Asimov's SF, September 2010 Read online

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  Cover art for "The Sultan of the Clouds, by Jeroen Advocaat

  CONTENTS

  Department: 2010 READERS’ AWARDS by Sheila Williams

  Department: REFLECTIONS: CALLING DR. ASIMOV! by Robert Silverberg

  Department: THOUGHT EXPERIMENTS: THE VIEW FROM THE OTHER SIDE: SCIENCE FICTION AND NON-WESTERN/NON-ANGLOPHONE COUNTRIES by Aliette de Bodard

  Novelette: BACKLASH by Nancy Fulda

  Short Story: THE PALACE IN THE CLOUDS by Eugene Mirabelli

  Poetry: THE NOW WE ALMOST INHABIT by Roger Dutcher and Robert Frazier

  Novelette: WHEAT RUST by Benjamin Crowell

  Poetry: EGG PROTECTION by Ruth Berman

  Short Story: FOR WANT OF A NAIL by Mary Robinette Kowal

  Department: NEXT ISSUE

  Novella: THE SULTAN OF THE CLOUDS by Geoffrey A. Landis

  Department: ON BOOKS by Paul Di Filippo

  Department: SF CONVENTIONAL CALENDAR by Erwin S. Strauss

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  Asimov's Science Fiction. ISSN 1065-2698. Vol. 34, No. 9. Whole Nos. 416, September 2010. 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 $55.90 in the United States and U.S. possessions. In all other countries $65.90 (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, 267 Broadway, 4th Floor, New York, N.Y. 10007. Asimov's Science Fiction is the registered trademark of Dell Magazines, a division of Crosstown Publications. © 2010 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. Please visit our website, www.asimovs.com, for information regarding electronic submissions. All manual 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 Worldcolor St. Jean, 800 Blvd. Industrial, St. Jean, Quebec J3B 8G4.

  ASIMOV'S SCIENCE FICTION

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  Isaac Asimov: Editorial Director (1977-1992)

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  Stories from Asimov's have won 50 Hugos and 27 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 guidelines. Look for them online at www.asimovs.com or send a self-addressed, stamped business-size (#10) envelope, and a note requesting this information. Write “manuscript guidelines” in the bottom left-hand corner of the outside envelope. We prefer electronic submissions, but the address for manual submissions and for all editorial correspondence is Asimov's Science Fiction, 267 Broadway, Fourth Floor, New York, NY 10007-2352. 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.

  Department: 2010 READERS’ AWARDS by Sheila Williams

  This year's Readers’ Award ceremony seemed almost like a replay of the Dell Magazines’ Award. Once again, I arrived in spectacularly sunny Orlando, Florida, but this time I took a shuttle bus sixty miles east to Cocoa Beach for the annual Nebula Awards Weekend. On Friday, I had the thrill of a lifetime when I got to accompany many of the Nebula finalists to the Visitor Complex at the Kennedy Space Center and watch the space shuttle Atlantis lift off for it's ultimate voyage to the International Space Station. I'm sure I'll revisit that experience in a future editorial.

  Of course, our annual Readers’ Award brunch was a lot of fun, too. While we would have loved it if all of our winners had been in attendance at the ceremony on Saturday morning at the Cocoa Beach Hilton, we were delighted to see that half of our winners could make it. Attendees included Will McIntosh, the exhausted father of sixteen-month-old twins, whose short story “Bridesicle” was a finalist for the Nebula Award and the upcoming Hugo Award, as well as the winner of our Readers’ Award; Ted Kosmatka, whose 2008 novelette, “Divining Light,” was a finalist for the Nebula Award at the same time that his and Michael Poore's wrenching 2009 novelette “Blood Dauber” was picking up the Readers’ Award; and Bryan D. Dietrich, the author of “Edgar Allan Poe,” this year's winning poem.

  Alas, perennially favorite author, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, couldn't be there in person to pick up the award for her poignant novella, “Broken Windchimes,” and neither could our artist, John Picacio, or Ted Kosmatka's co-author, Michael Poore. Still, we were graced by the presence of some lovely guests. These included Connie Willis, along with her husband Courtney and her daughter Cordelia, and two of our columnists—James Patrick Kelly and Peter Heck. Since we shared the enormous brunch table with Analog's AnLab winners we were also joined by Stan and Joyce Schmidt, Richard A. Lovett, Carl Frederick, Bud Sparhawk, the artist John Allemand, and other distinguished guests.

  I had a great time visiting with everyone, but as always, one of the chief pleasures the Readers’ Award poll brings is the chance to peruse the readers’ comments on the award ballots. Once again, many readers bemoaned the difficulty they had reaching a decision. David Lee Oakes summed up the situation nicely when he wrote, “I have enjoyed another year of wonderful stories in Asimov's. Fact is, the sci-fi tales of 2009 were so wondrous in the magazine that I found it outright befuddling in selecting which tales I should put on my Readers’ Award ballot. Trust me, it took me a prolonged while to make out this year's ballot. I thank all the science fiction authors of this mag . . . for making Asimov's a super-duper read each year.” Steven Harvey found the short story category particularly vexing. “I try to be as stingy with my ratings throughout the year so as to make my awards choices as easy as possible yet even I a
warded twelve ‘five star’ ratings in [this] category and six in the novelette category.” Like several other readers, he added “Norman Spinrad's article on the death of Thomas Disch was absolutely fascinating and the clear highlight of this year in the nonfiction area. It was top-quality journalism and as far as I'm concerned, could just as easily been published in the New Yorker."

  Although his cover came in fifth, a number of readers commented on how deeply moved they were by Duncan Long's December illustration. This cover was a reprint of Duncan's artwork, but it was partly due to these positive comments that I decided to ask the artist for an original piece of art for our April/May issue. I want to thank the voters for putting the idea in my head and for the beautiful piece of art that accompanied Gregory Norman Bossert's “Union of Soil and Sky” as a result.

  While not every story was universally beloved, readers did express a wide-range of favorites. Sherry Haub wrote, “Please keep mixing it up among ‘strange’ like ‘As Women Fight’ by Sara Genge and ‘5,000 Light Years from Birdland’ by Robert Chase; gentler ‘humanist’ like ‘The Consciousness Problem’ by Mary Robinette Kowal and ‘The Bird Painter in the Time of War’ by Carol Emshwiller; coming of age stories like ‘In Their Garden’ by Brenda Cooper, ‘Shoes-to-Run’ by Sara Genge, and ‘Angie's Errand’ by Nick Wolven; and magical realism like ‘Away from Here’ by Lisa Goldstein. It was also great to find a mystery-thriller within an SF setting. 2009's stories were way above the average. Keep ‘em coming!” Simon Gasch Trapiella wrote to say, “Even though it didn't make it to my ballot, I enjoyed R. Garcia's stories. I'd like to hear more from the Sand Sailor! Ian McHugh's debut is worth mentioning. His ‘House of Ye’ is very rich in detail, and even though Sara Genge's works are not really my cup of tea, I must admit her stories are pretty sound. ‘Shoes-to-Run,’ for instance, made for a very good read."

  The battles for first place in cover art and novelette were extremely close. For all the remarks about difficulties with coming to a decision about the short story, the largest point spread between first and second place occurred in this category. Of course, this was also the category with a four-way tie for third place!

  We will be celebrating the twenty-fifth Readers’ Award poll at the end of this year. I look forward to reading all your thoughts on our 2010 stories when it comes time to fill out that momentous ballot.

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  Left to right: Bryan D. Dietrich, Will McIntosh, Sheila Williams, and Ted Kosmatka.

  Photo by Jane Jewell

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  2010 READERS AWARD WINNERS

  BEST NOVELLA

  1. BROKEN WINDCHIMES; KRISTINE KATHRYN RUSCH

  2. Act One; Nancy Kress

  3. The Spires of Denon; Kristine Kathryn Rusch

  4. Earth II; Stephen Baxter

  5. Pelago; Judith Berman

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  BEST NOVELETTE

  1. BLOOD DAUBER; TED KOSMATKA & MICHAEL POORE

  2. Soulmates; Mike Resnick & Lezli Robyn

  3. A Large Bucket and Accidental Mastery of Spacetime;

  Benjamin Crowell

  4. Lion Walk; Mary Rosenblum

  5. SinBad the Sand Sailor; R. Garcia y Robertson

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  BEST SHORT STORY

  1. BRIDESICLE; WILL McINTOSH

  2. Five Thousand Light-Years from Birdland; Robert R. Chase

  3. The Bird Painter in the Time of War; Carol Emshwiller (tie)

  3. Away from Here; Lisa Goldstein (tie)

  3. Sleepless in the House of Ye; Ian McHugh (tie)

  3. The Bride of Frankenstein; Mike Resnick (tie)

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  BEST POEM

  1. EDGAR ALLAN POE; BRYAN D. DIETRICH

  2. First Beer on Mars; David Lunde

  3. They Believed in Fairies During World War One;

  Darrell Schweitzer

  4. The Last Alchemist; Bruce Boston

  5. Small Conquerors; Geoffrey A. Landis

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  BEST COVER

  1. SEPTEMBER; JOHN PICACIO

  2. July; Thomasz Maronski

  3. April/May; Paul Youll

  4. March; Donato Giancola

  5. December; Duncan Long

  Copyright © 2010 Sheila Williams

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  Department: REFLECTIONS: CALLING DR. ASIMOV! by Robert Silverberg

  Science fiction has given the world a legion of baaaad robots over the years. Back in the Gernsbackian antiquity of our genre, killer-robot stories were a pulp staple. Abner J. Gelula's “Automaton” of 1931 portrayed a lustful robot that makes erotic overtures to its creator's daughter and has to be destroyed. ("With an unusual alacrity, the Iron Man reached out its powerful appendages and held both Martin and the girl in vise-like grips against its metal body.") In Harl Vincent's “Rex” (1934), a robot seeks to take over the world. ("Reason told him that the first step to that end must be to take control of mankind and its purposeless affairs. He set the workshop humming in the construction of eleven super-robots, one to be sent to each of the North American cities to organize the lesser robots and take control of the government.")

  Though Isaac Asimov's robots were supposedly designed to be harmless, there's a dangerously disobedient one in his “Little Lost Robot” (1947). ("We have one Nestor that's definitely unbalanced, eleven more that are potentially so, and sixty-two normal robots that are being subjected to an unbalanced enviroment.") Clifford D. Simak's “Skirmish” (1950) shows the Earth invaded by extraterrestrial robots that are able to awaken consciousness in our small machines, sewing machines and typewriters and the like, so that we find ourselves surrounded by metallic enemies on all sides. ("The end could be predicted, with relentless, patient machines tracking down and killing the last of humankind, wiping out the race.") Philip K. Dick's “The Defenders” (1953) portrays the world made uninhabitable by a Soviet-American war, with the human survivors living in subterranean sanctuaries and the surface occupied only by military robots, who refuse to let us come back up after detente is reached by the warring nations. ("Now the end is in sight,” one of the robots declares: “a world without war.") Harry Harrison's “The War with the Robots” (1962) offers a variation on the same theme, with the robots on the surface carrying on war against each other while confining humans to the underground refuges to which they have fled.

  There's more, much more. The monstrous, terrifying computer of Harlan Ellison's “I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream” (1967). ("HATE. LET ME TELL YOU HOW MUCH I'VE COME TO HATE YOU SINCE I BEGAN TO LIVE.") The immensely intelligent telepathic computer of A.E. van Vogt's “Fulfillment” (1951). ("I shall be, not a slave, but a partner with Man.") The aerial spy-robots of Robert Sheckley's “Watchbird” (1953), which are so efficient that an even more powerful mechanical creature has to be sent aloft to prey on them, with ultimately dire consequences for its makers. ("The armored murder machine had learned a lot in a few days. Its sole function was to kill.") I had a few shots at the theme myself, as my story “The Iron Chancellor” (1958), in which a slightly overweight family brings in a robot to enforce dietary restrictions; the program malfunctions and they discover that they are slowly being starved to death.

  Even when a science fictional robot is portrayed as being sympathetic, as in Eando Binder's 1938 “I, Robot” (not to be confused with the much later Asimov book of the same name, which got that title over Isaac's objections), the robot sometimes does unintentional damage, as when Binder's robot tries to rescue a drowning girl. ("I managed to grasp one of her arms and pull her up. I could feel the bones of her thin little wrist crack. I had forgotten my strength.")

  Well, all that's just science fiction. There weren't any robots when those stories were written, and, since all stories need drama and suspense, the menace of the robot served nicely as a scary plot device. But we have lived on into an era when robots are all over the place—not the clanking two-legged mechanical critters of so many SF tales, but robots all the same, machine
s that perform a host of functions that once were handled by human beings. Robots sort the mail, defuse bombs, trundle down office hallways carrying packages, bustle around in houses gobbling up dust and terrifying house cats. Robot planes drop missiles on terrorists in Afghanistan and Pakistan. New uses for robots emerge every day. They are being employed increasingly in delicate manufacturing operations, in surgery, in all sorts of areas where more-than-human keenness of eye and steadiness of hand are required.

  Indeed we have more robots among us already than we tend to realize, and more are to come. We also have a great many lawyers in our midst. And the two groups are shortly going to be on a collision course. A warning about the legal problems that widespread use of robots will pose has come from M. Ryan Calo, a residential fellow at the Stanford Center for Internet and Society:

  "These are devices that don't have a predetermined usage; they're not toasters. There's a growing concern now about robot ethics."

  Robot ethics! Oh, mother, I really have lived into the twenty-first century!

  Legal cases involving robots have been turning up for more than a decade. Pacific Bell, which is now part of AT&T, used Zippy, a robot, to carry mail around in one of its Northern California buildings. In 1997 a woman sued, claiming that Zippy had run over her foot and then knocked her into a filing cabinet. She collected an undisclosed amount.

  But that's an old-fashioned kind of accident—a blundering machine slamming into someone. Consider a more complex situation that's probably just around the corner: malicious kids hack into a house that uses a robot cleaning system and reprogram the robot to smash dishes and break furniture. If the hackers are caught and sued, but turn out not to have any assets, isn't it likely that the lawyers will go after the programmer who designed it or the manufacturer who built it? In our society, the liability concept is upwardly mobile, searching always for the deepest pocket.

  It isn't even necessary to conjure up malicious hackers. Robots can make trouble all by themselves. “These are machines that may not be intelligent, but are increasingly autonomous,” says another Stanford scholar, Paul Saffo. “They do things without being told.” Suppose a robot designed to grade exams or term papers goes wonky and erases all the students’ work: who covers the cost of re-testing everybody? What if a robot air controller blows a circuit and decides that down is up? Or a robot surgeon loses track of which is the appendix and which is the pancreas? Et cetera. Even the best-designed robot could go bad in this imperfect world of ours, and Somebody Will Have To Pay For It. And so we stand at the threshold of a wonderful new era for the liability lawyers.