Originally in : Analog, December 2010.
An increasingly rare occurrence – a story from Analog in a Year’s Best volume. The editors point out that Analog had a better year with SF on account of the increasing amount of fantasy in the other mags.
The story is set on the planet Fremon, the location of Cooper’s first novel. As with a number of Analog stories, it is about human settlers on an alien planet struggling to understand the flora and fauna, and making some kind of accommodation in order for humanity to survive. Unlike a number of Analog stories of this ilk, it is quite well written, but didn’t really do that much for me – it could just as easily have been any settlers from any historical period on Earth struggling with the unknown.
