Visions of Paradise

Standard Candles

2011-11-05T07:28:00.000-07:00

It is obvious from reading numerous McDevitt novels that while he is a superb storyteller, his interests are more than merely plot. He is fascinated by history, as well as humanity’s place in the universe. His short fiction shows even more philosophical concerns such as the nature of humanity and relationships between humans and between humans and aliens.

Nearly every story in Standard Candles left me with some thought-provoking ideas, the type of sense of wonder which stays with me much longer than most other kinds. What good is it writing about such things as aliens and alien worlds if they are only stage settings for colorful battles, violence and killings? McDevitt realizes it is much more interesting to explore and think about them. In some ways, he is the philosophical heir to Poul Anderson whose stores always contained more than was apparent on the surface.

The title story “Standard Candles” was ostensibly about the search for astronomical constants, but really it examined one man’s obsession with science and how that affects his relationship with other people. “Translations From the Colosian” told of two humans who visit an alien world whose inhabitants were obsessed with art and culture. Watching one of their classic plays, they are struck with its incredible similarities with Sophocles’ Antigone, too much so, in their opinion, to be a coincidence.

“The Fort Moxie Branch” introduces a library a run by people who are either from the future or from another world entirely, and whose purpose is to save classic works of literature which were otherwise lost. Classical texts by Sophocles and Tacitus, but also works by Shakespeare (which apparently he considered too dangerous to stage), Melville (not good enough to publish, in his opinion) and Hemingway’s famous last novel. There are also complete collections by unknown authors who were unable to publish their works which were actually much better than the short-sighted publishing industry realized.

“Gus” is the story of a seminary which uses an avatar of St. Augustine as one of its teachers, but the new head of the seminary considers some of its beliefs heretical, even though its beliefs are “pure” Augustinian. But the beliefs of the Catholic Church have evolved considerably in the nearly two millennia since St. Augustine lived. Much of the story consists of conversations between the avatar and the head of the seminary, which are fascinating, but they also explore what it means to be human.

The first line of the story “Ellie” is “If the lights at Bolton’s Tower go out, the devil gets loose. At least, that was the story.” Why that is the story is what McDevitt examines here, combined with a human-interest story which complicates the situation considerably. Although McDevitt’s typical theme tends to be philosophical, he is equally adept with human emotions as well.

When a computer is fed all the data from every famous chess match of the century, and given a mathematical algorithm to determine the greatest chess player of the century, whose name would you expect it to spit out? Bobby Fischer? Jose Capablanca? Anatoly Karpov? Garry Kasparov? Will Ballard? Will Ballard? When that name comes out of the computer, the mathematician responsible for the program seeks out the man to determine who he is, and why he is supposedly the greatest chess champion ever.

“Cryptic” is the story of an astronomical array which formerly was part of SETI until the project was abandoned, a failure. Until the new director finds some buried data which seems to indicate that it had actually found precisely what it had sought, but the data was suppressed, never revealed to the world at large. Why would the most devoted seeker of alien life have possibly done that?

Finally, “Time Travelers Never Die” is the original novella version of McDevitt’s recent novel. I raved about the novel last year, calling it “delightful” in its combination of glimpses into history and a fascinating mystery. The novella is somewhat simpler, eliminating one of the major plotlines, but it is no less interesting.

While McDevitt is my favorite novelist, in some ways his short fiction is even better because it raises thought-provoking concerns. For me, that is what the best science fiction is really all about. You are likely going to roll yours eyes at yet another rave recommendation for a McDevitt book, but I cannot help it. He is that good.

Year's Best SF 16

2011-10-29T08:39:00.001-07:00

I read two annual best-of anthologies regularly because they are the two which are devoted exclusively to science fiction: Dozois’ and Hartwell & Cramer’s. On my recent trip to Myrtle Beach, I read the 16th installment of Hartwell & Cramer’s Year’s Best SF 16, and it had the usual mix of stories from prozines, online zines and original anthologies, running the gamut of the entire sf umbrella.

The opening story, and one of the best, is Joe Haldeman’s “Sleeping Dogs,” about a war on a distant planet which, when it ended, all the Earth soldiers had their minds wiped so they had absolutely no memory of their wartime activities. Decades later, after security has loosened considerably, the narrator returns to the planet in an attempt to regain his memory of precisely what activities he had during the war. Both the glimpses of the planet, and the former soldier’s memories, are fascinating and well-told, as you would expect from Haldeman.

I am not usually a big fan of Vernor Vinge, too much high-tech wet dreams, but “A Preliminary Assessment of the Drake Equations...” was a more traditional story about exploratory missions to distant worlds seeking alien life. In the middle of the story was a short anecdote which, by itself, would have been one of those perfect, memorable sf stories such as Fredric Brown or Bob Leman wrote regularly. As good as the overall story was, that anecdote was even better.

Cat Sparks’ “All the Love in the World” is set in a near-future post-apocalyptic Australia where a group of people have blocked off their small community from the craziness outside it. They have become most self-sufficient with one exception. They have exhausted their supply of medicine. So when the narrator leaves their community in search of some badly-needed medication, she finds that things are considerably different than she expected. This is a moving and hopeful view of the future.

Alastair Reynolds’ “At Bukokan” hypothesizes that the public eagerness for bigger and more extreme thrills will take some unexpected directions in our high-tech society. While its premise is a bit outrageous, Reynolds makes it both believable and interesting.

If you enjoy a good mystery based on determining the validity of an historical event, then Jack McDevitt is the writer for you. His series of mysteries set hundreds of years in the future featuring Alex Benedict is my favorite recent sf series. His story “The Cassandra Project” is based on the resurrection of America’s space program a few years in the future, just as the Russians release a series of pictures taken by their 1960s space program, one of which seems to show a dome on the far side of the moon. When a public relations agent for NASA compares the picture to one taken by the Americans, he finds no dome there. The solution to what seems a minor mystery at first proves to be anything but minor.

There are other good stories by writers such as Terry Bisson, Vandana Singh, Michael Swanwick, Greg Benford, Robert Reed and Paul Park, 21 stories in all. While I did not think this volume was quite as good as the previous 2 in the series, some of that might just be my specific taste as opposed to that of other readers. Overall, it is definitely recommended reading.

Andre Norton

2011-10-16T14:17:00.000-07:00

Many lifelong readers of science fiction entered the genre through one of several authors, such as Robert A. Heinlein or Andre Norton. In my case, I sequed from Tom Swift Jr. books right to Galaxy and Worlds of IF magazines. I became acquainted with Heinlein since he was publishing his 1960 novels in IF, including Podkayne of Mars, Farnham’s Freehold and The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.

But Andre Norton never made the jump to prozines in the 1960s, so I read basically none of her fiction until very recently when I decided to see what I was missing. Recently I began reading Star Born on my e-reader, and my immediate impression is that it is typical of the quality of fiction published in IF in the 1960s. So I wonder why Norton never made the extra money by serializing some of her novels along with the paperback sales.

I know—my first suspicious thought is that she was a woman, but since her pseudonym was male, why would that scare an editor away? My second thought was that she was considered a “young adult” writer, but her fiction was certainly comparable in quality to many of the other serials in IF, such as Poul Anderson’s Three Worlds to Conquer, Keith Laumer & Rosel Brown’s Earthblood, John Brunner’s Altar at Asconel and A. Bertram Chandler’s The Road to the Rim, so that hardly seems a valid reason not to publish her fiction.

Is it possible that she never considered submitting to prozines? I assume she was aware of them, but that may not be true. From my own point of view, that was too bad since I think I would have enjoyed her fiction when I was a teenager more than as a jaded adult. Still, I plan to read some more of her fiction when I finish Star Born, and think I will enjoy them in spite of my age.

Ratner's Star and Useless Things

2011-10-10T09:17:00.001-07:00

Some random thoughts.

Awhile ago I read an online interview with Samuel R. Delany, but while I do not recall where I read it, one part of it stands out in my mind: Delany was in a bookstore watching an employee shelving an early novel by Don DeLillo called Ratner’s Star. Delany commented that the novel was science fiction, since its plot involved contact with aliens from another planet. But DeLillo is one of the darling of the “literati,” and the woman became visibly distressed at Delany’s observation.

Why would somebody become upset when an obvious sf novel was identified as such? Because there are two totally different classifications of science fiction. “Insiders” might disagree on specifics, but generally agree that any novel which contains plausible speculative elements beyond our accepted world falls somewhere under the sf umbrella. But “outsiders,” whether lovers of literature or merely people mostly unfamiliar with written science fiction, tend to view it as fiction which resembles the type of popular special effects thrillers which masquerade as movie sf. If there are not big, bold battles and lots of pyrotechnics, it is not science fiction, no matter how speculative it might be.

I wonder if that is not the reason why Margaret Atwood has made statements distancing her fiction from sf in the past. She does not seem deliberately insulting or narrow-minded, and several of her novels certainly qualify as science fiction, but I think that she has no idea that sf is more than Star Wars and The Matrix, and if she did so she would certainly accept that, at least in part, she is a science fiction writer.

*

I recently read a very good story “Useless Things,” by Maureen McHugh, which was first published in the original anthology Eclipse Three, but I read it when it was reprinted in Gardner Dozois’ The Year’s Best Science Fiction, Twenty-Seventh Annual Collection. The story examined the effects of the recent economic downturn on average people. The main character lives with her two dogs in a small house in the New Mexican desert, making a meager living by sculpting lifelike dolls which she sells online.

The story mostly examines the woman’s life, the sole excitement taking place when her house is broken into and one of her dogs runs away. Eventually an old man living in a trailer park finds the dog and phones her, so she goes there and retrieves it.

And that is the entire story. I really enjoyed the views McHugh gave of the depressed lifestyle, as well as the development of her character. And the scenes about the missing dog were genuinely heartrending. But I could not help but asking myself one question when I finished reading the story: Why was this story selected by Dozois for his collection?

There is basically no plot and very little resolution except for some development in the woman’s character. Nor is it recognizably science fiction, except for a brief mention of Tom Cruise undergoing a scientific treatment to extend his life by 40 years. Gardner Dozois is a leading proponent of “core science fiction” as opposed to slipstream, magic realism, and all the other types which tease at being science fiction without ever really doing so.

“Useless Things” does not fall into “core science fiction” and probably had no right being in The Year’s Best Science Fiction except for one weakness of Dozois which I share: it was very good reading, and sometimes that trumps everything else.

Embassytown

2011-10-04T06:54:00.001-07:00

It is generally more common for a science fiction writer to switch to fantasy since that is where the sales and subsequent *big bucks* usually are. China Miéville seems to have taken the reverse route. He achieved fame with three wondrous fantasies Perdito Street Station, The Scar and Iron Council, then shifted to a noir detective novel The City & The City, which still perched on the edge of fantasy, and a horror thriller Kraken.

But his newest novel Embassytown is pure science fiction concerning a human colony on a world inhabited by strange beings known as the Ariekei (but called the Hosts by the colonists). The novel’s primary concern is the attempts by the humans to learn the Hosts’ language, not merely to understand them, but the much more difficult task of carrying on a conversation with them.

You see, the Hosts have two mouths, and they speak through both of them simultaneously. After the original linguists learned their language, while they could understand the Hosts’ portion of a conversation, the Hosts could not understand the human portion, or even recognize that a dialogue was being held with them. Until the humans raised pairs of Ambassadors, two cloned beings who nearly share one mind and who are able to communicate in the same simultaneous manner as the Hosts.

Embassytown is told from the point of view of Avice, a girl who was raised on the colony world, then went into space for several years before returning with a linguist husband fascinated with the language of the Hosts. The novel then follows their lives on the colony world, particularly the relationships between humans and Hosts, especially involving the Ambassadors.

Things reach a head when a new Ambassador EzRa is introduced to the Hosts, the first one who was raised offworld, rather than in Embassytown. The Hosts immediately react badly to EzRa, and there are fears among the humans of trouble between the two groups, especially when thousands of Hosts leave their homes surrounding Embassytown and swarm into the streets of the human enclave.

I cannot say much more about the plot of Embassytown without giving away important details, but it is a rich novel whose world becomes more defined as the novel progresses, as do the characters themselves. As in most Miéville novels, the various plot lines grow more tangled but ultimately reach a rousing climax which is totally satisfying.

Linguistics involving communication between humans and aliens is a fairly popular theme for science fiction, and some outstanding stories have been written in this area: Samuel R. Delany’s Babel-17, Suzette Haden Elgin’s Native Tongue, and Ted Chiang’s “Story of Your Life.” Embassytown is another welcome entry in this sub-genre, and is a typical high-quality China Miéville achievement which ranks with The Windup Girl and The City & The City as the best novels I have read so far this year.

Favorite short f&sf stories

2011-09-26T15:19:00.000-07:00

I do not believe I have ever posted my favorite short fiction list, so here it is.

Ranking / Title / Author
1 / Her Habiline Husband / Michael Bishop
2 / A Rose for Ecclesiastes / Roger Zelazny
3 / The Star Pit / Samuel R. Delany
4 / The Girl Who Was Plugged In / James Tiptree, Jr.
5 / The Last Castle / Jack Vance
6 / The Persistence of Vision / John Varley
7 / Story of Your Life / Ted Chiang
8 / Green Mars / Kim Stanley Robinson
9 / Blue Champagne / John Varley
10 / The White Otters of Childhood / Michael Bishop
11 / April Fool’s Day Forever / Kate Wilhelm
12 / The Visitor at the Zoo / Damon Knight
13 / Hawksbill Station / Robert Silverberg
14 / The Custodians / Richard Cowper
15 / The Dead Lady of Clown Town / Cordwainer Smith
16 / This Moment of the Storm / Roger Zelazny
17 / We, in Some Strange Power’s Employ, Move on a Rigorous Line / Samuel R. Delany
18 / Fire Watch / Connie Willis
19 / The Empire of Ice Cream / Jeffrey Ford
20 / Zima Blue / Alastair Reynolds

Alpha One

2011-09-21T14:48:00.001-07:00

The science fiction field has a long history of original anthology series, including Frederik Pohl’s Star series for Ballantine Books in the 1950s. In the late 1960s and early 1970s came Damon Knight’s Orbit, Terry Carr’s Universe and Robert Silverberg’s New Dimensions, the three most renowned series.

What the field does not have though is a long history of reprint anthology series other than best-of-the-year series. And while I have enjoyed several best-of-the-year series (especially those devoted exclusively to science fiction by Terry Carr, Gardner Dozois and David G. Hartwell), it would be nice to have a series devoted to the entire history of science fiction, rather than being restricted to a single year’s stories.

Apparently Robert Silverberg felt the same way, since in 1970 he released Alpha One, the first volume of 9 devoted to stories he felt were either neglected, or deserved renewed attention. He also released many stand-alone volumes of reprinted sf, my favorites being the immense The Arbor House Treasury of Modern Science Fiction and its companion The Arbor House Treasury of Great SF Short Novels. But for some reason, the Alpha series hold a special place in my heart.

Ironically, one of the best stories in Alpha One is also one of Jack Vance’s finest novellas, “The Moon Moth.” In it he sets up one of the strangest societies in science fiction, a world where people wear masks in public constantly, since to not do so is the ultimate obscenity. They also speak exclusively with musical accompaniment, which requires them to learn how to play a variety of different instruments, since each one portrays a different mood and attitude.

The new ambassador from Earth struggles to fit into Sirene society, upsetting more people than he impresses. Then he receives an urgent message that a violent criminal is landing on Sirene and must be apprehended and imprisoned. But how is he to catch somebody whose face is always hidden? This is an excellent story, from its fascinating society to its clever and believable interactions between people, and even the denouement of the mystery. Anybody who has never read it should consider that a worthwhile reason to seek out Alpha One.

Equally good is Roger Zelazny’s “For A Breath I Tarry.” I think it is safe to say that Zelazny’s burst of stories from 1965 through 1968 are as outstanding a four-year creative period as that of any sf writer ever. This story takes place in the distant future when humans are extinct, and two ancient machines continue their task of maintaining the Earth. But they are competing for the role of being sole guardian, a struggle which involves Frost, another machine which was created by one of the competing machines named Solcom during a period of unprecedented solar flareup which made it temporarily mad. Frost develops a deep interest in the extinct humans, and sets out to learn as much about them as possible in the hopes of understanding them. This story has all the mythic overtones which Zelazny did better than anybody else, while also being an absorbing story.

There are other excellent stories as well:

● two stories about time travelers struggling to survive in ancient times: Poul Anderson’s “The Man Who Came Early,” set in 10th century Iceland, and Ted Thomas’ “The Doctor,” set during prehistoric times;
● R.A. Lafferty’s “Thus We Frustrate Charlemagne,” which examines the difficulties of altering the past;
● Alfred Bester’s “The Pi Man,” which examines a man obsessed with balancing all the asymmetric events which happen in the world;
● and others by C.M. Kornbluth, J.G. Ballard, Barry Malzberg, Brian W. Aldiss, James Blish, Larry Eisenberg and Charles L. Harness, a worthy group of authors.

This is a highly-recommended anthology, which makes me wonder why nobody is editing such a reprint series now.

Emphyrio

2011-09-10T07:41:00.001-07:00

Jack Vance is one of the most idiosyncratic science fiction writers, perhaps along with Cordwainer Smith, whose writing is totally unlike any other writer (excluding the writers influenced by him who deliberately mimic his style). He excels at building colorful worlds filled with offbeat characters, and his names–both people and places–are always wonderful.

His plots tend to be simple, either mysteries or routine adventures, but you do not read Vance fiction for the plots, but rather to explore his wondrous worlds and spend time with the fascinating people. Occasionally though, a Vance story does have a plot worthy of its setting, or even a thought-provoking theme. The Domains of Koryphon (aka The Grey Prince) was such a novel. And so is one of his finest novels Emphyrio.

The setting is a world in which every citizen is provided welfare vouchers for all the work they do, although they are watched over closely by the Welfare Agency to make certain they are working to their capacity, as well as not doing any unacceptable behavior. The world has a caste system in which lords and ladies are given 1.18% of all the vouchers earned by the workers for their own use, which provides their wealthy lifestyles. However, the lords and ladies have no authority, serving as ceremonial nobles as a reward for their service centuries ago when they rescued the world from devastating wars.

The novel centers around Glyph and his father Amiante, wood-carvers and, in the case of Amiante, a very good one. But he is not particularly motivated to work harder than necessary, thus earning fewer vouchers than he might, as well as antagonizing the local representative of the Welfare Agency, most importantly by his secretly making illicit duplicates (which is forbidden worldwide for any items as simple as printed text, since most of the planet’s trading profit comes from original crafts). The novel’s main concern is Glyph’s childhood and coming-of-age, as he first notices his father’s dissatisfaction with their society, and eventually comes to share it as well. The actions which Glyph takes as a reaction to his dissatisfaction are both drastic and life-changing.

Were I to rank all of Vance’s novels, Emphyrio would sit near the top for its successful combination of the color, originality and wondrousness of Vance's best work, as well as having one of his most interesting and thoughtful plots. I recommend this book highly.

Midnight in Paris

2011-09-02T08:03:00.000-07:00

Retirement has given me the free time to see a lot more movies than I ever saw previously. Our cable-internet-phone triple package enables us to see free movies every Tuesday as well, which is another incentive. Still, I will not go to movies that I have no interest in seeing, which unfortunately is the majority of movies since I have fairly narrow interests in movies, and the movie chain which honors our free pass (it’s actually owned by the cable company) tends to show popular movies rather than serious or indie movies. So I’ve skipped all special effects extravaganzas, juvenile comedies, mindless thrillers and movies whose basic premise is people trying to kill other people.

That has actually left a half-dozen genre movies though, about which I had generally positive reactions:

• The Adjustment Bureau, starring the always-good Matt Damon, was a decent and fairly-thoughtful adaptation of a Philip K Dick story;
• Source Code, starring Jake Gyllenhal, was an interesting thriller about a man whose mind is sent back in time to uncover the bomber of a Chicago train before he can perform the terrorist act. In some ways, this movie was the dark side of the wonderful Groundhog Day;
• Green Lantern is one of my favorite comic books, but his movie was mediocre mostly because it was dumbed-down for the ignorant viewer rather than appealing to people who understood the character and preferred seeing Green Lantern himself rather than swell on a rather wimpy version of Hal Jordan;
• Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows, part 2, was similar to other movies in the series for the opposite reason as Green Lantern: it was basically aimed at viewers who had read the book and understood all the motivations and nuances of what was happening. I have not read the books, so while the movie was enjoyable watching, the logic behind much of it was skimpy.

But the best movie I’ve seen all year, genre or not, was Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris. First, I was amazed at how good Owen Wilson was in a serious role. He played a man with a successful career as a Hollywood rewrite screenwriter, but whose heart and soul were truly that of a novelist. As the movie opened, he was in Paris with his fianceé’s family. They were rich and uppity though, and did not understand Owen’s love of Paris and particularly his obsession with the Paris artistic community of the 1920s.

I cannot explain why this movie was a fantasy, since those elements snuck up on both Wilson and the viewer, but they became the central element of the movie, and were very successfully done. The fantasy helped Wilson grow and evolve as he learned what was wrong with his life and his dreams, and what he needed to do with his life.

I realize that part of the reason I loved this movie was because I can certainly relate to Wilson’s obsession and frustration with his writing, but I suspect anybody with an artistic passion would enjoy the movie as much as I did. It is the finest Woody Allen movie I have ever seen.

Under Heaven

2011-08-27T09:00:00.001-07:00

Next to science fiction, historical fiction is my favorite form of reading. My favorite authors of historical fiction include Iain Pears, Andrea Barrett, Steven Saylor and Guy Gavriel Kay.

Kay? Isn’t he a fantasy writer? Sometimes, yes. Tigana and the Fionavar Trapestry are fantasies. But other novels of his are pure historical fiction, except that he likes creating his own events in the past which either did not occur, or might even contradict historical facts. While writers would just alter those events and call it “alternative history,” Kay prefers changing the names of both places and people, and treating it as other-world fantasy. But in fact, except for the name changes and altered events, it reads like pure historical fiction.

The Lions of Al-Rassan is set in a thinly-disguised Moorish Spain. The Last Light of the Sun is about the Viking invasions of the British Isles. His most recent novel Under Heaven is set during Tang Dynasty China. It tells the story or the three children of famed general Shen Gao, recently deceased, but whose reputation persists: Liu has become principal advisor to the emperor’s first minister; Li-Mei became part of one the entourage of one of the emperor’s minor sons, before Liu convinced the first minister to donate her as wife of a barbarian ruler.

Tai, the second son, is the novel’s main character. After the death of his father, he spends two years at the sight of one of his father’s greatest battles, burying the dead bodies which litter the area. He is alone except for the ghosts of the fallen soldiers, both Kitan (the novel’s name for Chinese) and enemies. He becomes a famous figure through the empire, and is even given a gift of 250 horses by one of the emperor’s daughters who is also a wife of a barbarian king. The horses are a breed so superior to those of the Kitan that Shen Tai immediately becomes a person of major importance to the emperor and his advisors.

Under Heaven is mostly a novel of politics, into which Tai has become intimately-involved. People of importance include:

• Wei Song, a Kanlin warrior who saves Tai’s life early in the novel, and then becomes his protector;
• Wen Jian, a twenty-year old beauty who has become the emperor’s “precious consort,” and the power behind the throne;
• Shinzu, the emperor’s heir, who has a reputation for indolence and drunkenness, but whose true personality shows when political affairs heat up;
• Wen Zhou, the first minister who achieved his rank due to being Wen Jian’s cousin, but who is an enemy of Shen Tai for reasons unknown to him;
• An Li, also called Roshan, is the most powerful general in Kitai in spite of being a “barbarian” rather than a native Kitan;
• Shin Zian, the most famous poet in Kitai, known as the “Banished Immortal,” who becomes a close advisor of Shen Tai.

Although there is ultimately a major war in the novel, Under Heaven is not really concerned with military actions, but rather with the politics surrounding them. This is an outstanding novel, the equal of The Last Light of the Sun, which was my novel-of-the-year in 2004. So far 2011 has been an outstanding reading year, since I have read such classic novels as The City & The City, Julian Comstock, The Windup Girl and now Under Heaven. If only every year could be as good.

Some observations on the Hugo Awards.

2011-08-23T07:03:00.000-07:00

Rather than make subjective qualitative comments on whether I agree with the recent Hugo Awards, I would like to discuss the individual histories of the winners in 13 categories which lend themselves to repeat winners.

Best Novel: Connie Willis for Blackout / All Clear: This is Connie’s 11th Hugo Award, 4 more than any other writers. She is obviously very popular among Hugo voters, but does this large number of Hugo Awards indicate that she is the greatest living sf writer? Or has she been partly rewarded for her entertaining personality and popularity among worldon attendees?

Best Novella: Ted Chiang for “The Lifestyle of Software Objects”: This is his 4th Hugo Award, 3 of which have come in the past 4 years. Either he is peaking as a writer, or is merely on a popularity roll such as Michael Swanwick was from 1998-2003 when he won 5 Hugo Awards in 6 years.

Best Novelette: Allen M. Steele for “The Emperor of Mars”: This is his 3rd Hugo Award, the last one coming in 1997. His other two awards were both in the Best Novella category.

Best Short Story: Mary Robinette Kowal for “For Want of a Nail”: This is her first Hugo Award, making her the token new winner in the fiction categories. She previously won the Campbell Award in 2007 and had another Hugo nomination in 2008. The winning story actually tied for last in the number of nominations received, getting less than half of Peter Watts’ “The Thing,” which it beat handily for the award.

Best Graphic Story: Girl Genius 10, by Phil & Kaja Folio: This is their 3rd consecutive win in this category, all the years of its existence. I was glad to see they did the polite thing and withdrew from consideration next year.

Best Dramatic Presentation - Short Form: Dr. Who. This show has won the award 5 of the past 6 years, only losing one year to a sing-along blog, of all things. Dr. Who also dominates the nominations, having had 8 nominations in this category the past 3 years. Does this dominance speak for the quality of Dr. Who or the lack of quality of the rest of televised f&sf?

Best Professional Editor - Long Form: Lou Anders. This is his first award in a category which previously went to David G. Hartwell twice and Patrick Nielsen Hayden twice, both of whom declined nominations this year. This was a close vote between Anders and Ginjer Buchanon.

Best Professional Editor - Short Form: Sheila Williams. The is the 18th time the editor of Asimov’s has won a Hugo Award, George Scithers twice, Gardner Dozois 15 times, and this first win for Williams. A prozine is only as good as its editor and, at least in the eyes of the Hugo voters, Asimov’s has been very fortunate with its editors.

Best Professional Artist: Shaun Tan. After a considerable amount of publicity the past year, including an Oscar, Tan managed to squeak out a victory over Daniel Dos Santos. Previously this award was won 13 times by Michael Whelan, 10 times by Kelly Freas and 8 times by Bob Eggleton. Three of the last four years it was won by Donato Giancola.

Best SemiProzine: Clarkesworld. For years fans have complained about the dominance of Locus in this category, but for the last three years the award has been won by fiction zines: Weird Tales in 2009 and Clarkesworld the past two years. The latter winner is exclusively online, which might be more indicative of the future of this category than the fact that the winners have published fiction. Clarkesworld was actually trailing in the voting until Lightspeed, another online fiction zine, dropped out and its voters mostly favored Clarkesworld over Locus.

Best Fanzine: The Drink Tank. This is probably the most consistently-published fanzine, having had nearly 300 issues since its inception in 2005. The winner and its editor have paid their fannish dues, having had 8 prior nominations before winning this year. Although Drink Tank is the third consecutive online winner, it is a much more traditional fanzine than last year’s podcast zine StarshipSofa which offended so many people that there has been discussion about banning such zines from this category. It was beaten handily by Drink Tank in this year’s voting.

Best Fan Writer: Claire Briarly. Another winner who has paid her fannish dues, having had 8 prior nominations before winning this year in a close vote over Steven H. Silver. This category has been dominated in the past by a small handful of fanwriters, such as Richard E. Geis (7 awards), Dave Langford (21 awards) and Mike Glyer (3 awards), before going to two professional writers for their blogging 2 of the past 3 years (John Scalzi and Frederik Pohl).

Best Fan Artist: Brad Foster. Like Fan Writer, this category tends to go to a few repeat winners, such as Tim Kirk (5 times), Alex Gilliland, Bill Rotsler, Teddy Harvia and Frank Wu (4 times each). But Brad Foster is the most popular winner with his 7th award spread over a 25 year period, designating him as one of the best fan artists ever. This category was the closest vote of all, with Foster winning by a single vote over Randall Munroe, in spite of the latter barely making the final ballot by a single vote.

Overall, 6 of the 13 winners–Mary Robinette Kowal , Lou Anders, Sheila Williams, Shaun Tan, Claire Briarly and The Drink Tank–are first-timers, which is an unusually-high number for recent Hugo Awards. Next year is guaranteed to have at least one more newbie with the Foglios withdrawing from their category. Perhaps we’ll be fortunate and Connie Willis will not publish any stories this entire year, opening the door for other winners in the fiction categories. (Please don’t send me hate mail if you believe Connie Willis is the greatest writer in the history of science fiction. My reply to that is simple: sorry, she’s not.)

Sidewise Awards

2011-08-20T07:08:00.000-07:00

One of the awards announced at the Renovation worldcon taking place this weekend are the Sidewise Awards. I am a big fan of historical fiction, including alternative history, so these awards appeal to me, and often suggest some good reading for me as well.

For those of you who enjoy alt hist as much as I do, here is a listing of all the winners of the Sidewise Award. Happy reading!

Year / Long Form Winner / Short Form Winner
2010 / Eric G. Swedin, When Angels Wept / Alan Smale, “A Clash of Eagles”
2009 / Robert Conroy, 1942 / Alastair Reynolds, “The Fixation”
2008 / Chris Roberson, The Dragon’s Nine Sons / Mary Rosenblum, “Sacrifice”
2007 / Michael Chaban, The Yiddish Policemen’s Union / Michael Flynn. "Quaestiones Super Caelo Et Mundo" tied with Kristine Kathryn Rusch. "Recovering Apollo 8"
2006 / Charles Stross. The Family Trade, The Hidden Family, and The Clan Corporate / Gardner Dozois. "Counterfactual"
2005 / Ian R. MacLeod. The Summer Isles / Tilton, Lois. "Pericles the Tyrant"
2004 / Roth, Philip. The Plot Against America / Warren Ellis, Chris Weston, and Laura DuPuy Martin. Ministry of Space
2003 / Murray Davies. Collaborator / Chris Roberson. "O One"
2002 / Martin J. Gidron. The Severed Wing tied with Harry Turtledove. Ruled Britannia / William Sanders. "Empire"
2001 / J.N. Stroyar. The Children's War / Ken MacLeod. The Human Front
2000 / Mary Gentle. Ash: A Secret History / Ted Chiang. "Seventy-Two Letters"
1999 / Brendan DuBois. Resurrection Day / Alain Bergeron. "The Eighth Register"
1998 / Stephen Fry. Making History / Ian R. MacLeod. "The Summer Isles"
1997 / Harry Turtledove. How Few Remain / William Sanders. "The Undiscovered"
1996 / Stephen Baxter. Voyage / Walter Jon Williams. "Foreign Devils"
1995 / Paul J. McAuley. Pasquale's Angel / Stephen Baxter. "Brigantia's Angels"

Stories of Your Life and Others

2011-08-12T08:08:00.001-07:00

Ted Chiang is perhaps the best science fiction writer who has never written a novel. I realize a few people reading this might be thinking Ray Bradbury (who has written at least 6 novels) or Harlan Ellison (at least 5 novels, all written early in his career). But there is nothing wrong with mentioning Chiang in the same breath as Bradbury or Ellison, since he is as fine a writer as they were in their prime, and all three writers have at least one similarity: none of them are routine story-tellers.

Ray Bradbury began writing with a strong interest in horror fiction, and his first collection Dark Carnival showed that. But even as he matured into romantic fantasies, Bradbury was still primarily interested in arousing emotions in his reader rather than telling a story.

Harlan Ellison’s stories have also been highly emotionally-charged, and while he never wrote straight horror per se, his stories frequently aroused the same type of sharp emotions in his readers as the best horror fiction did.

Ted Chiang is not interested in arousing emotions, but rather arousing intellectual curiosity in his readers. A typical Chiang story starts with some speculative concept, then explores it through his characters. He rarely bothers with deep characterization, nor much detailed plotting, but arouses intellectual sense of wonder about as well as any writer possibly could.

If you still doubt that Ted Chiang deserves being mentioned in the same breath as grandmasters Bradbury and Ellison, consider this: since his first publication in 2001, Chiang has published 12 stories, 9 of which have been nominated for major awards (Nebula, Hugo or Sturgeon), and he has won 4 Nebula Awards, 3 Hugo Awards and 1 Sturgeon Award.

As for my own opinion of Chiang, he has had 3 stories on my best-of-the-decade lists already, 1 of which was my favorite story of the 1990s. So it will not be surprising when I mention early in this review that his first collection of short fiction Stories of Your Life and Others ranks with such debut sf collections as Roger Zelazny’s Four For Tomorrow, Samuel R. Delany’s Driftglass, and John Varley’s The Persistence of Vision.

The first story in the collection, which was Chiang’s first publication and a Nebula winner, is “Tower of Babylon,” which examines what it was like for the builders of the immense tower which took several centuries to complete and who basically spent their entire lives living in the tower itself, raising families which in some instances have never seen the ground. The story’s climax, in which the tower finally reaches heaven itself, is interesting, as is the Babylonian cosmology which is an intricate part of the story.

“Story of Your Life,” which was my favorite piece of short fiction for the 1990s, tells about an alien race which arrives in Earth orbit and establishes contact with humans. It is basically the story of two scientists, a male physicist and a female linguist, who attempt to communicate with the aliens. The linguist is the viewpoint character who discovers that the aliens’ language is not linear, but holistic, and as she immerses herself in it, her own worldview begins changing (not surprisingly, since linguists rightfully claim that a culture’s language is very influential on their view of the world). The alternating passages of the linguist’s personal life seem a bit misplaced at first, but as her worldview changes, the connection becomes both obvious and startling. An outstanding story.

“Hell is the Absence of God” takes the premise that God exists without any doubt, and whose angels periodically manifest themselves in our physical world, during which they occasionally cause great damage by their very passing through, but at other times they create miracles. Add to this the fact that when a person dies, their soul can be seen either rising to heaven or descending to hell. Chiang does an excellent job examining the life and emotional struggles of a man whose beloved wife has died and whose soul has risen to heaven. But he has never felt particularly close to God and thus fears his soul will descend to hell when he dies, thus cutting him off from his wife for all eternity.

Outstanding as these three stories are, there are four other fine stories in the book as well:

• “Understand” tells of a man who undergoes an experimental treatment for brain damage which makes him the most advanced mind in the world;
• “Division by Zero” tells the story of a brilliant mathematician whose entire world is shattered when she discovers a proof which destroys the underlying foundations of all mathematics;
• “Seventy-Two Letters” examines a world in which golems do exist, which has profound effects on the shape of 19th century life (this story would be considered “steampunk” were it published nowadays);
• “Liking What You See: A Documentary” examines a scientific technique which removes a person’s ability to differentiate the esthetics of other people’s faces, spurring a potential movement on campuses to equalize all students’ beauty in each other’s eyes, while causing great concern in the cosmetics industry.

Stories of Your Life is a fabulous collection, but keep in mind that characterization and routine story-telling are not Chiang’s main concern. He is an old-fashioned “hard” science fiction writer who is examining ideas first and foremost, but doing so about as well as I have ever seen it done. I recommend this collection very highly.

Dreamsongs, Vol. 2 (continued)

2011-08-07T06:55:00.000-07:00

The first novella is “Under Siege,” whose premise is that after a devastating nuclear war, life on Earth is both precarious and dismal. A project is underway to send the minds of six mutants back in time into the minds of historical people who were important figures at the crux of changes which could alter history and hopefully prevent the devastating nuclear war. But five of the mutants have died during their trips through time, so the last surviving mutant is the only hope to prevent the nuclear war and save life on Earth. His chosen event seems somewhat problematic to me, part of a war between Finland and Russia during the Napoleanic Wars, but selecting any important turning point in history is always subject to debate. This is a strong story with an unexpected ending.

“The Skin Trade” is a noir mystery set in a midwestern city controlled by a small group of rich people who are secretly werewolves. Several of them have been murdered by the particularly gruesome method of being flayed while alive. Their deaths are being investigated by a private detective and an insurance investigator, the latter a werewolf himself. Keeping in mind that I generally dislike urban fantasies, this was still fascinating reading which held my interest throughout, even as the wheels kept turning and turning.

I had initial problems with “Unsound Variations” since all the five characters in it were particularly unlikeable. The main two characters were a young couple who do nothing but fight and harass each other. They are attending a reunion of his college chess team, where they meet up with three other unlikeable team members, particularly the team outcast who has become incredibly wealthy and is using the reunion as his chance to finally get revenge against his former teammates. Overall, the story was interesting, and events progressed in a generally good direction with a satisfying denouement.

Anybody who read George R.R. Martin’s early stories, such as “With Morning Comes Mistfall” and “A Song For Lya,” could not miss the influence of Roger Zelazny on his fiction. In one of Martin’s section introductions, he discusses his move to Santa Fe where he became personal friends with Zelazny. So it was not surprising when I reached “The Glass Flower” to find it the most Zelaznyish story I have ever read by any author other than Roger Zelazny itself. It resembled a typical Zelazny story in mood, structure, and plot. The main group of characters were highly-emotional beings with strange powers engaged in dealings which risked their very lives. This might have been the strongest story of the group, except the more I read it the more I felt it was more form than actual story, so determined to resemble a Zelazny story that it was difficult to really appreciate it for its own merits.

Next came “The Hedge Knight,” which is set in the world of his Song of Fire and Ice historical series, which I assume is intended to be an epic fantasy series. However, except for a brief mention about dragons (from the past, seemingly more legendary than factual), there is nothing really fantastic about either this story or the very similar “The Mystery Knight,” also in the same series, and which appeared in the recent anthology Warriors. This is the story of Dunk, the hedge knight of the title, who enters a jousting tournament in an attempt to earn some much-needed money, and his squire Egg, an orphan boy who basically forced Dunk to accept him as a squire, and who seems to know more about the knights in the tournament than Dunk does, thus becoming a valuable source of advice for him. The early portion of the story is primarily concerned with the tournament, and the individual battles which take place in it, very similar to “The Mystery Knight” and also similar to Ivanhoe, an obviously influence on both stories. But once the plot started moving when Dunk fights off an arrogant prince who is attacking a young puppeteer, the story became much more interesting. I liked this story better than “The Mystery Knight,” and it intrigued me to look up more stories in this series (if not yet tackle the 6000+ pages of the novels).

The last story is the Nebula-winning novella “A Portrait of His Children,” a story about the relationship between a writer and his fictional characters, and how that relationship affects his relationship with his real family. Much of the story’s premise is understandable to any serious writer, but I strongly disliked parts of it, since I am not a fan of any story in which rape and violence play such a major role. I can understand why Martin felt he needed to do so, for it made the story’s climax more powerful, but I really wish he could have done it less violently.

Overall, Dreamsongs, Vol. 2 is a major collection covering the second half of Martin’s career, definitely well-worth reading. My immediate thought upon finishing it is that I wish the author had not abandoned most short fiction (except for occasional Song of Fire and Ice stories) in favor of his massive epic series. My second thought was that I wish he would finish the damned series so I can decide whether to read it or not.

Dreamsongs, Volume 2

2011-07-28T16:48:00.001-07:00

While everybody else seems to be reading the #1 bestselling book in the country, George R.R. Martin’s A Dance With Dragons, the latest historical epic in his Song of Fire and Ice series (I hesitate to call the series “fantasy,” since nothing I have read about it seems the least bit fantastic), I have decided to read Martin’s comprehensive volume of his later short fiction, Dreamsongs, Volume 2. I do not have Dreamsongs, Volume 1, and probably will not buy it, since except for a few amateur stories he wrote prior to his first publication, all the other stories in it are contained in one of his earlier collections which I already own (A Song For Lya, Songs of Stars and Shadows, Sandkings, Portraits of His Children). So if you have not read those collections, then you might wish to buy Volume 1 before tackling Volume 2.

Let’s not beat around the bush: George R.R. Martin is a great writer of sf, fantasy, even horror, freely moving between categories. As he states in one of his essays in Volume 2, We can draw our boundaries and make our labels, but in the end it’s still the same old story, the one about the human heart in conflict with itself. The rest, my friends, is furniture. So if you’re willing to cross genre boundaries, this is a great book subdivided into four sections:

• A Taste of Tuf. Haviland Tuf is Martin’s everyman hero who travels from world to world dealing with problems which are ostensibly ecological in nature. This series reminds me of Murray Leinster’s fine Med Ship series, although Martin is a better writer than Leinster, so the Tuf stories, while basic problem-solving sf, are even a bit better than Leinster’s;

• The Siren Song of Hollywood. Martin spent most of the 1980s in Hollywood writing and producing such shows as the revived Twilight Zone and Beauty and the Beast. Several of his screenplays were never actually produced, so here he includes two of them, one which appeared in truncated form as a Twilight Zone episode, and a pilot which never appeared. Both of them were good enough that I would have loved to see them performed;

• Doing the Wild Card Shuffle. Martin created his own “shared world” series, a format I enjoy as the literary equivalent of a continuing tv show. The wild cards series was a realistic look at super-heroes, and the two entries here are so good that they convinced me I should go back and read more volumes in the series (having only read the initial Wild Cards when it was first released). One of the stories introduces perhaps Martin’s greatest character (yes, better than his carefully-designed Haviland Tuf), with the unlikely name of The Great and Powerful Turtle;

• The Heart in Conflict. This section contains six novellas which show Martin at the top of his form, and which deserve individual discussion.

To be continued...

Blue Mars

2011-07-16T07:24:00.001-07:00

When a book has such high expectations as Blue Mars did, sometimes it is almost impossible to meet them. This is the concluding novel in Robinson’s trilogy, in which the first volume Red Mars won the Nebula Award, the second volume Green Mars won the Hugo, and this volume itself also won the Hugo Award.

In my own case, both Green Mars and Blue Mars were my books-of-the-year in the early 1990s, but Blue Mars was published smack in the middle of my science-fiction-burnout, so I never read it previously. That might have been a good thing, considering the expectations it carried.

In the past year I have reread both Red Mars (reviewed here on 9/25/10) and Green Mars (reviewed on 9/30/11), and they were both as wonderful as I recalled them being. But my feelings about Blue Mars are slightly less ecstatic.

The good points first. While politics and ecology continue to dominate the plot, the character development is the real strength of Blue Mars. I particularly enjoyed the chapter-long sojourns into the activities of specific characters, which Robinson has done throughout the series. In Blue Mars we got to spend time with:

• Nirgal, a native Martian who is part of a diplomatic mission to Earth in light of the successful revolution which freed Mars from Earth control;
• Michel, one of the “first hundred” colonists in Red Mars who is returning to his beloved Provence after nearly two centuries away;
• Ann, another of the “first hundred,” who was one of the most radical Reds who was thus alienated from most of her peers;
• Nadia and Art, she being the reluctant first president of free Mars, while he is her close advisor;
• Sax, the nerdy scientist of the “first hundred,” who is probably more responsible for the “greening” of Mars than anybody else.

Two relationships are the core of Blue Mars:

• Nadia and Art. Against her wishes, she became the first president of Mars, while he is a recent emigrant and representative of Praxis, the only metanational corporation on Earth which supported Martian freedom rather than trying to manipulate the Martian colonies for their own purposes. They were a closely-working pair in Green Mars who were largely influential in the development of the Martian constitution following the revolution. Their relationship continues to develop as they race around the planet in the unsettled years when the future of the constitution is very much questionable in the face of groups trying to ignore it, including radical Reds still determined to destroy all attempts at terraforming, and other groups striving to gather as much political control as possible (specifically the “Free Mars” group and its charismatic leader Jackie);

• Sax and Ann. After a series of physical challengers, including a stroke caused by Earth’s metanational enemies of a free Mars, Sax finally begins to appreciate its dwindling natural beauty as that original beauty is increasingly endangered. He also strives to renew his shattered friendship with Ann when their differences about the future of Mars drove them far apart emotionally as well.

Nirgal is also a fascinating character. He spends considerable time traveling alone on Earth, viewing the aging culture from the viewpoint of a native Martian outsider. And when he returns from Earth, we spend another chapter with him as he grows increasingly dissatisfied with the direction the “Free Mars” movement has taken during his absence, which leads to his attempt to find a niche for himself in the rapidly-evolving Martian civilization.

Wrapped around the character studies, Robinson shows us the continuing development of Martian culture, the “greening” steadily developing into a “blue-ing,” and the beginning of further expansion of human culture into the asteroids and satellites of the gas giants, and finally the first colonization expedition out of the solar system entirely. Since the book’s primary focus is on Mars itself though, we do not spend much time on these other locales, which perhaps await a future book.

If Blue Mars had been 200 pages shorter, concentrating on everything discussed above, it would have been as outstanding as the previous books in the series. One aspect which bored me a bit though was the endless political bickering between the various groups of Martians. Fortunately, Robinson seemed to feel similarly, for as the novel progressed, the politics slowly faded into background events which were mentioned rather than explored endlessly.

However, my main complain is that Blue Mars, even moreso than the previous books, was packed with endless expository lumps explaining everything from the ecological development of Mars through Martian geology and even a half-dozen page explanation of human brain processes. I accepted the ecological examinations in the first two books since that development was important to the political situation on Mars. But the dry lectures seemed mostly unessential in this book and–quite frankly–boring at times. I can't tell you how often I actually skimmed over long, meaningless paragraphs. For that reason, I cannot recommend Blue Mars as highly as I did Red Mars and Green Mars.

Science Fiction and the Future

2011-07-09T06:31:00.001-07:00

I was never a fan of cyberpunk for several reasons, including too much emphasis placed on current technology. But perhaps my biggest complaint with it was that it almost exclusively featured near-future dismal settings. Unfortunately, cyberpunk’s popularity was the first chink in the wall of far-future science fiction. Soon afterwards the genre saw the emergency of alternative history, followed by urban fantasy and horror.

As a result, the far future has become somewhat of an endangered species in science fiction. While it would be almost impossible to verify this trend by analyzing all published sf novels, I have decided to use the Hugo Award for Best Novel as a snapshot of sf trends. Consider that from 1960-1990, 74% of the 31 Hugo-winning novels were set in the far future:

Far-Future settings (23): Cyteen; The Uplift War; Speaker for the Dead; Ender's Game; Startide Rising; Foundation's Edge; Downbelow Station; The Snow Queen; The Fountains of Paradise; Dreamsnake; Gateway; The Forever War; The Dispossessed; Rendezvous with Rama; The Gods Themselves; To Your Scattered Bodies Go; Ringworld; The Left Hand of Darkness; Lord of Light; ...And Call Me Conrad (This Immortal); Dune; A Canticle for Leibowitz; Starship Troopers

Near-future, present, past, fantasy settings (8): Neuromancer; Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang; Stand on Zanzibar; The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress; The Wanderer; Here Gather the Stars (Way Station); The Man in the High Castle; Stranger in a Strange Land

However, from 1990-2010 the trend reversed with only 30% of the 24 Hugo-winning novels set in the far future:

Far-Future settings (7): A Deepness in the Sky; Mirror Dance; A Fire Upon the Deep; Barrayar; The Vor Game; Hyperion; Rainbow’s End

Near-future, present, past, fantasy settings (16): The Windup Girl; The City & The City; The Graveyard Book; The Yiddish Policemen’s Union; Paladin of Souls; Hominids; American Gods; Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire; To Say Nothing of the Dog; Forever Peace; Blue Mars; The Diamond Age; Green Mars; Doomsday Book; Spin; Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

In recent years, the trend has not shown any signs of slipping back to the far future. Consider the Hugo nominees for Best Novel the past 4 years:

2008
Far-Future settings: The Last Colony
Near-future, present, past, fantasy settings: The Yiddish Policemen’s Union; Brazyl; Halting State; Rollback

2009
Far-Future settings: Saturn’s Children; Anathem; Zoe’s Tale
Near-future, present, past, fantasy settings: The Graveyard Book; Little Brother

2010
Far-Future settings: none
Near-future, present, past, fantasy settings: The Windup Girl; The City & The City; Boneshaker; Julian Comstock; Palimpsest

2011
Far-Future settings: Cryoburn;
Near-future, present, past, fantasy settings: Blackout; All Clear; The Dervish House; Feed; The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms

The four year total is as follows:
Far-Future settings: 5
Near-future, present, past, fantasy settings: 16

Only 24% of the recent Hugo Award nominees for Best Novel are set in the far-future, and this is at the height of the New Space Opera movement. Ironically, none of the nominees in the past 4 years can actually be described as “new” space opera.

Granted, the Hugo Awards are only snapshots of current trends in science fiction, but with the evidence from those awards showing such an overwhelming shift away from the far future, it is hard to believe that is not a genre-wide trend as well.

And for those of us who grew up loving the far future, that is a sad future to envision.

[An earlier version of this article appeared in John Purcell’s fine fanzine Askance #2, which is available at www.efanzines.com.]

The Air We Breathe

2011-07-02T07:07:00.001-07:00

One of my favorite writers of historical fiction is Andrea Barrett. She excels when writing about scientists’ passion for their work, my favorite books being the collection Ship Fever and the novel Voyage of the Narwal.

Her most recent novel The Air We Breathe is set at the tuberculosis sanitariums which were popular in the Adirondacks of northern New York State during the early decades of the 20th century. The novel is concerned with two such sites: a private home for rich people to rest and absorb as much of the fresh air as possible; and a nearby dormitory-type sanitarium where poor people are sent by the state for the same purpose.

The cast of characters is a varied one:
• Naomi, the daughter of the caretaker at the rich house, who works endlessly under her mother’s obsessive thumb;
• Eureka, her best friend in the village who works at the sanitarium and who spends every available minute in its basement, learning to use the x-ray equipment;
• Irene, the x-ray technician who serves as Eureka’s mentor;
• Miles, a rich factory owner staying at the house who has fallen passionately-in-love with Naomi, even though she considers him almost old enough to be her father;
• Leo, a Jewish immigrant staying at the sanitarium whose passion is chemistry, which he studied before coming to America, and who becomes friendly with Eureka and Irene;
• Dr. Petrie, one of the doctors at the sanitarium;

In order to enlighten the poor residents of the sanitarium, most of whom are immigrants from central Europe, Miles initiates a weekly session in which interested patients can gather to listen to educational lectures. He runs the first two meetings, but soon other patients begin telling their own stories. This gives the novel a bit of a Canterbury Tales format, although the author is much more concerned with how the patients react to each other’s stories than the stories themselves.

The novel changes from slower-paced character-oriented to faster-paced plot-oriented when World War I begins and people are struck by a combination of patriotic fervor and fear of Eastern Europeans (reminiscent of the Japanese internment in WW2 and the current anti-Muslim fear). To make matters worse, there is a mysterious fire at the dormitory and Miles, the most fervent pro-war patriot, places the blame squarely on the shoulders of Leo, the Jewish immigrant. Meanwhile the entangled relationships between Miles who loves Naomi who loves Leo who loves Eudora begins affecting events at both the sanitarium and house.

My only complaint with the novel, and it is a minor complaint, is the strange narrative viewpoint Barrett uses for the novel. Events are told as if from the collective point of view of the patients at the dormitory. Initially this is a bit distracting, but once I got used to it I found it not much different than using the omniscient third person, and just as effective. I’m still not sure why Barrett chose such an unusual viewpoint, or why she felt it was necessary.

But that complaint aside, The Air We Breathe was probably her best novel, and equally as good as her collection Ship Fever. Any fans of historical fiction should enjoy it.

Quiz answers

2011-06-29T15:00:00.000-07:00

Here are the answers to the quiz:

1 “No! I don’t want the mangosteen.” / The Windup Girl
2 After pursuing him a week (half my annual vacation from the Columbus Ledger-Inquirer), I caught up with Danny Boles on a blustery day in April at a high school in eastern Alabama. / Brittle Innings
3 Everybody falls and we all land somewhere. / Spin
4 Monkey never dies. / The Years of Rice and Salt
5 Nine months Landsman’s been flopping at the Hotel Zamenhof without any of his fellow residents managing to get themselves murdered. / The Yiddish Policemen’s Union
6 Shadow had done three years in prison. / American Gods
7 The Hegemony consul sat on the balcony of his ebony spaceship and played Rachmaninoff’s Prelude in C-sharp Minor on an ancient but well-maintained Steinway while great green, saurian things surged and bellowed in the swamps below. / Hyperion
8 The shining rim of the planet Rodeo wheeled dizzily past the observation port of the orbital transfer station. / Falling Free
9 There was a razorstorm coming in. / Revelation Space
10 Veldt to scrub to fields to farms to these first tumbling houses that rise from the Earth. / Perdito Street Station

F&SF Quiz

2011-06-26T06:54:00.000-07:00

Here are the first lines of famous f&sf novels of the past 25 years. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to name the novels.

1. “No! I don’t want the mangosteen.”

2. After pursuing him a week (half my annual vacation from the Columbus Ledger-Inquirer), I caught up with Danny Boles on a blustery day in April at a high school in eastern Alabama

3. Everybody falls and we all land somewhere.

4. Monkey never dies.

5. Nine months Landsman’s been flopping at the Hotel Zamenhof without any of his fellow residents managing to get themselves murdered.

6. Shadow had done three years in prison.

7. The Hegemony consul sat on the balcony of his ebony spaceship and played Rachmaninoff’s Prelude in C-sharp Minor on an ancient but well-maintained Steinway while great green, saurian things surged and bellowed in the swamps below.

8. The shining rim of the planet Rodeo wheeled dizzily past the observation port of the orbital transfer station.

9. There was a razorstorm coming in.

10. Veldt to scrub to fields to farms to these first tumbling houses that rise from the Earth.

The Snowball Effect

2011-06-21T06:30:00.001-07:00

Most “hard science” sf stories extrapolate from a foundation in one of the “hard” sciences such as physics, chemistry biology, and computer technology (with all its AI ramifications). But occasionally a story extrapolates from a “softer” science.

Kim Stanley Robinson’s "A Sensitive Dependence on Initial Conditions" was based on chaos theory. A story in Galaxy in March, 1969, called “Godel Numbers,” by J.W.Swanson, was based on prime numbers. Thomas M. Disch once had a story (whose title and location totally escape me) whose sfnal premise was based on probability.

Which brings me to a story I recently read by Katherine MacLean, entitled “The Snowball Effect.” It was originally published in Galaxy in September 1952, and reprinted in her collection The Diploid Effect and Other Flights of Fancy in 1962.

For most of its length, the story reads like a contemporary story of academia. The president of a small college is in the midst of a fiscal crisis and, in attempts to cut his budget, he insists that the head of the Sociology Department justify “what is sociology good for?” This sets off a chain of events in which the department head devises an experiment in institutional growth in which the two men find a small sewing club in an equally-small town and set up conditions by which the club’s membership will grow larger and larger until it reaches the saturation point and the club crumbles on its own unwieldy size.

The story is interesting, if less than major, but it shows absolutely no indication of being speculative in the sf sense until the very last scene, which is a combination of a Fredric Brown “shock ending” and the sudden realization by the reader that what actually happened in the story’s central experiment was much too speculative to be realistic fiction and thus passed over into the realm of pure science fiction. The ending was well-done, although honestly it was telegraphed a few pages earlier.

Not being particularly fond of the “hard” sciences, I enjoy reading an occasional sf story based on less common sciences such as mathematics (Clifton Fadiman’s Fantasia Mathematica being an entire anthology of such stories), probability, sociology, psychology, or even something as unlikely as philosophy. I look forward to finding more such stories in the future.

Books to Read

2011-06-18T07:46:00.000-07:00

As usual, I have a large bunch of recent additions to my collection which I have not read yet. Half the fun is deciding which books to read next, so here are the choices awaiting me:

2010 Purchases Still Unread:
To The Stars / collection of 4 young adult novels by Heinlein
Miles in Love / collection of 2 novels and a novella by Lois McMaster Bujold
Warriors / collection edited by Gardner Dozois & George R. R . Martin
Captain Flandry / collection of novels and novellas by Poul Anderson
Cat Tales 2 / collection edited by George Scithers
Ananzi Boys / novel by Neil Gaiman
Virtual Light / novel by William Gibson
The Green Mile / novel by Stephen King
Young Flandry / collection of novels and novellas by Poul Anderson
Captain Blood / classic novel by Rafael Sabatini

2011 Purchases Still Unread:
Sir Dominick Flandry / collection of novels and novellas by Poul Anderson
Miles Errant / collection of 2 novels and a novella by Lois McMaster Bujold
The Great Book of Amber / 10 novels by Roger Zelazny
Dreamsongs Vol. 2 / collection by George R.R. Martin
House of Suns / novel by Alastair Reynolds
Empire / historical novel by Steven Saylor
Graveyard Book / novel by Neil Gaiman
Flandry’s Legacy / collection of novels and novellas by Poul Anderson
Embassytown / novel by China Miéville

Unread books obtain via Paperback Swap:
A Song for Arbonne / novel by Guy Gavriel Kay
Troubled Waters / shared world novel edited by C.J. Cherryh
Counting Up Counting Down / collection by Harry Turtledove
Chanur’s Homecoming / novel by C.J. Cherryh
Chanur’s Legacy / novel by C.J. Cherryh
Federation / collection by H. Beam Piper
Survival / novel by Julie Czerneda
Climb the Wind / novel by Pamela Sargent
Festival Moon / shared world novel edited by C.J. Cherryh (ed)
Fever Season / shared world novel edited by C.J. Cherryh (ed)
Prelude to Mars / collection of 2 novels and short fiction by Arthur C Clarke
Great Steamboat Race / novel by John Brunner
Venus of Dreams novel / by Pamela Sargent
N-Space / collection by Larry Niven
Venus of Shadows / novel by Pamela Sargent
Child of Venus / novel by Pamela Sargent

The Windup Girl

2011-06-11T07:13:00.000-07:00

There are several sub-genres of f&sf I do not enjoy, which I guess makes me similar to most other fans. Military science fiction. Urban fantasy. Near future dismal. However, there are some writers in each sub-genre who appeal to me in spite of their unfortunate choice of sub-genre. I read a David Weber “Honor Harrington” novella which was so good it has me wanting to read one of his novels. Charles de Lint is one of my favorite fantasy writers, even though he writes squarely in the middle of urban fantasy (in fact, to some extent he invented the sub-genre).

Near future dismal has not appealed to me since William Gibson popularized it in the early 80s with the ascent of cyberpunk. In fact, a large portion of American science fiction from the 1980s and 1990s bored me because it was obsessed with how dull and depressing the near-future could be. Thank heavens for the space opera revival in the pages of Interzone in the 1990s and writers such as Alastair Reynolds and Stephen Baxter who breathed new life into the sf genre.

But there is still a large undercurrent of near future dismal being published. Ian McDonald has written several highly-acclaimed novels in that sub-genre, such as River of Gods, Brazyl and recently The Dervish House. I haven’t read any of them, but I’ve read several of his shorter pieces set in the India of River of Gods and, while they are very well-written, I still find them somewhat boring.

So along came Paolo Bacigalupi a few years ago with his own version of a dismal near future. The first story of his I read was “The Fluted Girl,” which was so good I put it on my best-of-the-decade list. But he followed it with less interesting stories such as “The People of Slag and Sand,” “The Calorie Man” and “The Yellow Card Man.” None of those stories particularly appealed to me.

Then in 2010 he released his first novel The Windup Girl, which not only received near-universal acclaim, but won the Nebula Award and tied for the Hugo Award with China Miéville’s excellent The City & The City. Around the same time I read his novelette “Pump Six,” title story of his first collection, and I found it very enjoyable. Still near future dismal, but his plotting and sense of wonder carried the story. His vision of a future Columbia University was worth the entire story.

So recently I decided to read The Windup Girl, and I have been very pleased with it. Its setting is dismal, but the characters are not the typical bunch of depressed, amoral losers. They are people who are dealing with their situation in the best way possible, aggressive rather than lethargic, overall moral , although that morality is often affected by their circumstances rather than traditional morality.

The novel is set in Thailand, one of the few Third World countries whose economy has survived in the face of the worldwide economic collapse, due partly to the petroleum economy’s failure. There are a handful of main characters, each representing a different aspect of that country’s populace:

• Anderson Lake is a white foreigner who represents AgriGen, an international which has filled in part of the corporate gap following the collapse of petroleum. He runs a factory which is producing spring-generated energy using giant megodonts, which are artificially-grown elephant-like creatures, until one of the megodonts goes rogue and destroys the factory;

• Emiko is a windup-girl, an artificially grown person designed to serve masters totally and unquestioningly, sort of geishas when in Japan, but in Thailand she becomes an abused prostitute.;

• Jaidee is the Tiger of Bangkok, an idealistic yet brutal enforcer of the White Shirts who works for the Environment Ministry keeping foreigners and other exploiters under control. However, his division is in deadly conflict with the Trade Ministry, whose only concern is bringing foreign trade into the country, and who consider Jaidee a major obstacle to their plans;

• Kanya is Jaidee’s dependable but dour assistant who keeps secrets which threaten to become a hindrance to his mission;

• Hock Seng is a yellow card man, a foreign national who lives in Thailand without being a citizen. He manages Anderson’s factory, but neither totally trusts the other, and each realizes the other has a private agenda unknown to him.

The first half of the novel mostly explores the lives of the main characters, and their interrelationships with each other and with other important characters: General Pracha, Jaidee’s superior at the Environment Ministry; Akkarat, the head of the trade ministry; Richard Carlyle, another foreigner who works undercover for Akkarat. But the novel really takes off when Trade decides to remove Jaidee’s influence and take control of the country themselves.

Even Even if you, like me, dislike near future dismal sf, The Windup Girl is a taut, well-plotted character-based novel which aroused my sense of wonder even in the most depressing setting. I can see why it won so many awards and, along with The City & The City, it was indeed the best sf novel of 2010.

The Metallic Muse

2011-06-07T06:23:00.001-07:00

I cannot recall having read any stories by Lloyd Biggle, Jr., although his name is certainly a familiar one. When I was in high school, he was one of the founding members of the SFWA, and he has a reputation for writing sf about music. So when I saw a copy of his 1972 collection The Metallic Muse available at Paperback Swap, I quickly claimed it.

The book contains 3 novelettes and 4 short stories originally published in IF, Fantastic, Galaxy (2 stories each) and F&SF (1 story). The opening story “Tunesmith” was, according to Biggle’s introduction, based on the supposition of commercials growing so important that television shows vanished entirely, and people watched exclusively commercials. The protagonist of the story is a songwriter who, because of the disappearance of any music other than in commercials, writes jingles for a living. But the commercials are not really the focus of the story. Its real concern is how much more difficult it is for a true artist to succeed in a world dominated by mediocre hacks. The story is fast-paced with characters painted as black-and-white with few subtleties, and the ending kind of takes a left turn into an almost completely different story. But its scenes about the protagonist artist becoming a cultish performer are worth the entire story.

Two other stories in The Metallic Muse have some relationship to music. “Spare the Rod’ is concerned with a robot which has replaced a violin teacher as its methods enable students to play near-flawless violin almost instantly. This is mostly a trick story showing how the violin teacher foils the robot.

“Orphan of the Void” is a meatier novelette concerned with the aftereffects of the government’s systematically stealing all the young children of a primitive race to put them up for adoption for the richer residents of Earth. The main character is Thomas Jefferson Sandler, one of those “space orphans” who becomes obsessed with finding his true home and his original parents. The role music plays in this story is a relatively minor one, as a song concerning the search for one’s true home sweeps the galaxy, sparking a drastic reaction by the government which has a major impact on Sandler’s search.

The longest story is the concluding novelette which is mostly a problem-solving story about an invasion of predatory “rugs” from Venus which eats people and seemingly has no weakness. Of course, the hero discovers a weakness after several failed attempts. It’s an interesting story, but not as good as when Biggle is writing about his beloved music. Overall, this book is light reading of the 1950s prozine type. A pleasant change of pace between more “serious” books.

Julian Comstock

2011-05-29T07:32:00.000-07:00

I have read a handful of Robert Charles Wilson novels previously, and I often had mixed feelings about them. He usually creates an interesting scenario, around which he tells a human-interest story showing the impact of that scenario on ordinary people’s lives. This is the type of story which I tend to enjoy, and I have found Wilson’s previous novels very readable and generally interesting, as were his characters.

But what I found frustrating about his novels is that often nothing seemed to be resolved. The world was the same at the end of the novel as it was at the beginning, which tended to make the sfnal foundation of the story more of an excuse to examine his characters than anything he cared to explore for its own sake. While there was always forward progress in the lives of the characters, there was little or no development in the speculative foundation of the story.

At times I wondered if Wilson was a frustrated literary writer who liked science fiction but did not really know what to do with it other than create his backgrounds. Darwinia was a book I expected to like a lot, but it was mildly disappointing. So was The Harvest. His Hugo-winning Spin was better in that some exploration of the speculative foundation actually took place, but I have not read the sequel Axis yet to see if he fully explored it.

Which brings us to Wilson’s novel Julian Comstock, a Hugo-nominee in 2010. Its scenario appealed to me considerably, since I have grown weary about near-future sf which always presupposes that advanced technology will continue to grow and expand into singularities, raptures and non-human humans. In my own unpublished science fiction, I have hypothesized a collapse of technology and, to a large extent, civilization, and Wilson has adopted the same scenario for Julian Comstock.

In the late 22nd century, America has expanded to 60 states, including most of Canada, but the technological level is fairly 19th centuryish, due to various collapses in the mid-21st century. The government still has a president and Senate, but the former is mostly a hereditary position, and the latter are chosen exclusively from rich aristocrats rather than from the various lower classes (which range from free workers to indentured servants who are no better than hereditary slaves).

There is also a union of churches known as the Dominion, which exerts a commanding influence over both the government and the lives of most Americans, so that life is fairly dominated by three institutions: president, Dominion and military.

The novel is narrated by Adam Hazzard, the son of a seamstress on an aristocrat estate controlled by a family which has a distant relationship to Declan Comstock, the current president who has remained in office many years. The president has forestalled any threat of an overthrow by trumping up charges against his very popular brother whose military victories against European invaders in eastern Canada made him a national hero, eventually having him executed. Now the president fears that his nephew Julian might become the pawn of his enemies in another attempt to replace him, so Julian’s mother has sent him to that estate to keep him as far away from Declan Comstock’s attention as possible. He is accompanied by a mentor Sam who serves as the surrogate arm of Julian’s mother, and he becomes fast friends with Adam who stays with him through the entire book.

The war against the Europeans is going badly, largely due to the president’s mismanagement of the military, so another round of large-scale recruitments is enforced, and Julian, Adam and Sam are forced into the military. Julian decides to hide his true identity by adopting a pseudonym, a wise decision since he soon shows himself to be a bit of a rebel as he questions the Dominion beliefs and authority constantly. He also displays some of his father’s military genius and gradually becomes a hero among his fellow soldiers.

Adam is a writer wannabe, who keeps a journal of their adventures in the military, much of it centered around Julian’s exploits. He becomes friendly with a war correspondent who is much less scrupulous than Adam realizes. He steals Adams writings and publishes it in New York City as his own work. As a result, Julian becomes a popular figure in the media, so that he and Adam are invited to New York City to be honored for his exploits. Ironically, the person doing the honoring is the president’s sister-in-law, who is Julian’s mother, so that his true identity is immediately revealed. Almost overnight, Julian Comstock becomes a national hero.

These are just the bare bones of the novel. Much of it is spent following the lives of Julian, Adam and Sam. All three come near death due to the president’s determination to have his troublesome nephew killed by withholding military support from their portion of the army. They encounter several interesting people in their travels, perhaps none moreso than Calyxa, a rebellious singer from Montreal who becomes Adam’s wife.

The book is not without some flaws. Good things happen to Julian a bit too easily at times. Adam’s naivete is too convenient to be totally believable. And some of the villains were too black-and-white where they might have been better developed had they showed a bit more shades of gray in their personalities.

But overall I empathized with the main characters, and enjoyed the events of the novel. It reminded me somewhat of the straight-forward storytelling of the 1950s, which stood up well so long as you did not think too deeply about what was taking place, lest the house of cards come tumbling down. For me, the cards did not fall down and I enjoyed Julian Comstock enough to give it an A ranking.

Year’s Best Sf 15

2011-05-21T08:13:00.000-07:00

I read the first three volumes of David G. Hartwell & Katheryn Cramer's annual best-of series many years ago, then in the crush of books to read I skipped the next 11 volumes before my daughter-in-law gave me #14 as a gift one year, and I realized how good the series actually is. Just like #14, the stories in #15 are “unpretentious science fiction, running the gamut from traditional problem-solving to space opera, future history, and everything else which filled the pages of magazines such as Galaxy, Worlds of IF and Worlds of Tomorrow when they were my favorite zines in the 1960s.” But they are not deliberately old-fashioned sf, being thoroughly modern in approach and technique, just not obsessed with high-technology to the exclusion of good story-telling and such traditional tropes as sense of wonder and thoughtful speculation.

The fact that this volume is the best of the 6 I have read so far is a good sign that either Hartwell & Cramer are not losing their love of sf or that the sf field, even as it shrinks under the oppressive weight of fantasy and urban schlock, is going through a particularly fertile period right now. The stories in the volume come from a variety of sources: 13 stories from prozines, 2 online and 9 from original anthologies and collections.

My favorite stories include the following:

Alastair Reynolds’ “The Fixation” is a tale of how events in one universe can effect those in a parallel one unexpectedly;

Sarah L. Edwards’ “Lady of the White-Spired City” is a moody tale with a fantasy ambiance about a galactic traveler who returns to a world she had visited hundreds of years ago where she had a child which she abandoned to return to space;

Robert Charles Wilson’s “This Peaceable Land” is a scary alt history of what might have happened had the Civil War been averted by President Stephen Douglas;

Vandana Singh’s “Infinities” is a warm peon to mathematics (a subject dear to my own heart) about a math teacher in India who is obsessed by infinity. An engrossing tale, which unfortunately faded out rather than reach a fitting conclusion;

Michael Cassutt’s “The Last Apostle” is an alt hist about two Apollo astronauts who discover unmistakable signs of life from ancient Earth on the moon, and decided to conceal it;

Chris Robinson’s alt history “Edison’s Frankenstein” which hypothesizes the discovery of a new power source in the mid 18th century which both ends the Civil War and makes Thomas Edison’s discovery of electricity irrelevant.

There are numerous others fine stories by Yoon Ha Lee, Bruce Sterling, Nancy Kress, Gene Wolfe, Peter Watts (his Hugo-winning “The Island”), Brian Stapleford, Paul Cornell, Stephen Baxter and others. This volume is must-reading for fans of traditional science fiction with a modern emphasis.

Robert Silverberg’s Worlds of Wonder (aka Science Fiction 101)

2011-05-05T07:25:00.000-07:00

I am probably not the primary audience for this book, which, although published originally in 1987, and reprinted under its new title in 2001, is aimed at three groups, in roughly descending order of importance:

• fans of science fiction interested in reading some of the finest stories the field has produced;
• new writers of science fiction hoping to master their craft and cross the bridge into professional writing;
• fans of Robert Silverberg wishing to learn a bit about his own path from amateur writer to professional.

Let’s see how I fit into each target audience:

• I am certainly not a new reader of science fiction, having first discovered the genre in the early 1960s and having previously read every story in this book except one;
• having written science fiction for roughly 40 years, either I already know all the “secrets” in this book (regardless of my apparently inability to put them into practice), or I do not yet know them (which would make me far too slow a learner to ever achieve writing success);
• Robert Silverberg is my favorite writer of science fiction, so I have read many prior essays by him, in which he discussed much of the same territory discussed in this book.

That being said, Worlds of Wonder is a fascinating book. Silverberg is such a smooth, interesting writer that his autobiographical essays, the longest opening the book and others infused into critiques of the individual stories, are all very enjoyable reading. The essays might not appeal to every reader as much as it did to me though, since I experienced many of the same childhood traits that Silverberg himself did, including a lifelong passion for writing science fiction.

As for the stories themselves, Silverberg has selected what he considers ideal examples of successful science fiction stories, and he has succeeded in nearly every case. The book opens with Damon Knight’s “Four in One,” a straight-forward examination of how four people having different personalities and agendas can survive when they are ingested into an alien body and forced to live as a composite being. This taut story successfully combines a struggle to survive along with a close look at a very alien type of being.

The next two stories were my favorites. Alfred Bester’s “Fondly Fahrenheit” was ostensibly a tale of an evil robot, complete with Bester’s masterful writing flourishes and misdirections that lead to an unexpected but very satisfying conclusion that redirected everything I thought I understood previously in the story.

C.L. Moore’s “No Woman Born” was written in the 1940s but was at least two decades ahead of its time in its character-study of a woman whose brain is saved from a devastating fire by being placed into a robot body. But not just any body, and therein lies much of the story’s power. Silverberg marvels at how this story must have affected readers of 1940s Astounding and I totally agree with him. Had this story been published 25 years later, it would have been hailed as one of the highlights of the late 1960s New Wave.

“The Monsters” is a role-reversal story by Robert Sheckley, told from the viewpoint of a race of aliens experiencing the arrival of a human spaceship on their world. Sheckley was a master of making a philosophical point in a brief, satirical story, and in this story he was at the top of his form.

“Scanners Live in Vain” was the first published sf story by the brilliant Cordwainer Smith, who for two decades wrote a series of pseudonymous stories deservedly admired by both sf readers and writers. Smith understood the structure and intent of a science fiction story as well as any author, combining straightforward storytelling with wondrous ideas that always left you with a lot of food for thought. He was at the top of his form when he died abruptly in 1966, with stories such as “The Dead Lady of Clown Town” and his only novel Norstrilia. Had he continued writing for another two decades, I suspect his body of work might now be considered the very peak of 20th century sf. Outstanding though “Scanners Live in Vain,” is, it barely scratches the surface of the talent of Paul Linebarger (the man behind the pseudonym), and I strongly encourage you to read either Norstrilia or the NESFA Press edition of The Rediscovery of Man: The Complete Short Science Fiction of Cordwainer Smith.

And there’s still much more, including:

• Brian W. Aldiss’ “Hothouse,” one of the wondrous far-future stories which made his early reputation, part of a series of stories sharing that setting;
• Jack Vance’s “The New Prime,” about the ruler of the entire galaxy who nears the conclusion of his reign of office;
• Cyril M. Kornbluth’s “The Little Black Bag,” which, like Sheckley’s story, reveals some universal truths beneath its humorous surface story;
• Bob Shaw’s “Light of Other Days,” one of the greatest sf concepts ever devised, and a personal favorite story as well.

Anybody who cares about becoming a writer can do a lot worse than using this anthology as their first textbook. But anybody who has not read the majority of stories in it should buy it immediately (assuming they can find it on sale somewhere) for the stories themselves. Robert Silverberg has always had exquisite taste as an anthologist. I have more than 20 reprint anthologies edited by him, and I have enjoyed every one of them. This collection ranks among the finest of them for its excellence. I recommend it highly for all readers of science fiction.

Some observations on the Hugo nominations

2011-04-27T13:17:00.000-07:00

The Best Novel list seems considerably weaker than last year’s list. On the 2010 ballot, three of the books (Windup Girl, The City & The City, Boneshaker) easily had the most mentions on best-of-the-year lists, and two other nominations (Julian Comstock, Palimpsest) ranked high as well. But this year only three of the nominees showed up on the composite best-of-the-year ranking at all (The Dervish House, Blackout/All Clear, The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms), while other books which appeared on many such lists were left off the ballot, including the most recommended book of the year, How To Live Safely in a Sfnal Universe, as well as acclaimed books by very popular writers (China Miéville’s Kraken and Guy Gavriel Kay’s Under Heaven).

And, as several other people have commented, I find it very unfair that because Connie Willis is incredibly popular with Hugo voters, she rates having two books’ votes combined to win her one spot on the Hugo ballot. The argument that the two books really comprise a single novel is not really satisfactory, since many books have been split over several volumes in the past, but were never combined for award purposes. I believe this is blatant favoritism for the popular Connie Willis.

I have never heard of Feed, by Mira Grant, and even finding a review of it in the popular sf websites was not that easy. While it did get a glowing review at SF Site, which described it as a fast-paced zombie novel, the book did not show up on either their editors’ or readers’ best-of-the-year list. So who actually liked it enough to earn it a Hugo nomination? And is this the direction the Hugo Awards are headed–two zombie novels in two years (Boneshaker last year)? Can romantic vampires, urban detectives, and other worn-out tropes be far behind?

I had fully expected both Charles Stross to received a nomination for Best Novel, considering his recent history. He has earned 13 Hugo nominations since 2001, including 6 for Best Novel (2004 Singularity Sky, 2005 Iron Sunrise, 2006 Accelerando, 2007 Glasshouse, 2008 Halting State, 2009 Saturn’s Children) and 2 victories. He had eligible novels this year in both his Merchant Princes and Laundry Files series, so I expected at least one of them to make the final ballot.

While there are some familiar names on the short fiction lists (Ted Chiang, Alastair Reynolds, Geoffrey A. Landis, James Patrick Kelly, Mary Robinette Kowal and Allen M. Steele have all been on the list previously), there were a lot of lesser-known and even unknown names as well this year: Aliette de Bodard, Sean McMullen, Eric James Stone and Carrie Vaughn.

However, the tradition that being on the ballot one year gives a writer a distinct advantage the next year continues with many writers this year:

• Kij Johnson (‘‘Ponies’’in 2011 and “Spar” in 2010);
• Peter Watts (“The Things” in 2011 and winner “The Island” in 2010);
• Rachel Swirsky (‘The Lady Who Plucked Red Flowers beneath the Queen’s Window’’ in 2011 and “Eros, Philia, Agape” in 2010).

Two writers who have been Hugo’s best friends, along with Connie Willis, are Michael Swanwick and Mike Resnick, the latter who appears on this year’s Best Related Book category, while Swanwick’s 15 minutes of fame have seemingly ended. Other big names in the Best Related Book category include Barry Malzberg (a former nominee there) and Robert A. Heinlein (as the subject of a biography).

As usual, several categories do not seem to have much suspense: Girl Genius owns the Best Graphic Novel category; Doctor Who dominates the Best Dramatic Presentation-Short category, as usual (and what is the cute video Fuck Me, Ray Bradbury doing here? The voters could not find 5 episodes of tv shows better than that?),

Some categories actually have a bit of suspense this year. There are no overwhelming favorites in Best Editor, either Long Form or Short Form with the absence of Ellen Datlow and David Hartwell (at least one of whom likely declined a nomination), nor in Best Fan Writer, so some deserved nominees who have been shut out in the past will finally win the award.

I cringe at the thought of StarshipSofa winning another Best Fanzine Award, since while it might be a valuable service, it is definitely not a fanzine by any definition I can think of. The Best Semi-Prozines are split between online zines (Lightspeed, Clarksworld) and paper zines (Locus–which has won so many times that I would prefer any other nominee over yet another award for it–Weird Tales, Interzone), which I assume gives the advantage to online zines.

In general, while the Hugo nominees do not represent the absolute “best” in any category, that has likely only been true for an occasional category once or twice in the history of the awards, so it does not bear complaining about. But there are enough worthy nominees that the possibility exists of having all deserving winners this year. What odds do you think Las Vegas would give on that happening though?

The Modern Prometheus

2011-04-23T06:41:00.001-07:00

Many long-time sf readers, such as myself, grew up reading several of the giants of the genre. Readers whose “golden age” was in the 1940s and 1950s grew up on Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein, Arthur C. Clarke, Ray Bradbury, Fritz Leiber, Poul Anderson, Philip K. Dick, A.E. van Vogt, and others from that era. I was a child of the “New Wave” in the 1960s who grew up on Clifford D. Simak, Roger Zelazny, and three writers who are still active, Robert Silverberg, Ursula K Le Guin and Samuel R. Delany.

Readers who are like me got different types of pleasures from the various writers. But what about younger readers of science fiction; is it possible for them to enjoy current writers who provide similar rewards to the writers of our youth?

In an attempt to perform a service for younger readers, I have compiled a “If you liked A...then you should read B” list for them. But none of the writers B are slavish imitators of writers A. Rather it is my opinion that their fiction taps into the same sense of wonder as their forebears, and hopefully will influence their fans in a similar manner.

Robert A. Heinlein was the quintessential sf writer for fans in the 1940s and 1950s, luring many young readers into the sf field especially through his series of “young adult” novels of the 1950s. While many writers have striven to imitate Heinlein, often failing, there are two contemporary writers who were obviously influenced by Heinlein who seem to offer similar rewards without being mere imitators. Neither is a young writer actually, both having first reach prominence in the 1970s: John Varley and Joe Haldeman.

Isaac Asimov wrote straight-forward plots with lots of dialog, often based around sf mysteries (The Caves of Steel, much of the Foundation series). His most logical heir is Jack McDevitt who loves mysteries and characters investigating ideas rather than slam-bang action.

Arthur C. Clarke’s best fiction explored the vastness of space with thought-provoking ideas and scenarios. Frequently when I read fiction by Stephen Baxter I feel much of the same excitement. Fittingly, the two collaborated on both a standalone novel The Light of Other Days and the Time Odyssey trilogy but, ironically, they are not the works of Baxter which offer the most Clarke-like rewards.

A Roger Zelazny novel frequently revolved around a mystery, filled with color and wondrous scenarios, all told in language which was virtually poetic. The writer whose fiction seems to offer the closest similar experience is China Miéville, especially his Bas Lag novels.

While nobody offers any writing precisely similar to the type of evocative stuff Ray Bradbury wrote in the 1950s, there is one current writer whose short fiction does provide a similar effect, and that is Jeffrey Ford. I do not consider it a coincidence that although Bradbury was ostensibly a science fiction writer, his logical heir is a fantasist, considering that Bradbury primarily used sf tropes to tell fantasy stories.

The writer whose sense that things are not quite as we believe they are most resembles that of early Philip K. Dick is fantasist Tim Powers, whose novels are as much based on “secret histories” as they are based on pure fantasy.

Poul Anderson was perhaps the greatest master of world-building and plotting who might never be equaled in the breadth of his interests, ranging from space opera to sociological sf to historical fantasy to alternative history. The modern writer whose sf is most similar in attitude to that of Anderson is Alastair Reynolds, who is both talented enough and young enough to spread his wings in other directions in the future.

Again, none of these latter writers are imitators of their forebears, but I believe they would likely appeal to fans of the former in many ways. I have not attempted to select the “modern” Silverberg, Delany or Le Guin, since all three are still alive and well, so you can find their types of rewards from the sources themselves.

If you liked...Then Read...This Novel...
Robert A. Heinlein...John Varley...Steel Beach; The Golden Globe ; The Rolling Thunder trilogy
Robert A. Heinlein...Joe Haldeman...Forever War ; Mindbridge; The Worlds trilogy
Isaac Asimov...Jack McDevitt...Alex Benedict series
Arthur C. Clarke...Stephen Baxter...Xeelee series; Destiny’s Children series
Roger Zelazny...China Mieville...Perdito Street Station; The Scar; Iron Council
Philip K. Dick...Tim Powers...Declare; Last Call; Three Days to Never
Poul Anderson...Alastair Reynolds...Revelation Space trilogy; Century Rain; The Prefect
Ray Bradbury... Jeffrey Ford...The Empire of Ice Cream; The Cosmology of the Wider World; The Shadow Year

The Cat in the Hat and Zombies

2011-04-20T11:39:00.001-07:00

Can you guess from the title of this essay what trend in contemporary genre fiction I find the most disheartening? It’s the combining of classic novels with tired old fantasy tropes. This seems to me to be symptomatic of hack writers who lack a single trace of creativity trying to make easy money by stealing somebody else’s talent (Jane Austin being a particularly popular target, although Mark Twain and L. Frank Baum have been stolen as well) and combining it with crap to make a bestseller.

There are seemingly as many of these books as there were zombies in Night of the Living Dead, with titles which make me cringe: Pride and Prejudice and Zombies; Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters; Little Vampire Women; Mr. Darcy, Vampire; The Undead World of Oz: L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz Complete with Zombies and Monsters; Vampire Darcy’s Desire; Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Zombie Jim; Android Karenina.

Some slightly-more clever writers decided they did not need to steal a famous novel (since that would require their actually reading it), but instead to steal a famous historical or fictional character, tossing in some tropes and–voila!–a novel is born: Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter; Queen Victoria: Demon Hunter; Robin Hood and Friar Tuck: Zombie Killers.

I cannot help but wonder what is the market for these pseudo-novels? People who would never be caught dead in a Barnes & Noble, but consider Wal-Mart the height of literary fiction? People who consider 1930s space operas way too literary for their taste?

One would hope that the trend is an aberration whose moment of glory would not last much beyond Andy Warhol’s famous “15 minutes of fame,” but it does not seem to be showing any signs of abating any time soon. The current issue of Locus has its usual listing of recent book sales, and look at what treats await us in the near future:
• Richard Nixon’s battle with Lovecraftian horrors;
• a “remix” of The Sound of Music with vampires;
• The Three Musketeers (with vampires);
• a postapocalyptic reimagining of Edgar Allan Poe’s “Masque of the Red Death.”

Many avid book-lovers have been fearing the death of books and their replacement by ebooks in the near-future, but if this parasitic trend grows much stronger, we might all be better off if when books do die they drag ebooks along with them. Then all of us who still love real imaginative fiction can spend our time living in the past reading the type of fiction which, although looked down upon for generations, was actually high literature compared to what has been published since hack writers discovered that crap sells as well as pearls and does not require a smidgen of talent to produce.

Century Rain

2011-04-16T07:07:00.000-07:00

In the first hundred pages of Alastair Reynolds’ Century Rain, we are given three mysteries. Alternating chapters of the novel are set in late 1950s Paris where a right-wing government is slowly tightening the clamps on the population. The two main characters are Floyd and Custine, would-be swing musicians who moonlight as private detectives, and who are not making much of a living doing either. They are contacted by an old man who is landlord of an apartment building, and had gotten very friendly with a young tenant named Susan White who died by falling from her 5th floor balcony to the ground. The police considered her death a suicide and refused to investigate it. But the landlord, obviously smitten by the girl, is positive she was too fearful of heights to either jump off the balcony or risk falling off it, so he pays the two detectives to learn who murdered her.

The other alternating chapters are set in a future in which Earth is totally uninhabitable, and its former inhabitants live in orbiting cities. Verity is an archaeologist who takes risky visits to the planet to find relics from when the planet was still inhabited. Her speciality is Paris, France. When one of her young assistants dies accidentally during one of her field trips, she is blamed for negligence and given the choice of facing a tribunal or undertaking a dangerous mission which she is not given very much information about. All she learns initially is that the mission is an important tool in preventing a group known as Slashers from terraforming Earth. Apparently the Slashers have two different political groups, one willing to negotiate for the sake of terraforming Earth, while the others intend to invade it.

The third mystery involves the connection between the two scenarios. In the future, Susan White is a scientist who has already undertaken the mission that Verity is assigned, and somehow died doing it. And Verity’s boss has the same name as one of the characters in 1950s Paris. Obviously, they are connected somehow, which is one of the threads which Reynolds dangles before the reader.

Shortly afterwards, the two strands merge into one, and the mysteries become a single intriguing mystery. As usual, Reynolds’ plot combines the mystery with fast-paced action and several human interest stories revolving around Floyd and Verity. There are several types of villains in Century Rain as well, and one group are certainly the creepiest villains I can ever recall encountering in a science fiction book. Horror writers should take note that, as is so often true, less can sometimes be much more effective than overdoing the horror.

In the half-dozen Alastair Reynolds novels I have read, he has shown an ability to traveling across the spectrum of science fiction sub-genres, having done space opera in the Revelation Space series, police procedural in The Prefect, now noir mystery interwoven into a strong sf tale. But the common bonds are strong storytelling, fascinating premises, and good characters worth investing time in. Century Rain is such a story which I recommend highly.

The Stars My Destination

2011-04-07T06:44:00.000-07:00

Gully Foyle, the protagonist [I hesitate to call him the “hero”] of Alfred Bester’s stunning novel The Stars My Destination is one of the finest, perhaps the finest, character in science fiction. Gully Foyle happens to be a madman.

As the novel opens, he has been stranded on the hulk of a derelict spaceship for six months. Being fairly simple-minded, he has no way of escape, and spends his time trapped in a small locker which he periodically floods with oxygen from the ship’s dwindling supply of oxygen tanks. Then a miracle happens: another spaceship approaches, and he sends out messages and flares asking for assistance. The ship approaches very near, and slows down as if to rescue him, but at the last moment it speeds up and abandons Gully Foyle to his fate.

This abandonment instills such incredible rage in Foyle that he determines to escape and seek revenge against Presteign, the company which owned the other ship. And escape he does, only to be rescued by a bizarre cult living on an asteroid which expects Foyle to become a member and spend the rest of his life breeding. This does not suit him, since his only remaining purpose in life is an overpowering thirst for revenge. So he flees the asteroid, only to discover that while he was comatose the cultists had branded him permanently to resemble the other cult members’ bizarre tattooed-appearance.

Hatred and revenge totally control Foyle’s personality for the entire novel, alienating everybody he encounters, whether friend or enemy, and even his few romantic attachments despise him more than love him. He has two major enemies seeking him throughout the novel, interfering with his own search for the captain of the ship which abandoned him. One enemy is Presteign of Presteign, the hereditary magnate who is head of the company, and who is seeking a mysterious shipment which was lost when Foyle’s ship vanished, thus he wants the location of the abandoned wreck from Foyle. The other is Y’ang-Yoevil of government Intelligence, who is trying to find Foyle as part of the government’s ongoing struggle with the Outer Satellites with whom the Inner Planets are engaged in warfare.

In the second portion of the novel, Foyle assumes the identity of Geoffrey Fourmyles, a rich dilettante who travels with an outrageous circus which has made him enormously popular while enabling him to hide from his enemies right in the public spotlight as he continues his quest for revenge. But two women who simultaneously love and hate Foyle learn his true identity, making it more urgent that he achieves his goal before he is captured by his enemies.

There are so many important aspects of this novel. A key ingredient is jaunting, the ability of people to teleport, some for only a short distance, others for thousands of miles. Another is the war which escalates as the novel progresses. A third is a mysterious item called pyrE, which is apparently the cargo responsible for Presteign’s search for Foyle.

The Stars My Destination is strongly-influenced by the classic The Count of Monte Cristo, but so filled with fascinating characters and ideas as to supersede its source material. In addition to Foyle and his two primary enemies, other important people include:

● Saul Dagerman, a radioactive scientist in the employ of Presteign, but perhaps the only person not cowered by him;
● Robin Wednesbury, a one-way telepathic psychologist who tried to help Foyle upon his initial return from space as a tattooed madman, for which he repaid her with hatred and suffering;
● Jizbella, a fellow prisoner in an unescapable underground prison, who flees with him during their impossible escape, only to be abandoned by Foyle during the last stages of the escape;
● Olivia, Presteign’s blind, ice queen daughter who rejects Foyle instantly when she meets him in his guise as Fourmyles, even though he falls immediately in love with her.

The novel proceeds at a helter-skelter pace, its complex plot growing and changing constantly as Foyle’s activities interweave with those of Presteign, Y’ang-Yoevil and the three important women. Whenever it seems that I understood everything, Bester threw in another twist, whether in his enemies’ search for Foyle, his own search for vengeance, or the nature of his fellow characters.

The novel’s climactic scene is a masterpiece of sense of wonder, a feat of creativity I have not seen equaled in any piece of science fiction in the 50+ years since. Several major authors tried a similar approach during the experimental New Wave era but, in my opinion, neither succeeded at all compared to Bester’s pyrotechnics.

My memory of The Stars My Destination always placed that book on my top ten favorite sf novels ever; re-reading it many decades later, I think I actually underestimated the novel. I definitely agree with so many major f&sf writers who consider it one of the finest novels ever written. It is very highly recommended.

Most acclaimed f&sf of 2010

2011-04-01T12:53:00.000-07:00

As per usual, I kept watch of all the best-of-2010 lists of f&sf books, and the following are the books which made the most lists. Last year, China Mieville’s The City & The City topped the list and later tied for the Hugo Award. We'll see how this year's top picks fare in award season.

Title / Author / # of lists

How To Live Safely in a Sfnal Universe / Charles Yu / 12
The Dervish House / Ian McDonald / 11
Blackout / All Clear / Connie Willis / 9
Kraken / China Mieville / 9
Under Heaven / Guy Gavriel Kay/ 7
The Quantum Thief / Hannu Rajaniemi / 6
Surface Detail / Iain M. Banks / 5
The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms / N. K. Jemisin / 4
Lightborn / Tricia Sullivan / 4
The Curse Workers: White Cat/ Holly Black / 3
Mockingjay / Suzanne Collins / 3
A Visit From the Goon Squad / Jennifer Egan / 3
Shades of Milk and Honey/ Mary Robinette Kowal / 3
Who Fears Death? / Nnedi Okorafor / 3
New Model Army / Adam Roberts / 3

Brain Wave

2011-03-27T07:44:00.001-07:00

In 1967, I joined the Science Fiction Book Club (for the first time, but definitely not for the last time). My bonus for joining was Anthony Boucher 1000+ page Treasury of Great Science Fiction (in two volumes). In addition to a wealth of short stories and novelettes, the collection contained 4 complete novels (which tells you something about the length of sf novels then as compared to now; in many ways, I still prefer the shorter, punchier novels of that era to the bloated novels of this era), three of which have stayed in my memory over the decades as truly outstanding: John Wyndham’s Rebirth, Alfred Bester’s The Stars My Destination, and Poul Anderson’s break-through novel Brain Wave.

Recently I decided to go back and reread at least part of those two volumes, and I decided to start with the Anderson and Bester novels in volume 2. Since Brain Wave opened the volume, I would start there. While I recall the book’s premise, I remembered almost none of the book’s actual plot and only one specific scene early in the novel, a memory which might be a result of my having been a math major in college when I first read the novel: in the first few pages, Anderson sets the framework for how the Earth has passed out of a galactic region which inhibited intelligence of all creatures for several million years. In showing the resulting increase in intelligence, he focuses on a pre-teenaged boy who is studying algebra and begins wondering what would happen if the value of x changes from 2 to 3. But he does not change the value abruptly, but rather “sneaks up” on 3. Anderson then goes on to matter-of-factly mention that “he was well on his way to inventing differential calculus when his mother called him down to breakfast.”

That scene excited me again when I read it, and raised my level of anticipation considerably. But any writer can devise a fabulous premise, which Brain Wave definitely has, but it takes an outstanding writer to turn it into an equally thought-provoking novel, and Anderson succeeded totally in that as well. The rest of the relatively-short novel examines the aftereffect of the abrupt tripling of every creature’s intelligence both on people’s lives and on society as a whole. He shows the inevitable breakdown of society as people walk away from tedious jobs, including subsequent riots over the lack of food distribution and other anticipated services. There are civil wars in dictatorships where people rebel against long-time repression.

But, overall, it is an optimistic novel so we see how drastically-increased intelligence overcomes most of those crises relatively quickly. The main focal characters include a business manager who becomes virtual overload of a region stretching from New England to New York City, and a scientist involved in building a faster-than-light spaceship. But the most interesting parts of the novel focus on two other characters:

• Sheila, the wife of the scientist who is unable to adapt to increased intelligence and is diagnosed as “insane,” when all she really wants is to return to her former level of intelligence, which she determines to do;

• Archie Brock, who was a simple-minded farm hand who stays behind on the farm when all the other workers flee out of boredom. Archie develops a new type of communal living structure with a strange group including many of the farm’s animals (who are now intelligent enough to determine their own lives), a group of runaway circus animals (led by an intelligent elephant and monkeys), and other former “morons,” whose increased intelligence surpass what you and I currently have.

As is typical of an Anderson novel, there is the potential for a fast-paced thriller, but he represses that instinct to concentrate on the human element, while never forgetting how important pacing is to a well-told story. I have enjoyed reading Anderson’s Polesotechnic League stories recently, but Brain Wave is an entire level higher, ranking among the truly great science fiction novels. It certainly made me glad I decided to reread it, and convinced me to read the rest of the volume as well.

Worlds of IF, July, September 1952

2011-03-24T13:27:00.001-07:00

Continuing my slow reading of 1950s issues of Galaxy and IF brought me to the July and September, 1952 issues of If. The July 1952 issue had a lead novella by Walter M. Miller, Jr. “Let My People Go,” his second story in the first three issues of the magazine. While these two stories were not quite at the level of his 1950s masterworks as “Crucifixus Etiam,” “Conditionally Human,” and the deserved Hugo-winner “The Darfstellar,” they are still the best stories in the early issues of IF, which makes me wonder why there has never been a collection of his complete short fiction. He only published about 30 stories besides his two novels A Canticle For Leibowitz (which was really a fix-up of three novellas) and the long-delayed sequel St. Leibowitz and The Wild Horse Woman (which took Miller the rest of his life to write, and had to be finished by Terry Bisson after his death).

The September issue also had a novelette by Philip K. Dick entitled “The Skull,” one of his very earliest published stories whose plot should seem very familiar to anybody who read sf in the late 1960s. In the future, a repressive government is having difficulty dealing with the devoted members of a vast religion who believe in peace without war, which goes counter to the needs of the government. So they send a killer two hundred years back in time to find the spiritual source of the religion, a mysterious man who appeared in a midwestern town and gave a talk which had such an impression on his listeners that they formed a religion around his ideas.

Part of the mystique of the founder was that several of his followers saw the man again a few months later after he had been seized and executed by government officials. So when the killer arrives a few months later than intended, and his appearance stuns the first people he meets, anybody who doubted where this story was headed knew immediately. My immediate thought at that point was that Michael Moorcock must have read “The Skull” at some time before he conceived the idea for his masterpiece “Behold the Man.”

The City & The City

2011-03-19T08:11:00.000-07:00

Even though Paolo Bacigalupi’s The Windup Girl won more awards for Best Novel of 2009, China Miéville’s The City & The City dominated the lists as easily the most acclaimed novel of the year. Recently I bought both books and eventually hope to have my own opinion on which is better.

The City & the City begins as a routine mystery set in a fictional city of Besźel involving the murder of a graduate student. But as the novel goes on, there is mention of another city named Ul Qoma which seemingly inhabits the same piece of land as Besźel, except people in one city are forbidden from seeing either the inhabitants or the landmarks of the other. Intermingled with the murder is talk about the mysterious time in the distant past when the one city split into two cities as well as a war between them. While it is possible to travel from one city to the other, there are legal ways to do so similar to traveling to a foreign country. And when inhabitants of one city need to contact somebody in the other, it is similar to phoning a foreign country. Should somebody try to enter one city from the other city illegally–which can be done at various "cross-hatching" sites in either city–or even intermingle with somebody from the other city, it is illegal and apt to attract the attention of an entity (perhaps a supernatural one, although the inhabitants of the two cities are not sure about its origins) called the Breach which has the power to cause a person’s permanent disappearance.

As police detective and narrator Borlú investigates the murder, he learns that the victim had lived in Besźel originally, but relocated to Ul Qoma for her studies, even though her murdered body was discovered back in Besźel. Because of her questionable beliefs concerning the twin cities, she had gotten involved with various political groups, incurring the wrath of a Besźel patriotic group, and possibly a Ul Qoma patriotic group as well. To make matters even more complicated, she dabbled in the theories of a disreputable scientist who believed in the existence of a third city Orciny situated on the same piece of land as both Besźel and Ul Qoma, but somehow between the other two cities.

When Borlú learns of the involvement of both cities in the case, he brings his evidence to a group who serves as “secret masters” of both cities, containing members from both cities who meet in a building situated on the overlap between them. At first the group decides that the murder can best be solved not by police of either city, but by the mysterious Breach itself, to whom they turn over the mystery, but soon afterwards that decision is mysteriously overturned and jurisdiction returned to Inspector Borlú.

This might all sound somewhat confusing, but it is not really at all. Miéville unpeels the layers of the cities like an onion, slowly and carefully as the murder investigation progresses, and it not only becomes believable but more and more enthralling as the novel continues.

The second portion of the novel takes place in Ul Qoma where Borlú is a visiting inspector working with Inspector Dhatt. We soon learn that while Besźel is an open society which has ties with America, Ul Qoma is a closed society which is compared to Cuba and China in the novel. America refuses to have any dealings with Ul Qoma, even though it is considerably more prosperous and advanced than Besźel. Instead it has close dealings with Canada. Borlú’s time in Ul Qoma is fascinating, and the mystery both deepens and spreads wider as two more people connected with the murdered girl also disappear, and the mystery of Orciny, which has been disregarded as pure legend by most inhabitants of the two cities, including both investigating officers, eventually becomes an important part of the investigation.

I dare not say too much more about The City & The City without treading on spoilers, so suffice it to say this novel has numerous appeals to it: as a fascinating murder mystery (usually not my type of fiction, but Miéville has overturned that prejudice), as an exploration of an outrageous concept which actually works and provides considerable thought, and as a character study of the differences between living in an open and closed society. I recommend this book very highly and give it my top rating of A.

Moonfall

2011-03-11T07:20:00.001-08:00

Moonfall is the only Jack McDevitt novel I had not read yet. Even though he is my favorite current writer, all of his other novels which I have enjoyed (with the exception of Time Travelers Never Die) combined far-future views of Earth with glimpses of that future’s history, and strong doses of sense of wonder wrapped around interesting mysteries. But Moonfall was different from those novels. It was a near-future disaster novel / thriller about a giant comet which crashes into the moon and threatens life on Earth.

But I could only hold out so long before getting a copy of the missing novel to read. In spite of my love of McDevitt’s fiction, I did not have particularly high expectations for Moonfall, and I am pleased to say that I was wrong: those expectations were easily surpassed in what was a very enjoyable novel. Much of the book’s first half concentrated on the people working and studying on the moon at the time of the comet’s sudden arrival. Fortunately, there were no colonists there yet, so it was anticipated that there were sufficient numbers of “micro-buses” and spacecraft to evacuate in the few days’ notice. While that seems incredibly short notice for the arrival of a comet, considering that they are generally spotted while still out in the Oort Cloud with many months’ advance notice. McDevitt used his one “stretch the disbelief” moment with some mumbo-jumbo about a giant comet traveling ten times faster than the typical celestial visitor.

However, an unexpected emergency with one micro-bus causes a delay in the evacuation, so it turns out one less rescue mission than necessary will be possible, stranding a half-dozen people on the moon when the comet hits. The novel’s second half shows the effects of the impending comet’s arrival, as well as the aftermath of its striking the moon, on refugees from the moon itself, on various orbiting space stations and on Earth. The bulk of the time though is spent with those half-dozen people who are the core of the novel, the last group of refugees on the moon who attempt a stunning, last-second escape. They include:

• the vice-president of the United States, who was attending a ceremony on the moon and decided at the spur of the moment that it was his duty to be the last person standing on the moon who would thus “turn out the lights and close the door.” Of course, he made that claim before the incident with the micro-bus which made it unlikely all the moon’s residents could be evacuated;

• an international news reporter who decided incorrectly that the government would never allow the vice-president to endanger his life, so he also decided to stay until the last group out. Little did he know that the vice-president had stayed against the direct orders of the president;

• a non-denominational minister who experiences a spiritual boost while on the moon followed soon by his questioning a god who would endanger all life of Earth so capriciously;

• Evelyn, an administrator on the moon who becomes the confidante of the vice-president;

• the pilot and co-pilot of the micro-bus who endanger their own lives attempting the risky last-minute rescue.

After the comet hits the moon–AND THIS IS A BIT OF A SPOILER–the moon breaks up, and large portions begin descending on Earth, causing considerable damage when they hit inland, and devastating tsunamis when they land in the ocean (I finished reading this book the night before the earthquake in Japan and the resulting tsunamis, which felt a bit weird). Moonfall follows the efforts of several groups to survive while the last group of moon refugees are still struggling to escape.

McDevitt avoided most of the tired clichés of some disaster novels, with only one portion about a right-wing group which decides to do everything possible to prevent the rescue efforts on Earth. All in all, this was a strong and enjoyable novel, in large part due to the group of last refugees who became real people easy to care about. While not quite on the level of his Alex Benedict or Academy books, or his best standalone Infinity Beach, Moonfall is still highly-recommended.

The Year's Best Science Fiction (26th volume), part two

2011-03-04T15:03:00.001-08:00

Geoff Ryman’s “Days of Wonder” hypothesizes a distant future in which humans no longer exist on Earth, but have been replaced by semi-intelligent animals. The story’s main focus is on horselike beings whose main threat is predatory cats. On an annual equine migration, the cats capture and kill the young foal of a horse who had been one of the herd leaders. Soon after, she captures an injured cat following an unsuccessful ambush, and she cares for it as a replacement for her foal. Needless to say, this causes considerable consternation among the other horses.

Kristine Kathryn Rusch has established herself as a major mystery writer under several pseudonyms, and that success has carried over into her science fiction. Her series of Retrieval Artist novels are successful sf mysteries, as is her story “G-Men,” which originally appeared in an original anthology Sideways in Crime, devoted to that sub-genre. It tells two different but related stories, one a 1960s alternate history mystery involving the assassination of another important political figure between the murders of JFK and RFK. The other is a political power struggle between attorney general RFK and new president LBJ. Both stories were fascinating, and successfully done.

My choice for the best story in the volume is “The Erdmann Nexus,” by Nancy Kress. She is one of the finest writers of short fiction in the sf field, and has been so for thirty years. I recall such great stories as “Out of All them Bright Stars,” “The Price of Oranges,” “The Flowers of Aulit Prison” and “Beggars in Spain.” This Hugo Award-winner belongs among that group. It is set in a senior citizen complex where strange things are happening to several elderly residents, mysterious brain spasms which have no medical cause. The story has a well-developed cast worthy of an entire novel: Dr. Henry Erdmann, one of the residents and a theoretical physicist; Carrie, an aide who has developed a close relationship to him; Jake DeBella, a research scientist. And twice as many minor characters, all better-developed than major characters are in many novels. The strangeness grows, the mystery becomes deeper, as do the relationships, all merging in a satisfying conclusion which reminded me of–THIS IS A SPOILER!–Arthur C. Clarke’s classic novel Childhood’s End. If Kress ever expands this story into a novel (it’s already a novella of nearly 40,000 words), I will buy it as soon as it is available.

James Alan Gardner’s “The Ray-Gun: A Love Story” is a most unlikely premise to be any good. A somewhat geeky teenager discovers a truly alien weapon deep in the woods, and it basically takes over his life. He decides he can become a super-hero with it, so spends as much time as possible training both his physical body and his mind, being totally obsessed with what he calls the “ray gun.” That obsession breaks up two romances, and inadvertently causes the death of one girl. But the story works, mostly as a metaphor for how geeky kids often fixate on one particular aspect of their life (Star Wars, comic books, video games) to the exclusion of all others.

There were many other good stories in the collection, 30 stories in all, but those were my favorite baker’s dozen, in what was one of the better volumes in an overall recommended annual series.

The Year's Best Science Fiction (26th volume), part one

2011-02-25T07:59:00.000-08:00

Like most anthologies, I expected to find stories which fell into my comfort zone along with those which fell outside it in Gardner Dozois' 26th Year's Best Science Fiction (which contains stories originally published in 2008). But unless Dozois is stacking his strengths in the beginning, this collection was really outstanding from the outset.

Stephen Baxter’s “Turing’s Apples” is a SETI story set around two brothers’ sibling rivalry. One brother Wilson is part of a project set on the far side of the moon which has received a one-second message six thousand light years away near the core of the galaxy. The message is repeated once a year, as if it were being sent by a rotating lighthouse-type signal. In the second message more data is compressed than in the Encyclopedia Britannica.

The storyline about the signal illustrates Baxter’s strength as a writer, scientific extrapolation which blends into philosophical extrapolation. The climax of the story takes place in the passage

We don’t know anything about what they look like, how they live–or even if they’re corporeal of not. But they are old, vastly old compared to us. Their cultural records go back a million years, maybe ten times as long as we’ve been human...But they regard themselves as a young species. They live in awe of older ones whose presence they have glimpsed deep in the turbulent core of the galaxy.

If that paragraph excites your sense of wonder, then Baxter is the writer for you. While personal interactions are his weakness, the brothers’ sibling rivalry does not interfere with the thought processes at the heart of the story.

Soon thereafter came Paolo Bacigalupi’s “The Gambler.” My dislike for near-future dismal sf is fairly well-known, but I still enjoy Bacigalupi’s version (along with Cory Doctorow’s stories) while I rarely finish other writers’ stories of that type. His characters are generally not the amoral low-lives which dominate much of this sub-genre, but people with positive values and an optimistic view who are surviving as well as possible under the worst circumstances. Plus he is a good story-teller, which overcomes a lot of other negatives in his worldview.

“The Gambler” is about our current media age, in which people are obsessively fascinated by celebrities and their lives, while having virtually no interest in “real” news stories which impact their standard of living as well as the future of our world. The story’s narrator is a refugee from a dicatatorial takeover in Laos who works for a news agency. But while his co-workers’ stories are earning multiple thousands of hits per hour, his “important” stories are garnering virtually no public interest. His boss gives him an ultimatum: either increase his hits or he will be fired and, as a result, deported back to Laos.

This is a story about selling out: shouldn’t anybody stand up for principles? The story’s highlight is a scene in which the narrator meets a fabulously popular pop singer who is also a refugee from Laos, and how she tries to help him in spite of himself. Strong, thought-provoking stuff which is very enthralling reading.

Elizabeth Bear and Sarah Monette’s “Boojum” is a space opera about a pirate ship which is actually a living entity (known as a boojum) which eats merchant ships which are seized by the pirates. What starts out as an exciting adventure soon grows into a human interest story as the protagonist, a junior engineer named Black Alice who worships the ship, discovers how the crew actually convinces the boojum to follow their orders. On the heels of Bacigalupi’s story, this is another story about following one’s principles which I enjoyed very much.

Next came Alastair Reynolds’ “The Six Directions of Space,” which begins as a tale of espionage as a secret agent from a huge galactic empire visits one of its outer worlds where the government’s control is not as tight as it would like it to be, so the agent falls into the clutches of a mostly-independent warlord who treats her more like an enemy than an ally.

The tale of espionage becomes a story of first contact from the point of view of a repressive totalitarian state and ultimately veers into a tale of parallel universes in which different groups have built galactic empires: Mongols in one, Moslems in another, Nestorian Christians in a third; but other universes have non-human empires whose brutality make the human ones almost acceptable. This is a fascinating look into the many-worlds which cries out for sequels.

And then came Ted Kosmatka’s outstanding “N-Words,” a story about racism, but not the type its title might lead you to believe. The “N” referred to are neanderthals who have returned in the same manner that dinosaurs returned in Jurassic Park, but the neanderthals turn out to be considerably different than anthropologists have surmised. The reaction they stir in some people is unsurprising, but totally reprehensible. The story’s last line is a classic and worth the entire story.

After this outstanding start, I expected a let-down, but there are many other good stories in this volume. Ian McDonald’s “An Eligible Boy” is set in his vision of near-future India. I read different authors for slightly-different reasons: some are storytellers, some excel at characterization or world-building, others create great scenes but are not so good at stringing them together into a full-fledged novel. I read McDonald primarily for his background world. His milieu is always full and breathing, so you cannot help but feel a part of it. The plot of this story is a bit more developed than usual, making it one of the better stories in the collection.

I generally read Robert Reed because of a combination of his background world (especially, but not exclusively, in his Great Ship stories) and the strength of his individual scenes. As if he realizes the latter is his strength, “Five Thrillers” describes the future of the human race in five separate scenes, each containing the same main character, a near-superhuman named Joseph Carroway who is not only present at some of the crucial moments in history, but shapes most of them. As expected, this story has great scenes, although it does not quite hang together as a fully-developed story.

Charles Coleman Finlay’s “The Political Prisoner” begins like a straightforward political thriller about a sudden coup d’etat on the world Jerusalem by one department of the former government which inadvertently sweeps up an undercover agent of that very department and sends him to a prison farm along with hundreds of other men who either worked for the overthrown department or else were totally innocent. When the protagonist arrives at the prison camp, he is forced to work and live with a group of aliens who are despised by most humans and have been imprisoned purely for reasons of prejudice. Basically the story is about the trials and tribulations of political prisoners, and it works effectively on that level.

Maureen McHugh’s “Special Economics” reads like a contemporary political dark satire since I found very little in it that really makes in science fiction, but it was still an effective warning on how Chinese companies might be (are?) using the new capitalistic economy to trap their employees in virtual slavery, and how ineffective the government has become to prevent it.

To be continued...

Fiction websites.

2011-02-18T07:16:00.001-08:00

While print magazines devoted to science fiction are slowly fading away–even the “Big Three” have circulations nearing 20,000 and less–online fiction venues are growing. And while there does not seem to be a successful format for making a profit yet, the online zines have been very successful as far as quality of fiction and average number of hits.

According to Locus’ annual survey, the more popular online zines are averaging between the same 20,000 readers per month on the low end, with as many as 300,000 per month on the high end!

From my perspective, there is currently a “Big Five” of online science fiction websites:

http://subterraneanpress.com/magazine/ started out as a print magazine intended to publicize the Subterranean line of books. Several years ago they transferred the entire zine online, complete with cover, fiction, podcasts and nonfiction. One feature of this zine that makes it somewhat unique among online publishers is that it publishes novellas and novelettes, while most other venues restrict themselves to short stories (which is weird, since space is obviously not a problem online, as it is in print zines). The current quarterly issue has 7 stories, including an audio story by Elizabeth Bear, and other stories by Robert Silverberg, Larry Niven, Mike Resnick, Caitlin R. Kiernan and Jay Lake.

http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/ is a bi-monthly zine very similar in format to Subterranean, combining fiction, podcasts, and nonfiction. You have the option of browsing by issue contents, or by category (if you wish to only look for fiction they’ve published, for example), which is a convenient feature. Their authors are perhaps not as famous as those of Subterranean, but the quality is equally high. They have had stories by Yoon Ha Lee, N.K. Jemisin, Eric Brown, Robert Reed, and 2 of last year’s short story Hugo nominees.

http://www.tor.com/ is a bit more confusing to follow since it has no dedicated contents page, but rather links scattered all over their home page for fiction and nonfiction both. Fortunately, fiction is listed across the top and links to a contents page of all fiction published, so it is easy to find. Also, as has become common in this web-centered world, rather than have its issues posted in their entirety (as in Subterranean and Clarkesworld’s models), Tor.com publishes stories irregularly, so you need to check the site every few days. That being said, they feature a lot of excellent fiction by top writers (including two of last year’s Hugo-nominated novelettes). Scanning down their contents, I see John Scalzi, Neil Gaiman, Kij Johnson, Terry Bisson, Michael Bishop, Eileen Gunn, Bruce McAllister, Robert Charles Wilson, Michael Swanwick, Harry Turtledove and Charles Stross.

http://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/ is a relatively new magazine which posts stories, podcasts and features regularly, a la Tor.com, but then collects them all as monthly issues. Recent issues have had fiction by Julie E. Czerneda, Cat Rambo, Orson Scott Card, Tanith Lee, Ursula K Le Guin, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Nancy Kress, Robert Silverberg and Stephen King. While the three previous zines were all related to book publishers, and were considered “loss leaders” to attract new readers to their books, this zine seems to be more dependent on attracting income somehow, so while I have enjoyed it so far, I wonder about its long-term future.

http://www.strangehorizons.com/ is perhaps the longest-running online magazine, publishing weekly issues which each generally contain a story, a nonfiction article, and a handful of reviews. Its authors are not as famous as those of Lightspeed and Subterranean, but it is still of an overall high quality. Like Clarkesworld and Lightspeed, you can link to all the fiction published if you wish, where you will find stories by John Kessel, Lavie Tidhar, Carol Emshwiller, Vandana Singh, Theodora Goss, Tim Pratt and Cat Rambo.

There are many other online fiction sites, ranging from Lightspeed’s fantasy companion (http://www.fantasy-magazine.com/) to Abyss & Apex (http://www.abyssapexzine.com/), Gigantosaurus (http://giganotosaurus.org/), and the ambitious Daily Science Fiction (http://dailysciencefiction.com/) which publishes a story per day. But there is only so much reading one person can do, so I pretty much limit myself to the “Big Five” listed above.

If you start visiting the above sites, you may never have to pay to read a piece of short science fiction again. Happy reading!

Galactic Empires, vol. 2

2011-02-11T07:37:00.001-08:00

Another sf reviewer recently commented on his blog that while he enjoys modern science fiction, part of him misses the sense of wonder and big ideas of the 1950s and 1960s in magazines such as Galaxy and IF. I agree with him completely. While I would never stop reading new sf, and mostly enjoying it, I also enjoy reading sf of 40-50 years ago as well.

Apparently, Brian W. Aldiss felt much the same way in the 1970s when he edited a series of reprint anthologies of traditional sf mostly from the 1950s and 1960s. Part of that series was two volumes of Galactic Empires. The two volumes were short enough that today they might have been published as one 600 page volume. The two books feature many well-known SF writers. Volume One (which I reviewed here in November, 2008) had novelettes by Poul Anderson, Isaac Asimov (the original “Foundation”), Clifford D. Simak and James White (one of his Sector General stories). Volume Two has novelettes by John D. MacDonald, James Blish, Harry Harrison, Poul Anderson and F.L. Wallace. There are also several short stories, the best being by Mack Reynolds and a typical Fredric Brown punchline ending.

In spite of his reputation as part of the literary end of the sf spectrum, in these volumes Aldiss shows a predilection for traditional adventure stories, running the gamut from simple pulp adventures to more thoughtful stories. But what is never lacking in any stories in these two volumes is high concepts and sense of wonder.

John D. MacDonald is well-known for his Travis McGee mysteries, but he is an underrated sf author who appeared regularly in genre magazines in the 1950s and wrote two acclaimed novels Wine of the Dreamers and Ballroom of the Skies. His novelette “Escape to Chaos” has a tangled plot which he manages to untangle in the end. The third son of a tyrannical galactic emperor rebels against him and, although greatly outnumbered and beaten in almost every battle, manages to escape almost miraculously each time. It turns out that a group of advanced beings overseeing what we now call the “multiverse” (a term developed by Michael Moorcock) has decided the emperor needs to be overthrown and his son is the one to do it. But when they eventually decide that too many miraculous escapes is counterproductive, and order the female agent assigned to the rebel to let him die, they inadvertently open a can of worms which causes more trouble than they imagined.

James Blish’ short story “Beep” is a fairly well-known story about the development of an instant long-range communication device (similar to Ursula K Le Guin’s later ansible) and how one of its side effects proves more important than the original intent. This story, like much by Blish, is very slow-paced and consisting primarily of dialogue, but it was a gripping, satisfying story nonetheless.

Mack Reynolds was not a major writer, but a reliable journeyman who always understood the true nature of humans and the real foundations of their civilization. In “Down the River,” a spaceship lands and an emissary of a galactic empire informs all the world’s leaders that his empire has traded possession of Earth to another empire for other considerations. The leaders protest that they had no idea we were supposedly “owned” by other aliens and what gives them the right to “trade” us anyway? What happens next is both chilling and absolutely true, but I dare not say more lest I give away the story’s considerable impact. This was my favorite story in the book.

Harry Harrison’s “Final Encounter” details the adventures of a mismatched exploration team which believes it has finally made the long-dreamed of discovery of a truly alien race. This story is typical Harrison, well-plotted and intriguing.

Poul Anderson had novelettes from early in his career in both volumes. Both stories show some of Anderson’s strengths, although they are also simpler than much of his later works. “Lord of a Thousand Suns” shows the influence of Planet Stories and Leigh Brackett’s science fantasies in its tale of a member of the galactic empire fighting against powerful insurgents trying to overthrow it. He discovers the remnants of an ancient civilization far more advanced than humans, but which destroyed itself in a similar war against insurgents. However, some of their artifacts are more powerful than any human weapons, if he can only reach them and learn how to use them in time. What he finds is much more than he had bargained for. Fun stuff.

F.L. Wallace is a forgotten writer who did some very good stuff in the 1950s. His story “Big Ancestor” bears a resemblance to Harry Harrison’s story in that it tells of a group of scientists in the future seeking the alien race which hundreds of thousands of years ago apparently seeded numerous planets with the ancestors of humans who have been found on numerous worlds. Similar to “Final Encounter,” what they find is both more and less than they expected.

This was a fun volume, with more thoughtfulness than might be expected from its title and intent. I hope to seek out more Aldiss anthologies in the future.

Online Fanzines

2011-02-05T09:03:00.001-08:00

Do any of you remember the good ol’ days of the 1960s-1980s where many fanzines were actually devoted to science fiction? That is not particularly common anymore. I read quite a few zines regularly, but precious few of them have much emphasis on f&sf.

But that is not a problem since there are many websites and blogs devoted to f&sf, and several of them update fairly regularly. So here is my periodic updating of websites/blogs which I find good reading for serious f&sf fans. They are in roughly descending order regarding how frequently I check them.

http://www.sfsignal.com/. I check this website every day, since it is a comprehensive daily listing of what’s currently available online. It categorizes its links as Free Fiction, Interviews & Profiles, News, Articles, Events, and More Fun Stuff. In addition, it contains video clips, book reviews, tables of contents for upcoming collections/anthologies, and a fascinating feature Mind Meld in which a cross-section of writers/critics/fans discuss various topics. [I confess that I am a bit prejudiced here, since I have been asked to participate in several Mind Melds myself.] If there is any indispensible f&sf website, SF Signal is it.

http://www.locusmag.com/. I also check this website daily, but its contents are not as valuable as SF Signal, nor is it updated as frequently. It is primarily a news site, similar to its parent Locus Magazine, but it also has links to various news items and reviews online.

http://www.sfsite.com/. This is strictly a review site, updated twice-monthly. It is probably the most consistent location for new reviews. It also lists recent releases in books, media sf, and graphic novels.

http://www.strangehorizons.com/. This is a weekly sf zine, offering a mix of new fiction, articles and reviews. It is one of the oldest, most reliable online zines, and its format seems to be a role model for many new online zines.

http://www.tangentonline.com/. This is a long-running website devoted to reviews of short fiction, both zines and books. While it has occasional blips of inactivity, it is still a worthwhile source for reviews.

http://www.dondammassa.com/index.htm. This is Don D’Ammassa’s review site. Since he is one of the most prolific readers and reviewers of the past 40 years, and he updates regularly, this is a great place to catch up on reviews and recommendations. I just wish he would return to compiling his annual best-of-the-year lists [the site contains such lists for 1992-2004].

http://sciencefictiontimes.blogspot.com/. Jim Black has promised to be a more consistent blogger this year, which I hope is true since his combination of reviews and discussions of sf is one of the more interesting blogs on my favorites list. It does not hurt that his taste is very similar to my own, of course.

Next time I’ll discuss the fiction websites which I frequent regularly.

Green Mars

2011-01-30T09:55:00.000-08:00

I’ve been rereading Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars series, starting with Red Mars (which I reviewed on 9/25/10), and now the second title Green Mars. I selected both books as my book-of-the-year in 1992/1993 respectively, so that brings high expectations when I reread them, as well as several risks. How many books maintain their excitement the second time around? That fear has kept me from rereading several favorite books from the 1960s, when I was much younger and perhaps had different expectations and wonder levels than I do now. But the Mars series is less than 20 years old, so I might have similar expectations now as I had then.

In my review of Red Mars last September, I stated I see no reason to change that high opinion of the book upon this latest reading of it, which is as good an evaluation of Green Mars as well. The book shows Robinson doing what he is best at:

• detailed worldbuilding, including much attention spent on both the physical terraforming of Mars, as well as the diverse societies being developed on it;

• a finely-detailed political plot as the various groups of immigrants struggle to impose their different values on the planet (from the extreme reds who want to maintain Mars’ distinctive landscape to those who hope to transform the planet into a clone of Earth) while struggling against the giant transnational corporations from Earth who each have their own weapons and military forces, as well as the technology to enforce their own desires onto the planet against the opposition of the people already living there;

• details of a proposed revolution whose plans are hindered both by memories of the 2061 fiasco in Red Mars as well as the different aims and inflexibility of many diverse groups;

• well-developed characterization, especially four main characters: Art who arrives from Earth hoping to unite the diverse groups of the underground; Nirgal who becomes his closest friend and co-advisor; Sax who is one of the First Hundred and part of the underground, but who is living in disguise among the scientists working on the terraforming; Maya who is another of the First Hundred who has so much emotional baggage from her early years on Mars.

Green Mars is slow-paced, but moves inexorably forward as does the terraforming and political situation on Mars. Not being particularly science-oriented, I preferred the political maneuvering more than the physical terraforming itself. One of my favorite portions of the novel was the thirty-day gathering of representatives of the various underground groups to see if they can find common cause to unite them against the transnationals who have taken over much of the planet. Another very strong scene was the novel’s climax which, without giving too much away, reminded me of the most powerful scene in H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds.

For a middle novel in a trilogy, Green Mars was a very absorbing book that I recommend highly. And next on to Blue Mars, the concluding novel in the series.

Visible Light (continued)

2011-01-22T07:38:00.001-08:00

“A Thief in Korianth” is a novella about ... well, you obviously know what it’s about. ☺ Gillian is a young girl caring for both herself and her younger, precocious sister as a pickpocket, hoping eventually to accumulate enough money to save her sister from either of the two lives available to her, thievery and prostitution. But when she steals a sealed cannister thinking it contains money, she finds herself in the midst of a struggle between powerful forces in Korianth, a series of events far out of her control. This is the type of fantasy I enjoy most, a story either set in a real historical setting or an alternate historical setting, in which the only difference between fantasy and reality is either the “alternate” event or the presence of magic. Think of Fritz Leiber’s Fahfrd and the Grey Mouser or anything written by Guy Gavriel Kay.

In many instances, the magic is actually a red herring, placed in the story to earn its status as fantasy, but either unused or so minor the story could just as well been straight historical fiction. This was such a story, with the magic used sparingly and not totally necessary to the story's denouement. Overall it was gripping reading and typically well-done.

The final novella is “The Brothers,” a long fantasy about two warring kingdoms separated by a wooded area controlled by the Sidhe. The “evil” kingdom is ruled by the brother of the rightful king, who killed his sibling to achieve the throne. The son of the former king had been sent away to live with relatives as protection against his uncle, but when he comes back to reclaim the throne, he finds that circumstances might be considerably different than he had thought. And when the Sidhe interfere in his quest, his situation becomes even more difficult. This is a good story, not as strong as “A Thief in Korianth,” but a worthy conclusion to the book.

As I said when reviewing Sunfall, the first portion of The Collected Short Fiction of C.J. Cherryh, this portion alone made the overall collection worthwhile reading. And I still have several hundred pages of newer fiction to go!

Visible Light (The Collected Short Fiction of C.J. Cherryh, part two)

2011-01-18T10:39:00.000-08:00

The first portion of the massive Collected Short Fiction of C.J. Cherryh consisted of her 1981 collection Sunfall (which was reviewed here on 9/4/10). The second portion is her 1986 collection Visible Light, consisting of three novellas and three short stories.

The lead story, which, as far as I can tell, is the first piece of short fiction Cherryh published, is “Cassandra,” which won a Hugo Award as Best Short Story. It was a deserving winner, the story of a woman who sees future dead people superimposed on the present, and what happens when she meets a man who is part of both images. A chilling story.

The longest novella “Companions” is nearly a novel at 140 pages. It concerns an exploration mission to a planet which immediately discovers a total absence of all animal life. Shortly thereafter, a devastating disease affects all the members of the crew, quickly killing all but one member, Paul Warren. Before he died, the captain decided the planet is too dangerous for other visitors from Earth, so he rigged the ship never to take off again without exploding. So Warren is trapped on the planet with only an AI for company. The AI hovers over him like a guardian angel, providing less than ideal companionship.

One member of the crew went crazy before dying, killing a number of his fellows before fleeing the ship. Warren decides to search for him outside the ship, causing great discontent to the AI whose robot form cannot accompany him across a river due to its great weight. So Warren is alone when he encounters a presence with no corporeal form and the ability to invade his mind totally. “Companions” is the type of adventure story C.J. Cherryh does as well as any writer. It is carefully-paced (no action-packed thriller here!), based on the thoughts and actions of the main character as he tries to maintain his own sanity in the face of possible lifetime isolation, while also trying to solve the mystery of the mysterious entity. This is very good stuff which deserved an award nomination.

To be continued...

The Pritcher Mass

2011-01-11T06:56:00.001-08:00

Since I retired I have been reading and re-reading old prozines, enjoying its short fiction which seems much more sfnal than much of the short fiction being published currently (much of which tends toward the fantasy and slipstream variety). This month I picked up three issues of Analog from August, September and October, 1972. I only subscribed to Analog for a few years in the 1970s when Galaxy was degenerating under editors Ejler Jacobssen and John J. Pierce (with a few years’ spurt between them under Jim Baen), but I was also given a box of Analogs in the 1980s by a Biology teacher who was cleaning out his dad’s attic. Since Analog almost always had part of a serial in each issue, I kept the issues which had serials I did not already have in book form (which was 14 serials total), and gave my friend George, a Physics teacher and SF fan, the issues which either had incomplete serials or serials I already owned). I was left with 56 issues overall, which I have been reading occasionally (but much less frequently than I read 1950s issues of Galaxy and IF, which are more recent additions to my collection).

I selected the three issues I did this time because they contain a serial by Gordon R. Dickson, The Pritcher Mass, which I have never read. Dickson is one of the grandmasters of SF by whom I have read sadly-few books, only 2 in fact: Three To Dorsai! (which contains three novels in his most famous series: Necromancer, Dorsai! and The Tactics of Mistake) and the standalone novel Time Storm (which, for some reason, I have never read).

But I actually have 2 Dickson serials in Analog, the other being The Outposter and, based on my enjoyment reading The Pritcher Mass, I hope to read that serial as well in the near-future. The Pritcher Mass is about a near-future, overpopulated, polluted Earth, in which the majority of people live in domed cities, never daring to leave the domes because of “the rot” which is a mutated plant life which enters the lungs and grows until the person chokes to death. But life in the protected cities is dominated by The Citadel, a massive crime syndicate whose tentacles stretch even into the government itself.

But there is hope for humanity in the form of the Pritcher Mass, a giant “structure” being built purely by telekinetic-like abilities of the rare people who possess that talent, its purpose being to seek out planets where humanity can emigrate. The main character has been trying to qualify for the Pritcher Mass, since its workers live on a space station away from the crowding and pollution. But he has been failing his tests by the slimmest margins until he finds a “catalyst” in the form of a rock outside the dome. Subsequently, he encounters a female witch whom he believes is actually a telekinetic talent. He also learns that the Citadel is opposed to his being involved with the Pritcher Mass for reasons he does not know.

The novel combines fast-paced adventure with thought-provoking elements about the future of humanity and the polluted Earth. It was a good, if although great, novel which was both worthwhile reading and encouragement to read more by Gordon R. Dickson.

The three issues of Analog also had several enjoyable novelettes, some by well-known writers (James H. Schmitz, Christopher Anvil) but others by unknowns which, in some instances, is the real joy of reading prozines. The October issue had a novelettes by a writer I have never heard of previously. David Lewis’ “Common Denominator” was a novel about space soldiers. The narrator is a war ace flying solo fighter ships in a war on a distant planet. While the story is ostensibly about the invasion of a planet which is an enemy stronghold, it is really about the attitude of soldiers, both the narrator’s companions as well as the enemy, and how there are times when perhaps the enemy is actually more noble than members of one’s own race, in spite of the extreme differences which are the foundations of the war.

The August issue had a novelette by “old reliable” writer James H. Schmitz. “Symbiotes” is one of his Hub series featuring Trigger and Telzey, two women who are involved with the Psychology Service. Recently I read Schmitz’ huge collection Eternal Frontier, which was very enjoyable, but contained only non-Hub stories. Baen Books has published 4 collection of Schmitz’ stories which contain primarily Hub stories: Telzey Amberdon, T‘n’T: Telzey and Trigger, Trigger and Friends and The Hub: Dangerous Territory. If “Symbiotes” is any indication, those books should be as good as Eternal Frontier and definitely worth reading.

“Symbiotes” tells of Trigger at a shopping mall when she encounters an 8" high man on the run from somebody who has apparently kidnapped him and two friends who are inhabitants of a distant world which was designed hundreds of years ago as a possible outlet for overcrowded humanity by having its émigrés shrunk so that more of them could fit on the planet without crowding. But apparently somebody has found a profitable way to kidnap some of the tiny people and sell them for considerable profit. In the process, Trigger encounters three of the most intriguing aliens I have seen in a long time. Good stuff.

Hugo nominating ballot

2011-01-08T15:36:00.000-08:00

In my email box this week was a ballot for nominating the Hugo Awards for the best of 2010, so I need to think about my choices...

Best Novel. Going through my list of novels which I read in 2010, only two were actually published in 2010–I tend to be a few years behind in my reading–and only one of them seems worthy of a Hugo nomination to me, Jack McDevitt’s Time Travelers Never Die. So that was the extent of my ballot.

Best Short Fiction. I am even farther behind in reading short fiction than reading novels. I have not read a single issue of F&SF from 2010 yet, and all my other short fiction reading comes from best-of-the-year anthologies, which obviously have not been published yet.

Best Dramatic Presentation. I do not watch much television at all, except for Jeopardy, which cannot be classified as f&sf no matter how wide I stretch the category. So that eliminates Short Form. For Long Form, I saw about a half-dozen movies this past year, the best one being The Social Network, again not being f&sf by any description (although it might have had it been released 15 years ago, lol). But two of the movies I saw do qualify for the Hugo Awards, and both were excellent movies: Toy Story 3 and Tangled, so they made my ballot.

Fan Categories. There are too many outstanding fanzines, fan writers and fan artists to fit onto a ballot. Since several of my favorites make the ballot fairly regularly (Challenger, Argentus, Lloyd Penney), if I have to leave anybody off my ballot, I might as well leave them off since they do not need my support as much as some other deserving nominees. So my fan ballots looked as follows:

Fanzine: Visions of Paradise / The Reluctant Famulus / Lofgeornost / Feline Mewsings / Trial and Error. I admit that one of the five nominees is far from a major fanzine, and likely does not belong in the august company in which I placed it, but since I am the editor (and mostly sole writer) of VoP, I would not mind getting at least one nomination for a Hugo Award in my lifetime, so now I have it, lol.

Fan Writer: Fred Lerner / Dale Speirs / Gordon Eklund / John Purcell / Tom Feller. Four of these are fellow members of FAPA, and all are outstanding fanwriters who deserve a bit of recognition. It would be nice to see at least one of them actually make the final ballot.

Fan Artist: Brad Foster / Taral Wayne / Alan F. Beck / Terry Jeeves / José Sánchez. These are the artists who have given me illos for Visions of Paradise in the past year, so I wanted to honor them in a small way by nominating them. Actually, Foster (22 nominations, 7 wins), Beck (1 recent nomination) and Wayne (9 nominations) probably do not need my support, but they’ve earned it, as have all five artists.

Unless Renovation gives me a reason to join this year's convention, such as sending me all the Hugo nominations again as Aussiecon 4 did last year, it might be too expensive for me to join as a Supporting Member, so this could be my last time nominating the Hugo Awards for awhile (unless I convince myself I should attend my first worldcon since 1981). Oh, well...

The Rebel Worlds

2011-01-03T15:04:00.001-08:00

The second novel in Young Flandry was A Circus of Hells, which was a fairly routine adventure novel, enjoyable reading but not up to Anderson’s highest standards. However, the last novel in the book, The Rebel Worlds, is as good as Ensign Flandry, exploring some of the philosophical implications of rebellion: when the emperor and his regional governor are both incapable of enlightened leadership, the former being totally incompetent, the latter being equally amoral, do their highest-ranking military leaders have the right, or even the obligation, to rebel against them, knowing that their leadership might ultimately serve the sprawling Terran Empire better?

The story opens as Governor Snelund, for his own greedy purposes, arrests Admiral McCormac and kidnaps his wife for his own sexual pleasure. But he underestimated McCormac’s popularity; the admiral is soon freed and encouraged by many of his supporters to declare himself emperor. After much consideration, he does so, thus beginning a space war in one region of the sprawling Terran Empire.

Meanwhile, Dominic Flandry is now a special investigator with the rank of commander and captain of his own vessel. He travels to the troubled area and, of his own volition, successfully frees the kidnapped Kathryn McCormac, then travels with her to the would-be emperor’s home planet. But since he is traveling in an imperial war vessel, McCormac’s barbarian mercenaries shoot him down. Thus begins a journey cross-planet where Flandry encounters one of the most original and thought-provoking alien races Anderson ever produced, a tripod creature which consists of three beings, one resembling a rhinoceros, a second avian, a third monkey-like. Individually, they are basically dumb animals, but when they join together they form a highly-intelligent hive mind.

While the novel is primarily plot-driven, much of it concerns the emotional and philosophical concerns of McCormac (does he really want to become emperor? Are all the deaths in the rebellion really his responsibility?) and Flandry (should he be trying to end the rebellion, or support McCormac himself? Because Snelund, besides being thoroughly evil, is the closest advisor to the emperor and striving to become the power behind the throne). There is also considerable emphasis on the changing relationship between Flandry and Kathryn as they travel across her home world.

In the background of the novel is the impending space battle between McCormac’s forces and those of his former underling, but Anderson manages to bring the novel to a suitable climax without a single battle or weapon being fired, mostly due to the machinations of Dominic Flandry (totally against his official orders, of course!).

In his career- spanning collection Going For Infinity, Poul Anderson discussed how much he was influenced by the New Wave in the late 1960s. The Rebel Worlds, first published in 1969, certainly shows that influence, as it is a strong, enthralling space opera which holds up well even forty years later. I recommend both the novel The Rebel Worlds and the entire book Young Flandry.

Stephen Whitty, movie critic

2010-12-28T11:40:00.001-08:00

Dave Langford runs a feature in Ansible entitled “How They See Us,” which gives tidbits of derogatory opinions of genre science fiction from people steeped in so-called literature. But not everybody has that same attitude. Stephen Whitty is the movie reviewer for the Newark Star-Ledger, who tends to champion the literary side of movies. But in his review of Never Let Me Go, based on the best-selling literary novel by Kazuo Ishiguro, he made two comments I found particularly interesting. First…

I don’t know writer Kazuo Ishigura’s feelings about science fiction, but his “Never Let Me Go” is a bit of speculative fantasy whose ideas and characters pale next to those of far less acclaimed authors.

Then he ended his review with…

Ishiguro is a fine writer … but science fiction doesn’t need his intervention. Because, in the end, there is no division between “literary” works and “genre” entertainment. There are only stories—well or badly told.

Recently, Whitty began his column selecting his favorite movies of the year as follows...

“Ninety percent of everything is crap.” Credit that inelegant but absolutely defensible observation to Theodore Sturgeon, a smart sci-fi writer who regularly beat those odds in his own work. Tired of being told that most of his genre was garbage, he finally famous replied that most of everything was garbage.

He was a talented man though (and old-time Trekkers can credit him for one of the best episodes, “Amok Time”), and he sure knew how to do percentages.

It’s nice to know that at least one movie reviewer, who probably gets to see more bad science fiction on film than most people, is still open-minded enough and apparently knowledgeable enough to appreciate sf for what it is and not for what they imagine it is!

Ensign Flandry

2010-12-22T16:50:00.001-08:00

Baen Books might be the most important current publisher of science fiction, since they have been making a determined effort to keep many science fiction writers of the past in print in comprehensive collections. Writers they have rescued from oblivion include Christopher Anvil, Murray Leinster A. Bertram Chandler, Keith Laumer, Andre Norton, Cordwainer Smith, James H. Schmitz, and, perhaps most importantly, Poul Anderson. Baen is nearing the end of publishing all of Anderson’s Polesotechnic League and Terran Empire stories in 7 huge books. While I had a decent selection of those stories previously in my collection, the lure of having all of them in chronological order was too good to pass by.

I decided to start reading the four Flandry books first, since I have much more familiarity with the Van Rijn stories, so figured they could wait awhile. The first volume is entitled Young Flandry and contains three novels detailing the early years of his career. The first novel is suitably entitled Ensign Flandry and discusses one of the earliest incidents of his career, perhaps the earliest. As a 19-year old ensign, Flandry is part of a group attached to Commodore Mark Abrams who are sent to the planet Starkad where the alien Merseian (who are the enemies of the Terran Empire throughout the series) have established a stronghold and are interfering in the natural rivalry between a land-based race and an ocean-based race.

The main plot concerns a high dignitary Lord Hauksberg from Earth who is convinced that the Merseians desire peace as much as the Terran Empire does, and who considers Abrams a warlike radical who refuses to accept the Merseians as peace-loving. The novel is partly a power struggle between Hauksberg and Abrams that inevitably involves Flandry who (and this is a bit of a SPOILER) gets branded as a traitor to the empire when he uncovers hidden evidence of precisely why the Merseians are on Starkold and why their negotiation tactics are deliberately stalling.

Somebody without prior knowledge of Poul Anderson’s fiction might presume that a series of stories involving a military man in the Terran Empire was basically military fiction, with the plot little more than an excuse for elaborate scenes of warfare. In fact, there is as much pacifism evident in the philosophy of Ensign Flandry as there is war. Flandry is not a hawk, and neither is his mentor Abrams, but they are realists. So much of the novel is a philosophical battle between Hauksberg’s naivité in refusing to admit that an alien race might have a different philosophy than the Terran Empire, which at its heart is not warlike, and Abrams’ hard-nosed reality that the facts do not support Hauksberg’s claims.

Ironically, Hauksberg does not have any particular feelings for the two races on Starkold, treating them as little more than pawns in a power struggle, while Flandry realizes they are breathing, thinking beings who deserve survival for their own sake.

There is only one battle scene in the novel, a battle between space-traveling destroyers, and during most of it Flandry is hidden deep inside a ship, a non-participant. And when the Merseians’ plans are ultimately foiled, Flandry is too emotionally involved with one alien race whose lives have been totally uprooted to feel any pleasure at what has happened.

Ensign Flandry deals well with the realities of war from the viewpoint of a military officer who desires peace moreso than fighting, and features a well-thought-out plot that is both absorbing and interesting throughout. All in all, typical high-level Anderson fiction.

Stone's Fall

2010-12-17T11:26:00.001-08:00

The last two historical mysteries that I read by Iain Pears were both my favorite books in the year they were published: An Instance of the Fingerpost (2002) and A Dream of Scipio (2003), with the latter also being my favorite historical fiction of the decade. So naturally that created huge expectation for his latest historical mystery, Stone’s Fall.

Where the previous two were set hundreds of years ago, Pear's latest novel is set in three relatively-recent eras. The novel’s first portion is set in London in 1909 and concerns the abrupt death of financial magnate Lord Ravenscliff who falls out of his second story window (his real name is John William Stone, hence the title pun). His will leaves most of the money to his young wife, but there are two strange bequests: one is to a mysterious woman living in France, and the other is to an unknown child. Lady Ravenscliff, somewhat confused over these bequests, hires crime reporter Matthew Braddock to investigate both bequests at a very large annual annuity for seven years.

What then ensues is Braddock’s investigation of the will, which expands into investigating all of Lord Ravenscliff’s financial dealings, and his vast shipbuilding empire. There are wheels and wheels turning in the plot as Braddock and the reader learn much about early 20th century London’s financial institutions and also political dealings. Braddock eventually solves the mystery in a very satisfying way, if he does indulge in several leaps of deduction worthy of another detective of that milieu, Sherlock Holmes.

One of the people he encounters in his investigations is a mysterious government agent named Henry Cort who apparently has enough power to intimidate nearly everybody he encounters. Braddock is forced to deal with him at the section’s climax, and ultimately Cort leaves his personal journal to Braddock after both Cort’s and Lady Ravenscliff’s deaths many decades later.

The reading of Cort’s journal involves his own younger days in 1890 Paris, which comprises the second portion of the novel. It was Cort’s first dealings with spying for the British government and also involves financial dealings, specifically a plot to undermine the Bank of England. Cort proves to be nearly as deductive as Braddock was in the first section, and there are again wheels within wheels which provide a fascinating plot.

The third portion of the novel is John Stone’s journal about his younger days in Venice, including his dealings with both the builder of a prototype torpedo and the wife of a failed architect. The characters in this section are the most interesting in the book, running the gamut from a seer to a wraithlike figure who claims to be the walking incarnation of Venice itself. More financial dealings here, although less stretching of believability and deduction on the part of the narrator. And Pears manages to bring the entire novel full circle by showing how events in Venice impacted events in London thirty years later.

Stone’s Fall was a worthwhile book, mostly for its insight into the financial and banking structure in the late 19th century. If some of the novel was a bit too clever for its own good, the pace never lagged and the characters were all interesting people to read about. Its major failing was that it was unable to maintain the masterful level of the author’s previous novels.

Favorite books of 2010

2010-12-12T08:35:00.000-08:00

Traditionally, I post my favorite books of the year at the very end of December, but since I already know my choices for this past year, why wait?

This year I made a determined effort to cut back on my book-buying so that I can hopefully make some inroads into my huge pile of unread books (395 fiction books and 47 nonfiction books). I bought a total of 20 books, a slight increase from 2009 when I bought 18 books (but a large drop from 2005-2008 when I bought an average of 28 books each year).

The fly in the ointment though was Paperback Swap, where I replaced unwanted books with used books that were new to me. In 2009 I got 27 books in trade, and this year I got (or will get; some are still pending) 13 books.

This year I have read 31 books (so far; 2 more should follow before the end of the year) and 13 prozines. I reread 2 classics (Roger Zelazny’s Four For Tomorrow and Kim Stanley Robinson’s Red Mars), but of the books that I read for the first time, 4 of them stood out.

Jack McDevitt continues to be my favorite current writer, and I thoroughly enjoyed two of his books: Cauldron (the fabulous climax of the Academy series) and the delightful Time Travelers Never Die .

I was thoroughly surprised by how much I enjoyed Sir Walter Scott’s classic adventure novel Ivanhoe, and I hope to read more of his books, as well as more classic adventure novels, in the future.

But my favorite Book-of-the-Year was C.J. Cherryh’s Finity’s End, which was not a new book, having been published in 1997, but it was new for me. This is the third time I have selected a C.J. Cherryh book as my favorite book of the year, the others being Brothers of Earth in 1976 and Downbelow Station in 1981. Not surprisingly, when I list my favorite all-time sf writers, both she and McDevitt make the list (along with the above-mentioned Zelazny and Robinson).

It was a strong reading year and I look forward to reading even more good books in 2011 since I will be relatively free the entire year (rather than half the year as I was in 2010).

Thieves' World

2010-12-01T08:35:00.001-08:00

There is generally a different pleasure in watching a weekly tv series than in watching a movie. The weekly series has a continuing cast of characters, and if the series is well-done, its characters grow steadily through the series as the viewer relates to them more and more as well. There is also a sense of familiarity with the show’s setting, which should itself grow richer and deeper as the series progresses.

The same is true with standalone books as compared to long-running series. My favorite series was Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Darkover series, and while the characters were generally different from book-to-book, the world itself and its culture developed continuously through the books, so that Darkover itself was actually the main character in the series.

A popular trend in f&sf in the late 1970s and 1980s was “shared world” universes, in which an editor created a setting and then asked various writers to write stories set in that world. Thieves’ World was the first popular series which pretty much created the framework for those which followed. What helped make the series particularly interesting is that individual authors created their own characters and follow their exploits in each story they wrote. So while the town of Sanctuary itself developed steadily under the hands of various writers, different characters flitted in and out of stories along the way. Other writers were able to use any creators’ character, but only their creator had the option of causing them irrevocable change and developing them through the series.

There were 9 Thieves’ World books originally, of which I read and enjoyed 5 of them. Now, nearly thirty years later, I’ve decided to go back and begin the entire series again. The first book, entitled Thieves’ World, features some of the finest writers in the entire f&sf field. The first story which sets the tone for all that follows is “Sentences of Death,” by John Brunner. Brunner was a schizophrenic writer. From the late 1960s through the late 1970s he wrote 4 of the best dystopic sf novels ever (Hugo-winner Stand on Zanzibar, The Jagged Orbit, The Sheep Look Up and The Shockwave Rider), but he was primarily one of the finest adventure writers the sf field has ever known. He wrote dozens of space operas and planetary romances in the 1950s and 1960s, an era when such novels were generally looked down upon as lower-level stuff, thus Brunner was largely underappreciated until he started writing serious novels in the mid-1960s such as The Squares of the City and The Whole Man. His story established the milieu of Sanctuary and the people living in it, while telling an absorbing tale of a young woman whose childhood was destroyed by a soldier in the employ of the emperor, his men killing her parents and raping her multiple times. While she is working for a translator in Sanctuary, she sees that soldier who is now in the retinue of the emperor’s younger brother who has recently become governor of Sanctuary, and she realizes this is perhaps her only chance to earn her revenge. This was a strong story and a fitting introduction to Sanctuary.

Lynn Abbey’s “The Face of Chaos” tells of a card-reader Illyria and her metal-working husband whose anvil shatters on the same day that Illyria becomes involved with a strange young woman who is destined to be sacrificed to the gods as part of the laying of a cornerstone for a new temple. A magician informs Illyria that she must find some way to save the woman’s life for her own safety’s sake, so she sets out to do precisely that with the aid of her skeptical husband.

The next story is by Poul Anderson, a classic “hard science” writer who was equally comfortable working with fantasy. “The Gate of the Flying Knives” tells of a priest of the old religion of Sanctuary who resents the imposition of new religions by the governor prince, so he kidnaps the wife of a rival priest. The kidnapped wife has an attendant whose young lover is distraught, so he and a swordsman friend enter the temple itself seeking the 2 women. This is the first true sword-and-sorcery story in Thieves’ World, and the two heroes bear a (likely deliberate) resemblance to Fritz Leiber’s classic heroes Fahfrd and the Grey Mouser. Their tale is very entertaining.

The next two stories introduce two of the recurring characters in Sanctuary. Andrew Offutt’s “Shadowshawn” is about a brazen young swordsman who finds himself in the midst of double-dealings between one of the prince’s concubines, one of his guards (known as hell-hounds) and the emperor himself. Each participant believes they have the upper hand in the dealing, but the ending is surprising and well-done.

Robert Asprin’s “The Price of Doing Business” introduces Jubal, a former gladiator who is now one of the wealthiest and most evil merchants in Sanctuary. He learns a lesson about the dangers of treating all people as mere pawns in his scheming, and about the character of his enemies as well.

Joe Haldeman’s “Blood Brother” is the roughest of the stories in terms of violence, cruelty, and the low value of human life in Sanctuary. One-Thumb is the owner and bartender of the Vulgar Unicorn, the inn in the center of the Maze, the roughest area in Sanctuary. As a payment for a killing, One-Thumb received a block of a drug which is now missing, while his associate who runs a brothel is missing a similar block of drug which seems to be the same one. Somehow they trace the mystery to Sanctuary’s strongest wizard whom they must approach to try to solve the mystery. Other than the violence, my main concern with this story is its ending, which did not totally explain exactly what had happened previously.

The last two stories feature my favorite two characters in this first Thieves’ World book: Myrtis, the madam of the brothel, and Lythande, the magician of the blue star. Christine DeWeese’s “Myrtis” concentrates on the madam, while Marion Zimmer Bradley’s “The Secret of the Blue Star” tells precisely what the title implies, the secret which each magician wearing a blue star on his forehead possesses as their Achilles’ heel. This last story was the best one, along with Brunner’s first story, and altogether I finished the book highly-entertained and anxious to read the next book in the series.

Fantasy vs Science Fiction in the marketplace

2010-11-27T06:34:00.001-08:00

Two topics I have discussed in this blog previously are Locus Magazine and the current dominance of fantasy over science fiction in genre publishing. The latter topic reared its head again recently while I was reading the November issue of Locus. One of the magazine’s ongoing columns is entitled Books Received, and it highlights a specific month each issue. The November issue highlights books received by Locus during September of this year. There are nearly 8 pages of books, each with a brief description, and I could not help but notice a similarity to those descriptions.

For example, here are the descriptions of books in one column which I randomly selected:

• omnibus of the five books in the young-adult quasi-fantasy series;
• young adult paranormal romance about a teen werewolf;
• adventure novel with SF/fantasy elements;
• young-adult fantasy novel;
• young-adult vampire novel;
• urban fantasy novel;
• Arthurian urban fantasy novel;
• collection of SF stories;
• historical romance with debatable fantasy elements;
• Young-adult fantasy adventure.

That is 1 science fiction book with 7 fantasy novels (one of them having only debatable fantasy elements. So why the heck is the book even listed here?). All right, perhaps that column was a fluke. Let’s try another random column:

• tie-in novel based on the collectible [fantasy] card game;
• reprint vampire novel;
• paranormal romance novel;
• collection of 20 [SF] stories;
• reprint archaeological thriller with supernatural elements;
• fantasy novel;
• urban fantasy novel;
• graphic novel inspired by Hal Clement’s Needle;
• anthology of eight stories of vampire erotica;
• original anthology of erotic SF and fantasy stories.

This is harder to pigeonhole: 1 SF book, 1 SF-inspired graphic novel, and ½ of an erotic anthology is SF. So count that as 2.5 SF out of 10 books.

At the end of the listing, the column keeps a running tally:

September Totals / 2010 Totals
SF: 26 / 162
Fantasy: 34 / 307
Horror: 21 / 133
Paranormal Romance: 24 / 213

Notice that the SF totals are surpassed easily by both fantasy and paranormal romance for the year. If you consider those four categories as the “genre” fiction published in 2010 to date, SF comprises a mere 20% of the total so far this year.

The good news is that 162 SF books have been published so far this year, but considering how varied the types of novels are which fall under the SF umbrella, perhaps 50% might fall into a specific reader’s comfort zone. That’s still 81 SF books, far more than most readers will buy in a single year.

In my case, I do read some fantasy, so long as it is neither contemporary nor urban fantasy (with an occasional exception, such as a Charles de Lint book). I prefer either historical fantasy or ones set in created worlds, since they provide more of the wonder similar to science fiction’s futuristic worlds. So while I am distrustful of the trends in genre publishing (paranormal romances will never appeal to me, nor am I likely to read any books featuring those overused fantasy tropes of vampires/werewolves/zombies), at least for now enough SF is still being published to satisfy my reading hunger.

Prozines

2010-11-20T07:32:00.000-08:00

Science fiction has been a big part of my life ever since I was a child, and my collection is about evenly split between books (1,247) and prozines (1,233). Books actually came first, via trips to the local library to take out as many books with little rockets on the spine as I could find there. Next came Tom Swift, Jr. books which I devoured as soon as a new one was published.

Prozines came next, beginning with the January, 1963 issue of Worlds of IF. Through the 1960s, I bought both IF and its two companions Galaxy (those issues are still my favorite prozines) and Worlds of Tomorrow. In 1969 though, all three magazines were sold to a new publisher, and Frederik Pohl took the opportunity to resume full-time writing, and was replaced by the incredibly incompetent Ejler Jakobsson. I continued all three magazines until their demises at various times in the decade (and Galaxy did have a brief resurgence under Jim Baen’s editorship), but I expanded to Analog when Ben Bova took over as editor, and Fantasy and Science Fiction in 1974 (when IF died).

When Stanley Schmidt took over Analog, it became boring to me, so I switched to Asimov’s early in the 1980s and read it and F&SF through the late-1990s when I gave up reading all science fiction for about two years, including letting my subscriptions lapse. Since then I have renewed F&SF recently, but I have found myself falling far behind in reading it, partly because it seems to be leaning a lot more towards fantasy than science fiction. I would not mind so much if it were historical fantasy or fantasy set in created worlds, but it seems to be largely contemporary fantasy or slipstream, both of which bore me considerably.

So in a few months I will be without any prozine subscriptions, although fortunately I still have a backlog of magazines to read or re-read, probably more than I can read the rest of my life considering how many books I also have to read. Here’s what will keep me busy awhile:

Amazing / 21 issues
Analog / 56 issues
Asimov’s / 207 issues
Black Gate / 1 issue
Chinese Literature / 17 issues
Fantasy & Science Fiction / 407 issues
Fantastic / 1 issue
Galaxy / 247 issues
International SF / 2 issues
Interzone / 5 issues
Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet/ 4 issues
On Spec / 1 issue
Paradox / 5 issues
Postscripts / 8 issues
Realms of Fantasy / 6 issues
Science Fiction Age / 13 issues
Subterranean / 1 issue
The Third Alternative / 1 issue
Tomorrow / 19 issues
The Twilight Zone / 1 issue
Ultimate titles (miscellaneous) / 22 issues
Venture / 5 issues
Worlds of Fantasy / 4 issues
Worlds of IF / 148 issues
Worlds of Tomorrow / 26 issues

Echo

2010-11-12T06:36:00.001-08:00

I guess I should start any review of a book by Jack McDevitt with a disclaimer: he is my favorite current writer, whose books inevitably get a rave review from me. I selected Seeker as my book-of-the-year, and Echo is the next book in the same Alex Benedict series. Nor am I alone in my admiration for Jack McDevitt; his novels have been nominated for 9 Nebula Awards, and Seeker won the award in 2006.

The premise of an Alex Benedict novel, including Echo, is relatively straight-forward: Benedict is an antiquities dealer in the far-future, when much of the Orion Spiral has been settled by humans for many millennia. Along with his assistant Chase Kolpath, who is the narrator of the books as she writes her memoirs of Benedict’s adventures, they invariably get involved in a historical mystery involving some ancient artifact which they are trying to authenticate.

The novels in this series contain several aspects which often fill me with sense of wonder: a colonized sector of space in which worlds have different cultures and backgrounds; a sense of history far beyond our era; and a non-genre historical mystery. Add to this McDevitt’s ability to write a fast-paced, enthralling novel with characters who are reasonably-well-rounded, if not developed in considerable depth.

Echo also involves one of the great tropes of science fiction: the search for intelligent life other than humans. At the novel’s outset, Benedict finds an ancient artifact which contains non-human writing, and which belonged to one of the most famous seekers of alien life, a man who devoted himself to traveling through space looking for aliens. A few mysteries surround the artifact, including a pilot of space tours who mysteriously resigned her job soon after the finding of the artifact, and who refuses to discuss it with Benedict two decades later. To make the situation even stickier, somebody is very anxious to prevent Benedict and Kolpath from learning the truth behind the artifact, even to the point of attempted murder.

There are a few minor weaknesses in Echo, a few plot details which should not be considered too deeply, and a bit too much of a Sherlock Holmes influence on Benedict’s thought processes, weaknesses which did not appear in earlier books in the series. But they are slight compared to the strengths of this book, and the pleasures it gave me. Echo was the third McDevitt novel I read this past year, and while it was slightly weaker than either Cauldron (the magnificent finale to the Academy series) or Time Travelers Never Die (a wondrous romp through time), it did nothing to hurt McDevitt’s reputation in my mind. I recommend it highly, both for Alex Benedict fans as well as for all future history lovers.

Six Great Short Science Fiction Novels, part 2

2010-11-06T07:23:00.001-07:00

Algis Budrys wrote some of the most thought-provoking sf, and “Chain Reaction” is no exception. It reminded me of Star Trek’s “prime directive” that forbade members of the federation from interfering with native cultures. I also thought about Christian missionaries who tried to convert savages while simultaneously raising their level of existence. Budrys’ story examines a native culture which has been kept enslaved by superior beings from space, but then are freed when their captors are overthrown by superior beings from Earth. But the Earthlings feel obligated to keep the natives healthy and alive, which requires their abandoning many of their traditional practices and which they refuse to do. This is a well-done study of culture clash.

My least favorite story in the book was “Incommunicado,” by Katherine MacLean. The first few pages were confusing, and I almost abandoned it, but for some reason I kept going and the story became more interesting when the main character visited a space station where all the residents were speaking what seemed to be nonsensical gibberish, and he assumed something had made them crazy. His investigation and eventual realization were both interesting, and I ended up liking the story, although less so than others in this book.

My favorite story in the book was Damon Knight’s “Rule Golden.” Knight is mostly remembered as a critic and anthologizer himself, his Orbit series was one of the foundations of the New Wave in this country. But prior to that, Knight was an outstanding writer of short fiction, much of it in Galaxy in the 1950s, stories such as “To Serve Man,” which became arguably the second most-famous episode of The Twilight Zone (after the story of William Shatner having a breakdown on a plane flight), and the vastly underappreciated “The Visitor at The Zoo” (The Other Foot in novel form).

“Rule Golden” takes a premise which many people, including myself, have often considered: how would human civilization differ if humans automatically felt whatever pain or suffering they inflicted on another person? Knight makes the premise more interesting by bringing to Earth an alien representative of a galactic union whose members all possess that ability before they are allowed to leave their home planet and venture into space. And since Earthmen are now venturing into space for the first time, the alien intends to infect all humans with that ability, like it or not.

In some ways, this story is a companion piece to “Chain Reaction,” as its alien interferes with human life for our own good, or so it believes. This is an incredible story which is available in this volume and also in Knight’s collection Three Novels.

Great Science Fiction Short Novels, part 1

2010-10-30T07:24:00.000-07:00

Groff Conklin was one of the finest and most important anthologizers of pre-1960 science fiction, and it is unfortunate that he has been mostly forgotten since his death. Starting with The Best of Science Fiction in 1946, through The Classic Book of Science Fiction in 1982, he edited or co-edited more than 45 reprint anthologies, the majority of which were science fiction. A contemporary reader could not do better discovering the history of the sf genre than by reading a selection of Conklin’s anthologies, such as Six Great Science Fiction Short Novels, which was originally published in 1960.

The opening story is Isaac Asimov’s “Galley Slave,” one of his robot stories which, as usual, explores the ramifications of the Three Laws of Robotics. This story is primarily a courtroom mystery about a university professor suing U.S. Robots and Mechanical Men Inc. since one of its robots allegedly destroyed his career by deliberately changing his career-defining paper during the editing process. As usual, this was a clever, although not particularly deep, story that was fun reading.

Judith Merrill’s “Project Nursemaid” is the longest story in the book, at nearly 35,000 words. Although it was originally published in F&SF in 1955, it is a definite precursor of the 1960s New Wave since it is primarily a character study of several people seen through the eyes of the narrator, who also develops as a person during the long novella. The story is only borderline science fiction, since it is concerned with a project which is selecting babies to be raised in space under lesser-gravity conditions, as well as women to serve as their nursemaids. But other than this premise, the story could easily have been revised to be a mainstream story. In any case, it was very well done, and very enjoyable reading, one of the highlights of the book.

Of my very favorite writers–Silverberg, Bishop, Robinson, Simak, Zelazny, Cherryh–the one who speaks to me most personally is Simak. Very frequently while reading one of his stories I find myself nodding in agreement, thinking about how what he says relates to my own life. Such is true in “The Final Gentleman.” It is the story of a famous writer who decides he cannot write any longer, and almost immediately afterwards all he recalls about his past life is turning out to be false. This is reminiscent of a Twilight Zone episode, except Simak resolves the whole situation in a very sfnal manner. Not top-notch Simak, but even mid-level Simak is better than most other writers.

To be continued...

Three Hugo-nominated novellas

2010-10-24T07:04:00.000-07:00

After I downloaded the Hugo-nominated stories this summer, I started reading the novellas first. Unfortunately, I did not finish reading them until after the voting deadline passed, because reading them on my computer was inconvenient and I did not buy an e-reader until September. So, better late than never, here are my comments on three of the nominated novellas.

The first one I read was Nancy Kress since she is my favorite among the nominated authors. “Act One” was reminiscent of her brilliant “Beggars in Spain,” which was both a plus and a minus. A plus because this was also a strong, thought-provoking story with a well-developed point-of-view character. A minus because “Act One” had several noticeable flaws. The premise was that an illegal underground movement was gene-modifying children to be empathetic to the point of nearly reading people’s minds, hoping to eventually spread the ripples through the entire population. The tension arises when the group develops a faster way of infecting the entire population with an urge for nurturing.

The main character is the agent for a fading movie star who is to play the lead in a movie about this movement, and who thus contacts members of the illegal Group to research her role. The story is typically well-written for Kress, and the plot develops well and interestingly. However, Kress tries a bit too hard to jack up the story’s importance by giving the protagonist an emotional sub-plot all his own. He is a dwarf who has been alienated by his wife and normal-sized son since the birth of the son. I was never convinced of the rationale behind the dwarf’s actions which alienated his wife, nor of the subsequent effect on the son. A more jarring flaw though was that the Group, whose main goal is to spread empathy and nurturing through the entire population, so tightly-controls their members that anybody who proves dissatisfactory to their needs is immediately and viciously killed. Kress needed to show more of the Group’s motivations for this seemingly contradictory behavior to be believable. “Act One” had enough strengths to be a worthy Hugo nominee, but too many questions to be the winner.

Next I read Kage Baker’s “The Women of Nell Gwynne,” which is set in the currently-popular era of Victorian London. This setting—as well as similar settings around the world during the same era—have grown so popular in recent years that they have been given the name Steampunk, as if they are an actual movement, akin to Cyberpunk or New Space Opera. I have not really seen anything deserving of a movement since these stories share only a setting and some sfnal tropes rather than any philosophical basis. Still I have found most stories set in this milieu to be generally interesting. As was this story of a house of prostitution which serves as spies for the government. Baker was a very facile storyteller whose plots were generally fast-paced and interesting, with characters easy to relate to. Nothing major—or, in this case, award-worthy—but recommended for light reading.

Next I read John Scalzi’s “The God Engine.” This is the first Scalzi I have ever read, although I am familiar with his reputation for writing Heinlein-type fiction. This story did not remind me of Heinlein so much as a 1950s Ace Double or perhaps a story from the pages of Worlds of IF in the 1960s. The title is precisely the premise of the story: the universe contains numerous “gods” whose followers apparently warred many centuries ago until one god won out. Now he is the Lord who rules the galaxy while the other remaining gods are enslaved as some type of propulsion for starcraft. This premise is not particularly believable, nor is any attempt made to explain or justify it. The entire premise seems to be merely a convenient foundation for the story.

Nor is the religion of the victorious Lord developed any more than a bunch of typical clichés: autocratic leaders who seem more concerned with power than faith, followers who automatically spout the “official” beliefs, and a main character who is naturally skeptical about all of it. If a story based on religion is to be taken seriously, its beliefs and followers must display at least some philosophical depth or conflict. That does not exist at all in this story which, combined with the illogical background of the gods themselves, reduces this novella to little more than traditional pulp fiction.

I do not mean to disparage Scalzi’s writing, since a pulp homage might have been his intent for the story. It is fast-paced adventure, enjoyable so long as I did not take any of it too seriously or look for any depth beneath the surface plot. This type of story would have fit nicely besides the light adventures of writers such as Keith Laumer, Christopher Anvil and Mack Reynolds, all of whom were staples of the 1960s prozines. But these stories were never considered award-winners, nor should this one be on the Hugo ballot.

Godlike Machines, part 3

2010-10-22T16:41:00.001-07:00

Sean Williams’ A Glimpse of the Marvelous Structure (and the Threat It Entails)” is a complicated title for an equally-complicated story. On a future Earth people live in layers beneath the Earth. Two detectives are investigating the death of a person who is actually one of the two detectives. The other detective is apparently a spy from space sending back information he is garnering about life beneath Earth. Most of the story consists of the two detectives wandering aimlessly in the various levels beneath the surface while a mysterious entity called the Director is randomly killing people on each level, somehow related to the arrival of the two detectives. And the detective who is fated to die seems unconcerned either about her own death or the Director, but instead is seeking some mysterious being she calls Trelayne.

Sound confusing? The climax of the story does not really explain any of it, but introduces an explanation equally as complicated as the story itself. While I actually enjoyed reading this story, ultimately it was more senseless than satisfactory.

Robert Reed’s “Alone” is a tale of the Great Ship, his fabulous series about a gigantic ship which was apparently built by an ancient alien race, then abandoned and claimed by humans for a trans-galactic tour. Its inhabitants are members of numerous alien races, and their interaction provides much of the basis of the stories in the series. “Alone” is about an ancient being who has been hiding in the great ship for millennia before being sighted by one of the ship’s numerous captains, who considers the being a danger to the entire ship. The being’s efforts to elude the captain and survive are interesting, if not particularly gripping. While this is not one of the highlights of the series (such as “The Remoras” or “Marrow”), it is still typically-good Reed.

Godlike Machines, part 2

2010-10-07T12:23:00.001-07:00

The second story in the original anthology Godlike Machines is Stephen Baxter’s “Return to Titan,” which is related to the Michael Poole sub-series of his Xeelee series. I have not read the Michael Poole novels, although I know who he is through being mentioned in several stories in Baxter's Xeelee anthology Resplendent. This story reminded me of Arthur C. Clarke’s “Meeting With Medusa” and Rendezvous With Rama, since its primary emphasis was on exploring Titan and featured much scientific talk and discovery.

But since this was a Baxter story, rather than a Clarke story, there was also a strong human-interest aspect. The three explorers of Titan brought along a fourth member who was “gang-pressed” into joining them against his wishes, and the explorers were also breaking the law in disrupting a place which might contain sentience. Early in their exploration, their vehicle is destroyed first by being forced to crash on the surface by creatures resembling giant birds, and then it is totally torn apart for its metal by giant spider-like beings.

This was a good story along the lines of one of Clarke’s 70s “grand tour” stories, and while it is not Baxter at the top of his form, even middle Baxter is enjoyable reading.

Next came Cory Doctorow’s “There’s a Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow / Now is the Best Time of Your Life.” Doctorow is one of the few writers obsessed with technology whose fiction I enjoy, largely because he never forgets to tell a human-interest story which uses technological advances to set the background. In this story, Jimmy is a near-immortal boy who for most of the story remains physically 10 years old even though he has been alive for four decades. At the story’s start, Jimmy and his dad are two of the few humans living in a shattered Detroit, using giant mecha in their struggle to keep the remnants intact against attacks by equally-powerful wampuses determined to destroy all remnants of the great cities.

After Jimmy flees Detroit, he spends the next twenty years living in a commune whose members are artificially joined in a common emotional-bond through wires in their head, but Jimmy’s immortality prevents him from total connection to the others. Still he lives there peacefully until Jimmy’s childhood friend from Detroit shows up, who happens to be daughter of the man who destroyed the city. This is a good story about people’s motives and relationships in the midst of constant warfare between city and country. The story got a bit muddled at the end though, when the technology got out of control and the storyline got buried as a result, but most of it was worthwhile reading.

Godlike Machines, part 1

2010-10-04T15:44:00.001-07:00

I have mixed feelings about anthologies edited by Jonathan Strahan. I like the fact that he tends towards longer, novella-length stories in books such as the four volumes of Best Short Novels and the new Godlike Machines. I dislike the fact that he tends to mix fantasy with science fiction indiscriminately. I liked the fact that he has a predilection for science fiction set in the far future off planet Earth. I dislike the fact that he has a weakness for stories steeped in technological ideas wrapped in fancy language to the exclusion of characterization and strong plotting.

Every volume of Best Short Novels had a few stories I could not finish, as did The New Space Opera, co-edited with Gardner Dozois. I do not read his annual Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year, because I can get two volumes devoted exclusively to science fiction (edited by Dozois and Hartwell/Cramer).

But I jumped on Godlike Machines as soon as it was released, because it certainly excluded fantasy, and likely cyberpunk (near future dismal) in favor of large concepts sf, which I like a lot. Plus it contained three of my very favorite authors (Alastair Reynolds, Stephen Baxter and Robert Reed), as well as Cory Doctorow, Sean Williams and Greg Egan, all excellent writers.

The first story in the book is “Troika,” by Alastair Reynolds, which has lots of elements to it, including two parallel storylines:

• In the “present,” a former cosmonaut escapes from a mental institution and risks his life in a raging Russian snowstorm to find an aging astronomer and tell her that what he discovered on his last mission verified her theory for which she had been vilified and humiliated publicly;

• In the “past,” that mission is shown, as three cosmonauts explore this story’s Big Dumb Object, which had appeared inside the solar system and to date has resisted examination. But they succeed in entering it and learn amazing things as their lives change drastically, explaining why they end up as inmates in an insane asylum.

Both storylines are interesting, the one in the “present” having more characterization while the one in the “past” has more plot tension. They both mesh together eventually, and the story reaches a totally unexpected but believable ending. This is not Reynolds’ best story, nor his most technological, but still a good one. Then again, I have never read an Alastair Reynolds story that was not good.

As I finish each story, I will post its review here.

Reprint anthologies

2010-10-02T09:26:00.001-07:00

One of my favorite ways of keeping up with the sf field’s diversity and authors I might have missed is by reading reprint anthology series. I enjoy original anthologies, but those tend to be a mixed bag, not much different from an issue of a prozine with highs and lows, fantasy and science fiction all mixed together.

Reprint anthologies tend to be more exclusively science fiction, some of them restricted to specific themes or periods of time, but others which sprawl over the entire genre both thematically and temporally. Here are some of my favorite series. I will begin with best-of-the-year anthologies, of which there have been numerous series in the past 60 years. Recently, many of them tend to combine f&sf in the same volume, which disappoints me a bit. While I enjoy reading occasional fantasy, too much of it falls into one of my blind spots: either it is contemporary, or deals with tedious tropes such as vampires, zombies or werewolves, or is too close to horror fiction. So the best-of-the-year series I have read have always been pure sf:

▸ The Best Science Fiction of the Year, edited by Terry Carr (15 volumes before he combined it with fantasy);
▸ Year’s Best Science Fiction, edited by Donald A. Wollheim and Terry Carr (7 volumes before they went their separate ways);
▸ Science Fiction: The Great Years, edited by Isaac Asimov and Martin Greenberg (my collection runs from 1951 through 1964, although the series actually started with 1939);
▸ Nebula Award Stories, various editors (I have 19 volumes of the 46 years the series has been published; recent editions have been too idiosyncratic with too much nonfiction, poetry, and non-nominated fiction);
▸ The Year’s Best Science Fiction, edited by Gardner Dozois (27 volumes to date; perhaps not as high an overall quality as Carr’s series, but its huge size enables it to contain many outstanding stories, including several novellas each year);
▸ Best Short Novels, edited by Jonathan Strahan (4 volumes; although this series contains both f&sf, my love of novellas trumped that weakness);
▸ Year’s Best SF, edited by David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer (15 volumes; this series is narrower in focus than either Carr’s or Dozois’, but its choice of traditional/hard sf is invariably good reading);

Sometimes the other reprint anthology series are even better than the best-of-the-year ones:

▸ The Hugo Winners, various editors (I only have 4 volumes edited by Isaac Asimov, and since they are limited to winners only, they are all worthwhile reading);
▸ The Mammoth Books of [Short Novels of the Decade], edited by Isaac Asimov and Martin Greenberg (5 volumes from the1930s through the 1970s; a lot of very good stuff, although the stories might not represent the absolute best of any decade);
▸ various compilation anthologies edited by David G. Hartwell (I have 4 of them covering sf: The Ascent of Wonder, The Science Fiction Century, The Space Opera Renaissance and The World Treasury of Science Fiction; 2 fantasy: Masterpieces of Fantasy and Enchantment and Masterpieces of Fantasy and Wonder; and 1 horror The Dark Descent; all of the mare highly recommended);
▸ Alpha, edited by Robert Silverberg (9 volumes which tend to emphasize the 1950s, but cover the entire pre-1970 history of science fiction; since Silverberg’s taste tends to parallel my own, I enjoyed this series a lot);
▸ various compilation anthologies edited by Brian W. Aldiss (I have 5 of these so far: Galactic Empires 1 & 2, Farewell, Fantasy Venus, and Decade the 40s / 50s, co-edited by Harry Harrison; I’m looking to find used copies of his 1970s anthologies Space Odysseys, Space Opera, Evil Earths, Perilous Planets, and Decade the 60s, with Harry Harrison).

There is a ton of great reading in this volumes; sometimes I seriously consider not buying any new books and just reread all this great stuff I already have!

Red Mars

2010-09-25T06:13:00.000-07:00

Continuing my dipping into books by my favorite authors, an occasional trend I began about a year ago with Robert Silverberg (Phases of the Moon), Roger Zelazny (Four For Tomorrow), Clifford D. Simak (Strangers in the Universe) and C.J. Cherryh (Finity’s End, Sunfall), now takes me to Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars trilogy, which I first read in the mid-1990s.

There are several similarities between the fiction of Robinson and that of C.J. Cherryh, especially her Union-Alliance novels. Both write deliberate, detailed examinations of people living in a situation different from what they are used to. Both consider the political implications of events, and their plots are generally event-driven. There are major differences as well. Their settings are worlds apart (literally). Robinson rarely strays far from Earth, his Mars stories being about as far as he tends to go (until he bravely took Galileo to Jupiter in his latest novel Galileo’s Dream, and I’ve read that his next trilogy will be a space opera), while Cherryh wanders far from the solar system. She also tends to analyze human-alien interaction, while Robinson is content to explore how humans interact with each other. But while their means may differ, their intent is fairly similar: analyzing how people deal with difficult adjustments.

Red Mars is the first book in a trilogy which details fairly precisely how humans might colonize and terraform their nearest neighboring planet. It begins with the first hundred colonists, who become media stars as their long flight and settlement are broadcast across Earth on an almost-daily basis. So while viewers on Earth see an ongoing reality show, we readers see almost constant bickering among the hand-picked hundred. They were chosen for a combination of scientific expertise and the ability to subjugate their personal feelings toward the common goal. While the former might have been done successfully, the latter was a total failure, as their differing views, goals and personalities bring them into almost total opposition, so that bickering becomes more common than compromise.

The unofficial leaders of the group are Frank, a consummate politician from the United States contingent, and Maya, an emotional leader from the Russian group. Other dominant colonists are:

· John, who was the first astronaut to visit the red planet, and whose decades-long celebrity has given him considerable influence among the colonists;
· Ann, a rigid proponent of not terraforming Mars, but maintaining its pristine condition;
· Sax, the scientific leader of the colonists, who devises most of the ideas for terraforming Mars;
· Hiraku, the head of the gardens providing the colonists with food, who forms a cult of followers who ultimately flee the settlement to live hidden away in the Arean wilderness;
· Arkady, a “wild card” who almost from the beginning of the flight advocates vociferously the colonists’ need to ignore the United Nations’ demands and become an independent society.

Much of the first third of the novel takes place during the flight, when the hundred colonists plan their settlement while bickering constantly. Once they reach the planet, things improve somewhat as different groups head off in different directions to do their colonizing, exploring, and terraforming. Things worsen though as the UN begins sending additional colonists, so that tensions between groups become inevitable, and sabotage against the terraforming starts taking place, including at least one attempt on the life of John, the most visible proponent of terraforming.

John is the main character in the middle-third of the novel, as he rushes from settlement to settlement handling disputes and pushing the goal of terraforming Mars. After his assassination—which is revealed in the first chapter of the book—Frank becomes the viewpoint character as he deals with the growing difficulties of out-of-control immigration with no master plan for the assimilation of so many people, as well as increased interference in the affairs of Mars by multi-national corporations(the transnationals). In spite of Frank's efforts, conditions are getting worse and worse until the rebellion starts, as colonists attack transnationals, UN police attack settlers, and the whole planet is on the verge of exploding.

Red Mars is a strong novel equally-divided between political and human-interest concerns. I selected it as my book-of-the-year in 1992, and I see no reason to change that high opinion of the book upon this latest reading of it.

The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951 version)

2010-09-17T15:48:00.001-07:00

Another 1950s sf movie…

Having enjoyed Forbidden Planet so much, I dug into my slim collection of dvd’s for The Day The Earth Stood Still, another classic sf movie from the 1950s (definitely not the recent remake starring Keanu Reeves; the trailers I saw for it gave all indications of its being another chase thriller based so loosely on the source material as to be another I, Robot debacle).

In case you have never seen the original, a flying saucer lands in Washington D.C. with two occupants: Klaatu, an alien played in a low-key but effective manner by Michael Rennie; and Gort, his giant, indestructible robot companion. The reaction caused on Earth by their appearance is as expected, and one of the soldiers surrounding the landing site almost immediately shoots Klaatu in the hand.

Klaatu is taken to a hospital for treatment, but he heals almost miraculously overnight. It is obvious to the viewer and to Klaatu that he is being kept in the hospital as a prisoner moreso than for his health’s sake, but he decides he wishes to observe humans more closely. So he escapes from the hospital—and wisely, this scene is not shown, it is merely assumed that Klaatu’s advanced technology somehow helped him escape without being sighted by the guards outside his locked door—and takes a room at a local boarding house under the guise of “Mr. Carpenter.” This is the part of the movie requiring some suspension of belief, since apparently none of the newspapers or media have shown any pictures of Klaatu’s face, so nobody at the boarding house recognizes him at all.

The majority of the movie involves three aspects: first, the interactions between Klaatu and two other members of the boarding house community, a young single mom and her son who becomes attached to Klaatu almost immediately; second, the military’s intensified pursuit of Klaatu, deciding of their volition (and apparently without any government approval) that killing him is as good as capturing him alive; and third, Klaatu’s meeting with the world’s leading scientist (played by Sam Jaffe bearing an uncanny resemblance to Albert Einstein) to arrange a meeting between Klaatu and the world’s leading scientists to discuss his purpose in coming to Earth.

As I have indicated, there are several weaknesses in the movie, but they are minor compared to the effectiveness of the bulk of it. Do not watch it expecting any special effects though; it was made on a visual level below that of Forbidden Planet and the early 60s sf show The Outer Limits. But the story is effective nevertheless, never resorting to the type of chase scenes that ruin so many other science fiction movies. And the ending is truly chilling and thought-provoking, and nowadays might be the basis for a series of truly inferior sequels.

Good viewing. Occasionally curiosity makes me consider watching the remake, but my better sense and those “thrilling” preview scenes prevent me from doing so, probably thankfully on my part.

Some comments on the Hugo Awards...

2010-09-12T18:24:00.000-07:00

I’ve never been the type of blogger who fears putting my foot in my mouth, so here are my thoughts on the recent Hugo Awards:

Best Novel: The City and the City and The Windup Girl were easily the two most acclaimed novels of 2009, so it is nice to see them tie for the award. Of course, while I have both novels on my computer, compliments of Aussiecon, I have not yet read either one, so whether I feel they actually represent the best of the year is an opinion which must be delayed awhile.

Best Novella: I had expected that Kage Baker’s popularity, combined with her recent death, would have been enough to push “The Women of Nell Gwynne’s” over the top in this category. I was not too surprised that, with Baker not winning, the always-popular Charles Stross won the award. I have had a problem getting into Stross’ fiction though, finding it so packed with ideas that the story and characters seemed to get lost beneath the sturm und drang. Of course, much of my opinion comes from a few stories, mostly in the Accelerando sequence, so perhaps I should try some of his less-frantic fiction sometime.

Best Novella: Peter Watts’ “The Island” might have been the best novelette of 2009, but would it have been if Watts had not been mistreated and arrested by the U.S. custom police? While I can appreciate much of the anti-American fervor sweeping the world, I wonder if it is at least partly responsible for Watts’ win in this category.

Best Short Story: I had expected Kij Johnson’s “Spar” to win this category, so I was surprised that relative unknown Will McIntosh’s “Bridesicle” beat her out. An unknown generally only wins a major category when it really is the best story at its length that year. I wonder if McIntosh would have beaten out Mike Resnick though had the worldcon been held on Resnick’s home turf of America? When the worldcon is held on foreign turf, the winners tend to be less “same ol’ same ol’” and more truly representative of the best of the year. My feeling is that this is due to the huge size of American-held worldcons, many of the attendees being either fringe-fans or media fans who vote as much on name recognition of the nominees as they do on quality.

There were several winners which, at least in my opinion, were overwhelming favorites in their categories: This Is Me, Jack Vance! (Best Related Book), Girl Genius (Best Graphic Story), Doctor Who (Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form), Ellen Datlow (Best Editor, Short Form), Shaun Tan (Best Artist), and Brad Foster (Best Fan Artist). All of them were deserving winners and should not elicit too much hand-wringing in fandom.

Frederik Pohl winning Best Fan Writer is guaranteed to cause controversy though. The main contention here seems to be that a major professional should not be eligible in a fan category, but there is precedent. Jack Gaughan won Best Professional Artist and Best Fan Artist the same year in 1967! Of course, he was drawing both for prozines and for fanzines, so who could argue his eligibility for both awards (although I do not necessarily agree with his deserving the Best Professional Artist that year). Assuming one accepts Fred Pohl as a fan writer, his blog is one of the better ones, although not necessarily better than the body of work by the other nominees in this category. So I guess the main question here is did Pohl win due to the quality of his blog, or the quality of his professional writing?

I was very disappointed that StarshipSofa won Best Fanzine, since I do not see anything resembling a “zine” about it. I have no problem with it being online exclusively, especially since that is the direction fanzines are headed anyway. But audio presentations are a different breed altogether from fanzines. However, I was pleased that Clarkesworld won Best Semi-Prozine, since it is a very good outlet for original science fiction and deserves to be read by more fans.

Sunfall (The Collected Short Fiction of C.J. Cherryh, part one)

2010-09-04T07:57:00.001-07:00

Sunfall was originally published in 1981 as a collection of stories showing life in six great cities as Earth’s sun nears the end of its life. This premise has been used previously, most famously by Jack Vance, but Cherryh is neither interested in magic nor frivolity, concerning herself with an incisive look at the people who might be living in those ending days.

The book was republished in 2004 as part of the omnibus The Collected Short Fiction of C.J. Cherryh, which included the complete Sunfall (with the addition of one more city Venice), her general collection Visible Light, (from 1986) and an additional 300+ formerly uncollected pages. Cherryh is one of my favorite writers, and her stories are nearly all detailed studies of people struggling to cope with difficult situations. They are generally well-plotted, and the characters always progress in one direction or another, often ending in carefully-paced thrillers.

Sunfall differs slightly form a typical Cherryh story, being more poetic as it deals with the aura and feeling of each city as it nears the end of its long existence. The first city is Paris in “The Only Death in the City,” where most people are reincarnated endlessly, renewing their former lives each time. Thus two men Pertito and Legran have hated each other for centuries, and end up fighting and killing each other every reincarnation. But Alain is a newborn, a rarity in Paris, trying to live among all the ancients who have lived for centuries at least, perhaps even millennia. He falls in love with another teenage girl who actually is the reincarnation of one of the oldest people in Paris. She is amused by his passionate love, but has no interest in such a youngster. Still he pesters her until she agrees to four years of love followed by his death, presumably to be reincarnated again. Until Death herself takes an interest in the couple, and when Death takes one’s life no reincarnation is possible.

“The Haunted Tower” (London) tells the story of the mistress of the Lord Mayor of a future London, who has somehow offended him and is imprisoned in the Tower of London. She believes she will regain the mayor’s affection when he speaks to her again, but she begins doubting herself when she receives nightly visitations from the ghosts of former inhabitants of the tower, such as the two princes, Anne Boleyn and the Earl of Essex. This story builds to a suspenseful climax, which is totally unexpected and very well-done. This is one of Cherry’s finest pieces of short fiction.

“Ice” (Moscow) is one of Cherryh’s most poetic stories, strongly reminiscent of the short fiction of Roger Zelazny. It concerns a hunter who is one of the few people who ventures outside the gates of the city into the endless snowstorms to capture food for Moscow’s residents. He enjoys his work until a pack of wolves begin stalking him, endangering his life and making his occupation seemingly impossible.

“Highliner” (New York) tells about teams of people who do repairs outside the immense skyscraper which has become the entire city. One team is approached by a mysterious man who offers them a bribe to overlook certain structural deficiencies in the building. Reluctantly, they agree, but soon afterwards they find themselves trapped outside the city as one-by-one their lines are cut and they fall to their death. This is a crime story, with an unexpected conclusion which I found very satisfactory.

“The General” (Peking, since the book was published before the western world began using the pinyinization Beijing) is based on the historical Mongolian hordes which swept out of northeast Asia and conquered China as part of its overall conquest of much of Asia and Europe. The general is old and as he weakens physically, so does his hold on the various tribes under his command. As his horde nears the walled Forbidden City, he struggles with his army as the inhabitants of the city prepare for the invasion.

“Nightgame” (Rome) was both the shortest and weakest story in the book, a minor misstep in what was otherwise a superb one-author theme anthology which never lost sight of either the overarching theme or the fact that each story must be a complete tale in itself.

Anybody who reads Sunfall as part of The Collected Short Fiction of C.J. Cherryh got a seventh story “MasKs” (Venice) as part of the collection, and it is definitely a worthwhile novella set during carnevale about the power struggle between a young doge who came from the middle class and an aristocrat from Verona who wishes to overthrow him. The story is told from the point of view of the intended bride of the aristocrat who falls in love with a mysterious stranger whose identity remains hidden behind the masks of carnevale. While the ending is a bit pat, the story itself is as fine characterization as Cherryh has ever written.

For the sake of reading “MasKs”, I recommend you buy The Collected Short Fiction of C.J. Cherryh, whose further review will be continued...

Panverse One

2010-08-28T07:00:00.001-07:00

Panverse One is an anthology of 5 original novellas edited and published by Dario Ciriello, a young Clarion graduate who in the introduction states that he has “a burning desire to promote a form I’ve personally always loved and enjoyed.” Since novellas are my favorite form of fiction as well, I bought this book eagerly (in spite of the fact that the editor rejected my own submission to it. *sigh*).

Three of the stories were enjoyable reading. Andrew Tisbert’s “Waking the City” is a far-future story in which a rivalry exists between people living in a city, those in a small town, and those living in the jungle between. The main character Kuyo is proclaimed by his mentor Geo to be the likely person to seize control of the city, but things are not so clear, especially when Kuyo’s best friend Castor seems to be associated with the beasts in the jungle.

“Fork You” is a terrible title which I am surprised the editor did not change. But it is a good fantasy about a wild girl in the thrall of two ancient magicians who is adopted by a large, inbred family of hillbillies who begin the process of taming her. Their 30 acres contain a huge, ancient tree which seems to have some type of magical power itself. A lot of clichéd ideas, but the story is done well for most of its length, only faltering a bit at its conclusion.

Jason K. Chapman’s “The Singers of Rhodes” is set on a huge alien space station which rival groups of humans are exploring. One group is the Uni, a military group which has previously invaded and basically destroyed the civilizations on several human colonies, and is threatening the other groups on the station. Inhabiting the space station’s inner walls are huge grasshopper-like beings who do not speak, but sing, and are considered unintelligent by most humans on the space station. But, of course, the narrator and reader suspects otherwise. This story is obviously strongly-influenced by C.J. Cherryh’s Union-Alliance stories, which is an unfortunate comparison since it cannot possibly live up to that inspiration, although the story is enjoyable reading.

My favorite story in the book though is the longest story, nearly double the length of any other, Alan Smale’s “Delusion’s Song.” It is set in Victorian England in the small town of Haworth which has been mysteriously cut off from all surrounding civilization, and is instead set in the midst of endless fields and mountains. The story is centered around a family whose father Patrick is a preacher struggling to maintain the values of a town whose citizens are slowly sinking into an uncivilized state. His son Branwell is a drunk and drug addict ever since his older sister Maria died at boarding school several years ago, and he has antagonized both the women and the men who are determined to teach Branwell a lesson. Patrick also has three surviving daughters Charlotte, Emily and Anne, each with different strengths: Charlotte has taken over the role of head of the family with their mother and two elder sisters dead; Emily is strong-willed and helps the men patrol the perimeter of the town lest occasional wild stragglers enter it; Anne is learning to be a midwife. All three sisters love books and fiction, and spend much of the story discussing with each other the novels they each hope to write someday.

I have probably given enough spoilers already, but most readers will realize the true identity of the family early in the novella, and then watch their lives develop in the midst of the town’s traumatic situation. This is a very strong novella which should have gotten recognition as one of the best stories of 2009.

Overall, I recommend Panverse One and look forward to other volumes in the series.

Forbidden Planet

2010-08-24T06:22:00.001-07:00

It has been many decades since I saw the movie Forbidden Planet, so I was interested in how well a movie from the 1950s would hold up. From the first scene it was obvious that it predated movies such as 2001: A Space Odyssey which upped the visual ante considerably for sf movies. And some of the acting was “over the top,” especially in the romantic scenes and Walter Pidgeon’s death scene.

But as for the plot and sense of wonder, the movie still held my attention totally. Forbidden Planet was the antithesis of so many mindless thrillers which masquerade as science fiction. It was thoughtful, with a plot totally dependent on the speculative element, which was the fact that the planet had been the home of an ancient race which had achieved an intellectual level far beyond that of humans before mysteriously dying off. The tension arose from the invisible monster which had picked off all the original colonists 20 years ago, with the exception of Walter Pidgeon and his daughter (played by Anne Francis). After being quiescent for 20 years, it was now doing the same with their relief group, which was led by captain Leslie Nielsen (who was very young and incredibly serious for somebody who became a slapstick actor late in his career) and many other recognizable faces from early tv.

At first I thought the romance between Nielsen and Francis was an unnecessary flourish, but the movie’s creators proved me wrong. Every scene in the movie was relevant to the plot and done well. There was an exciting last scene as the monster chased Nielsen, Francis and Pidgeon through the ancient catacombs, but it was resolved in a satisfactory manner which was totally fitting with the tone of the rest of the movie.

I cannot recommend Forbidden Planet highly enough. I can only think of a small handful of sf movies which entertained and impressed me as much (the 1960 version of The Time Machine, Blade Runner, Dark City and 2001). If you have never seen it, and can ignore the dated visual effects and lack of thrills-and-chills, you should enjoy this movie immensely. It is definitely one of the classics of sf cinema.

The Altar at Asconel

2010-08-19T07:48:00.000-07:00

John Brunner is one of the forgotten masters of science fiction. From the mid-1960s through the mid-1970s he published an amazing group of mature sf, starting with The Whole Man and The Squares of the City and continuing with a series of near-future dystopias which were as biting and thought-provoking as anything being written at that time: Stand on Zanzibar, The Jagged Orbit, The Sheep Look Up and The Shockwave Rider.

But such works were actually a minority among Brunner’s fiction, most of which were sprightly adventure stories, loosely falling under the then-denigrated form of “space opera,” but always well-plotted, literate and more thoughtful than the lower end of that sub-genre which unfortunately tended to set the standard in the eyes of many readers.

The Altar at Asconel took place in Brunner’s mini-series about a galactic empire which flourished when humans found the technological debris from a former greatly-superior race which had left its discarded spaceships behind when they fled the galaxy for unknown regions. In this novel, the human empire has begun disintegrating, so that piracy and invasions are commonplace.

The three main characters are the sons of the former ruler of Asconel who has been overthrown by an invasion fleet which has established a repressive religion that has won over the hearts and minds of nearly the entire populace of the planet. All three sons are living offworld at the start of the novel, but they soon gather along with two women, one a telepath, and determine to regain their homeworld from the invaders.

The Altar at Asconel is briskly-paced with sufficient character development to be believable. There is no doubt it is a space opera, but a good one. Ironically, it was published in 1965, the same year as Brunner published The Squares of the City, so it was apparent that he was no longer content to be “merely” a writer of space operas and planetary adventures, but this novel was good enough that he had nothing to be ashamed of. Its ending left open the possibility of more novels in the series but, alas, they were apparently never written. This was good, fun stuff.

Year's Best SF: 13

2010-08-15T10:09:00.001-07:00

If you need any evidence that the science fiction field is changing, look at the “Story Copyrights” page of Year’s Best SF 13, edited by David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer. The book contains 25 stories first published in 2007 and here are their original publication sites:

• 7 were originally published in traditional prozines (4 in Asimov’s; 2 in F&SF; 1 in Analog);
∙ 5 were published in other magazines (2 in Nature and 2 in Foundation 100 and 1 in Subterranean 7);
∙ 10 were published in anthologies (5 in Fast Forward 1, 2 in The SFWA European Hall of Fame, and 1 each in Eclipse 1, The New Space Opera, and The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction);
∙ 2 were published online (Flurb #3 and Strange Horizons);
∙ 1 was published in a single-author collection (William Shunn’s An Alternate History of the Twenty-first Century.

This might not mean much to you, but compare it to the original publications from Year’s Best SF 1 whose 14 stories first appeared in 1995:

• 10 appeared in traditional prozines;
• 4 appeared in original anthologies.

70% of the stories in 1995 appeared in the traditional prozines, down to 28%. 32% now appear in sources other than prozines /original anthologies, compared to 0% in 1995.

There is little doubt that the traditional prozines have decreased in importance to the sf field when the annual best-of-the-year containing the most traditional type of science fiction has largely moved away from the prozines. I suspect that if we compare the original sites of publication in another decade–assuming the series is still in existence then–we will find even fewer stories from prozines and more from online sources.

Fortunately, the redistribution of original sources has not affected the quality of the stories themselves. They are still all “pure” science fiction (thankfully, since I have wearied of contemporary fantasy, medieval fantasy, Tolkien fantasy, slipstream, magic realism and every other type of fiction which might be good but is definitely not science fiction), running the gamut from near future dismal (not my favorite type) through planetary adventures and space opera. As is typical in any anthology, some stories fell into my personal “blind spot,” but overall the stories were very enjoyable.

The longest story in the book is Gene Wolfe’s “Memorare,” a mystery set amongst personal mausoleums in space. It is a fairly routine story for Wolfe, which is not a bad thing at all. I must confess that some of his multi-layered stories read more like literary exercises than true pleasures.

Tony Ballantyne’s “The Aristotle OS” was an amusing story of a computer operating system which is a lot more rigid than practical. John Kessel’s “The Last American” took a jab at politicians by showing what it really takes to become president of the United States, no matter how unsavory a person one might be. Stephen Baxter’s “No More Stories” tells of a prodigal son who returns to his dying mother’s bedside and finds things considerably different than he expected (or could have expected).

Nancy Kress’ “End Game” is about a scientist who devises a method to devote 100% of a person’s concentration to the task at hand, and the implications this has for such a person’s life. Karen Joy Fowler’s “Always” is a story about immortality and cults.

As usual, Hartwell selects enjoyable stories overall, something for everybody who still enjoys science fiction in the face of the tsunami which fantasy has become.

Ivanhoe

2010-08-07T11:10:00.001-07:00

I did not begin reading Ivanhoe with particularly high expectations. After all, it was written nearly 200 years ago, and was filled with such clichéd characters as the outlaw Robin Hood, his Merry Men, the noble Richard the Lionhearted, and the evil Prince John. At best I expected it to be light entertainment, but I have been deliberately seeking out classic adventure novels, and the unread portion of my collection also contains such novels as The Hounds of the Baskervilles, The Man Who Was Thursday, Riders of the Purple Sage, The Scarlet Pimpernel, The Three Musketeers, The Maltese Falcon, King Solomon’s Mines, The Call of the Wild, Treasure Island, and a few others as well.

I decided to start with Ivanhoe since I have considerable interest in medieval times, having already read several nonfiction books about that era, and having purchased three sets of lectures from The Teaching Company about that era, from the dawn of the Carolingian era to the dawn of the Renaissance.

The overriding story of Ivanhoe is the conflict between the Saxon people of the England and the Norman conquerors, one hundred and thirty years after William of Normandy conquered the country and became King William 1. The current king is Richard the Lionhearted who was been taken prisoner in continental Europe while returning from the Crusades. His deceitful younger brother John has been doing whatever he could to make sure Richard remains a prisoner, while he plans a coup to seize the throne himself. Meanwhile, a group of Saxon lords try everything in their power to regain control of the country from the Normans.

The novel begins at a jousting competition organized by Prince John and featuring several of his primary supporters, including a Templar knight named Brian who is apparently undefeated in such competitions. But he meets his match in two anonymous knights, one of whom is Ivanhoe, the disinherited son of a Saxon lord because of his support of King Richard, and the Black Knight, whose identity becomes obvious very early in the story. Another participant in the competition is an archer named Locksley whose identity also becomes obvious when he shoots an arrow through another arrow into a bullseye.

There are many major characters in the novel, including:
• Cedric, the Saxon lord who is father of Ivanhoe;
• Rowena, the gorgeous young ward of Cedric who is intended to marry another Saxon lord for political purposes, but who loves Ivanhoe;
• Isaac, a Jewish moneylender who is one of Prince John’s major sources of funding;
• Rebecca, his daughter who is a healer responsible for bringing Ivanhoe back to health after he is nearly killed;
• The Templar knight Brian who falls in love with Rebecca, a twice-forbidden love because of his vow of celibacy and their different religions.

There are also many minor characters who play important roles in the novel, including:
• Wamba, who is Cedric’s jester;
• Gurth, a servant of Cedric who, against his wishes, becomes Ivanhoe’s squire;
• the Norman prior of a nearby abbey;
• Friar Tuck.

The pacing of the novel never slows down in spite of long periods of discussion among the characters, and there are several scenes which are outstanding in themselves. One such scene is the battle between the Norman forces who have kidnapped Ivanhoe and taken over a Saxon castle against those who are fighting to recapture it, led by the Black Knight and Locksley. Another climactic scene is the trial of Rebecca for witchery.

It is not surprising that everything works out well in the end, and both the anonymous Black Knight and Locksley become fast friends, while King Richard and the Saxons bury the hatchet between them. There are definitely historical inaccuracies in this book, and much of it is over-the-top, but it was so much fun I recommend it highly.

In the Company of Others

2010-08-01T08:03:00.001-07:00

Julie Czerneda’s In the Company of Others is reminiscent of the Union/Alliance novels of C.J. Cherryh with the emphasis on politics replaced by a biological mystery. Earth’s emigration to other planets was stopped abruptly by an alien entity called “the Quill,” sending all the colonists fleeing to various space stations since Earth refused their return because of fear of contamination by the Quill. All the stations are vastly overcrowded, with their inhabitants forced to live on an alternate-day cycle, sharing work, beds, etc. Food is imported from Earth and tensions are regularly quite high.

The novel’s plot is complicated, but fast-paced, involving an attempt by Earth scientist Gail Smith to eliminate the threat of the Quill. But her arrival on an Earth ship at one station has disrupted the delicate balance between various aspects of the station’s inhabitants, so the novel deals equally with her struggle against the Quill and the intricate relationship between groups of people on the station, including its longtime residents, the offspring of the stranded immigrants, and the Earthers. The main characters are Smith and two of the stationers Pardell and Malley, all of whom are fairly well-developed, having both positive aspects the reader can related to, and weaknesses which affect their behavior and the development of the plot.

Important minor characters include Commander Grant (the leader of the security force on Smith’s ship who balances his duties with his loyalty to the scientist), Tobo (the ship’s captain), and Rosalind (an old-timer on the station). These characters also have balanced personalities, especially Grant who plays a very important role in the events. This was a very satisfying novel which compares favorably to Cherryh’s novels. I believe this is Czerneda’s only standalone novel, but it has encouraged me to try one of her trilogies as well.

Cauldron

2010-07-25T10:38:00.001-07:00

I’ve raved about the fiction of Jack McDevitt previously, and Cauldron illustrates much of what he does best. It is the concluding novel in the Academy series, and it provides closure to several of the mysteries which had been unanswered in previous novels: it explores the origin of the “chindi,” from the novel of that name (and does not find at all what they were expecting) and also the origin of the “omega clouds,” which have been hovering in the background of all six Academy novels, and was the main emphasis of several of them.

The basic premise is that a new, improved faster-than-light drive is discovered which is thirty times faster than the prior drive, and which permits travelers to reach portions of the galaxy which were previously out of reach. Two superluminals containing five people (including the main character of the series, Priscilla Hutchins) go in search of the answers to four mysteries. The trip is thoroughly fascinating, including believable characters whom the reader can empathize with. The long passages spent on a spacecraft are fascinating and the explorations spark thought-provoking implications. One of the novel’s major strengths though is the sense of wonder which is evoked by the explorations, especially in the origins of the “omega clouds,” which I had not expected to be resolved satisfactorily, but McDevitt did so in a manner which was both fulfilling and thrilling.

Cauldron is McDevitt at his finest writing, more evidence that he is one of the very best storytellers currently working. I recommend this novel highly (moreso if you have read the entire series preceding it.)

The Teaching Company

2010-07-10T09:06:00.000-07:00

While reading fiction is my first love, I do enjoy nonfiction too, although I find less time to squeeze it into my reading schedule (although hopefully that will improve now that school’s out forever, to paraphrase Alice Cooper ☺)

While I tend to avoid audiobooks for fiction, because I enjoy reading the book myself, I am less picky about nonfiction. Thus I have joined The Teaching Company which sells lecture series by college professors. There are so many fascinating lecture series in various categories, but the ones which interest me tend to be in history and archaeology. So far I have ordered 5 series from them: Ancient Greek Civilization (24 lectures on 4 DVDs), The Civilization of Ancient Rome (48 lectures), Early Middle Ages (24 lectures); High Middle Ages (24 lectures), and Late Middle Ages (24 lectures).

I’ve started viewing the Ancient Greek Civilization series, which are simple lectures delivered by Professor Jeremy McInerney of U Penn. The early lectures discuss the Minoan culture on Crete, its height during the Bronze Age and its subsequent fall which precipitated what McInerney calls “the Long Twilight,” akin to the Dark Ages which followed the fall of the Roman Empire two millennia later.

From there he goes into the re-emergence of Greek culture and the development of the well-known city-states. While the series might not be appealing to people who prefer video documentaries with lots of images and/or re-creations, for somebody who enjoys getting most of their learning from books, this is fascinating stuff which I highly recommend.

Each series comes with a bibliography which serves as a recommended reading list, but the lectures inspired me to go to the website http://www.ancient-greece.org where I researched the areas which particularly interested me in each lecture.

If the idea of a lecture series right in your living room appeals to you, go to http://www.teach12.com/teach12.aspx?ai=16281 and check out which categories interest you. I am certain you’ll find several that you will enjoy.

Time Travelers Never Die

2010-07-02T06:03:00.000-07:00

I consider a book great for two possible reasons: it can be great in the artistic sense (characterization, thoughtfulness, sense of wonder, world-building), or it can be great fun. In my opinion, no current writer’s books are more consistent fun than those of Jack McDevitt. His Alex Benedict series is my favorite ongoing series, well-developed mysteries based around historical events in our future. I did not expect to enjoy his contemporary sf mystery Time Travelers Never Die as much, but I was absolutely delighted by the book.

Its premise is simple: a scientist invents a portable device which serves as a time machine, then vanishes. His son Shel, also a physicist although nowhere near as his brilliant as his father, finds the device and along with his friend Dave begins searching through history for the missing physicist.

The best parts of the book are the visits to famous historical locales, such as the Library at Alexandria, and encounters with influential people, such as Galileo and Socrates. The first third of the book details the search for Shel’s father. When that is resolved, the second third is pure travelogue, but as a lover of history I found it delightful. The third portion concerns another mystery involving Shel himself, which has an unexpected but satisfying conclusion.

Besides the main plots, there are several individual scenes and threads which are small highlights. Such as the running thread about the missing plays of Sophocles, or the encounter with Cesare Borgia. These segments alone would be worth reading the entire book for, even if it were not as much fun overall as it is.

Much of this book reminded me of Robert Silverberg’s fiction, since he also loves intertwining his fiction with historical people and places. Up the Line is perhaps the book which came to mind most frequently, which is high praise since that was my favorite time travel book ever. I recommend Time Travelers Never Die for its storytelling, its cleverness, and its glimpses at history.

Essential Reading

2010-06-26T06:11:00.001-07:00

School’s out for summer ... School’s out forever!!! While there are certainly negatives to this fact, one positive about it is that now I can spend a lot more time reading. Considering that my Books-to-be-Read list include 298 works of fiction and 45 works of nonfiction, as well as the bundle of Hugo nominees which I recently downloaded from Aussiecon (which all supporting members get free as part of their $50 membership fee; I recommend doing so very highly), that’s a lot of reading to do.

I’ve scanned the unread books and made the following list of Essential Reading which I hope to tackle first:

Science Fiction and Fantasy:
Vacuum Diagrams / Stephen Baxter
Sea-Kings of Mars / Leigh Brackett
Stories of Your Life / Ted Chiang
Year’s Best SF 26 / Gardner Dozois
Best SF #13, 15 / David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer
Time Travelers Never Die / Jack McDevitt
Cauldron / Jack McDevitt
Northwest Smith / C. L. Moore
Federation / L. Beam Piper
Galileo’s Dream / Kim Stanley Robinson
Julian Comstock / Robert Charles Wilson
Anathem / Neal Stephenson

Historical Fiction:
Jerusalem / Cecelia Holland
Cider House Rules / John Irving
The Last Witchfinder / James Morrow
Empress / Shan Sa
Ivanhoe / Sir Walter Scott

Nonfiction:
The Creators / Daniel Boorstin
From Stonehenge to Samarkand / Brian Fagan
Terry Jones’ Barbarians
Under the Tuscan Sun / Frances Mayes
Full Circle / Michael Palin
The Search For Modern China / Jonathan Spence
The Italian 100 / Stephen Stignesi
The Distant Mirror / Barbara W. Tuchman

Any suggestions where I should begin?

Aussiecon and e-readers

2010-06-19T05:50:00.001-07:00

The last worldcon I attended was in 1981, the first one I attended with my wife who was totally bored the entire weekend. While I have yearned to attend another one, it has never seemed fair to do so. I’ve been fortunate to receive copies of all the Memory Books through friends and APAs that I’ve belonged to.

Other friends have encouraged me to join worldcons for the purpose of voting for the Hugo Awards, but as the cost of Supporting Memberships has escalated, it never seemed worthwhile to spend $40-50 just to vote for the Hugo Awards and receive a few Progress Reports, when I was fairly certain I would get a copy of the Memory Book for free.

Until this year. Aussiecon is providing a bundle of electronic versions of all the Hugo nominees. That includes novels and novellas, a package which itself is certainly worth the $50 cost. So I joined a week ago, and this morning I downloaded the bundle of nominated novels. Of course, being largely apathetic about technology–I use it similarly to how I use my car, great for driving but who cares about the functions under the hood?–I have not yet figured out how to access those novels. Fortunately, my computer guru is coming visiting today, so I assume that problem will be solved imminently.

Since I will be retiring from my job in one more week, I anticipate actually having time to read the Hugo nominations this year, and hopefully vote before the deadline next month. That would be my first Hugo vote in nearly 30 years, not that I expect it to have any influence on the outcome. I wonder if I’ll feel more disappointed in the award results when I actually participate in them?

I’ve been considering reading more e-books rather than keep filling up my house with paper books, but I have not yet determined the best format for doing so. I tend to oppose the Kindle, because it does not seem as if I would actually have possession of a book, rather paying for access to a book which would be “stored” at Amazon.com. I want an e-reader which enables me to keep a copy of the book I purchase on my computer. Is that asking too much, or too antiquated a need? I’m not sure, but right now that is one of my requirements for an e-reader.

I’ve never been one to jump on new technology, so I’m waiting patiently for the new e-readers to work out their bugs until I make a purchase. While it will not be overly-convenient reading the Hugo-nominated works on my computer, that will do until I work out exactly how I want to enter the e-reading era.

Cat Tales

2010-06-13T15:42:00.001-07:00

I do not receive review copies of books from publishers, probably because I do not publicize my review blog to them. But for some reason about a year ago Wildside Press sent me a copy of their original anthology Cat Tales, edited by George H. Scithers. Recently I was looking for some easy reading, so I took that book with me. My expectations were not particularly high, but I am a cat lover, so how bad could the stories be? Especially since one of Scithers’ requirements for the stories was “to avoid cats coming to a bad end on stage.” That was fine with me.

Overall, the stories were delightful. While the book’s subtitle was “Fantastic Feline Fiction,” relatively few of the stories actually fell into a sub-genre of the fantastic, which did not affect their overall quality at all. Nor were the stories upbeat–in fact, I would put the majority in the downbeat category–but the delightful cats made up for that. Highlights include:

• Nancy Springer’s “American Curls,” a mystery about an old lady with 90 cats who is mugged for no apparent reason;
• Fritz Leiber’s “Kreativity for Kats,” which is about precisely what the title describes;
• Sandra Beswetherick’s “Angelique’s,” in which a wandering lover is lured back to his former girlfriend by her cat;
• Pat Esden’s “Black Pumps & A Skanky Tom,” which told of a down-and-out drunk living in a trailer park whose cat leads him to clues about a particularly gruesome murder, but the police do not believe he is a reliable source of information;
• ShereemnVerdem’s “Dragon Dreams,” about a veterinarian and her two cats who slip into an alternate dimension where they provide medical assistance to a dragon whose baby is having trouble trying to crack its shell;
• K.D. Wentworth’s “Cat Call,” which is a murder mystery told from the point of view of the cat, which actually solves the mystery and then somehow tries to point out the clues to his rather clueless owner;

Fred Chappell’s “Creeper Shadows” is the longest story in the book (over 17,000 words, where no other story is longer than 8,000 words) and also the most substantial one. It is a medieval-type fantasy involving two mysteries. The first involves a pair of twins who only share a single shadow, while the other involves a man whose voice has been stolen from him. The style of the story seems to fall into the sub-genre of Vance’s Dying Earth-influenced stories, but it is well done and very interesting, a fine capstone to the collection.

Now here’s the real creepy part about this book: halfway through it, I had decided that it was enjoyable enough that I intended to purchase the sequel Cat Tales II from Wildside Press. The very next day in the mail came an envelope containing that very book! Unordered, without any chance of the publisher having seen my review of the first book since it had not been written yet.

What is going on here? Buy the book; you’ll enjoy it, but be prepared for supernatural effects to follow.

The Science Fiction Book Club

2010-06-05T08:34:00.001-07:00

I joined the SFBC for the first time in 1967 and my initial selections were Roger Zelazny’s Lord of Light and Harlan Ellison’s anthology Dangerous Visions. In those early years, nearly all the choices in their monthly catalog were science fiction, with an occasional fantasy to break the monotony. There were always so many good choices that it was possible to maintain a science fiction book collection entirely through purchases from that club.

But now? I am sitting with the most recent SFBC catalog. Its cover is from David Weber’s latest Honor Harrington novel Mission of Honor, but when I scanned the contents of the catalog, it seemed that book was in a definite minority of sf books offered within. All I noticed were endless fantasies and contemporary and near-contemporary thrillers about vampires and such. But was that observation a fact or perhaps my prejudiced view of books I had no particular interest in? So I went through the entire catalog and categorized each book in it. There was considerable overlap, but I tried to select which genre each book fit best. Here are the results:

Genre / Total / percent of overall total
Fantasy / 65 / 44%
Science Fiction / 50 / 34%
contemporary & near-contemporary thrillers / 23 / 16%
Horror / 5 / 3%
Media/comics tie-ins / 3 / 2%

While I am not surprised that fantasy and contemporary & near-contemporary thrillers total 60% of the books offered, 34% is actually a higher percentage of science fiction than I would have guessed before I began my tallying. However, most of the books in all categories are not new to the catalog. So considering only new books, I found the following sf books which I believe appeared in the SFBC catalog for the first time:

Mission of Honor / David Weber
Ship Breaker / Paolo Bacigalupi
Deceiver / C.J. Cherryh

Can a science fiction fan still maintain a collection exclusively through the SFBC? It is unlikely that all three of the new sf books would appeal to each reader (I personally have no interest in the Weber military sf book), so 2 books per catalog seem a fairly skimpy amount. Thus, as the amount of published science fiction continues to grow (in total numbers, albeit as a smaller and smaller percentage of the overall genre market which grows even faster), the amount offered through the SFBC does seem to be shrinking.

How long will it be before the powers-that-be decide to rename it the Fantasy Book Club to better reflect their main concern?

Favorite F&SF Series

2010-05-29T05:34:00.001-07:00

Before beginning this list, I needed to decide precisely what a “series” consists of. Obviously two books are too short to be ranked against long series of 10-15 books, but I also decided that a trilogy was not a true series per se. So 4 books is the minimum length needed to be on this list.

There is no restriction as to whether a series contains directly-related novels (that is, one long story spread over multiple books) or independent stories set in the same universe. As the list shows, the majority of series I prefer (13) fall into the latter category.

My prejudice towards science fiction rather than fantasy shows, as only 4 fantasy series made the list, and all are on the lower half. Before anybody starts screaming at me, I have not read most of the "major" fantasy series by authors such as George R.R. Martin, Robert Jordan, Stephen Donaldson, etc., so they did not make the list from lack of familiarity rather than any specific opinions I have towards them. This is not meant to be a definitive list, merely my personal preferences.

And, yes, only three women authors are on the list, but women tend to write fantasy, and I prefer science fiction, so that is a natural reflection of my interests.

1 / Darkover / Marion Zimmer Bradley
2 / Alliance/Union / C.J. Cherryh
3 / Alex Benedict / Jack McDevitt
4 / Mars / Kim Stanley Robinson
5 / Galactic Cluster / Jack Vance
6 / Pern / Anne McCaffrey
7 / Riverworld / Philip José Farmer
8 / Hyperion / Dan Simmons
9 / Galactic North / Alastair Reynolds
10 / Polesotechnic League / Poul Anderson
11 / Earthsea / Ursula K Le Guin
12 / Nevérÿona / Samuel R. Delany
13 / Galactic Center / Gregory Benford
14 / Ender / Orson Scott Card
15 / Gateway / Frederik Pohl
16 / Sector General / James White
17 / Known Space / Larry Niven
18 / Majipoor / Robert Silverberg
19 / Amber / Roger Zelazny
20 / Book of the Long Sun / Gene Wolfe

The Pnume

2010-05-23T16:16:00.001-07:00

The Pnume is the fourth and last of Jack Vance’s Planet of Adventure series of novels (the others being City of the Chasch, The Dirdir and Servants of the Wankh). While the first three novels in the series were mid-level Vance not on the level of either his Alastor or Demon Princes series, the last novel is not only the best of the series, but top-notch Vance fiction.

It begins with Reith, the Earthman stranded on Tschai, kidnapped by the Pnume and taken to their underground city. He manages to escape, and observes Pnume citizens who exhibit strange behavior in which they avoid looking directly at each other, submerging all personal desires for their roles as part of the group. Reith captures a young woman and forces her to help him flee. The very act of her reading a map stolen by Reith traumatizes her since she is convinced she will now be punished as a blasphemer.

Reith manages to reach the surface with the girl, but she has never seen anything other than the underground. Once he is free, the girl expects Reith to abandon her to die, but he feels obligated to protect the girl since he tore her away from the only life she knew and felt secure in. The Pnume is about their changing relationship as they flee Pnume agents, and Vance succeeds in showing its development much better than I actually expected. Along with all the color of Tschai and its exotic inhabitants, The Pnume was a fine conclusion to the Planet of Adventure series.

The Fabulous Riverboat

2010-05-16T10:28:00.000-07:00

After rereading and enjoying Philip José Farmer’s first Riverworld novel To Your Scattered Bodies Go, I was anxious to reread the second novel in the series The Fabulous Riverboat. This was a totally different type of novel than its predecessor. Bodies was primarily concerned with examining the sociological and theological implications of all of humanity being resurrected on a huge world in which everybody lives on the banks of a near-endless river. The protagonist Richard Francis Burton spent the novel examining many of the societies which have arisen in the strange afterlife. What he learned was that humans brought most of the same ills and evils with them which tormented people on Earth, such as repressive dictatorships and slavery.

The Fabulous Riverboat is mostly set in one society where Samuel Clemens is striving to build a Mississippi-type riverboat to seek the headwaters of the river. Like Burton, Clemens has been contacted by a mysterious stranger who tells him that he is a renegade among the so-called Ethicals who created the riverworld and resurrected all of humanity. The stranger has some plan to overturn the other Ethicals, and it includes Clemens and his riverboat. During the novel Clemens encounters others of The Twelve, the minions of the renegade Ethical. They include Joe, a towering Neanderthal who has become Clemens’ best friend and protector.

The building of the riverboat is a massive undertaking, especially on a world where violence and greed are as prevalent as on Earth. The society where Clemens lives is surrounded by others who threaten their security, including one ruled by a Japanese warlord and another by a black racist striving to build a totally-black society. To complicated matters, Clemens is not sole ruler of the society he has named Parolando, but shares power with King John Lackland, the Norman ruler of 12th century England who is every bit as evil as his legend.

The Fabulous Riverboat is a well-plotted adventure about Clemens’ struggle to build the riverboat. His allies include Joe, legendary swordsman Cyrano de Bergerac, and World War I flying Ace Lothar Van Richthoven (brother of the famous Red Baron). One of the strengths of the Riverworld series is that it enables Farmer to use many historical characters in roles different than their true lives, and he makes those characters very interesting. He is also a strong plotter who manages to make the novel an absorbing page-turner while not ignoring the philosophical questions raised in To Your Scattered Bodies Go.

I recommend The Fabulous Riverboat as strongly as I did its predecessor, even though it is a completely different type of novel. For some reason I never read the two concluding novels in the series, The Dark Design and The Magic Labyrinth, so they have now moved to the top of my list of novels to be bought and read as soon as possible.

Warriors

2010-05-08T05:29:00.000-07:00

Warriors (edited by George R.R. Martin and Gardner Dozois) was an interesting concept for an original anthology: stories about warriors, but featuring writers from such genres as historical fiction (Cecelia Holland, Steven Saylor), fantasy (Robin Hobb, Peter S. Beagle, Martin), science fiction (Robert Silverberg, Joe Haldeman, Dozois), alt history (Naomi Novik, S.M. Stirling) to contemporary fiction (Lawrence Block, James Rollins). 20 stories in all, 736 pages, all novelettes or novellas.

I decided to begin with novellas from two of my favorite writers of historical fiction, Holland and Saylor. Holland’s “The King of Norway” is set in her recent favorite venue, Viking Europe, and details a group of jomsvikings invading Norway with the intent of overthrowing its king. The point of view character is Conn Corbansson, who is not a jomsviking, but during a drunken party had sworn to accompany them and not return until he himself was king of Norway.

Holland is an excellent writer who does not fall into the trap of instilling modern sensibilities into her characters. Conn is perfectly comfortable fighting and killing, and the story is as much about the culture and ethics of the marauders as anything else. People kill and are killed, and the characters accept it as a regular part of life. So when Conn shows a momentary regret at the death of a young protegee, it is more effective than it would have been in a less cruel setting.

During the story, I wondered what Holland would choose for its ending, seeing two likely outcomes, but she avoided them both and had a third option which fit well with both the violence which preceded it and the sense of honor of the culture being explored. An excellent story (if you can stomach all the violence).

Saylor’s story “The Eagle and the Rabbit” was told from the point of view of a poor Carthaginian farmer who was one of the last survivors of the Roman army’s destruction of the city at the end of the long Punic Wars. He is part of a small group hiding in the hills as Roman slave traders track down the few remaining Carthaginians who will be sold as slaves when they reach the sea. The title refers to a cruel game the Roman commander plays in which one slave is set above the others and favored, while another is routinely abused by them, all part of their intent to break the spirit of the captives to prepare them to be slaves.

This story is much less violent than Holland’s story, although it is no less cruel in the life it portrays, and it is richer in characterization as well (which has always been one of Saylor’s strengths as a writer). Its ending made me wish for a sequel.

So far this book is outstanding reading. I plan to read some of the sf stories next. To be continued...

Prozine / Anthology listings

2010-05-01T07:57:00.001-07:00

While my f&sf collection is not huge by fannish standards, I do have a fair number of prozines and anthology series which, in many ways, are the backbone of my collection. Here are the series/zines which I currently have the most of:

Prozines:
Fantasy & Science Fiction / August 1969 - current / 407
Galaxy / Vol 1, #1 - Vol. 40, #1 / 247
Asimov’s / Spring 1977 - September 2007 / 207
Worlds of IF / January 1952 - December 1974 / 148
Analog / March 1967 - September 1986 / 56
Worlds of Tomorrow / April 1963 - 1971 / 26
Amazing / December 1957 - November 1983 / 21
Tomorrow / #1 - 19 / 19
Science Fiction Age Nov 1992 - March 1996 / 13

Anthologie Series"
Dozois, Gardner (ed) / The Year’s Best Science Fiction / 26
Various editors / Nebula Award Stories / 19
Carr, Terry (ed) / The Best Science Fiction of the Year / 15
Carr, Terry (ed) / Universe / 14
Asimov & Greenberg (ed) / Science Fiction: The Great Years / 13
Silverberg, Robert (ed.) / Alpha / 9
Carr & Wollheim (ed) / Year’s Best Science Fiction / 7
Hartwell, David (ed) / various compilation anthologies / 7
Knight, Damon (ed) / Orbit / 7

Four For Tomorrow

2010-04-25T07:34:00.000-07:00

Continuing my dipping into fiction by my favorite authors (starting with Clifford D. Simak’s Strangers in the Universe, followed by C.J. Cherryh's Finity’s End), I reread Roger Zelazny’s first collection Four For Tomorrow, which contains four of his early novelettes, three of which rank among the best fiction he has ever written.

“The Graveyard Heart” is in the sfnal tradition of stories examining the lives of bored immortals, except it has typical Zelazny twists to it. The members of the Set are not really immortal; they undergo cold sleep for most of their lives, only awakening for brief interludes during which they are required to party before cameras for the rest of the envious world to watch them. They are the ultimate celebrities, living only for the adulation of others, yet membership in the Set is very exclusive. Money alone is not sufficient; all applicants must be approved by a single old-fashioned matron whose standards are both very high and totally unfathomable.

Zelazny’s strength is creating a milieu and exploring the emotions of his characters, but this story has somewhat more plot that usual. The main character Moore begins the story as an engineer anxious to join the Set for various reasons: the thrill of being part of such an exclusive group; the chance to live far into the future; infatuation with one member of the Set. Soon after joining though, he becomes more enamored with the Set than with the woman he had pursued, while she has fallen in love with Moore and wishes to leave the set and have his baby. “The Graveyard Heart” is a powerful story which illustrates all of Zelazny’s strengths without exposing any of his weaknesses as a plotter.

“The Doors of His Face, the Lamps of His Mouth” is a rousing adventure story which won the very first Best Novelette Nebula Award 45 years ago. Set on a classical ocean-covered Venus, it involves a hunt for a deep-sea creature which has never been captured, by a rich dilettante and her former lover who is the baitman. The story is equal parts love story, deep-sea adventure, and sense of wonder, the type of story which might have been a throwaway if written by somebody other than Roger Zelazny whose writing had the ability to make even the flimsiest plot better than enjoyable.

The last story in the book is “A Rose for Ecclesiastes,” the first story which brought Zelazny to the attention of fandom, earning a Hugo nomination in 1964. It is the tale of a poet named Gallinger who is also a linguist, as well as a genius and an egomaniac. He is part of an expedition to Mars studying the few remaining Martian natives and their culture. He is the first human permitted to enter their sacred temple area and view their ancient texts. In a relatively brief novelette, Zelazny shows us the wonders of the ancient Martian culture, the Martian religion, the natives themselves, and the growth of Gallinger as he both immerses himself in the Martian texts and falls in love with a Martian girl. But the love story is much more than merely that, as it involves the fate of the entire Martian race.

“Rose” is one of the all-time finest science fiction stories, chosen by the SWFA as the sixth best sf story written prior to 1965, and if it were the only story Roger Zelazny had ever written, he would still be one of the giants of science fiction. If you have never read it, then find it somewhere. Four For Tomorrow is only available as a used paperback, although The Science Fiction Hall of Fame is in print.

However, “A Rose for Ecclesiastes,” “The Doors of His Face, the Lamps of His Mouth,” and “The Graveyard Heart” are all contained in the recent NESFA Press edition of Threshold Volume 1: The Collected Stories of Roger Zelazny, which also contains his other classic novella “He Who Shapes” and more than a dozen other early Zelazny stories. You cannot go wrong buying that volume instead.

Observations on the Hugo nominees

2010-04-17T05:10:00.001-07:00

The list of Hugo Award nominations is often more interesting than the actual winners. This year there are 6 nominees in three of the four fiction categories; I wonder why that is. Was it an arbitrary decision of the con committee, or were there actually ties for the 5th slot in each category? It seems unlikely to have three such ties unless the nominations were so spread out that a relatively few numbers of nominations were needed to make the ballot.

The Best Novel category is probably most notable for the absence of both Charles Stross and John Scalzi on it. Stross had been nominated in this category six consecutive years, while Scalzi three of the last four years. However, neither writer was ignored by their considerable number of fans, since both were nominated in the Best Novella category, and Stross in Best Novelette as well. Robert Sawyer continued his string of nominations for Best Novel, with his 9th nomination in that category since 1995, including a win in 2003 for Hominids.

Of the most critically-acclaimed novels of 2009, China Mieville’s The City and the City appeared on nearly every best-of-the-year list I saw, followed at a distance by fellow nominees Boneshaker, by Cherie Priest and The Windup Girl, by Paolo Bacigalupi. Among the most acclaimed novels of 2009, only The Devil’s Alphabet, by Daryl Gregory, did not earn a Hugo nomination. That’s not a bad correlation between general acclaim and Hugo nominations.

Several perennial Hugo favorites received nominations, including Nancy Kress’ “Act One” and Ian McDonald’s "Vishnu at the Cat Circus” for Best Novella, and Mike Resnick’s “The Bride of Frankenstein” for Best Short Story.

I would assume that Jack Vance’s autobiographical This is Me, Jack Vance! (Or, More Properly, This is “I”) is the favorite in the Best Related Book category, although he is pitted against two other Hugo favorites in 5-time winner Michael Swanwick (for Hope-In-The-Mist: The Extraordinary Career and Mysterious Life of Hope Mirrlees) and 3-time winner John Clute (Canary Fever: Reviews).

Many people have assumed that the Best Editor, Long Form category was created to reward David Hartwell for his excellence (and popularity), but he was not even nominated this year after winning it the past two years. 2007 winner Patrick Nielsen Hayden is presumably the favorite this year.

Only Gordon Van Gelder and Ellen Datlow have won the Best Editor, Short Form category since its inception in 2007, so presumably they are the co-favorites again this year.

The fan categories always lend themselves to evaluation. Last year’s Best Fanzine winner Electric Velocipede was not nominated this year, although perennial nominees File 770 and Challenger were. Three of the six nominees (File 770, Challenger and Argentus) are basically annuals, while Banana Wings and The Drink Tank are more regular, but I suspect the latter two have little chance of actually winning the award. The sixth nominee StarShipSofa is a podcast website, which should be an interesting vote considering last year’s winner was a webzine.

The biggest shock in the nominations is that Dave Langford is not on the Best Fan Writer list. He has not won the award the past two years (losing to John Scalzi and Cheryl Morgan), after having won it 21 of the previous 23 years. Interestingly, his early losses were to Mike Glyer who won the award three times, but he is not on the ballot either this year in spite of his fanzine File 770 being nominated for Best Fanzine. So there will definitely be a first-time winner in the category this year. Although Steven Silver has 11 total career nominations in this category and Best Fanzine and Chris Garcia has 6, I would guess that first-time nominee Fred Pohl, who earned a nomination for his popular blog, is the favorite to win.

Best Fan Artist has regular nominees Brad Foster, Sue Mason, Taral Wayne and Steve Stiles, although Foster and Mason have won it 8 times between them while neither Stiles nor Wayne have ever won it in spite of 8 nominations each. Inertia is often a factor in Hugo voting, so presumably Foster and Mason are the favorites here.

Finity's End

2010-04-10T06:58:00.001-07:00

I have more science fiction books by only two other authors than C.J. Cherryh, 48 books by Robert Silverberg and 35 books by Roger Zelazny. Cherryh is third with 30 books (and since she is still writing, she is probably destined to overtake Zelazny at some point, although his six-volume complete short fiction by NESFA Press might hold her off awhile).

While her fantasies are good (especially the Morgaine saga), and so are such series as The Faded Sun, Foreigner and Chanur, generally her books which I enjoy most are those set in the Alliance-Union war, stories such as Downbelow Station, Merchanter’s Luck and Cyteen.

Finity’s End is set in that universe after the end of the Company War when various forces in the settled portion of the galaxy are struggling to co-exist somewhat peacefully. The novel has two main focuses. One is the struggle by the leadership of the merchant alliance warship Finity’s End to broker a more lasting peace than currently exists in the human-settled portion of the galaxy through economic negotiations. The other focus is a coming-of-age tale of young Fletcher, who grew up on Pell Station, an orbiting habitat around a world which contains the only known intelligent aliens in human space. Fletcher’s mother was a crewmember on Finity’s End, whose entire crew consist of a vast network of relatives, referred to onboard ship as “cousins”–which they mostly are. But for some reason she was sent to Pell Station when she was pregnant with Fletcher, and her dependence on drugs caused her to lose custody of her son who drifted from one foster family to another, all of them bad experiences. Thus Fletcher grew up an angry, disillusioned station dweller who for most of his childhood had no idea what, if anything, he wanted to do with his life.

After his mother’s death, Fletcher made a determined effort to find a role at the station, and studied planetary science while spending time on the planet below studying the hisa and becoming particularly close to two of them. Just when it seemed as if things were going well for him though, Finity’s End returned to Pell Station and, as part of a larger political dealing, regained custody of Fletcher and brought him onboard the ship. The novel examines how Fletcher fits in with a crew consisting of people who all grew up together and who understand ship life intricately, while he knows none of them, has no wish to be part of them, and also understands nothing about life aboard ship.

He is immediately put into a group of four other seventeen-year olds, the “junior juniors” of the crew; however, they have spent considerable time in transit so the other three are physically twelve-year olds, and tend to act it at times. However, they have a much deeper knowledge base about life on Finity’s End, so Fletcher is in a situation where he spends most of his time with much younger kids who know more than he does. He rooms with Jeremy, whose closest family all died in the recent war, so he immediately attaches himself to Fletcher as an older brother. Vince, another of the four, dislikes Fletcher and goes out of his way to annoy him.

The four “junior juniors” are under the direct control of J.R., who is the leader of the “senior juniors,” who are all older than Fletcher but physically similar to him. Some of them resent Fletcher’s joining the crew, and the tension boils over several times into fighting, especially between Fletcher and Chad, his nemesis on the ship. But Fletcher has another unknown enemy on Finity’s End who is determined to undermine his efforts to become part of the crew and bond with the other cousins.

Finity’s End is a strong novel, equally divided between character study and political maneuvering. Much of it is devoted to showing what life is really like on a spacecraft, considerably more complex than is shown in most other space operas. Cherryh continues to grow as a writer, and while I enjoyed the first three Foreigner novels, I am glad she has returned to Merchanter space with her recent novel Regenesis, which I hope to read soon as well. Finity’s End is highly recommended.

Strangers in the Universe

2010-04-02T07:50:00.001-07:00

My first favorite science fiction author was Clifford D. Simak. I discovered him on Christmas morning, 1963, in the January issue of Worlds of IF with a short story “The Shipshape Miracle.” The next day when I ran to the candy store to buy the February issue of Galaxy, he also had a novelette “Day of Truce.” A few months later Galaxy serialized his classic novel Way Station (under the title Here Gather the Stars).

Later that year I bought my first sf collection, Simak’s Strangers in the Universe, a brief book containing 7 stories which I have recalled fondly for nearly 50 years. As I mentioned last time, I recently decided to devote the next month or so to reading books by my favorite authors, so this was the first book I selected. It is not always wise to reread something which made such an impression on me when I was a teenager, but happily this book well-rewarded my rereading of it.

I love Simak’s approach to storytelling. Not a lot of action or violence, mostly people trying to figure out a mystery logically. Often the mystery is philosophical in nature. “Retrograde Evolution” is concerned with why an intelligent race of aliens deliberately abandoned their level 10 culture to regress to a level 14 culture. “Beachhead” deals with first contact with aliens who calmly tell the humans they will never leave that planet, but take no action to deter them.

Simak’s fiction has its share of villains, such as the two guides in “Mirage” who abandon an archaeologist in a brutal Martian desert to seek out ancient treasure. Some villains are merely misguided, as in “Target Generation,” when inhabitants of a generation ship have forgotten all about their centuries-long mission, and consider one man’s attempts to land the ship pure blasphemy which they fear will destroy them all.

The stories are always fascinating, usually gentle–Simak’s trademark–and invariably thought-provoking. They generally contain a satisfying resolution, even if it is not always a pleasant one. I cannot think of another sf author who so consistently combines speculation, thoughtfulness, and an overriding philosophy that goodness will generally overcome evil in the long run. If only the world was more of a Simakian one.

I can’t wait to start reading another of his anthologies.

Aurora in Four Voices

2010-03-27T14:00:00.000-07:00

Another author in David G. Hartwell’s The Space Opera Renaissance whom I had not read previously was Catherine Asaro. Her reputation as a writer of hard science romances was a blending which did not strike anticipation into my heart. But her story “Aurora in Four Voices,” was very impressive. It is neither space opera nor hard science nor a romance, but a strong sf planetary adventure about a city built by aliens with a preoccupation with mathematics. The story involves a human who is a captive in the city because the most powerful artist there requires him as a model. All the human wants to do is escape, and when a powerful member of the interstellar military arrives on the world, he sees his chance to do so.

“Aurora in Four Voices” was good enough that I definitely want to read one of Asaro’s Skolian Empire novels.

*

I have decided to read some older books in my collection, particularly ones by my favorite authors. I’m starting with Clifford D. Simak’s collection Strangers in the Universe. I met Simak at a worldcon in Boston in the early 70s where he was invited to a small private room party. That was one of my fannish highlights, sitting and chatting with one of sf’s greatest authors.

Other authors I hope to revisit in the near future include Michael Bishop, Kim Stanley Robinson (likely his newest novel Galileo’s Dream) and Roger Zelazny. Good reading ahead...

Ms. Midshipwoman Harringon

2010-03-22T15:23:00.000-07:00

One of the authors I have never read before is David Weber. He has written a lot of books, mostly published by Baen, and his Honor Harrington series is very popular. But he seemed to fall into the category of military science fiction, one of my least favorite sub-genres. So why buy any of his books when there were so many others worth reading that I had a considerably better chance of enjoying?

One of the unexpected pleasures of reading huge compendiums such as David G. Hartwell’s The Space Opera Renaissance is that it contains substantial stories by authors I have not read previously, including David Weber’s “Ms. Midshipwoman Harrington.” That is a long novella about her first experience on a military ship when Honor Harrington is still an apprentice in training. Almost immediately upon reading it I saw why Weber has a reputation for military fiction emphasizing the characterization. The story is not about war per se, but about the humans involved in the war. Honor, the point of view character, is very competent and a very insightful watcher of all the people around her and the military protocols which she follows, if not always supporting.

Honor’s highly-intelligent pet Nimitz is a cat-like alien with whom Honor has a special rapport that makes Nimitz more than just a mere pet.

Early in the story, the “villain” is an arrogant, egotistical training officer Santino who takes special delight in bullying Honor and her classmates, and I expected him to be harassing them the entire story, a thought which did not delight me because of his almost-stereotypical personality. Weber either realized how distasteful the character was, or wanted to show Honor’s competence, because he inserts a scene where she not only showed the other officers what a bully Santino was, but ultimately caused his removal as their training officer.

The story’s climactic scene was a battle between Honor’s warship and a pirate ship, but it managed to be both skeptical of interstellar warfare while also a rousing adventure scene. Overall, while this novella did not convert me into a fan of military sf, I certainly enjoyed it enough to want to read more of Honor Harrington’s adventures.

Most acclaimed f&sf of 2009

2010-03-13T05:29:00.000-08:00

As per usual, I kept watch of all the best-of-2009 lists of f&sf books, and the following are the books which made the most lists. Last year, the top 2 books were Neal Stephenson’s Anathem and Cory Doctorow’s Little Brother, which were both nominated for the Hugo Award, but lost to Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book, which came in a distant 4th on the list.

What does the fact that China Mieville’s The City & The City ran away with this year’s crown as the most acclaimed f&sf novel of the year mean for that book’s fate on the award ballots? The top three vote-getters below have already made the Nebula best Novel ballot. Stay tuned...

Title / Author / # of lists
The City & The City / China Mieville / 25
Boneshaker / Cherie Priest / 12
The Windup Girl / Paolo Bacigalupi / 10
The Devil's Alphabet / Daryl Gregory / 9
Chronic City / Jonathan Lethem / 8
Ark / Stephen Baxter / 7
Under the Dome / Stephen King / 7
Galileo’s Dream / Kim Stanley Robinson / 7
Finch / Jeff VanderMeer / 7
The Magicians / Lev Grossman / 6
Gardens of the Sun / Paul McAuley / 6
Julian Comstock / Robert Charles Wilson / 6
Yellow Blue Tibia / Adam Roberts / 5
Drood / Dan Simmons / 5
Palimpsest / Catherynne Valente / 5
The Angel's Game / Carlos Ruiz Zafon / 5

Odyssey

2010-03-06T06:31:00.000-08:00

Much as I like Alex Benedict and Chase Kolpath (the protagonists in what I consider Jack McDevitt’s best series of novels A Talent For War, Polaris and Seeker), Gregory MacAllister is probably Jack McDevitt’s most interesting character (in the longer Academy series). He is a curmudgeon who edits a weekly magazine called The National whose main purpose seems to be poking holes into popular opinion, especially when that opinion is buttressed by emotions rather than pure logic. Consider him a futurist William F. Buckley, except Mac is not wed to a particular political party; he views all rigid political views with the same degree of skepticism, and is disliked by liberals as well as conservatives.

Because of his belief that social issues on Earth should be the focus of much more public concern and government spending than it is, he has a strong anti-space exploration attitude which serves as a yang to Priscilla Hutchins’ yin in the Academy stories. But Mac is not so rigid as to be totally beyond seriously considering an issue. He accompanied Hutch in the adventures on the planet Deepsix, and in Odyssey he accompanies another Academy pilot Valya on a voyage to seek out moonriders (which are the 22nd century version of UFOs).

By the time of the events in Odyssey, Hutch is no longer a space pilot, but an administrator raising a family on Earth. This works well for the dynamic tension in the novel since Mac and Hutch, having gone through the life-and-death situation on Deepsix, have developed a close friendship which led to their now accepting each other’s ideas without risking their friendship in argument. Valya has no such qualms and serves as a more interesting foil for Mac on the voyage in which the two of them are forced to spend 24/7 together, along with a PR man and the daughter of a powerful senator.

What really makes Odyssey work though was McDevitt’s idea to have MacAllister be the main viewpoint character, since the novel’s main focus is the search for the mysterious moonriders in the vastness of space, and Mac does not believe in their existence at all. He assumes they are either a collective delusion (much as UFO’s are in the 20th-21st centuries) or a deliberate hoax to spark interest in the space program, since much of the Academy’s funding is under attack by powerful forces in the government. So as the reader is faced with increasing evidence of the moonriders’ actual existence, so is Mac.

As usual in a McDevitt novel, what I like best about Odyssey is that it has a tightly-woven plot with lots of forward movement without being either an adventure or “thriller” per se. The characters grow and change although, except for Mac, they are not the story’s main focus. The primary concern of the Academy series is humanity’s interaction with forces beyond our knowledge and comprehension, a more sfnal version of what should have occurred in Star Trek but which was generally lost beneath mundane adventures which were the series’ main concern. If is unfortunate that no television series has ever been written on the same level as McDevitt’s Academy novels.

I recommend Odyssey highly, whether you have read the prior novels in the series or not.

The Year’s Best Science Fiction, vol 25

2010-02-20T06:43:00.001-08:00

There are pros and cons in reading a 788 page collection such as the twenty-fifth annual collection of The Year’s Best Science Fiction (containing stories published in 2007). The pros are primarily twofold: (1) that is a hell of a lot of pages, so there is room for some outstanding novellas and novelettes published in that year; (2) editor Gardner Dozois is primarily a fan of science fiction, as opposed to fantasy, slipstream, magic realism, and all the other sub-genres which nip around the edges of sf. Since my own taste is primarily sf as well, I prefer his annual volume (or Hartwell & Cramer’s) to those which combine f&sf, horror, and fringe genres.

There are two primary cons in such a huge volume: (1) A reader should not think of it as a “best of the year” volume while reading it, since an editor’s views will definitely diverge from the reader’s views, and having the expectations that each story will be a “best” story can easily lead to some enjoyable stories being dismissed as too “minor” to deserve inclusion in the volume. The more important con though is (2) that sf is not so much a “genre” as an umbrella for various types of speculative fiction: space opera, worldbuilding (both physical worlds and cultures), future history, cyberpunk, steampunk, alternate history (which it shares with historical fiction and might be a separate category itself, but there is enough connection between AH and SF to mention it here), secret history (ditto), hard science, and probably several others I’ve forgotten momentarily. Since I prefer certain sub-genres to others, it is unlikely that I would like every story in the book. Not that there is anything wrong with abandoning some stories mid-stream, but as a reviewer it is important that I explain my prejudices instead of blithely rejecting stories as “bad stories,” when in fact they might be very good stories which just fall outside my own comfort zone.

The volume opens with David Moles’ “Finsterra,” the story of poachers trying to kill endangered alien species which are so huge they serve as worlds themselves. The protagonist is an engineer in the employ of one of the poachers, a totally despicable person engaged in a basically evil activity, but she serves him without qualms or self-doubts. Perhaps I have a moral blind spot, but it kind of puts a damper on the story when the only moral people in it are treated as the enemy. Fortunately, the story is enjoyable reading and all works out well in the end,

John Barnes’ badly-titled “An Ocean is a Snowflake, Four Billion Miles Away” tells of two documentary film-makers who are stranded far from rescue on a distant world during a natural disaster. Léoa is a despicable person who first tries to undercut Thorby’s efforts for her own advantage, but who is later injured seriously in the disaster and rather than abandon her, which he could easily have done, Thorby struggles to save her life in addition to rescuing himself. A good human-interest story combined with a believable adventure.

“The Sky is Large and the Earth is Small,” by Chris Roberson (and what is it with these mock-poetic titles?) is set in his alternate history Celestial Empire in which China is the dominant power in the world. The story tells of an astronomer who has spent much of his life imprisoned by the emperor after having been tortured for information which he has never revealed about the military weaknesses of the Mexica Empire which has been at war consistently with the Middle Kingdom. The story’s primary concern is the conversations between the prisoner and a bureaucrat writing a report on the feasibility of invading Mexico, a struggle of wits between a desperate interrogator (who needs to complete his report at the risk of his own future) and a seemingly senile old-timer. Goods stuff.

Robert Silverberg’s “Against the Current” tells of a man who suddenly finds himself slipping backwards in time, slowly at first, but increasingly faster. At first thought this might seem intriguing–think of all the knowledge of the future such a person might employ–but things are rarely so simple, and Silverberg is too smart to fall into such a trap. First the man’s money is useless since all American currency has been changed in recent decades. Then his credit card’s expiration date is unbelievable. This was an intriguing story, more evidence that even in his semi-retirement Silverberg is still one of our finest writers.

I do not normally enjoy either military sf or adventure thrillers seeped in high tech, but Neal Asher is one of the few writers in those genres whose stories I find both readable and interesting. When an amoral fortune hunter nearly kills a xeno-archaeologist to steal the ancient artifact he has uncovered (which might have the capability of reviving a long-vanished alien race), it starts a series of events involving the xeno-archaeologist tracking her down both for revenge and to recover his artifact. There are no moral characters in this story (which is one reason why I prefer Alastair Reynolds to most other writers in the high-tech sub-genre of the space opera sub-genre, in addition to the fact that he never forgets that the story is primarily about the people in it), but the plot is fast-moving and always interesting. I suspect that some other readers would really like this story a lot if I enjoyed it as much as I did.

I was immediately suspicious of “The Great Wall,” by Justin Stanchfield because of its premise: an immense wall is found on Titan, presumably an alien artifact, reminding me of Alastair Reynold’s fine novella “Great Wall on Mars.” But the story drew me in quickly: its setting is a ship containing government protectors whose job is keeping everybody away from the wall while governments on Earth argue over who has jurisdiction over it. The ship follows another ship presumably containing fortune hunters onto the surface of Titan right near the wall itself, where they encounter a mystery so stunning and so absorbing that I was totally hooked. This is one of my favorite types of sf story, a future mystery seeped in wondrousness, but involving real people who are more than placeholders. While the story’s ending did little to clear up the mystery of the wall, I was still pleased with its outcome.

Stephen Baxter’s “Last Contact” is a quintessentially-British story about a cozy end-of-the-world, in which the main character is primarily concerned with having time to care for her garden before the end comes, as compared to a similar American story which would probably descend into hysteria and violence. The story was fascinating for its glimpse at British attitudes moreso than for any other reason, sfnal or otherwise, but I definitely enjoyed it.

Alastair Reynolds is known for his very high-tech far futures in which civilization has progressed fairly directly from its current technological level for several millennia. In “The Sledge-Maker’s Daughter,” he proves that he has more weapons in his writing arsenal than just that one, writing a tale about a rural future in which civilization is struggling to survive following some type of total technological meltdown. The story has a fantasy ambiance about it (which itself is stunning for a Reynolds story), but it does a fine job of exploring how the remnants of that lost technology might still affect the new parameters of civilization.

Kage Baker is a fine writer whom I have been wanting to read more stories by for some time, but sadly she will not be writing any more stories since she died recently. This is more incentive to go back and read some of her other critically-acclaimed fiction from the past decade. “Hellfire at Twilight” is a Company story about a researcher seeking some forged papers from early 19th century England, where he encounters a weird cult which decides to use him as the centerpiece of one of its ceremonies. This is not the finest of her stories that I have read, but enjoyable, as all her fiction that I have read is.

Three of the stories struck me as the finest in the volume. First was Vandina Singh’s very strong “Of Love and Other Monsters,” a novella about a boy Arun who has no memories prior to his being rescued from a fire by a shopkeeper in India, who then raises him as her own son. The boy has the unnatural ability to enter people’s minds and somehow “meld” them with the minds of other people. Apparently there is another person Rahul Moghe with the same ability who stalks Arun for much of the story, successfully kidnapping him at one point. The story’s twin concerns are Arun’s search for his own origins, and why Rahul is so desperate to win him over to his own purposes. Both as a character development and a mystery, this story is very successful and bodes well for Singh as a major science fiction writer.

I reviewed Gregory Benford’s “Dark Heaven” on 11/1/09, but I’ll repeat here that it impressed me in several ways. The story is a noir mystery featuring a hard-boiled Louisiana detective named McKenna investigating a series of drownings which have all the earmarks of homicide, including mysterious marks on the arms of the victims. The fact that two such drownings occur within a few days of each other push the deaths past coincidence into probable murders. But there is so little evidence that McKenna seems to be spinning his wheels futiley as his superiors wait impatiently for him to turn his attention to other crimes awaiting resolution.

In the background of “Dark Heaven” are a race of aliens who have come to Earth and established a basehead on an island near the murders, totally isolated by federal agents who pretty much bully anybody who dares to come near them, including local police investigating crimes. At first, the aliens seem to be mostly background, the sfnal ingredient in the story but, knowing Benford’s fiction, I knew that would not last for long.

For my taste, the finest story in this book, and one of the best of the entire past decade, was Ted Chiang’s “The Merchant and the Alchemist’s Gate.” Chiang is probably my favorite (and presumably a lot of other sf readers’ favorite as well) current writer of short fiction. This story tells of a “gate of years” which enables a person to step 20 years into the past or future and visit themselves temporarily in that alternate time. Several people do so, and their stories are always fascinating, but Chiang is not merely a storyteller. This story is also a morality tale about how one’s actions influence not only other people, but also oneself. This is one of Chiang’s finest stories (the others being “Story of Your Life” and “Hell is the Absence of God,” in my opinion) and well-deserved all the awards it won. If you have not read it yet, either find this volume or the recently-published The Very Best of Fantasy & Science Fiction (reviewed here on 9/12/09).

As usual, I recommend the 25th volume of The Year’s Best Science Fiction very highly.

Twelve Greatest Living Science Fiction Writers

2010-02-13T07:30:00.001-08:00

This is a risky list to make, since it is invariably influenced by personal preference, although I have tried as much as possible to avoid that. My criteria for selection on the list are (1) overall high level of writing; (2) several true masterworks; (3) importance to the sf field; and (4) longevity. Anybody who disagrees is free to send me the name of their own great living writer whom you feel that I overlooked.

The authors are listed in roughly chronological order, not in order of preference:

1. Frederik Pohl is probably the senior living writer of science fiction, a major figure during two different eras. In the 1950s he co-authored a series of major satirical sf novels with Cyril M. Kornbluth, titles such as The Space Merchants and Gladiator-at-Law. After spending a decade as editor of Galaxy and Worlds of IF, he returned to full-time writing with such important works as “The Gold at the Starbow’s End” and the Heechee series, notably Gateway.

2. The publication of The Martian Chronicles alone make Ray Bradbury a worthy addition to this list, although other titles such as Fahrenheit 451, Something Wicked This Way Comes and collections The Illustrated Man and The Golden Apples of the Sun contained wonderful pieces of science fiction which emphasized ambiance and characterization over science and technology.

3. Has there ever been a better master of sense of wonder and creativity than the wonderful Jack Vance? I cannot recall any sf more fun to read than the Demon Prince or Dying Earth series. But Vance can be serious as well in novels such as The Languages of Pao or The Grey Prince and in short fiction “The Last Castle” or “The Moon Moths.”

4. Whenever I am looking for a good, solid read which combines future speculation, outstanding storytelling, and an emphasis on historical development, I seek out either Poul Anderson or Robert Silverberg. Any of “Nightwings” or Dying Inside, The Book of Skulls or “Born With the Dead” could have been the capstones of entire careers, but they were merely a few of the many gems written by perhaps the finest single living sf writer.

5. Brian W. Aldiss is a chameleon, able to flit between core science fiction and purely literary fiction, often incorporating elements of both in the same stories. The Hothouse series was superb far-future speculation, and such works as the Helliconia series and Graybeard rank among the pantheon of all sf of the past half-century.

6. Ursula K Le Guin is probably the most renowned writer on this list, and deservedly so. Her seminal works such as The Left Hand of Darkness and The Dispossessed are reason enough for her great reputation, but other works such as her Earthsea novels and Hainish series (the latter including the above-mentioned novels) are also outstanding works by a truly great writer.

7. If there is one writer whose absence in recent decades saddens me, it is the wondrous Samuel R. Delany, whose fiction excites as much as they infuriate, since they often require multiple readings to fully understand everything which is taking place in them. He created the foundation for cyberpunk fifteen years before it became popular in the 1980s. Works such as Babel-17, Nova, Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand, “The Star-Pit,” “Empire Star,” and “We, In Some Strange Power’s Employ, Move in a Rigorous Line,” were truly the mark of a genius (a word which I do not throw around loosely).

8. Gene Wolfe is in some ways the descendent of Jack Vance, since Vance’s Dying Earth series certainly influenced Wolfe’s New Sun / Long Sun / Short Sun series, although the latter are much more in-depth explorations of a far-future milieu rather than the former’s fast-paced romps. Like Delany, Wolfe’s fiction often demands multiple readings, whether in his detailed series mentioned above, or shorter works such as The Wizard Knight or short fiction such as “The Fifth Head of Cerberus” or “The Death of Doctor Island.”

9. Another great writer missing-in-action the past two decades is Michael Bishop who combines serious literary analysis with a strong sense of humor. Consider his series of novellas about a modern woman’s affair with a primitive human in racially-charged Georgia (Ancient of Days) or his sequel to Frankenstein in which the monster becomes a minor league first baseman (Brittle Innings).

10. One prime aspects of great science fiction is the ability to think creatively and write serious stories based on fantastic premises. John Varley possesses that talent, as well as being an outstanding storyteller. His seminal short fiction such as “The Persistence of Vision,” “Blue Champagne” and “The Pusher” continue to astound, and his novels such as Titan and Steel Beach are both entertaining and rich with thought-provoking ideas.

11. One of science fiction’s major aspects is creating and exploring distant worlds and alien races, the specialty of C.J. Cherryh who is also a master storyteller in works such as Downbelow Station, The Faded Sun and the Chanur and Foreignor series. Any reader with an interest in anthropology should find Cherry’s aliens truly wondrous reading.

12. A relative child of less than 60 years old compared to the other writers on this list, Kim Stanley Robinson combines the best elements of literary merits, detailed future history, thought-provoking ideas and storytelling. Novels such as The Wild Shore, the Mars series and The Years of Salt and Rice would each be a highlight in another author’s career. If any writer can equal Silverberg in my personal pantheon, it is Robinson.

Least Favorite Authors of SF

2010-02-07T05:48:00.001-08:00

Other than as a market category, science fiction is not a “genre” per se, but a huge umbrella which envelops numerous types of speculative fiction: space opera, worldbuilding (both physical worlds and cultures), future history, cyberpunk, steampunk, alternate history (which it shares with historical fiction and might be a genre itself, but there is enough connection between AH and SF to mention it here), secret history (ditto), hard science, and probably several others I’ve forgotten momentarily.

So what this all means is two things: (a) SF contains something for just about every reader who is not instinctively repulsed by any fiction which reeks of genre; and (b) it is unlikely that every fan of SF, not matter how devoted he or she might be, is going to enjoy every single sub-genre.

Thus, as I suspect is true of most SF fans, there are several popular writers whose fiction rarely resonates with me. Those writers tend to fall into three categories: writers pre-occupied with technology, writers who specialize in dismal views of the near future, and writers more concerned with flash than with substance.

In the past I have often listed my favorite writers, so here is a listing of my least favorite writers of SF:

• Charles Stross. I have tried to read his fiction, including several of his “Accelerando” stories and his novella “Missile Gap,” and I have found them too much sturm und drang and not enough storytelling or character development;

• Vernor Vinge. His interest in high-technological developments mostly bores me, although I did enjoy one of his novellas many years ago in Analog called “The Barbarian Princess,” which was a total departure from most of what I have seen by him;

• Bruce Sterling: I cannot pinpoint why I generally finish a Sterling story with a feeling of dissatisfaction, but I usually do. It might have something to do with the fact that I generally feel no empathy for his characters, who generally have attitudes totally different from my own. If I cannot relate to the characters in a story, I generally remain cool emotionally to the story itself;

• Greg Bear. I used to like Greg Bear stories until he decided to reinvent himself as a writer of thrillers. I dislike most thrillers which seem too artificial to me, little more than a series of unlikely complications strung together more for the purpose of keeping the thrill quotient high than actually being an absorbing story;

• Terry Bisson. A simple reason here: I am not a big fan of humorous fiction. It usually falls flat with me, which is why I have hesitated to read any of Terry Pratchett’s acclaimed Discworld novels;

• Greg Egan. Too much hard-science dominating his stories. I don’t mind a strongly-plotted story which has a hard science foundation, but Egan’s stories are mostly about analyzing the scientific basis of the story, and that’s too much for me;

• R.A. Lafferty. There’s a point where strangeness becomes so dominant in a story that I totally lose interest in it. If I cannot relate to any of the characters, or become absorbed in the storyline, then the story has no purpose to me;

• Paul McAuley. Read my comments about Greg Bear;

• Spider Robinson. Reading a story of his usually reminds me of the Monty Python sketch where Eric Idle is smirking, “Nudge nudge, know what I mean?” while elbowing the person next to him. With the exception of “Stardance,” I’ve never enjoyed the other Robinson stories that I’ve read;

• Rudy Rucker. See R.A. Lafferty above.

I assume that all of the above writers have written atypical stories which would not fall into my blind spot, but which I have not yet seen, so any such recommendations are welcome.

F&SF June/July 2009

2010-01-30T07:53:00.003-08:00

Robert Reed is such a good writer; how many writers could possibly churn out as many stories as he does, with all of them being near or at the top of his talent? An example of why he is so good is the story “The Firehorn,” in the June/July 2009 issue of F&SF. The plot is simple: a group of children aged 8 through 13 have a secret clubhouse where they play the typical games children of that age play. Then the 13-year old boy teases the youngsters by claiming he saw a monster prowling nearby. The 13-year old girl plays along with him and names the monster the “firehorn.”

Somehow the firehorn takes on a life of its own. Soon all the youngsters in town believe in it, and are seeking it out, and even the adults play along. Then somebody actually sees a creature resembling the mythical firehorn, and the practical joke grows into a truly legendary creature along the lines of the yeti or bigfoot.

Fifty years after the “creation” of the firehorn, the originator is hired by a group of AI’s and cyborgs to help them hunt the firehorn, whose existence they truly believe. He wonders why artificial beings believe in such a chimera? This leads to an inevitable discussion about the genesis of both religions and legends, and a story which began as a lark turns into a philosophical treatise with an ending which was absolutely superb. While “The Firehorn” is not a classic story, it is definitely well worth reading.

Another very good story in the issue was Albert Cowdrey’s novella “Paradiso Lost,” a space adventure involving two raw officers who are part of a mission to find a missing space colony which was established by a religious cult several years ago, and now seems to have disappeared. The entire story takes place on the ship and its cast of characters include the arrogant general, his dwarf companion, the female second-in-command, and the grizzled sargeants who serve under the two lieutenants but are their advisors much of the time. While this might sound like military SF, a sub-genre which I generally dislike, it is much more of a human interest story wrapped around two intriguing mysteries. Good stuff.

Jack Vance

2010-01-23T07:27:00.001-08:00

At times it is difficult to determine the difference between a science fiction story and a fantasy. Perhaps the most influential writer in the blending of the two genres has been Jack Vance. His first book The Dying Earth was set on a future earth where magic has replaced science, and the individual stories consisted of a series of adventures reminiscent of the fantasy quest. Another early book was The Languages of Pao, perhaps the best science fiction novel ever written about linguistics.

In the Sixties Vance was most successful with three acclaimed novellas and a series of fast-paced adventures. The novellas were "The Moon Moth," a mystery that examined a society in which people communicate largely by wearing elaborate masks; "The Dragon Masters" and "The Last Castle," were both sf stories which wore much of the paraphenalia of fantasy. Both stories won Hugo Awards and affirmed Vance’s reputation as one of the major writers in science fiction.

The adventure series told the adventures of Kirth Gersen who was orphaned as a child when his entire world was destroyed by a group of piratical "Demon Princes." Much like the Batman of comic book fame, Gersen devoted his life to avenging himself on the five callous murderers. While the individual novels such as The Star King and The Palace of Love can best be described as mystery adventures on the surface, they all featured the richness of worlds and characters that make all Vance novels joys to read.

In the past three decades Vance has concentrated most of his efforts on several well-received series. Such science fiction series as Planet of Adventure, The Alastor Cluster, and The Durdane Trilogy all feature typical Vance exotic settings wrapped around satisfying mystery and adventure plots.

Perhaps his best recent science fiction series has been The Cadwal Chronicles, consisting of the novels Araminta Station, Ecce and Old Earth, and Throy. The world Cadwal is an immense nature preserve whose sparse population lives in a rigid caste structure, with full Agency members on top, followed by semi-official collaterals, and finally semi-human Yips on the bottom. The stories are a sprawling canvas of detailed and exotic world-building, featuring lush adventures, biting satire, and rich characterization, all strongly-plotted both as mysteries and tales of political intrigue.

Vance also received acclaim in the 1980s for the pure fantasy Lyonesse series, containing the novels Lyonesse, Lyonesse: the Green Pearl, and Lyonesse: Madouc, the last of which won Vance a World Fantasy Award as Best Novel.

Although Vance is now retired as a writer, his vast backlog of outstanding stories continue to be reprinted both individually and in omnibus editions such as The Jack Vance Treasury and The Jack Vance Reader. Any reader who enjoys wondrous settings and beings in a fast-paced mystery setting should run–not walk–to wherever you can find any of the Jack Vance books mentioned above. You will not be disappointed.

Chronology

1916 / Born August 28 in San Francisco, California.
1945 / First published with “The World Thinker” in Thrilling Wonder Stories.
1950 / First book The Dying Earth published.
1957 / Publication of Big Planet.
1958 / Publication of The Languages of Pao.
1961 / “The Moon Moth” published in Galaxy .
The Man in the Cage, by John Holbrook Vance, wins Edgar Award as Best First Mystery Novel.
1963 / “The Dragon Masters” wins Hugo Award as Best Short Fiction.
1964 / The Star King serialized in Galaxy.
1967 / “The Last Castle” wins Nebula and Hugo Awards.
1976 / Publication of The Best of Jack Vance.
1984 / Receives World Fantasy Convention Life Achievement Award.
Publication of Lyonesse.
1988 / Araminta Station published.
1990 / Lyonesse: Madouc wins World Fantasy Award as Best Novel.
1992/ Guest of Honor at Orlando World Science Fiction Convention.
1996 / Publication of Night Lamp.
1997 / Receives Nebula Grandmaster Award from Science Fiction Writers of America.
2007/ Publication of The Jack Vance Treasury.
2008 / The Jack Vance Reader published.
2009/ Publication of Wild Thyme, Green Magic.