Analog Science Fiction & Fact, March/April 2023

Astounding/Analog

by Trevor Quachri (Editor), Carolyn Ives Gilman (Contributor), Rajnar Vajra (Contributor)

Vol. XCIII, No. 3 & 4.

Novella
- The Tinker and the Timestream Carolyn Ives Gilman

Novelettes
- Ice Ageless, Rajnar Vajra
- The House on Infinity Street, Allen M. steele
- Immune Response, Robert R. chase
- Defense Reactions, Shane Tourtellotte

Short Stories
- Incommunicado, Andrej Kokoulin, Translated by Alex Shvartsman
- An Inconvenient Man, Adam-troy Castro
- Citizen Science, Naomi Kanakia
- Judgment Day, Stanley Schmid
- A Most Humble Innovation, Howard V. hendrix
- The Five Stages, Aubry Kae Andersen
- Meat, Leonard Richardson
- Death Spiral, Kate Macleod
- What Women Want, Katherine Tunning
- The Problem with Bargain Bodies, Sarina Dorie
- Memory’s Bullet, Aaron Fox-lerner
- A Noble Figure, out of the Sky, Mark W. tiedemann
- Aalund’s Final Mission, Raymund Eich
- Kept Man, Louis Evans

Flash Fiction
- Aerobraking, Jonathan Sherwood
- This Story Is Plagiarized, Buzz Dixon

Science Fact
- Why Are the Keplerians So Different?, Kevin J. Walsh
- The Passenger Pigeon and the Great Filter, Howard V. hendrix

Probability Zero
- Is There a Problem, Officer?, Galen T. pickett

Poetry
- The Precursors, Don Raymond
- the Observer, Bruce Boston Bruce Boston

Reader’s Department
- Guest Editorial: Don’t Slow down, Richard a. lovett
- In Times to Come
- The Alternate View, John G. cramer
- The Reference Library, Rosemary Claire Smith
- Brass Tacks
- Upcoming Events, Anthony Lewis.

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212 pages, digest magazine

First published March 1, 2023

About the author

Trevor Quachri (b. 1976) has been the sixth editor of Analog Science Fiction & Fact magazine since September 2012.

Previously, he was “a Broadway stagehand, collected data for museums, and executive produced a science fiction pilot for a basic cable channel.”

Quachri started as an editorial assistant in 1999 at Asimov's Science Fiction and Analog. Former editor of Analog, Ben Bova, was an early influence.

Reviews

[John Loyd · Rating 4 out of 5]

8 • The Tinker and the Timestream • 28 pages by Carolyn Ives Gilman
Good/OK. Taghrib colony is doomed. Sooner or later the sun will flare again. Rustem spots something in the sky, it’s a ship. Three starhoppers crew the ship that works on some unthought of physics. As long as they get a dog and the dowser, Firni, they agree to take one of the tinkers with them and search for a habitable planet and come back. A sense of wonder story. There’s one small scene where Rustem gets to appreciate Firni and she also helps him understand the aliens better, but mostly it’s their ship and him being frustrated at being the only one on board with a plan.

42 • Incommunicado • 8 pages by Andrej Kokoulin
Good+. Igor gets word from Ira that she will miss the next communication window. As that comes and goes he gets frantic with worry and decides to check for himself.

50 • An Inconvenient Man • 3 pages by Adam-Troy Castro
OK. Ed is eating his lunch when aliens come through a hole in the sky.

53 • Citizen Science • 5 pages by Naomi Kanakia
Good/VG. The narrator has done great science, but it doesn’t have the academic jargon, but she feels it’s just as worthwhile.

58 • Judgement Day • 6 pages by Stanley Schmidt
Good+. Marcella gets warned by a time traveler that her legacy is in jeopardy.

64 • Ice Ageless • 16 pages by Rajnar Vajra
Good. Sol is offered the opportunity to pilot a colony ship to a hospitable planet. It’ll take ten thousand years, but his body will be slowed down so that it will seem like ten days. They need a pilot because they can’t trust electronics over that period, but his body has self-repair that the computers don’t. Original premise.

86 • A Most Humble Innovation • 2 pages by Howard V. Hendrix
OK. Narrator proposes an idea to diminish the energy crisis.

88 • Aerobraking • 2 pages by Jonathan Sherwood
Fair. Narrator explores new planets for the knowledge that it will leave as a legacy.

90 • The Five Stages • 3 pages by Aubry Kae Andersen
Good/OK. Jackie describes stages (anger, fear, depression, acceptance) of (for example) terminal illness and is possibly demonstrating a fifth stage.

93 • Meat • 5 pages by Leonard Richardson
Good+. Meat is a colony organism, that grows meat, sells it, and gets it back after it has gone through the customer’s digestive system. The Sheriff warns meat that a health inspector is coming.

98 • Death Spiral • 10 pages by Kate Macleod
Good/VG. Humans and stigmergs jointly mine an asteroid. Mostly apart because there’s not much communication between the species. Stigmergs communicate mostly by scent. One of the sticking points was no human males allowed. When a dead man is found, Allani investigates.

108 • The House On Infinity Street • 16 pages by Allen Steele
Good. Shel who started writing in the 1930s tells Steele about a mail order company that sold ideas. A friend of his convinced him to travel to Deerfield so they could stake out the P.O.Box and confront the guy.

124 • What Women Want • 4 pages by Katherine Tunning
Fair. Laxi wants to take over the world or something. The first attempt doesn’t work. The next attempt was to combine with some type of pyramid retailing women. I must’ve been trying to read it too literally, I think it's supposed to be tongue-in-cheek.

132 • The Problem with Bargain Bodies • 3 pages by Sarina Dorie
Good/OK. People (consciousnesses?) can purchase and where bodies like clothing. The narrator is returning one claiming it was defective.

135 • This Story Is Plagiarized • 1 pages by Buzz Dixon
OK. AIs have copywrited everything.

136 • Memory's Bullet • 4 pages by Aaron Fox-Lerner
Fair-. I get the feeling that something in the past allowed memories to be passed on to descendants and that instead of preserving history it caused a downfall. The way it was written with some sort of war going on and a second stream. Rambling incomplete sentences which I suppose were intentional to create the setting, but for me just made it a slog to read.

140 • A Noble Figure, Out of the Sky • 6 pages by Mark W. Tiedemann
Good+. Emma’s farm is run down, equipment failing. A stranger helps fix the generator.

146 • Aalund's Final Mission • 7 pages by Raymund Eich
Good/VG. The beam to slow down the ship isn’t coming. It will be destined to drift forever at near light speed. Aalund has to tell the crew.

153 • Kept Man • 11 pages by Louis Evans
Very Good. In a matriarchal society, Bei is married off to a countess. Gains some fame and the empress takes him away and promptly ignores him. With all this free time he makes some art. Then has a showing which causes a riot. When Bei is freed from his solitude he finds his rescuers a bit too radical as well.

164 • Immune Response • 12 pages by Robert R. Chase
Good. Richter kicks out his grad student for no good reason. Several years later Collins goes to his funeral. The wife says Dr. Richter left a box for him. The most intriguing item was a list of names of physicists who had died young. Both their names were on it.

176 • Defense Reactions • 23 pages by Shane Tourtellotte
Good. The people Yehf overcame a disease, “The Malady,” which robbed them of intellect. Found that it was not of natural origin, nor made by any society on planet. The only conclusion is the Others did it to deliberately keep them from becoming spacefaring. Now the planet is consumed with effort to be able to confront the Others when they arrive, but only by impinging on the lifestyle of the populace. Toi-Chahl believes that the government in power is using the fear to stay in control. She doesn’t lead a revolution, but supports the faction that wants to bring a change.

[Oleksandr Zholud · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a March/April 2023 issue of Analog Science Fiction and Fact, this one with several surprisingly good stories.

Contents:
Don't Slow Down [Editorial (Analog)] essay by Richard A. Lovett when good in theory idea backfires, with the example of digital signs that in bad weather, or if there is congestion ahead, can read anything from 45 miles per hour to “slow.” Their goal is to decrease accidents, but a study shows they actually increase them! 4*
The Tinker and the Timestream novella by Carolyn Ives Gilman there is a human colony, which had to land where they did but as they later discovered their sun is prone to planet-burning flares. They cannot leave, but now a ship comes with weird human descendants. Their propulsion is based on space-time equivalent, so that what we know as dark matter is actually fast time. It allows for light-speed jumps. They are feckless nomads with ‘we’ll get somewhere’ attitude. The protagonist and a girl with (supposedly) arrested development and an avian gene for seeing magnetic fields join then to find as new planet to settle. 3.5*
The Precursors poem by Don Raymond
Why Are the Keplerians so Different? [Science Fact (Analog)] essay by Keven Walsh Keplerians are the planets found by the Kepler space telescope. Most Keplerians are larger and more massive than Earth, less dense than Earth. Almost all of them have periods less than Earth’s, with the overwhelming majority also having periods less than Mercury’s. Many Keplerians have very short periods of less than ten days, implying that there are a large number of planets that are closer to their stars than Mercury is to our Sun. Why it is so? It seems that our solar system is quite unique. 3*
Incommunicado short story by Andrej Kokoulin Igor supervises three researchers (?) Ira Telegina, Anna Glebova and Zhorik Sapkowski. Ira always contacts him on schedule, so when she went silent, he hitch-hikes his way across the galaxy (this is a humorous piece) for a punchline in the end. 3*
An Inconvenient Man short story by Adam-Troy Castro Ed Doutz was a boring little man who lived a boring little life that he supported by working a boring little job. Once he sits on a bench to eat his sandwich when aliens contact him with a punchline request. 3*
Citizen Science short story by Naomi Kanakia the protagonist is doing science outside academia, so when she made a breakthrough in immunology, academia hasn’t recognized her. So she meets a woman from academia, who rejects her because ‘it is not a proper science’. There are several well-made quips on some ‘progressive’ stories in current SF like When I told her the name, she blinked rapidly. She wasn’t white, though this story would be better if she was. She was Asian, but Vietnamese, so maybe the child or grandchild of refugees, unlike my parents, who were high-caste Hindus in India. 3.5*
The Observer poem by Bruce Boston
Judgement Day short story by Stanley Schmidt Marcella is about to give speech before the UN, which wants to honor her for her work with creating a vaccine that saved millions. Suddenly she is approached by a time traveler, who says that You see, as long as all posterity knows about you is what we’ve been discussing, you’ll be revered as a heroine long after you’re gone. But when they learn about the bad thing you did, all the good will get drowned out and the bad is all they’ll remember. They’ll always start by saying they don’t want your good works to be forgotten, right before they start harping on the bad, but that will be the effect. The ‘bad’ thing about her looks ridiculous for us now – another quip against extreme progressiveness. 3.5*
Ice Ageless novelette by Rajnar Vajra Captain Solomon Cohen is chosen for a special mission – to guide a colony ship on a 10000 year journey. He will be drugged and modified, so that the voyage will take subjectively only 10 days. His job is simple and is done by humans, not a computer only because computers and all electronics are likely to degrade or brake over such periods. An interesting unusual idea, well realized. 3.5*
The Passenger Pigeon and the Great Filter [Science Fact (Analog)] essay by Howard V. Hendrix Fermi’s paradox – one of the solutions – developed civilizations destroy themselves. The case of passenger pigeon, went from millions to extinction in a century. 4*
A Most Humble Innovation short story by Howard V. Hendrix an essay written emulating Jonathan Swift’s Humble proposition about the utilization of surplus human biomass (SHB). 3.5*
Aerobraking short story by Jonathan Sherwood a flash-fic about a woman pilot who tells her son she likes to learn and explore, with a final view from other eyes. 3*
The Five Stages short story by Aubry Kae Anderson the narrator knows and shows four stages of grief in others, but her personal trauma skews her view. A nice experimental piece. 3*
Meat short story by Leonard Richardson another humorous piece about an alien symbiote, who sells meat carves from its own body in return of human excrement. The safety inspector is arriving. “This restaurant is a disaster. You turn peoples’ shit into meat and sell it back to them.”
“But, Sheriff,” said Meat, “all food is made out of shit.”
“Very indirectly,” 4*
Death Spiral short story by Kate MacLeod a sheriff on a joint asteroid mining project with aliens is informed about an accident. The aliens, stigmergs communicate with smells alone and they insisted that no man can be present. The accident is the body of a man in one of many tunnels. 3.5*
The House on Infinity Street novelette by Allen M. Steele piece is written as a memory about a recently passed away golden age SF writer Shelby Weinberg who was seen often at conventions until his death in 2004. It is filled with multiple links to figures like Campbell jr. and pulp era in general. I guess it won’t work for those who aren’t aware of the period, but I loved it. 4.5*
What Women Want short story by Katherine Tunning alien wants to conquer Earth but does it in a novel way. 3*
Quantum Entanglement Disentangled [The Alternate View] essay by John G. Cramer another piece on why everyone should read his The Quantum Handshake: Entanglement, Nonlocality and Transactions. 2*
Is There a Problem, Officer? short story by Galen T. Pickett Probability Zero flashfic about a faster-than-light particle stopped by particle police for speeding. 3*
The Problem with Bargain Bodies short story by Sarina Dorie flash fic with a great start: As soon as it was my turn, I heaved the human body on top of the customer service counter. One of the things that had attracted me to the sleek female body when I first purchased it from Penny Pincher’s Supermarket was the purple skin and green hair. The world where bodies are purchased like dresses and it is equally hard to return them to the shop if they don’t fit. 3.5*
This Story is Plagiarized short story by Buzz Dixon flash fic with an AI brute forcing the creation of all possible texts. 4*
Memory's Bullet short story by Aaron Fox-Lerner post-apoc world with two vessels hunting each other. The story constantly skips between the actions of the vessel and the memories from the past presented as messages from its AI program. 2.5*
A Noble Figure, Out of the Sky short story by Mark W. Tiedemann another post-apoc world, Emma lives with her (disturbed?) mother on a farm that slowly degrades. A wandering stranger gives her some help while her mother constantly calls her away. 2.5*
Aalund's Final Mission short story by Raymund Eich a military ship with a rare for SF propulsion – capturing directed beam with a sail, is on a mission during some kind of interstellar conflict. The beam to stop them hasn’t appeared, so now they have to find another way to decelerate. 3*
Kept Man short story by Louis Evans a world run by eternal women, who treat men like women where treated on Earth for most of the history. The protagonist is an artist, but he cannot be anyone important because of his gender. 3*
Immune Response novelette by Robert R. Chase the story starts with the burial of the narrator’s former colleague in the physics department, Dr. Howard Richter. Years before, Dr. Richter pushed the narrator away from the research so they had a falling out. now the widow gives him a box from her late husband. There a list of names which includes Richter and the narrator, the names have check marks next to them are of scientists, who had died young. Is there a force that stops our scientific research? 4*
Defense Reactions novelette by Shane Tourtellotte a serial of loosely related stories about the world that found out that unknown aliens tried to stop their development. This time they face a problem that people, who helped to fight the alien created ‘malady’ that limited intellect, are still in power a century after, from driver turning into a burden. 3*

[Daniel Farrelly · Rating 4 out of 5]

Incommunicado, by Andrej Kokoulin, and translated by Alex Shvartsman - Much too complicated and convoluted for a short story. A guy works as a long-distance communications person (?) with several remote labs on other planets, one of which houses his GF. The GF says there'll be a storm soon so she won't make her next Zoom call. Then the guy freaks out anyway and flies across the universe to meet her. The obvious twist is that his GF is fine and was always fine, and the second twist is that she was actually an instance of Replika AI that runs the lab.

Very convoluted for a short story and needed refinement. The author worked hard to make it a fleshed-out universe with lots of alien species and place names, but that made it hard to keep track of what was going on. There were also a whole bunch of needless side plots, including:

- a guy named Robbie joins the group. He never says or does anything and I'm not sure when he arrived. The story just acted like he's always been there.
- explaining some war that resulted in humans being OP in this universe
- an alien pirate hostage situation where the MC single-handedly talks them down?
- a planet ruled by the mob or something where they bring out 'three-metre tall cyborgs with claws and buzzsaws' to intimidate MC but he convinces them to let him into restricted space
- a bit where MC haggles with some alien, but the alien doesn't know how haggling works and constantly proposes lower values. and its supposed to be funny but I'm like oh my god just fucking end your story!

It shouldn't take paragraphs to explain what happens in your short story.

An Inconvenient Man, by Adam-Troy Castro - A funny story about a first alien contact with a 'boring little man' sitting on a park bench. The writing reminds me of Terry Pratchett or Douglas Adams. A good premise for a short story that didn't overstay its welcome (Cough, cough, Incommunicado, cough)

Citizen Science, by Naomi Kanakia - The rambling manifesto of a creepy weirdo incel, who met a girl at a party once and then made up a huge ludicrous story about them and obsesses over them forever. Weird as fuck. A+ character writing from the author though. They did a fantastic job realizing a character who's just a complete fucking weirdo. Maybe next time use your powers for good?

Judgement Day, by Stanley Schmidt - a nice, silly little story about time travel. I enjoyed it a lot.

A Most Humble Innovation, by Howard V. Hendrix - a proposal for solving climate change. Fun, I enjoyed this one too.

The Five Stages, by Aubry Kae Andersen - a surgeon deals with the end of the world. Subtle and scary and really well written. When I grow up I wanna be able to write good like this.

Meat, by Leonard Richardson - basically a fun excuse to discuss the titular alien species, but still made it into a functional story. Fun and weird. Bit hard to understand at first but explained well by the end.

Death Spiral, by Kate Macleod - on an Asteroid mining colony, a dead body is found, and the head of security needs to investigate before the aliens sharing the station find out. Almost too complicated a premise for a short story but the author made it work. Was pretty gripping and exciting once it got going. There were some descriptions that I found hard to understand, such as the beginning with the vr setup and when first describing the aliens. Think it could have used a beta reader for those bits but the rest was really good.

What Women Want, by Katherine Tunning - Essentially an episode of Invader Zim where Zim joins an MLM. Funny concept that's executed well.

The problem with bargain bodies, by Sarina Dorie - a funny little story about purchasing replacement human bodies to inhabit like clothing. It was fine. Good for what it is.

Memory's Bullet, by Aaron Fox-Lerner - a bit of an experiment in the medium. A post-apocalyptic setting in which a person deals with the uploaded memories of their ancestors. There's lots of playing with tense, pronouns and perspectives, and multiple memories flash one after another in long run-on sentences. It was definitely a commendable experiment but a bit of a more challenging read than I was looking for. Might have made for a better segment on Love and Robots where the flashes could have utilized different animation styles, or maybe I'm just too poo-brained to deal with it.

A Noble Figure, Out of the Sky, by Mark W. Tiedemann - A scene from a Preacher or Old Man Logan style post-apocalypse where a traveller stops by an old house and meets the inhabitants. I really liked it, it was an intriguing world and I would have liked to see more. I thought the tone of sad companionship in a bleak world was really well done. I would have liked for it to have been stretched into a novella. It was interesting to see the mum and the daughter interact, but I would have liked to see the daughter pushed to come to some kind of confrontation with the mother. There was one, in which she told her mother to call her by her first name, but that didn't really feel very climatic. Nothing really changed about their situation. It was clear that the daughter wanted other companionship, and I would have liked that angle to be explored more. Would her drive for other companionship result in a change in her circumstances, and how, or would she remain in her fate to slowly die and become like her mother? I would have liked to see that explored, and think these characters could have easily supported it. Also what the fuck was up with the dirt?

Aalund's Final Mission, by Raymond Eich - a ships crew discuss options after they're stuck travelling at light speed with no way back. Wasnt this the plot of Stargate Universe? Anyway, it was good. Felt a bit rushed. Feel like it should have been stretched out a bit to have some more time to breathe. There were interesting details like the background war, that were skimmed over very quickly and with little fanfare. The climax was very hasty too. It was good, just very rushed.

Kept Man, by Louis Evans - the life of a man living in an alternate world where women live forever and have all the power, and men only live a few decades. I really liked it. It was well written and well paced, and long enough to explore the topic. I really liked the biological explanation, but the alternate names for plants and animals was needless and confusing. I get why, I just think it was unnecessary and hampered the flow of reading. But yeah, really good.

Aerobraking, by Jonathan Sherwood - Flash fiction about someone coming in from orbit. A nice little story. I enjoyed it. It was written well and was just a nice little hopeful tale. Would have liked some indication as to what might happen next, but I guess that was the point.

This Story is Plagiarized, by Buzz Dixon - Fucking hilarious concept that turned into the chat-GPT sci-fi speculation story I've been waiting for.

[Kevin Phyland · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Taghrib Colony was an accident, settled as the starship’s fuel ran low, and now it’s become clear that the star is a flare star - they may be wiped out at any time. Into the sky comes a bright light, thought to be a nova, but instead it is a ship of aliens, with very alien technology. They have developed time-rate control which enables them to cross vast distances in short relative times, and they might just be able to save the colony in “The Tinker And The Timestream” by Carolyn Ives Gilman. Naomi Kanakia contributes a story, whose plot would ironically have appealed to John W. Campbell, even if he would never have bought it! “Citizen Science” takes up the old saw that the only real science must be conducted by scientists, but sometimes amateurs see further without blinkers. Stanley Schmidt has another take on time travel when his protagonist is visited by a traveller from the future who exhorts them to stop drinking coffee in “Judgment Day”. Inside a warren of tunnels in an asteroid the humans and the ‘stigmergs’ share an uneasy co-existence. The stigmergs communicate mostly through smell and when a dead body is found in a tunnel the smell unsettles the aliens in “Death Spiral” by Kate MacLeod, while Leonard Richardson provides the weirdest tale in years with the alien “Meat” whose diner serves pieces of himself and who gets paid in excrement! Allen Steele finally puts to rest the myth that SF writers’ ideas come from a post box in Schenectady…it’s actually in Deerfield, Massachusetts. “The House On Infinity Street” explains all. Raymund Eich gives us “Aalund’s Final Mission” where the laser-boosted solar sail can not be slowed down on arrival at their target star leaving the ship’s captain and political officer at loggerheads, while Louis Evans posits a society of immortal females and very mortal (but much larger) males. Bei is destined to be a “Kept Man” by a wealthy female until his artistic leanings cause consternation. When Collins’s ex-thesis adviser dies he is willed a small box containing papers of a mysterious nature. Their parting had been acrimonious but the hints in the box lead Collins to the conclusion that there had been a reason behind it and a big one. Perhaps the Universe really is against you for some areas of research. “Immune Response” by Robert R. Chase is nicely paranoid.

[Brandon · Rating 3 out of 5]

Magazine review: 3.5/5 ⭐⭐⭐💫

The March/April 2023 issue of Analog Science Fiction and Fact was packed with fourteen short stories, most of them under four thousand words. It also featured four novelettes and one novella. It has stories from authors such as Allen M. Steele, Adam-Troy Castro, Kate MacLeod, Louis Evans, Leonard Richardson, and many many more. I enjoyed reading most of the stories with many of them having a “fun and silly” sort of theme that involved common scifi tropes. Quite a few of the short stories were under three thousand words and were very quick to read.

Some of the highlights for me came from these stories:

5 🌟 - Meat by Leonard Richardson tells the story of an alien that is made entirely of meat who has opened a restaurant to cut, cook, and serve pieces of himself to the customers. In return, the customers return their feces for the alien to examine and learn about the specimen that ate him. When a health inspector shows up, the alien finds its business plan in jeopardy. This was a really fun and entertaining story.

4 ⭐ - Death Spiral by Kate MacLeod is set on an asteroid mining station where humans must share the asteroid with the stigmergs (basically ants). The stigmergs rely entirely on smell to communicate and navigate through the asteroid. The smell of a male human plays havoc on their senses, so no males are allowed on the asteroid. When a company cop finds a dead male body, it is up to her to track down the cause, and to find the source of the horrible scent the stigmergs keep complaining about.

4 ⭐ - Kept Man by Louis Evans shows a society where women live forever and short-lived men are kept around to breed. When one man, Bei, learns to express himself through painting, his art leads to a revolution.

4 ⭐ - Ice Ageless by Rajnar Vajra, a pilot takes on the mission of a lifetime, one that will take ten thousand years. A colony ship needs a pilot, but the catch is that he needs to stay awake for the entire duration of the trip. A drug is developed to slow his metabolism and suspend animation where ten thousands years can be experienced subjectively in ten days.

This is a great issue for taking in bite-sized chunks of reading with most of the stories being so short, and it featured some truly unique tales.

[Michael Goodine · Rating 4 out of 5]

A decent issue of Analog. I enjoyed Carolyn Ives Gilman's "The Tinker and the Timestream," Rajnar Najra's "Ice Age" (bonus points for having a unique premise), Leonard Richardson's "Meat" (funny), Louis Evans' "Kept Man," and Andrej Kokoulin's "Incommunicado" (also funny).

People following Shane Tourtellotte's ongoing series about how the people of the planet Yehf overame a sickness that made them all stupid (and the fallout thereof) will likely enjoy "Defense Reactions" a lot. If Tourtellotte issues a collected edition at the conclusion of the series I will probably pick up a copy.

[Michael Klein · Rating 5 out of 5]

"What Women Want" by Katherine Tunning. Brilliant, funny, biting, and suspenseful tale of Earth's eventual conquerer. A great send up of our consumer-focused culture. Loved it.

[Marta E C R · Rating 3 out of 5]

There were a number of really good articles in this issue, but it just didn't seem quite as good overall as some of the others have been. 3.5 stars rounded down to 3 for this issue.

[Mark Catalfano · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked “Death Spiral” by Kate MacLeod