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Asimov's SF, October-November 2011
by Dell Magazine Authors
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Science Fiction
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Dell Magazines
www.dellmagazines.com
Copyright ©2011 by Dell Magazines
NOTICE: This work is copyrighted. It is licensed only for use by the original purchaser. Making copies of this work or distributing it to any unauthorized person by any means, including without limit email, floppy disk, file transfer, paper print out, or any other method constitutes a violation of International copyright law and subjects the violator to severe fines or imprisonment.
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Cover Art by Paul Youll
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CONTENTS
Department: EDITORIAL: SEND IN THE RIGHT REVIEWER by Sheila Williams
Department: REFLECTIONS: A WRITER'S DIARY by Robert Silverberg
Department: ON THE NET: STEAMED by James Patrick Kelly
Novella: STEALTH by Kristine Kathryn Rusch
Short Story: THE CULT OF WHALE WORSHIP by Dominica Phetteplace
Poetry: BEING ONE WITH THE BROOM by Ruth Berman
Short Story: THIS PETTY PACE by Jason K. Chapman
Poetry: EXTENDED FAMILY by Bruce Boston
Novelette: THE OUTSIDE EVENT by Kit Reed
Poetry: THE MUSIC OF WEREWOLVES by Bruce Boston
Short Story: THE PASTRY CHEF, THE NANOTECHNOLOGIST, THE AEROBICS INSTRUCTOR, AND THE PLUMBER by Eugene Mirabelli
Short Story: FREE DOG by Jack Skillingstead
Poetry: GALILEO'S INKSPOTS FADE INTO TWILIGHT by Geoffrey A. Landis
Novelette: MY HUSBAND STEINN by Eleanor Arnason
Short Story: TO LIVE AND DIE IN GIBBONTOWN by Derek Kunsken
Short Story: A HUNDRED HUNDRED DAISIES by Nancy Kress
Poetry: VAMPIRE POLITICS by Ruth Berman
Novella: THE MAN WHO BRIDGED THE MIST by Kij Johnson
Department: NEXT ISSUE
Department: ON BOOKS: INSIDE/OUTSIDE by Norman Spinrad
Department: SF CONVENTIONAL CALENDAR by Erwin S. Strauss
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Asimov's Science Fiction. ISSN 1065-2698. Vol. 35, No. 10 & 11. Whole No. 429 & 430, October/November 2011. GST #R123293128. Published monthly except for two combined double issues in April/May and October/November by Dell Magazines, a division of Crosstown Publications. One year subscription $55.90 in the United States and U.S. possessions. In all other countries $65.90 (GST included in Canada), payable in advance in U.S. funds. Address for subscription and all other correspondence about them, 6 Prowitt Street, Norwalk, CT 06855. Allow 6 to 8 weeks for change of address. Address for all editorial matters: Asimov's Science Fiction, 267 Broadway, 4th Floor, New York, N.Y. 10007. Asimov's Science Fiction is the registered trademark of Dell Magazines, a division of Crosstown Publications. © 2011 by Dell Magazines, a division of Crosstown Publications, 6 Prowitt Street, Norwalk, CT 06855. All rights reserved, printed in the U.S.A. Protection secured under the Universal and Pan American Copyright Conventions. Reproduction or use of editorial or pictorial content in any manner without express permission is prohibited. Please visit our website, www.asimovs.com, for information regarding electronic submissions. All manual submissions must include a self-addressed, stamped envelope; the publisher assumes no responsibility for unsolicited manuscripts. Periodical postage paid at Norwalk, CT and additional mailing offices. POSTMASTER, send change of address to Asimov's Science Fiction, 6 Prowitt Street, Norwalk, CT 06855. In Canada return to Quad/Graphics Joncas, 4380 Garand, Saint-Laurent, Quebec H4R 2A3.
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ASIMOV'S SCIENCE FICTION
Sheila Williams: Editor
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Stories from Asimov's have won 51 Hugos and 27 Nebula Awards, and our editors have received 18 Hugo Awards for Best Editor.
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Please do not send us your manuscript until you've gotten a copy of our guidelines. Look for them online at www.asimovs.com or send a self-addressed, stamped business-size (#10) envelope, and a note requesting this information. Write “manuscript guidelines” in the bottom left-hand corner of the outside envelope. We prefer electronic submissions, but the address for manual submissions and for all editorial correspondence is Asimov's Science Fiction, 267 Broadway, Fourth Floor, New York, NY 10007-2352. While we're always looking for new writers, please, in the interest of time-saving, find out what we're loking for, and how to prepare it, before submitting your story.
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Department: EDITORIAL: SEND IN THE RIGHT REVIEWER
by Sheila Williams
It's an acknowledged truism that it is pointless to argue with professional critics. Once they've made up their minds about a movie, a book, a play, or a short story, it's highly unlikely that you will disabuse them of their notions. Whether or not you or I agree with their assessment of a work, they will usually have cogent reasons for their opinions. Engaging in counter argument will likely lead to humiliation when they bring the hammer down and finally reveal to you their real opinion of the work in question. I take the advice not to quibble pretty seriously, but there are times when I rather wistfully wonder why a magazine or a newspaper can't be more merciful to their reviewers. Why not ask someone who enjoys genre fiction to review the latest big-budget sci-fi film? Why not give the fantasy buff the newest three-volume trilogy?
In 1979, Time magazine's noted film critic Richard Schickel must have thought he'd drawn the short stick when he was sent to reviewthe first Star Trek movie. He was unhappy with the language, “[T]here is a lot of talk. Much of it in impenetrable spaceflight jargon. Scanners, deflectors, warp speed. . . ."; referred to many of those who had enjoyed the original TV show as “the half-educated"; and completely misinterpreted the opening sequence of the film, describing it this way: “It turns out that the villainous UFO is not manned. This is very peculiar, since in the film's opening sequence it is full of weirdos [sic]. By the time the Enterprise closes in on it, the creatures have all disappeared, victims not of the story line but of what appears to be a shortage of either money or time.”
Mr. Schickel was entitled to his ultimate opinion that Star Trek: The Motion Picture was “nothing but a long day's journey into ennui.” Indeed, it was not the most exciting SF film I'd ever seen, but my “half-educated” friends and I—all philo
sophy graduate students at Washington University in St. Louis—agreed that we would have gotten more from the review if Time had chosen to send a critic who had actually enjoyed the TV show, wasn't afraid of the vocabulary, knew a more descriptive term for “Klingons” than “weirdos,” and could figure out that rather than piloting V'Ger, the aliens and their spaceship were under attack and then destroyed by the “UFO” during the movie's first scene. The reviewer didn't have to like the movie. Confusion and boredom are legitimate reactions to any film, but one gets the sense that Mr. Schickel may have attended the screening of a Star Trek film under protest.
More than thirty years have gone by and as far as fantasy and SF films go, most news outlets seem to have either gotten better at assigning the right reviewers or perhaps find that a higher percentage of their critics grew up on and now enjoy watching genre films. Even Mr. Schickel seems to have found some of the later Star Trek films easier to endure. Reviewers like Richard Corliss, A. O. Scott, and Manohla Dargis, routinely extol the virtues of genre films that catch their fancy. Still, that doesn't mean that today's news outlets always manage to match the right reviewer to the work.
One of the most egregious examples of a mismatched pairing has got to be the New York Times decision to ask Ginia Bellafante to review HBO's ten-part series based on George R.R. Martin's blockbuster fantasy novel, A Game of Thrones. Ms. Bellafante doesn't directly refer to the intended audience as “half-educated,” but she does question whether the show's subject matter could possibly appeal to half the world's population because she doesn't know a single woman who is interested in reading fantasy. (I have the impression that she may never have met any that read science fiction, either.) In her review, Ms. Bellafante shows herself to be very uncomfortable with alien world building. Echoing Mr. Schickel, she's also unhappy with the show's vocabulary and she asserts her superiority over role-playing gamers in the usual obligatory manner of many popular culture critics. She sums up her feelings toward AGame of Thrones this way: “If you are not averse to the Dungeons & Dragons aesthetic, the series might be worth the effort. If you are nearly anyone else, you will hunger for HBO to get back to the business of languages for which we already have a dictionary.”
I have no argument with Ms. Bellafante's opinion of the show. It didn't work for her, and that's fair. It's her job to tell us what she thought. I don't subscribe to HBO and haven't watched the series so I haven't formed my own opinions about it. Still, I am in agreement with a commenter who posted on the Times' website, “I don't want a rabid fan as a reviewer, but the writer should be somebody who at least likes similar shows, movies, and books (a.k.a. somebody who would actually buy a ticket to the Lord of the Rings).”
Ms. Bellafante was inundated with so many cries of protest that she posted a follow-up essay wherein she described herself as a stand-in for the non-fantasy viewer. As such, she may have provided a useful service for that subset of television watchers, but a lot of those spectators probably self-selected themselves out of A Game of Thrones' audience even before they read her review.
Those who could have benefited most from the review—the millions who enjoyed The Lord of the Rings trilogy, as well as Avatar, Star Wars, Star Trek, and perhaps even Monty Python and the Holy Grail—would have learned more from an essay by someone who wasn't afraid to occasionally step outside the everyday world of House and The Sopranos—someone who wasn't discomforted by the language, the world building, and the unusual inhabitants that are often the sine qua non of fantasy and science fiction. Undoubtedly, I wouldn't have agreed with everything this imaginary reviewer had to say about the program, but at least I would have known that he or she had attended the screening willingly and not just for the popcorn.
[Back to Table of Contents]
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Department: REFLECTIONS: A WRITER'S DIARY
by Robert Silverberg
I've never kept a diary, which I often regret when I try to reconstruct the details of some event of my early life. (Isaac Asimov kept one, and it stood him in good stead when he wrote a huge two-volume autobiography, another thing I've never felt the urge to do.) But people often ask me what the life of a science fiction writer is like, since they find the idea that I have put in more than fifty years writing SF very strange indeed. (I don't. I'm used to it.) So, just for the fun of it, a few diary-like notes on my life as a writer in the early weeks of 2011.
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January 11. A newspaper article today about the discovery by archaeologists of what seems to be a six-thousand-year-old winery in Armenia. A column idea here? The ancient past is almost as science-fictional as the future, after all. And I do like wine. Put this aside to think about.
January 15. My birthday. We go to one of our favorite San Francisco restaurants, and I bring along a bottle of one of my favorite wines. The sommelier, as she pours it, says “Welcome back.” Does she remember us from our last visit? We have been seated right opposite the kitchen door; she notices that I don't like it, and arranges for us to move to a better table. Later she brings us an extra course, and then some additional wine. It turns out that she reads SF and loves Lord Valentine's Castle, and indeed remembers me from my last visit here. Wants to talk about my current work—I tell her that I've just written a new Majipoor story—and about my neighbor Jack Vance. It becomes a delightful evening, thanks to her extra attention. I'll send her a signed copy of my newest book; it's the least I can do.
January 18. First copies of Musings and Meditations, the new collection of Asimov's columns published from 1996 to 2010, arrives. They've done a handsome job with it. I start leafing through it and find myself reading my own columns with deep interest, even pleasure. The book, I think, is more than the sum of its parts, not just a bunch of scattered essays but a work that projects a coherent world-view. I hope the critics agree.
January 19. Sheila Williams sends me a link to her new anthology, Enter a Future, made up of stories from Asimov's. It contains my “Enter a Soldier. Later: Enter Another.” I love to see the rows of anthologies on my shelves here, going back more than fifty years, with my stories in them. But I will never see this one: it is available only in an electronic edition. Oh, well. I'll get along without it. I tell Sheila that I'm an old-fashioned guy but I'm doing my best to adapt to the current century.
January 20. Filing some of my Russian editions that a new correspondent in St. Petersburg has sent me. In Soviet days the Russians pirated dozens of my novels and stories, and the piracy went on into the early and wild post-Soviet days. For years I've been trying to collect copies of them, hampered by the difficulty I have reading Cyrillic script. An Amazon-like Russian bookselling site called Ozon.ru lists 129 different Silverberg items, and, scrolling through, I see that I already own about half of them. But some are new to me and aren't even included in the bibliography of my Russian publications that the Polish scholar Zyta Szymanska compiled for me two years ago. With the help of Google's translation function I manage to identify one of them: an attractive book from 1994 that couples my early novel The Seed of Earth with L. Sprague de Camp's The Tower of Zanid. It's in Russian, but it was published, I discover, in Estonia, which in Soviet times was forced to use Russian as its primary language. I'll be in Tallinn, the capital of Estonia, in May. Maybe I can find a copy there, or in St. Petersburg, which I'll also be visiting.
January 24. I've closed a deal for U.S. electronic rights to my ten-volume Collected Short Stories series and the first five volumes will be available on Kindle later this week. (Malcolm Edwards’ Orion Books has already acquired British e-rights.) This is very exciting news. Bill Schafer's Subterranean Press has done a beautiful job with this series, but he's done them only as limited-edition hardcover books that go quickly out of print and become collector's items. Now, though, Malcolm and Bill will be making them permanently available in e-versions, and thus, with a little help from my friends, I acquire a twenty-first-century platform for my work. So long as I'm still around, I want my books and stories to
stay around also, and Kindle and its competitors have gone from being interesting science fictional novelties to being absolutely essential media for the writer who wants his work to survive.
January 25. Got a fast start on the short story I've promised for Gardner Dozois’ book in honor of Poul Anderson. I agreed to write a Time Patrol story for it, and so I was rereading Poul's splendid series all last week to refresh my memory of his concept. (I am staying away from my own Up the Line, which in some ways was a parody of the Anderson series.) Had a lot of trouble working out the resolution of the plot for this one, because once you give all your characters the ability to move freely in any direction in time and space, it's like giving them all magic wands, and any plot resolution can too easily be canceled out by someone else's opposing move. But I think I have it nailed down. We'll see next week.
Feb 1. I seem to have finished the Time Patrol story pretty rapidly, with a ten-page flourish on the final day that harkens back to the wildly prolific days of my youth. Rough draft, of course. I need to read through it carefully and see whether it make sense, now. But I think it does. Gardner will be pleased.
Another Gardner Dozois item today. Sean Wallace of Prime Books has asked me to do an introduction to a collection of Gardner's stories that he's publishing to be distributed at Readercon next summer, where Gardner is guest of honor. This will be the third time since 1977 that I've done an introduction to one of Gardner's story collections. Can I find anything new to say about him? Well, if not, I'll say the same old things. They were good enough to use the first two times around.
Feb 2. From Vince Gerardis comes the outline for the pilot show for the miniseries HBO is planning to make out of The World Inside. I'm pleased to see that the screenwriter has remained completely faithful to the concepts of my novel while introducing some interesting and appropriate new plot twists. If the show does get made—and in Hollywood that's always uncertain until the cameras finally start rolling—it should be terrific, a sexy Blade Runner sort of thing that attracts a wide audience.
Asimov's SF, October-November 2011 Page 1
