Asimovs Science Fiction July 2009 Reviewed
Volume 33 Issue 7, Whole Number 402 From Dell Magazines
May 7, 2009
The July issue of Asimovs has the usual mixture of regulars and debutants in an issue that starts reasonably and ends with one of the year's best novellas.
Michael Cassutt
In Michael Cassutt's 'The Last Apostle' an alternate Apollo Space Program makes a lunar landing on the far side, where one of the astronauts makes a startling discovery that throws new light on the Earth's history. It's one of many such stories that shows that the nostalgia for lost opportunities in the space program hasn't abated at all.
By contrast, 'Camp Nowhere' by Kit Reed is much darker and funnier. At first this fable of an alienated teenager and his self-indulgent parents who take him off to summer camp appears to be a morality fable, or at best mimetic SF, but the final twist makes it a much more solidly fantastic piece than it first appears.
R. Garcia y Robertson
More nostalgia for lost futures comes by way of R. Garcia y Robertson's novelette 'SinBad the Sand Sailor,' which carries on a tradition epitomised by Philip Jose Farmer, that of writing about a classic work in an altogether alternate literary style. In this case Edgar Rice Burroughs Barsoom is the setting for a cheesy 1960s style Playboy pastiche. Told in a breezy style, it's hokum, but enjoyable hokum.
The tone darkens again with 'Sleepless in the House of Ye,' a debut piece by Clarion graduate and Writers of the Future winner Ian McHugh that does a fine job of evoking the alien. In a wintry world the eponymous House faces collapse under the weight of a glacier, leaving its hibernating inhabitants with an uncertain future, unless some of them volunteer to stay awake. Recommended.
'Shoes-to-Run' by Sara Genge marks her third appearance in Asimovs. This time its the story of a girl who feels like a boy trapped in the wrong body, living outside a domed Paris of the semi-distant future. When Shai-Shai sees her first menstrual blood she makes a desperate gamble and asks to join the men in a hunt, for it is hunting that defines a man. Recommended.
Stephen Baxter
Stephen Baxter's 'Earth II' is set four centuries after a world in the 82 Eridani star-system is colonized by a faction fleeing a ruined Earth. The society of Earth II, starved of heavy metals and a general lack of resources struggles on with wooden sailing ships and a near veneration of the Founders. Women are the warrior/explorers while men stay at home, and when one of them leads an expedition across the world, she gains the same understanding of the fragility of her world as her stay-at-home partner. Baxter dribbles exposition slowly at first, then cascades it over the gradually-oriented reader in a most satisfactory way. More importantly, for once Baxter draws characters large enough not to be dwarfed by his trademark love of vast scales. It may be the novella that finally ends his Hugo and Nebula drought, and rightly so. Outstanding.
Poetry this month comes from Esther M. Friesner and. F.J. Bergmann, and there is the usual editorial from Sheila Williams, opinion from Robert Silverberg and books reviewed by Paul Di Filippo
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