Analog June 2010

June's issue contained 3 Novelettes and 4 Short Stories, along with the various usual features. This was a good issue, run out and grab a copy!

"The Anunnaki Legacy", by Bond Elam was the lead and cover story this time. Suppose we discover that humanity was the result of genetic manipulation by an "ancient race", and suppose that ancient race was long gone leaving behind only tantalizing hints at their existance, much less their technology, culture...or very nature? That's the Anunnaki and we are their legacy...maybe. In this story, humans were being human, aliens were being alien, puzzles needed solving and a sense of wonder was everywhere you looked. Yep, this novelette was good enough to carry the entire issue and good enough for you to run out and grab a copy all by itself.

"Space Aliens Taught My Dog to Knit!", by Jerry Oltion & Elton Elliott kept me laughing. I guessed the ending early, but that didn't matter because it was so much fun for the authors to get me there. Suppose the "crazies" are right and it really is all a great big conspiracy? Even so, with bumbling, stumbling, and all too humans running this great big conspiracy you know that sooner or later the National Inquirer is going to break the story...right? Read and enjoy!

"Heist", by Tracy Canfield was a detection/puzzle story with King Solomon thrown in. Take nanotechlogy and 3D fabbers and now just what makes a rarity a rarity? And how do you tell the original from the replacant when there is no difference, except in the mind of the owner?

"At Last the Sun", by Richard Foss wasn't about the BP spill, but it came out right in the middle of that disaster and how could I not make the connection? Another First Contact story inside an environmental tale inside a slice of Gulf Coastal life. I live here, the BP disaster is my people's disaster. This story isn't about spilling oil, but it is about the ruination of a people's culture...maybe two people's culture...

"Cargo", by Michael F. Flynn asks the question, "What makes a Dark Age?" Flynn is one of the authors you go to for "alternate past" fiction, but here he gives us an alternate future story. This is truly an idea story with a very slim...but very attractively shaped...wrapper of plot around it.

Analog July/August 2010

Every year Analog combines their July and August issues into one big "double issue." They do the same with their January and February issues. I'm sure they do it to save on costs...paper, mailing, etc...and that's okay with me. With more pages to fill, we typically get some longer form stories and I like longer form stories! This issue had 3 Novellas, 4 Novelettes and 3 Short Stories...as well as the typical features (Editorial, Science Fact, Alternate View, Reference Library, etc.). Following are comments on a few of the stories/articles therein.

"Doctor Alien's Five Empty Boxes", by Rajnar Vajna was the lead and cover story. Doctor Alien is the "psychologist to the stars"...stars as in aliens, not as in movie...and here he is dealing with a number of interesting cases. Some of the cases aren't at all what they seem. Humor, action and puzzle solving! What's not to like? Read this!

The science fact article this month, "Artificial Volcanoes: Can we cool the Earth by Imitating Mt. Pinatubo?", by Richard A. Lovell. I've read about this before, didn't like the idea then, don't like it now. Let's pump the upper atmosphere full of particulates, reducing the Earth's insolation, and cooling us all down! Yeah, let's do that...:(...not! Do read the article, do some study, and decide for yourself.

"The Long Way Around", by Carl Frederick is a nice little story set on the moon with a nice little puzzle solving ending. Interesting read, but certainly lightweight...oh, about 1/6th Earth gravity light.

"Fly Me to the Moon", by Marianne J. Dyson almost made me cry. Alzheimer's has hit my family hard. As good as this story was, and it was very good, any story like this was bound to make me very sad. This was an upbeat story wrapped around a very, very, downbeat disease. To be clear, it is worth reading.

"Bug Trap", by Stephen L. Burns was fine, but overshadowed by other stories in this issue. Read it if you have a few hour to waste.

"The Android Who Became a Human Who Became an Android", by Scott William Carter was a good read. Underlying a "detective story" was an interesting little idea about what is it to be a human. As it turns out the Android was much more human than one of the humans and why the android became a human and then became an android again was all human.

"Project Hades", by Stephen Baxter was great! As good as Dr. Alien was, this was better, and, IMO, deserved to be the lead story. If I had been the editor I'd have given the cover to the good doctor, but give Stephen Baxter's "What if this had happened?" top billing. Atomic bombs, first contact with creatures from inner space, shoot outs between US and British forces, heroes and villians left and right, and puzzles to solve...what more could you ask!

Lots of juicy stuff in this issue. Go find it!

Analog May 2010

The May 2010 issue of Analog contained 4 novelettes and 3 short stories and a poem, along with the usual Science Fact, Probability Zero, Editorial, Alternate View and other standard articles. Like most Analog's I've read in recent years it was a mixed bag of stories ranging from real "page turners"...pun intended...to page sloggers. Here is what I thought about some of the stories and articles.

"Page Turner", by Rajnar Vajra, was the lead novelette this month's lead story...and a real page turner it was, too! An earthquake traps a young woman under a building and the story is the tale she tells herself while she waits for rescue...or to die. In the story she calls herself Page Turner, and lets the reader know that some of what she relates is true and some is false and challenges the reader to figure out which is which. A SF plot device saves her in the end...a plot device that the reader could have put into the false category, but wasn't. Highly recommended!

The science fact article in this issue as titled "Robots Don't Leave Scars: What's new in Medical Robotics?" and, frankly, it didn't interest me very much.

"Hanging by a Thread", by Lee Goodloe, was the story that got the cover this month. The thread was a "elevator to space" connected to a floating research station on a exotic water world. Exotic in the sense of insidious acid oceans, orca sized, barracuda viscous, creatures, and massive hurricanes. Mix in emotional storms spawned by love and jealousy and physical threats and you have an interesting mix. Well worth the time to read.

"Fishing Hole", by Rick Cook was a nice little short story of no real consequence. I'd call it a bon bon...a trifle...to munch on between better stories.

I didn't like "Teaching a Pig to Sing", by David D. Levine or "The Day the Music Died", by H. G. Stratmann. It isn't that they weren't well written, they just didn't appeal to me. YMMV. "A Talent for Vanessa", I'll just skip...take that for what's it's worth.

I did like "Farallon Woman", by Walter L. Kleine...a very strange "first contact" story. I think it is the best story in the issue, not the most exciting, not the most entertaining, but still the best.

The War Against the Rull

Way back in 1964 I started reading a book called The War Against the Rull by A.E. Van Vogt. I had gotten about a third of the way through when it was stolen...leaving possessions outside while going through the lunch room line in school, I learned, was a good way to lose them. It was a good 20 years before I got my hands on another copy and finished the book. The image to the right is what the first book looked like (published in 1962) and the one on the lower left is the one I finally finished many years later. A few weeks ago I was browsing on Amazon and came across a new(er) edition of War Against the Rull with a new story added...and frankly I remembered the book being stolen, but had forgotten that I finally did finish it, and it was only a penny...so I bought it. The cover of that book is on the lower right.

I read the "new" short story at the end of the book first, as it was set before the rest of the story and then jumped right into the saga from the beginning! Yes, I enjoyed it. Yes, it was nostalgic. Yes, I remembered reading it twenty years ago before I'd gotten very far in to it, but I didn't remember the details and re-reading this book was like sitting down with an old friend telling and listening to favorite old tales. I don't begrudge the time...or the penny plus shipping...I spent on The War Against the Rull.

I won't say much about the book's plot, as someone might want to read it, but surfice it to say it is about a war against a specie called the Rull, and the Rull are the implacable foes of mankind and all of our allies. The book is really a collection of short stories (and novelettes) that have been put together with a little stitching to make them hang together, so it is more a series of vignettes telling stories about the protagonist, Trevor Jamison, his family and his associates. One "story" focuses almost entirely on Jamison's young son, Diddy, and his "night out" where he "tries to find the source of the noise". The young boy is 9 years old and, like all other young boys (but not girls it seems), spends a full night out in The City as sort of a rite of passage. The subject matter being what it is he, of course, runs a foul of a Rull plot and has to thwart it...by gunning down 100 plus other young boys...disguised Rull of course, who are ransacking the Research Offices. The degree of discipline and ruthlessness, trained into the youth of this culture through conditioning is frightening. I, frankly, have trouble seeing the humans as "the good guys." My guys, better than the other side's guys, certainly, but not the good guys.

To today's sensibilities there are some problems with The War Against the Rull. First, the human's tactics are just about as despicable as the Rull. Rull exterminate all intelligent opposition...that's evil no doubt...but Humans subvert and "brainwash" any intelligent opposition they run into until they "willingly" become allies...is that much better? Second, this level of training, not education, but pure brainwashed conditioning, is something that humanity has done to itself. We see the effects on the elite and how they live, but I do wonder at how the mass of humanity live in this, oh so very, controlled society. Thirdly, these stories were clearly written before any thought was giving to equality of the sexes. Women are emotional, weepy, creatures who either get in the way of their stoic men-fold, need to be saved in any crisis, or are willing prostitutes for their "man" who uses them to get what he wants and eventually discarded. Nope, not one capable woman in the book! Well, given that these stories were written in the 1940's and 50's for the most part I can't blame Van Vogt much for his chauvinism, it was almost par for the course in those days. It does grate today, though, and I'm an old male chauvinist pig, these portrayals would probably really piss off a feminist.

During the 40's and 50's Van Vogt was one of the leading lights of Science Fiction, right up there with Asimov and Heinlein. Slan and The Voyage of the Beagle, among other books were...and still are...excellent reads. If you like SF, you need to be familiar with Van Vogt, old fashioned, chauvinistic, he may be to today's thinking, but his work is still an important part of the continuum of Science Fiction.

So, do I recommend this book? Yep, I certainly do! I think the fun of the stories in The War Against the Rull outweigh all of its perceived faults. If you haven't had the pleasure of reading this book, these stories, and are willing to put up with some "old fashioned" ideas, you should take the time to seek it out and give it a read. I think you'll enjoy...and then you can move on to read some of the other great Science Fiction that A. E. Van Vogt wrote!