Analog April 1980

Stanley Schmidt (editor) Analog April 1980 (1980)
Just when you think you know someone… as Lord Rothermere observed on the first of September, 1939. I've developed certain expectations as I work my way through a handful of unread back issues of Analog picked up here and there over the years, and true to form, the April 1980 issue features a science article which I couldn't be bothered to read beyond the first couple of pages, Jerry Pournelle droning on about something or other, advertisements which appear faintly ludicrous with hindsight, and the second instalment of Bob Buckley's World in the Clouds - which would be fine if it were just about terraforming Venus as the science is quite interesting and well communicated, but said terraforming is undertaken as some kind of futuristic community service deal by a street tough. I assume tough as a noun made sense for my father's generation and I remember finding it weird in Topper and Beano when I was a kid. The problem is that, science aside, the rest of the tale is written in a style consistent with the kind of writing you would expect in a story about a street tough.

Also, there's David A. Roach's Memo from the Big Chief which takes the form of correspondence between various cavepersons - one of whom is imaginatively named Ugg - detailing, I presume, health and safety concerns raised by the invention of fire. I didn't read it because I make a point of not reading short stories which take the form of correspondence, and the premise just isn't that funny.

However, this was otherwise a surprisingly enjoyable issue of this thing. The characteristically right leaning editorial is fairly liberal and concerns itself with the environment in terms which serve to remind us that Republicans weren't always the largely amoral corporate shitbags we see before us today and were once worth listening to, sometimes. The letters page features satisfyingly testy missives from Poul Anderson, Isaac Asimov, and A.E. van Vogt defending his 1979 novel Renaissance from a reviewer who may or may not have bothered to read it.

The star attraction for me, the reason why this leapt off the shelf and into my hands, would be Simak's Grotto of the Dancing Deer which notably won Nebula, Hugo and Locus awards for best short story. Oddly, it's nothing spectacular in context of Simak's body of work, but is nevertheless decent - as you would most likely expect - so I suspect someone or other simply felt it was high time Cliff won another award, which is fair.

Finally we have the novella length Nightflyers, an example of George R.R. Martin's early science-fiction work. I sort of enjoyed the first couple of seasons of Game of Thrones, but not enough to read the books so this is my first encounter with his writing, and it's not difficult to see why he would eventually be shifting this stuff by the truckload. Nightflyers almost mashes a ghost story up with a murder mystery and flings the results out into deep space, and is of sufficient complexity and sophistication to oblige me to re-read the first half when I came back to it because I was already lost; and yet going back to start again turned out to be a genuine pleasure, such is the quality of the tale, which may even be the best thing I've read in any of these digest magazines. At least I can't, off the top of my head, think of anything I've enjoyed more.

I appreciate that even a stopped clock is correct twice a day - unless it's digital - but this one has made for a very pleasant change to the usual.