Analog Science Fiction and Fact May/June 2020

by Trevor Quachri (Editor), Anne McCaffrey (Contributor), Derek Künsken (Contributor)

90TH ANNIVERSARY RETROSPECTIVE REPRINT
WEYR SEARCH, Anne McCaffrey

SERIAL
THE HOUSE OF STYX, Part II, Derek Künsken

NOVELLA
MORAL BIOLOGY, Neal Asher

NOVELETTES
A BREATH OF AIR, Tom Jolly
CALM FACE OF THE STORM, Ramona Louise Wheeler

SHORT STORIES
CANDIDA EVE, Dominica Phetteplace
TO PERSIST, HOWEVER CHANGED, Aimee Ogden
NET LOSS, James Sallis
A COMPASS IN THE DARK, Phoebe Barton
IT WAS A TRADITION WHEN YOU TURNED 16, Eric Cline

SCIENCE FACT
SPACE DUST: HOW AN ASTEROID ALTERED LIFE ON EARTH . . .MILLIONS OF YEARS BEFORE THE DINOSAURS, Richard A. Lovett

POETRY
MILES TO GO BEFORE WE REST, G.O. Clark
THE NEW PLANET, Sarah Gallien

READER'S DEPARTMENTS
GUEST EDITORIAL: HERE THERE BE WOMEN, Emily Hockaday
THE ALTERNATE VIEW, John G. Cramer
IN TIMES TO COME
THE REFERENCE LIBRARY, Don Sakers
BRASS TACKS
UPCOMING EVENTS, Anthony Lewis

208 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 2020

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

[Oleksandr Zholud · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the review of May-June 2020 issue of Analog. There was nothing strikingly awesome, but quite a few solid works.

Fiction and Essays in the issue:

Here There Be Women [Editorial (Analog)] essay by Emily Hockaday A short intro to the 90th anniversary selected story, this time by a woman, plus a few musings about women in SF over time.
Weyr Search [Dragonriders of Pern short fiction] -1967 novella by Anne McCaffrey it may sound strange, but this is my first taste of Anne McCaffrey works – I have heard of Pern, but never have tried any of the books. This is a fine ‘SF masquerading as fantasy’ story, with a woman hair to the hold, who managed to escape, when their hold was attacked, grew up and managed a revenge when Dragonriders visited the hold. A good quality 60s SF, which sounds a bit old today. 3*
Miles to Go Before We Rest poem by G. O. Clark I am quite weak in poetry and I don’t get this one.
Moral Biology [Polity Universe] novella by Neal Asher a planet with an orbital attack/defense grid, which goal seems not to defend from outside, but to hold what is inside from escaping. A team of a human, golem and AI, with a platoon of solders is sent to investigate. It was hard for me to follow all characters but the final reveal is quite interesting. 3*
Space Dust: How an Asteroid Altered Life on Earth...Millions of Years Before the Dinosaurs [Science Fact (Analog)] essay by Richard A. Lovett there was a mutual disintegration of two non-iron asteroids (one about 150 km in diameter), so even now 1/3 of all asteroids that fall are from that calamity. 3*
A Breath of Air novelette by Tom Jolly colonists on Mars make it habitable one greenhouse at a time. Someone tries to kill them, why? A nice exploration/terraforming/mystery story. 3*
The New Planet poem by Sarah Gallien a short piece supposedly about a joint project of terraforming together with aliens (?)
Candida Eve short story by Dominica Phetteplace a mission on Mars dies on flight, all but one woman. The pandemics havocs the Earth, so no way back for the survivor in near future. 2*
Is the Universe a Hypersphere? [The Alternate View] essay by John G. Cramer another piece re the discrepancy in the Hubble constant (as discussed last issue). 2*
To Persist, However Changed short story by Aimee Ogden a short piece that describes something similar to a living thinking planet, too short IMHO. 1*
Net Loss short story by James Sallis a criminal got snitched by smart TV, another flash fiction. 2*
A Compass in the Dark short story by Phoebe Barton a girl on a Moon colony, her father makes compasses for spirits of the dead to travel safe. She rebels against his views. 2*
In Times to Come (Analog, May-June 2020) [In Times to Come (Analog)] essay by uncredited what the next issue will bring.
It Was a Tradition When You Turned 16 short story by Eric Cline a nice story – a father tries to teach his teenage daughter to manually drive in age when all cars are driven by AI. 4*
Calm Face of the Storm novelette by Ramona Louise Wheeler some kind of flying narrator (a bat variant?) gets behind ‘known land’ to find that some tales are true. 3*
The House of Styx (part 2 of 3) [Venus Ascendant 1] serial by Derek Künsken? a continuation of the story. The family prepares to go dark and live in tunnels on Venus, but they lack expertise, so invite other people. So far a very nice read. 4*
The Reference Library (Analog, May-June 2020) [The Reference Library] essay by Don Sakers some new SF

[John Loyd · Rating 5 out of 5]

8 • Weyr Search • 30 pages by Anne McCaffrey
Very Good. Twenty-two year old John started reading Dragonriders of Pern and quit after one-third of this novella. The language was a little stilted and it was hard to get a sense of what was going on. Giving the full novella a chance made a difference. Once I got to the point where I had the gist of what was going on. Fax was lord of his hold and has taken over six more holds. One of them ten turns ago, where Lessa, a young daughter of Lord Ruatha, somehow escaped the extermination of everyone in her family. She has worked since then to make sure Fax reaps no income from her hold. F'lar is a dragonrider on a Search for a new weyrwoman (queen). He's disappointed that Fax has killed off all the likely candidates, but is going to visit the rest of the holds anyway

38 • Moral Biology • 32 pages by Neal Asher
Very Good. A mixed crew of humans (AI, human, golem, an AI in a human body...) has found a planet with a living alien. Perrault is a master of languages with his shroud he will be able to communicate with the alien. Gleeson is the xenoarchaeologist. Together with some soldier they try to make contact and keep running into obstacles. Perrault and the shroud were extremely fascinating.

78 • A Breath of Air • 19 pages by Tom Jolly
Good/VG. Banner Goodman, his son and housemates are trying to homestead on Mars. It's been rough going with failures that are beginning to feel like sabotage. That pesky neighbor Kowalski seems to be after their land. A mystery. Nice family dynamic, the Goodmans being thrown together with two strangers to make it in a harsh environment.

98 • Candida Eve • 10 pages by Dominica Phetteplace
OK+. Susana is the only survivor to make it to Mars. The rest died of a pathogen that started hitting Earth about the same time. There was an unmanned mission that set up a habitat. The mission parameters may change now from an extensive search for life to immediate start of terraforming.

108 • To Persist However Changed • 2 pages by Aimee Ogden
Huh. Moonmind? lobes? Origin of life on some alternate Earth?

110 • Net Loss • 2 pages by James Sallis
OK. The narrator is mistakenly identified in wrong doing, taken to jail and when he gets back finds he's been blacklisted.

112 • A Compass in the Dark • 4 pages by Phoebe Barton
OK. The narrator's father believed that spirits needed a guide, a magnetic field, to reach the afterlife. She was skeptical at best, when she graduated she moved to a base the farside.

116 • It Was a Tradition When You Turned 16 • 6 pages by Eric Cline
OK+. Ray is giving his daughter her first driving lesson. She thinks it's anachronistic and doesn't really want to do it, but it's just one time. May or may not have had some father-daughter bonding.

122 • Calm Face of the Storm • 14 pages by Ramona Louise Wheeler
Very Good/Excellent. Bret leaves home in a huff, gets distracted by a rare, thought extinct, flying lizard and follows it. By the time he gives up the chase, he's flown into a storm. He survives but lost any way to communicate with his family. He meets a girl who introduces him to her tribe of lighthouse keepers. They kind of bond, but they very different customs. By the way binary system with two suns. Part of the year two suns in the sky during the day, the other part there is no night and the characters have wings and fly.

136 • The House of Styx • 64 pages by Derek Kunsken
VG/Good. The D'Aquillons have found a cave on the surface of Venus sucking the atmosphere. It appears to have a wormhole at the end. Because of the politics they don't want to go the government with this find. They'd get nothing, but they can't exploit this resource by themselves. Marthe visit Marie-Pier Hadon and Pascal makes his first trip ever to the higher altitudes to talk with a Phocus engineer, and Gabriel-Antoine is quite an engineer. If I could fully suspend disbelief at their ability to cope with the environment, I'd rate it higher. Don't think about acid, pressure and temperature.

[Ken Papai · Rating 5 out of 5]

Been reading ANALOG magazine since the late '70s.This new issue 2020 MAY/JUNE is specatacular and the cover story, a novella by Asher is as GOOD as hard science fiction gets.

[Timo Pietilä · Rating 3 out of 5]

A lot of space is taken by the classic story (Weyr Search by Anne McCaffrey) which I read not long ago, and by a serial (which I hope to read later). The quality of the stories was pretty average, or even below average, and there were some very stupid details in many of the stories. Is the editing of Analog going downhill?


Moral Biology • novella by Neal Asher
An expedition goes to a planet that is protected by orbital platforms. It is unclear if those platforms are supposed to protect the planet or to stop something from escaping. The expedition is led by AI, and a member of the away team is AI with an android body. Their ship is shot down; they land and study strange creatures that show clear indications of biological engineering, and seem very dangerous. A pretty clumsy and slow-moving story, with vast, vast amounts of exposition and a fair amount of "as you know Bob"-dialogue. The team takes totally stupid risks, and I don’t think that the end of the story (or anything really) worked. **-
A Breath of Air • novelette by Tom Jolly
A group of people has “homestead” rights to an area on Mars. The people who lived in that place had died in an accident. There seems to be a lot of bad luck and strange accidents - perhaps the less-than-friendly-looking neighbors are trying to drive them away? After a bigger accident, which practically destroys both farms, things look bad. Nothing unusual or new, but a smoothly written and entertaining story. ****-
Candida Eve • short story by Dominica Phetteplace
All but one of the members of a Mars expedition have died of a disease that has spread like a pandemic on Earth soon after their launch. She buries the dead members (wtf, why intentionally bring bacteria and even the deadly pandemic virus from Earth to Mars?) and starts to do whatever research she can do alone. The story has a nice feel, it is more relevant now than when it was being written, but there are a few too irritating stupidities in it. If you send self-learning robots on a vital space mission, wouldn’t it make sense to teach them the most basic functions before the mission leaves, so that they wouldn’t have to learn how to hold a screwdriver as the first thing on the mission? But, on the other hand, apparently no testing at all had been done about how drones work, otherwise their malfunction would have been easily prevented by ANY testing. ***½
A Compass in the Dark • short story by Phoebe Barton
A woman has moved to the far side of the moon and returns to bury her father, who believes that souls need a magnetic field to escape. The writing was nice, but the story was too short. And at the beginning, I was very baffled when it was mentioned that the Earth and the Sun are seen as sickles on the sky. I was trying to think about a place where that could happen, but wasn’t able to. I still can't think how that would be possible. ***-
It Was a Tradition When You Turned 16 • short story by Eric Cline
A treatise of electric cars, the disguise of a father giving his daughter a driving lesson while she thinks the whole thing is unnecessary and quaint. Not actually a real story. ***+
Calm Face of the Storm • novelette by Ramona Louise Wheeler
Bret is nearing the end of his adolescence and flies alone. He gets caught up in a storm and is blown away to strange lands. He meets an intriguing female of the other tribe, which was thought to be mystical, and she goes into winter hibernation, as is the way of her people. He flies farther, and finds strange but dangerous creatures. When he eventually returns home, he is not believed. A pretty standard coming-of-age story, but the setting was really strange. At first, I thought it took place on a colony planet, but then it was obvious that the planet was the home planet of flying creatures, who apparently have a spaceport and satellite location system, but don’t really know much of the geography, peoples, and animals of their own world...WTF is going on? Is there a rational explanation for this all, or is the author just lazy? ***

[Paul · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ratings for this issue:

A (excellent):

Moral Biology by Neal Asher
A Breath of Air by Tom Jolly
It was a tradition when you turned 16 by Eric Cline

B (very good):

Weyr Search by Anne McCaffrey
Candida Eve by Dominica Phetteplace
Net Loss by James Sallis

C (average):

The House of Styx, part 2 by Derek Kunsken
Clam Face of the Storm by Ramona Louise Wheeler
To Persist, However Changed by Aimee Ogden

D (poor):

A Compass in the Dark by Phoebe Barton
Editorial: Here There be Women by Emily Hockaday

[Kevin Phyland · Rating 4 out of 5]

On a distant planet a survey crew led by an an Al safely ensconced in orbit is trying to find and understand the actions of a single alien hidden on the planet. It is found that it communicates pheremonally and when they finally converse they discover it is one of the last and feels the need to disperse offspring - offplanet - and the humans suspect that they may be the vector. Great Polity stuff from Neal Asher in "Moral Biology". Tom Jolly, in "A Breath Of Air", takes us to a fledgeling Mars colony where some antagonistic neighbouring sharecroppers find their plots being sabotaged, but who is doing it and why? Bret gets lost during a storm after angrily flying away from his home tree and finds an old lighthouse. Mornell shelters him until her time of hibernation and Bret returns to search for rare flying lizards but learns some adult lessons in Ramona Louise Wheeler's "Calm Face Of The Storm". The preponderance of vignettes as opposed to stories is becoming endemic with the short pieces. Finally the second instalment of Derek Kunsken's "House Of Styx", where Pascal struggles with his sexuality and a second visit to the wormhole on Venus's surface is conducted before a syndicate of three families forms to do something borderline illegal and highly dangerous. Excellent stuff!

[Michael Goodine · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm still enjoying the heck out of the serialized "House of Styx" by Derek Künsken. That's worth the price of admission. It's got detailed and well-thought out science that resembles theories that have been discussed in the real world.

Tom Jolly's "A Breath of Air" is similar. These are the sorts of stories that people read Analog for, I imagine.

"Moral Biology" by Neal Asher is the longest standalone story here. It has some interesting ideas, but a lot of really clunky dialog.

This issue's retrospective reprint is Anne McCaffrey's "Weyr Search" which is obviously a wonderful story.

[Seth Kennedy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very solid issue. Loved the Weyr Search retrospective choice as McCaffrey holds a fond place in my heart and it's been many years since I last visited Pern. Neal Asher's cover story was also pretty great, part II of the serial was compelling and the other stories hit the spot too, though it was longer on longer pieces and shorter on shorter pieces than a normal issue. But that's okay.

[Rebecka Mähring · Rating 2 out of 5]

Favorite(s):
"Weyr Search" by Anne McCaffrey (retrospective reprint)
"A Breath of Air" by Tom Jolly

[Alan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Good as always, been a subscriber since 2000