Asimov's Science Fiction 26

George A. Scithers (editor) Asimov's Science Fiction 26 (1980)
Based on what I've read, I'd formed the impression of Asimov's being a decent magazine if marginally more conservative than Fantasy & Science Fiction. This is the earliest issue I have by at least a decade, picked up - from what I'm able to remember - back in 2008 from a second hand book store in Looe, and only now have I got around to reading it, for some reason. I think maybe the cover put me off.

I've seen it claimed that the state of written science-fiction was getting pretty desperate towards the end of the seventies with everyone churning out soupy sub-Tolkien drivel until William Gibson blasted it all away with his edgy cyberpunk revolution just as the Pistols had made all those music biz hairies look a bit dated. I've seen this claimed mainly in preface to interviews with William Gibson so I'm sceptical, and yet...

The best thing in this issue is Isaac Asimov's factual editorial discussing the classification of planets, meteorites, and other celestial bodies. I learned a few things and it beautifully illustrates why the man is remembered as such a great communicator. Travels by Carter Scholz, in which the consciousness of Marco Polo encounters a philosophical artificial intelligence in deepest space is also pretty great; as are Sheridan A. Simon's The Eumenides in Koine and Relatively Speaking by Lee Weinstein and Darrell Schweitzer, although these last two are both very short and therefore lack the presence to help towards balancing out the rest.

A. Bertram Chandler's Grimes and the Great Race reads very much like the writing of a former naval officer. James Gunn's analysis of the history of the science-fiction novel conveniently chooses Asimov's Foundation as typical of the genre, explains the plot in detail, and then proposes that its success is due to it being such a brilliant book - suggesting a certain lack of impartiality and failing to explain anything at all, and certainly nothing to anyone who found Foundation massively underwhelming, as did I. I started Joan D. Vinge's The Storm King but it seemed to be all swords, dragons, mead and people saying behold and I stalled after about the fourth of its thirty or so pages; and Jo Clayton's forty pages of Southwind My Mother looked like more of the same with a hey nonny no, none of which squares with why I would have bought an issue of a magazine which specifically refers to science-fiction in the title.

I guess it was early days for Asimov's Science Fiction, and everyone is entitled to fire a few blanks from time to time.