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Analog Science Fiction and Fact, September/October 2018
Magazine
Published September 1, 2018
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About the author
Trevor Quachri
101 books27 followersTrevor 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.
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.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
September 12, 2018
8 • Go Random, My Love • 24 pages by Bill Johnson
OK+. Roy and his artie, Cele, get a distress call from Alice and Zikri. She is in a universe with different physical laws.
40 • Optimizing the Verified Good • 9 pages by Effie Seiberg
Good/OK. A cleaning robot experiences pain which is verified bad. It decides that decreasing pain for the combating bots would be verified good.
50 • A Surprise Beginning • 5 pages by Gregory Benford
Very Good/Good. A plane is sucked into the future. A Looking Backward (Edward Bellamy) type story. We get a look twenty years into the future through the eyes of a seventy-six year old physicist. I really liked the protagonist keeping a nice even keel and matter of fact approach.
55 • When the Rain Comes • 3 pages by Ron Collins
OK. Cubro goes through its daily routine, even picking up some of Lacy's mannerisms.
58 • The Unnecessary Parts of the Story • 7 pages by Adam-Troy Castro
OK+. A crew member gets infected by an alien parasite and starts killing crewmates. Once he's confined they captain takes suggestions from the officers. Meanwhile the Hennesey-alien is busting loose. Lots of talk from the narrator about what should be done, but of course it's ignored. A pastiche horror.
66 • The Pendant Lens • 12 pages by Sean McMullen
Good/VG. George Marchant is sent to help Robespierre with his machinery. A device that helps him see into the future. It is also dangerous requiring tremendous amounts of electrification which often discharges and is dangerous because the user has to be so close.
78 • ...and He Built a Crooked Hub • 19 pages by Christopher L. Bennett
Good/VG. Another David and Nashira story. Nashira overhears that the hub people, who have sort of a monopoly on hub transport, have sent someone to spy on David. David is renting a room in that happens to be a tesseract using 4-D space to maximize rooms on the station. A romp ensues when everyone gets stuck in the room(s) unable to get out.
97 • Shepherd Moon • 9 pages by Premee Mohamed
Good+. Thea works for a private space company. NASA has contacted them to retrieve a body. Her boss wants her to do the mission. When she learns that it's her ex-lover she really doesn't want to do it.
106 • It Came from the Coffee Maker • 4 pages by Martin L. Shoemaker
OK. The AI for the coffee maker is so under used that it spends the rest of the time contemplating.
113 • Nevertheless • 9 pages by Elizabeth Rubio
VG. Persephone Jackson is on the housekeeping crew. She's helping clean up after a guy who lost his hand during EVA. She's been turned down for EVA because she happens to be too large. She's even too large for her bed, that's why she's been sleeping in a closet and doesn't here the evacuation warning. Fun improvisation.
122 • Off-Road • 9 pages by Harry Lang
Good/OK. Frank always wanted to be a trucker like his father, but now all the trucks are self driving. We find him and Murth hauling a load of melons from Ftown to the market at Buzzport on Mars. They get a call to drop off a science pack. This trip changes Frank's outlook on life.
131 • Trapezium • 14 pages by Tony Ballantyne
Good. Craig, Joanna and Armstrong are hired to take a BoboboCedian the rest of the way to Fraxinus. The trouble is they have no apparent way to contain this prisoner.
146 • Black Shores • 10 pages by Darren Speegle
Good/OK. Lars and Ciara vacation on a planet of art and beauty, but get caught in a storm that leads them to a cove that isn't in the brochures. Will they make it back to civilization?
156 • Impetus • 11 pages by Shane Landry
Good. Sakura crashed two years ago racing. Jobs are scarce and highly taxed even when you do get one. The only way to get enough money to pay for her father's operation is to race again.
167 • Harry and the Lewises • 32 pages by Edward M. Lerner
Very Good+. Ted Anderson has a PhD in history but the economy isn't supporting any jobs in his field so he is working as a freelance writer for a tabloid newspaper under the byline Mark Carlson. The boss's daughter asks him (as a last resort, everyone else turned down her offer) to investigate an ancestor who traveled with Lewis and Clark. The first half of the story is mostly research. He finds some oddities, but nothing concrete. He's about to give up when he sees some covert security cameras around Lewis's grave. The excitement level picks up after that scene and continues to the end. The title sounds like Harry and the Hendersons, that is not a coincidence.
OK+. Roy and his artie, Cele, get a distress call from Alice and Zikri. She is in a universe with different physical laws.
40 • Optimizing the Verified Good • 9 pages by Effie Seiberg
Good/OK. A cleaning robot experiences pain which is verified bad. It decides that decreasing pain for the combating bots would be verified good.
50 • A Surprise Beginning • 5 pages by Gregory Benford
Very Good/Good. A plane is sucked into the future. A Looking Backward (Edward Bellamy) type story. We get a look twenty years into the future through the eyes of a seventy-six year old physicist. I really liked the protagonist keeping a nice even keel and matter of fact approach.
55 • When the Rain Comes • 3 pages by Ron Collins
OK. Cubro goes through its daily routine, even picking up some of Lacy's mannerisms.
58 • The Unnecessary Parts of the Story • 7 pages by Adam-Troy Castro
OK+. A crew member gets infected by an alien parasite and starts killing crewmates. Once he's confined they captain takes suggestions from the officers. Meanwhile the Hennesey-alien is busting loose. Lots of talk from the narrator about what should be done, but of course it's ignored. A pastiche horror.
66 • The Pendant Lens • 12 pages by Sean McMullen
Good/VG. George Marchant is sent to help Robespierre with his machinery. A device that helps him see into the future. It is also dangerous requiring tremendous amounts of electrification which often discharges and is dangerous because the user has to be so close.
78 • ...and He Built a Crooked Hub • 19 pages by Christopher L. Bennett
Good/VG. Another David and Nashira story. Nashira overhears that the hub people, who have sort of a monopoly on hub transport, have sent someone to spy on David. David is renting a room in that happens to be a tesseract using 4-D space to maximize rooms on the station. A romp ensues when everyone gets stuck in the room(s) unable to get out.
97 • Shepherd Moon • 9 pages by Premee Mohamed
Good+. Thea works for a private space company. NASA has contacted them to retrieve a body. Her boss wants her to do the mission. When she learns that it's her ex-lover she really doesn't want to do it.
106 • It Came from the Coffee Maker • 4 pages by Martin L. Shoemaker
OK. The AI for the coffee maker is so under used that it spends the rest of the time contemplating.
113 • Nevertheless • 9 pages by Elizabeth Rubio
VG. Persephone Jackson is on the housekeeping crew. She's helping clean up after a guy who lost his hand during EVA. She's been turned down for EVA because she happens to be too large. She's even too large for her bed, that's why she's been sleeping in a closet and doesn't here the evacuation warning. Fun improvisation.
122 • Off-Road • 9 pages by Harry Lang
Good/OK. Frank always wanted to be a trucker like his father, but now all the trucks are self driving. We find him and Murth hauling a load of melons from Ftown to the market at Buzzport on Mars. They get a call to drop off a science pack. This trip changes Frank's outlook on life.
131 • Trapezium • 14 pages by Tony Ballantyne
Good. Craig, Joanna and Armstrong are hired to take a BoboboCedian the rest of the way to Fraxinus. The trouble is they have no apparent way to contain this prisoner.
146 • Black Shores • 10 pages by Darren Speegle
Good/OK. Lars and Ciara vacation on a planet of art and beauty, but get caught in a storm that leads them to a cove that isn't in the brochures. Will they make it back to civilization?
156 • Impetus • 11 pages by Shane Landry
Good. Sakura crashed two years ago racing. Jobs are scarce and highly taxed even when you do get one. The only way to get enough money to pay for her father's operation is to race again.
167 • Harry and the Lewises • 32 pages by Edward M. Lerner
Very Good+. Ted Anderson has a PhD in history but the economy isn't supporting any jobs in his field so he is working as a freelance writer for a tabloid newspaper under the byline Mark Carlson. The boss's daughter asks him (as a last resort, everyone else turned down her offer) to investigate an ancestor who traveled with Lewis and Clark. The first half of the story is mostly research. He finds some oddities, but nothing concrete. He's about to give up when he sees some covert security cameras around Lewis's grave. The excitement level picks up after that scene and continues to the end. The title sounds like Harry and the Hendersons, that is not a coincidence.
January 4, 2019
Go Random, My Love • novelette by Bill Johnson
Two men get a distress signal from a woman one of them knew years ago. She seems to be in a dire situation with almost certain death awaiting. They launch a rescue mission which takes them across several universes. The story contains the most stupid sentence I have ever read in modern science fiction: "The hydrogen blowing off that damned sun is like a wind-chill. I'm getting temperatures below 1 degree absolute." And there is another place which states that hydrogen wind cools down planets. I wonder how the author imagines that happens? There is some action, an eventual rescue, and so on, but my head hurt too much from all of the stupidities of the story that I really wasn’t able to concentrate on it. I wonder if the current editor of Analog has any scientific training at all? The writing wasn’t memorable either. There seems to be a huge amount back plot that isn’t explained at all. *½
When the Rain Comes • short story by Ron Collins
A robot takes measurements and sends the results to headquarters. It cooks for a human, but the food is never eaten. The headquarters never answers. All of the days go exactly the same way. A nice, but sad, story. ***+
A Surprise Beginning • short story by Gregory Benford
A plane is transferred twenty years to the future. The world is more or less utopia, climate problems have been solved, and people are in good health in their 90s. Credit cards aren’t used, but small sticks have replaced them (extremely stupid prediction: a physical medium? And one which is hard to carry). The story has not much of point (it was meant to be published in an airline’s magazine) but it is smoothly written. ***
The Unnecessary Parts of the Stars • short story by Adam-Troy Castro
An old story: one member of a space team gets infected by an intelligent virus, gets violent, and tries to kill everyone. Why would it do that? An excellent take on an old cliché. ***½
... And He Built a Crooked Hub • [The Hub Gates] • novelette by Christopher L. Bennett
The story is happening on an interstellar hub-station which connects interstellar FTL-links. This story doesn’t examine those but is more of a “door-comedy” or a bedroom farce. That can be very complicated when the rooms are connected as a four-dimensional maze with a defective control mechanism. A funny story which works fairly well, but doesn’t really give anything about the hub itself - that is what I would want to have. ***
Trapezium • novelette by Tony Ballantyne
A ship gets an alien captive as a transport. The alien is very hard to control, but they know that they have a way to threaten it and keep it in check - but they don’t know what the method actually is. A pretty good story with a lot of background which isn’t explicitly presented but well enough that the main points are understandable. In the beginning, I was distracted by a mention of “slavemakers” – somehow I first thought that the story would have been part of Larry Niven’s “Known Space”-stories, but they had slavers, nor slavemakers, after all. ***+
Optimizing the Verified Good • short story by Effie Seiberg
Robots battle in gladiator-style battles for human entertainment. The cleaning robot who cleans the arena after battles start to wonder why they doing what they are doing, especially when he (and the other robots) start to experience pain. He starts a strike, but when there are no fights there are no visitors and no electricity to load the batteries. But they find a solution which doesn’t involve real injuries for any battling robots. (They essentially reinvent show wrestling). It is strange that the fighting arena apparently has no human involvement whatsoever. A pretty good story of a brave and pretty smart little robot, anyway.***½
Black Shores • short story by Darren Speegle
A man and a woman are on an excursion on a foreign planet. They have a native guide. As the weather turns bad they are forced to find shelter and energy from an abandoned spaceport. It was abandoned as people living in that part of the world have turned to other things, namely to art. But their art is something very special - something which reminds me of the Firefly’s reavers. A pretty good story, but the backstory is very open, too open. ***+
The Pendant Lens • novelette by Sean McMullen
A British man comes to French during the revolution. He is an expert on steam engines and electrical engineering. Science is a bit more advanced than it really was in our timeline. Robespierre uses a steam engine to power an electric generator which is connected to a machine which shows the future. Robespierre is very paranoid and uses the machine to screen enemies and to influence people. The engineer fears for his own life (for a good reason) during the turbulent revolution. An excellent steanpunkish story. ****+
Shepherd Moon • short story by Premee Mohamed
A private space organization gets a rush job from NASA. They are supposed to recover a body of an astronaut who was killed in an accident. A female spaceship pilot gets the job even if she really doesn’t want to. She has very personal reasons not to do it. A fairly simple story, not bad but nothing really special either. ***
It Came from the Coffee Maker • short story by Martin L. Shoemaker
An AI which is running a coffee maker is bored, very bored. It has been copied from powerful AI which is able to run airport traffic systems and making coffee takes a negligible percentage of its abilities. It thinks about scenarios by which it could take over humanity, but damn those pesky Asimovian laws.. a nice short fun story. ***
Nevertheless • short story by Elizabeth Rubio
A member of the cleaning crew (who is so big that she didn’t get a job working on the hull of the ship) is left on a damaged section of the ship. She manages to save the day. A simple “unprivileged person save the day and gets the attention she needs” story. ***
Off-Road • short story by Harry Lang
A truck is driving on Mars, from one habitat to another. They are asked to examine a magnetic anomaly which happens to be near their position. They have some trouble getting there and there is a sudden dust storm and plenty of other tropes. The anomaly turns out to be “something interesting," but just when the story might have turned interesting, it ends. Nothing that hasn’t been seen many times before. ***-
Impetus • short story by Shane Landry
A family is heavily in some sort of racing using some sort of biomechanical suits and some sort of vehicles. The daughter is a very good racer, but she hurt herself badly sometime earlier trying a dangerous stunt during a race. The family is really down in their luck and the father gets cancer. The daughter decides to take part in a race to get everything ok with the winnings. Yeah, of course about two years break in a sport which apparently demands extreme coordination doesn’t mean anything. The writing is ok, but the similar plot has been seen in movies, TV, and literature countless times. ***-
Harry and the Lewises • novella by Edward M. Lerner
A man who works as a writer for a ratty tabloid is asked to look at the Lewis and Clark expedition at the beginning of 19th century. There turns out to be some very strange irregularities in the journals, and the tomb of Lewis seems to be under very close surveillance. Is there something more than was disclosed at the time? And what could be important enough to have meaning even now, over two hundred years after the expedition? There turns out to be a bigger conspiracy than even his ratty tabloid has ever invented. A very good and well-written story, but the end was a bit abrupt. ****
Two men get a distress signal from a woman one of them knew years ago. She seems to be in a dire situation with almost certain death awaiting. They launch a rescue mission which takes them across several universes. The story contains the most stupid sentence I have ever read in modern science fiction: "The hydrogen blowing off that damned sun is like a wind-chill. I'm getting temperatures below 1 degree absolute." And there is another place which states that hydrogen wind cools down planets. I wonder how the author imagines that happens? There is some action, an eventual rescue, and so on, but my head hurt too much from all of the stupidities of the story that I really wasn’t able to concentrate on it. I wonder if the current editor of Analog has any scientific training at all? The writing wasn’t memorable either. There seems to be a huge amount back plot that isn’t explained at all. *½
When the Rain Comes • short story by Ron Collins
A robot takes measurements and sends the results to headquarters. It cooks for a human, but the food is never eaten. The headquarters never answers. All of the days go exactly the same way. A nice, but sad, story. ***+
A Surprise Beginning • short story by Gregory Benford
A plane is transferred twenty years to the future. The world is more or less utopia, climate problems have been solved, and people are in good health in their 90s. Credit cards aren’t used, but small sticks have replaced them (extremely stupid prediction: a physical medium? And one which is hard to carry). The story has not much of point (it was meant to be published in an airline’s magazine) but it is smoothly written. ***
The Unnecessary Parts of the Stars • short story by Adam-Troy Castro
An old story: one member of a space team gets infected by an intelligent virus, gets violent, and tries to kill everyone. Why would it do that? An excellent take on an old cliché. ***½
... And He Built a Crooked Hub • [The Hub Gates] • novelette by Christopher L. Bennett
The story is happening on an interstellar hub-station which connects interstellar FTL-links. This story doesn’t examine those but is more of a “door-comedy” or a bedroom farce. That can be very complicated when the rooms are connected as a four-dimensional maze with a defective control mechanism. A funny story which works fairly well, but doesn’t really give anything about the hub itself - that is what I would want to have. ***
Trapezium • novelette by Tony Ballantyne
A ship gets an alien captive as a transport. The alien is very hard to control, but they know that they have a way to threaten it and keep it in check - but they don’t know what the method actually is. A pretty good story with a lot of background which isn’t explicitly presented but well enough that the main points are understandable. In the beginning, I was distracted by a mention of “slavemakers” – somehow I first thought that the story would have been part of Larry Niven’s “Known Space”-stories, but they had slavers, nor slavemakers, after all. ***+
Optimizing the Verified Good • short story by Effie Seiberg
Robots battle in gladiator-style battles for human entertainment. The cleaning robot who cleans the arena after battles start to wonder why they doing what they are doing, especially when he (and the other robots) start to experience pain. He starts a strike, but when there are no fights there are no visitors and no electricity to load the batteries. But they find a solution which doesn’t involve real injuries for any battling robots. (They essentially reinvent show wrestling). It is strange that the fighting arena apparently has no human involvement whatsoever. A pretty good story of a brave and pretty smart little robot, anyway.***½
Black Shores • short story by Darren Speegle
A man and a woman are on an excursion on a foreign planet. They have a native guide. As the weather turns bad they are forced to find shelter and energy from an abandoned spaceport. It was abandoned as people living in that part of the world have turned to other things, namely to art. But their art is something very special - something which reminds me of the Firefly’s reavers. A pretty good story, but the backstory is very open, too open. ***+
The Pendant Lens • novelette by Sean McMullen
A British man comes to French during the revolution. He is an expert on steam engines and electrical engineering. Science is a bit more advanced than it really was in our timeline. Robespierre uses a steam engine to power an electric generator which is connected to a machine which shows the future. Robespierre is very paranoid and uses the machine to screen enemies and to influence people. The engineer fears for his own life (for a good reason) during the turbulent revolution. An excellent steanpunkish story. ****+
Shepherd Moon • short story by Premee Mohamed
A private space organization gets a rush job from NASA. They are supposed to recover a body of an astronaut who was killed in an accident. A female spaceship pilot gets the job even if she really doesn’t want to. She has very personal reasons not to do it. A fairly simple story, not bad but nothing really special either. ***
It Came from the Coffee Maker • short story by Martin L. Shoemaker
An AI which is running a coffee maker is bored, very bored. It has been copied from powerful AI which is able to run airport traffic systems and making coffee takes a negligible percentage of its abilities. It thinks about scenarios by which it could take over humanity, but damn those pesky Asimovian laws.. a nice short fun story. ***
Nevertheless • short story by Elizabeth Rubio
A member of the cleaning crew (who is so big that she didn’t get a job working on the hull of the ship) is left on a damaged section of the ship. She manages to save the day. A simple “unprivileged person save the day and gets the attention she needs” story. ***
Off-Road • short story by Harry Lang
A truck is driving on Mars, from one habitat to another. They are asked to examine a magnetic anomaly which happens to be near their position. They have some trouble getting there and there is a sudden dust storm and plenty of other tropes. The anomaly turns out to be “something interesting," but just when the story might have turned interesting, it ends. Nothing that hasn’t been seen many times before. ***-
Impetus • short story by Shane Landry
A family is heavily in some sort of racing using some sort of biomechanical suits and some sort of vehicles. The daughter is a very good racer, but she hurt herself badly sometime earlier trying a dangerous stunt during a race. The family is really down in their luck and the father gets cancer. The daughter decides to take part in a race to get everything ok with the winnings. Yeah, of course about two years break in a sport which apparently demands extreme coordination doesn’t mean anything. The writing is ok, but the similar plot has been seen in movies, TV, and literature countless times. ***-
Harry and the Lewises • novella by Edward M. Lerner
A man who works as a writer for a ratty tabloid is asked to look at the Lewis and Clark expedition at the beginning of 19th century. There turns out to be some very strange irregularities in the journals, and the tomb of Lewis seems to be under very close surveillance. Is there something more than was disclosed at the time? And what could be important enough to have meaning even now, over two hundred years after the expedition? There turns out to be a bigger conspiracy than even his ratty tabloid has ever invented. A very good and well-written story, but the end was a bit abrupt. ****
March 26, 2019
Couple of "meh" stories this time, but Edward Lerner's "Harry and the Lewises" feature novella was quite good (I always like his stuff), and I enjoyed "Trapezium" by Tony Ballantyne, "optimizing the verified good" by Effie Seiberg, "Shepherd Moon" by Premee Mohammed, "Black Shores" by Darren Speegle (a kind of Lovecraftian alien tourism tale) and "Off-Road" by Harry Lang. Viva Analog!
July 24, 2019
++ The plaything on the tesseract wall - Larry Hodges , Probability Zero
++ Guest editorial - Colliding icebergs - Richard A. Lovett
++/- Optimizing the verified good - Effie Seiberg
++/- Nevertheless - Elizabeth Rubio
++/- Harry and the Lewises - Edward M. Lerner
Cover damaged by hot chocolate spill
++ Guest editorial - Colliding icebergs - Richard A. Lovett
++/- Optimizing the verified good - Effie Seiberg
++/- Nevertheless - Elizabeth Rubio
++/- Harry and the Lewises - Edward M. Lerner
Cover damaged by hot chocolate spill
October 12, 2018
Notable stories :
When the rain comes - a day in the life of a robot left alone on a station
The unnecessary parts of the story - a cliche alien parasite takes over a space ship, as told by the parasite
It came from a coffee maker - an Ai plots to take over the world
When the rain comes - a day in the life of a robot left alone on a station
The unnecessary parts of the story - a cliche alien parasite takes over a space ship, as told by the parasite
It came from a coffee maker - an Ai plots to take over the world
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews