News You Can Bruise for 2009 August 12

This was a quick one because the bulk of the issue is the first 25% of Vernor Vinge's The Peace War. It's a pretty good novel but I've already read it, and if you want to read it it's easier to just buy the novel.

What else is there of note? Two things: David Brin's speculative nonfiction "The Deadly Thing at 2.4 Kilo-Parsecs", which I remember reading online but can't find now, and Allison Tellure's story "Low Midnight", which has cool sea monsters. That's it, really. But! I love the ads in old Analog! They've got lots of ads for role-playing and computer games. I took pictures of my favorites and put them up for you. Highlights:

• An ad for the cult-classic boardgame Cosmic Encounter with a blurb by Harlan Ellison.
• An ad for the paperback of Battlefield Earth.
• Two computer games based on Fred Saberhagen's Berserker series, published by Baen Software, which promises upcoming games co-written by luminaries like Robert Heinlein and C.J. Cherryh. I'm pretty sure those games didn't happen.
• An ad for a board game not mentioned anywhere on the web: Space Colony Rescue® by (one assumes) David Mac, which promises exciting encounters with "Abandoned Fuel Depots". It's possible this game didn't really exist either.