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Analog Science Fiction & Fact Magazine
April 2002

This month's issue of Analog features an editorial by Stanley Schmidt who takes issue with the current 'Throwaway Mentality' of society. He is concerned that people are more willing to just throw out or replace perfectly working products after just a few years and wonders whether it is worth spending so much for the 'Latest and Greatest' consumer products.

Stories featured in this issue are:

• "Hominids (Part 4 of 4)" by Robert J. Sawyer. In the concluding part of the story, Ponter, the Neanderthal from an alternate Earth, is on the verge of accepting his new life on our Earth. But his Neanderthal partner, having successfully eluded the watching authorities, rushes to duplicate the experiment that caused Ponter's disappearance from his world, hoping to locate Ponter and prove his innocence. Will life ever be the same for all involved?
• "Sea Changes" by Amy Bechtel. A story about a veternarian who gets involved with a family who has a very unusual set of sea creatures who have laid a bunch of eggs. Things get complicated when the eggs hatch since the creatures' lifecycle can only be guessed at.
• "Our Man in Pluvia" by Charles L. Harness. A humourous story that about the various 'hoops' an agent has to jump through in order to get a movie scene shot. It doesn't help when the weather refuses to cooperate and threatens to do something it has not done for a long time in a certain place.
• "Chum" by Jerry Oltion. A story that looks at what happens when two old friends, while on a fishing expedition, have to end up having to become closer than they expected.
• "The Diamond Drill" by Charles Sheffield. An interesting puzzle story that will challenge the reader. One person claims to possess stage jewelry that resembles diamonds in all but one respect. So, is he what has what he says it is or are they diamonds in disguise? Try to figure it out before the end of the story.
• "The History of Chan's Journey to the Celestial Regions" by Richard Foss. An entertaining tale about a possible journey to the Moon that could have happened a long time ago in a country that is associated with a different kind of rocket.
• "Galactic Society" by Robert Zubrin. This Science Fact article looks at whether there is life out there and what form it would take. Starting with the Drake Equation, he examines the possibility that the first lifeforms (even on Earth) may have been designed by aliens to evolve and propogate through space and gives his own spin on how many galactic civilisations may be out there. He then looks at how we can find and contact alien civilisations and how to 'join' into such a society.
• Brane Bashing: Big Bang or Big Clap? by John G. Cramer. In this Alternative View article, Cramer considers the problems with the current standard model of the evolution of the Universe and considers an alternative theory known as the 'ekpyrotic cosmology' which describes the creation of the universe as the result of a collion of higher-dimensional 'branes' (multi-dimensional membranes).

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