A pretty decent issue, mostly.
SHORT STORY: TRANSFER POINT, Barry N. Malzberg & Bill Pronzini
A customs inspector at a lunar immigration station is told that the station will be closed, and the new one will be established on Mars. He starts his day a bit baffled about the news. He is also feeling somehow strange, strangely light headed or something. A short, light story with a fifties feel in it. ***+
NOVELETTE: THE EIGHTH ITERATION, Bond Elam
A colony is facing internal struggle where the colonists have divided into factions. A leader of "moderates" is facing a capture and possibly trial. He and his female friend escape and find the ruins of a similar compound they live. Apparently due to problems in cold sleep they woke up without any memories. The old compound shows signs of a struggle. The story start without any background straight away in middle of action. At first that felt distracting, but it suited to the story- the protagonists themselves had woken in the middle of action without any memories. I am not sure if the factions would appear as fast and as rigid as in the story, but pretty good anyway. ***½
SHORT STORY: DAILY TEDS, Ron Collins
A guy discovers a way to send a copy of himself to the future. Soon there are a lot of copies with increasing deviating behavior compared to the original. And all copies are making more copies. That can only lead to serious problems. Light story about a possible end of the world. ***+
SHORT STORY: DOWN PLEASE: THE ONLY RECORDED ADVENTURE OF LARS FOUTON, CAPTAIN'S LIFT OPERATOR ON THE STARSHIP MAGNIFICENT, Adam-Troy Castro
A story about the elevator operator of the most advanced space ship of the alliance. He drives the personal elevator of the ship's commander and his guests. The elevator goes from the bridge to the personal and guest’s quarters, nowhere else. Why would a super advanced and powerful spaceship have a lift which needs a person to operate it? Well, that IS the question. A pretty nice and fun story. Pretty bad job, though. ****-
SHORT STORY: PARTIBLE, K.J. Zimring
An anthropologist gets a notification that his son is on the custody of the immigration officials. That's kind of strange as he doesn't have a son. As matter of fact, he hasn’t even had sex with the woman who is the mother of the child. He did know her and was in love with her, but sex - no. Especially surprising is when the DNA test turns out to be positive. A good and moving story. ***½
SHORT STORY: THE LAST DAYS OF DOGGER CITY, Mjke Wood
A city or large structure built on the coast of Norway (?) starts to fall into the ocean. The future is bleak, Yellowstone has apparently blown up and practically no communication is available from anywhere. A woman loses her son and must look for him in a falling building. Just an action scene. The more interesting parts of the story are missing. ***
NOVELETTE: DANCING IN THE DARK, Ramona Louise Wheeler
Comets are being chased for their volatiles in a solar system which has been colonized by humans a few hundred years ago. A group which is hunting for them discovers the largest ever. Its’ trajectory seems strange; it is like something changed the orbit recently. The found that something seems to be eating comets. Is it a strange lifeform? Another story which feels like a third or fourth chapter ripped from a novel. ***
PROBABILITY ZERO: WHEY STATION, Guy Stewart
Usually I haven’t reviewed the Probability Zero stories, as they are very short fillers. Usually they are fun but forgettable stories. This time – I haven’t the slightest idea what happens in this story. I asked about it on Analog’s Facebook page, but didn’t get any answers. Could someone please explain to me WTF happens in this story?
3 comments:
Re: "Whey Station"
I should give you some background:
"Whey Station" is a play on words. Clifford D. Simak (who is a fellow Minnesotan gone these last 27 years. He was awarded 3 Hugos, a Nebula, and a SFWA Grandmaster as well as a Bram Stoker Award for Lifetime Achievement.
He's something of a personal hero of mine and after re-reading Way Station (1963) (In which a Civil War veteran is a caretaker of a secret Way Station, a transfer point for aliens. But the outside world is snooping around, and their blundering may endanger all of humanity. It takes place on a farm in Wisconsin and we spent a summer on a tiny farm in the same state), I had an idea for a really, really short story playing with a "what if?" In this case, I wondered what would have happened to such a farm if the caretaker died suddenly and his family quickly sold it -- without having any idea what it was? Ni and Rey bought this farm and in the process of renovating activate the TRANSFER POINT again.
I upgraded the ambient technology (chest freezers, flat screen displays, and plastic tables) and then had the screen activate with an incoming transfer.
At the beginning of Chapter 5 of Simak's book, WAY STATION, you'll find the message:
"NO. 406301 TO STATION 18327. TRAVELER AT 16097.38. NATIVE THUBAN VI. NO BAGGAGE. NO. 3 LIQUID TANK. SOLUTION 27. DEPART FOR STATION 12892 AT 16439.16. CONFIRM"
It's letting the caretaker of the station, Enoch Wallace, know exactly what to expect of the alien transferring through and what kind of preparations he should have.
My message:
wstat120254 2 whey-stat 18328 NatOnyxyfmII. N2checkon. 2LIQ-Tank. SOLN 27. DEP4 wstat31591 @615.5.05.00084.0000141. Rog?
Translation:
wstat120254 2 = the station Rey and Ni purchased (secondary to the one presumed to have been in Wisconsin)
whey-stat 18328 = the end station (note: one number different from Simak's destination station)
NatOnyxyfmII = Native of Onyxyfm II (an alien people from another story I wrote)
N2checkon = two pieces of check on luggage
2LIQ-Tank = second-type of liquid tank (liquid nitrogen, if you wanted to know) necessary for the traveler
SOLN 27 = lifted it from Simak
DEP4 wstat31591 = Departing for whey (way) station 31591
@615.5.05.00084.0000141 = a time expressed in some sort of universal, intergalactic time; I thought it should be more complex than Simak did...
Rog? = 21st century US is a bit less formal than 1960s US, so "roger" instead of CONFIRM...
That's it. Hope it doesn't disappoint...I didn't mean for it to be opaque...
Sorry.
Maybe you can read something else I wrote -- not everything I do is so dependent on having read something else.
But thanks for asking! I'll keep this letter handy for the next person who asks...
Sincerely,
Guy Stewart
Thank you for you comment. I am familiar with Way Station. It is one of my favorite books, but it has been probably more than ten years I last read it and didn't remember those "codes". Also as non-English speaker I tend to be very bad at puns - especially in non-expected puns. When I read English I don't "sound out" the words in my mind. So "Whey" and "Way" are totally different words for me, even if they are pronounced in the same way. If I know that there is a pun, I must consciously sound out the words, and then I usually notice it. That sometime makes jokes hard to notice, but on the other hand I never, ever have to worry about how to pronounce words when I read, or find unpronounceable words (like for example "wrtxxd") hard to read. This probably comes from my native language, Finnish, which is written 99,9% phonetically. If you see a word, you always can pronounce it correctly (when I was small and really hadn't started on English yet, I read about "spelling bees" in American schools from a magazine. I remember I was very, very baffled. If you hear a word, why should you not be able to spell it?)
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