{"id":5573,"date":"2022-09-13T11:13:54","date_gmt":"2022-09-13T11:13:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/?p=5573"},"modified":"2022-09-13T11:13:56","modified_gmt":"2022-09-13T11:13:56","slug":"no-stranger-to-native-shores-by-matt-mchugh","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/?p=5573","title":{"rendered":"No Stranger to Native Shores by Matt McHugh"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

No Stranger to Native Shores<\/em><\/strong> by Matt McHugh (Analog<\/em>, November\/December 2021)1<\/sup> begins with Minister Geddek asking Nurse Betta if the young child she has in her charge is well before telling her that a ship similar to the one used by the child\u2019s people is approaching (it isn\u2019t obvious that Geddek and Betta are aliens at this point\u2014and that their charge is a human child\u2014but we soon find out). After this brief exchange the story switches to the approaching human ship, Bellerophon<\/em>, and we are introduced to another of the main characters, a Senator Susan Tristam Cowley of the Allied Human Territories. She and the crew discuss the information they have gathered about the alien society on the planet ahead, and we also learn about an earlier expedition\u2014which included Cowley\u2019s sister and her husband\u2014whose ship, Outreach<\/em>, disappeared (although it left its \u201cframe\u201d in orbit).
The rest of the story is a cat-and-mouse piece that sees the humans land, meet the aliens, and try to discover what happened to Outreach<\/em>. Meanwhile, the Minister tells the child, Topper, that they arrived on the planet when Outreach<\/em> crashlanded there\u2014but does not tell them that the aliens summoned an electrical storm to destroy the ship and subsequently built a research building around the wreckage.
Eventually, Cowley and her crew discover (a) that her sister was pregnant and had a child, (b) that the aliens destroyed the ship, and (c) that the aliens have the child captive. The Bellerophon<\/em> sends in an armed team in to recover the child, and Geddek\u2019s city simultaneously comes under attack from another alien nation. Betta takes Hopper and makes a run for it (the alien loves its human charge and is is determined not to give up the child) but Geddek intercepts the pair and tells them about the circumstances behind the destruction of the Outreach<\/em>, his subsequent subterfuge to keep Topper safe, and that giving the child to the humans is the only way he can prevent further bloodshed.
The climax of the story sees Cowley meet Topper\u2014her sister\u2019s daughter\u2014in an emotional scene. Geddek then explains the complex political situation on the planet to Cowley (Topper translates the alien\u2019s clicking and popping speech), and how certain factions want to profit off the wreckage of a second ship. It becomes clear that Geddek is on Cowley\u2019s side, and she arranges for the Outreach<\/em>\u2019s orbital frame to land and serve as a decoy to draw off the attacking forces. While Geddek passes the position of the frame to the attacking forces, Betta and Topper leave with Crowley on the Bellerophon<\/em>. Meanwhile, a human couple stay on the planet to work with Geddek. (I may have missed out one or two points in this synopsis as the plot has a lot of moving parts and it\u2019s been a couple of weeks since I read it\u2014but most of it is there).
All things considered this is a pretty good traditional science fiction yarn, but the ending is overplotted, and this sees the story jump through a lot of unlikely hoops\u2014the crash deception plan, the overly neat alien\/human exchanges, etc.
A First Contact piece that is almost there.
**+ (Average to Good). 9,150 words. Story link<\/a>.

1. This placed third in the novelette category of the 2022 Analog<\/em> Readers\u2019 Poll Awards.

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

No Stranger to Native Shores by Matt McHugh (Analog, November\/December 2021)1 begins with Minister Geddek asking Nurse Betta if the young child she has in her charge is well before telling her that a ship similar to the one used by the child\u2019s people is approaching (it isn\u2019t obvious that Geddek and Betta are aliens […]<\/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":[1301],"tags":[256,50,33,718,1303,1302,7],"class_list":["post-5573","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-matt-mchugh","tag-2-5","tag-50","tag-analog","tag-first-contact","tag-human-adopted-by-aliens","tag-matt-mchugh","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\/5573","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=5573"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5573\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5590,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5573\/revisions\/5590"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5573"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5573"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5573"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}