Analog Science Fiction and Fact, March 2014
Reviewed date: 2016 Dec 19
112 pages
112 pages
- Serial (3 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.
- Novelette: "Life Flight" by Brad R. Torgersen - A young boy on a colony ship runs into a problem: his body will not tolerate cryo sleep. So while everyone else takes their proper turns sleeping so as to all arrive in the prime of their lives, he arrives a tired, 93-year-old man.
- Short story: "Rubik's Chromosome" by Megan Chaudhuri - A gene analyst takes a second look at a custom chromosome design for a Saudi couple: it's designed to produce good-looking, intelligent boys, and good-looking girls. But there's a tiny mistake: the girls will be intelligent, too.
- Short story: "Not for Sissies" by Jerry Alton - Nathan decides to live and grow old, despite the fact that most people opt to die when things get tough.
- Short story: "The Teacher's Gamble" by Stephen L. Burns - An alien entity watching Earth sacrifices itself to save the planet from an asteroid; the only evidence is the Tunguska event.
- Short story: "The Avalon Missions" by David Brin - Slow and steady wins the race, sort of. The first interstellar space probe finally arrives, only to discover signs of life left behind by later, faster missions.
- Short story: "We Who Are about to Watch You Die Salute You" by Maggie Clark - This story was unnecessarily difficult to follow. It's like the author made it deliberately obtuse. As near as I can tell, the Mars colony/base has been abruptly abandoned because everyone there is dying of unexplained radiation. The last mission was already on its way, and one journalist is interviewing the four women explorers to get their feelings on their one-way trip to die on Mars.
- Science Fact: "The Probability and Nature of an Interstellar Information-Trading Community" by Mark H. Shellans - A lot of sciencey talk about information trading with other intelligent species.