The Taranth Stone by: Ron Collins Novelette Published in Analog (Magazine ) -- October, 2000, Stanley Schmidt , ED. On Writing "The Taranth Stone"      The problem, you see, was that I did not plan "Stealing the Sun" to be a series. It was supposed to be a nice little, self-contained piece. Then Stan Schmidt sent me a note saying "You know, this story isn't finshed. When can I have the next installment?"      There's more to it.      He also took it upon himself to send me an editorial by John Campbell, wherein he describes certain difficulites with re-engineering as a methodology of invention. My work was suddenly cut out for me. So, I hunkered down and began to write.      What came out was terrible.      So I tried again. And I tried. Basically I hated it all.      I had written a planet into the first story that was noxious--think Venus. So the first problem was that I didn't know how to make a realistic universe in a Venus-like planet. So I studied. I read a bunch of stuff about Venus, and I extrapolated. Eventually, I hit upon the species that lived there. And then I started writing again. And again. And again.      I think Stan was fearing he would never hear from me again. E'gads, he's broken a newbie writer!      Seventeen drafts later, however, I had my story. And I guess it was good enough, you know?      Stan liked it enough to put it on the cover of his magazine.      It's my first major cover. I hope you like it.   Excerpt:      He glanced to where his weapon lay waiting. It was a recent-model Tegra he acquired in trade for diverting a shipment of root, a good gun with lots of stoppage but less than accurate at longer ranges. Crissandr despised the weapon, of course, and hated that he kept it loaded and in such easy reach. "No one will touch a Waganat," she explained. But desperation leads to a certain lack of caution, and a family name is good for only so much.      There was something else about the gun, too, something he would never tell Crissandr. The gun made him feel independent, his own man, separate from and unreliant upon his family. © Ron Collins

Compuserve HOMer Nominee, best novelette of 2000 2nd Place - ANLAB reader's poll Buy this Novelette REVIEWED BY: Chrostopher East Tangent Online The cover story that opens the October issue of Analog is "The Taranth Stone" by Ron Collins. This is a sequel to an earlier Collins story that I missed entitled "Stealing the Sun," but fortunately it holds up as a stand-alone piece as well. Set on a planet in the Alpha Centauri system, the story features Baraq Waganat, a member of the alien race known as the Quadar. Baraq is summoned to the home of a Quadarti counsilor and rival, Hateri. Hateri wants Baraq to use his family's connections in order to thoroughly examine a legendary artifact known as the Taranth Stone (in actuality an Earth spacecraft). Thanks to the help of some scientist friends, and in spite of some intrigue generated by his father, Baraq cracks the mystery of the Taranth Stone, which hints at a horrible fate for all his people and moves him to a final, desperate act to save them. I found the story generally well executed, with a good core idea behind it.