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

This 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).

The origins of Barry N Malzberg's pseudonym "K M O'Donnell"

Rich Horton tells us at rasfw that "it's a tribute to Kuttner, Moore, and one of their best known pseudonyms, Lawrence O'Donnell."

Related: Stories of Barry N Malzberg.

Barry N Malzberg's "Transfer" (short story, shape shifter, free): A parable of terrorist's mindset?

This is a much darker story than I normally post.

Only 3 weeks ago, I would have rated it C & never bothered to write this post. I'm sure I'm reading more into it than author intended, but the "beast" in this story thinks too much like the terrorists involved in Bombay attacks a fortnight back; at least two of them who talked to a news channel using victim's phone during the (I think first day of the) siege.

PS: This video recording (I cannot see the video on my PC, but looks like others are able to see) is of the first of the two calls (in Hindi) that were aired by India TV; I could not locate the second one online. This was the call that convinced me we were dealing with Pakistanis - the man claims he is from Hyderabad in the South, but language, accent, & the words used are instant give away. And the content of the talk felt so much like the "beast" in this story (second call also felt like this "beast" - to my biased mind, at least).

Story summary.

Narrator is modeled after werewolves - he can transform himself into a tentacled "beast" that hunts hapless people in the city at night, & kills for no reason but that he cannot help it! He also eats some of them. And narrator seems to have some sort of split personality - beast & the man who becomes beast have distinct though related personalities.

Fact sheet.

First published: Fantastic, August 1975.
Rating: B.
Download full text from Internet Archive.
Included in Ellen Datlow's Sci Fiction classics.