{"id":4682,"date":"2018-04-22T19:50:22","date_gmt":"2018-04-22T19:50:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/?p=4682"},"modified":"2018-05-03T16:05:35","modified_gmt":"2018-05-03T16:05:35","slug":"asimovs-science-fiction-v41n1112-november-december-2017","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/?p=4682","title":{"rendered":"Asimov’s Science Fiction v41n11&12, November\/December 2017"},"content":{"rendered":"

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ISFDB link<\/a><\/p>\n

Other reviews:
\nGardner Dozois, Locus<\/a>
\nRich Horton, Locus<\/a>
\nGreg Hullender\u00a0and Eric Wong,\u00a0Rocket Stack Rank<\/a>
\nSam\u00a0Tomaino,\u00a0SF Revu<\/a>
\nStephanie Wexler,\u00a0Tangent Online<\/a>
\nVarious,\u00a0Goodreads<\/a><\/p>\n

Editor, Sheila Williams; Associate Editor, Emily Hockaday<\/p>\n

Fiction:
\nThe Discrete Charm of the Turing Machine<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 novelette by Greg Egan \u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>+<\/span>
\nConfessions of a Con Girl<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by Nick Wolven \u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>+
\nIn Dublin, Fair City<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 novelette by Rick Wilber \u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>+
\nThe Last Dance<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by Jack McDevitt
\nAnd No Torment Shall Touch Them<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by James Patrick Kelly \u2217<\/strong>
\nTimewalking <\/em><\/strong>\u2022 short story by Michael Cassutt \u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>
\nSkipped <\/em><\/strong>\u2022 short story by Emily Taylor \u2217<\/strong>
\nAfloat Above a Floor of Stars<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by Tom Purdom \u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>
\nLove and Death and the Star that Shall Not Be Named: Kom\u2019s Story<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by James E. Gunn \u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>
\nNine Lattices of Sargasso<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 novelette by Jason Sanford \u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>
\nOperators <\/em><\/strong>\u2022 short story by Joel Richards \u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>
\nThe Nanny Bubble<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by Norman Spinrad \u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>
\nI Met a Traveller in an Antique Land<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 novella by Connie Willis \u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>+<\/p>\n

Non-fiction:
\nCover <\/em><\/strong>\u2022 by Eldar Zakirov
\nExcelsior!<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 editorial by Sheila Williams
\nGog and Magog<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 essay by Robert Silverberg
\nTime Party<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 essay by James Patrick Kelly
\nPoetry<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 by Jennifer Crow, Robert Frazier, Ken Poyner, G. O. Clark, Jane Yolen (2), H. Mellas
\nNext Issue
\nOn Books<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 by Peter Heck
\nSF Conventional Calendar<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 by Erwin S. Strauss<\/p>\n

The Discrete Charm of the Turing Machine<\/em><\/strong> by Greg Egan gets off to a cracking start with a call centre employee making a debt consolidation call using an \u201cout stream avatar\u201d (software that alters the callers appearance to appeal to the prospective client). Then someone calls him:<\/p>\n

When Dan came back from his break, the computer sensed his presence and woke. He\u2019d barely put on his headset when a window opened and a woman he\u2019d never seen before addressed him in a briskly pleasant tone.
\n\u201cGood afternoon, Dan.\u201d
\n\u201cGood afternoon.\u201d
\n\u201cI\u2019m calling you on behalf of Human Resources. I need to ask you to empty your cubicle. Make sure you take everything now, because once you\u2019ve left the floor, you won\u2019t have an opportunity to return.\u201d
\nDan hesitated, trying to decide if the call could be a prank. But there was a padlock icon next to the address, ruth_bayer@HR.thriftocracy.com, which implied an authenticated connection.
\n\u201cI\u2019ve been over-target every week this quarter!\u201d he protested.
\n\u201cAnd your bonuses have reflected that,\u201d Ms. Bayer replied smoothly. \u201cWe\u2019re grateful for your service, Dan, but you\u2019ll understand that as circumstances change, we need to fine-tune our assets to maintain an optimal fit.\u201d
\nBefore he could reply, she delivered a parting smile and terminated the connection. And before he could call back, all the application windows on his screen closed, and the system logged him out.
\nDan sat motionless for ten or fifteen seconds, but then sheer habit snapped him out of it: if the screen was blank, it was time to leave. He pulled his gym bag out from under the desk, unzipped it, and slid the three framed photos in next to his towel. The company could keep his plants, or throw them out; he didn\u2019t care. As he walked down the aisle between the cubicles, he kept his eyes fixed on the carpet; his colleagues were busy, and he didn\u2019t want to embarrass them with the task of finding the right words to mark his departure in the twenty or thirty seconds they could spare before they\u2019d be docked. He felt his face flushing, recalling the time a year or so ago when a man he\u2019d barely known had left in tears. Dan had rolled his eyes and thought: What did you expect? A farewell party? An engraved fountain pen?
\nAs he waited for the elevator, he contemplated taking a trip to the seventh floor to demand an explanation. It made no sense to let him go when his KPIs weren\u2019t just solid, they\u2019d been trending upward. There must have been a mistake.
\nThe doors opened and he stepped into the elevator. \u201cSeven,\u201d he grunted.
\n\u201cGround floor,\u201d the elevator replied.
\n\u201cSeven\u201d Dan repeated emphatically.
\nThe doors closed, and the elevator descended. p. 15-16<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The rest of the story details Dan\u2019s unemployment and examines the financial and social implications of advanced technology and software replacing humans in the workforce. There are a number of witty passages that match the one above.
\nConfessions of a Con Girl<\/em><\/strong> by Nick Wolven is an interesting piece that extrapolates the \u2018like\u2019 culture of today into the academic world of the near future. This one is in the form of a written essay by Sophie Lee, a young woman at college who originally had so many \u2018pro\u2019 votes (likes) that she had a dark green \u2018holoscore\u2019. However, after a number of problematical social interactions, her score goes light green and then yellow (not so good). This is an example of one of those, involving her \u2018friend\u2019 Roman:<\/p>\n

This was when we were hanging out in his room almost every night, eating pizza and talking about Roman\u2019s feelings. And that was where we were one Saturday night, when Roman suddenly got a funny look. Now by this time, confessedly, my Pro\/Con Holistic Score was not so green as previous. I had brought Roman to several events with my peer network, where he experienced issues related to inappropriate touching. So I was beginning to be conflicted about the friendship. Also, it may be that my sensitivity, though usually high, was not so high as ordinarily. In any event, when Roman did what he did, I reacted uncharacteristically, which I mean, by getting scared and kicking him in the face.
\nThese are the words Roman said to me, that night, which I quote here not to be adverse, but only in the spirit of veracity.
\n\u201cB***h, what the F**k? Crazy t**t, you come here every night, playing on me, then I finally get the balls to make a move, you shoot me down? Seriously? Mother f **king c**k teasing c**t.\u201d
\nAs noted, I have set all this down not to cause hurt, but because it is in fact what Roman said to me.
\nBut the upshot is, after this incident, my Pro\/Con Holistic Score took a gigantic hit.
\nAnd it was because Roman kept giving me Con votes! I tried to engage with him constructively about it, but he only told me I had \u201cplayed him,\u201d and how the worst thing a girl can do to a guy is give him those kinds of mixed signals. Then he told other guys I had \u201cset him up,\u201d and they all gave me Con votes, too! So I was receiving Con votes every day, and this, plus a few other, unrelated factors, was, as people say, \u201cthe perfect storm,\u201d which made my holoscore begin to drop. p. 39<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

She is later interviewed by her Learning Process Adviser, Mr Barraine, and assumes that it is about her falling holoscore. However, he tells her that (spoiler) she has also been failing academically\u2014among other things she has been empathising with the wrong characters in her English course texts\u2014and, because of her poor empathic skills, will not be permitted to graduate.
\nThere is an emotional and ironic final scene from her childhood that undermines the college\u2019s assessment of her empathic abilities.
\nThis is one that grew on me after I finished it, and one I will have to read again.
\nThis piece is followed, like most in this 40th<\/sup> anniversary year issue, by a longish afterword which references a parent\u2019s collection of Asimov\u2019s Science Fiction<\/em>.
\nIn Dublin, Fair City<\/em><\/strong> by Rick Wilber is the third of his \u2018Moe Berg\u2019 stories, about a baseball player turned OSS operative in an alternate world where the Nazis have invaded England, and the Japanese San Diego. In this one he goes to Eire to pick up a defecting Professor Heisenberg. The story is itself is relatively straightforward but improves towards the end, partly because of a (spoiler) gloomy and scary climax.
\nThere are a couple of things that I didn\u2019t like about this though, minor stuff which, if revised, would have bumped it up to three stars. First off, the alternate world building isn\u2019t entirely convincing\u2014at the very start there is a mix of Spitfires, Gloster Meteors, and Me262s in the air over a 1940 Dublin. Now the latter two aircraft weren\u2019t in operation until mid-1944 in our world and, if you know this (and I concede most people won\u2019t), it crashes your mental gears. If you are going to introduce specific points of difference like this in a parallel world story I\u2019m not sure the opening paragraphs are the place. Even more unconvincing is an Irish Free State where the British have kept control of the ports and Dublin\u2014the city and the area around it is called \u2018The Pale\u20191<\/sup> (this has some historical basis but nonetheless does not ring true). There are other shortcomings too: the woman who Moe teams up with is a mysterious and unrealistically shadowy character; another irritation is Wilber\u2019s habit of telling us what Irish words mean when it is obvious:<\/p>\n

Two minutes left, so Moe tipped the doorman, walked into the lobby, found the gents\u2014the door said \u201cFir\u201d on it, Irish for \u201cMen\u201d\u2014and he walked in, set the briefcase on the counter next to him, and washed his face and hands to make himself presentable. p. 57<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

You could lose the \u201cIrish for \u2018Men\u2019\u201d, don\u2019t you think?
\nWilber\u2019s afterword has this touching note:<\/p>\n

My other major interest in writing revolves around baseball, where I\u2019ve enjoyed a great deal more success as a writer than I ever did as a player, though I had a terrific personal coach to teach me the game. My father, Del Wilber, played for the Cardinals, Red Sox, and Phillies and later managed in the minor-leagues for many years. He died some years ago, but I can still hear his voice coaching me as I write about the game. At least eight of my stories in Asimov\u2019s have had baseball as a significant element. p. 67<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The Last Dance<\/em><\/strong> by Jack McDevitt has a widower called Ethan get an AI holo-replica of his wife a year and a half after she has died in a car crash. He spends some time getting accustomed to her before she is introduced to their daughter. Up until this point the story was okay, although the idea did not particularly convince me, but from then on it goes rapidly downhill. The holo goes from saying it is<\/em> Olivia and that he should trust it, to pressuring Ethan to date other woman and move on with his life. There is an irritating last line that turns it from a mediocre story into a gimmick.
\nAnd No Torment Shall Touch Them<\/em><\/strong> by James Patrick Kelly begins at a funeral. A teenager called Carli is attending along with a hologram (another one) of his \u2018uploaded\u2019, and troublesome, grandfather. The rest of the story covers Carly\u2019s relationship with a slightly older guy called Lucius. There are sections from his point of view as well as Carli\u2019s mother and the female priest.
\nAll of this comes over as literary family soap opera\/slice-of-life, and I found it quite boring.
\nOh yes, there is a warning before the story about a brief sex scene (which turns out to be a gay one between Carli and Lucius).
\nTimewalking <\/em><\/strong>by Michael Cassutt is about a man in his sixties called James who is receiving treatment for sleepwalking. Towards to the end of one session, his therapist starts talking about time-travel, and how his various selves may be trying to pass information to each other. James loses his patience with the therapist and leaves.
\nThe other thread in this concerns James\u2019s partnership with a coder called Pham in a company called May Cay. The company is a start-up that is developing \u2018vineware\u2019, silicon-carbon plant material. These two threads soon merge as James and Pham consider two separate takeover offers for their business.
\nThis is well done up until the\u00a0irritating ending, which spoils it, and does not convince.
\nSkipped <\/em><\/strong>by Emily Taylor is essentially the same kind of angsty relationship material as the Kelly. A woman on a moon transport \u2018skips\u2019 to another universe and finds herself sitting opposite a man she doesn\u2019t know. In this reality the man is her \u2018husband\u2019; her \u2018daughter\u2019 is sitting beside her. The story alternates scenes between this reality and flashbacks from her own universe, and the familial, relationship, and environmental differences between the two.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat were you doing on the transport?\u201d he whispered.
\n\u201cGoing to give a presentation. I work in plants. In growing. Does she?\u201d
\n\u201cShe does,\u201d he said. \u201cBut we were off to take our daughter for a picnic in the grassland.\u201d
\n\u201cThat sounds nice,\u201d I said. We didn\u2019t have a grassland in our universe. What a lovely idea. I imagined stretching out, toes in dirt, just as I had in my faintest childhood memories. It would not be an efficient use of station space, but I could see that in this universe, they had made concessions to beauty. p. 103<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

At the end (spoiler) she reports to the authorities so she can return to her own universe.
\nThis one is essentially dystopian\/relationship navel-gazing\u2014and not my cup of tea.
\nAfloat Above a Floor of Stars<\/em><\/strong> by Tom Purdom takes place on board an FTL starship in the near future. A man, Revali, and woman, Kemen, are on a mission to travel for thirty eight years to a point above the Galaxy, where they will then record the event for humanity.
\nThe first part involves a lot of rather dull gender stuff as they alternately adopt altered personas to make themselves more attractive\/palatable to the other; this is backed up with talk about humanity splitting into two different species:<\/p>\n

Kemen was a confirmed Montalist. The splintering of the human race was inevitable, in her opinion. It might take several centuries, but the process couldn\u2019t be stopped now that it had started. There was no way legacy humans like Revali could build a society both sexes would find acceptable. The men and women who had created the first compatible companions had done something irresistible. The splintering of the human species had become inevitable the moment humans had learned to shape their genes and personalities.
\n[. . .]
\n\u201cWe may always have some legacies around,\u201d Kemen said. \u201cLittle isolated pockets. But you can\u2019t deny your population is shrinking. Every time one of your people defects, one of the other groups gains. Eventually, we\u2019ll have two species\u2014men with the kind of women men seem to have always wanted, and women partnered with the kind of men women need.\u201d p. 110<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The second part is more interesting because they start arguing (and perhaps behave more like a normal couple!) about the ceremony that they have agreed to undertake when they EVA:<\/p>\n

Kemen started talking about the ceremony in the middle of the fourth tenday. She brought it up, he noticed, after a sexual interlude in her quarters, while he was eyeing the ship\u2019s latest lunch suggestions.
\n\u201cI\u2019ve been thinking about the ceremony,\u201d Kemen said. \u201cIs it really something we have to do?\u201d
\nBenduin Desha had handed him her all-important addition to his funding with two requirements attached. He had to make the trip with someone from another branch and the two of them had to hover over the galaxy, hold hands, and make a statement about the basic unity of mankind.
\nWe are still one species<\/em>, Benduin Desha had said. Faced with the immensity of the galaxy\u2014seeing it spread out before you\u2014you should see how small we are. That we must stay together.<\/em> p. 112<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Kemen later decides she will not go through with this and that is when the trouble starts.
\nThe story has a cosmic ending that puts all this into perspective.
\nThe ninety-three year old (!) James Gunn returns with another of his \u2018Transcendental\u2019 series, Love and Death and the Star that Shall Not Be Named: Kom\u2019s Story<\/em><\/strong> This one has Kom, an alien, find Sam, a human, in hibernation in a small spacecraft while he is visiting locality of the star that shall not be named. Kom resuscitates him, and the rest of the story details their conversations, which are mostly about Kom\u2019s home world, birth, and life.
\nThis is traditional old-school SF, which makes it something of an outlier in the magazine, and also a non-story, which doesn\u2019t.
\nNine Lattices of Sargasso<\/em><\/strong> by Jason Sanford takes place on a floating island in the Saragossa Swirl run by a woman called Lady Faye. Her island is made from\u00a0nanotube mesh salvaged from the collapse of the Space Elevator, and it has robot spiders collecting the plastic rubbish that becomes tangled in the material. The destruction of the Space Elevator was one of the events that were part of a greater Crash of high-tech equipment caused by a newly sentient AI.
\nThe story itself unfolds as separate \u2018memory lattices\u2019 uploaded by the teenage female narrator called Amali, and there are two main narrative strands; the first consists of flashbacks of Amali and her brothers abandoning a ship packed with refugees and the three months they spent on the lifeboat (during which time their mother died) before they washed up on Lady Faye\u2019s island; the second concerns gene-mod ships run by pirates, and one of their progeny, Mareena, who washes up on the island years after Amali and her brothers did.
\nThese elements are competently marshalled to conclusion but I found the story a bit of a plod nonetheless (whether this was me or the story I\u2019m not sure). I think this may have been because it was initially hard to get into; there are also one or two things that don\u2019t entirely convince (I can see why Lady Faye wants (spoiler) rid of Amali to protect to avoid being exposed as a gene-mod pirate, but why would she specifically want a memory of her being eaten alive by the sea monster? Moreover, that whole sea monster eating people thing is at odds with the Russian captain\u2019s general demeanour.) It may also be that this story, like the previous one I read by this writer, is slightly too long and needs editing to improve the pacing.
\nSanford also contributes an afterward (more interesting than most) about his grandfather\u2019s SF collection, his time in Thailand with the Peace Corps, and how he showed copies of Asimov\u2019s<\/em> to his kids.
\nOperators <\/em><\/strong>by Joel Richards is set in the near-future, and concerns the occasional hijackings of self-driving trucks. Barry Connors, a trucker turned private investigator, is hired to sort the problem out.\u00a0 Matters play out in a refreshingly low-key but correspondingly realistic manner, and touch on the social and economic disruption that future automation may bring.
\nThe Nanny Bubble<\/em><\/strong> by Norman Spinrad2<\/sup> is about Teddy, a cocooned child in the near-future who is apparently being given behaviour modifying drugs to make him content with his protective, partially-VR existence. Then one day he sees a group of older kids playing a pickup game of baseball on the wrong side of town. The difference between their game and the VR Little League ones he plays fascinates him. First he stops taking his pills, and then one day he turns off his phone (and GPS tracking) and cycles over to the field. After the older boys pick their teams, one of them is a man short:<\/p>\n

And Ted saw his chance.
\nHe trotted up to that captain, a big black guy with dreads, maybe as much as sixteen years old.
\n\u201cI can play, and I\u2019ve got my glove,\u201d he announced to laughter from both teams.
\n\u201cI\u2019m at least as good as most of what I\u2019ve seen here.\u201d
\n\u201cOh yeah, Little Leaguer?\u201d
\n\u201cI\u2019m a cleanup power-hitting centerfielder, and I lead the league in home runs, runs batted in, and batting average,\u201d Ted boasted truthfully.
\n\u201cIs that so, Mr. Little League MVP?\u201d said Captain Dreadlocks.
\n\u201cYes it is, you could look it up on the league website. The name is Ted Smithson.\u201d
\nThe blond-haired captain of the full nine player team glanced at Captain Dreadlocks. \u2018You got a better idea, Robbie?\u201d
\nRobbie looked back at him, shrugged, then spoke to Ted. \u201cDo I insult you by telling you you bat ninth and play right field, Mr. Power-Hitting Centerfielder?\u201d
\n\u201cI can deal with it,\u201d Ted told him. \u201cIt\u2019s a chance to show you what I can do.\u201d And show myself too, he told himself.
\nAnd so he did. p. 164<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Pleasant enough but minor.
\nI Met a Traveller in an Antique Land<\/em><\/strong> by Connie Willis3<\/sup> starts with a blogger called James in NY for a series of meetings with prospective publishers talking on the telephone with his agent about a disasterous radio interview he has just done:<\/p>\n

I was in New York doing publicity for my blog, Gone for Good, and meeting with editors about publishing it as a book when I found the bookstore.
\nI\u2019d just finished doing an interview on Backtalk on WMNH, and Brooke had called to tell me the editor at Random House I was supposed to meet with canceled our one-thirty appointment.
\n\u201cProbably because he heard that train wreck of an interview and doesn\u2019t want Random House\u2019s name connected with a book-hater,\u201d I said, going outside. \u201cWhy the hell didn\u2019t you warn me I was walking into a set-up, Brooke? You\u2019re my agent. You\u2019re supposed to protect me from stuff like that.\u201d
\n\u201cI didn\u2019t know<\/em> it was a set-up, I swear, Jim,\u201d she said. \u201cWhen he booked you, he told me he loved your blog, and that he felt exactly like you do, that being nostalgic for things that have disappeared is ridiculous, and that we\u2019re better off without things like payphones and VHS tapes.\u201d
\n\u201cBut not books, apparently,\u201d I said. The host hadn\u2019t even let me get the name of my website out before he\u2019d started in on how terrible e-books and Amazon were and how they were destroying the independent bookstore.
\n\u201cDo you know how many bookstores have gone under the last five years in Manhattan?\u201d he\u2019d demanded.
\nYeah, and most of them deserved to, I thought.
\n<\/em>I hadn\u2019t said that. I\u2019d said, \u201cThings closing and dying out and disappearing are part of the natural order. There\u2019s no need to mourn them.\u201d
\n\u201cNo need to mourn them? So it\u2019s fine with you if a legendary bookstore like the Strand, or Elliott\u2019s, shuts its doors? I suppose it\u2019s fine with you if books die out, too.\u201d
\n\u201cThey\u2019re not dying out,\u201d I said, \u201cbut if they were, yes, because it would mean that society didn\u2019t need them any more, just like it stopped needing buggy whips and elevator operators, so it shed them, just like a snake sheds its skin.\u201d
\nHe snorted in derision. \u201cThat\u2019s the stupidest thing I\u2019ve ever heard. Necessary things disappear every day. And what about all the things we don\u2019t realize are necessary till they\u2019re already gone?\u201d
\n\u201cThen society brings them back. Like LPs. And fountain pens.\u201d
\n\u201cAnd what if we can\u2019t bring the thing back? What if it\u2019s too late, and it\u2019s already gone?\u201d
\nLike the chance to have a decent interview, you mean?<\/em> I thought. p. 169<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

His agent tells him that one of his later appointments is cancelled and he finds himself with a couple of hours to kill. So, he wanders about the city and, when the weather turns particularly inclement, he dives into an antiquarian bookshop to get out of the rain:<\/p>\n

The old-fashioned kind of bookstore about a foot and a half wide, with dusty copies of some leather-bound tome in the front window, and \u201cOzymandias Books\u201d lettered in gilded copperplate on the glass.
\nThese tiny hole-in-the-wall bookstores are a nearly extinct breed these days, what with the depredations of Barnes and Noble, Amazon, and Kindle, and this one looked like the guy on WMNH would be ranting about its<\/em> closing on his next program. The dust on the display of books in the window was at least half an inch thick, and from the tarnished-looking brass doorknob and the pile of last fall\u2019s leaves against the door, it didn\u2019t look like anybody\u2019d been in the place for months. But any port in a storm. And this might be my last chance to visit a bookstore like this.
\nThe inside was exactly what you\u2019d expect: an old-fashioned wooden desk and behind it, ceiling-high shelves crammed with books stretching back into the dimness.
\nThe store was only wide enough for a bookcase along each wall, one in the middle, and a space between just wide enough for a single customer to stand. If there\u2019d been any customers. Which there weren\u2019t. The only thing in the place besides the guy sitting hunched over the desk\u2014presumably the owner\u2014was a gray tiger cat curled up in one corner of it.
\nThe rest of the desk was piled high with books, and the stooped guy seated at it had gray hair and spectacles and wore a ratty cardigan sweater and a 1940\u2019s tie. All he needed was one of those green eyeshades to be something straight out of 84 Charing Cross Road<\/em>.
\nHe was busily writing in a ledger when I came in, and I wondered if he\u2019d even look up, but he did, adjusting his spectacles on his nose. \u201cMay I help you, sir?\u201d he said.
\n\u201cYou deal in rare books?\u201d I asked.
\n\u201cRarer than rare.\u201d p. 170-171<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

James starts to browse the shelves and finds a vast assortment of books that do not appear ordered in any coherent way. Shortly after he has started looking, a woman walks past him and a conversation between her and the man at the front of the shop intrigues him, so much so that he later follows her through the staff door. Several flights of stairs eventually lead him down into a huge cavernous space with innumerable shelves of books. He sees some of the employees talking to the woman and, when he is eventually discovered, the woman is nonplussed and offers him a tour of the premises.
\nAs they are walking through the stacks, the woman explains that they obtain copies of books that would no longer\u00a0exist if they did not acquire them. Jim is puzzled at how they can\u00a0know\u00a0a\u00a0 book is the last of its kind and, more practically, how any organisation can afford multiple such rare items. Matters appear even more peculiar when the shelving system becomes clear to him:<\/p>\n

I looked at the books as we passed. Most of the sections had only two or three books, and Yancey Creek had just one, which was, fittingly enough, Noah\u2019s Ark on Ararat<\/em>.
\nIt didn\u2019t have any signs of water damage I could see, and neither did any of the other books, which meant they had to have been subject to some kind of advanced salvage technique.
\nI revised my theory of eccentric millionaire up to billionaire. Technologies to salvage waterlogged books cost big money. I\u2019d researched the big 1966 flood of the Arno that had destroyed Florence\u2019s National Library in connection with a pro-digitizing post I\u2019d written. Their vacuum freeze-drying and other book-salvaging equipment had been wildly expensive.
\nOr maybe these were just the few that hadn\u2019t gotten soaked.
\n\u201cFlash floods,\u201d Cassie said. \u201cSheffield; Big Thompson; Rapid City, South Dakota; Fort Collins, Colorado.\u201d She paused a moment to indicate a shelf of books. \u201cThat one was particularly bad because the university library was being remodeled and all the Colorado history books and doctoral dissertations had been moved to the basement.\u201d
\nWhich explained why the books all had titles like Irrigation Techniques in Use in Dryland Farming<\/em> and The Narrow Gauge Railroad in the Rocky Mountains from 1871-1888<\/em>.
\n\u201cLandslides,\u201d Cassie said, still walking, not even glancing at the bookmarks as she passed, \u201cmudslides, sinkholes.\u201d
\nShelving the books this way, by the agent of their almost-demise, was crazy, but it certainly highlighted the dangers facing books. Just like a nature preserve putting up signs telling what had decimated the particular species: poaching, acid rain, loss of habitat, pesticides. p. 178-179<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Later on in this extended tour he gets a call from his agent saying his appointment is back on, and soon. As he is a long way from where he came into the store, the woman helpfully leads him to an elevator that takes him back to the surface. Because he is in so much of a rush, he does not note his location before leaving in a taxi.
\nA few days later, and after research that provides some surprising information, he tries to find the shop again . . . .
\nWhat is especially neat about this story is how it eventually loops back around to the radio interview discussion and (spoiler) has Jim (as I did) completely change his mind about book extinction.
\nThis is a very readable meditation on the value of each\u00a0individual book\u00a0and why they should be preserved; it will especially appeal to bibliophiles.<\/p>\n

The Cover<\/em><\/strong>, for Connie Willis\u2019s story is a pleasant piece by Eldar Zakirov, an artist I\u2019ve never heard of before.
\nExcelsior!<\/em><\/strong> by Sheila Williams is an editorial roundup of various Asimov\u2019s<\/em> events that have taken place in its fortieth anniversary year.
\nGog and Magog<\/em><\/strong> by Robert Silverberg begins with a couple of paragraphs on Game of Thrones<\/em> before becoming another History Today<\/em> piece, this time about ancient\/mythical walls and the tribes beyond them.
\nTime Party<\/em><\/strong> by James Patrick Kelly is his hundredth \u2018Net\u2019 column for the magazine, and has\u00a0discussion and web links on the theme of time travel.
\nOn Books<\/em><\/strong> by Peter Heck reviews several books by people I\u2019ve actually heard of (unlike Charles de Lint at F&SF<\/em>), and these include new novels by Norman Spinrad, Peter S. Beagle, and China Mi\u00e9ville, and a associational book of interviews by Robert Silverberg & Alvaro Zinos-Amaro. I have the last two already and managed not to impulse buy the others, which sound pretty good.
\nThere is Poetry<\/em><\/strong> by Jennifer Crow, Robert Frazier, Ken Poyner, G. O. Clark, Jane Yolen, and H. Mellas (the Frazier and Mellas are okay), and the usual Next Issue<\/em><\/strong> and SF Conventional Calendar<\/em><\/strong> pages.<\/p>\n

The usual mixed bag of an issue.\u00a0\u25cf<\/p>\n

_____________________<\/p>\n

1. \u2018The Pale\u2019 page<\/a> at Wikipedia.<\/p>\n

2. The introduction to Spinrad\u2019s story has this mangled information:<\/p>\n

He tells us inspiration for his latest tale came from England, which is called the Nanny State, and the ubiquitous cameras that are aimed at non-consenting adults. \u201cNow non-consenting kids are more and more surrounded by the Nanny Bubble of controlling adults even when they just want to play their own pick-up games….\u201d p. 160.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I don\u2019t want to sound like a Scotsman\/Welshman\/Irishman with a chip on his shoulder, but \u201cEngland\u201d is not synonymous with \u201cthe United Kingdom\u201d or \u201cBritain\u201d. Secondly, people don\u2019t call England (or Britain) the \u201cNanny State\u201d\u2014they may assert that it is<\/em> one, but that is a different thing: I\u2019ve yet to hear anyone say, \u201cI\u2019m flying down to London and then we are going to motor around the south of Nanny State for a week.\u201d<\/p>\n

3. For what it is worth, half way down p. 190 in Willis\u2019s story these two sentences are, unintentionally I think, repeated:<\/p>\n

Come on, the address had to be listed somewhere. I didn\u2019t have time to walk all over Manhattan looking for it. p. 190<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This magazine is still being published!<\/strong> Subscribe: Kindle UK<\/a>, Kindle USA<\/a>\u00a0or physical & digital copies<\/a>. \u25cf<\/p>\n

Revised 3rd May 2018 to give the Richards\u2019 story its own review rather than a copy of the Cassutt!\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n\"rss\"<\/a>\"rss\"<\/a><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

ISFDB link Other reviews: Gardner Dozois, Locus Rich Horton, Locus Greg Hullender\u00a0and Eric Wong,\u00a0Rocket Stack Rank Sam\u00a0Tomaino,\u00a0SF Revu Stephanie Wexler,\u00a0Tangent Online Various,\u00a0Goodreads Editor, Sheila Williams; Associate Editor, Emily Hockaday Fiction: The Discrete Charm of the Turing Machine \u2022 novelette by Greg Egan \u2217\u2217\u2217+ Confessions of a Con Girl \u2022 short story by Nick Wolven \u2217\u2217\u2217+ […]<\/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-4682","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\/p6Pcj7-1dw","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4682","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=4682"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4682\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4792,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4682\/revisions\/4792"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4682"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4682"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4682"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}