Asimov's SF, August 2011 Read online

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  Cover art by Jeroen Advocaat

  CONTENTS

  Department: EDITORIAL: THE 2011 DELL MAGAZINES AWARD by Sheila Williams

  Department: REFLECTIONS: EARTH IS THE STRANGEST PLANET by Robert Silverberg

  Department: ON THE NET: WRITING LESSONS by James Patrick Kelly

  Novelette: THE END OF THE LINE by Robert Silverberg

  Novelette: CORN TEETH by Melanie Tem

  Short Story: WATCH BEES by Philip Brewer

  Short Story: FOR I HAVE LAIN ME DOWN ON THE STONE OF LONELINESS AND I'LL NOT BE BACK AGAIN by Michael Swanwick

  Poetry: BRIBING KARMA by Danny Adams

  Short Story: WE WERE WONDER SCOUTS by Will Ludwigsen

  Poetry: THE MUSIC OF NESSIE by Bruce Boston

  Short Story: PAIRS by Zachary Jernigan

  Department: NEXT ISSUE

  Novelette: PARADISE IS A WALLED GARDEN by Lisa Goldstein

  Department: ON BOOKS by Peter Heck

  Department: SF CONVENTIONAL CALENDAR by Erwin S. Strauss

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  Asimov's Science Fiction. ISSN 1065-2698. Vol. 35, No. 8. Whole No. 427, August 2011. GST #R123293128. Published monthly except for two combined double issues in April/May and October/November by Dell Magazines, a division of Crosstown Publications. One year subscription $55.90 in the United States and U.S. possessions. In all other countries $65.90 (GST included in Canada), payable in advance in U.S. funds. Address for subscription and all other correspondence about them, 6 Prowitt Street, Norwalk, CT 06855. Allow 6 to 8 weeks for change of address. Address for all editorial matters: Asimov's Science Fiction, 267 Broadway, 4th Floor, New York, N.Y. 10007. Asimov's Science Fiction is the registered trademark of Dell Magazines, a division of Crosstown Publications. © 2011 by Dell Magazines, a division of Crosstown Publications, 6 Prowitt Street, Norwalk, CT 06855. All rights reserved, printed in the U.S.A. Protection secured under the Universal and Pan American Copyright Conventions. Reproduction or use of editorial or pictorial content in any manner without express permission is prohibited. Please visit our website, www.asimovs.com, for information regarding electronic submissions. All manual submissions must include a self-addressed, stamped envelope; the publisher assumes no responsibility for unsolicited manuscripts. Periodical postage paid at Norwalk, CT and additional mailing offices. POSTMASTER, send change of address to Asimov's Science Fiction, 6 Prowitt Street, Norwalk, CT 06855. In Canada return to Quad/Graphics Joncas, 4380 Garand, Saint-Laurent, Quebec H4R 2A3.

  ASIMOV'S SCIENCE FICTION

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  Stories from Asimov's have won 51 Hugos and 27 Nebula Awards, and our editors have received 18 Hugo Awards for Best Editor.

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  Please do not send us your manuscript until you've gotten a copy of our guidelines. Look for them online at www.asimovs.com or send a self-addressed, stamped business-size (#10) envelope, and a note requesting this information. Write “manuscript guidelines” in the bottom left-hand corner of the outside envelope. We prefer electronic submissions, but the address for manual submissions and for all editorial correspondence is Asimov's Science Fiction, 267 Broadway, Fourth Floor, New York, NY 10007-2352. While we're always looking for new writers, please, in the interest of time-saving, find out what we're loking for, and how to prepare it, before submitting your story.

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  Department: EDITORIAL: THE 2011 DELL MAGAZINES AWARD by Sheila Williams

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  My co-judge Rick Wilber and I were exceptionally fortunate this year in that we had to choose the Dell Magazines Award for Undergraduate Excellence in Science Fiction and Fantasy Writing from an unusually large pool of talented authors. Due to all this talent, we ended up with the largest group of finalists in the award's history. We were even more fortunate that every one of our finalists chose to attend this year's International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts in Orlando, Florida. The award, which includes a five hundred dollar first prize, is co-sponsored by Dell Magazines and the International Association for the Fantastic and is supported by the School of Mass Communications, University of South Florida. It is given out each year at the conference.

  Although the award's outcome is determined via a blind read, we were pleased to discover that most of our finalists were familiar faces. Our winner, Seth Dickinson, who graduated from the University of Chicago last spring, had placed in the contest on two previous occasions. Seth has always been able to spin a hard science fiction tale and this year's excellent story about “The Immaculate Conception of Private Ritter” was exciting and engrossing. We're sure Seth has a strong career as a fiction writer ahead of him.

  Our first-runner up, Amanda Olson of S. Olaf College, flew in from Scotland, where she is spending a year at the University of Aberdeen. Her bittersweet tale of “Aunt Victoria” made her a first-time finalist and she got to attend the conference with her close friend from first grade, and fellow finalist, Kendra Leigh Spalding. Kendra, a junior at the University of Minnesota and another first-timer, received an honorable mention for “Caveat."

  The second runner-up certificate went to Eugenia Lily Yu of Princeton University. Although Lily received an honorable mention in last year's contest, this was her first chance to attend in person. It was a delight to meet her and to have a chance to read her story, “The Cartographer's Wasp and the Anarchist Bees.” A revised version of the story sold to Clarkesworld soon after the conference. It was posted on their site in April.

  Last year's winner, Rachel Sobel—a senior at the University of Washington (Seattle), was this year's third runner up with an intriguing tale that takes place “In the Time of the Drought."

  Rick and I had had a previous chance to get to know many of this year's honorable mentions. Miah Saunders, a junior at High Point University in North Carolina, was last year's first runner-up. She received her award this year for a scary story about “
Death's Lady.” Lara Donnelly who, like Seth, had been a finalist on more than one occasion, received her award for the darkly amusing tale of “The Case of the Wayward Sister.” Unlike last year, when she flew in from Ireland, Lara, a senior at Wright State University flew to the conference directly from Dayton, Ohio.

  Last year's second runner-up, Rebecca McNulty, a junior at The College of New Jersey, returned to accept her award for a disturbing story about “The Little Man's Call.” I was pleased that this time I didn't confuse her name even once with her good friend, Rachel Halpern's. Rachel is a junior at Grinnell College. She was on hand to receive her second honorable mention award, this time for a sharp look at “A Clarity of Mind."

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  Left to right: Amanda Olson, Rick Wilber, Miah Saunders, Kendra Leigh Speedling, Lara Donnelly, Sarah Brand, Rachel Halpern, Rachel Sobel, Seth Dickinson, Eugenia Lily Yu, Rebecca McNulty, Tina Tseng, and Sheila Williams. Photo credit: Bill Clemente/Locus Publications

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  In addition to the aforementioned Kendra, other honorable mentions who were new to the award and to the conference were Sara Brand of Vanderbilt University, who received her award for the thoughtful tale, “Perchance to Dream,” and Tina Tseng of UCLA who received her award for a heart-breaking tale of “A Treatise on the Duality of Peace and Accomplishing a Rewarding Parent-Child Relationship Based Upon Mutual Respect and Love.” We hope to see many of the new and returning contestants at next year's conference.

  As usual, the students were warmly welcomed by a number of leading authors. On Friday night, they had dinner with conference guests of honor Connie Willis and Terry Bisson. We were joined at this meal by the always amazing Kit Reed and her husband Joe. The students also had a chance to spend time with Marie Brennan, Suzy McKee Charnas, Ted Chiang, Stephen R. Donaldson, Andy Duncan, Kathleen Ann Goonan, Nisi Shawl, Joe Haldeman, James Patrick Kelly, John Kessel, Patricia McKillip, Sandra McDonald, Rachel Swisky, Peter Straub, and many other writers.

  You can visit with previous finalists and current writers at our Facebook site. Search for the Dell Magazines Award or go directly to www.facebook.com/pages/manage/#!/pages/Dell-Magazines-Award/177319923776

  We are actively looking for next year's winner. The deadline for submissions is Monday, January 2, 2012. All full-time undergraduate students at any accredited university or college are eligible.

  Before entering the contest, contact Rick Wilber for more information, rules, and manuscript guidelines. He can be reached care of:

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  Dell Magazines Award

  School of Mass Communications

  University of South Florida

  Tampa, Florida 33620

  [email protected]

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  Next year's winner will be announced at the 2012 Conference on the Fantastic, in the pages of Asimov's Science Fiction magazine, and on our website.

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  Department: REFLECTIONS: EARTH IS THE STRANGEST PLANET by Robert Silverberg

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  One morning some fifty-five years ago I came into the office of John W. Campbell, Jr., the already legendary editor of Astounding Science Fiction, greatest of all SF magazines, and there, leaning against the wall behind his desk, was a new painting that cover artist Ed Emshwiller had just brought in.

  "What do you think of it, Bob?” John asked. In his Socratic way he was always asking the visitors to his office for their opinions about this or that—even his newest and youngest regular contributor, which is what I was.

  The painting puzzled me. At first glance it looked like a cheerful rural scene somewhere in New England or Kansas: a boy walking down a rutted dirt road with a fishing rod over his shoulder, a cow thrusting its head through a barbed-wire fence to slurp up some flowers by the roadside, a couple of birds standing in the path. At second glance I saw that it wasn't Kansas. The “cow” had a face like that of no cow ever seen on Earth, the “birds” looked more like little dinosaurs, and there were two crescent moons visible in the pleasant blue sky. I smiled. And then I took a third glance. There was a pelican sitting on one of the fence posts. “That isn't Earth,” I said. “So what's that pelican doing there?"

  "Well, don't you think pelicans are just as weird-looking as any extraterrestrial critter is likely to be?” said Campbell.

  That painting is on the June 1958 issue of Astounding, probably pretty hard to find now. But the incident stayed in my mind, and, about twenty years later when I was editing anthologies, I did one called Earth is the Strangest Planet, with stories in it by Brian Aldiss, Harry Harrison, R.A. Lafferty, Avram Davidson, and assorted others, with this introductory statement of theme:

  It is not hard to find wonders in science fiction, but mostly they are found in stories set in remote galaxies or in the vast reaches of the future. . . . But there are more real wonders in a puddle of muddy water than in a million imaginary galaxies, and the book you now hold in your hand is intended to demonstrate that. . . . Our inexhaustible, always surprising home world [is] the planet that gave the universe the stegosaurus, the kangaroo, the Venus flytrap, the pelican, the turtle, the lobster, and a billion other miracles, not the least of them the human imagination.

  Science fiction writers have given us not only a legion of strange animals and landscapes, but also a panoply of bizarre cultures at least as odd, in their way, as the pelican and the stegosaurus are in theirs. But, as John Campbell pointed out to me that day long ago, sometimes the real world is every bit as strange as anything ever dreamed up by SF writers.

  A few years ago, for example, I came across a novel called Broken April, by Ismael Kadare, which centers on the custom of blood feuds as practiced to this day among the clansmen of Albania's mountainous northern highlands. Kadare is one of the great novelists of our time, though it is his misfortune to write in Albanian, perhaps the most obscure European language. His work reaches us because he has a gifted translator in Paris who turns it into French, from which it can be translated—with considerable accuracy, apparently—into English. I've read half a dozen of his novels, one of which, The Palace of Dreams, qualifies as science fiction, or at least fantasy. (It is about bureaucrats in an empire much like that of the Ottomans whose task it is to sort and classify the dreams of all the citizens in the hope that they will find Master Dreams that provide clues to the destiny of the realm.)

  In Broken April, the unlucky protagonist, Gjorg, becomes trapped in the traditional Albanian cycle of family feuds when his older brother is murdered. Gjorg, as the oldest surviving male of his family, has no choice but to seek out his brother's killer and shoot him—after which, he knows, he will be tracked and killed in turn by an avenger from the other man's family. This bleak and harrowing novel makes frequent reference to the Kanun, the Albanian code of customary law, which regulates not only the rules of feuds but just about every other aspect of life in the Albanian highlands. Gjorg must follow the Kanun at every step.

  I thought for a time that the Kanun was fictional, an ingenious bit of background material invented by Ismael Kadare to provide the underpinning for his remarkable book. But not long ago I discovered that it really exists, and in fact has been translated into English and published by the Gjonlekaj Publishing Company of New York. I have a copy on my desk right now, a big red book called Kanuni I Leke Dukagjinit, “The Code of Leke Dukagjini."

  It could easily be the code of laws of some extraterrestrial civilization. Albanians are human beings, of course—I have met a few, and I can attest to that—and their homeland is right in the middle of Europe, with Greece on one side and Montenegro, Kosovo, and Macedonia, three pieces of the former Yugoslavia, on the other, but their Kanun, conceived by the tribal leader Leke Dukagjini in the fifteenth century and compiled much later in written form by the Franciscan monk Shtjefen Gjecov, is a book of twelve sections with 1,262 clauses that offers us a picture of a most unusual way of life that most of us can only regard as alien. It is of a lev
el of strangeness that the most inventive of science fiction writers would be hard pressed to match.

  Consider the rules of plundering, by which is meant mainly the stealing of sheep. “Plundering is avenged by plundering,” we are told. “Plundering is not settled otherwise than by plundering in return or by guns. . . . For an act of plunder committed in the mountains the owner must have his livestock restored, but receives no other compensation. For an act of plunder committed in a sheepfold, the owner must have his livestock restored and a fine of five hundred grosh for the honor of the sheepfold.” To which many other conditions are appended. “If the plunderer is supported by the village and the Banner, the person whose livestock has been plundered has the right to plunder the livestock of anyone in that village or Banner, in order to recover his honor and to be compensated for his own livestock. . . . The bellwether of the flock may not be taken as plunder. If the bell worn by the bellwether is taken as plunder, this act dishonors the entire flock and the sheepfold. The plunderer must pay a fine of five hundred grosh and may not take a single head of livestock.” Et cetera, et cetera.

  As for murder: “A murderer is a person who kills someone with his own hands. As soon as a murderer has killed someone, he must inform the family of the victim, in order that there should be no confusion regarding his identity. . . . The murderer, if he is able to do so himself, turns the victim over on his back. If he can, well and good; if not, he must tell the first person he meets to turn the victim over on his back and place his weapon near his head. . . . The murderer may not dare to take the victim's weapon. If he commits such a dishonorable act, he incurs two blood-feuds. . . . The murderer may move around at night, but at the first light of day he must conceal himself."

  The Kanun goes on to specify the elaborate rules under which a twenty-four-hour truce between the villages of the victim and the murderer is arranged so that the victim can be buried; the murderer is expected to attend the funeral and accompany the body to the cemetery and also to go to the wake, and he is protected during that time, though “if the murderer does not go to the funeral and the wake after the truce has been given, it is not considered dishonorable for the family of the victim to withdraw the truce, since the murderer has added insult to injury."