A lot of space is taken by the classic story (Weyr Search by Anne McCaffrey) which I read not long ago, and by a serial (which I hope to read later). The quality of the stories was pretty average, or even below average, and there were some very stupid details in many of the stories. Is the editing of Analog going downhill?
Moral Biology • novella by Neal Asher
An expedition goes to a planet that is protected by orbital platforms. It is unclear if those platforms are supposed to protect the planet or to stop something from escaping. The expedition is led by AI, and a member of the away team is AI with an android body. Their ship is shot down; they land and study strange creatures that show clear indications of biological engineering, and seem very dangerous. A pretty clumsy and slow-moving story, with vast, vast amounts of exposition and a fair amount of "as you know Bob"-dialogue. The team takes totally stupid risks, and I don’t think that the end of the story (or anything really) worked. **-
A Breath of Air • novelette by Tom Jolly
A group of people has “homestead” rights to an area on Mars. The people who lived in that place had died in an accident. There seems to be a lot of bad luck and strange accidents - perhaps the less-than-friendly-looking neighbors are trying to drive them away? After a bigger accident, which practically destroys both farms, things look bad. Nothing unusual or new, but a smoothly written and entertaining story. ****-
Candida Eve • short story by Dominica Phetteplace
All but one of the members of a Mars expedition have died of a disease that has spread like a pandemic on Earth soon after their launch. She buries the dead members (wtf, why intentionally bring bacteria and even the deadly pandemic virus from Earth to Mars?) and starts to do whatever research she can do alone. The story has a nice feel, it is more relevant now than when it was being written, but there are a few too irritating stupidities in it. If you send self-learning robots on a vital space mission, wouldn’t it make sense to teach them the most basic functions before the mission leaves, so that they wouldn’t have to learn how to hold a screwdriver as the first thing on the mission? But, on the other hand, apparently no testing at all had been done about how drones work, otherwise their malfunction would have been easily prevented by ANY testing. ***½
A Compass in the Dark • short story by Phoebe Barton
A woman has moved to the far side of the moon and returns to bury her father, who believes that souls need a magnetic field to escape. The writing was nice, but the story was too short. And at the beginning, I was very baffled when it was mentioned that the Earth and the Sun are seen as sickles on the sky. I was trying to think about a place where that could happen, but wasn’t able to. I still can't think how that would be possible. ***-
It Was a Tradition When You Turned 16 • short story by Eric Cline
A treatise of electric cars, the disguise of a father giving his daughter a driving lesson while she thinks the whole thing is unnecessary and quaint. Not actually a real story. ***+
Calm Face of the Storm • novelette by Ramona Louise Wheeler
Bret is nearing the end of his adolescence and flies alone. He gets caught up in a storm and is blown away to strange lands. He meets an intriguing female of the other tribe, which was thought to be mystical, and she goes into winter hibernation, as is the way of her people. He flies farther, and finds strange but dangerous creatures. When he eventually returns home, he is not believed. A pretty standard coming-of-age story, but the setting was really strange. At first, I thought it took place on a colony planet, but then it was obvious that the planet was the home planet of flying creatures, who apparently have a spaceport and satellite location system, but don’t really know much of the geography, peoples, and animals of their own world...WTF is going on? Is there a rational explanation for this all, or is the author just lazy? ***
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