Image by sdobie via Flickr"Stealth" is the first story in this edition of Asimov's Science Fiction. The author is Kristine Kathryn Rusch. She is credited with a number of accolades including winning a Readers' Award, AnLab from Analog, and she apparently now has a series of novels behind her and near fruition projects which will be published shortly. Overall, I have a mixture of feelings for this novella. There is an overarching sentiment that I am getting from a number of stories, as well as a character type, which I'm starting to find not entirely to my tastes. In fact, I often like to start with a negative that I might leave off with positives. Kind of like eating your salad before you eat your meat or dessert. That said, the protagonist of the story is a 'galaxy's greatest scientist' faced with serious repercussions to her research (people die) which has given her a great deal of guilt over the accidents, and a fear that the technology, if mastery is achieved, might result in the ruling empire's having control over a technology which would give it an overwhelming advantage over her competitors. Thus, it becomes her mission to do her best to destroy the technology as best she might. She therefore becomes something of a terrorist, blowing up facilities while posing as a lead researcher.
Most of the narrative is told through third person limited, confined to the perspective of "Squishy"/Rosealma. Despite being described as a top level genius, there are times where her thoughts seem to parallel those of someone with not much education at all. For instance, the phrase, "She hadn't bothered to learn him in the same kind of depth that he had learned her." I have a hard time living with that line. It's not the type of phrase that a learned person would think. She doesn't use language in the way a scientist would.
One of the strengths of this novella is Rusch's interesting approach to a nonlinear story. It is relatively simple and easy to follow. Each reference to the past which has an effect on the 'now' has its own heading. Using this formula of switching between past and present, she manages to develop her protagonist's history with Quint, a minor antagonist/former-husband who works as security for the very empire she is working to undermine, as well as her reasons for blowing up the research station and showing that this is not her first time.
Rusch also has an excellent ability to fill out scenes with adequate descriptions that add to her story. She is an excellent storyteller. Again, my only quibble is with the sort of language that she uses from time-to-time as it's 'transcribed' from the thoughts of this super-galactic-scientific mind.
In the end, she gets away with sabotage. I don't really like the characters. I don't really like the plot. The only thing I really liked are her excellent descriptive passages and strong ability to conduct a temporally complex story in a very easy to follow way.
Just one thing I'd like to add: the subscription model deletes issues when a new one is loaded on, automatically. It is possible to go to Amazon's website and download a past issue. But then I had a hard time finding it. To be honest, I was not able to find it by hunting for the title. I did make a search for 'Asimov' and was able to find it and continue reading it. However, I think this is a poorly thought out idea. What they really ought to do is query the reader of whether or not they want that edition deleted or not. Also, it was impossible to predict when this would happen. I have a December issue even though it's not quite November yet. I find this annoying.
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