Wednesday, September 18, 2013

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

Cover of Analog magazine, March 2013 issueThis is the last Analog issue edited by Stanley Schmidt - the longest serving editor of the magazine whose 34 year stint is longer than even John Campbell's, according to his editorial. Effective next month, the current Managing Editor, Trevor Quachri, becomes the editor.

Links on author fetch more works of author. For read stories, my rating appears in brackets. Where I have a separate post on a story, link on story title goes there.

Table of contents (best first).

  1. [ss] Harry Turtledove's "It's the End of the World As We Know It, And we Feel Fine" (A): Dog is to man as man is to...
  2. [ss] Bud Sparhawk's "The Snack" (A); humor: App assisted healthy living...
  3. [ss] Don D'Ammassa's "Pre-Pirates" (A); satire: Who's the loser & who's the winner if a preview of a work of fiction becomes available at a website ("prepubs.com") before the author has written it? Who owns rights to it?

    Old well hashed idea of simple casualty violation dating back to at least Asimov, but still quite a readable piece.
  4. [novelette] Sean McMullen's "The Firewall & the Door" (B): Making a reluctant humanity go star exploring...
  5. [novelette] Bond Elam's "Instinctive Response" (B): Two human superhero space scouts find a world with local aliens dying of an incurable disease. They'll help find a cure, & in the process learn something about human origins...

    Very classic style story with a lot of technobabble about DNA & cell dynamics. Cannot say I liked the story, but it was a fast easy read.
  6. [ss] Andrew Barton's "The Paragaon of the Animals" (B): On  an alien world, a human women is working towards saving local low-tech sentients from human slavery.
  7. [novelette] Marissa Lingen's "The Radioactive Etiquette Book" (B): A diplomat needs to deal with aliens with vary different value systems...
  8. [ss] Barry Malzberg & Bill Pronzini's "High Concept" (B): "Harmless" & helpful aliens have arrived on earth, & after a few initial protests, people have become used to having them all over. That's when an author has idea for a novel where the plot has savage war involving these aliens. And will pay a heavy price for having thought such a demeaning idea...

Fact sheet.

Labeled: "No CXXXIII No 3".
Related: Stories from Analog/Astounding (whole issues only).

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