“Protocol”, Promised Land, K-19
The date inflation at Analog never ceases to amaze me. I’m over a month behind on this one, but the date on the cover is September 2002. Anyway, my favorite story this time was “Protocol” by Timothy Zahn. It’s listed as a novelette; I would have called it a short story. The aliens were appropriately alien.
Promised Land was an experiment for me, and one that failed. If I had to guess, I’d say Connie Willis was the co- and Cynthia Felice was the author of this sci-fi/romance crossover. The romance side won. Nothing significant would be changed by transporting all the characters and plot events to the Wild West: the city girl returning to the family farm, the quiet but dependable cowpoke boy, the devilish rake, the flirt with a heart of gold, etc. Down to details of canning fruit, sewing sleeves and prairie fires, it’s a Western, not a sci-fi novel. The natives are fire-monkeys rather than Apaches; only the city girl’s alien pet is necessary to the plot, and you can see that resolution coming from three territories away.
Yes, I was warned by the back cover, but when I think of “an all-new novel that is not just sweeping science fiction, but an engaging romantic story as well” I think Shards of Honor. I don’t think Harlequin Romances set in space. There are genres and there are genres. Romance is one that drops anvils on your head every chapter or so. Ouch. Ouch. Ouch! The plot turns on the heroine’s slow, explicit, and stereotypical realization that the hero is her One True Love and not the neanderthal she thought. On the side, her guilt for flirting with the local Lothario dawns upon her - and I never even noticed she was flirting with him.
I don’t object to romance conventions per se, not even ones like the flirting issue that I just don’t grok. I firmly believe in a woman’s right to write off her education and spend the rest of her life on a farm pickling vegetables, baking compotes and reproducing. But that’s not science fiction. The genre is more than a sprinkling of spaceships and cute alien pets - there is a kind of story that is a sci-fi story and Promised Land isn’t that kind.
On the other hand, “K19: The Widowmaker” had a sci-fi plot, even though it was set in the past. I couldn’t help thinking of Spock in “The Wrath of Khan” when the sailors braved the reactor chamber. I’m not saying K19 was a great movie (Liam Neeson aside), but it was about the science. You could transport all the characters and plot events to a spaceship, and nothing significant would be changed.