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  Asimov's Science Fiction

  August 2007

  Vol. 31, No.8. Whole No. 379

  Cover Art for “Hormiga Canyon” by Jim Burns

  NOVELETTES

  Hormiga Canyon by Rudy Rucker & Bruce Sterling

  The Bridge by Kathleen Ann Goonan

  The Mists of Time by Tom Purdom

  SHORT STORIES

  Dead Horse Point by Daryl Gregory

  Teachers’ Lounge by Tim McDaniel

  Prodigal by Justin Stanchfield

  Thank You, Mr. Whiskers by Jack Skillingstead

  POETRY

  When the Radar Aliens Come by Greg Beatty

  DEPARTMENTS

  Editorial: The 2007 Dell Magazines Award by Sheila Williams

  Reflections: Decoding Cuneiform by Robert Silverberg

  On the Net: Happy Red Planet by James Patrick Kelly

  On Books by Peter Heck

  The SF Conventional Calendar by Erwin S. Strauss

  Asimov's Science Fiction. ISSN 1065-2698. Vol. 31, No.8. Whole No. 379, August 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: The 2007 Dell Magazines Award by Sheila Williams

  REFLECTIONS: DECODING CUNEIFORM by Robert Silverberg

  ON THE NET: HAPPY RED PLANET by James Patrick Kelly

  HORMIGA CANYON by Rudy Rucker and Bruce Sterling

  DEAD HORSE POINT by Daryl Gregory

  THE BRIDGE by Kathleen Ann Goonan

  TEACHERS’ LOUNGE by Tim McDaniel

  PRODIGAL by Justin Stanchfield

  THANK YOU, MR. WHISKERS by Jack Skillingstead

  THE MISTS OF TIME by Tom Purdom

  WHEN THE RADAR ALIENS COME by Greg Beatty

  ON BOOKS by Peter Heck

  SF CONVENTIONAL CALENDAR

  NEXT ISSUE

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  Asimov's Science Fiction

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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.

  Editorial: The 2007 Dell Magazines Award by Sheila Williams

  Thirty years ago, Isaac Asimov co-founded his eponymous magazine partly so that new writers would have the same sort of venue to break into that he'd had when he sold his first story to Amazing at age eighteen. Fourteen years ago, my co-judge, Rick Wilber, and I founded the Dell Magazines Award for Undergraduate Excellence in Science Fiction and Fantasy Writing to honor Isaac's memory and to create an additional way to encourage young writers. This year, I traveled to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, in March, for my fourteenth Conference for the Fantastic in the Arts. There, I met a new crop of talented young writers. This year's winner, Natty Bokenkamp, is a senior at Stanford University majoring in physics with an emphasis on astrophysical studies. In addition to placing first in the contest with his perceptive story, “The Uncanny Valley,” and picking up a check for five hundred dollars from Dell Magazines, Natty was also named second runner-up for his story, “Cargo.” “The Uncanny Valley” will appear on our website next year.

  As has often been the case with these awards, we had another double winner this year. Our first runner-up, Rahul Kanakia, was also our third runner-up. His respective stories were “Money Is the Best Damn Thing There Is” and “The Silent Horde.” Although Rahul is a junior at Stanford majoring in economics, he and Natty met for the first time at the Florida conference. Both, however, had previously met our 2005 and 2006 winner, and Stanford alum, Anthony Ha.

  This year, only one of our three honorable mentions could attend the conference. Stephen Leech, a senior in mass communications who now plans to teach high-school English, received a certificate for his story “The Whale-Zeppelin Canard.” He is the first student from the University of South Florida to place in the awards. The Dell Magazines Award, which is co-sponsored by the International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts Award, is also supported by the School of Mass Com- munications, University of South Florida, Tampa, Florida. Honorable mention also went to Seth Dickinson of the University of Chicago for his short story, “Claymore Three-Zulu,” and to two-time first runner up (in 2006 and 2007), Eliza Blair of Swarthmore College for her story “Tangle."

  Last year's award-winning story, “Shift,” by Meghan Sinoff, is now up at our website. Don't miss th
is moving tale.

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  Left to right: Rahul Kanakia, Rick Wilber, Natty Bokenkamp, Sheila Williams, and Stephen Leech.

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  Next year, the convention moves to Orlando, Florida, so this was my last chance to spend my afternoons by the Fort Lauderdale pool doing story conferences with the students. Some time at this last visit to the capital of Spring Break was also spent meeting with well-known authors. I attended guest of honor Geoff Ryman's excellent reading; I dined with James Patrick Kelly, Ted Chiang, John Kessel, M. Rickert, and Patrick O'Leary; and, on Saturday afternoon, Tachyon publisher Jacob Wiesman took me on what may have been my last trip to Jaxson's Ice Cream Parlor. Later that day, I had the delightful opportunity to sit with Joe and Gay Haldeman during the awards’ banquet and ceremony. I hope the move will continue to give me opportunities to hang out with convention regulars like Brian W. Aldiss, Peter Straub and his lovely wife, Susan, John Clute, Andy Duncan, Elizabeth Hand, Mary Turzillo, and Kathleen Ann Goonan.

  We are actively looking for next year's winner. The deadline for submissions is Monday, January 2, 2008. 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:

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  Dell Magazines Award

  School of Mass Communications

  University of South Florida

  Tampa, Florida 33620

  [email protected]

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  Next year's winner will be announced at the 2007 Conference on the Fantastic, in the pages of Asimov's Science Fiction magazine, and on our website.

  Photo credit: Liza Groen Trombi

  Copyright (c) 2007 Sheila Williams

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  REFLECTIONS: DECODING CUNEIFORM by Robert Silverberg

  Last month I wrote of dipping into Ancient Records of Assyria and Babylonia, a fine old volume of translations from Meso-potamian cuneiform inscriptions, from which it is easy to see that the part of the world now known as Iraq was, even in antiquity, a bloody battleground ruled by ferocious tyrants. I quoted from the boastful inscriptions of such ancient Assyrian kings as Sennacherib and Assurbanipal, of which this is a typical sample: “For two days, from before sunrise, I thundered against them like Adad, the god of the storm, and I rained down flame upon them.... A pillar of living men and of heads I built in front of their city gate, seven hundred men I impaled on stakes in front of their city gate. The city I destroyed, I devastated, I turned it into mounds and ruins; their young men I burned in the flames.” And I noted that what I found most interesting about these horrifying testaments of atrocity wasn't their ghastliness but the mere fact that we are capable of reading them at all, written as they were on tablets of clay in what is now a lost language and a strange wedge-shaped script. So let's look now at how we came to understand the Assyrian and Babylonian inscriptions in the first place.

  European scholars had been puzzling over this ancient writing—"cuneiform,” it was called, from the Latin word meaning “wedge"—since the seventeenth century. Three different kinds of cuneiform inscriptions had been discovered at the ancient Persian capital of Persepolis. By 1778 one of them had been shown to be a forty-two-character alphabetic script. The other two were vastly more complex. And no one knew which language these characters represented, although it was reasonable to think that one or perhaps all three scripts were in the ancient Persian tongue.

  To decipher an unknown script, there has to be some point of contact with the known. If both the characters and the language they represent are enigmas, it becomes impossible to get very far with a decipherment. François Champollion was able to decipher hieroglyphics because he had the use of the Rosetta Stone, which provided a long Egyptian text in two kinds of Egyptian script, plus a translation into Greek. But no Rosetta Stone for the cuneiform script was available.

  One big break came toward the end of the eighteenth century as philologists began to study existing texts of an archaic form of the Persian language that had been written using a decipherable alphabet called Pehlevi. One of them guessed that the simplest of the Persepolis inscriptions, the so-called Class I ones, were Old Persian texts written in the wedge-shaped cuneiform letters. A German high-school teacher named Georg Friedrich Grotefend, whose hobby was solving puzzles, went looking for some repetitive phrase in the Persepolis inscriptions that might give him a clue to the meaning of a few of the wedge-shaped symbols.

  It was already known that Persian official inscriptions almost always began with, and constantly reiterated, a formula that went, “So-and-So, Great King, King of Kings, King of This and That, Son of So-and-So, Great King, King of Kings.” Grotefend first identified the eight most frequent of the forty-two Class I characters and decided that these probably stood for vowels. Then he went looking for the words of his royal formula, and the names of the kings.

  Quickly he found clusters of repeated words, the most frequent of which was a seven-letter group that he suspected meant “king.” In Old Persian that word was “khsheihioh,” and by lining up the characters he arrived at guesses for seven letters. Then, finding what seemed to be a royal name at the proper place in the formula, he matched the letters he had already identified against the name of a known king—Xerxes, “Khshershe” in Persian—and then tested his growing list of letters against the name of Xerxes’ father, Darius—"Darheush.” Bit by bit, by trial and error, he was able to claim identification of twenty-nine of the forty-two Class I characters by 1803. Although it turned out that he was wrong about some of these, he had provided entry into the mysteries of Class I cuneiform.

  But Class I was still a long way from a complete decipherment and the Class II and III inscriptions were still total mysteries when, in 1835, a swashbuckling English scholar-adventurer named Henry Creswicke Rawlinson entered the picture. Rawlinson, a lieutenant in the service of the British East India Company, had been stationed in various Asian posts—first in India, then in Persia—since the age of seventeen. He had a natural knack for languages and quickly mastered several Indian tongues, Arabic, and Persian. And, like Grotefend, he was inclined toward puzzle-solving as an amusement. Knowing little of Grotefend's work, he attempted a decipherment of Class I using the same method, and worked out thirteen letters on his own. When the East India Company transferred him to its Persian base at Kermanshah, he swiftly learned that a lengthy cuneiform inscription in all three scripts was to be found carved on the Behistun Rock, a seventeen-hundred-foot-high cliff twenty miles from town, and rode out to take a look.

  But the inscription was all but inaccessible. The ancient Persian rock-carvers had removed the steps leading up to it after they were finished, so later vandals could not deface the words. Rawlinson, a considerable athlete, scrambled up the bare, slippery face of the rock without the aid of ropes or ladders until he reached a ledge, two feet in breadth at its widest point, where he could stand and copy part of the inscription.

  The Behistun text was studded with names out of Persian history—King Darius and his whole ancestral line—and Rawlinson, using inspired guesswork, his linguistic skills, and his knowledge of history, was able to match names to cunei-form characters and work out a nearly complete translation by January 1838, cor
recting many of Grotefend's errors and demonstrating certain knowledge of eighteen of the forty-two letters. In the months that followed he was able to decipher and translate some two hundred lines of the Class I Behistun inscription.

  Class II and Class III remained unknown, though, and Rawlinson had only fragmentary copies of those texts, which he believed were the Class I inscription written in the scripts of two other languages, one of them very likely Babylonian or Assyrian. In 1844 he returned to Behistun, erected a wooden folding ladder on a narrow ledge three hundred feet above the ground, stood on its topmost rung, and, bracing himself against the rock with his left arm and holding his notebook in his left hand, copied the inscription with his right hand. “The interest of the occupation,” he wrote, “entirely did away with any sense of danger."

  Now he had all of Class I and most of the Class II inscription. In 1847 he returned equipped with ladders, planks, ropes, nails, hammers, and pegs, and hired a Kurdish boy to scramble out over the abyss on a scaffold to make paper casts, “squeezes,” of the almost inaccessible Class III. Equipped with the full texts, Rawlinson set about to match his Persian Class I text against the far more intricate Class III, which had hundreds of characters instead of only forty-two, in the hope of solving the riddle of Babylonian cuneiform. In England, meanwhile, a clergyman named Edward Hincks started work on the same difficult task.

  Hincks showed that it was wrong to talk of a Babylonian “alphabet.” More than five hundred different Class III characters were known, and no language could have that many basic sounds. Hincks guessed that some of the symbols stood for individual syllables, and others for entire words. Comparing Class I's royal formulas with their likely Class III counterparts, he showed that the seven signs of Xerxes’ name—KH-SH-Y-A-R-SH-A in Hincks’ reading—lined up with Babylonian signs that could have been pronounced KHI-SHI-I-AR-SHI-I. By 1847 he had deciphered twenty-one syllables and had identified the ideographic symbols that stood for such words as “and,” “son,” “great,” “house,” and “god."