Asimov's SF October/November 2008
Science Fiction from Dell Magazines with Cover Art by Virgil Finlay
Sep 6, 2008
The October/November double issue (ISSN 74470 08621, 238 pp) also has poetry from Mike Allen, Jane Yolen and others, columns from Robert Silverberg and James Patrick Kelly, and books reviewed by Norman Spinrad.
Nancy Kress
"The Erdmann Nexus" by Nancy Kress covers similar territory to Theodore Sturgeon's classic "Baby Is Three," but the science is updated in this tale of an approaching starship and the choices that we may have to make as a species and Kress' characterization is sharper. Even though the narrative lurches into an unsignposted epilogue, it's highly recommended.
"Listening for Submarines" by Peter Higgins is so grounded in the world of the crescendo-ing Cold War --when it seemed at any moment that Reagan and Andropov might launch their ICBMs-- that this haunting fable of a secret listening post on the Welsh coast might just as easily have appeared in a mainstream magazine.
Sara Genge writes a complex story of alien sex with her "Prayers for an Egg." Like Tiptree whose work this was reminiscent of, Genge is an outsider, Tiptree coming from Langley and the mainstream, Genge an American living in Spain; her rhythm and cadences equally exotic to American genre SF.
These stories mark the highpoint of this issue, their 'difference' from the norm giving the issue a rare depth.
Brandon Sanderson
Like the Kress, Brandon Sanderson's "Defending Elysium" depicts humanity on the edge of star-flight, but sadly the Sanderson is wanting by any other comparison. It's fast-paced and inventive after about the fourth page -- though until then it's standard Space Opera, but it's also as clumsy as anything Asimov's has published all year, full of infodumps and switchback characterization that feels contrived.
Leslie What's "Money Is No Object" writes a pleasantly nasty little fairy story about a magic wallet that's bottomless; the catch is that it only dispenses one dollar bill at a time. As a variation on time is money it's a gem.
Gord Sellars crackles with righteous indignation in "Dhuluma No More." It's an excellent, furious story about the real cost of humanity's efforts to combat Climate Change, particularly on the developing world.
Ian R. MacLeod
"The English Mutiny" by Ian R. MacLeod is another of his many uchronias; branching from a meteor crashing to earth and the Moghul Empire allying with the Portuguese against the English, it's alternately bloody and beautiful, as so often MacLeod's best work is.
In "Cat in the Rain" Jack Skillingstead takes a Hemingway title as his starting point, and there are signs in the lean, stripped-down narrative that the title isn't the only thing that Papa inspired. It's a dark, paranoid, and very, very bleak story of alien invasion.
Robert Reed
That tone darkens still further for Robert Reed's novella "Truth" which tells of a mystery captive incarcerated in a near-future domestic version of Guantanamo since being captured soon after 9/11. Romano is part of a time-travelling jihad -- or is he? What is truth and what is story? Reed's powerful examination of a possible future reads as if he's played Chicken with his editor to see how dark he can make the story, and at the last moment blinked.
Based on much of this issue, there's something in the air that's making American SF writers lift their heads to the breeze, and like animals sensing an approaching storm, they're not happy, which makes the classic cover by Virgil Finlay all the more an odd choice.
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