A fairly nice issue.
Puncher's Chance • novella by James Grayson and Kathy Ferguson
A story about a shuttle mission to Mars to relieve a medical emergency. The ship is very old and almost falling apart and the crew weren’t supposed to go on such mission. There are several more or less serious emergencies during the trip. A problem solving story in typical Analog tradition telling about heroism. The beginning was a bit too slow and some condensing might have been a good idea. **½
The Door That Does Not Close • shortstory by Carl Frederick
An alien which inhabits an android body of a child and a scientist are trying to uncover a manuscript the Romans wrote after the aliens visited earth last time, over 1500 years ago. A pretty good and entertaining story. However, there are some strange assumptions which are critical for the story. Why would the scientist think that that alien is a child while the body it inhabits is for some very strange and impractical reason a child’s body? Why would aliens use a child for a task like that? ***+
Original Sin • novelette by Richard A. Lovett
Starts as a sports story and seems first pretty uninteresting. Then it turns to something else. A running coach is using an apparatus which can record everything the person experiences to evaluate to running performance. Typically for or sports coach :-) he is pretty dense and the wide variety of uses that kind of system would have, won't occur to him. His trainee is smarted, but gets soon involved with criminals. A pretty good story. ***½
Preemption • shortstory by Charlie Rosenkrantz
An alien ship appears and bubbles of destruction start to appear on apparently random locations. The president tries to contact the ship to find out what is going on. The writing was pretty good, especially considering that this was the first (and only) published story. The ending might have been slightly tighter. It seemed to go on far too long. ***½
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