Analog Science Fiction and Fact, January/February 2014
Reviewed date: 2014 May 5
192 pages
192 pages
- Serial (2 of 4): "Lockstep" by Karl Schroeder - Toby wakes up after a 14,000-year sleep to discover that the entire galaxy is operating in locksteps--a city sleeps for 360 (or 720, or 180) years while robots and machines gather scarce resources, wakes for a month, and then sleeps another 360 years.
- Novella: "Music to Me" by Richard A. Lovett - Follow-up story to January/February 2010's "Neptune's Treasure". Now the AI Brittney is back on Earth, where she discovers that a) people don't know or care she exists, and b) there is an AI hiding in Earth's network that will kill her to protect the secret of its existence.
- Novelette: "The Tansy Tree" by Rob Chilson - This seemed more fantasy than science fiction. There's something about a man whose wife is dying, and her tansy tree that grows medicinal nuts for her.
- Novelette: "Determined Spirits" by Gray Rollins - A man is awoken decades early from cold-sleep, and uncovers a murderous plot to sabotage the entire interstellar mission.
- Short story: "Mousunderstanding" by Carl Frederick - Trade representative visits a planet whose currency and economic policy is based on mice--and it's all being threatened by a plague of cats.
- Short story: "Win, Women, and Stars" by Thoraiya Dyer - A doctor contemplates botching an operation in order to sabotage the patient's chances of going to Mars--and the doctor happens to be the second choice for the Mars expedition.
- Short story: "This is as I wish to be Restored" by Christie Yant - A cryogenics lab runs out of money and discards some frozen people, but an employee saves one secretly, to revive later.
- Short story: "The Problem with Reproducible Bugs" by Marie DesJardin - A scientist working on a brain-scanning invention is suffering memory blank-outs, and can't discover why.
- Short story: "Just Like Grandma Used to Make" by Brenta Blevins - Arrested by the food copyright police for making home-made apple pie.
- Short story: "Racing Prejudice" by John Frye III - A AI/robot competes in the Olympics, but miscalculates and is beaten by an unmodified human.
- Short story: "Technological Plateau" by Michael Turton - A veritable paradise of a planet is actually a trap: EM bursts periodically destroy any technological device.
- Short story: "This Quiet Dust" by Karl Bunker - A planet without animal life is revealed to have intelligent dust.
- Science Fact: "Lighting Up the Brain: The Use of Electromagnetic Radiation to Stimulate Neurons" by Kyle Kirkland - Orwellian alarmism about manipulating people's thoughts via electromagnetic stimulation. The problem is how to achieve a specific result with such a crude delivery mechanism--you could try tailored genes inserted into specific sets of neurons to make them sensitive to the EM radiation.