Analog Science Fiction and Fact, November 2013
Reviewed date: 2014 Feb 24
112 pages
112 pages
It took me forever to finish reading this issue, because I got distracted by watching Netflix and playing Tiny Death Star.
- Novella: "The Matthews Conundrum" by Edward M. Lerner - Joshua Matthews gets sick, leaves a party in a cab, and arrives home a month later, still sick from the party. Nobody can explain his month-long absence. As he investigates, he uncovers a conspiracy that stretches hundreds of light-years and spans billions of years: it seems somebody or something has been "synchronizing" civilizations on various planets, to bring them all to a relatively similar level of technology at the same time. Although the planets differ in age by billions of years, every species has achieved space travel capability at the same time.
- Novelette: "Make Hub, Not War" by Christopher L. Bennett - All interstellar commerce goes through the Hub.
- Novelette: "Redskins of the Badlands" by Paul Di Filippo - A Park Ranger stumbles upon vandals, who kidnap him and take him to their secret project: nano-paleontology. But not just that--the nanobots excavate the dinosaur bones, then stitch them together with faux muscles and animate the structure with a primitive AI. The "dinosaur" then starts to eat them.
- Short story: "Bugs" by Ron Collins - An old man tries an experimental nanotech treatment instead of a heart transplant, but soon discovers that the nanobugs are fixing more than his heart--they're making him a better human.
- Short story: "Deceleration" by Bud Sparhawk - A mysterious object in the sky appears at intervals of centuries, and it seems to be slowing down. It eventually arrives in the solar system.
- Short story: "Distant" by Michael Monson -
- Short story: "The Eagle Project" by Jack McDevitt - A nanoship project to explore nearby solar systems turns up nothing of interest, and a follow-up project appears unlikely until the last images arrive: a mysterious tower on a faraway world. New expeditions are planned--but Tony suspects the tower image was faked.
- Short story: "Copper Charley" by Joseph Weber - A coal mining company, facing bad publicity for their environment-wrecking activities, turns to a new, pleasanter technology: bioengineered trees that extract copper from the soil. It's like mining, but without the environmental impact--or at least that was the plan until the trees evolve.
- Science Fact: "3D Printing and Dancing Bears" by Thomas A. Easton -