"Emperor Penguins" by Joseph Manzione is a worthy challenger for the top spot. In it, humanity has made contact with alien race that is like, and yet unlike, ourselves. They provide us with an abundance of technological advancements and in return look not for technology, but culture. The hero of the story -- Renko -- is a divorced lawyer who desperately wants to spend more time with his children, but lost them in the custody battle. He's still coping with this new life when the aliens ask him to try a law case on their home world. It seems that one of the aliens wants custody of his children, an idea that shocks and rocks that world.

The story does law right. Manzione's presentation of the ins and outs of legal systems on both worlds lends a sense of reality to the story -- this is the sort of manoeuvring that would occur if we really did make contact. But the main reason it succeeds is that it takes a central tenet of some sociological theories -- that a more advanced civilization always obliterates the culture of a lesser one -- and sends it spinning.

The rest of the stories in the double-sized edition may not rise to the quite same heights of "Emperor Penguins" and "The Astronaut From Wyoming," but they're still very good. "As Time Goes By" by Amy Bechtel is a nice "day in the life" story about a vet whose client just happens to have a few sea monsters as pets. "Live Bait" takes on equally huge aquatic beasts as Shane Tourtellotte introduces us to thrill-seekers looking to dive through the digestive track of alien creatures.  G. David Nordley's "Beamriders" provides the edition with its dose of science fact. His article looks at different solar-sail-type vehicles that could make the trip through interstellar space.

The July/August Analog is exactly the sort of edition readers will want to take to the beach with them, and it's good enough that they'll spend their vacation kicking themselves if they leave it sitting on the kitchen counter.