Analog Science Fiction & Fact, September/October 2025

Astounding/Analog

by Trevor Quachri (Editor), Al Onia, Anya Markov

Vol. XCV No. 9 & 10

Novella:
• SUSPENDED ANIMATION, Jay Werkheiser & Julian Michael Carver

Novelettes:
• NOT IN MY VALLEY, M.L. Clark
• IN A DESOLATE GARDEN, Auston Habershaw
• DONACON, Paul E. Franz
• ELECTOR, Stephen Case

Short stories:
• RUST, David D. Levine
• ONTARIO LACUS, Pauline Barmby
• YOU ARE HEARBY NOTIFIED THAT YOU ARE THE FUTURE OF ART, Anya Markov
• SCARECROW, Timothy Quinn
• BOYS AND GIRLS TOGETHER, Larry Niven
• GENIUS, BORROWED AND BRIEF, Julia Darcy
• ANALOG EQUIVALENT FOODSTUFFS, Kate Macleod
• A SHOT IN THE DARK, Avery Parks
• TEMPLE IN THE NIGHT, Louis Evans
• SEEDLINGS, Al Onia
• CARRIED ON THE WIND, Steven Mohan, Jr.
• THE NEW PEOPLE, David McGillveray
• A SIMPLE MARTIAN BURIAL, Tom Jolly
• GIRL WITH THE TATTOOED SOUL, Mark W. Tiedemann

Science fact:
• DRYCANES AND WASPS, Kevin Walsh

Poetry:
• MUSIC OF THE SPHERES, Jim Murdoch
• LOOKING BACK, Arthur H. Manners

Reader's departments:
• GUEST EDITORIAL: The Blind Men and the Hurricane, Stanley Schmidt
• THE ALTERNATE VIEW, John G. Cramer
• IN TIMES TO COME
• GUEST ALTERNATE VIEW: The Solar Storm That Nearly Created Armageddon, Richard A. Lovett
• THE REFERENCE LIBRARY, Sean CW Korsgaard
• BRASS TACKS

Cover art from Tithi Luadthong.

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208 pages, digest magazine

First published August 8, 2025

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]

8 • Suspended Animation • 28 pages by Jay Werkheiser, Julian Michael Carver
Good. Visual effects specialist Dustin is brought in to make animations of the alien matter that hitched on the fragment of asteroid that impacted in Alaska. The clandestine behavior and secrecy of the military is making Dustin worry this might be more than some scientific endeavor, that it could be a real threat to earthly biology.

42 • Not in My Valley • 14 pages by M. L. Clark
OK. Dar is driving across a valley before his wife kills their boss. The drive turns into some kind of road duel as a hauler with either a psychotic driver or faulty autopilot keeps trying to run him off the road. Meeting the wife will have to wait for a future story as this one ended without him completing the drive.

56 • Rust • 6 pages by David D. Levine
Good/VG. Mercy and Terrence arrive at a former lab to decommission it. Unfortunately they find chimps there. Illegally genetically modified chimps. Terrence wants to let them die, while Mercy wants to save them and expose the company.

62 • Ontario Lacus • 5 pages by Pauline Barmby
Good. Jordan fled his thrill seeking girlfriend, but now Val has come all the way to Titan to swim a hydrocarbon lake and Jordan, the safety officer, is her contact from the base.

67 • You Are Hearby Notified that You Are the Future of Art • 3 pages by Anya Markov
Fair/Poor. News/documentary style of how art has developed in the future with machines/AI. No characters. Not a fan of this style.

73 • Scarecrow • 5 pages by Timothy Quinn
Fair. Cutt and Keith investigate an unresponsive lunar vehicle and find a dead body. Suit leak, but they wonder what brought her to the surface and find a container. Cutt has one idea. Keith says unless it’s contraband forget it. The italicized portion of the story was a bit harder to follow. Sounded like Cutt was on Earth, which I assumed was prior to his arrival on the moon, but the third section was definitely after. Plus Analog should use a font where “b” and “h” aren’t identical.

80 • Boys and Girls Together • 4 pages by Larry Niven
OK+. In a world of immortality, if you stay eleven years old, Terry decides it’s time to become an adult, even if it means aging and eventually dying.

84 • Genius, Borrowed and Brief • 8 pages by Julia Darcy
OK/Good. Grayson stumbles into creating a work of art. Not just one that will help him pass his course, but one that is salable. He tweaks (or doesn’t) his program and finds he can make a new piece every night. Maybe there is something diabolical in his art that makes people stare at it endlessly.

92 • Analog Equivalent Foodstuffs • 10 pages by Kate Macleod
Good. The food synthesizer breaks down and the crew has several weeks until they reach the next port. More humorous than [immediately] life threatening.

102 • In a Desolate Garden • 12 pages by Auston Habershaw
Very Good+. Barton wants to buy a planet [and terraform it] for himself and Claudia. Their engrams survey the planet with a salesbot. They are surprised when a transmission comes from this currently lifeless world. Barton thinks it’s a trap, Claudia thinks it may be a distress call and tells the bot to answer. Claudia, at least her engram, has a chance to really delve into what will make her happy.

114 • A Shot in the Dark • 6 pages by Avery Parks
OK. Leo and the Mercy are going to be much too late to be of any help to Pallas station. The captain has a crazy idea. Shoot Leo and the medicine ahead in the lifeboat to another ship headed to Pallas.

120 • Temple in the Night • 4 pages by Louis Evans
Fair/Poor. Val denies Edi’s request to search for the mythical Temple. Fast forward Val is on call, is forced into pilot duty and while in hypertrance feels some of what Edi described. But when she’s back in real space nothing is there.

124 • Seedlings • 6 pages by Al Onia
Good. After the ship is holed Glenn escapes in a lifeboat and is stranded on a seedling planet. He encounters three different species that are seemingly after the same resources as him, water in particular.

130 • Carried on the Wind • 12 pages by Steven Mohan, Jr
Good. Marine General Violet Compton is in charge of security for an alien ambassador that wants to visit an archaeological dig where they have found Neanderthals.

142 • Donacon • 17 pages by Paul E. Franz
Good/VG. Ian, Aiden and Aisha are working on a therapy to help cardiovascular diseases. Aiden somehow, recovering from a bad back, has gained the appearance of a body builder. Maybe some unauthorized tampering with the cardio therapies. Well, that takes the story in a new direction.

159 • The New People • 7 pages by David McGillveray
Good. Colonists landed on Reprieve seventy years ago with barely anything. They’ve lasted three generations and now the new people have come and founded a colony inland. What’s especially irritating to Ferrin is the people drain, children and grandchildren seduced away. The was Coast is now it may not survive.

166 • A Simple Martian Burial • 4 pages by Tom Jolly
OK. Martian expedition with no plans of ever returning to Earth know that eventually people will start dying. Since they’re were chosen with older age as a prerequisite it’ll be sooner rather than later. When the first one goes it’s not expected, though it is. Now they need to do something with her body.

173 • Girl with the Tattooed Soul • 7 pages by Mark W. Tiedemann
OK. Salya lives on a space habitat. She is lonely but doesn’t like crowds either. She mostly wanders Aea, alone until one day she meets Dillon.

180 • Elector • 20 pages by Stephen Case
Very Good+. Started a bit slow. Sim Marechal is informed there’s an election for emprex seven years early, and he may have the deciding vote. Why do we care who’s going to be emprex? We learn that there is a network of machine intelligences that span the Crèche. Planets are terraformed and given a planetary intelligence that allows instant communication and ships can do interstellar travel in a blink. Sim doesn’t go directly to World Mains, but rather to talk with one of the other electors. Trying to find out why the election is early and what of the candidates. By the end we find out the reasons, there is adventure along the way, and Sim’s decision is harder than expected.

[Marta E C R · Rating 5 out of 5]

It’s rare that an issue of Analog gets five stars from me. This one had many excellent stories, however, and deserves that rating. Not all were excellent, of course; some I couldn’t even rate. But it was a very good issue nonetheless.

[Anish · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read an issue of Analog after a long time.I liked most of the stories. The best in my opinion was Elector by Stephen Case.

[Brendan Powell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great issue ... I think only one story in there that I didn't enjoy.

[Kevin Phyland · Rating 4 out of 5]

When a piece of asteroid impacts in Alaska the military cordon the area off. Ace VFX artist Dustin is sent for, to help analyse something found in the tundra. Using animation markers, only on the micro-level, he is tasked with producing a motion picture of it at the cellular level. With a researcher and an engineer they race against time as the alien biofilm spreads. Exciting tale from Jay Werkheiser & real-life animator Julian Michael Carver where art imitates life imitating art. M. L. Clark reimagines Spielberg’s Duel on a mining wordlet, where a heavy ore rig, perhaps autonomous, has taken a serious dislike to mining worker Dar’s much smaller vehicle in “Not In My Valley”, while David D. Levine takes us to an undersea laboratory about to be decommissioned by a research company, who surprisingly find an abandoned experiment in raising chimpanzee intelligence still on board. “Rust” evokes Godwin’s The Cold Equations. Larry Niven examines some of the problems of an immortality treatment that only works on prepubescents in “Boys And Girls Together”, and Kate Macleod takes us on board a ship where the unit that assembles everything on board, including food, has gone on the blink in “Analog Equivalent Foodstuffs”. The crew must relearn an ancient craft to survive. The best of the shorter works comes via Julia Darcey, a name new to me. Her tale is of a mediocre artist who finds, and takes credit for, a program which creates digital and emotive art, but which threatens intelligent life on Earth. “Genius, Borrowed And Brief” is a chilling tale. After a family tragedy Barton sends uploads of himself and his grieving wife Claudia to a newly opened planet, which he has purchased for her. There the engrams discover a being akin to a computer virus which has been living there for millions of years. But mistakes happen and engram Claudia is offered an incredible choice “In A Desolate Garden” by Auston Habershaw. When a disease breaks out in a settlement the medical ship is too slow to reach it in time, so the ship’s doctor takes to the much faster lifeboat to reach another much closer ship. While en route however, her original ship is infected, giving the valiant doctor a more difficult decision in “A Shot In The Dark” by Avery Parks. The alien Enrum have requested a visit to a Neanderthal burial site, intrigued by the flower burial theory. But newly minted General Violet Compton’s guard duty becomes the scene of a military encounter and a biological awakening in “Carried On The Wind” by Steven Mohan, Jr. A drug startup creating mediators for circulatory diseases stumbles across a muscle mediator, promising sculptured physiques with little exercise. “Donacon” by Paul E. Franz shows us the results of endpoint body dysmorphia. The election of a new emprex of the Human hegemony is suspiciously called earlier than normal. The “Elector” from the Palatinate has been exiled en route to prevent his vote. It seems the planetary intelligences which the humans refer to as gods, have started an internecine conflict which imperils humanity in Stephen Case’s tale.