Analog Science Fiction and Fact, September 2013

A pretty average mix of stories.

FULL FATHOM FIVE, Joe Pitkin
A lone explorer is in a trapped under the ice of Europa, a moon of Jupiter. She has captured a body of an alien, which apparently died at the moment light from the vessel hit it. She has some strange dreams of her father. The body of the alien then releases a great amount of metallic compound which is badly needed to repair the radio transmitter. A pretty confusing story, which starts in the middle of a story and ends in the middle of a story. It almost felt like everything which happened was just a hallucination of the protagonist, but just almost. If the story wasn’t a hallucination, then the alien is pretty strange and is apparently capable of transmutating elements with no radiation whatsoever. ***
MURDER ON THE ALDRIN EXPRESS, Martin L. Shoemaker
The first civilian expedition of mars has ended with a death of the leader of the expedition. But there seems to be evidence, which proves that the death was intentional. The expedition wasn’t apparently very expertly leaded, but who would have committed murder and why? And is the ex-girlfriend of the first officer who took part of the ill-fated expedition somehow involved? The story consists mainly from the eyewitness accounts of what happened. An ok story, perhaps slightly overlong. ***+
THE ORACLE, Lavie Tidhar
A story about an emerging all powerful godlike artificial intelligence. A very fragmentary, at places very confusing and unclear story. This didn’t work for me at all. **-
CREATURES FROM A BLUE LAGOON, Liz J. Andersen
Working for interplanetary veterinary corps can be very demanding – especially when your working partner is a (almost) yellow submarine with an AI with some interesting characteristic. A light hearted story in the best James White style. An enjoyable read – nothing deep, but the story wasn’t meant to be something deep. ***+
LIFE OF THE AUTHOR PLUS SEVENTY, Kenneth Schneyer
Extending copyright by suspended animation may work, but there are some things which are hard to escape – like debtors. Another story in a light vein. It was probably overlong to some degree– might have worked best as a shorter Probability Zero story. ***-
THE WHALE GOD, Alec Nevala-Lee
A whale beaches in a war time Vietnam. The US army personnel tries to rescue it. Some of them see some strange shapes at a corner of their eyes, and they have strange feelings. A pretty nice story – but it is not exactly science fiction at all. By a remarkable coincidence, I read about the exact phenomenon which is described in the story just a few days before I read the tale. Pretty good and even moving story. ***+