November 2009

The Penderwicks is a good story, but it will not become a classic like Five Children and It. The plot is too slow and meanders too much. Still, it held the attentions of my girls, ages 11 and 8.

This is actually a pretty good issue. None of the stories can be described as fantasy, although some of them are a stretch to be called science fiction either. I think The Prophet of Flores was my favorite story, for the setting (an alternate world where the Earth is only 5,800 years old and evolution as a theory of origins has been proven false) if not for the story itself.

• Novelette: The Caldera of Good Fortune, by Robert Reed - Crockett lives in the caldera, an ice volcano inhabited by the microscopic collectively-intelligent Luckies; a run-in with an alien named Doom and some hired assassins persuades Crockett to get out while the getting's good.
• Novelette: The Prophet of Flores, by Ted Kosmatka - In an alternate world where radiocarbon dating proves the Earth is 5,800 years old, and Darwin's theory are demonstrably false, the discovery of "hobbit" bones in Flores threatens to upset the idea that Homo sapiens is and always has been the only intelligent, tool-using creature.
• Novelette: What Wolves Know, by Kit Reed - A child raised by wolves is reunited with his human family, where he does what any good adult wolf should: kill his father. The story is less about wolves than about the boy's abusive father and his mother's vain attempt to stop the abuse by getting pregnant.
• Novelette: The Good Ship Lollypop, by R. Garcia Y Robertson - Shirlee escapes from JuVee prison by stealing a cargo ship, but she's kidnapped by the Boogie man.
• My Heart as Dry as Dust, by Kim Zimring - Adijan, the inventor of an AIDS vaccine that saves 90% but kills the other 10%, is hanged for genocide in Ghana after 80 million people die from the vaccine.
• How Music Begins, by James Van Pelt - A junior high band is kidnapped by unknown aliens and performs every Friday evening for a faceless audience, hoping that a perfect performance will earn their freedom.
• Draw, by Pati Nagle - A boy who lives under the sea rescues his father who is sucked into the desalinization plant and will die if his oxygen runs out.
• By Fools Like Me, by Nancy Kress - After a holocaust, the survivors eke out a living, developing a religion that reveres plants and considers books to be sin because they were made from trees.

The August 2007 issue of Asimov's has the worst cover art I've ever seen. I want to retch. The stories are average, except Hormiga Canyon, which is rotten. Teacher's Lounge is meant to be funny, but it's not.

• Novelette: Hormiga Canyon, by Rudy Rucker & Bruce Sterling - Two hippies from Los Angeles follow an ant trail into a crack in the fabric of space, where time travels slower and things change size.
• Novelette: The Bridge, by Kathleen Ann Goonan - A oldfashioned hardboiled detective in a bio-nanotechnology world investigates the alleged murder of two artificial people--who may actually be real people.
• Novelette: The Mists of Time, by Tom Purdom - A time travel expedition to see a British warship capture a slaver turns into a struggle between the financier--whose hero is the British captain--and the film-maker, who thinks the British are no better than the slave traders.
• Dead Horse Point, by Daryl Gregory - Venya gets a call from Julia, her college roommate who is prone to spells of total concentration, where she is unable to snap back into the real world.
• Teacher's Lounge, by Tim McDaniel - ESL teachers discuss the problems they're having with teaching aliens English, and one teacher shares his crackpot theory that the aliens intend to conquer Earth--as soon as they learn enough English to effectively rule humanity.
• Prodigal, by Justin Stanchfield - A daughter and her estranged father meet on a space station orbiting Earth; they are immortal due to treatments given to space pilots, and their sister/daughter is dying of old age back on Earth.
• Thank You, Mr. Whiskers, by Jack Skillingstead - A senile old woman imagines having a cat, imagines having a different life where she grows young again.

Robert Silverberg needs to have his column taken away from him. Asimov's editor gives him free reign to write about anything he wants. This month he decided to mail it in. The entire column is based on some Google searches about Limbo. As in, the Catholic construct of an intermediate area existing in the boundary between heaven and hell. Silverberg offers nothing insightful, and he even admits to googling for information.

Sheila Williams's editorial was boring. None of the stories were much good. This is an abysmal issue. I don't regret letting my subscription lapse.

• Novella: Fountain of Age, by Nancy Kress - Max Feder, a rich old criminal waiting to die, undertakes an adventure to find an old flame--a woman he once knew and loved: Daria, the rich widow whose body's bizarre tumors hold the secret of rejuvenation technology.
• Novelette: The Sky Is Large and the Earth Is Small, by Chris Roberson - Cao Wen, a bureaucrat in Imperial China in the 1400's, interviews a recalcitrant political prisoner who is the only living member of the expedition to America.
• Novelette: The Trial, by Brian Stableford - An experimental drug causes an Alzheimer's patient to regain too much memory, making him unable to block out repressed memories of horrors during the war.
• Bullet Dance, by John Schoffstall - Daughter of a diplomat to Egypt is visited nightly by spirits who teach her the bullet dance, which later saves her life when she dodges an assassin's bullets.
• Roxie, by Robert Reed - A man, his dying dog, and an asteroid on a collision course with Earth.
• Congratulations from the Future!, by Michael Swanwick - A look back at 100 years of Asimov's, written from the future. It's meant to be funny. Laugh.