Wednesday, April 16, 2008

Finishing off March's Analog

The last few stories in the March Analog were generally OK, but nothing outstanding.

"The Bookseller of Bastet" by John G. Hemry involves a bookshop on a planet undergoing political unrest. The bookstore tries to maintain independence, tries to stay above the fray, and they're successful for a few generations. But eventually the violence comes to them. It's a nice moral tale about the importance of free and independent sources of information, but I suspect that it's preaching to the choir. I doubt that any Analog reader has been quietly muttering to themselves: "If only we could bomb out those darn book sellers!"

"Knot Your Grandfather's Knot" by Howard V. Hendrix starts out with an older man restoring an old car plus an extended health report. He's failing at getting the car running, and his health is failing. Then he goes off reminiscing about his grandfather. I didn't get any whiff of an incipient plot, and with all the car/health reports, no sense of the protagonist's character, or why I should care what may happen to him. So when I asked myself "skip or keep going?" the answer came back "Skip."

I love John Clute's "Real Year" concept. It's a handy tool for identifying when a story seems temporally out of place. The Real Year for "Helen's Last Will" may be the late '40s or early '50s. Blanche is a wealthy, elderly and unpleasant woman. Her sister Helen has died, and this unpleasant woman feels that she hasn't gotten her fair share of the will. She's also concerned that Helen's head has been removed from her body, as she donated it to "Advanced Technologies." She sues Helen's son, a one-dimensional momma's boy, and eventually finds out what it is that Advanced Technologies actually does. With all the dialog between selfish older women and their lawyers, and their concerns with their social charities, there's almost nothing in this story that couldn't have been written 50 years ago. It's readable, and it's nice when Blanche gets her comeuppance, but there's nothing new here.

Finally, we get part II of a serial by Joe Haldeman, "Marsbound." I won't go into too much detail, as two-thirds of a novel is a bit much to cover here. I've read it all the way through so far, but it hovers right on the keep going/skip it boundary. The protagonist seems too stupid to be a realistic teenager, and the plot seems to hinge too much on her making silly decisions. I may be biased, but I just don't remember teenagers being as stupidly silly as some authors write them. Also, in this story even the adults get pretty irrational when the plot calls for it. It's probably not too far out of the bounds of realism, but it just didn't ring true for me. However, the hard-sf trip to Mars & the Martian colony in the first installment, and the encounters with "Martians" since then have been great, and keep me on the right side of my dividing line. The Martians here aren't quite like any I'd read before, and that's a big plus. In the third installment it looks like the protagonist will be significantly older, and I suspect that I'll probably enjoy it more. I'll let you know how it goes.

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