Birthday Review: Metaplanetary, by Tony Daniel

Metaplanetary, by Tony Daniel

a review by Rich Horton

Tony Daniel turns 55 today. He received a lot of well-deserved notice in the 1990s for his first couple of novels, and for stories like "Life on the Moon" and "The Robot's Twilight Companion". The novel in question, Metaplanetary, the first of a planned trilogy, appeared in 2001, and its successor, Superluminal, in 2004, but he couldn't sell the third book, and nothing else came out until an enjoyable novel from Baen in 2012, Guardians of Night. He has continued to write and edit for Baen since them. For his birthday, I am posting a review I wrote first for my blog back in 2001, of Metaplanetary.

The best reading I have done recently, however, was of Tony Daniel's new novel Metaplanetary. So far, this is the best SF book I've read from 2001. Metaplanetary is a grand, involving, novel set in 3013 C. E., in a fully colonized solar system which is about to burst into a vicious civil war. It is chock full of neat, if perhaps not always fully plausible, SFnal ideas. It managed to excite my somewhat jaded sense of wonder, and it made me care deeply about quite a few characters, and it advances some interesting and worthwhile moral themes. Its main flaw is that it doesn't end so much as stop -- it's part of a trilogy (the sequel was called Superluminal, and the third book never appeared), and it really does not stand alone. Another, lesser, flaw, perhaps, is that the villain is really evil -- no moral ambiguity there. But that said he is well-portrayed and interesting.

The solar system in 3000 or so is divided into basically two sections. The inner system, called the Met, consists of the inner four planets, and a gloriously weird system of tubes connecting them, which makes the whole thing look like a spider web, sort of. Many people seem to live in the tubes, or in nodes of the system, called bolsas. Mercury, with all that energy available, is the dominant planet. Earth has been largely returned to nature.

The outer planetary systems have all been colonized, with varying degrees of success. Triton, Neptune's big moon, is one of the most successful colonies. In addition, a number of artificially intelligent ships live permanently in space, particularly the Oort clouds, and they have traveled as far as Alpha Centauri. (These are called cloudships.) The Met doesn't reach to the outer system because the asteroid belt is impractical to cross with the tubes.

Besides the Met, the other key SFnal notion of the book is "grist". Basically, grist is very "smart" nanotech. Most if not all humans have an integrated bunch of grist attached, called a pellicle, which hosts a version of the their personality in AI form, called a convert. There are also "free converts", AI's based on scans of human brains but which don't have a biological body.Humans can interact with both free converts and with the "attached" converts of other humans in Virtual space, and all of the system, pretty much, is instantaneously connected by a grist network called the merci. And some humans are what are called LAP's -- LAP stands for Large Array of Personas: they are in essence a network of clones and converts that can be physically and virtually in many places at once.

For the most part, the solar system is in something of a Golden Age. The physical needs of people seem to be well supplied. A critical political issue is the rights of "free converts". Some do not consider them "Human" -- they are just computer programs, in this view, without real free will, without, if you will, "souls". But others, especially in the outer system, regard them as clearly human.

The novel is told from a variety of points of view: a couple of cloudships; a free convert named Danis Graytor; Danis' human husband Kelly; their daughter Aubry (who has a human body but is considered a "half free convert"); an artificial woman named Jill with a body made of grist and a braine based on a ferret's; Colonel Roger Sherman, the military leader of Triton's forces; Sherman's son Lee; Director Ames, the leader of the Met government; General San Filieu, an aging Catalan woman under Ames influence who leads the Met attack on Triton; and more. This gives us a good look at the variety of ways people live in this future, and at what it is like to be a free convert, or a cloudship, or a human with a pellicle and convert attachment, or a LAP. This also helps keep the action moving, important in a fairly long book.

The action of the novel is exciting and fascinating. We see atrocities, such as some clever means of torturing AIs, and a brutal attack on Triton with some scary uses of space tech; and we see heroism in the resistance to these atrocities. We see convincing depictions of sex between humans and AIs, and of alternate means of travel in a physically linked solar system, and of AI entertainment. We get useful glimpses of the history of this future: the young life of Director Ames, the development of the cloudships, the invention of grist and the merci. It's a fairly long book, but never boring.

The characters are fully rounded, even the villains. (If they are evil, and many are, they are evil in interesting ways.) Daniel gives his different characters and narrators different voices. His prose is generally sound, occasionally lapsing into cliche, but at other times very nice. His scope is vast, and his theme is one of the great SF themes: "What is a human?" He illustrates this nicely with his array of characters of vastly different "shape" or composition; and he metaphorically illustrates even more nicely the associated conflict of viewpoints between individualists and collectivists: hinting by the end at a truly scary collectivist vision. The scary parts of the book are convincing and often quite original, and very scary: and the heroism is moving and believable. I really liked this book.

Ace Double Reviews, 75: The Planet Killers, by Robert Silverberg/We Claim These Stars!, by Poul Anderson

Ace Double Reviews, 75: The Planet Killers, by Robert Silverberg/We Claim These Stars!, by Poul Anderson (#D-407, 1959, $0.35)

A review by Rich Horton

On the occasion of the 92nd anniversary of Poul Anderson's birth, here's a repost of a briefish review I did of one of his Ace Doubles, backed with one by Robert Silverberg.

Silverberg again! And Poul Anderson. Two of the most prolific writers in SF history, and also two of the more regular Ace Double contributors. And also two SFWA Grand Masters: two of the best SF writers ever. As of 1959, though, I doubt anyone was predicting future Grand Master status for Silverberg: certainly this novel provides no support for such speculation! Anderson, to be sure, is another matter.

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The Planet Killers is about 43,000 words long. It is an expansion of "This World Must Die!", published under the name Ivar Jorgenson in the August 1957 Science Fiction Adventures. It's a very simple story -- too simple, really. I expected -- hoped -- to see a twist along the way but none really happened. The story opens with Roy Gardner, an agent of Earth, being ordered to the planet Lurion. It seems that a computer has decided that Lurion will turn warlike in 67 years, make a sneak attack on Earth, and completely destroy it. The only alternative for Earth is to destroy Lurion now, by sending 5 agents to Lurion to set off sonic generators to, I guess, shake the planet apart.

The objections to this are obvious. Most clearly, in 67 years there is no way to divert Lurion from this path? More simply, how can there be a "sneak" attack if Earth has predicted it? And how contrived is this idea of sending 5 and only 5 agents to plant the sonic generators?

At any rate, Gardner goes to Lurion. He finds the one remaining agent of the 5 previously sent, who is near collapse. Gardner soon learns that Lurion is indeed an awful place, evidenced by such  things as entertainments in which two people (one usually, it seems, a woman) fight with knives until one is killed. But Gardner also meets a Lurionese group which hopes to reform the planet from within. And he meets an Earth woman, an anthropologist, with whom he falls in love. She too will be doomed if Lurion is destroyed, for any attempt to evacuate Earth people from the planet would give away the game.

Can Gardner's resolve hold? Or will he make the obvious morally correct decision? And how will his agency treat his defection, if he defects? All the most obvious and straightforward answers occur. It's really a paint-by-numbers book -- Silverberg at this stage of his career was not terribly good, but he was often at least decent -- competent and entertaining, and occasionally attacking interesting themes. But not here -- this is Silverberg at close to his worst.

(Cover by Ed Valigursky)

Poul Anderson's We Claim These Stars! is a fairly early Flandry story. It was originally published as "A Handful of Stars", in the June 1959 Amazing, then expanded and reprinted in this Ace Double as We Claim These Stars! The Ace Double version is about 41,000 words long. Ace later reprinted it as a single book. It was also reprinted, under the superior title "Hunters of the Sky Cave", in Anderson's collection Agent of the Terran Empire (1965). Alone among the stories in that book, it was not revised for the 1979 Gregg Press edition.

As with all Flandry, the story is good fun. And this is one of the earliest Flandry stories to show hints of the darkness that pervaded the later full-length Flandry novels. Right from the beginning, to be sure, Flandry was lamenting the coming "Long Night" -- that was the central them of the series from the get go. But by We Claim These Stars! little hints of Flandry's personal emptiness begin to show up. Briefly, in this novel he accompanies a young woman who has escaped from a planet overrun by Merseian supported invaders back to her planet, where he sets up a resistance operation. There is plenty of derring-do, and of course some romance (resolved as ever in a bittersweet way), and even a direct physical encounter with Flandry's rival Aycharaych. The Terrans win this round, but we already know, of course, that they won't win them all -- that the Long Night will claim the Terran Empire.

This is certainly one of the best early Flandry stories, probably the best.

Birthday Review: Stories of John Grant

On the occasion of Paul Barnett's 69th birthday, here's a compilation of my Locus reviews of a number of his short stories, all of which were published under his "John Grant" pseudonym.

Locus, January 2003

The Autumn 2002 issue of The Third Alternative is also pretty strong throughout. The highlights are a good morally scary piece from Brian Hodge, a solid novel excerpt concerning the Blitz from Graham Joyce, and perhaps most interesting, John Grant's novelette "Wooden Horse". A young man derails his doctoral studies by becoming obsessed with some old British WWII films shown at a seedy local cinema. The recitation of the films involved, and the reason they are so interesting, along with subtle details of the narrator's life, slowly spring the surprise, which is not precisely novel, but well-presented and queasy-making.

Locus, July 2003

John Grant's "No Solace for the Soul in Digitopia" (Live Without a Net), is a fine erotic fantasia of multiple universes, in which a visit to what seems to be our universe reveals the limitations of a computing-based life.

Locus, September 2004

The Third Alternative leads off with a lovely, erotically-charged, novelette from John Grant, "Has Anyone Here Seen Kristie?" The protagonist, devastated by his wife's death, has been pushed by a co-worker to take a vacation in Edinburgh, during the Festival. There he meets by chance a young woman named Kristie, and they spend the week chastely exploring the Festival, getting much more out of it together than the man could have by himself. The culmination is in a sense predictable, but nicely handled with a slightly wistful conclusion.

Locus, November 2004

John Grant's "Q" (Sci Fiction, October) involves a government figure investigating research at a mysterious laboratory. They have learned to scan people's minds, but only usefully to read dreams. Somehow (unconvincingly to me) this leads to a disturbing revelation about the nature of the universe, which is given a cynical political twist. Interesting stuff, but I couldn't quite believe.

Locus, January 2009

John Grant’s “Will the Real Veronica LeBarr Please Stand Down?” is the lead story and the best in the Autumn Postscripts. It’s told from the point of view of a famous actress – perhaps – or is she a simulation of that actress? She works in a whorehouse where the gimmick is that the johns get a liaison with a famous person. And her latest john turns out – scarily – to be only too familiar to her.

Locus, April 2014

I made a point last month about the number of horror stories I liked, and I'll open this month by mentioning another: “His Artist Wife”, by John Grant, from the January-February Black Static. The narrator is a writer of of low-budget paperback entertainments, and his late wife Lucy was a brilliant and popular artist. He's mourning her death while trying to write a much more ambitious novel, based on another real-life couple: a composer and his mysterious wife, who died on their wedding night. Soon enough we realize that Lucy was murdered, apparently by the narrator, apparently because of her affair with the author of some books she illustrated. The story develops gradually, as drawings in Lucy's style begin to appear, depicting versions of her murder; while the new novel goes slowly, while we learn details of the relationship of the composer and his wife; and while Lucy's lover remains the narrator's only human contact. Lots of ambiguity, lots of atmosphere, lots of disquietude. I really liked it.

Locus, June 2014

The March-April Interzone is an excellent outing for the magazine. John Grant contributes another very fine piece: “Ghost Story”, in which Nick, a happily married man, gets a phone call from a girl he was infatuated with at the age of about 8. It seems she's pregnant, and he's the father. But the childhood connection had not continued, and they haven't even met in years – how can this be. An uneasy visit explains nothing really, but Nick is pushed to wonder about what the girl is convinced they did together, and what history she came from. Really fine work, and very well resolved.

Also, here's  a link to my review of his collection Take No Prisoners. (This review first appeared in the June 2004 Locus)

Birthday Review: Take No Prisoners, by John Grant

Take No Prisoners, by John Grant (Willowgate Press, 1-930008-09-0-4, $13.95, 260pp, tpb) 2004.

reviewed by Rich Horton

On the occasion of Paul Barnett's 69th birthday, I'm taking the opportunity to post this review (that first appeared in Locus for June 2004) of his collection (under his usual pseudonym, John Grant) Take No Prisoners.

John Grant (who also writes under his real name, Paul Barnett) is not exactly unfamiliar to me – I've read a number of his stories, such as last year's fine "No Solace for the Soul in Digitopia". And of course his compilations of authorial indiscretions in "Thog's Masterclass" (a regular feature of David Langford's fanzine Ansible) are rightly celebrated. But I have not read any of his many novels – and so this book works very well as an introduction. Grant displays considerable range.  Included are a couple of humorous mysteries, several contemporary horror stories, an alternate history novelette, some SF and some fantasy and some very striking combinations of SF and fantasy.

Intriguing were a number of stories, mainstream, straight fantasy or a heady combination of fantasy and SF, which signal a tenuous link to each other by occasional references to The World and by the repetition of character names like Qinefer, Lo Chi, and Qinmeartha; as well as place names like Starveling.  Otherwise these stories show little connection, but I suspect that a greater familiarity with Grant's oeuvre, perhaps particularly his novel The World, would clarify matters somewhat. Not to worry, though: the stories work perfectly taken by themselves.  For example, there is "Mouse", at first reading straightforward SF about the exploration of an anomalous world and its alien-built structure, but which turns out to also concern the World and the Incarnate Gods who create much of it.  At its center is an affecting story of two people trapped in an alien room, one of them the title character (real name Qinefer), a woman who has rejected contact with other people, the other a man still recovering from his wife's departure.  Much different is "I Could have a General Be/ in the Bright King's Arr-umm-ee", about Qinmeartha, who betrayed his evil rulers to the Bright King, partly by seducing the evil Queen, Lo Chi. But he finds that Lo Chi's love exacts a price. "All the Best Curses Last for a Lifetime" tells of a created being who becomes the Soul of Evil. "Sheep" again seems straight fantasy, with this time Qinmeartha a brutal husband to the fair Lo Chi, until she sees a chance for revenge. "Coma" is set in our world, with Lo Chi a young woman in a coma, but it suggests links with a larger universe as Lo Chi's comatose mind explores a certain "chord". Finally, "How I Slept with the Queen of China" is purely mainstream, about a somewhat inarticulate young man trying to protect the title character (real name, again, Qinefer) from an abusive boyfriend.

The longest story in the book is "Snare", which tells of a briefly successful rock band through the eyes of the drummer.  He's in love with the lead singer, and agonizes through her other affairs, dreaming that she really feels something special for him. Much later the band is long gone, and he has married and has a mundane job, but once yearly he makes a pilgrimage and listens to the few songs they recorded. Song by song we learn the sad and ultimately disquieting story behind the group.

The two mystery stories are "A Lean and Hungry Look" and "A Case of Four Fingers".  Both are comic stories about the rather fumbling Inspector Romford. In the first he is dragged by his wife to a bit of "culture": an amateur production of Julius Caesar that gets a bit too realistic.  The second and better of the pair sets the story explicitly in the village of Cadaver-in-the Offing, which serves as the setting for all cozy detective stories. This requires someone to recycle the characters – and who better than the narrator (but let the story reveal that). This particular time a cadaver goes missing before it can be recycled. It seems that the murdered man, a great magician, has performed another feat and disappeared after death.  Can Romford solve the case?

"The Glad Who Sang a Mermaid in from the Probability Sea" is another dizzying SF/Fantasy combination, as the "Finefolk" find a way to flee Earth and the domination of the "Ironfolk" by learning FTL travel. But the Ironfolk inevitably follow ... In "Wooden Horse" a young man derails his doctoral studies by becoming obsessed with some old British WWII films shown at a seedy local cinema. The recitation of the films involved, and the reason they are so interesting, along with subtle details of the narrator's life, slowly spring the surprise, which is not precisely novel, but well-presented and queasy-making.

I am struck here not only by the variety of these stories, and the impressive imagination, but by the control of voice. His first-person narrators all tell their stories in characteristic and different ways: from the exuberant, arch, tones of the Finefolk narrator of "The Glad Who Sang a Mermaid in from the Probability Sea", to the archaic and mannered style of Qinmeartha in "I Could have a General Be/ in the Bright King's Arr-umm-ee", to the simple, even naive, words of the young man in "How I Slept with the Queen of China" – each a different voice, each perfectly matched to the story being told.  This is a book of first-rate work, by a writer worthy of more of our attention.

Two Short Novels by Don DeLillo: The Body Artist and Cosmopolis

Two Short Novels by Don DeLillo: The Body Artist and Cosmopolis

a review by Rich Horton

These reviews are taken from blog posts I did at the time of reading, and I'm posting them today on Don DeLillo's 82nd birthday. They are the only books I've read by DeLillo. Both are fairly short, and both have slight elements of the fantastic or SFnal.

The Body Artist (2001)

Don DeLillo's new novel (or novella, it's a bit over 25,000 words) is The Body Artist.  I haven't read DeLillo before, though I have a copy of White Noise buried in the "Ought to Read" pile.  This book, by all accounts, is not typical of DeLillo.  It certainly doesn't seem like the other books based on descriptions of them I've read.

Lauren Hartke is the "Body Artist" of the title (basically, a performance artist).  Her husband, a 64 year old Spanish film director, commits suicide one day, and she stays in their remote rural rented house for a few months, alone.  But soon she realizes she is not alone: a very strange, apparently brain-damaged, man is in the house -- possibly has been in the house since before she and her husband rented it.  Hartke can't bring herself to report this man to the authorities, and she spends some weeks trying to talk to him.  The man can hardly speak, and when he does, it's in incomplete sentences -- sentences which sometimes, eerily, sound like something her husband or she herself said in previous months.  Or even like something she will say in the future.  Was the man spying on them for months, and does his damaged brain recall fragments of conversations?  Is he somehow possessed by the spirit of her husband?  Is he a creature from a different dimension?  Is she making too much of this -- could these utterances just be random words to which her faulty memory assigns shape?

The book is more interested (as we might expect) in asking those questions than answering them.  Though clearly it's about identity -- certainly the questions about the suicided husband's identity are important -- and Hartke's "art" involves trying to reshape her body -- to remove all traces of her "self" and use her body as a template to take on other "identities" -- and of course the question of what "identity" the mysterious stranger has is important, too.  (I found myself, also, thinking of Sarah Canary.)

It's really very well-written.  I wasn't wholly excited by it -- I guess I wanted DeLillo to come closer to answers.  But the book is spooky and memorable, and the prose is excellent. It has been made into a 2016 film by Benoit Jacquot, called À jamais.

Cosmopolis (2003)

Don DeLillo is the author of such novels as White Noise and Underworld, a huge literary star, certainly one of a few names usually mentioned as possibly our leading American novelist. I've only read his two most recent novels, both very short: The Body Artist (2001), and now Cosmopolis, new this year. Cosmopolis is about 50,000 words long, about twice the length of The Body Artist, but still pretty short in comparison to DeLillo's more famous novels. So, if you are thinking I am lazy and/or intimidated by the other stuff, you're probably right. At any rate, I had read a few reviews of Cosmopolis, mostly quite dismissive, and I was going to skip it until I saw a positive mention of rec.arts.sf.written and almost the same time saw it at the library. What the heck, I figured, it's short.

The "hero" (quotes definitely necessary) of this book is Eric Packer, an obscenely rich New Yorker who makes his money in the currency markets. He wakes up one morning in 2000 and decides to drive across town in his limousine and get a haircut. The novel follows his long trip, as the president is in town, and other complications ensue, making it a very slow progress indeed.

Packer does considerable work in his limousine, which is fully net-connected. Most of his work (that we are shown) involves tracking the value of the yen, which is inexplicably rising even though all indicators say it is grossly overvalued. Packer has bet that the yen will fall, and as it rises he loses more and more money, a process exacerbated by what seems his hubris, his refusal to cut his losses. He is also worried, or his security chief is worried, by what is called a "credible threat" to his life. Even so, Packer stops the limousine several times and gets out. He eats three different meals with his old-money wife of about a month, Swiss-born poet Elise Shifrin, each time trying to convince her to finally consummate their marriage. The sincerity of his feelings for her is undercut by his additional stops for a variety of sexual encounters -- with an old mistress, with an employee, with one of his security detail who catches his eye. But though she complains about his evident infidelity, their relationship seems more complicated than that.

Packer also has different encounters -- the funeral of a rap star he had admired, a pickup basketball game, a trip to a rave. And he meditates rather fatuously (to my mind) on the state of the world, of technology, the meaning of money and poetry, and the deaths of some of his rivals. Alternate sections present the "confession" of a former employee of Packer's, who, we soon gather, will murder him by the end of the book. And Packer keeps losing money, and slowly sheds his security detail, sometimes in shocking fashion, as the seedier part of the city is reached.

Obviously DeLillo is interested in, oh, the relationship between technology-mad "new money" America and the "old-money", perhaps more artistic, Europe (represented by his poet wife). But that seems only a side issue. Packer himself is a strange creation, wholly unbelievable really, as indeed his whole entourage and his obsessions seem huge exaggerations to me. In a way that makes the novel very cold, and Packer's fate not terribly affecting. He's a) not a nice guy, and b) not a real person. Still, I was rather absorbed by the book, and I found it interesting if not exactly gripping. It is perhaps best read as satire, and Packer best seen as nearly a comic grotesque -- an exaggeration.

(There are, incidentally, very minor SFnal aspects -- mainly a camera that seems to see the near future. And the general feel of the book is at least very slipstreamish -- I am sure Bruce Sterling would happily have included it in his list of candidate slipstream novels if it had appeared before Sterling's 1989 article that introduced the term.)

Cosmopolis was made into a film by David Cronenberg that was released in 2012.

Birthday Review: Bones of the Earth, by Michael Swanwick

This is a review I did a long time ago for my old website, now defunct. So it seemed worthwhile to repost it on the occasion of Michael Swanwick's birthday.

Bones of the Earth
by Michael Swanwick
Tor, New York, 2002, 335 pages, $25.95
ISBN: 0-312-87238-0

A review by Rich Horton

I've read some solid SF novels in 2002 so far -- The Years of Rice and Salt, Permanence, Schild's Ladder. It hasn't been a bad year. But nothing that really threw me until this one. Bones of the Earth is, about halfway through the year, clearly my favorite SF novel of 2002. It combines several well-integrated (and rather original) SFnal ideas with some neat scientific speculation, interesting characters, a compelling plot, and a powerfully argued theme about the nature of science and the human urge to do science.

The novel concerns a program to send paleontologists back to the Mesozoic Era to study dinosaurs in their natural environment. As such it is both a dinosaur novel and a time travel novel. Perhaps unexpectedly, the thematic heart of the book is in the time travel aspect, though the dinosaur speculations are worthwhile and fun in themselves.

The story opens in 2012 when Richard Leyster, a young paleontologist, is approached by a mysterious man named Griffin,offering him a mysterious job. He can tell him nothing about the job, but he can show him something -- a fresh Triceratops head. And he seems oddly certain that Leyster will accept the job. Leyster does, of course, and several months later he finds himself at a strange scientific conference, attending presentations about field work in the Mesozoic, and being accosted by a mysterious older woman (though she was born later than he) named Gertrude Salley, who implies a past relationship. Thus we have met the three main characters -- Leyster, the brilliant and studious scientist; Salley, brilliant herself but manipulative and unbound by law or rules; and Griffin, the tormented administrator of the entire program.

One key plot thread concerns a scheme by Christian fundamentalists to sabotage the time travel efforts, which ends up marooning a number of paleontologists in the Late Cretaceous. Griffin and his assistants try to loop back and forth through time to forestall this sabotage, but they are frustrated by the insistence of the sponsors of the time travel program that no paradoxes be created: thus anything they know to have "already happened" they cannot stop from happening. The other key thread involves Salley's attempts to subvert that law -- right at the beginning we see hints that she is trying to cause paradoxes, and her attempts continue, though her motive remains unclear to the reader for some time.

The scenes in the Cretaceous involve some well-handled "primitive survival" scenes, and some fascinating speculation about dinosaur social life and about the real causes of their extinction. The other thread involves some very clever handling of time loops and paradox, and an eventual trip far into the future to meet the Unchanging -- the mysterious beings who have offered the boon of time travel to humans. The resolution is surprising, logical, and achingly sad, or at least bittersweet. Swanwick is convincing treating human curiosity, our love of science. He is convincing treating human reactions to the possibility of fixing our past mistakes. There are some lovely set pieces involving encounters with prehistoric beasts, and one involving a young girl fascinated by Mesozoic sea life. The characters are well-drawn, particularly Griffin and his boss, the Old Man. Leyster and Salley are well done as well but a bit less fully realized -- or pass too clearly idealized to fit their parts. The minor characters are interesting, too. I loved the book, and I was quite moved by it. I think it is one of the best time travel novels in all of SF.

Birthday Review: Stories of Michael Swanwick

On the occasion of his 68th birthday, here's a set of my Locus reviews of Michael Swanwick's short fiction:

Locus, May 2002

"A Great Day for Brontosaurs" by Michael Swanwick (Asimov's, May) is a light-hearted jape about a man who has invented dinosaurs – which manages to play nicely with the hoariest of SF clichés.

Locus, November 2002

The October/November issue of Asimov's is another impressive one. There is one story that both by its quality, and its controversial nature, will dominate discussion -- let's hold off on that one. More lighthearted is Michael Swanwick's "The Little Cat Laughed to See Such Fun", a sequel to his Hugo winner "The Dog Said Bow-Wow". Darger and the enhanced dog are in Paris now, working on another scam: they claim to have found the remains of the Eiffel Tower. Their victim is a dying (indeed, already dead) man named M. d'Etranger. Of more interest (to Darger) is his beautiful young wife, but Surplus is unimpressed, realizing she is an enhanced cat. It's as fluffy as its predecessor, and as much fun.

Locus, December 2002

Michael Swanwick's work is always worth a look, though I don't think "Slow Life", Analog's December cover story, is among his best. It is interesting: about finding life on Titan, and the way such life might think differently from us. (Unfortunately for my tastes, not quite differently enough – the communications barrier is far too easily surmounted.)

Locus, September 2003

I'd also like to mention Michael Swanwick's series of short-shorts at Sci Fiction, The Periodic Table of Science Fiction, which has been reliably cynical and funny. It's nearing conclusion, and a high point was reached with the entry for Einsteinium, "The Dark Lady of the Equations" (June 20), a lovely (and not cynical!) fantasia about an inspiration for Albert Einstein.

Locus, October 2004

Also in the October-November Asimov's is Michael Swanwick's "The Word That Sings the Scythe". This is a direct sequel to last year's "King Dragon". The fey Will has been thrown out of his home village and finds himself a refugee of war. He hooks up, against his will, with an abandoned young girl named Esme, who seems to remember nothing. She seems particularly lucky, but there is a law of conservation of luck – so her luck doesn't mean those around her are lucky. Will learns a bit more about her when in the refugee camp he meets a woman who claimed to have been her mother – of sorts – long before, for it turns out Esme's history is strange indeed. This is all set in a strange fantastical world, with an array of apparently traditional fantasy creatures – unicorns, ghasts, feys, lubins, and others – and a weird admixture of technology, perhaps most strikingly indicated by the intelligent mechanical dragons, that seem to resemble AI-controlled fighter planes more than anything. This is a fine story by itself, and presages a potentially very interesting novel to come.

Locus, July 2005

The cover story for the July Asimov's is a Darger/Surplus novelette from Michael Swanwick: "Girls and Boys, Come Out to Play". Swanwick's scoundrelly heroes, a man and an enhanced dog in a sort of post-posthuman world, are now in "Arcadia": that is, Greece. They are looking for the Evangelos bronzes, in a rather low-tech setting inhabited by fairly ordinary humans and sex-mad satyrs. But some powerful African scientists have taken up residence nearby, and they claim to building gods. Perhaps they are: for a very convincing manifestation of Pan, complete with orgy, soon follows. Darger and Surplus, acting rather more like heroes than scoundrels for a change, discover that the scientists have some sinister goals: there are darker gods than Pan that they hope to create. With the help of some very friendly locals, the two save the day.

Locus, November 2005

“Triceratops Summer”, by Michael Swanwick, a lovely sweet story about an accident at a physics institution that brings a herd of Triceratops into the Vermont countryside. Of course the story isn’t really about dinosaurs, but rather about how to enjoy life and about what lasts or doesn’t last and what matters.

Locus, December 2005

Also in January I liked Michael Swanwick’s “An Episode of Stardust”, a cute scam story set in Faery. It really isn’t anything but “yet another con man story”, but Swanwick uses the Faery setting quite effectively.

Locus, July 2006

From the August Asimov's, a strong adventure tale, set on Venus, from Michael Swanwick: “Tin Marsh”, in which two prospectors learn to hate each other after several months of enforced company. One of them snaps, and starts to chase the other with intent to kill – ironically leading to a valuable strike. Which rather complicates an already complicated situation.

Locus, October 2006

In Michael Swanwick’s “Lord Weary’s Empire” (Asimov’s, December) his continuing character Will is chased into the underground of Babel Tower. In this dark realm he encounters Lord Weary, the leader of a gang of the dispossessed and unfortunate: fey creatures such as haints and wodewoses. Lord Weary plans a revolution, and Will quickly becomes his lieutenant. But their ragtag army has little chance against organized opposition. More important to the story is the nature of Lord Weary himself, a cast down high elf, whose motives are difficult to understand. It’s a cynical but sad story, set in a sad but interesting world.

Locus, January 2007

The Autumn 2006 Postscripts opens with a very fine, and very bawdy, story from Michael Swanwick, “The Bordello in Faerie”, in which a young man in a mining town on the border of Faerie is attracted by the title bordello, only to be very surprised indeed at the nature of the whores there. Inevitably, he becomes addicted …

Locus, February 2008

Michael Swanwick’s “From Babel’s Fall’n Glory We Fled …” (Asimov's, February) is fascinating SF (not related to his fine new novel The Dragons of Babel) about a human embassy to an alien city. The city is attacked, and everyone killed but one human – who escapes in the company of one of the aliens, wearing a spacesuit whose intelligence is based on his now-dead lover. The story deals with economics, with the biology and culture (and economics) of the aliens, and with the dangers of crossing an unfamiliar planet … it is intelligent, full of adventure, original, wry.

Locus, December 2010

In the December Asimov's I also liked Michael Swanwick’s “Libertarian Russia”, another stark look at the future, here one in which Russia’s descent into anarchy is regarded as a libertarian opportunity by the somewhat clueless protagonist – and by some meaner folks;

Locus, August 2011

Best in the August Asimov’s is “For I Have Lain Me Down on the Stone of Loneliness and I’ll Not Get Up Again” may be the longest title yet from Michael Swanwick, who has had a few pretty long titles before. It’s about an American of Irish descent visiting the Old Sod, in a future in which aliens have brought prosperity and peace to Earth – at a cost, no doubt. He’s about to head to the stars when he visits Ireland, and there he falls for a beautiful singer. He’s almost ready to toss his future away and stay with her – and he learns that she’s a member of a terrorist group aimed at pushing the aliens off Earth. And she asks him to help … He’s left with a harsh choice, not to mention the question of whether her love is real or aimed at manipulating him. The resolution makes sense, and the story really does work.

Locus, September 2011

And finally the best recent story at Tor.com is Michael Swanwick’s “The Dala Horse”, in which a little girl from Sweden must travel alone (but with her toy (?) horse) over the mountains. On her trip she encounters a dangerous man, and other forces are compelled to intervene. The story begins with a purposefully fairy tale aura, but to no one’s particular surprise (I trust) it is SF all along, post-Singularity SF, about the choices people – or polities – might make in the context of the classical Vingean Singularity’s arrival. As such, this is by now almost an old story, but Swanwick makes it new again.

Locus, May 2014

As for the novelettes, they are better still. Michael Swanwick's “Of Finest Scarlet Was Her Gown” is a stylish deal with the devil variant – an innocent young woman goes to Hell to try to rescue her father. The Devil, in the form of an alluring Madam, makes a unique deal with her … Over the next year , her innocence is tested and (in the way of things) vanishes, which may or may not serve as a win for the Devil. The depiction of Hell is imaginative and rings true, and the resolution is very nice.

Locus, June 2015

My favorite story this issue comes from Michael Swanwick and Gregory Frost. “Lock Up Your Chickens and Daughters – H’ard and Andy are Come to Town” is about a couple of con men visiting rural Paradise Lake, Texas, in a drought-ridden future. They plan to con the townspeople into thinking they can banish the drought … naturally counting on the unwitting help of the local crooked sheriff. What they don’t expect is the sheriff’s all too precocious daughter roping herself in … The story is very funny, very clever, told perfectly.

Locus, November 2017

Michael Swanwick’s “Starlight Express” (F&SF, September-October) is really good far-future SF, set in Rome. Flaminio is a water carrier, and one day he sees a woman on the platform of the “starlight express”, which seems to be a way to travel to the stars, no longer understood by humans. People sometimes travel through it, but it’s assumed that’s a way to suicide. No one comes back – except here is someone. Flaminio and this woman, Szette, spend much time together, and he learns her strange, sad story, and of course that time must end. An elegant and bittersweet and wise piece.

Locus, December 2017

Michael Swanwick’s “Universe Box” (which was actually published last year, in an edition of 13!) is also fairly breathless fun, in which a thief steals a box with everything anyone could desire in it, and under pressure, has a rather colorless young man named Howard hide it, as the Adversary pursues. Howard has been planning to ask his girlfriend Mimi to marry him, while Mimi has been planning to break up with boring Howard, but the box, and the adventures the thief leads them into, change both their lives. It’s stuffed with wit, with imagination, and with audacity.