Analog SFF, June 2008 Read online

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  Analog SFF, June 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 A. Hardy

  Cover design by Victoria Green

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  CONTENTS

  Reader's Department: EDITORIAL: OUR MOST IMPORTANT PRODUCT by Stanley Schmidt

  Novella: BRITTNEY'S LABYRINTH by Richard A. Lovett

  Reader's Department: IN TIMES TO COME

  Science Fact: PEROXIDE SNOW, EJECTED MOONS, AND DESERTS THAT CREATE THEMSELVES by Richard A. Lovett

  Novelette: WATERBOT by Ben Bova

  Novelette: DEMAND ECOLOGY by Craig DeLancey

  Poem: ON THE EVOLUTION OF GOD by Robert Lundy

  Reader's Department: THE ALTERNATE VIEW: THE RETURN OF THE WARLOCK'S WHEEL by Jeffery D. Kooistra

  Short Story: BACK by Susan Forest

  Short Story: FINALIZING HISTORY by Richard K. Lyon

  Novelette: THE LATE SAM BOONE by Bud Sparhawk

  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: OUR MOST IMPORTANT PRODUCT

  by Stanley Schmidt

  When I was growing up, I heard and saw a great many ads for General Electric featuring the slogan, “Progress is our most important product.” A reasonable case could be made that, in at least one sense, it really was, though of course “importance” can be measured in a variety of ways. Often “most important product” is taken to mean a physical commodity with large economic importance to an area, or that is strongly associated with that area because more of it is produced there than elsewhere. Lobster from Maine, for example, or maple syrup from Vermont, or software from Silicon Valley.

  But what is the most important product of American business as a whole? Writing this in the height of the holiday gift-hawking season, I find myself irresistibly tempted to make an irreverent suggestion: the most important manufactured product in the contemporary U.S. is “need.”

  How often have you heard a child—or adult—say they “need” this or that because it's the latest fad? How many garments, games, or gizmos have you heard advertised or reviewed as “this season's must-have"?

  I know; I've lost count, too.

  It's time for a reminder and a reality check. In the strictest sense, there are extremely few “must-haves.” Air, water, and food—all of which are aspects of “usable energy"—are (at least in our present condition) hard to dispute. Also, given that we have physical bodies, we need a quantity of space for them to occupy. There's not much else that's necessary for survival.

  Most of us, of course, would not be satisfied with mere survival at its minimal level, but there will be times when we may have to settle for that—and be able to endure it—until we can work through hardships to something better.

  To get beyond mere survival, and derive some satisfaction from life, most of us also have psychological needs such as companionship, approval from others, and self-esteem, though the level of dependence on these things varies widely from individual to individual. None of us, though, has a built-in need for a huge house, an SUV for city driving, any new car or computer every year or two, a multithousand-dollar dress to be worn once, or an electric card-shuffler.

  So, in a society almost as geared as Aldous Huxley's Brave New World to viewing consumption as an intrinsic good, we've created an entire industry dedicated to making people think they need such things, whether they do or not. We've accustomed ourselves to following it like sheep wherever it chooses to lead us. And that, in turn, leads to a tremendous amount of waste of time, money, material resources, and human energy, making and trading objects to fill “needs” as artificial as the objects themselves. It leads also to a great deal of psychological stress among people who feel pressured to “keep up with the Joneses.”

  Wasting energy and resources, good as it might seem for the short-term health of an economy that has evolved to depend on it, can hardly be good for the long-term health of atmospheres and ecosystems. Constant, frenzied competition to have the “Latest and Greatest Everything” can hardly be good for the long-term mental health and viability of a society that has let itself be driven to such a state.

  Please don't read this as a blanket indictment of advertising as an unmitigated evil. It isn't; both businesses and consumers need it. Businesses need to let potential customers know that their products and services exist and are worth having; consumers need to know where to find what they want. But please note how different the emphasis in these statements is from the ones commonly implicit (and sometimes explicit) in real-world advertising. I acknowledge the essential value of advertising as a means of enabling producers and consumers to find each other. I reject and resent the notion that it's a Good Thing for businesses to try to browbeat me into thinking I just have to have their product, instead of presenting me with information that leads me to make that decision (or not) for myself. I've often wished that good but short-lived restaurants had advertised enough to build a clientele that would ensure their viability. I've stayed away from car and furniture dealerships (no doubt you know examples) because their advertising was so in-my-face obnoxious I wanted nothing to do with them.

  Of course, not all of the needs that are created and thrust upon us are entirely products of advertising. Given that very few of us would willingly settle for bare-minimum survival, we must acknowledge that anyone who wishes to live at all comfortably in any real-world civilization will need certain things, and those “second-order” needs change as technology evolves and society evolves with it. I don't need to look far afield for examples, or point a smug finger only at others comfortably remote from myself.

  You're reading this in a magazine that is part of the publishing “system” that has grown up as a major means of disseminating information, ideas, and entertainment in this part of the world and this period of history. That system is in a state of unusually rapid flux at the moment, and how it works in ten years may be quite different from the way it works now. But we can already say confidently that the system has undergone big changes in the last few centuries, and especially in the last few decades.

  One of those changes is that, in some respects, it's much easier for an aspiring writer to get his or her work in front of an audience than ever before. All that's necessary is to post it online and try to entice people—any people—to look at it, whereas formerly it would have been necessary to find an editor willing to publish it. The number of writers who could do that was necessarily small, and a very large percentage of writers—sometimes even genuinely talented ones—remained unknown wannabes.

  In another sense, though, the recent evolution of computer technology and its application to publishing has made it harder—or at least more expensive—for a new writer to get started. Once you've written something, it's easier than ever to get it at least nominally published (though most online publication [with some conspicuous exceptions] produces little if any income for i
ts authors). But taking that initial step, the act of writing itself, requires much more of an investment in equipment than it used to.

  Shakespeare and Dickens wrote longhand with quill pens—and delivered their manuscripts that way. It's been a long time since any professional editor would have been willing to accept such a longhand submission. Most people's penmanship is so much harder to read than typescript that, once typewriters were widely available, it became necessary for any writer with professional aspirations to get one, even though it required a much more substantial investment than a pen. In the last couple of decades, it has become almost that necessary for an aspiring writer to have a computer and one or more peripherals such as printers, disk burners, and internet connections—which are even more expensive than typewriters.

  The necessity is clear for a writer who wants to publish only online: the computer is the basic operating “cell” of the internet. But why should someone who wants to write for printed magazines or books “need” a computer? Quite simply, because it offers huge advantages over the typewriter to both author and publishers, and so many writers have already made the switch that publishers have reconfigured their in-house equipment and staffing to deal with material that will almost always be generated electronically. They are no longer equipped to handle significant amounts of material that isn't. When most writers wrote on typewriters, typesetting required somebody within the publishing company (or a subcontractor) to retype every entire manuscript. That meant people had to be employed to do that. Now, when most authors can provide electronic copies of their accepted manuscripts, and those can be used directly for typesetting, the retyping stage is no longer necessary and staff is no longer employed to do it. Some publishers already refuse to accept manuscripts that can't be supplied in electronic form; others will occasionally accept one that's typed, but it's a hardship and they can't do it very often.[*]

  The new method has big advantages for writers as well as publishers. For example, in the old system, new mistakes often crept in during the retyping-to-typeset stage. That doesn't happen with that stage gone, so typesetting is generally more accurate when it's done directly from the author's disk. But it does mean that writers who want to operate within the new system have a genuine need for computers, which are more expensive than typewriters (which are more expensive than pens).

  That's just one example of how evolving technologies and coevolving societies can create new needs that really are needs, at some level, and come with benefits that make it worthwhile to accept them. But we could use some practice, I think, at recognizing the difference between that kind of need and the kind we let ourselves be convinced exists only because somebody else tells us it does—because they want to sell us something.

  Copyright (c) 2008 Stanley Schmidt

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  [* Please note carefully: This does not mean you can automatically now do everything electronically. Some publishers do accept electronic submissions (and are sometimes very particular about format). Others (including Analog) still require a hardcopy (accompanied by a self-addressed stamped reply envelope) for first reading, and want an electronic copy only after acceptance. It depends on how things are done in a particular office; as a writer, you'll need to find out the policy for each publisher you'll deal with.]

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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

  Irene Lee: Production Artist/Graphic Designer

  Carole Dixon: Senior Production Manager

  Evira Matos: Production Associate

  Abigail Browning: Manager, Subsidiary Rights and Marketing

  Julia McEvoy: Manager, Advertising Sales

  Bruce W. Sherbow: VP, Sales and Marketing

  Sandy Marlowe: Circulation Services

  Advertising Representative: Connie Goon, Advertising Sales Coordinator, Tel: (212) 686-7188 Fax:(212) 686-7414 (Display and Classified Advertising)

  Editorial Correspondence Only: [email protected]

  Published since 1930

  First issue of Astounding January 1930 (c)

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  Analog Science Fiction and Fact (Astounding), Vol. CXXVIII, No. 6, June 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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  Novella: BRITTNEY'S LABYRINTH

  by Richard A. Lovett

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  Illustration by David A. Hardy

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  "Junior partners can be major players...."

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  Imagine you have an entire world to yourself. Then imagine a stranger walks into your camp.

  I have to hand it to Floyd; he's got a flair for the dramatic. Of course, it was my fault for telling him about Shackleton. That also made it my fault that an annum later we found ourselves cataloging Ring clumps for Torrence Rudolph III. Though I was stunned Floyd didn't rebel at the mere thought. What is it about humans that makes them take their worst fears and charge at them headlong? I know what I don't like, and microgravity has a lot to do with it. And Floyd ... he has this need for open spaces. It's not that he's claustrophobic—he's a tug pilot, after all. But he hates places where things might fall on him. So why in Space did he want anything to do with a gravitational kaleidoscope like the Rings, let alone burrowing around like some kind of mole, just waiting for something to squish us?

  Unfortunately, Floyd was the one with the legs, so in such matters, I tended to get outvoted.

  Obviously, money was a factor, but we didn't need cash. Not that much, anyway. At least, not once we got the insurance company to actually read the full-replacement rider he'd had on Ship.

  But I'm getting ahead of myself.

  It wasn't that the parallels weren't screamingly obvious. Shackleton was an explorer who escaped death by taking an open boat across a thousand-plus klicks of the word's stormiest waters. Floyd and I built a sand sled to cross hundreds of klicks of dunes. Shackleton fetched up on the shore of a mountainous island, which he then had to cross on foot. Floyd and I did the same. So what if Shackleton was in Antarctica, hundreds of years ago, and we were on Titan? A sailboat's a sailboat, whether it floats or skids.

  So, of course, I told him about it. We were on the sled for thirty-two days. I had to talk about something. Including the “Who the bleep are you?” response Shackleton got when he finally reached civilization. But I only mentioned it because it was a good story: not because I thought we were going to try to copy it. After all, we were in suit-radio range all through the final day. But once Floyd gets an idea i
n his skull, there's no shaking him of it. “We've come all this way,” he insisted. “I want to see their faces.”

  As it turned out, we couldn't see much of the face of the first person we met, but his body language said plenty. He was in an old-style pressure suit, with a big fishbowl of a helmet on which he'd displayed enough telemetry from whatever he was doing that there wasn't much room for him to see out, let alone us to see in. It also turned out that while the Titan Base scientists had had a couple of skinsuits coming to them in the equipment capsule Floyd and I'd crash-landed all those days earlier, they were accustomed to people who, even in Titan's 1.6-bar atmosphere, looked ... how should I say it?—puffy?—when they stepped outside.

  Floyd had never been fat, but when I later saw him in a mirror, he looked emaciated. After a month of suit rations, you could count his ribs through the suit. Combine that with the compressed-air bladders behind his shoulders and in front of his thighs, and he looked more than a bit insectoid. More of a surprise than the poor guy in the pressure suit deserved, if you ask me. But then I've always been more mature than Floyd. Mature enough that I'd have radioed in and asked them to send out a crawler and give us a lift, those last few klicks. But you know how it is with men asking for help.

  Anyway, once the guy quit screaming, Floyd and I were famous.

  Floyd's full name, by the way, is Floyd Ashman. He likes to be called Phoenix, but you won't catch me doing it. He claims it's because it's his hometown, but that's just an excuse. Ashman? Phoenix? Way too cutesy for my taste.

  I'm Brittney. I suppose you could call me Ashman, too—most of the media did—but I don't have a last name. I'm Floyd's symbiote and I live in a bunch of computer chips implanted beneath his ribs. There's a dozen, though I could make do with fewer if I had to.

  Floyd is forty-eight-year-old flesh and blood. I'm ... well, the news pods liked to say quantum foam, but that's the chips. The real me hasn't been around much more than a couple of annums, though if I were human I'd tell you to think of me as nineteen, maybe twenty.