beccaelizabeth (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
beccaelizabeth) wrote2017-11-12 01:12 pm
beccaelizabeth) wrote2017-11-12 01:12 pm
Entry tags:
Analog September/October 2017
Lately it looks like I havent been posting as much. I did sleep through a couple of days, but much more often I just was too anxious so I made things private instead of attempting interaction. Not hardly helpful. So I'll have another go at revewing things instead.
been a bit since I read it but I disnt write about it, so
Analog for september/october reviewed under the cut
NOVELLA
"Heaven's Covenant" - Bud Sparhawk
religion, politics, a bad marriage, and slavery
the sf setting made their assertions the particular humans werent really human a thing you had to allow brain space, but then the details didnt support it, you see it's just the same old same old
so then its just slavery told by the slave owners
and... its difficult to give a damn about her marriage problems when they're all so very clearly in the wrong.
but that's the story.
If we bring this level of old garbage to space colonisation
we wouldnt deserve the stars.
NOVELLETTE
"My Fifth and Most Exotic Voyage" - Edward M. Lerner
The cover story. Gullivers time travels. I didnt find it very amusing, possibly because I anticipated the punchline and didnt find it novel. I think I read a time travel story once where they came back with a unicorn and said of course, time travel was impossible, so they're living in a fantasy. So it is here, they havent invented time travel, they've learned to access fictional worlds. I dont know about you but, with a little more focus on the steering, I'd like that even better. The story I liked not so much.
"I Know My Own & My Own Know Me" - Tracey Canfield
Cat gets uplifted, talks like internet cats, saves expedition
but its funnier, darker and more thinky than that.
I liked how it packed a lot of angles on human and uplift relations, possible uses for intelligence enhancement in humans and the increasingly tense investigstion into why one colony needs it, into one set of chat logs.
"The Old Man" - Rich Larson
Dark, violent, sketches a worldbuild in blood and death but not a world I liked reading
"Orphans" - Craig DeLancey
Everything falls apart and they end up up the creek.
i am not keen on stories that state problem and leave it.
"The Sword of Damocles" - Norman Spinrad
I did like this, pretty much. Humans make some near humans dedicated to looking at the galaxy for life, story follows different phases of their search and conclusions they draw from it. Seems to decide people are more interesting interested lively when they dont know, when the unknown is hanging over them. Which, okay, curiousity is yaay. Reaching out to your neighbours, even across huge gaps of galactic speed of light travel time, is a goal to dream on.
But I'm a bit puzzled at the low tech of their imagination. I mean, uploads arent in their calculations, or any way to make people weigh less and last longer.
but it explores the problem it sets itself.
SHORT STORIES
"Ghostmail" - Eric Del Carlo
secure communication gets entangled with an alternate timeline
interesting but made me think of Vimes getting the wrong organiser and then its hard to be as serious as the story
"The First Trebuchet On Mars" - Marie Vibbert
nice application of physics and human behaviour
"Climbing Olympus" - Simon Kewin
grief, guilt, fathers and sons
not my kind of feels
"Emergency Protocol" - Lettie Prell
creepy
interesting creepy?
"A Tinker's Damnation" - Jerry Oltion
a 'technology, do we really need it' story
in an sf magazine
doesnt seem the place, really
"The Absence" - Robert R. Chase
It's either about drug induced serious mental illness trashing a scientific endeavour or about a demon helping build a space elevator just to cause maximum destruction when it failed. kind of nasty either way.
"Arp! Arp!" - Christina De La Rocha
*facepalm*
the plot resolution depends on sea life having an accent.
interesting sciencey bits though.
"The Mathematician" - Tom Jolly
bugs doing math? entities made of collections of bugs? unusual imagine but I dont see a point.
"Coyote Moon" - James Van Pelt
illegal immigrants in space. felt a bit like 'but what if it happened to white people'. but yeah, seemed like a thing that would happen in near future space colonies, got to import cleaners somehow...
"Abductive Reasoning" - Christopher L. Bennet
Alien talks to conspiracy theorist, points out flaws, then meets reals.
okay.
"Invaders" - Stanley Schmidt
Aliens come watch the eclipse, because we're the only planet that has them.
it's like its bounce squee about how cool eclipses are, which is fair enough.
PROBABILITY ZERO
"Viktor Frankenstein's Bar and Grill, and Twenty-Four-Hour Roadside Emporium" - Michael F. Flynn
nothingy.
some interesting bits but nothing that lived in my head after I put it away.
been a bit since I read it but I disnt write about it, so
Analog for september/october reviewed under the cut
NOVELLA
"Heaven's Covenant" - Bud Sparhawk
religion, politics, a bad marriage, and slavery
the sf setting made their assertions the particular humans werent really human a thing you had to allow brain space, but then the details didnt support it, you see it's just the same old same old
so then its just slavery told by the slave owners
and... its difficult to give a damn about her marriage problems when they're all so very clearly in the wrong.
but that's the story.
If we bring this level of old garbage to space colonisation
we wouldnt deserve the stars.
NOVELLETTE
"My Fifth and Most Exotic Voyage" - Edward M. Lerner
The cover story. Gullivers time travels. I didnt find it very amusing, possibly because I anticipated the punchline and didnt find it novel. I think I read a time travel story once where they came back with a unicorn and said of course, time travel was impossible, so they're living in a fantasy. So it is here, they havent invented time travel, they've learned to access fictional worlds. I dont know about you but, with a little more focus on the steering, I'd like that even better. The story I liked not so much.
"I Know My Own & My Own Know Me" - Tracey Canfield
Cat gets uplifted, talks like internet cats, saves expedition
but its funnier, darker and more thinky than that.
I liked how it packed a lot of angles on human and uplift relations, possible uses for intelligence enhancement in humans and the increasingly tense investigstion into why one colony needs it, into one set of chat logs.
"The Old Man" - Rich Larson
Dark, violent, sketches a worldbuild in blood and death but not a world I liked reading
"Orphans" - Craig DeLancey
Everything falls apart and they end up up the creek.
i am not keen on stories that state problem and leave it.
"The Sword of Damocles" - Norman Spinrad
I did like this, pretty much. Humans make some near humans dedicated to looking at the galaxy for life, story follows different phases of their search and conclusions they draw from it. Seems to decide people are more interesting interested lively when they dont know, when the unknown is hanging over them. Which, okay, curiousity is yaay. Reaching out to your neighbours, even across huge gaps of galactic speed of light travel time, is a goal to dream on.
But I'm a bit puzzled at the low tech of their imagination. I mean, uploads arent in their calculations, or any way to make people weigh less and last longer.
but it explores the problem it sets itself.
SHORT STORIES
"Ghostmail" - Eric Del Carlo
secure communication gets entangled with an alternate timeline
interesting but made me think of Vimes getting the wrong organiser and then its hard to be as serious as the story
"The First Trebuchet On Mars" - Marie Vibbert
nice application of physics and human behaviour
"Climbing Olympus" - Simon Kewin
grief, guilt, fathers and sons
not my kind of feels
"Emergency Protocol" - Lettie Prell
creepy
interesting creepy?
"A Tinker's Damnation" - Jerry Oltion
a 'technology, do we really need it' story
in an sf magazine
doesnt seem the place, really
"The Absence" - Robert R. Chase
It's either about drug induced serious mental illness trashing a scientific endeavour or about a demon helping build a space elevator just to cause maximum destruction when it failed. kind of nasty either way.
"Arp! Arp!" - Christina De La Rocha
*facepalm*
the plot resolution depends on sea life having an accent.
interesting sciencey bits though.
"The Mathematician" - Tom Jolly
bugs doing math? entities made of collections of bugs? unusual imagine but I dont see a point.
"Coyote Moon" - James Van Pelt
illegal immigrants in space. felt a bit like 'but what if it happened to white people'. but yeah, seemed like a thing that would happen in near future space colonies, got to import cleaners somehow...
"Abductive Reasoning" - Christopher L. Bennet
Alien talks to conspiracy theorist, points out flaws, then meets reals.
okay.
"Invaders" - Stanley Schmidt
Aliens come watch the eclipse, because we're the only planet that has them.
it's like its bounce squee about how cool eclipses are, which is fair enough.
PROBABILITY ZERO
"Viktor Frankenstein's Bar and Grill, and Twenty-Four-Hour Roadside Emporium" - Michael F. Flynn
nothingy.
some interesting bits but nothing that lived in my head after I put it away.