Asimov's SF, January 2008 Read online

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  Asimov's SF, January 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 for “The Perfect Wave” by Jeremy Bennett

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  CONTENTS

  Department: EDITORIAL: HARRY POTTER AND THE FUTURE OF READING by Sheila Williams

  Department: REFLECTIONS: ALADDIN'S CAVE by Robert Silverberg

  Department: ON THE NET: SFWA by James Patrick Kelly

  Novelette: THE PERFECT WAVE by Rudy Rucker & Marc Laidlaw

  Novelette: ALASTAIR BAFFLE'S EMPORIUM OF WONDERS by Mike Resnick

  Short Story: THE WHALE'S LOVER by Deborah Coates

  Novelette: ‘THE BEAUTIFUL AND DAMNED’ BY F. SCOTT FITZGERALD by Tanith Lee

  Short Story: UNLIKELY by Will McIntosh

  Serial: GALAXY BLUES: PART THREE OF FOUR: THE FOOL'S ERRAND by Allen M. Steele

  Department: 2007 INDEX

  Department: TWENTY-SECOND ANNUAL READERS’ AWARD

  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.1. Whole No. 384, January 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 $43.90 in the United States and U.S. possessions. In all other countries $53.90 (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. Canadian postage paid at Montreal, Quebec, Canada Post International Publications Mail, Product Sales Agreement No. 40012460. 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: HARRY POTTER AND THE FUTURE OF READING

  by Sheila Williams

  On the thirty-eighth anniversary of the first manned moon landing, just as the wild celebrations of Robert A. Heinlein's centennial were beginning to quiet down, I found myself sitting on a sidewalk in New York City, awaiting the release of J.K. Rowling's seventh Harry Potter novel. I was there for two reasons: one because I'm a mother who wanted to see the book reach the waiting hands of her thirteen-year-old as close to the stroke of midnight as possible, the other because I'm a fiction editor who had to witness first hand this astonishing reception for a book.

  I must confess that on that evening (a month ago as I write this editorial), and much to my daughter's dismay, I had not read any of the Harry Potter books. Until that night, my closest encounter with Harry had occurred when I was impaled on J.K. Rowling's 2001 Hugo award for Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. On that occasion, I had been accepting the Hugo Award for Kristine Kathryn Rusch's January 2000 novelette, “Millennium Babies.” A lovely librarian had accepted Jo Rowling's best novel award. After photos were taken, we made our way off the stage, but, in the glaring lights, the librarian lost her footing and fell down the stairs bumping into me as she passed. Everyone quite rightly moved quickly to make sure that the librarian and the award were in good shape. I knew that my leg had been bruised, but it was only much later in my hotel room that I discovered I'd probably left a good bit of my DNA on that Hugo.

  So on this evening in 2007, I came prepared with my protective science fiction talismans. I took up my place in line at 10:30 PM with a Ted Chiang story to read and a blanket that once belonged to Isaac Asimov to sit on. Amusing events unfolded around me, just as I'm sure they did on every bookstore line in the world that night. Close to 11:30, a beautiful young woman tried to get the attractive guy ahead of me to let her into the line. He promised her good-naturedly that he would, just as long as she asked the enormous queue of people behind us if it was okay with each of them. When she responded that she just wanted one book, he remarked that everyone there was on line for “just one book.” A cantor beside me was practicing for the next day's service. Her children tried to persuade her to sing the prayers to the theme music of the Harry Potter movies. I was amazed when she actually got the tune and sang a few lines of Hebrew. She told me that theoretically, the prayers could be sung to anything, but that she didn't think this particular selection would go over that well with some members of her congregation.

  Close to midnight, I was joined by my daughter and one of her friends. They'd been comfortably ensconced in the bookstore rereading Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. Sales of the new novel began a few minutes later and, naturally, the pe
ople who'd been lined up all day were the first to be served. I watched one young man in a cloak scamper madly across Broadway waving his tome. Fortunately, there wasn't much traffic, but I couldn't prevent myself from screaming, “Don't die before you read the book!” By 12:40, though, the two girls had their own copies and were on their way to a weekend of Harry Potter books and movies, interrupted briefly, at my insistence, by a party on Saturday night in honor of Neil Armstrong's first steps on the Moon.

  My daughter discovered the Harry Potter books in kindergarten. My husband read the first ones to her, but she has since listened to all the tapes and reread each book a half a dozen times. Some of her passion for Harry may have cooled, but it has been replaced by a love for many other books. When she was little, British author and editor David Langford suggested I introduce her to the fiction of Diana Wynne Jones. Her interest was not aroused when I first handed those books to her, but now that she's discovered Ms. Jones on her own, she can't get enough of her works. While my daughter is well read in most branches of fiction, her favorite fantasy authors include Phillip Pullman, Maria V. Snyder, Tanith Lee, Ellen Kushner, Jane Yolen, and Patricia McKillip. I'm indebted to writers like Scott Westerfeld for beginning to kindle an interest in science fiction as well.

  My daughter has influenced other people, too. A few years ago, a young man returning from his job on Wall Street stopped me on the subway. He'd been a counselor at her elementary after-school program and he said, “I remember your daughter. I'm not much of a reader, but she got me started on Harry Potter. Tell her I'm still thankful for that."

  To her delight, as the summer winds down, even I have managed to read the first four books in the series. With any luck, I'll be finished with the rest before winter. I'll be too late to join in my husband and daughter's fervent discussions about the true nature of Snape, but at least I'll know what they were talking about.

  There doesn't seem to be any waning of my daughter's or her friends’ interest in books. I know my evidence is only anecdotal, but I hope it's an indication that dire warnings about the death of the written word have been greatly exaggerated.

  Copyright (c) 2007 Sheila Williams

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  [Back to Table of Contents]

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  ASIMOV'S SCIENCE FICTION CONGRATULATES THE WINNERS OF THE 2007 HUGO AWARDS

  Best Novel: Rainbow's End by Vernor Vinge

  Best Novella: “A Billion Eves” by Robert Reed, Asimov's, October/November 2006

  Best Novelette: “The Djinn's Wife” by Ian McDonald, Asimov's, July 2006

  Best Short Story: “Impossible Dreams” by Tim Pratt, Asimov's, July 2006

  Best Related Book: James Tiptree, Jr.: The Double Life of Alice B. Sheldon by Julie Phillips

  Best Dramatic Presentation—Long Form: Pan's Labyrinth

  Best Dramatic Presentation—Short Form: Doctor Who: “The Girl in the Fireplace"

  Best Professional Editor—Long Form: Patrick Nielsen Hayden

  Best Professional Editor—Short Form: Gordon Van Gelder

  Best Professional Artist: Donato Giancola

  Best Semi-Pro Zine: Locus, Edited by Charles N. Brown, Kirsten Gong-Wong, and Liza Groen Trombi

  Best Fanzine: Science-Fiction Five-Yearly, Edited by Lee Hoffman, Geri Sullivan, and Randy Byers

  Best Fan Writer: Dave Langford

  Best Fan Artist: Frank Wu

  John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer: Naomi Novik

  [Back to Table of Contents]

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  Department: REFLECTIONS: ALADDIN'S CAVE

  by Robert Silverberg

  You all remember the story of Aladdin's cave, don't you?

  The magician who shows Aladdin the marble slab in the desert, with the copper ring set into it, and tells him that if he seizes the ring and raises the slab, a fabulous treasure will be his, for he alone can lift the slab. The staircase of twelve steps, leading down into a great cave in the earth. The four rooms containing gold and silver jars; the fourth room with the door leading into a garden; the trees whose fruits were rubies and emeralds; and above all else the room beyond the garden where a lamp hangs from the ceiling, the lamp of wonders that can summon the powerful spirits known as the Slaves of the Lamp, who can grant all wishes—

  This is the story of my own Aladdin's Cave.

  It's an episode more than half a century old that I think will stir some emotion in the bosom of anyone who, like myself of long ago, found it exciting to collect the science fiction magazines of ancient days. The year was 1950. I had just turned fifteen. I was a high-school sophomore, a voracious reader of science fiction ever since I had come upon H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine and Jules Verne's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea when I was about ten. I had branched out, in the previous couple of years, from such classic authors as Wells and Verne to the rather less respectable pulp magazines of the day—first Weird Tales, which I discovered early in 1948, and then Amazing Stories, the following year, a magazine that I much preferred because I had the illusion that its stories were grounded in scientific speculation. (It would be another year or two before I came to see that dear old Amazing was just a trashy adventure-story magazine, whose stories were hardly more scientific in their orientation than the spooky fiction Weird traditionally offered.)

  I couldn't get enough of the stuff. You know the feeling, because you went through it yourself in those first glorious months after you stumbled into reading SF. I wanted to read every bit of it I could find. There wasn't much science fiction being published then—just a handful of magazines and the very infrequent paperback. A few publishers were doing hardcover science fiction also, but of course I couldn't afford those back then (three dollars was the cover price), and when I searched for them in the public library (where they were listed under the category of “pseudoscientific fiction” they were never there, probably already having been checked out by those wiseguy seventeen-year-olds who had discovered SF a few years ahead of me. So I went hunting for the back issues of Amazing and its companion Fantastic and the gaudily named Thrilling Wonder Stories and the other pulp SF magazines of the era.

  New York City, where I lived then, was full of shops that dealt in back-issue magazines. I was already a regular customer of one, a musty place called Jackson's, in a seedy corner of Brooklyn, where I had gone frequently in 1947 and 1948 to buy old copies of The National Geographic Magazine that aided me mightily in my homework. I hustled over there and asked Jackson—a creepy old character with bristly gray stubble all over his face—about science fiction magazines. He pointed across the room. There they were, a dime apiece, and I went tottering away with a tall stack of pulps, several dollars’ worth, issues going back two or three years.

  But all Jackson had were the recent issues. I craved older stuff, four, five, even ten years old, issues that contained the classic stories that veteran readers still were raving about in the magazine letter columns. One day, visiting a friend who also had begun collecting SF magazines, I noticed that the cover of one of his recent acquisitions bore the rubber-stamped address of a shop in downtown Brooklyn. It might be worth investigating, I thought. Surreptitiously—because he and I were very competitive in amassing the old magazines—I jotted down the name of the store.

  I think it was called The Curio Shop, though after all this time I'm not entirely sure of that. But graven on my memory forever is its address—106a Court Street. I h
ustled down there after school the next day, a short trip by subway from my home.

  106a Court turned out to be a decrepit nineteenth-century building just at the edge of the downtown district, three or four blocks from the county courthouse that gives the street its name. I found myself in a long, narrow, dimly lit shop, cluttered from floor to ceiling with junk of all sorts—tables and chairs, pots and pans, bookcases, mismatched dishes, incomplete sets of silverware, and I know not what else. The proprietor, a gaunt, fierce-looking woman with grizzled gray hair, sat behind a desk just inside the front door. She gave me a quizzical look, as though wondering what a rosy-cheeked lad like me was doing in her bedraggled emporium.

  I was pretty terrified. “Old science fiction magazines?” I managed to say.

  “Downstairs.” She pointed to a staircase dimly visible toward the back of the shop. “Watch your head going down. The light's on your left."

  The staircase was a rickety affair, and I had to crouch as I descended it. Some groping and I found the light switch. A faint bulb revealed a dusty realm of floor-to-ceiling odds and ends: more of the same junk as the upstairs room held, all piled higgledy-piggledy, everything crammed closely together, with only one narrow passage permitting entry. Cautiously I advanced, squinting in the dimness. And in flimsy bookshelves tucked under the staircase I came upon the rubies and emeralds of my Aladdin's cave: heaps and heaps of science fiction magazines, some fairly recent, but most of them truly ancient ones! Dates like 1934 and 1930 and 1927 leaped out to dazzle my eyes. And not just a few magazines, but dozens—hundreds!

  1934 and 1930 and 1927 must seem prehistoric to you—dates out of a time when your grandparents were little children. I assure you that those years seemed every bit as prehistoric to me, back there in 1950. Not only hadn't I been born when those magazines were new, but most of them went back to a time when my parents hadn't yet met. For me anything before around 1941 was prehistoric—practically paleolithic.