"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).

Harry Turtledove's "It's the end of the World as We Know It, And We Feel Fine" (short story): Dog is to Man as Man is to...

According to the story, differences between wild dogs & domesticated ones are mostly confined to a gene called "WBSCR17", a gene also found in humans. Can humans be turned into cute pets?

Update 25 September 2013:  Don Sakers' fiction review article, "The Reference Library", in the same Analog issue that contains this story, has a review of one of Iain M Banks' novel "The Hydrogen Sonata". He discusses, among other things, some key characteristics of the Culture universe of the author where this novel is set. Some of these characteristics of the Culture universe sound a lot like things in this Turtledove story. But I've not personally read any Culture book.

Story summary.

Last big human fracas not only killed off most people, the few left around were relatively docile. And there was something around that intended to presumably make the world a better place...

Here we get a glimpse of this docile future world. Beautiful.

Fact sheet.

First published: Analog, March 2013.
Rating: A.
Added to my "best of 2013" list.
Related: Stories of Harry Turtledove.

Harry Turtledove's "Vilcabamba" (novelette, alien invasion, free): Looking at colonial history with sf lenses

In spite of hype, I rarely find tor.com short fiction worth commenting on. Here is one of their rare good pieces.

It's mostly a retelling of the history of invasion of Americas by Europeans some centuries back, only it's aliens called Krolps who are doing to modern US & Canada (& rest of humanity in background) what the Europeans did to natives. And the fight back of natives is equally brave. And futile.

Title is the name of one of the cities founded by some Inca tribes in Peru while trying to "adapt" to raiding Spaniards - something that let them continue with old ways for a while ... but only for a while.

Fact sheet.

First published: tor.com, 4 February 2010.
Download full text from publisher's site (page says it's available in multiple formats, but I've always found the tor.com downloads corrupt except for default HTML).
Rating: A.
Related: Stories of Harry Turtledove; alien invasion stories.

Harry Turtledove's "News from the Front": Internal debate in US during early days of US/Japan conflict during World War II

Most interesting aspect of this very readable non-genre story for me was - many of its episodes sounded like some very familiar conflicts between administration & media in India in recent memory - though in different contexts.

At a less important level, it sheds some light on the conflict - a subject I am completely ignorant of. Until I read this, I did not even know why Japan bombed Pearl Harbor - obviously there must have been provocation, but I didn't know of it.

And since this is a work of fiction, its specific assertions obviously have to be taken with a pinch of salt.

Story is in the form of media clippings covering the first 6 months of conflict - 7 December 1941 to 16 June 1942, & is very critical of Roosevelt administration that was ruling during the period.

By the very nature of the subject of this story, your take is likely to be very different from mine. And if you are from US, I wonder if timing of this story has something to do with the US military presence on Iraq?

Fact sheet.

"News from the Front", short story, review
First published: Asimov's Science Fiction, June 2007.
Rating: A