Magazine Review—Analog

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.