Posted in Fantasy, Reading Reviewed, Robert Silverberg, Science Fiction at 12:00 on 2 July 2016
Dell Magazines, 112 p.

The first issue of the year’s subscription to the magazine my younger son gave me as a Christmas present. In his column Robert Silverberg remembers the pulp days. As to the fiction:-
The Grocer’s Wife [enhanced transcription] by Michael Libling.1 Andrew Phillips works for a government agency overseeing the mental deterioration of various subjects. His latest, a grocer named Thomas Bonner, gets to him, or rather the devotion of Bonner’s wife does. The deterioration process mimics Alzheimer’s but is induced by the government to drain the brains of its victims. Waffle about JFK and President Bush aside quite how and why the government should feel the need to do this remains obscure.
Bringing Them Back by Bruce McAllister. A man tries to bring back all the creatures lost to environmental stress and targeted viral outbreaks by drawing them onto paper. The story is complete with illustrations purporting to be these drawings. The last of them (he cannot bring himself to draw his wife) are of his children and himself.
In Equity by Sarah Gallien.2 An orphaned child goes to his latest placement interview with little hope of acceptance. His prospective adopters want him to be subject to unfettered medical trials in exchange for the best education.
Passion Summer by Nick Wolven.3 A Passion can be bought but is usually fleeting. Fourteen year-old Jeffrey decides to ask for a Passion for Passion itself.
Exceptional Forces by Sean McMullen narrates the tale of a Russian scientist who detected carrier wave background noise in the Andromeda galaxy (evidence of alien radio transmissions) and the contract killer sent to silence him. The story panders to the secret-conspiracy-that-rules-the-world tendency.
The Monster of 1928 by Sandra McDonald is an unexceptional fantasy tale. The monster of the title is Tulu, the legend of the Everglades, encountered one night by narrator Louise.
The Charge and the Storm by An Owomoyela.4 On a colony formed by a starship community but dominated by the alien Su a group of humans seeks independence.
Pedant’s corner:- 1 skullduggery (skulduggery,) 2 sprung (sprang,) unpixilated (pixilated means bemused or intoxicated, context suggests unpixelated,) 3 gladiolas (gladioli,) Diedre (Deirdre,) 4 missing comma before a speech quote, to not die (not to die.)
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Posted in Reading Reviewed, Science Fiction at 12:00 on 13 August 2015
Special 1000th 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 1000th 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 1,000th 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.)
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