Analog Science Fiction and Fact, May 2011
Reviewed date: 2011 Jul 7
112 pages
112 pages
The stories in this issue were mostly serviceable but not memorable. I did particularly enjoy What I Did on My Summer Vacation and Boumee and the Apes.
- Novella: Tower of Worlds, by Rajnar Vajra - A giant spaceship houses different species in their own, separate environments, but everything threatens to come undone when the queen of one level works to invade the next.
- Novelette: Ellipses.., by Ron Collins - A man's neighbors are digging funny holes in their lawn, so he investigates--and discovers far more than he bargained for: his neighbors are aliens.
- Novelette: Blind Spot, by Bond Elam - Detective Harry Carver takes a case for a pharmaceutical company hoping to recover a stolen memory-erasing drug called Oblivion, and predictably ends up losing his memory and forgetting about the case.
- Short story: Boumee and the Apes, by Ian McHugh - Boumee the elephant sees apes acting intelligently and suspects they might be people too, but can he convince the tribe before they kill all the apes?
- Short story: The Wolf and the Panther were Lovers, by Walter L. Kleine - A con man in the old west meets a talking wolf and panther.
- Short story: The Old Man's Best, by Bud Sparhawk - Brewing moonshine on a space station near Jupiter.
- Short-short: What I Did on My Summer Vacation, by Jerry Oltion - Video-game summer camp is the best until the kids discover that the administration is using them as gold farmers--so they organize a rebellion, refuse to play video games, and end up "addicted" to that outdoors stuff.
- Science fact: To the Outer Solar System and Beyond: Psychological Issues in Deep Space, by Nick Kanas, M.D. - A review (for widely-read science fiction fans anyway) of potential psychological issues facing long-term space travel.