Another Quiz: BIPOC SF and Fantasy

I've written another quiz for the trivia league I'm a member of. The subject this time is SF (and Fantasy and Horror) by Black people, indigenous people, and people of color. The quiz ran on Tuesday, so the results are in at the site. I figured, as with my previous quizzes, I'd post it here on my blog for anyone who is interested to try. I'll post the answers in a couple of days.

The official quiz had 12 questions, the first 12 posted below. I wrote a total of 18, and I've posted all 18 here. I tried to pick the best (by some heuristic) 12 to use ... not sure I succeeded! I had a lot of help from a group of playtesters in the trivia league; and I also asked for help from some of my SF friends, in this case Steven H Silver, John O'Neill, and Chris Barkley.

Caveats: The quiz ended up playing very hard -- harder than I wanted. But, hey, lots of y'all are SF experts, so it might be easier for you! But there are two extra hard questions in this set!

Go ahead and post your guesses in the comments if you want (but don't cheat and look at the comments first!) 

[Addendum -- I've made a separate post with the answers now.]

1. Ava DuVernay, the acclaimed director of Selma, became the first Black woman to direct a live action feature with over a $100,000,000 budget with which 2018 film, an adaptation of a beloved Newbery Award winner?

2. Jeannette Ng, a British writer born in Hong Kong, won the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer in 2019. She used her acceptance speech to call out the "fascism" of Campbell, and also to support protesters in favor of democracy in Hong Kong. A year later they won a Hugo Award for Best Related Work for that speech, which had led to a new name for the Best New Writer award. What is that new name?

3. The Artistic Director of Opera Siam is a native of Thailand who was raised in England and holds dual Thai and American citizenship. He has written multiple operas and symphonies, and is also a major writer of SF, Fantasy, and Horror in English, including the early stories that became his novel Mallworld, as well as the World Fantasy Award winning novella "The Bird Catcher," and the novel Vampire Junction. Who is this man? (Either his given name or surname will be accepted as answers, as he has published under pen names using both as "last name".)

4. Set in the fantasy continent of Nyumbani, which is overtly based on Africa, the Imaro sequence is pioneering Sword and Sorcery (or "Sword and Soul") stories, created by what Pennsylvania-born Canadian writer, whose death in Nova Scotia in 2020 went unnoticed by the SF/F field for months?

5. SF and Fantasy have been much enriched over time by contributions from writers with reputations established in the broader literary field -- one might mention the Nobel Prize winner Doris Lessing; or the Booker Prize winner Kingsley Amis. More recently, Jamaican writer Marlon James, who won the Booker Prize for his novel A History of Seven Killings, published which colorfully titled fantasy novel, first of a planned trilogy based on African history and mythology?

6. Contemporary Native American writers of speculative fiction include such luminaries as Stephen Graham Jones and Rebecca Roanhorse. One of the pioneers among Native American SF writers received Nebula nominations for his stories "Time Deer" and "The Bleeding Man" back in 1976, and also edited a magazine of Native American SF: Red Planet Earth. He has remained active, with novels such as Death in the Spirit House (1989) and The Mammoth Project (2019) (with Terry Izumi). Who is this writer?

7. Black writers made significant contributions to the SF canon even before the first genre magazines appeared in the mid-'20s. One great example from 1920 is "The Comet," about a Black man and a white woman who meet as perhaps the only survivors of a deadly encounter with a comet. Which prominent sociologist, the first African-American to receive a doctorate from Harvard, wrote this story?

8. The author of Mexican Gothic, the 2021 winner of the Locus Award for Best Horror Novel, was born in Mexico and now lives in Canada. In addition to several outstanding novels spanning genres such as horror, noir, and science fiction, she has made major contributions as the co-editor of magazines such as Innsmouth and The Dark, and of anthologies such as Dead North: Canadian Zombie Fiction. Name this writer/editor.

9. The first novel originally published in a language other than English to win a Hugo Award as Best Novel was translated into English by an American writer who shares his surname with the author of the original version. (The American writer has also had great success with his own writing, including a huge "Silkpunk" series The Dandelion Dynasty; plus winning multiple Hugos for his short fiction.) Please give the name of either writer, both surname and given name please. [Extra credit for giving both names!]

10. The Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation usually goes to TV episodes or movies, so it was surprising to see an experimental rap group nominated in the Dramatic Presentation (Short Form) category two years running for an album (Splendor and Misery) and a song ("The Deep"), both SF-themed. ("The Deep" garnered them a third Hugo nomination when Rivers Solomon turned it into a collaborative novella.) (One group member, Daveed Diggs, is probably better known for his work on a certain historical musical than for his SF-related work!) Name this group.

11. The Canadian poet and short fiction writer Amal El-Mohtar has won a Nebula and a Hugo award. She is also a reviewer of SF on NPR, and also is Science Fiction and Fantasy columnist for what very important review outlet? (Her columnist role was previously held for many years by Gerald Jonas and later by N. K. Jemisin.)

12. A key text highlighting the tremendous contributions of African-descended writers to speculative fiction throughout the 20th Century is Dark Matter: A Century of Science Fiction from the African Diaspora,which won the World Fantasy Award in 2001. The editor won another World Fantasy Award for Dark Matter: Reading the Bones in 2005, and was nominated for the James Tiptree Jr. Award (now the Otherwise Award) for a collection of her own fiction in 2016. She is now the editor of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. Who is she?

13. Fandom in its early days was almost exclusively white (with the notable exception of Warren Fitzgerald, founder and president of what is often called the very first SF fan club, the Scienceers) -- so much so that in the late 1950s a group of Bay Area fans invented a Big Name Fan who wrote faanfiction such as The Cacher in the Rye and My Fair Femmefan and who happened to be Black. While this man was a hoax, his name was adopted for a Society founded in 1999 to address "the representation of people of color in the fantastical genres." This Society sponsors two awards, one for SF by POC writers and one for SF about racial and ethnic issues, the Parallax Award and the Kindred Award. What was the name of this hoax fan?

14. One way in which SF writers can address the racist history of some admired predecessors is to directly reconsider their work, as Victor La Valle does in "The Ballad of Black Tom", his 2016 Shirley Jackson Award-winning story that retells the events of "The Horror at Red Hook", a story by which notorious writer of the '20s and '30s, who is also namechecked in the title of a HBO series that debuted in 2020?

15. One of the most versatile contemporary SF writers is the Nigerian-American Nnedi Okorafor, who has won awards ranging from the Wole Soyinka Prize to the Kurt Laßwitz Prize to the Eisner Award (not to mention the odd Nebula and Hugo!) for her work in young adult fiction, adult science fiction, and comics. She is also writing for films and TV, including co-writing the screenplay for a forthcoming Viola Davis-produced Amazon Prime adaptation of Wild Seed, a novel by which true giant of science fiction?

16. Shortly after the great Samuel R. Delany opened the tap for Black writers in SF, partly by publishing some of his early novels as Ace Doubles, a much less successful Black writer began publishing with a couple of Ace Doubles -- Crown of Infinity and The Age of Ruin. Alas, after two more novels this writer left the field somewhat bitterly, partly because of publishers' habits of whitewashing his characters on his books' covers. Who was this writer?

17. This writer was born in the US, to French and Vietnamese parents. She grew up in Paris, speaking French, but writes in English. Her published fiction includes series set in Paris, in Aztec-based worlds, and in futures with living spaceships and a polity based on Vietnamese culture. Her stories "Immersion", "The Waiting Stars", and "The Tea Master and the Detective" have won Nebula Awards. Who is she?

18. Native American writer William Sanders made a mark with his novels Journey to Fusang and The Wild Blue and the Grey, and with short stories like "Elvis Bearpaw's Luck", "Jennifer, just Before Midnight", and most of all "The Undiscovered", which imagines an alternate life in North America for which famous playwright? (The story could arguably be a sequel to a certain late-90s Best Picture Oscar winner.)

Fantastic fiction by Elisabeth Sanxay Holding (Miss Kelly and 3 F&SF stories)

 Fantastic fiction by Elisabeth Sanxay Holding (Miss Kelly and 3 F&SF stories)

I discovered the great mid-century noir writer Elisabeth Sanxay Holding several years ago when I ran across a copy of her Ace Double The Blank Wall/The Girl Who Had to Die in a Kansas City antique mall. I had never heard of her, but I soon learned that she had a major reputation as a writer of noir fiction -- though, like many noir writers, especially women, that reputation had been dimmed for many years before something of a revival in the past couple of decades. Here's what I wrote back then about her:

She was born in 1889, died in 1955. She began her writing career as a romance novelist, but switched to mysteries during the depression. Her novels sold fairly well, and she was well-praised. She wrote at least one YA fantasy, Miss Kelly, which Anthony Boucher praised in the pages of F&SF. But she did seem to be mostly forgotten after her death.

That said, The Blank Wall, generally considered her best novel, had already been filmed in 1949 as The Reckless Moment (starring Joan Bennett and James Mason). It was filmed again in 2001 as The Deep End, starring Tilda Swinton. (This was pretty much Swinton's "breakout" film, "breakout" here being relative to Swinton's career -- that is, she didn't become a major movie star, she just moved from a well-respected indie actress to an even more respected Hollywood actress, who would contend for Academy Awards (and, indeed, eventually win one).) More recently, a number of Holding's books have been reprinted by Persephone Press and by Stark House (the latter, neatly, are double editions). The Blank Wall was even featured in a Guardian list, in 2011, of the "Ten Best Neglected Literary Classics". She has been called "The Godmother of Noir". So she's not forgotten, and indeed I think her reputation is slowly increasing at last.

The Blank Wall, in particular, is first rate. But naturally I was intrigued by her fantastical stories, so I found copies of her one fantasy book, Miss Kelly, which is actually a middle grade book; and of the three issues of F&SF which feature stories by her. I suspect she was "recruited" to contribute to F&SF by editor Anthony Boucher, who was also, of course, a writer of crime fiction and a very prominent reviewer of crime fiction. I wonder how much additional fantastical work she might have done had she not died somewhat young in 1955. Here are some short reviews of those stories, plus one additional story cited in the ISFDB, even though it is not fantasy.

Miss Kelly

Miss Kelly is a a middle grade book, published in 1947 by William Morrow. It is illustrated by Margaret S. Johnson. It runs about 19,000 words. 

It is a talking animal story. Miss Kelly is a cat, living in the house of Mr. and Mrs. Clinton, their two children, and their Black cook Janet. She is very happy with her family, and with Janet, and with their dog, Rover. (This was the era in which "Rover" and "Spot" seemed the default dog names.) Miss Kelly can understand and also speak English, as well as of course the language of animals, though her mother strictly warned her never to let humans know she can understand them, and especially not that she can also speak. Then the circus comes to town, and Miss Kelly is very interested, but of course cannot go herself. Her dog friends warn her, anyway, that circus animals can be dangerous, especially the tigers, which they describe as like Miss Kelly, only 100 times bigger.

But then, coincidentally, a tiger escapes from the circus, and comes right to the Clinton home, on a night where the parents are out and Janet is babysitting. It crashes into the house and threatens the children. Miss Kelly intervenes, and manages to talk the tiger down, as it were -- it seems he hates the circus (understandably) and want to kill as many humans as he can in revenge. She convinces him not to do so, and leads him outside to the woods, hiding him and promising to help.

But before Miss Kelly can return with food or additional help, the tiger is captured, and given to a zoo. Miss Kelly has become a celebrity, for saving the children from the tiger. But she feels compelled to live up to her promise and find and help the tiger. In the end she realizes she must disobey her mother's instructions, and talk to Mr. Clinton and convince him to take her to the zoo. And this, of course, leads to further and further complications: the Clintons are somewhat discombobulated (as her mother warned) by her speech; and when she gets to the zoo she eventually realizes that all the animals there need her help. Holding accepts her premise and works things out as logically as possible ... with an ending that is not exactly what Miss Kelly might have originally desired for her life but which seems to fit her responsibility.

It's an enjoyable read, but I don't think I liked it quite as much as Boucher. In part, even with Miss Kelly's input the zoo seems still not a great place for animals (I think zoos have improved greatly in intervening decades -- perhaps a result of Miss Kelly's influence? :) ) The book never seems to have been reprinted, and Holding wrote no more children's books. 

"Friday, the Nineteenth" (F&SF, June 1950)

This a striking darkish fantasy. Donald Boyce is tired of his wife Lilian, and ready to have an affair with Lilian, his best friend's wife Molly. The story details the couple's friction, and Donald and Molly flirting at a couple of gatherings. The overall picture of Donald is not complimentary ... whatever issues he has with Lilian seem more a product of his attitude than her failings. Anyway, Donald and Lilian make a date for a drink after work one Friday, and agree to a rendezvous for more than just a drink the next day ... and then things get strange. For next day is Friday again ... This is a pretty fine story, with a real touch of eeriness by the end.

"Shadow of Wings" (F&SF, July 1954)

This is a rather curious science fiction story, fairly dark in its implications. One day, apparently, all the birds disappear. Which means they stop eating ... which of course will lead to ecological disaster, and all kind of trouble for humanity. This remains a complete mystery, until one man decides to try to follow the flocks of birds that are still seen sometimes ... and he finds -- well, I won't give it away. The actual solution is highly implausible in a number of ways; and it ends up involving aliens who want to take over the Earth, and who think humans unworthy of this planet. That message -- which is left unvarnished -- is disquieting, but the mechanics of the story, and the resolution, are rather clumsy.

"The Strange Children" (F&SF, August 1955)

This is a story that begins rather eerily, with Marjorie babysitting at the house of a couple unfamiliar to her. The children, who are nice enough, act very strangely. They won't have anything to do with her ... eventually she learns their story. They have a visitor, a youngish man named George, who comes and plays with them, but won't come for anyone else. Eventually Marjorie is also able to meet this young man, who tells her that he's a ghost -- he died five years earlier. The explanation eventually comes out, and this part resolves as a somewhat routine (but believable) crime story involving the children's mother and a lover; and the resolution turns rather darkly on the mother's character. All the parts of this story are pretty cool, and it's a good way to use a fantastical element (the ghost) to tell a crime story. Somehow for me they didn't quite fit together as well as I hoped, but I think it's solid work.

Boucher's blurb for this story mentions Holding's death, in February of 1955, and laments that this will be the last of her stories they can publish. And I regret that too -- her metier was the crime story, but I think she might well have continued to produce the occasional dark fantasy to good effect.

"The Married Man" (Munsey's Magazine, December 1921)

I'm adding a bit about this story, from early in her career, only because it is listed in the ISFDB, though it is not SF or Fantasy by any stretch. I can only assume they included it because they include the entire contents of a 2014 anthology called Psychology: A Literary Introduction, edited by Laura Kati Corlew and Charles Waugh. That anthology has a story by Philip K. Dick ("Second Variety") plus a couple more SF or SF-adjacent stories from the mainstream ("The Country of the Blind" and "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" for example,) which must be why it's in the ISFDB.

"The Married Man", subtitled "A Modern Comedy of Enlightened Thought", is about an ordinary '20s married couple, Andy and Marian, in their mid-30s, with three young children. But Marian, who presents herself as a very dutiful and perhaps somewhat dull wife, not interesting in literature or anything else intellectual, realizes her husband is not happy. And, indeed, on their 10th anniversary, instead of a present, he proposes that they separate. Not, he says, because he doesn't love her, nor that she has been unsatisfactory as a wife, nor that there is another woman. No, he has simply come to realize that men are not suited for marriage -- marriage is a prison for the modern man. Marian is crushed, but she agrees to go to her mother's house for a time, and she engages a babysitter for the children, while Andy goes off to give his lecture on "Marriage from a Man's Point of View". The rest of the story shows what happens to Andy's life without Marian -- in essences, he is pestered by other women who are perversely excited by his rejection of marriage, and who paradoxically seek to lure him into marrying them. Three women are presented: an innocent very young woman who decides that Andy would be an improvement on her conventional fiance, an immoral married woman who wants to start an affair with Andy, and the very modern babysitter, who wants to marry Andy and raise the children by her unconventional lights. We see where this is going from the start, with the inevitable conclusion as Marian returns and sets Andy's life back in order, so that he realizes how much he needed her.

It's actually kind of funny, and Marian is an interesting character (Andy is kind of a pompous nothing.) Very much a story of its time, and a touch hackneyed, but not badly done.

Old Bestseller Review: Bindon Parva, by George A. Birmingham

Old Bestseller Review: Bindon Parva, by George A. Birmingham

At last I return to the roots of this blog -- "Old Bestsellers", my term here for popular fiction of (mostly) the first half of the Twentieth Century. I use the term bestseller loosely -- many of the books I review were indeed huge bestsellers (even if many are all but forgotten today,) but others were more in the category of good sellers, and a few probably didn't sell well at all. The goal is to review popular fiction -- but I won't shy away from serious literature (and I'll note that that distinction can be pernicious -- much fiction that was very popular was very "serious" as well.) (For the record, I will continue posting about other interests of mine: Science Fiction, short fiction, Ace Doubles, etc.)

George A. Birmingham was an author I had never heard of until I stumbled across this book, Bindon Parva, in an antique store. For a couple dollars I figured it was worth a try. I learned that "George A. Birmingham" was the pseudonym used for his writing by James Owen Hannay (1865-1950), an Irish clergyman (born in Belfast) of Scottish descent. Hannay was a leading light of the Gaelic League, a generally Irish Nationalist organization that also advocated for the use of Irish Gaelic (instead of, or in a addition to, English) as a way of emphasizing Ireland's differences from England. As Hannay was a Protestant, and not of Irish descent, and his parents were staunch Unionists, he tended to be distrusted by both sides. Later in his life (after Irish independence was achieved) he did in fact move to England, taking a position at a church near London. 

As a relatively poor curate in an Irish church Hannay needed money, and he began to write, at first some short fiction, then some theological works. As far as I can tell he used the name "George A. Birmingham" from the start -- perhaps he felt it best to dissociate his writing from his pulpit, even though his fiction and nonfiction seemed to generally be on religious themes. His first novel, The Seething Pot, appeared in 1905. His early novels seem to be on the subject of Irish Nationalism, and seemed to enrage both sides of the conflict, as they supported the Nationalist cause but also portrayed some Nationalists in a negative light (not to mention having Protestant protagonists.) His later works seem less political (presumably in part because Ireland became independent.) He wrote some 60 novels and story collections, and another couple of dozen nonfiction works: travel books, theological books (including a book called Do You Know Your Bible?) and many others. 

The book at hand, Bindon Parva, was published in England in 1925 by, of all houses, Mills and Boon, though it is not at all a romance novel. I have the US edition (probably the first), from Bobbs-Merrill. There is a preface for American readers in which "Birmingham" says that to his surprise the book was well received in England. In general, it seems to me that "Birmingham" was a fairly successful writer -- publishing over 80 books is proof enough of that, and he does seem to have been financially successful as well (buying a boat, for example.) I don't think he ever published an out-and-out bestseller, but I think his books were generally "well received". Yet he seems to me all but completely forgotten now.

Bindon Parva is a curious construct. It is at heart a collection of short stories, about four or five thousand words apiece, for a total of some 60,000 words. But the stories are framed -- doubly framed, really -- as, first, a set of stories told by Sylvester Maturin, the pastor of the Anglican church at Bindon Parva (a fictional town, on the southern coast of England, near Portland), to the narrator, an architect who has been engaged to restore some murals uncovered at that church. The second "frame" is that Maturin tells the stories of several (11, actually) of his predecessors at the church, from the 15th Century through the 19th Century -- and it seems that Maturin has these stories directly from the ghosts of those people. (This makes these technically ghost stories but the "ghost" aspect, though given some play, is really more of a framing device than a true supernatural element.)

Birmingham was a real writer, of solid if not spectacular prose, with a way of promoting his ideas, and a good grasp of character. Maturin -- an honest and convinced if somewhat shabby cleric, comes to life, as does the narrator, an intelligent man but (as portrayed) a somewhat empty cynic. The uncovered murals are of the Seven Deadly Sins and the corresponding Virtues. But the heart of the books is the stories of the various clerics -- which also in a way present a brief history of England from the time of Edward IV to Queen Victoria. 

The first pastor is Hugh Freyne, who betrays his (then Catholic) vows to get a girl pregnant, and so abandons his priestly vows to marry the girl, and thus establish the (Anglicized) De Fresney family, becoming eventually baronets and essentially the Lords of the small fishing town of Bindon Parva. The succeeding tales recount crises in the parish of Bindon Parva, encompassing its (somewhat forced) conversion to Anglicanism, and subsequent eras of varying religiosity, a conflict of sorts with dissenters (Methodists) and the eventual revivification of the Anglican tradition, and the High Church. So there are a couple of episodes during the English Civil War, the Restoration, the Titus Oates anti-Catholic hysteria, et cetera. Other episodes deal more directly with crises of faith for individual pastors, involving their own sins, or their vainglorious attempts at hymn-writing, or their involvement in smuggling, or their dealing with a parishioner whose daughter has become a prostitute, etc. The resolutions are more or less what you might expect from a clergyman -- but really none the worse for that, emphasizing compassion and honesty and a true belief in God.

The book is quite readable throughout. It seems to me one of those once popular books that seem to have deserved the popularity they may have earned in their time, but at the same time not necessarily to require a revival. Even so, I enjoyed reading it, and though it will likely never have a wide readership, it's a nice book, and not by any means to be disparaged. 

Happy New Year: and 2021 Awards Eligibility Post

Happy 2022, and let's hope it's far better than the previous 2 years!

I'll open with an announcement -- I have "retired" from my post as Locus Short Fiction reviewer. My final column will appear in the February 2022 issue, exactly 20 years after the first column appeared. I've written a couple of things that appear in Locus -- in the January issue (available now) and in the February issue, talking about my decision. But the reasons are simple: I've been at it for a long time, and I sort of feel it's time for a) a different voice; and b) for me to have more time to do some other things I want: concentrate more on some other projects such as my forthcoming anthology (with Eric Schwitzgebel and Helen De Cruz) on the best philosophical SF of all time, for MIT Press; to write more about other subjects (getting back to my project about Cele Goldsmith's Amazing/Fantastic career, for example); and just plain to read more -- to keep up with SF novels, to read more in other fields (Victorian novels, early 20th century popular fiction, contemporary fiction, etc.) I also still plan to contribute occasional pieces to Locus; and my Best of the Year anthologies will continue as long as my publisher wants them.

Also, there is a great personal reason: my grandchildren: Addy is 15 months old today, Gus is two weeks old, and another grandson is due May 31! I'll certainly be devoting plenty of time to doting on them! (And this is a reminder to me that even when things are depressing in the wider world, there is joy!)

Having said that, I figured I'd make a post about my awards eligibility. The only award I'm really eligible for is Best Fan Writer. (Whether I'm worthy is not for me to decide.) I think my columns in Locus are fan writing, for one thing, and I'm certainly very proud of them. In addition, there are my posts at this blog, which include a great many looks at SF novels, both recent and old; and occasional other discussions. And this year I contributed several pieces to fanzines, mostly to Black Gate, but also a piece on Firefly to the special issue of Journey Planet on the subject of SF TV shows that were Cancelled Too Soon. 

Here are my Black Gate posts. I'm particularly proud of the several I've written (with more to come) taking a close look at how some notable (and maybe less notable) SF stories work. I'll start with the first of that series, which actually appeared in 2020, then the ones from 2021:

"The Star Pit", by Samuel R. Delany;

Three Stories by Idris Seabright;

"Winter Solstice, Camelot Station", by John M. Ford;

"It Opens the Sky", by Theodore Sturgeon;

(The next planned entry will be on "Winter's King", by Ursula K. Le Guin (both versions,) hopefully sometime this month; and then, I hope, one on "The Last Flight of Dr. Ain", by James Tiptree, Jr.)

Other Black Gate posts (a couple of reviews, a look at an old F&SF, and something slightly different):

Review of The Gentleman, by Forrest Leo;

Review of Underneath the Oversea, by Marc Laidlaw;

Snippet about finding a signed copy of the Twayne Triplet Witches Three;

Retro-Review of F&SF, Summer 1950;

Here's a few highlights from this blog (in my opinion):

The Complete Stories of Robert H. Rohrer (an obscure Goldsmith discovery);

Quiz: Aliens in SF (with Images);

Space Opera: Then and Now;

Review: Lent, by Jo Walton;

Review: The Goblin Emperor, by Katherine Addison;

Cordwainer Smith Award Review: The Continuous Katherine Mortenhoe, by D. G. Compton;

Review: Tropic of Kansas, by Christopher Brown;

Review: Sorcerer to the Crown, by Zen Cho;

Review: Beer! Beer! Beer!, by Avram Davidson;

A Newly Discovered Avram Davidson Novel: Beer! Beer! Beer!

Beer! Beer! Beer!, by Avram Davidson

a review by Rich Horton

Avram Davidson is a favorite writer of mine. His prose is charming, eccentric in a good way. His esoteric interests, particularly in the odder corners of history, inform many or most of his stories, and also, for example, the essays making up the book Adventures in Unhistory. I think much of his best work is at short lengths, but he wrote in the neighborhood of 20 novels to go withe dozens and dozens of shorter fictions.

Davidson was born in Yonkers, NY, in 1923. He served in the US Navy in World War II, notably spending time in China. After the War, he spent some time in Israel, but soon returned to the US, and began publishing stories and essays, at first in Orthodox Jewish publications. By the mid-1950s he was regularly publishing SF, Fantasy, and crime fiction, and his novels began appearing in the early '60s. He was editor of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction from 1962 to 1964. His fiction won him a Hugo Award, a Nebula Award, and an Edgar. He spent some time in Mexico, and later settled in California. He and his wife, the writer Grania Davis, had a son, Ethan, in 1962. They later divorced, though they remained close, indeed collaborating on a couple of novels, and in fact Avram was godfather to Grania's son Seth, from her second marriage. He died in 1993.

Besides his published fiction, Davidson tantalized his readers with a great many abortive projects -- several series that were discontinued after one or two novels, and some hinted at but never finished works -- one of them a planned collaboration with Harlan Ellison (of which I believe perhaps 10,000 words were written.) And much of his work that was published is now hard to find -- many magazine stories were never collected, and those books that were published are mostly out of print. However, Avram has the benefit of devoted family and friends; and his aforementioned godson, Seth Davis, has taken on the ambitious project of reissuing many of Davidson's works as audiobooks, and some even in print. A collection of at least some of the uncollected stories is, I believe, in work. Seth is also producing podcasts, in which he and a guest discuss one of Avram's stories, as frame for an audio version (https://avramdavidsonuniverse.buzzsprout.com/). (Full disclosure: I am a guest on one of those podcasts, discussing "The Sources of the Nile". This is scheduled for February 2022.)

In among Davidson's papers there were some completely or nearly completed pieces -- for instance an account of a trip to Belize -- and at least one novel. This novel has now been published, by Seth Davis' imprint Or All the Seas With Oysters Publishing. Seth was kind enough to send me a copy.

This novel is set in Yokums, NY, in 1930. (Yokums, of course, is a stand-in for Yonkers.) In one sense it is a fictionalized retelling of a locally famous incident: a sewer-cleaning crew encountered a mysterious rubber pipe -- and from its open end beer came pouring out. This was still 3 years before the repeal of Prohibition. The flowing beer attracted a huge crowd, happy to sample it. Naturally there were investigations (and even another beer filled pipe was found) but nothing was ever officially determined about the origin of the beer. To be sure, the notorious bootlegger Dutch Schultz lived very close to one of the endpoints of the pipe ... Indeed, Davidson wrote an article about this incident, and it appears in his 1962 book Crimes and Chaos (which has also been reissued in trade paperback and audio by Or All The Seas With Oysters.)

Davidson took his account of the story, and expanded it into this novel. The novel retells the basics of the beer incident (changing the names of the people involved), but adds a fascinating cast of characters. Besides the principals (such as the renamed versions of Dutch Schultz and the Mayor and the Commissioner of Public Works, etc.) we meet the likes of Mary Mabel Moomaw, a crusader for Prohibition; and Elmer Dugan, a boy dealing with the stresses of growing up in the Depression; and Bill Bomberg and Stelle Wilson, beginning reporters for rival papers, who are hesitatingly entering a relationship; and H. Seymour Clack, Captain of the packet boat Sadie Howell, and his Black Chief Engineer, Preacher Babcock. And many more. What emerges is an affectionate portrait of Yonkers -- er, Yokums -- at that time; interspersed with details of the city's history; and plenty of snark about its politics.

The central story -- the discovery of the beer -- is a minor aspect, really (and well told in the Crimes and Chaos article.) But the ambling descriptions of the characters are the heart of it. It's funny; always interesting; warm. The prose is recognizably Davidsonian, and less convoluted than his prose became late in his career, but still readable. The characters speak in voices, several dialects rigorously captured. (Perhaps a bit too "rigorously" on occasion -- tics like representing an voiced "th" as "dth" for some of the speakers wore rather thin.) The side incidents are intriguing as well -- the Dutch Schultz character's dinner party, for example, or Elmer Dugan running away to sea; and even very minor characters, like the older newspaperman Peter Fogarty, come to poignant life.

This is a novel all of us who have cherished Avram Davidson's work will be delighted to find; and we can hope it will attract new readers for this great writer. It's not a lost masterpiece, but it's a warm and honest book; a well-told tiny slice of American history.

Review: Sorcerer to the Crown, by Zen Cho

Sorcerer to the Crown, by Zen Cho

a review by Rich Horton

This was Zen Cho's first novel, published in 2015. Cho is a Malaysian writer, based in the UK, where she works as a lawyer. She caught my attention with some fine short fiction, and when this novel appeared, advertised as a Regency romance with magic, I was intrigued -- because I like Regencies, and I like magic. And the book was well-reviewed ... but I remain obstinately behind on my novel reading. However, in 2021, I have made a focused attempt to catch up on novels I've missed in the past several years, particularly novels by women; and I have been using my (new) Audible account to help. Sorcerer to the Crown, then, is the latest such novel I've listened too (the 12th, beginning at the end of last year with Piranesi.) It is read by Jenny Sterlin, very nicely. (As is traditional, I will mention the pronunciation I learned from it: "geas" is pronounced "gesh" (roughly), instead of "jee-us" as I had always read it.)

[Note -- I may misspell some names, not having the printed book to consult.]

The novel opens with Zacharias Wythe, a young black boy, demonstrating his magical abilities before a meeting of the Society of Unnatural Philosophers, sponsored by his master (and eventually adoptive father) Sir Stephen Wythe, who is Sorcerer to the Crown -- that is, the leader of English magicians. At least, of the acknowledged English magicians -- mostly gentlemen, and all men. Zacharias is a curiosity, because of his color. As for women, they are deemed too weak to perform powerful magic, though it is discreetly accepted that many women use household magics to help with cooking and cleaning, etc. But with Sir Stephen's influence, Zacharias is trained in magic, and becomes very accomplished. And then, some 20 years later, Sir Stephen dies suddenly -- and Zacharias inherits his staff, which makes him the new Sorcerer to the Crown. But his position is delicate -- many English magicians are offended by the thought that a lowborn former slave is now their leader. He is even covertly accused of having murdered Sir Stephen. And he is privately subject to a mysterious and painful malady -- in addition to the fact that the ghost of Sir Stephen continues to give him advice. And finally, this is a time of crisis for English magic -- its supply is diminishing, evidently because of some dispute with the King and Queen of Faerie. Moreover, the Sultan of Jondarbyke is demanding magical help from England, to deal with a plague of vampiresses on his island -- and England may not have the magical ability to do so.

Zacharias has few allies -- his stepmother, Lady Wythe, is one; and he has a couple of supporters in the Society, an older magician named Damerel, and a younger, rather foolish but quite pleasant man named Rollo. It is Rollo who prevails on Zacharias to give a lecture at a magical school for "gentlewitches" -- a school which aims to teach young women to suppress their magical abilities. One of the women at the school is Prunella Gentleman, who was sort of adopted by the school's headmistress after her father committed suicide. Prunella never knew her mother, though her looks make it clear that her mother hailed from India. This of course makes Prunella an outcast too, and she has been doing chores at the school, including teaching, in exchange for her keep. She is also, we quickly learn, an extremely accomplished magician -- as, indeed, are several other young women at the school, despite the efforts of the headmistress. On the day of Zacharias' visit, Prunella is set to cleaning the attic (in part of keep her out of Zacharias' way) -- and there she discovers an old valise that must have been her father's, containing (as she eventually realizes) several magical treasures, in particular seven eggs that might hatch familiars. As such they are incredibly valuable, especially as Faerie has cut off the supply of familiars to England.

Well, Zacharias' visit is something of a disaster, as some of the girls, instead of showing their docile suppression of their magical gifts, get into a fight, complete with hurled spells. Prunella gets quite unfairly blamed, and decides it is time for her to leave. And Zacharias is struck by the realization that it is really foolish for England to ignore the magical abilities of their women, and he hatches a scheme to force the Society to accept women as "magiciennes". At the same time he finds himself burdened with Prunella, who has decided that she will go to London, and that the best way to get there is to hitch a ride with Zacharias.

Things keep bubbling from there ... there are sorcerous assassination attempts against Zacharias ... there are visits from one of the witches of Jondarbyke (a delightful character!) ... one of the more powerful magicians in England mounts an attempt to dislodge Zacharias from his position, aided by his wife, who is more than she seems ... Prunella hatches some of her familiars, with the result that she is de facto the most powerful magician in England ... and, of course, Zacharias and Prunella, against their first inclinations, get closer and closer (I mean, this is a romance!)

Some of this, it seemed to me, is too much of a muchness. The ending, though in many ways satisfying, is kind of a mad jumble. Some plot strands more or less fizzle, though some are quite effectively resolved. There are a couple of out and out surprises, which both delighted me and rather tired me. There are some cliches, most notably the one in which the main character is  a) inordinately beautiful; and b) the greatest sorcerer in the land. (The other main character is of course very handsome, and one of the greatest sorcerers in the land.)

The novel deals fairly effectively with the issue of race, which obviously greatly affects the social positions of both main characters -- yet even there at times I thought things not quite convincing. All in all, I'd call it a classic exemplar of a first novel -- a writer in love with her characters and concept, having a great deal of fun (which is transmitted to the reader) but not quite in control.

I don't want to understate things -- I really enjoyed this novel, even if I felt it didn't quite work completely. But how many novels do? Sorcerer to the Crown is a lot of fun, with characters it's nice to spend time with, and that you'll readily root for. The language is pretty solid -- a decent pastiche of early 18th century prose. There is certainly room for a sequel (and, indeed, one appeared in 2019, The True Queen.) Recommended.

Review: Tropic of Kansas, by Christopher Brown

Tropic of Kansas, by Christopher Brown

a review by Rich Horton

Christopher Brown's 2017 novel Tropic of Kansas was the latest novel our book group (run by Mark Tiedemann) discussed -- last Wednesday! I actually bought a copy back in 2017, and never got around to reading it. Due to the condition of my basement, I couldn't find my copy, so I went ahead and bought the Kindle version -- and then the Audible version as well. The cool thing is, that both Kindle and Audible versions allow you to jump ahead to wherever you got in the other version. Anyway, some disclaimers here -- I come to this review both a) knowing the author (a bit, not extensively), and b) having just discussed the book with him (and several fellow book club members.) Just so you know!

Before I get to the book per se, maybe I should mention what I thought about the audiobook. First -- it only taught me one new pronunciation, and actually I learned this same thing from the last audiobook I heard (Machine, by Elizabeth Bear): some people (mostly British I guess) actually pronounce "solder" as if there is an "l" in the word. Who would do that?! All Americans know it's pronounced "sodder", but I guess that's kind of a bad word to the English (by analogy with "sodding".) (Also, in Machine I learned that the English pronounce "methane" "meeeethane", which is just weird, sorry.) Tropic of Kansas is read by Josh Bloomberg and Bahni Turpin. The two readers split the book based on the two POV characters -- Bloomberg reads the chapters featuring the male character, Sig; and Turpin reads the chapters featuring the female character, Tania. (Both read the final chapter all the way through, separately -- it features both characters.) Both narrators do a good job.

The 30,000 foot view of this novel is simple: in the near future (actually an alternate near future, the Jonbar point being, apparently, the successful assassination attempt on Reagan) the US is in terrible decline, ecologically, economically, and especially politically. President Mack is a fairly open fascist who, after serving a couple of terms, staged what seems a straightforward coup against his successors. His government is fantastically corrupt, and has enemies' lists that it eagerly acts upon, and all that. The book is essentially about a grassroots revolution against him, leading to ... but I'll let the book tell you that.

On the ground, though, the book is about its two main characters, who are radically different from each other (even though they are sort of step-siblings.) We are introduced to Sig as a young teenager, essentially feral, scrambling to steal some food from a Canadian home. Years later, he is still in Canada, still essentially feral, but is being deported to the US. Tania, by contrast, is a lawyer in Washington, D. C., working for the government, in a division that investigates corruption. This isn't what she might have expected growing up poor in Minneapolis, and her mother considers her to be something of a sellout, but she, and her very privileged white friend Odile, seem to feel that they are doing what they can to ameliorate a nasty political situation. But one day the two of them visit the White House, following what has been called a suicide bombing attempt by the former Vice President, Maxine Price, who (they say) tried to blow up the President in revenge for his role in removing her and the previous President from office. Tania sees the President -- who escaped the blast, only losing an arm -- and can't resist yelling at him. And quickly she and Odile are arrested.

Both of them have just enough pull not to be charged, but Tania's mother is also in prison, and Tania is pressured into a deal. In exchange for her mother's release, she must take on a difficult assignment in the "Tropic of Kansas" -- the name for the ecologically and economically blasted Midwest -- essentially, the Mississippi River valley (its whole length) and points West. Her division has been tracked with rooting out a dangerous criminal who has escaped from detention in northern Minnesota. This is, of course, Sig. And (in something of an implausible coincidence), she knows Sig. For he used to live with her family in his preteen years, when his mother -- a radical -- wasn't able to care for him. And Tania, a few years older than him, was his primary babysitter. We get some flashbacks, both their back stories, and especially the story of Sig's mother's death, and how Sig reacted (a policeman ended up dead, and Sig had to run to Canada.)

So that sets up the main action. And what follows is, in a series of alternating chapters, the story of Sig making his way from Northern Minnesota south, through Iowa, St. Louis, and Texas, and eventually to New Orleans, the center of the resistance. Meanwhile, in the other chapters, we follow Tania, as she is always a step or two behind Sig, but is slowly learning about the resistance, and especially their strange, secret, illegal computer network. Inevitably, the more Tania learns, the more she is convinced to change sides; and as for Sig, his passage is more a series of heroic attempts at small (or sometimes larger) acts of violence aimed at thwarting the government and its ruling cabal of corporations, and also setting free some of his friends. 

The structure of the novel is striking -- very short chapters, alternating viewpoints. It gives the book tremendous propulsive momentum. Much of Tania's (more interior, both figuratively and literally) chapters are devoted to understanding this society, and learning about the alternate political structure she eventually hopes to promote. Sig's chapters are exterior -- partly because he is all surface. We learn little about his inner feelings -- one noticeable feature is that he has a few brief relationships with women, and it never seems something he wants, though presumably he's happy enough with them. They just sort of happen. And they're not the point. The point, really, of the Sig sections is action, and they are very exciting, turning on a set of increasingly extravagant, and generally very violent, confrontations. Sig levels up again and again, becoming a sort of superhero, at the same time generally ending up seriously injured, captured, imprisoned only to escape, and at best only about 80% successful in each effort.

The resolution came for me as a bit of a mixed bag. There's a certain degree of anti-climax, and of rushedness, to the conclusion. But at the same time, it's pretty honest in its mixed nature. The book is willing to admit that revolution comes with terrible costs, to both sides; and also that while it may achieve some of its goals, it rarely achieves them all; and may also have unexpected and negative consequences. 

All this said, I really liked the book. It's terrifically exciting, Very fast moving. Politically fascinating (even if you don't agree at all times -- indeed, you almost never should agree wholly in a case like this, and as I mentioned, this book is willing, at least to a degree, to interrogate its politics, to admit skepticism.) The main characters are both very well depicted (despite the eventual near-superhero qualities of Sig), and both, despite severe faults, end up being people we really root for. 

And, for a fillip -- here's what Chris Brown said about the origin of this novel. He wrote a story for a festschrift about Robert Howard -- stories riffing on Howard's themes and characters. Brown's story essentially reimagined Conan as a soldier in the Iraq War. ("The Bunker of the Tikriti", as by Chris Nakashima-Brown, in Cross Plains Universe.) As he later considered making this story a novel, it obviously required massive change -- complete reimagining -- but it is truly interesting, and illuminating, to see Sig as modern day vision of what a Conan character might really be.

Review: The Once and Future Witches, by Alix E. Harrow

 I notice that I haven't made a post here in almost two months. That wasn't the plan, but things happened. I'm going to try to be a more regulat poster.

The Once and Future Witches, by Alix E. Harrow

a review by Rich Horton

My latest in a long series of reviews of books I heard, rather than read, is The Once and Future Witches, by Alix E. Harrow. Harrow has been publishing short fiction since 2014, and she came to my notice with her Hugo winning short story from 2018, "A Witch's Guide to Escape: A Practical Compendium of Portal Fantasies". Her first novel was The Ten Thousand Doors of January in 2019, and The Once and Future Witches, published a year ago as I write, was her second. It won the 2021 British Fantasy Award for Best Novel.

The novel is set in 1893, in an alternate history in which witchery is real, but has been brutally suppressed over and over again (mostly by men, and often, we eventually learn, but what seems to be the same, nearly immortal, man.) Though it eventually becomes clear that both men and women can do magic, this history assigns most of it to women, including things like collection of fairy tales (by the Sisters Grimm and Charlotte Perrault and Andrea Lang, for example -- and Alexandra Pope is the name of a famous translator of Homer.) Likewise history is altered in curious ways -- the witch burnings in Salem, for example, happened about a century later than in our history, and the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire becomes the Square Shirtwaist Fire and happens a couple of decades early. I could see the motivation for most of these changes (some, I suspect, just for fun) but I'm not surely they really worked -- at any rate, they nagged at me as artificial. More successful are the reimagined fairly tales intertwined with the main line of the story -- these interrogate the assumptions and intentions of traditional fairy stories effectively, and also work nicely to advance the plot (and back story) of the book.

The story here concerns three sisters: Beatrice Belladonna, Agnes Amaranth, and James Juniper. They grew up in the backwoods, and their mother died young. They were raised by an abusive father, and by their grandmother, who taught them "witch ways" -- little magics, sometimes bigger magics, done in secret by women. The three are separated as the action starts, and each blames the others: Beatrice and Agnes both abandoned the much younger James when she was 11 or so, after a mysterious fire nearly killed their father and injured James Juniper. It's clear to the reader that none of the girls had much choice in the actions they took, and that their mistrust of each other is misplaced, but that mistrust drives the early action importantly. As the book opens, their father has died, and James Juniper, her home given to a male cousin, has fled to the city, to New Salem (while being suspected of having murdered her father.) New Salem (actually location never really given) was built, apparently, to replace the old town of Salem, which was burned to the ground to wipe out all traces of witchcraft, and to kill the remaining witches. As James comes to the city, she is drawn to its center, and so are her sisters, who have lived in the city for a while. (Beatrice is a librarian, and Agnes works in a mill.) As the three come together, a sudden storm reveals a mysterious tower -- the Tower of Avalon -- and it is clear to everyone, hopeful witches and suspicious moralists, that magic in some form has returned.

New Salem, we learn, has been explicitly recast as a highly moralistic city, and witchcraft is illegal, and all but unknown (at least, openly.) It is also the home of a nascent movement for women's suffrage. In something of a reaction to this, the upcoming mayoral race features a reform-minded opponent, Gideon Hill, a slimy man who urges severe opposition to both women's suffrage and any trace of witchcraft.

The three sisters represent a version of the traditional maiden, mother, crone. James Juniper, the youngest, the wild girl, is the maiden; Agnes, pregnant out of wedlock, and the most traditionally beautiful, is the mother, and Beatrice, the eldest, and a Lesbian, is the crone. But these cliched roles are also questioned and examined, and each is given fuller agency than in traditional stories. Soon they are -- if somewhat tentatively -- working together. James Juniper joins the suffragist society, but quickly realizes they are somewhat hidebound, very cautious (especially about any hint of witchery), and racist to boot. The sisters form a new society, explicitly looking to restore witchcraft, at first by resurrecting, from old stories and oral traditions, as many spells (witch ways) as possible, eventually be seeking to restore the Tower of Avalon. Meanwhile Agnes is trying to find a way to keep her coming daughter safe, and to give her a chance at an independent life; while Beatrice is forging a tentative relationship with Cleopatra Quinn, a black journalist from New Cairo, the black neighborhood of New Salem. And Gideon Hill -- who, it is clear to readers from the jump, has his own dark magical abilities -- is trying to capture them and destroy them.

The novel gains momentum quickly. There are actually three climaxes, each very powerful, each of which brought tears to my eyes. The magic is convincingly and imaginatively described. There are truly wrenching sacrifices that must be made, which are not shied away from. The back story of the sisters in interesting and well revealed, and the back story of some other characters, Gideon Hill in particular, is also intriguing. I will say I didn't quite find James Juniper's character to come to life as fully as her two sisters; and Agnes' eventual love interest seems a bit convenient. The novel makes a brave attempt to engage with racial issues, and also LGBTQ+ issues -- sometimes this aspect seems a bit sketched in, a bit forced. (Though necessary to acknowledge.) All these are quibbles (and so too is my feeling that the denouement is somewhat of a letdown) -- for the most part The Once and Future Witches is exciting, tremendously moving, and earns its ending.

Birthday Review: James Tiptree, Jr.: The Double Life of Alice B. Sheldon, by Julie Phillips

Today would have been Alice Bradley Sheldon's 106th birthday. I was surprised and disappointed to find that I haven't really written anything substantive about her ... I suppose because I read her complete works before I really began writing about SF. Not that that's an excuse.

Here's a brief review I published in Fantasy Magazine of Julie Phillips' exceptional biography. (The review is brief because that was the format for the magazine.)

Review: James Tiptree, Jr.: The Double Life of Alice B. Sheldon, by Julie Phillips (St. Martin’s Press, 0-312-20385-3, $27.95, 470pp, hc) 2006. 

A review by Rich Horton

It has been said that the lives of writers are not terribly interesting – perhaps this is sometimes true (though less often so than some might think), but it is certainly not true of the life of “James Tiptree, Jr.”. This was fairly clear even when we did not know who “Tiptree” was, and when rumor and “his” letters spoke of much travel, intelligence work in World War II, a psychology Ph.D., and government work. Then we learned that “Tiptree”, famously an “ineluctably masculine” writer in Robert Silverberg’s words, was a woman, Alice Bradley Sheldon, and her story became even more interesting.

As Julie Phillips’s excellent biography makes clear, her story was still more interesting than we knew. Alice Bradley was the daughter of a very successful Chicago writer, Mary Hastings Bradley, who was also an explorer and took her daughter on three trips to the African interior. Alice grew up rather wild, tumbling into a disastrous first marriage at her debut. She was bisexual, though her affairs with women were generally short-lived – perhaps simply because she couldn’t bring herself to fully accept her Lesbianism – or perhaps because her rivalry with her mother (or something else) made her ever suspicious of women. She was fiercely intelligent, beautiful, and hard to satisfy. Besides worthy service for the U. S. military, she was a promising painter, a chicken farmer, a psychologist, a journalist, a writer for the New Yorker, and more. But above all, once she took her male pseudonym, she was one of the greatest and most original SF writers of all time. 

Phillips’s book tells her life story with sympathy but also with a clear eye to her problems. It is also insightful as to the source of her SFnal inspiration, and quite strong in covering the literary value of the major stories and the novels. And it portrays very well the deep epistolary friendships “Tiptree” made with many SF writers, male and female. This is a moving life story, and an acutely written literary biography – a must for anyone interested in SF history.

Cordwainer Smith Award Review: The Continuous Katherine Mortenhoe, by D. G. Compton

The Continuous Katherine Mortenhoe, by D. G. Compton

a review by Rich Horton

This weekend, at Readercon 31 (in a virtual sense), the 2021 Cordwainer Smith Rediscovery Award was given to David Guy Compton, who wrote his SF as D. G. Compton. (He also wrote crime fiction as Guy Compton, and romances as Frances Lynch.) The jury this year comprised Grant Thiessen, Steven H Silver, and myself. This was our first year on the jury, succeeding Robert J. Sawyer and Barry Malzberg, who resigned last year after many years of service. (Their fellow juror, Mike Resnick, had died before last year's selection was made.) 

We discuss our selection in this video. Short version -- he was an exceptional writer of generally low-key SF (mostly novels), focussed on character and on social themes. The bulk of his work appeared between 1965 and 1980, though after an eight year absence he returned with 5 more novels between 1988 and 1996, plus an outlier short story in 2001. He was born in 1930, and is still alive, though he doesn't appear to be writing. He has been active in the assisted suicide movement. Though born and long resident in the UK, according to information in the 2015 NYRB Books reissue of this novel, he was at that time living in Maine.

The Continous Katherine Mortenhoe, from 1974, is probably Compton's best known novel. This is partly because of the 1979 film adaptation, Death Watch, directed by Bertrand Tavernier, and starring Romy Schneider and Harvey Keitel; but also because it's an outstanding book -- my personal favorite of Compton's oeuvre. It was first published in the US as The Unsleeping Eye (a Don Wollheim title change, and not inappropriate though less good than the original title.) Inevitably there were also editions titled Death Watch. My edition is the 1980 Pocket Books reprint, also called The Unsleeping Eye, and curiously copyrighted 1979, which is either an error, or reflective of revisions Compton may have made, either as a result of the movie, or of his 1979 sequel, Windows. 

The book is set in the relatively near future -- probably in our past as of 2021. Katherine Mortenhoe is a woman in her 40s. She has been diagnosed with a terminal disease, and given a month or so to live. This is extremely unusual for the world of this novel, as almost all diseases are curable, and no one dies except by old age (or violence.) The other main character, Roddie, is a TV reporter who has had a camera surgically implanted, so that anything he sees is recorded. He is assigned to get close to Katherine Mortenhoe, in order to record her final days for a sort of "reality TV show". (This particular bit of speculation by Compton seems very prescient now.) Katherine is at first very resistant, but she is worn down over time as her fate becomes widely known, and it becomes clear that her privacy is lost no matter what she does.

Katherine works in "the Romance division of Computabooks" -- apparently making revisions to computer-generated novels. (Her rackety father, we eventually learn, is also a writer -- of what seems to be trashy SF, in a sly swipe by Compton at his own preferred genre.) She has urges to write her own realistic novel. She is married to a rather colorless man named Harry, and their marriage is shortly coming up for renewal. Her previous marriage, to Gerald Mortenhoe, ended when he declined to renew. Her problem is that she seems totally out of touch with contemporary life -- and her doctor theorizes that this psychological issue has leaked into her physiological problems, causing her uncurable illness.

Katherine's reaction to her plight is primarly to attempt to escape -- not to escape death, which in essence she seems to embrace, but to escape the sort of ordinary life she had been living, and also of course to escape the intrusive TV focus. She has to elude Harry, but cannot elude Roddie -- who she doesn't know (and who doesn't obviously seem a TV journalist, as his camera is invisible.) So both of them end up with the "Fringies" (essentially, this future society's poor, homeless, and unemployed.) And then they find themselves at the estate of a very rich man, who is having a party/orgy. And they are threatened by nihilistic criminals. Throughout all this Roddie is entirely altering his view of his own job -- and his feelings for Katherine Mortenhoe. And Katherine is becoming, it seems, more and more herself.

There are some plotty twists that I won't reveal, except to say that the unavoidable destiny of the novel's characters cannot be changed. Other characters -- Roddie's boss, Katherine's doctor, her ex-husband, Roddie's ex-wife, Katherine's father -- come into view, and all these viewpoints coalesce to depict this rather interesting and sociologically convincing future more fully -- and more darkly. Katherine is a wholly believable character, and Roddie is interesting and worth following, if, I thought, not quite as convincing. The resolution -- even as its general shape is clear from the getgo -- is quite powerful, quite moving. This is a major novel, and while it wouldn't be correct to say that it was ignored -- it got a fair amount of notice -- it still deserves more attention, and deserves to stand among the key SF novels of the 1970s.

Review: We Are Satellites, by Sarah Pinsker

We Are Satellites, by Sarah Pinsker

a review by Rich Horton

Sarah Pinsker has written a lot of outstanding short fiction (and has two Nebulas to show for that), and her first novel, A Song for a New Day, also won a Nebula. So this, her second novel, has a lot to live up to. I "read" it, as I have with many novels since I got my Audible subscription, via listening to it. (In all honesty, the narration wasn't my favorite -- some of it was (probably unfair on my part) reaction to the voice, but also I wasn't quite convinced by how she changed voices between characters, and some of the phrasing didn't seem right to me.) Anyway, how does We Are Satellites stack up?

It's set in the very near future, and it concerns the reactions of a family of four to a new technology. The family consists of Val, a schoolteacher and running coach; her wife Julie, a chief of staff for a member of the House of Representatives; and their children, David, who is in high school as the action starts, and Sophie, a few years younger, who has epilepsy. The new technology is called a "pilot" -- a brain implant which, in essence, allows the brain to multitask much more efficiently. This tech is originally adopted by high school age kids (at least as we see) and David quickly wants one, noticing that his fellow students are doing better in class.

That sets up the central issue driving the book -- for Val is immediately, viscerally, opposed to pilots, and to David getting one; while Julie is open to letting David get one, and moreover she wants one herself. There is a political side illuminated by her position -- her boss is getting one, and most of the other people in her office are as well. Beyond that, BNL, the company making the pilots, is based in their district, so there are lots of jobs on the line -- and even some financial assistance for those who want a pilot. As for Sophie, her epilepsy makes her ineligible to get one.

This sets up some immediate, and interesting, social problems. One is solved quickly -- if pilots are expensive, won't they only increase the divide between the haves and have-nots? BNL, however, offers them for free to those who can't afford them. But there are still people on the "outside" -- those who can't (or won't) get a pilot -- people like Sophie, who can't, and Val, who won't.

The personal issue becomes fraught when David graduates, and instead of going to college accepts an offer to join the Army, which sees tremendous potential for soldiers using pilots. But this unites Julie and Val, who both hate the idea of David joining the military, purely (as portrayed) as mothers, who fear for their son's safety. Meanwhile, Sophie has made a friend at school, and her friend, led by his father, is part of a pilot resistance group, which Sophie joins. The other key development is in David's head -- the pilot gives him the ability to multitask, indeed -- but to a fault. He notices EVERYTHING, which is very distressing, and which he calls "Noise".

I won't detail the further developments, but we see the lives of David and Sophie develop as they grow into adulthood; and we see Val and Julie weather some serious crises in their marriage (caused mostly by lack of communication, which is blamed largely on Julie (and her errors are severe) but somehow some similarly terrible lapses by Val seem forgotten ...) 

So -- how did it work for me? Well, it was a mixed bag. The central idea is outstanding -- plausible, and worth examining, and much of the examination is spot on. But the plot ends up ensnarled in a really sort of cliche "evull corporation" thread. But more to the point, very often I had a hard time believing things. Some of this was character stuff that could be laid at the feet of characterization -- why don't people communicate more? Maybe that really is true to the characters, but if Julie, Val, and perhaps especially David (about his "noise") had actually talked more, things might have been much different. But there are other things -- there's a subplot involving a stolen corporate badge that I simply rejected, as someone who works for a defense contractor and has a badge -- the scheme would not have worked. And Sophie's resistance effort seems based more on the conviction that since she doesn't like pilots (because she can't get one herself?) the corporation that makes them must be up to something. (One of the speeches against pilots reminded me only too much of an anti-vaxxer's screed.) The fact that in this book, her suspicions end up true (for reasons that, again, I didn't quite buy) doesn't seem to me to justify getting there for the wrong reasons. (Especially as it's easy to imagine similar technology being critical to HELP people with epilepsy -- granting that in this future it didn't work, but what if a treatment for epilepsy also turned out to give people the same boost that pilots do? Where would Sophie stand? Even though some of the other, very worthwhile, issues with pilots would remain?)

So -- that sounds negative. But -- I still really liked the book. Why -- partly because Pinsker creates characters we like and root for, and who have real world problems that matter. Also -- the posited technology, the pilots, is both believable, and of real benefits -- but with real problems. I might well be guilty of the reviewer's worst sin -- wanting the author to write the book they want, instead of the book the author meant to read -- but I feel like the central concept is really cool, and the characters will support a nuance examination of some wrenching issues, so it's almost a copout to let things turn on corporate malfeasance instead of a close confrontation with truly troubling implications of a technology that can help, but that also has a dark side. For me, that would have been a more ambiguous novel -- but in the end more interesting.

Review: The Goblin Emperor, by Katherine Addison

The Goblin Emperor, by Katherine Addison

a review by Rich Horton

Some little way through The Goblin Emperor I had a thought -- this book's main character is "the Ted Lasso of Emperors". This won't mean much to those who have not seen the TV series Ted Lasso (in which case, my first recommendation is: See it now!) Ted Lasso is about a man hired to coach an English football team who is woefully unprepared for the job (he's an American football coach, which is the lame joke that inspired the series -- but the series is NOT about that joke.) Ted Lasso, with the help of a loyal assistant, and despite the open hostility of his players and many of the local supporters, manages to succeed (to a degree) simply by being unfailingly kind. The Goblin Emperor, then, is about Maia, a half goblin who becomes Emperor of the Elflands despite no preparation, and who faces open hostility from many of his subjects and from many of the people who should be helping him, but who succeeds mostly by being unfailingly kind.

The other thing that came to mind was the novels of Anthony Trollope, mostly because of Trollope's fascination with manners and with political minutiae, but to a degree because the steampunkish and also the monarchy plus nobles social structure in The Goblin Emperor is not entirely unlike Trollope's England. And also because if Jo Walton can do Trollope with dragons (in the thoroughly delightful Tooth and Claw) then why can't Katherine Addison do Trollope with elves and goblins?

I am, to be sure, late to the party with this book -- after all, it won the Locus Award for Best Fantasy Novel, and was nominated for the Nebula, Hugo, and World Fantasy awards, all this back when it was published in 2014. What can I say? I am perpetually behind on my novel reading! I should also mention that "Katherine Addison" is a pseudonym for Sarah Monette, who has published a number of fine novels and excellent shorter work under her own name (I am particularly fond of her Kyle Murchison Booth stories, and her collaborations with Elizabeth Bear such as "Boojum".) One of my recent stratagems for catching up on novels is listening to audiobooks, and so with The Goblin Emperor, which I "read" in the narration by Kyle McCarley.

To briefly summarize the plot: Maia is the youngest son of the Emperor Verinechebel of the Elflands. Maia's mother was a goblin, and their unhappy marriage was purely political. She was "relegated" soon after Maia's birth, and so Maia never knew his father, nor the court. His mother died when she was 8, and he was raised thereafter by his much older cousin, who has been punished in essence (we eventually learn) for political reasons. This cousin is bitter, and very abusive to Maia.

Then there is an airship accident, and Verinechebel is killed along with all Maia's older half-brothers. He becomes the heir, and is summoned to court to take up his duties. He is confronted with a very hostile Lord Chancellor, and a great deal of suspicion by most of the court, not to mention a fair amount of prejudice due to his half-goblin ancestry. (In this world, it is clear, goblins and elves are the same species, just different races.) Fortuitously, he is able to hire as secretary the courier who brought the news of his elevation, and this man, Csevet, proves to be invaluable and very loyal.

Maia, then, must navigate a passel of issues, some personal, some political. These include the investigation into the airship crash that killed his father (which of course is quickly proven not to be accidental), confrontations with severely jealous relatives like his sister-in-law Chevien, who believes her son to be the rightful Emperor; and his quasi stepmother, Verinechebel's last wife Csoru. Likewise there is the question of his necessary upcoming marriage; and of the supposed necessity of his half-sister's marriage. There are political questions, in this book ultimately revolving around the issue of a proposed bridge across a major river. There is the desire of his grandfather, the Avar of the Goblins, who wishes to visit. His Lord Chancellor continues to obstruct him. His infatuation with an opera singer threatens, perhaps, scandal. And, eventually, he faces two separate assassination attempts. And his reaction, throughout, is to listen, to try to understand the other person, to do the unexpectedly kind thing.

Some of this description may make the book seem full of incident and action, but it really isn't -- it's mostly court intrigue, lots of talk, the occasional revelation of a dark backstory. And I was gripped throughout. I was completely absorbed, and very moved. I loved this novel.

And yet I must admit it's far from perfect. Part of the issue is that Maia -- delightful character though he is -- is perhaps a bit too perfect. Part is that he is really quite lucky -- in most any real life comparable situation he'd have been crushed. And the details of the plot do take on aspects of cliche. (That said, another complaint I've seen -- that there are too many weird words -- strikes me as wrongheaded. Perhaps aided by the narration, I found the words (names, titles, buildings, etc.) delightful -- strange but comprehensible, and greatly adding to the atmosphere.) As "fantasy", it's marginal. There is a touch of magic, but not a lot. The elves and goblins aren't really all that elflike or goblinlike, though I did like their ears -- really, as I said, they are stand ins for different races. (Not that that is really a problem.)

Bottom line -- this is in a certain way a comfort read. In that sense it makes us feel good -- by showing us that a good person can make a difference. I might not always (cynical old me) believe that, at least not to this extent, but I'd like to, and for the space of this novel I did. A good novel, a fun novel, a great read. Not a great novel, but that's not always what we need.

Review: One Night Stands and Lost Weekends, by Lawrence Block

One Night Stands and Lost Weekends, by Lawrence Block

a review by Rich Horton

Everybody has to start somewhere. Lawrence Block, like many writers who came up in the 1950s, got his start in the men's fiction magazines of just after the pulp era. Digest-sized magazines, for the most part, that published very pulpy fiction. And this book collects the stories Block wrote and sold at the beginning of his career, to magazines like Manhunt, Trapped, Off-Beat, and so on. (One of them even went to Science Fiction Stories.) These pieces were first published between 1958 and 1963, with one outlier in 1966. 

I have read a lot of lower end '50s magazines, but in my case almost all science fiction. But the crime fiction market was similar in its way. Block is quite dismissive of these early stories, and for the most part he is right, at least in that Block's later work, such as the Bernie Rhodenbarr and Matthew Scudder series, is much better. But it is still interesting to see a writer learning. And, really, it's clear from his earliest stories that he could WRITE -- could put words together in interesting ways, could make the reader want to see what happened (even if, in many of these early stories, what was going to happen was fairly predictable), and could make the characters breath, even if, again, these early characters were drawn from stock. I was reminded to an extent of the career of Robert Silverberg, in science fiction -- he began writing fairly routine SF that for all that was never less than compentently executed -- you could see from the start that he could write. And both Block and Silverberg also honed their novel-length skills by writing a good deal of paperback soft porn in the same period, by all accounts likewise competent and professional if formulaic.

This book, a trade paperback from 2008, was actually originally published in two separate volumes by the estimable small press Crippen and Landru. The first book, One Night Stands, collected most of the short stories Block published in the first years of his career. These pieces run from say 1500 to about 4000 words. They are snappy, usually dark, setting up a criminal situation, and typically turning a little twist on things, often to the ironic misfortune of the main character. I had seen only one of these early, not surprisingly (me being me) the one science fiction story, "Nor Iron Bars a Cage", which I had read in its reprint in Judith Merril's Year's Best SF collection, under the original (lesser) title "Make a Prison". I thought the piece amusing anough, but frankly not worthy of inclusion in a year's best book -- and Block seems to agree. (It's about an alien sent to prison for a crime, and the people who imprison him congratulating themselves on the great prison they've constructed -- until they learn something (not all that surprising) about the alien's physical form that renders their prison useless.) But I read through the rest of these stories quickly, always entertained. As implied above, they tend to follow formula -- introduce a criminal situation -- typically someone doing a crime, or someone about to be victimized, occasionally telling of a cop investigating a crime -- and reveal an ironic twist, often the criminal getting caught for some foolish reason. There are a lot of beautiful women, either eager to sleep with the men in the stories, or not so eager but about to be forced to, or willing to sleep with them but for a much higher price than they think they're paying. Are these great works? No. But they're worth the price of admission.

The second Crippen and Landru book was called The Lost Cases of Ed Lincoln, and it collected three novelettes about a private eye named Ed Lincoln. The genesis of these stories is amusing -- Block was hired to do a tie-in novel for a TV series starring Ray Milland about a PI named Roy Markham. His first try seemed too good to waste on a TV tie-in, so he changed the name of the protagonist to Ed Lincoln, and sold it as a standalone (Death Pulls a Doublecross.) (The Roy Markham novel he did write eventually appeared as well, though after the TV series had been cancelled.) Block decided to try to turn Ed Lincoln into a series character, but never could make another novel work. But he did write these three novelettes for Man's Magazine in 1962/1963.

These are actually decent work, and a series of novels might have been OK. They're not great work, though. Ed is a fairly typical private eye, complete with a convenient friend in the police department, and a signature slightly unusual preferred drink (cognac.) He's happy to sleep with his clients -- though an ongoing minitheme is that the nicer (if not necessarily quite as beautiful) women he encounters are better for him. In "The Naked and the Deadly" he is hired by a beautiful young woman who says she's being blackmailed -- but when the "blackmailer" is killed after meeting Ed for the payoff, he learns instead that the woman's father was blackmailing a mob boss, who killed him and will kill the daughter too. But of course things are not quite that simple ... I thought this solid work. "Stag Party Girl" was a bit less successful. Ed is hired to protect a man who's being threatened by his whore/mistress now that he's marrying a rich girl. But when the mistress ends up killed at the man's bachelor party, he's the first suspect. Ed doesn't believe he's guilty, though the police do, and he keeps investigating, undercovering the sad tale of the fiancee, and eventually solving the crime -- a rather melodramatic solution turning on a psychosexual hangup that I frankly didn't buy. Finally, my favorite may have been "Twin Call Girls", in which one of a pair of sisters with the title profession hires Ed because she's been threatened with murder. Alas, before Ed can get to her, she's killed, and Ed needs to find the killer, with the help of her sister. I think I liked it because I figured out the solution right off the top, but it was one of those cases where even so working out the way the details come clear is almost more fun because you can see how they fit. On the whole I'd say a series of Ed Lincoln novels probably could have turned out fine, but perhaps it was better that Block invented Bernie Rhodenbarr and Matthew Scudder instead.

The title of the book refers not just to the experiences of (some of) the characters but to Block's self-deprecating account of how long the short stories in One Night Stands and the novelettes in The Lost Cases of Ed Lincoln took to write. I was amused by the ordering of the stories in One Night Stands -- alphabetical order by title, perhaps the first story collection I've ever seen ordered that way (not counting stories written to fill an alphabetical list.) And I should add that besides the stories themselves, Block's autobiographical introductions (to this combined volume, and to each original collection) are a very enjoyable addition.

Review: Unconquerable Sun, by Kate Elliott

 Unconquerable Sun, by Kate Elliott

a review by Rich Horton

Unconquerable Sun is the first in a new Space Opera trilogy from Kate Elliott. Thus it joins a quite remarkable list of recent Space Operas, many or most by women -- books from Arkady Martine, K. B. Wagers, Ann Leckie, Elizabeth Moon, Elizabeth Bear, Aliette de Bodard, Kameron Hurley, Karen Lord; though of course by men too, such as Yoon Ha Lee, Tim Pratt, John Scalzi, and Gareth Powell. I am confident that that list could be much longer. 

How does it stack up in this company? The short answer is, very well. For the longer answer, I will start with my reservations: it cannot be said that the book avoids certain Space Opera cliches. The title character is a Princess, to begin with -- of a comity that calls itself a republic. (And, yes, the book does eventually explore at least somewhat the contradictions implied therein.) Beyond that, well, the main characters are all very special people, At least three of them (none of them the true central characters, but all important secondary characters) are repeatedly described as implausibly physically beautiful. Beyond that, the characters collectively are remarkably accomplished. As for the plot and action and space battles -- there is a good deal of coincidence and good fortune driving events. Let me add -- every one of these statements is true of many many Space Operas, going back to the beginning. (Indeed, it's true of many books, period.) One might say it's part of the DNA of the genre. We know what we're getting into, and we shouldn't complain.

Well, that last paragraph reads a tad mean. And I don't really want it to come off that way. Because given all that, Unconquerable Sun is both terrifically exciting, and full of neat ideas, unexpected revelations, and characters we really like being with. It is, I think, a very succesful piece of SF. It doesn't really break new ground, but it uses its familiar tropes expertly, and I will certainly be reading the rest of the series.

What is the book about? The title character, Princess Sun, the heir to the throne of the Republic of Chaonia, is 20, and as the book opens has just returned from leading a successful military action against Chaonia's principal rival, the Phene Empire. Over time we learn that Chaonia is a smaller federation of Solar Systems, and that Sun's mother, the Queen-Marshal Eirene, has managed to expand its reach, and forge alliances or at least detentes with important polities. Sun is her heir, but her position is perhaps precarious, because her father, Prince Joao, is a Gatoi, part of a ship-dwelling group who often serve as mercenaries for the Phene. Eirene, who already has several consorts, may be pursuing another marriage. And the rival Lee family, who control the security apparatus of Chaonia, have their own interests in the heirship. All interesting enough (and to be honest, pretty standard.) 

Sun quickly finds herself sidelined to a tour of shipyards, and is furious. Meanwhile, we are introduced to further points of view. One is Persephone Lee, twin sister of one of Sun's formal "Companions", Perseus Lee. Persephone, however, has escaped her family, and secretly enrolled at CeDCA, a military academy, and is about to graduate. Another POV, in chapters headed "A Dispatch from the Enemy", is Apama At Sabao, also a young military trainee, but for the Phene Empire -- and she is suddenly sent on a secret mission to make a surprise attack on Chaonian installations. The fourth major POV character is Zizou, a captured Gatoi mercenary. He has been taken in an attempt to study -- and hopefully subvert -- a treatment that Prince Joao believes the Phene give to the Gatoi, greatly enhancing their strength but also including a compulsion to fight to the death, and to always blindly obey the orders of their Phene commanders.

Soon events transpire that bring all these threads together -- Sun's group of companions is attacked, and Perseus Lee is one of the victims. Persephone, on the verge of graduation, learns she has not truly escaped her family, as she is summoned home to replace her brother as one of Sun's companions -- and also, to her horror, to take up a position as her Aunt's heir to the Governorship of Lee House. Zizou is stolen by the Lee family, in an attempt to embarrass Sun, and so also her father -- but Sun manages to gain his loyalty instead. Realizing that she is potentially under more direct attack (possibly from rival factions in Chaonia -- not just from the enemy), Sun and her group of companions make an escape, and for perhaps implausible but terribly exciting reasons manage to be in the right place at the right time to at least blunt the surprise Phene attack ... and, and, and -- the action is truly nonstop from this point, very nicely done, truly gripping. Mixed into this, of course, are the personal relationships of these characters -- especially those in Sun's entourage. Sun herself has taken her companion Hettie as a lover, which is frowned upon. Sun's mother has several, to some extent dynastic, marriages. And Persephone Lee (my personal favorite character by far) begins to form a bond with another character that will clearly be a fulcrum in coming books. 

I have said little about this stellar milieu. It seems the result of a diaspora from a poisoned Earth (most likely), which founded the Celestial Empire, based around a set of stars connnected by a "beacon network" -- which seems to be a set of artifical wormhole connections left by an older race. So far, so familiar, to be sure -- and the next fillip, that the Celestial Empire collapsed when a subset of beacon connections failed reminded me of Scalzi's Collapsing Empire. This is not a complaint -- all these elements, this furniture if you will, are part of the toolset SF writers use, and they are used nicely here. One element Elliott adds is another means of faster than light travel, rarely used because it's much slower than the beacons -- but also independent of them. The humans who have settled these stars use some degree of genetic engineering. For example, it goes unremarked that children are routinely born to same sex couples using genetic material from both parents (and even a third.) Cloning is forbidden in Chaonia, but it's clearly possible. The Phene Empire is more eager to use this tech -- most Phene have four arms, for one thing, and some (including Apama's mother) were born with a sort of armored shell. They have developed as well another, creepy, capability which looms very large towards the end of the novel. Much of this is not really fully developed in this book, but it has the clear potential to be a major issue in the rest of the trilogy. And it's all well handled, integrated into the book with the seamless skill of a veteran SF writer.

An important subtheme of the book, and presumably the trilogy, is exploring -- at least to a degree -- the injustices in even the supposedly "good" polity of Chaonia. (Note that how "good" Chaonia is, and how "bad" the Phene empire are, at least is not a matter of black and white.) Some of Sun's companions, or their "CCs", give us -- and Sun -- some insight into the contradictions in Chaonian society, and indeed Apama's situation hints at some ethnic prejudice in the Phene Empire. I suspect these aspects too will be more important in future volumes.

So, as I said, this was a tremendously fun read. The start is a little bit slow -- but for good reasons I think -- and once the engine of the plot is ignited, it's fast moving and involving. It's unashamedly full bore Space Opera, with as I've noted some of familiar implausibilities and conventions of that subgenre, and they are nicely deployed.