Birthday Review: Stories of Stephen Baxter

Today is the birthday of one of the very best contemporary writers of true Hard SF: Stephen Baxter, and in his honor I offer this compilation of my Locus reviews of his short fiction.

Locus, December 2002

The December Analog is a fairly solid issue. Best is Stephen Baxter's "The Hunters of Pangaea". This is a meditation on intelligent dinosaurs in the late Jurassic -- herders of Diplodocus. Intriguing speculation on social organization, and a moving portrait of their evanescence, combine for a very effective piece.

Locus, January 2003

Stephen Baxter's "Breeding Ground" (Asimov's) is an interesting, dark, story of the human "Third Expansion", and their battle with the Xeelee, in this case telling of a disastrous space battle that causes a group of soldiers to retreat to the core of their living starship, and possibly to learn a key secret about these curious beings. 

Locus, March 2003

The best pieces in the March Asimov's are Stephen Baxter's "The Great Game" and Lucius Shepard's "Only Partly Here". Baxter's piece is another deeply cynical story about far future humans in conflict with the inscrutable Xeelee -- in this case a human planet is succumbing to catastrophic vulcanism, and the Xeelee are suspected, at least enough for a militarist Admiral to see a potential casus belli.

Locus, August 2003

Stephen Baxter's "Touching Centauri" is a novelette (reprinted from last year's UK collection Phase Space) featuring the hero of his Manifold books, Reid Malenfant, in yet another alternate future. This time Malenfant has sponsored an attempt to image a planet of Alpha Centauri by laser. When the laser pulse doesn't return, the very structure of the universe comes into question. I was reminded of a classic Philip Latham story, "The Xi Effect" -- like that one, Baxter's story is effective metaphysical horror.

Locus, June 2004

From the June Analog Stephen Baxter's "PeriAndry's Quest" stands out in presenting a really fresh idea, and using the idea provocatively. PeriAndry is a young man in a society living on "Old Earth" -- whether this is Earth after some strange calamity or somewhere else is not clear. PeriAndry's people live on a ledge on a high cliff -- and the effects of altitude are very strange. Go up the cliff and time runs faster, down and time slows. The people in the "Attic", who live on a higher part of the cliff, age much faster than the people on the Ledge. PeriAndry takes a fancy to a servant girl -- who will be a year older in a month, and was born only a year and a half previously. The social effects of this are explored nicely as PeriAndry struggles with his older brother's jibes, and as he eventually tries to find the girl in her home.

Locus, February 2005

The publishing company behind Postscripts, PS Publishing, also continues to issue outstanding novellas in slim volumes. Their best offering this year, and one of the best novellas of 2004, is Stephen Baxter's Mayflower II. This is the story of a generation starship. The ship is fleeing Port Sol, a distant habitat in the Solar System, doomed to be destroyed by the Coalition. The main character is Rusel, who is forced to abandon his lover when he is chosen to be part of the limited crew of the ship. He becomes an Elder, one of a select few chosen to give the generations of starship inhabitants guidance and continuity of purpose. Over the depths of time, however, both he and the inhabitants change in curious and chilling ways. This is a striking and invigorating story, a direct response to classic SF stories like Robert Heinlein's "Universe" and Brian Aldiss's Non-Stop, with perhaps nods in the direction of Poul Anderson's "The Troublemakers" and even such a recent story as Ursula K. Le Guin's "Paradises Lost". Baxter considers the many problems raised in the history of the field's treatment of this common idea, suggests answers for some -- and raises new problems.

Locus, July 2005

I also liked "Climbing the Blue" (Analog, July-August), a Stephen Baxter story set in the same strange world of last year's "PeriAndry's Quest". In the world, people live on a sort of cliff, such that time flows faster at higher levels. Celi is a young man who becomes a doctor, and is faced with the lure of moving down to slower times and become a Natural Philosopher, in order to live (relatively) longer and learn more about his strange world. But a tragedy pushes him in a different direction.

Locus, April 2006

Stephen Baxter’s "The Lowland Expedition" is another of his tales of Old Earth, where time moves faster at higher altitudes: thus a typical -- but pretty good -- Analog "exploring a weird environment" story. In this case his explorers encounter a strange danger on the nearly uninhabited bottom level.

Locus, November 2008

Stephen Baxter's "Between Worlds" is set near the Galactic Core. One faction of a newly disunited humanity is forcing people from their very odd homes. But one woman refuses to leave, on the grounds that her child has been left behind. A simulacrum of Michael Poole (hero of an earlier Baxter novel), as well as an acolyte of a strange future religion, try to talk her into evacuating -- but the problem is that her daughter is a post-human being in a plasma cloud. Baxter mixes intriguing astronomical settings, political speculation, religious speculation, and various potential future forms of humanity -- not just patterns in plasma clouds, but computer simulations, and nonintelligent starship crew. 

Review of Eclipse Two (Locus, November 2008)

Another story that successfully reaches for a thoughtful and philosophical conclusion is Stephen Baxter’s "Turing’s Apples". It’s a sibling rivalry story -- the narrator and his brother are both "mathematical nerds", but the younger narrator is more "normal" -- married with children, and in a fairly good government job involving supercomputers. His brother is the genius, and the one without social skills, and he cozens the narrator to sneak a program analyzing a SETI message that seems to be the code for an alien AI onto the government’s computers. Of course the AI’s intentions are not necessarily benign -- but again, Baxter’s interests are not conventional, but rather in exploring a not benign, perhaps, but quite interesting alien purpose for this AI, with profound long term implications.

Locus, July 2009

"Earth II", by Stephen Baxter (Asimov's, July), is an involving story set on a planet colonized by refugees from a flooded Earth. Centuries later, Xaia Windru is the co-Speaker of the nation Zeeland, and as traditional for women, is the war leader, and she has just defeated the Brythons, and now wishes to press across the sea to a new land and the rumored City of the Living Dead. Back home, her husband, the political leader, is dealing with demands for a new Library to store the data saved from the Founders. Questions of the nature of the planet’s original inhabitants (possibly another single species ecology, though quite different to that depicted in Daniel Hatch’s story), and of the dangers of a coming axial flip, and of leaning on the records of the Founders, all entwine. Solid work indeed.

Locus, November 2009

Analog for December includes another Old Earth story from Stephen Baxter, about an Earth where time runs at different rates at different altitudes. I’ve found these fascinating, and "Formidable Caress" is pretty strong too, about an inquisitive man from deep in the slower running areas who makes a number of striking astronomical discoveries that shed some light on Old Earth and the "formidable caresses" that seem to have shaped its history. I will confess, though, that I was a bit disappointed at the closing revelation, which will mean a lot more to people who have read Baxter widely than to those unfamiliar with his novels.

Locus, February 2010

Lots of good novellas this time around, even in the magazines. Asimov’s for February features Stephen Baxter’s "The Ice Line", another in his extended series of stories about an alternate history where ice-loving aliens invaded in the 18th Century. This story is set in this history’s version of the Napoleonic Wars. The somewhat rascally American engineer Ben Hobbes, an associate of Robert Fulton, is serially captured by the French and then the British, and is recruited to use his engineering ability (he and Fulton designed a submarine) on a much more ambitious ship, against a more dangerous enemy than the French. Quite enjoyable work, with wonky steampunkish technology (though not really a steampunk attitude), and a nice counterpoint in the form of comments by the transcriber of Hobbes’s diary, the lovely Anne Collingwood (as Ben would have it).

Locus, December 2013

That leaves the last piece of fiction in Starship Century as my favorite -- Stephen Baxter's "StarCall", about an AI controlling a star probe, who takes "calls" from people with accounts once a decade. Once person's decade by decade calls are followed, giving us a glimpse both at the progress of the star probe and at the changes back on Earth -- and it all works, so that the AI and its mission become real and human to us.

Birthday Review: How Like a God and Doors of Death and Life, by Brenda W. Clough

Birthday Review: How Like a God and Doors of Death and Life, by Brenda W. Clough

a review by Rich Horton

I read Brenda Clough's "Gilgamesh" books, How Like a God (1997), and Doors of Death and Life (2000), in an omnibus edition from the SFBC, called Suburban Gods.  Brenda calls them "suburban fantasy", and indeed they depict suburban life pretty well: home improvement, day care, commuting, minivans, even believable contemporary American Christians (a rarity in SF!).  For that alone these are refreshing books.

How Like a God concerns Washington area software developer Rob Lewis, the father of 18 month old twins, and the loving husband of Julianne, who works in the fashion industry.  One day he suddenly realizes that he has an unusual power: he can read minds, the minds of anybody on the planet, and he can control people.  After a few mild experiments, he tells his wife, and her response appals him.  She wants him to influence her employers to help her career, and then she wants him to look for great personal power: run for President, perhaps.  Horrified, he makes Julianne forget everything, but soon her realizes that he can't control his power, and that he is altering his twins unconcsiously, making them act extra mature without even knowing it.  In despair, he runs away to New York City and spends months as a homeless man, using his power occasionally to cadge meals and housing.  His humanity begins to slip away from him, and suddenly he realizes that he is becoming a monster.  When he finds himself about to rape a teenage girl (by making her want it), he starts to break out, and looks for help.  His only help is from a chance encounter with an NIH microbiologist, Edwin Barbarossa, a fundamentally good man at a very deep level.  The rest of the book follows Rob's gradual return to humanity with Edwin's guidance, and also Rob's eventual encounter with the mysterious and surprising source of his power.

This is a very fine book, quite original in conception, and dealing pretty unflinchingly with the issue of personal responsibility, and how important and difficult that is when you have immense power.  The book's only real weakness is the character of Julianne, who is neither terribly likeable, nor particularly three-dimensional, but she's a fairly minor character and that doesn't really hurt the book too much.

Doors of Death and Life, the  sequel, is still an enjoyable read, taking on some loose ends from the first book.  However, it's not as good, and overall it's a bit disappointing.  The plot is fairly disjointed, and some key issues are resolved rather abruptly.  I'll continue after warning that naturally there might be spoilers for How Like a God in my discussion of Doors of Death and Life.

Doors of Death and Life is set in about 2002, 7 years after How Like a God.  It becomes clear that this is an alternate history, sort of.  Dan Quayle was apparently elected President in 1996, for instance, and more significantly, a semi-privatized space effort has resulted in a new moonbase.

Rob still hasn't told Julianne about his powers.  He has told Edwin, and Edwin's wife Carina.  Edwin is spending several months at the moonbase. In How Like a God, it's been revealed that Rob got his powers from Gilgamesh, the supposedly legendary King of Uruk.  Rob defeated the mad old King, and took the King's powers away, giving Edwin his immortality.  The plot, as I said, is a bit disjointed.  It opens with Rob murdering three men who threaten to rape Julianne.  His guilt feelings tormenting him, as well as his lack of communication, he finally confesses his powers to Julianne. Understandably offended, and not able to trust her own feelings (is Rob controlling her so that she just thinks she loves him?), she kicks him out and thinks about a divorce.  At the same time Carina, an archaeologist, insists on travelling to Central Asia to find Gilgamesh, and to interview him about daily life in ancient Sumeria.  Edwin pushes Rob to accompany her there.

That's the first thread, and it's resolved all too suddenly.  Gilgamesh is dead.  Rob in despair puts the make on Carina, but after a brief time they make up.  Julianne suddenly decides she can trust Rob.  Then plot 2 comes up: a disaster on the trip home from the moonbase should kill Edwin and his companions.  When he survives (because of the immortality), he is accused of murder.  Rob is afraid that his secret will be revealed when they probe Edwin.  A sinister force within the space program keeps Edwin drugged, either trying to stick the murder charge on him, or worse ...

As I said, the book is still an enjoyable enough read.  But the plot is a bit disjointed, the main villain is too evil, and the various resolutions come too easily (in some ways, though there is still considerable cost to each of the characters).  Julianne is still not quite a successfully realized character, though Carina is well done.  Paradoxically, Brenda Clough is much more convincing, to me, with her male characters, Rob and Edwin, who come through very well. 

Perhaps this is just a case of sequelitis.  And I hope I don't sound too negative: I still like the book, but it's not as good as the first volume.

Birthday Review: Stories of Michael Bishop

Today is Michael Bishop's 73th birthday. Bishop is one of SF's great writers. I discovered him early in my SF reading career -- with, as noted below, "Cathadonian Odyssey" in the second issue of F&SF I ever read, and other early stories such as "Death and Designation Among the Asadi", "Rogue Tomato", "Blooded on Arachne", "Stolen Faces", and "Allegiances". His novel And Strange at Ecbatan the Trees takes its title from the same source material as my blog. My favorite of his novels is probably Count Geiger's Blues. I felt it necessary to do a compilation of my reviews of his work, but my time at Locus came fairly late in his career (not that his career is over at all!) -- so I've added a few less formal things from earlier, plus something I wrote just today about "Cathadonian Odyssey".

"Cathadonian Odyssey", F&SF, September 1974

The first SF magazines I ever bought were the August 1974 issues of Analog, Galaxy, and F&SF. I devoured them all, bought one apiece for three consecutive days from the newsstand at Alton Drugs, and I knew that they were MY drug. From those first three issues, however, I don't necessarily remember the stories that well. In the August Analog, one story has stuck with me: "And Keep Us From Our Castles", by Cynthia Bunn, a really intriguing story about a future penal regimen that I'd like to reprint some day. (Bunn has only published 6 stories that I know of (a couple as by Cynthia Morgan -- presumably one name is her married name?), but I liked what I saw.) The August 1974 Galaxy included Ursula K. Le Guin's Hugo winner "The Day Before the Revolution", but I confess that while I love The Dispossessed, I don't think nearly as much of this story, a prequel to the novel. F&SF for August had John Varley's first published story, "Picnic on Nearside" -- I don't recall realizing how important that story would seem later! -- and a good Dean McLaughlin piece, "West of Scranton and Beyond the Dreams of Avarice". But, except perhaps for the Bunn story, nothing blew me away.

The cover story for the September F&SF was "Cathadonian Odyssey", by Michael Bishop. THAT blew me away. (The cover, by the way, was by Jeannine Guertin, the only work she has done in the field according to the ISFDB.) It's the first story I remember thinking "I need to nominate this for a Hugo" about. (I don't think I nominated that year, though I started soon after and haven't stopped since. "Cathadonian Odyssey" did make the Hugo shortlist, though, so I wasn't the only person to think it deserved a nomination.) I decided to reread it today and write about it. Perhaps not surprisingly, it didn't affect me as stronly 44 years later as it did back then, but I still think it's a good story.

Cathadonia is a remote planet that a human ship happens across, in what seems a highly colonized future galaxy. It's fairly lush, and fully human habitable, but the cargo ship that discovers it just rests for a bit, and the crewmen entertain themselves by slaughtering the three-legged local inhabitants. Then they leave, report their discovery but not their crime, and soon another ship comes by and drops off a survey team. However, the descentcraft of the survey team inexplicably crashes, leaving one survivor, Maria Jill Ian. Maria, with little hope of surviving until the mother ship returns, nonetheless almost randomly decides to head for Cathadonia's ocean. And soon she encounters a native, whom she christens Bracelos. They become friends of a sort, as she realizes that Bracelos has remarkable telekinetic powers. They continue to the ocean, but the closer they get Bracelos becomes more reluctant. And he demonstrates his abilities in shocking ways -- most notably by bringing Maria's husband's body (he died in the crash) to them, after she mentioned missing him. Finally Bracelos refuses to go closer to the ocean, and embarks on a particularly dramatic telekinetic effort. The ending is ironic or just on several levels.

Blog review of Cosmos, May 1977

Michael Bishop's "The House of Compassionate Sharers" is a somewhat ambitious story that didn't work very well for me. Too many ideas that don't cohere, and a forced ending that doesn't convince. The protagonist is a protagonist who has been repaired cybernetically after an accident, and who feels revulsion for humans, including his wife. (Bishop prefaces the story with the famous closing lines of Damon Knight's "Masks": "And he was there, and it was not far enough, not yet, for the earth hung overhead like a rotten fruit, blue with mold, crawling, wrinkling, purulent, and alive.") His wife sends him to the title house to be cured, and he is assigned to another being who has been altered to by largely cybernetic. Somehow this, combined with an encounter with an evil pair of sadistic clones, leads to a cure. Hmmm?

Blog Review of Shayol, Fall/Winter 1985

Michael Bishop's "A Spy in the House of Arnheim" is fairly intriguing, rather surrealistic, about a man waking up in a hotel room, unaware if he is a spy or a tourist or both, and continually puzzled by the ever-changing strangeness of his surroundings.

Locus, March 2003

There is also a neat story in the November-December 2002 Interzone by "Philip Lawson" (Michael Bishop and Paul di Filippo). "'We're All in This Together'" is about a serial murderer who seems to get inspiration from the banal sayings of a newspaper column called "The Squawk Box". A mystery writer obsessed with contributing a saying to this column ends up involved in the murder investigation. Rather loopy, but with a serious core.

Locus, July 2008

Michael Bishop’s “Vinegar Peace, or, The Wrong Way Used Adult Orphanage” (Asimov's, July) is powerful on its own terms, telling of a woman taken to the title institution after the last of her surviving children dies fighting another apparently wasted war. (It is only more wrenching to think of Bishop’s own terrible recent loss of his son in the Virginia Tech massacre.) The story at first seems poised to be darkly satirical, but it modulates to something quite moving.

Locus, October 2012

Going Interstellar is an anthology comprising a mix of nonfiction and stories about interstellar travel – a refreshingly forthright bit of space boosterism, with the nonfiction trying to show practical ways of making starships, and the stories showing the starships in action. The best story is a long, goodhearted, novella from Michael Bishop, “Twenty Lights to 'The Land of Snow'”, which is “extracts from the computer logs of our reluctant Dalai Lama”. Said Dalai Lama is Greta Bryn, a girl on a generation ship inhabited by Tibetan Buddhists planning to colonize a new planet. She has been identified as the next Dalai Lama, despite not being either male or Tibetan, and the story follows some decades in her life (not all spent awake) as the ship approaches their new home and as she grows into her possible role (there is a rival claimant, it seems).

Birthday Review: Stories of Aliette de Bodard

Today (November 10) is Aliette de Bodard's birthday, so, in her honor, here are a number of reviews of her work that I have done for Locus over the years.

Locus, November 2007

Aliette de Bodard’s “Deer Flight” is an affecting fantasy about Lesper, a wizard whose wife had been a deer-woman, and had returned to the forest. He meets another deer-woman, and learns that she has been attacked – and his wife killed – by his successor as the King’s wizard. The ending, and the sacrifice to be demanded of Lesper, is a well-done surprise.

Locus, May 2009

Aliette de Bodard has caught my eye with some strong traditional fantasy tales and some fine work set in an alternate history ruled by the Aztecs. “The Lonely Heart”, from Black Static for February/March, is a different and darker tale. (Though de Bodard has always shown a great deal of range of both subject matter and tone, perhaps influenced by her mixed background: a French/Vietnamese writer working in English.) This story concerns a woman who rescues a forlorn teenaged prostitute only to find her husband too interested in her – and to learn that the girl is something rather different than she had expected.

Locus, February 2011

And Aliette de Bodard, in “Shipmaker”, deals with an unusual means of growing the minds that control spaceships in her Chinese/Aztec dominated future: they are gestated in human wombs, matched to newly built ships. This story concerns a ship designer who wants her own children, but feels denied that opportunity due to her sexuality, and her ambivalent feelings about the woman who is to bear the mind for her latest ship.

De Bodard returns to that idea in the February Asimov’s, with “Shipbirth”, set in the same future. Here a Mexica doctor comes to examine the mother of a newly born mind that died before implanting in its ship. The mother seems to have been fatally damaged by the problem birth. The doctor was born a woman, but chose to change her gender after her sister died, also birthing a ship’s mind. She feels, it seems, almost trapped between male and female roles, and tortured by her responsibility to decide if the woman she is examining can be saved. It’s a pretty effective sad story.

Locus, July 2010

The veterans show well, but the most interesting work comes from a couple of newcomers. Aliette de Bodard offers “The Jaguar House, in Shadow”, set in her alternate history in which China reached the New World before Europe, which resulted among other things in continued Aztec prominence. (Similar ideas of course motivate Chris Roberson’s long series of novels and stories, some of which also appear in Asimov’s.) This story deals with a revolt of Knights of the Jaguar House against the corrupt leadership of their nation – a revolt opposed by the Commander of the House, once a friend of the rebels. The action centers on an attempt to rescue one Knight from torture, but the heart of the story is a question of pragmatism vs. honor, and it works quite well.

Locus, February 2012

Still better is a remarkable Aliette de Bodard story, “Scattered Along the River of Heaven”. It presents a series of snapshots from the life of Xu Anshi, one of the leaders of a revolution by the Mheng against the San-Tay on a space colony, alternated with the visit of one Xu Wen to San-Tay for her grandmother's funeral. The story cunningly fills in the most of the blanks – who these people are, what they did, why they did it, and where they ended up; wrapping it up with the realization that there were other key players along. It's a story of political promises and betrayal, of different sorts of oppression, of loyalty and family – and it's a deeply science fictional story as well.

Locus, August 2012

Aliette de Bodard's “Immersion”, in June's Clarkesworld, addresses cultural imperialism. As we have come to expect from de Bodard, the story is thought-provoking and challenging, and also built around a nice Sfnal idea. The story is set on a space station inhabited by apparently Asian-descended people. Quy's family runs a restaurant often catering to “Galactic” tourists. The central Sfnal maguffin is “immerser” technology, which helps people take on different appearances, and speak different languages, to deal with people of other cultures. Quy uses it, begrudgingly, to deal with customers. Her more rebellious sister is more interested in understanding how the technology works. And, more affectingly, one visitor is the wife of a Galactic man, and she seems to use the tech to fit in better with her husband's milieu. But this only distances her from her own self, her own history. All this is very intriguing, and as I said quite thought-provoking.

Locus, October 2012

Also enjoyable is another of Aliette de Bodard's stories of spaceships controlled by human brains born to human women. “Ship's Brother” deals with the reaction of the older brother of one of these “ships” to the effect this birth has on their mutual mother. Well done, pretty powerful stuff.

Locus, December 2012

Best of all is “Heaven Under Earth”, by Aliette de Bodard. Liang Pao is the First Spouse of a man on a planet where for some reason women are rare. Liang, thus, is genetically male but has been altered to be able to bear implanted children, as with his fellow Spouses. But now he must welcome a surprise – an expensive female bride. His first concern is for his own position, but he soon understands that the woman is in a difficult position herself – an aging ex-prostitute who had no interest in this marriage. Again, the hints of the society in the background are very interesting, and the predicament and position of Liang Pao is involving and affecting.

Locus, Feburary 2013

Aliette de Bodard's On a Red Station, Drifting, is another in her Xuya alternate history, in which the Chinese and Mexica (i.e. Axtecs) have become great powers, including, eventually, space-based powers. Several recent stories have been set in a colonized Galaxy, on space stations, some controlled by the Dai Viet. This one is set on a remote station, Prosper, controlled by an obscure branch of a powerful family, and run by a Mind, who is also one of the family's ancestors. To this station comes Linh, a cousin, fleeing an uprising against the Emperor. Linh has spoken out against the Emperor for his failure to confront the rebels, and so she is potentially a traitor, and also racked with guilt for leaving her previous post under threat. Quyen is the leader of Prosper, and she is not confident in her abilities, and also worried that the station's Mind seems to be decaying. All this seems to portend disaster, amid small betrayals and slights between everyone involved. The authentic (to my eyes) non-Western background powerfully shapes an original and ambitious tale.

Locus, January 2014

“The Waiting Stars”, by Aliette de Bodard, is one of the stronger ones – telling in parallel of a mission to rescue an abandoned Ship – and its Mind – from a “graveyard”; and of the difficult lives of a group of refugee children brought up in an Institution in the country of their enemies – with the memory of their true heritage gone. The connection between the two threads takes a while to come clear, and when it does it's pretty striking. Alas, the resolution strained my belief a bit – but the story is pretty neat on the whole.

Locus, May 2014

Aliette de Bodard's “The Breath of War” has a really neat science-fantastical premise: women in this world breath people into life from stone, who become their companions, and are necessary to breath life in turn into children. Rechan is a somewhat rebellious woman, who abandoned her stone brother in the mountains as war broke out – and now that the war is over she climbs back to the place she left him. There's a secret of course: the true nature of the Stoneperson she gave life to, and it's an interesting secret leading to a moving resolution. This, I suppose, is Science Fantasy at its purest: a mostly rational-seeming world, with mostly Sfnal imagery, but with a thoroughly implausible, but very fruitful, central conceit.

Locus, March 2015

Aliette de Bodard's “Three Cups of Grief, by Starlight”, is a moving look from three points of view at the legacy of a dead scientist: her son, cheated of her mem-implants because her knowledge was too important; her daughter, a spaceship, struggling to properly grieve for her; and her protegée, less grateful for the mem-implants than stifled by them. De Bodard's extended future is rich enough by now to allow seemingly endless small pieces set in its interstices: this is a good example.

Locus, December 2015

Asimov's had another of those months full of pretty solid stories with none that quite overwhelmed me. The anchor story is a huge novella by Aliette de Bodard, “The Citadel of Weeping Pearls”, a time travel story about the escape of the Empress' daughter in the title Citadel, and the quest of a variety of people to find her, perhaps in the past; while the Empress worries about her succession, and about the threat from a neighbor empire. Lots of cool stuff here.

Ace Double Reviews, 79: Final War and Other Fantasies, by K. M. O'Donnell/Treasure of Tau Ceti, by John Rackham (#23775, 1969, $0.75)

A review by Rich Horton

This Ace Double backs a leading light of the then hot SF New Wave with a very old-fashioned author (and a very old-fashioned story). Rackham's Treasure of Tau Ceti is about 50,000 words long, and O'Donnell's collection is about 40,000 words of fiction, plus a nice introduction and some story notes.

As I've mentioned in other reviews of Ace Doubles by these writers, both "John Rackham" and "K. M. O'Donnell" are pseudonyms. "Rackham"'s real name was John T. Phillifent (1916-1976). O'Donnell's real name is Barry Malzberg (b. 1939). Malzberg's pseudonym was famously, and very nicely, derived from the names of Henry Kuttner, C. L. Moore, and their joint pseudonym "Lawrence O'Donnell", though at the time people used to speculate that the "K. M." stood for "Karl Marx" (Malzberg's politics being, at least then, fairly well to the left). Both Malzberg and Phillifent published (still publish, in Malzberg's case) much of their work under their own names. (Indeed, as far as I can tell Malzberg abandoned the K. M. O'Donnell pseudonym after 1972. Phillifent also abandoned his John Rackham pseudonym at about the same time, but that was perhaps more because he stopped selling at more or less that time.)

(Cover by Panos Koutroubousis)

K. M. O'Donnell's first story was published in 1967, and in 1968 he made a big splash with the title story of this collection, "Final War", which appeared in the April 1968 F&SF, and which made the Nebula final ballot and come close to winning the award for Best Novelette. No doubt that notoriety helped him sell this collection, his first, and one of his first books. K. M. O'Donnell, even then, must have been a pretty open pseudonym, as a couple of the stories included here first appeared in magazines under Malzberg's own name. (And, indeed, Malzberg/O'Donnell have such an individual and noticeable style that readers could hardly have failed to notice that they were the same writer.)
The stories are:

"Final War" F&SF April 1968 (12500 words)
"Death to the Keeper" F&SF August 1968 (8400 words)
"A Triptych" F&SF July 1969 (2000 words)
"How I Take Their Measure" F&SF January 1969 (2100 words)
"Oaten" Fantastic October 1968 (2200 words)
"The Ascension" Fantastic April 1969 (1700 words)
"The Major Incitement to Riot" Fantastic February 1969 (2200 words)
"Cop-Out" Escapade July 1968 (3600 words)
"We're Coming Through the Window" Galaxy August 1967 (1100 words)
"The Market in Aliens" Galaxy November 1968 (1400 words)
"By Right of Succession" If October 1969 (1800 words)

I had read these stories before -- I think I had a copy of this Ace Double years ago (though I know I didn't read the Rackham story). But it was enjoyable rereading them. In particular my impression of "Final War" changed radically. I had a memory of it as a very depressing Vietnam allegory. On rereading, I don't think that applies at all. It's a very funny story, albeit very blackly funny, and its anti-war attitude is much more general than simply anti-Vietnam. It seems to resemble Catch-22 more than anything, I would say. The story concerns a hapless group of soldiers engaged in a fairly formalized series of battles with the opposition. Hastings is a private trying to get out on grounds of mental illness. The Captain is a confused officer convinced Hastings is out to get him. The First Sergeant is a former motor pool worker who claims falsely to have been in "four wars and eight limited actions".

"Death to the Keeper" tells of an actor who plans to reenact the assassination of the "Keeper" years previously, though it ends up more concerned with the actor's mental state. "A Triptych" is perhaps the earliest of Malzberg's "astronaut" stories (his most famous being, I suppose, Beyond Apollo (1972), his controversial Campbell winning novel). "How I Take Their Measure" is a cynical story about a future welfare worker tormenting his cases. "Oaten", he says, was written as an Analog story, and came off as a parody of an Analog story: it's about trying to make contact with supposedly primitive aliens. "The Ascension" is another assassination story (Malzberg claims there are four in the book but I can only find three): this one from the POV of the President waiting to be killed. "The Major Incitement to Riot" looks at a riot in an oppressive future state from several angles. "Cop-Out" is a crucifixion story, about two entities acting out the crucifixion, with a twist of course. "We're Coming Through the Window" (his first published SF) is a cute short-short, about a time machine that goes a bit wrong. "The Market in Aliens" is a cynical short story, as Malzberg writes very much in 50s Galaxy mode, about exploiting alien visitors. And "By Right of Succession" is the other assassination story, the trick here having the assassin succeed the president (of course to be assassinated himself in turn).

Some fine work here, particularly the title story, and (for me) "The Market in Aliens".

(Cover by Kelly Freas)

The John Rackham novel, Treasure of Tau Ceti, is very minor work indeed. Rackham did some enjoyable work (his Ace Double Danger from Vega, which I have reviewed in this series, is a good example), but this book just doesn't do much. It opens in London, as bored rich man's son Alan Noble stops a mugging in progress, and ends up with a clue. He gets help from adventurer Neil Carson, and from the beautiful Fiona Knight, and they learn, implausibly quickly, that the clue refers to a mysterious treasure to be found among the possibly intelligent aliens on Verlan, a planet of Tau Ceti.

So they travel to Verlan, and make their dangerous way to a group of aliens. They witness a remarkable crystal with great healing powers, and learn that the aliens know where there is a cache of such crystals. But when they reach the island with the cache, they find that another villainous individual is also on the same track. And they find that the treasure is very well hidden, very hard to reach. So -- do they find it? Do they, after much effort, rebuff the bad guy? Do they find a way to retrieve the treasure? Do they prove that the aliens are intelligent?

Well, of course you know the answers! My problem with the book, which it should be said is efficiently enough told, is that there is never a surprise, never anything of real SFnal interest. It's purest yard goods, lazy writing by a guy just filling a slot.

Birthday Review: Stories of Steven Utley

Birthday Review: Stories of Steven Utley

I really enjoyed the work of Steven Utley, particularly his long series of stories about an expedition to the Silurian Era, and I never felt he got the recognition he deserved. He was born November 10, 1948, and he left us too soon in 2013. So I wasn't going to miss posting a compilation of my Locus reviews of his work.

Locus, February 2002

F&SF also features a new Silurian tale from Steven Utley, "Foodstuff".  Utley's Silurian stories, about time travel via a single wormhole connection to the Silurian era, have impressed me increasingly over time. Many of the stories taken by themselves are rather modest in effect, basically using the isolated Silurian era as a backdrop for nicely modulated quiet stories about ordinary people. But the cumulative effect, for me, has been quite powerful. "Foodstuff" is another of these modest stories -- as three people taking a boat upriver encounter some minor technical problems. During the delay for repairs, they are subjected to the attempts of one of them to experiment with "native" Silurian era food. And that's about it -- but it's well told and satisfying.

Locus, July 2005

Steven Utley's "Promised Land" (F&SF, June) is another of his Silurian tales, about the researchers who go back through a wormhole to the Silurian era. As with most of these stories, Utley's main concern is the characters, not the SFnal ideas. Here he tells of dying man, an irascible scientist born just a little too late to make use of the wormhole. A younger colleague and his wife meet at his deathbed, and the interaction of the three (along with other scenes set after the man's death) rings true both in its depictions of scientists and its depictions of men and women in the oldest dance.

Locus, April 2008

And Steven Utley’s “The 400-Million-Year Itch” (F&SF) is another of his excellent Silurian stories, this one as with most of them using the time travel as merely a backdrop for a grounded character story, here concerning the woman who sacrificed her academic career to be an assistant to the famous scientist who discovered the “anomaly” leading to a version of Silurian Earth.

Locus, December 2008

Steven Utley as ever concentrates on the personal human reaction to science fictional milieus – in “Perfect Everything” (Asimov’s, December) a man is returning from an interstellar expedition that failed to find aliens, occupying his time with simulations of his lover. But what they find on getting home is in multiple ways a terrible inversion – the aliens have arrived, and his lover is not really his lover.

Locus, March 2012

Other interesting stories in the March-April F&SF include the first Silurian story in a while from Steven Utley, “The Tortoise Grows Elate”, as usual with this series more about the human misadventure of his time-traveling scientists, here looking at the fraught love affair of a couple of older scientists from the point of view of a younger researcher, with wit and warmth;

Locus, March 2013

“The Boy Who Drank from Lovely Women”, by the late Steven Utley (March-April F&SF), tells of a mysterious ancient man, and eventually of his long ago participation in the French force sent to put down the Haitian slave rebellion. The evils of slavery aren't the focus here (though they are not forgotten) – rather, the fairly predictable but still interesting revelation of the reason for the main character's great age, and also its effects on him.

Birthday Review: Skin Hunger and Sacred Scars, by Kathleen Duey

Today is Kathleen Duey's birthday. In recognition of that, I've posted this pair of reviews I did at time of publication of the two novels in her Resurrection of Magic series. I really like these books -- alas, the series was never completed, for the sad reason that Kathleen Duey has had problems with some form of early-onset dementia. Skin Hunger, by the way, was a finalist for the Newbery Medal. [Note: Kathleen Duey died on June 26, 2020.]

The review of Skin Hunger first appeared in the print Black Gate, later posted on the website here, and the review of Sacred Scars first appeared in Fantasy Magazine here.

Skin Hunger, by Kathleen Duey (Atheneum, ISBN: 978-0-689-84093-7, $17.99, 357 pages, hc) 2007

A review by Rich Horton

Skin Hunger is the first book in a new Young Adult fantasy series by Kathleen Duey, collectively called The Resurrection of Magic. It is first in a series, and as such nothing is really resolved. Indeed, the ending is quite abrupt, and the book can’t be said to stand alone. But it is very fine work, quite explicitly demythologizing such fantasy clichés and schools of wizardry, with characters who we want to like but who are not necessarily unambiguously good. I was involved throughout, and I eagerly await succeeding books.

It is told on two separate tracks, apparently decades apart. (The question of how apart the events on the two tracks are in time, and exactly how they will be joined, is not answered here -- it’s certainly a key mystery to be revealed.)

The book opens with a young boy fetching a witch to help his mother through childbirth. But the mother dies anyway, and the witch absconds with the family’s valuables. The boy and his father, thus, have reason to abundantly hate witches, and we eventually gather that sorcery is not particularly respected in this land in any case. So when his sister, the baby his mother died bearing, seems to have unusual powers with animals, he refuses to believe her. The girl, Sadima, grows up loved but lonely, her isolation enforced by her grieving father’s withdrawal from society. In time she decides to leave for the city, especially after meeting a man named Franklin who takes her powers seriously and asks her to meet him if she can come to the city.  And in the city she does meet Franklin, and Franklin’s friend Somiss (though Somiss’s true relationship to Franklin is only slowly unveiled). Somiss is a scion of a family related to the King, but he as run away to try to gather the long outlawed knowledge of sorcery. Franklin and Sadima try to help him, by copying old songs and books, and by keeping house for him, despite his selfishness and secretiveness.

The other narrative track is told by a boy named Hahp, younger son of a wealthy man in the same city Sadima comes to. But evidently Hahp lives some time later, for he is sent by his father (who he hates) to a mysterious school of wizardry. This school is apparently run by Somiss, with Franklin a leading teacher. The small group of mostly aristocratic boys endures exceedingly harsh treatment to try to develop their powers, most notably starvation and a deliberate strategy of pitting each boy against his fellows. Over the course of something like a year Hahp finds, to his surprise, that he does have some magical ability, but he also learns to hate the wizards, and he slowly begins to resist their rules, and to try to forge alliances with his fellow boys.

All this -- the whole book, really -- is mainly scene-setting. Just at the end some things happen that seem to promise great changes, on both narrative threads. But we must wait for future books to learn what happens, and to learn how Franklin and Somiss advanced from their position hiding out with Sadima to being leaders of an apparently approved magical school. And what of Sadima herself, unquestionably the most likable and virtuous character in the book, but ominously absent from Hahp’s thread? All these questions are intriguing indeed -- good reason to anticipate book 2 of The Resurrection of Magic.

Sacred Scars, by Kathleen Duey (Atheneum, New York, 978-0-689-84095-1, $17.99, hc, 554 pages) 2009

A review by Rich Horton

This is the second in a series of YA novels collectively called A Resurrection of Magic. I was very impressed a couple of years ago with the first book in the series, Skin Hunger. I should mention immediately that this is definitely a series you want to read in order -- the second book won’t make nearly as much sense without having read the first.

Sacred Scars, as with Skin Hunger, is told in alternating chapters, from different points of view. One track follows Sadima, a young woman from a farming community who, in the first book, comes to the city of Limori and ends up staying with two young men: the aristocratic and cruel Somiss; and the much nicer Franklin, Somiss’s servant, with whom Sadima falls in love. Somiss is trying to learn as much about magic as he can, though it is illegal; and Sadima helps him at Franklin’s behest, mostly by copying the old "songs" that Somiss thinks may be spells. By the end of the first book, the three are driven from the city and hole up in a cave, along with several homeless boy Somiss has kidnapped, hoping to recruit them (by whatever means) to further helping him.

The second track, we realize, is set much later in time, though how much later is unclear. Hahp is a young boy from a rich family who has been sent to the Limori Academy of Magic. It seems that magic, while still mysterious, is in regular use, at least among the rich, and one dangerous route to prestige for younger sons is to become a wizard. But it becomes clear that the method of instruction is sadistic and that many, perhaps all but one, of the boys in Hahp’s class will die. Hahp has a certain magical talent, and he forms an uneasy alliance with his roommate, Gerrard, who has different talents. The leader of the Academy is Somiss, and the other teachers include Franklin and (we learn) at least some of the boys Somiss had kidnapped, now grown, of course.

Sacred Scars takes a long time to get going, and I do feel that the first half of the book would have benefited from some cutting. (Sacred Scars is considerably longer than Skin Hunger.) For much of the book very little happens. In Sadima’s track, she continues to urge Franklin to break with Somiss, and to help her free the kidnapped boys and flee. At the same time, Sadima learns more and more of Somiss’s cruel nature, which encompasses among other things a history of rape; and she begins to wonder how much Somiss is lying to Franklin about the magic he is learning -- especially as it seems that in their different ways Franklin and Sadima may be more talented than Somiss. And on Hahp’s track, there are repeated examples of magical lessons, which are mostly of the "throw him in the water and hope he swims" variety. But Hahp does learn some magic, some of it remarkable. Nonetheless, his hatred for the wizards and their sadistic system of instruction remains fixed, and he urges Gerrard to support him in forming an alliance with all the surviving boys to try to counter the wizards.

Things speed up midway through the book, roughly, when Sadima at last gets up the courage to escape; and when Hahp starts to form further ties with his fellow students. There are some surprising and quite wrenching developments. The book ends, however, very much as a middle book: much has changed, but nothing is resolved.

After the slow start, I enjoyed the book immensely. Sadima in particular is a very involving character, and her fate is surprising and yet quite logical. Some of what I thought about the timeline of events as revealed in Skin Hunger turns out to have been wrong, and it’s clear that the next book will have some very interesting political developments to follow, as well as some doubtless wrenching personal changes.

This is a well-written book, full of well-depicted characters. Duey is tackling the right questions -- the proper use of power, the question "can the genie be kept in the bottle?", responsibility for others, even enemies. That said, it is as I have implied very much a middle book. It is enjoyable to read, but its ultimate success will only be clear after the series is concluded. At any rate, I continue to recommend Duey’s books -- I’m eagerly anticipating Book Three.

[And, as noted above, Book Three has never appeared, alas.]