Ace Double Reviews, 63: The Man With Nine Lives, by Harlan Ellison/A Touch of Infinity, by Harlan Ellison (#D-413, 1960, $0.35)
Not quite ready for my next Old Bestseller, so let's dip into my backlog of Ace Double reviews with one by a really major writer. I wrote this some years ago, so some comments are slightly out of date, and I'll note where they've changed.
The only SFWA Grand Master who wrote an Ace Double that I haven't yet covered in this series of reviews is A. E. Van Vogt. I'll get to him -- but not yet. Now I'm dealing with a writer who is not yet a Grand Master, but who will surely be one soon. [And indeed, Ellison was named a Grand Master in 2006. Gene Wolfe made it in 2013 (much much later than he deserved) and Michael Moorcock in 2008. In all, nine Grand Masters who wrote at least one Ace Double were inducted later than A. E. van Vogt, the last of them being Samuel R. Delany.]
I admit I was shocked that Anne McCaffrey was named a Grand Master this year [2005 -- the year before Ellison was named] before such obviously superior choices as Gene Wolfe, Michael Moorcock, and the subject of this review: Harlan Ellison. (Ellison, it might be noted, was a pivotal figure in securing Van Vogt's recognition as a Grand Master.)
This book pairs his first story collection with one of the very few novels Ellison has written. His first novel was non-SF, Web of the City (1958), based on his experiences after joining a street gang. So The Man With Nine Lives is his first SF novel, and arguably his only one. (I have the perhaps mistaken impression that Spider Kiss (1961) is not SF. Doomsman (1967) was so bad that he destroyed copies of it for a while -- and as it was a Belmont Double it may not have been novel length [indeed it is not novel length]. And that's it for book-length SF from Ellison by himself!) The Man With Nine Lives is about 44,000 words long, and it is expanded from a shorter story, "The Sound of a Scythe", with another story, "Assassin!", also included.
My basic reaction to The Man With Nine Lives is that it reads like a drastically padded novella. So I suspect (not having read it) that "The Sound of a Scythe" might be a decent (though far from great) story. [I eventually did read "The Sound of a Scythe" and it is indeed a decent novella.] But the novel isn't very good.
Cal Emory is a desperate man. As the novel opens, he is trying to kill Paul Lederman, but Lederman has the jump on him. Through flashbacks we learn why.
It seems that Emory and Lederman were college roommates. But Lederman, son of a rich man, stole Emory's girlfriend, married her and then drove her to suicide, then engineered a cheating scandal that was blamed on Emory, getting him expelled. Lederman then hired Emory at his company (his father having died), supposedly out of charity. Emory finally figures out the truth and decides to kill Lederman.
However, he decides, unconvincingly, that he first must find a man named Patooch, apparently the ONLY person in the universe who can surgically alter him so that Lederman will not be able to find him. It turns out that the uber-villain Lederman has arranged for Patooch to be sent to "deepsleep", this future's replacement for prison. So Emory agrees to serve half of Patooch's sentence. Then we learn what "deepsleep" is -- which is a cute but silly idea. The computer that rules Earth and its colonies uses the minds of convicted felons, whose bodies are frozen, to be telepathically projected into aliens in order to prepare the Galaxy for future human advancement. Thus, Emory is sent to several different "alien" bodies to do various things to help Earth's future -- things like influence an alien species to exterminate a plant that will be poisonous to humans when they eventually encounter the planet. One of these episodes is the story "Assassin!" (Science Fiction Adventures, February 1957), retitled here "Travelogues Two: In Delpheron's Armada". This story has essentially no reason to be included in the novel: it is completely independent (and a tolerable story though no more than that, about a man sent to kill a sort of Genghis Khan of Space, complete with a nice ironic ending but not much interest until that point). The other travelogues make more sense, and the concluding one actually holds the seeds for the novel's ending. Which is OK, nicely enough set up and if not convincing at least acceptable on the terms of the story.
The story collection, A Touch of Infinity, gathers six early stories, a novelette and 5 shorts, totally about 40,000 wordss. I'll cover them one by one.
"Run for the Stars" (Science Fiction Adventures, June 1958, 14000 words)
The alien Kyben have made a breakthrough into human space and have overrun Deald's World. The resistance needs to escape to warn Earth, and their only hope is to plant a "Sun Bomb" inside a man who will run from the Kyben long enough to give the others a chance to get away. Yeah, that didn't make much sense to me, either. Another important point is that they choose a drug-addicted loser, on the grounds that he's such a coward he'll keep running, and keep the Kyben chasing him. The story really turns on a nasty closing twist, which is OK but doesn't really seem to justify 14,000 words.
"Back to the Drawing Boards" (Fantastic Universe, August 1958, 5900 words)
An inventor creates an intelligent robot, which is taken by the government for use in testing a starship. The bitter inventor makes a slight modification to the robot, causing it to make a certain demand on his return from the stars. The gimmick is incredibly lame, and a pretty old idea, and I don't believe in the results of it anyway! A pretty weak effort.
"Life Hutch" (If, April 1956, 4500 words)
Ellison's second sale. A decent piece. Another Kyben story, though it needn't have been. A space pilot is marooned in a Life Hutch on an asteroid. He needs to activate the distress beacon, but the controlling AI has gone mad and attacks anything that moves. The puzzle is -- how can the guy move to activate the distress beacon. The solution is OK. The setup is awfully damn strained, however.
"The Sky is Burning" (If, August 1958, 3400 words)
Ellison calls this a change of pace story. Maybe. One night astronomers detect hundreds of objects burning up in the atmosphere. They manage to intercept one, which turns out to be a majestic alien creature. The creature communicates telepathically, and a few sensitives hear its message. Which causes them to commit suicide. I wasn't convinced by the reason.
"Final Trophy" (Super Science Fiction, June 1957, 5400 words)
A great hunter goes to an alien planet and witnesses a strange "hunt" in which the aliens seem to give themselves up to the prey. He decides he needs to hunt this animal, show the aliens that he's stronger. With predictable results. Actually, the story is well-framed, around a grand trophy, the hunter's "final trophy", the nature of which is easily guessed, but still works OK. I wasn't fully convinced by the explanation, but still I thought the story OK.
"Blind Lightning" (Fantastic Universe, June 1956, 6500 words)
Another very early story, Ellison's third or fourth to be published. A tortured scientist is exploring an alien world and gets captured by a native. The native is intelligent, but wants to eat him. The scientist could kill the native, but wants to find a better solution, and eventually he does, finding redemption of a sort in so doing. Not bad minor work.
On the whole, this is a pretty negligible set of stories -- as the novel The Man With Nine Lives is also negligible. It is possible to detect the seeds of Ellison's mature style -- these stories are certainly fairly flamboyant, and generally deal with desperate characters. It's worth noting that Ellison was extremely prolific in the lower end SF magazines through about 1959, then fell silent for three years (though I believe he was working in other genres and in TV), resuming at a slower rate of production with much better stories, including award winners like "Repent, Harlequin, Said the Ticktockman". In one way his career could be compared to those of Brunner and Silverberg -- writers who produced competent work at a frenetic pace through the mid to late 50s (or into the mid-60s in Brunner's case), then slowed down and began doing far better work in the mid-60s. However, it seems to me that Ellison's early work was less accomplished than that of either Silverberg or Brunner. It's really seems to me that the Ellison of the mid-60s, say from "Repent Harlequin" on, is an almost completely different, and enormously better, writer than the early Ellison. As I've said, you can see seeds of the later Ellison in the early stuff, but only seeds, only hints. This early work is slapdash, scientifically absurd, careless, pulpish, and the prose may try hard but fails to have much impact.
Thursday, July 21, 2016
Tuesday, July 19, 2016
Worldcon Programming Schedule
Here's my programming schedule for Worldcon. All the panels seems to "fit my eye", as it were. I'll be real happy to share a panel with Gary Wolfe and Alvaro Zinos-Amaro (and Michelle West!): I've done panels with Gary before and conversed (and emailed) with Alvaro, though not on a panel. I actually haven't met any of the other panelists, which is a bit unusual these days, and I'm looking forward to meeting all of them.
Reviewing the Reviews
Thursday 11:00 - 12:00, 2208 (Kansas City Convention Center)
With the internet, it is easy to find reviews of just about any book published. But not all reviews are created equal. How can you find reviews that are more than just raves about a favorites author or flames about a hated one? Which review sites are better than others? Do Amazon reviews really mean anything?
Gary Wolfe, Michelle (Sagara) West, Alvaro Zinos-Amaro (M), Rich Horton
Small Presses & Magazines: Welcoming the Unexpected
Saturday 10:00 - 11:00, 2207 (Kansas City Convention Center)
Authors in the slipstream, weird, magical realism, or speculative literature categories can have a hard time finding the right home for their work. With stories that aren't always a good fit for the larger genre markets, it's still important to find quality publishers. Such homes exist in both the literary and SF/F/H publishing communities. This panel will take a "deep dive" into the world of small presses and magazines, presenting fantastic venues and discussing hard-learned lessons such as publishers that promised more than they could deliver. Whether you're looking for good work a little off the beaten path or trying to find potential new markets for your writing, this panel is for you.
Jamie Lackey, Katherine Wynter, Rich Horton (M), Jason Sizemore, Mr Ron Yaniv
"Transcending" the Genre
Sunday 13:00 - 14:00, 2209 (Kansas City Convention Center)
Critics still use the term "transcending the genre," but what does that really mean? And what does that mean for fandom - have we gone mainstream? Or are we experiencing snobbish reactions rooted in fannish history? What happens to the discourse when Zadie Smith talks about reading Octavia Butler, or Marlon James says his next novel will be "an African Game of Thrones"? At the end of the day, do we really want all the genre walls to disappear? Do we want to completely transcend genre?
Dr. Tom Easton, Rich Horton, Cait Spivey, Nora Fleischer (M)
Thursday, July 14, 2016
Old Bestseller: The Romantic Comedians, by Ellen Glasgow
Old Bestseller: The Romantic Comedians, by Ellen Glasgow
a review by Rich Horton
Back to a true quill writer of Old Bestsellers, Ellen Glasgow. Glasgow had the second bestselling novel of 1904 (The Deliverance), the tenth bestelling novel of 1906 (The Wheel of Life), and the fifth bestelling novel of 1916 (Life and Gabriella) -- all according to Publishers' Weekly's list. She also won the Pulitzer Prize for her late novel In This Our Life (1941), which quickly became John Huston's second movie in 1942, starring Bette Davis and Olivia de Havilland. The novel at hand, The Romantic Comedians, wasn't one of the very top bestsellers of its year, 1926, but I'm sure it sold quite well, and it was one of the very first Book of the Month Club selections (the Club was created that year).
Ellen Glasgow (1873-1945) was born into a fairly prominent Richmond, Virginia family. She was educated at home due to poor health, and began writing fairly early. Her first novel appeared anonymously in 1897 (delayed due to her mother's and brother-in-law's deaths). It portrayed a woman who rejected marriage in favor of passion, says Wikipedia. And indeed, Glasgow never married but had several affairs of some length. She was for a time a suffragette, but did not seem to stay active politically -- however, her novels seem to have often tackled significant social themes. She was a close friend of another Richmond writer, James Branch Cabell.
She seems one of those once prominent writers now nearly forgotten (though, as I note later, not really entirely forgotten). After all she had a lot of commercial success, and some critical success too as evidenced by the Pulitzer. But I really knew nothing about her -- just enough to have a sense when I saw this book at a sale that her name seemed vaguely familiar. (Wikipedia does say that Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings planned a biography, but died before she could complete it.)
While most of her novels seem to have been deathly serious -- her second novel was called "sodden with hopelessness all the way through", and many of her other novels seem depressing on a look -- this one, as with other late ones, is not so dark. But the title of The Romantic Comedians suggested it might be, well, a romantic comedy. It's not, really, though it's not exactly depressing, either. Apparently after her ambitious 1925 tragedy Barren Ground, she decided to turn to somewhat lighter subjects for her next couple or three books.
This book, then. the one immediately succeeding Barren Ground, concerns Judge Gamaliel Bland Honeywell, a 65 year old lawyer in Queenborough, Virginia. His wife Cordelia died a year before the action of the novel, and we soon gather that she was a worthy woman who took good care of him and kept him in order -- but perhaps that she wasn't his great passion. And soon we see Amanda Lightfoot, still beautiful at 57, who was briefly engaged to the Judge 37 years before, before a quarrel and her sudden departure to Europe. He followed her, but met Cordelia on the ship. Amanda has never married, apparently still carrying the torch for the Judge. But somehow Gamaliel doesn't quite feel up to visiting her.
The other characters soon enter. One is his scandalous sister Edmonia, who has buried three husbands and left the fourth. Now she's back home, only too ready to give Gamaliel advice. And too there is impoverished widow Bella Upchurch and her beautiful daughter Annabel, who herself was just jilted by her fiance.
This sets the scene, and what follows is predictable: Gamaliel takes an interest in Annabel Upchurch, and soon is making something of a fool of himself over the young woman. Her mother, desperate to save the family situation, urges Annabel to marry the Judge, reasoning that she's lost her "true love" and she might as well settle for money. Edmonia thinks her brother should court Amanda Lightfoot, but he won't listen. The reader might come to the conclusion that Bella Upchurch, a pretty woman of an age somewhat more appropriate for Judge Honeywell (late 40s) might be a better match than her daughter. But the May-December marriage goes through.
And the result is much as one might predict. Annabel isn't much of a wife to Gamaliel, and she doesn't really care much for him. And, of course, she's young, and there are other young fish in the ocean besides her caddish ex-fiance. And, after all, the Judge doesn't care to dance those fashionable '20s dances with her ...
Well, it's easy to see where this will end up. And so it does, really in a fairly sensible fashion. The disappointment is, perhaps, that it's too sensible. There is no great romance here. There is no sprightly comedy either. Amanda Lightfoot turns out to be rather a crashing bore. Bella Upchurch is just not the right woman. Edmonia is entertaining but really doesn't have enough of a role.
I ended up with the impression of a well-meaning, well enough executed, novel that I really didn't much like. It's possible that I was looking for the wrong thing -- clearly Glasgow was interested in (fairly gentle) satire, and I may have been after more of a love story -- if so, my fault. Still, I didn't find the satire biting enough, or perhaps just not funny enough (except every so often in Edmonia's scenes).
I would suggest that Glasgow was very much a writer of her time, and perhaps too serious a writer for her talent. That is, if she was more of a writer of entertainments, her work might have lasted at some level. And if she was a greater writer, it might have lasted. But as an ambitious writer who didn't quite have the chops -- she falls into sort of a gap. And having said that, I should note that she's not as forgotten as all that. The University of Virginia reissued a number of her books in the 1990s, and I think she still gets some academic attention, both from the "Southern writer" angle, and the "Early Feminist" angle.
a review by Rich Horton
Back to a true quill writer of Old Bestsellers, Ellen Glasgow. Glasgow had the second bestselling novel of 1904 (The Deliverance), the tenth bestelling novel of 1906 (The Wheel of Life), and the fifth bestelling novel of 1916 (Life and Gabriella) -- all according to Publishers' Weekly's list. She also won the Pulitzer Prize for her late novel In This Our Life (1941), which quickly became John Huston's second movie in 1942, starring Bette Davis and Olivia de Havilland. The novel at hand, The Romantic Comedians, wasn't one of the very top bestsellers of its year, 1926, but I'm sure it sold quite well, and it was one of the very first Book of the Month Club selections (the Club was created that year).
Ellen Glasgow (1873-1945) was born into a fairly prominent Richmond, Virginia family. She was educated at home due to poor health, and began writing fairly early. Her first novel appeared anonymously in 1897 (delayed due to her mother's and brother-in-law's deaths). It portrayed a woman who rejected marriage in favor of passion, says Wikipedia. And indeed, Glasgow never married but had several affairs of some length. She was for a time a suffragette, but did not seem to stay active politically -- however, her novels seem to have often tackled significant social themes. She was a close friend of another Richmond writer, James Branch Cabell.
She seems one of those once prominent writers now nearly forgotten (though, as I note later, not really entirely forgotten). After all she had a lot of commercial success, and some critical success too as evidenced by the Pulitzer. But I really knew nothing about her -- just enough to have a sense when I saw this book at a sale that her name seemed vaguely familiar. (Wikipedia does say that Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings planned a biography, but died before she could complete it.)
While most of her novels seem to have been deathly serious -- her second novel was called "sodden with hopelessness all the way through", and many of her other novels seem depressing on a look -- this one, as with other late ones, is not so dark. But the title of The Romantic Comedians suggested it might be, well, a romantic comedy. It's not, really, though it's not exactly depressing, either. Apparently after her ambitious 1925 tragedy Barren Ground, she decided to turn to somewhat lighter subjects for her next couple or three books.
This book, then. the one immediately succeeding Barren Ground, concerns Judge Gamaliel Bland Honeywell, a 65 year old lawyer in Queenborough, Virginia. His wife Cordelia died a year before the action of the novel, and we soon gather that she was a worthy woman who took good care of him and kept him in order -- but perhaps that she wasn't his great passion. And soon we see Amanda Lightfoot, still beautiful at 57, who was briefly engaged to the Judge 37 years before, before a quarrel and her sudden departure to Europe. He followed her, but met Cordelia on the ship. Amanda has never married, apparently still carrying the torch for the Judge. But somehow Gamaliel doesn't quite feel up to visiting her.
The other characters soon enter. One is his scandalous sister Edmonia, who has buried three husbands and left the fourth. Now she's back home, only too ready to give Gamaliel advice. And too there is impoverished widow Bella Upchurch and her beautiful daughter Annabel, who herself was just jilted by her fiance.
This sets the scene, and what follows is predictable: Gamaliel takes an interest in Annabel Upchurch, and soon is making something of a fool of himself over the young woman. Her mother, desperate to save the family situation, urges Annabel to marry the Judge, reasoning that she's lost her "true love" and she might as well settle for money. Edmonia thinks her brother should court Amanda Lightfoot, but he won't listen. The reader might come to the conclusion that Bella Upchurch, a pretty woman of an age somewhat more appropriate for Judge Honeywell (late 40s) might be a better match than her daughter. But the May-December marriage goes through.
And the result is much as one might predict. Annabel isn't much of a wife to Gamaliel, and she doesn't really care much for him. And, of course, she's young, and there are other young fish in the ocean besides her caddish ex-fiance. And, after all, the Judge doesn't care to dance those fashionable '20s dances with her ...
Well, it's easy to see where this will end up. And so it does, really in a fairly sensible fashion. The disappointment is, perhaps, that it's too sensible. There is no great romance here. There is no sprightly comedy either. Amanda Lightfoot turns out to be rather a crashing bore. Bella Upchurch is just not the right woman. Edmonia is entertaining but really doesn't have enough of a role.
I ended up with the impression of a well-meaning, well enough executed, novel that I really didn't much like. It's possible that I was looking for the wrong thing -- clearly Glasgow was interested in (fairly gentle) satire, and I may have been after more of a love story -- if so, my fault. Still, I didn't find the satire biting enough, or perhaps just not funny enough (except every so often in Edmonia's scenes).
I would suggest that Glasgow was very much a writer of her time, and perhaps too serious a writer for her talent. That is, if she was more of a writer of entertainments, her work might have lasted at some level. And if she was a greater writer, it might have lasted. But as an ambitious writer who didn't quite have the chops -- she falls into sort of a gap. And having said that, I should note that she's not as forgotten as all that. The University of Virginia reissued a number of her books in the 1990s, and I think she still gets some academic attention, both from the "Southern writer" angle, and the "Early Feminist" angle.
Monday, July 11, 2016
The 2016 Hugos: Short Story
The 2016 Hugos: Short Story
By Rich Horton
Repeating again: I am not planning to reflexively rank Rabid
Puppy entries below No Award. I am of course disgusted by the Rabid Puppy
antics, and I feel that many worthier stories were kept off the ballot by the
Rabid choices. And if a story is bad enough, it will certainly be off my
ballot, with No Award the last choice. (That’s always been my approach.) But,
this year in particular, many of the nominees supported by the Rabid Puppies
were either unaware of that, or aware and quite clearly not happy with that.
Also, I don’t want to reduce the meaningfulness of the win for the actual, and
probably quite worthy, winners – if they finish first and No Award is second,
to my mind it to some extent delegitimizes their wins, through no fault of
their own. Better to have been chosen the best with everyone voting on merit
than voted best simply because all the other choices were automatically
rejected regardless of quality.
The 2016 Hugo nominees for Best Short Story are:
“Asymmetrical
Warfare” by S. R. Algernon (Nature,
Mar 2015)
“Cat
Pictures Please” by Naomi Kritzer (Clarkesworld,
January 2015)
“If
You Were an Award, My Love” by Juan Tabo and S. Harris (voxday.blogspot.com,
Jun 2015)
“Seven
Kill Tiger” by Charles Shao (There
Will Be War Volume X, Castalia House)
“Space Raptor Butt Invasion” by Chuck Tingle (Amazon
Digital Services)
I’ll go ahead and
show my nomination longlist (I think I ended up nominating the first 5 on this
list but I may well have switched in or out a couple of the others):
“Mutability” by Ray
Nayler (Asimov’s)
“Capitalism in the
22nd Century” by Geoff Ryman (Stories
for Chip)
“The Game of Smash
and Recovery” by Kelly Link (Strange
Horizons)
“The Astrakhan, the
Homburg, and the Red, Red Coal” by Chaz Brenchley (Lightspeed)
“Hello Hello” by
Seanan McGuire (Future Visions)
“Consolation” by
John Kessel (Twelve Tomorrows)
“The Daughters of
John Demetrius” by Joe Pitkin (Analog)
“Unearthly
Landscape by a Lady” by Rebecca Campbell (Beneath Ceaseless Skies)
“The Karen Joy
Fowler Book Club” by Nike Sulway (Lightspeed)
“Little Sisters” by
Vonda M. McIntyre (Book View Cafe)
“Asymptotic” by
Andy Dudak (Clarkesworld)
“Cat Pictures
Please” by Naomi Kritzer (Clarkesworld)
“Today I Am Paul”
by Martin Shoemaker (Clarkesworld)
“Drones” by Simon
Ings (Meeting Infinity)
“The Graphology of
Hemorrhage” by Yoon Ha Lee (Operation
Arcana)
“Please Undo This
Hurt” by Seth Dickinson (Tor.com)
“The King in the
Cathedral” by Rich Larson (Beneath
Ceaseless Skies)
“Time Bomb Time” by
C.C. Finlay (Lightspeed)
So, only one story
from this long list of stories I considered – less than I might have hoped. But
easily explained – this is clearly the category Vox Day chose to make a mockery
of. His nomination choices in the longer fiction categories (Novel, Novella,
Novelette), were actually all readable stories, and some quite plausible Hugo
nominees. That’s not at all the case in Short Story. And, indeed, the only good
story on the list was only added after one of the original nominees withdrew.
So, my ballot:
1. “Cat Pictures,
Please”, by Naomi
Kritzer
Here’s what I wrote about “Cat Pictures, Please” in the March 2015 Locus:
“I really like a very funny short story by Naomi Kritzer, “Cat
Pictures, Please”, about an emergent AI that decides it has to do good
for people, though it must be paid, in cat pictures of course. The three cases
it takes on are interesting themselves, and the AI's reactions are priceless –
I laughed aloud in public.”
So, a funny story on the short list – that’s one valid
complaint, I think, about the Hugos – there is a tendency to perhaps undervalue
humor, or overvalue deadly seriousness (I’m sure I’m guilty myself), and it’s
nice to see humor getting some notice. As with most good comedy, there’s some
food for thought behind this story as well.
I’m torn about the next two stories. They are at least real
SF, and of professional quality. But they’re a long way below my view of Hugo
standards, more so than the least of the novelettes. I may end up moving my No
Award vote to second. But maybe not …
2. “Asymmetrical Warfare”, by S. N. Algernon
This is part of
Nature’s long-running series of short-shorts. It’s about aliens invading Earth,
in the hopes of raising up a new predator species. The starfish-shaped aliens
can’t believe the bipedal humans are the real intelligence, though … leading to
rather asymmetrical misunderstanding. It’s amusing enough, not remotely
Hugo-worthy, but a decent work in its short space.
3. “Seven Kill Tiger”,
by Charles Shao
A Chinese executive
is having a hard time meeting production goals in an African project. He blames
the locals (described in quite racist terms, though to be fair this is
presented as the views of a villain), and, in danger of losing his job, he
authorizes a project for a race-specific plague, to wipe out the Africans and
allow Chinese to immigrate. An American official for the CDC (or some similar
organization) starts to track down the reports of a mysterious disease in
Africa, but … Well, it’s a didactic story, and as such it doesn’t really have a
story structure, instead choosing to make its point. The racial politics – indeed
the politics in general – are dodgy as well. The story does manage to scare,
that’s fair to say…
4. No Award
The remaining two
stories are downright awful. The less objectionable of them is “Space Raptor
Butt Invasion”, by Chuck Tingle. It’s gotten Tingle some good press, because he’s
been a pretty good sport about the whole thing*, and because his politics don’t
seem to align with Vox Day’s. I fear that some people are tempted to vote for
the story because they think it will annoy Day. It won’t – if it won, Day would
be thrilled. The story itself is straightforward gay porn – I won’t evaluate it
on those terms, though I must say it didn’t seem anything special. Its SFnal
veneer has an astronaut coming to a Moonbase to tend it for a while solo, and
meeting an intelligent dinosaur, from a parallel universe. Soon they get down
to business … As SF, it’s a joke (not a funny one), and it certainly isn’t remotely
in the universe of stories that deserve a Hugo.
Even worse is “If
You Were an Award, My Love”, a juvenile and rather vile, and very clumsy and
unfunny, parody of Rachel Swirsky’s “If You Were a Dinosaur, My Love”. The
story itself is bad enough, the comments section of the blog post in which it
even appeared even worse.
*Though a better
sport would have had his fun and then withdrawn.
Sunday, July 10, 2016
The 2016 Hugos: Novelette
The 2016 Hugos:
Novelette
By Rich Horton
As I wrote in my first post in this series: I am not
planning to reflexively rank Rabid Puppy entries below No Award. I am of course
disgusted by the Rabid Puppy antics, and I feel that many worthier stories were
kept off the ballot by the Rabid choices. And if a story is bad enough, it will
certainly be off my ballot, with No Award the last choice. (That’s always been
my approach.) But, this year in particular, many of the nominees supported by
the Rabid Puppies were either unaware of that, or aware and quite clearly not
happy with that. Also, I don’t want to reduce the meaningfulness of the win for
those worthy winners – if they finish first and No Award is second, to my mind
it to some extent delegitimizes their wins, through no fault of their own.
Better to have been chosen the best with every voting on merit than voted best
simply because all the other choices were automatically rejected regardless of
quality.
The 2016 Hugo nominees for Best Novelette are:
“And
You Shall Know Her by the Trail of Dead” by Brooke Bolander (Lightspeed, Feb 2015)
“Flashpoint:
Titan” by CHEAH Kai Wai (There Will Be War Volume X,
Castalia House)
“Folding
Beijing” by Hao Jingfang, trans. Ken Liu (Uncanny Magazine,
Jan-Feb 2015)
“Obits”
by Stephen King (The Bazaar of Bad Dreams, Scribner)
“What
Price Humanity?” by David VanDyke (There Will Be War Volume X,
Castalia House)
I’ll go ahead and
show my nomination longlist (I think I ended up nominating the first 5 on this
list but really I don’t think there was much separation top to bottom, and I
may have switched a couple):
“Twelve and Tag” by
Gregory Norman Bossert (Asimov’s)
“Acres of Perhaps”
by Will Ludwigsen (Asimov’s)
“The Long Goodnight
of Violet Wild” by Catherynne M. Valente (Clarkesworld)
“Botanica Veneris:
Thirteen Papercuts by Ida Countess Rathagan” by Ian McDonald (Old Venus)
“Endless Forms Most
Beautiful” by Alvaro Zinos-Amaro (Analog)
“The Heart’s Filthy
Lesson” by Elizabeth Bear (Old Venus)
“This Evening’s
Performance” by Genevieve Valentine (The Mammoth Book of Dieselpunk)
“And You Shall Know
Her by the Trail of Dead” by Brooke Bolander (Lightspeed)
“Folding Beijing”
by Hao Jingfang (Uncanny)
“My Last Bringback”
by John Barnes (Meeting Infinity)
“The Deepwater
Bride” by Tamysn Muir (F&SF)
Thus, two stories
among my nomination candidates made the ballot, which is actually not unusual.
Oh well, that’s
enough about my choices. It does give you a hint as what will come first on my
ballot, though! Except that I’m not sure -- I could easily flip the first two
spots.
- “Folding Beijing”, by Hao Jingfang (translated by Ken Liu)
Here’s what I wrote about “Folding Beijing” in the March 2015 Locus: “The conceit here is that
Beijing has been literally folded into three separate parts, that each get part
of each day. The division is unequal, in a very explicitly class-based fashion,
and the story opens in Third Space, with Lao Dao, a waste inspector, as he
plans an illegal trip to First Space to deliver a love letter from a man in
Second Space to a woman there. The idea itself if fascinating and nicely
depicted, and the social differences between the three Spaces are well
described and only too believable, and the characters, Lao Dao in particular,
are also well done.” So, to my mind a very original concept (perhaps recalling
Philip Jose Farmer’s Dayworld to a degree, as well as numerous stories with
Dayside/Nightside divisions), used effectively to deal with class differences.
(I should add a note about the translator: Ken Liu of course
is a first-rate writer (and a Nebula, Hugo, and World Fantasy Award winner),
but his contributions as a translator, in introducing excellent
Chinese-language SF to the English-speaking world, are also very praiseworthy.
(He also translated last year’s Hugo winning novel, The Three Body Problem, by Cixin Liu (no relation).)
- “And You Shall Know Her by the Trail of Dead”, by Brooke Bolander
Here’s what I wrote
in the April 2015 Locus: “Rhye
is an android of some sort, made to be a killer, and after leaving the army she
has been rescued by another android, Rack, a gentle man who is a computer
expert. The two seem a traditional team: brains and muscle, as it were, but as
the story opens Rack has gotten into trouble. A mobster has killed him for not
finding his son quickly enough. Said son's brain had been uploaded, and Rack
had followed him there. Now Rack's body is dead, and Rhye is forced to upload
after him, to look for the mobster's son with the dangled reward of at least
retrieving Rack's brain. This is neat stuff in itself, and the story of Rhye's journey
in the virtual world is well-executed, with a perfect twisty ending (perfect in
that I saw the right answer in advance, but in a way that seemed earned, not
cheap or gimmicky). Best though is the manner of telling: Rhye's voice, profane
and vulnerable and very darkly funny. (By the way, Bolander swears in an author
profile that she had never heard of the drink “Rack and Rye” before naming her
characters – I had assumed the names were on purpose, either way, it works.)”
This is excellent action SF, with a pretty solid SFnal
premise behind it.
- “Obits”, by Stephen King
This is about a guy who wants to be a journalist, but at the
wrong time, i.e. now, with papers shedding employees (and cash) and online
places paying peanuts. He ends up writing a nasty satirical obituary column for
a TMZ-like website, for peanuts of course. When he asks for a raise and his
boss brushes him off he gets mad and to vent, writes an obituary for her. When
she suddenly dies he gets scared, then a bit tempted – what if he tries writing
an obituary for someone really evil? Well, you can see where this is going, and
it goes there, with no real twists (and, as King makes sure to tell us, no real
resolution). This is decent stuff, and King is an engaging writer, for sure,
but this isn’t really brilliant. It’s not King at his best, it’s not particularly
original – I just don’t see it as Hugo material.
- “Flashpoint Titan”, by Cheah Kai Wai
This is set on board an experimental Japanese warship in the
Saturn system. Ships start acting suspiciously, and it becomes clear that a
sneak Chinese attack on the American colony on Titan is in the offing. The
commander of the new Japanese ship offers to help, but he is constrained both
by rules of engagement – until the Chinese are proven to act hostilely, his
hands are tied – and also by a need to keep the experimental weapons on board
his ship secret. What follows is bog standard mil-SF, and decent enough stuff,
but nowhere surprising, nowhere a cut above any other particular story.
- “What Price Humanity?”, by David VanDyke
This opens with a long infodump setting up the situation:
the Solar System has been engaged in a long war against the alien Meme (a
really bad name choice these days), constantly throwing them back only to face
another wave. Must humanity “use inhumane means” to fight this war? Then we
switch to the POV of Captain Vincent Markis, in a strange situation which
quickly suggests to him a virtual reality setup to keep his brain going while
his body is regenerated. The VR setup gets more complex, and soon Markis meets
others in it – all fellow veterans. Soon they are doing wargames … Again, it’s
easy enough to see where this is going. It’s competent mil-SF – it’s not a bad
story – but it doesn’t stand out either.
So – two stories that I’d be happy see win the Hugo, and
three stories that, while readable enough, certainly publishable, are not at
all distinguished. Not the first time that’s happened, no doubt, but still
regrettable.
Thursday, July 7, 2016
The 2016 Hugos: Novella
The 2016 Hugos:
Novella
By Rich Horton
I’m going to write a series of posts on the short fiction
categories for the 2016 Hugos, now that I’ve read them all. I’ll rank them in
the order I intend to vote.
A quick word on my voting philosophy: I am not planning to
reflexively rank Rabid Puppy entries below No Award. I am of course disgusted
by the Rabid Puppy antics, and I feel that many more worthy stories were kept
off the ballot by the Rabid choices. And if a story is bad enough, it will
certainly be off my ballot, with No Award the last choice. (That’s always been
my approach.) But, this year in particular, many of the nominees supported by
the Rabid Puppies were either unaware of that, or aware and quite clearly not
happy with that. Also, I don’t want to reduce the meaningfulness of the win for
those worthy winners – if they finish first and No Award is second, to my mind
it to some extent delegitimizes their wins, through no fault of their own.
Better to have been chosen the best with every voting on merit than voted best
simply because all the other choices were automatically rejected regardless of
quality.
So, novellas first. The 2016 Hugo nominees for Best Novella
are:
Binti by Nnedi Okorafor (Tor.com)
The Builders by Daniel Polansky (Tor.com)
Penric’s Demon by Lois McMaster Bujold (Spectrum)
Perfect State by Brandon Sanderson (Dragonsteel
Entertainment)
Slow Bullets by Alastair Reynolds (Tachyon)
I’ll go ahead and
show my nomination ballot:
The Two Paupers, by C. S. E. Cooney (Fairchild Press)
“Gypsy”, by Carter
Scholz (Gypsy plus …, F&SF)
“The Four Thousand,
the Eight Hundred”, by Greg Egan (Asimov’s)
“The Bone Swans of
Amandale”, by C. S. E. Cooney (Bone Swans)
“The Boatman's
Cure”, by Sonya Taaffe (Ghost Signs)
With these four
also contenders:
Wylding Hall, by Elizabeth Hand (Open Road/PS
Publishing)
Penric's Demon, by Lois McMaster Bujold (Penric's Demon)
Teaching the Dog
to Read, by Jonathan
Carroll (Subterranean)
Sunset Mantle, by Alter S. Reiss (Tor)
So you can see that
none of my personal nominations made the ballot. Three of my choices were
somewhat obscurely published, so I wasn’t surprised that they didn’t make the
cut (these are the Cooney stories, and the Taaffe story (which may be a long
novelette anyway)). By all means seek them out to read! I was quite bothered
that the Scholz and Egan stories, two of the very best hard SF stories of the
last few years, and both published in top magazines, didn’t get a nod.
Oh well, that’s enough
about my choices. It does give you a hint as what will come first on my ballot,
though!
- Penric's Demon, by Lois McMaster Bujold
Here’s what I wrote
in the November Locus: “It's set in her Chalion universe (or, more
properly, The World of Five Gods). Penric is a pleasant young man, the younger
son of a not terribly prosperous noble family, whose life is turned upside down
when, while helping a woman stricken on the way, he unwittingly agrees to take
on her demon. This marks him as tied to the fifth god, the Bastard, and it's
also potentially a very dangerous thing. The rest of the story is about Penric
learning the nature of demons, his in particular (he names her “Desdemona”,
cleverly enough), and learning to navigate the dangers posed not just by his
possession, but by the jealousies and fears of those around him, particularly
those in his new Order. The depiction of demons (which remind me a little bit
of the (science-fictional) Aspects in Gregory Benford's Galactic Center future)
is pretty neat, and Desdemona is an interesting character (or characters). Nice
story, though not spectacular, but I'd be glad to see more of Penric and
Desdemona.”
So you can see that I liked the story, but wasn’t over the
moon about it. Still, best of this list, though I will say it’s pretty close
over the next couple stories.
- Slow Bullets, by Alastair Reynolds
I also wrote about this in the November Locus: “pure SF,
told by Scur, a veteran of a sectarian war that seems to have engulfed human
space. After the ceasefire, and an encounter with a vicious enemy soldier who
tortures her leaves her for dead, she ends up on a prison ship with a number of
war criminals. But when she wakes, with the bulk her fellow passengers, and the
ship's crew, they realize that something has gone terribly wrong – they seem to
have reached the right planet, but centuries late, and the planet seems unrecognizable.
Also, her enemy is also on board. The story blends a couple of mysteries – why
is Scur on the ship? What happened to it, and what happened to human
civilization? – with a tale of revenge and possible redemption. Parts of it
stretched my suspension of disbelief, and at times it drags a bit, but the
ending is moving and there are some neat revelations.”
Again, I wasn’t over the moon about it, but it’s got some
pretty good and powerful ideas.
- The Builders, by Daniel Polansky
I just read this story. It’s a caper story of sorts,
following the usual structure: the leader of a gang assembles all the varied
members, sometimes reluctantly. Then the plot is set in motion, and the caper is
executed. The first twist in this story is that all the characters are animals:
the leader, called the Captain, is a mouse; and there’s a rat, a badger, a
snake, an owl, a stoat, an opossum, and a salamander. The plan is to try again
something they had tried years ago, which we come to realize is a political
coup of sorts. We also realize that they were betrayed the last time by one of
their own … All these plot details aren’t so much the point, though – the story
is all style, offhand black humor, anthropomorphic descriptions of the
characters, cutting dialogue. And, eventually, lots of violence. This is pretty
fun, I have to say. It’s not really that interesting from an SF or Fantasy
point of view, and it’s really not all that deep (and doesn’t want to be). Fun,
though.
- Binti, by Nnedi Okorafor
Binti won the
Nebula for Best Novella, which may make it the frontrunner for the Hugo. But I
have to say I found it disappointing. It tells of Binti, a mathematical prodigy
from the Himba people (a Namibian group), who gets a scholarship to go to
University on another planet in what seems a Galactic culture with multiple
alien races. This first part is kind of interesting, as Binti meets a number of
other, more privileged, students, starts to make friends, and we start to
understand her culture. But that’s not the story Okorafor is telling – because suddenly
aliens attack and kill everyone but Binti. Binti is important, perhaps, because
she carries an ancient artifact that helps her communicate with the aliens
(jellyfish like creatures called Meduse). The aliens, without her permission,
modify her so that she can better understand and communicate with them, and
they use her to help them recover a significant artifact that was stolen from
them and housed at the University to which Binti is going. I was put off by the
wild jumps in the story, by the implausible and too often magic tech, by the
lack of apparent consequence or concern about the atrocities committed by the
Meduse, and by some slack prose. Against that I should point out that it has
more exotic ideas than any of the other stories, and appears to be trying to
engage “deeper” issues – just not, to my mind, quite successfully.
- Perfect State, by Brandon Sanderson
Perfect State
concerns Kaironimas, who is God-Emperor of his own little domain. He has
conquered his world after three hundred years, and is providing for his people pretty
well, and he’s getting kind of bored. There is the problem of Melhi, ruler of
another world, with robots, who wants to fight him … and then there’s the
summons he has received, from the Wode – he needs to find a mate an contribute
his DNA to create another “Liveborn”. And we realize that he’s really a “brain
in a jar” – and he knows it. He’s been given his own virtual reality, to make
of what he will, with limited contact with other domains. Everyone else in his
world is a simulation. And he must go to a Border State and meet a woman and …
And so he does, and she’s intriguing, and very different from him, and a bit
cynical, and he starts to fall for her. Well, there’s a twist of course, and it
involves his unwanted enemy, Melhi, as well as the nature of these virtual
lives. And it’s really not bad, coming to a real if slightly trite resolution.
None of the ideas here are terribly original, but this story is pretty well
done in that context. A fine story, not a brilliant one.
So there you have it. No story I would have nominated for a
Hugo myself, but also no truly bad stories. So I won’t leave any of these off
my ballot. Indeed, while this isn’t a great Novella shortlist, it’s really not
too different, in overall quality, from many previous shortlists. I just regret
the significantly better stories – in what was a very good year at the very top
of the novella list – that didn’t get nominated.
I’ll note something else: all 5 of these stories were
published as standalone novellas, either slim books or ebooks. So too were many
of the other stories I recommended, such as The Two Paupers, Wylding
Hall, Teaching the Dog to Read,
and Sunset Mantle. This seems
unusual, but it does seem to reflect the state of novella publishing these
days.
Monday, July 4, 2016
An Old Rex Stout Omnibus: Curtains For Three
Rex Stout Special: Curtains for Three
a review by Rich Horton
A special for Patti Abbott's Friday's Forgotten Books, which is focusing on Rex Stout this week. That said, while I doubt this particular book was a bestseller, Stout's Nero Wolfe books sold very well for a long time, and afforded him a handsome income.
I have a certain tendency to read mystery writers in bunches -- that is, as a teen I binged on Agatha Christie, and since then I've done the same -- read huge swathes of their oeuvre over a period of month or a couple years -- with the likes of Charlotte MacLeod, Robert Barnard, Ellis Peters, Anne Perry, Peter Lovesey, John D. MacDonald, and Georges Simenon. And also Rex Stout, sometime in the '80s, when I read dozens of his Nero Wolfe novels, mostly in the Bantam paperbacks that were being reissued at that time.
So I figured I'd reread one of the old Nero Wolfe books I had. I chose Curtains for Three, from 1950. Like many of Stout's Nero Wolfe books it's an omnibus of three novellas, which is one reason I picked it: interest in the short fiction market for mysteries. These three novellas were published in the American Magazine, one each in 1948, 1949, and 1950. I suspected they were marketed as "Complete Novels" in the magazine issues, and I was right, as the covers here show (or would show, if the reproduction was better!). They are all of similar length, in the neighborhood of 25,000 words.
Rex Stout (1886-1975) was born in Indiana, grew up in Kansas, and joined the Navy after a brief spell at the University of Kansas. He served as a Warrant Officer on President Theodore Roosevelt's yacht. He left the Navy and went into banking, apparently inventing a school banking system that was very widely implemented. He published a variety of genre short stories in the that period. By 1927 he had made enough money to retire and turn to writing, at first producing three literary novels that were well received but didn't sell. In 1934 he published the first Nero Wolfe novel, Fer-de-Lance (an abridged version appeared in the American Magazine), and from then on concentrated on mysteries, introducing a couple of other detectives (such as Tecumseh Fox and Dol Bonner, who appeared in one book of her own and later in some Nero Wolfe books), but eventually sticking with Wolfe. He was active politically, mostly for leftish causes, including time spent in a leadership position for the ACLU; despite this, he was fiercely anti-Communist and late in his life supported US involvement in Vietnam.
The Nero Wolfe books are one of those long-lasting mystery series in which the detective never ages even as the novels are set at the time of writing. (Simenon's Maigret novels are like this as well.) I always thought that worked well until perhaps the '60s, when maybe the present day setting didn't seem to fit Nero Wolfe and the narrator, Wolfe's assistant Archie Goodwin, quite as well.
To the stories. The three stories in Curtains for Three are:
"The Gun With Wings" (American Magazine, December 1949)
"Bullet for One" (American Magazine, July 1948)
"Disguise for Murder" (as "The Twisted Scarf" in American Magazine, September 1950)
The book was first published by Viking in December 1950. They all share a similar structure: a murder mystery is presented, with about 6 obvious suspects, and after interviewing them all, with Archie possibly sent on an errand or two, and with Inspector Cramer of the NYPD either accepting Wolfe's help or fulminating against his involvement, Wolfe determines the solution (often turning on a tricksy minor detail). Usually he reveals it with all involved present in his office. (Wolfe famously almost never leaves his brownstone, and has very fixed hours devoted either to work, food, or his orchids.)
In "The Gun With Wings", two lovers want to hire Wolfe to prove that each of them is innocent of murder. It seems that the woman's husband, a famous tenor, has just been shot. Naturally, the wife is a suspect, and so is her lover. And though both claim to be sure the other didn't do it, they want Wolfe to prove it so there is no lingering doubt. There are other candidates, such as a rival whose daughter claimed to have been seduced by the dead man, and that daughter as well, and a couple more. Wolfe's main concern is to find out how the title gun "winged" itself from one place to another ...
In "Bullet for One", a famous industrial designer has been murdered while walking his horse in Central Park. Wolfe is hired by a group of the suspects in the murder with a commission -- to prove that another man, the victim's top salesman, is guilty. Wolfe of course, refuses, and promises only to find who is actually guilty. The other suspects are a rival designer, the victim's daughter, an investor, an employee who was just fired, and the designer's groom. Part of the intrigue here, as usual, is Archie Goodwin's preference for one of the women involved over the other, and the perhaps related decision by Wolfe to send Archie on errands he considers unimportant -- but maybe they're not?
Finally, in "Disguise for Murder", the murder is actually committed in Wolfe's office. He is showing off his orchids, unwillingly, to a Garden Club. Taking a break by hiding in the office, Archie is confronted by a young woman who admits she's a crook, and wants to get out of the business, but she's been recognized at the orchid showing, and fears she might be in danger. When, shortly later, she is found strangled in the office, Wolfe is understandably motivated to find the killer, who must be another of the guests. A complication is the high-handed way the police treat the scene of the crime. This also features some action for Archie, and some real danger. And it turns on a fairly clever trivial point.
In all of these stories, as in most of the Nero Wolfe mysteries, the characters of Goodwin and Wolfe, as well as their various assistants such as Fritz the cook, and Saul Panzer; as well as foils like Inspector Cramer; are of greater interest than the mysteries. (This is hardly uncommon in these ongoing series.) They are good fun -- in the case of these stories minor fun, though the best Wolfe novels are more involved and of greater lasting interest.
a review by Rich Horton
A special for Patti Abbott's Friday's Forgotten Books, which is focusing on Rex Stout this week. That said, while I doubt this particular book was a bestseller, Stout's Nero Wolfe books sold very well for a long time, and afforded him a handsome income.
I have a certain tendency to read mystery writers in bunches -- that is, as a teen I binged on Agatha Christie, and since then I've done the same -- read huge swathes of their oeuvre over a period of month or a couple years -- with the likes of Charlotte MacLeod, Robert Barnard, Ellis Peters, Anne Perry, Peter Lovesey, John D. MacDonald, and Georges Simenon. And also Rex Stout, sometime in the '80s, when I read dozens of his Nero Wolfe novels, mostly in the Bantam paperbacks that were being reissued at that time.
So I figured I'd reread one of the old Nero Wolfe books I had. I chose Curtains for Three, from 1950. Like many of Stout's Nero Wolfe books it's an omnibus of three novellas, which is one reason I picked it: interest in the short fiction market for mysteries. These three novellas were published in the American Magazine, one each in 1948, 1949, and 1950. I suspected they were marketed as "Complete Novels" in the magazine issues, and I was right, as the covers here show (or would show, if the reproduction was better!). They are all of similar length, in the neighborhood of 25,000 words.
Rex Stout (1886-1975) was born in Indiana, grew up in Kansas, and joined the Navy after a brief spell at the University of Kansas. He served as a Warrant Officer on President Theodore Roosevelt's yacht. He left the Navy and went into banking, apparently inventing a school banking system that was very widely implemented. He published a variety of genre short stories in the that period. By 1927 he had made enough money to retire and turn to writing, at first producing three literary novels that were well received but didn't sell. In 1934 he published the first Nero Wolfe novel, Fer-de-Lance (an abridged version appeared in the American Magazine), and from then on concentrated on mysteries, introducing a couple of other detectives (such as Tecumseh Fox and Dol Bonner, who appeared in one book of her own and later in some Nero Wolfe books), but eventually sticking with Wolfe. He was active politically, mostly for leftish causes, including time spent in a leadership position for the ACLU; despite this, he was fiercely anti-Communist and late in his life supported US involvement in Vietnam.
The Nero Wolfe books are one of those long-lasting mystery series in which the detective never ages even as the novels are set at the time of writing. (Simenon's Maigret novels are like this as well.) I always thought that worked well until perhaps the '60s, when maybe the present day setting didn't seem to fit Nero Wolfe and the narrator, Wolfe's assistant Archie Goodwin, quite as well.
To the stories. The three stories in Curtains for Three are:
"The Gun With Wings" (American Magazine, December 1949)
"Bullet for One" (American Magazine, July 1948)
"Disguise for Murder" (as "The Twisted Scarf" in American Magazine, September 1950)
The book was first published by Viking in December 1950. They all share a similar structure: a murder mystery is presented, with about 6 obvious suspects, and after interviewing them all, with Archie possibly sent on an errand or two, and with Inspector Cramer of the NYPD either accepting Wolfe's help or fulminating against his involvement, Wolfe determines the solution (often turning on a tricksy minor detail). Usually he reveals it with all involved present in his office. (Wolfe famously almost never leaves his brownstone, and has very fixed hours devoted either to work, food, or his orchids.)
In "The Gun With Wings", two lovers want to hire Wolfe to prove that each of them is innocent of murder. It seems that the woman's husband, a famous tenor, has just been shot. Naturally, the wife is a suspect, and so is her lover. And though both claim to be sure the other didn't do it, they want Wolfe to prove it so there is no lingering doubt. There are other candidates, such as a rival whose daughter claimed to have been seduced by the dead man, and that daughter as well, and a couple more. Wolfe's main concern is to find out how the title gun "winged" itself from one place to another ...
In "Bullet for One", a famous industrial designer has been murdered while walking his horse in Central Park. Wolfe is hired by a group of the suspects in the murder with a commission -- to prove that another man, the victim's top salesman, is guilty. Wolfe of course, refuses, and promises only to find who is actually guilty. The other suspects are a rival designer, the victim's daughter, an investor, an employee who was just fired, and the designer's groom. Part of the intrigue here, as usual, is Archie Goodwin's preference for one of the women involved over the other, and the perhaps related decision by Wolfe to send Archie on errands he considers unimportant -- but maybe they're not?
Finally, in "Disguise for Murder", the murder is actually committed in Wolfe's office. He is showing off his orchids, unwillingly, to a Garden Club. Taking a break by hiding in the office, Archie is confronted by a young woman who admits she's a crook, and wants to get out of the business, but she's been recognized at the orchid showing, and fears she might be in danger. When, shortly later, she is found strangled in the office, Wolfe is understandably motivated to find the killer, who must be another of the guests. A complication is the high-handed way the police treat the scene of the crime. This also features some action for Archie, and some real danger. And it turns on a fairly clever trivial point.
In all of these stories, as in most of the Nero Wolfe mysteries, the characters of Goodwin and Wolfe, as well as their various assistants such as Fritz the cook, and Saul Panzer; as well as foils like Inspector Cramer; are of greater interest than the mysteries. (This is hardly uncommon in these ongoing series.) They are good fun -- in the case of these stories minor fun, though the best Wolfe novels are more involved and of greater lasting interest.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)