Also in: The
Years Best Science Fiction, Fourteenth Annual Collection
St Martins
Press, Garner Dozois - Editor - page 109
Appears in DANCING WITH DRAGONS
Also available at Fictionwise
PRIMROSE AND THORN was elected as the year's best ANALOG novella and was in the running for SFWA's 1998 Nebula Award!
The Analytical Laboratory Award was presented at the annual Nebula breakfast in Kansas City MO on April 19, 1997. George Krauter, who did the cover art and illustrations, also received the award for Analog's best cover of the year.
The story is an exposition of what sailing on Jupiter might be like. Of course, the fact that Jupiter is immense, has a crushing atmosphere, and intense gravity presented somewhat of a challenge and left me stumped until I read David Nordley's article on surface gravity and discovered that it was possible to have "only" two gravities, which is survivable, and still be in the atmosphere. From that point on there was a logical progression from sailboat to balloon, and then to a 'sailboat" that was a mixture of the two. I was amazed when it was later pointed out to me that concepts from an earlier work ALBA KRYSTAL appeared in this story, all without my being aware of it.
I put as much of my knowledge of sailing into this as I could while trying to remain true to the premise of the story. These particular characters were chosen because I wanted to populate the story with people who worked under the sail and those who just loved to sail.
I wrote a sequel to this but before it was done my computer was stolen, along with about 20-30 unfinished manuscripts that were in development (which means I hadn't given up on them completely). The sequel was written and sold in 1996 as PRIMROSE RESCUE.
G. David Nordley wrote a flattering letter (ANALOG, November 1996) about this story. He complained that the rather poetic vision of Jupiter and the surrounding stars that I described would not be possible from a synchronous orbit. They also published my response to some of his comments.