Asimov's SF, September 2007 Read online

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  Asimov's SF, September 2007

  by Dell Magazine Authors

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  Science Fiction

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  Dell Magazines

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  Copyright ©2007 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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  Asimov's Science Fiction

  September 2007

  Vol. 31, No.9. Whole No. 380

  Cover Art by Dan O'Driscol

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  NOVELETTES

  The Caldera of Good Forture by Robert Reed

  The Prophet of Flores by Ted Kosmatka

  What Wolves Know by Kit Reed

  The Good Ship Lollypop by R. Garcia y Robertson

  SHORT STORIES

  My Heart as Dry as Dust by Kim Zimring

  How Music Begins by James Van Pelt

  Draw by Pati Nagle

  By Fools Like Me by Nancy Kress

  POETRY

  Asteroid People by Bruce Boston

  Cendrillon at Sunrise by Jo Walton

  Reservations Suggested by G.O. Clark

  A Meeting of Minds by Karin L. Frank

  DEPARTMENTS

  Editorial: 2007 Readers’ Awards by Sheila Williams

  Reflections: Saddam Wasn't the Worst by Robert Silverberg

  On Books by Paul Di Filippo

  The SF Conventional Calendar by Erwin S. Strauss

  Asimov's Science Fiction. ISSN 1065-2698. Vol. 31, No.9. Whole No. 380, September 2007. 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) 2007 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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  CONTENTS

  EDITORIAL: 2007 READERS’ AWARDS by Sheila Williams

  REFLECTIONS by Robert Silverberg

  ASTEROID PEOPLE by Bruce Boston

  THE CALDERA OF GOOD FORTUNE by Robert Reed

  CENDRILLON AT SUNRISE by Jo Walton

  MY HEART AS DRY AS DUST by Kim Zimring

  HOW MUSIC BEGINS by James Van Pelt

  RESERVATIONS SUGGESTED by G.O. Clark

  THE PROPHET OF FLORES by Ted Kosmatka

  WHAT WOLVES KNOW by Kit Reed

  DRAW by Pati Nagle

  A MEETING OF MINDS by Karin L. Frank

  BY FOOLS LIKE ME by Nancy Kress

  THE GOOD SHIP LOLLYPOP by R. Garcia y Robertson

  ON BOOKS by Paul Di Filippo

  SF CONVENTIONAL CALENDAR by Erwin S. Strauss

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  Asimov's Science Fiction

  Isaac Asimov: Editorial Director (1977-1992)

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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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  EDITORIAL: 2007 READERS’ AWARDS

  by Sheila Williams

  Awards, awards, awards. Last month, I brought word of the results of the Dell Magazine Award for Best SF or Fantasy short story by an undergraduate. This month, I bring news of your own Readers’ Awards poll. Unlike last year, the fiction categories races were unusually tight. Many of you indicated that because you liked so many stories, it wasn't easy to make a final decision. Michael Bowden, a subscriber from Canada, summed up the process: “VERY hard to choose among all fields given the overall high quality of the stories and the sources of the stories—what it is about them that drives them and makes them memorable—is wonderfully variegated.” This indecision is gratifying to my cruel editor's heart, since I deliberately choose stories for Asimov's that appeal to your wide-ranging tastes.

  Ultimately, of course, our winners successfully nudged out their competition, and several were on hand to collect their awards at our breakfast reception. The ceremony was held in New York City on May 12th at Roy's New York in the Marriott Financial Center. Guests included our best novella winner, Paul Melko; best novelette winner, Paolo Bacigalupi; and best poem winner, Darrell Schweitzer. They were joined by managing editor Brian Bieniowski and our associate publisher Christine Begley, as well as our semi-permanent guests—Connie Willis and her daughter Cordelia, and James Patrick Kelly. Analog's Anlab ceremony was held at the same time and their guests included Stan and Joyce Schmidt, Trevor Quachri, Barry and Jean Longyear, and John Hemry. The press was represented by Ernest Lilley for Locus and Scott Edelman of SF Weekly.

  Paul Melko's winning story, “The Walls of the Universe,” was a Nebula nominee as well, and, much later in the day, he and our other Nebula finalist—William Shunn for “Inclination"—watched
as they both lost the award to our own Internet columnist, Jim Kelly. Jim's novella, “Burn,” was published as a stand-alone book by Tachyon Publications. Paul and Bill have a shot at a rematch, though, since their stories are currently finalists for the Hugo Award, too.

  I first met Paolo Bacigalupi at last year's Nebula ceremony, and I was delighted that he could fly in from Colorado to collect the Readers’ Award for his dark and disturbing novelette about the “Yellow Card Man.” Paolo's story contrasted with “Impossible Dreams,” the amusing and romantic tale by Tim Pratt that won for best short story. Paolo and Tim are also up for the Hugo Awards, along with six other Asimov's stories.

  Tim couldn't be on hand to collect his award, but, happily, our winning poet arrived straight from an early morning Philadelphia train. Darrell Schweitzer, an assistant editor from Asimov's early days, won the award for his nostalgic poem about “Remembering the Future."

  One person who couldn't make the award ceremony was artist-award winner J.K. Potter. Jeff's March cover illustrated David Ira Cleary's “The Kewlest Thing of All.” Although this artist's work may have been new to some of you—one person asked if his name was a pseudonym—Jeff was prominent in the fantastic fiction field long before J.K. Rowling began publishing tales about a certain apprenticing wizard. Jeff's evocative work appeared on a number of Asimov's covers in the mid-eighties. Indeed, in a time before we bestowed an award for best artist, Jeff provided the cover art for our first best-novelette winner—"The Prisoner of Chillon” by James Patrick Kelly (June 1986). We're glad to have him back and hope to see more of his work on future covers of Asimov's.

  As always, the breakfast was a lot of fun, but I had even more fun reading through the comments that so many of you send along with your award ballots. There's some constructive criticism and great deal of positive reinforcement. In addition to letting me know how hard it was to squeeze your favorites onto three lines, many of you thanked me for using a number of new writers. Others asked for the work of long-time favorites. I can assure you that we are hard at work acquiring stories from both types of authors.

  Alan K. Lipton, a subscriber for twenty-seven years said, “This is my first Readers’ Award ballot. I should do it again—it makes me feel more involved with a magazine that's like a family member. Thank you for continuing, and thank you for a consistently great experience."

  I look forward to hearing from many more of you in next year's poll. Copyright (c)2007 Sheila Williams

  [Back to Table of Contents]

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  BEST NOVELLA

  1. THE WALLS OF THE UNIVERSE; PAUL MELKO

  2. A Billion Eves; Robert Reed

  3. Lord Weary's Empire; Michael Swanwick

  4. Inclination; William Shunn

  5. Down to the Earth Below; William Barton

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  BEST NOVELETTE

  1. YELLOW CARD MAN; PAOLO BACIGALUPI

  2. The Djinn's Wife; Ian McDonald

  3. Dawn, and Sunset, and the Colours of the Earth; Michael F. Flynn

  4. Under the Graying Sea; Jonathan Sherwood

  5. The Gabble; Neal Asher

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  BEST SHORT STORY

  1. IMPOSSIBLE DREAMS; TIM PRATT

  2. The Osteomancer's Son; Greg van Eekhout

  3. The Small Astral Object Genius; James Van Pelt

  4. Life on the Preservation; Jack Skillingstead

  5. Nano Comes to Clifford Falls; Nancy Kress

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  BEST POEM

  1. REMEMBERING THE FUTURE; DARRELL SCHWEITZER

  2. Copyright Notice, 2525; David Livingstone Clink

  3. An Eccentric in Orbit; Laurel Winter

  4. It's Not Easy Being Dead; Bruce Boston

  5. Chaos Theory; William John Watkins

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  BEST COVER

  1. MARCH; J.K. POTTER

  2. September; Donato Giancola

  3. April/May; Bob Eggleton

  4. February; Dominic Harman

  5. December; Jeroen Advocaat

  [Back to Table of Contents]

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  REFLECTIONS

  by Robert Silverberg

  The news in recent years has brought us a lot of grim, violent stuff originating in Iraq. First came the forcible removal from power of the bloodthirsty tyrant Saddam Hussein, who during a long reign was responsible for the deaths of thousands—maybe hundreds of thousands—of his own citizens. Then, upon Saddam's fall, came a host of Iraqi mini-tyrants who have imposed a chaotic, anarchic insurgency upon that unhappy country, giving it a daily ration of suicide bombers, attacks on places of worship, and other horrors.

  Iraq these days is a troubled and troublesome place. But when we look back across that country's history, as I've been doing lately, we see a grand tradition of monstrous violence there stretching back thousands of years. Saddam wasn't the first ogre to rule Iraq. Nor was he—by some distance—the worst.

  I ought to clarify, at this point, what I mean by “Iraq.” As a national name, that's a fairly recent one. My eleventh Edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, published in 1910 and considered a reliable compendium of just about all that was known at that time, says nothing about “Iraq,” though it does have an entry for “Irak-Arabi,” which it tells us is “the name employed since the Arab conquest to designate that portion of the valley of the Tigris and Euphrates known in older literature as Babylonia.” Irak-Arabi, we learn, is made up of two unequal portions: “an extensive dry steppe with a healthy desert climate, and an unhealthy region of swamps,” the latter being in the southern region. Two great rivers run through the area, the Tigris and the Euphrates, which had led the Romans to give the area the name of Mesopotamia, “the land between the rivers.” Certain portions of the country, the encyclopedia reports, are periodically terrorized by uncontrollable Bed-ouin marauders, and the whole place, after a period of great prosperity in the early days of Arab rule more than a thousand years ago, “has now returned to a condition of semi-barbarism."

  The territory once known as Irak-Arabi had come under Persian rule in the fourteenth century, then fell to the Ottoman Turks in 1534, and entered into a long period of stagnation and disarray. The Ottomans divided it into two provinces, with Basra as the capital of the swampy south and Baghdad the capital of the central area where the two rivers are closest together. The old Roman province of Mesopotamia had had a third district north of that, which the Ottomans made a province with its administrative center at Mosul, close by the ruins of Nineveh, the ancient capital of the warlike kingdom of Assyria. When the Ottoman Empire was broken up after World War I, its three Mesopotamian provinces of Mosul, Baghdad, and Basra were combined by the victorious Allies to create the new independent nation of Iraq, with Faisal, an Arabian-born prince, as its first king. A revolution in 1958 expelled the royal dynasty and Iraq has been a republic ever since, under the rule of a series of oppressive dictators culminating in Saddam Hussein.

  The key thing that emerges from this quick tour of history is that present-day Iraq is a hodgepodge of incompatible nationalities deriving primarily from the ancient kingdoms of Babylonia and Assyria. (The coming of Islam has added a further complication because of the division between Sunni and Shiite religious factions: the Sunnis are dominant in northern Iraq, the Shiites in the south, and the central area holds a mixture of both groups.)

  Lately I've been delving into early Mesopotamian history, thanks to a fascinating book I acquired a few months ago called Ancient Records of Assyria and Babylonia. This, edited by Daniel David Luckenbill, a professor of Semitic languages at the University of Chicago, and published by the University in 1927, is a collection of translations of inscriptions left behind by the Assyrian kings. It's easy to see from the fierce boasts of those bloodthirsty monarchs that Saddam had been using them as role models during his thirty years of rule in the region that had once been theirs. Anyone who had the sort of old-fashioned education that I was lucky enough to have, a couple
of generations ago, is well aware, of course, of what bad guys the Assyrians were. Though I was never particularly religious, I did read the Bible—King James Version—for its literary value, and in the Old Testament I encountered again and again the villainous Assyrians who forever made life so tough for my Hebrew ancestors.

  In II Kings, for example, the tale is told of the Assyrian invasion of the two Jewish kingdoms of Judah and Israel. Israel fell first, and its people were carried off to Assyria in captivity. Then, II Kings reports, “in the fourteenth year of king Hezekiah did Sennacherib king of Assyria come up against all the fenced cities of Judah, and took them.” Sennacherib, who had previously conquered neighboring Babylonia and much of Palestine, demanded an immense tribute, “and Hezekiah gave him all the silver that was found in the house of the Lord, and in the treasures of the king's house. And at that time did Hezekiah cut off the gold from the doors of the temple of the Lord, and from the pillars which Hezekiah king of Judah had overlaid, and gave it to the king of Assyria."

  Lord Byron, in a gaudy poem called “The Destruction of Sennacherib” that I loved when I was a boy, has this to say of the savage Assyrian attack:

  The Assyrian came down like a wolf on the fold

  And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold;

  And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea

  When the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee.

  In the Biblical version, and Byron's, things end fairly well for the Hebrews: the Lord hears his people's prayers, and the Angel of Death goes among the Assyrians in their camp outside Jerusalem, smiting them so vehemently that in one night “an hundred fourscore and five thousand” are slain, “so Sennacherib king of Assyria departed, and went and returned, and dwelt at Nineveh."

  Upon turning to Luckenbill's Ancient Records of Assyria, I made two interesting discoveries: one, that the Assyrian invasion of Judah took place pretty much as the Bible describes, and, two, that the Jewish kingdom may have survived the onslaught not by the miraculous intervention of God but by the payment of that stiff tribute. For this is what the actual inscriptions of Sennacherib, who ruled Assyria from 705 to 681 B.C., have to say: