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ISFDB link<\/a><\/p>\n Other reviews: Editor,\u00a0Trevor Quachri; Assistant Editor,\u00a0Emily Hockaday<\/p>\n Fiction: Non-fiction: There are two particularly good stories in this issue: the first is\u00a0The Human Way<\/em><\/strong> by Tony Ballantyne. This starts with the narrator driving in a Ferrari 456 on an almost completely deserted planet. It isn\u2019t long before we find out that an autonomous AI built the infrastructure for human settlers who never arrived. We also learn that the (female) narrator is a soldier in the second Antarctic Army, and they are on the planet looking for the kidnappers of an alien \u2018S.\u2019 As she is driving she sees\u00a0a woman and two children:<\/p>\n My attention focused in on what the scanners revealed to be a woman and two children, standing blown by the sea breeze at the edge of a wide parking area. I opened up a visual channel, zoomed in. They\u2019d seen me\u00a0<\/em>coming. They were waving at me to stop. <\/em> The rest of the story involves the army\u2019s search for the S, and it is a fast paced, lively and inventive account:<\/p>\n . . . And all the windows on the train shattered, all at once. A wide band of dust arced to the side, flickering as it engaged with a bullet pattern sweeping down from my right, and then I was rolling, checking the feed from my satellite, firing off to the top corner, rolling again, off the platform, onto the tracks, four more shots. . . .<\/em> The only thing that didn\u2019t quite work for me was what the kidnappers hoped to achieve by kidnapping the S. It is explained earlier in the story that The Human Way wanted to start a war, but the final rambling conversation loses that focus somewhat. If it hadn\u2019t been for this slight failing it would have been a very good story. He was the one who told Me that the fifty familiar strangers who had just rung my doorbell, who had waited for Me to open it and had then marched through the threshold, were not of equal legitimacy.<\/em> I\u2019m not as familiar with Analog<\/em> as I used to be, but this strikes me as a rather atypical piece for the magazine. It is also a very Malzbergian piece, both in its dense style and solipsistic agonising. I am not entirely sure what the story is about. Is it about the unknowability of the future? Not second guessing the life choices we make? Seizing control of our lives? Probably all of these and more. This is one that will reward repeated rereadings (maybe in the Best of the Year anthologies).<\/p>\n Following closely behind these two (perhaps it should be in the same group) is\u00a0Plaisir d\u2019Amour<\/em><\/strong> by John Alfred Taylor. This has a sociologist called Ben who joins the inter-solar system ship Agricola<\/em> to do research on their society. A new species of humanity crews the ship:<\/p>\n Ben had watched videos of gibbons after someone told him that Ceelies reminded him of the great apes. Not really like gibbons, he decided now, though his companions had the same long arms and short legs. But their chests were narrower, and their wrists normal\u2014not the ball-and-socket joints that allowed gibbons to brachiate from tree to tree. No need to brachiate here.<\/em> Over the next few months he roams the ship interviewing and observing the inhabitants and their society:<\/p>\n Wu messaged Ben that he\u2019d want to attend the mass wedding. Ben wouldn\u2019t miss it for the world, because it was a ritual special to what he privately called his tribe.<\/em> During his stay, Ben falls in love with Ellen, the woman who was his guide when he first arrived. Both of them are aware that their relationship will be strictly time-limited and that he will leave the ship at the end of his visit. Ben Niehaus knew all about tribes and moieties and phratries, endogamy and exogamy, as well as the pitfalls of participant observation, but never imagined falling in love.<\/em> p. 161<\/p>\n I had to look up four words and, even after I had, that sentence still didn\u2019t make much sense.<\/p>\n There are other good stories in the issue too, three of which are time travel stories (this is one of the themes of this issue). Nexus<\/strong><\/em> by Michael F. Flynn initially appears as if it is just a straightforward example of that sub-genre, but it ends up with considerably more moving parts. But I\u2019m getting ahead of myself. . . . \u201cNo twonkies allowed?\u201d <\/em> The \u2018twonkies\u2019 reference suggests the writer is C. L. Moore (and the sleeping husband Henry Kuttner). I didn\u2019t quite understand the point of the piece until I had a quick look on Wikipedia,1<\/sup> which states that a later husband quashed the proposal of a\u00a0Nebula Grandmaster Award for Moore due to the writer\u2019s advanced Alzheimer\u2019s, for fear of the upset and confusion it might have caused her. The also-rans include a few that are OK, such as the Brodski and Clare stories, but don’t entirely work for whatever reason.\u00a0Host<\/em><\/strong> by Eneasz Brodski is about a boy called Julian, who lives on an outer system habitat and regularly skips school. During one of these absences he attempts to get to the other side of the habitat and reunite with a friend who has moved. During this preamble we also learn of the Abominations, who have attacked and destroyed habitats around Neptune. Once Julian arrives at the other side of the habitat he is caught up in an attack. The Abominations are zombie\/Borg-like humans whose bite infects the recipient and thereafter links it to the hive mind. There are also a number of sidebars that present more philosophical material. Ultimately there are interesting parts to this but it doesn\u2019t entirely convince. Europa\u2019s Survivors<\/em><\/strong> by Marianne J. Dyson has a narrator called Carrie, a scientist with terminal cancer who goes to a research outpost on Europa. On landing her spaceship punches through a thin ice layer to the station which is below below a thicker protective one, the ship damaging one of the pumps that stops\u00a0the access shaft freezing shut on the way through. After landing she meets Dr Lee, her fellow research scientist, and Olsen, who runs operations. Lee\u00a0then goes out in a pod to recover a filter on the damaged pump, runs into difficulties, and gets stuck in ice at the surface, a high radiation environment. Cassie goes out in another pod to rescue him. Time Heals<\/em><\/strong> by James C. Glass has a man going back in time to kill the abusive stepfather he had as a boy. He learns something that makes him change his mind about the man. A rather unengaging by-the-numbers time-travel story, with any possible paradox questions sidestepped; and another mawkish ending. The Cover<\/em><\/strong> by Tomislav Tikulin illustrates the Flynn story. I\u2019m not a big fan of alien covers, at least not on current day magazines. Many works by science fiction authors in the area of space exploration are examples of what Bruce Sterling has referred to as \u201cdesign fiction,\u201d a term coined by Julian Bleecker of Near Future Laboratory.\u2019 Design fiction is \u201cthe deliberate use of diegetic prototypes to suspend disbelief about change.\u201d This is not just storytelling; this is designing prototypes and examples of a world that has somehow been changed. In this changed world, we now have new possibility, and this provides room in which creative human thought can posit solutions and pathways to reach this new state.<\/em> Many authors portray a system rejected by the American pragmatists one hundred years ago, not reflecting what we do in 2016. Education has changed and improved. Active learning, where students participate in the educational activity, is now used much more frequently, because it increases student performance. Student creativity is harnessed. Groups are used to form highly effective learning clusters. Educators now have serious debates as to whether they should expose students to a sequence of lectures (with an information retention rate around 20%) when they could be working with the students in active learning (retention around 60%).<\/em> p. 6<\/p>\n My heart sank a little when I read the last sentence: when I completed a postgraduate teacher training course in the mid-1990s, the lecturers were trying to nudge the profession to adopt pupil-centred learning (which I presume is analogous to active learning). To find they are still having a debate about it some twenty years later is really quite depressing. The idea that you only need to stand at the front of a class and talk at your pupils\u2014thereby filling them up with education as if they are empty vessels\u2014belongs with the dinosaurs. People who don\u2019t have to live it have often extolled the supposed virtues of \u201cthe simple life.\u201d Even this magazine, back in its <\/em>Astounding days, published Fredric Brown\u2019s short story \u201cThe Waveries,\u201d in which some rather unusual aliens quietly made it impossible for Earth\u2019s humans to continue using electricity, and everybody wound up happier with the quieter, more limited life that resulted. Much as I admire Fredric Brown, it has always seemed to me that that particular story glossed over the difficulties of the transition way too casually and made the end result look a lot rosier than I think it would be.<\/em> p. 46<\/p>\n He then goes on to discuss the issue that almost no one mentions when they talk about resources or global warming, which is that any advances you make in tackling those problems will be undone by an ever-increasing population, and that latter issue is the one that needs to be urgently addressed. It\u2019s hard not to like an article that reinforces your own opinions! The New Age period of the 1960s and 1970s was largely idea-oriented, although quintessential New Age author Michael Moorcock produced his own share of action\/adventure SF.<\/em> p. 194-195.<\/p>\n It\u2019s \u2018New Wave\u2019 not \u2018New Age,\u2019 an error that occurs twice. Although he did produce some adventure SF during that period (The Ice Schooner<\/em>) Moorcock produced mostly fantasy. I first started reading <\/em>Astounding in 1948 or 1949, and have been a subscriber for almost all of the years since. Until recently, I have read each issue from cover to cover, but some stories in the last few years have just not worked; they happen to be those written in present tense, with a few notable exceptions.<\/em> That is almost seventy years as an Astounding\/Analog<\/em> reader. I was frustrated that the Journeyman story in June didn\u2019t have any \u201cpreviously appeared in\u201d notes. I spent the whole story trying to remember what had happened previously, and which characters we had seen before, which made it much harder to immerse myself in the story.<\/em> I mentioned the potential problems with series stories in a recent F&SF<\/em> review. These sound like they are badly written and\/or structured.<\/p>\n Overall a mixed bag, but there is a lot of good longer work so worth a look.<\/p>\n This magazine is still being published!<\/b> Subscribe: Kindle UK<\/a>, Kindle USA<\/a>\u00a0or physical & digital copies<\/a>.<\/p>\n ISFDB link Other reviews: Colleen Chen, Tangent Online Greg Hullender and Eric Wong, Rocket Stack Rank L\u00e4hett\u00e4nyt Tpi Klo, Tpi\u2019s Reading Diary John Loyd, There ain\u2019t no such thing as a free lunch Sam Tomaino, SFRevu Various, Goodreads Editor,\u00a0Trevor Quachri; Assistant Editor,\u00a0Emily Hockaday Fiction: Nexus \u2022 novella by Michael F. Flynn *** Europa\u2019s Survivors \u2022 […]<\/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":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3232","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-analog-science-fiction-and-fact"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Pcj7-Q8","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3232","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=3232"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3232\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3260,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3232\/revisions\/3260"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3232"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3232"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3232"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nColleen Chen, Tangent Online<\/a>
\nGreg Hullender and Eric Wong, Rocket Stack Rank<\/a>
\nL\u00e4hett\u00e4nyt Tpi Klo, Tpi\u2019s Reading Diary<\/a>
\nJohn Loyd, There ain\u2019t no such thing as a free lunch<\/a>
\nSam Tomaino, SFRevu<\/a>
\nVarious, Goodreads<\/a><\/p>\n
\nNexus<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 novella by Michael F. Flynn ***<\/strong>
\nEuropa\u2019s Survivors<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 novelette by Marianne J. Dyson *<\/strong>
\nEli\u2019s Coming<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by Catherine Wells ***<\/strong>
\nTime Heals<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by James C. Glass *<\/strong>
\nShakesville<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by Adam-Troy Castro and Alvaro Zinos-Amaro ***<\/strong>+
\nHost<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 novelette by Eneasz Brodski **<\/strong>
\nThe Snatchers<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by Edward McDermott *<\/strong>
\nUnbearable Burden<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by Gwendolyn Clare **<\/strong>
\nHidden Intentions<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by Mary E. Lowd
\nGrandmaster<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by Jay O\u2019Connell ***<\/strong>
\nAlexander\u2019s Theory of Special Relativity<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by Shane Halbach\u00a0\u2217\u2217<\/strong>
\nConcerning the Devastation Wrought by the Nefarious Gray Comma and Its Ilk: A Men in Tie-Dye Adventure<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by Tim McDaniel *<\/strong>
\nEcuador vs. the Bug-Eyed Monsters<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by Jay Werkheiser *<\/strong>
\nThe Human Way<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 novelette by Tony Ballantyne ***<\/strong>+
\nPlaisir d\u2019Amour<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 novella by John Alfred Taylor ***<\/strong><\/p>\n
\nCover<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 Tomislav Tikulin
\nInterior artwork<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 Vincent Di Fate, Kevin Speidell, Josh Meehan, Joel Iskowitz
\nFuture-Proofing the Near Future: Design Fiction for Global Education<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 editorial by Nickolas Falkner
\nSustainability Lab 101: Cuba as a Simulation of Possible Futures<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 essay by Stanley Schmidt
\nBarriers<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 poem by J. Northcutt, Jr.
\nHypothesis\/Assertion<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 poem by Daniel D. Villani
\nTesting the Neutrino Hierarchy<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 essay by John G. Cramer
\nIn Times to Come<\/em><\/strong>
\nThe Reference Library<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 by Don Sakers
\nBrass Tacks<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 letters
\nUpcoming Events<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 by Anthony R. Lewis<\/p>\n
\n\u201cCan you see this, Captain?\u201d<\/em>
\n\u201cUh huh.\u201d<\/em>
\nI tapped at my console, brought up the weapons systems.<\/em>
\n\u201cI\u2019ve got a clear line on their upper vertebrae. If I take out the adult first, I\u2019d be able to pick off the children before they make it for cover. Get the heads plugged into life support before brain anoxia sets in…<\/em>
\nCaptain Elton thought it over.<\/em>
\n\u201c. . . no. The scan shows the area\u2019s clear. We\u2019ll take a risk. See what they want. \u201c<\/em>
\nWe\u2019ll take a risk? I thought. <\/em>What\u2019s this \u201cwe\u201d? Still, that\u2019s what I was there for. . .<\/em>
\n\u201cYes, Sir.\u201d<\/em>
\nI stepped down my weapon systems. I could see the woman clearly with my own eyes, now. She was shortish with dark curly hair and looked nothing like a soldier. Still, who does nowadays? I guided the car to a halt right beside her and pushed open the passenger door.<\/em> p. 147-8<\/p>\n
\nThat\u2019s the euphoria of battle. You need to take a couple of hours to sit back and replay it in slo-mo if you are to truly follow what has happened. In real time, this battle ended in less than fifteen seconds with me pushing a metacarbon knife deep into the belly of a Dalkeith mercenary, just as he grabbed hold of Joanna, me using my body mass to push him off his ridiculous chicken legs and bear him to the ground, my face up close to his, watching the life ebb from those grey eyes as I twisted the knife and sent the narcotic shock into his system.<\/em>
\nAnd then normal time resumed, and I was panting, looking up at Joanna, seeing the horror in her eyes, aware of the blood on my face, hearing the shushing noise the magnetic dust swarm made as it returned to the container on my back.<\/em> p. 155<\/p>\n
\nSharing the honours with this story is\u00a0Shakesville<\/em><\/strong> by Adam-Troy Castro and Alvaro Zinos-Amaro. This is a dense, philosophical piece about a man who has fifty quantum echoes of himself from the future in his apartment. They have all traveled back to warn him about a soon to occur fulcrum event that will decide his future path in life. But only one of them is the real \u2018him.\u2019<\/p>\n
\nThough they looked like the Me of tomorrow, the Me of five years from now, the Me of forty years from now, the Me who I could aspire to and the Me who I desperately needed to avoid becoming, and though they all claimed to have traveled here from their own particular versions of my future to offer vitally important but mutually contradictory advice, though they are all only projected duplicates who do\u00a0<\/em>not need to eat and drink and eliminate wastes, one of the fifty is more real than the others, since he reflects my true future and all the rest are merely flawed reflections created by an error in chronal translation. I did not have to reconcile the paradoxes. I just had to understand that the rest of my life depends on figuring out which Me is giving Me the proper information.<\/em> p. 88<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/sfmagazines.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/AN20170304i1x600.jpg?resize=415%2C600&ssl=1\")
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\nBen marveled at the arrogance of last century\u2019s genetic engineers, their ruthless decision to remake humanity for space. <\/em>Homo sapiens sapiens caelestis. He wondered how happy Ceelies were in their niche.<\/em> p. 161<\/p>\n
\nEllen couldn\u2019t come\u2014something about a new crop of lettuce.<\/em>
\nThe stretch of Main Street outside Wu\u2019s office was magic with blue light. There was low synthesizer music, seemingly East Indian with a drone, but shot through with pizzicati-like birdsong. Wu was holding onto the apex of a conical frame with his toes, and the couples to be married were in an arc at the base. They\u00a0<\/em>were dressed fresh from the ship\u2019s fabbers: the grooms, whether immigrants from L5 or citizens of <\/em>Agricola, wore navy blue studded with tiny gold stars; the brides wore peach. Ben was close in because he wanted to hear the words, but there was no need\u2014the ceremony was unobtrusively amplified.<\/em>
\nThe marriage service was simple and dignified. After the wedding vows, the newcomers promised to accept and uphold the ship\u2019s articles, and Wu granted them a share in Agricola. Ben realized they weren\u2019t just marrying their partners, they were wedding the ship as well: a new twist on exogamy.<\/em> p. 174<\/p>\n
\nAnd that is pretty much it for this low-key slice-of-life piece. There is no plot as such, and only the slightest of narrative arcs, so it is a measure of the writer\u2019s skill that this is an absorbing story.
\nI have a minor criticism, which is that the first line of this piece\u00a0is one of the worst I\u2019ve read:<\/p>\n
\nIt starts with a time traveller in a bar who recognises a woman on the TV news (she has just saved a baby from a burning building). He realises that he recognises her from a earlier trip to the past, and wonders if she is the person who has wiped out his timeline. When he leaves the bar two events happen in short succession: he gets in a fight with three guys trying to steal his van, which is actually a time machine in disguise, and sees them off, only to have a monstrous alien appear and pursue him as he is getting in the van. He quickly shifts to another time. Later, he picks the woman up and interrogates her, coming to the conclusion that he<\/em> may actually be the one who has annihilated his timeline.
\nAfter this relatively straightforward opening, the tale becomes considerably more complicated, and introduces (multiple spoilers) an Air Force officer called Zendahl who is actually a member of a secret alien community on Earth called the Apakallu (some are purebred, others are \u2018reverts\u2019 or are genetically modified to fit in with humanity like he is). They have noticed the alien creature\u2019s appearance on Earth: it is an aggressive species they call a headhunter, and an enemy of their race from the ancient past. He and two others are tasked to investigate.
\nIn short order we find out more about the alien, who may cause the end of life of Earth if it gets its ship repaired and summons the rest of its people, and are also introduced to a Pentagon analyst called Annie, who is actually an android, as well as Jane, a telepathic PI, who is investigating the fire the baby was saved from. This may all sound a little kitchen sink, and it feels a little like that to begin with, but the writer manages to blend these various elements together quite well. I didn\u2019t entirely buy it, but it is an entertaining enough piece.
\nEli\u2019s Coming<\/em><\/strong> by Catherine Wells is a time-travel story that gets off to a clich\u00e9d start in the present (arrogant CEO\/founder\/owner swans around the company building doing his own thing) but improves as he travels to 67 CE, just as the Romans are due to breach the walls of Masada. The people inside the town are about to start committing suicide to avoid falling into the hands of the Romans.
\nThis is one of those time travel tales that are really a historical story in disguise, but there\u2019s a clever twist ending I didn\u2019t see coming.
\nGrandmaster<\/em><\/strong> by Jay O\u2019Connell opens with a woman writer reading her sleeping husband\u2019s overnight work on a collaborative manuscript before she continues the piece. A knock at the door disturbs her, and she opens it to find that the visitor is\u00a0a strangely dressed young woman. The writer invites her into the apartment and discovers the woman is a time-traveller who can only stay for five minutes in this time period. The time-traveller wants to use that time to tell the writer that she should have been given a Grandmaster (Nebula) award in the future but wasn\u2019t. The time-traveller shows the writer a smartphone with a mocked-up picture of the award, explaining she couldn\u2019t bring any physical objects back. The writer asks:<\/p>\n
\nThe girl shakes her head. \u201cArtifacts brought back from the future? No\u2019\u2019<\/em>
\n\u201cIt\u2019s not fair that you know my made up words but I don\u2019t know yours.\u201d <\/em>
\nThe girl shimmers. \u201cNo it\u2019s not, I guess.\u201d <\/em>
\n\u201cMemories?\u201d the woman says quickly. \u201cYou leave those?\u201d <\/em>
\nThe girl nods. \u201cOh yes! Yes, you should remember this. Um.\u201d She checks her screen. \u201cThere\u2019s more I wanted to say but the ligature is collapsing. I\u2019m almost done. Can we hug?\u201d She asks. <\/em>
\nThe woman nods grimly. \u201cWhy not?\u201d <\/em>
\nThe embrace lasts only a few seconds. \u201cThank you,\u201d the words whispered hotly in her ear smell like peppermint. And without any transitional oddness, the woman finds herself completely alone again, the whiff of candy still in her nostrils.<\/em> p. 125<\/p>\n
\nThe story is a touching tribute, and it\u2019s fitting that it has appeared in Analog<\/em> (Astounding<\/em> published many of Moore\/Kuttner\/Padgett\/etc.\u2019s best stories).
\nOne minor point: the Vichy France references at the beginning made me think the story was set there until I was further on.<\/p>\n
\nUnbearable Burden<\/em><\/strong> by Gwendolyn Clare Is narrated by an AI who talks about his own existence and that of several others, one of whom has committed suicide. This is quite interesting as far as it goes but is little more than the opening act in a longer piece. The obvious editorial response should have been, \u2018Where is the rest of it?\u2019
\nAlexander\u2019s Theory of Special Relativity<\/em><\/strong> by Shane Halbach has a time machine malfunction causing a woman to return to her partner after eleven years in the future, whereas only ten minutes have passed for him. Relationship difficulties ensue.<\/p>\n
\nThe other part of the story is the science nugget, which is about the bacteria in the filter. These bacteria may be of Europan origin (or are maybe just contamination from Earth). The scientists want to recover them as they are radiation resistant and propagate few mutations in their DNA.
\nFor some, this will be an OK story, I guess, but there are several things you\u2019ll need to overlook to think so. Apart from the two-dimensional characters (Cassie and Olsen start flirting like teenagers almost immediately they meet), I could also have done without the cutesy artificial pets they all have to monitor their health. There is also a ridiculous attitude to risk for people in such a hazardous environment: when Lee is in trouble, Cassie just decides she is going to go off and rescue him. No risk assessment, no chain of command, etc. I would suggest this is just not how people would conduct themselves in this type of environment. Well, not unless they all want to experience quick and horrible deaths. There is also an ending that you can see coming a mile off and one which is far too pat, not to say mawkish (you can probably guess what it is from what I\u2019ve described already).<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/sfmagazines.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/AN20170304i2x600.jpg?resize=415%2C600&ssl=1\")
<\/p>\n
\nThe Snatchers<\/em><\/strong> by Edward McDermott is about \u2018snatchers\u2019 who go back in time to seize the writer Antoine de Saint-Exupery from Corsica in1944. Once the narrator and his female accomplice get there they start carrying out their plan. This is well enough done for the most part\u2014there are various complications, including Time\u2019s attempt at killing them to restore the status who\u2014but its pessimistic end is rather abrupt.
\nHidden Intentions<\/em><\/strong> by Mary E. Lowd is an awful, twee Probability Zero piece (is there any other kind?) about a dragon like alien being irritated by a small child she is babysitting. Solution: put her in a spacesuit and fool her into going into the airlock, before spacing her for an hour\u2019s peace and quiet.
\nConcerning the Devastation Wrought by the Nefarious Gray Comma and Its Ilk: A Men in Tie-Dye Adventure<\/em><\/strong> by Tim McDaniel starts with a man waking up in the middle of the night to find two men digging up the plants in his garden. They later explain to him that these plants attract butterflies, and that certain instances of butterflies flapping their wings cause tornadoes, cyclones, hurricanes, etc. Leaden humour.
\nEcuador vs. the Bug-Eyed Monsters<\/em><\/strong> by Jay Werkheiser is an SF sports story: these are generally not my cup of tea and this one proved no exception. An Ecuadorian football team play football in an orbiting alien habitat where the low grav environment and Coriolis effects caused by its rotation cause the players difficulties. Added to this are a rivalry between two players for a woman, and suspicion about the opposing alien teams\u2019s intentions. I found the game play descriptions boring and ended up skimming through those parts of the story.<\/p>\n
\nThere is the usual postage stamp size Interior artwork<\/em><\/strong> by Vincent Di Fate, Kevin Speidell, Josh Meehan, and Joel Iskowitz. I\u2019m curious: is the art the same size in the physical edition? I presume they shrink it for the digital version, but can\u2019t think why.
\nFuture-Proofing the Near Future: Design Fiction for Global Education<\/em><\/strong> by Nickolas Falkner is an interesting editorial that if, I recall correctly (my summary note disappeared), starts off talking about the moon landings and segues into \u2018design fiction\u2019 being written to aid education in the future. I think these two quotes will give you a flavour:<\/p>\n
\nThe design fiction may not be real, but it allows visions of new possibilities.<\/em> p. 5<\/p>\n
\nSustainability Lab 101: Cuba as a Simulation of Possible Futures<\/em><\/strong> by Stanley Schmidt is another interesting piece, this time about Cuba\u2019s \u2018Special Period,\u2019 when the country had to make massive changes to its society in the late 1990s to respond to cancelled\u00a0Russian oil imports. Schmidt notes that, while the Cubans managed this very well, and that the change to a lifestyle (more work on the land, more use of pushbikes, etc.) has health benefits, it would be better to not get into the situation in the first place, as they now have less leisure time, ability to travel, etc.<\/p>\n
\nThere are two poems in the issue, Barriers<\/em><\/strong> by J. Northcutt, Jr. and Hypothesis\/Assertion<\/em><\/strong> by Daniel D. Villani, both of which struck me as rather ponderous.
\nTesting the Neutrino Hierarchy<\/em><\/strong> by John G. Cramer is a rather rarefied article on neutrino mass hierarchy.
\nThe Reference Library<\/em><\/strong> by Don Sakers starts with a potted history of action\/adventure SF. Unfortunately, this kind of thing just brings out the nit-picker in me:<\/p>\n
\nSome of the reviews are of work that could be described as \u2018product,\u2019 i.e. StarCraft Evolution<\/em> by Timothy Zahn, an entry in a \u2018military science fiction media franchise,\u2019 but there are also reviews of books from Bova, Spinrad, Dickson, etc.
\nBrass Tacks<\/em><\/strong> has an interesting letter form Robert P. Odenweller of Bernardsville, New Jersey:<\/p>\n
\nWhere this style of writing came from puzzles me, but I\u2019ve been told that it is normal for <\/em>People magazine, which I have never seen, so cannot comment. The voice of the story is important, and this style loses me. One such story recently was so difficult to follow that I gave up on it, a great rarity for me.<\/em> p. 200<\/p>\n
\nThere is also this from Elka Tovah Davidoff of Malven, Massachusetts:<\/p>\n
\nConversely, I was thrilled that \u201cFall\u201d in July \/August started with a synopsis. I was able to begin the story with the backstory firmly in mind, and therefore enjoyed it much more. Please continue doing this for serial stories!<\/em> p. 201<\/p>\n\n
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