Analog

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Analog, May 2009

By Jim Steel ⋅ August 29, 2009

Adam-Troy Casto opens this issue of Analog with “Among The Tchi”. It’s not as successful as his “Gunfight on Farside” in the previous issue, but not many stories are. It’s still an intruiging novelette that will remind many readers of the type of archly decadent tales that Mathew Hughes excels at writing. Castro’s human characters [...]

Analog, April 2009 & Wake by Robert J. Sawyer (serialized in the November 2008 – March 2009 issues of Analog)

By Jim Steel ⋅ April 1, 2009

The April 2009 issue of Analog features one novella, two novelettes, and three short stories.
Oh, the myths we weave. One of the fondest pulp imaginings was that outer space was going to be like the American Wild West. Well, they’re both frontiers, aren’t they? As the space age slowly pushes past its first half-century, it [...]

Analog, March 2009

By Jim Steel ⋅ February 1, 2009

Being a doom’n’gloom Brit with a generally left-ish political viewpoint, one would think that Analog wouldn’t be a good fit for my tastes. These days, however, I’m getting more pleasure out of Analog than its stablemate, Asimov’s SF—where, all things considered, I should feel more comfortable. I have to approach Analog from the right direction, [...]

Analog, January/February 2009

By Jim Steel ⋅ January 1, 2009

The January/February 2009 issue of Analog is one of their biannual double issues, which gives their readers an extra-large serving of fiction, gives their staff a break, and gives encyclopaedists a numerical headache.
The cover artwork belongs to Rajnar Vajra’s “Doctor Alien,” which is about a human psychiatrist who is summoned to an alien space station [...]

Analog, November 2008

By Jim Steel ⋅ November 11, 2008

The meat of Analog’s November issue is the first episode of Robert J. Sawyer’s four-part serial, “Wake.” Rather than reviewing part of the whole, we’ll merely note its presence and pass on to the first of two novelettes.
Carl Frederick’s “Greenwich Nasty Time” starts out on the Isle of Wight. Paul is a physics [...]

Analog, October 2008

By Fábio Fernandes ⋅ October 24, 2008

The October issue of Analog has plenty of creative stories, most of which (but not all) share a common trait: intriguing storytelling that ends abruptly.
In “The Meme Theorist,” Robert R. Chase presents us with Theo Pelerin, a scientist who suddenly starts seeing dead people—dead scientists, to be more accurate. When the story begins, he wakes [...]

Analog, December 2008

By Nader Elhefnawy ⋅ October 15, 2008

Due to the serialization of Robert J. Sawyer’s novel, Wake, the December 2008 issue of Analog carries a more limited selection of short fiction than usual: one short story, two novelettes, and a two-page “Probability Zero” piece.
David Bartell’s “Misquoting the Star” continues the story he began in “Misquoting the Moon,” which appeared in the March [...]

Analog, September 2008

By Fábio Fernandes ⋅ August 8, 2008

The September, 2008, issue of Analog is more balanced than the July/August issue was; it’s full of good, insightful stories, even if some of them are predictable and bordering on cliché.
In “The Fourth Thing” by Stephen L. Burns, a woman called Noelle is visited by a presence in her head which urges her to come [...]

Analog, July/August 2008

By Fábio Fernandes ⋅ June 3, 2008

The July/August 2008 issue of Analog is a roller coaster: full of ups and downs—more ups than downs, but a bit frustrating all the same. It barely manages to keep a delicate balance between the scientific infodump and the storytelling, often resulting in the science overwhelming the fiction. It’s not a return to Hugo Gernsback [...]

Analog, June 2008

By Gerald W. Page ⋅ May 1, 2008

One of the more irritating pitfalls for any practitioner of the noble art of science fiction writing is to work out some idea that you’ve noticed should have been worked out years ago, to take your time to do it right, and then, on the eve of writing it into a story (or, worse, mailing [...]

Analog, May 2008

By Gerald W. Page ⋅ March 26, 2008

The May, 2008, issue of Analog starts off with a novella called “Test Signals” by David Bartell. There’s not much plotting here, despite a strong idea. Our hero, who is born with a defect—an extra pair of arms—learns that the company he works for is trying to patent the genetic material which gave him [...]

Analog, January-February 2008

By Nader Elhefnawy ⋅ March 13, 2008

Analog once again kicks off the year with a double issue. The 2008 January-February issue’s short fiction offerings include ten short stories and novelettes, as well as a “Probability Zero” piece, alternate history star Harry Turtledove’s “Worlds Enough, and Time”—a two-pager offering a quirky twist on the exogenesis hypothesis of how life began.
The first [...]

Analog, April 2008

By Gerald W. Page ⋅ February 20, 2008

To the publisher, February, not April, is the cruelest month. Having the shortest number of days, it yields the shortest sales time for a magazine. In most parts of the country, the weather is bitter. Customers do not visit bookstores and newsstands as often as in other months. Even leap year, with its generous doling [...]

Analog, March 2008

By Gerald W. Page ⋅ January 10, 2008

The first science fiction magazine I ever bought was the January 1955 issue of Astounding Science Fiction. The issue featured a Christmas cover by Kelly Freas. I had been reading SF about 5 or 6 years and up to then had been content with books, mostly paperbacks. My taste for short fiction was satisfied, I [...]

Analog, July/August 2007

By The Fix Contributors ⋅ October 24, 2007

In his Hugo-nominated novel, Eifelheim, based on a short story of the same name that appeared in Analog (11/1986), Michael F. Flynn demonstrated an understanding of the way the thought processes of Medieval man differ from modern man. It is so much more than just a matter of believing in “superstitions.” In “Quaestiones Super [...]

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