Special 1000^th issue. Dell Magazines.

I read this as it was kindly given to me (along with the June 2015 edition of Asimov’s) by the good lady’s blog friend Peggy when she came to visit us in May.
The cover of ANALOG 1000 is apparently an adaptation of the very first cover (of Astounding Stories of Super Science, Jan 1930) and in his editorial Trevor Quachri says how much he loves both illustrations. He also notes the move under John W Campbell from unashamed action-adventure pulp to a magazine where “fleshed-out characters and realistic science are integral to what we do.” (You might still want to work a bit more on that “fleshed-out characters” thing, guys.)
In accordance with Campbell’s prescription, as well as the fiction the mag has several fact articles. This being the 1000^th issue these include a look at how the magazine might evolve, a statistical comparison of Analog with other comparable magazines (genre or not) with regard to its longevity while also noting its most frequent contributors and a piece on the importance of legendary editor Campbell to the evolution of Astounding into Analog (and SF as a whole.)
The fiction is highly skewed towards the space operatic. Only two out of the featured stories were Earthbound. In The Wormhole War by Richard A Lovett, Zeke Schlachter is piloting Earth’s first exploratory wormhole (to the Earth-like planet Gaia 205c) when it suddenly explodes. Five years later so does the second. Every wormhole meets the same fate. The Gaians turn out to be sending wormholes towards Earth faster than humans can in the other direction. Something has to give.¹ The very YA in tone Very Long Conversations by Gwendolyn Clare has an expedition to an alien planet being contacted by the indigenous population – through sculpture. The Kroc War by Ted Reynolds & William F Wu is told from a variety of sketched viewpoints, pro and anti the war, mostly human but one Kroc, and is the story of said war from beginning to end, and beyond. In Strategies for Optimizing Your Mobile Advertising by Brenta Blevins a man whose T-shirt runs ever-changing advertising slogans (you can’t block adverts from someone standing right in front of you) has his system hacked. The Odds by Ron Collins contemplates the chances of being the one ambassador in the history of the universe charged with lying to the only other sentient species known.² In The Empathy Vaccine by C C Finlay a man wants to buy a treatment that will remove his empathy. (The seller has already taken done this.)³ Seth Dickinson’s Three Bodies at Mitanni relates how three people (though it is their consciousnesses only) have been charged with roaming the galaxy and deciding whether the societies derived from seedships sent out earlier “by a younger and more desperate Earth” are to be culled or not. ⁴ Ships in the Night by Jay Werkheiser has a high c, time-dilated interstellar trader spin a yarn at a pub on a stopover. In The Audience by Sean McMullen, humanity’s first starship arrives at the gas giant Abyss as it passes through the Oort cloud. Under the surface of its moon, Limbo, the crew finds alien life. And it finds them.⁵
Many of these contain the sort of stuff I loved when I was a teenager discovering SF and consuming it voraciously. While I’m glad people are still producing stories like these (they’re entertaining enough and do what they say on their tins) I’ve moved on a bit and wouldn’t seek them out. But it’s great to have the 1,000^th issue of a magazine on my shelves.

Pedant’s corner:- (in one of the book reviews) “who will stop at noting” (if only such people – or indeed aliens – would!!)
¹ mowed (mown,) like Damocles’ (Damocles’s,) Two year later (years.)
² has “lay” for “lie” but this seems to be common in USian
³ he probably checked out me the way I checked out him (checked me out the way I checked him out sounds more natural to me.)
⁴Lachesis’ (Lachesis’s; several instances.)
⁵ Complimenting each others’ skills would be a fine thing for the crew to do but complementing them is actually the reason why they had been selected. Clouds do not contain water vapour (it’s colourless) but rather liquid or solid water. And a scientist ought not to use “steam” in this context either. Gasses (gases.)

In Nostalgia by Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam the nostalgia of the title is a drug that takes you back to earlier times. This may not always be a good idea.
T R Napper’s An Advanced Guide to Successful Price-Fixing in Extraterrestrial Betting Markets features a mathematical prodigy imagining creating bets about his behaviour on a market for extraterrestrials. He is surprised when an alien turns up to collect. (He has neglected to take his medication, though.)
The Ferry Man by Pandora Hope¹ is inspired by one of the byways of Norse mythology. A ferry captain has the power to reverse the usual attraction of a siren for the unwary.
In Tribute by Christien Gholson² a mysterious creature is puzzled by why others bring some of their kind to his world to die. While it is a different story entirely, I noticed (of course, I would) that this has some tonal and descriptive similarities to Dusk, the story of mine that appeared in Nova Scotia.
Fish on Friday by Neil Williamson is an amuse bouche set out as a transcript of a phone call from a state apparatchik in an independent Scotland to a Ms MacArthur who is something of a refusenik of the benefits, dietary and otherwise, of the regime.

Pedant’s corner:-
¹ Pandora Hope sounds very pseudonymous to me.
² Can anyone else not see this? (Can no-one else see this?) Kaayam (Kaayem.)

In Must Supply Own Work Boots by Malcolm Devlin¹ a man whose augmentations are old-tech seeks work.
Bullman and the Wiredling Mutha by R M Graves is a tale of gang warfare and genetic manipulation told in a degenerate English.
Thana Niveau’s The Calling of Night’s Ocean describes a late 1960s experiment with dolphins, when the dolphins are injected with LSD.
Finding Waltzer-Three by Tim Major² sees a group investigate a ghost spaceship, Marie-Celeste-like, except the bodies are still there.
E Catherine Tobbler’s Oubliette³ has a woman move through the levels of Aphelion Station, in time as well as space, in search of a locket, and peace.
Mind the Gap by Jennifer Dornan-Fish⁴ is narrated by an AI which is on the road to achieving genuine consciousness.
Tom Greene’s Monoculture is set well in the aftermath of a flu epidemic that has wiped out all of humanity except clones of Dave Williamson and a few “randoms”.

Pedant’s corner:-
¹ “discrete” where “discreet” made more sense.
² The captain, along with the bulk of the crew, are scheduled to sleep. (The captain are?) wigwam-like (as described it was more tepee-like.)
³ Written in USian; a slow exhale (exhalation?) to lay invisible (lie invisible,) lead to (led to,) lain bare (laid bare)
⁴ Written in USian: tick born disease (tick borne?)

The good lady and I are off gallivanting for a few days; from the 12^th.

I don’t know how much contact with the internet I’ll have when we’re away – I’m not one for smart phones. (Or even a mobile come to that, except I carry one for emergencies.)

I’ve scheduled posts for every day up till Sunday, though.

This isn’t a view any human of even the relatively recent past could ever have seen: the Moon passing in front of the Earth:-

From Astronomy Picture of the Day 7/8/15, this photo – taken by NASA’s Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) spacecraft – is captioned Full Moon, Full Earth, but of course it’s a New Moon; from the surface of the Earth all of the Moon would appear dark. The hemisphere of the Moon seen in the photo is of course its far side (which isn’t dark, except briefly: it gets as much sunlight as the near side does, only in reverse proportion.)

The DSCOVR spacecraft is situated at the Earth-Sun L1 Lagrange Point (see diagram – not to scale – below) where the orbit of a satellite is stable. As such it is perfectly placed to observe the Moon transit the Earth as above, which from its perspective occurs twice a year.

SPFL Tier 2,* The Rock,** 8/8/15.

A stunning start to the league campaign.

When was the last time we won our first league game?

And this against one of the teams fancied to be in the top two.

I wasn’t there but this is seriously encouraging.

It’ll be interesting to see how we fare against old boss Ian Murray’s St Mirren away next week.

*It’s the Ladbrokes Championship now, you know.

**The Cheaper Insurance Direct Stadium.

This photo (credited to Dominick Reuter/Reuters) – which doesn’t seem to be on the website – appeared in Thursday’s print edition of the Guardian:-

Surely Mr Trump is using the wrong finger to go along with that facial expression.

Taggart’s wasn’t the first TV theme tune Maggie Bell had taken on. From the previous decade here’s her version of the Hazell theme.

Maggie Bell: Hazell

I was sorry to hear about the death of actor George Cole today. Another figure from my youth (and not so youth) gone. Mind you at 90 he’d had a good innings.

In his two most famous roles, Flash Harry in the St Trinian’s films and Arthur Daley in Minder Cole was always intensely watchable.

He had the advantage of learning at the feet of a master. The clip from St Trinian’s I saw on today’s News had Flash Harry in dialogue with the headmistress, played by Alastair Sim (who in real life more or less adopted him,) and I couldn’t resist a giggle.

According to a piece on the radio Cole was well liked by film crews as he behaved like a gentleman to them. Courtesy is never a hindrance.

It struck me on listening to the eulogies that the character of Arthur Daley – in which incarnation Cole delivered the immortal line, “What is occurring, Terence?” as something unforeseen went on – might have been an inspiration for Del Boy of Only Fools and Horses.

George Edward Cole: 22/4/1925 – 5/8/2015. So it goes.

A bridge has spanned the River Forth at Stirling for centuries. Not the same one obviously but the most famous of them was the one where William Wallace won his great victory over the army of Edward I of England (Edward Longshanks) at the eponymous battle in 1297.

The “old” bridge that still survives now carries foot traffic only. It was built 500-600 years ago. It is a lovely structure of four arches and three supports, here shown from the “east” bank.

These are the approaches from the west. Note the cobblestones:-

This is the old bridge from the modern road bridge:-

And this is a view from the “west” bank. The Wallace Monument can be seen as a distant spire beside the lamp standard at the extreme right of the bridge as seen here:-

Two “modern” bridges also cross the Forth close by. This is the railway bridge from the modern road bridge:-

The road bridge is in the foreground here with the railway bridge supports visible through its arches:-

The Wallace Monument from the old bridge:-