The March/April 2023 issue of Analog is well worth reading
just for the novelette “The House on Infinity Street” by Allen Steele. It’s a
variation on the standard line given when some fan asks, “Where do you get your
ideas?” The answer, given with a straight face, is “Schenectady.” It works as a
nonsensical answer. If the fan takes the answer seriously, the more elaborate
reply is that some mail-order place (I suppose nowadays it would be on TikTok
or something similar) in Schenectady, New York will mail an author a story idea
for a fee. Some people actually believe the answer, before realizing they’ve
been spoofed.
So in a completely serious tone, Steele tells the supposedly
true story of how a friend of his had the real experience. But it was in Deerfield,
Massachusetts. This was in the late 1950’s—the age of Automats, and also when
pulp magazines like Astounding and Unknown were in their heyday.
A fellow named Shelby Weinberg got writer’s block, and in desperation wrote to
a literary agency that dispensed ideas. What he got back was a description of a
futuristic device. Steele, in the present, realizes it’s a smartphone. Shelby
continued to get uncannily accurate future ideas, including technology like
solar panels. The ideas seemed too real, so eventually a friend persuaded him
to visit the literary agency, with unfortunate results.
“The House on Infinity Street” is an enjoyable stroll down
memory lane, with Steele naming pulp after pulp I had never heard of before. He
also details what it was like to be a struggling writer at the time, with one
writer “borrowing” an idea from another. Even if you are not up on the pulp
origins of science fiction magazines, this is an intriguing window into that
time.
Also enjoyable is the science fact article “Why are the Keplerians
so Different?” by Kevin Walsh of the University of Melbourne. The Keplerians are
the exoplanets discovered by the Kepler space telescope. Contrary to what many
people believe, no one has seen any planets beyond our solar system through a telescope.
Their existence is inferred by a star’s light getting periodically dimmed for a
short time, which is presumably caused by a planet passing in front of that star.
Many Keplerians have orbits lasting less than ten days, which
would mean they are orbiting their stars at immense speeds. Others have very
low density, with one having only one tenth the density of water. Still others
are quite massive. Walsh freely admits that a couple of these more massive supposed
planets are probably brown dwarf stars. (My own take is that some of these exoplanets
are also small stars, but in a new category similar to brown dwarfs.)
In any event, the Keplerian exoplanets do not resemble the planets
in our own solar system.
So if you can order the March/April Analog or read it in a
library, you will find particularly good science fiction and fact to read.
