July 2010

I really enjoyed the lunacy of Nothin' But Blue Skies. Would I swear allegiance to a galactic empire in order to buy a flying car? Maybe. The audacity and seriousness of the demand intrigues me.

I also liked When We Were Fab, a story about how nanofabrication technology changes the world. With scarcity a thing of the past, how do stores compete? Not on price, but on exclusivity. Each store jealously guards its must-have designer products. That threatens to drive our protagonist, a convenience store owner, out of business. Then he discovers his niche: he can scan and reproduce all the old, out-of-copyright pre-nanotechnology products, and sell them to old-timers who are pining for the good old days.

Unfortunately, it doesn't ring true. With nanofabrication technology, there's no reason why any product, no matter how trivial, would ever be discontinued. It wouldn't take a convenience store owner to realize that there is a market for simple non-electric plastic toothbrushes. No, Walmart would have this market sewn up before the smaller shop owners knew what hit them.

• Novella: Swords and Saddles, by John G. Hemry - In 1870 a lightning storm transports Captain Ulysses Benton and the US 5th Cavalry regiment to an alternate earth where a land bridge changed the course of history: the American continent is populated by Europeans living in medieval-style castles.
• Novelette: Snowflake Kisses, by Holly Hight & Richard A. Lovett - A young professor studying the neurochemical basis for true love concocts a love potion, and agonizes about whether to take it herself so she can have the kind of love she's always craved. Is it still love even if she knows the feelings come from a bottle?
• Novelette: The Robots' Girl, by Brenda Cooper - New neighbors notice that the girl next door is being raised by the household robots, who permit her to have no contact with other humans.
• Short story: A Sound Basis For Misunderstanding, by Carl Frederick - A cultural liaison sent to negotiate a lutetium deal averts tragedy when his impromptu bassoon jam session wins him a recording contract to produce a kids' album for the aliens.
• Short story: Nothin' But Blue Skies, by Stephen L. Burns - A used car salesman is surprised when an alien walks in and wants to trade flying cars for used SUVs--with one condition: buyers of the flying cars must swear allegiance to the Koomban Empire.
• Short story: When We Were Fab, by Jerry Oltion - Even with an expensive new nanofabrication unit, the owner of a convenience shop can't compete with Walmart or Target and their exclusive products--until he finds a niche in reproducing old, out-of-copyright products.
• Short story: The Planet Hunters, by S. L. Nickerson - When a grad student looking for hot Jupiters around other stars stumbles upon five solar systems with a planet configuration identical to ours, it defies logic until it becomes apparent that the space telescope is seeing into the past--and the future.
• Science Fact: What's In A Kiss? The Wild, Wonderful World Of Philematology, by Richard A. Lovett - All about kissing, although I wonder why Lovett felt the need to make the title big and pretentious by using a fanciful term like philematology.

I really enjoyed Narrow World, and the fact article about isotopes. This might be my favorite science fact article I've ever read in Analog. The other stories are OK but unremarkable, except Encounter in a Yellow Wood which is nothing but an infodump without any attempt at a story.

• Novella: Of One Mind, by Shane Tourtellotte - Trapped and forced to work on a government mind-readjustment project, Lucinda Peale tries to sabotage the project from the inside.
• Novelette: The Hub of the Matter, by Christopher L. Bennett - A plucky young human decides that he will be the one to discover how the Hub works--but not everybody wants him to succeed.
• Novelette: Narrow World, by Carl Frederick - A college student studying high median ecology gets stranded in the median of superhighway 81X, where he comes face to face with strangely evolved dwarf cats and dwarf rats.
• Short story: Encounter in a Yellow Wood, by Bud Sparhawk - A man argues with his ex girlfriend about cutting down an engineered grove of trees that has been processing a 20th century landfill.
• Short story: Locked In, by Brad Aiken - A corporate tycoon suffers a stroke and loses most of his mobility; his computer-aided voicebox becomes a liability when somebody hacks into it at a board meeting.
• Short story: Dr. Skenner.s Special Animals, by David A. Simons - A kindly vet treats genetically engineered animals (including a dragon) instead of turning them in to be put down like the law requires.
• Short-short: Ten Thousand Monkeys, by Tocho Ligon - Tom Ligon's cat writes a humorous short about the infinite monkeys conjecture.
• Science Fact: Isotopy, by Stephen L. Gillett, Ph.D. - Isotopes of chemical elements are not quite chemically identical, which means that tracking the various ratios of isotopes can help us do things like distinguish fresh rainwater (low H-2 content) from lake water (higher H-2, because it's heavier and thus evaporates slower, leaving more heavy water behind.)

I actually didn't like most of this issue--a fact I didn't realize until I was looking back at it after having finished it.

• Novella: Neptune's Treasure, by Richard A. Lovett - Floyd and Brittney--his suit AI--find a crashed alien spaceship on Triton.
• Novella: Thus Spake the Aliens, by H. G. Stratmann - Katerina and Martin run the gauntlet of alien artifacts on terraformed Mars, unsure what sort of test they must pass to prove humanity's worth before the aliens will save Earth from imminent destruction.
• Novella: The Possession of Paavo Deshin, by Kristine Kathryn Rusch - Seven-year-old Paavo has seen the Ghosts all his life; now the Ghosts show up in the flesh and claim to be his real parents, who had been Disappeared for six and a half years.
• Novelette: Simple Gifts, by Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff - Professor Llewellyn tries to prevent a mining company from exploiting a planet's native intelligent species, but the native villagers turn the tables and exploit the company.
• Short story: Shame, by Mike Resnick & Lezli Robyn - Townsfolk lynch a local alien who they think turned one of their own over to the evil Skeletons.
• Short story: On Rickety Thistlewaite, by Michael F. Flynn - Stupid, unintelligible story about an emperor who tries to escape his tiresome duty.
• Short story: Rejiggering the Thingamajig, by Eric James Stone - Bokeerk, a Tyrannosaurus Sapiens, is the only one who can fix the transmat system that has ceased working and stranded the whole galaxy of travelers.
• Short story: A War of Stars, by David L. Clements - A meatspace copy of a human fighter pilot is about to deliver the deathblow to their bitter rivals, when he discovers that it may be humanity that is the aggressor in this war.
• Science Fact: Twins: Never Identical, by Victor Raggio, MD - Monozygotic twins are not genetically identical because 1) mutations, 2) X-pair inactivation, and 3) different mitochondrial DNA.
• Science Fact: Take Off Your Hat: You're In the Presence of Culture, by Stephen R. Balzac - What is culture and how does it work?
• Special Feature: Making Unreality Ring True: Writer's Tricks For Bringing Stories To Life, by Richard A. Lovett - Lovett shares a few tricks about how to write convincingly.
• Special Feature: Across my Life, by Ben Bova - Ben Bova recounts his experience with Analog: from reader, to writer, to editor, then back to writer again and then reader.

• Serial (2 of 2): To Climb a Flat Mountain, by G. David Nordley - The castaways on Cubeworld climb to another face of the world, locate a shuttle from their wrecked spaceship, and eventually contact the builders of Cubeworld.
• Novelette: Formidable Caress, by Stephen Baxter - On old Earth where time is stratified, one man moved down to the slow lands so he can live long enough to see the Formidable Caress--the collision between the Milky Way and another galaxy.
• Novelette: Wilderness Were Paradise Enow, by H. G. Stratmann - Two very stupid humans land on Mars, where they meet aliens who give them superpowers. It's all a test to see if mankind is fit to continue living, and they fail the test because the women tricks the man and doesn't let him attempt to solve the world's problems.
• Short story: The Jolly Old Boyfriend, by Jerry Oltion - An old boyfriend shows up on Christmas Eve, which wouldn't be unusual except that 1) he's dead, 2) he's dressed as Santa Claus, and 3) he's slightly transparent.
• Short story: The Universe Beneath Our Feet, by Carl Frederick - Buoyant aliens live on the underside of the ice, and religious disagreements about what lies 'below' the ice threaten to break the community apart.
• Short-short: A Flash Of Lightning, by Robert Scherrer - A teacher explains to his class that when the friction of the timeline causes large changes to be progressively dampened until they eventually result in negligible changes, this is called the Butterfly Effect.
• Science Fact: Plate Tectonics, Goldilocks, And The Late Heavy Bombardment: Why Earth Isn't Mars Or Venus, by Richard A. Lovett - Plate tectonics help keep Earth's atmosphere regulated so it doesn't get too hot or too cold.

• Elvis Died for Your Sins: Elvis Presley is a demigod and works at a used bookstore.
• Like Dreams of Waking: A wounded Confederate soldier slips through space-time to see the possible outcome of a Southern victory, and realizes that the only way to save democracy on the American continent is for the south to lose the war.
• Ariadne's Skein: Encounter with the Minotaur.
• Thirst: Vampires in ancient Rome.
• Dear John: Cloned Marilyn Monroe streetwalker meets cloned Jack Kennedy.
• Trafalgar Square: Alternate world where China is a bastion of freedom and democracy, and Britain and Western Europe are under the grip of communism.
• The Green Bay Tree: Susannah Hall is upset that her father, William Shakespeare, condones her sister's amoral lifestyle.
• Another George: The last drake realizes that his mate is the last female dragon on Earth, and decides that humanity would be better off without dragonkind.
• Songs: Phil travels back to the dingy motel room where he deserted his college lover, Nick, and finds Nick's songs crooning through the antique radio.
• Thy Vain Worlds: Kratrina Cryssa is held in the rest home, to protect her from a parasitic alien shapeshifter that preys upon her vulnerability and her emotional response to feed its young.
• Crawling Between Heaven and Earth: William Shakespeare lets go of his younger brother Edmund, who is caught in the shadow of Will's accomplishments and reputation.

I surprised myself by enjoying Joan even though it's a time travel story. The other stories are good too. An all-around excellent issue.

• Serial (1 of 2): To Climb a Flat Mountain, by G. David Nordley - Jacques Song awakes from cold sleep to find that he and his fellow crew members have crashlanded on a square, flat world.
• Novelette: Amabit Sapiens, by Craig DeLancey - Lyta is part of a conspiracy to end the petroleum economy by spiking the world's oil wells with petroleum-eating bacteria.
• Novelette: Joan, by John G. Hemry - Kate travels back in time and saves Joan of Arc from being burned at the stake as a heretic.
• Short story: Foreign Exchange, by Jerry Oltion - Disaster strikes a Mars mission when the uncrewed return vehicle returns early--with an alien passenger.
• Short story: Thanksgiving Day, by Jay Werkheiser - Kev has to figure out why the alien plants are poisonous before the colony's food reserves run out.
• Science Fact: Rock! Bye, Bye, Baby, by Edward M. Lerner - How likely is an earth-killing asteroid strike, and what can we do to prevent it?