Asimov's Science Fiction, May/June 2018 by Sheila Williams

Asimov's Science Fiction, May/June 2018 Reviews

• 
  Lena

  This was my first ever issue of Asimov’s Science Fiction and I am hooked!
  
  
  Cost of Doing Business by Nancy Kress ★★★★★
  “People want change, but they don’t want to pay the real costs, and major change always costs.”
  Riveting story of what it would take to get the United States off of its fossil fuel addiction. One great man decides to be that change, but can he live with it?
  
  
  Bubble and Squeak by David Gerrold & Ctein ★★★★★
  “Come on, we’ve been through worse—”
  “No we haven’t,” said Hu.
  “This is the worst.”
  Do you love disaster movies? I do! I just got to read an amazing disaster "movie" about two guys running like hell to get to safety in the three hours before a tsunami hits.
  A three hundred foot tsunami.
  In Los Angeles.
  Oh yeah!
  
  
  The Wandering Warriors by Rick Wilber & Alan Smale ★★★★☆
  "Come then," she said, "and let us play."
  Talented baseball players whose careers were interrupted by WWII get together every summer to travel around the country playing other amateur teams as The Wandering Warriors.
  
  But this summer they’ve ended up in Ancient Rome called by Julia Domna, daughter of the High Priest of the Temple of the Sun God and widow of Septimius Severus, Emperor of Rome. She hopes a ball game at the Colosseum can heal the rising tension between her Co-Emperor sons, Geta and Caracalla.
  
  This was a great idea for a story, and yes they did play a similar(?) ball game at the time.
  
  Problem: I have no interest in baseball. None. Thus some of it was painfully boring and yet I appreciated and enjoyed it far more than The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon.
  
  Live From the Sky by Sue Burke ★★★★☆
  “You don’t know how much you changed my life. Some of it was good. Some of it was horrible. I want you to know that wasn’t your fault.”
  This is lightly a science fiction story but mostly about a family under pressure and a young woman who takes the initiative to change her life.
  
  When the Rains Come Back by Caldwell Trunbull ★★★☆☆
  “One day she’d have children. And what world would they choose for themselves?”
  A difficult well written short story about a near future world of many governments struggling for identity and resources.
  
  Creative Nonfiction by Paul Park ★★★☆☆
  What was that, lol? So strange. First it’s a meta fight between a high school student and her teacher over a creative writing assignment and then a potentially alien apocalypse. So strange.
  
  Riverboats, Robots, and Ransom in the Regular Way by Peter Wood ★★★★☆
  “I thought the passengers came first,” Maggie said.
  “What about the Asimovian laws?”
  “Bad for business,” Chip said and returned to his book.
  Amusing story about an intergalactic corporate retreat taken over by pirates.
  
  A Mammoth, So-Called by Marc Laidlaw ★★☆☆☆
  Unremarkable story about alleged pre-Holocene hologram technology.
  
  Unexpected Flowers by Jane Lindskold ★★☆☆☆
  Long stream of consciousness breakdown of a failing relationship triggered by flowers on Valentine’s Day.
  
  Time Enough to Say Goodbye by Sandra McDonald & Stephen D. Covey ★★★☆☆
  A woman keeps going back in time to try to save her father even though she knows it’s impossible. Sad.
  
  I enjoyed most of the poetry and the non fiction articles described a book I’d never heard of and now must read:
  City
  
  Happily rounded up to four stars because this magazine has lived up to the hype. Quality work.
• 
  Sara

  Four stars to the novellas Bubble and Squeak, Life from the Stars, and the short stories Unexpected Flowers and Riverboats and Ransoms. I skipped a few of these, which had less to do with their quality than my own tastes and the growing dread over an equally growing Asimov’s backlog.
• 
  Gerhard

  A lion's roar for 'Bubble and Squeak'!
• 
  Denise Barney

  As ever, a high quality issue. A great mix of novellas, novelettes, short stories, poems. The department columns were interesting--even Norman Spinrad's "On Books" was an interesting look at "Alternate Alternate Histories," examining the pitfalls of writing "near future stories" where events in this timeline outstrip the events in the story.
  
  On a personal note: I grew up in Daly City and Thornton Beach features prominently in "Life From the Sky." John Daly Boulevard is named; however, Daly City isn't. Otherwise, Ms. Burke got most of the geography of Westlake/Southwestern San Francisco correct. And Ctein, co-author of "Bubble and Squeak" has his studio in Daly City as well (not too far from Thornton Beach, in fact). I don't know if @Sheila_Williams was aware of this when the stories for this issue were selected.
  
  I enjoyed both novellas. "The Wandering Warriors" is about a minor summer league baseball team in 1946 who find themselves transported back to Ancient Rome. The story alternates between the viewpoints of "The Professor," the owner/manager, and "Quentin," one of the players. The "Wandering Warriors" find themselves playing baseball in the Roman Coliseum and the result will determine their fate and that of the Roman empire.
  
  In "Bubble and Squeak" Los Angeles is threatened by a mega-tsunami and the protagonists' effort to move to higher ground. The story is a realistic look at what it would take to evacuate the Los Angeles Basin in three hours, including the cost in human lives. There are heroes and scoundrels, and painful decisions must be made.
  
  The Guest Editorial, "A Semester with Isaac Asimov," is Jay Cole's essay about teaching a semester course at the West Virginia University about the science fiction stories of Dr. Asimov. Well, some of the stories because he wrote so many. I would love to take that course!
  
  The rest of the issue is well worth a read as well.
• 
  Benn Allen

  The only true highlight of this issue is the novella "Bubble and Squeak" by David Gerrold and Ctein. The rest of this issue was either mediocre or just crap, not to my liking at all.
  
  Rick Wilber and Alan Smale's "The Wandering Warriors", the start of the May/June 2018 issue of "Asimov's" was a far cry from a high point. While I don't particularly like baseball or have a strong interest in Ancient Rome, the story might have been better if the time travel aspect wasn't explained away with such a careless bit of handwaving. I mean given "Asimov's" is a *science fiction* magazine, the explanation used for the Professor (is he meant to be Moe Berg?) and fellow Wandering Warriors' trip back in time can basically be summed up as, "It's magic!" Honestly, even when I had only three pages left in the story, I wanted to bail on it. It left such a bad taste in my mouth, it was a struggle to get through the rest of the ish. Maybe if it had been published in "The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction" or in a periodical devoted to "The Twilight Zone", I might have liked it better.
  
  Then there's "Flowers, Unexpected". Um, this is science fiction? This tale would have worked just as well in "Vogue" or "Cosmo" or "The New Yorker" as here. Better in fact.
  
  In "Bubble and Squeak", the sci-fi element may be minor (super-mega-gigantic tsunamis), but the story's titular stars and their struggles to survive are gripping and entertaining. This story alone was worth both the price of admission and the wait to get to it.
  
  Nancy Kress' "The Cost of Doing Business" is worth mentioning as being worth reading. It was a bit more interesting than the other stories, though a bit too predictable in places.
• 
  J. Allen Nelson

  Great selection of stories in this issue -- as much as Alternate History has been done (and done, and done. . . ) I thoroughly enjoyed The Wandering Warriors, as well as most of the stories in the issue. Nancy Kress, of course. And who WOULDN'T love to see what becomes of LA in David Gerrold & Ctein's Bubble and Squeek????
  A breath of fresh prose after several books on History and Shakespeare. . . . (!!)
• 
  Stephanie

  Excellent edition. Nearly all the stories were very good. I thought Bubble and Squeak was outstanding. The novella was written by David Gerrold & Ctein (FYI - Gerrold wrote the Tribbles episode for Star Trek). I also very much enjoyed Cost of Doing Business by Nancy Kress. Creative Nonfiction by Paul Park was a very interesting mystery, although I got a bit confused by the ending. Anyway, these were the outstanding pieces for me in this edition.
• 
  Michael Frasca

  Not one of ASF's stronger issues, but here are the story and article that I liked:
  
  -The Wandering Warriors by Rick Wilber & Alan Smale. I love baseball. I love SF. I love Rick Wilber. 'nuf said.
  
  - On Books: Alternate Alternate Histories by Norman Spinrad. An interesting and thought-provoking essay/review about alternate past/present/future histories and their interconnectedness.
• 
  Stephen

  Avg rating: 2.85
  Ratings: 5 4 4 3.5 3 3 2 2 1 1
  
  Best stories: Bubble and Squeek, The Wandering Warriors, Time Enough to Say Goodbye
• 
  Michael

  Average issue. Took my time plowing through it due to personal circumstances. I did like Bubble and Squeak though.
• 
  Francis Bass

  Solid issue, bookended by two fantastic novellas
• 
  Patrick Hurley

  Some nice stories in here, including an interesting story by one of my Taos Toolbox teachers, Nancy Kress, about Flint and the environmental crisis. I skipped the novellas, though.