Analog's January/February 2005 issue includes the first part of a serial by Jack Williamson but that, alas, falls out of the purview of this column. I liked the stories I read, even though none of them would make my Hugo list.

"A Few Good Men" by Richard A. Lovett tells of a young woman who winds up in a future in which they need to kidnap men from our time. How this is explained and how she works things out make for a classic Analog story. "The Supersonic Zeppelin" is a satiric story by Ben Bova about the rise and fall of a SSZ project. "Rough Draft" by Kevin J. Anderson and Rebecca Moesta deals with a one-hit wonder science fiction writer who must confront a novel written by him in an alternate universe. "Nova Terra" by Jeffrey D. Kooistra is a nice little story about a man who builds an "impossible" motor. Also very good is "Seventy-Five Years" by Michael A. Burstein which starts out mundanely about a Senator's bill to extend the release date of census information but goes in an unexpected direction.

The remaining story was one I liked a little less. "Uneducated Night and Strange Shadows" by James Gunn completes his "Gift From The Stars" series published previously in Analog. Characters from the previous stories arrive on the world from which the plans for a spaceship were sent. Unfortunately, the story is a bit too talky for my tastes.

(Source: Penny Press)