Birthday Review: Stories of Gene Wolfe

Gene Wolfe was born May 7, 1931, just two months after my father. He would have been 88 today, but he died April 14. Back then I composed this selection of my reviews of some of his later work, mostly for Locus, but I contented myself with posting a eulogy then, and I saved that for today, his birthday.

Locus, July 2002

Notable recent offerings at The Infinite Matrix include a new short story by Gene Wolfe, "Under Hill".  This is a clever retelling of the tale of the Princess on the Hill of Glass, with an odd ending twist.  It's minor Wolfe, but definitely to be read.

Locus, March 2003

February was a strong month for Sci Ficton. Gene Wolfe's "Castaway" is one of his best recent stories, a moving tale of a man rescued from a devastated planet, and the woman he had to leave behind. I hope it doesn't give away too much to say it reminded me of James Tiptree's great story "The Last Flight of Dr. Ain".

Locus, May 2003

Gene Wolfe's "Graylord Man's Last Words" (Asimov's, May) reminded me a bit of his recent SCI FICTION story, "Castaway", in treating a fairly familiar situation at a slant. In this case an old being is telling a story from his youth -- soon we gather that he is a robot of some sort, and the story involves one of the last humans. It's fairly simple for Wolfe, but still quite effective.

Locus, December 2003

"Of Soil and Climate" (Realms of Fantasy, December) is a new Gene Wolfe story, which is recommendation enough. A psychiatrist in prison finds himself suddenly in a fantasy land, where he encounters alluring women and mortal danger, Night People, Tree People, and Sun People, and a Princess. I found it intriguing but incomplete: could it be a novel excerpt?

Locus, April 2004

Gene Wolfe is suddenly a Realms of Fantasy regular, which is good news: for one thing because it means he's writing lots of short stories. "Calamity Warps" (April) is a simple and quite short story about a man and his dog and his shadow, which implies much at the end. Like his last solo piece for Realms, "Of Soul and Climate", it seems thematically related to his new novel (The Knight) in suggesting a crossover from our world to a fantasy world.

The First Heroes is a strong collection of stories (mostly fantasy) on the subject of the Bronze Age. The book opens very well with Gene Wolfe's "The Lost Pilgrim". His hero is a time-traveler, and soon we gather that he had meant to join the Mayflower, but instead ended up thousands of years previously, on the Argo, with his memory damaged in the process. At first the story is a rather humorously skewed view of some of Jason's journey -- and quite effective as such -- but the ending is darker and more moving than the opening seems to promise.

Locus, July 2004

Peter Crowther of PS Publishing has started a magazine, Postscripts. The first issue features a whopping 13 short stories and shortish novelettes by an impressive array of authors – veterans, up-and-comers, and several writers best known outside the genre. Gene Wolfe is impressive as might be expected, with "Prize Crew", an SF horror story about an enemy warship found mysteriously abandoned, which the title crew takes back to Earth – unfortunately.

Locus, October 2004

Gene Wolfe's "The Little Stranger" (F&SF, November) is another of his simple yet thoroughly weird stories – a series of letters from an old woman to her dead cousin, telling of gypsies, witches, a gingerbread house – all quite naively told, disquieting, striking.

Locus, January 2005

Aeon is a promising new 'zine distributed in electronic form (on CD-ROM, or in versions for handheld computers). The first issue has an impressive lineup, including a long novel excerpt from Walter Jon Williams. The standout story is a reprint from Gene Wolfe – but a reprint from an obscure source. "Talk of Mandrakes" was originally scheduled for a 1987 issue of the briefly revived Worlds of If, which never appeared. It was unpublished until earlier in 2004, in a limited distribution chapbook. So this appearance is welcome. The story is a clever SF horror piece about what an expedition to an alien planet has brought back with them.

Locus, August 2005

From Postscripts I also really liked a flakily original story from Gene Wolfe, "Comber", about cities floating on huge waves, and an impending disaster when a city begins to head down a wavecrest.

Locus, February 2006

PS Publishing offers a Gene Wolfe chapbook free to Postscripts subscribers. Of course Postscripts is worth subscribing to regardless, but this is certainly a fine bonus. It’s a seasonal story, “Christmas Inn”, about a struggling rural Bed and Breakfast called the Christmas Inn. One bitter winter, as they fear foreclosure, they are visited by four (or five?) strange people. The story is told from multiple POV’s: first person narratives by the two owners and their teenaged son, as well as some third person sections. The visitors, mostly via sex, interact strongly with the residents, leading finally to a concluding séance. Here their nature is revealed – at least to one character, and perhaps to alert readers but not as of yet to this reader! But despite not quite getting the story, I enjoyed it and was moved by it. All things I can say about a lot of Wolfe!

Locus, May 2006

Online SF took a harsh blow with the loss of Sci Fiction at the end of 2005. One potential bright spot we’ve been looking forward to is a new venture from Baen Books, entitled Baen’s Universe, edited by Eric Flint. The first issue appears in June, and it’s rather promising. It’s stuffed: about 140,000 words of new short fiction, a couple of reprints, several serials and some articles. The fiction comes from a wide variety of writers: Baen stalwarts like Dave Freer and David Drake, several new writers, and some writers you wouldn’t think of in connection with Baen Books, like Charles Stross and Gene Wolfe.

Indeed Stross and Wolfe provide two of the better stories. Wolfe’s “Build-a-Bear” is set on a cruise ship. A lonely woman chances across a build-a-bear workshop, and ends up with a rather more impressive bear than she had expected.

Locus, November 2006

In October I thought two stories stood out – two that are perhaps not quite what a reader of Baen Books would expect. Gene Wolfe’s “The Old Woman in the Young Woman” is set after a holocaust, with a traveler meeting up with a young woman and her – mother? The women, of course, have a secret – not a terribly surprising one, but the story is still involving.

Capsule Review of Soldier of Sidon for Fantasy Magazine (2006)

Many years ago Gene Wolfe published two novels (Soldier in the Mist and Soldier of Arete) about Latro, a soldier in Ancient Greece (though Latro is Roman) who loses his memory each night as he sleeps. In addition, Latro can see gods, even as those around him see nothing. These are wonderful novels, but clearly Latro’s story was incomplete, and readers clamored for more. At last we have another: Soldier of Sidon. In this novel, he travels to Egypt, in hopes of finding someone who can cure him of his amnesia. Latro (or Lucius/Lewqys, as he is also called) becomes the leader of a group of soldiers on a boat heading south on the Nile, in service of the foreign King occupying Egypt. The book tells of many wonders and adventures encountered on this trip: his river wife (a prostitute hired for the journey) who may not be quite human, another woman who seems to be made of wax, numerous gods and their priests, in various forms: human, snake, panther, etc., a trip to the underworld, imprisonment in a mine, and so on. There is much intriguing detail about life in Ancient Egypt, much quite realistic and much delightfully fantastical. The characters are excellently portrayed, ever through the odd window of Latro’s intermittent consciousness. Wolfe has always been fascinated by shapeshifters, by questions of identity, by memory and its impact on character – and all these elements pervade this novel. Latro’s story is not finished – there is at least one more novel to follow, I believe [If, indeed, another was planned, it never eventuated] – and that is the only disappointment here. Taken as it is, this is both involving historical fiction and mesmerizing fantasy.


Locus, March 2007

Gene Wolfe published a two story chapbook, Strange Birds, last year. This features two good stories, the better being a rather different kind of circus story, “On a Vacant Face a Bruise”, in which a boy joins a circus – but rather a different sort of circus, with such wonders as automaton dancers and talking birds – the true nature of this circus being shown only at the end.

Locus, April 2007

The big news this month in SF magazines is the F&SF Special Gene Wolfe issue. This includes essays on Wolfe by Neil Gaiman, Michael Swanwick, and Michael Andre-Driussi, as well as a very long new novella from Wolfe, “Memorare”. This is the story of March Wildspring, a documentary producer making a feature on spec. It seems that it has become common for small asteroids to be used as memorials to the dead. Sometimes very dangerous memorials. March recruits the beautiful Kit Carlson to help him, and she brings along a friend who has just left her abusive husband. This woman, Robin Reed, turns out to be March’s ex-wife. March is now in love with Kit – and perhaps she returns his love. As they plan to explore one more asteroid, reputed to be the most dangerous of all, Robin’s new husband turns up, trying to get her back. Clearly this story is about more than the memorials to the dead – it is about marriage, and about sin, and about redemption – which may be available for some inside the mysterious asteroid/memorial March calls Number Nineteen.

Locus, April 2010

Full Moon City is an urban fantasy anthology about werewolves, which on the face of it is a pretty tired theme, these days. But it has a heck of a list of contributors, and it rises well above the average urban fantasy anthology. It’s true that a high proportion of the stories are fairly fluffy – light comic treatments of the subject, but still entertaining. And two true veterans stand out. Gene Wolfe’s “Innocent” is one of many comic stories in the book, nastily comic in this case, as a werewolf in prison tells his story to a priest … a story that involves accusations of child molesting, of which he protests innocence. Of course it becomes clear that there is innocence and innocence!

Locus, July 2010

The best of Jonathan Strahan’s recent anthologies is Swords and Dark Magic, co-edited with Lou Anders, which should be treated at more length. It’s a collection devoted to the “New Swords and Sorcery”, which is to say, more or less, the old Swords and Sorcery with extra cynicism. Granting of course that cynicism was hardly ever absent from Sword and Sorcery fiction, this book does seem more of our time. And it’s solid from beginning to end. There is plenty of nice stuff here, but I’ll content myself mostly with mentioning Gene Wolfe, whose “Bloodsport” is quite powerful, about people recruited to enact a chesslike game, much in the fashion of medieval tilts. The main character is a powerful knight, who falls in love with a pawn on the other side – but then their country is invaded, and the game players become a sort of resistance. And, of course, pawns can become queens … but Wolfe has a different question to answer.

Locus, February 2014

Shadows of the New Sun is a tribute anthology for Grand Master Gene Wolfe. Happily, it features two good new stories by Wolfe himself – “Frostfree” tells of a somewhat unpleasant man who receives an amazing new refrigerator, that not only provides food and washes dishes, but helps – we hope – with his love life as well. “The Sea of Memory” is the stranger, and stronger, piece, about a woman waking – she thinks – on an isolated island with a few other people, and slowly learning – remembering? – her true situation.

2019 Best of the Year TOC

Here's the TOC for The Year's Best Science Fiction and Fantasy, 2019. As ever, I'm thrilled at the wonderful set of stories these great authors have contributed.  This is in alphabetical order by place of publication, if anyone is wondering. 

• “The Spires” by Alec Nevala-Lee (Analog, 3-4/18)
• “The Unnecessary Parts of the Story” by Adam-Troy Castro (Analog, 09-10/18)
• ”A Witch’s Guide to Escape: A Practical Compendium of Portal Fantasies” by Alix E. Harrow (Apex, 2/18)
• ”Bubble and Squeak” by David Gerrold and Ctein (Asimov’s, 5-6/18)
• “The Gift” by Julie Novakova (Asimov’s, 11/12/2018)
• “Beautiful” by Juliet Marillier (Aurum)
• ”The Starship and the Temple Cat” by Yoon Ha Lee (Beneath Ceaseless Skies, 2/1/18)
• ”Carouseling” by Rich Larson (Clarkesworld, 4/18)
• ”The Persistence of Blood” by Juliette Wade (Clarkesworld, 3/18)
• ”Umbernight” by Carolyn Ives Gilman (Clarkesworld, 2/18)
• ”The Donner Party” by Dale Bailey (F&SF, 1-2/18)
• ”How to Identify an Alien Shark” by Beth Goder (Fireside Quarterly, 7/18)
• ”The Tale of the Ive-Ojan-Akhar’s Death” by Alex Jeffers (Giganotosaurus, 4/18)
• “Foxy and Tiggs” by Justina Robson (Infinity’s End)
• “Intervention” by Kelly Robson (Infinity’s End)
• ”The Temporary Suicides of Goldfish” by Octavia Cade (Kaleidotrope, Winter/18)
• ”Dayenu” by James Sallis (LCRW, Spring/18)
• ”Lime and the One Human” by S. Woodson (LCRW, 7/18)
• ”The Court Magician” by Sarah Pinsker (Lightspeed, 1/18)
• “Jump” by Cadwell Turnbull (Lightspeed, 10/18)
• ”Firelight” by Ursula K. Le Guin (Paris Review, Summer/18)
• “The Buried Giant” by Lavie Tidhar (Robots vs Fairies)
• ”Today is Today” by Rick Wilber (Stonecoast Review, Summer/18)
• ”The Heart of Owl Abbas” by Kathleen Jennings (Tor.com, 4/11/2018)
• ”Grace’s Family” by James Patrick Kelly (Tor.com, 5/18)
• “The House by the Sea” by P. H. Lee (Uncanny, 9/10/2018)

Birthday Review: Autonomous, plus two short stories, by Annalee Newitz

Annalee Newitz is primarily a science journalist, I believe, and so she hasn't written a ton of fiction. But I've liked what I've read. On the occasion of her birthday, then, here's my two reviews from Locus of her short stories, plus my review of her novel Autonomous, reposted from last year's Nebula Ballot review post.

Locus, January 2014

In the November Lightspeed my favorite story is "Drones Don't Kill People", by Annalee Newitz, which on the face of it is a bit cliche, about drones coming to self-awareness and realizing that their uses -- covert surveillance and assassination -- are immoral. But Newitz wraps this is an unexpectedly engaging and convincing tale, beginning with horror and ending with hope, with non-human characters that really hold the interest.

Locus, December 2018

In Robots vs Fairies ... I liked Annalee Newitz’ “The Blue Fairy’s Manifesto”, set in the future of her novel Autonomous, and featuring a robot calling itself the Blue Fairy setting free other robots, including in this story a robot RealBoy. Newitz’ story is particularly interesting (to me), reiterating some of the themes of Autonomous in asking what freedom really might mean for robots.

Autonomous

a review by Rich Horton

Annalee Newitz' first novel, Autonomous, is on the Nebula shortlist. I'd heard lots of buzz about it already, and I knew I liked Newitz' writing (I used her 2014 story "Drones Don't Kill People" in my Best of the Year book), so I meant to get to it -- and I finally did. I have to say, it met my expectations -- it's a really cool book, really hard SF, exciting and scary and moving.

Jack Chen is a patent pirate -- she reverse engineers patented drugs, sometimes ones critical for the health of people who can't affort corporate medicine, and sometimes just for money (a woman's got to live, after all). But her latest effort, a drug called Zacuity, which makes people love their jobs, and want to keep working, has backfired badly -- people are getting addicted to work, to the point of ignoring things like food. She desperately needs to find a cure, and her only hope might be her old lover Krish, who betrayed her a quarter century ago, when she went to jail for her anti-patent activism. She ends up freeing an indentured young man called Threezed (after the last two characters in his ID), and they make their way across Canada to Krish's lab, and to a safer place to work.

Meanwhile they are being chased by agents of the International Property Coalition, which enforces patents. The two assigned to her case are a human named Eliasz and a military bot named Paladin. Bots are nominally indentured for 10 years after their creation, after which they can become autonomous. (Similar rules apply to humans who have been indentured.) Not surprisingly, autonomy isn't quite as easy to achieve as that. And Paladin hardly knows what they -- he? she? it? -- wants -- as most of their wants are controlled by programming.

The story is on the surface about patents and drugs and so on, and about the tense chase as Eliasz and Paladin home in on Jack. And all that works really well. But that's just the surface -- an important surface, to be sure. But the title tells the truth -- the heart of the novel is "autonomy". For bots, sure -- Paladin's eventual realization that they might like to be autonomous is a major issue. But for humans, as well -- Threezed, in particular, who was indentured and sold and had his indenture extended for obscure legal reasons, wants autonomy and is pretty cynical about the whole thing.

But there's more -- what autonomy, for example, do workers who have been given a drug like Zacuity possess? How about Med, a heroic bot researcher who was created as a never-indentured bot -- is she truly autonomous or does her programming control her? And even when Paladin attains autonomy it's temporary -- and can she (as she by then identifies, sort of) trust her "feelings"? What about Eliasz? He's a fanatic about human indenture -- he hates it. And he loves bots, especially Paladin. But he's on the side of a truly evil entity -- well, mostly evil -- and in their service he -- and Paladin -- commit horrible murders. Are they autonomous in so doing?

This is a very thought-provoking book, and tremendously exciting. It's exceptional hard SF. It's not perfect -- the author's hand can be seen on the scales on occasion. And the end is fuzzed just a bit -- there's a cynical side to it, to be sure, but also some convenient resolutions. But what book is perfect? I really liked this novel, and it's pushed its way onto my Hugo nomination ballot.

Birthday Review: Short Fiction of Jack Sharkey

Jack Sharkey would have been 88 today. He was a pretty minor writer of SF, mostly for Cele Goldsmith Lalli's magazines, Amazing and Fantastic, between 1959 and 1965. After Lalli left those magazines he turned mostly to plays. He died in 1992.

I have to confess I don't like his work much -- I think he was one of Lalli's few weak spots. But let's take a look at some of this short stories. He also published two Ace Doubles, which I have already covered:

Ultimatum in 2050 A. D.;

The Secret Martians.

Anyway, here are several reviews of his short stories, from Amazing/Fantastic, published originally as Retro-Reviews at Black Gate:

Fantastic, November 1959

Jack Sharkey’s “Minor Detail” is, well, pretty minor. It’s about a blowhard General promoting his new superweapon, which will allow men to become strong enough to survive any fall, thus allowing them to dispense with parachutes. The idea is stupid, and the supposedly ironic reason it doesn’t work doesn’t make sense.

Fantastic, December 1959

“The Man Who Was Pale,” by Jack Sharkey, tells of a landlady welcoming a strange new tenant – he’s very pale, he’s nocturnal, he wants to live in the basement in a box full of dirt … what could he be? And what could go wrong?

No surprises here – just competent hackwork.

Amazing, March 1960

Sharkey’s “Old Friends are the Best” is a slight, mildly amusing, bit of SF horror… a plant is discovered on the Moon, and brought back to Earth as a scientific marvel – with, of course, unfortunate (and scientifically absurd) results.

Fantastic, April 1960

The cover story is “Doomsday Army,” by Jack Sharkey, an entirely too long story about a National Guard captain who ends up being the main intermediary to a bunch of (as it turns out) very small alien invaders. He’s portrayed as a fairly ordinary suburban husband, prone to taking shortcuts in solving problems his wife brings to his attention: so of course his solution to the alien problem will be a dangerous shortcut. And so it is, with an implausible solution.

There’s joke enough here for maybe 3,000 words at the outside, and this drags terribly at some 13,000 words. (I wonder if it was written to the cover, which does portray a scene from the story but in a very generic fashion.)

Fantastic, November 1963

"The Aftertime", by Goldsmith regular Jack Sharkey, begins as a very straightforward post-apocalyptic story, with a young man, Rory, waking to find his city bombed and his building mostly collapsed. He wanders the city, encountering a young woman and then a few more people, eating canned food, banding together for help, but slowly losing hope as nothing is heard on the radio, and then people start dying because of some strange energy organism. Then there's a shocking twist -- it fooled me -- and a quite strained ending concerning the less than plausible (to say the least) nature, origin, and weakness of the energy beings.

Fantastic, February 1964

Jack Sharkey was also a Goldsmith regular, and, in my view, one of her weak spots. He really wasn’t very good — though he was professional and, I suppose, reliable in his way. “The Orginorg Way”, that said, is better than usual for Sharkey, perhaps because it’s short. It’s about an unprepossessing man obsessed with a woman, who turns to manipulation of plants as a way to attract her — with, of course, unfortunate effects.

Fantastic, August 1964

Jack Sharkey's "Footnote to an Old Story" is amusing enough little piece about a 97-pound weakling who visits a Greek island and falls for a beautiful local girl. Somehow he gets the notion that letting his hair grow will make his body more attractive, and to his surprise it works -- soon he's a pretty impressive physical speciment, and the Greek girl is intrigued. So, it looks like the "Old Story" is the Samson story maybe -- but it turns out, in a slick enough conclusion, that it's another story entirely.

Fantastic, September 1964

Jack Sharkey's "Hear and Obey" is, like the Janifer story, a variation on a traditional theme, in this case the Genie in the Lamp. This Genie is a bit persnickety about how he grants the wishes, with, as one might expect, unfortunate results for his new owner. A bit strained, I thought.

Fantastic, October 1964

“The Grooves” is a brief horror story in which a young man vows to invade the troll’s cave in the mountains to claim at least some of the rumored treasure there… despite warnings that no one has ever returned, and that “you must never kill a troll, because trolls have inverted souls.” Minor work, but effective enough working out its fairly predictable premise.

Birthday Review: Short Fiction of Catherynne M. Valente

Today is Catherynne Valente's birthday, and so here's a selection of my Locus reviews of her short fiction, a great way to experience some of the loveliest prose in the field of recent years. She's on the Hugo Shortlist for Best Novel right now, for Space Opera.

Last year on this date I posted my review of her lovely novel The Orphan's Tales: In the Cities of Coin and Spice.)

Locus, December 2006

Slightly more strongly themed is Mythic 2, a short anthology focused mostly on fantasy (stories and poems) with a fairy tale slant. Catherynne M. Valente’s “Temnaya and the House of Books” plays bitter variations on multiple familiar tales (at least “Snow White”, “Cinderella”, and “Hansel and Gretel” that I recognized) in telling of a daughter rejected by father, mother, and stepmother.

Locus, February 2007

Electric Velocipede’s Fall issue includes “yet another Snow White” retelling, “Milk and Apples” by Catherynne M. Valente. Here the stepmother is a wet-nurse, a victim of her demanding stepdaughter, and her predicament is harshly and elegantly portrayed.

Locus, June 2007

Catherynne M. Valente's "A Dirge for Prester John" (Interfictions) is a delightfully exotic story of the legendary Prester John in the fantastical land he encountered -- complete with such creatures as the phoenix, the gryphon, and the blemmye.

Locus, July 2008

Catherynne M. Valente’s “A Buyer’s Guide to Maps of Antarctica” (Clarkesworld, May) is a delightful story of obsessive rivalry between two Argentinian mapmakers, of a perhaps slightly alternate Antarctica – one is naturalistic, one artistic – and it’s easy to guess which mapmaker is more interesting.

Locus, August 2009

Another strong online site, Clarkesworld, has been showcasing a lot of decidedly odd SF this year, and from August comes one of the oddest and most intriguing: “The Radiant Car Thy Sparrows Drew”, by Catherynne M. Valente, a difficult to describe but ever fascinating story, set in a sort of steampunk alternate Earth, and concerning the lost last film of a documentary filmmaker called Bysshe, about a mysterious city on a strange Venus.

Locus, September 2010

Lightspeed in its third issue features two original stories distinguished by the originality of their ideas, and by some distinctiveness in the telling. “How to Become a Mars Overlord”, by Catherynne M. Valente, purports to be a manual for potential rulers of the Red Planet – of any red planet of the many Mars analogs dotting the universe. The descriptions of variant overlords are well done, and the philosophical musings driving the piece are also worthwhile – so I enjoyed it, but in the end felt it a bit short of “story”.

Locus, October 2010

I’ve been keeping an eye on the various novella-length chapbooks available. Rabid Transit Press offers their second novella, Catherynne M. Valente’s Under in the Mere. This is a beautifully written (as we expect from Valente) series of pieces from the point of view of many of King Arthur’s knights, all from original angles, with a certain emphasis on California. I didn’t find it wholly successful – it has a static feel, and works more as a sort of commentary on the Matter of Britain than a complete story.

Locus, October 2011

At Tor.com for July there is a delightful story by Catherynne M. Valente, “The Girl Who Ruled Fairyland – for a Little While”, set in her Girl Who Circumented Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making world, about Mallow, who answers the King’s summons to the Foul, only to learn that the King, and Politicks, are bound to ensnare her. It’s full of whimsy – the serious kind – and linguistic invention, and a light touch over sometimes dark matter – first rate.

Locus, January 2012

Nick Mamatas and Masumi Washington offer The Future is Japanese, which collects a number of SF stories about, in some sense, a Japanese future, as well as a few stories by Japanese SF writers. ... “One Breath, One Stroke”, lovely fantasy from Catherynne M. Valente, about a house half in the real world and half in another place, such that the calligrapher who lives in the human half of the house is a calligraphy brush in the other place. The story follows the lives and loves of the brush's fellows in the other place, such as a skeleton woman and a catfish … Valente at her exquisite best.

Locus, June 2015

There is also the conclusion to a long novelette by Catherynne M. Valente, serialized in Clarkesworld in February and March, “The Long Goodnight of Violet Wild”. This is excellent work, extravagantly written on the subject of color, partly. Violet is “just a kid with hair the color of raisins and eyes the color of grape jelly”, from the Purple country of course, with her Mummery a Clarinaut and a sometime lover of the Ordinary Emperor, and her Papo is a Nowboy, herding mauve squirrels. Violet's best friend is a boy named Orchid Harm, and when he is killed, she and her Sorrow decide to travel across the 7 countries of the world to the Red Country. The story is luscious fun to read, partly for something as simple as the color words we encounter, the imaginative playing with time and with character and action is all of a lovely piece.

Locus, August 2016

Beneath Ceaseless Skies for May 25 is their 200th issue, so a special one, with twice the stories. And it’s exceptional: four first-rate pieces. Catherynne M. Valente’s “The Limitless Perspective of Master Peek; or, The Luminescence of Debauchery” is a gender-bending piece about a woman who inherits her father’s glassblowing business, and learns that her customers would rather deal with a man. So we continue, with Master Peek, who is gifted with unusually long life, acquiring several wives, a great deal of wealth, and eventually a fortuitous discovery – that the remarkable glass eyes he makes allow him to see what the wearer sees. Master Peek’s long career continues, especially when he falls for a dangerous and less than dependable woman … Valente’s prose, here pitched a bit to the humorous end of the scale, is a delight as ever, and so too is her extravagant imagination.

Jonathan Strahan’s new anthology is Drowned Worlds, a climate change anthology. Maybe because the theme is pretty depressing the two stories I liked best are somewhat desperately comic, and even almost optimistic, if sometimes in a black way. ... Less satirical is “The Future is Blue”, by Catherynne M. Valente. Tetley Abednego is a much detested woman in a city built on a massive raft of plastic garbage in the sea. The story tells of her childhood, her beloved twin brother, the boy she falls in love with in Electric Town, and the terrible but necessary thing she did that has led to her ostracism. It sounds depressing, but it’s not really, and it’s very imaginative, and, as I suggested, almost, in a black way, hopeful.

Birthday Review: I Capture the Castle, by Dodie Smith

I Capture the Castle, by Dodie Smith

a review by Rich Horton

Dodie Smith was born May 3, 1896, and she died aged 94 in 1990. She is one of those writers known nowadays for only a small subset of her oeuvre -- two books, the children's novel The Hundred and One Dalmatians, and the adult novel I Capture the Castle. But she wrote several other novels, about a dozen plays, and four volumes of autobiography. She was also an actor early in her life. Her other novels and her plays seem mostly forgotten nowadays, as I note, but they must have been fairly successful, in that several of them were filmed. Even I Capture the Castle was for a long time, it seems to me, eclipsed by The Hundred and One Dalmatians, but sometime in the last few decades it was enthusiastically rediscovered -- or re-emphasized. (And perhaps I am merely reflecting my experience.) Here's what I wrote about I Capture the Castle around the time the movie based on it appeared, in 2003.

I first heard of I Capture the Castle several years ago, and immediately formed the idea I might like it. I had at the time read The Hundred and One Dalmatians, Dodie Smith's most famous story -- and altogether a slier and smarter story than the Disney version. (Though at least the first Disney version, the animated one, is really a pretty darn good film.) I had no idea she had written anything else. It turns out Smith was a quite prolific and apparently rather popular playwright in England in the 30s. She moved to the US at the outbreak of war because her husband was a pacifist. I Capture the Castle appeared in 1948, The Hundred and One Dalmatians a bit later. There was a sequel to The Hundred and One Dalmatians called The Starlight Barking -- a terrible book.

I picked up a copy of I Capture the Castle real cheap at a used book sale, feeling pretty proud of myself for having found a not very available book. Of course, shortly thereafter it was reprinted in trade paperback -- I think more in reaction to the new live action version of The Hundred and One Dalmatians than anything. Last year a film was made of the book. Not long ago my wife was looking desperately for reading material and I dug up I Capture the Castle and suggested it to her. She read it and quite liked it, and I went ahead and read it, at long last, after she finished. Then this past weekend we rented the film and watched it.

The book is purely delightful. It opens with 17 year old Cassandra Mortmain starting a diary: "I write this sitting in the kitchen sink." Cassandra lives with her eccentric father, her stepmother Topaz, and her older sister Rose and younger brother Thomas in a dilapidated castle. Her father had rented the castle several years previously, after getting out of prison. (He had attacked his wife with a cake knife, perhaps not seriously, but a neighbour intervened and got hurt -- so the isolation of the castle appealed.) At that time the family was still flush, after her father's success with an odd book called Jacob Wrestling. But by the time of this book, they are living in grinding poverty. The children's mother is dead, though Mortmain has married again, and Topaz, a beautiful woman, much younger than her husband, still earns an occasional amount modeling. Very small royalties for the book sometimes come in. But Mortmain is blocked on any new book, and spends his time reading detective stories. Cassandra is out of school. The beautiful Rose is frustrated by poverty and determines either to "go on the streets" or at least marry a rich man. While Cassandra fends off the clumsy but honest advances of their strikingly handsome servant boy, Stephen, who is in the habit of presenting her poetry copied from famous poets as love poems.

The main actions starts when the new owners of the castle, and of the nearby estate Scoatney, turn up. They are two American men, Simon and Neil Cotton. Simon, the elder, has a beard, which makes him suspicious, but soon Rose determines to marry him. Neil is bound to return to America, and is very suspicious of the sisters' apparent golddigging. Further complications occur when their mother takes an interest in the elder Mortmain, much to Topaz' distress, while a cousin, Mrs. Fox-Cotton, determines to photograph Stephen, and perhaps to seduce him.

Well, as they say, much hilarity ensues, along with a certain amount of pain for all concerned. There are some twists and surprises (at least to me -- perhaps I was naive), leading to a satisfying if somewhat open ending. It's great fun, in large part because of Cassandra's voice, very bright, funny, a bit naive, sweet. It's a romantic book with a light tone, but it maintains just enough ambiguity and edge to avoid treacle. The characters are quite nicely drawn -- at least the women. I don't actually think any of the men come off (except for the Vicar, in a very small part). Simon and Neil and Mortmain are all really only sketches. and Stephen is perhaps more than that but not convincing. However, the women are much better -- Cassandra is lovely, Rose is convincingly not such a wonderful person without being horrible, and Topaz is odd but quite sympathetic.

Well -- what about the movie? Sad to say, it doesn't really come off at all. For the most part the movie is pretty faithful to the bare bones of the plot -- but that's not enough. The humor of the book is almost wholly lost. Cassandra's voice just doesn't survive. The very fine closing lines are altered, much to their diminishing. Rose's character is coarsened just a bit. Topaz is completely muffed -- she is turned into a grotesque. Stephen's role is diminished, which makes some things seem a bit confusing. Bill Nighy plays Mortmain, and he does a fine job, but doesn't quite capture the Mortmain of the book -- still, he's one of the better parts of the movie. All sorts of little things are just a bit off -- for instance, the Vicar is played by the guy who played Mr. Collins in the recent Pride and Prejudice miniseries, and he plays him (in just a bit part -- reduced from the book, understandably given time limitations) as another Mr. Collins, which isn't right AT ALL.

To some extent, this is a bit unfair -- expecting the movie to be a book adaptation. Rather, one should evaluate the movie on its own merits. I suspect it still falls short -- for instance, it's not really very funny, and I think that would have been nice -- but I admit I may not be evaluating it as independently of the book as I should. But there you go.

Birthday Review: Endless Honeymoon, by Don Webb

Birthday Review: Endless Honeymoon, by Don Webb

a review by Rich Horton

Don Webb has a birthday today. He's written a lot of neat short fantasy and horror over the years. His only novels (that I know of) are a set of Texas-based mysteries, with slight and ambiguous fantastical elements, that were published around the turn of the millennium by St. Martin's Press. I really liked those books, but alas, there have been no more. Here's what I wrote about the third of those books when it first came out:

Endless Honeymoon is the third in a recent series of Texas-based mysteries by the engagingly odd writer Don Webb.  I say series, but the books are very loosely linked, sharing mostly some Texas settings, and occasionally featuring major characters from another book as minor characters. I like all three books a lot.  This latest book, after The Double and Essential Saltes, is even more loosely linked, as the protagonists of the other two books were brothers. The lead male characters are all likeable, somewhat nerdy, and very uxorious.  The subject matter is always a bit off-center, and quite different from book to book, but computers are always central to the books.  And you can count on a mention of fireworks.  (It's not certain that this book is in exactly the same timeline as the other two: a murdered character from a previous book appears here alive, and it seems to be set later, though who knows for sure.)

This book is about a couple named Willis and Virginia Spencer. They are independently wealthy (Virginia inherited money, and Willis made a bundle as a Y2K expert), and they spend much of their time performing rather cruel pranks.  Their victims are people whom they have discovered who are "psychic vampires", or simply "shits", who delight in causing misery to those around them, and Willis and Virginia hope to teach these folks a lesson.  They choose their victims by means of a computer program Willis found during his Y2K work.  It turns out, however, that the program was written by a man who takes the whole thing a bit more seriously: he murders the "psychic vampires" instead of simply scaring them.  And one day, unluckily, Willis and Virginia choose the same victim that the "Shit Killer", as he is called, has chosen.

Before long, several people are on the track of the couple. One is the agent the FBI has assigned to the "Shit Killer" case, a young Hispanic man named William Mondragon. This case has the reputation of driving FBI agents crazy, and indeed the previous agent on the case, Abel Salazar, has quit the FBI and is working for someone else, also looking for the killer, and he tracks down both Mondragon and the Spencers.  Add the "Shit Killer" himself, who may be looking for a successor to carry on his work, and the mysterious person behind Salazar, and the Spencers are in big trouble.  Before long Virginia has been kidnapped and Willis and Mondragon are on a wild chase after both her and the real killer.  The resolution is quite scary, involving several people who are both insane and evil, and dealing with Virginia's past abuse by both her father and her first husband, with the "Shit Killer"'s wasted life, and with a strange psychiatrist.

The story is full of imaginative action, and it's fast moving and exciting. Webb does not shy away from the moral implications of all his character's actions, and from the unfortunate attractiveness of the "Shit Killer"'s agenda.  Willis and Virginia are flawed and likeable, and even the villains, mostly, are real (if very strange) people, and not wholly villainous.  (The only exception is clearly completely insane.) 

Birthday Review: Stories of Larry Niven

Today is SFWA Grand Master Larry Niven's 81st birthday. I figured I'd compile a selection of my reviews of his work -- problem is, he hasn't done all that much short fiction during my time at Locus. But I do have some reviews of some of his older work from articles I've done for Black Gate over time. So there's enough ...

Problem is, this doesn't really capture how fun his work was when I was reading it in the mid-70s. I really loved his stuff -- the short stories like "Neutron Star" and "Not Long Before the End" and "Rammer" and "The Fourth Profession" and "Inconstant Moon". The Gil the Arm stories. All the Known Space novels, like A Gift From Earth and Protector. Unfortunately, none of those are covered below -- but they're good stuff, yes they are. Here's what I do have something written about:

Galaxy, October 1968

The one truly famous piece in this issue is Larry Niven's "All the Myriad Ways", in which a policeman puzzled by the recent wave of suicides ties them to the recent realization that there are infinite parallel worlds in which we each make slightly different decisions. The implication is that any decision we ourselves make is meaningless -- because "we" will make every possible different decision anyway, in another world. So, why not commit suicide? I remember being really blown away the first time I read the story, but somehow it didn't have the same impact on rereading, and somehow the logic that seemed inevitable on the first reading doesn't convince me now.

Vertex, August 1974

Niven's "Night on Mispek Moor" is set during another company war, this one on a planet of the Leshy circuit. The protagonist is a mercenary from another planet, trapped on the title moor and attacked by zombies. Not a bad story, nothing great.

Cosmos, May 1977

The three Niven pieces were the first three Draco Tavern stories he published. This has become a rather long series of short-shorts, continued to this day in Analog, featuring a first-person narrator named Rick Schumann, who owns a bar in Siberia which caters to a broad range of alien patrons, particularly the insect-like Chirpsithra, who claim to rule the Galaxy. These stories are "Cruel and Unusual", "The Subject is Closed", and "Grammar Lesson". All are slight as may be expected -- perhaps the best is "The Subject is Closed", in which a priest asks the Chirpsithra about life after death.

Odyssey, Summer 1976

(Cover by Boris Vallejo)

The lead story is Larry Niven's long novella, "The Magic Goes Away", about 26,000 words in this version. (It was published as an illustrated trade paperback from Ace in 1978 -- I believe that version is revised, and seems to be about 33,000 words.) The Niven novella is set in the world of his well-known story "Not Long Before the End", in which magic is real but the source of magic, mana, is running out. A swordsman named Orolandes is involved in the last burst of magical power. I remember enjoying it a fair bit as a teenager.

Tangent review of Analog, July-August 2000

The short stories are also a mixed, but decently solid, assortment.  Larry Niven's "The Wisdom of Demons" is a Draco Tavern story, the first I've seen in some years.  The tavern's owner, Dr. Rick Schumann, tells of a man who met an alien that really wanted to understand humans, and was willing to give the man whatever he wanted, in the form of one wish.  It's a fairly insubstantial story, but the result of the wish is clever enough.

Locus, August 2002

Also in the August Asimov's, a first rate issue, Larry Niven and Brenda Cooper offer a sequel to last year's "Ice and Mirrors". "Free Floaters" is set about a decade later.  Kimber and Eric are still partners and sometime lovers.  This story is told from Eric's POV, as they are given a new job, trying to make contact with a strange alien race which lives in the clouds of an isolated "free floating" Jovian world.  The story fairly entertainingly presents an unusual alien race, and perhaps less convincingly examines Kimber and Eric's relationship at a critical stage.

Locus, August 2005

Larry Niven and Brenda Cooper offer, in "Kath and Quicksilver", a fairly enjoyable far-future piece about a girl marooned on doomed Mercury as the Sun expands, and her interesting means of escape. But it fails to convince in its depiction of the far-future posthuman society. (I will say that I was amused by an apparent reference to a famous "mistake" in Niven's first published story, "The Coldest Place", in which Mercury was depicted as keeping one side always toward the Sun. This was "correct" as of time of writing, but obsolete by the time the story was published. In this story, the authors contrive to have Mercury once again orbiting the Sun with one side always facing it.)

Locus, November 2003

In the November Analog the two novelettes are probably the most interesting pieces. Larry Niven and Brenda Cooper offer "The Trellis", about a scientific station on Pluto, and the curious bio-engineered "trellis" of plants linking Pluto and Charon. An adventurous teenaged girl gets trapped on the trellis, and her father and an old man mount a rescue, hampered by the decaying equipment of the station. The twist is that the rescue is broadcast as a sort of virtual adventure entertainment, but this seemed to point an almost trivial moral.

Birthday Review: Stories of Alexander Jablokov

I was really impressed with Alexander Jablokov's early work, in the '90s, particularly "Fragments of a Painted Eggshell", from 1995, which I thought an obvious Hugo contender, except that it appeared in one of the great years for SF novelettes -- that was the year that Greg Egan published "Wang's Carpets", and Ian MacLeod published "Starship Day", and James Patrick Kelly published "Think Like a Dinosaur". Then, around 1998, Jablokov stopped publishing, for about 8 years. Thankfully, his return has been similarly impressive. Today is his birthday, so here's a selection of my Locus reviews of his stories since that return to the field.

Locus, July 2006

There are good stories in the August Asimov's ... Finally, a very welcome return: Alexander Jablokov’s “Dead Man”. An investigator is hunting down a dead man – more properly, a man who has been uploaded into a computer but still survived by accident. Apparently this isn’t allowed. We slowly learn a little bit about the “dead man” and what drives him, and rather more about the investigator and what drives him – particularly his relationship with his mother. Strong work, very nicely using the SF idea purely in the service of looking at human character.

Locus, March 2007

Elsewhere in these two issues there is plenty further fine work. Alexander Jablokov’s return to the field continues in fine form with “Brain Raid” (F&SF, February). A small team from a struggling cognitive repossession firm is sent to recover a rogue AI that has formed in a minimall. But problems arise – it seems the AI is a bit more powerful than they are equipped to handle. The story twists a bit from there, turning on the motivations of the narrator’s supposed friend who tipped them to this job. It’s a nicely plotted piece, and nicely furnished with SFnal detail – and its central idea reminds me that the same idea, AIs becoming too intelligent for the good of humans, certainly of ancient vintage in the field, seems suddenly very fashionable again.

Locus, September 2007

There’s plenty more fine stuff this issue (F&SF, September). Alexander Jablokov’s “Wrong Number” tells engagingly enough of repairing regret over missed opportunities while repairing cars – it sounds odd, and is, but matter of factly so.

Locus, March 2008

The March F&SF has another in a recent mini-genre of stories that aren’t quite SF but that in their retelling of aspects of the Space Race readily satisfy our SF Jones. (Other examples being the film Apollo 13 and Andy Duncan’s “The Chief Designer”.) In “The Boarder”, Alexander Jablokov tells of a Russian immigrant family who take in another immigrant as a boarder: a man who was a minor cog in the Russian space program. Through the eyes of the family’s American-born son we see this curious and obsessed man, and we learn not only something of Russia’s sometimes tragic space adventures, but something of the conflicted experience of the immigrant.

Locus, March 2010

At Asimov’s for March two stories stood out. Alexander Jablokov, one of my favorite new writers of the ‘90s who had mostly gone silent until recently, offers “Blind Cat Dance”, about two things: a strange project to restore habitats to wildlife by engineering them to be blind to humans, so that they live among us; and also about a woman who want to learn to do that sort of work, and her husband’s project to help her, and another man with a different view entirely of the woman and that project. 

Locus, April 2011

The April-May Asimov’s is their first big Double Issue of the new year, and there is a lot of good stuff to be found in it. The cover story is “The Day the Wires Came Down”, a steampunk-flavored story by Alexander Jablokov. Arabella and Andrew are twins, and they take a ride on the “telpher” system on its last day before it will close. The telphers are suspended trains running on wires. The two are looking for a light for their father’s birthday, but they end up with a curious electrode wrapped in a piece of newspaper that tells of a long ago disaster, the sabotage of an old telpher station. They end up following the telpher system to the end of its line, out of the city, still looking for a light while learning in bits and pieces the story of that past disaster, as the telpherman running their car seems to be engaged in his own romantic adventure. The angle of the telling of the story is a bit odd – a necessary choice, perhaps, to maintain mystery and to allow the whole story to unspool, but it does distract the reader, as well, as Arabella and Andrew turn out to be more observers than central to the story. So while I enjoyed it I felt kept a bit at a distance.

Locus, July 2014

The cover story in the July Asimov's is Alexander Jablokov's “The Instructive Tale of the Archaeologist and His Wife”, and it's a very good one. It's set in what seems to be perhaps the far future, after the “technological era” has collapsed. The story turns subtly on the title archaeologist's slow accumulation of unexplainable artifacts, on his difficult relationship with his wife, who joins a crackpottish sect called the Obliviators, on certain mysteries about the past “technological age”, and on his own descent – or ascent – into a brand of what his colleagues would also call crackpottery. And in the end a striking revelation comes to us, about how we can know the past (and, perhaps, at some level about SF and Fantasy writers).

Locus, December 2016

And perhaps the best piece this issue (Asimov's, October-November) is “The Forgotten Taste of Honey”, by Alexander Jablokov, set on a Norsish island controlled by Gods who insist that the corpses of people from their territories be returned if they die in another place. This seems to reduce social mobility a lot, and so traders are viewed with suspicion, and pay for their passage, in a sense, by transporting misplaced corpses to their homes. Tromvi is a middle-aged trader who took up her profession after her husband died in one of the wars/feuds that plague this land. On her current trip she has the corpse of a mountain woman who died by the sea, and this corpse, or its God, seems quite insistent about its journey, particularly when the vagaries of her trip, influenced by more fighting, lead her to a rather suspicious-acting Passkeeper, who seems to want to steal the corpse; and then to a feral young woman. The landscape, again, is well-captured, and the fantastical background struck me as quite original, while the main character gives it all a believable sensible grounding.

Locus, February 2019

In the January-February Asimov's, Alexander Jablokov has another story about Sere, investigating things in the baroque multi-species city of Tempest. In “How Sere Looked for a Pair of Boots” she begins by trying to free her cousin’s boyfriend from prison, and ends up stumbling on something much more significant. The best part of the story, as with its predecessor, is the gleeful description of the odd configurations and habits of the various alien species. Fun stuff.

Birthday Review: The Wee Free Men, by Terry Pratchett

Today would have been Terry Pratchett's 71st birthday, but he died, not yet 67, in 2015. In his memory, then, here's a repost of something short I wrote a while ago on my SFF Net newsgroup.

The Wee Free Men, by Terry Pratchett

a review by Rich Horton

I've read a few of Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels with general enjoyment -- but they have left me wondering for the most part exactly why they are so very popular. (Doubtless in part, as I have been assured, because I haven't read the right ones.) Put simply, to me they have seemed nice comic novels with some worthwhile gentle satire -- but by no means masterpieces. Now I have read what I think is my favorite Discworld book so far -- and perhaps not surprisingly it is not part of the main sequence. This is The Wee Free Men, the first of Pratchett's Tiffany Aching sequence of nominally Young Adult Discworld books.

Tiffany is a nine year old girl living in on the Chalk. She is part of a sheepherding family. She has older siblings and a very annoying younger brother, Wentworth. One day she is playing by the river when she encounters a bunch of tiny (six inches tall or so) blue men -- and a monster. She uses Wentworth as bait for the monster -- rather shocking, that, using her little brother that way -- but quite successful as well, for she is able to send the beast packing.

She thereby attracts the attention of Miss Tick, a witch. Miss Tick cannot practice magic on the Chalk, but she decides that Tiffany must be a witch -- and perhaps one who can practice magic. This is important because another world is impinging dangerously on this one (evidently Discworld, though one of the different features of this particular Discworld book is that really it could have been set just as well in our world, looked at a bit slant). It will be up to Tiffany to deal with this impingement. Luckily, she has the help of the little men she saw -- the Nac Mac Feegle, or Wee Free Men. Luckily too she has the memories of her Granny Aching, who must also have been a witch -- mustn't she? Even if all the magic she did seems to have had a sensible explanation. ("It's still magic if you know how it's done.")

And so Tiffany and the Nac Mac Feegle will find their way to the realm of the Faerie Queen -- or "Quin" as the Wee Free Men would have it. And a combination of Tiffany's resourcefulness and growing understanding with the Wee Free Men's vigor and absurd bravery will (of course) save the day. I liked the book a great deal. Tiffany is a wonderful character -- so too is her Granny. The Wee Free Men are hilariously portrayed. Little bits like the most horrible menace the Queen can find to face the Wee Free Men are just plain funny. And the story is sensible and humane as well. Not moralistic but essentially moral without being a lesson. There are at least a couple more Tiffany Aching books, which I will have to scare up.

Ace Double Reviews, 7: Reality Forbidden, by Philip E. High/Contraband From Otherspace, by A. Bertram Chandler

Ace Double Reviews, 7: Reality Forbidden, by Philip E. High/Contraband From Otherspace, by A. Bertram Chandler (#G-609, 1967, $0.50)

by Rich Horton

Last year I posted an Ace Double featuring Philip E. High on the occasion of his birthday -- April 28. I have another one, so why not post it this year?

(Covers by Jack Gaughan and Kelly Freas)

Reality Forbidden is about 53,000 words long, and Contraband from Otherspace about 35,000. As far as I can tell, this Ace Double represents the first publication of either novel in any form. (Which is not to say that there might not have been a short story antecedent to the Chandler in particular. High didn't publish all that much short fiction, and oddly enough his short fiction career was quite disjoint from his novel writing career. At least according to the ISFDB, his short stories were all published between 1955 and 1963, and his first novel was in 1964, his last in 1979.)

Philip E. High was an English author who wrote a number of shortish novels, mostly in the 60s. He bears comparison, perhaps, with J. T. M'Intosh, though he was not so prolific a short story writer as M'Intosh. But he fit the same sort of niche: a not very good writer who still produced oddly interesting stuff -- just weird enough to attract attention, but generally disappointing in the execution. David Langford is something of a proponent of High's work.

Reality Forbidden opens with a couple of men escaping from England to Canada. It turns out that a device which allows people to create their own reality (sort of a virtual reality, though more by telepathy than any computer hookup) was invented some decades previously. It was outlawed in most of the world, including England, but it was so easy to make that black market versions keep turning up. In Canada it was never outlawed, and supposedly Canadians have adapted to living with everyone using such a device.

The two men were arrested on suspicion of being involved with creating such a device, and sent to Canada as spies in lieu of imprisonment. (Which doesn't seem very sensible, but let that pass.) One of the men turns out to be an "Immune", and before long he is in cahoots with the heroic Canadian resistance to the evil forces that control the rest of the world. Which, it turns out, all emanate from an alien invader ... Weird stuff, and it doesn't really hold together very well at all. Still, it is definitely an interesting story, and quite original. (It is apparently often cited as one of the earlier uses of Virtual Reality in an SF story.)

A. Bertram Chandler was an English-born Australian seaman who began writing SF for Astounding in the 40s. His most famous stories are about Commodore John Grimes, a spaceship Captain in the Rim Worlds of our Galaxy. Chandler's spaceships, not surprisingly, recall sea ships a lot, particularly in the command organization.

Contraband From Otherspace is a rather disappointing Grimes novel. Grimes has just got married to Sonya Verrill, an Intelligence Officer from the Federation. (The Federation is the association of more inward worlds including Earth.) They are preparing to retire from their respective services and perhaps buy a ship of their own. But at the last moment, more or less, a mysterious ship shows up, seemingly out of nowhere. It's a derelict, full of corpses. It is soon enough determined that the ship comes from another universe (transition between universes is easy out on the Rim.) In that universe, rats mutated to become human-sized and intelligent, and they subsequently enslaved humans, and also used them for meat.

Grimes and Sonya take a crew, rehab the derelict ship, and, by unconvincing means, make their way to the other universe, there to confront the rats. They make their way to a world of lizards, whom Grimes has earlier befriended, and they enlist the lizards to help set things right, and make it so that the rats no longer enslave the humans.

Chandler's stories never worried over much about making even the remotest scientific sense, but in some cases, as this one, things just get too absurd. The oh so convenient transition between universes, the rapid mutation of the rats, the coincidental landing in just the right place on the lizard planet ... there are just too many bits of sheer silliness in this story. It just didn't work for me. Some of the silliness (such as the rats using English, except that every vowel is replaced with an "ee" sound, like a squeak, see) is clearly for fun, and sort of tolerable, but more of it is just ad hoc lets advance the plot any old way stuff. I confess I've never been a big fan of Chandler, but others of his stories are at least decent fun. This one doesn't rise to that level. (One more cavil -- the title is just plain meaningless! I thought the story would be about parallel world smuggling -- potentially a fine idea. But there's no contraband in the book at all.)

Ace Double Reviews, 78: One of Our Asteroids is Missing, by Calvin Knox/The Twisted Men, by A. E. Van Vogt

Ace Double Reviews, 78: One of Our Asteroids is Missing, by Calvin Knox/The Twisted Men, by A. E. Van Vogt (#F-253, 1964, $0.40)

A review by Rich Horton

(A. E. Van Vogt was born April 26, 1912. In his memory then, here's another of his Ace Doubles. I've covered biographical/career details of both writers in earlier posts on this blog, so I'll skip that here.)

(Covers by Ed Emshwiller and Jack Gaughan)

This Ace Double, from 1964, features SFWA Grand Masters back to back. And, indeed, it features the very last Ace Double contribution from each prolific writer. "Calvin Knox", of course, is a pseudonym, a very Protestant pseudonym, for Robert Silverberg. One of our Asteroids is Missing is a shortish novel, about 36,000 words. The Twisted Men is a story collection, the three pieces totaling some 39,000 words. (Incidentally, this is an Ace Double, and not the only one, for which the covers were switched -- Emshwiller's cover was intended for The Twisted Men, and Gaughan's for One of Our Asteroids is Missing.)

One of Our Asteroids is Missing certainly reads like late-50s Silverberg, and the cover says "First Book Publication", which strongly suggests that it was first published in an earlier, perhaps shorter, magazine version, perhaps in Science Fiction Adventures, for which Silverberg contributed a great deal of novella-length fiction. But I can't find anything -- none of the stories Silverberg published as by Knox in the magazines have likely titles, at any rate. There was a Mack Reynolds story called "One of Our Planets is Missing!" in the November 1950 Amazing, but I'm sure that's unrelated.

The story opens with John Storm finding a valuable asteroid, full of useful metals. He had promised himself two years looking for asteroids, after which he'd either have struck it rich or he'd go and take a job with Universal Mining Cartel -- either way, he'd marry his girlfriend Liz. he heads to Mars and files a claim, then heads to Earth, and to his shock, his claim doesn't exist any more. And indeed, HE doesn't exist any more, at least not in the government's records. He heads back to Mars to find out what happened, and he learns that UMC is behind all this -- they've bribed a guy to make his claim disappear, then filed their own claim.

Up to about this point, I was rather enjoying the story. A fairly interesting mystery, some good action, a decent pulp-style hero, crisp if not brilliant writing. But it starts to go off the rails when Storm heads back to "his" asteroid to see what UMC is up to. On the asteroid he finds that UMC are trying to move it (!!), and that they are hiding a mysterious secret -- big surprise -- and then gets captured by UMC, who, instead of doing the obvious thing and just kill him, try to buy him off for a few million dollars, which is more than he had originally expected to get anyway. But he refuses to be bought, and instead -- well, I don't want to give away the surprise, though it isn't really that interesting, but the story comes to an ending in kind of a different direction than I felt the beginning really merited. On the whole I didn't think the novel worked very well, not even counting silliness like the not well worked out travel times to the asteroids, etc.

The Twisted Men collects three rather minor Van Vogt stories from lesser SF magazines around 1950. They are "The Twisted Men" (17600 words), first published as "Rogue Ship" in the March 1950 Super Science Stories; "The Star-Saint" (9300 words), first published in the March 1951 Planet Stories, and "The Earth Killers" (12000 words), first published in the April 1949 Super Science Stories.

"The Twisted Men" tells of a scientist who believes the Sun is a variable star, and a sort of mini-nova will destroy life on Earth in a few years. The only hope is to send an colony expedition to Alpha Centauri. He is dismissed as a crackpot, but still manages to build a ship and send it off, with an odd mix of volunteers. He stays home on Earth and is shocked when the ship returns early. But it doesn't stop -- all attempts to get into it fail -- it crashes through Earth leaving a big furrow and returns to space. The hero finally gets aboard, and everyone is "frozen". He eventually realizes that they are actually going nearly the speed of light, in, somehow, their reference frame, so they are feeling the effects of time dilation (and the Lorentz contraction as well, which is where the "twisted" part comes in). All this is really silly and just plain wrong distortion of relativity, resolved by the hero somehow entering the ship's field of reference, and learning that they are, somehow, both near Earth and near Alpha Centauri, so the colony mission can go on, with he, rather creepily, replacing the 50 year old captain as the putative wife of a now 17 year old girl. It has to be said, as with much Van Vogt, that the silliness of the ideas is partly redeemed by the cockeyed originality of them.

"The Star-Saint" concerns a new colony that has been mysterious wiped out, on what seems to be an empty planet. The title character shows up, more or less out of nowhere, and learns to communicate with the planet, which is somehow sentient and has been sending rocks to attack the colonists. He negotiates an agreement for mutual benefit. Again, often silly, but some interesting ideas too. Could have been pretty good with a rewrite, I think.

In "The Earth Killers" the US is nearly destroyed by a nuclear attack. But no other country seems to have sent the bombs. And the hero, an Air Force pilot, had been testing a new plane at the time of the attack and he witness a bomb, which he thought was coming in nearly vertically, as if the attack was from space. But he is not believed, and it is assumed he is concealing the actual villain country. So he goes to prison, but escapes to try to find the real villains, whom he assumes are on a base on the moon. The eventual answer wasn't quite what I expected, and indeed was a pretty good solution. It's not really a very plausible story, and it's somewhat too long, but it's not bad.

The Novels of Avram Davidson

The Novels of Avram Davidson

by Rich Horton

Today would have been Avram Davidson's 96th birthday. He died in 1993. In his memory, here's a repost of something I did back in 2003 on rec.arts.sf.written, a quick summary of his novels. For the most part I don't say much about them. I've revised it to account for the 2005 publication of The Scarlet Fig.

[Revised again in 2023 to add links to reviews of the two novels I hadn't previously read plus Beer! Beer! Beer! I also briefly mention his "Ellery Queen" novels, which I also haven't read. And I deleted a mention of the then recent Wildside Press reprints, though I think some of those are still available. And I added mention of Davidson's "Ellery Queen" novels --- thanks to Rob Gerrand for reminding me of them.]

Avram Davidson is one of my favorite authors, but his reputation, with me as with most anyone, is founded on his short fiction (and, I suppose, to some extent on his exotic nonfiction, as with Adventures in Unhistory). Davidson's strengths were a sharp moral sense, a fascination with curious minutiae, a quirky imagination, obfuscation to good effect, and a glorious sprung prose rhythm. All of these strengths, it seems to me, are better displayed at shorter lengths. His novels tended to be sloppily plotted, or to display signs of lost interest, or to simply not finish (as in the case of his several series begun but never completed). Thus I urge those who have not yet discovered Davidson to seek out the short fiction, recently collected in such places as The Avram Davidson Treasury, The Investigations of Avram Davidson, and The Other Nineteenth Century. Highlights include the Engelbert Eszterhazy stories, the Jack Limekiller stories, "The Sources of the Nile", "The Slovo Stove", "What Strange Stars and Skies", "El Vilvoy de Las Islas", "Dragon Skin Drum", "Dagon", "The Lord of Central Park", and many more.

But here we consider the novels. Several were written in the middle sixties, and published as paperback originals, probably for minimal advances, probably written fairly quickly. These show signs of being forced into rather pulpish and conventional plot frames, and the exuberance of the writing is sometimes muted. Still, the prose does break free at times, and Davidson's imagination remains compelling. 

Many of the novels were parts of projected series, though these series were not usually finished. Here's a summary of Davidson's "novel series", with the books listed in (to the best of my knowledge) internal chronological order. (After the series summary, I'll list and describe all the novels individually).

1. Dragon
The Kar-Chee Reign (1966), Rogue Dragon (1965) -- no more ever planned or needed

2. Vergil
Vergil in Averno (1987), The Phoenix and the Mirror (1969), The Scarlet Fig; or Slowly, Through a Land of Stone (2005)

Up to six more "Vergil" books were reputedly planned. A number of short stories about Vergil have also been published, some of which may be extracts from The Scarlet Fig. Here's David Tate's list of the Vergil short stories:

"Vergil and the Caged Bird", Amazing, January 1987
"Vergil and the Dukos: Hic Inclusus Vitam Perdit, or The Imitations of the King", Asimov's, September 1997
"Yellow Rome, or Vergil and the Vestal Virgin", Weird Tales, Winter 1992/1993, also in The Avram Davidson Treasury
"Vergil Magus: King Without Country", with Michael Swanwick, Asimov's, July 1998
"The Other Magus", in Edges, Eds. Ursula K. Le Guin & Virginia Kidd (Pocket Books; Berkley paperback, 1980)
"Sea-Scene, or Vergil and the Ox-Thrall", Asimov's, February 1993
"Young Vergil and the Wizard", Infinite Matrix, December 2001

I have heard that there are possibly another half-dozen unpublished shorts.

3. "Starflux/Earthflux"
The Island Under the Earth (1969), The Six-Limbed Folk (apparently never written), The Cap of Grace (apparently never written)

4. Peregrine
Peregrine: Primus (1971), Peregrine: Secundus (1981)

A third Peregine book was planned but never written. Davidson's son Ethan wrote a novelette, "Peregrine: Parentus", based on Avram's notes for the final novel. It was published in 2016, but I haven't seen it.

Now, to briefly describe the various novels individually. I'll list them in publication order, to the best of my knowledge. There are a couple I haven't yet read. Also, many of them I read in short order as I found them used in about 1994, which was before I kept notes on the books I read. Which means I don't remember them all very well.

Joyleg (with Ward Moore) (1962)

A version was serialized in Fantastic. This is one of three novel-length (or nearly so) collaborations by Davidson: the other two are with his ex-wife Grania Davis. This novel is about a man living in the back hills of Tennessee who turns out to be a veteran of the American Revolution. The secret of longevity attracts the attention of the American Government, and the Soviets as well, and much political foofaraw occurs, much revolving around the book's real main characters, a Congressman and Congresswoman (the "woman" underlined on the back of my 1962 Pyramid paperback -- I suppose that was considered almost more SFnal than a 200 year old guy back in 1962). I thought it went on a bit long, and that it read too much like Ward Moore and not enough like Davidson. Minor.

Mutiny in Space (1964)

Expansion of the Worlds of Tomorrow novella "Valentine's Planet". Probably the least of Davidson's novels. It is reminiscent of Poul Anderson's slightly earlier Virgin Planet, in that it features a man or men spacewrecked on a planet dominated by women who, it turns out, are just looking for a REAL MAN [TM]. In this case a mutiny leads to a spaceship crew being marooned, on a planet where the males are all small and childlike (as I recall), so that the women rule. Naturally, things change. It's not horrible, and not completely un-Davidsonian, but it's not very good, either.

And on the Eighth Day (as by "Ellery Queen") (1964)

The Fourth Side of the Triangle (as by "Ellery Queen") (1965)

These two novels were ghost-written by Davidson for Frederic Dannay and Manfred Lee, the originators of Ellery Queen. It's possible that they were written to an outline by Dannay and/or Lee. I have not read them. Some sources also claim that Davidson wrote The House of Brass (1968), but others (Francis M. Nevins) say that Davidson did write an expansion of Dannay's outline, but it was rejected, and Lee eventually finished the novel himself.

Masters of the Maze (1965)

The first novel to show real signs of Davidson's true obsessions, and his true, or mature, prose style. It's a weird thing, and I didn't really find it wholly successful, but I found aspects quite fascinating. I admit I don't remember it well at this remove, but it involved weird alien creatures in control of a "Maze" that allowed travel through space and time, and a failing young writer, and dangerous aliens who need to be stopped.

Rogue Dragon (1965)

Davidson earned a Nebula nomination for this, though it should be noted that in those days (this was the first year of the Nebula awards), the rules were different, and the list of nominated works is rather long. The aliens known as the Kar-Chee came to Earth and brought the Dragons with them, but the Kar-Chee have been defeated, but Earth is an exhausted backwater. Now the Dragons are hunted for sport by rich men from elsewhere in the Galaxy. Jon-Joras, the hero, comes to realize that this sport must cease. A decent, fun, sometimes dark, novel.

Rork! (1965)

In an exhausted human-colonized portion of the Galaxy, a young man goes to Pia 2, "the most remote, isolated, world in the Galaxy", and gets involved in a conflict between entrenched colonialist men who have enslaved the local species called "Tocks", and the Wild Tocks, all further complicated by the danger of the fierce rorks, yet another species. Parts of it were quite good, parts, particularly the ending, were simply rushed.

The Enemy of My Enemy (1966)

I don't remember this one well. A fugitive gets surgically transformed to become a Tarnisi, and ends up affecting the course of a hopeless war between Tarnis and some other nations. The solution is slightly unexpected. I don't think this was one of my favorite early Davidson novels, but as I say I don't remember it well.

Clash of Star-Kings (1966)

Very short novel (about 38,000 words, originally half of an Ace Double) that appeared on the Nebula nomination list for Best Novella of 1966. It depicts a conflict between alien entities as a conflict between the ancient Gods of the Aztecs and the Olmecs, witnessed by a couple of writers living in Mexico to save money. Pretty good stuff, best I think for the depiction of everyday life for American expatriates in Mexico. My full review is here: Review of Clash of Star-Kings/Danger From Vega.

The Kar-Chee Reign (1966)

Prequel to Rogue Dragon, telling of the end of the period of Kar-Chee oppression of Earth. My full review is here: Review of Rocannon's World/The Kar-Chee Reign.

The Island Under the Earth (1969)

Published as one of the celebrated first series of Ace Specials in 1969. Here the source of Davidson's imagination is closer to Greek myth. The novel is set in a strange land with such creatures as Harpies and especially Centaurs. Unfortunately I remember little else except that I liked it, and that I was saddened to hear that Davidson never wrote the sequels.

The Phoenix and the Mirror (1969)

First published by Doubleday in 1969 (as far as I know, the Vergil novels are the only Davidson novels originally published in hardcover), then as an Ace Special in 1970, expanded from a 1966 novella in Fantastic. Perhaps Davidson's most highly-regarded novel. It is an "Alternate History Fantasy", set in a Roman Empire full of magic, and alchemy, and strange creatures, in which the poet Vergil was a powerful sorcerer. This novel is about Vergil's search for the perfect Speculum, or mirror, and his involvement with several women. It is the first novel in which Davidson gave full reign to his fascination with the oddities of history and "unhistory", and in which he let his prose style loose to its full flowering of elegant eccentricity.

Peregrine: Primus (1971)

Perhaps Davidson's single most engaging novel, and the most overtly comedic of them. It's set in another alternate Roman Empire. As I said in my review of the Wildside reprint, for Maelstrom SF: The story is set in an alternate history. Peregrine is the younger son of "the last pagan King in lower Europe". When he reaches his majority, his father reluctantly exiles him, in order to prevent trouble with the Crown Prince. So begin Peregrine's, er, peregrinations. Accompanied by a faithful page and an aging sorcerer, he roams about "lower Europe", encountering the remnants of an eccentric Roman Empire, a wide variety of mutually heretical Christians, and many other wonders.

Ursus of Ultima Thule (1973)

Set in the now vanished Arctic continent Ultima Thule, this novel follows Arnten, a boy who may be the son of a were-bear, as he flees persecution due to his differences from his fellows, finds his father, and ends up on a mission to solve the curse that is poisoning the iron in his kingdom. A minor effort. Here is my review.

Peregrine: Secundus (1981)

Much of a muchness with Peregrine: Primus, it continues Peregrine's story without seeming to bring it closer to any sort of conclusion. I'd say it's not quite as good as the first book but still quite enjoyable. Assembled from a 1973 novelette in F&SF ("Peregrine: Alflandia"), and a 1980 novella in Asimov's ("Peregrine Perplexed").

Vergil in Averno (1987)

The prequel to The Phoenix in the Mirror, telling of Vergil's journey to the underworld. I found it a lot harder going than its predecessor, to be honest.

Marco Polo and the Sleeping Beauty (with Grania Davis) (1988)

Enjoyable novel about Marco Polo, along with his father and uncle, setting about in search of the Sleeping Beauty, at the behest of Kublai Khan. Lots of adventures with mostly legendary creatures ... dragons, griffins, magical carp, a sphinx, dog-headed pirates, a serpent woman, etc. ... in somewhat legendary places ... old Cathay, the Pleasure Isle, a hidden valley in Tebet, etc. My full review.

The Boss in the Wall (with Grania Davis) (1998)

A long novella (perhaps 32,000 words) extracted (by Davis) from a much longer novel that Davidson had been working on for some time when he died. This was published in book form by Tachyon after Davidson's death. It's good stuff, with much of the classic Davidson flavor, about nasty critters that lurk in the walls of houses.

An extract from my review for Tangent: So what is it about? To quote: "A Paper-Man or Paper-Doll or Paper-Doll Man. A Hyett or Hetter or Header. A Greasy-Man or String-Fellow. A Rustler or Clicker or Clatterer. And/or other names." Or the "House-Devil". Or "The Boss in the Wall". Professor Vlad Smith moves into a new house. Which is a very old house, owned by his Uncle Mose. Almost immediately, something unexplainable and scary kills his Uncle and puts his wife and daughter into states of shock. A local doctor puts Vlad in touch with Professor Edward Bagnell, who has been investigating sightings of the "House-Devil". And we follow Vlad, and Bagnell, and others in a rambling search through the available scholarly and semi-scholarly and crackpot records of other potential "Paper Men", "Rustlers", and "Bosses in the Wall", to an encounter with a mysterious committee studying the phenomenon, and to a resolution to (at least) Vlad's story.

The Scarlet Fig (2005)

I wrote this for Fantasy Magazine when this novel finally came out (in a lovely and expensive hardcover edition): Some books have significance and value beyond their pure value as novels. Certainly The Scarlet Fig is one such – the long awaited third Vergil novel from the late Avram Davidson. Its value as fiction is high enough, mind you. It’s very characteristic of late Davidson, stuffed with evidence of his erudition, the prose complicated, eccentric, enjoyable for those of us who have a taste for Davidson’s prose. (That said, often a bit prolix, perhaps a bit too precious.) The story concerns Vergil’s travels after he leaves Rome (“Yellow Rome”), fearful of accusations of having tarnished a Vestal Virgin, and also menaced by piratical Carthaginians. He visits many strange shores: Corsica, Tingitayne, the Region called Huldah (and its beautiful eponymous ruler), the island of the Lotophageans, where he drinks of the Scarlet Fig, and finally the Land of Stone in North Africa. All along we witness much magic and many wonders – all reflecting the altered Rome of Davidson’s Vergil Magus, a Rome reflecting the legends that accumulated in the Middle Ages: so, gloriously grotesque satyrs, victims of the cockatrix, the dogs of the Guaramanty, etc. I enjoyed it greatly, particularly the character of Vergil and the mix of darkness and strangeness throughout. It is also beautifully presented: a large handsome hardcover, with beautiful illustrations, and much excellent additional material to the novel: afterwords by both Davis and Wessells, and several appendices including a few “deleted scenes” and reproductions of some notecards from Davidson’s collection (“Encyclopedia”) of Vergilian research.

Beer! Beer! Beer! (2021)

Seth Davis, Davidson's godson (and the son of his ex-wife Grania Davis) has been working to bring much of Davidson's work back to print, and Gregory Feeley alerted Seth to this unpublished book. Seth published it in 2021. It's an entertaining novel, non-SF, about a real incident in Davidson's hometown, Yonkers, during prohibition, in which a pipe was discovered out of which flowed beer. I reviewed the novel when it came out: here.