ANALOG PLUS 50: Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact March 1973 (not much read)

ANALOG PLUS 50: Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact, March 1973

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I had a lot of books to read in March, and I enjoyed most of them. Consequently, I didn't start Analog until March 27, so not much of it got read.

The usual explaination: For anyone finding these reviews, my purpose is two-fold: enjoying some "classic" sci-fi, and looking for stories that I think could be adapted for TV broadcast since so much of what shows up on anthology shows is rough to awful. Additional Note: I do NOT work in television. I just watch it.

In this issue: There's part two of a serial, two novellettes, and two short stories, one of which is really flash. The kind of thing that would one day be called "Probability: Zero" in Analog.

Editorial: "Law & Order" by Ben Bova. The 15th anniversary of Sputnik had passed without notice. Satellites are now orbiting the Earth. The Russians established the rule of "Freedom of Space" by launching over countries airspace and not asking permission, as when flying planes. This harkens back to the old "Freedom of the Seas" which was enforced by the British and then the U.S. Navy, and was kept in effect as long as it benefits those with the most power. Once laws are no longer beneficial, they tend to get ignored and fall be the wayside. Could that happen in space? (In the 50 years since, you know that it has, with space-based weapons platforms.)

Novelette: "Who Steals My Purse", John Brunner, with an illustration by John Scoenherr showing . The caption reads,

I haven't read it yet. John Brunner is a name that I could find in my basement, but I can't say that I've actually read anything. I hope to get to it, even in April.

Short Story: "Death of God", by Herbie Brennan, with an illustration by Kelly Freas, showing a background banner that says (one supposes) Peace of Earth, with a couple of cartoony, happy people walking with flowers in their hands. More prominent is the large round thing with a scaly belly, wings and a long bill, plodding along. The caption reads, "Sometimes a demonstration can be unexpectedly successful. And when it is, the need for such demonstratons disappears -- even though something else will soon be "bugging" the demonstrators."

Wilbur Hines works in a lab. Protestors smash the lab, calling him "Biological swine" and "bacteriological pig". Hines is studying gnats, and they escape as if Pandora's Box had been opened. He thought that they wouldn't be a problem but he was wrong. They mutated.

They were fruitful and multiplied, and have become a nuisance. More people stayed at home, avoiding going out. Some people are immune (unappetizing).

At some point, she was given the name Westbrook because that's the location were she lives.

Romee has to go to the jungle to get roots to sell to the Earth people to get money for the damn-TV and to buy chocolate. She's addicted. The new government wants to ban the sale of chocolate because they think it's unhealthy for the Notcid, and it could be why so many are dying in the jungle.

Romee meets a woman who is looking for people for a series of tests on response to envrionmental stimuli for a modest stipend. Romee applies.

The test turns out to be a little cruel. It uses the machine-sounding noises that the Noctid hear in the jungle and usually don't survive. Most of the time, their response is to jump away from the noise. By the time she's heard the noise twice, she's flattened to the ground, scared out of her wits. This continues until the experiment is stopped by a senior official who is not amused. He mentions "damage money" that Romee will be awarded ... but that won't be for quite a while.

Since she still needs money, she goes off the jungle and finds some of the roots she needs. While she's crawling around, she hears the noises roaring above her. She flattens to the ground and waits for the end to come. But nothing happens. The noise keeps repeating, over and over, until there are new sounds, a creak and a crack. It was a swinging tree limb, and it kept swinging so long that it finally cracked and fell. Worse for the tree, it fell into the very trap the limb would have pushed Romee into had she jumped into the air instead of flattening to the ground.

She now knew how to beat the tree. She wanted to tell others but their instinct would still be to jump. So she starts by training her family the way she was trained.

This was a cute story and should be easily filmable. Hollywood would likely screw it up because makes the capitalists friendly but hardly ever polite, while the government people are polite but hardly ever friendly. Too much of the current output leans in favor of the government over any private enterprise, even when it acknowledges government's shortcomings.

Casting, as written, there are two big parts for women, but you only need a few background characters in hairy suits, one main character and four humans. I'd watch it.

Howard L. Myers has written several stories that I've read already.

Short Story: "The Guy with the Eyes", by Spider Robinson, with an illustration by Vincent di Fate, showing a bartender (Callahan)behind his bar, some glasses and decanter on the bar, and two patrons. There are some spheres odd to the side, which could be taken as planets that are meant to be inferred but not actually in the scene. The caption reads, The job of a scout is difficult and dangerous. He must determine the nature and disposition of the enemy, its weak points, and its strengths. But when the scout starts to feel sorry for the enemy...

I was hyped to read an early Callahan story. I took the paperback Time Travelers Strictly Cash from the library back in high school. My oldest brother enjoyed it immensely. I read about half of it. I wasn't the greatest of readers back then, which is why I'd take multiple books out -- I'd hope one would "click" with me. I also playtested the GURPS supplement. "Mild Hangover" Advantage? That was mine. "No Hangover" was already there.

Anyway, I haven't read a lot of Spider, even though I'm always meaning to. This story seems like it's set in his universe and there's more going on. It gives the general location and the setup of the bar routines. Doc Webster is there telling bad puns. And people get up to make toasts.

There's stuff with "this Janssen kid" whose known for trouble. There's mention of heroin (he toasts "skag") and the war (it's 1973). But he's not the guy with the eyes. He's over in the corner listening, but has no answers.

Some pontificating happens, as is wont to happen in 70s stories and beyond.

The man with the eyes wore a black suit, a Joliet Special and his shoes didn't look right. He orders 10 drinks, makes 10 toasts to his profession, and then announces that he's an advance scout from many light-years away. Callahan knows he's neither drunk nor lying. A message is going to his Masters that he can't prevent, and for the first time, he has regrets. He's surprised when the bar regulars don't attack and kill him on the spot.

It petered out toward the end with a Mickey Finn reference but no solution to either problem.

Obviously, filming this would be a big deal because Callahan's is a long running series of stories and books. It could be a series of its own about a bar where everyone knows your name or something, but in Long Island, NY. Why it hasn't been made, who can say? (Well, Spider could, and probably folks who follow Spider on social media...) I don't know who I'd cast for any of the parts. And, of course, the storylines would have to be updated since they started in the 70s and lasted for many years after.

Short Story: "Modus Vivendi", by William Walling, with an illustration by Vincent di Fate, showing a large planet (Jupiter, there's a spot), some moons and a ship. The caption reads, The most critical step in any medical experiment is going from test animals to human trials. Usually this step is taken very carefully. But sometimes ...

I read the caption a while back before I read the story. It's funny reading it now as it telegraphs the ending in a way.

Clancy Bevvins, Lee Gresham, and Thaddeus Frye are scientists and researchers on a space-based station orbiting Jupiter. There's a base on Ganymede. Much of the research is of the hush-hush variety, so most have nothing to say about their work to the others. The one thing is that Bevvins has three gibbons with him. He says he's in deep space to avoid radiation and to be in zero g.

There's an accident that pushes them out of their orbit and whatever it is has breached both oxygen systems. The three of them and the gibbons are the only survivors. Time is against them. They won't spin into Jupiter before Ganymede is in range to call for help but they will run out of oxygen with no way to recycle it. There isn't enoug for one man let alone three

That's where the gibbons come in. One of them has something in their system (I was a little murky on the details) that allows her to recycle the carbon dioxide or breathe oxygen. Bevvins uses his experiment to keep the three of them alive. But there are consequences.

This was a good story, and only require a cast of 3 that can be as fiverse as you want them to me. It would also need three gibbons, briefly, which could be trained animals or could be cgi. Probably cheaper to get an animal trainer for a day of shooting, but what do I know? Only a couple of interior sets are needed, but the wreckage, and exterior would likely require CGI. I'd watch it.

Science Fact: "The Third Industrial Revolution" by G. Harry Stine, with an illustration of industry on the Moon that appears to be credited to "General Electric". The caption reads Conclusion. When you want to have our cake and eat it too, you're in a dilemma. When you want to continue a high-level technolog without further gutting Mother Eart for resources, you have to move your industrial base out of this world.

I followed a bit of this and then skimmed the rest. Gravity wells are issues for get resources and materials up into space. Slingshoting from the Moon or Mars would be easier, as would be mining asteroids. And you wouldn't have to worry about heating the environment.

If I knew enough about manufacturing in general, let alone space manufacturing, this could be a good resource to revisit for writing. The problem is that unless I want to write hard science fiction, most of this can be hand-waved.

Novellette: "Force Over Distance", by Tak Hallus, with an illustration by Jack Gaughan, showing a man working at a table, where there's a large box and a vertical ring. On either side of him are men with sombreros and guns. In the forground, there appears to be an object floating in a ball of light. The caption reads, The military-industrial state can sometimes amount to nothing more than two or three men with a common purpose. They don't even have to like each other.. just have a common purpose.

I've read Tak Hallus before at least twice. (I did a quick blog search.) This story is filled with Mexican banditos and revolutionaries.

Federico Jenson is a physicist who goes to Mexico and has his tire shot. He discovers this when he replaces it with the spare. As soon as he's done, the banditos steal the car and intend to strand him on the roadside. He wants his briefcase with his life's work in it. They refuse. So he says that he's going, too. So he's a hostage for ransom that he basically agreed to (insisted upon).

He tries to work out a math eqaution in the dust because he doesn't have paper but he insists on continuing his work. Juan, the guard, asks about it, calls him crazy for all the work he does to get a "cero" (the sequence should converge to zero). This sums up the opening illustration.

Jenson is being held prisoner by the revolutionary el Buitre, the Vulture. El Buitre isn't dumb -- he is good at strategizing and planning. He has Jenson demonstrate his transporter, which moves something to the other end of a table. El Buitre wants him to build a "beeg one", as big as a room. Jenson says what that would require.

This is no problem for El Buitre because his people can steal whatever they need. People die along the way. Jenson isn't happy about this, but on the other hand, he doesn't want their deaths to mean nothing. They're already dead and the project can move forward. He's almost as obsessed about his life work as El Buirtre is about his revolution.

His men make it into Tucson to get tantalum, and they kidnap construction engineer Harold Wright. Wright refuses to opperate for several days. El Buitre is about to kill him when Jensen intervenes. So El Buitre decides to kill him first. At this point, Wright agrees to help (although he nearly gets himself killed for calling El Buitre "Buzz").

The two complete the machine even though Wright is trying to stall it because he believes that they'll be killed before it's done. Finally they plan to escape through the device, with Wright worrying that Jenson might stay behind for "science" and his life work. Their plan is thwarted by the fact that Juan is smarter than he's been letting on.

The banditos go through the device (which seems like a large stargate) but they're in for a surprise when they get there.

An enjoyable story. It could fill an hour-long episode of an anthology show. I don't know how well the Mexican bandito angle would play unless it's done in a retro style, as in this actually happened in the 70s. The cast would require a handful of revolutionaries, El Buitre, and a physicist and an engineer. Women don't have a lot to do in this story. The ending requires a lot of extras and motorcycles, but it could just be a handful, and then cut away to Jenson and use a lot of sound effects and smoke and rattling boards.

Note: there is a very odd interior art piece which looks like El Buitre is riding a motorized unicycle. There's smoke to obscure the missing parts of the bike (and his arms because there are no handlebars) but you can see the far legs which should be on the other side of the motorcycle, out of sight. I found it amusing.

Short Story: "Trade-Off", by R. A. Beaumont

This entry appears to have been deleted. I must've typed it at work and didn't "save" it. Or it was lost the last time my computer froze and I had to do a hard boot.

Until it's restored: I wasn't thrilled with this story. It's filmable, but I don't it could/would be made into a segment on an anthology series.

Short Story: "Trade-Off", by R. A. Beaumont with an oval-shaped illustration by John Schoenherr, showing what appears to be a bunch of silos (or cylindrical objects) on a field at night and there are lots of bubble. The caption reads, There are times when the cure is worse than the disease. But when the cure triggers other diseases ...

I just started reading this. It appears to be told in a series of top secret memos. I didn't get far.

I have libary books to finish, so I may or may not get back to this.

The Reference Library , by P. Schuyler Miller. Opens with a discussion of books about on-screen SF. Reviews include The Overman Culture, by Edmund Cooper; The Wrong End of Time, by John Brunner; The Reality Trip, by Robert Silverberg; Pstalement, by Lester del Rey; and The Darkness of Diamondia, by A.E. van Vogt.

Brass Tacks: In July, there was an article on the future of automotive plants. Analog received a lot of responses, so they printed a reply by the writer, R. G. Cleveland first. I don't remember the article and the issues involved are 50 years old, so I didn't miss much skimming this.

I got an early start on this, whih was good, but then my book club and other library books took my attention away for a couple weeks, and February ended before you knew it.

Witches of New York (McKay)

Witches of New York by Ami McKay (2023)

(Not a review, just some notes to help me remember the things I've read. But written this way because it's the Internet, and some people will stumble across this page.)

This book was one of three that was our book club was to choose from, but it didn't win the vote. After the previous month, where the ebooks were difficult to come by, I placed holds on all three books before we even voted. Since the winning book was short, and since this one seemed to be of interest, I gave it a shot. I'm glad I did.

The story takes place in New York City in the 1880s when the Brooklyn Bridge was still under construction, Cleopatra's Needle was on its way to the city (to eventually stand in Central Park) and Lady Liberty's torch, and only her torch, stood in Madison Square Park. Against all this, two witches, Eleanor St. Clair and Adelaide Thom, have a shop called "Tea and Sympathy" where they offer tea and tell fortunes. Both witches have their own specialties and their own histories. They also have a raven named "Perdu". A story from Eleanor's grimoire tells a tale that describes a bird very similar to Perdu and you're to assume that they are the same bird. Moreover, we find from a later ghost, that Perdu isn't really a bird and has an untold secret. In the author interview after the story, when asked Perdu's identity, she says that the clues are in the book, and points back to that story. So that's one mystery solved.

Side note: I learned from Good Reads that Adelaide Thom, who changed her name from Moth, actually appeared in an earlier book by McKay. There were references to her changing her name in this book but nothing came of it. Apparently, it was just to connect the characters together while allowing the character to have a new identity.

Added to this mix is Beatrice Dunn, a young woman from upstate who comes to the city. She touches the obelisk when her train is stopped to allow the obelisk to pass. Beatrice has a natural talent to see ghosts and speak with the dead.

The basic story is that there are some people who are fearful of witches (or pagans) in general, and they have a problem with the tea shop. There is a reverend who is descended from the witch hunters who wants to find one of his own. As a minor character, there is a demon that uses the reverend as a useful idiot to hunt witches so he can feed on their magic (their dead bodies).

There's a love story brewing with Adelaide, who wears a mask because of a previous acid attack that claimed one eye, and Dr. Brody, who wears a prosthetic arm to replace the one he lost in the war (Civil War, that is). Dr. Brody is interested in contacting the beyond and has a device which is, essentially, a mechanical ouija board, that Beatrice will operate blindfolded, where see can't see the responses.

The reverend kidnaps one witch (who takes her own life, after a dream with her mother) and then Beatrice. Everyone is looking for her, but the ghost of the former witch helpd her.

In the end, this is a slice of life piece, because there's no overarching story line. There are competing ones and some of them are left open. That is to say, there isn't a nice pat ending for everything. Perdu is still a bird. And the demon is still out there searching for magic, and the witches have no idea of his existence.

A little heavy at times on the feminism in that it breaks the narration to make its points, but not overly so. Frankly, I've come to expect it. Likewise, if it's a story about witches, I know that there will be an overzealous, possibly evil, priest trying to recreate Salem two centuries after the fact, as if nothing changed.

Speaking of Salem, I have two points: first, the tragedy of Salem was underscored by the fact that none of those innocent woman hanged were actually witches in the literary sense of the word. They may have been pagans, and they made have gathered herbs and brewed potions (or tea), but nothing as powerful as witches are portrayed in the "present" time. If witches had been that powerful back then, would they have been so easily captured and killed. Maybe they weren't and innocents died in their places. (hmmm, that could be a story idea.) And if any of the witches condemned to die were indeed powerful, then doesn't that take some of the stigma away from the ones who opposed them? I hope not, but it gives pause.

The second is that the author discovered in doing researched that she has an ancestor (once removed) that was hanged for witchcraft, and only because laws were changed did that woman's daughter survive. So that makes this story a little more personal.

I enjoyed this book, even more than the actual book club selection. I'm glad I read it.

The Bookshop and the Barbarian (Stang)

The Bookshop and the Barbarian by Morgan Stang (2023)

(Not a review, just some notes to help me remember the things I've read. But written this way because it's the Internet, and some people will stumble across this page.)

This was a book that was posted in FreeEBOOKS on reddit. The author asked for opinions. I'll post them here instead of on Good Reads. I was in a quandry whether to give this 2 or 3 stars out of 5. It's better than some of the dreck that I've given two stars to, just because I made it to the end, but not as good as some of the "Okay" things that I gave 3 stars to. A solid (actually, a little malleable) 2.5 here. What tipped it was that this book as a 4.1 on Amazon and a 3.9 on Good Reads. So it'll withstand a 2.

I don't know if the narrator of the book wants to be Douglas Adams or Terry Pratchet (or Mark Twain?), but the narrator comes off as talking down to the readers, not lifting them up. You are not let in on the joke; you are part of the joke.

Moreover, the book is filled with idiots, who do dumb things because they're idiots. Some of it could be uninformed, but most of it is because they are just dumb. This isn't a case of Arthur Dent or Ford Prefect being so single-minded about one particular thing that they are oblivious to other things going on. They're just dumb. Except maybe the barbarian, who is just uninformed how things are done her, and who could actually be the intelligent one in her own way.

I was curious if this was going to be titled "The Librarian and the Barbarian" but the main character buys the bookshop not a librarian. "Bookkeeper" is an account and "bookshopper" or "bookshop owner" doesn't have the same flow.

Maribella rides into town to open a bookshop that she bought through correspondence of some kind from the Baron. She meets a bunch of people who are dumb for no reason and don't know how to pass the time even though there's talking to a bookstore lady. The store is infested with goblins and when she tries to remove them, one bites her. She goes to hire someone to get rid of them, but goblins are a protected species because they've been hunted so much and their populations have dwindled. Killing a goblin is illegal. So she has to hire someone who doesn't fear the local laws, and meets a barbarian. The barbarian gets rid of the goblins and gets hired as security (because when she isn't hired as security, the goblins come right back.)

Then Maribella finds out that she owns the bookshop but not the land that it is on. The woman who owns the lands intends to tear it down and essentialy build high-rises, condos, whatever, gentrifying the town. She brings her own goons. Mirabella finds one of the goblins and brings it back, putting her in the window for all to see (and feed). Now the shop can't be torn down.

Some characters introduced that move the story and other than are just there to be found and be silly for a few pages.

The book meanders about the life in the bookshop and in the town for a year, until it suddenly shifts direction so much as to become a different story altogether with an ending that seemed to be pulled out of a goblin's butt. Maybe it was foreshadowed, not likely, but if it was, it was lost in all the other stuff tossed in to be amusing or distracting.

I remember laughing a single time and taking note of one line. In Chapter 9, about 26% of the way through the book, I read the following passage: “Lady Malicent stood straight and silent. She had a bosom that rose and fell like a poorly-planned revolution.” (Yes, I made a note of that, and posted it on Twitter.)

That was a clever use of language, and I'd wished that the first quarter of the book had been more like that. Unfortunately, I got an inverted version of that wish when not long after there was another rising bosom joke, which might've been funny if not for the first one. And then the bigger problem hit, the narrator said that after three instances, we've come to the end of the bosom jokes.

Why is this problematic? Well, for one thing, it wasn't even halfway through the book. Had they been spaces out throughout the novel, it could've been a good running gag to appear maybe four or five times, or to just have pop up one last time toward the end of the book under different circumstances, denoting a different emotion. The second problem was that the narrator stated that this was the third bosom joke. And for the life of me, I couldn't recall what the first had been. And I was too annoyed to go and scan the text for it.

The other problem with the arrangement I suggested is that there needed to be more jokes and better writing to support those bosom jokes.

Note: if I were the narrator of this joke, I more than likely would have added, "See what I did there? See what I did there? It's so funny, but you failed to notice how clever I am!"

And since I mentioned percentages, there is an interlude in the middle of the book that announces that it is an interlude exactly in the middle of the book. Kindle says that it was indeed at 50% of the way through. It wasn't anything that I recall now, other than wondering how much padding or cutting was done to get to that interlude at exactly 50%.

On the plus side, this appears to be the first book of 2023 I read that was published in 2023. I wish it had been better, or at least had another draft.

Final note: A quick check shows that Morgan Stang has 7 books listed on Good Reads with 600+ ratings and 100+ reviews, and a fair bit of a following. So it might not have been the author who posted in FreeEBOOKS, but rather a fan posting a link. This is the only book with less than a 4.00 rationg. The earliest book is from 2020.