{"id":1482,"date":"2021-07-17T13:23:56","date_gmt":"2021-07-17T13:23:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/?p=1482"},"modified":"2021-07-28T12:21:08","modified_gmt":"2021-07-28T12:21:08","slug":"minerva-girls-by-james-van-pelt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/?p=1482","title":{"rendered":"Minerva Girls by James Van Pelt"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Minerva Girls<\/em><\/strong> by James Van Pelt (Analog<\/em>, September\/October 2020) starts with three precocious fourteen year old girls planning a trip to the Moon. Throughout the construction of their ship (or rather the adaptation of a gas station storage tank with insulation and an anti-gravity drive), Penny the narrator goes to summer school. As she struggles to master her geography lessons\u2014a list of states, etc.\u2014we see her situation in school, i.e. the tribalism, bullying, pettiness, and so on. When Penny isn\u2019t in class, or hanging out with Jacqueline and Selena, she works in her (presumably widowed) father\u2019s scrap yard, where she sources the parts needed for the ship.
About half way through the story a ticking clock is introduced in the form of Selena and Jacqueline\u2019s parents plans to move away, and the trio rush to test the anti-gravity drive:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By the time we\u2019d solidified the anchors and rigged the power source, the eastern sky had lightened.
We crowded into the crane\u2019s control booth fifty yards from our test site. Selena connected the video game joystick to the wires that ran to the Distortion Drive. She held it out to Jacqueline. \u201cYou should do the honors.\u201d
I had my phone out to film our results.
I guess I thought the Distortion Drive would rise up from the golf cart trailer until the cables stopped its progress. That, or it wouldn\u2019t move, which seemed more possible. I steadied the phone and turned on the video.
Jacqueline took a deep breath, then pushed the joystick forward a tick.
I lurched against the glass, as if someone had tipped the control booth from behind. Selena squeaked and caught herself from falling.
Jacqueline bumped her head on the window. Then the control booth shifted back into place.
I said, \u201cWhat happened?\u201d while rubbing my shoulder.
\u201cDang,\u201d said Jacqueline. \u201cThat\u2019s going to leave a welt.\u201d She sat on the control booth floor, her notebooks spilled around her.
\u201cMy machine!\u201d Selena opened the door.
Jacqueline grabbed Selena\u2019s leg. \u201cNot yet.\u201d
A clattering like hail rattled the control booth\u2019s metal ceiling for a couple seconds. Gravel and marble-sized rocks bounced off the ground around the booth. My toolbox that I\u2019d left next to the trailer slammed down along with the wrenches and other tools that had been in it.
\u201cI hadn\u2019t considered that,\u201d said Jacqueline. \u201cI\u2019ll need to narrow the distortion field.\u201d  p. 33<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Eventually (spoiler) they set off on their trip, and Penny sees North America from orbit: now that the land isn\u2019t an abstract shape on paper she can easily reel off the states and cities, and knows she\u2019ll ace her geography test the next day. They continue on to the Moon.
I think I can see the attraction of this story, which is essentially a YA piece for teenage girls (although it harks back to the lone inventor trope it\u2019s mostly about their personal tribulations). But I wonder if even that audience will manage to suspend disbelief at the thought of three fourteen-year-olds inventing a gravity drive and going to the moon.
I was also puzzled about the story\u2019s appearance in Analog<\/em>\u2014I wouldn\u2019t have though that the magazine\u2019s readers would be interested in something like this but, surprisingly, it won the novelette section of the Anlab Awards for 2020. I suspect the (mainly) American readership like sentimental YA material more than I do.
** (Average). 8,300 words.

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Minerva Girls by James Van Pelt (Analog, September\/October 2020) starts with three precocious fourteen year old girls planning a trip to the Moon. Throughout the construction of their ship (or rather the adaptation of a gas station storage tank with insulation and an anti-gravity drive), Penny the narrator goes to summer school. As she struggles […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[363],"tags":[17,296,33,364,7],"class_list":["post-1482","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-james-van-pelt","tag-17","tag-296","tag-analog","tag-james-van-pelt","tag-novelette"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1482","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1482"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1482\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1510,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1482\/revisions\/1510"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1482"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1482"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1482"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}