Analog July August 2017
Jul. 11th, 2017 01:04 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethFinished reading. That was not worth the time.
Not Far Enough, Martin L Shoemaker
A surviving on Mars adventure.
... I'd forgotten it by the end of the magazine. nothing about it grabbed me.
For All Mankind, C. Stuart Hardwick
This was the one I complained about the other day. Warnings : Major Character Death via suicide mission, Rape as character background, ovarian cancer and hysterectomies because... he's writing women?
Alternate history where Russia and America send one woman each to save the Earth back in the moon race era. It's a one way trip. The story explains at great length how much their lives sucked to lead them here, but hey, they save the planet anyway.
... the depressing part is I think it set out to be feminist?
... the depressing part is all of it.
Belly Up, Maggie Clark
Interesting elements, interesting enough central character, some neat worldbuilding and religious stuff. Criminal gets adjusted so they don't do emotions, on theory they'll stop being criminal. Lets people beat them up cause they can't get worked up about it anyway. Becomes nicer person. Makes a plan to help one of their victims who beats them up. Thinks up cunning plan to save the world. ... yes there was a bit of a leap in there. Um, something something win a bit? As far as I understood, nobody in the story figured out why their opponents did anything or how they did it, so the big fighting parts remain puzzling. But it's more about the not/fighting the pov character does.
I'm... interested but not sold, I think.
But it has characters and stuff to think about.
Galleon, Brian Trent
AI starship goes mad, steals itself, eats other ships, heads off for center of galaxy.
I feel like I've read it before, whatever the window dressing.
Don't know what it's unique selling point was trying to be.
Across the steaming sea, Rob Chilson
rather boring fantasy that attempts mileage from being a far far future after the fall sort of story. Demon AI and souls stolen as uploads.
Creepy but probably knows it, because they both wish for the girl, and get a copy of her each.
Very thin, for its word count. had fun showing us its world, ground through a little family drama, but still.
The Fool's Stone, Aubry Kae Andersen
Stone turns gold into lead. And anything else gets pushed along the periodic table too. But the owner gets sick.
one of those we know what's going on but they lack context things.
It's got lots of interesting bits, but I didn't much want to read people dying of radiation poisoning.
And it doesn't feel like science fiction, just putting it in the past.
The first rule is, you don't eat your friends, Robert R Chase
Monks who make friends with pigs are asked for sanctuary by a scientist into uplifting animals.
Uplift depicted as wrong on the basis we don't understand animal intelligence and culture so surgically altering them to be more human hurts them ways we can't see yet, plus the rather obvious ouchy ones.
Interesting, ish.
Doesn't depict the possibility of making new beings, calls uplifts caricatures.
Doesn't ask the pig's opinion.
... look if you're going to make a moral argument based on pigs having opinions, you've got to go there. Informed consent is the only answer to the problem as posed.
But it did some interesting worldbuild and religious stuff.
Alouette, Gentille Allouette, Andrew Barton
Pilot in orbit saves day by thinking of duct tape, which no engineer on the ground had thought of.
... do you think the author knows about the whole wd40 vs duct tape gift pack and decision tree? because I'm not finding this plausible.
Still, two women in space who don't die, retrieving space junk to put it in a museum. got its good points.
Fat Bubble, Tom Easton
science bit: gut microbiome controls weight, so they figure out how to thin people by changing gut stuff. plausible.
science/economics bit: financially non viable but only the protagonist sees it in time, because gut bacteria are contagious so you can only sell them once. not plausible, too basic.
human bit: his wife objects so hard to thinking he's calling her fat that she signs up to this medical trial to lose weight.
... *sigh*
Perspective, Kyle Kirkland
This one was a bit interesting. Brain stimulator, used right keeps you happy and relaxed, used wrong makes brain damage. Protagonist has to figure out precisely what damage the President has and why it makes him unfit for office.
Makes it public against her own obvious commercial interests, but she's so old it's not going to matter long to her anyway... and she's been using the stimulator so long she's her own best advertisement, so it might not matter commercially anyway.
science hero changes politics, without once mentioning which politics, outside of the stuff the brain damage effects.
But that makes it impossible for him to understand certain sorts of permanent consequences as being real, which can be read as sideways political comment indeed.
Clarity of Signal, Holly Schofield
Woman having trouble in marriage because keeps doing her career when husband wants to settle down in nicer accommodation now the kid is grown.
... I don't understand why he doesn't just get it while she's at work. He says henwon't without her seeing it, not that he can't, and it can't be because her choice is so important to him because he chooses a different place for the both of them by the end. I just... don't get it. She's doing her research job, she says there'll be more places to look at later, why is him making a decision other than the one they'd agreed on going to make him a 'dear sweet' guy?
SG part is she has to turn off her communication implants to go study beings she suspects of having telepathy. But they don't, they just have "low-grade phatic communication, with no more depth than two people exchanging the old text emoticons" and the general feel good factor it induces keeps them from achieving true intelligence.
On her way back to the ship she leaves her communication implants off to get in touch with herself.
... I suspect this story of disliking social media and the trend towards connection.
But the story is about how communication is hard but we have to keep trying. So that's nice.
I just... do not grok its baseline assumptions.
Pitch, Bruce McAllister & Patrick Smith
Framing it as a movie pitch made a probably joke out of this two page plot bunny.
I don't know if the funny/sting in this is meant to be writing SF while making it really about family, or writing a movie pitch based on 'real' terrorism. Or, given the scale of things that could be world ending pretty easily, writing a movie pitch in an apocalypse.
It did not amuse.
Phuquiang: A history, Uncle River
Don't know what this was trying to do.
Blinking Noon and Midnight, Tim McDaniel
Old dude who used to be the young dude that could figure out how to set the VCR discovers world's worst and least plausible user interface, and learns he is now the old dude who ends up with the clock blinking.
But in a way that leaves him locked in a house unable to call for help, because somehow phones are unportable again.
It's a 'old is unfunny from this side' sort of thing that I could sympathise with if it made more sense.
Teamwork, Eve Warren
Mars second generation reinvent extreme sports. First gen are surprised yet reasonable about it.
Its assumptions surprised me, like wouldn't first gen colonists be extreme sports people anyway? and it says the whole second generation are raised to be military mathematician/engineers because there's too much work to do to try any other way. And... I don't think people work that way. I don't think *tech* works that way, even now. The pace of change is too rapid, you're going to get ai models and self replicating tech with minimal need for human intervention. You'd need humans who liked tricky innovative problems, sure, but ... You need to get humans to love their world and try to raise it up right, rather than buggering off for Earth en masse, or heading into deeper space where it's all tech all the time. You can't afford not to have the artists, or the cultural drift will derail the whole project by the third generation.
It's a very short story for me to find so much to disagree with in it.
Also I'm sure the sort of gliding the first gen found so surprising was something I'd read in a golden age short... *googles plot* "The Menace from Earth", Heinlein, first published in 1957.
Eh, maybe it's riffing on how olders would feel about that getting started.
Often and Silently We Come, Ron Collins
... not the joke it would be in a fanfic title.
Alien abduction from the alien's side. alien religious orthodoxy involves cutting up other species to look for god. 'They didn't know about death' was a punchline with some pathos several decades ago, though to be fair 'because they're something like computer programs with backups' is a twist.
most of story is older alien interacting with annoying student, ending is breaking free of academic study (by vivisection) to go help people instead.
A Little Spooky Action, Howard V Hendrix
same writer i was very annoyed by last issue.
two page funny about fake medium real channeling Einstein, because spooky action at a distance something something laugh.
Medium advertises as "Transgender Transgressor of the Boundaries of Space and Time"
that they're trans seems random until they keep going on about being a real fake, and then you realise he's using it as a signifier of fake, and then ugh.
I don't know what I'm looking for in a story, but it do make me grumpy to not find it.
Not Far Enough, Martin L Shoemaker
A surviving on Mars adventure.
... I'd forgotten it by the end of the magazine. nothing about it grabbed me.
For All Mankind, C. Stuart Hardwick
This was the one I complained about the other day. Warnings : Major Character Death via suicide mission, Rape as character background, ovarian cancer and hysterectomies because... he's writing women?
Alternate history where Russia and America send one woman each to save the Earth back in the moon race era. It's a one way trip. The story explains at great length how much their lives sucked to lead them here, but hey, they save the planet anyway.
... the depressing part is I think it set out to be feminist?
... the depressing part is all of it.
Belly Up, Maggie Clark
Interesting elements, interesting enough central character, some neat worldbuilding and religious stuff. Criminal gets adjusted so they don't do emotions, on theory they'll stop being criminal. Lets people beat them up cause they can't get worked up about it anyway. Becomes nicer person. Makes a plan to help one of their victims who beats them up. Thinks up cunning plan to save the world. ... yes there was a bit of a leap in there. Um, something something win a bit? As far as I understood, nobody in the story figured out why their opponents did anything or how they did it, so the big fighting parts remain puzzling. But it's more about the not/fighting the pov character does.
I'm... interested but not sold, I think.
But it has characters and stuff to think about.
Galleon, Brian Trent
AI starship goes mad, steals itself, eats other ships, heads off for center of galaxy.
I feel like I've read it before, whatever the window dressing.
Don't know what it's unique selling point was trying to be.
Across the steaming sea, Rob Chilson
rather boring fantasy that attempts mileage from being a far far future after the fall sort of story. Demon AI and souls stolen as uploads.
Creepy but probably knows it, because they both wish for the girl, and get a copy of her each.
Very thin, for its word count. had fun showing us its world, ground through a little family drama, but still.
The Fool's Stone, Aubry Kae Andersen
Stone turns gold into lead. And anything else gets pushed along the periodic table too. But the owner gets sick.
one of those we know what's going on but they lack context things.
It's got lots of interesting bits, but I didn't much want to read people dying of radiation poisoning.
And it doesn't feel like science fiction, just putting it in the past.
The first rule is, you don't eat your friends, Robert R Chase
Monks who make friends with pigs are asked for sanctuary by a scientist into uplifting animals.
Uplift depicted as wrong on the basis we don't understand animal intelligence and culture so surgically altering them to be more human hurts them ways we can't see yet, plus the rather obvious ouchy ones.
Interesting, ish.
Doesn't depict the possibility of making new beings, calls uplifts caricatures.
Doesn't ask the pig's opinion.
... look if you're going to make a moral argument based on pigs having opinions, you've got to go there. Informed consent is the only answer to the problem as posed.
But it did some interesting worldbuild and religious stuff.
Alouette, Gentille Allouette, Andrew Barton
Pilot in orbit saves day by thinking of duct tape, which no engineer on the ground had thought of.
... do you think the author knows about the whole wd40 vs duct tape gift pack and decision tree? because I'm not finding this plausible.
Still, two women in space who don't die, retrieving space junk to put it in a museum. got its good points.
Fat Bubble, Tom Easton
science bit: gut microbiome controls weight, so they figure out how to thin people by changing gut stuff. plausible.
science/economics bit: financially non viable but only the protagonist sees it in time, because gut bacteria are contagious so you can only sell them once. not plausible, too basic.
human bit: his wife objects so hard to thinking he's calling her fat that she signs up to this medical trial to lose weight.
... *sigh*
Perspective, Kyle Kirkland
This one was a bit interesting. Brain stimulator, used right keeps you happy and relaxed, used wrong makes brain damage. Protagonist has to figure out precisely what damage the President has and why it makes him unfit for office.
Makes it public against her own obvious commercial interests, but she's so old it's not going to matter long to her anyway... and she's been using the stimulator so long she's her own best advertisement, so it might not matter commercially anyway.
science hero changes politics, without once mentioning which politics, outside of the stuff the brain damage effects.
But that makes it impossible for him to understand certain sorts of permanent consequences as being real, which can be read as sideways political comment indeed.
Clarity of Signal, Holly Schofield
Woman having trouble in marriage because keeps doing her career when husband wants to settle down in nicer accommodation now the kid is grown.
... I don't understand why he doesn't just get it while she's at work. He says henwon't without her seeing it, not that he can't, and it can't be because her choice is so important to him because he chooses a different place for the both of them by the end. I just... don't get it. She's doing her research job, she says there'll be more places to look at later, why is him making a decision other than the one they'd agreed on going to make him a 'dear sweet' guy?
SG part is she has to turn off her communication implants to go study beings she suspects of having telepathy. But they don't, they just have "low-grade phatic communication, with no more depth than two people exchanging the old text emoticons" and the general feel good factor it induces keeps them from achieving true intelligence.
On her way back to the ship she leaves her communication implants off to get in touch with herself.
... I suspect this story of disliking social media and the trend towards connection.
But the story is about how communication is hard but we have to keep trying. So that's nice.
I just... do not grok its baseline assumptions.
Pitch, Bruce McAllister & Patrick Smith
Framing it as a movie pitch made a probably joke out of this two page plot bunny.
I don't know if the funny/sting in this is meant to be writing SF while making it really about family, or writing a movie pitch based on 'real' terrorism. Or, given the scale of things that could be world ending pretty easily, writing a movie pitch in an apocalypse.
It did not amuse.
Phuquiang: A history, Uncle River
Don't know what this was trying to do.
Blinking Noon and Midnight, Tim McDaniel
Old dude who used to be the young dude that could figure out how to set the VCR discovers world's worst and least plausible user interface, and learns he is now the old dude who ends up with the clock blinking.
But in a way that leaves him locked in a house unable to call for help, because somehow phones are unportable again.
It's a 'old is unfunny from this side' sort of thing that I could sympathise with if it made more sense.
Teamwork, Eve Warren
Mars second generation reinvent extreme sports. First gen are surprised yet reasonable about it.
Its assumptions surprised me, like wouldn't first gen colonists be extreme sports people anyway? and it says the whole second generation are raised to be military mathematician/engineers because there's too much work to do to try any other way. And... I don't think people work that way. I don't think *tech* works that way, even now. The pace of change is too rapid, you're going to get ai models and self replicating tech with minimal need for human intervention. You'd need humans who liked tricky innovative problems, sure, but ... You need to get humans to love their world and try to raise it up right, rather than buggering off for Earth en masse, or heading into deeper space where it's all tech all the time. You can't afford not to have the artists, or the cultural drift will derail the whole project by the third generation.
It's a very short story for me to find so much to disagree with in it.
Also I'm sure the sort of gliding the first gen found so surprising was something I'd read in a golden age short... *googles plot* "The Menace from Earth", Heinlein, first published in 1957.
Eh, maybe it's riffing on how olders would feel about that getting started.
Often and Silently We Come, Ron Collins
... not the joke it would be in a fanfic title.
Alien abduction from the alien's side. alien religious orthodoxy involves cutting up other species to look for god. 'They didn't know about death' was a punchline with some pathos several decades ago, though to be fair 'because they're something like computer programs with backups' is a twist.
most of story is older alien interacting with annoying student, ending is breaking free of academic study (by vivisection) to go help people instead.
A Little Spooky Action, Howard V Hendrix
same writer i was very annoyed by last issue.
two page funny about fake medium real channeling Einstein, because spooky action at a distance something something laugh.
Medium advertises as "Transgender Transgressor of the Boundaries of Space and Time"
that they're trans seems random until they keep going on about being a real fake, and then you realise he's using it as a signifier of fake, and then ugh.
I don't know what I'm looking for in a story, but it do make me grumpy to not find it.