A pretty
average issue.
Sticks and
Stones • novelette by Tom Jolly
A spaceship has been on an exploratory mission and has
found an intelligent bacteria colony from another planet that is on board. They
have been forbidden to ever return to Earth, and the crew is bitter about that.
There is a promise of a world with an oxygen atmosphere and they go there. They
find a bizarre world with a lot of promise, have some adventures, encounter
some hostile creatures and possible invaders, and eventually, everything goes
well. A very naive story where both plot and writing are straight from the 50s.
I am not sure if this should have been taken as a parody - but it was too near
to the original style to mock it well enough. There were some problems with
logic, also. If you always have a mess with tomatoes when you transit from 1 g
to zero-g, shouldn’t you pick up the ripe fruits beforehand? If they are
carrying an alien organism considered so dangerous that they can never return
to Earth, how can they study other inhabited worlds for the same reason
(wouldn’t that go without saying)? ***
Flyboys •
novella by Stanley Schmidt
A young boy of a species where males are flyers and
females aren’t, passes his initiation to adulthood. There are humans on the
planet, also. There has been a battle between the humans and flyers, but after
a peace treaty, things seem to have settled down. But there are some flyers who
want humans out and they kidnap the youngster and try to persuade him to help
them. A fairly nice story with average writing and a fair amount “as you know,
Bob” style of exposition. The aliens behave very human-like, up to judicial
customs. ***½
The Mad
Cabbage • short story by Céline Malgen
A young scientist is studying fermented red cabbage as
she notices that its color is off: the solution is far too acidic for what it
is supposed to be. Lactic acid bacteria aren’t supposed to survive in such
conditions - what is going on? A very simple story with very little actual
plot. ***-
Aboard the
Mithridates • short story by Sean Vivier
A spaceship is traveling to a planet with high sulfur
content in the air. The air in the ship is slowly being adjusted to that
content so that the passengers evolve to it. There is some gene therapy but
strangely it is used after the air change to help current passengers (with
autosomal changes?). One boy struggles with adjusting. I wonder why he isn’t on
the list for gene therapy? The author seems to have an extremely strange
Lamarckian view of evolution, and a bad understanding of gene therapy. Does
Analog really have no editor who has any grasp of science at all? A pretty bad story. **-
On the
Changing Roles of Dockworkers • short story by Marie Vibbert
A dock worker tries to find out why a robot doesn’t
work like it supposed to. It has become self-aware. But could it be talked
around to continue working? A short simple OK story. **½
Mars, the
Dumping Ground of the Solar System • short story by Andrew Kozma
Mars is a slum where the most inept people, criminals,
and unneeded scum live. All planets (including Jupiter, Venus, and Mercury)
have been terraformed and the genetically modified workers of that process live
in apparent slum-like conditions on Mars. A girl has gone missing and almost no
one cares. The story apparently tries to achieve some sort of a racial point,
but manages to be clumsy and extremely stupid, and the “science” part of the
story, which is implied, would have been ridiculous even in a story written at
end of the 40s. Terraforming Jupiter and Venus is easier than using Mars for a
living? Transporting the works to Mars, when the planet they have designed it
for would at least have the right gravity? **
Retention •
short story by Alec Nevala-Lee
Someone is trying to cancel his cable service/security
system and is talking to a very insistent bot, which won’t allow cancellation.
It talks and talks and eventually it turns out both are bots that have been
left behind by disappeared humans. ***½
Keeping the
Peace • short story by Elisabeth R. Adams
Lizard like aliens want to conquer habited worlds.
They have sent ships to nearby solar systems with little success, but then the
ship from Earth arrived offering information of a ripe catch to be won. But the
lizard who is responsible for the solar conquest is having second thoughts. Not
bad, takes a while to get into as there was little backstory, but this time
that approach worked pretty well. ***½
Ennui • short story by Filip
Wiltgren
The AI of a generation spaceship is worried, as its
immortal passengers start to give up on life without any reason it can
understand or correct. There are also similar problems at the other human
settlements. The AI tries to find a solution, but eventually an alternative
solution by the AI is needed. A pretty good and even moving story. ****
The
Offending Eye • novelette by Robert R. Chase
Continues an earlier story. There are three factions
of humans: Stability (authoritarian and conservative faction), Eternals (aiming
to prolong human life span at almost any cost), and TransHumans (who aim for
uploading human consciousness to computers). A political officer (who keeps
watch on too much free thinking and anything which might hint on a machine AI),
has returned from an exploration trip where there was a find which might be a
threat to all factions of humans. Also, the computer on that ship has
apparently achieved self-awareness, and that demands careful study and
eventually even visiting the enemy camp, Eternals. Clearly a better story than
the first part. There was still a bit too much obvious exposition at places,
but there were fewer problems with logic. Even the writing felt better than
before. ****-