AnLab Awards

DELL MAGAZINES

PRESS RELEASE

New York, NY—We are pleased to announce the winners of Analog Science Fiction and Fact’s AnLab Award. They are:

Analog Science Fiction and Fact

Analytical Laboratory Winners

Best Novella:               “Nexus” by Michael F. Flynn (3-4/17)

Best Novelette:           “For All Mankind” by C. Stuart Hardwick (7-8/17)

Best Short Story:         “Paradise Regained” by Edward M. Lerner (1-2/17)

Best Fact Article:        “The Quest for the 2:00 Marathon” by Richard A. Lovett (9-10/17)

Best Poem:                  TIE: “Barriers” by J. Northcutt Jr. (3-4/17)

                                    TIE: “Hypothesis/Assertion” by Daniel D. Villani (3-4/17)

Best Cover:                 July/August 2017 by Rado Javor

Another kind word for "Nexus"

received at ANALOG:

Dear Mr Quachri,

I have just read the first Novella in this double issue - "Nexus" by Michael F. Flynn. I have not read anything else as yet in this issue - I wanted to write to you forthwith.

If I find nothing else worth reading in this issue, so be it.

"Nexus" is an Analog masterpiece! I have to confess that the first 2 or 3 pages seemed difficult to read and understand, had me confused and wondering what sort of rubbish is now being produced for consumption by readers. And suddenly it clicked for me, and I realised that I was reading the best Science Fiction story that has come my way in years. My congratulations to you for printing it and to Mr Flynn for having written it. It has originality, great characterisation, a superb writing style, the prose is beautifully-written, the plot sensationally bringing together so many Science Fiction memes, the imagination and ideas making a story that is about 95% narrative (breaking all the rules) fascinating, and all with great style and class. I absolutely loved it. This should become a classic in the genre and a master-class in how to write great fiction. More like this, please!

Sincerely,

Mel Anthony

(English but living in France)

TOF's reaction: I could not have said it better myself.

Nexus

The estimable Joseph Moore has posted a review of TOF's novella "Nexus" on his blog, Yard Sale of the Mind.

A: Review: Michael Flynn’s Novella Nexsus in this month’s Analog

A reconstruction of a conversation taking place around 12:30 a.m. last night, as my wife is entering the bedroom where I am just putting down the latest issues of Analog:

“Reading Mike Flynn?”

“Just finished. It has about every ridiculous pulp science fiction idea you’ve ever heard of in one place: time travel, appalling space aliens, space aliens that can pass for human, telepathy,  faster than light travel, transporter beams, androids…”

“What’s it about?”

“Aristotelian causality.”

 There is a woman who can’t die, a weather balloon cover story, ninja space cops, weird alien necrophilia (PG-13), alien invaders, aliens working under cover to protect earth from alien invaders. There’s Theadora the hooker-Empress, conflicting time-lines, the need to keep the cops and the military out of it, and super-ninja space cops.

Trying to remember if Area 51 gets a shout out.

And, yes, it all hangs on what Aristotle would call in Greek a ‘walking together’ – a series of coincidences – the component events of which are most definitely caused (they literally could not not be) but the walking together itself is just Fate, which takes the blame but is not, strictly speaking, a cause.

To sum up: Totally awesome. Mr. Flynn has made no direct comments on the whole Pulp Revolution stuff of which I am aware (wise man) – but, based on this, he’s down with it, at least conceptually.
++++++++++++++++

TOF would be a great fool to dispute this review.

Nexus!

Just got word today that my 25 kiloword story "Nexus" has been accepted at ANALOG and will appear in the April issue. April of which year is unspecified. Woo, as they say, hoo.

It is a bit of an unusual yarn. Not, said Trevor, your typical ANALOG story. Naturally, I am thinking of ways I could have done better. 

 

This was the story that was prefigured here and in a few other spots. These drafts may have been altered since the posts.

Nexus

Work progresses on Nexus, which now runs just over 15 kilowords of Immortal Prose. A few of those words to sketch the sixth and final character.

Since he has already teased the Reader with sketches of I. Loberta Shinbro and V. Annie Troy, perhaps TOF should backpedal and add at some point the sketches for II. Stacey Papandreou, III. Bruno Zendahl, and IV. Jim-7.

Nexus Progress

646 words on novelette "Nexus" rough draft. Now at 12 kilowords. Hammer about to come through the telephone. Tidbit:

Orphans of the Mind
V. Annie Troy

     Consider now the worker bee wending her way into the Pentagon from the upper platform of the Metro station. There is a reason for her being there; namely, that she is a civilian contractor “on loan” from MIT to U.S. Cyber Command, called uscybercom in that wonderful acronymic manner the government has. She splits her time between Ft. Meade and the Pentagon and so has been installed in an apartment in College Park, near the University.

      She walks with purpose, eyes straight ahead, no nonsense. She does not actually bump into anyone on the crowded platform or on the escalator to the security center, but swims like a fish among fish, maintaining her distance. A few in the morning stream send greetings her way and she answers their hails, but for the most part she is alone in the crowd.
     She seldom smiles – it is too much of an effort – and when she does, it is a slight, wan upturn of the lips. You would have to look twice to be sure it was there, and it was seldom there long enough to be caught by that second look. “A cold fish,” some have called her, which was both true and unjust. Considering her upbringing, it is a wonder she can smile at all. Yet, there is this one just truth about the judgement: There is something darned fishy about her.

(c) 2015. Michael F. Flynn

Jim-7

An excerpt from a rough draft of "Nexus," currently under construction, has been put on the PREVIEW PAGE.

IV. Jim-7

Alien life, we are told, would be unlike human life, and that may be true enough as regards such trivia as species and body form. Indeed, an alien may possess senses, organs, and appetites unknown to us. What lusts do bats endure that compel their squeaks? Does it pleasure them to receive the echo? How can human minds encompass the hankerings of bats – let alone those of a headwalker?

(This particular species of headwalker, for example, does not feel pleasure in the reproductive act. Rather, it feels a growing pain the longer it abstains, so the pleasure is more like the pleasure of ceasing to hit yourself on the head with a hammer. Mother Nature has more than one way of butt-kicking her children into reproduction.)

And yet, all things pursue the good insofar as they know the good, and the good is whatever preserves and completes its nature. In inanimate bodies, this preservation is called “inertia.” For animate bodies, it is called “life.” The struggle to maintain existence that Darwin saw in living kinds is only a higher form of the struggle of a boulder to remain stubbornly in place.

(cont. at the Preview)

Nexus

TOF's eager reader,
eagerly reading

Spent much of today working on what is shaping up to a novelette. Up to 6800 words so far, but not all of them are of equal quality. Trying to apply the dictum: First, get it written; then get it right.

Have finished parts I-III: Loberta Shinbro, Stacey Papadopolous, and Lt. Col. Bruno Zendahl, USAF. In Part I Shinbro saw Stacey on the TV, discovered his time machine being fiddled with by local criminals, and has a close encounter with Jim-7. In Part II, Stacey notices Janet Murchison at a distance, then encounters Shinbro. In Part III, Zendahl stops by the Seladar League in Philadelphia and is asked by the council to review surveillance video in which Jim-7 appears. In the course of this, he notices Shinbro briefly at the edge of the frame. He also calls Annie Troy to ask for information on possible orbital shenanigans.

Just why Shinbro was getting drunk is revealed in Part I, but not the cause of the cause, as it were. Why Jim-7 was in the electronics warehouse will be learned in Part IV. Stacey, Bruno, and Annie have similar -- and more passive -- motives, so I think Janet may hold the key. However, I will not know until I get there.

Nexus

Here is an excerpt from Nexus. The first part is a kind of prologue. Everything is roughly drafty.

Nexus

by Michael F. Flynn