Analog SFF, June 2010
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Cover art by Vincent DiFate
Cover design by Victoria Green
CONTENTS
Reader's Department: EDITORIAL: PRIMER by Stanley Schmidt
Reader's Department: IN TIMES TO COME
Reader's Department: BIOLOG: HENRY HONKEN by Richard A. Lovett
Novelette: THE ANUNNAKI LEGACY by Bond Elam
Science Fact: DER MANN, DIE FRAU, DAS KIND by Henry Honken
Probability Zero: LIGHT CONVERSATION by Alastair Mayer
Novelette: SPACE ALIENS TAUGHT MY DOG TO KNIT! by Jerry Oltion & Elton Elliott
Short Story: HEIST by Tracy Canfield
Short Story: AT LAST THE SUN by Richard Foss
Reader's Department: THE ALTERNATE VIEW: TWO BIRDS WITH ONE STONE by Jeffery D. Kooistra
Short Story: A TIME FOR HEROES by Edward M. Lerner
Short Story: CARGO by Michael F. Flynn
Novelette: CONNECTIONS by Kyle Kirkland
Reader's Department: THE REFERENCE LIBRARY by Don Sakers
Reader's Department: BRASS TACKS
Reader's Department: UPCOMING EVENTS by Anthony Lewis
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Vol. CXXX No. 6, June 2010
Stanley Schmidt, Editor
Trevor Quachri, Managing Editor
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Stanley Schmidt: Editor
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Published since 1930
First issue of Astounding January 1930 (c)
Reader's Department: EDITORIAL: PRIMER by Stanley Schmidt
Why is the sky blue?
Where do babies come from?
Neither of those is my topic for this month; you probably already know the answers, and you can read plenty about them, and similar questions, elsewhere. But what you read about them will depend very much on who the explanation is aimed at. That is my topic for this month, but with a twist that you may not anticipate.
If you're talking to, say, a physics graduate student who wants to understand in as much detail as possible the appearance of the sky, you will have to look at the wavelength dependence of Rayleigh scattering of electromagnetic radiation, which in turn can be calculated from principles of electromagnetic field theory. Complicated equations will inevitably be involved, but slogging through them will pay off in a detailed and quantitative understanding of what's going on. Of course, to describe the appearance of a real sky, with an atmosphere containing not only isolated gas molecules but a wide variety of water droplets and dust particles, you'll need to similarly account for the different behavior of radiation scattered by those larger objects.
It would be pointless to show that explanation, precise and comprehensive as it is, to a typical man or woman on the street with little or no formal training in physics. Such a person would not understand much of it and would be unlikely, perhaps even unable, to learn in a reasonable time the background required to do so. For them, even a good popularizer of science would have to settle for explaining that different colors of light are scattered more than others by gas molecules and dust particles, and show, perhaps with a diagram, how that leads to a blue sky in directions away from the sun on a clear day. The recipient of that explanation will not understand the answer anywhere near as thoroughly or precisely as one who has worked through the physics, but they may have enough general qualitative understanding of the process to give some satisfaction.
And for a small child, you'd have to make the explanation even simpler and more qualitative, perhaps aided by metaphorical analogies that are not strictly accurate but do help visualize the general idea. Naturally there's a corresponding further loss of depth and detail, but you have to use language the listener can understand to get anything across.
Similarly, a medical student or graduate student in genetics, training to advise and treat prospective parents, or to understand exactly how a human being develops from the collision of a sperm and an egg (and how the sperm and egg come to collide in the first place), will need a great deal of detailed knowledge about anatomy, physiology, advanced biochemistry, molecular biology, genetics, and epigenetics (the last of which nobody yet understands very thoroughly). A twelve-year-old can and needs to understand some of that, mostly at a very qualitative and practical level, but neither needs to nor could understand all the technical details. So he or she will get a qualitative explanation in terms that gloss over details but are understandable and true enough to be useful. A four-year-old asking the same question will necessarily get drastically oversimplified answers that will, if the kid is reasonably smart, raise plenty of further questions that he or she does not yet know how to ask. Sometimes those answers are reasonably accurate, if oversimplified; sometimes they're poetic but blatant lies, like the stork fable.
Now consider something that may seem completely unrelated, but may not be. There have, at various times and places in history (conspicuously including this one), been heated controversies between students of science and followers of various religions over what is the true nature and history of the universe. The obvious example from our own civilization is the ongoing “argument” (in which the combatants often talk more at and past than to each other) about evolution and creation. “Evolutionists” point to abundant scientific evidence that our planet is well over four billion years old, that evolution is going on right now, and that it has done so since the beginning. The strictest “creationists” point to Genesis and insist that since its account of creation is part of the Bible and the Bible is the Word of God, it means exactly what it says and is literally, unquestionably true, scientific “evidence” notwithstanding.
Most religions have their own accounts of how we and our world got to be the way we are. Few, if any, of them are literally compatible with the best scientific models we have. This bothers adherents of some more than others, but when the question arises and becomes a controversy, many scientists tend to dismiss the religious accounts as mere fables (like the stork) or metaphors.
Maybe some of them are—but maybe that view doesn't do at least some of them justice. Let me suggest another possibility: that scriptural creation stories really were gifts from “above” to help us understand and live well in our world. Maybe that means “divinely inspired” (and people can and will argue about what that means), or maybe it just means that they were given to our ancestors by somebody—whether creators or just more advanced visitors—who knew
more than the aforementioned ancestors and wanted to give them a helping hand. The details don't matter for what I'm asking you to consider. Let's just take as a working hypothesis that such scriptures, for some or all religions, were in fact given to some of our ancestors as a gift of knowledge by somebody at least slightly—and maybe tremendously—more advanced.
Either way, they were presented to our species at a time when it didn't know very much, and so things had to be explained in very simple, perhaps metaphorical terms—just as a child must have meteorology or reproductive biology explained in very simple, perhaps metaphorical terms. If so, then it is not true, as some scientists suggest, that the religious accounts are mere fairy tales of no intrinsic value. Neither is it true, as some religious folk suggest, that the scientific accounts are sacrilegious folderol of no intrinsic value.
Rather, the religious versions are primers, simplified introductions to complex truths for people too early in their development to understand fully detailed, completely accurate explanations of the same truths. And the scientific versions are the most advanced available attempts to formulate those detailed, accurate explanations for people who can understand them. Each is appropriate to readers or listeners at a different stage of development.
But as a baby matures into a child and then an adult, and in some cases an advanced scholar, he or she is expected to move on to more complex, detailed, and realistic explanations, and no longer cling to first-grade readers as ultimate truth.
I suspect that our long-forgotten teachers, if indeed we had them, would say that principle applies to civilizations and species, too.
Copyright © 2010 Stanley Schmidt
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Reader's Department: IN TIMES TO COME
Our July/August double issue takes full advantage of its extra space to offer a range of features that wouldn't fit in a regular issue. Bob Eggleton's cover heralds “Doctor Alien's Five Empty Boxes,” a new novella by Rajnar Vajra about the psychiatrist (introduced last year) who has to treat troubled extraterrestrials—without knowing what they consider “normal.” In this one he has an added challenge, related to the venerable observation that things are seldom what they seem. . . .
We'll also have novellas by Stephen Baxter and Stephen L. Burns, and a couple of items commemorating the anniversary of Apollo 11, both by writers who have actually worked in the U.S. space program: a novelette by Marianne J. Dyson and a poem by Geoffrey A. Landis.
Finally, Richard A. Lovett has two offerings: a science fact article on how we might moderate global warming by using artificial volcanoes, and another entry in his popular series of special features on writing—this time on the serious business of writing humor (of which, by the way, we just might also have an example or two).
[Back to Table of Contents]
Reader's Department: BIOLOG: HENRY HONKEN by Richard A. Lovett
For nearly thirty years, Henry Honken worked as sales coordinator for an import/export company in San Francisco. But that was merely how he made his living. His true calling was studying the “click” languages of southern Africa. Since the late 1980s, he's been a regular presenter at linguistics conferences and has published a dozen journal articles—even though he has no formal training other than a few undergraduate linguistics courses and a degree in anthropology. “With a BA you don't ordinarily get into a technical field that easily,” he says.
The languages, many from a group called Khoisan, use tongue clicks as consonants, as in the movie, “The Gods Must Be Crazy.” “Eighty percent of the vocabulary in Khoisan begins with a click,” Honken says.
These languages are interesting enough just because they're so different from others. They're also rare. Although click sounds were subsequently borrowed by neighboring linguistic groups such as Bantu, the original languages probably aren't spoken by more than a few hundred thousand people. In one case, Honken says, the number is probably as low as eight hundred. And most of them appear to be on the way out. “There are only a few where children are learning the language,” he says.
Linguistics is a long-standing topic in science fiction, particularly in the hard science fiction common in Analog. “One of the basic themes of science fiction is nonhuman life,” Honken says, “especially intelligent life. Any intelligent species is going to have some sort of communication system at least as complex as human language."
Rare languages not only provide models for alien communications, but also provide insights into the many ways in which it is possible for humans to think. “The more we know, the more we know about being human,” Honken says.
The click languages, he adds, are unusual not only for the sounds they employ, but also for the way they convey information. “Some have very unusual gender systems, based on sound and structure and meaning,” he says. Usually, gender systems tend to be based on [just] one of those factors."
These languages also have scores of words to describe tastes. “There probably aren't more than a dozen or so in English,” he says. “They [the click languages] have a lot to teach us about how human beings categorize knowledge."
So far, Honken's appearances in Analog have been limited to fact articles, but he's published fiction in two other magazines. One was a mainstream story about a young girl who thinks she wants to be a wizard. The other was science fiction about a man invaded by alien voices. “I think one of the next things I'm going to send [Analog editor Stanley Schmidt's] way is fiction,” he says.
Copyright © 2010 Richard A. Lovett
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Novelette: THE ANUNNAKI LEGACY by Bond Elam
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Illustrated by Vincent Di Fate
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Travelers in distress need help—and they need to consider all the options about how to get it.
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You have nothing to say about it!” Superintendent Cantrell snarled. “When my ships get here, we're going to start digging whether you like it or not, you got me?” He glared across the conference room table at Liz, his lips a bloodless smear through the gray stubble bristling from his chin.
Ensign Elizabeth McBride's eyes narrowed to burning green slits. She would have liked nothing better than to grab the superintendent by his scrawny chicken's neck and shake him within an inch of his miserable life. But newly commissioned science officers didn't grab mining superintendents by the neck. No matter how much shaking they needed. Not on their first missions, they didn't. Not if they ever wanted a second.
"Advocate Lassiter,” she said, turning to the balding, heavily jowled man who sat patiently listening to them from the head of the table. “I fully appreciate the superintendent's concerns, but this is our first chance to pick up the Anunnaki's trail in more than a generation. We need time on the surface. Time to explore and gather data. Once the superintendent's ships start cutting away Slag's core, any artifacts the Anunnaki left behind will be lost forever."
"Get serious,” Cantrell groaned. He gave the collar of his business tunic an annoyed tug. “Slag's atmosphere is full of hydrogen sulfide. There's nothing down there but worms. Them, and that stinking ice algae they eat. Even if the Anunnaki did land—which I doubt, by the way . . .” He rolled his eyes knowingly at the advocate. “. . . there wouldn't be anything left. With all those quakes, the surface is way too unstable."
Liz gritted her teeth, forcing herself to remain calm. She was a Fleet officer. She wasn't going to let some corporate loud mouth rattle her with a lot of irresponsible nonsense. Besides, it looked to her like Advocate Lassiter had heard more than enough of Mr. Cantrell's rant. Any moment now, he was going to come down on the superintendent with both feet—a trampling that she intended to enjoy to the fullest.
Confident that she'd made her point, she carefully interlaced her fingers on the table and turned toward the advocate, waiting for him to respond.
Advocate Lassiter nodded his acknowledgement, then cleared his throat, smoothing the satin cuffs of his robe as he
organized his thoughts. As the Council's official liaison for their mission, he had both the responsibility and the authority to ensure that they left no stone unturned in their quest to track down the Anunnaki. The Anunnaki, after all, were the whole reason they had launched the Fleet in the first place—to reunite themselves with the ancient astronauts who'd visited Earth and set humankind on the road to civilization. At least, that's what Liz and every child on their generations-long pilgrimage had been taught for longer than anyone could remember. All of which meant that Advocate Lassiter wasn't going to let Cantrell's ships anywhere near Slag until they'd scoured every square inch of the moon's surface, no matter how stable or unstable it happened to be. Or so Liz thought—right up to the moment Advocate Lassiter reached across the table, patted her reassuringly on the arm and gave her a smile so sweet she thought his teeth would melt in his mouth.
"You know, my dear, Superintendent Cantrell does have a point,” he said. “Much as we may hate to admit it, seismic activity most certainly would have destroyed any artifacts the Anunnaki left on Slag's surface long before we arrived."
The advocate's words jolted Liz like a slap in the face. This was the Anunnaki they were talking about—the beings who'd lifted their ancestors out of savagery, who might even have modified their DNA in the process. Advocate Lassiter couldn't possibly believe what Cantrell was telling him, not with their best chance to learn something new about the Anunnaki in more than a hundred years. It just wasn't possible. And yet, Advocate Lassiter now sounded as though he were more interested in helping the superintendent meet his precious quota than in completing their mission.
"Let's face it,” Cantrell was saying as he leaned back in his chair and jerked a thumb toward the curved window of the conference room. “You haven't proved that pile of junk out there was ever an Anunnaki ship in the first place. For all we know, it's some old probe we sent out ourselves. Probably hit a meteorite and got itself blown to hell and gone before anybody even remembers."