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<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Other Reviews: Fiction: Non-fiction: One of the things I wanted to do this year was get back into reading the current SF magazines: one day you are reading them all religiously, then it\u2019s three decades later. Hopefully I\u2019ll make more progress with this resolution than I did with my plan of reading all of 1940\u2019s SF&F magazines\u2026<\/p>\n If you are at all familiar with the SF magazine field you\u2019ll obviously know about the digest-sized\u00a0Asimov\u2019s Science Fiction<\/em>, one of the handful of must-read publications. The January issue has a nice, eye-catching cover by Donato Giancola. Although you could say it takes liberties with what might be the actual scene of White Dust<\/em><\/strong> it illustrates, it is a striking image. The stand-out story in this issue is the novelette by Dominica Phetteplace, Atheism and Flight<\/em><\/strong>. The editorial introduction that tells us that the author wrote this story while their grandfather was dying of cancer1<\/sup> and this caused some trepidation on my part, but it is an original, strange, hopeful and, in its final scene, you might even say transcendent story. The yoga class was full of pretty girls. Sometimes Jimeo is smart. The teacher wanted me front and center so she could help me modify. To my surprise, I assented. \u201cAny injuries?\u201d she asked before class. I raised my nub of an arm and everyone laughed. The class was not too challenging for me. Thanks to Wang Lee, I knew my way around a yoga mat. The teacher, Chrys, short for Chrysanthemum, checked up on me every other pose. She wanted to make sure I was doing the mods right. I was pretty sure I was, no need to hold up the whole class. After class, she told me what an inspiration I was. \u201cYou don\u2019t know that. I could be a serial killer. Maybe I lost my arm in a chainsaw massacre mishap.\u201d<\/em> One for the \u2018Best of the Year\u2019 anthologies.<\/p>\n There is one other story I liked in this issue, The Baby Eaters<\/em><\/strong> by Ian McHugh. This tells of a human on an alien planet looking to negotiate a trade concession and how he has to cope with the badhar-krithkinee\u2019s strange physiology, culture, and attitudes. As well as thinking themselves superior to other spieces the badhar-krithkinee have a prohibition on twin births as they believe that a soul has been separated. The narrator\u2019s perpetual worry of upsetting or offending these creatures permeates the story and an air of faint menace is never far away. If I have a minor criticism of this work it is that it seems to end rather abruptly and I think I would have preferred\u00a0this as\u00a0part of a longer and more substantial work.<\/p>\n The rest of the stories are solid enough also-rans. Chasing Ivory<\/em><\/strong> by Ted Kosmatka is a brief piece about a scientist dropped by helicopter in British Columbia near a mammoth herd, which she proceeds to stalk. The final piece of fiction is a novella by Allen Steele, Einstein\u2019s Shadow<\/em><\/strong>. This is an OK potboiler set in a parallel world 1933 where Hitler has died but the Nazi party is intact. In this world Albert Einstien has decided to seek sanctuary in America and an American private investigator is recruited by a Scotland Yard detective to be his bodyguard on the way over the Atlantic. They are to fly the 33 hour trip on a massive German-operated 20-engine machine that is more like a flying ocean liner than an aircraft. There is quite a bit of non-fiction in this issue. Some of it is almost administrative stuff: the SF Conventional Calendar<\/em><\/strong> and Thirtieth Annual Readers\u2019 Awards<\/em><\/strong>\u2014the accompanying Index<\/em><\/strong> to the last piece is useful.3<\/sup> So, what did I think of this modern SF magazine? Well, overall, the fiction is solid enough material with a couple of notable contributions, but I would have to say that I found the non-fiction quite dull and I am curious\u00a0to see if this interests me more\u00a0in future issues.<\/p>\n This magazine is still being published!<\/b> Subscribe: Kindle UK<\/a>, Kindle USA<\/a>\u00a0or physical & digital copies<\/a>.<\/p>\n Other Reviews: Greg Hullender\u00a0and Eric Wong, Rocket Stack Rank Jason McGregor, Tangent Online Alastair Reynolds, Approaching Pavonis (forthcoming) Lois Tilton, Locus Online Sam\u00a0Tomaino, SF Revu Mark Watson, Best SF (forthcoming) Fiction: The Baby Eaters \u2022 short story by Ian McHugh \u2665\u2665\u2665 Chasing Ivory \u2022 short story by Ted Kosmatka \u2665\u2665 Atheism and Flight \u2022 novelette […]<\/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-715","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-bx","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/715","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=715"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/715\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":757,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/715\/revisions\/757"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=715"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=715"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=715"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nGreg Hullender\u00a0and Eric Wong, Rocket Stack Rank<\/a>
\nJason McGregor, Tangent Online<\/a>
\nAlastair Reynolds, Approaching Pavonis<\/a> (forthcoming)
\nLois Tilton, Locus Online<\/a>
\nSam\u00a0Tomaino, SF Revu<\/a>
\nMark Watson, Best SF<\/a> (forthcoming)<\/p>\n
\nThe Baby Eaters<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by Ian McHugh \u2665\u2665\u2665
\nChasing Ivory<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by Ted Kosmatka \u2665\u2665
\nAtheism and Flight<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 novelette by Dominica Phetteplace \u2665\u2665\u2665\u2665
\nWhite Dust<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by Nathan Hillstrom \u2665\u2665
\nConscience<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by Robert R. Chase \u2665\u2665
\nThe Singing Bowl<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by Genevieve Williams \u2665
\nEinstein\u2019s Shadow<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 novella by Allen Steele \u2665\u2665<\/p>\n
\nCover<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 Donato Giancola
\nInterior Artwork<\/em><\/strong>
\nPoetry<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 Robert Frazier, Wendy Rathbone, Martin Ott, G. O. Clark
\nAll the News that Fits<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 editorial by Sheila Williams
\nFimbulwinter 2015<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 essay by Robert Silverberg
\nThe World of Series<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 essay by James Patrick Kelly
\nPushing the World in a Certain Direction and Other Acts of Submission<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 essay by Alvaro Zinos-Amaro and Paul Di Filippo
\nNext Issue<\/em><\/strong>
\nOn Books <\/em><\/strong>\u2022 essay by Paul Di Filippo
\nThirtieth Annual Readers\u2019 Awards<\/em><\/strong>
\nIndex<\/em><\/strong>
\nSF Conventional Calendar<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 by Erwin S. Strauss<\/p>\n
\nIf I have a minor criticism of the cover it is not about the artwork it is about the layout: I think I would have probably left justified the title story and moved it to the left, and moved the author block below it down and left, and lost the second lower title. This would have given the central image more room to breathe. I have a certain amount of sympathy with magazine designers though. Decades ago they were forced to put a bar-code (missing on the Kindle cover above) in the lower left hand corner of the magazine which means any cover from that date on is going to be horribly compromised.<\/p>\n
\nIt starts with a narrator who has lost his arm in a motorcycle accident and who does not have the money to get stem-cell regrowth therapy or a cybernetic arm. Nor can he house himself which is why he is living with his friend Jimeo and partner Cleo. While he stays with them he watches School of Flight videos, which have students of a guru called Wang Lee \u2018fly\u2019 across a canyon, although his roommate Jimeo is working on a paper to show it is all a matter of optimum biomechanics. When he is not watching these videos or doing a correspondence course of the School\u2019s, he feels sorry for himself, goes to an amputee support group, tries a yoga class, etc. In the middle of all this his arm starts regrowing…
\nThe rest of the story charts this strange development and his desire to fly across the canyon, which he subsequently attempts in its striking last scene, although only after applying for and being rejected by the School.
\nThe other thing I would note about this story is that its telegraphic, slightly gonzo style suits the story completely:<\/p>\n
\n \u201cYou are so funny!\u201d She handed me her card.<\/em><\/p>\n
\nWhite Dust<\/em><\/strong> by Nathan Hillstrom is a clever story about alien technology being used to send a copy of a special ops soldier to the \u2018far remote\u2019 to repair shielding damage in a heavy radiation environment. Once the copy gets there they only last a few minutes and the woman running the project is beginning to have problems with them. She eventually decides to send herself to see if she can solve the problem, but the copy that comes to consciousness in the remote is furious with her.
\nThere are one or two other points of information about how the transfer process works (spoiler) that make it quite a clever biter-bit story, but if it has a failure it is that it just doesn\u2019t quite convince and I found myself at the end of this thinking I should have liked it more than I did.
\nConscience<\/em><\/strong> by Robert R. Chase tells of Constanza Hernandez, who is a conscript in a US-Russian war against a future Caliphate. She is the pilot of a VTOL stealth aircraft (a future-helicopter analogue) who is given repeated missions to covertly insert or retrieve an operative into the battle space. She eventually becomes curious about who or what the operative is and starts making enquiries. I didn\u2019t really buy this part, or her actions subsequent to that, even though similar events have happened in the real world. Further, the entire story is a too thinly veiled version of current conflicts, so as you read the story you have the distraction of wondering what kind of axe-grinding is going on.
\nThe last short story is The Singing Bowl<\/em><\/strong> by Genevieve Williams. This story tells of aliens called \u2018gis\u2019 whose singing has become popular across the galaxy and tells of the events that unfold when an ethnomusicologist and group of tourists gather to listen to them sing. Similar to the McHugh story, this sets up the rules of alien behaviour and then an incident occurs that invokes said behaviour. Unlike that story though, I didn\u2019t think this one succeeded, probably because there is no additional depth to the story: it is just a one scene play. I\u2019d have to add that two stories predicated on specific alien behaviours in a single issue of a magazine seems like an editorial mistake to me, regardless of whether you think the stories are any good or not.<\/p>\n
\nThe story has a superficial level of verisimilitude2<\/sup> but nothing of any depth that really convinces. Also, the characters are all pretty much two-dimensional, though they are put through the motions well enough, I guess.<\/p>\n
\nThe editorial, All the News that Fits<\/em><\/strong>, is about the Annual Reader\u2019s Award, the possibility of the finalists being posted online, and the brand-new Asimovs.com website with author blogs, podcasts, etc.
\nRobert Silverberg\u2019s Fimbulwinter 2015<\/em><\/strong>, is an essay about the severe winter in Boston in 2015, Fimbulwinter and climate variation over the centuries. I\u2019m not quite sure what this has to do with SF but he has been doing the column for so long now I suspect he writes about what he wants to.
\nThe World of Series<\/em><\/strong> by James Patrick Kelly is an internet column about author series in fantasy and science fiction and some of the realities behind their publication.
\nPushing the World in a Certain Direction and Other Acts of Submission<\/em><\/strong> by Alvaro Zinos-Amaro and Paul Di Filippo is an article that perhaps takes longer than it needs to rebut the idea that all novels are political novels (I think\u2014at one point I may have started skimming). I\u2019m not sure that this needing rebutting, but there you go. Paul di Filippo also contributes a book review column which reviews a couple of big novels by Liu and Smale, a Strugatsky brother\u2019s translation and an anthology by Mike Ashley.
\nThere are also several poems in this issue, none of which I cared for bar Wendy Rathbone\u2019s piece about building rocket ship models, which I thought was OK.<\/p>\n\n
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