A Forgotten (Never Known?) SF Novel: Drek Yarman, by Keith Roberts

A Forgotten (Never Known?) SF Novel: Drek Yarman, by Keith Roberts

a review by Rich Horton

On the occasion of what would have been his 83rd birthday, I am reposting this rather brief look at Keith Roberts' last novel.

Keith Roberts was one of the truly fine writers of science fiction and fantasy in the last third of the 20th Century, but save for one great novel (Pavane) he is little remembered these days. He was born in 1935, and died on October 5, 2000 (my 41st birthday, as it happens). He was an illustrator, and the mostly uncredited editor of the Moorcock era version of the UK magazine Science Fantasy (later SF Impulse), but mostly a writer. He later life was unhappy -- he had multiple sclerosis and was in constant pain, and he had many difficulties with editors and publishers, by repute mostly due to his difficult nature.

His last novel, Drek Yarman, was in the process of being serialized in the first three issues of the fine UK magazine Spectrum SF (which I truly loved), when he died.  It's set in his post-apocalyptic Kiteworld future, and it's told by the title character, a violent, uncouth, self-made seaman, as a revolution by religious extremists is tearing their society (the Realm) apart.  Yarman tells the story of his life.  He is not a sympathetic character, really: a multiple murderer, whose life was formed by the disastrous effects of his upbringing by two alcoholics, but even more so by the effect of his incestuous love for his sister (a whore), and the actions he takes when he discovers her being propositioned by one of his neigbhourhood enemies.

He goes off to the sea, his potential relationships with women ruined by his longing for his sister, and when a disastrous trip to the island of Hy Antiel results in his fortune being made (partly because of his dishonorable acts), he ends up marrying and having kids and becoming first mate on the leading Kiteship of the Realm.  But all that goes wrong as well.  His dissolution is paired with an account of the dissolution of "The Realm" in this revolution.  Yarman's voice is well-portrayed, and the story is interesting, and even though he is a bad man, you feel a lot of sympathy for him, because he really is ill-used by fate, and many of his actions are bad choices when no good choice was possible.  This is a dark novel, and it's easy to see why it had a hard time finding a publisher, but it's worth reading. Alas, it will be very hard to find -- it has not been published since its serialization in Spectrum SF.

Birthday Review: Humpty Dumpty: An Oval, by Damon Knight

Humpty Dumpty: An Oval, by Damon Knight

a review by Rich Horton

In honor of Damon Knight's birthday, I'm reposting this review, which I first wrote about 15 years ago, of his last (and possibly best) novel.

Humpty Dumpty: An Oval, was Damon Knight's last novel, published in 1996. It is a very strange book, reminding me somewhat of Gene Wolfe (perhaps particularly Peace), and of Patrick O'Leary's The Impossible Bird, and of other afterlife fantasies like William Golding's Pincher Martin. (Golding, by the way, was also born on September 19.) Which is a hint that I regarded the book as an afterlife fantasy, though that interpretation is not entirely clear.

The book opens with the narrator, Wellington Stout, in an Italian hospital, recovering from a shot to the head. He had come to Italy for his beloved stepdaughter's wedding, but had agreed to ferry a mysterious package for his less than beloved older brother -- and in trying to deliver the package he seems to have been shot.

Stout is a salesman for a firm dealing in ladies' underwear. (A running joke -- or rather a detail of characterization -- is his obsession with women's breasts and with their bras.) He is 64 years old, an American long resident in England. We learn a bit about his past life -- a couple of marriages, one failed, one seemingly happy but ending with his wife's untimely death. Lots of affairs are implied. His relationship with his stepdaughter (actually his first wife's daughter by her second husband, whom Wellington raised after her mother fell apart) is loving but perhaps on the edge of impropriety. He seems a nice guy but far from perfect.

However, after his injury, he seems to lose his grip on reality. Or perhaps reality has lost its grip on the world. There seem to be competing groups of aliens, and of powerful secret humans, vying for control of the world. Stout finds himself willy-nilly on a journey westward, from Italy back to England to his childhood homes in Pennsylvania and Oregon. At first it seems that an explanation for all the strange goings on may be forthcoming -- what is the message Stout was carrying? Are the aliens from the planet Mongo real? what do the strange voices Stout keeps hearing, muttering almost intelligible phrases, mean? etc. etc. But as Stout's travels continue, things get weirder and weirder.

I quite enjoyed the novel, but I remain puzzled by it. We do get a pretty comprehensive portrayal of Wellington Stout, and of his life, in an odd fashion. And the weird events are continually interesting. But what it all means? I don't really know. It's easy enough to say that it could be an afterlife fantasy -- Stout hallucinating as he dies from the bullet in his head -- but even if that's true that's not much of a stab at what the novel really means ... For all my puzzlement, this novel has stuck with me for a long time -- I think it's very impressive work at this remove.

A Significant Ace Double: The Rithian Terror/Off Center, by Damon Knight

Ace Double Reviews, 4: The Rithian Terror, by Damon Knight/Off Center, by Damon Knight (#M-113, 1965, $0.45)

by Rich Horton

Today would have been Damon Knight's 96th birthday. He was born in Oregon in 1922, and died in 2002. He was one of the most important figures in SF history, in many areas, and in fact I think his importance in other areas than writing has contributed to a certain neglect or diminishment of his accomplishments as purely a writer of science fiction. To wit -- he was one of the first significant critics of science fiction, famous in particular for his book In Search of Wonder. He was a major editor in the field, first of 1950's magazines such as Worlds Beyond (where he published Harry Harrison's first story, and the first Dying Earth tale from Jack Vance) and If, later of the absolutely seminal original anthology series Orbit, and also of numerous significant reprint anthologies. He was the founding President of Science Fiction Writers of America. He was one of the founders of the Milford Writer's Conference. He was married to the great Kate Wilhelm. (He was even, early in his career, briefly an artist.) He won a Hugo in 1956 as Best Book Reviewer. and a Retro-Hugo in 2001 for "To Serve Man". Some people have assumed that these accomplishments are the reason he was named a Grand Master by SFWA in 1995.

But that does his fiction a disservice. He wrote a great quantity of magnificent short fiction, notably at the novella length, with stories like "The Earth Quarter", "Double Meaning", "Rule Golden", "Natural State", "Mary", and "Dio"; but also at shorter lengths, with the SF Hall of Fame story "The Country of the Kind", and "The Handler", "Four in One", "Masks", "Stranger Station", "A for Anything", "I See You", "Fortyday", and many more. His earlier novels were less successful, but towards the end of his life he did some exceptional work at that length, with CV, Why Do Birds?, and Humpty Dumpty: An Oval.

In remembrance of his birthday, I am reposting one of my earliest Ace Double reviews (so it's briefer than usual), of one of the novellas mentioned above ("Double Meaning") backed with a short story collection.

(Covers by Jack Gaughan)

The Rithian Terror is a short novel (or novella), of about 36,000 words. It was originally published in Startling Stories for January 1953 -- I'm not sure if it was expanded or revised for later publication, but I will note that 36,000 words was by no means an unusual length for a story in Startling. The Rithian Terror has also been published under the title "Double Meaning" -- indeed, I believe the only time it appeared as "The Rithian Terror" was in this Ace Double.* It was later published as half of a Tor Double (under the title "Double Meaning") and backed with another Knight short novel, "Rule Golden"). As far as I can tell, the only other stories to be both Ace Double halves and Tor Double halves are two by Jack Vance: "The Last Castle" and "The Dragon Masters"; and two by Leigh Brackett: "The Sword of Rhiannon" and "The Nemesis from Terra". (Spinrad's "Riding the Torch" was both a Tor Double and a Dell Binary Star half.) Off Center is a story collection, with 5 stories, totalling about 44,000 words. It should not be confused with the UK collection Off Centre, which consists of the contents of Off Center plus "Masks", "Dulcie and Decorum", and "To Be Continued". Knight published two other Ace Double halves, Masters of Evolution and The Sun Saboteurs -- I have reviewed both of these (links below). The Sun Saboteurs is an expansion of "The Earth Quarter", and Masters of Evolution is an expansion of "Natural State".

As it happens, both The Rithian Terror and its erstwhile Tor Double companion, "Rule Golden", featured superior (both morally and physically) aliens coming to Earth. I liked The Rithian Terror a fair bit. It features a far future (said to be 2521, felt like 2050 at most) Earth-based Empire, which has a policy of crushing alien races which it encounters. The latest are the Rithians, and after some years of covert harassment by Earth, the Rithians have snuck a spy team onto Earth itself. The story is told from the point of view of the Security man who leads the effort to find the last remaining Rithian, and the points of interest are his relationship with an "uncivilized" member of a breakaway human planet which has good dealings with Rithians, and his courtship of an upper-class woman. Again, the story is fast-moving and enjoyable, with a sound moral point, and the resolution of the main action is nicely calculated, though there is an unconvincing character change pasted on.

The stories in Off Center are:

"What Rough Beast" (10,800 words, from the February 1959 F&SF) -- a man has the power to change the past (involving reaching into parallel universes), thus preventing bad things from happening. Is this a good thing?

"The Second-Class Citizen" (2800 words, from If, November 1963) -- a man who teaches dolphins tricks escapes underwater when the holocaust comes.

"By My Guest" (24,500 words, from Fantastic Universe, September 1958) -- a man drinks a mysterious vitamin and suddenly he can "hear" the ghosts that possess him. This story read to me as if it were Knight trying to do Sturgeon. I liked it, though the ending wasn't quite up to the buildup.

"God's Nose" (800 words, from the men's magazine Rogue in 1964) -- not really SF, a meditation on what God's nose would be like, with, perhaps, a cute but naughty punchline.

"Catch That Martian" (5000 words, from the March 1952 Galaxy) -- there is an epidemic of people being shifted to another dimension, and a policeman theorizes that the cause is a visiting Martian who punishes rude or annoying people in this fashion.

All in all, a very solid brief story collection. "What Rough Beast" is particularly strong, and moving.

Here is my review of The Sun Saboteurs.
And here is my review of Masters of Evolution.

Birthday Review: Faking It, by Jennifer Crusie

Birthday Review: Faking It, by Jennifer Crusie

a review by Rich Horton

Back in the day people used to recommend Jennifer Crusie as one of the best of contemporary romance writers, so I tried a couple of her early novels (which I believe were first published as category yard goods, Harlequin or a similar imprint, but which she was able to have reprinted when she became popular) without much success. But then I bought a later novel, a hardback I believe, and it was a lot better. So on the occasion of birthday I'm reposting something I wrote a long time ago about the novel of hers I liked best.

I have previously tried a couple of Jennifer Crusie novels, and while I have found them moderately enjoyable they have not really lived up to the praise she has received. Her fans have recommended other novels. But my method of picking stuff has been more contingent, not well organized at all. And that continued when I picked up her 2002 novel Faking It at a used book sale a week or two back. However, this time I think I hit the jackpot. Faking It is, it would seem, everything Jennifer Crusie's fans have claimed. Its most distinguising feature is an easy, fluent, constant flow of clever, limber, comedic prose. Line by line the book is not necessarily laugh out loud funny but entertaining and imaginative and sharp.

I should note that the book is rather longer than her genre romance novels. It was published in hardcover, and seems to have been marketed more as "chick lit" than as traditional romance. And indeed while it qualifies as a romance -- certainly it features two main characters who fall for each other from pretty much the start, plus plenty of sex -- it also qualifies as a well-done mystery/caper sort of story (at times almost recalling Donald Westlake's Dortmunder novels), and it has some reasonably acute character observations to make.

The story concerns Matilda (Tilda) Goodnight, about 35 years old, a painter of imitation impressionist murals for people's walls. Her family runs a somewhat down at heels gallery in Columbus, Ohio. This family includes her mother Gwen, her sister Eve, Eve's daughter Nadine, Nadine's father Andrew, who divorced Eve when he realized he was gay, but stayed friends, and Andrew's lover, the family lawyer, Jeff. The family is in debt, partly because of Gwen's feckless, and dead, husband Tony. One thing Tony did was to have Matilda forge a series of paintings supposedly by Scarlet Hodge, the fictional daughter of Homer Hodge, who had done some American primitive paintings that he had actually been able to sell for good money. But now there is a problem -- one of the Scarlet Hodge paintings has been sold by mistake -- a painting that could easily be identified as a fake, which would possibly lead to lawsuits involving the other Scarlets. So Matilda tries to steal the painting back from Clea Lewis, the woman who has bought it.

Clea is a rather nasty 40ish woman who is trying to reel in rich Mason Phipps as her new husband, after the previous two died in suspicious ways. Clea also stole $3,000,000 dollars from a former lover, Davy Dempsey, a con man trying to go straight. Davy wants the money back, so he has abandoned his straight ways to try to steal the money from Clea -- but he runs into Tilda in the process. Standard meet cute -- and quickly they are kissing. But Tilda has basically sworn off men. And she still needs that painting.

So the story continues. Tilda makes Davy promise to get her the painting back. Mason Phipps, meanwhile, is after the Goodnight Gallery, and Gwen. Davy is after Tilda, who is attracted but can't admit it. Davy's friend Simon is after Eve, only he doesn't know it, because he only know's Eve's fake uninhibited personality, Louise. Clea seems to have hired a hit man to kill Davy, but Gwen finds herself unaccountably attracted to the hit man. Tilda realizes she needs Davy to steal or otherwise acquire all the other Scarlet Hodge paintings. Davy has ideas for revitalizing the gallery. Davy's unreconstructed conman father shows up. And so on ... A lot goes on, all quite interesting, all cleverly told, nicely plotted, and as I said very well put together prosodically. The title is nicely reiterated thematically -- fake paintings, fake identities, fake orgasms are all central ... A very light novel, to be sure, but a consistent delight.

Birthday Review: To Crush The Moon, by Wil McCarthy

Birthday Review: To Crush The Moon, by Wil McCarthy

a review by Rich Horton

This review was first published in Locus in 2005. I'm reposting it today in honor of Wil McCarthy's birthday.

With To Crush the Moon Wil McCarthy brings one of the most satisfying recent series of Hard SF novels to a close. This series, collectively called, perhaps, The History of the Queendom of Sol, began in 2001 with The Collapsium (itself an expansion of a 1999 novella). That novel told of brilliant scientist Bruno de Towaji, who saves the Solar System three times from the dangers of super high-tech combined with a jealous rival. The Collapsium introduced the key technologies of the series: various types of programmable matter, and matter transmission. The latter technology, combined with an editing process, allowed for practical immortality. This first book was cheeky and playful and rather Tom Swift-like in ways.

The subsequent three novels are more closely linked, and quite a bit darker in tone. By the end of The Collapsium, Bruno had married the Queen of Sol. In The Wellstone (2003) his son, Bascal, was the ringleader of a group of young people frustrated by their lack of opportunity in a world of immortals. The main character is Bascal's friend Conrad Mursk. The two of them and a large group of rebellious youngsters are exiled to Barnard's Star at the end of the book, and Lost in Transmission (2004) tells of the establishment and ultimate failure of the Barnard's Star colony. Conrad chooses to return to Sol, and To Crush the Moon is the story of what happens after his return.

The Wellstone and Lost in Transmission both had sections set thousands of years in the future, with Conrad (now called Radmer) retrieving Bruno de Towaji from self-imposed exile and returning with him to an altered Moon (now called Lune), where the last significant remnants of humanity are fighting a war with emancipated robots. Earth and the other major planets have been "Murdered". To Crush the Moon tells first of the crisis in Solar System politics that led both to the alteration and terraforming of Luna into Lune, and then to the tragic missteps resulting in the "Murder" of Earth. Conrad and Bruno are central to these events, and so are their wives, Queen Tamra and Xiomary Li Weng (Xmary).  Much of this section is savvy portrayal of what seems like inevitable political problems -- particularly problems dealing with fanatics who wish to restore death to society, and with the impatient returnees from various failed star colonies. Then the conclusion continues the story of the far future war on Lune, with Radmer leading Bruno de Towaji on a desperate mission to, quite literally, save humanity.

The story is satisfying on multiple levels. The scientific (and politico-economic) speculation remains scintillating. The pure adventure aspects are thrilling. The prose is clever, sardonic, successfully darkly funny even in the shadow of the deaths of billions. Conrad and Bruno are very well realized characters, though most of the remaining characters are a bit flatter. (In particular the leading women, Tamra and Xmary, never really come to life.) Lines like "Bruno was elbow-deep in wormholes. Not literally, of course -- he'd lost more than one arm that way already --" are simply delights. The ultimate scope of the story is really impressive, in space, time, and theme. The ending is perhaps a mild disappointment -- it's logical enough, and the reader is not cheated, but it seems just a touch off tonally.

I've truly enjoyed this series of novels, and I confess to slight puzzlement that it hasn't received more notice. For my taste, this is what 21st Century SF ought to be. (Of course there are other recent SF stories that are also "what 21st Century SF ought to be", such as Charles Stross's Accelerando stories.) The latter three novels have all been mass market originals -- perhaps their failure to appear between hard covers has told against them. If so, that's a shame.  I urge readers to seek out these first rate novels.

I've also posted this review of McCarthy's The Wellstone.

Birthday Review: The Wellstone, by Wil McCarthy

Birthday Review: The Wellstone, by Wil McCarthy, Bantam Spectra, New York, NY, 2003, US$6.99, ISBN 0-553-58446-4, 353 pages

a review by Rich Horton

Today is Wil McCarthy's 52nd birthday. Thus I am rescurrecting a review I did of his novel The Wellstone, that appeared in the June 2003 issue of 3SF.

I quite enjoyed Wil McCarthy's The Collapsium a few years back, a generally light-hearted, almost Tom Swiftian, novel set a few centuries hence in the Queendom of Sol. This told of Bruno de Towaji, a great inventor who is called on repeatedly to save the Solar System from destruction, and who finally becomes the permanent consort of the Queen of Sol. There is a lot of wacky tech at the heart of the Queendom. Artificial matter such as super-dense collapsium, which allows the construction of tiny "planettes" with reasonable gravity. The Fax system, by which people and other objects can be transported as information at light speed, and reassembled at their destination. Filters applied to the information in the Fax allow bodily modifications, most especially elimination of disease and aging. Programmable matter, such as wellstone, which allows ready construction of such things as solar sails by reprogramming reflectivity easily.

The sequel is The Wellstone, set some time later. The Fax filters have led to practical immortality (or immorbidity), which is a problem for the children. What will they do when they grow up? Their parents aren't about to vacate their jobs, for the most part. Some of these kids turn delinquent as a result -- or perhaps they would have been that way in any case. A number of kids are being disciplined by confinement to Camp Friendly, a "summer camp" located on a tiny "planette". One of these kids is the POV character, a young engineer named Conrad Mursk. Another is the Crown Prince Bascal, the son of Bruno de Towaji and the Queen. Bascal is extremely talented, a noted poet and a born leader, and he is very rebellious, as well as very spoiled. He incites the boys to an act of sabotage -- they escape via fax to Denver and release a dangerous substance that turns programmable matter to junk. They are soon captured, and Bascal's furious parents return them to Camp Friendly, with even stricter confinement (no working Fax gates).

But Bascal is not to be thwarted. With Conrad's sometimes reluctant help, with the help of a semi-accidental recruit, a teenaged girl named Xmary who was arrested by mistake in the earlier incident, and with the continued help of Bascal's less intelligent henchmen, he hatches another audacious plot. They use the properties of programmable matter to create a "homemade" solar sailship from the planette, and they head for the nearest working Fax gate. But a surprise awaits them there ...

I thought this even a better book than The Collapsium. It lacks the previous book's almost insouciant inventiveness -- the "Tom Swift" nature I referred to above. But the characters are done better, in particular Conrad himself, and Bascal as seen by Conrad. Bascal is an interesting creation -- a nice mixture of admirable and dangerous characteristics. Conrad and Xmary are nicely handled positive characters -- their frustration at their lot as children in a world with no room for them as adults is well portrayed. The book remains inventive, and often funny, with a dark undertone (reinforced by a downright grim prologue and epilogue) that lends a certain (forgive me!) gravitas to the theme.

I've also posted this review of McCarthy's To Crush the Moon.

Birthday Review: The Impossible Bird, by Patrick O'Leary

Birthday Review: The Impossible Bird, by Patrick O'Leary

a review by Rich Horton

Today is Patrick O'Leary's birthday. O'Leary was one of the most promising and fascinating new writers around the turn of the millennium, but, sadly, we've seen little from him since this, his third novel. I'm taking the opportunity to repost this review I did back when it first appeared on my SFF.net newsgroup. (A shorter version appeared in the magazine 3SF.) I've revised the review a bit to reflect what we know since the book appeared.

Patrick O'Leary is an SF author from Detroit.  He's written three  novels, all much praised: Door Number Three, The Gift, and The Impossible Bird. When I read Door Number Three I labelled it magical-realist wacky science fiction, with significant Catholic content. (It's a pretty good book.) O'Leary is an extravagant admirer of that other Catholic SF writer, Gene Wolfe, and Wolfe has been known to praise O'Leary's work quite fulsomely. I was convinced O'Leary was on his way to becoming a major voice in the SF field after these novels, but since then there has only been one more book, a story collection called The Black Heart, in 2009. I don't know what happened but I suspect it may have been the usual sad story -- talented writer is just a bit too strange (in a good way!) to sell widely.

The Impossible Bird is another very strange book that might be called "magical realist science fiction".  (Other books (from the same period) I'm tempted to so classify: Signs of Life, by M. John Harrison; and Zeitgeist, by Bruce Sterling.) It is at core the story of the relationship of two brothers, Mike and Daniel Glynn, who grew up Catholic in Saginaw, MI, in the 1950s.  Now, in about 2000, Mike, the elder by two years, is a successful director of TV commercials, and Daniel is an English professor, living in Detroit.  Throughout their lives it seems Mike has been the better looking, more athletic, more aggressive; while Daniel has been the nerdier and more intellectual.  Daniel is happily married with a 9 year old son, while Mike is divorced.

And both of them are dead.  (Thus in some ways the book also resembles for example Pincher Martin.)  This isn't at all clear at the open.  Daniel seems to be in shock after the death of his wife, while Mike is returning from an ad shoot in the Amazon.  Both are contacted by men who seem to be government agents, and ordered to find each other.  In Daniel's case, the spur is the kidnapping of his son.  But soon the strangeness of their situations becomes obvious. Why are the streets so empty?  Why do people kill each other, with the victims not minding?  What are the hummingbirds that everyone seems to have? And what does the boys' old high school teacher, Dr. Kindler, have to do with all this?  To say nothing of the childhood occasion when the two boys saw a UFO.

It's not entirely clear to me that we are to read this as I read Pincher Martin -- i.e. it's all an hallucination; or if it is to be regarded as real; though on balance I think the after death scenes are to be regarded as real.  The explanation for the after death situation vaguely resembles Robert Charles Wilson's Darwinia (though it is really rather different), and the philosophical working out of that situation is notable for disagreeing violently with the philosophical working out of an arguably similar situation in Greg Egan's Schild's Ladder.

The book basically is about Daniel and Mike working out their issues with each other, and it succeeds rather well on this level.  It's moving, rather sad, and it's also a rather absorbing book.  The SFnal content, however, didn't always quite work for me. And perhaps the characters of the two men, though reasonably well portrayed, are drawn a bit too obviously from stock. Nonetheless, a fine book, and I wish there had been many more from O'Leary.