Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine - January 2012

 Introduction - Getting to Know my Kindle Subscriptions

These last several weeks have been very strange for my subscription to Asimov's Science Fiction. First, I had November's edition. Just as I was winding down to the last stories when suddenly it disappeared and was replaced by the December copy. This then quickly disappeared and was then replaced by January's edition. Now, to be fair, the issue is quite simple: they can be found in the newly formed 'Periodicals: Back Issues' section to the rear of my Kindle's library, on page 13. However, it was quite confusing to me. I actually tried to download it again, but still could not find it until I did a search for the copy. Even this did not show me where it was, but it did allow me to open the November edition again so that I could finish it before opening the January edition.

So, I thought that I had been hallucinating about the December edition or something since it was there and then gone so quickly. So, I went to the Kindle FAQ and read the part about the 'Periodicals: Back Issues.' Shortly thereafter, the whole mystery of how periodicals work on the Kindle is solved.

I will be reading the December edition after I've finished reading the January edition I guess. Vital statistics for the main body of fiction: 48,487 words, 1 Novella, 1 Novelette, 5 short stories, and 2 poems. There is also a short essay by Robert Silverberg.

In the House of Aryaman, A Lonely Signal Burns - Elizabeth Bear

Elizabeth Bear's name was oddly familiar. I didn't know from what or why, but somehow I knew that name. After doing a little digging, it's no wonder why. Surely I've seen her books scattered throughout the science fiction and fantasy dens of second hand book stores aImage via Wikipediand libraries. She has done a lot of writing and a lot of her writing has been published. She has a generous article about her on Wikipedia.org. She also has an active and attractive web page/blog of her own, elizabethbear.com. There is a lot of information on her webpage about her various interests and activities in her profession and some personal anecdotes and photographs. On second thought, I was thinking about Greg Bear or Grizzly Bear. Is there any relation to the three? I didn't find a connection. I guess this Bear is a new Bear to me.

The setting is in India, in the somewhat distant future. One thing that kind of threw me off is her use of the word 'farang' to refer to foreigners, or Caucasians in India. It's odd because that's the word that Thai people use. It's a Thai word. Why would it be used in the context of India? Well, that's always a potential pitfall about writing a story in a country you're not all that familiar with. It's a bit easier if it doesn't exist at all. The editor wrote that the story is 'set in a stunningly rendered future India.' I think I agree and disagree with that statement. First, I disagree with it because it doesn't really feel much like India to me, future or present. More importantly, I agree with it because it is an excellent picture of a certain future. I enjoyed the forays into the alternate reality cyber world. I also enjoyed the playing with genetic engineering which appears quite often throughout the story: it affects Ferron to obey her mother when really she doesn't want to; there's a cat which is engineered to be blue with golden eyes. Not only that, but it can also learn how to talk.

The story is written in third person limited point of view from the perspective of a detective, Ferron. A murder has been committed, and it's quite an extraordinarily brutal one at that. In the apartment of the deceased, or so it's assumed to be early on, the victim - one Dexter Coffin, is not so much beside himself as he is inside out of himself. Much of what we're led to believe early on gets turned inside out, however, much like the corpse which leads to the investigation.

Eventually everything is sorted out, and the mystery is solved. I don't think it was a particularly good mystery. Maybe I've been watching too much CSI. It turns out that the corpse is a matter of mistaken identity and the murderer being thought of as the victim who had taken on someone else's identity. The charm of this story is definitely the setting, as well as the relationship between mother and daughter (with the mother being hooked on the cyber world).

Bruce Springsteen - Paul McAuley

Paul McAuley has an impressive bibliography that can be found at Wikipedia.org. I did not find anything else worth mentioning in terms of a personal or professional webpage.

This story is set on earth near Las Vegas. The setting is not so distant future. Things change in a hurry when an alien species, the 'Jackaroo' makes first contact with humankind. From there, the changes are rapid. 

A man on death row for some murders is confessing his story leading to the crimes to an alien from the culture called !Cha. He was working in a substandard casino when he ran into a woman, Rachel, who talked him into going on an adventure with her to steal an artifact. They succeed in getting the stone she was after, but not without committing some acts of murder in the process. They bring it to the tombs of the alien when the girl hits him over the head with a flashlight and attempts to make a getaway. The authorities are able to stop and kill her, however.

When the authorities are about to pick up the narrator, he first smashes to bits the stone that they had brought there in the first place. He swallows one of the pieces and thereby makes himself a host to one of the ghosts which inhabit the tomb.

Recyclable Material - Katherine Marzinsky

This is Katherine Marzinsky's first story. She has no webpage or any information about her anywhere in the top 100 Google results. However, I really enjoyed this very short and simple story.

The story is told from the perspective of a sanitation robot. Out of the first three tales I've read thus far, I enjoyed this one the most. It's very short, almost 1,200 words. A robot is cleaning the streets as his function requires when he runs into a discarded baby. He brings it to a hospital for recycling. On the one hand, it horrifies the nursing staff in the hospital. What's left unsaid, though, is what the other robots might have done with other abandoned babies. It might have been the first time a machine came in with a baby, but it's unlikely that it would have been the first time a baby had been encountered.

Maiden Voyage - Jack McDevitt

Jack McDevitt has a webpage, jackmcdevitt.com, of his own and there's also a Wikipedia.org article on him. Evidently, according to Wikipedia.org, he started off on his writing career in his early 50s. That sure gives late bloomers the message that you can get started at any time.

The story is told in third person. Mankind has enabled himself to go beyond his own star system and is visiting the first planet which is truly suitable for human habitation. It's verdant beyond belief and puts Brazil's Amazon to shame.

Those who were sent there to study it discover an extinct culture. There are cities, but no one is left in them. There is the mystery of what happened to them which may never be answered. This is due to the pilot's opinion that the discoveries should not be revealed to the human community. The reason for this is that she doesn't like the commercialization of untouched places. She remembered how the craters on the moon were being 'ruined' by humanity.

I don't know if I believe in that sentiment, but, it is what it is. Morally, I suppose, he's trying to suggest that some tombs in Egypt ought not to be touched, and ought to be left to time to destroy. Well, he doesn't put it that way, but I feel that inference. I figure if they're dead, well, it's not going to bother them at all if we explore their culture. If anything, it is what brings them back to life. King Tutankhamen is more alive in the last twenty years than he has been in the last two thousand because of the archaeologists who have painstakingly pulled his remains apart and examined them, and the things which he 'possessed' in death. Commercialization is unfortunate, but it's also an enabler for people, individuals, to visit an area for themselves.


The War is Over and Everyone Wins - Zachary Jernigan

Zachary Jernigan has a nifty little blog: zacharyjernigan.blogspot.com.

This story has its roots in racism and genocide. In essence, the white race has been annihilated. The main character is an Indian who married a Vietnamese and then produced offspring together that looked white. As a result, they were murdered. His father was a part of the army that introduced the virus that killed every white person. His father also had no sympathy for his son's loss and attributes the murder of his son's family to the fact that his family was too white.

I think that the editor's note at the start of the story was attempting to difuse a bomb before it went off. The author quoted Margaret Atwood, "I hope that people will finally come to realize that there is only one 'race'-- the human race -- and that we are all members of it." If we are to follow that line of thinking, not in terms of the intent of meaning but how it might mean if followed in another direction, it might suggest that genocide would not cover the active extermination of a certain race. But, there are races. There is but one species, the human species, but of race, we have many. I know that the intent was to say that every division within the species ought to be thought of as equals, but following the line of thinking to its edges will reveal that it is a poorly worded sentiment.

Writing about genocide is bound to be a hot topic. Writing about genocide about an alien culture is one way to avoid the controversy. However, Jernigan chose to write about Caucasians being exterminated.

Now, one thing that is suggested in the text is that Caucasians are the glue that keeps the races together. After the extermination, all the other races quardoned off themselves from the others, literally built walls around them, and began to war between districts within cities which had concentrations of the remaining races. He writes that "we're not violent because there are no Caucasians around to keep things peaceful." However, what else are we to infer from the fact that suddenly all the races left (all non-Caucasians) are fighting hand-and-foot. The culprit is suggested to be the last vestiges of white culture left behind, with certain people being targetted as being too white and perhaps the cause of the current friction in Jernigan's world.

In any case, the grandfather of the narrator (narration is in first person) has died. He was half white, and a little too white for his father. His father is only quarter white, and therefore much darker. Thus, the father is quite happy that his own father has died. The narrator, however, despite being unable to remember white people, remembers his grandfather as a good man, and loved his Vietnamese wife and his daughter. Therefore, he is upset by the genocide.

I suspect that if this same type of story was to be written about Africans being excised from the human race, it wouldn't be tolerated. Nor would it be tolerated of any other race. Imagine a story based on the extinction of the Jewish people? What kind of story could we infer from that? But, shoes never do fit on the other feet.

The Burst - C. W. Johnson

I couldn't find anything decent about C. W. Johnson online when I went looking for it today.

One thing that bothers me a little bit that I often run into is the idea that somehow physicists are intellectually superior to everyone else. I see it on a comedy show that I've really been enjoying, "The Big Bang Theory" where Sheldon is at the top of the intellectual pecking order of his friends. There was even an article about it somewhere. Often I see the sentiment that liberal arts degree holders ought to be considered less intellectually capable than those who hold science degrees. It usually bothers me. Especially considering that understanding the basic premises and principles of what the current generation of scientists believe is mostly old hat and quite simple.

The reason I'm bringing it up is because of the conversation Cayla has with her boyfriend, Rish. They are discussing the basics of Big Bang Theory. When the super intelligent Cayla asks if Rish remembers the conversations he replies, "Talk, yes. Understand, no. All I remember is, dark energy something something expanding universe something something accelerating something something, or something." His degree is in history. How it is that we're to assume that someone who enjoys history has somehow ignored the history of science or cannot comprehend it is pretty lame and a tired old sentiment.

In any case, to round up the plot: girl is a student. She's really smart. She finds a bit of data and forms a theory about how it shows that dark matter has been observed. She tries to tell her professor, but his dog just died and he's torn up over it. Turns out that it was his wife's dog, and the wife had died six years earlier.

This story was definitely not my cup'o'tea and perhaps a tad offensive. Perhaps he should do a bit of research on the Wright brothers. A high school dropout dispelled the myth then held by the brightest minds in the physics community that technology would never lift man into the sky. Quite frankly, a lot of the problems facing the physics community look quite simple with simple solutions and explanations. Sometimes, they remind me of priests with followers rather than people who are genuinely interested in the phenomena in the universe. I guess this story has brought out some of those old feelings and disgust.

Friendlessness - Eric Del Carlo

Eric Del Carlo has a webpage of his own. It looks like some of the books that he's selling have same-sex relationships going on. That is to say, on several of the covers, actually more than half, there are two scantily clad men. I have nothing against same-sex relationships, but taking a look through it made me wonder if there was any relationship between homosexuality and the sad character of the story.

One interesting sci-fi spec, and this is the only thing that makes this story sci-fi, is the 'socweb.' The socweb is not really explained fully. However, it seems like an implanted number which gives everyone who sees each other with one of the devices a score of how socially valuable the character is.

In this case, the character is some kind of extremely socially awkward individual. He briefly had friends, but these friends were not really friends. But once he lost his job and his money was gone, so too were his friends (nobody knows you when you're down and out).

He hitchhikes back to his home town. And, when it seems he's about to commit suicide, though subconsciously, an old acquaintance stops him. That friend had not only lost his socweb implant, but had grown to like not having it at all. He offers friendship and assistance. He doesn't care about socweb scores. He just wants to help an old friend in need.

I had wondered if there was some homosexual element to these characters, but there's nothing to suggest that at all in the story itself. Also, having briefly scanned Johnson's short autobiography, I don't think he is either. So, I don't think that is an element to the story. It was just a thought. I thought that maybe there was some shame in the main character which was causing his extreme feelings of social awkwardness. But, nothing is said explicitly to reveal the reason for this. He's just naturally antisocial.

The Essays

Reflections: Rare Earths, Getting Rarer--Robert Silverberg

We are facing some kind of crisis. I don't think many people are even aware of the problem or even know what rare earths is. They probably don't know that they are essential molecular components of all of our advanced technogadgets: computers, cell phones, lithium batteries, etc. They probably don't know that China likes to inflate the cost of the materials from time-to-time, and that we're in just such a time now. This causes artificial scarcity, but the truth is that eventually they will be very scarce materials.

There is not much effort being made to recycle components so that those molecules might be reused. Apparently mining is still a cheaper way to get these materials.Perhaps one day we won't have a choice, and we'll have to get raw materials from our waste. Wouldn't that be nice?

On the Net: Son of eBooks, the Next Generation, Vol. III--James Patrick Kelly

James Patrick Kelly writes a brief essay about how ebooks are growing. I have to agree with that sentiment. Wow... has it almost been one year since I bought my Kindle? It's the best thing I've bought for myself in years - aside from the netbook I'm using right now. I'm reading more than I have since I left Concordia University in 2005. Back in 2005, when I came to Korea, I had to pick and choose gingerly what texts I could bring with me to savour as I suffered in a country with little to offer the literary aficionado. Well, the Kindle has completely changed all that.

I now carry around with me more than 300 books wherever I go. Just a few months ago I started some subscription services, and I'm considering ordering some more. I'm eagerly anticipating the time when I can hold a coloured version of the Kindle that's about A4 in size so that I can read graphic novels and graphically rich content with the same gusto as I do text on my b&w Kindle.

Also, the amount of subscriptions on Amazon is small, but slowly growing.

These are really exciting times in the publishing industry. I do believe James has the right idea when he wrote, "Certainties are profound: at some point the ascending digital line must cross the descending print line. not if, friends, but when. The Two Certainties point to a future in which ebooks inevitably dominate paper books."

I don't think paper books will ever disappear. However, I do expect that market to fluctuate. I believe that the print-on-demand presses are just getting started. Micro publishing will rise up in a tide as have the micro brewing industries of beer. I think this is a great thing, and it excites me tremendously as I ponder my own existence in this universe. I also fully believe that the world of professional publishing will eventually look to the success of self published writers before committing to trying a new writer. Or, perhaps they'll just start offering a lot less money. Maybe they're doing that already. Maybe someone can enlighten me.

In conclusion, he writes, "Oh, and FYI: ebooks are here to stay. you read it here first." I think I can also say the same about pbooks (paper books). They are here to stay. They will transform into something that is more crafted and elegant than it has been in the past. I think this is a great thing.

Conclusions

Again, I enjoyed this edition of Asimov's Science magazine. I was kind of happy to see a few essays to the rear of the magazine, but I still feel that this is a weak point of the magazine. They could do a lot to bolster that section. Also, sometimes I find the language of the writers to be a bit ill under educated sounding, especially when that language is handled by these allegedly superior intellects in their dialogues in the stories. One of the reasons I like watching the TV comedy series, "The Big Bang Theory", I realized, is because of the rich geek-speak that I hear from the characters. It really is like they're speaking my language.