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Asimov's SF, October-November 2011

BOOK: Asimov's SF, October-November 2011
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Dell Magazines
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Copyright ©2011 by Dell Magazines

NOTICE: This work is copyrighted. It is licensed only for use by the original purchaser. Making copies of this work or distributing it to any unauthorized person by any means, including without limit email, floppy disk, file transfer, paper print out, or any other method constitutes a violation of International copyright law and subjects the violator to severe fines or imprisonment.
Cover Art by Paul Youll
CONTENTS

Department: EDITORIAL: SEND IN THE RIGHT REVIEWER by Sheila Williams

Department: REFLECTIONS: A WRITER'S DIARY by Robert Silverberg

Department: ON THE NET: STEAMED by James Patrick Kelly

Novella: STEALTH by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

Short Story: THE CULT OF WHALE WORSHIP by Dominica Phetteplace

Poetry: BEING ONE WITH THE BROOM by Ruth Berman

Short Story: THIS PETTY PACE by Jason K. Chapman

Poetry: EXTENDED FAMILY by Bruce Boston

Novelette: THE OUTSIDE EVENT by Kit Reed

Poetry: THE MUSIC OF WEREWOLVES by Bruce Boston

Short Story: THE PASTRY CHEF, THE NANOTECHNOLOGIST, THE AEROBICS INSTRUCTOR, AND THE PLUMBER by Eugene Mirabelli

Short Story: FREE DOG by Jack Skillingstead

Poetry: GALILEO'S INKSPOTS FADE INTO TWILIGHT by Geoffrey A. Landis

Novelette: MY HUSBAND STEINN by Eleanor Arnason

Short Story: TO LIVE AND DIE IN GIBBONTOWN by Derek Kunsken

Short Story: A HUNDRED HUNDRED DAISIES by Nancy Kress

Poetry: VAMPIRE POLITICS by Ruth Berman

Novella: THE MAN WHO BRIDGED THE MIST by Kij Johnson

Department: NEXT ISSUE

Department: ON BOOKS: INSIDE/OUTSIDE by Norman Spinrad

Department: SF CONVENTIONAL CALENDAR by Erwin S. Strauss

* * * *

Asimov's Science Fiction
. ISSN 1065-2698. Vol. 35, No. 10 & 11. Whole No. 429 & 430, October/November 2011. GST #R123293128. Published monthly except for two combined double issues in April/May and October/November by Dell Magazines, a division of Crosstown Publications. One year subscription $55.90 in the United States and U.S. possessions. In all other countries $65.90 (GST included in Canada), payable in advance in U.S. funds. Address for subscription and all other correspondence about them, 6 Prowitt Street, Norwalk, CT 06855. Allow 6 to 8 weeks for change of address. Address for all editorial matters:
Asimov's Science Fiction,
267 Broadway, 4th Floor, New York, N.Y. 10007.
Asimov's Science Fiction
is the registered trademark of Dell Magazines, a division of Crosstown Publications. © 2011 by Dell Magazines, a division of Crosstown Publications, 6 Prowitt Street, Norwalk, CT 06855. All rights reserved, printed in the U.S.A. Protection secured under the Universal and Pan American Copyright Conventions. Reproduction or use of editorial or pictorial content in any manner without express permission is prohibited. Please visit our website, www.asimovs.com, for information regarding electronic submissions. All manual submissions must include a self-addressed, stamped envelope; the publisher assumes no responsibility for unsolicited manuscripts. Periodical postage paid at Norwalk, CT and additional mailing offices. POSTMASTER, send change of address to
Asimov's Science Fiction,
6 Prowitt Street, Norwalk, CT 06855. In Canada return to Quad/Graphics Joncas, 4380 Garand, Saint-Laurent, Quebec H4R 2A3.

ASIMOV'S SCIENCE FICTION
Sheila Williams:
Editor
Trevor Quachri:
Managing Editor
Mary Grant:
Editorial Assistant
Emily Hockaday:
Editorial Administrative Assistant
Jayne Keiser:
Typesetting Director
Suzanne Lemke:
Assistant Typesetting Manager
Kevin Doris:
Senior Typesetter
Victoria Green:
Senior Art Director
Cindi Tiberi:
Production Artist
Laura Tulley:
Senior Production Manager
Jennifer Cone:
Production Associate
Abigail Browning:
Manager Subsidiary Rights and Marketing
Bruce W. Sherbow:
Senior Vice President, Sales and Marketing
Sandy Marlowe:
Circulation Services
Advertising Representative
Robin DiMeglio: Advertising Sales Manager
Phone: (203) 866-6688 ext. 180
Fax: (203) 854-5962
[email protected]
(Display and Classified Advertising)
Peter Kanter:
Publisher
Christine Begley:
Vice President, Editorial and Product Development
Susan Mangan:
Vice President, Design and Production
Isaac Asimov:
Editorial Director (1977-1992)
* * * *

Stories from
Asimov's
have won 51 Hugos and 27 Nebula Awards, and our editors have received 18 Hugo Awards for Best Editor.

* * * *

Please do not send us your manuscript until you've gotten a copy of our guidelines. Look for them online at www.asimovs.com or send a self-addressed, stamped business-size (#10) envelope, and a note requesting this information. Write “manuscript guidelines” in the bottom left-hand corner of the outside envelope. We prefer electronic submissions, but the address for manual submissions and for all editorial correspondence is
Asimov's Science Fiction
, 267 Broadway, Fourth Floor, New York, NY 10007-2352. While we're always looking for new writers, please, in the interest of time-saving, find out what we're loking for, and how to prepare it, before submitting your story.

* * * *
* * * *
Department:
EDITORIAL: SEND IN THE RIGHT REVIEWER
by Sheila Williams

It's an acknowledged truism that it is pointless to argue with professional critics. Once they've made up their minds about a movie, a book, a play, or a short story, it's highly unlikely that you will disabuse them of their notions. Whether or not you or I agree with their assessment of a work, they will usually have cogent reasons for their opinions. Engaging in counter argument will likely lead to humiliation when they bring the hammer down and finally reveal to you their
real
opinion of the work in question. I take the advice not to quibble pretty seriously, but there are times when I rather wistfully wonder why a magazine or a newspaper can't be more merciful to their reviewers. Why not ask someone who enjoys genre fiction to review the latest big-budget sci-fi film? Why not give the fantasy buff the newest three-volume trilogy?

In 1979,
Time
magazine's noted film critic Richard Schickel must have thought he'd drawn the short stick when he was sent to reviewthe first Star Trek movie. He was unhappy with the language, “[T]here is a lot of talk. Much of it in impenetrable spaceflight jargon. Scanners, deflectors, warp speed. . . ."; referred to many of those who had enjoyed the original TV show as “the half-educated"; and completely misinterpreted the opening sequence of the film, describing it this way: “It turns out that the villainous UFO is not manned. This is very peculiar, since in the film's opening sequence it is full of weirdos [sic]. By the time the
Enterprise
closes in on it, the creatures have all disappeared, victims not of the story line but of what appears to be a shortage of either money or time."

Mr. Schickel was entitled to his ultimate opinion that
Star Trek: The Motion Picture
was “nothing but a long day's journey into ennui.” Indeed, it was not the most exciting SF film I'd ever seen, but my “half-educated” friends and I—all philosophy graduate students at Washington University in St. Louis—agreed that we would have gotten more from the review if
T
ime
had chosen to send a critic who had actually enjoyed the TV show, wasn't afraid of the vocabulary, knew a more descriptive term for “Klingons” than “weirdos,” and could figure out that rather than piloting V'Ger, the aliens and their spaceship were under attack and then destroyed by the “UFO” during the movie's first scene. The reviewer didn't have to like the movie. Confusion and boredom are legitimate reactions to any film, but one gets the sense that Mr. Schickel may have attended the screening of a
Star Trek
film under protest.

More than thirty years have gone by and as far as fantasy and SF films go, most news outlets seem to have either gotten better at assigning the right reviewers or perhaps find that a higher percentage of their critics grew up on and now enjoy watching genre films. Even Mr. Schickel seems to have found some of the later
Star Trek
films easier to endure. Reviewers like Richard Corliss, A. O. Scott, and Manohla Dargis, routinely extol the virtues of genre films that catch their fancy. Still, that doesn't mean that today's news outlets always manage to match the right reviewer to the work.

One of the most egregious examples of a mismatched pairing has got to be the New York
Times
decision to ask Ginia Bellafante to review HBO's ten-part series based on George R.R. Martin's blockbuster fantasy novel,
A Game of Thrones.
Ms. Bellafante doesn't directly refer to the intended audience as “half-educated,” but she does question whether the show's subject matter could possibly appeal to half the world's population because she doesn't know a single woman who is interested in reading fantasy. (I have the impression that she may never have met any that read science fiction, either.) In her review, Ms. Bellafante shows herself to be very uncomfortable with alien world building. Echoing Mr. Schickel, she's also unhappy with the show's vocabulary and she asserts her superiority over role-playing gamers in the usual obligatory manner of many popular culture critics. She sums up her feelings toward
A
Game of Thrones
this way: “If you are not averse to the Dungeons & Dragons aesthetic, the series might be worth the effort. If you are nearly anyone else, you will hunger for HBO to get back to the business of languages for which we already have a dictionary."

I have no argument with Ms. Bellafante's opinion of the show. It didn't work for her, and that's fair. It's her job to tell us what she thought. I don't subscribe to HBO and haven't watched the series so I haven't formed my own opinions about it. Still, I am in agreement with a commenter who posted on the
Times'
website
,
“I don't want a rabid fan as a reviewer, but the writer should be somebody who at least likes similar shows, movies, and books (a.k.a. somebody who would actually buy a ticket to the Lord of the Rings)."

Ms. Bellafante was inundated with so many cries of protest that she posted a follow-up essay wherein she described herself as a stand-in for the non-fantasy viewer. As such, she may have provided a useful service for that subset of television watchers, but a lot of those spectators probably self-selected themselves out of
A Game of Thrones'
audience even before they read her review.

Those who could have benefited most from the review—the millions who enjoyed The Lord of the Rings trilogy, as well as
Avatar, Star Wars, Star Trek,
and perhaps even
Monty Python and the Holy Grail
—would have learned more from an essay by someone who wasn't afraid to occasionally step outside the everyday world of
House
and
The Sopranos
—someone who wasn't discomforted by the language, the world building, and the unusual inhabitants that are often the
sine qua non
of fantasy and science fiction. Undoubtedly, I wouldn't have agreed with everything this imaginary reviewer had to say about the program, but at least I would have known that he or she had attended the screening willingly and not just for the popcorn.

BOOK: Asimov's SF, October-November 2011
5.49Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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