Asimov's Science Fiction: February 2014
Page 17
"We believe they traveled down the length of the continent, ja. Their horses are genetically nearly identical to the Caspian horses of Iran, one of the oldest known breeds."
"And the people? Genetically?"
Odwa sighed. "Hard to tell."
"How so?"
He looked at her in the dark, then took a moment to remove his cap and reshape its brim. "You saw them disappear. We have not been able to convince them to let us do the types of testing we need to do. Yet. So we make guesses, for now."
"And what do your guesses tell you? About their origins and their—talent?" Yona reached for her water bottle to hide her impatience with his answers.
"I believe they must be from that area. But how do we explain the disappearing? We use the label 'transdimensional.' Transdimensional for the way they wink in and out. Here and gone. Zap. We think that wherever they go, they spend time there, too, even if they are gone from here for only an instant."
"And do the horses wink out as well?"
"Not that we've seen. Nor have we ever seen anyone drop a baby or appear in a fire, if you are going to ask that. Things they are holding go with them. They all leave together, every time. Group decision, but how they decide? We don't know." He shrugged.
"So you're telling me that I've spent my day taking photographs of 'transdimensional' beings who think they are ancient Jews? And all that talk about choosing what to shoot means you want me to keep all of the disappearing stuff out of what I bring back to my editor? You're going to ruin me."
Odwa smiled. "No. You are here to take photographs of a lost and isolated Semitic tribe, and convince the world that it is to this group's benefit to remain lost and isolated. My job is to stay here and protect them and someday figure out what they are and where they are from, and ja, why they have picked up certain Jewish rituals along the way."
"You know this all sounds ridiculous, right?"
"I know. You can choose not to believe me. You can keep taking pictures and decide later. I thought it might inform your photos a little bit if you realized exactly how isolated they are."
"Transdimensional," Yona repeated. "Precisely."
"And what do they want for themselves?"
"We are still working on getting an answer to that. They leave when they are afraid for their group's safety, so we know they don't want to be overrun. They made it down the length of the continent, but they have been settled in this valley for some time, so we think it is reasonable to believe that they would like to stay here. Of course, that will not be possible if the complexities of their situation get out."
Yona thought about her options: documenting what she saw, or documenting what people expected to see. She wondered what Oliver would have done. The loss hit her again, fresh and bright and blooming. She wondered how long it had taken him to decide to put down his camera and become part of the story. He couldn't have had much time to make up his mind. An instant.
Maybe these people had an advantage over the rest of the world; maybe those times they disappeared really did last longer on the other side, wherever that was. Maybe when they blinked out together they had a chance to discuss with each other the ramifications of their decisions, to do more than hold each other and whisper reassurances and promises that could not be kept. Yes, you can intervene, but this will be the last moment we have with each other. Yes, my love, your life for his. I will try to understand.
SHOTS 71–83, VIDEO #3: The tribespeople sing. The song goes on long after the stars have come out, long after their voices have gone hoarse, long after the fire has dwindled.
SHOT 84: This picture was taken with a cellphone camera, by someone other than the photographer whose work is on display in this gallery. Yona Haifetz-Perec is the subject of the photograph. She is singing with the tribespeople, her face tilted toward the stars.
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ASK CITIZEN ETIQUETTE
Marissa Lingen | 911 words
Marissa Lingen is a freelance writer living in the Minneapolis suburbs with two large men and one small dog. She's sold over ninety short stories to Tor.com, Analog, Lightspeed, and more. Her first tale for Asimov's takes on the complex world of the future. If we are to resolve difficult issues with diplomacy, it may be wise to seek advice from an expert.
Dear Citizen Etiquette:
My cousin insists on bringing her robot to all family gatherings. Am I obliged to hold events in robot-friendly surroundings to please her? If I do not, must I pay her robot's cleaning and retooling bills?
Signed,
Longing for the Beach
Gentle Reader:
Sand in the gears will ruin any 'bot's day, but that doesn't mean you have to keep your summers buttoned up for your cousin's robot's sake. Don't have every event somewhere that's unfriendly to machine people. That would be pointed. But just as you're allowed to get up an outing to an art museum without making sure your blind auntie is pleased with it, you may with no lapse in manners go to the beach. And if your cousin wants to bring her robot, let her clean the poor thing out herself. She's the one who insisted on bringing it.
Dear Citizen Etiquette:
My workmate will not stop talking about her pregnancy. I know she and her partner scrimped and saved for years to buy the best embryo possible, but do I have to listen to every single chromosomal choice they made? We are only ten chromosomes and four months into this discussion, and already I'm beginning to hate this child. What will I do when he's in nappies?
Desperately,
Love Your Baby But Not His Genechart
Gentle Reader:
Of course this is one of the most important decisions a person will ever make— but so was choosing her partner, and she didn't chronicle every particle of flirtation in the break room, did she? I hope not! But by the same token, no new mother wants to hear that her embryo is a bore. It's time for you to learn some of etiquette's oldest tools, the polite lies. "Oh, Gertrude," you will say, "I so wish I had the time to hear more about your decision to go with hazel eyes instead of true green. But alas, our employer will be so put out with us if we do not finish the presentation by Thursday. I would hate to see Little Gertlet in a subpar preschool because we lost our situations." Perhaps it would be for the best if you left that last part as implication only, but you get the picture.
Dear Citizen Etiquette:
My neighbor keeps tuning his implant to a frequency close to mine. I fear he is overhearing the chats of an—ahem—personal nature shared between my spouse and me. Worse, I fear he means to! How can I make it clear that our facilitated telepathic exchanges are for our two minds alone?
Hopefully,
Alone In Our Own Little Corner of the RF Spectrum
Gentle Reader:
This is where modern technology's approximation of telepathy is, alas, only an approximation. Wouldn't it be charming to feel that you and your sweetheart are in a world of your own? But it is not so, and no amount of chiding, no application of manners, can make it so. You can gently hint, you can cajole, you can grab him by his fashionably wide lapels and declaim, "Now, look here, buddy!" But the airwaves are and ever more shall be the airwaves. Either invest in better encryption or resign yourselves to the idea that your private times will not be so private. Or may I suggest the old-fashioned idea of whispering your inmost thoughts in your beloved's ear? Crazy notion, I know, but it thwarts all but the most dedicated snooping neighbor—and if he plants a bug to hear you whispering, you'll have recourse to call in the authorities.
Dear Citizen Etiquette:
How do I explain to my friends and relations that I am the same person I was before I uploaded? My interests remain the same—I was never much of a golfer, and I can still play virtual holotennis with them, but I have always preferred a quiet chat and a good book to a walk on the beach. So what if I don't have legs now? Is that any reason to cut me out of their social plans?
Uploaded and Lonely
Gentle Reader:
Shall I get you in touch with the r
obot companion of the first writer's relative? Perhaps the two of you can have your quiet chat and a game of chess while your respective relations obsess about beaches. More practically, while it would be lovely if everyone's friends and family were open-minded about their decisions to become up-loaded citizens, the simple fact is that not everyone will. "But the environmental impact—" I know. "But the health concerns of—" I know. "The political lobby of—" I know, I know, I know. The simple fact is that you cannot force your friends to want to invite you to do things socially. They will or they won't. What you can do is invite them to do things. Show them the best of the uploaded world, or those aspects of it that you can share with someone who is still flesh and blood. If they still never contact you, it's their loss.
Feeling overwhelmed by the social demands of the modern world? Write, text, or telepathic chat to Citizen Etiquette on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Problems solved and persons respected regardless of race, color, creed, gender, sexuality, chemical basis, or upload status. You pay communications charges please.
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Watching the Orionids Meteor Shower
39 words
We
Find
Harsh
Cold crisp
Meteoric light
Our necks craned back
Seated in the nascent morning
We open ourselves to the full cosmos
The possibilities of change in our constellations
Like a cork popped then easily ignored
One streaks out from the belt
A mark of transience
An exclamation
Too short
Then
Lost
...
—Robert Frazier
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Cloud Vortex
48 words
Looking online
at Cassini's amazing picture
of Saturn's North Polar Vortex,
that giant, swirling madness
of clouds,
brings back
the memory of lying
upon my grass-cushioned back,
gazing at summer storm clouds
as they rumbled across the
New England sky,
the simple shapes
of calmer days turning darkly
monstrous, like those now riding
the vortex, and the weather
of my nightmares.
—G. O. Clark
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An Answer, At Last
12 words
Schrödinger's cat asks
why don't you ever pet me?
Wait, don't open the...
—Greg Beatty
* * *
SHE SAYS: "TERRIBLE THINGS HAPPEN TO GUYS ON VALENTINE'S DAY"
28 words
She goes back in time
And tweaks
This or that event
So that
I am standing alone
Wondering
At the déjà vu.
Wasn't someone
Just here?
Don't I still
Smell perfume?
But then,
Standing alone again,
The feeling is gone.
—Roger Dutcher
* * *
Gold Ring
78 words
Found a gold ring in our backyard
Bright on new grassblades
One spring muddy morning
It didn't take a fire to find
An inscription — initials inside
That matched our neighbor's
It was her wedding ring
Lost scrambling in from a blizzard
And buried in new snow
Then blown
Over the fence
When the blower cleared the driveway
It wasn't much of a quest
To return it
And it didn't turn any of us invisible
But when you find a gold ring in the backyard
It makes a fairytale
Out of an April day
—Ruth Berman
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EDITORIAL
Sheila Williams | 945 words
REMEMBERING FREDERIK POHL
Daily visits to SFsignal.com keep me up on our field's latest news. Checking in on my phone on the last day of LoneStarCon 3—this year's Worldcon—I discovered that Frederik Pohl had died. Although I knew he was ninety-three and had been in failing health, I was shocked and saddened by the news.
Fred Pohl, author, editor, even agent, blogger, and SF ambassador to almost every corner of the world, helped fashion the field as we know it. Rather than try to capture his whole life, I thought I would reflect on this talented grandmaster from my own point of view as an editor.
Long before there was a Hugo Award, Fred edited the 1940 and most of the 1941 issues of two pulp magazines— Astonishing Stories and Super Science Stories. Authors whose first stories appeared in these issues included Isaac Asimov, James Blish, and Wilson Tucker. Although Fred was operating with an excruciatingly low budget, he was also able to procure work from L. Sprague de Camp, Robert Heinlein, Henry Kuttner, and other well-known writers. Fred worked on some later issues as assistant editor before enlisting in the army in 1943.
He returned to editing magazines at the helm of If and Galaxy in 1959. During his tenure, If won three Hugos for Best Professional Magazine. Works published under Fred's tutelage included Larry Niven's "Neutron Star," Harlan Ellison's "I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream," Cordwainer Smith's "The Ballad of Lost C'mell," and Roger Zelazny's "Damnation Alley." He published numerous pieces by Poul Anderson and Robert Silverberg as well as Gardner Dozois and Bruce McAllister's first stories and Gene Wolfe's second published tale.
Harlan Ellison has said that Fred "remains one of the truest judges of writing ability the field of imaginative literature has ever produced." In his book, Transformations: The Story of Science Fiction Magazines from 1950 to 1970, Mike Ashley adds, "that ability, along with his perspicacity and tenacity [allowed Pohl] to shepherd his magazines through the wilderness of the early sixties and make them among the most exciting and rewarding publications of their day."
The seventies found this man of many hats busily editing brilliant novels for Bantam (Joanna Russ's The Female Man and Samuel Delany's Dhalgren both came out in 1975), as well as producing his own award winning books—the 1976 Nebula award winner Man Plus, the 1977 Hugo and Nebula winner Gateway and 1979's National Book Award winner Jem. He also managed to be supportive of a fledgling publication then-called Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine. Three of his tales appeared in 1979 issues of Asimov's. Although there are some gaps, Fred averaged roughly a story a year in Asimov's from 1979 through 1994. These include the March 1979 Nebula finalist "Mars Masked" and January 1985's Hugo award winner "Fermi and Frost."
Perhaps because of his renown, very little bio information accompanies these stories. The few that carry interesting tidbits mention his wife, "the least stern of professors, Betty Ann Hull," his devotion to the internationalization of SF, and his apprehension about humanity's future. The introduction to "Fermi and Frost" stresses his concern about nuclear winter; the intro to the November 1986 story, "Iriadeska's Martians" mentions that Fred "has represented the U.S. State Department in such diverse countries as Singapore, the Soviet Union, and New Zealand, and he has attended international conferences in far flung places like the People's Republic of China, Brazil, and Yugoslavia." The intro to Fred's 1992 story, "The Martians," says that, "Mr. Pohl's latest book, Our Angry Earth [written in collaboration with Isaac Asimov], is a nonfiction work about the damage we're doing to our environment, and the consequences and remedies thereof."
I never knew Fred very well, but I always felt connected to him. In 2002, when I was pregnant with my younger daughter, I was suddenly hospitalized for a suspected blood clot. I was cross. The situation had upended my routine. I had a very frightened eight-year-old at home and I was on the phone with my
assistant figuring out how deadlines were going to be met when a hospital chaplain showed up at my bedside. I'm not religious and I wasn't thrilled, but somehow the good angel on one of my shoulders decked the little devil on the other. Rather than coldly turning her away, I decided to engage the chaplain in conversation.
She was astonished to learn that I managed an SF magazine. Before she'd become a minister, she told me she'd once worked as an editorial assistant for Fred at Galaxy and If. This news lightened my mood. I took it as a good omen and was unsurprised when test results later showed that I was fine. Although I didn't catch her name and Fred and I never did figure out who she was, it seemed obvious to me that there is a secret cabal of SF editors who look out for their own.
Fred sent me a new story a few months after I became editor of Asimov's. As always, it was a pleasure to work with him. "Generations" appeared in the September 2005 issue. It was his first story for us in more than ten years. The accompanying intro says, "Frederik Pohl's current principal activity is traveling around the world as much as possible—he visited his seventh (and last, because that's all there are) continent in 2004, and hopes to get to his fifty-first and fifty-second countries in 2006—but he keeps on writing when he can find the time. His short story collection, Platinum Pohl, out this year from Tor, is his one hundred and thirty-fifth book." Fred kept on traveling, but, alas, this was his final story for Asimov's.
Late in the evening on the last day of LoneStarCon 3, I met Gardner Dozois, Kim Stanley Robinson, Susan Casper, Tor editor Beth Meacham, and others in our hotel bar. We all lifted our glasses in salute to the life and legacy of the multifaceted Frederik Pohl.
February 2014
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