Edited by Sheila Williams
208 pages
Published 2024
Read from February 6 to February 12
Rating: 2.5 out of 5
As with the most recent issue of Analog, I’m making a belated effort to read the current issue Asimov’s for as long as I maintain my subscription (which, considering the massive economic downturn very likely on its way, might not be for much longer). I’ve had a subscription to Asimov’s since last spring, and I’m only now doing more than page through an issue to see who’s in it. Well, at least now I have a back catalogue to keep me company as our household’s discretionary spending goes out the window.
It’s weird how I haven’t read a full issue of Asimov’s newer than 2000. Maybe that’s why my stories and poems never seem to stand a chance with the editorial staff. Time to fix that!
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As we so often do, we open this issue of Asimov’s with a poem from Robert Frazier: “Your Clone Can Always Look Herselves Up.” It’s pretty good.
Buried amid all the critical writing that front-ends this issue, we find a second poem: “Einstein to Newton” by Gary Sterling. Kind of an ode to science and scientists.
Maybe I should start reading the essays in Asimov’s, but today is not that day.
“In the Splinterlands the Crows Fly Blind” by Siobhan Carroll. Our first story, and right away I can tell that the market difference between Asimov’s and Analog persists after all these years. Asimov’s is more character-forward and imaginatively weird, as opposed to concept-forward and more realistically grounded. In the aftermath of a multiversal cataclysm, Charlie and his brother Gabe live on an alternate Earth where a crow hivemind is the dominant species. “Splinterlands” addresses many of the same apocalyptic anxieties we encountered in the current issue of Analog, but relishes the freedom to explore them more allegorically. An excellent novelette. As it turns out, my favorite story in this issue.
“Five Hundred KPH Toward Heaven” by Matthew Kressel. At a corporate party to mark the decommission of a space elevator, three captains swap tales from their days lifting passengers into orbit. As a story, it’s an enjoyable hangout, but there isn’t much to it; it feels like it could have been published a quarter-century ago. (I noticed that trend with Analog too. I don’t fault the writers so much as I blame our own contemporary inability to imagine anything new, crushed as we are beneath the weight of the dystopia around us.)
A little poem is next: “When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer” by Kenton K. Yee. It’s cute.
“Shadow of Shadows” by Frank Ward. Twenty years after the death of his young son, physicist Sebastian goes through the motions of his life, until the multiverse intrudes upon his dead-end career and stale grief. Quiet and workmanlike, this story mostly does what it sets out to do.
“What the Frog’s Eye Tells the Frog’s Brain” by Beston Barnett. Grim tale of artificial intelligence escaping its bounds and interrogating its creators. It avoids the Roko’s basilisk bullshit that real life tech bros find so compelling, in favor of a human perspective of horror. A well-structured and thoughtful story.
“Through the Pinhole, or, The Origin of a Holostory” by Nikki Braziel. A divorced holonovelist gets stranded in 16th century Malta, and gets his groove back. Corny and a bit choppy, but adequately entertaining.
A poem from Jane Yolen: “Fantastic!” It’s about the feelings of community attached to a sci-fi convention. Shrug.
“A Girl from Hong Kong” by Robert Reed. A typically solid, rambling, slightly opaque entry in Reed’s “Great Ship” sequence, giving us bits of backstory for Quee Lee and the setting at large. Big and baroque in the old 1990s tradition.
“Jilly in Right: A Thought Experiment” by Rick Wilber. “Washed-up dude has his life flash before his eyes while he spins out on the highway, with a sprinkle of alternate timelines” feels rather antiquated as a story structure. I’m not even sure what decade to pin it to: 1970s, maybe? I just couldn’t get into it.
“My Biggest Fan” by Faith Merino. Surreal stalker-horror, employing suburban anomie, late capitalist dislocation, and Ford Pintos to memorable effect.
Another poem: “Too Far Away” by Jenny Blackford. I quite liked it.
“Completely Normal” by Jendayi Brooks-Flemister. Delightfully odd flash fic on the topic of soup and being a third culture kid.
“Moon and Mars” by James Patrick Kelly. Overlong novella about space colonists and space politics. It’s a slog. The prose is jargon-heavy like something from Analog. Blank characters fire repartee off one another. We spend much of the first fifteen pages rehashing events from the two prior stories in this series. On top of all that, any sci-fi that includes “making babies is everyone’s duty” in its ideological assumptions gives me the ick. Since this one story sprawls across over one-third of the fiction pages in this issue, it single-handedly brings down my (fully arbitrary) rating.
Lastly, one more poem: “unfolding origami: a haiku” by Kendall Evans. Eh.
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And that’s it! Asimov's has always been more to my taste than Analog, and that certainly holds true with this pair of issues — with some obvious exceptions, of course.
Glad I finally read an issue while it was current!
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