Ace Double Reviews, 114: Daybreak -- 2250 A.D., by Andre Norton/Beyond Earth's Gates, by Lewis Padgett and C. L. Moore

Ace Double Reviews, 114: Daybreak -- 2250 A.D., by Andre Norton/Beyond Earth's Gates, by Lewis Padgett and C. L. Moore (#D-69, 1954, 35 cents)

a review by Rich Horton

(Covers by Harry Barton and ?)

Here's an Ace Double pairing what should have been the first two women to become SFWA Grand Masters. Alas, C. L. Moore's family (that of her second husband, that is), who were apparently quite hostile to science fiction, refused to allow her to be given the award shortly before her death. To be more fair to them, their stated motive was that Moore by that time was suffering from dementia, and was in no shape to either understand the award, or to tolerate any ceremony about it. Fair enough, I dare say, but I think something could have been worked out. This was probably some time between 1978 and 1983. In 1984, Andre Norton became the first woman to be officially named an SFWA Grand Master, though in my mind, C. L. Moore will always have pride of place. (No disrepect to Norton, who after all was a year younger than Moore, nor to Leigh Brackett, 3 years younger than Norton, who died in 1978, probably a few years before she'd have had a chance to be named. (Note that Brackett was just 63, and to date the youngest people to be named SFWA Grand Masters are Connie Willis and Joe Haldeman, who were 66.))

One reason I bought this Ace Double is oddly personal. A number of years ago my brother-in-law, knowing I know a lot about science fiction, told me about a book he read when he was a kid. Or partly read, I should say. It seems his father (my father-in-law, though he died before I ever met my wife), found him reading it, took it away from him, ripped it in half and threw it out, telling him he didn't want his son reading any trashy Sci-Fi stuff, or words to that effect. My brother-in-law didn't remember the title or author, just the cover -- a guy poling a raft through ruins. Somehow that triggered a memory in me -- I was sure I knew the book.

As you'll have guessed looking at the cover image displayed here, that book was Daybreak -- 2250 A.D. Probably a later single edition, not this Ace Double. I went to my favorite used book store a couple of days later, and sure enough, I found a copy of a later edition of Daybreak -- 2250 A.D. with the right cover. I presented it to my brother-in-law the next time I saw him, to gratifying astonishment. (Incidentally, I can't find out who painted that cover. And later Ace editions, from the '70 onward, have a different cover that is blatantly and crudely copied from the original.)

(Cover by Nicholas Mordvinoff)

Of course I had to buy my own copy, and of course it had to be the Ace Double edition! Actually, I read Daybreak -- 2250 A.D. some while ago. The novel was first published in 1952 by Harcourt, Brace, as Star Man's Son, 2250 A.D. The Ace Double was the first paperback edition, in 1954, and the title was changed, with the original title given in parentheses as simply Star Man's Son. Later Ace editions retained the Daybreak -- 2250 A.D. title, while other hardcover editions were called Star Man's Son, 2250 A.D., and a number of non-Ace paperback editions went with the shorter Star Man's Son. The most recent editions seem to be a Baen omnibus pairing it with the 1975 novel No Night Without Stars, and using the Daybreak -- 2250 A.D. version of the title. Possibly, then, that was Norton's preference.


I don't actually remember the novel that well, though I do remember enjoying it. It's about a young man in a post-Apocalyptic world who wants to be a "Star Man" like his father -- essentially, someone who visits the old radioactive cities to try to salvage valuable stuff. But he is rejected -- perhaps because of his white hair (inherited from his mother), and he ends up going off by himself (well, with his cat with whom he has a telepathic link) and meeting up with another loner from a different tribe ... and in the end there's a confrontation with the mutated "beast people", and then a "conceptual breakthrough" sort of revelation. But, really, better to check out what Judith Tarr wrote about it at Tor.com: After the Apocalypse: Andre Norton's Daybreak -- 2250 A.D.

(Cover by Earle Bergey)

On to Beyond Earth's Gates. This is bylined "Lewis Padgett and C. L. Moore", which is curious because "Lewis Padgett" is generally regarded as a collaborative pseudonym for Moore and her husband Henry Kuttner. I do suspect, though, that the Padgett pseudonym was probably more often used for stories in which Kuttner was the primary author (while I suspect "Lawrence O'Donnell" stories were more often primarily by Moore.) And I say that, and it's important to remember that Kuttner and Moore claimed they often couldn't remember and couldn't tell who wrote which parts of some of their stories. That said, Beyond Earth's Gates was first published in the September 1949 issue of Startling Stories as "The Portal in the Picture", a complete novel by Henry Kuttner. I suspect the text of the Startling publication is essentially the same as the Ace Double.

Kuttner and Moore wrote some truly brilliant SF, but, sad to say, Beyond Earth's Gates doesn't qualify as such. It's told by Eddie Burton, a rising young Broadway actor. Lorna Maxwell is a "third-rate young ginmill singer" who has been pestering Eddie to help her get a leg up in her career. He doesn't want anything to do with her, but one night she comes over to his place -- and disappears. And of course Eddie is soon suspected in her disappearance.

Mixed in with this is Eddie's recollection of his Uncle Jim's stories of trips to a strange other world called Malesco. And Eddie's apartment was once his uncle's ... We know, of course, what's going on. Naturally, Eddie soon sort of stumbles -- falls -- through a dimensional portal into Malesco.

From there on the story is a fairly fast-moving thing about revolution in Malesco. This seems to be a parallel world, where history changed in roughly Roman times. It is now under the oppressive rule of the Hierarch, and his quasi-religious organization. Scientific knowledge is restricted greatly. and thus much less advanced than in our history. And, strangely, Lorna Maxwell has been co-opted by the rulers, and is nearly worshipped by the population, her glamor strangely enhanced. It seems our world is considered Paradise. Eddie is tangled up with some people in the hierarchy, and some out and out revolutionaries. But his only goal is to find Lorna, and bring her back, to clear his name.

All in all it's not really that interesting, unfortunately. You know how it ends, of course -- with Lorna and Eddie back in New York. And Lorna, strangely, trained perhaps by her star turn in Malesco, is now Malesca, the most beautiful woman in the world. And Eddie, who knows better, is unable to resist ...

Birthday Ace Double: Dwellers of the Deep, by K. M. O'Donnell (Barry Malzberg)/The Gates of Time, by Neal Barrett Jr.

Barry Malzberg turns 80 today. I've already reviews a couple of his Ace Doubles on this blog -- here's the third and last.

Ace Double Reviews, 41: Dwellers of the Deep, by K. M. O'Donnell/The Gates of Time, by Neal Barrett, Jr. (#27400, 1970, $0.75)

by Rich Horton

"K. M. O'Donnell" is a pseudonym of Barry Malzberg's. Dwellers of the Deep is one of his "recursive" novels -- that is, it's about SF. It's some 35,000 words long. According to the ISFDB, it's his third novel, and his second Ace Double half (of 4 total). The Gates of Time was Neal Barrett's first or second novel (Kelwin also appeared in 1970), and his first of two Ace Double halves (I have also reviewed Highwood).

(Cover by Jack Gaughan)

Dwellers of the Deep is about a young man named Izzinius Fox, a collector (not a fan!) of SF magazines in 1951. Izzy's main interest is Tremendous Stories -- an obvious analog of Astounding. (Other SF magazines mentioned include Thoughtful (F&SF?) and Thrilling (Galaxy?).) Izzy deals with a bookseller named Stuart Wiseman, who has been selling him back issues of Tremendous at perhaps inflated prices. But Izzy is also dealing with a group of aliens, who periodically take his consciousness up to their ship and pressure him to turn over his copy of the issue of Tremendous containing Cupboard's article about "A New Engineering of the Mind". (Obviously referring to L. Ron Hubbard's "Dianetics: A New Science of the Mind".) The aliens claim they will use this article benevolently to guide Earth to a new utopian future, but Fox is afraid they mean to conquer us. (For some reason the issue in question changes from the May 1950 issue (which is actually the issue of Astounding in which the first Dianetics article appeared) to the December 1946 issue as the book goes on.)

Izzinius has other concerns. For example, he is afraid of women, but there is a young woman living in his apartment building, Susan Forsythe, who keeps invading his room and trying to get him to attend meetings of the local fan group, the Solarians. Fox is also out of work, having quit his civil service job to concentrate on SF magazine collecting. The aliens are torturing him with false memories of his dead father. And his landlord is just plain weird ...

So the novel continues -- full of satire of fan politics and fan obsessions, with the occasional side trip to satire of bureaucracy. It's really pretty funny for the most part, though it may depend a bit on getting some of the fannish injokes. Not a great story by any means but basically fun stuff -- much like the previous "O'Donnell" Ace Double I reviewed, Gather in the Hall of the Planets.

In my previous review of Highwood, I covered Neal Barrett's career: short stories in Galaxy and such places beginning in 1960, and novels starting in 1970 with Kelwin and The Gates of Time, and later the Aldair books for DAW. Then, as someone once said, Barrett stood too long next to fellow Texan Howard Waldrop and just mutated. Beginning in the mid 80s he published a few novels and a number of short stories that are gloriously weird, poetic, loopily imagined -- just real neat stuff, including novels such as Through Darkest America (1986), short stories like "Ginny Sweethips' Flying Circus", "Stairs", and "Cush". His more recent work includes a number of mysteries and a couple further unusual science fantasies beginning with The Prophecy Machine in 2000.

(Cover by Josh Kirby)

But what about The Gates of Time? Suffice it to say, it doesn't in the least hint at the pretty worthwhile writer Barrett became. Ignoring a pointless prologue and epilogue, it opens with Luis Jarcal, the only surviving human, on a huge multi-species starship. His lover is a catlike alien, but he is soon in trouble with her husband. And the starship is in the vanguard of efforts to hold back something called "the Void". And Jarcal mysteriously becomes possessed by a strange being called N'Cil. His only friends seem to be a symbiotic pair of aliens -- the birdlike Lhis and the plantlike Quan. We are told that Earth's first attempt at a starship was swallowed, along with Earth, by the Void, only Jarcal surviving.

OK -- that could work. Then piratical evil aliens destroy the starship, only Jarcal and Lhis-Quan surviving. At the aliens' planet they encounter another human -- naturally a shockingly beautiful woman, named Sesharane. After the escape the quartet goes on the run, learning that, well, Jarcal and his N'Cil companion are fated to save the world or something and ...

Blah, blah, blah. Pretty much a case of the author making things up as he goes along. Without much concern for internal consistency (for example, we learn that Earth apparently had an extensive interstellar empire -- but wait a minute, earlier they just had one doomed starship -- is this explained? NO!) There is also such silliness as Sesharane refusing to have sexual relationships with Jarcal because, even though she loves him and he her, she is unable to have babies, so sex would be pointless. Eh? (As it happens, I just have been reading Neal Stephenson's Quicksilver, which makes much of a couple of main, heterosexual, characters engaging in rather extravagantly non-propagational sex -- not that that's a big deal or anything, but just that the contrast in attitudes really struck me.) Anyway, I really can't recommend The Gates of Time at all.

Birthday Review: Stories of C. M. Kornbluth

Cyril Kornbluth was born July 23, 1923, and died in 1958, only 34 years old, while running to catch a train in order to interview for an editing position at F&SF. He was one of SF's great cynics, and his work was dark and bracing. He collaborated extensively with Frederik Pohl, and also with Judith Merril. At the time of his death his reputation in the field exceeded Pohl's, but shortly thereafter, in New Maps of Hell, Kingsley Amis named Pohl arguably the field's best writer, and of course Pohl lived a half century and more beyond that, and did some tremendous work in that time, so by now he is (deservedly) regarded as the more important writer. But Kornbluth was very good as well, and it would have been wonderful to see where he might have ended up had he the chance to write more. Here's a selection of snippets I've written about Kornbluth, not necessarily representing his best work at all. But on what would have been his 96th birthday, I think he merits a look.

F&SF, Fall 1950

"The Silly Season" is C. M. Kornbluth at his most sardonic. A newspaperman investigates mysterious UFO-type manifestations. They seem real, but nothing comes of them. Over a few separate outbreaks, people become convinced they are all fake. Then the aliens REALLY come ...

Worlds Beyond, February 1951

Three more stories are reprints. One is C. M. Kornbluth's rather well-known first story, the short-short "The Rocket of 1955" (600 words) about a fake rocket launch. This first appeared in Escape in 1939, though the copyright notice here says "[c] 1941 by Albing Publications". ...

The third reprint is, as it happens, also by C. M. Kornbluth, though it is published as by "Walter C. Davies". "Forgotten Tongue" is also copyright 1941 by Albing Publications -- suggesting that the notice under "The Rocket of 1955" is a foulup, mistakenly copied from this story, which first appeared in the June 1941 Stirring Science Stories. Stirring Science Stories is yet another magazine to have died after its third issue (that June 1941 issue), though it was revived for one more issue in March 1942, by a different publisher. The blurb reads "A brief, apparently meaningless message -- but once you've read it, your mind wasn't your own". (Not sure what Knight was doing with tense there.) That made me hope for an early example of a "blit", but not so. It's more just sophisticated, and implausibly powerful, propaganda. It's set in a future divided between the Optimus party, representative of the rich (and apparently intelligent and physically superior) and the Lowers. The Optimus party is in control, but then an Optimus devises a way of influencing people through distributing books which subliminally make them Loyal -- but a Lower steals the book, changes every occurrence of Optimus to Lower, and turns the tables. Kind of dumb, I thought. Kornbluth did get some mileage out of the story, though, as besides this appearance and the original it was reprinted in the May 1942 Uncanny Tales.

Galaxy, December 1951

"With These Hands", by C. M. Kornbluth, is another story about a true artist facing replacement by less expensive machines. In this case Halvorsen ekes out a living by teaching, very occasionally selling something, and by the patronage of women who seem to hero worship him to some extent. In the dark conclusion, he finds this insupportable, and flees to a dangerous place to admire a true work of art, even if it means his life. Pretty good work.

Astounding, January 1952

And finally there is "That Share of Glory", one of C. M. Kornbluth's better known stories, though a somewhat atypical one. It lacks the bitterness of much of Kornbluth's most famous work -- indeed, it's downright Campbellian. It's about Alen, a novice in a quasi-religious order of linguists. He is assigned to his first mission, to help a somewhat rascally trader deal with the natives of Lyra. Alen does his job fairly well, using his knowledge of languages and customs to help foil some space pirates, and to help with the jewel trade on Lyra; and he also adheres to his Order's pacifism: they have a rule against ever using weapons. Then one of the crewmembers gets arrested, and it looks like the local authorities will railroad him, especially when Alen uses his knowledge to confound a strict local judge ... The resolution involves Alen realizing that sometimes violence is justified, and that the whole thing was a setup to test him: is he an inflexible prig only fit for low-level jobs in his order, or does he have the imagination to be a more influential member. So: very Campbellian. And pretty enjoyable.

Space Science Fiction, May 1953

"The Adventurer" is one of Kornbluth's somewhat well-known stories. It's cynical, naturally, and in a bracing way. In the future the US has become the Republic, ruled by hereditary and corrupt Presidents. The cabinet, in despair at the debased nature of the dynasty, decides to create a hero to lead a rebellion -- with cynically believable results. A good, bitter, story.

F&SF, April 1954

"I Never Ast No Favors", by C. M. Kornbluth (5700 words)
Amusing story told in a somewhat Runyonesque style. It's a letter from "Tough Tony", a teenaged gangster who has been sent to an upstate farm in lieu of jail. He's complaining to his mob boss about the horrors of farm life -- mainly a tough boss lady and a "hexing" war.

F&SF, November 1972

Frederik Pohl and C. M. Kornbluth's “The Meeting” is a very simple story, really, set not far in the future. Harry Vladek is shown attending a parent-teacher meeting at his son’s school. This is a school for “exceptional children” – that is, children with special needs. We are given a portrait of the trouble Harry and his wife are having with their son Tommy, and that that some of their fellow parents are also having, and a portrait of a bit of mild optimism in that this new (and expensive) school does seem to be helping Tommy – a bit. Just a little bit. On coming home his wife reminds him that a certain Dr. Nicholson has called, and urgently needs Harry to call back, with a decision. We soon gather that the decision concerns whether to allow Tommy to be the subject of a brain transplant – another boy is dying, his brain is perfectly intact, but an accident will soon kill him. Harry and his wife will get a new brain for their child… but, of course, their child is not dead, and his brain, while decidedly not working very well, is not dead either. That’s pretty much the story, and as such it’s pretty effective, though ethically there doesn’t seem to be a choice. (The brain transplant would be murder, of course.) But the depiction of the Vladeks’ despair is effective.

Belated Birthday Review: Short Stories of Fran Wilde

I've been busy the past few days -- my son Geoff got married on Saturday. And what with all that, I haven't been keeping up with this blog. Some time in the past week, I can't remember when exactly, was Fran Wilde's birthday. Fran's an exciting writer, and I've got to know her a bit at a few recent conventions, so I can say she's a neat person too. I hadn't exactly reviewed enough of her short stories for one of these collections, but there were a couple stories I didn't get to in Locus (my fault!) so I wrote a bit extra here (and, actually, I had already written more about "Clearly Lettered" in my Hugo ballot summary.)

Locus, July 2016

The Jewel and the Lapidary by Fran Wilde is a novella from Tor.com’s line of slim books. The central fantastical idea is pretty cool: there is a valley protected from outsiders by powerful jewels that are wielded by the ruling family (“Jewels”) but contained by Lapidaries who each bond to a single Jewel. This story concerns the betrayal and fall of the valley, leaving one surviving Jewel and her Lapidary, both fairly insignificant young women. They must find a way to resist the invaders, and at least to prevent them using the valley’s mines to supply jewels to allow them to cement and extend their conquest. It’s a slim story, fairly uncompromising in its plot, nicely written: I liked it, and I suspect the world it’s set in might yield more fine stories. [And, hey, look -- here's another story in the same universe: The Fire Opal Mechanism! I'll get to it soon!]

Hugo Ballot overview for 2017

“Clearly Lettered in a Mostly Steady Hand”, by Fran Wilde – a story of a visit to a museum exhibition that in the end seems to be a “freak show”, and which has a distinct and scary effect on the visitor. It’s told in the second person, and this is (perhaps rarely!) the exactly correct choice for this story, as the reader slowly realizes that the act of viewing the perhaps grotesque (or just misunderstood?) exhibits has parallels with how they see people who are different. This is a story that improved for me immensely on rereading – either because my mood was different, or because I saw more on a second pass -- the latter, really, is I think the truth.

Locus, November 2018

Uncanny’s 24th issue is subtitled Disabled People Destroy Science Fiction, and it features stories from writers who identify as disabled. Not all the stories explicitly feature disabled characters, but most do, and if a few read more as well-intentioned homilies than stories, the best here are very fine indeed. Fran Wilde is as ever challenging and intriguing with “Disconnect”, about a woman whose bones and joints disappear from her body in her sleep, usually recoverable; and her mentor, an older professor who is getting younger.

Expanded look at "The Synchronist", from Infinity's End

In Locus I wrote: "Fran Wilde’s “The Synchronist" is a pretty challenging story about the importance of consistent time-keeping for long distance space travel". I didn't write more because, well, Infinity's End had a lot of exceptional stories and I didn't have much space. But this is a really fine, interesting piece about a woman and her father, both of whom are experts in understanding and maintaining the consistency of timekeeping on interstellar travel. It's a wild story, and sometimes a bit hard to follow, but still fascinating.

Locus, March 2019

Uncanny in January-February features another challenging story from Fran Wilde. (I noticed that the last time I wrote about Wilde, I called both stories I covered “challenging”. I’m sure I did it on purpose – I’m even more sure Wilde does it on purpose.) “A Catalog of Storms” is built around a number of names given to different kinds of storms that menace a seaside village. But the story concerns the “weathermen” of that village, people who have been transformed into denizens of the air, and who can protect the town from the storms. Sila’s great aunt was one of the first weathermen, and her Mumma is terrified that she’ll lose one of her daughters the same way … and, indeed Sila’s sister Lillit is shown transforming in the opening sequence – and to her Mumma’s horror, Sila harbors the same ambition. The story concerns the stress between the heroic life and the mundane, perhaps, but more than that it is involved with language, and with letting go.

Birthday Review: Stories of Cory Doctorow

Yesterday was Cory Doctorow's birthday. So in slightly belated recognition, here's a collection of my Locus reviews of his short fiction -- some of the most intelligent, politically engage, and technologicall intriguing SF of the past couple of decades.

Locus, September 2002

Black Gate, by contrast, avowedly tries to publish more traditional adventure-oriented fantasy. The fourth issue, for Summer 2002, features a number of stories that fit that description just fine. The best story, though, is Cory Doctorow's "Beat Me Daddy (Eight to the Bar)", a post-holocaust tale, and straight SF, not fantasy, but I'm not complaining. A group of people are scratching out a living by scavenging the ruins of a "dresdenned" city. The narrator is a trumpet player in a casual band that represents the closest thing to real community around. When a young woman shows up and tries to get the locals to start growing plants instead of scavenging, there is some surprising resistance. The characters are well-drawn, and the central issue thought-provoking, though I thought the resolution unconvincing.

Locus, November 2002

The online newsmagazine Salon has long showed interest in SF, so perhaps it's not surprising that they have published an SF novelette: "0wnz0red", by Cory Doctorow, posted August 28. It's a fine story, too, pretty much in Bruce Sterling territory, about a software engineer in a decline after his best friend has died of. Then his friend shows up alive, indeed, in excellent health. It seems he has been treated so that his autonomic functions are under software control, to his body's benefit. But the feds want to keep that stuff under wraps ... I liked it.

Locus, January 2003

The December offering from Sci Fiction begs comparison with "Junk DNA", if only because both stories are collaborations by writers noted for madcap near future extrapolation. "Jury Service", by Charles Stross and Cory Doctorow, concerns a man who is selected to serve on a "jury" evaluating, for safety and utility, some tech downloaded from post-singularity, all the while worrying about a bio-hazard that seems to have infected him. The plot is twisty and interesting and frenetic, and the heart of the story, the depiction of wacky future tech and social adjustments to that tech, is neat stuff.

Locus, March 2003

Finally, the online newsmagazine Salon has published another fine story by Cory Doctorow. "Liberation Spectrum" (posted January 16, 2003) crackles with speculation. A "mobile multinational" pushing "cognitive radio" faces deep internal stress after there attempt to wire a Mohawk reservation and free them from the national telecommunication monopoly is resisted by the Canadian feds. The speculation is interesting technologically, and interesting sociologically, and the personal aspect (focussed on the corporation's founder and CEO) works as well. It's often funny, and also moving. And in many ways it's reminiscent of a Campbell-era Analog story, but 21st Century style, post-Bruce Sterling style.

Locus, February 2004

DAW's "monthly magazine" of themed anthologies offers a reliable if seldom exciting source of new SF and Fantasy. 2003 closes with Mike Resnick's New Voices in Science Fiction: 20 short stories by new writers (variably defined: from complete unknowns like Paul Crilley to well-established writers like Kage Baker and Susan R. Mathews). For the most part the stories seem more promising than outstanding. A high point is Cory Doctorow and Charles Stross's "Flowers From Alice", a very clever story of posthuman marriage with a delightful ending twist.

Locus, August 2004

I mentioned Emswhiller's story from the second issue of Argosy, dated May-June. I think the magazine is successfully straddling genres according to its apparent ambition. Besides the Emshwiller story there is a fine mystery by O'Neil DeNoux, a nice humorous Lucifer Jones piece from Mike Resnick, and a very enjoyable wild pair of novellas from Cory Doctorow and Charles Stross. Their 2002 Sci Fiction novella "Jury Service" is reprinted, followed by a brand new story, "Appeals Court", that follows directly from the first. Our hero, Huw, carrying an Ambassador from the post-Singularity "Cloud" of uploaded intelligences, makes his way willy-nilly to a much-changed U.S. There he finds primitive Baptists, petroleum trees, a hypercolony of flesh-eating ants, and another Church promoting lots of sex. And he hasn't escaped Judge Judy either ... Like the first story, it's full of whipcrack smart satire and wild speculation – fun stuff. [These became a novel, The Rapture of the Nerds.]



Locus, April 2005

Infinite Matrix was more or less missing in action last year, but so far this year it is in fine form. Perhaps the most talked-about short story of the year to date is Cory Doctorow's "i, robot". Doctorow is doing a series of stories re-examining SF classics from his contemporary political viewpoint. "i, robot" considers Asimov's robot stories (more The Caves of Steel than I, Robot, I thought) as well as George Orwell's 1984. Arturo Icaza de Arana-Goldberg is a detective in Toronto, raising his daughter alone after his wife defected to Eurasia. UNATS (North America) is engaged in perpetual war with the rest of the world, while trying to maintain "Social Harmony" by coercive means including restricting genetic engineering and robotic development (such as true AI). One day his daughter disappears, and Arturo tries to track her down, ending up in a tangle of loyalties – his wife may be involved, as well as scary advance robots, and on the other side the less than pleasant folks from "Social Harmony". I think it's a fine story – better than 2004's "Anda's Game" – my only quarrel is that while the depiction of the dystopian situation in North America is only too plausible, the depiction of the fairly utopian alternative in Eurasia is sheer wish-fulfillment. Still – a very thought-provoking work, well worth the notice it has received.

Review of Future Washington (Locus, January 2006)

Cory Doctorow's “Human Readable” opens as Trish, a lawyer, and her boyfriend, a scientist, visit the man’s family for the first time. On the way there, the emergent quasi-AI that controls traffic breaks down – the first, it turns out, of many such breakdowns. Trish becomes convinced that the extended network of tiny computing devices that is used for traffic control and other beneficial things is vulnerable to manipulation, and needs to be made “human readable”, even at cost to its efficiency. Her boyfriend is convinced that it works best if left alone – that occasional breakdowns are a small price to pay for the huge ultimate benefits. The story demonstrates (not quite convincingly, mainly because the tech is only handwaved in) that powerful interests can fiddle with the network so that, for example, rich people avoid traffic jams, while people on the outs with those in power constantly lose cellphone connectivity, and so on. Doctorow makes it more interesting by interweaving Trish’s love story with the political story. It’s good stuff, though I thought not quite outstanding. I note that on the surface it’s purely about the dangers and political problems of a near-future technological advance, but that it is also a pretty straightforward metaphorical look at the dangers and political problems of free-market capitalism.

Locus, October 2006

I didn’t find the second issue of the new online magazine Jim Baen’s Universe quite as involving as the first. Still, it features a very generous helping of stories and articles, many quite entertaining. I liked Cory Doctorow’s “When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth”, a post-holocaust novelette in which a bio-engineered plague kills most of humanity, and for a brief time a group of computer geeks try to set up a new world order of sorts.

Locus, October 2008

And an exciting new source of online fiction has appeared: Tor.com, associated with the publisher of course. The first three text stories (there is also a graphic story) appeared in July and August, all from “hot new writers” in a sense, ages ranging from 37 to 44: Cory Doctorow, John Scalzi, and Charles Stross. To which generation do these belong? I don’t know, but I do sense that they (perhaps especially Doctorow and Stross) feel that they are actively in dialogue with each other. The best of these stories is Doctorow’s “The Things That Make We Weak and Strange Get Engineered Away”, about a quasi-religious, nearly monastic, organization called The Order, the members of which are programmers who live communally. It seems utopian, but the protagonist learns some of the costs when he ventures outside to chase the source of an “anomaly” in the datastreams he monitors, and realizes who he has been working for (indirectly) and the effect of his work on ordinary people.

Review of Fast Forward 2 (Locus, November 2008)

Another of the bumper crop of new unthemed original anthology series has put out its second number. Fast Forward 2, unlike books from Jonathan Strahan and Ellen Datlow, is quite overtly an all-Science Fiction book. It also features no fewer than three collaborative stories. SF, probably in great part because of its commercial roots, has long featured a somewhat high proportion of collaborations, but three in one volume these days is unusual. In each case the partners are of broadly similar age and notoriety, suggesting that the contributions of each writer are likely about equal. The longest and most ambitious is “True Names” by Cory Doctorow and Benjamin Rosenbaum, nearly a novel. This is apparently a new entry in Doctorow’s ongoing series of riffs on famous SF stories. It concerns a far-future set of civilizations, mostly living in virtual environments. (That being the main nod to Vernor Vinge’s famous model – otherwise there is less thematic connection to the predecessor stories than in Doctorow’s “I, Rowboat”, “I, Robot”, and “Anda’s Game”.) One civilization is democratic, consisting of numerous entities vying for control, while the other is more or less totalitarian, ruled by a single strict program. The two polities battle across the Galaxy, not always noticing the threat of a third virtual environment, which seems lifeless but unstoppable. The plot involves computer program sex (sort of) and heroism, and questions about reality versus simulation – at multiple levels – and it’s fast-moving and interesting but for me it fell into the trap of excessive abstraction. I never quite believed in – nor always understood – what was going on. Nonetheless, it’s quite a thought provoking effort.

Review of Life on Mars (Locus, May 2011)

Cory Doctorow’s “Martian Chronicles” is the latest of his stories taking their titles from classic SF, though the story itself doesn’t really react to or comment on Bradbury. It’s about a boy on his way to Mars, who is really good at playing a Sims-like game mimicking a business setup. He makes a couple of friends who take different roles in the game, and learns, in Heinleinesque fashion (complete with the Heinlein trick of winning arguments by framing the opposing position as you desire) to know better, and to understand what’s really going on at Mars, where the economy is supposedly modeled on the game he plays.

Locus, June 2014

Robot Uprisings is John Joseph Adams' latest project, teamed this time with Daniel H. Wilson. The theme is clear enough, and the stories as a set are a fine examination of variations on it, from a nicely varied set of writers too, both from within and without the genre. As with many themed anthologies, read all at once there might be a bit of a sense of too much repetition. But by and large this is a strong book.

My favorite story was a reprint that I missed on its first appearance in 2010. Cory Doctorow's “Epoch” is about BIGMAC, a “doomed rogue AI”, and his story is told by Odell Vyphus, the sysadmin who has inherited responsibility for BIGMAC. Apparently BIGMAC was something of a dead end – “there just weren't any killer apps for AI”. Now it's obsolete, and expensive to maintain, and Odell's boss wants him to kill the AI. Naturally BIGMAC finds out about this plan, and implements its own plan to save itself. The story is funny and intelligent and moving and believable – the same can be said for the characters. Very strong work.

Birthday Review: Stories of Esther Friesner

Today is also Esther Friesner's birthday. Friesner is best known for her comic work, and that work is very funny indeed. But she also can be very affecting, as with her two Nebula winning short stories. here's a selection of my reviews of her short fiction, most from Locus but also a review of a story collection, from 3SF.

Locus, April 2002

The April F&SF is very solid.  Several stories are comic – particularly notable being Esther Friesner's novelette "Just Another Cowboy", and Thomas M. Disch's set of brief Biblical retellings, "Torah! Torah! Torah!".  Friesner's story is set on a Texas ranch that has just been inherited by a scrawny boy who was raised in New York.  He and his shrewish aunt come to take possession, and the farmhands are naturally concerned for their futures.  But there is one very special farmhand … It's silly, quite entertaining, fun.

3SF, February 2003

By contrast Esther Friesner, it must be said, is fairly well known – at any rate, she owns two Nebula Awards for short fiction, and she has published any number of novels, many of them comic but some quite dark.  Here's a collection of recent work: Death and the Librarian and Other Stories.  It's an excellent display of her talents.  It includes her two Nebula winners: the title story, a moving piece an old woman who reads to a rather special group of children, and her encounter with death; and "A Birthday", a fierce and thoughtful story about the human costs of abortion – and of anti-abortion laws.  My other favorite here is "Chanoyu", a striking SF story interleaving a Japanese tea ceremony with slow revelations about the artificial person at the center of the story, and about its job harvesting genetic material.

This collection amply displays Friesner's range, with humourous and whimsical stories like "How to Make Unicorn Pie", fierce satire in "'White', said Fred", a highly poetic, magic realist story about the Spanish Revolution in "Love, Crystal, and Stone", an odd, clever, futuristic take on Alice in "A Pig's Tale", even one brand new story, "Ilion" (a September 11 piece).  At times the stories are over-sentimental, at times a joke is belabored, but overall, a fine collection.

Locus, July 2004

The July issue of F&SF is a special "All-American" issue, with all the stories on American themes. For example, Esther Friesner's "Johnny Beansprout" is a hilarious story of an alternative Johnny Appleseed, spreading not only bean sprouts but vegetarian dogma. The kicker is that the story is told from the POV of one of Johnny's adoptive relatives: Sawney Bean, with all that that name implies.

Locus, April 2005

At the March Asimov's, Esther M. Friesner's cover novelette, "The Fraud", features a penniless English gentleman, George Pengallen, investigating what must surely be fraudulent claims of a woman pregnant by a unicorn. But frauds abound – Pengallen himself is a deceptive man, as surely too are his lover and his new patron. Much is made of the fraudulent Mrs. Tufts, who claimed to give birth to rabbits. But somehow the woman's claims ring a but more truly. The conclusion is inevitably sad and cynical.

Locus, October 2006

I didn’t find the second issue of the new online magazine Jim Baen’s Universe quite as involving as the first. Still, it features a very generous helping of stories and articles, many quite entertaining. Esther Friesner’s “Benny Comes Home” is just very funny, about a boy in a post-WWII Jewish family who learns a lot of family secrets when a cousin finally comes home from the war, and another cousin deals with her family insisting she finally marry someone.

Locus, September 2007

Also in the August F&SF ... Esther Friesner is  entertaining, and quite clever, in “At These Prices”, in which a rather greedy hotel guest finds herself fortuitously pledged the service of a brownie. It seems the hotel has inherited the very inexpensive use of a whole group of magical creatures … and a misstep means that Ms. Franklin gets the use of the brownie. Which is unpleasant for him – but his friends are there to help.

In the online world, Helix for Summer features a strong set of stories, all by women. I preferred Esther Friesner’s sharply satirical “A Sacred Institution”, in which a slimy politician marries his dog but runs into trouble when aliens show up who demand that promises like marriage be kept – and who can enforce such demands.

Locus, August 2016

Now to some anthologies. Bryan Thomas Schmidt has a couple new books about, both a mix of reprints and originals. Galactic Games is a collection of sport stories, timed to coincide with the Rio Olympics. In this case the book is mostly originals, often dealing with attempts at interspecies sport, and (not always on purpose) managing to highlight the difficulties of fair completion between entities of a radically different physical makeup. Maybe the best take on that comes from Esther Friesner, in her wickedly funny tale of what happens when a representative of a very warlike species wants to be a cheerleader, “Pompons and Circumstance”.

Birthday Review: Short Fiction of Robert Sheckley

Robert Sheckley was one of the greatest SF writers of short stories, particularly funny short stories, though he was certainly capable of deeper work (even in the funny stories.) I read through basically all of his story collections a quarter century or so back, a very rewarding effort.His novels were never as good as his short fiction, but they were still reliably enjoyable.  He was born in 1928 and died in 2005, after falling ill while visiting Russia. He was named SFWA Author Emeritus in 2001, and award that was controversial in some quarters, because it was often regarded as a pat on the back for an accomplished long-time writer who "wasn't good enough for Grand Master status". Sheckley, it was felt (and I agree) was potentially a Grand Master, if perhaps not a slam dunk case, so the Emeritus designation seemed almost an insult, though Sheckley by all accounts was quite happy to be so honored.

What follows is what I've written about his short fiction, a few reviews of late stories in Locus, plus a number taken from my "retro-reviews" of 1950s magazines. Alas, none of the stories I mention are among his best, such as, say, the fairly early "Specialist" or the much later "Pas de Trois of the Chef, the Waiter, and the Customer".

Astounding, March 1953

The only short story is Robert Sheckley's "Fool's Mate" (4800 words), in which two equally matched space fleets confront each other. It seems their computers have determined that the alien fleet has a tiny positional advantage which nearly guarantees victory -- but that neither fleet can attack since the act of attacking will ruin their position and guarantee failure. The standoff is psychologically devastating, until a man comes up with an idea -- use one of the gunnery officers who has been driven insane to control attack strategy. You see, the other side's computer will never be able to figure out a madman ... Cute, I suppose, but not terribly believable.

Science Fiction Stories, 1953

Robert Sheckley's "Ask a Foolish Question" (3600 words) concerns representatives of several different races finding a machine built by an ancient race called "The Answerer". The Answerer will answer any question -- but can lesser races ask a sensible enough question and understand the answer?

Space Science Fiction, September 1953

Robert Sheckley's "The Hour of Battle" (2200 words) is another human/alien war story, with a nasty twist. Humans have encountered evil telepathic aliens, who can take over people's minds and make them do anything. They have developed a telepathy detector, and a series of ships guard the Solar System, ready to destroy the aliens at the first sign of telepathic probing. But perhaps they haven't quite thought this through ... though what hope there really could be in such a situation I can't see.

Galaxy, August 1954

The short stories are "Subsistence Level", by Finn O'Donnevan (4500 words); ... "Finn O'Donnevan" is really Robert Sheckley. I'm not sure why he used a pseudonym for "Subsistence Level", which is fairly characteristic of his work of the time, though not one of his best stories. A young couple move to the asteroids to be pioneers, and they must live difficult pioneer lives: 5 hour work days!, plain eight course meals prepared by household robots, etc. Minor but acceptable.

If, September 1954

Robert Sheckley's "The Battle" (2000 words) extrapolates today's trends toward increasing automation of warfare to the Battle of Armageddon. OK, but mostly a punchline story.

Galaxy, October 1954

The short stories include Robert Sheckley's "Ghost V" (5300 words), the first (chronologically) AAA Ace Planet Decontamination Story. This is more straightforward than most Sheckley. The AAA Ace guys must solve the mystery of a planet where two groups of explorers have each died violently, despite no evidence of dangerous creatures on the planet. The solution is OK, but not great.

Galaxy, November 1954

Robert Sheckley's "The Laxian Key" (3500 words) is a AAA Ace story. Arnold's latest get-rich-quick idea is a "Free Producer", which can make endless supplies of something for nothing. Problem is, the something isn't worth much! It's mostly a joke story, with no real resolution, but it's pretty funny.

Galaxy, July 1955

Robert Sheckley's "Deadhead" (3000 words) is about a struggling scientific outpost on Mars, inhabited only by Ph.D.'s who are forced to do all the ordinary work, too. Every so often a stowaway "deadheads" to Mars, trying to escape tiresome Earth. The "deadhead" seems a very useful person, but regulations say he must be sent directly home. But the question is -- how did he get to Mars after all? The answer is a bit cute -- worth 3000 words, I guess, but nothing special.

Locus, September 2003

Weird Tales for July-August features a story by the wonderful Robert Sheckley: "The Tales of Zanthias". Zanthias is a leader of an unusual town of misfits, a town surrounded by monsters such as zombies, calibans, witches, ghosts, all of which he tries to keep away. One morning his wife is missing, and he looks for her -- and finds that he himself has a secret.

Locus, January 2004

Mike Resnick's latest DAW anthology reverses the conceit of an earlier book: this time we have Men Writing Science Fiction as Women. As with the previous book, the results are mixed. ... Also good is Robert Sheckley's "A Tale of the Oroi", a pleasant concoction of fantasy and SF in which a fairy from Ancient Greece encounters a time traveler from the 21st Century, with slyly presented, unexpected, results.

Best SF Short Fiction of All Time

I've been asked, a few times, to produce lists of my favorite short science fiction stories. I did that once (at least) on rec.arts.sf.written, and I did it for the Locus All Centuries poll. And my answer will probably change the next time I think about it seriously. But, just for documentation's sake, I wanted to record my answers from before.

First, here's an off the top of my head answer I gave on rec.arts.sf.written (gosh how I miss that community in its Golden Age!) in December 1999. The original question was "Ten Best Novelettes" (by which the poster (Jerry Friedman) meant "long stories" -- roughly speaking, novelettes and novellas.) Naturally I added short stories too.

Here's what I posted.

__

Here's my list, which extends to 12 authors and 14 stories (so sue me!):

(I've put it in my best guess at chronological order of publication)

"... and Now the News" by Theodore Sturgeon
"The Dead Past" by Isaac Asimov
"Flowers for Algernon" by Daniel Keyes
"The Sources of the Nile" by Avram Davidson
"Starfog" by Poul Anderson
"Nine Lives" and "The Stars Below" by Ursula K. Le Guin
"The Second Inquisition" by Joanna Russ
"Green Mars" by Kim Stanley Robinson
"The Last of the Winnebagos" and "Fire Watch" by Connie Willis
"The Originist" by Orson Scott Card
"Wang's Carpets" by Greg Egan
"The Ziggurat" by Gene Wolfe

And a list for short stories (10 authors, 12 stories):

"Scanners Live in Vain" by Cordwainer Smith
"Fondly Fahrenheit" by Alfred Bester
"The Man Who Came Early" by Poul Anderson
"The Man Who Lost the Sea" by "A Saucer of Loneliness" by Theodore
Sturgeon
"A Rose for Ecclesiastes" by Roger Zelazny
"Light of Other Days" by Bob Shaw
"The Milk of Paradise" and "The Last Flight of Dr. Ain" by James
Tiptree, Jr.
"The Marvelous Brass Chess-Playing Automaton" by Gene Wolfe
"Out of All them Bright Stars" by Nancy Kress
"New Rose Hotel" by William Gibson

Oh, and a list of honorable mentions (this is so hard!): "The Star" by Clarke, "Nobody's Home" by Russ, "Rat" and "Think Like a Dinosaur" by James Patrick Kelly, "E for Effort" by T. L. Sherred, "The Star Pit" by Samuel R. Delany, "Imaginary Countries" and "Winter's King" by Ursula K. Le Guin, "The Moon Moth" by Jack Vance, "Wall of Crystal, Eye of Night" by Budrys, "The Crystal Spheres" by Brin, "The Other Dead Man" and "How the Whip Came Back" and "Seven American Nights" and etc. by Wolfe, "The Only Neat Thing to Do" and "And I Awoke and Found Me Here on the Cold Hill's Side" and etc. by Tiptree, "Why I Left Harry's All-night Hamburgers" by Watt-Evans, "Starship Day" by Ian R. MacLeod, "Bloodchild" by Octavia Butler, "All My Darling Daughters" and "At the Rialto" and "Schwarzchild Radius" by Willis, "Stairs" by Neal Barrett, Jr., "Great Work of Time" by John Crowley, "An Infinite Summer" by Christopher Priest, "Inconstant Moon" by Larry Niven.

_____

And for the Locus All Centuries Poll, here's my submission, from 2012 for stuff through 2010: 

The Locus All Centuries Poll -- best SF/Fantasy novels and short fiction of the 20th and 21st centuries (separately) is ending just about now. Here's my votes (note that they change over time, and the order is random, and there are stories I missed!)


20th Century Novella:
1: "Story of Your Life", Ted Chiang

2: "Great Work of Time", John Crowley

3: "Green Mars", Kim Stanley Robinson

4: "The Blabber", Vernor Vinge

5: "Seven American Nights", Gene Wolfe

6: "The Star Pit", Samuel R. Delany

7: "The Last of the Winnebagos", Connie Willis

8: "E for Effort", T. L. Sherred

9: "The Originist", Orson Scott Card

10: "The Gold at the Starbow's End", Frederik Pohl

20th Century Novelette:
1: "Wang's Carpets", Greg Egan

2: "Fondly Fahrenheit", Alfred Bester

3: "The Second Inquisition", Joanna Russ

4: "The Sources of the Nile", Avram Davidson

5: "A Rose for Ecclesiastes", Roger Zelazny

6: "Starfog", Poul Anderson

7: "An Infinite Summer", Christopher Priest

8: "Nine Lives", Ursula K. Le Guin

9: "The Stars Below", Ursula K. Le Guin

10: "Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius", Jorge Luis Borges

20th Century Short Story:
1: "Out of All Them Bright Stars", Nancy Kress

2: "The Man Who Lost the Sea", Theodore Sturgeon

3: "The Milk of Paradise", James Tiptree, Jr.

4: "Nobody's Home", Joanna Russ

5: "Light of Other Days", Bob Shaw

6: "Day Million", Frederik Pohl

7: "New Rose Hotel", William Gibson

8: "The Last Flight of Dr. Ain", James Tiptree, Jr.

9: "The Man Who Came Early", Poul Anderson

10: "Schwartz Between the Galaxies", Robert Silverberg

21st Century SF Novel:
1: Cloud Atlas, David Mitchell

2: The Yiddish Policemen's Union, Michael Chabon

3: The Sky So Big and Black, John Barnes

4: Spin, Robert Charles Wilson

5: Ares Express, Ian McDonald

21st Century Fantasy Novel:
1: Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, Susannah Clarke

2: Lavinia, Ursula K. Le Guin

3: The Light Ages, Ian R. MacLeod

4: The Name of the Wind, Patrick Rothfuss

5: The City and the City, China Mieville

21st Century Novella:
1: "New Light on the Drake Equation", Ian R. MacLeod

2: "Magic for Beginners", Kelly Link

3: "A Billion Eves", Robert Reed

4: "The Engines of Desire", William Barton

5: "The Tear", Ian McDonald

21st Century Novelette:
1: "The Voluntary State", Christopher Rowe

2: "The People of Sand and Slag", Paolo Bacigalupi

3: "Lull", Kelly Link

4: "The Path of the Transgressor", by Tom Purdom

5: "Finisterra", by David Moles

21st Century Short Story:
1: "The House Beyond Your Sky", Benjamin Rosenbaum

2: "Three Days of Rain", Holly Phillips

3: "Pip and the Fairies", Theodora Goss

4: "More Adventures on Other Planets", Michael Cassutt

5: "Exhalation", Ted Chiang

Birthday Review: Stories of Matthew Johnson

Today is Canadian writer Matthew Johnson's birthday. He has published a couple of dozen stories, mostly in the decade between 2005 and 2014. I haven't seen a story since then -- I think he's been working on a novel. I see that there is a new story in a 2019 anthology -- I hope that means more are coming. I think Matthew is outstanding -- I've used a couple of his stories in my books, and I've enjoyed many more of them.

Locus, September 2006

Fantasy Magazine in its fourth issue continues to supply strong literary-oriented fantasy and slipstream. This time around I really liked Matthew Johnson’s “Irregular Verbs”, about a people supernally skilled in language, whose language is constantly changing, so that small groups, even couples, quickly evolve individual languages. One man loses his wife, and with it their shared language: a loss he cannot bear. So, against tradition, he tries to preserve it, in an unusual way. I though the story both moving and clever: reminiscent, actually, of many of the stories in Ursula Le Guin’s Changing Planes. Johnson distinguishes himself again with “Outside Chance” in the Summer On Spec, a convoluted tale of time travelers monitoring possible futures in an attempt to avoid disasters.

Locus, December 2006

There are three more strong pieces in December at Strange Horizons. ... Matthew Johnson’s “Heroic Measures”, which depicts an old woman (clearly, though never named, Lois Lane) and a very ill old man (clearly Superman, unable to die because of his powers, but otherwise infirm). Particularly moving, in an ironic way, is an encounter with another old man, significantly bald. Part of the fun of this of course is recognizing these familiar characters – but beyond that simple fun the story gains real power in making these characters, and their senescence, wholly believable.

Locus, February 2007

the other prize story at the March Asimov’s  is “Public Safety”, by Matthew Johnson, a fascinating and original alternate history set in a Nouvelle Orleans under French control, with France evidently still ruled by a Revolutionary government (including of course the Committee of Public Safety). The government insists on perfect rationality. The narrator is a part-Black policeman, assigned to what seem to be irrational crimes. In this case a threat has been transmitted – “She dies on the thirteenth” – which may be linked to a series of random bombings. He needs to find who the threatened “she” is, to begin with – and, it turns out, to end with. Johnson’s point is ultimately political, but reached via description of a colorful setting, and an interesting plot and main character. Very nice.

Locus, May 2007

The Winter On Spec has appeared – another solid issue of this now quite venerable magazine. My favorite story was the opener, Matthew Johnson’s “Lifebuoy”, which has a pretty neat central idea: cops are issued a “lifebuoy”, which allows them to abort an operation for ten minutes after it begins and return in time to the start. Karen is a detective who is in charge of a situation in which that fails – the ten minutes expire, and then her partner is killed. She is racked with guilt, but then comes the obvious question – why only ten minutes? Which starts to raise more questions, some of which are addressed as her investigations begin to cause problems for her.

Locus, August 2008

The first story at the August Asimov’s, Matthew Johnson’s “Lagos”, fits quite squarely within the constraints of the Mundane Manifesto. Safrat is a Nigerian woman who works as a teleoperator of remote equipment, such as vacuum cleaners for rich people. But she finds out that the telepresence network is being used for less savory reasons. The SFnal backgrounding of the story, even including the way Johnson parallels it with tribal magic, didn’t really catch fire for me, but the believable portrayal of the world’s poor, yet again pawns in the wealthier world’s system, was effective – and it seems very much a concern of much so-called Mundane SF.

Locus, December 2010

The December Fantasy Magazine features a strong story from Matthew Johnson, “Holdfast”. The setting is somewhat Norse in flavor. Irrel is a farmer, with a wife, a young son, and a daughter who wants to marry the young man staying with them, and perhaps move to the city. There are dragons, and magic, and war, and Irrel knows some magic, farm magic, which some denigrate. But the story – very quietly told – gently hints that his magic may be greater than many suspect – in a quiet, homebound way.

Locus, May 2014

“Rules of Engagement”, by Matthew Johnson (Asimov's, April-May), is a contemporary war story, about a trio of young soldiers who have been rendered medically unfit for active duty. The story is told on two threads … one covering a critical event during their service in Yemen, the other dealing with their various difficulties adapting to life back in the States. The Sfnal core is the brain adaptation they underwent, which includes behaviorally reinforced restrictions on use of force, plus ways around that … and which might, the story suggests, impact their behavior even when no longer active.

Birthday Review: Bad News, plus four obscure SF stories, by Donald Westlake

Donald Westlake was born July 12, 1933, and died on the last day of 2008. He was one of the great crime writers of the last half of the 20th Century, particularly for his comic crime novels, though he was also excellent in darker works. My favorite Westlake books were his hilarious Dortmunder novels. In his memory, on what would have been his 86th birthday, here's a look at one of his later Dortmunder novels, plus reviews of four early science fiction stories. (He was a modestly prolific SF writer early in his career, though usually not a very good one, until he left the genre rather publically, via an essay in the great fanzine Xero, blaming John Campbell for his disgust with SF.)

Bad News, by Donald Westlake

A better vacation read might have been Donald Westlake's latest Dortmunder book, Bad News.  It's very fast moving, very funny, very clever, and very much a typical Dortmunder book, which is, dare I say, good news.  As those who've read previous books in the series know, the most common trope of the Dortmunder books is for Dortmunder and his gang to get involved in a crime which ends up having to be, in some sense, repeated, with different permutations, several times.  For example, in the very first one, The Hot Rock, they had to steal the same jewel several times. 

In this book, after the usual opening scene, John Dortmunder hilariously failing to get caught while failing to successfully complete a robbery, he finds himself approached by Andy Kelp with a unorthodox (for them) proposal. Andy has been hired by somebody he met on the Internet (Andy is always trying new technology, which Dortmunder hates) to help out in a certain enterprise -- they want them to dig up a grave and rebury a different body in it.  This isn't much to Dortmunder's liking, but the price seems fateful -- exactly the amount of money he had expected to realize from the stolen goods he was forced to leave behind the previous night.  After Andy and John complete the body switch, they foil the attempt by the villains Fitzroy and Irwin to cheat (permanently) their new helpers, and they get interested in a) figuring out what's really going on, and b) getting themselves a much bigger cut.  With the help of Tiny Bulcher, they are soon involved in the scheme, which I won't detail here because finding out is much of the fun. Also involved are Little Feather, an Indian from out West, formerly a Las Vegas showgirl, and their target is an Indian-operated casino in Upstate New York.  (Surprisingly many of the more recent Dortmunder books end up partly set in Upstate New York -- it looks like Westlake may have moved there, which might explain it.)  It's no surprise that the crooked casino owners have their own ideas, which involve several hilarious further iterations of the original "crime". 

It's all very funny stuff, and the various schemes are pretty much as clever as usual, though depending just a bit on sheer luck.  Wholly worth reading, as indeed is the entire series.  I'd put this particular entry somewhere in the middle range of the Dortmunder books, which means well in the upper range of books in general.

Science Fiction Stories, May 1960

"Travellers Far and Wee", by Donald Westlake, is also slight, a tolerable little thing about people apparently charged with driving around New York and New Jersey forever, with the duty of being those annoying drivers we all deal with.

Amazing, March 1961

Donald Westlake, of course, became a very famous crime writer, under his own name and his most popular pseudonym, Richard Stark. But early in his career he wrote a lot of SF, before breaking with the field, and more explicitly, John Campbell, in an essay in the fanzine Xero.

Westlake was never as good an SF writer as he was a crime writer. (Though who can say what he might have done later in his career had he stuck with SF. He did write a couple of SF/F novels later on.) “The Risk Profession” is probably my favorite Westlake SF story of those I’ve read, and likely it’s not a coincidence that it’s a crime story. Ged Stanton is a fraud investigator for an insurance company. He’s sent out to the asteroids to find a way the company can avoid paying a “retirement plan” to a asteroid prospector. The plans are issued with the intent that most of the plan members will die too soon to collect.

Stanton ends up on the rock where the claimant’s partner is preparing to stake a big claim – it seems the two of them hit it big, but the one man died in an accident before he could collect his money – but not before he could ask for a refund of his Retirement Plan, figuring he wouldn’t need it any more. Obviously, something is fishy – and Stanton indeed figures it out (hey, I figured it out too, from the start) – but there are some neat tricks in the whole setup, and a nice closing twist.

If, September 1961

The other novelette is by Donald Westlake, presumably shortly before his stormy departure from SF writing. (It is my view that Westlake's departure from the field was as much due to his not really being a very good SF writer (and a truly wonderful crime writer) than to the hidebound nature of SF and its editors, as he claimed.) "Call Him Nemesis" (10K) is amusing enough. A series of crimes are averted by mysterious means, linked by odd temperature fluctuations and the association of the word "Scorpion". Psi is involved, but the person doing it is the point of the story, and it's nicely revealed.

Amazing, November 1961

The cover story is a novelet, "Meteor Strike!", by Donald E. Westlake (12500 words). Westlake, who was born in 1933 and died in 2008, was one of the great crime fiction writers of our time. I am particularly fond of his comic capers featuring the thief John Dortmunder. Others plump for his darker novels about a criminal named Parker, written as by Richard Stark. Early in his career, Westlake published a fair amount of Science Fiction, before bidding a bitter farewell to the field in a rant published in the great fanzine Xero. Westlake complained about SF's conservatism, and particularly about John Campbell. Alas, I feel his argument -- which had some merit -- loses some force simply because, truth be told, Westlake was a pretty mediocre SF writer.

That said, I did rather enjoy the last Westlake SF story I read, "The Risk Profession" (Amazing, March 1961). But it was in part a crime caper piece, playing to his strength. "Meteor Strike!" is pretty dire. It's about a regular Earth to Moon transportation system, particularly a space station en route, and a regular delivery of something important to the lonely station orbiting the Moon. This particular flight includes three new spacemen, one of them a rather truculent young man, embittered by his flunking out of MIT. He's pushed himself to success ever since, but at the cost of being a prime jerk. This behaviour continues on this trip. So when a meteor unconvincingly hits the Earth orbiting space station (and embeds itself in its skin!), right where the precious cargo is stored, somehow this rookie is chose to assist in the repair operation. He does OK, of course, after some bad spots. And the suspense over the "cargo" is finally relieved -- it's entertainment tapes. Sigh. This is painfully earnest "hard" SF, overly complicated in a way to make it certain that many details will be embarrassingly wrong; and with a really badly strained character story behind it. You can see Westlake working hard to make his story serious -- to make the science plausible and the characters three-dimensional. But I think he missed the boat on both fronts. As I've said before, Westlake's decision to concentrate on crime fiction was definitely the right one.

Birthday review: Stories of Karen Russell

Today is Karen Russell's birthday. Russell is an exceptional writer, not associated with in-genre SF/Fantasy, but a significant amount of her work is definitely fantastika. I had hoped to use her story "Orange World" in this year's best of the year volume, but we couldn't get rights, likely because it's the title story of her new collection. She should have won the Pulitzer for her 2011 novel Swamplandia!, but instead of given it to a fantistacalish novel the committee decided to give no award that year. (The other finalists were an unfinished posthumous novel, and a novella that had first been published several years before. It was an appalling decision.) Normally I only do these Birthday reviews if I have at least five stories ... but I should have reviewed "The Bog Girl" a few years ago (I didn't because it's kind of ambiguously fantastical), and in the upcoming August issue of Locus, I do have a review of a very fine new story from the last issue of Tin House, "The Gondoliers". So, close enough for government work. Anyway, SF/F readers should be seeking out Russell's work. Here are four really good places to start:

Locus, March 2008

Zoetrope All-Story features a sure enough no-fooling vampire story, “Vampires in the Lemon Grove” by Karen Russell, in the Winter 2007 issue. Two aging vampires rusticate in an Italian lemon grove. The man tells us his history, especially his lust for blood and the associated guilt, and his love for his companion – while she spends more and more time as a bat. The story is effectively literary: well-written, and character-driven, but it takes the vampire tropes seriously, and uses them in service of its character-based aims.

Locus, March 2013

The new Tin House has several stories in a fantastical vein, of which the best is a horrifying Karen Russell story, “Reeling for the Empire”, set in late 19th Century Japan, about women taken from their families to work in a silk producing factory – only to learn that their work involves producing the silk themselves, after drinking a special tea that changes them forever.

Locus, June 2014

One story that has got a lot of attention in the wider literary world (partly for its venue: its a digital only release from a new outlet called Atavist Books) is Sleep Donation, by Karen Russell. It deserves the attention on its own merits. A plague has swept the Americas – people are suddenly unable to sleep, leading inevitably to death. A treatment is discovered: those who can still sleep can donate their sleep to those who need it. Trish Edgewater is a volunteer for a “sleep bank”, using the story of her older sister, one of the first victims, to motivate new donors in to signing up. Complications arise – one of Trish's “clients”, a young baby, turns out to have particularly effective donations, which even sometimes cure insomniacs, but her father is concerned about the exploitation of his child. Another donor's sleep is infected with a terrible nightmare that drives some people to become “elective insomniacs”.  Trish herself wonders about her exploitation of her sister's story. The fundamental idea is in places preposterous, but Russell's extrapolations of the social impact are dead on, and the story examines our disaster-driven culture, perhaps our general “sleeplessness”, and the power of dreams very nicely.

Locus, August 2018

The New Yorker’s annual Fiction issue, themed Childhood, includes a striking Karen Russell story, “Orange World”. Like many stories from mainstream sources, it is using its fantastical material in service of a very contemporary story – the narrator is a woman pregnant for the first time, rather older than most first time mothers, and she is worried about her pregnancy, and her baby, and so she’ll do anything to keep him safe, including making a deal with a devil. Which is a real devil (if not THE devil), and preys on her horribly, until she finds a group for new mothers, which includes some women who have dealt with similar creatures. It’s funny and scary and dead honest – strong work from one of the best writers to regularly straddle genre borderlines.

Birthday Review: Capsules on some of Robert A. Heinlein's juveniles

Birthday Review: Capsules on some of Robert A. Heinlein's juveniles

Robert Heinlein was born 112 years ago today, in my state (Missouri.) A couple of decades ago I decided to reread (or, in many cases, read for the first time) all his so-called "juveniles". I found that effort quite rewarding -- I think they held up very well. So, here's a selection of what I wrote back then -- all very short looks -- about some of those juveniles (I didn't manage to write about all of them.) I will say, in summary sort of, that my favorite on that reread was Citizen of the Galaxy.

Let me add, while I'm here, a strong recommendation for Farah Mendlesohn's The Pleasant Profession of Robert A. Heinlein, a critical survey of all of his work. Farah treats his writing from the perspective of multiple different themes, so that she revisits different stories multiple times. Her views strike me as very intelligent, very provocative. She provides a necessary corrective to both his critics on the left, and his adulators on the right. For me, she was particularly useful on the late novels, acknowledging their weaknesses but sensibly highlighting both what some of them did right (fitfully), and, more importantly, illuminating how the thematic aspects of the late novels reflect his lifelong concerns. Definitely the best book about science fiction I've read in 2019.

Rocket Ship Galileo

The first, and regarded by many as the worst, of RAH's juveniles.  I can see why, but it's still pretty enjoyable.  Some far-fetched stuff, like the spaceship in a back yard business (and the estimate of what R&D for the first moon flight would cost: 1.5 million dollars), also the ancient race on the moon thing. Not to mention Nazis.  But it's still a good read.

Between Planets

A half-Venusian, half-Earthling boy gets caught up in the Venusian revolution. Enjoyable.  As with so much Heinlein (or, really SF of that time period!), the ending is seriously rushed.

Red Planet

A young man and his semi-intelligent Martian "pet" go to the "Company" school, and discover that the "Company" doesn't really have the best interests of the colonists at heart. One of many RAH depictions of Mars, this one seems more Leigh Brackett-like than the others. One of the better plotted juveniles, I think. I liked this quite a lot, really.

Space Cadet

A boy joins the Space Patrol, and his experiences as a "Cadet" are detailed.  As a novel, rather episodic. But generally fun, and with plenty of Heinleinian philosophy underlying his concept of the duties of the Space Patrol. (Is the Mars briefly mentioned in this one the same as the Mars of Red Planet? It can't be exactly the same, because the political situation seems very different.  But his (very brief) description of the Martians seemed similar.)

Tunnel in the Sky 

This features a group of students sent through a matter transmitter gate to a frontier planet for a "survival test". But the gate collapses, and they are marooned there. To an extent, it's like a response to Lord of the Flies. It's a pretty good story, structured better than many of RAH's novels.  It also features one of his black heroes, though the evidence for that is vague (probably on purpose).  The awful Darrell Sweet cover muffs it, of course.

Starman Jones

I think this one of the best in the series.  This features a teenage boy who stows away on board a starship, and works his way from stable boy to Captain.  It's episodic, like many of these books, but very enjoyable.  The depiction of the use of computers in navigation is, well, interesting (says someone who writes navigation software).  Both books share the odd feature of most of Heinlein's juveniles, the shying away from love interests.  Obvious love interest candidates are dangled before the reader, but nothing ever happens (to his protagonists, that is).  Even when his protagonists, in the juveniles, do marry, it's after oddly truncated romances: see Time for the Stars for a perfect example.

Another interesting feature of the juveniles is the range, throughout the books, of future Earth societies depicted.  Heinlein doesn't copy himself at all, I think, in this area.  The details are rarely foregrounded, but the background hints are neat.

Time for the Stars 

An odd duck, really.  Save maybe for the revised version of Podkayne of Mars, rather the saddest of the juvies (that I've read).  It's uneven, but some of what RAH is trying to pull off here is very ambitious.  The careful contrast of the characters of Tom and Pat makes this much more a novel of character than usual for Heinlein.  I don't think he quite succeeds, but still a very worthwhile effort.  (The above is probably gibberish to someone not familiar with the plot of Time for the Stars: basically, the central conceit is that some identical twins (and occasionally some other people) have telepathic links, which transmit at near infinite speed.  This makes them naturals for communication pairs, one to accompany a slower than light starship to new planets, the other to stay at home and receive transmissions.  Tom and Pat are one such pair: the further twist, of course, is time dilation, so that the twin who travels with the starship ages very little, while the other twin grows old.  That's pretty much the whole story, though RAH includes plenty of action (and tragedy), and even a non-convincing love affair at the end.)

Citizen of the Galaxy

Citizen is very enjoyable, the story of Thorby, a slave who is bought by an old beggar who turns out to be much more than it seems: after the old man’s death, Thorby spends some time with the Free Traders, a fascinatingly sketched spaceship based society, before eventually finding his true family, which naturally enough is a fabulously rich and powerful clan on Earth.  It’s a fun read, with some very interesting sociological speculation: the plot is a bit coincidence-driven, however, and things come too easily to Thorby (by which I don't mean he doesn't face much hardship and difficulty: he does, but (especially right at the end) he seems almost magically talented enough in just the right areas to succeed against significant odds.)

Have Space Suit, Will Travel

High school kid wins a derelict spacesuit in a contest, refurbishes it, and ends up kidnapped by aliens, taken to the moon and points beyond, and eventually facing a crisis which may mean the end of humanity. And good solid Heinleinish fun/instruction along the way. Also features one of his best heroines.