Birthday Review: Stories of Cat Rambo

Today is Cat Rambo's birthday, and in her honor I've put together a selection of my Locus reviews of her short fiction.

Locus, December 2006

In Strange Horizons in November I was particularly impressed by Cat Rambo’s tearjerker (but in a good way) “Magnificent Pigs”, about a young farmer who wants to be an artist, but who has to raise his younger sister after their parents’ death. The young man moonlights as a tattoo artist – and practices on their pigs as his sister, who loves the book Charlotte’s Web, dies of cancer.

Locus, April 2007

At Strange Horizons in February I liked Cat Rambo’s “Foam on the Water”, a look at a politically connected American man tempted by an exotic woman (?) he encounters in Thailand … I like the subtly shown reasons he shies away from relationships.

Locus, April 2008

In Cat Rambo’s “The Bumblety’s Marble” a girl receives the title object fortuitously, and then meets a mysterious boy from the underworld, who desperately wants it back – the lives of the two children are quite sharply limned in a short space.

Locus, February 2010

Cat Rambo also has a collection out, her first, Eyes Like Sky and Coal and Moonlight, with a selection of fine earlier work and five new stories, of which my favorite was “The Silent Familiar”, in which a wizard’s familiar has a child, a silent child. Who can this child be a familiar for? The answer has bitterly logical consequences for everyone involved.

Locus, April 2011

GigaNotoSaurus opened 2011 with a couple of quite different and quite entertaining stories. From February, Cat Rambo’s “Karaluvian Fale” is colorful political fantasy about a young woman of an aristocratic family fallen on hard times who learns to give as good as she gets in the nasty political maneuvering surrounding her. It’s one of those stories that I hope presages more in the same milieu – this story is fine but a bit thin perhaps – but all it needs is more length, more incident, more plot.

Locus, July 2011

The June issue of Fantasy includes  a strong piece from Cat Rambo, “The Immortality Game”. Twenty years before, in high school, Glen was fascinated by four popular kids, in particular one girl who seemed briefly interested in return. But nothing much happened, and now he’s married, fairly happily, living an ordinary life. Those four all seem fabulously successful, and then he’s drawn back into their orbit, and the girl he liked wants him. And she’s still terribly hard to resist. What’s their secret? The story rather darkly recalls both Ken Grimwood’s Replay and Avram Davidson’s “The Sources of the Nile” (each from a different angle), and it is strong work on the effects of immortality – on the immortals and on those they influence.

Cat Rambo shows up again in the second 2011 issue of Abyss and Apex . Her “Bots D’Amor” is a pleasant story about a somewhat down and out spaceship pilot with a collection of toys that his ship’s robots have used to augment themselves with – perhaps illegally, but still perhaps to his benefit.

Locus, May 2016

Best this issue (F&SF, March-April 2016) is Cat Rambo’s “Red in Tooth and Cog”, in which Renee, eating lunch in a park near work, has her phone stolen, and comes to realize that it was taken by an abandoned robot-creature. She becomes interested, and slowly, with the help of the park’s robot caretaker, puzzles out some of the secrets of the park’s robotic ecology. The invention is sometimes whimsical, often very affecting, at times beautiful. And to my mind quite original.

Birthday Review: Stories of Daniel Abraham

Before Daniel Abraham was half of James S. A. Corey, he was an exceptional upcoming solo writer of SF and Fantasy. He's still exceptional, mind you, but most of his efforts are focussed on The Expanse. he was born 49 years ago today, so in his honor, I'm posting this compilation of my reviews of his short fiction:

SFF Net post, December 2000

The best story in the February 2001 Asimov's issue is Daniel Abraham's "Exclusion", about people having the ability to simply ignore other people, in such a way that the other person can't even detect the existence of the first person.

Locus, August 2002

Daniel Abraham is a very impressive young writer, and "Ghost Chocolate" (Asimov's, August) is a nice look at possible ramifications of a technology, which would allow brain state transfer from an elderly person to their younger clone.

Locus, February 2004

Daniel Abraham's "An Amicable Divorce" (The Dark) tells of a man living in misery after his marriage fell apart, a result apparently of the death of the couple's son. But a chance at reconciliation seems to offer itself when the wife calls for help -- it seems she is perhaps being haunted. The resolution is unpredictable and bitter.

Locus, August 2004

July is another good month at Sci Fiction. Daniel Abraham's "Leviathan Wept" is a strong, dark, novelette about an anti-terrorist organization that uses brain links to coordinate their operations. They are inevitably morally compromised themselves, which is one dark aspect to the story, but more original is the SFnal idea behind it, suggesting a darker reason behind contemporary human conflicts.

Locus, October 2004

Let's begin with the October-November F&SF double issue, which is strong throughout. Daniel Abraham's "Flat Diane" is a very scary horror story, offering no easy outs, about a newly divorced man and the unfortunate results when his daughter makes a silhouette of herself (Flat Diane) and sends it traveling by mail. Things go awry when Flat Diane ends up at the mother's house – and when her creepy new boyfriend notices. The protagonist is driven to extremes that on the one hand seem inevitable but that will surely not bode well for anyone.

Locus, May 2007

My favorite story in Logorrhea is by Daniel Abraham: “The Cambist and Lord Iron: A Fairy Tale of Economics”, in which a dissolute nobleman sets a stodgy middle-aged cambist (a foreign exchange expert) three questions on the value of some unusual items. The story is lightly told, with dark overtones, supremely engaging.

Locus, May 2009

My other favorite story here is Solaris 3 is more traditional near future SF: “The Best Monkey” by Daniel Abraham, which intriguingly speculates on the nature of beauty, on its ties to sex, on how what we perceive as elegant might be hardwired with what perceive as a good mating prospect. And what might result if those perceptions were altered. All this revealed as a reporter tries to track the secret behind a strangely successful corporation.

Locus, December 2009

The opening story in Postscripts #19 is a fine steampunk adventure from Daniel Abraham, “Balfour and Meriwether in The Adventure of the Emperor’s Vengeance”. The story involves Jewish and Egyptian history, and an ancient army of robots, all thematically slingshotting us to the 20th Century. (Unlike most steampunk, this appears to be something of a secret rather than alternate history.)

Locus, February 2013

Less original, less ambitious, but arguably more satisfying as pure story, is Gods of Risk, by James S. A. Corey, a novella set in “Corey's” (Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck's) Expanse future. This is a YA-flavored piece, set on Mars, where David, an adolescent awaiting his career posting, has been lured into using his chemistry talents to cook drugs. He's infatuated with Leelee, an associate of the dealer he's working for. When she gets in trouble, amid threats of war with Earth, David clumsily tries to come to her rescue. Nothing surprises here, certainly to an extent the characters and situations are cliches, but it all works, it's great fun.

Locus, October 2017

Daniel Abraham’s “The Mocking Tower” (The Book of Swords), concerns two men coming to the title tower to find the sword in which the Imagi Vert, a great wizard and friend of the well-loved old King, is said to have imprisoned the King’s soul. Finding the sword might help one of the King’s son’s win the war of succession that is tearing apart their Empire. But perhaps the King’s son need a lesson more than he needs the sword?

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.