Analog Science Fiction and Fact - September/October 2017

Our lead story for our September/October issue presents a conundrum: a notable figure is seemingly plucked out of the past, but his presence in the future isn’t just unlikely, it’s impossible . . . or is it? Find out in “My Fifth and Most Exotic Voyage,” by Edward M. Lerner.

In our fact article for the issue, Richard A. Lovett checks the progress of “The Quest for the 2:00 Marathon.” More than just a look at the evolution of sports, it’s biology, chemistry, and no less than a matter of how far we can push the human form. Just what might we be capable of under the right circumstances? This is one answer to that question.

Then misfortune befalls a group of scientists including some Uplifted animals in “i know my own, and my own know me,” by Tracy Canfield; letters from the Front and quantum warfare mingle in Eric Del Carlo’s “Ghostmail”; Marie Vibbert builds “The First Trebuchet on Mars”; Simon Kewin goes “Climbing Olympus”; Rich Larson brings us the most personal possible tale of revenge in “The Old Man”; very unscientific methods inspired by real world events leave just “The Absence” by Robert R. Chase; even the truly alien may speak in ways we understand, in Tom Jolly’s “The Mathematician”; A Close Encounter winds up being regretted by both parties in “Abductive Reasoning,” by Christopher L. Bennett; there’s a seasonal Probability Zero from Michael F. Flynn, and more, from Craig DeLancey, Lettie Prell, Jerry Oltion, Christina de la Rocha, James Van Pelt, Stanley Schmidt, Norman Spinrad, and Bud Sparhawk.