Andy Duncan

Wiki entry, ISFDB entry ------------ Andy Duncan "The Chief Designer" © IASFM, Jun 2001 The Pottawatomie Giant and Other Stories, 2012 --novella : 2002 Hugo --winner : 2002 Sturgeon W --novella : 2002 Locus /3 --short fiction : 2002 SE SF Award W --novella : 2002 Asimov's Reader Poll /4 --novella : 2003 Nebula --/ fourth place sf story --/ style award --/ emotion award A lovely paen to the sheer idea of "relentless space exploration" - and to famous Russian rocket designer Sergei Korolev (who sent off Yury Gagarin into space). Here is a quote from an excellent review by Norman Spinrad (IASFM, March 2002) that illuminates the heart of the story, while shedding light on some interesting qualities of a Russian soul: "...From my own occasional personal contact with cosmonauts and with Russians and Russia in general, there is something in the Russian soul that allows them to be unashamed and unabashed romantics. I'm no expert, but somehow I doubt that there is an exact translation in Russian for “corny.” Perhaps this up-front and unapologetic romanticism is also what attracts the culture to ideologies, from pre-revolutionary Pan-Slavism to Marxist utopianism, and now, with its demise, to the renaissance of the always nationalistic Russian Orthodox Church. Russia, it seems, abhors an ideological vacuum... and it's not that far from the visionary idealism that is the more sophisticated and complexly adult version of the gosh-wow sense of wonder that drew generations of kids to those simple-minded SF pulps. From the very beginning, indeed from before the beginning, going back to Tsiolkovski's nineteenth century speculations, the true goal of the Russian space program — of the engineers and cosmonauts and of its guiding light Korolov, if not all of the bureaucrats and politicians above them — was the exploration of the solar system and beyond by humans, the expansion of the species out into the great wide universal yonder. Why? As a famous jazz musician once said in a somewhat different context, if you have to ask, you're never gonna get it." --Norman Spinrad, 2012 ------------ "The Pottawatomie Giant" © Sci Fiction, Nov 2000 The Pottawatomie Giant and Other Stories, 2012 --short fiction : 2001 World Fantasy W --novelette : 2001 Locus /13 --novelette : 2002 Nebula "Senator Bilbo" © Starlight # 3, ed. P. Hayden, 2001 The Pottawatomie Giant and Other Stories, 2012 --short story : 2002 Locus /2 --short fiction : 2002 SE SF Award ------------------------

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