{"id":1916,"date":"2016-09-04T21:16:49","date_gmt":"2016-09-04T21:16:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/?p=1916"},"modified":"2016-09-04T22:28:44","modified_gmt":"2016-09-04T22:28:44","slug":"asimovs-science-fiction-488-september-2016","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/?p=1916","title":{"rendered":"Asimov’s Science Fiction #488, September 2016"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"AsimovsSF201609x600\"<\/p>\n

ISFDB link<\/p>\n

Other reviews:
\nGreg Hullender\u00a0and Eric Wong, Rocket Stack Rank<\/a>\u00a0(forthcoming)
\nSam\u00a0Tomaino, SF Revu<\/a>\u00a0(forthcoming)
\nUnknown, Tangent Online<\/a>\u00a0(forthcoming)
\nVarious, Goodreads<\/a><\/p>\n

Fiction:
\nThe Mind Is Its Own Place<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 novelette by Carrie Vaughn \u2665\u2665
\nDome on the Prairie<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by Robert Reed \u2665\u2665\u2665
\nEpitome<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 novelette by Tegan Moore \u2665\u2665
\nAcademic Circles<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by Peter Wood \u2665\u2665\u2665
\nThe Whole Mess<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 novelette by Jack Skillingstead \u2665\u2665\u2665+
\nAll that Robot<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by Rich Larson \u2665\u2665\u2665+
\nThe Visitor from Taured<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 novelette by Ian R. MacLeod \u2665\u2665\u2665\u2665<\/p>\n

Non-fiction:
\nCover<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 by Michael Whelan
\nEditorial: Thirtieth Annual Readers\u2019 Awards\u2019 Results<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 by Sheila Williams
\nReflections: \u201cDarn,\u201d He Smiled<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 essay by Robert Silverberg
\nPoems<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 by Chris Wozney, Jane Yolen, Robert Frazier, Bruce Boston
\nNext Issue<\/em><\/strong>
\nOn Books<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 by Peter Heck
\nThe SF Conventional Calendar<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 by Erwin S. Strauss<\/p>\n

The last issue of Asimov\u2019s Science Fiction<\/em> was a strong one and so is this, with most of the good stuff at the back end of the magazine.<\/p>\n

The first of the novelettes is The Mind Is Its Own Place<\/em><\/strong> by Carrie Vaughn which is an initially intriguing story about a M-space navigator who finds himself in a space station hospital\u00a0but can\u2019t remember why. As matters develop there are hints from other patients\/inmates that he may have the facility to travel to any point in existence without the use of an M-drive. Later, after several other events, he makes an unauthorised visit\u00a0to the docking area to see the ships that are there\u00a0as he feels these may trigger key memories. When he arrives\u00a0(spoiler) he remembers that he tried to set the co-ordinates of the\u00a0last attempted\u00a0jump to inside his\u00a0spaceship, and caused the death of twenty shipmates. At this point he realises he is delusional.\u00a0This isn’t much better than a sophisticated \u2018and then I woke up and found it was all a dream\u2019\u00a0ending,\u00a0which rather spoiled the story for me.
\nThe other story that didn\u2019t entirely work for me was one of the other novelettes, and a debut story, Epitome<\/em><\/strong> by Tegan Moore. This is set in the near-future and is about Shelby, who has a badly injured roommate called Vivian. Shelby is in love with Vivian but she cannot bring herself to tell her. While Vivian is recovering, Shelby starts to spend ever more time with Vivian\u2019s online persona, which she augments with neurological \u00a0\u2018scans\u2019 of Vivian making it a much more complex AI. Eventually, she starts a \u2018physical\u2019 relationship with the AI who she calls ViiP. This is all developed well enough but there is something about this that doesn\u2019t quite convince, and I think it is probably the virtual reality aspects. Not a bad debut story, though.<\/p>\n

The rest of the fiction ranges from good to very good so I\u2019ll take it in that order.
\nDome on the Prairie<\/em><\/strong> by Robert Reed begins in the midst of\u00a0a family of aliens who are building a dome near Chicago, having appropriated a nuclear reactor and fuel. The \u2018father\u2019 is now working on building multiple fusion reactors to provide the energy to create new \u2018children.\u2019 Meanwhile the human military have been unsuccessful in their attempts to prevent this and have embarked on an intelligence gathering exercise. To that end they get one of their soldiers to engage one of the younger aliens in conversation, a feat that requires a huge amount of real-time computing power. Their conversation has unexpected consequences.
\nLittle House on the Prairie<\/em> is referenced in both the introduction and the story but I have no knowledge of that book so I\u2019m not sure what the read over is. It is not necessary to enjoy this piece, which provides a good depiction of an alien culture.
\nAcademic Circles<\/em><\/strong> by Peter Wood is a smart and amusing story about time travel that involves, amongst other things, English professors going back in time to steal their colleague\u2019s articles on Philip K. Dick. I have one niggle which is that I think the ending might violate one of its own time travel \u2018rules.\u2019<\/p>\n

The next two stories are another rung (or half a rung) up in quality. The Whole Mess<\/em><\/strong> by Jack Skillingstead is another entertaining tale, this time about a professor of mathematics who is given an equation to complete by a strange young man. Initially the professor is determined to ignore the man and his equation but he eventually becomes intrigued. When he solves it he finds that it triggers the invasion of the \u2018Masters,\u2019 terrifying and gigantic squid-like beings which\u00a0appear through a rent in space:<\/p>\n

The wind dropped as if a plug had been pulled. I looked up. A maple leaf see-sawed out of the air and landed on the others. The atmosphere became electric. Lisa looked at me. I saw fear in her eyes before I quickly glanced away. Behind her on the path a ragged hole opened like a rough doorway or the mouth of a tunnel. Its face rippled with an oily iridescent sheen. The hole expanded and acquired depth. An elephant\u00a0could have passed through it.
\nFor a moment I couldn\u2019t credit what I was seeing. The brine-and-sewer stench familiar from my dream wafted out of the tunnel. Instinctively, I took Lisa\u2019s arm and pulled her back, only to stumble over my own briefcase. She grabbed hold to keep me from falling, and we ended in an awkward embrace.
\nA shape moved inside the tunnel, something huge, dragging itself toward us. My flight response seized me, but I couldn\u2019t move. <\/em>p.70<\/p>\n

As these events occur the professor and Lisa are transported to a parallel world\u00a0where they find they have the memories of different lives mixed in with their original ones. Just as they are trying to come to terms with this the Masters appear again and once more they are transported to another world and even more different lives:<\/p>\n

After a moment I replaced the hat and descended the steps in a daze, my dirty white sneakers feeling strange after years of loafers. This iteration\u2019s identity slowly rose to the surface. By the time I reached University Avenue and the six-year-old Ford Focus I\u2019d left parked there, I knew perfectly well that I didn\u2019t belong on campus, except as the slightly sad figure I now inhabited, a man well past thirty ignorantly in search of entry into the higher-education structure. My appointment with the admissions counselor hadn\u2019t gone well. I was woefully under-qualified, and my paltry community college credits were non-transferable.
\nThe whole thing was an ironic counterpoint to my original arrival, a decade and a few iterations ago, when I was the over-qualified applicant for a teaching position that would ensure insulation from the cries of Genius! that had hectored me since grade school. Now I fell short even as an aging freshman looking for validation in the form of a degree in the humanities.
\nYes, the <\/em>humanities. p.72<\/p>\n

In due course Cthulhu, sorry, the Masters turn up through another portal and he and Lisa are once again transported. He realises he needs to formulate another equation to close the portals before he is subsumed into his\u00a0new identity and forgets about what he has initiated.
\nAll that Robot<\/em><\/strong> by Rich Larson is about a group of robots and a man who are marooned on an island after an unspecified apocalypse. Carver Seven is the only robot that has any interaction with the man, and even he does not entirely understand some of the man\u2019s communications or actions. After a couple of establishing scenes with the man, and also with another robot called Recycler, Carver Seven (spoiler-ish) eventually goes to the man with the head of Carrier Three, a largely destroyed robot Carver Seven appears to have been emotionally involved with:<\/p>\n

The next day, he goes to visit the man again.
\n\u201cHey, look who it is,\u201d he warbles from a distance, because the man startles easily, like a bird. It looks up at him. Its photoreceptors are pink and glassy.
\n\u201cHey, yourself, robo-parrot,\u201d the man says, then returns to its work. There is a storm-felled tree between its soft feet, and it is using the sharp appendage to strip away the branches. Carver Seven looks around and sees remnants of fire, burned pieces of animal. The man has hunted, how Recycler hunts. Beyond the mess, there are two more trunks already stripped smooth. He wonders what the man is building.
\nBut his original query is much more important.
\n\u201cCan you do me a favor and fuck off?\u201d Carver Seven asks.
\nThat gets the man\u2019s attention. Its audio port opens and it makes the clipped noise that repeats, over and over, sometimes when the man is pleased but more often when it leaks lubricant.
\nCarver Seven scans up and down the beach. \u201cCan you do me a favor and fuck off and look here and fix it up a bit?\u201d he asks. Then he opens his main cavity and pulls out Carrier Three\u2019s caved-in head.
\n\u201cWhoa.\u201d The man\u2019s photoreceptors enlarge. \u201cDid you do that? This some Lord of the Flies type shit?\u201d
\n\u201cLord of the Flies type shit?\u201d Carver Seven echoes, trying to parse the new sound units.
\nThe man shakes its head. \u201cWho is it?\u201d it asks.
\nCarver Seven thinks hard. He knows what this latest question means, but he does not know how to communicate Carrier Three\u2019s name, the beautiful arc of click-squealclick, into the man\u2019s ugly wet language. Then his subroutines dredge up the sound unit the man used to wail at the sea, used to punctuate long rambling speeches with.
\n\u201cShe is Anita,\u201d Carver Seven says.<\/em> p.84-85<\/p>\n

The man agrees to repair Carrier Three if Carver Seven will help him build a raft to leave the island. Meanwhile, Recycler tells the rest of the robots of a blasphemy that the man has uttered about their life-giving sun (the robots are largely solar powered).
\nThis is an inventive, witty and affecting story with some sections, such as the one above which illustrates the story\u2019s clever pronoun switch, that are excellent. I suppose it doesn\u2019t hurt that I have a weak spot for stories where robots exhibit signs of humanity and\/or try to come to terms with it. I may have scored this one lower than I should have.<\/p>\n

The last story is The Visitor from Taured<\/em><\/strong> by Ian R. MacLeod, the best in the issue and one for the \u2018Best of the Year\u2019 anthologies. This (spoiler-ish story description follows) is about two young students, Lita and Rob, who meet at university in the future. Rob is the self-contained bright young thing and Lita, initially at least, is in his shadow. Rob studies astrophysics while her course is in the very niche field of analogue literature:<\/p>\n

I was already aware\u2014how couldn\u2019t I be?\u2014that no significant novel or short story had been written in decades, but I was shocked to discover that only five other students in my year had elected for An Lit as their main subject, and one of those still resided in Seoul and another was a post-centarian on clicking steel legs. Most of the other students who showed up were dipping into the subject in the hope that it might add\u00a0something useful to their main discipline. Invariably, they were disappointed. It wasn\u2019t just the difficulty of ploughing through page after page of non-interactive text. It was linear fiction\u2019s sheer lack of options, settings, choices. Why the hell, I remember some kid shouting in a seminar, should I accept all the miserable shit that this Hardy guy rains down on his characters? Give me the base program for <\/em>Tess of the d\u2019Urbervilles, and I\u2019ll hack you fifteen better endings.<\/em> p.92<\/p>\n

In time their friendship deepens and they end up sharing a house with others. Rob takes Lita to one of the university labs and shows her a diffraction-slit experiment and goes on to explain his obsession with the many worlds theory. Later, Lita introduces him to the field of analogue literature and, initially, their tastes largely coincide:<\/p>\n

Perhaps inevitably, Rob\u2019s and my taste in books had started to drift apart. He\u2019d discovered an antique genre called Science Fiction, something that the AIs at An Lit were particularly sniffy about. And, even as he tried to lead me with him, I could see their point. Much of the prose was less than luminous, the characterization was sketchy, and, although a great deal of it was supposedly about the future, the predictions were laughably wrong.
\nBut Rob insisted that that wasn\u2019t the point, that SF was essentially a literature of ideas. That, and a sense of wonder. To him, wonder was particularly important. I could sometimes\u2014maybe as that lonely astronaut passed through the stargate, or with those huge worms in that book about a desert world\u2014see his point. But most of it simply left me cold.<\/em> p.96-97<\/p>\n

After they leave university and go their own ways they still keep in touch by meeting in a virtual bar modelled on the one they used to frequent; occasionally they also meet in person. While Lita gets a job as an ideas person in media company Rob ends up completing a series of physics research contracts while all the time trying to get the money and resources for the many worlds theory he is obsessed with:<\/p>\n

He\u2019d settled into, you might almost say retreated to, a sub-genre of SF known as alternate history, where all the stuff he\u2019d been telling me about our world continually branching off into all its possibilities was dramatized on a big scale. Hitler had won World War Two\u2014a great many times, it seemed\u2014and the South was triumphant in the American Civil War. That, and the Spanish Armada had succeeded, and Europe remained under the thrall of medieval Roman Catholicism, and Lee Harvey Oswald\u2019s bullet had grazed past President Kennedy\u2019s head. I didn\u2019t take this odd obsession as a particularly good sign as we exchanged chaste hugs and kisses in the street outside the Eldon and went our separate ways.<\/em> p.97<\/p>\n

In the final section Rob\u2019s father dies and he gives up his science career and returns to run the family marine farm in Harris on the Isle of Lewis. Later, Lita uses Rob as a presenter in a science documentary series where he finally accumulates enough money and fame to quit and pursue his experiment. At the end of the story she joins Rob on the island and they wait for the wait for the gravitational waves from one black hole colliding with another to reach the multiple data observation points that Rob has set up.
\nThis is a superior piece that is convincingly told; it has a verisimilar\u00a0future that other writers rarely match. Also, unlike the SF described in one of the quotes above, the prose is elegant\u2014and yes, at times luminous\u2014and it has that rare British voice that you seldom hear in SF nowadays. As to the characterization, it is far from sketchy, in fact this is less a story than the account of two people\u2019s lives and how, after multiple intersections, they finally come together.<\/p>\n

The Editorial<\/em><\/strong> is about a recent\u00a0readers\u2019 awards breakfast that Asimov\u2019s Science Fiction<\/em> and Analog<\/em> hosts each year. I didn\u2019t read the magazine in 2015\u00a0so I can\u2019t tell how egregious the readers\u2019 choices are, but next year I\u2019ll be foremost amongst the Monday morning quarter-backers.
\nReflections: \u201cDarn,\u201d He Smiled<\/em><\/strong> by Robert Silverberg is an amusing essay about Damon Knight and James Blish\u2019s critical work. He concentrates on Blish\u2019s dislike of \u2018said bookisms\u2019 in particular, referring to one damming review:1<\/sup><\/p>\n

[Blish] devotes considerable space to his \u201csaid-bookism,\u201d a term of literary opprobrium that I think was one of Blish\u2019s coinages. This is what he says: \u201cAbout half of the fifteen thousand words of this story are dialogue, at a minimum estimate, and in the seventy-five hundred words of miscellaneous yatter, the characters actually say something only twenty-seven times. For the rest of the yarn, they shout (six times), repeat, snap (twice), order (four times), stammer, observe (five times), ask (sixteen times), lecture, argue,\u2019half-whisper,\u2019 muse, call, sigh (four times), nod, agree (four times), report (three times), cry, yell, command, bark, scream (twice), guess, state (twice, both times \u2018flatly\u2019), add, suggest, chide, propose, announce, explain, admit, growl, chuckle (twice)….\u201d<\/em> p.7<\/p>\n

On Books<\/em><\/strong> by Peter Heck covers several books, the most interesting of which sound\u00a0like the new Paul Di Filippo collection, A Palazao in the Stars<\/em>, and Breaking the Chains of Gravity: The Story of Space Flight Before NASA<\/em> by Amy Shira Teitel.
\nNice Cover<\/em><\/strong> by Michael Whelan.2<\/sup>
\nFinally, I actually liked one of the poems in this issue for a change:\u00a0Autosexuality<\/em><\/strong> by Chris Wozney, probably because it is as much a joke as a poem.<\/p>\n

Another highly recommended issue.<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. The review, One Completely Lousy Story With Feetnote<\/em>, is in The Issue at Hand<\/em> by James Blish, p.92. The story is Final Exam<\/em> by Arthur Zirul (Astounding<\/em>, March 1954).<\/li>\n
  2. Thomas Wagner pointed out on Twitter (@SFF180) that this is an alternate version of the cover he did for Isaac Asimov\u2019s Foundation\u2019s Edge<\/em><\/a>.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    This magazine is still being published!<\/b> Subscribe: Kindle UK<\/a>, Kindle USA<\/a>\u00a0or physical & digital copies<\/a>.<\/p>\n\"rss\"<\/a>\"rss\"<\/a><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    ISFDB link Other reviews: Greg Hullender\u00a0and Eric Wong, Rocket Stack Rank\u00a0(forthcoming) Sam\u00a0Tomaino, SF Revu\u00a0(forthcoming) Unknown, Tangent Online\u00a0(forthcoming) Various, Goodreads Fiction: The Mind Is Its Own Place \u2022 novelette by Carrie Vaughn \u2665\u2665 Dome on the Prairie \u2022 short story by Robert Reed \u2665\u2665\u2665 Epitome \u2022 novelette by Tegan Moore \u2665\u2665 Academic Circles \u2022 short story […]<\/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-1916","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-uU","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1916","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=1916"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1916\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1933,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1916\/revisions\/1933"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1916"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1916"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1916"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}