Birthday Review: Short Fiction of Gardner Dozois

Birthday Review: Short Fiction of Gardner Dozois

Gardner Dozois would have been 71 today (23 June 2018). As I have done for a few other people, I thought a Birthday Review composed of stories I've reviewed of his for Locus would be nice. The problem is, Gardner's best work as a writer came before I started reviewing.

(Cover by Paul Alexander)

So, I grabbed my copy of his first collection (The Visible Man, 1977), and reread three of my absolute favorite Dozois stories. I also reread Robert Silverberg's introduction, in which he seemed convinced that Gardner was a woman -- no, wait! That was another book! Silverberg, instead, notes Dozois' exceptional prose skills, and places him as a writer working on the edges of Science Fiction -- he writes "much of what he has written is only marginally science fiction by my own fairly restrictive definitions". (For all that, Silverberg published Dozois repeatedly in New Dimensions.) The interesting point is that Gardner, over time, evolved a similarly restrictive definition of SF.

Anyway, I'll cover these three stories much as I might have had I been reviewing for Locus in the '70s.

"Horse of Air" (Orbit 8, 1970)

"Horse of Air" is one of Gardner Dozois' very bleakest stories, which is saying something. It is told in three voices, two of them the same middle-aged man living in a huge Apartment Tower in a much-decayed future city, one of them some sort of observer, perhaps simply the omniscient narrator. The man observes the outside world from his balcony, which we soon gather is a sort of prison; and his dueling internal voices soon make it clear that his main thoughts are vicious and revengeful. He dreams of some apocalyptic event he can set in motion, and of the aliens who will be the agency of that event. We slowly realize his true position -- why he is where he is, why he can't escape; and the portrait is of a rather ugly person in a very ugly future. And the prose reflects this ugliness -- and still somehow reaches for a mad transcendence by the end. [This seems like one of the stories that Silverberg respected but didn't quite consider SF.]

"A Special Kind of Morning" (New Dimensions 1, 1971)

[I loved this story on first reading it in High School, in a copy of New Dimensions 1 that I borrowed from my school library. It absolutely holds up. It was probably the first story by Dozois to attract major attention.] This story is told by a very old man, one-legged, to a much younger man. They are on the planet Kos, part of the Commonwealth. The frame device is beautifully handled, and very effective. The prose is Dozois at his very best. And it's pure SF -- set on another world, and quite cunningly introducing a rather horrifying and very science-fictional background. The old man tells the story of when he lost his leg. He was a soldier, in the old war on a different planet -- World -- in which the Quaestors overthrew the Combine, leading to World's entry into the Commonwealth. He's fighting for the Quaestors, and the first scene has him observing the utterly terrible destruction of the Combine's second city, D'Kotta. Dozois's extended description of this destruction is magnificent. Here's a short extract: "Did y'ever watch the sea lashed by high winds. The storm boils the water into froth, whips it white, until it becomes an ocean of ragged lace to the horizon, whirlpools of milk, not a fleck of blue left alive. The land looked like this at D'Kotta." D'Kotta destroyed, his team's mission is to lure down a ship carrying reinforcements for the Combine, and destroy it. So far, so simple, but all along we have hints of strangeness -- clones, and nulls, and zombies, and hereditary executive clones, and disembodied brains in the Cerebrum. And all this becomes slowly more personal, and more central to the old man's story -- leading to a powerful resolution.

"The Visible Man" (Analog, December 1975)

[I remember being surprised and excited to see a Dozois story in Analog, and very impressed by the result. I believe I nominated for a Novelette Hugo in what was my first nomination ballot.] George Rowan is a criminal, being transported to Boston for punishment. He has already been treated in an important way: he cannot see any living animal or human. The car appears an empty self-driving car to him, for example. But he gets a fortuitous chance to escape when the car has a blowout, and he runs, still unable to see anyone. Someone he gets to a town (not without running into some people) and then to a shopping center, where he can disguise himself as a blind man. And he is helped by some mysterious people, who tell him how to get to the sea, to escape to Canada and South America, and join the resistance. This is action filled, fascinating writing, and the terror of Rowan's curious semi-blindness is excellently portrayed, leading to a dramatic conclusion. There is a bit of a gimmick ending -- clever enough, and I think I liked it more at age 16 than I do now -- it might have been better if it stopped a paragraph or two earlier. Still, a strong story.

And now the reviews I did for Locus of some of Gardner's later stories -- which were always well done and interesting, but lacked the drive and passion of his best early work.

Locus, April 2002

Another light-toned contribution from the April 2002 F&SF is Gardner Dozois' "The Hanging Curve", the magazine's annual April issue baseball story -- this one about the last pitch in a World Series Game 7, a pitch that literally hangs in the air, unmoving and immovable.  Nice if quite minor.

Locus, June 2006

Best this time around at F&SF was Gardner Dozois’s "Counterfactual", an interestingly different take on alternate histories of the Civil War. This is set in an alternate world, in which the South still lost the war but in which Lee never surrendered but escaped to fight a long guerrilla war, still ongoing in the 1930s. A journalist named Cliff from the Minneapolis Star, also a writer of Counterfactuals, is traveling to Montgomery, Alabama, to report on the ceremony welcoming Alabama back into the Union. He speculates on a possible alternate history, in which Lee decided to surrender. The depiction of Cliff’s real world -- rather a depressing one -- is of course the main point of the story. For veteran SF readers of course further interest comes from recognizing the main character -- and one other character, less obviously a well-known writer.

Locus, January 2017

F&SF for November/December features a rare and welcome appearance from Gardner Dozois, whose fame as an editor should not cause us to forget how good his fiction is. "The Place of Bones" is a short stylish dark fantasy told by the tutor of a younger son of a French nobleman. The young man becomes a prodigious scholar, and discovers a way into the mysterious Dragonlands, somewhere not quite in Southeastern Europe. The tutor tells of their desperate trip into these lands, from whence no one returns, and what they find -- or hope to find -- there.

Locus, February 2018

There is other strong work here (F&SF, January/February 2018) -- for example a sharp-edged story, "Neanderthals", from Gardner Dozois, pitting an enhanced time traveler against a recreated Neanderthal bodyguard, leading to a cynical resolution.

Birthday Review: Kelly Link

Birthday Review: The Short Fiction of Kelly Link

Recently I mentioned how much I like Genevieve Valentine's short fiction, and I noted that she might be my favorite contemporary short fiction writer. And then I immediately noted that at last she's "in the conversation". By which I mean I have several favorites, and the one I'd pick on any given day can change. And one of my other absolute favorites is Kelly Link, who was born July 19, 1969. Which is almost a REALLY REALLY significant day in world history, I might add -- and in a very science fictional (and scientific) way!

Anway, here's a selection of my reviews of Kelly Link's short fiction, from Locus between 2004 and 2008. That leaves out a lot -- I covered her work in other venues earlier, and in Locus later, and I've liked it from the beginning. (I remain quite proud of noticing her first story, in Asimov's, and recommending it for a Hugo nomination.)

Locus, December 2004

And the real standout, one of my favorite stories of the year, is "The Faery Handbag", by Kelly Link. Genevieve is a girl in love with a boy named Jake. Genevieve also has an eccentric Grandmother, Sofia, who comes from Baldeziwurlekistan, which makes her hard to beat in Scrabble. Sofia has a special handbag, which, she says, holds her home village, placed there to escape the War. I shouldn't say more -- it's a neat story in itself, neater still because of Link's storytelling voice -- and I'm looking forward to more stories about Genevieve.

Locus, July 2005

Finally, the title story, "Magic for Beginners", is one of my favorite stories of this year. I was grabbed from the beginning lines: "Fox is a television character, and she isn't dead yet. But she will be, soon. She's a character on a show called The Library. You've never seen The Library on TV, but I bet you wish you had." Indeed I do! But the story isn't really about Fox -- it's about Jeremy Mars, a 15-year-old boy with a writer father and a librarian mother and a four close friends and, it turns out, an interest in a Las Vegas wedding chapel and a phone booth. Delight is the best word -- I was delighted every second to be reading this story.

(My feelings haven't changed! What a story, what a great great story.)


Locus, April 2006

Naturally one of the stories I most looked forward to was Kelly Link’s "The Wizards of Perfil", and this is indeed a very enjoyable piece, though not as good as her best work. A boy named Onion and his disagreeable cousin Halsa, as well as Halsa’s mother and brothers, are fleeing a war that has already their other parents’ lives. Money is short, so when a reprensative of the reclusive Wizards of Perfil offers to buy a child, one of them must go. Onion, who may be telepathic, seems a natural candidate to sell to the representative of the reclusive wizards, but somehow Halsa is sold instead. As we expect with Link, the story goes in unexpected directions, telling of both Onion and Halsa and the very reclusive wizards -- though I must say the resolution was exactly what I expected. (Which is not necessarily a bad thing.)

Locus, November 2007

Kelly Link’s "The Constable of Abal" is perhaps the best here. Zilla and Ozma are a mother and daughter who can see ghosts. They have had to flee Abal after Zilla killed a constable who was investigating some lucrative blackmail she was getting up to. But the ghost of the constable accompanies them, and eventually they fetch up in another town, at the house of the mysterious Lady Fralix. Who, in good time, will teach Ozma what she needs to know about her mother and herself. It is another delight from Link, charmingly told, original, fun and wise.

Locus, January 2008

And it will probably surprise few that my favorite story here is from Kelly Link. "Secret Identity" is about a superhero convention -- apparently with real superheroes, making this the one fantastical piece in the book -- and a girl who pretended to be her older sister and is now hoping for a rendezvous with an older man she "met" online. Which is as awkward as you might expect, and handled perfectly by Link: and not quite as you expect either.

Locus, January 2008

Kelly Link offers a truly remarkable story, "Light", which as with many Link stories is best read, not read about. But, briefly, it concerns Lindsey, who lives in a Florida a lot like the Florida we know. But not exactly -- for example, there are the "sleepers". Lindsey’s job is to manage a warehouse used by the government to house people found sleeping, unwakeable. And there are pocket universes, which can be explored, and toured, and even retired to, as with Lindsey’s parents. Lindsey also has an ex-husband, and a fairly crazy brother … and I don’t want to say much more but that it is wonderful as ever with Kelly Link, and that it is resolved perfectly.

Locus, May 2008

Kelly Link’s "The Surfer" is set in the near future. A Balkanized U.S. is descending to economic and political chaos. Its health care system is helpless in the face of a series of new flus -- and so Dorn’s father, a Doctor, grabs Dorn from soccer practice and whisks him down to Costa Rica. There they spend a short while in quarantine, waiting for a chance to join a colony centered around a surfer who was verifiably abducted by aliens and is waiting for their return. The SFnal furniture here is interesting -- the plausible and depressing near future, the potential aliens, Costa Rica’s dreams of a space program. But the story is about Dorn, his dreams of being a star soccer goalie, his immaturity, his interactions with a couple of girls also in quarantine. And, yes, his growth, in classic YA fashion -- but his growth seems earned, and isn’t implausible or excessive. And anyway it’s Kelly Link, which means the telling is enchanting.

Old Bestseller Review: Lady Merton, Colonist (aka Canadian Born), by Mrs. Humphry Ward

Old Bestseller Review: Lady Merton, Colonist, by Mrs. Humphry Ward

a review by Rich Horton

Mary Augusta Ward is considered an English writer, and she spent the great bulk of her life in England, but she was born in Tasmania in 1850. Her father was Tom Arnold, a school inspector in Tasmania and later a Professor of Literature at the University of Dublin, then a lecturer in History at Oxford. Her grandfather was Thomas Arnold, the legendary Headmaster of Rugby College, and her uncle was the great poet ("Dover Beach") and critic Matthew Arnold. Her brother-in-law was Thomas Huxley, and so her nephews were Julian and Aldous Huxley. (Aldous was named after a character in one of her novels.) Mary Augusta married Humphry Ward, a lecturer at Oxford, later a journalist. Their son, Arnold (natch!) became a Member of Parliament. She began publishing with a children's book (Milly and Olly) in 1881. She published her books as by Mrs Humphry Ward. Later in her life she became a leading opponent of women's suffrage, and the head of the Women's National Anti-Suffrage League. That stance seems uncharacteric today, for she was otherwise very active in liberal causes of the day: she was a campaigner for better education for the poor (she founded a school now called the Mary Ward Centre), she set up a sort of day care center to allow poor women to work more easily, and she promoted University education for women, initially starting the "Lectures for Women" program at Oxford. .

Her first major success, and still probably her best-known novel, was Robert Elsmere (1888). There were no bestseller lists at the time, but I suspect it would have ranked very highly on any such list. It's the story of a churchman and the problems in his marriage caused by his theological differences with his much stricter wife. I saw a copy once and passed -- it looked rather dry. Two of her novels, Lady Rose's Daughter (1903) and The Marriage of William Ashe (1905), were each the bestselling novel of their year in the US, according to Publishers' Weekly.

The novel at hand was serialized in 1909 and came out in book form in 1910. It was published in England as Canadian Born, but retitled Lady Merton, Colonist, in the US. I bought it in part because it looked like a good read, but also because of another feature of the physical book. It has a broad piece of tape over the lower part of the cover, labeled Famous Circulating Library, "Books One Cent a Day". Commercial circulating libraries were once a major means of book distribution, but by about the middle of the 20th century they disappeared, rendered unnecessary by the spread of public libraries, and the introduction of relatively cheap paperback editions.

My edition, possibly the American first, was published by Doubleday, Page. There is a frontispiece by Albert Sterner. (His version of Lady Merton does not match my image of her.) It is signed by, I assume, the first owner, Bee V. McBride, who lived on 9107 Virginia Ave. (There are probably many Virginia Avenues, but I assume this is the one I am fairly familiar with, on the South Side of St. Louis.)



The book opens with 28 year old widow Elizabeth, Lady Merton, on a train in the middle of Canada, accompanying her brother Philip in a private car on a trip from Quebec to Vancouver. (Her late father was a major investor in the railroad.) Lady Merton's husband died in the Boer War, very shortly after their marriage.

She finds herself enchanted by the Canadian landscape, to the point of boring her brother, who is much younger, and in doubtful health (not helped by his drinking). Then, somewhere in Manitoba, the train is halted because a sinkhole has made the track unusable. While repairs are made, she meets an energetic mining engineer now working for the railroad, who arranges for their comfort while supervising repairs to the track. She takes an immediate interest in this man, George Anderson, a native of Manitoba, and she is fascinated by his advocacy for Canada and its future. Anderson, it soon becomes clear, is a man going places -- soon he will stand for the Canadian Parliament. He soon begins to have an influence on Philip, as well.

So, you can see where THAT is headed. But there are complications. For one, Elizabeth's birth and wealth and the fact that her home is in England seem to make a relationship with a Canadian inappropriate. Add to that the fact that she already has a courter -- Arthur Delaine, a 40 year old Englishman who feels the need to marry, and who thinks Elizabeth appreciates his fascination with the classics. And Delaine happens to show up in Winnipeg, with the evident intention of fixing his position with Lady Merton.

The more severe complication, however, is George Anderson's family history. His father was an alcoholic, who caused his house to burn down, killing Anderson's mother and sisters, while he was drinking. Anderson thinks his father dead, but a mysterious man is following him to Vancouver ... and at a stop in the mountains, this man approaches Delaine -- telling him, of course, that he is Anderson's father.

Much ensues -- an attempt by Anderson to rehabilitate his father, an attempt by his father to rope Anderson in on a dicey mining venture, Anderson rescuing Philip from drowning, and then his father escaping and getting involved in a criminal venture, with fatal results.

It's all pretty enjoyable stuff, though by the end it wears out its welcome just a bit, as Elizabeth returns to England, and Philip's health becomes a determining factor. I thought that something of an unnecessary complication, to be sure, and in the end, things resolve more or less as we have expected all along, with a curious epitaph recording an episode of the happy couple's life in Canada.

So, as I said, I did enjoy this book. It's not as didactic as the reputation of some of Mrs Ward's other novels, though to be sure she is quite clear on the proper place of a woman as her husband's support in a marriage. (That said, she is also quite clear on a woman's right to choose her own life within those constraints, and a woman's value and versatility and also her right to an education.) More than anything, the novel is a paean to Canada, especially to the dream of Canada as it was becoming its own nation, as it was experiencing its own version of Manifest Destiny. I wonder -- is it remembered at all in Canada?

Birthday Review: Land of the Golden Clouds, by Archie Weller

Birthday Review: Land of the Golden Clouds, by Archie Weller (1998)

a review by Rich Horton

Archie Weller was born 13 July 1957. He is mixed race, Australian aboriginal and white, and he is well known and respected for his fiction on aboriginal life in contemporary Australia. In 2000 I contributed a review to the American journal Antipodes, which concerns Australian literature. I covered Weller's second novel, Land of the Golden Clouds, which is Science Fiction, as well as a rather dreadful fantasy novel, The Alchemist's Key, by Traci Harding. As for Land of the Golden Clouds, I found it a mixed bag -- a work of some ambition, that mostly fails. It's tedious for long stretches, and the SFnal aspects are pretty silly. At any rate, here's what I wrote about that book (somewhat revised for wording).

Land of the Golden Clouds is set 3000 years after a nuclear war had devastated the human technological society. Ilgar, a young man of a hunter-gatherer tribe descended from Australia's white inhabitants, is a "moon-talker", who prophesies the future based on what he sees in the night sky. His tribe and others in Australia, including the "Keepers of the Tree", descendants of the aboriginals, live in fear of night-time raids from the cave-dwelling Nightstalkers, who have migrated underground and cannot tolerate sunlight, and who prey on human flesh.

One dark night, Ilgar and his companions are attacked by a group of Nightstalkers. In the ensuing fight, all his companions are killed, as well as all but one of the attackers. This survivor is an 18 year old girl names S'shony, who has developed a reveulsion for her people's ways, after falling in love with a "Sun Person" who had been trapped under ground.

She uses her telepathic powers, as well s the love she and Ilgar begin to feel for each other, to urge him to form a band of people to travel overland to the cave of the leader fo the Nightstalkers. At this time an airplane from Jamaica, a rare outpost of advanced technology, is marooned in the area. Ilgar, now renamed Red Mond Star Light, leads a small party (including S'shony, some members of his tribe, two Keepers, and the Jamaicans) on a long treck across Australia.

This trek, perhaps extending from roughly Uluru (Ayers Rock) to Melbourne, takes up most of the novel. Along the way the group meets several other tribes with different ways, most hostile, but a few willing to join their quest. Some people are killed along the way, either as a result of the dangers of traveling in this landscape, or of the evil machinations of some of the tribes they encounter. A constant theme of the book is the way almost everyone in this future mistrusts anyone unfamiliar, and while this attitude seems in some way natural, Weller is surely suggesting that the way forward in the future is more trust and cooperation. The culmination is an exciting battle.

For me, this was about halfway to being a pretty fine post-Apocalyptic quest story. There are numerous impressive bits, such as the terrifying picture of life in the "Silver City", and also the well-done final battle. But much is silly and pointless, and the characters seem fairly stereotyped, though they do come to some life.

My major problems came in three areas. One was simply the unevenness of the telling -- long sections are very tedious. The scientific background is inane -- the depicted results of nuclear war are just wrong; and there is an added disaster that seemed unnecessary to me: an asteroid struck the Earth, which has evidently been knocked from its orbit and is slowly spiralling into the Sun. The telepathy that some tribes possess didn't convince at all. And, most tellingly, the prose was often quite weak. Certain descriptive passages were pretty impressive, but much was clunky and ungrammatical. (And the copy-editing of my edition was terrible.)

Ultimately, the novel read as a tired variation on hundreds of '50s post-Apocalyptic stories, complete with exaggerated anti-technological bias. In that way, it resembles only too many efforts by non-SF writers that tiresomely reiterate ancient clichés that they might think they are the first to offer.

A Little Known Ace Double: The 13th Immortal, by Robert Silverberg/This Fortress World, by James E. Gunn

Ace Double Reviews, 74: The 13th Immortal, by Robert Silverberg/This Fortress World, by James E. Gunn (#D-223, 1957, $0.35)

A review by Rich Horton

James Gunn was born July 12, 1923, so he turns 95 today, and he is still an active writer, with a new novel out this year. In honor of his birthday, I'm resurrecting a review I did several years ago of his only Ace Double. Alas, it was his first novel, and I'm afraid I'm not very kind to it.

(Covers by Ed Valigursky and Ed Emshwiller)

This Ace Double pairs the first adult solo novel from each of these well-known writers. (Silverberg had an earlier juvenile, Revolt on Alpha C (which as it happens was probably the first SF novel I ever read), while Gunn published a collaboration with Jack Williamson (Star Bridge) in the same year as the first publication of This Fortress World.) The 13th Immortal is about 45,000 words long, while This Fortress World is much longer at 67,000 words or so (and even as such is abridged). (I find it funny that Gunn appears in this Ace Double with Silverberg's 13th Immortal, and that he later published a novel, fixing up some of his better early stories, called The Immortals.)

Both writers are SFWA Grand Masters. I've written about Silverberg in these Ace Double reviews many times before, so I won't repeat myself here. Gunn is particularly well known as one of the first people to treat SF in an academic milieu -- indeed, he published extracts from his MA thesis in Dynamic Science Fiction. He has been a Professor (now Emeritus) of English at Kansas University for decades, and he is the Founding Director of KU's Center for the Study of Science Fiction. (He has taught at KU for 60 years now!) He's also, of course, been a significant writer of SF for even longer, getting particular notice for The Listeners, about SETI, basically, which was a Nebula nominee. He won a Hugo for Best Novelette for "The Giftie" in 1999, and other Hugos for non-fiction in 1976 and 1979.

The 13th Immortal is set several hundred years after a century of war has caused the remainder of the world to retreat to technological stasis. Twelve immortal men have parceled the world into twelve domains, and they in their various ways have enforced an agrarian lifestyle on everyone. The thirteenth domain is Antarctica, newly green and secure behind an impenetrable field.

Dale Kesley is a farmer in Iowa. But he has surprisingly little memory of his past life. One day a man turns up, looking for someone -- for Dale. This man is from Antarctica, he claims. And so too, says the man, is Dale. And it's time for him to go home. After some internal agonizing, Dale decides to follow this man -- mostly because of a nagging feeling that he doesn't really fit in Iowa.

But their travels do not go smoothly, In South America the two are separated, and Dale is captured by the agents of the Immortal in charge there. Rather implausibly, this man takes a shine to Dale and instead of having him executed after an escape attempt he recruits him -- as an assassin! Dale's new job is to go back to North America and kill the Immortal up there!

It is clear that relationships among the Immortals are fraying. And during Dale's travels he learns even more about his world, as he ends up encountering a town full of despised mutants, and a town run completely by automation. Inevitably his peregrinations lead him to Antarctica, and a confrontation with the mysterious 13th Immortal -- as well as a realization of his own history and destiny.

This is really pretty minor stuff. Silverberg of that era was a competent craftsman, and often willing to at least make a stab at handling interesting issues -- but still often a producer of yard goods. This book is yard goods, and indeed a bit below the average Silverberg 1950s standard, perhaps not a surprise coming so early in his career.

This Fortress World was first published by Gnome Press in 1955. This 1957 Ace Double is abridged. It is a novel that seems very derivative of Isaac Asimov's Foundation series. (One of Gunn's Hugo-winning books was called Isaac Asimov: Foundations of Science Fiction.) But nowhere near as good.

(Cover by Murray Tinkelman)

It opens with a young acolyte, William Dane, at a religious order witnessing a beautiful woman leaving something in the collection bowl, then going outside only to have her feet cut off by some blacksuited thugs. Finding her beauty sufficient to challenge his faith, he hides the pebble she left. Soon the thugs are invading his cathedral -- he kills a few of them, and decides to leave.

He's picked up by an intellectual who teaches him, almost instantly it seems, to be a master fighter. But when this man urges him to give him the mysterious pebble, he kills him. After another escape, he is rescued by a whore with a heart of gold (TM). But that doesn't last -- he decides to escape to another world, but instead he ends up in the hands of the blacksuits, by whom he is tortured. But the WWAHOG(TM) rescues him again, rather surprisingly -- only to be kidnapped herself. So William realizes he has to confront the head of the blacksuits -- and eventually the real power. But he learns that there is another power he knew nothing about ...

I hardly believed a word of it, I have to say, and I was bored through most of it. The Galactic society Gunn sketches is unconvincing, despite his heavy-handed attempts to give it a philosophical grounding. And the characters do not convince, either. (For example, William is unable to reconcile himself to the fact that Whore With a Heart of Gold (TM), with whom he falls in love, was, well, a whore (for very good reasons, it turns out).) Pretty weak stuff. I must add, however, that I was reading an abridged version, and it's possible that the full novel does a better job, particularly in establishing character.

Birthday Review: The Hook, by Donald Westlake

Birthday Review: The Hook, by Donald Westlake

by Rich Horton

Donald Westlake's 2000 novel The Hook treats a subject much on the mind of writers, and probably little on the mind of those not involved in some way with the publishing industry: the death of the midlist. Bryce Proctorr, a bestselling writer of thrillers, is in the middle of a nasty divorce, and perhaps as a result, is completely blocked on his new book. One day he bumps into Wayne Prentice, an old friend and fellow novelist with whom he has been long out of contact. Wayne tells him his sad story: his first novels were well-received, but he became a victim of the harsh logic of bookstore computers: each novel sold a bit less than its predecessor, causing subsequent orders to go down, which caused sales to go down -- the old vicious circle. Wayne had even switched to a pseudonym, with short-term success but eventually the same fate. He has a novel finished that he can't sell. So Bryce has an idea -- what if Wayne gives him the novel. Bryce will do a light revision to make it read like he wrote it, then submit it under his own name -- and they will split the advance, over a million dollars.

So far so good. But there's a kicker. Bryce's soon-to-be-ex wife will take half of his fee for the book -- if they are still married when the payment arrives. And she is apparently (Bryce says) a stone bitch who is dragging out the divorce just to torture him. So, she needs to die. And Bryce can't do it -- he'd be the first suspect. But Wayne ...

Wayne is an ordinary guy, it seems. Very happily married. A good writer, just a victim of the insanity of contemporary publishing. And not in any way a murderer. So he thinks he'll say no. But he runs the idea by his wife, who much to his surprise doesn't reject it out of hand. So he ends up agreeing to meet Bryce's wife, just to see if she is really a bad person ...

In a way, this part ends up making no sense. Wayne meets Lucie Proctorr, who is certainly not a nice person. But "not nice" doesn't mean "deserves to be murdered", and Wayne is not really presented as a character who would make that leap. Yet he does -- I felt mainly in order that the rest of the book would exist.

And the rest of the book is an ironic recounting of how Lucie's murder affects the two writers. Their writing careers develop in believable but not entirely expected ways. Their personal lives also change, in rather ironic fashions. Each feels considerable pressure from the power the other man has over him -- either one could reveal the crime, and send both of them to jail. But their lives remain intertwined in surprising ways. All leading to a truly creepy conclusion.

It's pretty good stuff. For me, the implausibility of the characters' initial actions keeps it short of brilliant -- though it is muchly redeemed by the ending. Making me wonder, indeed, if Westlake didn't work from the ending backward, in a sense.

Final Hugo Ballot Thoughts

Here, at last, is my summary post about the Hugo shortlist, with my tentative voting plans in many of the categories. I'll include links to the various posts I've already made about the novels, and about each of the short fiction categories.

Best Novel

My view is that this ballot has two halves -- three strong candidates at the top, and three solid and enjoyable novels behind the top three -- good work that I'm glad to have read, but not quite at the level of the top three.

I intend to vote in this order. Each title will link to my review of the novel in question.

1. New York 2140, by Kim Stanley Robinson
2. Raven Strategem, by Yoon Ha Lee
3. The Stone Sky, by N. K. Jemisin
4. Provenance, by Ann Leckie
5. Six Wakes, by Mur Lafferty
6. The Collapsing Empire, by John Scalzi


Best Novella

In this case, I think there are three novellas that are close to a dead heat at the top of the ballot, two further pieces that are nice enough but not really in the same league with the best stories, and one quite weak, quite disappointing story. My discussion of the stories is here.

My ballot order:

1. "And Then There Were (N - one)", by Sarah Pinsker
2. All Systems Red, by Martha Wells
3. Down Among the Sticks and Bones, by Seanan McGuire
4. River of Thieves, by Sarah Gailey
5. The Black Tides of Heaven, by JY Yang
6. Binti: Home, by Nnedi Okorafor


Best Novelette

Unlike the first couple categories, I think this one has three divisions: two stories, very close in quality, that are clearly the best; two more that are also quite strong, but a step behind; and the last two which are also decent work, just one further step behind. Probably, in that sense, a fairly typical ballot -- and, it should be said, a pretty strong one. My post on the novelettes is here.

And my ballot order:

1. "Extracurricular Activities", by Yoon Ha Lee
2. "The Secret Life of Bots", by Suzanne Palmer
3. "Wind Will Rove", by Sarah Pinsker
4. "A Series of Steaks", by Vina Jie-Min Prasad
5. "Children of Thornes, Children of Water", by Aliette de Bodard
6. "Small Changes Over Long Periods of Time", by K. M. Szpara


Best Short Story

In this case I'd say there's a kind of even distribution of quality from top to bottom. Again, a strong ballot, with no bad stories, but one, in my view, severely harmed (as was the novel ballot, and inded the novella ballot as well) by omitting a few of the clear cut very best stories of the year. My detailed comments are here.

Ballot order:

1. "The Martian Obelisk", by Linda Nagata
2. "Fandom for Robots", by Vina Jie-Min Prasad
3. "Clearly Lettered in a Mostly Steady Hand", by Fran Wilde
4. "Carnival Nine", by Caroline Yoachim
5. "Sun, Moon, Dust", by Ursula Vernon
6. "Welcome to Your Authentic Indian ExperienceTM", by Rebecca Roanhorse


In the other categories, I'm generally less informed, and while I will vote where I have a preference, I mostly won't discuss things at length. There are a couple categories where I'm pretty well informed, but I won't discuss my ballot here, for partly personal reasons, and partly because I think the choices here are based on razor thin margins -- these are the Editor categories. But I'll say a couple of things about a couple of the categories.

To begin with, Best Related Work. Here I will just say that I hope that sentiment in the wake of Harlan Ellison's death doesn't promote votes for Nat Segaloff's hagiography A Lit Fuse, surely the weakest by far of the nominees. (My vote is for Paul Kincaid's Iain M. Banks, but all the other books beside A Lit Fuse seem worthy.)

In Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form, I really think it's a three horse race, between my choice (The Shape of Water), Get Out, and Blade Runner 2049. The others are, honest, kind of in the "there are things on this list not like the others" category. Enjoyable movies in their way, but seriously not in the same league as the top three.

In Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form, I'll won't vote -- I liked "USS Callister" a lot, but I haven't seen (nor heard) the other nominees.

In Best Professional Artist, my top slot goes to Kathleen Jennings, on merit, and because I recommended her for nomination and was very pleased to see her on the ballot. The rest of the nominees, to be sure, are all fine artists.