPoetry<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 by Bruce Boston (x2), Wendy Rathbone, Steven Utley
\nNext Issue <\/em><\/strong>
\nSF Conventional Calendar<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 by Erwin S. Strauss<\/p>\n

_____________________<\/p>\n

[All the story reviews have been previously posted of sfshortstories.com so, if you have read them there, skip down to the thee dots \u2022\u2022\u2022 and you\u2019ll find the non-fiction reviews and summary.]<\/p>\n

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Bibi<\/em><\/strong> by Mike Resnick and Susan Shwartz opens with an enigmatic passage that has a woman looking for food in the African bush after having \u201cslept too long\u201d. Thereafter the story introduces Jeremy Harris, an American aid worker in a nearby tented compound who is woken by one of the children who lives there with the message that the camp doctor wants him. As he wakes and gets ready we get some of his backstory: he is HIV+, and moved from the USA to work in the Ugandan camp after he infected his ex-partner. We also learn that he was a wealthy stock trader and not only does manual work for the project (there is an observation about digging graves being better exercise than any personal trainer) but helps fund it.
\nThere is more information about Jeremy, as well as the effect that Idi Amin and Aids has had on Uganda, before he goes to meet the story\u2019s other main character, Elizabeth Umurungi. Elizabeth is the camp doctor, a Europeanised Ugandan who was a fashion model before she changed professions. She tells him that one of the families has left the camp and, after breakfast, they drive to their village to see if they can find them. En route Jeremy gets a glimpse of what looks like a woman in the bush.
\nWhen they get to the village Elizabeth speaks to the grandmother, and asks her why she left the camp. The grandmother, after some cultural sparring with the doctor (she calls her \u201cMemsaab\u201d) tells her that \u201cBibi\u201d is coming to help them. Unconvinced, Jeremy and Elizabeth stay to help the daughter, who is dying of AIDS.
\nAs the pair settle down for the night we get more backstory about Jeremy when Elizabeth reads out loud a letter from Jeremey\u2019s ex that he has been reluctant to open and read himself. And with good reason\u2014it contains angry, bitter recriminations, as well as bad news about other friends:<\/p>\n

\u201cDear (that\u2019s a joke) Jeremy:
\n\u201cAfter I stopped shaking and walked out on you and got back to the Keys, Bud wanted to head North after you with his AK. But Steve said what the fuck, Bud tested clean\u2014no point throwing away his life along with yours and mine. And Steve\u2019s. He\u2019s real sick. ARC pneumonia. He calls it ARC-light bombing when he\u2019s got enough breath to talk. I\u2019ve moved in with the two of them to try to help out. Money goes farther that way, and I like to think I\u2019m useful. It\u2019s hard to watch him come apart and know this is how I\u2019m going to end up.
\n\u201cThen I think it\u2019s how you\u2019re going to end up too, and it\u2019s not so bad. For once, you\u2019re not going to be able to weasel your way out of something. Only you call it negotiating, don\u2019t you? It\u2019s part of that important stuff, like attention to detail and execution, that makes you such a big success on the Street. Wall, that is, not 42nd, where they sell themselves another way. Not much difference, is there, when you come right down to it? Talk about \u2018execution\u2019\u2014you\u2019ve sure executed the two of us like a pro.\u201d\u00a0 p. 34<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That night, a number of odd things happen: Jeremy wakes up and sees what he thinks is a child by the grave of the family\u2019s grandfather before he shoots at a leopard; later they discover that the the radio and spark plugs have been stolen from the Landrover. When Jeremy and Elizabeth question the family they learn that Bibi took them. Then the daughter starts recovering, seemingly cured.
\nLater on Jeremy sees Bibi in the bush, and realises she looks like Lucy, the 3.2 million year old Australopithecus afarensis found by archaeologists. Then, when he subsequently tries to lure her into the camp (spoiler), he catches her but is bitten and she escapes. He develops a fever, and tells Elizabeth that she came to village to save her son\u2014they are all her children\u2014and that she can talk but no-one can understand her language. When Jeremy finally recovers he tells Elizabeth that he knows he is no longer HIV+.
\nMuch later, after they have returned to the camp (they swap Elizabeth\u2019s jewellery for the spark plugs), they argue about whether they should try and find Bibi and exploit her gift:<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve got to go back and find her,\u201d answered Elizabeth. \u201cI\u2019d kill for the chance to have AIDS researchers examine her. I still don\u2019t know that I buy your story about her curing you with a bite, but whatever happened, she obviously gave you some biochemical agent that kills the HIV virus.\u201d
\nShe looked at Jeremy wryly. \u201cIt\u2019ll never replace the Salk vaccine, but there\u2019s simply no other explanation. I\u2019ve got to find her and bring her to the camp.\u201d
\n\u201cShe\u2019s not a lab animal,\u201d replied Jeremy seriously. \u201cShe\u2019s got to remain free to do her job.\u201d
\n\u201cHer job?\u201d
\n\u201cShe has other children to cure.\u201d
\n\u201cYou\u2019re not a child.\u201d
\n\u201cWe\u2019re all her children.\u201d
\n\u201cThat again,\u201d said Elizabeth with a sigh.
\n\u201cYou don\u2019t have to believe it,\u201d said Jeremy, protecting his bacon as the kite swooped down toward his plate. \u201cIt\u2019s enough that I do.\u201d
\n\u201cYou\u2019re not being logical, Jeremy.\u201d
\n\u201cI was logical my whole life, and what did it get me, except some money I don\u2019t need and an incurable disease?\u201d replied Jeremy. \u201cWhy don\u2019t you really look at Uganda sometime? This is a magical place, for all its problems. Spit a mango pit out the window of your Land Rover, and when you drive by six months later a mango tree has grown up. Amin and his successors virtually wiped out your wildlife, yet all the animals are returning. Terminally ill people suddenly get cured. So how can I not believe in magic?\u201d\u00a0 p. 59<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The final section sees the pair spend three months trying to find Bibi but eventually they give up. Then Jeremy wanders out into the bush on his own, and eventually comes upon her.
\nThis, as you can probably gather from the above, is a bit of a mixed bag. It gets off to a good start with its characterisation and the African locale, and throughout the story does an impressive job of recalling the AIDS epidemic of the eighties and nineties (perhaps worse than the one we are dealing with now)1\u2014however, the idea of a three million year old woman who is able to cure various diseases, and Jeremy\u2019s anti-science\/magical thinking take at the end of the piece, both take some of the shine off. That said, it\u2019s a worthwhile read for those that are interested in character driven stories set in the HIV era, and\/or in Africa, and I enjoyed it.
\n\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong> (Good). 18,200 words.<\/p>\n

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Ex Vitro<\/em><\/strong> by Daniel Marcus is set on Titan, where a couple, Jax and Maddy, do science work on the geology of the planet and its slug-like aliens. In the background there are rumbles about a possible nuclear war on Earth between PacRim and EC.
\nThe second chapter switches the point of view from Jax to Maddy (as does the fourth). She is worried about her family in Paris, a likely target, and this causes an argument between them. Maddy later thinks about a embryo of theirs she has in cold storage, but about which she hasn\u2019t told Jax.
\nThe third chapter sees Jax observing the slugs on the surface when Maddy calls: there has been a war on Earth and her parents are dead. She wants to leave Titan for the Moon or the L-5 colonies, so Jax calls their boss at Sun Group, who tells them that Naft and Russia came through alright and that he can send a ship for them later if they want.
\nThe last chapter sees Jax lie to Maddy about the timescale of a likely pickup. Later on Maddy goes out on the surface and opens the canister holding the embryo, destroying it.
\nI guess this okay for the most part\u2014if you are interested in dysfunctional relationships against a backdrop of a dysfunctional Earth\u2014but it just grinds to a halt. I\u2019d also have to say I\u2019m not a fan of overly contrived writing like this:<\/p>\n

They cycled through several iterations of crash and burn, learning each other\u2019s boundaries, before they settled into a kind of steady state. Still, their relationship felt to Jax like a living entity, a nonlinear filter whose response to stimuli was never quite what you thought it was going to be.\u00a0 p. 68<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u2217<\/strong> (Mediocre). 4,750 words.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

All Under Heaven<\/em><\/strong> by John Brunner begins with a young man called Chodeng watch a military procession arrive in a Chinese town as he helps his uncle mend the temple roof. When his uncle catches Chodeng looking at the scribe sat among the visitors, he chastises him for daydreaming. Later that evening though, as they all gather for a meal, Chodeng is the one who translates for the visitors (who speak a different dialect). During this Chodeng and the villagers learn from General Kao-Li and his scribe, Bi-tso, that they are headed towards the next village to look for meteorites. Chodeng is ordered to go with them.
\nWhen they arrive at Gan Han (meaning \u201cnot enough water\u201d) after an arduous journey through the hills, they are surprised at to find a verdant oasis, with rice-filled paddies, frogs and ducks. Chodeng is dispatched to speak to one of the young women in the paddy fields, and he quickly finds that (a) they speak the same language as the visitors (they were banished to this area by a previous emperor) and (b) the village bloomed into this paradise after the arrival of the meteorites. Then matters take an even stranger turn when the rest of the locals turn up:<\/p>\n

Can this be how a dragon looks?<\/em> The question sprang unbidden to Chodeng\u2019s lips, but Bi-tso spoke before he had time to utter it.
\n\u201cA phoenix? Are there still phoenixes in our decadent age?\u201d
\nMention of such a legendary, powerful creature dismayed their escorts. They exchanged glances eloquent of apprehension, only to be distracted a second later as the pack animals caught\u2014what? The scent, perhaps, of what was approaching. Or maybe they saw it, or detected strange vibrations in the air, or registered its approach by some sense too fine for coarse humanity. At all events it frightened them, and for the next few minutes the men had all they could do to prevent the beasts from shucking their loads and bolting.
\n[. . .]
\nA phoenix, was it? Well, if a scholar so identified it. . . . On first seeing it he had at once felt a dragon to be more likely. Yet\u2014
\nYet was he seeing it at all? Seeing it in the customary sense of the term? Somehow he felt not. Somehow he felt, when he tried to stare directly at it and focus its image, to get rid of the shiny hazy blur that seemed like a concentration of the strange luminosity he had already detected in the local air, what he had mentally compared to the nimbus round figures in religious paintings, that the\u2014the creature wasn\u2019t there to be seen. Not there there. Nearby. In a perceptible location. But not there in the sense that one might walk, on his own sore human feet, to where it was. One couldn\u2019t judge how tall, how wide, how deep from front
\nto back\u2026. In fact, apart from the bare fact of its existence, one could describe it in no terms whatsoever.\u00a0 p. 91-92<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It soon becomes apparent that the creature is an alien when it starts mind to mind communication with Chodeng. During a long conversation he finds out that it arrived with the meteorites (the remaining parts of its spaceship) and compelled the villagers to help it, later rewarding them with improved living conditions. After some more chat it disappears\u2014but Chodeng senses it is still there. Then the head man invites the visitors to eat and rest.
\nThe back half of the story sees Chodeng slip away with the girl he saw earlier, Tai Ping, during dinner\u2014at which point the alien starts mentally communicating with him, stating that it needs his help to organise the collection of the scattered parts of its ship. The alien offers him the girl\u2019s sexual favours in return, but when Chodeng approaches Tai Ping he realises that the alien is controlling her, and he refuses. He then tells the alien that they will help it retrieve the various parts of its ship in the morning. After the alien leaves the girl\u2019s father arrives and thanks Chodeng for sparing his daughter.
\nThe final act (spoiler) sees the visitors and locals arrive at the meteorite\/crash site. The alien starts talking to Chodeng, who relays its messages to the General and Bi-tso, and they hear of its extra-terrestrial origins and how, after Chodeng\u2019s actions the night before, it realises that it has underestimated humanity\u2019s potential to be civilized. The alien then reveals its physical body to the humans (as opposed to the projection they all saw before), at which point the General tells the soldiers to kill it for its various breaches of Imperial law (forced labour, etc.), After it dies, and they all turn back towards the village, they see the barren scene and realise that the greenery and water was an illusion.
\nThis has some good local colour and characterisation, but the stranded alien plot isn\u2019t particularly original, and the flip-flops at the end (the alien\u2019s change of heart, the General\u2019s execution order) make the story too busy and too contrived.
\n\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong> (Average). 11,450 words.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Jigoku No Mokushiroku<\/em><\/strong> by John G. McDaid2<\/sup> gets off to an intriguing start with an AI elevator called Hitoshi talking to Crazy Bob, a visitor to a huge futuristic library built and run by the Koreshians. Although Hitoshi thinks that Bob might be mad, the AI chats to him when he can (partially as part of the building\u2019s security protocols), and reveals that it is named after Hitoshi Igarashi (the Japanese translator of The Satanic Verses, who was assassinated by Moslem extremists in 1991). Hitoshi even quotes parts of Bob\u2019s books back to him when he stops in-between floors to allow Bob to have an illicit cigarette:<\/p>\n

\u201cIf I may quote your last book, \u2018The vacuum of disbelief sucked the rationality out of culture.\u2019\u201d
\n\u201cYeah. We started ringing like a bad circuit. Any control was better than none. Until finally, here I am, in a nation of nonsmoking, nondrinking, vegetarian strangers, stripped of all weaponry in the name of safety, with no culture in common, each plugged into their own unique digital information environment, under a government financed by 40 percent tax and the forfeiture of every convicted criminal\u2019s assets.\u201d He took a long drag and exhaled slowly through his nose. \u201cAnd I can write all this stuff down, blast it out on the net, and there\u2019s not even anybody left who cares enough to read it.\u201d\u00a0 p. 109<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This feels as if it is, or will be, remarkably prescient.
\nAs the story progresses Bob asks Hitoshi about a woman called Aki who, on one elevator trip, gets on along with a couple of \u201cKoreshi suits\u201d (we learn along the way that the library, a huge underground structure, has been constructed by followers of The David (David Koresh of the Waco siege3<\/sup>) and that each of the disciples is required to emulate The David, usually in some act of self-immolation).
\nLater on in the story Bob becomes involved in Aki\u2019s plan to nuke the library but, as they are in the process of smuggling the bomb down to the basement, Hitoshi convinces them to let him do it so it can be freed from its current constraints as an elevator AI. After they leave the elevator Hitoshi takes the bomb down to the sub-levels and disarms it for possible future use.
\nThis is a witty and entertaining piece but I\u2019m not sure the satire, which mostly seems to be aimed at mad millennial types, has much point\u2014it\u2019s a pretty obvious target\u2014and I\u2019m not sure I understand Aki\u2019s motivation in wanting to bomb her own library.
\nThe story has a pretty good start but a weaker ending; I think its Sturgeon Award overrates it.
\n\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong> (Good). 5900 words.<\/p>\n

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Tiger I<\/em><\/strong> by Tanith Lee opens with a woman in a self-driving car en route to a house in the middle of the desert. When she arrives at the gate she talks to Mary Sattersley, the owner, over the intercom and gains admittance. On the short walk to the house the narrator sees a tame lynx and two tigers.
\nWhen the pair arrive the narrator and Sattersley have a drink and talk. Sattersley tells the narrator that she is pregnant and will give birth that night, and then invites her to watch. The narrator also learns that the cats on the property can\u2019t speak but they can understand what is being said to them (as she sees when she asks the cheetah on Sattersley\u2019s lap to open and close its eyes).
\nLater on, after the narrator has had a swim in the pool, the pair meet again and have dinner. The narrator hears Sattersley\u2019s life story, which involves sexual abuse at an early age, many sexual partners during her youth, and then a tryst with an old man just before he dies. She inherited his fortune, and then learned that she was pregnant for the first time. Subequently she has given birth on several other occasions.
\nThe final scene (spoiler) sees Sattersley deliver a tiger cub.
\nAn odd, surreal tale that left me clueless as to what it was supposed to be about.
\n\u2217<\/strong> (Mediocre). 4,700 words.<\/p>\n

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Hot Times in Magma City<\/em><\/strong> by Robert Silverberg (Omni Online<\/em>, May 1995) starts in a Los Angeles recovery house where an ex-addict, Mattison, is monitoring a screen for volcanoes and lava outbreaks in the local area:<\/p>\n

The whole idea of the Citizens Service House is that they are occupied by troubled citizens who have \u201cvolunteered\u201d to do community service\u2014any sort of service that may be required of them. A Citizens Service House is not quite a jail and not quite a recovery center, but it partakes of certain qualities of both institutions, and its inhabitants are people who have fucked up in one way or another and done injury not only to themselves but to their fellow citizens, injury for which they can make restitution by performing community service even while they are getting their screwed-up heads gradually screwed on the right way.
\nWhat had started out to involve a lot of trash-collecting along freeways, tree-pruning in the public parks, and similar necessary but essentially simple and non-life-threatening chores, has become a lot trickier ever since this volcano thing happened to Los Angeles. The volcano thing has accelerated all sorts of legal and social changes in the area, because flowing lava simply will not wait for the usual bullshit California legal processes to take their course.\u00a0 p. 139<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

When there is a particularly serious eruption, Mattison\u2019s team is sent by Volcano Central to support the local lava control teams in Pasadena. En route we get a description of this near-future LA:<\/p>\n

The rains have made everything green, though. The hills are pure emerald, except where some humongous bougainvillea vine is setting off a gigantic blast of purple or orange. Because the prevailing winds this time of year blow from west to east, there\u2019s no coating of volcanic ash or other pyroclastic crap to be seen in this part of town, nor can you smell any of the noxious gases that the million fumaroles of the Zone are putting forth; all such garbage gets carried the other way, turning the world black and nauseating from San Gabriel out to San Berdoo and Riverside.
\nWhat you can see, though, is the distant plume of smoke that rises from the summit of Mount Pomona, which is what the main cone seems to have been named. The mountain itself, which straddles two freeways, obliterating both and a good deal more besides, in a little place called City of Industry just southwest of Pomona proper, isn\u2019t visible, not from here\u2014it\u2019s only a couple of thousand feet high, after six months of building itself up out of its own accumulation of ejected debris. But the column of steam and fine ash that emerges from it is maybe five times higher than that, and can be seen far and wide all over the Basin, except perhaps in West L.A. and Santa Monica, where none of this can be seen or smelled and all they know of the whole volcano thing, probably, is what they read in the Times or see on the television news.\u00a0 p. 143<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

After the team successfully complete their task (which, basically, involves hosing down the lava flow so it forms a crust that dams what is behind it) they get sent to another job\u2014but not until they demand, and get, a break:<\/p>\n

Lunch is sandwiches and soft drinks, half a block back from the event site. They get out of their suits, leaving them standing open in the street like discarded skins, and eat sitting down at the edge of the curb. \u201cI sure wouldn\u2019t mind a beer right now,\u201d Evans says, and Hawks says, \u201cWhy don\u2019t you wish up a bottle of fucking champagne, while you\u2019re wishing things up? Don\u2019t cost no more than beer, if it\u2019s just wishes.\u201d
\n\u201cI never liked champagne,\u201d Paul Foust says. \u201cFor me it was always cognac. Cour-voy-zee-ay, that was for me.\u201d He smacks his lips. \u201cI can practically taste it now. That terrific grapey taste hitting your tongue that smooth flow, right down your gullet to your gut\u2014\u201d
\n\u201cKnock it off,\u201d says Mattison. This nitwit chatter is stirring things inside him that he would prefer not to have stirred.
\n\u201cYou never stop wanting it,\u201d Foust tells him.
\n\u201cYes. Yes, I know that, you dumb fucker. Don\u2019t you think I know that? Knock it off.\u201d
\n\u201cCan we talk about smoking stuff, then?\u201d Marty Cobos asks.
\n\u201cAnd how about needles, too?\u201d says Mary Maude Gulliver, who used to sell herself on Hollywood Boulevard to keep herself in nose candy. \u201cLet\u2019s talk about needles too.\u201d
\n\u201cShut your fucking mouth, you goddamn whore,\u201d Lenny Prochaska says. He pronounces it hooer<\/em>. \u201cWhat do you need to play around with my head for?\u201d
\n\u201cWhy, did you have some kind of habit?\u201d Mary Maude asks him sweetly.\u00a0 p. 151<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

En route to the second job we see more scenes of volcanic Armageddon and, at one point, the crew pass something that looks like an Aztec sacrifice taking place at an intersection. Finally, at the second job (spoiler), there is a climactic scene that involves a moment of peril for one of this dysfunctional crew, and a chance of redemption for another.
\nThis is a very readable and entertaining story (as you can see from the extensive quotes above), with a neat idea (albeit not an especially SFnal one) as well as characters that are both colourful and snarky. It\u2019s a pretty good piece, and one I\u2019d have for my \u201cYear\u2019s Best\u201d. That said, the story feels like it is a bit longer than it needs to be (perhaps because of the vulcanology material, some of which feels like it comes straight from a very interesting holiday in Iceland), and the characters of the addicts are a bit too similar.
\nI note in passing that this doesn\u2019t read like a Silverberg\u2019s work at all, and felt more like one of those Marc Laidlaw & Rudy Rucker stories I\u2019ve read recently.
\n\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>+ (Good to Very Good). 20,100 words.<\/p>\n

\u2022\u2022\u2022<\/p>\n

The Cover <\/em><\/strong>for this issue is by John Maggard, a cluttered piece that seems even more so after the addition of the logo and cover type (I also don\u2019t know why you would change the \u201cS\u201d and \u201cF\u201d to red from white\u2014at some point covers can go from eye-catching to repellent).
\nThe Interior Artwork<\/em><\/strong> is provided by Steve Cavallo, Mike Aspengren, Laurie Harden, Pat Morrissey, Slava Kisarev, Ron Chironna, and one uncredited artist. Most of it is too cluttered and\/or too dark. (Apologies for the clipped images above, by the way, not my scan.)
\nOld Enough to Vote<\/em><\/strong> by Robert Silverberg is about the magazine\u2019s eighteenth anniversary issue, which was published in April, other long lived SF magazines, and the personnel that have been involved with the Asimov\u2019s SF<\/em> over its lifetime.
\n1994 Hugo Award Winners<\/em><\/strong> is a single page congratulating the winners of that year\u2019s Hugo Awards, none of which I\u2019ve read (1994 was a busy year for me). The only Asimov\u2019s SF<\/em> winners are Joe Haldeman for None So Blind<\/em> (Asimov\u2019s SF<\/em>, November 1994) and Gardner Dozois (Best Editor).
\nThere is Poetry<\/em><\/strong> by Bruce Boston, Wendy Rathbone, and Steven Utley, none of which did anything for me. SF Poetry rarely does.
\nNext Issue <\/em><\/strong>mentions the return of Joanna Russ with her first new SF story \u201cin more than ten years\u201d, Invasion<\/em>, as well as a story from Walter Jon Williams, Foreign Devils<\/em>, set in China (like Brunner\u2019s tale this issue\u2014was there something in the air?)
\nThere is also an SF Conventional Calendar<\/em><\/strong> from Erwin S. Strauss, but no On Books<\/em> column.
\nI note in passing that there are a lot of advertisements in this issue, more than I remember for the Asimov\u2019s<\/em> of this period (there are ten, including a couple of house ads, breaking up the text of Bibi<\/em>, never mind the rest of the magazine).<\/p>\n

\u2022\u2022\u2022<\/p>\n

This is a worthwhile issue of the magazine, with good or better novellas from both Robert Silverberg and Mike Resnick & Susan Schwartz, as well as a good story from John McDaid (which later won a Sturgeon award). The rest of the stories are more mixed but the Brunner is a decent enough read. \u00a0\u00a0\u25cf<\/p>\n

_____________________<\/p>\n

1. In the time frame of Resnick and Schwarz\u2019s story scientists were less successful against HIV than COVID because (a) they had less of an investigative armoury (b) the virus appeared to be lethal and (c) it seemed at first to affect only certain groups (i.e. gay men, which blunted the initial level of concern).<\/p>\n

2. The full title given on the opening page of McDaid\u2019s story is Jigoku No Mokushiroku (The Symbolic Revelation of the Apocalypse)<\/em>. Google translates the title as \u201cBook of Revelation\u201d.<\/p>\n

3. The Wikipedia page on the 1993 Waco siege<\/a>.\u00a0 \u25cf<\/p>\n\"rss\"<\/a>\"rss\"<\/a><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Summary: This is a worthwhile issue of the magazine, and includes Robert Silverberg’s Hot Times in Magma City, a good (and atypical for this writer) novella which has a group of recovering addicts doing emergency work in a volcano blighted Los Angeles. The gonzo setting and the sparky character interactions make it a fun read. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13634","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-asimovs-science-fiction"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Pcj7-3xU","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13634","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13634"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13634\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13640,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13634\/revisions\/13640"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13634"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13634"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13634"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}