From Richard.Horton@sff.net Mon Mar 15 23:38:55 2004 Date: 2 Oct 2003 21:56:23 GMT From: Richard Horton Newsgroups: sff.people.richard-horton Subject: Summary, Analog, 2003 Summary, Analog, 2003 Time for my yearly summaries again! Actually I finished Analog and Asimov's a few weeks ago, but I'm only getting around to the summaries now. Analog published 74 stories in 2003. Two were serials, Rajnar Vajra's "Shootout at the Nokai Corral" and Edward M. Lerner's "Moonstruck". Of the 72 shorter pieces, 5 were novellas, 20 were novelettes, and 47 were short-stories, 9 of the latter being Probability Zero short-shorts. This was about 704,000 words of fiction, about 538,000 words of it short fiction. (This was almost 30,000 more words of fiction than in 2002, but not quite as much as in 2001.) Incidentally, sometimes I try to pick the winners of the Anlab Readers' Poll. Last year I declined to pick a short story winner, but I picked the Novelette and Novella winners correctly. The Novella winner was Pat Forde's "In Spirit", the Novelette winner was Stephen L. Burns's "Look Away", and the Short Story winner was Stephen Baxter's "The Hunters of Pangaea". (I will note that "The Hunters of Pangaea" was first on my personal Anlab ballot, while "Look Away" was on my ballot but not I think first, and I didn't vote for "In Spirit" at all.) I might also note that last year's Novelette and Short Story Hugo Award winners were both from Analog (Michael Swanwick's "Slow Life" and Geoffrey A. Landis's "Falling Onto Mars"). I mentioned both somewhat favorably in my year-end summary, but I didn't pick either for a Hugo award or even nomination! Novellas Analog's novellas this year were pretty strong, by far the high point of the magazine's fiction. The three best, in this order, were Vernor Vinge's "The Cookie Monster" (October), P. J. Plauger's "Lucky Luke" (December), and Daniel Hatch's "Seed of Destiny" (January). I also quite liked G. David Nordley's "The Fire and the Wind" (July/August). This leaves only Catherine Asaro's "Walk in Silence" as a disappointment, and even it was reasonably entertaining. The Vinge is an intriguing story of people in a virtual environment. It's surely part of a novel-in-progress. Plauger's "Lucky Luke" is sweet and fun, a bit sentimental, about two mentally-linked "twins" in parallel universes. "Seed of Destiny" is a nice tale of an alien biological mystery. If I were to pick a winner of the Anlab poll, which I will, it would be "The Cookie Monster". Name recognition combined with actual quality is pretty tough to beat. Novelettes I thought this year's best novelette was Stephen L. Burns's "Capture Radius" (February), an enjoyable story in the purest Analog mode: an engineering problem in Earth orbit. It's not a very challenging or original story, however. Richard A. Lovett, a new writer (the only pieces I can remember from him before this year are Analog science fact articles (including one Anlab winner) -- but I may have missed something) had two stories built around interesting ideas: "Equalization" (March), about mind transfer being used to even out unfair advantages of physical ability; and "Tiny Berries" (September), about spam gone wild. Both were conceptually involving, but neither quite worked as a story. Michael A. Flynn's "Still Coming Ashore" (July/August) is a pretty good entry in his "Irish Bar" series, this one featuring some nice evolutionary speculation. Ken Wharton's "The Monopole Affair" (May) was a decent thriller about a physicist in trouble for discovering too much. Bud Webster's "Triumph in the Desert" (July/August) was solid work about the earlier life of his recurring character Bubba Pritchett. Steven Bratman's "The Immortality Plague" (May) had some pretty interesting SFnal speculation in another story that didn't quite convince on the story level. And there was solid stuff by Pete D. Manison, Alexis Glynn Latner, Ben Bova, Larry Niven/Brenda Cooper and Edward M. Lerner. My Anlab ballot will probably include "Capture Radius", "Still Coming Ashore" and "The Monopole Affair" in that order, though I could change my mind on the last story. As for predicting a winner -- I don't have a strong feeling about any story, but I'll lean toward Burns, because he's won a few previous Anlabs. Short Stories I didn't have any of this year's short stories singled out as being especially good. Looking over the list, I'd probably put Ken Wharton's "Aloha" (June), which plays some nice games with time reversal and the end of the universe, at the top. There were two pretty decent Brian Plante stories, "Lavender in Love" (February) (about a sentient vending machine) and "Halloweentown" (October) (about a creepy future Halloween when safety concerns run wild). Shane Tourtellotte had two more stories in his series about using healthy brain patterns to cure insane people -- these have been thoughtful and interesting pieces, but once again I have to say that as fiction they haven't bowled me over. Worth reading though. The stories this year were "A New Man" (October) and "Persistent Patterns" (March). There was also decent work by Mary Soon Lee, Michael Flynn, David Brin, Sarah A. Hoyt, John G. Hemry, and Bruce Holland Rogers. My ballot will have "Aloha" at the top, and one story each by Plante and Tourtellotte, I think. (I'll review the stories to see which to prefer.) I'm going to speculate that Tourtellotte may win the Anlab this year, but again I don't have a strong feeling. Dishonorable Mention I didn't find any Analog stories this year in the truly dreadful category, though there was an awful lot of very mediocre stuff. Not to speak ill of the dead, but Lloyd Biggle's posthumous contributions have really not impressed me, including three stories this year. Carl Frederick's "The Spacemice Incident" was the story I had rated lowest this year -- I admit I don't remember it at all, which probably tells you something. I was distinctly underwhelmed by Rajnar Vajra's serial, "Shootout at the Nokai Corral", though judging by the Analog letter column, I am in a minority there. Wrapup Probably an above-average year on the whole for the magazine. In particular, there was a very strong list of novellas. Still, the magazine remains what it is -- if you don't like Analog, nothing published in 2003 will change your mind. -- Rich Horton