Asimov's SF, February 2010

Dell Magazines
www.dellmagazines.com

Copyright ©2010 by Dell Magazines

Department: EDITORIAL: AFFECTING ETERNITY by Sheila Williams

Department: REFLECTIONS: REREADING CLARKE by Robert Silverberg

Novelette: STONE WALL TRUTH by Caroline M. Yoachim

Poetry: REINCARNATION by Peter Swanson

Short Story: DEAD AIR by Damien Broderick

Novelette: THE WOMAN WHO WAITED FOREVER by Bruce McAllister

Short Story: THE BOLD EXPLORER IN THE PLACE BEYOND by David Erik Nelson

Novelette: THE WIND-BLOWN MAN by Aliette de Bodard

Poetry: SUBATOMIC REDEMPTION by Michael Meyerhofer

Novella: THE ICE LINE by Stephen Baxter

Department: NEXT ISSUE

Department: ON BOOKS by Peter Heck

Department: SF CONVENTIONAL CALENDAR by Erwin S. Strauss

Asimov's Science Fiction
. ISSN 1065-2698. Vol. 34, No.2. Whole No. 409, February 2010. GST #R123293128. Published monthly except for two combined double issues in April/May and October/November by Dell Magazines, a division of Crosstown Publications. One year subscription $55.90 in the United States and U.S. possessions. In all other countries $65.90 (GST included in Canada), payable in advance in U.S. funds. Address for subscription and all other correspondence about them, 6 Prowitt Street, Norwalk, CT 06855. Allow 6 to 8 weeks for change of address. Address for all editorial matters:
Asimov's Science Fiction,
267 Broadway, 4th Floor, New York, N.Y. 10007.
Asimov's Science Fiction
is the registered trademark of Dell Magazines, a division of Crosstown Publications. © 2009 by Dell Magazines, a division of Crosstown Publications, 6 Prowitt Street, Norwalk, CT 06855. All rights reserved, printed in the U.S.A. Protection secured under the Universal and Pan American Copyright Conventions. Reproduction or use of editorial or pictorial content in any manner without express permission is prohibited. All submissions must include a self-addressed, stamped envelope; the publisher assumes no responsibility for unsolicited manuscripts. Periodical postage paid at Norwalk, CT and additional mailing offices. POSTMASTER, send change of address to
Asimov's Science Fiction,
6 Prowitt Street, Norwalk, CT 06855. In Canada return to Quebecor St. Jean, 800 Blvd. Industrial, St. Jean, Quebec J3B 8G4.

Sheila Williams:
Editor
Brian Bieniowski:
Managing Editor
Mary Grant:
Editorial Assistant
Victoria Green:
Senior Art Director
Lynda Meek:
Graphic Production Artist
Laura Tulley:
Senior Production Manager
Jennifer Cone:
Production Associate
Abigail Browning:
Manager Subsidiary Rights and Marketing
Bruce W. Sherbow:
Senior Vice President, Sales and Marketing
Sandy Marlowe:
Circulation Services
Julia McEvoy:
Manager, Advertising Sales
Advertising Representative
Robin DiMeglio: Advertising Sales Manager
Phone: (203) 866-6688 ext. 180
Fax: (203) 854-5962
[email protected]
(Display and Classified Advertising)
Peter Kanter:
Publisher
Christine Begley:
Vice President, Editorial and Product Development
Susan Kendrioski:
Vice President, Design and Production
Isaac Asimov:
Editorial Director (1977-1992)

Stories from
Asimov's
have won 50 Hugos and 27 Nebula Awards, and our editors have received 18 Hugo Awards for Best Editor.

Please do not send us your manuscript until you've gotten a copy of our manuscript guidelines. To obtain this, send us a self-addressed, stamped business-size envelope (what stationery stores call a number 10 envelope), and a note requesting this information. Please write “manuscript guidelines” in the bottom left-hand corner of the outside envelope. The address for this and for all editorial correspondence is Asimov's Science Fiction, 475 Park Avenue South, New York, NY 10016. While we're always looking for new writers, please, in the interest of time-saving, find out what we're loking for, and how to prepare it, before submitting your story.

When I landed my job as editorial assistant as
Asimov's,
I felt a bit like a skydiver who had managed to set down on a precipice. Thankfully, more experienced hands reached out to steady me, so that the wind couldn't blow me off my perch. Over the course of my career I've amassed debts of gratitude to many people, but the two who grounded me most in those early days were Betsy Mitchell and Eleanor Sullivan.

Both women were colleagues of mine at Davis Publications. Betsy's name may be familiar to very long-time readers of
Asimov's
and certainly will be to those who know the names of the editors behind the books at the big SF publishing houses. Betsy had already worked as a journalist and as a copywriter at Dell Books before she became an editorial assistant on both
Analog
and
Asimov's
in late 1980. By the time I joined the magazine, she was the managing editor of
Analog
and the associate editor of
Asimov's
. Betsy's job at
Analog
was demanding and time consuming
.
Her duties at
Asimov's
were primarily to train me. It was a joy to be taught by someone as even-tempered and as much fun as Betsy. Due to our workload, I often had to operate on my own, and it seemed as though I was destined to make every possible mistake at least once. I can still see her standing in my doorway cheerfully delivering horrifying news about the very first issue of
Asimov's
to carry my name. In proofing the magazine, I hadn't noticed that some of the galleys for a nonfiction column had been pasted up out of order. Betsy's patience and good humor helped me learn from these mistakes without being humiliated and ensured that they were never repeated. Her own name came off the masthead when mine went on, but her help and encouragement lasted for months afterward.

I'd been flying solo for a while when Betsy announced that she was leaving the magazines to help Jim Baen start up his brand new publishing company, Baen Books. I was heartbroken to see her go, but my loss was science fiction's gain. Betsy eventually moved from Baen Books to Bantam Spectra where she was named associate publisher. At Spectra, she edited the Hugo Award-winner
Hyperion
by Dan Simmons and
Virtual Light
by William Gibson. Later, she founded the Aspect line at Warner Books. One of her goals at Aspect was to focus on the work of writers of color. Nalo Hopkinson, whose
Brown Girl in the Ring
won Aspect's initial first-novel contest, was one of her discoveries. Betsy was the publisher of the World Fantasy Award winning
Dark Matter,
the first-ever anthology of speculative fiction by black writers. She is now the Vice President/Editor-in-Chief of Del Rey Books where, in addition to editing such writers as Michael Chabon, Terry Brooks, and Naomi Novik, she publishes Del Rey Manga and graphic novels.

While I was learning how to produce a magazine from Betsy, I was learning about the life of an editor from Eleanor Sullivan, the editor of
Ellery Queen's
Mys
tery Magazine.
Eleanor was about twenty-five years older than I and was much more sophisticated. She was blonde and the first person I'd ever met who always wore black. Eleanor lived in a large duplex apartment on East 48th Street. She knew everyone. Her neighbor was Katherine Hepburn and her close friends included Judith Crist, Ruth Rendell, and Phyllis Diller. Eleanor invited me to her home and took me out to places like Applause, a restaurant where every so often the wait staff would leave off serving drinks and dinner to break into song and dance routines. Although she was a very private person, she told me wonderful stories about her life and about publishing. She had worked as an elementary school teacher for ten years before joining the staff of
Ellery Queen
in 1970, and she was the editor of
Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine
from 1975 until 1981. Eleanor worked closely with Fred Dannay, the editor and one half of the team of cousins that made up the Ellery Queen pseudonym. The editorship of his magazine was passed to Eleanor when he died.

At Davis, we could take calls after hours by intercepting the night bell. Once, I took a call from a woman with a familiar voice. It was the actress Loretta Swit and she wanted to give Eleanor two tickets to that evening's Broadway performance of
Edwin Drood
. I wasn't sure if my life would be worth less if I lost Eleanor a shot at the tickets or if I gave out her home number. As I dithered, Loretta sweetly asked me if it would help if she told Eleanor I'd been very difficult. With great relief, I said that would be lovely and passed along the information.

Though a mystery editor might seem to have a tenuous connection to science fiction, it was another of Eleanor's friendships that brought about the existence of this very magazine. Since Fred Dannay worked mostly from his home, Eleanor had held down the fort at the New York office. Isaac Asimov loved visiting with her and as a result he submitted all his Black Widower and Union Club mystery stories in person. It was because of these visits that our publisher, Joel Davis, got to know Isaac and eventually asked him if he could attach the Good Doctor's name to a science fiction magazine.

Eleanor died almost twenty years ago, but I think of her when I hang ornaments from her on my Christmas tree or when my kids complain that I wear too much black. While our busy lives don't allow us to see that much of each other, Betsy Mitchell has remained my friend for all these years. These two women who helped shape me also shaped our world. In an alternate universe that is without Betsy Mitchell, the SF field looks completely different from the one we know. And without an Eleanor Sullivan, there is no
Asimov's Science Fiction
magazine.

Copyright © 2010 Sheila Williams

[Back to Table of Contents]

The merits of most of the science fiction of Arthur C. Clarke have largely escaped me. There is no denying the overwhelming visionary fertility of his imagination—he exceeds all others in his ability to show us the wonders of the as yet uncharted realms of space and time—and some of his short stories are superb. But the big, bland novels that repeatedly put him on the best-seller lists—the
Rendezvous with Rama
books,
Imperial Earth
,
2001
and its various sequels, et cetera, have always struck me, despite their passages of great conceptual inventiveness, as dull, slow, and passionless. That they should have enjoyed such great commercial success and gobbled up so many Hugo and Nebula awards left me baffled.

In my first few years as a science fiction reader, though, when everything was new and wondrous for me and I had not yet come to judge what I read with the eye of a fellow practitioner of the craft, Clarke's earliest published fiction had a powerful impact on me—such stories as “Loophole” and “Rescue Party,” and the short novel
Against the Fall of Night
, all of which I read when I was thirteen or fourteen. So I decided, for this series of essays on rereading my early SF favorites, to see what it was that I had found so marvelous in Clarke's first novel when I encountered it more than sixty years ago.

As it happened, the edition of
Against the Fall of Night
that I took down from the shelf also contained a novella, “The Lion of Comarre,” that first appeared in the pulp magazine
Thrilling Wonder Stories
in the summer of 1949, when I was barely into my teens. I remembered that one fondly, too; and so I began my Clarke research with it now.