Asimovs Science Fiction August 2009 Reviewed
Dell Magazines: Volume 33 Issue 8, Whole Number 403
Jun 25, 2009
The fiction in the August 2009 Asimovs SF is primarily concerned with identity and intelligence and it's a superior issue. As well as the fiction there are the usual columns by Robert Silverberg, James Patrick Kelly and Peter Heck, together with editor Sheila Williams commenting on the 2009 Reader's Awards..
'The Qualia Engine' marks Damien Broderick's third appearance of the year in Asimovs, although sadly this episodic autobiography of a super-child growing up isn't as strong as either of the first two. Billed as a tribute to classics like A.E. Van Vogt's Slan and Children of the Atom by Wilmar Shiras, it's too reverential, and together with a tendency to introspection on the part of the narrator it muffles Broderick's usual assurance and inventiveness.
Robert Reed
Robert Reed is a writer capable of taking the stalest of SF cliches and examining them from new angles. In 'Creatures of Well-Defined Habits' he turns the space-bar of SF into a coffee bar and fills it with quasi-immortals, adapted humans and replicants, gathering to listen to one of the regulars reminisce about his life. When he's killed it triggers a theft and a pursuit across the Solar System. One of Reed's best stories of late.
In Derek Zumsteg's 'Blue' only two of the original seven crew are left alive aboard a stranded research ship in orbit around a black hole that isn't black. They spend their time bickering over food, but their arguments are symbolic of a deeper grief, and guilt that they dare not talk openly about. The reader gradually learns the truth a paragraph, then a page at a time as Zumsteg peels away the veneer over the backstory. Recommended.
Mary Robinette Kowal
Last year's Campbell Award-winner Mary Robinette Kowal's 'The Consciousness Problem' tackles many of the same themes of defining identity and intelligence as the earlier stories. While Myung works on cloning, Elise recovers from a car crash at home. She is convinced that she is a clone and that 'original' Elise died in the crash. He's adamant that she isn't, finally admitting that he's cloned himself, and he asks Elise to participate in an experiment to distinguish between clone and original. What none of them have foreseen is that the clone is a person with emotions of his own. Highly Recommended.
In 'Two Boys' by Steven Popkes Neanderthals have been resurrected via genetic engineering. When Alice hears a rumour that one of them -a boy-- has come to town, she decides to look him up. To her surprise he seems to half-expect her. Alice doesn't know that her family already has a connection to the Neanderthals, from when her father was at school. Popkes throws up some fascinating insights into both human and Neanderthal culture. Highly Recommended.
Kristine Kathryn Rusch
'Turbulence' by Kristine Kathryn Rusch presents every frequent flier's nightmare in stark prose, and punches far above its 1800 words. Recommended.
Michael Blumlein's 'California Burning' tells of a son's discovery that his late father's bones wouldn't burn at the crematorium, while ironically forest fires rage across the state. Slowly he begins to believe his father is an alien, but that still leaves the question of what to do with the bones.... Blumlein is capable of extraordinarily fast changes of tone -from comic to dark and back again- without leaving the story disjointed, as he demonstrates here. Recommended.
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