Novella "The Journeyman: In the Great North Wood" by Michael F. Flynn
Novelettes "When the Stone Eagle Flies" by Bill Johnson "Murder on the Cislunar Railroad" by Christopher L. Bennett
Short Stories "Hold the Moment" By Marie Vibbert That Which Grows on Trees" by C.S. Lane "The Anthropic War" by Jay Werkheiser "The Nult Factor" by J. T. Sharrah
Poems "Machineries of the Heart" by Robert Frazier
Non-Fiction "Here We Go Loopedy Loop: A Brief History of Time Travel, Part II" by Edward M. Lerner
Analog Science Fiction and Fact, June 2016, Volume CXXXVI No. 6 Trevor Quachri, editor Cover art by Bob Eggleton
8 • The Journeyman: in the Great North Wood • 36 pages by Michael Flynn Good+. Teodorq is a freelance body guard. He see some suspicious activity in the town square and helps take out a couple of the perpetrators. This got him noticed and hired to defend a excursion into the forest. It's an archeological expedition, but after a few days at their first site they notice suspicious activity coming their way. The story is very good and there are some great one liners, but the reading was a bit complex and took more time. Flynn created a great setting, but he introduced greenies, hillsmen, forestmen, fades and threw in a lot of interrelationships. It was complexity that I didn't know was relevant or not. Basically every tribe hates or distrusts every other tribe but Teo chose his group that did get along.
56 • When the Stone Eagle Flies • 13 pages by Bill Johnson Good/VG. Time traveler Martin can't get back to his home time. He is stranded in the past and now has to steer events in the direction that will lead to his future. He is now in Nineveh making sure that it falls. There are problems.
70 • Hold the Moment • 6 pages by Marie Vibbert Good/Very Good. Daisy is trying to invent a box to keep things in stasis. Where time passes outside but zero time inside. Instead what she gets is the opposite. She is also a single mother trying to raise a thirteen year old daughter.
76 • That Which Grows on Trees • 3 pages by C. S. Lane OK. A couple of bioengineers create some plants that grow money.
83 • The Anthropic War • 4 pages by Jay Werkheiser OK. Astronomers discover a patch of sky where the background radiation of the big bang has changed. They theorize there is another intelligent race that has started observing that portion of the sky.
87 • The Nult Factor • 5 pages by J. T. Sharrah OK. Hiram Quigby made it his goal in life to do nothing. Philosopher Jason Dahlquist picked up on this and made turned Quigby's nults into his nultism.
92 • Murder on the Cislunar Railroad • 12 pages by Christopher L. Bennett Good/VG. UNECS agent Zachary March was near Nexus One where he found Jaya Ramanathan headed to certain death. The Railroad is the underground organization trying to liberate AIs from their slavery.
Debo ser yo que me estoy haciendo viejo, pero menuda mierder de número. Esta y el Asimov van hacia abajo pero a pasos agigantados.
Ahora Analog ha empezado a publicar poesía, que es algo que jamás hubiera ocurrido en vida de Stanley (el editor anterior), y se está "asimovizando", es decir, sin salirse de la tónica de la ciencia ficción dura, afina un poco más hacia el lado literario, con cuentos que parecen parte de una novela incompleta y cosas así.
Preveo que dentro de poco esta y Asimov se unan en una sola revista. ¿El nombre? ¿Asilog? ¿Anamov? En fin, es lo que hay. Creo que la subscripción se me acaba con este número: básicamente adios con el corazón que con el intelecto no puedo.
A below-average issue, some of the stories have too little background.
The Journeyman: In the Great North Wood • [Journeyman] • novella by Michael F. Flynn This continues a series I haven't been a great fan of. A pair of adventurers continue their adventures on a planet that apparently has been colonized centuries ago, and some high-tech artifacts can still be found. They are hired as bodyguards on an expedition that is trying to find such artifacts. They find a malfunctioning spaceship with badly-working AIs, and are ambushed by natives. More sightseeing and world description than plot — this is not my favorite style, and I had to struggle to get through this story. **+ When the Stone Eagle Flies • novelette by Bill Johnson Time travelers in ancient Babylonia try to guide events towards the future they are coming from, which has been destroyed by events that have been changed in the past. But someone might notice that something strange is going on. A fairly nice story, but slightly too much of a fragment. Better than some other parts of the series, though. ***- Hold the Moment • shortstory by Marie Vibbert A woman who tried to invent a stasis machine manages the opposite: a machine that apparently makes everything outside of it “freeze” (sounds slightly implausible — the entire universe?). She also has some trust issues with her preteen daughter. The writing was OK, but somehow left a slightly unsatisfied feeling. ***+ The Anthropic War • shortstory by Jay Werkheiser A strange changed region of space is spotted. Scientists find out that our universe is “contaminated” by another, and the contamination spreads as beings of the another universe make observations of ours. The only way to fight back is to make observations of the “contaminated” area, which causes it to revert back to the properties of our universe, with the budget of deep-space cosmology and exploration mushrooms. A short, fairly fun story. ***+ The Nult Factor • shortstory by J. T. Sharrah A lazy man decides to market things that aren’t good for anything, which leads to a peculiar religious cult, which turns out to have (after a few stages) a major effect human and interstellar history. A fun little story.*** Murder on the Cislunar Railroad • novelette by Christopher L. Bennett The story starts with an apparent murder: a woman is stranded in space with no chance of getting back to the space station. Who did it? And why? Had it something to do with AIs — or an organization that apparently “helps” AIs to run away from sometimes-abusive treatment by humans? This story feels like a third part of a series: background at first is very sketchy, and then there is a lot exposition. It is hard to form any emotional connection to the victim (or to anyone else) when you don’t know the characters at all. **½
The last time Michael F. Flynn appeared in the pages of "Analog" was two years ago where the magazine published not another entry of Flynn's "Journeyman" series, but, iirc, an "Alternate View" essay by him. One entry after the other. I disliked both enough I swore I would not read anything else written by Flynn. This, the current issue of "Analog" has a new "Journeyman" entry in it, as well as a guest editorial by Michael F. Flynn. I kept my word and did not read either editorial or "Journeyman" novella. I don't regret it. It cut my reading of this issue by a good 43 pages.
The remainder of the issue was good and highly entertaining. Much better than last issue. I particularly enjoyed Bill Johnson's follow up (of a sort) to his previous "Analog" tale, "Paris, 1885" and Christopher L. Bennett's "Murder On the Cislunar Railroad". The remaining shorter stories, Marie Vibbert's "Hold the Moment", C.S. Lane's "That Which Grows On Trees", Jay Werkheiser's "The Anthropic War" and J.T. Sharrah's "The Nult Factor" were equally good. (Though I was bothered by something in "That Which Grows On Trees". The flaw with the counterfeiting scheme - literally growing money - is how did the counterfeiters get different serial numbers on the organic cash? Seems to me, from what little the story tells us, every bill should have the same serial numbers. Unless there's a method of organically changing the numbers Werkheiser failed to tell us about.)