Asimov's SF, June 2008 Read online

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  Asimov's SF, June 2008

  by Dell Magazine Authors

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  Science Fiction

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  Dell Magazines

  www.dellmagazines.com

  Copyright ©2008 by Dell Magazines

  NOTICE: This work is copyrighted. It is licensed only for use by the original purchaser. Making copies of this work or distributing it to any unauthorized person by any means, including without limit email, floppy disk, file transfer, paper print out, or any other method constitutes a violation of International copyright law and subjects the violator to severe fines or imprisonment.

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  Cover art by Mark A. Garlick

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  CONTENTS

  Department: EDITORIAL: MAKING AN ENTRANCE by Sheila Williams

  Department: REFLECTIONS: THE DEATH OF GALLIUM by Robert Silverberg

  Poetry: WAR GODS by Bruce Holland Rogers

  Department: ON THE NET: SON OF GALLIMAUFRY by James Patrick Kelly

  Novelette: CALL BACK YESTERDAY by Nancy Kress

  Poetry: FIREFLIES by Geoffrey A. Landis

  Short Story: SURPRISE PARTY by James Patrick Kelly

  Novelette: BURGERDROID by Felicity Shoulders

  Novelette: THE AUCTIONEER AND THE ANTIQUARIAN, OR, 1962 by Forrest Aguirre

  Short Story: BENEATH SUNLIT SHALLOWS by Derek Kunsken

  Short Story: GABE'S GLOBSTER by Lawrence Person

  Novella: THE HOB CARPET by Ian R. MacLeod

  Department: ON BOOKS by Peter Heck

  Poetry: TIME TRAVEL TIME by Ruth Berman

  Department: SF CONVENTIONAL CALENDAR by Erwin S. Strauss

  Department: NEXT ISSUE

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  Asimov's Science Fiction. ISSN 1065-2698. Vol. 32, No.6. Whole No. 389, June 2008. 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, 475 Park Avenue South, New York, N.Y. 10016. Asimov's Science Fiction is the registered trademark of Dell Magazines, a division of Crosstown Publications. (c) 2008 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. All 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 Quebecor St. Jean, 800 Blvd. Industrial, St. Jean, Quebec J3B 8G4.

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  ASIMOV'S SCIENCE FICTION

  Isaac Asimov: Editorial Director (1977-1992)

  Sheila Williams: Editor

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  Stories from Asimov's have won 44 Hugos and 25 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 manuscript guidelines. To obtain this, send us a self-addressed, stamped business-size envelope (what stationery stores call a number 10 envelope), and a note requesting this information. Please write “manuscript guidelines” in the bottom left-hand corner of the outside envelope. The address for this and for all editorial correspondence is Asimov's Science Fiction, 475 Park Avenue South, New York, NY 10016. 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: MAKING AN ENTRANCE

  by Sheila Williams

  What is it about a story that catches my attention and convinces me to continue reading? What is it about the opening of a story that tells me I'm in the hands of someone who knows what they are doing and where they are going and that there's a good chance I'm going to enjoy joining them on their literary journey? Several times a month, I sit down to read through dozens and dozens of stories. These tales sit in large stacks on my office bookcase and they represent the unknown. Some of these stories are going to blow me away, but the trick is always to find those tales. The physical work of producing Asimov's ensures that there is never enough time to give each story submission the attention it deserves. Yet, from these stacks, with clockwork regularity, will come the material that will constitute upcoming issues of the magazine.

  Over the years, other editors and I have given writers the glib advice that they must grab us by the throat with the first paragraph or all is lost. The truth is that because I have so much material to read, a story must get my attention early and manage to hold onto it, or I'll put the manuscript down and proceed to the next one on the pile. While passing this information along was meant to be helpful, it has also meant that I've seen an overabundance of stories that start off with exploding spaceships and then dump me into the pandemonium that ensues. Of course, I have nothing against stories about stricken spaceships—"Marooned off Vesta,” Isaac Asimov's first published story, continues to hold a warm place in my memory, and I loved Kristine Kathryn Rusch's Readers’ Award-winning novella “Diving Into the Wreck"—but our magazine can't survive on one type of story alone.

  I know I see some of these stories because I've indicated that a story has to be exciting to keep me reading, and there are few situations dicier than an accident in space. Still, even exploding spaceship stories can become predictable. Pondering this conundrum has led me to the realization that it's not just excitement that I'm after when I'm perusing the first few paragraphs of a new story. Last spring I was chatting with the highly respected author Barry N. Malzberg, who has been an editor and a literary agent as well, and we both concluded that in addition to looking for an intriguing opening, the editor is looking for a sense that the writer is in total control of his or her material and has a sure hand on where the story is going. While not all of these stories will be right for me, this confidence is a characteristic of the stories that I do publish.

  To improve my own understanding of what works for me, I thought I'd take a look at the openings of a couple of the stories that have leapt up and grabbed my esophagus. One such tale, “To the East, a Bright Star” by James Maxey, appeared in the same issue as Kris Rusch's aforementioned story. James
's writing was completely unknown to me when I read the following:

  There was a shark in the kitchen. The shark wasn't huge, maybe four feet long, gliding across the linoleum toward the refrigerator. Tony stood motionless in the knee-deep water of the dining room. The Wolfman said that the only sharks that came this far in were bull sharks, which could live in either salt or fresh water, and were highly aggressive. Tony leaned forward cautiously and shut the door to the kitchen. He had known the exact time and date of his death for most of his adult life. With only hours to go, he wasn't about to let the shark do something ironic.

  Clearly a shark in the kitchen is an unusual situation. It may even be a life-threatening one, but the author has also managed to show us that something even more dire is lurking in the pages ahead—and he does so with a bit of wit as well. One has to read further to figure out what the clues mean, but these are the sort of cues that make me want to turn the page and find out what's in store.

  In this very issue we have a couple of stories by brand new Asimov's authors. Derek Kunsken's tale of life “Beneath Sunlit Shallows” begins with the following:

  Vincent dreamed again that he swam behind a child-like Merced, out of the cold dark, rising toward an unknown sun. He didn't see the sun, which could only penetrate two hundred meters of water. He wanted, the way one does in dreams, to see it, ignoring the fact that if he saw even its depth-attenuated blue light, he would already be dead.

  These lines immediately introduce me to a character with a human name who seems to be in a nonhuman situation. Why is he under water? Why would he be dead if he saw the sun? Looking for the answer to this question definitely convinced me to plunge into the rest of Derek's story.

  Felicity Shoulders’ “Burgerdroid” begins more quietly:

  "I don't want to go!” Henry said, pushing his lunchbox out of sight behind the sofa to gain time.

  "I don't want to go either. But I am subject to the tyranny of capitalism, and you are subject to the tyranny of me.” I fished out the lunchbox and closed Henry's fingers over the handle.

  "It isn't fair,” Henry said. “Other people have weekends on Saturday.”

  "Of course it's not fair. That's why it's called ‘tyranny.’”

  This beginning is not as exciting as an exploding spaceship, but it does start off with a fascinating voice. The exchange between mother and child rings true, and the dialog made me want to find out more about this “tyranny.”

  This editorial is too short to fully resolve what it is that makes a story work for me, but I hope these snippets have provided a little insight into what it takes to grab my attention. Why these tales kept me reading after their initial assault on my tender throat is another story. Perhaps it is a tale best resolved by looking for the rest of these latter two stories and seeing for yourself.

  Copyright (c) 2008 Sheila Wiliams

  [Back to Table of Contents]

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  Department: REFLECTIONS: THE DEATH OF GALLIUM

  by Robert Silverberg

  I mourn for the dodo, poor fat flightless bird, extinct since the eighteenth century. I grieve for the great auk, virtually wiped out by zealous Viking huntsmen a thousand years ago and finished off by hungry Greenlanders around 1760. I think the world would be more interesting if such extinct creatures as the moa, the giant ground sloth, the passenger pigeon, and the quagga still moved among us. It surely would be a lively place if we had a few tyrannosaurs or brontosaurs on hand. (Though not in my neighborhood, please.) And I'd find it great fun to watch one of those PBS nature documentaries showing the migratory habits of the woolly mammoth. They're all gone, though, along with the speckled cormorant, Steller's sea cow, the Hispaniola hutia, the aurochs, the Irish elk, and all too many other species.

  But now comes word that it isn't just wildlife that can go extinct. The element gallium is in very short supply and the world may well run out of it in just a few years. Indium is threatened too, says Armin Reller, a materials chemist at Germany's University of Augsburg. He estimates that our planet's stock of indium will last no more than another decade. All the hafnium will be gone by 2017 also, and another twenty years will see the extinction of zinc. Even copper is an endangered item, since worldwide demand for it is likely to exceed available supplies by the end of the present century.

  Running out of oil, yes. We've all been concerned about that for many years and everyone anticipates a time when the world's underground petroleum reserves will have been pumped dry. But oil is just an organic substance that was created by natural biological processes; we know that we have a lot of it, but we're using it up very rapidly, no more is being created, and someday it'll be gone. The disappearance of elements, though—that's a different matter. I was taught long ago that the ninety-two elements found in nature are the essential building blocks of the universe. Take one away—or three, or six—and won't the essential structure of things suffer a potent blow? Somehow I feel that there's a powerful difference between running out of oil, or killing off all the dodos, and having elements go extinct.

  I've understood the idea of extinction since I was a small boy, staring goggle-eyed at the dinosaur skeletons in New York City's American Museum of Natural History. Bad things happen—a climate change, perhaps, or the appearance on the scene of very efficient new predators—and whole species of animals and plants vanish, never to return. But elements? The extinction of entire elements, the disappearance of actual chunks of the periodic table, is not something I've ever given a moment's thought to. Except now, thanks to Armin Reller of the University of Augsburg.

  The concept has occasionally turned up in science fiction. I remember reading, long ago, S.S. Held's novel The Death of Iron, which was serialized in Hugo Gernsback's Wonder Stories starting in September, 1932. (No, I'm not that old—but a short-lived SF magazine called Wonder Story Annual reprinted the Held novel in 1952, when I was in college, and that's when I first encountered it.)

  Because I was an assiduous collector of old science fiction magazines long ago, I also have that 1932 Gernsback magazine on my desk right now. Gernsback frequently bought translation rights to European science fiction books for his magazine, and The Death of Iron was one of them. The invaluable Donald Tuck Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and Fantasy tells me that Held was French, and La Mort du Fer was originally published in Paris in 1931. Indeed, the sketch of Held in Wonder Stories—Gernsback illustrated every story he published with a sketch of its author—shows a man of about forty, quintessentially French in physiognomy, with a lean, tapering face, intensely penetrating eyes, a conspicuous nose, an elegant dark goatee. Not even a Google search turns up any scrap of biographical information about him, but at least, thanks to Hugo Gernsback, I know what he looked like.

  The Death of Iron is, as its name implies, a disaster novel. A mysterious disease attacks the structural integrity of the machinery used by a French steel company. “The modifications of the texture of the metal itself,” we are told—the translation is by Fletcher Pratt, himself a great writer of fantasy and science fiction in an earlier era—"these dry, dusty knots encysted in the mass, some of them imperceptible to the naked eye and others as big as walnuts; these cinder-like stains, sometimes black and sometimes blue, running through the steel, seemed to have been produced by a process unknown to modern science.” Which is indeed the case: a disease, quickly named siderosis, is found to have attacked everything iron at the steel plant, and the disease proves to be contagious, propagating itself from one piece of metal to another. Everything made of iron turns porous and crumbles.

  Sacre bleu! Quel catastrophe! No more airplanes, no more trains or buses, no bridges, no weapons, no scissors, no shovels, no can-openers, no high-rise buildings. Subtract one vital element and in short order society collapses into Neolithic anarchy, and then into a nomadic post-technological society founded on mysticism and magic. This forgotten book has an exciting tale to tell, and tells it very well.

  It's just a fantasy, of course. In the
real world iron is in no danger of extinction from strange diseases, nor is our supply of it running low. And, though I said a couple of paragraphs ago that the ninety-two natural elements are essential building blocks of the universe, the truth is that we've been getting along without two of them—numbers 85 and 87 in the periodic table—for quite some time. The periodic table indicates that they ought to be there, but they're nowhere to be found in nature. Element 85, astatine, finally was synthesized at the University of California in 1940. It's a radioactive element with the very short half-life of 8.3 hours, and whatever supply of it was present at the creation of the world vanished billions of years ago. The other blank place in the periodic table, the one that should have been occupied by element 87, was filled in 1939 by a French scientist, who named it, naturally, francium. It is created by the radioactive decay of actinium, which itself is a decay product of uranium-235, and has a half-life of just 21 minutes. So for all intents and purposes the world must do without element 87, and we are none the worse for that.

  Gallium, though—

  Gallium's atomic number is 31. It's a blue-white metal first discovered in 1831, and has certain unusual properties, like a very low melting point and an unwillingness to oxidize, that make it useful as a coating for optical mirrors, a liquid seal in strongly heated apparatus, and a substitute for mercury in ultraviolet lamps. It's also quite important in making the liquid-crystal displays used in flat-screen television sets and computer monitors.

  As it happens, we are building a lot of flat-screen TV sets and computer monitors these days. Gallium is thought to make up 0.0015 percent of the Earth's crust and there are no concentrated supplies of it. We get it by extracting it from zinc or aluminum ore or by smelting the dust of furnace flues. Dr. Reller says that by 2017 or so there'll be none left to use. Indium, another endangered element—number 49 in the periodic table—is similar to gallium in many ways, has many of the same uses (plus some others—it's a gasoline additive, for example, and a component of the control rods used in nuclear reactors) and is being consumed much faster than we are finding it. Dr. Reller gives it about another decade. Hafnium, element 72, is in only slightly better shape. There aren't any hafnium mines around; it lurks hidden in minute quantities in minerals that contain zirconium, from which it is extracted by a complicated process that would take me three or four pages to explain. We use a lot of it in computer chips and, like indium, in the control rods of nuclear reactors, but the problem is that we don't have a lot of it. Dr. Reller thinks it'll be gone somewhere around 2017. Even zinc, commonplace old zinc that is alloyed with copper to make brass, and which the United States used for ordinary one-cent coins when copper was in short supply in World War II, has a Reller extinction date of 2037. (How does a novel called The Death of Brass grab you?)