Birthday Review: Red Thunder (and some short stories), by John Varley

Today is John Varley's birthday. He's 73! I'm not sure people who weren't reading SF in the mid-70s realize what a phenomenom he was. His first sale (or maybe not, as we'll see below!) appeared in the very first issue of F&SF I ever saw (and bought), the August 1974 issue. He was THE GUY we looked for in the magazine from that time throughout the '70s. 

I haven't written a whole lot about his short fiction, because it mostly appeared long before I was writing. So I've assembled just a couple of pieces about his stories, and a blog post I wrote about one of his enjoyable later novels.

Red Thunder, by John Varley

a review by Rich Horton

John Varley's latest novel is Red Thunder. Varley is well-known as a writer much influenced by Heinlein, and this book pretty openly advertises its influence. To begin with the basic plot echoes slightly that of Heinlein's first juvenile, Rocket Ship Galileo. In the Heinlein book, a couple of teenagers, with the help of a knowledgeable older man, build a spaceship and travel to the Moon. In Red Thunder, four teenagers, with the help of a knowledgeable older man (an ex-astronaut), built a spaceship and travel to Mars. Also, Varley adds in a couple of very direct RAH references by way of character names: the main character is named Manny Garcia, and another major character is named Jubal. Basically, the book is good fun, propelled (pun intended) by a thoroughly implausible scientific advance but otherwise at least in the range of plausibility, with a heartfelt and not too overt message about responsibility and power at its core. 

One night Manny and his best friend Dak, and their girlfriends Kelly and Alicia, having just witnessed the latest Venture Star launch, run over a drunk man on a Florida beach. The Venture Star is a shuttle successor, and this latest launch would be boring and routine except that the passengers are the astronauts on NASA's Mars mission. (The book was obviously finished before February 1, 2003, and thus in mentioning the potential dangers of space travel Challenger is brought up a few times, but never Columbia -- one of the pitfalls of writing SF!) Manny and Dak are space nuts, and their girlfriends tolerate this. Manny and Dak are also trying to work their way through college on the Internet, handicapped by their relative poverty and the debased public school system. It turns out that the man they run over is Travis Broussard, an ex-astronaut who was quietly pushed out of NASA a few years previously. And Travis's ex-wife is one of the Mars astronauts.

They strike up a friendship with Travis (who is uninjured by the mishap, thanks to the sand he was laying in), and soon they meet his strange cousin Jubal. Jubal is mentally damaged by his father's abuse, but he is extremely intelligent in his odd way. And Manny stumbles across an invention of Jubal's, the potential of which Jubal doesn't recognize, but Travis does -- it offers the possibility of a spacedrive that can maintain 1g acceleration for approximately forever. One thing leads to another, and the kids hatch an idea for building a spaceship, powered by Jubal's drive, that can get to Mars fast enough to beat not only the American mission but the Chinese mission that is slightly ahead of the Americans. All becomes more urgent when Jubal figures out that the American spaceship has a flaw, which could lead to a disaster -- and only a spaceship like the one they propose to build could possibly rescue anyone. But there are problems, such as convincing the kids' parents to let them go ...

Well, as I said -- good fun. The characters are engaging and involving, though there is a bit of convenience in the way all the good guys are good in just the right ways. I'd say it was a perfectly appropriate YA book -- though there is a fair amount of sex (premarital and without bad consequences -- I suppose some people would object). The central SFnal McGuffin, Jubal's drive, is totally unbelievable, but why quibble? The other SFnal element, the technical and logistical details of building the rest of the spaceship, are, I suspect, a bit stretched, but Varley tries hard to make that stuff work, and it mostly does.

Vertex, August 1974

Reading this issue of Vertex, I find that "Picnic on Nearside", which appeared in the first issue of F&SF I ever bought, only TIED (more or less) for the honor of being Varley's first published story. I had never even heard of "Scoreboard" before. With good reason, it turns out. I don't think the story has ever been reprinted. It is set on Ceres, during a protracted and wasteful war between two companies. It's not terribly interesting, and worse, it turns on a gimmick rather blatantly borrowed (perhaps not intentionally) from Ben Bova and Myron R. Lewis's much more economical story "Men of Good Will". "Picnic on Nearside" isn't a masterpiece, but it's enjoyable, and it's an Eight Worlds story -- as such a good introduction to Varley. "Scoreboard" is a downright weak story, and not set in any of Varley's futures -- as such not a good introduction to Varley. So perhaps it's just as well that it seems to be forgotten.

Locus, June 2003

"The Bellman" (Asimov's, June) is set on a colonized Luna. A serial killer is targeting lonely pregnant women. Anna Louise Bach is one of a number of pregnant policewomen who volunteer to be "bait". Naturally, she's the one who attracts the Bellman's attention. The resulting chase sequence is truly exciting, though other aspects such as the Bellman's motives didn't quite convince me.

Review of Fourth Planet From the Sun

John Varley's "In the Hall of the Martian Kings" brilliantly represents the 70s – what writer could be more a 70s SF writer than Varley? This story stands outside his more familiar series. It's about an expedition marooned on Mars, and the unexpected means they find to survive. Much 70s SF, in retrospect, reads like an attempt to recast 50s tropes for a new audience, and Varley's story certainly fits, with its plucky survivors and optimistic science miracles – with such details as a female expedition leader, and lots of sex, marking it as a product of the 70s.

Stories with Titles Taken from Kubla Khan

Stories with Titles Taken from "Kubla Khan"

Many years ago on Usenet I put together (with help from other denizens of the great newsgroup rec.arts.sf.written) a list of stories which take their titles from Samuel Taylor Coleridge's poem "Kubla Khan". I believe this may be the poem (or, at least, relatively short poem) which has inspired the titles of more SF stories than any other. That list was on my old home page for a while, but has not been anywhere but on my hard drive since the demise of my old host, SFF.net. So I've decided to resurrect it here, just for fun. I've added a few new stories.

The list doesn't include a couple of ambiguous cases -- stories called "Demon Lover", for instance, nor one called "Floating Hair". It does include a couple instances where the story's title isn't a direct quote from the poem, but is clearly directly inspired by the poem. Also, the Raymond F. Jones story listed gets its title from Coleridge's preface to the poem discussing its origin, and why it's not "complete" (N.B.: I think it's plenty "complete", and that the Person from Porlock perhaps did us all a favor!) There are four based on "Down to a Sunless Sea", three called "Ancestral Voices", and two each called "In Xanadu" and "The Milk of Paradise". Doubtless there are some I have missed.

I've read several of these, and those I've read I've bolded.

Chris Amies, "Down to a Sunless Sea", 1994

Ray Bradbury, "A Miracle of Rare Device", 1962

Marion Zimmer Bradley, "Measureless to Man", 1962, Probably better known as "The Dark Intruder".

Thomas M. Disch, "In Xanadu", 2001, A fine story with chapter headings also derived from the poem.

Gardner Dozois and Michael Swanwick, "Ancestral Voices", 1998

Malcolm Ferguson, "A Damsel with a Dulcimer", 1948

Sarah Frost, "Her Symphony and Song", 2014

R. Garcia y Robertson, "Into a Sunless Sea", 1994

Theodora Goss, "Singing of Mount Abora", 2008, World Fantasy Award winner and a wonderful story

David Graham, Down to a Sunless Sea, 1981

Rivka Jacobs, "The Milk of Paradise", 1994

Raymond F. Jones, "The Person From Porlock", 1947

Kari Maaren, Weave a Circle Round, 2017

Syne Mitchell, "Stately's Pleasure Dome", 2003

Kris Neville (writing as Henderson Starke), "As Holy and Enchanted", 1953

Kevin O'Donnell, Jr., "In Xanadu", 1976

Nat Schachner, "Ancestral Voices", 1933

S. M. Stirling, "Ancestral Voices", 1994

Cordwainer Smith, "Down to a Sunless Sea", 1975, This story was completed by Paul Linebarger's wife Genevieve Linebarger.

Brad Strickland, "Beneath a Waning Moon", 1993

Melanie Tem, "Woman Wailing" (poem), 2004

James Tiptree, Jr., "The Milk of Paradise", 1972, A great story, my favorite of this list

Stewart von Allmen, "He on Honeydew", 1995,

Birthday Review: Stories of Marissa Lingen

I'm a bit late again, but here's a Birthday Review for Marissa Lingen, a number of my reviews of her stories -- work I've liked consistently from her earliest publications, and which seems to have gotten stronger and stronger in recent years.

Locus, February 2005

The Canadian magazine Challenging Destiny has gone to electronic publication, through Fictionwise. I can't but regret this (though I can certainly understand the economic rationale). The words of the stories are the same though! The latest issue, #19 (December 2004) is a pretty strong one. Marissa K. Lingen's "Anna's Implants" has an intriguing idea. The colonists on Anna's planet have what seem to be personality constructs of great artists implanted during their teen years. The idea is to foster creativity – but sometimes it leads to madness. And – does it really help truly original art? Anna seems to be a very promising young artist – and her sister begs her not to take the implant. But Anna has a different idea.

Locus, September 2010

I saw a sequence of lush, fascinating, stories at Beneath Ceaseless Skies in July. “The Six Skills of Madame Lumiere”, by Marissa Lingen, is told by one of Madame Lumiere’s protégés, who worked for her in her whorehouse. Naturally, it was more than a whorehouse, and Madame Lumiere had more skills than just as a Madame. In this story a young man comes asking for help for his cousin, a woman with a special talent that has brought the interest of the cruel Rust Lords. The story involves a convincing journey through Faery, an intriguing talent, different villains, and a set of interesting women lead characters – all mixed delightfully.

Locus, January 2011

In Analog’s January/February Double Issue I enjoyed Marissa Lingen’s “Some of Them Closer”, a nicely quiet piece about a woman returning to Earth after decades helping terraform a new colony planet. Between the travel time (plus time dilation) and time spent on the new planet, she is completely out of touch with the people of Earth, but she had also not felt at home on the new planet. Where can she feel at home? And with whom? The answers are familiar, but the story does a fine job getting us there, and a fine job portraying the main character.

Locus, May 2014

In On Spec for Winter 2013/2104 I particularly liked “The Young Necromancer's Guide to Re-Capitation”, by Marissa Lingen and Alec Austin, which is just lots of fun, concerning a boy who collects minions in the form of re-animated fantastical creatures, here trying to recover the stolen head of his latest minion, a dragon.

Locus, March 2015

Marissa Lingen's “Blue Ribbon”, in the March Analog, is a very enjoyable and moving and rather Heinleinesque YA short set in the Oort Cloud. Tereza Pinheiro and her sister have just won a spaceship race but find themselves barred from returning to the station where their parents are: it is in quarantine. The race is sponsored by their 4H club, and there are a lot of other children in spaceships, all of course with no place to go. The problem is how to survive until help can come, how to keep their spirits up (knowing their parents are possibly very sick), and how to deal with sickness if it strikes any of them. This is well and honestly handled … in in the pure Heinlein manner, we also get a glimpse of an intriguing future space-based society. Good stuff.

Locus, July 2018

Analog’s May-June issue includes several intriguing short stories. Marissa Lingen’s “Finding Their Footing” is about a woman and her two children who have divorced their family in the Oort after her husband’s death, and who are moving to Triton to look for a new position, hoping to stop at Callisto to witness a cryovolcano eruption on the way. This is one of several stories Lingen has published about a future society in the Outer System, and they are collectively fascinating in their details about the structure and dynamics of that society. This piece is quiet, a minor work perhaps, but quite enjoyable, and I hope to see many more stories (or a novel) in this milieu.

Locus, August 2018

The purest SF story in the July-August Analog is “Left to Take the Lead”, by Marissa Lingen, another in her extended sequence of pieces set in a heavily populated Solar System. Holly is a woman from the Oort, forced into an indenture after a catastrophe (the subject of an earlier story) cost her family their home. She is working on a farm near Edmonton, with a good Earth family, and a fellow indenture who becomes a friend. The story turns on the struggles of the rest of her family to make enough money to get everyone together again, and Holly’s struggles to adapt to Earth life. (Plus there’s a bit about hockey (Martian hockey), because Marissa Lingen!) This is solid work in what is becoming a really impressive series dealing with very interesting ideas about the social and economic order of this Solar System.

Locus, March 2019

I also liked Marissa Lingen’s “The Thing, With Feathers” (Uncanny, January-February), which is set in a weirdly post-apocalyptic world – a magical apocalypse. Val is a lighthouse keeper on a lake, once a sort of magical doctor, struggling to maintain belief in a possible future. A man comes to her place by the lake, a stranger, asking for her help. The story, quiet, understated, really portrays the blossoming of something that might be friendship, and, maybe, a bit of, well – the thing with feathers.

Locus, December 2019

In the November-December Analog Marissa Lingen contributes a strong well grounded story, “Filaments of Hope”, about Lif, who has been planning to go to Mars as long as they’ve been able to, and who is left at loose ends when the mission in canceled. So they visit relatives in Iceland, and they find, perhaps, that what they’ve learned about adapting to Mars still has meaning on this ever-changing, ever-challenging, world. It’s a quiet story, with no bombshells: just solid and believable characters.

Birthday Review: Stories of Mercurio D. Rivera

Today is the birthday of Mercurio D. Rivera. He's been publishing short fiction since 2005, always interesting, and increasing in power, I think. At least, his Asimov's story from this year is very impressive. Here's a collection of my reviews of his work from Locus.

Locus, September 2006

“Longing for Langalana”, by Mercurio D. Rivera (Interzone, June), is a sad story of humans colonizing a planet in partnership with an alien species, the Wergen. The aliens have a couple of intriguing features: on marriage they are physically connected, growing ever closer over years. And they are obsessively attracted to humans. But the colonization of Langalana runs into problems (due to a cleverly depicted native species) – and in parallel the relationship of humans and the Wergen deteriorates. This is movingly portrayed by the relationship of the story’s narrator, a Wergen female, with the human boy she meets and is inevitably drawn to as an adolescent.

Locus, April 2008

The first 2008 issue of Abyss and Apex is a good one. Two particularly sharp-edged pieces work best: Mercurio D. Rivera’s “Snatch Me Another” deals with the implications of a technology that can “snatch” conjugate items from parallel universes, and the effect on one mother and her partner, as we slowly realize that they have “snatched” a replacement for their dead child.

Locus, July 2010

I also quite liked Mercurio D. Rivera’s “Dance of the Kawkawroons” (Interzone, March-April), about a couple of rapacious humans coming to the planet of the alien Kawkawroons to try to retrieve an egg with some precious properties. Still, though I enjoyed it, I thought its focus slightly off – the aliens fascinated me, and I’d have liked to learn more.

Locus, October 2011

Mercurio D. Rivera’s stories about the Wergen, an advanced alien race bound by chemistry to obsessively bond to humans, have been consistently interesting, and “For Love’s Delirium Haunts the Fractured Mind” is a particularly strong piece, from the July-August Interzone. Joriander is a Wergen serving a human family on Mars, as something of a guardian/pet for a young boy. He loves this role, but we see, over the length of the story, by observing the way his “owners” act, and by confrontations with his brother, how degrading it is. In the end, one is reminded of Lee’s feelings, that slavery is worse for the owner worse than the slave – and reminded as well that bad as it is, especially morally, for the owner, it really is actually worse for the slave. Even when they are conditioned to love it.

Locus, June 2012

June sees the Asimov's debuts of three newish writers who have been doing strong work for other magazines. None is quite the author's best work, but all three are enjoyable stories. And Mercurio D. Rivera, an Interzone regular, offers “Missionaries”, which has plenty of intriguing elements but doesn't quite close the deal, telling of a religious group coming to try to speak to aliens on a distant planet.

Locus, April 2020

The March-April Asimov’s features Mercurio D. Rivera’s “Beyond the Tattered Veil of Stars”, an impressive story in the lineage of Theodore Sturgeon’s “Microcosmic God”. It’s told in two threads – one follows a series of entries from the chronicles of an alien race, as they deal with a series of catastrophes; and the other is told by a journalist involved with an old friend of his, who has created something remarkable: a virtual simulation of an alternate world; in which she subjects her simulated creatures to horrible crises, in the hope that their ingenuity will create something she can use in our Earth to deal with our problems. The story deals effectively with the ethical issues this raises – and the ethical issues surrounding the journalist’s motives – and also with the reactions of the simulated creatures, leading to a striking and dark (if ambiguously hopeful, but for who?) conclusion.

Belated Birthday Review: Stories of Leah Cypess

Leah Cypess had a birthday recently, and I prepared this set of reviews of her work I've done for Locus, but life intervened, and I didn't get around to posting it. So -- finally! Happy Birthday, late! I like how these reviews, to me, show a writer, though always interesting, growing and growing.

Locus, September 2013

I wanted to like Leah Cypess' “What We Ourselves Are Not” (Asimov's, September) more than I did, because its central idea is interesting – an implant that gives people access to real memories of people of their culture, with the idea that this will help preserve diverse cultures. Alas, the main characters (two teenagers) don't convince, and the story is given to somewhat loaded arguments for both sides of the (worthwhile) question considered.

Locus, August 2016

Leah Cypess’ “Filtered” (Asimov's, July) concerns a journalist struggling with getting a story he thinks important noticed in a world where online filters tailor what everyone sees so much that nobody sees anything that will challenged their preconceptions. It’s further complicated because his wife is also his boss – and their ambitions, and their slightly different focus, might threaten their marriage.

Locus, June 2017

From the May-June Asimov's, “On the Ship” is another impressive and thoughtful idea piece from Leah Cypess. The narrator is a child on a spaceship searching for a new home planet. (A perhaps too explicit analogy is made with the horrible treatment of the Jewish refugees on the St. Louis before World War II.) Life on the ship seems fairly happy, and every time a new planet is reached there is a party while it is tested. But the narrator soon realizes that something strange is happening, especially when a mysterious woman keeps showing up unexpectedly. The secret isn’t much of a surprise to SF readers, but it’s used and resolved effectively here.

Locus, July 2017

Leah Cypess contributes “Neko Brushes” (F&SF, May-June), an effective retelling of a Japanese folktale about a boy who can paint things so well they come to life – mostly cats, but eventually a magic sword in service to a woman in revolt against the Emperor.

Locus, August 2018

And, finally, don’t miss “Attachment Unavailable” by Leah Cypess (Asimov's, July-August), a short and sharply funny story told as a comment thread from a social media group of new parents, discussing the offer of some aliens to help their babies sleep better.

Locus, April 2019

Leah Cypess, in “Parenting License” (Analog, March-April), takes on the notion that prospective parents might need training before insurance companies will pay for the costs of pregnancy, childbirth, and child rearing. Melanie, thus, is panicked when she turns up pregnant by accident before she and her husband have had gotten their Parenting License. At first blush it seems poised to be a satirical take on the issue, but instead it too looks quite soberly at the problem.

Locus, May 2020

What matters most? Plot? Character? Prose? Something else? The answer is all of the above, I think, and more importantly, each reinforces the other, ideally. These thoughts are prompted by an exceptional novelet in the May-June F&SF, “Stepsister”, by Leah Cypess. At first look, this is as cleverly constructed a plot as I’ve seen in some time. It’s a Cinderella retelling, from the point of view not of a stepsister, but of the Prince’s stepbrother. He’s absolutely loyal to his Prince (now King), partly, to be sure, because any sign of the bastard son of the former King being less than loyal would mean his life. But now the King wants him to fetch Queen Ella’s stepsister from the refuge the King allowed her when Ella insisted her sisters and mother be killed. There’s a tangled mesh of personal issues to deal with – Ella’s hate for her sister is justified: she really was an abuser; however the King had fallen for her just enough to save her life; and the stepbrother – had completely fallen for her. But what now? Does the King want a new Queen, as Ella has proved barren? Has Ella discovered she is still alive, and does she want her killed? What will the stepbrother do? Does the stepsister even have a voice in this?

All these snarled threads are just beautifully resolved. And we realize, that much as this expertly constructed plot snaps shut perfectly, we’ve seen a story of character wonderfully resolved as well – the beautiful plot wouldn’t work if we didn’t believe in the motivations – in the love! – of each of the characters. Even the character we don’t know about until the end. Excellent!

Revised Review: The Other Nineteenth Century, by Avram Davidson

The Other Nineteenth Century, by Avram Davidson

a review by Rich Horton

A little while ago, for Avram Davidson's birthday, I posted a "review" I had done of this book for my blog, almost two decades ago. It was a carelessly tossed-off piece, arguably OK for a blog post (though still wrongheaded as I have found!), but I never should have reposted it.

I got some criticism, gentle and very fair. And I thought, "Rereading Avram Davidson is never a bad thing! Why not reread the book!" And so I have.

To begin with -- stupid things I said in that first review -- for one thing, I complained that not all the stories are really set in the 19th Century. To which the simple answer is, "So what!". In fact, most at least touch on the 19th Century, and those that don't are either from a bit earlier, or at least have a certain redolence of that time about them. (Indeed, if you choose to end the 19th Century not with the calendar's demarcation but instead the beginning of World War I, as some do, just as some end the '50s with Kennedy's assassination, a couple further stories come in, including one which explicitly is placed right at that event.) Second: I bitched about "Mickelrede", a rather strange piece that Michael Swanwick put together from notes Davidson had left for an abandoned novel. On rereading that piece, I wonder what the heck I was thinking when I read it the first time.

Anyway, to the burden of my new review. The Other Nineteenth Century was the third Davidson collection in four years to come from St. Martins or Tor, after The Avram Davidson Treasury and The Investigations of Avram Davidson, so in a sense it was picking through leftovers, especially as all three books mostly skirted his two acclaimed short story series, the Eszterhazy and Limekiller stories. (This book does include a later and rather short Eszterhazy piece, and one story that appeared in the Treasury.) But the richness of Davidson's catalogue is thus revealed -- even with that constraint, and with the thematic constraint of choosing pieces that at least vaguely suggest the 19th Century, the book is worthwhile throughout, and includes a few pieces that stand among his very best stories.

For example, "Dragon Skin Drum", which I prefer to his slightly better known story of post-War China, "Dagon". "Dragon Skin Drum" is told from the viewpoint of an earnest and naive soldier, who visits a restaurant in the Forbidden City in the company of his more rough-edged friend, Gunnery Sergeant Jackson. Howard tries out his knowledge of Chinese, and tries to understand the local guides/interpreters he must hire, and puts up with Jackson's crudeness, and hears the story of the title drum ... and we learn a bit about these two characters (Jackson not surprisingly the savvier), and about this particular time, right as Mao is marching.

Also, "The Montavarde Camera", a really effective biter bit piece about a man who buys a camera from one of those mysterious little shops you can never find again. The camera has a sinister background -- people whose pictures are taken tend to die soon. And the man has a nagging wife ... We see where this is going, and it gets there just right.

Certainly among the best of Davidson's late stories is "El Vilvoy de las Islas". Many have noticed that his style grew more mannered, more prolix, late in his life. Sometimes this habit was taken to excess, but sometimes it worked, as here. The narrator seems to be the author himself, on a trip through South America. Feeling too tired to continue, he stops in a country called Ereguay, and eventually hears the story of "El Vilvoy" -- a young man from the Islas Encantadas, who, visiting the mainland, saves a woman from an attack, and becomes a sensation for a while. It eventuates that he and his family, on a nearly deserted small isle, live a simple life ... but there are mysteries. And so Davidson wanders through various newspaper accounts, oral stories, and so on, letting us piece together the story of the "Wild Boy".

"What Strange Stars and Skies" has been a favorite of mine for a long time -- telling of a Dame Philippa, who does charity work in the slums of London, and when ministering to the poor near a sailor's house, encounters a very curious press gang. The last line is wonderful.

I first encountered "The Man Who Saw the Elephant" in this book, and it delighted and moved me -- it's about a Quaker couple, the wife hardworking and only just tolerant of her husband's dreams ... one of which is to see the elephant that a traveling showman advertises. In the end, the husband does get to see ... well, if not an elephant something quite wonderful anyway, it seems to me.

I don't perhaps have time to discuss every story. Many turn on portraying a reasonably well known historical incident, or set of characters, from a slant -- and letting the reader figure out what's really going on. Davidson also delights in Alternate History, such as "O Brave Old World!", about the radically different history of America had Frederick of Hanover survived and moved to the Colonies; or "Pebble in Time" (with Cynthia Goldstone) in which a Mormon travels back in time to witness Brigham Young reaching the Salt Lake and unexpectedly changes history, leading to a different 1960s in San Francisco (though concluding with a labored pun that doesn't land as easily now as it might have when first published.) The stories are a mix of historical fiction, mystery, and SF/F, from a very wide range of sources. The editors and a couple more people contribute short afterwords, rather a mixed bag -- some add intriguing detail (including, in one case, Davidson's editorial interaction with Robert P. Mills), others, alas, rather clumsily step on the subtle point Davidson is reaching for.

Finally I need to address a quite odd posthumous collaboration that closes the book, "Mickelrede", put together by Michael Swanwick from a set of notes that Davidson left for an unfinished novel begun in the early '60s. In my previous review, I was very dismissive of the story, which I really failed to understand. Honestly, I'm ashamed, because actually it's not that difficult to follow. It helps somewhat to get the context right -- now I can see that the notes really do look like they might plausibly have become a novel very much in the mode Davidson was using for his earliest short novels, such as Masters of the Maze. The novel involves a contemporary academic thrust into another world (possibly the future) to serve in some sort of combat games, and also to deal with the Green King and the holy Mickelrede, a sacred object that seems to be a slide rule. There is a woman involved, of course, and Swanwick advances some alternate plot points, such as changing the slide rule to a Difference Engine, and the woman to Ada Lovelace. Davidson's novels, at this point in his career, were not his best work, and I can imagine well enough the novel which might have resulted, which would have been enjoyable but not great (sort of a better written Ken Bulmer, for those who remember Bulmer) -- the possibility of a later true collaboration between Swanwick and Davidson, incorporating Swanwick's ideas, is intriguing but likely would not have been the best use of either authors talents -- though who knows? The prose in this fragment seems more Swanwick than Davidson, but that's hardly a complaint, and there certainly are hints of Davidson as well.

Very Belated Birthday Review: Stories of Kris Neville

Here's a very belated birthday review for Kris Neville, born May 9, 1925. I wanted to write about him, but I had only reviewed three or four of his stories, so I dug up a few more and read them ...

Kris Neville (1925-1980) had one of the interesting disappointing careers in the field. He was a native of Carthage, MO, home of Belle Starr and the great baseball pitcher Carl Hubbell and the far from great (indeed criminal) Missouri Attorney General William Webster, but NOT related to "North Carthage", the fictional town where Gillian Flynn's bestseller Gone Girl is set. (Carthage is near Joplin, entirely across the state from the Mississippi, on which North Carthage is said to sit.)) Thus Neville is the second Missourian in a row I've covered. He lived most of his adult life in California, and began publishing short fiction in 1949, and quickly made an impact, most notably with "Bettyann" (1951), but also "Hunt the Hunter" (1951) and "The Toy" (1952) among others. He also published perhaps a half-dozen novels, the last of which, Run, the Spearmaker, has only been published in Japan, except for an excerpt in the Riverside Quarterly. (It was co-written with his wife Lil, as were other late stories.) The novels were mostly expansions or fixups of earlier stories, and made little impact.

There is little question that he could have had a significant career. Why didn't he? Barry Malzberg, who collaborated with him on two stories and carried on an extensive correspondence, says that this was partly due to frustrated ambition -- the field, perhaps most of all its editors, were not ready to publish work of the ambition he desired. Another reason could be that he had a very good job, a technical writer and an expert on epoxies, which he seems to have liked and in which he was highly respected. Sometimes we readers forget that much as we want to see promising writers keep at it, there are other, equally rewarding, careers, and it's not our call what a given person chooses to do with their life. (I think of P. J. Plauger sometimes in this context.)

Astounding, March 1951

"Casting Office", by "Henderson Starke" (Kris Neville) is set just where it says -- in a casting office. The Actors seem pretty upset with the latest play, and the Critics are hammering it. The Author is peeved. It doesn't take long to figure out what's really going on, and what the "play" really is. Campbell calls it a fantasy, kind of by way of apology to Astounding's readers. There are some cute bits, but it goes on a bit long, and the central twist idea is so clear from the start that I think the story spends too much time acting like the reader can't guess.

Galaxy, June 1951

"Hunt the Hunter" is set on a distant planet where the leader of the human race (I assume) is hunting the mysterious "farn beast". He has roped in as guides two businessmen who have apparently previously visited the planet and bagged a farn beast. Meanwhile, an alien force is supposed to be nosing around the planet. The main viewpoint characters are the two businessmen, who make their resentment of the leader clear -- and who feel even worse when the leader decides to use one of them as bait. The bulk is the story is fairly familiar cynical comedy about bad and worse people variously bumbling around and mistreating each other ... and then the ending, quite literally, springs a little trap. Nice story, not a classic but solid work.

Avon Science Fiction and Fantasy Reader, April 1953

"As Holy and Enchanted" is another story Kris Neville wrote under the name "Henderson Starke". A lonely, ordinary, man name Nick likes to walk in the part on Sundays, representing a more peaceful and natural break from his usual life in the city and work in a shop (perhaps a machine shop?) One Sunday at a fountain he happens across lovely girl name Mona, who seems enchanted by him, and they spend the day together, eating at restaurants and such. Nick falls for her immediately, and she seems intrigued by him -- but the reader, of course, knows right away what sort of creature (or spirit) she is, so the ending is never in doubt. A nicely done bittersweet piece.

(This story appears, of course, on my list of stories with titles taken from "Kubla Khan".)

Imagination, January 1954

(Cover by W. E. Terry)

The cover story (illustrated rather garishly by W. E. Terry) is "Peril of the Starmen", by Kris Neville. Earth is visited by aliens, and we (the readers) learn immediately that their plan is to blow up the planet. (Apparently they subscribe to the logic that I think I saw stated in Charles Pellegrino and George Zebrowski's The Killing Star -- once a species is capable of space flight they are a potential danger, so the smart thing to do is destroy them first.) Of course, the aliens' message is one of peace. One of the aliens, however, begins to have doubts. Set against the aliens' plans is conflict in the US government. Some are eager to welcome the aliens, but another faction, led by a Senator from Missouri who might be described in contemporary terms as "Trumpian", wants nothing to do with the aliens. In essence, they are right, but for totally wrong reasons. The premise is intriguing, but the story goes on a bit too long, mostly turning on an implausible love story between the doubtful alien and the Senator's sister.



9 Tales of Space and Time, 1954

(Cover by W. Thut)

"Overture" is the direct sequel to "Bettyann". (The two stories were combined, presumably with additional material, into a novel in 1970, and another story, "Bettyann's Children", written with Lil Neville, appeared in 1973.) (Obviously, spoilers for "Bettyann" follow.) The story opens with Bettyann, having left the ship in which her alien relatives were planning to take her away, using her shapechanging ability to fly back to her true home, in Southwest Missouri. She must now come to terms with her newly revealed alien abilities, and somehow explain to her parents why she suddenly left Smith College. She becomes obsessed with the idea of making a difference -- perhaps by using her powers to heal people, and she also begins to fall for the much older local doctor. Not much else really happens -- a couple of minor health crises, her young love, her relationship with her adoptive parents -- but the story is very nicely told, sweet, well-written.

Galaxy, October 1968

Kris Neville's "Thyre Planet" is a bit more serious, if not entirely so. The story has two foci, and I'm not sure they work together. On the one hand it's a fairly broad satire of the executive personality, almost Dilbertian in spots, as Mr. Bellflower, a very well-trained expert executive, is hired by Thyre planet to solve the reliability problem with their transport booths, which were left by the natives of Thyre, who have all disappeared. So Bellflower's strategies are shown, which proved to be more based on establishing a power base and keeping the money flowing than actually solving the problem. Thus, a solution to the problem is the worst thing that could happen -- despite the fact that thousands of people a year are lost in the transport booths. The other focus is of course the problem -- and its solution, which is fairly clever, if, I think easily guessable. I liked both aspects of the story, but they seem to sit a little uneasily together.

F&SF, December 1970

"The Reality Machine", by Kris Neville, is a brief, dark, satire that follows an advisor to the President as he tries to brief him on the progress of the title machine, which we eventually learn, really is altering reality. The story seems darkly prescient in presenting an advisor who despite some apparent competence defers entirely to his worthless President; and a President who is happy to deny reality. How did Neville know?

Universe 3, 1974

Kris Neville's "Survival Problems" is, somewhat like "The Reality Machine", a dark satire on American politics. It mainly follows a successful scientist at a Mortuary institute, an expert in preserving people after their death, who wins a lottery to get life extension (at the cost of slowing one's brain processes so they become very stupid.) But first he must deal with crises at his job ... and then it becomes necessary to preserve the President himself ... the story runs on long enough to make the mordant points it wants to make, without really developing a plot -- which is OK, I suppose, because Neville doesn what he wants in its space.

Birthday Review: Stories of Robert Moore Williams

(Cover by Jeff Jones)

Robert Moore Williams was born in Farmington, MO, in 1907. He began publishing SF in 1934, made a mild splash with the 1938 story "Robots Return", and continued publishing fairly regularly into the 1970s. He was possibly best known for a number of Tarzan-like knockoffs, first the Jongor series from the pulps in the '40s and '50s, reprinted in 1970 or so when there was something of a Burroughs revival, and also the Zanthar series, from the late '60s. (These two series featured covers by perhaps the most significant Sword and Sorcery artists of that era -- Jeff Jones for Zanthar, and Frank Frazetta for Jongor.) His late short fiction (that is, that from the 1960s) was all for Frederik Pohl at If -- he was one of several writers from Pohl's youth that he lured back to publish short fiction for his magazines in the '60s.

I found his stories rather ordinary, but generally professionally done. Here are looks at a few stories of his I have read in some older SF magazines.



I have also reviewed a couple of his Ace Doubles here.

The Star Wasps

King of the Fourth Planet


Super Science Stories, May 1950

"The Soul Makers" by Robert Moore Williams is one of two stories dealing with Nuclear War. (If you ever see an SF magazine from the early 50s without a Nuclear War story, you can bet it's a fake.) In this case the Americans are fighting the East Bloc, with the help of newly invented robots. The robots are acting erratically however -- and it turns out they have realized that the fallout from the bombs has already doomed humanity, and they are planning for the future.

Thrilling Wonder Stories, April 1951

Robert Moore Williams' "The Void Beyond" posits that space travel is so painful that only young men -- no women, and no one over 30 -- can survive it. Eric Gaunt is a veteran captain, 28 or so, who is disgusted when a woman tries to come aboard, having bought her ticket legally with her ambiguous name, Frances Marion. So then the woman stows away ... and when they catch her she insists that the problem is in their head and if they just exhibit will power they'll be able to tolerate space, just like she will. The ending is a mild twist. Generally a pretty silly idea and execution, with a predictable romance tacked on.

Imaginative Tales, July 1957

As for Robert Moore Williams' "The Red Rash Deaths", it's about a policeman investigating a mysterious plague -- a terribly contagious red rash has caused dozens of hundreds of deaths. He tracks down a strange man who seems associated with the deaths ... and a deus ex machina (or ex futura) solves his predicament.

Super Science Stories, May 1958

Robert Moore Williams (name given as "Robert M. Williams" on the TOC, but the full name shown on the story page) contributes "I Want to Go Home" (3500 words), about a troubled boy who has spent his whole life obsessed with the idea that he is out of place in our world, and he wants to go home. He eventually infects the police psychiatrist assigned to his case with the same concern. A minor story, but Williams does come to an unexpected conclusion.

If, October 1965

"Short Trip to Nowhere", by Robert Moore Williams, is set in the distant future of 2010, where there are antigravity beds and sleep machines. One night the protagonist is a accosted by someone in his sleep -- and after wondering who could talk to him via the sleep machine, he realizes that his 3-year-old daughter also seems to talk to -- and play with -- someone while she sleeps. This soon leads to the creature in the sleep world luring the child into his "world" -- and when the Dad talks to the creature via his sleep machine he quickly realizes that this creature has no notion that his world isn't made for humans -- for example, there's no food there. Kind of a trivial piece, really.

Birthday Review: The Coming, by Joe Haldeman

Joe Haldeman turns 77 today. He's an SFWA Grand Master, one of the truly fine writers of his generation. He's one of those writers who made a huge splash early in his career, with his second novel, first SF novel, The Forever War; and in some ways I sometimes think that's made people forget how consistently strong his novels have been throughout his career. I haven't seen a novel since Work Done For Hire in 2014 -- I hope we might have more coming. Here is a review based on a blog post I did of one of his solid late middle-period books.

The Coming, by Joe Haldeman
a review by Rich Horton

Joe Haldeman's newest book is The Coming. This is a shortish, nicely executed, book about the receipt of a signal from an alien ship. Haldeman explicitly credits James Gunn's fine novel about receiving messages from aliens, The Listeners, as an influence, but The Coming reminded me much more of a brilliant and underrated novel by John Kessel, Good News From Outer Space. Both books (The Coming and Kessel's novel) use the idea of aliens coming to Earth as a fulcrum for an exploration of U. S. society.

The Coming opens with an astronomer at the University of Florida, Aurora Bell, recognizing an anomalous signal from a gamma ray telescope. It turns out to be a short message saying, in English, "We're Coming". And she is able to confirm that it comes from a source about a tenth of a light year from Earth, blue-shifted so that it must be traveling at 99 percent of the speed of light.

The novel is neatly structured so that the point of view smoothly shifts from scene to scene, such that each new scene begins from the POV of a character encountered just previously.  This gives the whole book a certain fluidity and a certain sense of movement, and it also alows the author to gracefully explore events through the eyes of a wide variety of characters.  What we see is a portrait of\ the city of Gainesville, Florida, in the 2054. The characters include Dr. Bell and her husband, a composer and also a professor; several colleagues of Dr. Bell, significantly including her assistant, a mysterious immigrant from Cuba named Pepe Parker; a restaurant owner in the University neighbourhood; a Mafia bag man; a policeman; a couple of reporters; a homeless lady; a university student making extra money by "acting" in "virtual reality" pornographic episodes; and more. Haldeman uses this tapestry of viewpoints to portray the reaction of the wider populace to the Coming of the aliens, but more importantly, he uses it to portray the social and political and technological landscape of this particular future.

Haldeman's portrayal is interesting. The future tech includes highly computerized homes and holographic conference calls and the above-mentioned virtual porn. Environmentally, the world is facing advanced global warming, with much flooding, unusual winters and summers, sunblock essential at all times lest you get skin cancer, etc. The political view of the US is a bit disappointing: his view is a cynical redaction of contemporary politics, with all but unchanged Democratic and Republican parties, and an image-besotten Republican idiot as President.  I'd have rather seen a more altered political landscape. There are snippets of world politics that present some interesting changes: an important subplot concerns a looming war between France and Germany. The major social change in the U. S. that affects the book is that much stricter laws about sexual activity have been implemented: homosexuality is completely criminalized, while even some consensual married activities are apparently against the law (though not often enforced).  I confess I find these last changes implausible and counter to real social trends in the U. S. today: perhaps I am simply an optimist. His overall future is somewhat depressing but not without hope, and it is quite interesting. The characters are well-portrayed and involving.

The plot is also interesting. It turns on political manoeuvring about the proper response to the arrival of the aliens, as well as the calamitous revealing of a dark secret in the Bells' past.  There is a certain amount of action and intrigue, resolved nicely enough. And Haldeman's climax, involving the promised arrival of the aliens, is well-handled, and the reader isn't cheated.  Overall the book feels just a bit slight, but it's a fine effort, and a good solid read.

A List of 100 (+) Books I Haven't Read

One Hundred Books on my TBR Pile

I put this list together after having previously rather carelessly posted a shabbily curated list of 100 (actually 99) books that, it was claimed, was put together by the BBC and that of which, supposedly (no proof offered) the average person had only read 6. The list also included a couple of strange duplicates, too many books by certain writers, and a couple of (in my opinion) egregiously bad books. On the other hand, most of the books on the list were actually pretty good, so it was fun discussing it.

But then, I thought -- this might be more interesting. This list is one I made essentially from looking at my (literal and also figurative) To Be Read pile -- books I've known about for years, own in most cases, and think are awfully interesting. Some are fairly recent books (many SF) that I've been meaning to get to, others are older books, mostly in the category of "classics". Some people have noted that some of them seem like the lesser-known, and arguably "lesser", books of great writers. There are two reasons for this: some are books by writers whom I've already tried, but want to read further. So, I've read Henry Esmond and Vanity Fair, and I want to read more Thackeray, hence Pendennis. I've read Middlemarch, and want to read more Eliot, hence Daniel Deronda. I've read lots and lots of Byatt, but never got to Babel Tower, hence it's there. The other reason is that I don't necessarily agree that all these books are "lesser" ... speaking as one who hasn't read them. Is Anna Karenina "lesser" than War and Peace? I don't know, but it seems pretty major to me. Is The Blind Assassin lesser than The Handmaid's Tale? I don't think so (can't say I know) ... it's just the book that hasn't become a famous miniseries.

Anyway -- what's not on this list. First -- nothing I have already read. So don't ask me why there's no Jane Austen -- I've read her complete works. Same with Kingsley Amis. Anthony Powell. Robertson Davies. Penelope Fitzgerald. Flann O'Brien. Kipling. Flannery O'Connor. W. M. Spackman. Karen Joy Fowler. etc. etc. etc.

It is my list, and I read only English (a failure of mine, not any sort of virtue), so it's very English-language-centric, and beyond that rather Western-centric, with some attempts to broaden that. Parts of it are pretty idiosyncratically me -- but what would be the fun if that wasn't true? And this is a shame-free zone, I hope -- if you haven't read these, great! Neither have I! That just means we have more to look forward to!

I have also expanded my additional list to include some excellent suggestions offered after my original Facebook post. Those appear at the end.

I have, as of August 2024, a bit more than four years after the original post, gone ahead and put strikethroughs on each book that I can now say I've read. There are also cases where I read another book by the same author but not the one I cited (i.e. I've read David Copperfield now, but not yet Great Expectations ... but I haven't struck through the original books in those cases.)

Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart

Richard Adams, Watership Down

Isabel Allende, The House of the Spirits

Charlie Jane Anders, The City in the Middle of the Night

Eleanor Arnason, Daughter of the Bear King

Kate Atkinson, Life After Life

Margeret Atwood, The Blind Assassin

Honore de Balzac, Pere Goriot

John Barth, Giles Goat-Boy

Saul Bellow, The Adventures of Augie March

Lauren Beukes, Zoo City

Elizabeth Bowen, The Death of the Heart

Anne Bronte, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

A. S. Byatt, Babel Tower

Willa Cather, My Antonia

Eleanor Catton, The Luminaries

Anton Chekhov, Selected Stories

Wu Cheng’En, Journey to the West

C. J. Cherryh, Cyteen

Wilkie Collins, The Moonstone

Ivy Compton-Burnett, Manservant and Maidservant

Joseph Conrad, Lord Jim

John Crowley, Lord Byron’s Novel: The Evening Land

Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves

Samuel R. Delany, Tales of Neveryon

Thomas M. Disch, On Wings of Song

Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

Fyodor Dostoyevksy, The Brothers Karamazov

Roddy Doyle, Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha

Jennifer Egan, Manhattan Beach

George Eliot, Daniel Deronda

William Faulkner, Absalom, Absalom

Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary

E. M. Forster, A Room With a View

George Macdonald Fraser, Mr. American

Elizabeth Gaskell, Cranford

Nikolai Gogol, Dead Souls

Alasdair Gray, Lanark

Henry Green, Doting

Elizabeth Hand, Curious Toys

Thomas Hardy, Far from the Madding Crowd

Tsao Hsueh-Chin, Dream of the Red Chamber

Kazuo Ishiguro, The Remains of the Day

Howard Jacobson, The Finkler Question

Henry James, The Ambassadors

Marlon James, Black Leopard, Red Wolf

N. K. Jemisin, The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms

James Joyce, Ulysses

Franz Kafka, The Trial

Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Margaret Laurence, Rachel, Rachel

Ursula K. Le Guin, Always Coming Home

Stanislaw Lem, Solaris

Eleanor Lerman, Radiomen

Doris Lessing, Canopus in Argus

Jonathan Lethem, Motherless Brooklyn

Karen Lord, The Best of All Possible Worlds

George MacDonald, Lilith

Naguib Mahfouz, Arabian Nights and Days

Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall

Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Love in the Time of Cholera

Herman Melville, Moby Dick

Toni Morrison, Sula

Ottessa Moshfegh, Homesick for Another World

Haruki Murakami, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

Lady Murasaki, The Tale of Genji

Robert Musil, The Man Without Qualities

Vladimir Nabokov, Laughter in the Dark

Helen Oyeyemi, Mr. Fox

Edgar Pangborn, Wilderness of Spring

Georges Perec, Life: A User’s Manual

Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time

Alexander Pushkin, The Captain’s Daughter

Mary Renault, The King Must Die

Sally Rooney, Normal People

Matt Ruff, The Mirage

Karen Russell, Swamplandia

Walter Scott, The Heart of Midlothian

Vikram Seth, A Suitable Boy

William Shakespeare, The Two Noble Kinsmen

Zadie Smith, On Beauty

Francis Spofford, Golden Hill

Laurence Sterne, Tristram Shandy

Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, Hard to Be a God

Elizabeth Taylor, Angel

William Makepeace Thackeray, Pendennis

Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

Anthony Trollope, The Way We Live Now

John Updike, The Centaur

Jack Vance, Lyonesse: Suldrun’s Garden

Jo Walton, Lent

Janwilliam van der Wetering, The Corpse on the Dike

Edith Wharton, Summer

Colson Whitehead, The Underground Railroad

John Williams, Stoner

Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse

Xenophon, Anabasis

Margaret Yourcenar, Memoirs of Hadrian

Yevgeny Zamyatin, We

Stefan Zweig, The Royal Game

New Additions:

Ray Bradbury, Something Wicked This Way Comes

Lawrence Durrell, Constance; or, Solitary Practices

Jaraslav Hasek, The Good Solider Svejk

Shirley Jackson, The Haunting of Hill House

Leena Krohn, Collected Fiction

Chen Quifan, Waste Tide

Bruno Schulz, The Street of Crocodiles

Voltaire, Candide

Edward Whittemore, Quin's Shanghai Circus

Birthday Review: Stories of Bryce Walton

Bryce Walton would have turned 102 today. Bryce Walton, you say? Who he? He was a prolific contributor of short fiction in various genres between 1945 and 1969, with just one SF novel (Son of the Ocean Deeps (1952).) He was originally from Missouri, and he died in 1988. Frankly I found his work fairly mediocre -- but at times surprisingly ambitious. He's one of those names you'd have known if you read in the field in the 1950s ... but you might not remember him.

In his honor, here's a look at several of his stories that I have read in various 1950s SF publications.

Space Science Fiction, May 1952

As for the other story, "To Each His Star", it's wholly forgettable. Bryce Walton is not one of my favorite pulp-era writers -- I've read a lot of his work for Planet. So is this story, about four criminals who escape in a spaceship heading for a paradise planet, one of four stars. They can't agree on the right planet, though, and come to violence over it (after they have crashed and are apparently traveling light years in their spacesuits). Horrid stuff.

Science Fiction Stories, 1953

Bryce Walton's "By Earthlight" (5200 words) is an anti-war story. The first flight to the Moon is planned, and a secret organization smuggles a man onto the ship (which is not meant to be manned). It's all part of an unconvincing attempt to end all war, by reasons explained in the story that I couldn't believe. It's a very sincere story, that tries to be a powerful message piece, but fizzles.

Vortex, Volume 1 Number 1

"The Last Answer", by Bryce Walton (4300 words) -- Computers and robots have taken over all man's functions and man is stagnating. A supercomputer decides that for the good of man this must change.

Planet Stories, Summer 1954

I read "Mary Anonymous", by Bryce Walton (7400 words) a few years ago in Planet Stories and didn't remember it before rereading it in Don Wollheim's anthology The Earth in Peril. It's not too bad -- Walton's stories didn't usually impress me much, but he could show some real ambition. Mars and Earth have been at war for decades, and Earth has just figured out the weapon to exterminate the Martians. But as they launch it, Mary suddenly rebels, and, as it turns out conditioned by the Martians, destroys the Earth spaceship. It's a surprisingly cynical story -- both Earth and Mars come off as irredeemably evil. Mary is sympathetic but does bad things too. The story ends with a twist revelation about Mary that seemed obvious to me (but then I had read the story before!)

Orbit, July-August 1954

"The Passion of Orpheus", by Bryce Walton (7500 words) -- probably the most ambitious of these stories, though not quite successful. After some disastrous nuclear wars, a small remnant of humanity survives. They remember the great days of life in the City. Finally, a representative young man is sent to the City, with instructions to go to the Temple and sing the Song, which may do something good but unspecified. Near the city he meets some beautiful but unambitious people, who try to keep him with him (using sex and all), but he continues to the City, sings the Song, and learns its real purpose, and the real nature of the people he has just been with. It doesn't convince, but it's not without interest -- Walton at something like the top of his not very extensive range.

If, June 1955

Bryce Walton's "Freeway" (5000 words) is a curious combination of the "people living in their cars all the time" story with the "oppressed intellectuals" story. Our hero and his wife are driving all the time, forbidden to stop for more than 8 hours at a time because he has been accused of "philosophy", and also of supporting the previous administration. His wife is sick, and he stops illegally, and he is pushed to violence, but then ... The setup is strained, and the resolution implausible.

If, October 1957

The other novelette (note that at If even stories over 20,000 words were still novelettes -- as I have noted elsewhere, Novella did not become a common term until much later, though Short Novel was not uncommon) was Bryce Walton's "Dark Windows". This concerns a future in which "eggheads" are blamed for all the world's problems. People have periodic intelligence tests, and are subject to destructive brain-probes if they fail -- or, I should say, pass! Our hero, Fred, a loyal patriot, is recruited to the SPA to help hunt down eggheads, partly because he is held to have well-suppressed intelligence. Well, you can see where this is going -- Fred will become an Egghead -- but Walton does get to a slightly unexpected ending.

Birthday Review: Stories of Caitlin R. Kiernan

Birthday Review: Stories of Caitlin R. Kiernan

Today is Caitlin R. Kiernan's birthday, and I find I've never published a collection of my reviews of her short fiction. So here is one!

Blog review of Shadows Over Baker Street, November 2003

"The Drowned Geologist", by Caitlín R. Kiernan, also only peripherally features Holmes, mostly telling of an American geologist who encounters some mysterious old fossils on a visit to England.

Blog review of Gothic!, April 2005

I quite enjoyed Caitlin R. Kiernan's "The Dead and the Moonstruck", another "reversal" story, this one about a changeling raised by ghouls who must pass a rite of passage test to become fully accepted by her new family. The story doesn't really go anywhere though -- it is clearly a bit of backgrounding for a character in her latest novel. But I did enjoy it.

Locus, December 2008

The opening and closing stories in the fine, typically rather mannered, small magazine Not One of Us (now up to 40 issues!) impressed me. Caitlín R. Kiernan’s “Flotsam” is a brief intense depiction of the protagonist’s latest encounter with a seductive vampire of sorts – it’s essentially a prose poem, and as such not easy to pull off, but Kiernan’s writing is lovely and it works.

Review of Eclipse 4 (Locus, May 2011)

“Tidal Forces” by Caitlin R. Kiernan is very well-written, and the central characters are utterly real, but its central conceit, which is purposely just plain weird, came off simply too affected for me. I have no doubt Kiernan did exactly as she intended, and used the idea with eyes fully open – but it didn’t work. There’s still plenty to like in this story of a woman whose partner is afflicted with a black hole, quite literally, that begins to eat her substance away.

Review of Supernatural Noir (Locus, August 2011)

And finally Caitlín R. Kiernan’s “The Maltese Unicorn”, which is as stylishly noir as any story here, about a used bookstore owner who is friendly with a mysterious brothel owner, and thus ends up trying to track down a strange object – a dildo – for her, and ends up getting involved, to her distress, with a beautiful and untrustworthy woman mixed up in the whole business. I thought this the best story in the book, and the story that most perfectly, to my taste, matched the theme.

Review of Naked City (Locus, August 2011)

The American West, and mines, are also central to another strong Caitlín R. Kiernan story, “The Colliers’ Venus (1893)”, in which a museum curator investigates a captured woman – a woman found encased in rock, while dealing as well with his own abortive relationship.

Old Bestseller: Franny and Zooey, by J. D. Salinger

Franny and Zooey, by J. D. Salinger

a review by Rich Horton

Franny and Zooey was J. D. Salinger's third book, published in 1961. The two previous books were his only novel (The Catcher in the Rye) and a story collection (Nine Stories.) The two parts of Franny and Zooey appeared in the New Yorker in 1955 and 1957.) It's a short book, and is usually described as comprising a short story ("Franny") and a novella ("Zooey".) In fact "Franny" is a longish short story at some 10,000 words by my rough count, and "Zooey" is a very long novella, perhaps 50,000 words. For that matter, the two pieces are intimately related, and if you ask me, they work together as a unified whole, and I think it makes a fair amount of sense to call the book a true novel.

This is the third Salinger book I've read. Like everyone else of my generation, I was assigned The Catcher in the Rye in high school, and like (it sometimes seems) only a few people, I rather liked it. I also read Nine Stories, and reread much of it just a few years ago. I think some of those stories are very fine. I could continue to the last book (Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters, and Seymour, an Introduction) but I am gathering that his work seemed to decline in quality as time went on, so perhaps I won't continue.

So I decided I'd read "Franny", because it's kind of short. And I read it through, liking it fine if not really loving it. It's the story of a few hours one weekend in which Franny comes up from her school (unspecified -- I thought it might be obvious to smarter readers but apparently it's not clear -- I'd have said maybe Vassar? maybe Mount Holyoke? but I don't know) to Harvard, where her boyfriend Lane goes, to attend the Harvard-Yale game. They go to a restaurant, and talk, and Franny is revealed as an interesting if a bit, well, immature young woman, while Lane is revealed as a prat (or "phony", Holden Caulfield would say.) Franny talks about books and her acting and about the odd book she's reading, The Way of the Pilgrim, about a man in Russia who is convinced that the way to spiritual truth is to continually recite a prayer: "Lord Jesus Christ have mercy on me". Franny doesn't eat and then gets sick. Lane mostly just gets mad that he's missing the game. By the end I was sure Franny was pregnant.

"Zooey" is set only a few days later, after Franny, in her delicate condition, has gone home to New York. It is basically organized around three communications between Zooey and his family -- first a long letter from his brother Buddy, next a long conversation in the bathroom with his mother, and then an even longer harangue (in a couple of parts) from Zooey to the distraught Franny. I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop about Franny's condition, but it never did, and eventually I realized Franny is NOT actually pregnant (though she probably was sleeping with the rather shallow Lane.) Instead she's having a spiritual crisis, based partly on her reaction to the book and its "prayer". Zooey, a TV actor, is unconvinced of the value of the book, and expresses some of his own philosophical notions, along with descriptions of his TV career, a couple of new scripts he's looking at, a potential movie he could appear in in France, and aspects of his family life. His and Franny's family, the Glasses, are Salinger's major fictional obsession -- the excellent story "A Perfect Day for Bananafish" features their older brother Seymour, who committed suicide. The children all appeared on a long-running radio show, which seems to have affected them in something like the way child actors are often depicted as being affected by early fame. Anyway, Zooey's ramblings (and really he does ramble) are sometimes interesting, somes just affected, to the point of occasional tedium. More to the point, he didn't really come to life for me, though Franny was a reasonably well done character.

I don't think this is a bad book, but it's not a great book either. It may be a book of its time ... probably it hit home a lot more directly in 1961 than now. I understand Salinger was quite upset that not just me but many readers assumed Franny was pregnant ... all I can say, it sure seemed like that's what we were expected to think. Salinger can (or could) write, but I think his prose was overrated at times ... it's original, has a real (though somewhat limited) voice, and certainly includes some sharp observation, but it never seemed quite striking to me, and sometimes just lost its way. Perhaps I write too much in awareness of where Salinger ended up ...

Birthday Review: The Sorcerer's House, by Gene Wolfe

Gene Wolfe would have turned 89 this past Thursday. Alas, he died last year. I am (belatedly) posting another one of my reviews in his honor. This is perhaps the best of his late novels, The Sorcerer's House, from 2010. This review originally appeared in Fantasy Magazine.

The Sorcerer’s House
By Gene Wolfe
Tor
$24.99 | hc | 302 pages
ISBN: 978-0-7653-2458-0
March 2010

A review by Rich Horton

Gene Wolfe continues to publish interesting novels about every year. His new book is The Sorcerer’s House. It is a standalone novel, and, by Wolfe’s standards, a fairly simple one. It is also quite absorbing, a very nice read, and for all its relative “simplicity” stuffed with puzzles and with such Wolfean obsessions as twins, shapechanging, and virtue. And it is told in the familiar almost naïve first-person prose of many recent Wolfe novels.

The protagonist is Baxter Dunn, who has just been released from prison. We slowly gather that he went to jail for fraud, and that his victim, or one of his victims, was his identical twin brother, George. Most of the book is told in letters from Baxter to George, though Baxter also writes to George’s wife Millie, and to a friend he made in prison. And some of the letters here are addressed to Baxter.

Baxter comes to a quiet Midwestern town called Medicine Man. At first destitute, he comes by mysterious means into possession of a house called the Black House, which is rumored to be haunted. The house is quite odd – it is (of course) bigger on the inside than the outside, and its windows sometimes seem to look out on a landscape different that what one sees from the outside. And there are a variety of unusual characters attached to the house: another pair of good/bad twins, teenaged boys named Emlyn and Ieuan; a couple of weird butlers named Nicholas or Nick; a fox who sometimes seems to be a woman; and some magical implements.

Baxter also has encounters in the town, particular a series of variously interesting women: an attractive young widow, the older woman who revealed his inheritance to Baxter, a pert policewoman, etc. And the town is also menaced by a “Hellhound”. We are left to wonder what is really going on. Is Baxter really a criminal or did his brother betray him (perhaps because they both seem to love Millie)? Why did the mysterious Mr. Black leave his house to Baxter? From whence do all the odd creatures attracted to Baxter come – the fox woman, the werewolves, a vampire?

All this is familiar territory for Gene Wolfe’s readers. What may seem unusual is how relatively transparently it is all resolved. (Though the ending does leave a couple of open questions – I have my own answers, contradicting the plain narrative, but I’m by no means sure I’m right.) At any rate, it doesn’t quite achieve the depth of Wolfe’s very best work. But it avoids the frustration of a novel like, say, Castleview, at least to this reader, who knew there was something special going on beneath that book’s surface, but never quite figured it out. The Sorcerer’s House is, in the end, an entertainment, clever and satisfying – not great Wolfe, but good Wolfe, which is recommendation enough.

Birthday Review: Leviathan, by Scott Westerfeld

Here's a review in honor of Scott Westerfeld's birthday, today -- his very enjoyable Steampunk YA novel Leviathan.

Leviathan
by Scott Westerfeld
Simon Pulse
$19.99 | hc | 440 pages
ISBN: 978-1-4169-7173-3
October 2009

A review by Rich Horton

Scott Westerfeld’s Leviathan is a thoroughly delightful Young Adult novel, the first in a series that is based on World War I, but in an alternate history. In this history Charles Darwin discovered the genetic basis for evolution, and how to manipulate it, and as a result the United Kingdom and its allies have a society based on biotechnology, such as the title airship, a huge beast (or colony of organisms) based on whale DNA and much more. By contrast the Germans and Austrians and their allies, called Clankers, use Steampunk flavored machinery: airplanes and zeppelins, but also great walking land war machines.

The novel is told through the point of view of two teens. Aleksandar is the son of the murdered Serbian Prince Franz Ferdinand and his lower-class wife, and as such is not eligible for the throne, but is still a threat to the powers that be. As the novel opens he is spirited away by a pair of loyal retainers, who fear that the people who arranged for Alek’s parents to be killed will be coming for him. They take a smallish “Walker” and head for Switzerland, fleeing the German army that should be on their side. Meanwhile Deryn Sharp, a girl who has grown up loving to fly the living balloons based on jellyfish genetics, has disguised herself as a boy and joined the Air Service. She ends up a midshipman on the whale-based Leviathan, which is ferrying a valuable but mysterious cargo from England to Turkey, just as war is breaking out.

As we might expect their paths cross … And, in reality, nothing is resolved in this book, no mysteries even unveiled. That will wait for subsequent books, which this reader anticpates eagerly.

The novel is in many ways a familiar YA construction: a hidden Prince, a disguised girl, both people who need to grow up and are being forced to do so in a dangerous situation. The book delights in part because both protagonists are nicely depicted and fun to follow and root for. It also delights in the depiction of the rival, unusual, technologies of the Darwinists and the Clankers. Westerfeld is very good with plausible invented words, and with plausible (to a sufficient degree, at least) inventions, particularly his biological inventions. (The Clanker tech, after all, though different to ours, is still by and large familiar.) There is plenty of exciting action as well. And an intriguing mystery – with the hint that the War may play out a bit differently than in our world – which hold the interest in this book and make subsequent books much to be looked forward to.

Review: The Sky So Big and Black, by John Barnes

The Sky So Big and Black, by John Barnes

a review by Rich Horton

This is John Barnes' new novel.  It's set in the same future history as his novels Orbital Resonance, Kaleidoscope Century, and Candle.  Like Orbital Resonance, it's nominally YA, and very Heinleinian, and very much "to please adults".  It's something of a sequel to Orbital Resonance -- I don't remember that book that well, but I'm pretty sure the main character of the new book is a relative of the main character of the older book -- I think a niece.  It's also heavily related to Candle, far as I can tell, in that a main plot element is the takeover of Earth by the "One True" meme -- something I deduce happened in Candle, though I'm not quite sure. (I haven't read Candle.) (I say "Future History" but it's really an odd variant -- a sort of Future Alternate History, in that it's set in a future that branches from a near past (at time of writing) history that never happened.)

I just wanted basically to say that I loved this book.  As I mention, it's very much in the Heinlein Juvenile mode.  There are passages that seem pure quill Heinlein.  Here's the protagonist's father and her talking about education in the 20th Century:

"In fact what [20th C. students] got was either a specialty in some academic subject, like math or literature, or certification in some useful trade, like engineering or lying."

"They didn't have certification in lying!"

"Ha! The first place my grandpa taught was a program in something called "communications". Look up the curriculum sometime and tell me that's not a degree in lying!"

And there's plenty more in that vein, about personal responsibility and politics and human relationships.

But more than all that, it's just a good novel. Very well structured -- it's presented as a psychologist listening to a series of interviews he did with Teri-Mel Murray, a young woman on Mars who was working with her father as an "ecospector".  It's clear from the start that something terrible happened, and indeed that the psychologist was forced to erase Teri-Mel's memory.  It's also clear that he likes her a lot, and is really torn up by what has happened, and worried that he may have to treat her again, for some mysterious reason that takes a long time to become clear.

The interviews tell of Teri and her father travelling across the lightly terraformed planet to a "Gather" of the "rounditachis", people who live more or less in the open on Mars, working to help advance the terraforming.  Teri is hoping that she will be certified a "Full Adult" at the Gather, and be free to marry her boyfriend.  Her father wants her to go back to school for one more year, because he's not convinced that ecospecting will remain a good living.  As they travel, they plan to make one more attempt at a big "scorehole".  And Teri is starting to worry about her boyfriend.

All the above is cute stuff, and interleaved with neat SFnal details about the terraforming of Mars.  In the background lurk details about the future history up to this point, especially the takeover of ecologically ravaged Earth by a "meme" called "One True", or "Resuna", which more or less has turned Earth's population into a hive mind. Also we learn bits and pieces about the psychologist's feelings, which give us hints about the disaster which has clearly occurred.

So it's a scary book, as we learn to like Teri more and more, while we just know that she's going to get hurt real real bad.  And when the crisis comes, it's exciting, and terribly sad, and even scarier than I had first expected.

The resolution is moving, real, and, well, open. Barnes' future is on the one hand full of hope, and of cool SFnal stuff, and on the other hand it is very damned scary, and full of something purely evil, but not EVULL, somehow.

It's a darn good novel, and though it is written about a "young adult" (Teri is about 15), and though it is accessible and readable and appropriate (in my judgement) for teens to read, it is also very effective for adults.

Birthday Review: Naomi Novik's first three Temeraire books, plus some short fiction

Naomi Novik was born on the last day of April, so in honor of her birthday, here are some reviews I have done of her (excellent) work, the first a review of the first three Temeraire novels from Black Gate, and then a few reviews of short fiction for Locus.

His Majesty's Dragon/Throne of Jade/Black Powder War
by Naomi Novik. Del Rey, $7.50 each (384/432/400p)
ISBNS: 0345481283 / 0345481291 / 0345481305
March/April/May 2006.

A Review by Rich Horton (Black Gate, Spring 2007)

These three books are the first of a potentially open-ended series [it did, of course, eventually come to completion -- the first 8 covers are shown here, the ninth book, League of Dragons, came out in 2016, and there is also a story collection], set during the Napoleonic Wars in an alternate fantastical past: almost exactly like our history but with dragons. The obvious comparison is with Patrick O'Brian, and it is a high compliment indeed to say that the books are not entirely unworthy of such company as O'Brian's Aubrey/Maturin novels of the British Navy during the Napoleonic Wars (which some consider the best historical novel series ever.) I found Novik's books extremely enjoyable reading, and I look forward to many further volumes. Del Rey's interesting publishing strategy, issuing three books in very quick succession, has evidently garnered Novik and the books well-deserved sales and public attention.

It should be noted that the novels are indeed true series novels: each concluding its sub-story satisfyingly enough, but also advancing an overall arc. The series opens with Captain Will Laurence of the English Navy capturing a French ship, on which there is a dragon egg. When dragons hatch they are "harnessed" by a person who will be their constant companion: usually an aviator, but no such candidate being available the man chosen is Laurence himself. This means the end of his promising Naval career, and an unconventional life as one of the rather raffish Aerial Corps, but the friendship of the dragon, a very unusual specimen he names Temeraire, proves to be ample compensation. His Majesty's Dragon (titled Temeraire in the UK) details the training of Laurence and Temeraire, complete with some internal conflicts and adjustments, leading to their first battles and the revelation of Temeraire's particularly special war-fighting power, unique to his variety of extremely rare dragon. This variety, it transpires, is the Chinese Celestial, usually reserved to be companions of the Chinese Imperial Family.

In Throne of Jade the Chinese protest the British capture of Temeraire (who had been intended as a gift for Napoleon), and the spineless Foreign Office sends Laurence, Temeraire, and crew to China, hoping to negotiate better trading rights in exchange for returning this valuable dragon. But while Temeraire enjoys China, in particular the special privileges -- or, perhaps, ordinary rights that all intelligent creatures ought to enjoy -- given dragons there, he refuses to be separated from Laurence. Also, it turns out there is some political turmoil in China -- the resolution of which leads also to an accommodation that allows Laurence and Temeraire to remain together.

Black Powder War is the story of their desperate land journey first to Istanbul, to collect three more dragon eggs the British have bought from the Turks, then through war-torn Europe, where they learn that Napoleon has a new Celestial -- one who has cause to hate Laurence, Temeraire, and by extension England.

The first book is nearly an unalloyed delight (save the slightly unprepared-for nature of the end), the second is enjoyable but a step down, perhaps a bit too slow; and the third ranks pretty much with the second, though the ending is surprising and quite moving. The series as a whole promises to continue to be very fun reading, with a nicely set up tension between the necessity of defeating Napoleon and the cause of "Dragon's Rights", which Temeraire has at last persuaded Laurence is both morally and practically essential. Both lead characters are engaging and well-depicted, the prose is nicely handled with a sound period flavor, the fantastical elements are not terribly plausible (nor necessarily consistent) but they (draconic characteristics and types, basically) are nicely imagined.  Recommended.

Review of Fast Ships, Black Sails (Locus, December 2008)

One coup the VanderMeers managed was to land a novelette from Naomi Novik. (To my knowledge she has only published two other short stories, both quite short, at her website.) “Araminta; or, The Wreck of the Amphidrake” is one of the best pieces in this book. It’s not a Temeraire story -- it is a gender-bending tale of a rather tomboyish girl of a noble family sent by sea to marry the young man her parents have chosen. When pirates attack her ship, she resorts to a special magical protection she has been given … the results are entertaining and in the end Araminta gets the chance to make her own choices for her future, choices that not too surprisingly involve adventure and piracy.

Review of Warriors (Locus, May 2010)

Naomi Novik shows up with her first straight SF story (that I know of), “Seven Years From Home”, about a diplomat sent to an alien planet, charged with mediating somehow between two human variant groups, one of which has colonized one continent by altering themselves to blend in with the established ecology, the other of which, latecomers, are bent on terraforming the planet, and having conquered their continent are now proceeding to the other. The diplomat, not surprisingly, goes native (as it were), only to become complicit in what she can’t help seeing a terrible crime. The story has some intriguing elements, but doesn’t really convince. But it’s nice to see Novik continue to extend her range – she is serving notice that she won’t be tied to Temeraire for her whole career.

Review of Naked City (Locus, August 2011)

More lighthearted are stories like Naomi Novik’s “Priced to Sell”, about various problems a real estate agent deals with in selling to the magical community – slight, to be sure, but fun.

Locus, January 2017

One of my favorite stories in The Starlit Wood is Naomi Novik’s “Spinning Silver”. As one might guess, Rumpelstiltskin in the base story. The conceit is that instead of spinning straw into gold, a moneylender might be seen as spinning silver (a small amount of money) into a larger amount (gold). The narrator is the daughter of a poor village moneylender, too kindly to make a living. The daughter, however, has learned to harden her heart to her father’s clients’ troubles – which often enough are invented anyway – and under her stewardship the family has prospered – but at what cost? Especially when a fairy creature called the Staryk learns of her abilities, and insists that she spin his silver into gold. The mechanism she uses is clever, and the expected complications ensue, especially when the local Duke is involved. Novik very effectively layers the story with meaning – most notably the status of the moneylenders, who are (of course) Jewish – which points as well to a perhaps sometimes missed element of Rumpelstiltskin’s traditional portrayal. As with many of the stories in this book (and indeed in most contemporary fairy tale versions) the agency or lack thereof of the female characters is also central, and quite matter of factly and honestly treated.

Birthday Review: The Other Nineteenth Century, by Avram Davidson

This is slightly belated -- Avram Davidson would have turned 97 yesterday. Gosh, he was a wonderful writer! I've previously covered a couple of his Ace Doubles, and I've posted a survey of his novels, and a review of The Avram Davidson Treasury, so here's a very short bit I wrote for my blog some long while ago about another posthumous collection, The Other Nineteenth Century.

[On reflection, I've regretted posting that rather casually tossed off old blog entry, and I've produced a more thorough review here:

Review of The Other Nineteenth Century.]