Asimov's SF, October-November 2008 Read online

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  Asimov's SF, October-November 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 Virgil Finlay

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  CONTENTS

  Department: EDITORIAL: THE 2008 DELL MAGAZINES AWARD by Sheila Williams

  Department: REFLECTIONS:: BEAMING IT DOWN by Robert Silverberg

  Department: ON THE NET: ALTERNATIVITY by James Patrick Kelly

  Novella: THE ERDMANN NEXUS by Nancy Kress

  Short Story: LISTENING FOR SUBMARINES by Peter Higgins

  Short Story: PRAYERS FOR AN EGG by Sara Genge

  Poetry: THE FIRST DANCERS by Michael Meyerhofer

  Novelette: DEFENDING ELYSIUM by Brandon Sanderson

  Short Story: MONEY IS NO OBJECT by Leslie What

  Poetry: RETURN OF ZOMBIE TEEN ANGST by Mike Allen

  Short Story: ‘DHULUMA’ NO MORE by Gord Sellar

  Novelette: THE ENGLISH MUTINY by Ian R. MacLeod

  Poetry: GOODBYE BILLY GOAT GRUFF by Jane Yolen

  Short Story: CAT IN THE RAIN by Jack Skillingstead

  Poetry: A CRISIS OF FOREST by Sandra Lindow

  Novella: TRUTH by Robert Reed

  Department: ON BOOKS: POST-GENRE SPECULATIVE FICTION by Norman Spinrad

  Department: SF CONVENTIONAL CALENDAR by Erwin S. Strauss

  Department: NEXT ISSUE

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  Asimov's Science Fiction. ISSN 1065-2698. Vol. 32, Nos. 10 & 11. Whole Nos. 393 & 394, October/November 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)

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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: THE 2008 DELL MAGAZINES AWARD

  by Sheila Williams

  After fifteen annual trips to Fort Lauderdale in conjunction with the Dell Magazines Award for Undergraduate Excellence in Science Fiction and Fantasy Writing (which is annually bestowed by Dell Magazines and the International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts), I found myself in Orlando, Florida, on March 18—180 miles north of the world's Spring Break capital. The new location held no side trip to Disney World for me, however. I was too busy holding story consultations with our award finalists, as well as attending the conference's readings and panels.

  My co-judge, Rick Wilber, and I had an unusually strong crop of stories to choose from. With so many good stories, we decided to expand our circle of semi-finalists over most other years. On Saturday night, I bestowed the award (and the check for $500) on the winner, Stephen Leech of the University of South Florida, and handed out certificates to our finalists. Stephen, who had placed as an honorable mention in the contest in 2007, won this year's award with “Blank, White, and Blue,” an extremely funny and well-researched tale that displayed a great leap forward in plotting and control. Stephen's story will appear on our website next year. In the meantime, please look for “The Uncanny Valley” by last year's winner, Natty Bokenkamp. Natty's story is up on our website now.

  Seth Dickinson, a second-year student at the University of Chicago, was this year's first runner-up with his story “Hypocrite.” Like Stephen, Seth was also an honorable mention in last year's contest. In addition to his certificate, Seth will receive a two-year complementary subscription to Asimov's. Our second runner-up was Jeremy Figgins, a student of science fiction author John Kessel at North Carolina State University. Although Jeremy couldn't be in attendance, he received a certificate and a one-year subscription to Asimov's for his story, “An Acre in the Woods.” Another finalist who couldn't be in attendance was our third runner-up, Rebekah White of The University of Auckland. If she had made her way from New Zealand to Florida to pick up her certificate for “Girl Wonder,” Rebekah would certainly have also won the award for furthest distance traveled.

  Two of this year's honorable mentions could not be on hand to receive their citations. These students were Kasey Orrell, another student from North Carolina State University and the author of “Fly True,” and Sarah Mill
er of Bard College at Simon's Rock, who wrote “Clockwork Angels.” Fortunately, we did have the delightful chance to meet Emily Tersoff of Bard College, who was the author of “Stay With Me.”

  Besides spending time with some of the contenders for the Dell Award, I also had a chance to hang out with a number of SF authors. In addition to visiting with regular conference-goers like James Patrick Kelly, Ted Chiang, John Kessel, Kathleen Ann Goonan, Eileen Gunn, and Brian Aldiss, I got to spend some quality time with conference newcomers like Judith Moffett and Robert J. Sawyer. Over drinks, Vernor Vinge and I discussed the science and music in a story by a brand-new author named Gord Sellar that Vernor had critiqued at the Clarion West Writers Workshop and that I'd scheduled for the July 2008 issue of Asimov's. It's new writers like Gord and Stephen and past winners of the Dell Magazines Award who will take science fiction into its unpredictable future.

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  Left to right: Seth Dickinson, Rick Wilber, Stephen Leech, Sheila Williams, Emily Tersoff

  Photo credit: Liza Groen Trombi

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  We're now actively looking for next year's winner. The deadline for submissions is Friday, January 2, 2009. All full-time undergraduate students at any accredited university or college are eligible. Stories must be in English, and should run from 1,000 to 10,000 words. No submission can be returned, and all stories must be previously unpublished and unsold. There is a $10 entry fee, with up to three stories accepted for each fee paid. A special flat fee of $25 is available for an entire classroom of writers. Instructors should send all the submissions in one or more clearly labeled envelopes with a check or money order. Checks should be made out to the Dell Magazines Award. There is no limit to the number of submissions from each writer. Each submission must include the writer's name, address, phone number, and college or university on the cover sheet, but please do not put your name on the actual story.

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

  Dell Magazines Award

  School of Mass Communications

  University of South Florida

  Tampa, Florida 33620

  [email protected]

  Next year's winner will be announced at the 2009 Conference on the Fantastic, in the pages of Asimov's Science Fiction magazine, and on our website.

  Copyright (c) 2008 Sheila Williams

  [Back to Table of Contents]

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  Department: REFLECTIONS:: BEAMING IT DOWN

  by Robert Silverberg

  The idea of beaming electricity down to Earth from satellites in space is back in the news, now that worldwide concern over global warming is bringing about some rethinking of our current ways of generating power. Power plants that burn coal, oil, or natural gas create combustion-product problems. Nuclear power plants have spooked certain segments of the population since the Three Mile Island and Chernobyl events of a generation ago, though the fact that they are actually quite safe these days and have none of the emission problems of fossil-fuel plants has begun to attract support for them even from environmentalists who long opposed them. Hydroelectric power and wind power are also carbon-free, but generating them involves building giant dams or covering great swathes of land with windmills, which engenders ecological problems of its own. The use of solar-power panels also is land-intensive, and in any case is suitable only where long hours of sunlight can be consistently counted upon. And so, since the relentless rate of growth in annual demand for electrical power is unlikely to slow down in the years ahead, the concept of shipping power down from space is getting major attention these days, nearly eighty years after it first turned up in science fiction.

  One big backer this time around is the Pentagon, which issued a report in October 2007 asserting that beaming energy down from space satellites would provide “affordable, clean, safe, reliable, sustainable, and expandable energy for mankind.” Those powerful political buzzwords are to be found in a seventy-five-page study conducted for the Defense Department's National Security Space Office, which has been examining potential energy sources for worldwide U.S. military operations. The Pentagon people do note, however, that although the technology for building such space-based power plants already exists, the cost of lifting thousand of tons of apparatus for collecting and transmitting the energy into space would be formidable.

  While the Defense Department ponders the budgetary aspects of such a project, the tiny Pacific nation of Palau—twenty thousand inhabitants scattered over a cluster of islands—is ready to go ahead. Palau got involved after the American entrepreneur Kevin Reed, speaking at the Fifty-Eighth International Astronautical Congress in India in September 2007, suggested that Palau's Helen Island would be a fine site for a demonstration project in which a satellite in orbit three hundred miles up would ship down microwave beams carrying one megawatt of power, enough to run a thousand homes. A 260-foot rectifying antenna, or “rectenna,” would act as the receiver. Since Helen Island is uninhabited, there would be no immediate economic benefit, but the pilot rig, Reed said, would at least demonstrate the safety of power transmissions from space.

  The government of Palau quickly showed interest in the scheme, suggesting that it might well be extended to the populated islands of the archipelago. “We are keen on alternative energy,” said Palau's president, Tommy Remengasau. “And if this is something that can benefit Palau, I'm sure we'd like to look at it.” Reed has organized an American-Swiss-German consortium and is looking for corporate financing for the estimated eight hundred million dollar cost of the system, which he thinks can be in operation as early as 2012.

  NASA has for many years been studying much more grandiose ideas for beaming power down from space. One NASA plan involves satellites in geostationary orbits, 22,300 miles up, that would be equipped with arrays of solar panels eighteen square miles in size and transmit power continuously to rectennas of similar vast area on Earth. Each of these orbiters would yield twice as much power as Hoover Dam, and, according to studies independently carried out in Japan, the beams from them would be no more dangerous than microwave ovens, though no-go zones would have to be established to keep aircraft out of their path. Another proposal—and I am indebted to SF writer Allen Steele for details of this one—is the SunTower, an array of photovoltaic cells ten miles long in orbit six hundred miles high, that would collect solar energy (available twenty-four hours a day up there, remember), convert it into electricity, and send it via low-power microwave beams to rectennas on Earth. The cost of hoisting all this hardware into space and assembling it there would be enormous, of course, but once the initial investment had been made, limitless supplies of carbon-free electricity would head our way.

  The progenitor of the modern proposals for beaming power down from space seems to be Peter Glaser of the Arthur D. Little Corporation, who first set it forth in an article in Science in 1968. Gerard K. O'Neill, an advocate for the development of permanent space stations who had been working on space-colonization plans for NASA, expanded on Glas-er's ideas in a 1976 book, The High Frontier, that led to a flood of further books and studies. Of course, power-generating stations in space began to turn up in science fiction, also. The Canadian writer Donald Kingsbury, who attended a 1977 meeting of the American Astronautical Society in San Francisco where much attention was paid to the theme of the industrialization of space, embodied the idea in a 1979 novella, “The Moon Goddess and the Son,” and then a 1986 novel of the same name. In 1981, rocketry expert G. Harry Stine published under his “Lee Correy” pseudonym the novel Space Doctor, about the problems of constructing a power satellite in geosynchronous orbit. Allen Steele's 1989 novel Orbital Decay shows a gang of rough-hewn construction guys working aboard a space satellite called Olympus Station—nicknamed “Skycan"—to build a power-transmission plant. And plenty of other writers have dealt with the subject since.

  But the history of the power-satellite theme in science f
iction goes back much farther than that —to 1931, astonishingly, and Murray Leinster's novelette “Power Planet,” which, like so many Leinster stories, introduced a startling new idea to our field.

  Leinster is not much spoken of in the SF world nowadays, but he was a major figure fifty years ago, commonly thought of as “the Dean of Science Fiction.” He was a courtly, soft-spoken Virginian, born in 1896, whose real name was Will F. Jenkins. Though he had hoped to become a scientist, circumstances did not allow him to go beyond an eighth-grade education. Nevertheless, he pursued a lifelong interest in technology, maintaining a home laboratory from which flowed scores of patentable inventions, while at the same time carrying on a major career as a fiction writer under the “Leinster” pseudonym, with science fiction as one of his specialties. It was Murray Leinster who gave us the concept of parallel worlds in “Sidewise in Time” (1934), did one of the first generation-ship interstellar stories in that year's “Proxima Centauri,” and wrote a definitive tale of the problem of communi- cation with aliens in his classic novelette “First Contact” in 1945. His other major contributions to science fiction over the course of a fifty-year career would make a long list.

  “Power Planet” appeared in the January 1931 issue of the pioneering SF magazine Amazing Stories. The magazine science fiction of that era was mostly pretty creaky work, but “Power Planet,” despite some crude pulp touches, remains surprisingly readable today. It presents us with fiction's first power-generating space station: “The Power Planet, of course,” Leinster writes, “is that vast man-made disk of metal set spinning about the sun to supply the Earth with power. Everybody learns in his grammar-school textbooks of its construction just beyond the Moon and of its maneuvering to its preent orbit by a vast expenditure of rocket fuel. Only forty million miles from the sun's surface, its sunward side is raised nearly to red heat by the blazing radiation. And the shadow side, naturally, is down to the utter cold of space. There is a temperature drop of nearly seven hundred degrees between the two sides, and Williamson cells turn that heat-difference into electric current, with an efficiency of 99 percent. Then the big Dugald tubes—they are twenty feet long on the Power Planet—transform it into the beam which is focused always on the Earth and delivers something over a billion horsepower to the various receivers that have been erected.” The space station itself is ten miles across, “and it rotates at a carefully calculated speed so that the centrifugal force at its outer edge is very nearly equal to the normal gravity of Earth. So that the nearer its center one goes, of course, the less is that force, and also the less impression of weight one has.”