Analog SFF, September 2008 Read online

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  Analog SFF, September 2008

  by Dell Magazine Authors

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  Science Fiction

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  Dell Magazines

  www.analogsf.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 David B. Mattingly

  Cover design by Victoria Green

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  CONTENTS

  Reader's Department: EDITORIAL: “IT'S ALL ABOUT ME,” WRIT LARGE by Stanley Schmidt

  Novelette: THE LAST TEMPTATION OF KATERINA SAVITSKAYA by H. G. Stratmann

  Reader's Department: IN TIMES TO COME

  Science Fact: FOLLOW THE NANOBRICK ROAD by Edward M. Lerner

  Poem: In ‘69 by Geoffrey A. Landis

  Novelette: ONCE IN A BLUE MOON by William Gleason

  Short Story: THE FOURTH THING by Stephen L. Burns

  Reader's Department: THE ALTERNATE VIEW: WHAT IS “OLD-FASHIONED” ANYWAY? by Jeffery D. Kooistra

  Short Story: FOREVER MOMMY by David Grace

  Short Story: INVASION OF THE PATTERN SNATCHERS by David W. Goldman

  Serial: TRACKING: PART II OF III by David R. Palmer

  Reader's Department: THE REFERENCE LIBRARY by Tom Easton

  Reader's Department: BRASS TACKS

  Reader's Department: UPCOMING EVENTS by Anthony Lewis

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  Reader's Department: EDITORIAL: “IT'S ALL ABOUT ME,” WRIT LARGE

  by Stanley Schmidt

  One of the most dependable phenomena in our world is that as the end of a calendar year draws near, newspapers will be full of articles listing somebody's idea of “The top something-or-other of the year.” Last year my local paper had one that caught my eye, not so much for what it included as for what it didn't. It billed itself as a list of the fifty most outstanding nonfiction books of 2007—but not one of them was about any sort of science, and only a couple had even a peripheral brush with technology.

  They were all about history, biography, the arts, sociology, politics, or closely related subjects. In other words, they were all about us: human beings.

  As if nothing else mattered.

  I found this disturbingly illuminating as yet another example of the apparent fact that a great many people actually believe that nothing else does matter. “Humanities” teachers too often actively encourage this attitude, with pious pronouncements about how great literature is distinguished by “universality and timelessness” (by which they usually mean something far more limited than the words suggest) and “human value.” William Faulkner is often quoted (or at least carefully paraphrased) as saying, “The human heart in conflict with itself is the only thing worth writing with.” I have heard English teachers dismiss science as “too cut and dried” (which, to me, only proved that they had never done any, or, if they tried, didn't understand what was happening).

  Yet despite this too common, too dismissive attitude, we humans, impressed as we may be with our own importance, are a very small part of the universe. Even if we don't care about the rest of it for its own sake, if we want to make the best of our lives within it, we had better try to understand as much as possible of the rest of it.

  At least we haven't (at least yet) reached the point where books about science aren't being written or published. There are plenty of them out there, but they seldom make it onto “recommended” lists aimed at the general public. Is this because it just so happens that science books are never good enough to make it into the “winners’ circle"? Of course not. Instead, the population self-selects into those who are interested in reading about science and those who are not. Those who are already interested in science read about it; those who aren't, ignore it (and write “fifty best” lists).

  Which has a lot to do with why the words “ignore” and “ignorant” look so much alike and come from the same root. The people who don't read books that try to explain science and technology for the intelligent layperson are precisely the ones who most need to. They may sincerely believe that space travel, nanotechnology, ecology, Earth-crossing asteroids, genetics, biotechnology, robotics, and information technology are esoterica of interest only to a few “geeks,” but they couldn't be more wrong. These fields, others like them, and the ways they all converge and interact are already affecting everybody personally, directly, and profoundly. They will only do so increasingly, and faster and faster, as time goes on. All of us are going to have to make decisions about them, both as individuals trying to run our own lives, and as voters and consumers trying to do what we can to steer public policy in directions that will help us more than they hurt us.

  The decisions we make have much more chance of being reasonable and beneficial—or at least nondestructive—if we have some understanding of the things we're making decisions about. So people publishing lists of “best nonfiction” for the general public have a moral obligation—seldom honored in practice—to seek out and recommend books from this much wider range. Some are better than others, of course, and a layman who wants to understand what he's voting on could use some guidance toward the best sources, in terms of both content and presentation.

  Because everybody needs to understand at least something of how we fit into the rest of the universe, and those who believe that least are those who need it most. The anthropocentric attitude, the deep-seated idea that human beings are all that matters and the only thing worth thinking about, is directly responsible for many of our problems. It has encouraged us to multiply without regard for the consequences, to harvest resources without regard for how plentiful or renewable they are, to spew toxic wastes into the atmosphere and waterways, and to shrug off space travel and asteroid protection as irrelevant and silly.

  To live successfully among other people, individuals must learn early to get beyond, “It's all about me.” Others simply won't tolerate people who think they're free to take whatever they want, say whatever they want, dump their trash wherever they want, and attack whomever they dislike or disagree with. A society can't function with members who haven't learned that—but when enough of them do learn that, practically everyone benefits. Not only can individuals then try to shape their lives in ways they like, as long as they don't encroach on others, but they also have a good chance of being offered help when they need it.

  Unfortunately, too many of us have extrapolated this hard-earned and valuable lesson to mean that anything that helps people make more of themselves, live longer, and have more of the things they want is Good. But it ain't necessarily so. In the short term, sure; but the long term, and the big picture, ultimately matter more. And from that point of view, what looks like commendable altruism, defined as humans helping one another in every possible way, may ultimately turn out to be harmful to humanity—and to individual humans.

  Part of the justification for learning to think about others as well as oneself is, actually, selfish. If you or I, in deciding how to behave, think about nothing but our own immediate desires, then it appears to make sense to steal whatever we covet and to cut down our enemies. But our ancestors learned through many generations of bitter experience that such a course of conduct is ultimately self-destructive. If we follow it, we will find ourselves plagued with the need to be
constantly on our guard against others who would do unto us as we find it expedient to do unto them. If we all agree instead to set mutual limits, allowing each of us to follow our desires only insofar as they don't infringe on others, and placing positive value on helping one another, each of us will, on average, be better off. We adopt such values and limits not merely to serve some abstract social good, but because they tend to improve life for each of us individually.

  At least, up to a point. We as a species are just beginning to appreciate that similar considerations may apply to our relationships with other species and the planet as a whole. If our well-meant desire to help our fellow humans is carried out too zealously and too successfully, we may soon find that it makes our species as a whole a higher-level equivalent of the antisocial individual looking out only for himself. Such an individual is likely to learn the hard way that such a course is self-defeating, because his fellows will not tolerate it and will take punitive action.

  Such a species is likely to learn the hard way that such a course is self-defeating, because the rest of the ecosystem will not tolerate it and will take punitive action.

  To live successfully among other people, individuals must learn early to get beyond, “It's all about me.” To live successfully with the rest of the world we depend on, our species must soon learn to get beyond, “It's all about us.”

  Copyright (c) 2008 Stanley Schmidt

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  Peter Kanter: Publisher

  Christine Begley: Associate Publisher

  Susan Kendrioski: Executive Director, Art and Production

  Stanley Schmidt: Editor

  Trevor Quachri: Managing Editor

  Mary Grant: Editorial Assistant

  Victoria Green: Senior Art Director

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  Published since 1930

  First issue of Astounding January 1930 (c)

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  Analog Science Fiction and Fact (Astounding), Vol. CXXVIII, No. 9, September 2008. ISSN 1059-2113, USPS 488-910, GST#123054108. Published monthly except for combined January/February and July/August double issues by Dell Magazines, a division of Crosstown Publications. One-year subscription $55.90 in the United States and possessions, in all other countries $65.90 (GST included in Canada), payable in advance in U.S. funds. First copy of new subscription will be mailed within eight weeks of receipt of order. When reporting change of address allow 6 to 8 weeks and give new address as well as the old address as it appears on the last label. Periodical postage paid at Norwalk, CT and additional mailing offices. Canadian postage paid at Montreal, Quebec, Canada Post International Publications Mail, Product Sales Agreement No. 40012460. (c) 2008 by Dell Magazines, a division of Crosstown Publications, all rights reserved. Dell is a trademark registered in the U.S. Patent Office. Protection secured under the Universal Copyright Convention. Reproduction or use of editorial or pictorial content in any manner without express permission is prohibited. All stories in this magazine are fiction. No actual persons are designated by name or character. Any similarity is coincidental. All submissions must be accompanied by a stamped self-addressed envelope, the publisher assumes no responsibility for unsolicited manuscripts or artwork.

  [Back to Table of Contents]

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  Arthur C. Clarke

  1917-2008

  Sir Arthur C. Clarke, exceptionally well known for his work in both science fiction and fact, died at the age of 90 on March 19 in Sri Lanka, where he had lived since 1956. He was born December 16, 1917 in Minehead, Somerset, England. The son of a farmer who died when Arthur was 13, he early discovered a strong interest in science and science fiction—in considerable part, he said, because of this magazine, then called Astounding Stories of Super-Science. He was active in the early days of fandom, and made his first professional sales to Astounding in the mid-1940s. He appeared in Astounding and later Analog several times over the ensuing decades, with both fiction and nonfiction (including guest editorials), and also with stories and articles in too many other places to name here. He published almost 100 books, including such novels as Against the Fall of Night, Childhood's End,The Deep Range, Rendezvous with Rama (and its several sequels), and The Fountains of Paradise. He received many awards for his work, including several Hugos, Nebulas, and the Grandmaster award of the Science Fiction Writers of America. He was knighted in 1990.

  He was probably best known to the general public for the movie and novel 2001: A Space Odyssey, on which he worked closely with Stanley Kubrick, but in the long run perhaps his most important work (in his own opinion as well as that of many others) lay in the realm of fact. In 1945 he published an article in the British magazine Wireless World, which laid before the public the concept of the communications satellites which are now such an integral part of our daily lives. Perhaps somewhat surprisingly, at least to some, he made this profoundly important contribution before earning a college degree. His family lacked the financial resources to send him to college at the usual time, so he worked in civil service and later as an officer in the Royal Air Force, where he helped develop new applications for radar. Military benefits enabled him finally to attend college, graduating with high honors in physics and mathematics from King's College in London at the age of 30. He continued to write both fiction and nonfiction, promoting popular understanding of and support for science and technology. In recent years he was an avid proponent of space elevators.

  A major impetus for his move to Sri Lanka was his fascination with oceans and scuba diving, which he saw as the closest thing available on Earth to the weightlessness found in spaceflight. It was also something he could continue doing even after the onset of post-polio syndrome, which limited his mobility on land during the last two decades of his life. He will be long remembered for an imagination which, through both fiction and nonfiction, pointed the way to a bright but achievable future.

  —Stanley Schmidt

  [Back to Table of Contents]

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  Novelette: THE LAST TEMPTATION OF KATERINA SAVITSKAYA

  by H. G. Stratmann

  Illustration by Mark Evans

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  The bigger the gift, the more likely it is to come with strings. When, if ever, should it be accepted anyway?

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  The Eternal Feminine leads us upward.

  —Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

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  It was a warm rainy morning on Mars.

  Katerina Savitskaya, the first and only woman on the Red Planet, stood barefoot in the open entrance of the habitation module and took a deep breath of the lightly lavender-scented air around her. A moist Martian breeze gently brushed her cheek like a lover's kiss. She fingered the end of her long freshly shampooed auburn hair, watching raindrops splatter the dusty ochre ground outside and kick up miniature craters like a shower of micrometeorites.

  Several meters above her head, the rain pinged softly against the flat metal roof of the planet's lone human dwelling. The habitation module, shaped like a squat tin can nine meters in diameter, had been her home here for nearly three neomartian months. Though more spacious than the compact apartment in St. Petersburg where she'd grown up, the module was dwarfed by the vast desertlike plain surrounding her.

  Katerina sighed, cheered by the stillness and solitude of the dawn. Mission Control had radioed a work schedule for today that included a trek northeast to the shore of the Boreal O
cean. She silently asked God if this was the day there would be a second close encounter with the enigmatic aliens who'd terraformed Mars.

  Suddenly the shapely young cosmonaut sensed something large sneaking up behind her from inside the module. Before she could turn around, a pair of long hairy arms wrapped themselves tightly like tentacles around her waist. She shivered as hot wet lips with fetid breath nuzzled her throat—

  “Happy birthday, Katerina!”

  Martin Slayton, the first and only man on Mars, stepped back and grinned goofily at his fiancee. A maroon baseball cap with both NASA's insignia and the pale intertwined letters “S” and “L” sewn on it covered his black crew-cut hair. He wore the crimson pullover shirt emblazoned on the front with “St. Louis Cardinals 2035 World Series Champions” she'd bought for him late last October, shortly before they'd rocketed away from Earth. Dingy white shorts and dirty black hiking boots completed his non-regulation spacesuit.

  Katerina kissed his bristly cheek. Then she sniffed his mouth and wrinkled her nose. “Have you brushed yet?”

  Her husband-to-be sheepishly ran his tongue over filmy teeth. “Sorry. I was so eager to be the first to congratulate you on your special day that I neglected my oral hygiene.”

  “Well, you're too late. Someone else already congratulated me.”

  Martin blinked. “Don't tell me they came and brought you a birthday cake.”

  “Considering how unpredictable the aliens are, it wouldn't have surprised me if they had. No, your rival for my affections is the dashing Harvey Schlocknagel.”

  Martin struck a heroic pose. “Well, I could fight him for your love in a duel with flashing sabers, like vying suitors do in those romance novels you read. However, since he's twenty-five million kilometers away at Mission Control, we'll have to take a rain check. Besides, you know who'd win the fight. As I recall, he's about a head shorter than me, twice my age, and lacks my manly physique and bronzed rippling muscles.”