Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact, Vol. 90, No. 5, January 1973

Astounding/Analog

by Ben Bova (Editor), Daniel B. James (Contributor), G. Harry Stine (Contributor)

Vol XC No 5.

Contents:
4 • "With Friends Like These ... " • [Editorial (Analog)] • essay by The Editor
8 • Integration Module • novelette by Daniel B. James
30 • The Third Industrial Revolution (Part 1 of 2) • [Science Fact (Analog)] • essay by G. Harry Stine
46 • Health Hazard • short story by Howard L. Myers
63 • In Times to Come (Analog, January 1973) • [In Times to Come (Analog)] • essay by uncredited
64 • A Thing of Beauty • short story by Norman Spinrad
78 • Cemetery World (Part 3 of 3) • serial by Clifford D. Simak
127 • The Analytical Laboratory: October 1972 (Analog, January 1973) • [The Analytical Laboratory] • essay by uncredited
128 • Proud Guns to the Sea • short story by Duncan Lunan
145 • One Plus One Equals Eleven • short story by G. C. Edmondson
156 • Year 3 of the Shark • short story by Joel S. Witkin
161 • The Reference Library (Analog, January 1973) • [The Reference Library] • essay by P. Schuyler Miller
162 • Review of the comic strip collection "Flash Gordon: Into the Water World of Mongo" by Alex Raymond • essay by P. Schuyler Miller
169 • Brass Tacks (Analog, January 1973) • [Brass Tacks] • essay by uncredited
171 •  Letter (Analog, January 1973) • essay by George W. Price
173 •  Letter (Analog, January 1973) • essay by John P. Conlon
175 •  Letter (Analog, January 1973) • essay by Gordon Wolfe.

【 PREVIOUS ISSUE ← January 1973 → NEXT ISSUE 】

180 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1973

About the author

Ben Bova was born on November 8, 1932 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. In 1953, while attending Temple University, he married Rosa Cucinotta, they had a son and a daughter. He would later divorce Rosa in 1974. In that same year he married Barbara Berson Rose.

Bova was an avid fencer and organized Avco Everett's fencing club. He was an environmentalist, but rejected Luddism.

Bova was a technical writer for Project Vanguard and later for Avco Everett in the 1960s when they did research in lasers and fluid dynamics. It was there that he met Arthur R. Kantrowitz later of the Foresight Institute.

In 1971 he became editor of Analog Science Fiction after John W. Campbell's death. After leaving Analog, he went on to edit Omni during 1978-1982.

In 1974 he wrote the screenplay for an episode of the children's science fiction television series Land of the Lost entitled "The Search".

Bova was the science advisor for the failed television series The Starlost, leaving in disgust after the airing of the first episode. His novel The Starcrossed was loosely based on his experiences and featured a thinly veiled characterization of his friend and colleague Harlan Ellison. He dedicated the novel to "Cordwainer Bird", the pen name Harlan Ellison uses when he does not want to be associated with a television or film project.

Bova was the President Emeritus of the National Space Society and a past President of Science-fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA).

Bova went back to school in the 1980s, earning an M.A. in communications in 1987 and a Ph.D. in 1996.

Bova has drawn on these meetings and experiences to create fact and fiction writings rich with references to spaceflight, lasers, artificial hearts, nanotechnology, environmentalism, fencing and martial arts, photography and artists.

Bova was the author of over a hundred and fifteen books, non-fiction as well as science fiction. In 2000, he was the Author Guest of Honor at the 58th World Science Fiction Convention (Chicon 2000).

Hollywood has started to take an interest in Bova's works once again, in addition to his wealth of knowledge about science and what the future may look like. In 2007, he was hired as a consultant by both Stuber/Parent Productions to provide insight into what the world is to look like in the near future for their upcoming film "Repossession Mambo" (released as "Repo Men") starring Jude Law and Forest Whitaker and by Silver Pictures in which he provided consulting services on the feature adaptation of Richard Morgan's "Altered Carbon".

http://us.macmillan.com/author/benbova

Reviews

[David H. · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the thirty-second magazine issue of my personal project to read the Analogs that my dad gave me before he passed away (I collect all my reviews for it here). My parents are in Clarkesville, Tennessee. Dad is in graduate school, and my mom is working at a boot company. Amazingly this is the month in which the Vietnam War ended with the Paris Peace Accords. I'm sure my parents had a lot of feelings about that, as did all Americans. Interestingly Dad did not use the name stamp he used for the December 1972 issue on this one.

The January 1973 issue has a cover from John Schoenherr illustrating James's novelette "Integration Module." The "googly eye" effect on Beta's robot cracks me up so much, even though the scene depicted is actually quite an emotional one in the story.

The editorial "With Friends Like These ... " from Ben Bova is his critique about the "insider scientist vs. outsider amateur," which is fair enough, as outsiders can often provide some non-conventional wisdom to allow us to look at things from a new perspective. But he picks some incredibly stupid examples (the guys behind the Steady State model - thoroughly discredited in favor of the Big Bang Theory, Immanuel Velikovsky and his theories about Venus - he's literally a crackpot?, and Irving Langmuir's cloud seeding, which at first seems to be the one good example, but apparently it's never been shown to be statistically significant), so Bova's point is just confusing all around. The one good thing I'll say about Campbell as an editorial writer is that he was a bit better at building an argument--they were terrible arguments, but at least you knew where his piece of shit was coming from.

Daniel B. James's "Integration Module" is a character study with a lot of psychology, as Beta is actually a human who has been unknowingly (to him) turned into a cyborg brain connected to a factory. The story follows Beta's mentor as Beta finally realizes that he must have a central spot where his processing is happening, as his wide-ranging senses have to be integrated somewhere.

"The Third Industrial Revolution (Part 1 of 2)" by G. Harry Stine is the Science Fact article, giving serious consideration to how space industry would work. Unfortunately, it's obviously never gotten close to happening in real life, but it really is a good example of the space optimism of this crowd.

Howard L. Myers's "Health Hazard" is quite possibly an actually good Myers story?! I've been disappointed by his Econowar stuff. He's basically a worse version of F. Paul Wilson - same libertarian crackpot views, but also a worse writer. However, this story - the last published in Analog (every Myers story after 1971 has been posthumous) - was actually quite fun. It does poke fun at humans a bit, but is slightly more even-handed politically. The real humor is in Romee and her reaction to that human silliness, as well as the mystery of her species's strong reaction to noise and how she overcame it. A couple parts weren't written very clearly, but at least there's a Myers story I could conceivably recommend.

"A Thing of Beauty" by Norman Spinrad features an American "monument" broker trying to sell various things to a Japanese businessman who wants to buy something for his garden back home. Among the considered items: the Statue of Liberty, Yankee Stadium, the UN Building, and the final item. It's written in a fun way, and a serious reader could read a lot more into things (as I've discovered online). It was also a Nebula finalist, losing to a James Tiptree, Jr. story.

Clifford D. Simak's serial "Cemetery World (Part 3 of 3)" concludes and wow. This had had such a strong beginning in Part 1, only to get worse and worse in the subsequent parts. There's just so much randomness it felt like. The time travel aspect was interesting, but disappointing, and the denouement probably could've been a whole serial part on its own.

"The Analytical Laboratory" is a feature where Analog readers rank each issue's stories, published several months after, with the top two winners getting pay bonuses. Here we have October 1972 (link goes to my review). David Lewis's story takes the top spot (one of the rare non-serials to place first since I've been reading). The rest of the rankings are predictable, though I thought the readers would hate the preachiness of Richard Olin's story a lot more; the Ralph Hamil story takes the bottom slot instead.

"Proud Guns to the Sea" by Duncan Lunan felt like a simplistic alien pirate story but required too much setup, for an uninteresting payoff.

G. C. Edmondson's "One Plus One Equals Eleven" features an engineer deals with a computer printing out apparent poetry. For some reason, he's struck by the output. I wasn't.

"Year 3 of the Shark" by Joel S. Witkin has an incredibly fussy sergeant obsessed with paperwork, despite a war in which they're losing. The story ends where he loses his sense of purpose, and that somewhat satisfies. In a lot of ways it doesn't feel very science fictional.

P. Schuyler Miller's review column "The Reference Library: The Hugo Awards" is a long one, covering the Hugos (awarded in 1972, for 1971 stories), Flash Gordon, Chad Oliver, Gordon Dickson, Keith Laumer, the Hoyle father/son duo, John Boyd, Bob Shaw, and Poul Anderson. I'm exhausted just listing that out.

"Brass Tacks" has an amusing mix of letters: One suggests a tax on engine sizes to help combat pollution. Another proposes a canal between Lake Superior to the Pacific Ocean for... reasons. A couple more letters are clearly fans of Joe McCarthy for some weird reason (though one transitions into being a letter about hunting for some reason. Then there's a pair of letters attacking and praising the inclusion of Joe Haldeman's "Hero" with its sexual scenes. A final letter is very excited about the possibilities in NASA's new space shuttle program.

[Kevin Phyland · Rating 3 out of 5]

Beta is a cyborg intelligence, constructed as a sphere on swivels with mechanical arms. But Beta has lately started to examine metacognition, to try to understand how it thinks for itself. What it finds out about its “Integration Module” shocks it at first in the cover story by Daniel B. James. Paternalistic humans have banned chocolate from the indigenous population of chimees on Notcid, who respond to loud noises with prodigious involuntary leaps. But trying to modify this instinct could prove to be a “Health Hazard” in this tale from Howard L. Myers. An insurrection decades earlier has toppled the United States from its pre-eminent economic position and a fabulously wealthy Japanese businessman is on a shopping trip for iconic artifacts. Spurning the purchase of the Statue of Liberty, what he ultimately purchases seems at first to be a joke but becomes “A Thing Of Beauty” in Norman Spinrad’s ironic tale. Clifford D. Simak concludes his “Cemetery World” novel with the discovery of warbots that still roam the planet and a resolution to the scam that is considered sacrilegious. I have reviewed this in detail elsewhere. Duncan Lunan shows us space pirates in “Proud Guns To The Sea” and G. C. Edmonson’s tale “1 + 1 = 11” investigates creative output which seems to be coming from a computer. The shorter tales are all pretty unmemorable though.

[Paul · Rating 2 out of 5]

B (very good):

Integration Module by Daniel B. James
A Thing of Beauty by Norman Spinrad
Cemetery World (pt 3 of 3) by Clifford D. Simak

C (average):

Health Hazard by Howard L. Myers
Proud Guns to the Sea by Duncan Lunan
Year 3 of the Shark by Joes S. Witkin

D (poor):

One Plus One Equals Eleven by G. C. Edmundson