Saturday, January 12, 2013

"Analog Science Fiction and Fact", January/February 2013 (ed Stanley Schmidt) (magazine): Annotated table of contents & review

Cover by David A Hardy of Analog Science Fiction and Fact magazine, January-February 2013 issue. Cover illustrates the story In the Moment by Jerry Oltion, a young romancing couple watching, via a telescope on earth, a small celestial body impact moon.
This post covers only fiction in this issue. Where I have a separate post on a story, link on its title goes there. Link on an author fetches more fiction by author. My rating is in brackets.

Table of contents (best first).

  1. [ss] John G Hemry's "The War of the Worlds, Book One, Chapter 18: The Sergeant-Major" (A); satire, fanfic: An episode from "The War of the Worlds" (download) that Mr H G Wells failed to write.
  2. [novella] Rajnar Vajra's "The Woman Who Cried Corpse" (B): Corpse of a woman has vanished from hospital, victim's daughter is accused of her murder by police, & a gang of badmen are after the daughter. What's cooking?
  3. [novelette] Kyle Kirkland's "True to Form" (B): In a world of humans & androids that are easy to recognize as such, someone has figured out a way to creates androids that can pass as humans & is breeding them at will, outside of society's controls.
  4. [ss] Jerry Oltion's "In the Moment" (B): Romance in the backdrop of a celestial event.
  5. [ss] H G Stratmann's "Neighborhood Watch" (B): Keeping nosy humans out is a pain!
  6. [novelette] Amy Thompson's "Buddha Nature" (B): Yet another "robot wants to be accepted by a temple as a worshiper" story. In this case, robot wants to be accepted as an acolyte by a Buddhist monastery.

    I've read may be a half dozen stories of the kind, so there was no novelty value. But it's an ok read.
  7. [novelette] Brad R Torgersen's "The Exchange Officers" (B): An episode in a US/China war.
  8. [novelette] Robert Scherrer's "Descartes's Stepchildren" (B): What if some people are biologically incapable of conscientious behavior?
  9. [novella] Edward M Lerner's "Time Out" (B): A reclusive mad scientist is building a time machine. Story is told through the eyes of his assistant. By the end of the story, we'll be told why time travel is undesirable.

    This might have been an ok read at may be flash fiction length. At novella length, it was just plain boring. A rehash of many themes in time travel that have each been already done to death.
Related: Fiction from Astounding/Analog; whole issues only.

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