Analog Review

 The March/April 2025 issue of Analog had a number of mystery stories.

The novella “Murder on the Eris Express” by Beth Goder was a somewhat gruesome murder mystery with incredible comic relief by a couple of bots. The captain turns off his ship’s AI, then is found dead a few hours later. The AI, named Mo, is upset at the death and its own lack of memory. The grooves around the captain’s neck will be the key to solving the murder. Meanwhile, Cleaning Bot 444 is disgusted at all the blood and other human debris in the captain’s quarters. He vacuums it all up and disposes of it.

“Mr. Palomar goes to Space” is a funny short story by Hayden Trenholm. Mr. Palomar likes to fill out surveys. Then he is whisked off to Cape Canaveral. He is disappointed to find out he was chosen to go to space as an experiment, because he is very average. At one point he is taped to the wall of a space station to make sure he does not interfere with the professionals.

Kate MacLeod’s novelette “Heat Death” is a vividly written mystery. Although the murder victim is from Mars, this is not really science fiction. He could simply have been from a distant place on Earth. 

The most immersive novella is “The Return of Tom Dillon” by Harry Lang. A colony on Mars has entire cities under pressurized domes. The body of a woman is found frozen and buried from the waist down outside the domes. Detective Hector Kovack has his own stressors, since his brother murdered their mother, and Kovack had to kill him in a shootout. He drinks too much. But he is a dogged investigator, asking questions others don’t, and discarding false leads. He ends up acting more like a private investigator, disregarding rules in his search for the truth.

It's easy to blame a small terrorist group that has been operating on Mars, but Kovack points out the MO doesn’t match the terrorists. Despite the terrorists, Mars has had a low murder rate. A funny moment in this grim story is when a detective from Earth named McGill asks if this could be a copycat killing. The Mars detectives haven’t heard that term before. After the Earth detective explains, Kovack thinks, “What kind of asylum did McGill come from?”

So overall, if you like mysteries, either buy this on a newsstand or find it in a library.

Princess Mononoke

I recently saw Princess Mononoke in a theater. It was a treat to see it on a big screen. I will not  try to summarize the plot, which concerns nature gods in Japan. But for those who have seen it, consider these themes:

The gods are cruel. I know the movie tried hard to make a distinction between a god in its natural state and a god who has turned into a demon. But such a being can arbitrarily decide to wipe out an entire village. When one goes beyond bowdlerized versions of myths and legends for boys and girls, it becomes clear the ancients and the Japanese until relatively recently characterized the gods as cruel.

Mononoke is an allegory. As human civilization advances, especially with the smelting of iron, the gods become weaker and withdraw. This fast-paced drama in its own way shows that as civilization advances, belief in the old gods fades and eventually dies out.

At the same time, the gods are real. Even though this story is an allegory, at the same time it portrays the gods as real. If one offends or even attacks the gods, they react with terrifying fury. Though some movies in the West do the same sort of parallel messaging, Mononoke is non-Western storytelling.

We have seen these characters before. I will go out on a limb and say Prince Ashitaka is the real main character. While on a quest, villagers who did not know him before sense he is a natural leader and are willing to follow his orders. Contrary to some previews, Lady Eboshi of Irontown is not an evil character. She is quite civil and represents scientific and technological advancement. Princess Mononoke is led by her emotions. She helps in healing Prince Ashitaka and is constantly hostile towards Lady Eboshi.

These are archetypal characters that can be found in Medieval morality plays. We have them in Star Trek: The Original Series as Kirk, Spock, and McCoy.

Blossoms