Niven drew Known Space in broad strokes: planets and alien races defined by one or two characteristics, history that progressed in definite, discrete steps, and technology that progressed without social resistance or engineering difficulties. With that framework established, authors are free to fill in their own details, and that's always part of the fun of the Man-Kzin Wars volumes.
This present book contains seven stories by four writers: Hal Colebatch, Jessica O. Fox, Matthew Joseph Harrington, and Alex Hernandez. The stories range from a morality play regarding the fate of some surrendered Kzinti to the story of a human adopted into Kzinti society. Together, the authors manage to paint a nuanced and compelling vision of an alien species and the humans affected by them.
A Darkling Sea
James L. Cambias Tor, 352 pages, $25.99 (hardcover)
Kindle: $11.04, iBooks, Nook: $12.99 (e-book)
ISBN: 978-0-7653-3627-9
Genres: Alien Beings, Undersea/On the Sea
There are two things that, when done well, can set an SF reader's heart all a-twitter: aliens and worldbuilding. A Darkling Sea combines the two, and adds well-drawn characters and a compelling plot.
Centuries in the future, Terran explorers ran into the technologically superior Sholen race. Eventually, a truce was drawn: humans would be allowed to continue their explorations, as long as they didn't disturb the habitats of other intelligent creatures.
Enter the planet Ilmatar, an ice-bound world where Terran scientists discover a dark, hidden ocean far beneath the ice—an ocean that's occupied by the sapient Ilmataran race. All goes well, until Henri Kerlerec arrives. Kerlerec is a media darling and latter-day Indiana Jones. When an encounter with the Ilmatarans leaves Kerlerec dead, the Sholen decide to step in to protect the aliens.
Tensions between Terrans and Sholen escalate, as both sides try to co-opt the Ilmatarans. The future of human space exploration hangs in the balance.
This is the book you've wanted to read all year, you just didn't know about it. Now you know.
Burning Paradise
Robert Charles Wilson
Tor, 320 pages, $24.99 (hardcover)
Kindle: $10.99, iBooks, Nook: $12.99 (e-book)
ISBN: 978-0-7653-3261-5
Genres: Alien Beings, Alternate History
When you see Robert Charles Wilson's byline, you know you're in for a fun and crazy ride. Burning Paradise is no exception.
Cassie Klyne is a pretty normal teenager in the United States in 2015. Her world is well on the way to perfection. There haven't been any wars since the Great Armistice of 1918, no economic downturns, no political assassinations. The world is prosperous, poverty is almost unknown, even crime and social unrest are rare.
And Cassie knows it's not supposed to be that way.
Her parents were part of the group that discovered the truth, eight years ago. Since the invention of radio, an alien being has been making subtle changes in human development—changing history for its own unknown ends.
One thing is sure, though: the alien entity doesn't want humans to know the truth. Cassie's parents were murdered, as were others in their group. Those who knew the secret scattered and went into hiding. Cassie's aunt Nerissa, part of the group, took Cassie and her brother Thomas into hiding. That way, they've been able to survive.
Until the night Cassie witnesses a pedestrian struck by a car outside her apartment—a pedestrian whose red blood is mixed with the green, steaming fluid that marked the android agents of the alien.
Cassie takes her brother and goes on the run... and an adventure that will bring her face-to-face with the mysterious force that's been manipulating humanity.
It's a breathless romp across an Earth that's maddeningly different from our own, an Earth in the grip of one of the grandest conspiracy theories ever. Cassie, smart and plucky, is a great guide on this journey.
If any book ever deserved to be called a "page-turner," it's Burning Paradise. If you lose sleep finishing it, don't blame me.
And that, unfortunately, is the end of my space. Until next time, enjoy!
Don Sakers is the author of The Eighth Succession and Dance for the Ivory Madonna. For more information, visit www.scatteredworlds.com.
* * *
BRASS TACKS
2711 words
Dear Trevor,
First, I'd like to thank you very much for your kind words in your March 2014 editorial ["I, Editor"].
But my main reason for writing is to respond to Joseph Blacksten's letter in that issue. You answered him very well—you're exactly right that there are many ways to write editorials, and the important thing is to use one well suited to the subject at hand—but I think I can add a different perspective.
Mr. Blacksten says, "An editorial should make the point right away, then develop the reasons to support it." He cites former editor John W. Campbell as a good example of this practice. But the fact is that while John sometimes did it that way, more often he didn't.
I speak with some authority on this because I wrote more Analog editorials than anybody except John, and in learning to do so, I studied a lot of his to learn some tricks of the trade from a master. But I didn't just rely on my memory. Before starting this letter, I revisited Harry Harrison's collection of Campbell editorials.
What I found confirmed what I remembered. While occasionally John actually stated a thesis up front and then gave supporting arguments and examples, more often his approach was subtler and obviously influenced by his background as a fiction writer. Typically he started an editorial, like a story, with a "narrative hook," a provocative statement calculated to grab the reader's attention and make him or her want to stick around and see where Campbell was going with it. Usually he wound up following a meticulous chain of logic to a conclusion that seemed inescapable but was quite different from what the reader might have expected. Sometimes that conclusion was so shockingly at odds with something the reader started out believing that he was forced to reexamine his own beliefs to resolve the apparent contradiction.
I found that technique so effective as a reader that I often used it later in my own editorials. The only problem I ever found with it was that if my narrative hook used a recent event as an example of the point I was eventually going to make, some readers mistakenly thought the editorial was about the example rather than the principle it illustrated. But that made for good Brass Tacks letters and responses.
As you said, there are lots of ways to do it, and no matter which one you choose, some readers will think it's wrong. Don't let that bother you. I often thought that my most successful editorials were ones that drew hate mail from both ends of the spectrum. You're off to a good start; keep using a variety of topics and approaches, have fun with it, and keep us all on our toes!
Stan Schmidt
Dear Mr. Quachri,
I read your January/February 2014 editorial about STEM education ["Checklists"]. While I consider education to be a good thing in general and STEM education to be a good thing in particular, it occurs to me to wonder: What is the employment outlook in STEM fields?
Yours truly, Rudolf vonLuchen
A very good question. The answer is complicated: On one hand, "over the past 10 years, growth in STEM jobs was three times as fast as growth in non-STEM jobs," according to the U.S. Department of Commerce. On the other hand, some disciplines (like electrical engineering) currently have over three times the average unemployment for the field (though still better than the national average).
My takeaway would be that STEM degrees and jobs are vital and valuable, but as long as the education gap I discussed in my editorial persists, they're also in danger of being increasingly outsourced.
Dear Editors,
Regarding the January/February 2014 Editorial ["Checklists"]: The poor quality of education in the U.S. is of great concern. Not only are we on track to become a third world nation, but more importantly, democracy requires an educated and informed populace. We are failing both of those requireme
nts. We need better politicians, but we will not get those unless we have a better electorate.
I BEG everyone to read John Taylor Gatto's Underground History of American Education, which is free at http://www.johntaylor gatto.com/chapters/index.htm. Gatto, who wrote Dumbing Us Down, was New York City and later New York State Teacher of the Year. He eventually quit in disgust, and investigated just how our schools got to be so very bad. The short answer is by design; the aim was to so badly miseducate, even diseducate, 90% of the population that they would not self-educate.
This is a pretty shocking claim, but Gatto backs it up completely. He has quotes from Dewey, Mann, and US education policy documents that astonish. He says repeatedly that it is NOT a conspiracy; the system is stable as long as everyone protects their own self-interest.
NO discussion of the problems in education is properly informed without what Gatto has to say. Fixing details on a system designed to fail only makes it worse.
Part of the problem is that many students do not know any educated people other than their teachers, who are too often not very bright, badly paid, and have no job satisfaction, so the students see education as not being worthwhile.
I have an Ivy League BSChE 1980, and have worked on the side as a tutor for several decades. For a while I worked for the local juvenile court, tutoring kids in a school for those who had been thrown out of school. Two in particular were giving me guff about math being useless, so I brought in my thermodynamics and transport [of mass, momentum, and energy, not people] texts, which have some math. What really blew them away was the transport text's eight pages of nomenclature, showing what various symbols stood for. They had never seen such math and had no idea math was required to design things.
I could never understand the attitude they, like many of the others, had—basically: "I ain't gonna learn nothin' and you can't make me." In frustration I asked two of them if they knew why life is like a manure sandwich, the answer being the more bread you have the less manure you have to eat. I told them that they were choosing a life of ignorant poverty, where they would eat a great deal more manure than they really had to. Gatto explains how the system is designed to give them that attitude.
As to the alleged benefits of centrally controlled curricula, I note that almost all private school students do much better on STEM [and other] subjects, and those curricula are not centralized at all. I did have one student at a "Christian" school, for physics, who was never taught about torque and angular momentum; his parents allowed as how the teacher was chosen for religious fervor, not ability. But that was the exception.
Also, while tutoring juvies I looked at their history material, and what they were taught about Vietnam was simply not true. See also Lies My Teacher Told Me [e.g., pretty much everything your high school history text said about Reconstruction is false, history rewritten so Southern states would adopt the text that was nicest to the South; Woodrow Wilson was an open member of the KKK, and was the one who segregated the federal government, etc]. I see great benefit in diversity in education in that it keeps us from having everyone indoctrinated alike. At least someone will be taught those politically incorrect truths.
I note that in paragraph six some arithmetic was done wrong: Per stats given, 34% of engineers are female; the 18% is white females only.
John Williams Port Clinton, OH
Dear Mr. Quachri:
It took a little while for the penny to drop, and then I realized what is really different in Analog since the Quachri Era began. It is the lack of those little introductory blurbs! They have been a consistent feature of Analog for more than seventy years, and I miss them. Any chance of bringing them back?
Marc Russell Los Angeles, CA
Dear Editor Quachri,
I usually write Dr. Schmidt a letter when I send in my Anlab selections and I thought I would continue that tradition with you.
Generally I am very happy with your editing of Analog but I do have two negatives, one minor, one major.
The minor quibble: I miss very much the one or two sentence blurbs that have always introduced an Analog story. It may be that you just don't want to write them, and I can live with that but I miss them. To me they have always been part of the Analog experience.
There were two stories in Analog that I hated this year.
There always were a few stories every year that I was indifferent to and even mildly disliked but I can't ever remember in my 20+ years of reading Analog any stories that I felt were completely out of place.
The stories and my reasons:
"Other People's Avatars" [Howard V. Hendrix, July/August 2013]. The lead character in this story is an active drug abuser. I do not want to read stories about drug abusers. I only read four pages. Maybe the point was that the character's experience in the story would reform him. I don't care. I do not want to read stories about active drug abusers. It violates my sense of life
"The Oracle" [Lavie Tidhar, September 2013]. I hated this story even more than OPA. I read the whole story, and it made no sense at all to me.
Since this has never happened to me EVER in my reading of Analog, the fault is with the author, not with me. The story came across to me as an illogical, confused mishmash. It did not belong in Analog.
Two small blips in any otherwise fine year. I am looking forward to another twenty years of excellent stories under your editorship.
Dr. Rebekah M. Brown
I appreciate the feedback. A lot of people miss the blurbs, and I understand their appeal. I tried writing a few (that didn't see print), but I found it very difficult to avoid quickly falling into a rut: all of mine started to sound alike in short order. Instead of blurbs on the individual stories, I've been making the monthly "In Times to Come" box almost more like a collection of blurbs; hopefully, the tease will help motivate readers into picking up the next issue. But like many things, that's not set in stone, and I won't say it's impossible for the old method to return.
I actually feel like only hating two stories out of the year is pretty complementary, all things considered. It may sound strange, but I'm okay with people hating a few stories here and there. Optimally, everyone would love everything, of course, but that's not realistic. So I hope that the magazine is surprising and interesting on the whole, knowing the risks that entails. I'd rather have that than something toothless or predictable, where everyone always knows what they're going to get.
To the Editor:
I have not written to an Analog editor since J.W. Cambell published a wild takeoff on Keynesian multiplier analysis that was combined with a totally misleading take on the relationship between gold and money. However, I am moved to write that the article by Andrews ["Homesteading to the Stars: Colony vs. Crew," December 2013], while interesting as a set of suggestions on achieving interstellar colonization in the next century, has a severe flaw in its economics.
The idea that an expedition would get a positive return on investment by sending back data accumulated along the way does not fly. The same data could be obtained by much cheaper robot craft which might even be more reliable, and it is not very likely that any such data would be sufficiently valuable to pay for an expedition on the scale he suggests. The matter is not hopeless, however, for there are far more certain and valuable returns that might be considered. Many an SF story has featured colonization by dissatisfied groups such the Pilgrims going to North America. Some such groups might be heavily subsidized by a civilization that wants to see the last of them. How much might some of us pay to see the last of white supremacists, religious fanatics, or Justin Bieber fans? A very rich society that wanted peace might sponsor a flight or two. A rigid and intolerant society might want to send off some it could not tolerate (to a new Australia perhaps). As a viable commercial enterprise however—no chance.
Neil Garston Professor Emeritus of Economics
Greetings!
Mr. Arlan Andrews, Sr.'s article ["Homesteading to the Stars: Colony vs. Crew," December 2013] is a well-written expl
anation of one method for reaching the stars. While colonies on Earth were expected to provide economic gains to the backers (raw material, products to sell, etc.), a colony in the stars is a one-way trip with little economic reward to the backers except any immediate profit made in the construction, supply, etc. I will take issue on his idea that such an endeavor can only come from "educated, liberal democracies" to produce the necessary wealth and technology to fund, equip, and send forth the voyagers. Any authoritarian society (social, political, or religious) can focus on such a project and bring it to completion.
C. Henry Depew
Tallahassee, FL
Dear Editors
With regard to "Things We Have in This House for No Reason" [Marissa K. Lingen] in the October 2013 edition, I have read the story several times and I don't get it.
Is this a shaggy dog story?
Stephen Burgis
No, it's not a shaggy dog story; a shaggy dog story intentionally lacks a point or punchline. Spelling out what a story is attempting often spoils the very thing that makes it work, so I'll just say that the narrator may not understand her elders or her world quite as well as she thinks she does.
Dear Trevor Quachri,
This is a comment on H. G. Stratmann's science fact article, "Galactic Cannibalism: Who's On the Menu?" in your July/August 2013 issue of Analog. I was fascinated reading about close encounters of a galactic kind between our Milky Way galaxy and others in our local group.
I am of a paleontological bent and have always wondered what conditions our Solar System has cycled through in its orbit around our galaxy. It takes about 230 million years to make one orbit. I've also heard there is a pattern of global catastrophes and meteor and comet bombardments on our planet that occur about once every 230 million years. I've always wondered if these were connected, but never knew just what "conditions" would be different in our orbit on the other side of our Galaxy. Surely plowing through an intergalactic collision zone would be enough to "perturb" anybody's Oort Cloud! If not just rain down on us with intergalactic space junk!
Analog Science Fiction and Fact - July-Agust 2014 Page 37
