Birthday Review: Stories of Matthew Hughes

I have enjoyed Matthew Hughes' stories set in a version of Jack Vance's Dying Earth milieu for a long time. Today is Hughes' birthday -- here's a selection of my reviews of his work (by no means representing all his work!)

Locus, March 2004

The March F&SF opens with "Mastermindless", an amusing science fantasy novelet by Matt Hughes, set "one eon before Jack Vance's Dying Earth". Everyone in the city has been rendered nearly broke, ugly, and stupid. Unfortunately, this includes our hero, which severely hampers his investigation into the cause. It's quite fun, and I'm looking forward to the promised future stories in the series.

Locus, June 2004

The two novelets in the June F&SF are both colorful adventure fantasies, and plenty of fun. Matthew Hughes's "A Little Learning" is about Guth Bandar's examination to become a scholar of the Institute of Historical Inquiry. He must travel through the Events, Landscapes and Situations of the noösphere to the Blessed Isles. But a rival sabotages his route, and Guth is left with little option but to use what small knowledge he has of alternate routes through the noösphere to try to find a shortcut. His adventures are amusing indeed, and cleverly imagined. Hughes is a welcome new find.

Locus, August 2004

Also in the August F&SF is another amusing story by Matthew Hughes, "Relics of the Thim", in which Hengis Hapthorn investigates some very plausible looking relics of an ancient civilization, suspicious because they have been produced by a known con artist – though authenticated by a respected scholar. What he learns is a bit unexpected.

Locus, October 2004

The men show well too, in the September Asimov's. Matthew Hughes might seem like a "hot new writer", but actually his first novel appeared in Canada ten years ago. Still, he has just recently come to well-deserved wide attention. "The Hat Thing" is a sharp time-travel short-short, about the difficulty of really fitting in in the past.

Locus, February 2005

The highlights of the February F&SF are two rather light-toned novelets. "Inner Huff", by Matthew Hughes, is another story of Guth Bandar exploring the noösphere. This is the human collective unconscious – source of stories and tropes. He is researching the siren songs, but ends up captured by a version of Circe, and turned into a pig. He escapes to another part of the noösphere – but as a pig – and there are some interesting pig stories out there ...

Locus, June 2005

The June F&SF features Matthew Hughes "The Gist Hunter", along with a cover illustrating the story, also by Matt Hughes (not the same guy!) I think this may be Hughes's best Hengis Hapthorn story to date. Hapthorn is engaged by one Turgut Therobar to defend him in a case of "murder and aggravated debauchery". Therobar is a very respectable man, but people have gone missing at his estate, and a young woman has been violated outrageously. Hapthorn visits the estate, and finds things are quite strange. In particular, a rival he once insulted is present, and seems to be working to prove a theory involving "gist" that Hapthorn regarded as nonsensical. To be sure, there is also an extremely attractive and surprisingly enthusiastic young woman ... Let's leave the unraveling of mysteries to the story – it's very enjoyable work indeed.

Locus, April 2005

In Matthew Hughes's, "Finding Sajessarian" (F&SF, April), the title character is willing to pay Hengis Hapthorn to find him -- as a dry run for his anticipated disappearance subsequent to a planned crime. Hengis, with the help of his remarkable AI assistant, has little trouble finding him, but Sajesssarian, after all, is a criminal, and has little desire to pay up, instead leaving Hapthorn in a sticky situation. Hengis, and the integrator, and another assistant, are equal to the problem, of course, and readily figure out what is truly happening -- but not without certain, one feels, irrevocable changes occurring in the relationship between Hengis and his much put upon assistant.

Locus, August 2005

Matthew Hughes's "Thwarting Jabbi Gloond" (F&SF, August) goes back to the beginning of Henghis Hapthorn's career. Our hero is rather undistinguished student, but he shows a certain intuitive ability, which causes his friend Torsten Olabian to suggest a career as a discriminator. Hapthorn is skeptical, but then Olabian has cause to ask for his friend's help in dealing with a man who is sponging off his father's estate. Hapthorn's investigations uncover some unsavory and unexpected secrets about Olabian's father and his fortune, involving some rather interesting aliens – perhaps not an unmixed result, but one that at any rate confirms Hapthorn's career direction. This is enjoyable work that accomplishes, I think, just what it is attempting – but it isn't terribly ambitious set next to Hughes's other Hapthorn stories, nor his Guth Bandar stories.

Locus, July 2006

Matthew Hughes is reliably entertaining in “The Meaning of Luff” (F&SF, July), a tale from the early life of Luff Imbry, who by the time of the novel Black Brillion was a reformed con man. Not so here – as he takes advantage of a fellow conperson’s financial need to take the lion’s share of a money making opportunity involving a device that, apparently accurately, reveals the ultimate value of any person’s life. The title tells us where this is going – and Luff’s response to such knowledge is quite in character.

Locus, March 2007

The February and March issues of F&SF each feature a nice cover taken from the same story: the two-part serial “The Helper and His Hero”, by Matthew Hughes. This story represents the culmination of Hughes’s series of stories about the noönaut Guth Bandar. A noönaut is an explorer of the collective unconsciousness: the source material (or perhaps the collective resultant) of story and myth. Bandar is by now middle-aged, and his noönaut career has long since been frustrated – as he has learned, because he is being saved for an important role. Now he takes a vacation to investigate gravitational anomalies in the Swept: a mostly uninhabited plain, the result of a long-past invasion by the alien hive-mind called the Dree. Most of the travelers are victims of a new disease, the Lassitude, and their companions, in hopes of a cure. But Bandar quickly gathers that one disturbing pair is not what it seems. In particular, the young aristocrat of the pair soon evinces great interest in Bandar’s ability as a noönaut – and, worst, this young man shows scary ability in that area himself. More, he seems hardly a real person – closer to an archetype, specifically the Hero archetype. And Bandar, it appears, is to be cast in the role of Helper to this Hero – in a desperate attempt to forestall another Dree invasion. The story is enjoyable enough, but seems just a bit sketchy. And the reason for that is simple, I think: this is exactly the story told in Hughes’s novel Black Brillion. Only the novel was told from the point of view of the young “Hero”, Baro Harkless, while this story is told from Bandar’s POV. It is interesting seeing the tale from another angle, but I must say I find the longer novel a more satisfying experience. (The serial is itself, I believe, just barely novel length according to SFWA’s definition.)

Locus, June 2007

Matthew Hughes's "Sweet Trap" (F&SF, June) is reprinted from a limited edition of his 2006 novel Majestrum. Henghis Hapthorn, along with his new familiar and also with is other self, the magically talented Osk Rievor, is hired to track down a missing man. The man bought an unexpectedly cheap spaceship then disappeared. Henghis and his often reluctant allies manage to track down the disappeared man, and find the unexpected criminal behind it all. It's a pleasant story but nothing special.

Locus, December 2009

Postscripts #19 is subtitled Enemy of the Good. So, yes, I know it’s officially an anthology but to me it’s still a magazine. The title story is one of Matthew Hughes’s Luff Imbry stories, set as with his Henghis Hapthorn pieces in the age just prior to that of Jack Vance’s Dying Earth. Here the enterprising thief is captured by a trap set by his latest victim. But his captor has an additional use for him – to explore a cave wherein an ancient sect had reputedly created nearly perfect works of art. Such ancient masterworks would surely be incredibly valuable. But – well, there’s always a but, and it’s fun getting to the but, and realizing why Luff himself is uniquely qualified to (more or less) triumph.

Locus, May 2017

The three novelets in the March-April F&SF are all really nice pieces, in different ways – perhaps none of them is precisely groundbreaking but they are all quite fun. ... Matthew Hughes starts a new series with “Ten Half Pennies”, about Baldemar, a poor boy who finds himself bullied at school, and comes up with the notion of buying protection from a moneylender’s enforcer, which leads eventually to doing errands for said enforcer, and then to a position as “wizard’s henchman”. The story from there is well-plotted and amusing, told in Hughes’ well-honed Vance-derived ironic voice.

Birthday Review: Stories of Nina Allan

Nina Allan is one of the best, and one of the most individual, writers working in our field. She's published two strong novels (The Rift (2017) and The Race (2017)) but for me she shows at her best with her short fiction -- though her best short fiction is longer novelettes and novellas (including the exceptional short novel "Maggots".) Here's a selection of my reviews of her short work for Locus.

Locus, June 2008

Each year Albedo One sponsors a contest, the Aeon Award, and this year’s winner is Nina Allan’s “Angelus”. It’s told by a chess Grand Master from Eastern Europe, who encounters an old college friend by surprise, and reminisces on their shared history at Cambridge, in particular the one woman they both had some sort of relationship with, the daughter of a powerful professor. Quite subtly the differences in this world are revealed – political relationships are evidently quite different to our world’s, and there is a war fought in part by greatly altered “flyers” – and this is related also to the sad way the relationship of these two men and the young woman they both, perhaps, loved worked out.

Locus, August 2009

Black Static’s version of “horror” probably fits my taste as well as any horror magazine. At the August/September issue I enjoyed Nina Allan’s atmospheric “My Brother’s Keeper”, which I suppose qualifies as horror in that it’s a ghost story. But ghost stories, to me, often don’t have a “horror” vibe, as in this case, in which Martin is confronted with a family secret on receiving a special gift from his Lesbian “aunts”, as his single mother tries to resist their well-meaning interference is his life – all this mediated by Martin’s dead brother’s commentary.

Locus, July 2010

Similarly, Nina Allan’s  “Flying in the Face of God” (Interzone, March-April), about a woman making a documentary about a woman undergoing radical bodily alterations to become a starship pilot seemed to be about the wrong person – I’d have liked to see more about the pilot, less about the filmmaker, though I have no doubt Allan told the story she wanted to tell. And not by any means a bad story, I should say.

Locus, November 2010

At the September-October Interzone I quite liked Nina Allan’s “The Upstairs Window”. It’s a cynically told piece, in which the narrator tells of a friend of his, an artist who has got in trouble with the government and who must flee. The narrator is a journalist, who cultivates a more detached attitude. Behind this somewhat simple outline hints of the background slowly come to light – this is some sort of repressive England (perhaps an alternate present?) – and the revelation of this background is what gives the story depth and interest. I thought it a slant approach to telling the story, and ultimately quite effective.

Locus, January 2011

A few small press anthologies have come my way. Eibonvale Press is devoted to “Horror, Magic Realism, Slipstream, and the Surreal”, and Blind Swimmer is an anthology of new stories by writers who have published with them. The general theme is “Creativity in Isolation”, and the stories are a generally nice lot. My favorites include “Bellony”, by Nina Allan (one of the more interesting new writers), about a reporter who comes to an English seaside resort to investigate a favorite author of hers, who had disappeared some years previously. She leases the writer’s old house, and learns some contradictory things – stories she hears, facts she learns, about the writer’s past life don’t seem to jibe. Nicely mysterious work, with an interesting character behind the character in the disappeared writer, who we never actually meet.

Locus, June 2011

The best piece in the March-April Interzone, however, is “The Silver Wind”, by Nina Allan. Martin is a real estate agent in a rather oppressive future, but he becomes fascinated with the idea of time travel and the potential involvement in that sort of thing of a dwarf clockmaker named Owen Andrews. But visiting Andrews is dangerous, as he’s somewhat persona non grata to the government. But Martin’s interest is personal – his wife has died – and his hope is to turn back time. What he finds from Owen Andrews is rather different, and it takes Martin to a quite different place. Martin’s personal story is in contrast to the back story, of a militaristic and racially fraught future – and the strange background of Andrews’ clock researches adds a third intriguing axis to a fine story from a continually improving writer.

Locus, October 2012

Black Static for July-August debuts a new, smaller, format for the magazine, one that I understand will be used for Interzone as well. (The fiction wordcount, as far as I can tell, will be roughly the same.) The standout this time comes from the remarkable Nina Allan. “Sunshine” is a vampire story, though avowedly “an undercover protest against vampire fiction”. The protagonist is a vampire, or in his term, a hirudin. He is in the nature of things a solitary individual, and a serial killer. The story, told in his voice, details his life and methods, and then the one human he ever cared for, a young woman, and how their relationship came about and in the end was resolved, in a shocking way that illuminates the idea of vampire as serial killer. A really effective, powerful, piece.

Locus, October 2016

There’s been a lot of good stuff recently at Tor.com. The best is “The Art of Space Travel”, by Nina Allan, a fine meditative story about Emily, who works at the hotel where the Martian astronauts are staying before they head out to space. The story isn’t about the astronauts, though, but about Emily, and about her mother, a scientist who has a sort of Alzheimer’s-like disease, perhaps because of contamination she encountered while investigating a plane crash, and about her mother’s involvement in preparation for a failed earlier Martian mission, and about Emily’s desire to learn who her father was. A good example of the effective – not just decorative – use of an SFnal background to tell a mundane story.

In Now We Are Ten ... Nina Allan’s “Ten Days” is also strong, about Dora, a lawyer and a death penalty opponent, who becomes fascinated with the story of Helen Bostall, who had been executed for the murder of her radical socialist husband in the 1920s. Dora is convinced she was innocent (which seems obvious enough). When she fortuitously finds a curious watch that turns out to be a time machine, she goes back to try to meet Helen Bostall and warn her of the danger she is in. But what can happen when you try to change the past? Allan’s story, though, isn’t really about the twists and dangers of time travel: it’s more interested in character, and in politics, and their intersection.

Locus, March 2017

Five Stories High is a collection of five novellas, all set in a spooky house called Irongrove Lodge. Each story is really independent – the house is similar in some ways from story to story but with different characteristics. The best story is the first and longest, “Maggots”, by Nina Allan. Willy is a boy from the North of England who becomes convinced that his Auntie Claire has been replaced by another creature who looks just like her. This ends up messing with his relationship with his first girlfriend, who is convinced he has Capgras Syndrome. Over the years, Willy hides his suspicions and quietly investigates cases of people who seem to have some of the same convictions he has, a path that leads him to a scary story of a man who wrote a book about how his sister had become a demon, and who ended up murdering her. These people had lived in Irongrove Lodge, and Willy finds his way there, and has a legitimately scary revelation about what has happened to him, and to his Aunt.

Locus, August 2017

In the June Clarkesworld Nina Allan, one of the most consistently interesting of contemporary SF writers, offers “Neptune’s Trident”. The world has changed radically since something called the clampdown, which seems to be result, at first, of some sort of invasion or attack. Caitlin is living in Scotland, struggling to keep her and her partner Steph going by gleaning useful items from what washes ashore; and hoping that by some miracle her brother, a submariner, has survived. Steph has a strange disease, a result of whatever has changed the world, that results in people becoming what are called “flukes”, and Caitlin is hiding her condition from an increasingly hostile society, represented here most directly by an itinerant preacher Caitlin encounters. Hints at the true nature of what’s happened slowly surface – perhaps a deep change in reality? This is interesting work, which seems to fit into a long tradition of morose English catastrophe SF, going back to John Christopher (All Flesh is Grass) and of course J. G. Ballard’s early novels.

Birthday Review: Threshold Shift, by Eric Brown

Today is Eric Brown's birthday -- he becomes another writer who just caught up with me in age again, at 59. For his birthday, I've reposted my review of his collection Threshold Shift, from the October 2006 Locus, and I've appended a couple more reviews of short work by him.

Threshold Shift, by Eric Brown (Golden Gryphon, 1-930846-43-6, $24.95, 218pp, hd) September 2006.

A review by Rich Horton

When considering single author collections, the “theme” is not so much the concern. Often, indeed, one wants the opposite: a representation of the writer’s range. Especially with an author’s first American collection. This book does a good job representing Eric Brown’s range: it depicts him doing what he does best very well. And what he does best is colorful, unabashedly story-centered, rather old-fashioned in settings and plots, but if old-fashioned on the outside still quite thought-provoking on the “inside”.

Brown has been a very prolific writer of short fiction over the past 20 years or so, but he is not very well-known in the U. S. The great bulk of his stories have appeared in British magazines: mainly Interzone, but also Spectrum SF, Postscripts, and others. (He was also a regular in the US magazine Science Fiction Age before its unfortunate death.) He has twice won the British Science Fiction Award. This fine collection will hopefully introduce him to a new set of readers: it is his first to appear in the US (he has had two earlier British collections).

I’ve long enjoyed the best of Brown’s stories, while finding him a bit uneven. Threshold Shift is a strong selection, featuring his two BSFA winners. One story, BSFA winner “Hunting the Slarque”, is from an extended series documenting the last years of the planet Tartarus, whose sun is about to go nova. I thought the series a bit repetitive, but selecting one story avoids that problem. “Hunting the Slarque” is Brown at his most, well, lurid, but still satisfying, about a Hunter hired to track down the two surviving legendary Slarque, creatures native to Tartarus, creatures who (along with some humans) wish to stay on Tartarus and perish with the planet.

Three stories come from a long series of stories, collectively my favorites among Brown’s work, concerning the alien Kéthani, and their gift to humanity: immortality. Brown’s usual concern with the stories is the ethics of immortality, as opposed to the Kéthani themselves. For example, “Thursday’s Child” very movingly considers a couple with opposing views: the husband is in favor of accepting the Kéthani offer, and indeed he works in “collection”: picking up the dead and sending them via Onward Station to the Kéthani planet for resurrection. But the wife is opposed, and she has resisted allowing their daughter to be implanted with the chip that allows resurrection. But then the daughter becomes ill … In “The Kéthani Inheritance”, it is the man of a couple (in this case a new couple) who resists implantation, partly because he’s not sure bad people should live forever. But his new lover doesn’t want to lose him, and when both lose their parents, their perspective is altered. The other Kéthani story is a bit different. “The Touch of Angels” is the only original in this book, a murder mystery which ends up giving us a bit more insight into Kéthani motives than previous stories. 

Other highlights include the other BSFA winner, “The Children of Winter”, a colorful romantic story of an alien planet with multiple races, including of course the mysterious humans; and a collaboration with Stephen Baxter, “The Spacetime Pit”, which reminded me of an old Algis Budrys story, “The War is Over”, as it told of a woman crashed on a primitive planet, and her long wait for the inhabitants to develop the capability to save her.

The rest of the collection is also entertaining. Eric Brown is a so far underappreciated writer – perhaps because he’s not really flashy and new, perhaps because his lesser works are sometimes disappointing. But he does what he does best very well, and work like that showcased here is very fun – and also thematically engaging.

From my summary of Spectrum SF for 2000

The two novellas published this year were "Destiny on Tartarus" by Eric Brown and "Great Wall of Mars" by Alastair Reynolds.  Both are colourful and exciting, well worth reading, but not quite Hugo material.  The Brown story is the first (in internal chronology) of his Tartarus stories, about the planet of a Sun which is about to go nova.  This story is set a century before the nova, so it's not about the impending nova like the other stories, which I think may be why I liked it the best of all the Tartarus stories.  (For one thing, it avoided repeating the same plot elements and thematic elements that several other stories had.)

Locus, July 2006

Cemetery Dance remains perhaps the most reliable source of well-written contemporary horror. In #54 I was taken with a clever story from Eric Brown, “The Man Who Never Read Novels”, in which a horror novelist meets a man on a train who confesses to not reading contemporary novels – for an interesting reason. Of course the writer is compelled to press his new manuscript on him … with amusingly mordant results.

A Lesser-Known Philip K. Dick Novel: Time Out of Joint

Time Out of Joint, by Philip K. Dick

a review by Rich Horton

No Philip K. Dick novel can be called "forgotten", but it seems to me that this novel has become less known than it deserves, because I think it's one of his best novels, and probably his very best novel prior to The Man in the High Castle. Here's what I wrote about it some time ago, a fairly brief look at the book..

One of Philip Dick's more noted early novels is Time Out of Joint, from 1959. This was originally published in hardcover by Lippincott -- perhaps Dick's first appearance between boards. Lippincott was at that time publishing the occasional SF book -- A Canticle for Leibowitz was another -- though carefully disguised. For instance, Time Out of Joint was not presented as SF, but as "A Novel of Menace".

The setting is what seems a first a slightly altered 1950s. The main character is Ragle Gumm, who makes his living solving a puzzle for a newspaper. Ragle lives with his sister and her husband. He carries on a somewhat unsatisfying affair with the rather immature wife of a not very pleasant neighbor. And he worries about his curious standing as the reigning puzzle-solving champion.

Slowly we realize that his world is somehow artificial. He (and his brother-in-law) uncover curious buried items, occasionally see strange things that seem to imply most everyone in the town is artificial, hear odd transmissions via crystal radio, and so on. One of the most symbolic findings is slips of paper with names of objects -- "the word is the thing", anyone? Most significant is when Ragle stumbles across newspapers and magazines from the future (1998 or so -- why is 40 years such a  common SF near future?)

The general outline of what's going on with Ragle and his family should be relatively clear -- I'll leave the specific solution and the motivations for readers to discover. The basic idea is, then, familiar enough -- redolent of Daniel Galouye's slightly later novel Simulacron-3, just to name one. What makes the book stand out is for one thing the way Dick uses the 50s setting to comment, as if from the future, on the 1950s (and to do so with an aspect of nostalgia that almost makes the book seem as if written in 1998), also the portrayal of the characters, and finally a certain charged feeling of strangeness -- very much a central feature of much of Dick's work -- that gives the idea of inhabiting an artificial world -- "word as thing" or "signifier as object" if you will -- real psychological immediacy.

Birthday Review: Short Fiction of Adam-Troy Castro

Today Adam-Troy Castro once again is as old as I am. Every October I inch ahead of him, but every May he catches up again -- I just can't shake him! Anyway, he's one of the SF's finest storytellers, and a writer intimately concerned with moral questions, always wrapped in story. He also has exceptional range, of both tone (he can be silly funny and sharply funny and tragic and coolly logical) and genre (he's arguably more at home with horror than anything else, but he also writes fantasy, and SF (sometimes hard SF), and YA fiction, and mysteries, and exceptional pop culture exegesis, and more. So here's a selection of my Locus reviews of his short work.

Locus, July 2002

Analog's yearly July/August double issue is out. Adam-Troy Castro's "Unseen Demons", a related story to his earlier Nebula nominee "The Funeral March of the Marionettes", is long and intriguing but also a bit frustrating. Andrea Cort has been brought to the planet Catarkhus to determine what to do with a human who has brutally dismembered several members of the indigenous species. The problem is, settled law demands that he be tried under the indigenes' laws, and nobody has been able to communicate with the Catarkhans.  This is a political issue because humans have a reputation for violence, and the other alien species on Catarkhus seem convinced that the humans are going to try to let the criminal get away unscathed.  The problem is further complicated by the Catarkhan nature: they are almost unaware of their surroundings, and indeed the victims may well not have even known they were being murdered.

So we have a setup for a nice Analog-style problem story, interesting enough though as usual the alien species seems a bit too specifically created to set up the problem.  The other interesting part of the story emerges slowly, and it involves Andrea Cort's personal history, which, too coincidentally for my taste, also involves brutal murder of aliens.  The solution was somewhat disappointing – basically, the central problem is pretty stupid, and the solution is common sense. Other aspects of the problem were solved nicely though – such as establishing at least a very rudimentary communication with the aliens.

From my review of Imaginings, Locus, October 2003

Two stories struck me as particularly good.  First, Adam-Troy Castro, a writer who is always a threat to do something really good. "Of a Sweet Slow Dance in the Wake of Temporary Dogs" seems to me among his best few stories.  A man escapes his boring job to an exotic and romantic destination, and once their meets a sexy and willing woman who only enhances his enjoyment. But there's a catch -- visitors must stay the full duration, and the tenth day is given over to horrible experiences of war and suffering.  Is it worth it?  This is a sort of "Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" variant, with a twist to be sure, and Castro does an excellent job portraying both the idyllic and horrific aspects of this experience, and of asking but not answering his central question.

Locus, April 2009

So far the two remaining monthly (or almost) magazines forge on. Analog’s April issue’s lead novella, Adam-Troy Castro’s “Gunfight on Farside”, is the “real story” of the only Lunar gun battle, reluctantly told by the aging survivor of that battle to a persistent … well, why she’s so persistent is a cute secret of the story. Analogies with Wyatt Earp suggest that the legend has outpaced the facts – except that the “real” facts turn out to be even stranger than the legend. To be sure, as readers of the linked story “Sunday Night Yams at Minnie and Earl’s” will remember, these “facts” are fantastical, despite Analog’s hard SF reputation.

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. Adam-Troy Castro’s “Arvies” has a truly striking central idea. Arvies are human bodies grown to be hosts for unborn humans in the far future, who live for centuries serially riding and wearing out host bodies. This story in particular focuses on one such “human” and her latest arvie, and her perverse decision to bear a child in this latest body. Castro tells the story quite straight-facedly, and the horror but plausibility of the central idea is thus well depicted. Full marks for that – alas, the very effectiveness of the dry depiction of the morals of that future also, to me, made the story a bit hard to like, as opposed to respect.

Locus, October 2012

Adam-Troy Castro's “My Wife Hates Time Travel” (Lightspeed, September) is very sweet, about a couple that learns that one or the other of them is fated to invent time travel, and the logical consequences of such an invention. Castro cleverly ramifies these consequences and paradoxes … and also makes the story a love letter to the wife of the title.

Locus, February 2014

The best stories at Lightspeed for January are very odd pieces. Adam-Troy Castro's “The Thing About Shapes to Come” is easily enough described – it's about a girl who gives birth to a cube, amid a rash of births of geometric figures – it's Castro's deadpan description of the child (called, of course, Di) and of the working out of the whole situation that makes the story strangely effective.

Locus, September 2016

Adam-Troy Castro’s “The Assassin’s Secret” (Lightspeed, August) is amusing as well, a slightly over the top tale of the world’s greatest assassin, who can kill with a stroke of his pen. Castro has a fair amount of fun describing his way of life, and his ways of death, but the center of the story is how the assassin deals with those who come asking for his services, and in particular the one secret he holds.

Locus, February 2018

One more issue from 2018, then a look at some of the later work from 2017. The January Lightspeed is full of fable-like pieces – even the SF, as Adam-Troy Castro’s “The Streets of Babel” is presented. It’s clever work, about a man living in the wilderness who is captured by a living city and made to endure the most dehumanizing aspects of city life for some months. Clever, as I said, with a distinct satirical point, though it didn’t quite sell me.

Locus, August 2017

Lightspeed for July includes a fine Chinese-flavored fable – or morality tale – from Alvaro Zinos-Amaro and Adam-Troy Castro (conspiring as ever to make me misplace the hyphens in one of their names!), “A Touch of Heart”. Dou Zhuo is a farmer whose land produces little, and he becomes envious of his more successful neighbor. Eventually he finds the means to hire an assassin of the notorious Black Touch, which endeavors to fulfill their contracts with the least possible effort. When Dou asks for his neighbor’s death, the assassin arranges to kill him, by removing one second from his life span. Dou is furious, but learns to make his requests more specific – and eventually learns what will satisfy him with the least effort expended.

Locus, January 2018

Adam-Troy Castro and Alvaro Zinos-Amaro give us another of their Chinese-flavored morality tales in the November 21st issue of Beneath Ceaseless Skies. “The Mouth of the Oyster” tells of a fortunate couple who fall victim to a terrible plague, that leaves the husband blind and his wife somewhat crippled. But their love is if anything intensified, and so is their commercial success. Then a magician offers his product – eyes that can restore sight to the husband – but only one facet of sight – he might ask for beauty, or the ability to see deceit, or anything he can think of. But will the effect of this special sight be an unmixed blessing?

Locus, March 2018

Analog opens 2018 with “Blurred Lives”, a novella from Adam-Troy Castro, the latest in his stories of Draiken, formerly an operative employed in a number of interstellar conflicts. He had retired to an out of the way planet, trying to avoid the attention of his former employers, but was unsuccessful. Here he and one of his former enemies, Thorne, are joined in hunting the “puppet masters” who directed their operations, and who thus forced them into complicity in what they now see as crimes. Thorne’s escape over time has been pure escape – into a sensory deprivation box, and she remains more likely to simply want to forget, while Draiken is driven by a desire for something like justice. This leads them to Liberty, a cylinder world whose inhabitants live luxurious lives, but who are subject to random selection for “disposal” at the behest of the rulers, one of whom is the man Draiken and Thorne seek. And they find him – ready to die – and he offers Draiken a deal: enter one of the – call them “prisons” -- and escape, and Draiken can have what he wants (freedom for all the prisoners). But if he doesn’t escape, he stays there forever. This is the occasion for one of Castro’s specialties – particularly inventive horrors that humans can inflict on others, and I’ll leave the nature of that to the reader to discover, but it’s horrifying and morally awful. There is also a nicely put dilemma at the resolution. Strong stuff, with perhaps a hint of over-constructedness to the setup – but that’s in service of a worthwhile moral.

Locus, October 2018

I also liked Adam-Troy Castro’s “The Unnecessary Parts of the Story”, which cleverly deconstructs an all too familiar scenario: the Spaceship with the Captain and the Professorial Type and the Hot Girl and the Forgettable Guy etc. etc. as they deal with a horrible alien plague in mostly very stupid ways. Point of view is everything in this story, and that leads us down a path to a not quite expected conclusion.

Locus, February 2019

In the January-February Analog there is also a novella from Adam-Troy Castro, the latest of his Draiken stories, “The Savannah Problem”. I was particularly struck by the structure here – the story seems all exposition, in a way, as Castro depicts Draiken’s pursuit, capture, and extraction of a gangster thug from a space station. All this is interesting – Castro is good at action and tactics – but it seems extended, as we wait and wait for his purpose in capturing this man. A risky tactic in a storyteller – but Castro pulls it off with a brilliant rapid thematically relevant conclusion.

Locus, March 2019

Speaking of “challenging”, the January/February F&SF, which is through and through a strong issue, has several stories that are borderline horror, with the horror turning on the question of personal responsibility. Adam-Troy Castro’s “Survey” is one of those stories told entirely in dialog, depicting a college student taking a survey, seemingly one of those psychology research projects, this one an “exploration of stress on the human animal”. The means of putting stress on the young woman in the story is quite horrifying (I leave it to the reader to learn it), and when it’s married with a certain ambiguous offer of a kind of power, the questions the story asks – about the nature of responsibility, I suppose – become even more queasy-making.

Answers: Science Fiction Planets

A couple of days ago I posted a quiz on the subject of Science Fiction Planets. I promised the answers, so here they are. (If you want to see the quiz first unspoiled, here it is.)


SPOILER SPACE

Quiz: Science Fiction Planets

1.  This image is based on a Star Wars prequel film, and portrays the capital city of the Empire, which is an "ecumenopolis," or planet-spanning city. Many people think that an inspiration for this city is the capitol city/planet of the Empire in Isaac Asimov's Foundation series. Name either planet/city. Click here .  

Coruscant, Trantor

2.  Pierre Boulle, author of Bridge on the River Kwai, also wrote a novel set on a planet of the star Betelgeuse, and it too spawned a successful movie (and eventually many more.) Name the first movie made from that book. (Note that the movie, unlike the novel, is revealed to be actually set on Earth in its famous final scene.)

Planet of the Apes

3.  Planets of this three-star system are understandably a common site for science fiction stories. Examples include Robert Silverberg's first book; the planet Rakhat in Mary Doria Russell's novel The Sparrow; as well as the planet Pandora in the movie Avatar. This star system was also the original destination of the Robinson family before they became Lost in Space (in the '60s TV series.) Name this star system.

Alpha Centauri

4.  This planet with a mysterious worldwide intelligence is featured in films by Andrei Tarkovsky and Stephen Soderbergh, based on a novel by a Polish science fiction writer. Name both the planet (which has a name recalling our sun) and the author (whose name might recall our moon, or at least our lunar exploration).

Solaris, Stanislaw Lem

5.  N. K. Jemisin made history when she won the Hugo Award for Best Novel three years running, for each volume of a trilogy. Most of the action is set on a continent called the Stillness. Per the title of the trilogy, on which planet is this continent located?

(Broken) Earth

6.  The late great Ursula Le Guin set much of her science fiction in a future sometimes called "Hainish". She won the Hugo and Nebula Awards for her novel The Left Hand of Darkness, set on the notably cold planet Gethen. What is the English name for that planet (supposedly also the translation of Gethen into English?) (That English nickname is also used in the title of a short story set on the planet.)

Winter

7.  Perhaps the most famous planet located outside our Solar System in TV is Vulcan. In which episode of Star Trek: The Original Series, written by Theodore Sturgeon, did Spock's undergoing pon farr force the Enterprise to return to Vulcan.

Amok Time

8.  Samuel R. Delany gave one of his novels the subtitle "an ambiguous heterotopia". The novel's protagonist, Bron Helstrom, lives on a moon of the planet Neptune, though he was born on Mars and visits Earth during the novel. Name either the original title of the novel or Delany's preferred title.

Triton, Trouble on Triton

9.  A long series of novels beginning with Dune,by Frank Herbert, centers around control of which planet(also sometimes called Dune), the source of the spice mélange, which among other things is used to help navigate starships. If you don't remember the novel, you may remember David Lynch's film, or the SyFy Channel miniseries. (And, reportedly, Denis Villeneuve is working on a pair of films based on Dune.)

Arrakis

10.  Cixin Liu (or Liu Cixin), was the first Chinese writer to win the Hugo Award for Best Novel, not to mention gaining fans including Barack Obama. The novel in question concerns invaders from the planet Trisolaris, so-called because its system has three suns. What is the title of the novel, in its English translation, based on the difficulties caused by the complex orbit of Trisolaris due to those three suns (and also representing a system in Newtonian mechanics that is not amenable to a closed-form solution?)

The Three-Body Problem

11.  In recent years a great many extrasolar planets have been detected by various means, and science fiction writers are beginning to use those planets in their novels. Allen Steele has written a long series of novels set on a (as yet undetected!) moon of one of those extrasolar planets, 47 Ursae Majoris b. The planet is called Bear (for obvious reasons) – what is the trickier name of the moon which Steele's characters colonize?

Coyote

12.  While more famous for the Chronicles of Narnia, C.S. Lewis also wrote a trilogy about a man named Elwin Ransom, with books set primarily on Malacandra, Perelandra, and Thulcandra (the Silent Planet.) Give the usual English names for these planets (in the above order.) 

Mars, Venus, Earth

13. The planet Mesklin is noted for its unusual shape, which leads to a very strange gravity gradient. The novels set there were written by a high school science teacher named Harry Stubbs, who used this name as a pseudonym.

Hal Clement

14. On which planet is the title structure of Kim Stanley Robinson’s first novel, Icehenge, found? (Well, at least it was a planet when the book was published!)

Pluto

15. Leigh Brackett wrote a number of stories and novels about this recurring character. Though he is most associated with Mars, his adventures also took him to Venus, and out of the Solar System to the planet Skaith, and he was actually born on Mercury. His last name might suggest the nature of the landscapes of, at least, Mars and Mercury. Who was this character?

Eric John Stark

Old Besteller: The Rose and the Ring, by William Makepeace Thackeray

Old Besteller: The Rose and the Ring, by William Makepeace Thackeray

a review by Rich Horton

I've previously written about Thackeray, in the context of his great novel Henry Esmond -- in my opinion one of the very best novels of the 19th Century. This time around I'm covering something much lighter -- the last of several "Christmas books" he wrote under the name M. A. Titmarsh, and generally the best regarded of those. These were more in the vein of entertainments appropriate for reading at the Christmas season than, necessarily, books that directly concerned Christmas. At any rate, I'll begin with the biographical snippet I wrote before.

William Makepeace Thackeray was born in India in 1811 -- his father was a secretary for the British East India company. William came to England in 1815 after his father's death. He was educated at Charterhouse School and at Cambridge, but did not take a degree. He spent the next several years more or less wasting his time -- some travel, some apparently desultory studies of law and art, failed attempts at starting two newspapers. His family had money, but Thackeray lost some of it by his own efforts and more after a couple of Indian banks failed. So upon his marriage in 1836 he had to support his family, and he turned to writing. He wrote for various magazines (Fraser's and Punch among them), doing reviews, satirical sketches, and some travel writing. He published a couple of novels (Catherine and Barry Lyndon) before becoming famous with the publication of Vanity Fair in 1848. He and his wife had three daughter. One died in infancy. The eldest, Anna Isabella, became a well known novelist in her own right. The youngest married the famous critic Leslie Stephen. After the birth of their third child, Thackeray's wife succumbed to depression, and eventually had to be committed to an asylum. Thackeray died quite young, in 1863. (Indeed his wife, still mentally ill, outlived him by over 30 years.)

The Rose and the Ring is the last of his "Christmas novels", published at Christmas, 1854. (The previous set, totalling five, I believe, dated to the 1840s.) It's a very short novel, something less than 40,000 words by my estimate. It's copiously illustrated, by Thackeray himself. My copy is the Wordsworth Classics edition.

It's a wholly satirical story, concerning the countries Paflagonia and Crim Tartary. The two countries have been at war often, but now are expecting a marriage between Angelica, the only daughter of the King of Paflagonia, and Bulbo, the son of the King of Crim Tartary. The complication is that both Kings are recent usurpers. In Paflagonia, the new King took over when his nephew Giglio was only an infant; while in Crim Tartary Duke Padella rebelled against the rightful (but not very good) King, and the toddler Princess Rosalba was thrown into the woods and eaten by lions. All this, it turns out, was the doing of the Fairy Blackstick, who, in the way of fairies, was offended by the royal families. But, we are told, Blackstick, who has noticed how bad all these royal people turn out, has decided that a bit of misfortune in the lives of the young children will be good for them.

So you can see what's going on -- the Princess Rosalba was not actually eaten by lions, but managed to wander into Paflagonia, where she became the much put upon maid to Princess Angelica. As for Prince Giglio, he has grown up, still rather spoiled, in the Palace, with the expectation of marrying his cousin and becoming King in the end anyway. But now that Angelica will marry Bulbo, his hopes are dashed. Which, in reality, after a bunch of events, means he'll notice the virtuous maid (now called Betsinda) of Angelica ...

The plot is driven to a great extent by more mischief from the Fairy Blackstick, in the form of a rose and a ring, each of which renders the bearer attractive to all who see them. Those work well enough that when Angelica and Bulbo have them, they are happy to be engaged to each other ... but as the objects move on to other people, complications ensue.

But no more about the plot. Suffice it to say that all works out well at the end (except for the people who end up killed!) But in the mean time there are amusing issues such as the King's Butler being turned into a doorknob, and his unpleasant wife, now the Countess Gruffanuff (Thackeray has lots of fun with names -- there's also a General Hedzoff) plots to marry Giglio. And Betsinda/Rosalba is thrust out of the palace again. Giglio himself end up in exile. There are orders to execute Giglio and (by mistake) Bulbo as well. And in the end inevitably war.

So, a fairly conventional fairy tale plot. The pleasure -- and there's a good deal of pleasure -- is in Thackeray's exaggeratedly satirical view of everything. The writing is very funny throughout. I noted the fun with names, but also the characters are depicted with a nasty joy. Certainly the pretensions of aristocracy are mocked, and indeed the foolishness of almost everyone. But it's mostly somewhat gentle under the surface (the story is nominally for children, after all). The drawings -- also by Thackeray as I note, are fun as well. This is a slight book, of course, but a fun one.

Quiz: Science Fiction Planets

Recently I wrote a quiz for a trivia site I am a member of. The subject was Science Fiction Planets. I prepared 15 questions -- only the first 12 were used, but I'll add the other three at the end. If anyone wants to email me their guesses at the answers (no cheating please!) I'll try to compile a list of who got the most right. (I expect a fair amount of 15s, actually!), and I'll publish the answers in a day or two. (email: rrhorton@prodigy.net)

Thanks to Steven Silver, by the way, who helped with some of the questions.

1.  This image is based on a Star Wars prequel film, and portrays the capital city of the Empire, which is an "ecumenopolis," or planet-spanning city. Many people think that an inspiration for this city is the capitol city/planet of the Empire in Isaac Asimov's Foundation series. Name either planet/city. Click here

2.  Pierre Boulle, author of Bridge on the River Kwai, also wrote a novel set on a planet of the star Betelgeuse, and it too spawned a successful movie (and eventually many more.) Name the first movie made from that book. (Note that the movie, unlike the novel, is revealed to be actually set on Earth in its famous final scene.)

3.  Planets of this three-star system are understandably a common site for science fiction stories. Examples include Robert Silverberg's first book; the planet Rakhat in Mary Doria Russell's novel The Sparrow; as well as the planet Pandora in the movie Avatar. This star system was also the original destination of the Robinson family before they became Lost in Space (in the '60s TV series.) Name this star system.

4.  This planet with a mysterious worldwide intelligence is featured in films by Andrei Tarkovsky and Stephen Soderbergh, based on a novel by a Polish science fiction writer. Name both the planet (which has a name recalling our sun) and the author (whose name might recall our moon, or at least our lunar exploration).

5.  N. K. Jemisin made history when she won the Hugo Award for Best Novel three years running, for each volume of a trilogy. Most of the action is set on a continent called the Stillness. Per the title of the trilogy, on which planet is this continent located?

6.  The late great Ursula Le Guin set much of her science fiction in a future sometimes called "Hainish". She won the Hugo and Nebula Awards for her novel The Left Hand of Darkness, set on the notably cold planet Gethen. What is the English name for that planet (supposedly also the translation of Gethen into English?) (That English nickname is also used in the title of a short story set on the planet.)

7.  Perhaps the most famous planet located outside our Solar System in TV is Vulcan. In which episode of Star Trek: The Original Series, written by Theodore Sturgeon, did Spock's undergoing pon farr force the Enterprise to return to Vulcan.

8.  Samuel R. Delany gave one of his novels the subtitle "an ambiguous heterotopia". The novel's protagonist, Bron Helstrom, lives on a moon of the planet Neptune, though he was born on Mars and visits Earth during the novel. Name either the original title of the novel or Delany's preferred title.

9.  A long series of novels beginning with Dune,by Frank Herbert, centers around control of which planet(also sometimes called Dune), the source of the spice mélange, which among other things is used to help navigate starships. If you don't remember the novel, you may remember David Lynch's film, or the SyFy Channel miniseries. (And, reportedly, Denis Villeneuve is working on a pair of films based on Dune.)

10.  Cixin Liu (or Liu Cixin), was the first Chinese writer to win the Hugo Award for Best Novel, not to mention gaining fans including Barack Obama. The novel in question concerns invaders from the planet Trisolaris, so-called because its system has three suns. What is the title of the novel, in its English translation, based on the difficulties caused by the complex orbit of Trisolaris due to those three suns (and also representing a system in Newtonian mechanics that is not amenable to a closed-form solution?)

11.  In recent years a great many extrasolar planets have been detected by various means, and science fiction writers are beginning to use those planets in their novels. Allen Steele has written a long series of novels set on a (as yet undetected!) moon of one of those extrasolar planets, 47 Ursae Majoris b. The planet is called Bear (for obvious reasons) – what is the trickier name of the moon which Steele's characters colonize?

12.  While more famous for the Chronicles of Narnia, C.S. Lewis also wrote a trilogy about a man named Elwin Ransom, with books set primarily on Malacandra, Perelandra, and Thulcandra (the Silent Planet.) Give the usual English names for these planets (in the above order.) 

13. The planet Mesklin is noted for its unusual shape, which leads to a very strange gravity gradient. The novels set there were written by a high school science teacher named Harry Stubbs, who used this name as a pseudonym.

14. On which planet is the title structure of Kim Stanley Robinson’s first novel, Icehenge, found? (Well, at least it was a planet when the book was published!)

15. Leigh Brackett wrote a number of stories and novels about this recurring character. Though he is most associated with Mars, his adventures also took him to Venus, and out of the Solar System to the planet Skaith, and he was actually born on Mercury. His last name might suggest the nature of the landscapes of, at least, Mars and Mercury. Who was this character?

Birthday Review: Four Zelazny Capsules

Roger Zelazny would have been 82 today, but, dammit, he died way too young in 1995. I loved his short fiction but I haven't written a lot about it, so instead I've taken four rather short bits, capsules, really, that I did of four of his novels, for my SFF Net newsgroup a while ago, and in once case for  Black Gate retro-review of an issue of Galaxy.

I also reviewed Lord of Light for SF Site some time ago: Lord of Light review.

This Immortal

(cover by Gray Morrow)

Having just reread Roger Zelazny's Lord of Light, I decided to go ahead and reread his other award-winning novel, This Immortal.  The serial version of This Immortal, "... and Call Me Conrad", won the 1966 novel Hugo, in a tie with Dune.  I have the Ace first edition paperback of This Immortal. The book version, at about 58,000 words, is perhaps 8,000 words longer than the serial, but I've compared the two, and the changes are a mix of some excisions, and some expansions, and some phrasing changes. Incidentally, the copy on my Ace edition states that the book version, due to its changes, was still eligible for a Hugo, and they suggest it might win two Hugos in a row. (Of course, it didn't, and wasn't even nominated, but, interestingly, the actual winner, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, had been nominated the previous year on the basis of its (technically not yet finished) serialization.)

This Immortal is a good read, with plenty of Zelaznyesque brio. But it's not as good as Lord of Light (many, I should note, disagree,) and actually, it seems a bit, well, slight.  The ending is a distinct anti-climax.  It's still a book you ought to read, mind you, but it's just real good, not great. The storyline concerns Conrad Nomikos, one of about 4 million people still living on Earth centuries in the future, after a Nuclear war, and after the bulk of the population has gone to the stars to work for the advanced, civilized, Vegans.  Conrad and some of his friends had years before been involved in the "Returnist" movement, urging people to return to Earth, and resisting the Vegans' moves to buy up the best Earth real estate.  Nowadays, the situation is a stalemate, with Earth's exile population preferring not to return, but with the Vegans' not buying any more of Earth either.  But Cort Mishtigo, a high status Vegan, has come to Earth to tour some of the ancient sites.  Conrad, who seems to have some mysterious past identities that go back a long way, is recruited to guide Mishtigo, and to protect him from assassins.  He is in danger because the more radical Returnists believe that his "tour" is a pretext for evaluating more real estate, in advance of a renewed Vegan buying campaign.  Conrad is unsure of Cort's motives, and anyway unhappy with the idea of murder. The novel consists, then, of Cort's tour, and a number of well-done battles between Conrad and a variety of monsters and mutants.  The fight scenes, and the descriptions of the mutants (based on Greek mythology), are really good.  It's only the eventual revelation of the Vegan motives that's a bit pat and anti-climatic.

Damnation Alley

(This review is actually of the original 31,000 word novells, which appeared in the October 1967 Galaxy.)

(Cover by Jack Gaughan)

“Damnation Alley” is of course a pretty famous story, especially so after it became a novel (in 1969) and a film (in 1977). The film is by all accounts only loosely based on the novel, and Zelazny is said to have disliked it. I had, I confess, never read the novel or novella, nor seen the film. Barry Malzberg is quoted in Wikipedia as calling the novel “a mechanical, simply transposed action-adventure story written, in my view, at the bottom of the man’s talent” – a judgement with which I am inclined to agree. It’s set in a rather ’50s-ish postapocalyptic world. Hell Tanner is a criminal living in the nation of California. He is offered a pardon in exchange for taking some medicine across the former US to Boston.

This passage is called “Damnation Alley,” and it is full of bandits, radioactive craters, storms, giant gila monsters, bats, snakes, and other menaces. Tanner starts out in a convoy of three tank-like vehicles, and over time the other drivers are killed, including Tanner’s unwilling partner. He picks up a girl (from a motorcycle gang), and seems to slowly gain something of a conscience. None of this is surprising, and much is silly, especially the square-cube law violating monsters. That said, Zelazny could write action well, and there are bits that work nicely, even some lyrical bits. It is what it is – reasonably well done but not particularly original action-adventure. The problem is, I expect a lot more from Zelazny.

Creatures of Light and Darkness

(Cover by James Starrett)

One of the Roger Zelazny novels I had never read was Creatures of Light and Darkness, from 1969.  I've had a copy for a while, and I finally got around to it.  It's a rather strange story, based, as far as I can tell, on Egyptian mythology, though set, again, as far as I can tell, in the far future in space.  A man is awakened by Anubis, and sent on a mission to find and kill the Prince Who Was a Thousand, in order to restore Anubis and Osiris to power over the Midworlds.  The story rather obliquely follows this man, called Wakim, and Thoth, who has been given the same mission by Osiris, and the magicians Vramin and Madrak, and various other Eqyptian gods.  A battle rages across many worlds, and backward and forward in time. The gods betray each other, and the reader's loyalties to the characters are forced to switch quite a bit.

I have to admit, it didn't work for me at all.  I don't know enough Egyptian mythology to follow any of the stories, if they are actually based on such stories.  Much seemed deliberately obscure.  The SFnal bits are profoundly unconvincing, and the characters are given powers which seem to be very arbitrary, and just what is needed at any given time.  Of course it is well written, in Zelazny's trademark mode -- elevating contemporary language, complete with slang, to an epic/poetic level -- that's all well enough done, and there are some nice ideas, but overall it was a mess, and rather boring. Zelazny was certainly one of the greats, but for me, at any rate, this is a disappointment, nothing to compare with Lord of Light or This Immortal or the best short stories.

Doorways in the Sand

(Cover by Ron Walotsky)

My rereading project isn't really meant to focus exclusively on Roger Zelazny, or even primarily, but Doorways in the Sand was a favorite of mine since I read it in the Analog serialization in 1976.  On this reread it was pretty much as good as I remembered.  Fred Cassidy is a permanent student, partly because he likes learning, partly because he continues to draw from his rich Uncle's trust fund as long as he is in college.  Meantime various advisors scheme to get him to graduate, while Fred, an acrophiliac, climbs all over the roofs of the college town.  But all of a sudden he has a lot more to worry about.  Various beings seem convinced he knows the whereabouts of the alien "starstone", a cultural artifact given to Earth in exchange for the British Crown Jewels and the Mona Lisa, and the maintenance of which in good condition is essential to Earth's nascent status in Galactic civilization. These folks memorably include some alien cops who like to dress up as marsupials. Follows a lot of action, all well done if sometimes a bit implausible, and a decent resolution involving a not absurd view of our place in the universe, etc. etc.  It's not a great novel, but it's really great fun.

Birthday Review: Stories of Alter S. Reiss

It's Alter S. Reiss's birthday today. He's only been publishing fiction since 2010, but I've known him much longer (online, that is) -- he was one of my favorite regular posters in the glory days of the usenet newsgroup rec.arts.sf.written. We have met in person, at a few different conventions. I was very pleased to see him start publishing, and even more pleased to find his work so good. Here is a collection of my reviews of him from Locus.

Locus, January 2011

Another online magazine, Abyss and Apex, introduces Alter S. Reiss in its Fourth Quarter 2010 issue. Reiss’s first published story is a nice one: “Rumor of Wings”, about a mysterious woman trying to find a very important – to her – bracelet. It’s a milieu of shape changers, like gull people – and like the protagonist, whose true form we learn only at the end.

Locus, May 2011

Daily Science Fiction is a website that opened late last year. They publish a new story each weekday. Not surprisingly, many of these stories are very short, and the quality is uneven. But they do publish the occasional longer story (usually on Friday), and some nice stuff. Perhaps my favorite from the site to date is “Memory Bugs”, by Alter S. Reiss (2/8), about a man who uses a new technology to record memories of his times with his lover, and seems to lose the distinction between reveling in memory and creating new memories.

Locus, November 2012

Somewhat belatedly I got to the May issue of Australia's Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine. Two stories stood out for me. Alter S. Reiss, who has been consistently good with his first few published stories over the last little while, offers “Server Issues”, which is at its most basic level a story about an expert helping track down some stolen servers. A bit dry, eh – but the bite comes from a key background deal: crowd sourced bounties on people, such that someone who gets a lot of people a little bit angry might attract a big enough bonus for his murder to get in real trouble. The story neatly fills us in on the consequences and some of the details of such a system.

Locus, January 2013

In December, Strange Horizons features another good story from Alter S. Reiss, who has impressed me with both the quality and the variety of his stories this past year or two. “America Thief” is a gangster story, with characters including Bugsy Siegel and Arnold Rothstein. The narrator is a small-time hood who is also a magician, and the son of a rabbi. He is pressured by Rothstein to investigate a local boy who seems to be turning lead into gold – a job that ends up stressing his shaky morals, his belief in truth, his care for his girlfriend, and his concern for his community – a well-told and original story.

Locus, November 2015

The third novella, Sunset Mantle (Tor.com), is from a much less prominent writer, Alter S. Reiss. It comes from Tor's new series of novellas, available electronically and in paperback. Cete is a veteran soldier, unjustly dismissed from his previous service, wandering and looking for work in a place called Reach Antach, when he comes across a lovely mantle, and the intriguing blind woman, Marelle, who wove it. Against his better judgment he decides to stay and join the local army, at unattractive terms, for a chance to commission another piece from Marelle. He soon realizes the political situation is more tangled than he had realized, and is forced again to an unjust punishment, only to seek redemption in attempting to saving the Reach at impossible odds. It can't be denied that the story hits some only too familiar notes, but it does so effectively. It bears comparison, in a way, with the work of K. J. Parker – set in a non-magical fantastic world, dealing with war and politics in a medieval technology world – but with none of the cynicism. The pleasures are real, if quite different to those in Parker.

Locus, June 2016

In Beneath Ceaseless Skies I found a couple of nice if not quite brilliant stories from newish writers whom I’ve been following with interest. Alter S. Reiss’s “Sea of Dreams” (3/31) follows a deposed Emperor, Ierois, who has been exiled to an island in the Sea of Dreams. He is joined, decades later, by a boy, exiled for similar political reasons (the Empire appears to have Game of Thrones-style politics). But the boy has ambitions of returning – and he is convinced that what he finds washing up from the sea will aid him, not understanding, as Ierois has learned, that what the Sea offers are only dreams, illusions. A nice conceit – and Reiss moves the story in a slightly unexpected direction.

Birthday Review: The Ghost Brigades and The Lost Colony, by John Scalzi

Today is John Scalzi's birthday -- he reaches his half century. He doesn't write a ton of short fiction, so I've not reviewed him all that much in Locus. But I did write about the second and third volumes of his Old Man's War trilogy at my blog back when they appeared, so I figured I'd resurrect those reviews now, in his honor.

I also reviewed The Collapsing Empire here, last year as part of my series of Hugo nominee reviews.

The Ghost Brigades, by John Scalzi

a review by Rich Horton

John Scalzi won last year's Campbell Award for Best New Writer, and his first novel with a major publisher, Old Man's War, was on the Hugo ballot. That novel told of human colonies in a hostile galaxy, whose army consists of old people who have agreed to serve in the military in exchange for a new body. The backstory of that novel hinted at a complex political situation involving the many alien races the humans share the galaxy with. His 2006 novel, The Ghost Brigades, addresses that situation a bit more.

The title refers to the Special Forces branch of the Colonial Defense Forces. These are particularly enhanced soldiers, cloned from soldiers who didn't survive the period between agreeing to serve in the CDF and getting transferred to their new body. They have special abilities, most particularly a quasi-telepathic link with other members of their unit. But they are for the most part secret. In Old Man's War we met one Ghost Brigade soldier, Jane Sagan. (These soldiers are given names derived from famous scientists.)

In this novel a plot is uncovered: three alien races, the Rraey, the Obin, and the Enesha, have agreed to unite against humanity. And one human, Charles Boutin, a brilliant scientist, has turned traitor after the death of his daughter. Boutin's expertise is consciousness transfer. The CDF have a copy of his consciousness, and they transfer it into a clone of his body, hoping to find out what made Boutin go bad. But the transfer doesn't take (at first), and the clone, called Jared Dirac, becomes a regular Special Forces member.

He joins Jane Sagan's unit, and eventually participates in key actions, such as a mission against the Eneshans, in which his unit commits atrocities in order to convince the Eneshans to abandon their alliance against humans. This stress begins to recall his Boutin memories, and he is set on a path leading inevitably to the real Charles Boutin, and to some wrenching revelations about galactic politics, and about human interactions with aliens.

It is once again a lot of fun. There are weaknesses -- some excessive implausibilities in the plot most particularly. And I am not entirely convinced by the characterization of the Special Forces members (though Scalzi does try ...). But it's pretty good overall, and I did like the increased moral complexity of this future as described here. Not a great novel, but a nice fun novel with a bit of a deeper side. There are some nice ideas, some good thinking about such things as the importance of consciousness, and plenty of sharp and funny writing.

The Last Colony, by John Scalzi

a review by Rich Horton

The Last Colony is a nominee for the Hugo this year. It's John Scalzi's third book in his Old Man's War series -- and he intends it to close the series, and indeed it does finish the narrative arc well, answering the questions raised in the earlier books and coming to an satisfying and surprising conclusion. [I should note that he eventually added three more novels in this milieu.] And it's pretty enjoyable, though I wouldn't say it's worthy of the Hugo.

As the story opens, John Perry and Jane Sagan, now married and returned to normal human bodies, are living on a quiet colonial world, as local ombudsman and police chief respectively. But they get an offer from the Colonial Defense Forces and the Colonial Union -- to lead a new colony, an experimental colony. Unlike previous colonies, with colonists recruited entirely from Earth's poorer countries, this one will be composed of people from 10 well established human colony planets. This seems likely to be a political mess, dealing with 10 different groups with different goals. Not to mention the potential dangers on the planet (which turn out to include an unexpected intelligent species). But ... that's hardly even the least of Perry and Sagan's problems.

Revealing any of the twists -- and there are several -- might be unfair, so I won't. But Scalzi is concerned with helping to show us the real place of humanity in this very hostile universe, the real motivations of the Colonial Union (humanity's space based government), and a potential (however slim) for something like peace between the various alien species. Given the starting point, the ending point of the book is hard to see -- and to be honest I think the plot developments, while interesting and clever, are a bit farfetched. (Suffice it to say that Scalzi manages to make the extermination of humanity the most likely future.)

Anyway, it's a fun book, and a pretty thoughtful one, though there's a bit of deck stacking going on here and there. It's certainly not a humanity uber alles book. I thought the characterization a bit thin -- most everyone talks just about the same. And though Jane is a major character and is present almost throughout the book, somehow she almost doesn't seem to be there, and her relationship with John, that I thought worked well in the other books, comes off as almost an afterthought. Bottom line: good, not great, but quite well done in the sense of fairly resolving the series.

Birthday Review: Stories of Geoff Ryman

Today is Geoff Ryman's 68th birthday. He's a consistently provocative and original writer, with tremendous range. Here's a selection of my reviews of his work, for Locus and one taken from my year end Recommended Reading post, from before I was reviewing for the magazine.

2001 Recommended Reading

Three novelettes from F&SF really impressed me.  Geoff Ryman, in "Have Not Have" (April) shows us a woman in a remote Chinese village using her knowledge, her connections, and the villagers' lack of knowledge to forge a living for herself as a sort of "fashion expert". She is presented almost cynically, but we come to feel great sympathy for her. Then the idea of a universal net connection (via direct brain interface) is broached -- obviously this will completely change things for Mae in particular, and the rest of the village too. No answers are offered -- just the picture of one woman, a good if compromised woman, at the hub of a change she may not survive. This is a very fine, very quiet, effective story.

Locus, September 2003

Interzone for April leads with a strong story from Geoff Ryman, "Birth Days". The hero is a gay man born just prior to the development of a genetic screening test for homosexuality. As a result he is part of the last generation, it seems, in which gays will be a normal percentage of the population. He becomes a scientist, and one of his projects is a drug which will "cure" homosexuality even in adults. But this seems a betrayal, and he next works on something quite different -- a means by which men can bear children, without even a female ovum. Ryman takes the implication of this tech to the extreme (beyond where I could believe it, actually). But throughout it raises worthwhile questions -- even if one might disagree with the in-story answers. (For instance, it seems to imply that homosexuality is "justified" once it becomes possible for gays to bear children -- I shouldn't think that necessary!)

Locus, October 2006

The gem in the October-November F&SF is Geoff Ryman’s “Pol Pot’s Beautiful Daughter (Fantasy)”, set in very near future Cambodia. A young woman grows up isolated, and very rich: she is Pol Pot’s beautiful daughter, but she is obstinately naïve about her father’s legacy. She finally meets an interesting young man, who jumps to just the wrong conclusion about her mysterious past. She must come to terms with this man’s expectations, and with the expectations of the myriad tortured ghosts her father left behind. From an unexpected angle, the story manages to convincingly portray Cambodia, and to bring tears in its evocation of plight of Cambodia’s ghosts.

Locus, August 2008

Geoff Ryman and others stirred up a fair bit of controversy a couple of years ago with the so-called “Mundane Manifesto”, calling for a fairly rigorous sort of SF: eschewing implausible and perhaps tired tropes such as FTL and time travel, and insisting on fully imagined futures, not just the present writ large (or writ small with just a single change). Looked at that way – as a positive effort for a rededication to a certain SFnal discipline – it was a very promising effort. Looked at more negatively, as a rejection of SF that didn’t fit what the promulgators weren’t currently interested in (on grounds that seemed at times stridently moralistic), it was, as I said, controversial. That more carping tone seems to have been abandoned (was abandoned fairly early, I think), and what remains of the Mundane Manifesto is quite interesting, as shown in the June Interzone, a special issue guest-edited by Ryman, Julian Todd, and Trent Walters.

Perhaps the best story, not entirely surprisingly, is from Ryman himself. “Talk is Cheap” is set in a seemingly fairly near future, but a quite significantly changed one. The narrator is a Walker: he spends his days on his feet, gathering information about the environment. People seem to have always-on links to a future net, mediated by something they call a Turing. The narrator makes contact with someone else, named Jinny, a Doctor, and he is very interested in her, for all the old reasons. A couple of days pass, as we are introduced to other aspects of this future social system – such as the categorization of people by their social needs: the narrator, for example, is a Dog. And too we see just the beginnings a potential relationship. It’s dense throughout, always new – just what Ryman calls for in his introduction.

Locus, February 2009

The new Tor.com site is rounding very nicely into form. Two recent outstanding stories are “A Water Matter” by Jay Lake and “The Film-makers of Mars” by Geoff Ryman. ... Ryman’s story is clever fun, built around the discovery of very early, shockingly realistic, films of Burroughs’s Mars books, as a film buff tries to understand how such things could be – before encountering the even stranger truth.

Locus, October 2009

This is F&SF’s big double issue (October-November), and there’s a lot here. ... Geoff Ryman, in “Blocked”, mixes several odd ingredients intriguingly: a Cambodian casino manager trying to become a man while alien invaders drive humanity to some sort of virtual existence.

Locus, October 2011

The September-October F&SF has a very strong story from Geoff Ryman, “What We Found”. It’s set in Nigeria in the near future, and tells of a young man growing up with a more brilliant (it seems) brother and an abusive father and a beaten-down mother. In parallel threads we learn that he has become a noted biologist. His younger life goes from bad to worse, as his father loses his government job and his brother loses his mind – but his adult self is discovering links between genetics and nurture that he finds terrifying. This is a story with a real if modest scientific background that motivates a moving examination of character (in that way a bit like an earlier 2011 F&SF story, Carter Scholz’s “Signs of Life”).

Locus, November 2013

Two other stories excited me in the September-October F&SF. Geoff Ryman's “Rosary and Goldenstar” is a curious alternate look at a young Shakespeare and two of his best known minor characters, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern from Hamlet. It's subtle, and beautifully written – able to stand without shame with the greatest of all Rosencrantz and Guildenstern retellings, Tom Stoppard's tour-de-force Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead. Here, Shakespeare is staying with Thomas Digges, who welcomes visitors from Denmark, and along with John Dee they discuss Tycho Brahe, Copernican astronomy, heresy, politics, even sexuality (in a hidden way) – a striking piece.

Locus, March 2016

Stories for Chip is a festschrift celebrating 2015 SFWA Grand Master Samuel R. Delany, one of the greatest SF writers of all time. It’s a suitably diverse mix of SF and fantasy, non-fiction and fiction, women and men, queer and straight, numerous nationalities, and writers from within and without the field. My favorite story is “Capitalism in the 22nd Century; or, A.I.r”, by Geoff Ryman, which tells of two sisters from Brazil, and a plan to escape on a starship … but more centrally, it’s about the two sisters’ relationship, and about their interactions with the A. I.s that, perhaps, rule this future world. Tremendously intelligent SF.

Locus, January 2019

Geoff Ryman's "This Constant Narrowing" (F&SF, October-November) is headed by a content warning, and the story does manage to be legitimately challenging, legitimately discomfiting. The narrator is an Hispanic man from Southern California, and the story opens with him being shot, then "rescued" by another man, and we realize that this is a world, reminiscent of Philip Wylie's The Disappearance, in which all the women are gone, and some men shoot others to claim them for sexual services. We learn more about his life, before the women disappeared, and his earlier friendship with a black cop. But things keep "narrowing" -- the black men gone, and Asians, and so on... There's a message here, or perhaps there's just a plea to think about the way we seem to be treating "others" -- from all sides. Ryman is consistently able to provoke thought about subjects we sometimes avoid.