July/August 2017 Asimov’s Science Fiction Now on Sale
As I mentioned in my last magazine review, I’m a guy who tends to skim magazines. I’m looking for something new, something different, something… yeah, I have no idea what I’m looking for these days. I’m just impatient and I skim. Don’t hate me.
Tangent Online is my enabler. They publish up-to-date magazine reviews (that I skim), and these reviews tell me everything I need to know to form a plan of attack in, like, 45 seconds. For example, they tell me that the latest issue of Asimov’s Science Fiction has terrifically intriguing tales from Alexander Jablokov, Rich Larson, and James Gunn, among others. Asimov’s, prepare to be boarded.
This issue of a magazine which is celebrating forty years of publication features a balance of fast-paced, high-tech adventure stories and intimate character studies. Fittingly, a pair of linked stories by an author with nearly seven decades of experience combine both action and introspection.
Leading off the issue is “How Sere Picked Up Her Laundry” by Alexander Jablokov. The setting is a planet where a large number of alien species live, often inhabiting structures left behind centuries ago by other beings. The narrator is hired to find out who leased a large portion of one such giant building, and why an exterminator died while working on a tunnel within it. She encounters a number of strange creatures while uncovering the mystery. The author creates a complex background and interesting alien biology…. “An Evening with Severyn Grimes” by Rich Larson is set in a future where a wealthy man can rent the body of a young, healthy man as a place to house his mind. The protagonist is hired by a group of terrorists who violently oppose this practice. Her consciousness is downloaded into the many linked computerized devices which fill this world in a plot to assassinate the man, but she has plans of her own… a fairly effective cyberpunk story.
First published in 1949 and named a Grand Master by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America in 2007, James Gunn proves that he is not just resting on his laurels with two stories set in his Transcendental universe. Both “Transcendental Mission: Riley’s Story” and “Weighty Matters: Tordor’s Story” depict the lives of characters who will eventually set out on a mission to discover the nature of a device which is rumored to produce perfection in any individual. The reader may be reminded of the pilgrims bound for Canterbury in Chaucer’s famous poem. Inevitably, both tales are expository and open-ended. The second story may be more interesting because the author creates an entire alien culture.
Read Victoria Silverwolf’s complete review of the latest Asimov’s SF here.
