Analog November 2011

Stanley Schmidt (editor) Analog November 2011 (2011)
I am often stopped in the street by strangers who ask me, what is this thing we call science-fiction? I can't help but smile as I give my reply - always the same reply - which is that just as Albert Einstein explored the boundaries of theoretical physics, so too do science-fiction authors such as Runcible V. Bottywang or Melvin Felch investigate the outer limits of science, imagination, and wonderment; and I leave my eager audience with the recommendation that they perhaps catch a few episodes of a certain television serial called Babylon 5. If it amuses me to explain that which most soon-to-be science-fiction fans will surely discover for themselves, it is a kindly amusement, for it isn't a bad question.

So what is this thing we call science-fiction?

You might respond with the name of some computer video game set on an amazing alien planet which you've recently enjoyed, but it is also Star Trek and Doctor Who and even a little movie you might just have heard of. It was quite popular in my day. Star Wars, I believe it was called.

This issue of Analog opens with Adam Troy-Castro's With Unclean Hands in which his Andrea Cort is sent to the homeworld of the Zinn, a once-powerful race now on the long path to extinction. She's expected to sign the approval for a simple prisoner transfer, but why are the Zinn so eager to take custody of an unremarkable human murderer? Cort becomes suspicious when she makes friends with a Zinn child - or fotir - named First Given, whose behaviour seems odd even for an extraterrestrial comprising bags of organs suspended beneath a carriage of spindly legs. Cort travels to the island upon which Simon Farr, the serial murderer, is allowed to live in relative liberty. It seems that humanity will receive a futuristic star drive in return for Farr, but Andrea Cort realises that a brutal crime is being planned against an innocent, and that the price is too high.

There's more but I can't be arsed to type out the whole fucking thing, particularly given that I found it a chore to read; and possibly excepting Jerry Oltion's Rocket Science, this issue didn't do much for me at all; and when the stories turn out to be mostly duds, the book reviews you find in these digest magazines are sometimes worth a look, usually featuring either something you've read and enjoyed or something you may potentially enjoy in the future. For what it may be worth, I've written this review of the November 2011 issue of Analog in the style of its book reviews - inconsequential musing as preamble, then a detailed description of characters, plot, and almost everything that happens, with finally a closing sentence telling us whether it was any good; and this issue of Analog is massively underwhelming. Here's some of what Don Saker wrote about Peter David's novelisation of a Transformers movie.

This one is a lot of fun. It starts with the truth about the Apollo program: despite what the world believes, Armstrong and Aldrin had a secret mission on the moon. They were sent there to explore an alien starship that crashed in 1961. They brought back some of the alien tech that they found there.

Curtain up in the present day. Sam Witwicky, human friend of the Autobots, meets British scientist Carly Spencer and immediately falls in love. But there's more than love on the agenda: the ship that crashed on the moon was a Transformer vessel, the evil Decepticons have learned of its cargo, and they'll stop at nothing to get it.

I know it doesn't all have to be J.G. Ballard, which I state as someone who isn't even a fan of the guy, and yes I'm the proud (or at least not significantly ashamed) owner of a collection of about fifty-million X-Men comics, but Jesus fucking Christ - robots that turn into cars. Call me cynical, but a line must be drawn somewhere before we all end up falling out over the uneven continuity of fucking Paw Patrol.

I don't think I've ever read an issue of Analog which didn't have something wrong with it on some level. There have been flashes of inspiration here and there, and I genuinely believe Stanley Schmidt to be a decent guy; but the magazine has seemingly spent most of its publishing history as exciting and imaginative tales for an audience of people who are otherwise deeply suspicious of excitement, imagination, strangers, anything fancy, and colours which aren't either brown or light gray.

Thankfully this is the last of my unread issues.

Never again.