Birthday Review: Stories of Esther Friesner

Today is also Esther Friesner's birthday. Friesner is best known for her comic work, and that work is very funny indeed. But she also can be very affecting, as with her two Nebula winning short stories. here's a selection of my reviews of her short fiction, most from Locus but also a review of a story collection, from 3SF.

Locus, April 2002

The April F&SF is very solid.  Several stories are comic – particularly notable being Esther Friesner's novelette "Just Another Cowboy", and Thomas M. Disch's set of brief Biblical retellings, "Torah! Torah! Torah!".  Friesner's story is set on a Texas ranch that has just been inherited by a scrawny boy who was raised in New York.  He and his shrewish aunt come to take possession, and the farmhands are naturally concerned for their futures.  But there is one very special farmhand … It's silly, quite entertaining, fun.

3SF, February 2003

By contrast Esther Friesner, it must be said, is fairly well known – at any rate, she owns two Nebula Awards for short fiction, and she has published any number of novels, many of them comic but some quite dark.  Here's a collection of recent work: Death and the Librarian and Other Stories.  It's an excellent display of her talents.  It includes her two Nebula winners: the title story, a moving piece an old woman who reads to a rather special group of children, and her encounter with death; and "A Birthday", a fierce and thoughtful story about the human costs of abortion – and of anti-abortion laws.  My other favorite here is "Chanoyu", a striking SF story interleaving a Japanese tea ceremony with slow revelations about the artificial person at the center of the story, and about its job harvesting genetic material.

This collection amply displays Friesner's range, with humourous and whimsical stories like "How to Make Unicorn Pie", fierce satire in "'White', said Fred", a highly poetic, magic realist story about the Spanish Revolution in "Love, Crystal, and Stone", an odd, clever, futuristic take on Alice in "A Pig's Tale", even one brand new story, "Ilion" (a September 11 piece).  At times the stories are over-sentimental, at times a joke is belabored, but overall, a fine collection.

Locus, July 2004

The July issue of F&SF is a special "All-American" issue, with all the stories on American themes. For example, Esther Friesner's "Johnny Beansprout" is a hilarious story of an alternative Johnny Appleseed, spreading not only bean sprouts but vegetarian dogma. The kicker is that the story is told from the POV of one of Johnny's adoptive relatives: Sawney Bean, with all that that name implies.

Locus, April 2005

At the March Asimov's, Esther M. Friesner's cover novelette, "The Fraud", features a penniless English gentleman, George Pengallen, investigating what must surely be fraudulent claims of a woman pregnant by a unicorn. But frauds abound – Pengallen himself is a deceptive man, as surely too are his lover and his new patron. Much is made of the fraudulent Mrs. Tufts, who claimed to give birth to rabbits. But somehow the woman's claims ring a but more truly. The conclusion is inevitably sad and cynical.

Locus, October 2006

I didn’t find the second issue of the new online magazine Jim Baen’s Universe quite as involving as the first. Still, it features a very generous helping of stories and articles, many quite entertaining. Esther Friesner’s “Benny Comes Home” is just very funny, about a boy in a post-WWII Jewish family who learns a lot of family secrets when a cousin finally comes home from the war, and another cousin deals with her family insisting she finally marry someone.

Locus, September 2007

Also in the August F&SF ... Esther Friesner is  entertaining, and quite clever, in “At These Prices”, in which a rather greedy hotel guest finds herself fortuitously pledged the service of a brownie. It seems the hotel has inherited the very inexpensive use of a whole group of magical creatures … and a misstep means that Ms. Franklin gets the use of the brownie. Which is unpleasant for him – but his friends are there to help.

In the online world, Helix for Summer features a strong set of stories, all by women. I preferred Esther Friesner’s sharply satirical “A Sacred Institution”, in which a slimy politician marries his dog but runs into trouble when aliens show up who demand that promises like marriage be kept – and who can enforce such demands.

Locus, August 2016

Now to some anthologies. Bryan Thomas Schmidt has a couple new books about, both a mix of reprints and originals. Galactic Games is a collection of sport stories, timed to coincide with the Rio Olympics. In this case the book is mostly originals, often dealing with attempts at interspecies sport, and (not always on purpose) managing to highlight the difficulties of fair completion between entities of a radically different physical makeup. Maybe the best take on that comes from Esther Friesner, in her wickedly funny tale of what happens when a representative of a very warlike species wants to be a cheerleader, “Pompons and Circumstance”.

Birthday Review: Short Fiction of Robert Sheckley

Robert Sheckley was one of the greatest SF writers of short stories, particularly funny short stories, though he was certainly capable of deeper work (even in the funny stories.) I read through basically all of his story collections a quarter century or so back, a very rewarding effort.His novels were never as good as his short fiction, but they were still reliably enjoyable.  He was born in 1928 and died in 2005, after falling ill while visiting Russia. He was named SFWA Author Emeritus in 2001, and award that was controversial in some quarters, because it was often regarded as a pat on the back for an accomplished long-time writer who "wasn't good enough for Grand Master status". Sheckley, it was felt (and I agree) was potentially a Grand Master, if perhaps not a slam dunk case, so the Emeritus designation seemed almost an insult, though Sheckley by all accounts was quite happy to be so honored.

What follows is what I've written about his short fiction, a few reviews of late stories in Locus, plus a number taken from my "retro-reviews" of 1950s magazines. Alas, none of the stories I mention are among his best, such as, say, the fairly early "Specialist" or the much later "Pas de Trois of the Chef, the Waiter, and the Customer".

Astounding, March 1953

The only short story is Robert Sheckley's "Fool's Mate" (4800 words), in which two equally matched space fleets confront each other. It seems their computers have determined that the alien fleet has a tiny positional advantage which nearly guarantees victory -- but that neither fleet can attack since the act of attacking will ruin their position and guarantee failure. The standoff is psychologically devastating, until a man comes up with an idea -- use one of the gunnery officers who has been driven insane to control attack strategy. You see, the other side's computer will never be able to figure out a madman ... Cute, I suppose, but not terribly believable.

Science Fiction Stories, 1953

Robert Sheckley's "Ask a Foolish Question" (3600 words) concerns representatives of several different races finding a machine built by an ancient race called "The Answerer". The Answerer will answer any question -- but can lesser races ask a sensible enough question and understand the answer?

Space Science Fiction, September 1953

Robert Sheckley's "The Hour of Battle" (2200 words) is another human/alien war story, with a nasty twist. Humans have encountered evil telepathic aliens, who can take over people's minds and make them do anything. They have developed a telepathy detector, and a series of ships guard the Solar System, ready to destroy the aliens at the first sign of telepathic probing. But perhaps they haven't quite thought this through ... though what hope there really could be in such a situation I can't see.

Galaxy, August 1954

The short stories are "Subsistence Level", by Finn O'Donnevan (4500 words); ... "Finn O'Donnevan" is really Robert Sheckley. I'm not sure why he used a pseudonym for "Subsistence Level", which is fairly characteristic of his work of the time, though not one of his best stories. A young couple move to the asteroids to be pioneers, and they must live difficult pioneer lives: 5 hour work days!, plain eight course meals prepared by household robots, etc. Minor but acceptable.

If, September 1954

Robert Sheckley's "The Battle" (2000 words) extrapolates today's trends toward increasing automation of warfare to the Battle of Armageddon. OK, but mostly a punchline story.

Galaxy, October 1954

The short stories include Robert Sheckley's "Ghost V" (5300 words), the first (chronologically) AAA Ace Planet Decontamination Story. This is more straightforward than most Sheckley. The AAA Ace guys must solve the mystery of a planet where two groups of explorers have each died violently, despite no evidence of dangerous creatures on the planet. The solution is OK, but not great.

Galaxy, November 1954

Robert Sheckley's "The Laxian Key" (3500 words) is a AAA Ace story. Arnold's latest get-rich-quick idea is a "Free Producer", which can make endless supplies of something for nothing. Problem is, the something isn't worth much! It's mostly a joke story, with no real resolution, but it's pretty funny.

Galaxy, July 1955

Robert Sheckley's "Deadhead" (3000 words) is about a struggling scientific outpost on Mars, inhabited only by Ph.D.'s who are forced to do all the ordinary work, too. Every so often a stowaway "deadheads" to Mars, trying to escape tiresome Earth. The "deadhead" seems a very useful person, but regulations say he must be sent directly home. But the question is -- how did he get to Mars after all? The answer is a bit cute -- worth 3000 words, I guess, but nothing special.

Locus, September 2003

Weird Tales for July-August features a story by the wonderful Robert Sheckley: "The Tales of Zanthias". Zanthias is a leader of an unusual town of misfits, a town surrounded by monsters such as zombies, calibans, witches, ghosts, all of which he tries to keep away. One morning his wife is missing, and he looks for her -- and finds that he himself has a secret.

Locus, January 2004

Mike Resnick's latest DAW anthology reverses the conceit of an earlier book: this time we have Men Writing Science Fiction as Women. As with the previous book, the results are mixed. ... Also good is Robert Sheckley's "A Tale of the Oroi", a pleasant concoction of fantasy and SF in which a fairy from Ancient Greece encounters a time traveler from the 21st Century, with slyly presented, unexpected, results.

Best SF Short Fiction of All Time

I've been asked, a few times, to produce lists of my favorite short science fiction stories. I did that once (at least) on rec.arts.sf.written, and I did it for the Locus All Centuries poll. And my answer will probably change the next time I think about it seriously. But, just for documentation's sake, I wanted to record my answers from before.

First, here's an off the top of my head answer I gave on rec.arts.sf.written (gosh how I miss that community in its Golden Age!) in December 1999. The original question was "Ten Best Novelettes" (by which the poster (Jerry Friedman) meant "long stories" -- roughly speaking, novelettes and novellas.) Naturally I added short stories too.

Here's what I posted.

__

Here's my list, which extends to 12 authors and 14 stories (so sue me!):

(I've put it in my best guess at chronological order of publication)

"... and Now the News" by Theodore Sturgeon
"The Dead Past" by Isaac Asimov
"Flowers for Algernon" by Daniel Keyes
"The Sources of the Nile" by Avram Davidson
"Starfog" by Poul Anderson
"Nine Lives" and "The Stars Below" by Ursula K. Le Guin
"The Second Inquisition" by Joanna Russ
"Green Mars" by Kim Stanley Robinson
"The Last of the Winnebagos" and "Fire Watch" by Connie Willis
"The Originist" by Orson Scott Card
"Wang's Carpets" by Greg Egan
"The Ziggurat" by Gene Wolfe

And a list for short stories (10 authors, 12 stories):

"Scanners Live in Vain" by Cordwainer Smith
"Fondly Fahrenheit" by Alfred Bester
"The Man Who Came Early" by Poul Anderson
"The Man Who Lost the Sea" by "A Saucer of Loneliness" by Theodore
Sturgeon
"A Rose for Ecclesiastes" by Roger Zelazny
"Light of Other Days" by Bob Shaw
"The Milk of Paradise" and "The Last Flight of Dr. Ain" by James
Tiptree, Jr.
"The Marvelous Brass Chess-Playing Automaton" by Gene Wolfe
"Out of All them Bright Stars" by Nancy Kress
"New Rose Hotel" by William Gibson

Oh, and a list of honorable mentions (this is so hard!): "The Star" by Clarke, "Nobody's Home" by Russ, "Rat" and "Think Like a Dinosaur" by James Patrick Kelly, "E for Effort" by T. L. Sherred, "The Star Pit" by Samuel R. Delany, "Imaginary Countries" and "Winter's King" by Ursula K. Le Guin, "The Moon Moth" by Jack Vance, "Wall of Crystal, Eye of Night" by Budrys, "The Crystal Spheres" by Brin, "The Other Dead Man" and "How the Whip Came Back" and "Seven American Nights" and etc. by Wolfe, "The Only Neat Thing to Do" and "And I Awoke and Found Me Here on the Cold Hill's Side" and etc. by Tiptree, "Why I Left Harry's All-night Hamburgers" by Watt-Evans, "Starship Day" by Ian R. MacLeod, "Bloodchild" by Octavia Butler, "All My Darling Daughters" and "At the Rialto" and "Schwarzchild Radius" by Willis, "Stairs" by Neal Barrett, Jr., "Great Work of Time" by John Crowley, "An Infinite Summer" by Christopher Priest, "Inconstant Moon" by Larry Niven.

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And for the Locus All Centuries Poll, here's my submission, from 2012 for stuff through 2010: 

The Locus All Centuries Poll -- best SF/Fantasy novels and short fiction of the 20th and 21st centuries (separately) is ending just about now. Here's my votes (note that they change over time, and the order is random, and there are stories I missed!)


20th Century Novella:
1: "Story of Your Life", Ted Chiang

2: "Great Work of Time", John Crowley

3: "Green Mars", Kim Stanley Robinson

4: "The Blabber", Vernor Vinge

5: "Seven American Nights", Gene Wolfe

6: "The Star Pit", Samuel R. Delany

7: "The Last of the Winnebagos", Connie Willis

8: "E for Effort", T. L. Sherred

9: "The Originist", Orson Scott Card

10: "The Gold at the Starbow's End", Frederik Pohl

20th Century Novelette:
1: "Wang's Carpets", Greg Egan

2: "Fondly Fahrenheit", Alfred Bester

3: "The Second Inquisition", Joanna Russ

4: "The Sources of the Nile", Avram Davidson

5: "A Rose for Ecclesiastes", Roger Zelazny

6: "Starfog", Poul Anderson

7: "An Infinite Summer", Christopher Priest

8: "Nine Lives", Ursula K. Le Guin

9: "The Stars Below", Ursula K. Le Guin

10: "Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius", Jorge Luis Borges

20th Century Short Story:
1: "Out of All Them Bright Stars", Nancy Kress

2: "The Man Who Lost the Sea", Theodore Sturgeon

3: "The Milk of Paradise", James Tiptree, Jr.

4: "Nobody's Home", Joanna Russ

5: "Light of Other Days", Bob Shaw

6: "Day Million", Frederik Pohl

7: "New Rose Hotel", William Gibson

8: "The Last Flight of Dr. Ain", James Tiptree, Jr.

9: "The Man Who Came Early", Poul Anderson

10: "Schwartz Between the Galaxies", Robert Silverberg

21st Century SF Novel:
1: Cloud Atlas, David Mitchell

2: The Yiddish Policemen's Union, Michael Chabon

3: The Sky So Big and Black, John Barnes

4: Spin, Robert Charles Wilson

5: Ares Express, Ian McDonald

21st Century Fantasy Novel:
1: Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, Susannah Clarke

2: Lavinia, Ursula K. Le Guin

3: The Light Ages, Ian R. MacLeod

4: The Name of the Wind, Patrick Rothfuss

5: The City and the City, China Mieville

21st Century Novella:
1: "New Light on the Drake Equation", Ian R. MacLeod

2: "Magic for Beginners", Kelly Link

3: "A Billion Eves", Robert Reed

4: "The Engines of Desire", William Barton

5: "The Tear", Ian McDonald

21st Century Novelette:
1: "The Voluntary State", Christopher Rowe

2: "The People of Sand and Slag", Paolo Bacigalupi

3: "Lull", Kelly Link

4: "The Path of the Transgressor", by Tom Purdom

5: "Finisterra", by David Moles

21st Century Short Story:
1: "The House Beyond Your Sky", Benjamin Rosenbaum

2: "Three Days of Rain", Holly Phillips

3: "Pip and the Fairies", Theodora Goss

4: "More Adventures on Other Planets", Michael Cassutt

5: "Exhalation", Ted Chiang

Birthday Review: Stories of Matthew Johnson

Today is Canadian writer Matthew Johnson's birthday. He has published a couple of dozen stories, mostly in the decade between 2005 and 2014. I haven't seen a story since then -- I think he's been working on a novel. I see that there is a new story in a 2019 anthology -- I hope that means more are coming. I think Matthew is outstanding -- I've used a couple of his stories in my books, and I've enjoyed many more of them.

Locus, September 2006

Fantasy Magazine in its fourth issue continues to supply strong literary-oriented fantasy and slipstream. This time around I really liked Matthew Johnson’s “Irregular Verbs”, about a people supernally skilled in language, whose language is constantly changing, so that small groups, even couples, quickly evolve individual languages. One man loses his wife, and with it their shared language: a loss he cannot bear. So, against tradition, he tries to preserve it, in an unusual way. I though the story both moving and clever: reminiscent, actually, of many of the stories in Ursula Le Guin’s Changing Planes. Johnson distinguishes himself again with “Outside Chance” in the Summer On Spec, a convoluted tale of time travelers monitoring possible futures in an attempt to avoid disasters.

Locus, December 2006

There are three more strong pieces in December at Strange Horizons. ... Matthew Johnson’s “Heroic Measures”, which depicts an old woman (clearly, though never named, Lois Lane) and a very ill old man (clearly Superman, unable to die because of his powers, but otherwise infirm). Particularly moving, in an ironic way, is an encounter with another old man, significantly bald. Part of the fun of this of course is recognizing these familiar characters – but beyond that simple fun the story gains real power in making these characters, and their senescence, wholly believable.

Locus, February 2007

the other prize story at the March Asimov’s  is “Public Safety”, by Matthew Johnson, a fascinating and original alternate history set in a Nouvelle Orleans under French control, with France evidently still ruled by a Revolutionary government (including of course the Committee of Public Safety). The government insists on perfect rationality. The narrator is a part-Black policeman, assigned to what seem to be irrational crimes. In this case a threat has been transmitted – “She dies on the thirteenth” – which may be linked to a series of random bombings. He needs to find who the threatened “she” is, to begin with – and, it turns out, to end with. Johnson’s point is ultimately political, but reached via description of a colorful setting, and an interesting plot and main character. Very nice.

Locus, May 2007

The Winter On Spec has appeared – another solid issue of this now quite venerable magazine. My favorite story was the opener, Matthew Johnson’s “Lifebuoy”, which has a pretty neat central idea: cops are issued a “lifebuoy”, which allows them to abort an operation for ten minutes after it begins and return in time to the start. Karen is a detective who is in charge of a situation in which that fails – the ten minutes expire, and then her partner is killed. She is racked with guilt, but then comes the obvious question – why only ten minutes? Which starts to raise more questions, some of which are addressed as her investigations begin to cause problems for her.

Locus, August 2008

The first story at the August Asimov’s, Matthew Johnson’s “Lagos”, fits quite squarely within the constraints of the Mundane Manifesto. Safrat is a Nigerian woman who works as a teleoperator of remote equipment, such as vacuum cleaners for rich people. But she finds out that the telepresence network is being used for less savory reasons. The SFnal backgrounding of the story, even including the way Johnson parallels it with tribal magic, didn’t really catch fire for me, but the believable portrayal of the world’s poor, yet again pawns in the wealthier world’s system, was effective – and it seems very much a concern of much so-called Mundane SF.

Locus, December 2010

The December Fantasy Magazine features a strong story from Matthew Johnson, “Holdfast”. The setting is somewhat Norse in flavor. Irrel is a farmer, with a wife, a young son, and a daughter who wants to marry the young man staying with them, and perhaps move to the city. There are dragons, and magic, and war, and Irrel knows some magic, farm magic, which some denigrate. But the story – very quietly told – gently hints that his magic may be greater than many suspect – in a quiet, homebound way.

Locus, May 2014

“Rules of Engagement”, by Matthew Johnson (Asimov's, April-May), is a contemporary war story, about a trio of young soldiers who have been rendered medically unfit for active duty. The story is told on two threads … one covering a critical event during their service in Yemen, the other dealing with their various difficulties adapting to life back in the States. The Sfnal core is the brain adaptation they underwent, which includes behaviorally reinforced restrictions on use of force, plus ways around that … and which might, the story suggests, impact their behavior even when no longer active.

Birthday Review: Bad News, plus four obscure SF stories, by Donald Westlake

Donald Westlake was born July 12, 1933, and died on the last day of 2008. He was one of the great crime writers of the last half of the 20th Century, particularly for his comic crime novels, though he was also excellent in darker works. My favorite Westlake books were his hilarious Dortmunder novels. In his memory, on what would have been his 86th birthday, here's a look at one of his later Dortmunder novels, plus reviews of four early science fiction stories. (He was a modestly prolific SF writer early in his career, though usually not a very good one, until he left the genre rather publically, via an essay in the great fanzine Xero, blaming John Campbell for his disgust with SF.)

Bad News, by Donald Westlake

A better vacation read might have been Donald Westlake's latest Dortmunder book, Bad News.  It's very fast moving, very funny, very clever, and very much a typical Dortmunder book, which is, dare I say, good news.  As those who've read previous books in the series know, the most common trope of the Dortmunder books is for Dortmunder and his gang to get involved in a crime which ends up having to be, in some sense, repeated, with different permutations, several times.  For example, in the very first one, The Hot Rock, they had to steal the same jewel several times. 

In this book, after the usual opening scene, John Dortmunder hilariously failing to get caught while failing to successfully complete a robbery, he finds himself approached by Andy Kelp with a unorthodox (for them) proposal. Andy has been hired by somebody he met on the Internet (Andy is always trying new technology, which Dortmunder hates) to help out in a certain enterprise -- they want them to dig up a grave and rebury a different body in it.  This isn't much to Dortmunder's liking, but the price seems fateful -- exactly the amount of money he had expected to realize from the stolen goods he was forced to leave behind the previous night.  After Andy and John complete the body switch, they foil the attempt by the villains Fitzroy and Irwin to cheat (permanently) their new helpers, and they get interested in a) figuring out what's really going on, and b) getting themselves a much bigger cut.  With the help of Tiny Bulcher, they are soon involved in the scheme, which I won't detail here because finding out is much of the fun. Also involved are Little Feather, an Indian from out West, formerly a Las Vegas showgirl, and their target is an Indian-operated casino in Upstate New York.  (Surprisingly many of the more recent Dortmunder books end up partly set in Upstate New York -- it looks like Westlake may have moved there, which might explain it.)  It's no surprise that the crooked casino owners have their own ideas, which involve several hilarious further iterations of the original "crime". 

It's all very funny stuff, and the various schemes are pretty much as clever as usual, though depending just a bit on sheer luck.  Wholly worth reading, as indeed is the entire series.  I'd put this particular entry somewhere in the middle range of the Dortmunder books, which means well in the upper range of books in general.

Science Fiction Stories, May 1960

"Travellers Far and Wee", by Donald Westlake, is also slight, a tolerable little thing about people apparently charged with driving around New York and New Jersey forever, with the duty of being those annoying drivers we all deal with.

Amazing, March 1961

Donald Westlake, of course, became a very famous crime writer, under his own name and his most popular pseudonym, Richard Stark. But early in his career he wrote a lot of SF, before breaking with the field, and more explicitly, John Campbell, in an essay in the fanzine Xero.

Westlake was never as good an SF writer as he was a crime writer. (Though who can say what he might have done later in his career had he stuck with SF. He did write a couple of SF/F novels later on.) “The Risk Profession” is probably my favorite Westlake SF story of those I’ve read, and likely it’s not a coincidence that it’s a crime story. Ged Stanton is a fraud investigator for an insurance company. He’s sent out to the asteroids to find a way the company can avoid paying a “retirement plan” to a asteroid prospector. The plans are issued with the intent that most of the plan members will die too soon to collect.

Stanton ends up on the rock where the claimant’s partner is preparing to stake a big claim – it seems the two of them hit it big, but the one man died in an accident before he could collect his money – but not before he could ask for a refund of his Retirement Plan, figuring he wouldn’t need it any more. Obviously, something is fishy – and Stanton indeed figures it out (hey, I figured it out too, from the start) – but there are some neat tricks in the whole setup, and a nice closing twist.

If, September 1961

The other novelette is by Donald Westlake, presumably shortly before his stormy departure from SF writing. (It is my view that Westlake's departure from the field was as much due to his not really being a very good SF writer (and a truly wonderful crime writer) than to the hidebound nature of SF and its editors, as he claimed.) "Call Him Nemesis" (10K) is amusing enough. A series of crimes are averted by mysterious means, linked by odd temperature fluctuations and the association of the word "Scorpion". Psi is involved, but the person doing it is the point of the story, and it's nicely revealed.

Amazing, November 1961

The cover story is a novelet, "Meteor Strike!", by Donald E. Westlake (12500 words). Westlake, who was born in 1933 and died in 2008, was one of the great crime fiction writers of our time. I am particularly fond of his comic capers featuring the thief John Dortmunder. Others plump for his darker novels about a criminal named Parker, written as by Richard Stark. Early in his career, Westlake published a fair amount of Science Fiction, before bidding a bitter farewell to the field in a rant published in the great fanzine Xero. Westlake complained about SF's conservatism, and particularly about John Campbell. Alas, I feel his argument -- which had some merit -- loses some force simply because, truth be told, Westlake was a pretty mediocre SF writer.

That said, I did rather enjoy the last Westlake SF story I read, "The Risk Profession" (Amazing, March 1961). But it was in part a crime caper piece, playing to his strength. "Meteor Strike!" is pretty dire. It's about a regular Earth to Moon transportation system, particularly a space station en route, and a regular delivery of something important to the lonely station orbiting the Moon. This particular flight includes three new spacemen, one of them a rather truculent young man, embittered by his flunking out of MIT. He's pushed himself to success ever since, but at the cost of being a prime jerk. This behaviour continues on this trip. So when a meteor unconvincingly hits the Earth orbiting space station (and embeds itself in its skin!), right where the precious cargo is stored, somehow this rookie is chose to assist in the repair operation. He does OK, of course, after some bad spots. And the suspense over the "cargo" is finally relieved -- it's entertainment tapes. Sigh. This is painfully earnest "hard" SF, overly complicated in a way to make it certain that many details will be embarrassingly wrong; and with a really badly strained character story behind it. You can see Westlake working hard to make his story serious -- to make the science plausible and the characters three-dimensional. But I think he missed the boat on both fronts. As I've said before, Westlake's decision to concentrate on crime fiction was definitely the right one.

Birthday review: Stories of Karen Russell

Today is Karen Russell's birthday. Russell is an exceptional writer, not associated with in-genre SF/Fantasy, but a significant amount of her work is definitely fantastika. I had hoped to use her story "Orange World" in this year's best of the year volume, but we couldn't get rights, likely because it's the title story of her new collection. She should have won the Pulitzer for her 2011 novel Swamplandia!, but instead of given it to a fantistacalish novel the committee decided to give no award that year. (The other finalists were an unfinished posthumous novel, and a novella that had first been published several years before. It was an appalling decision.) Normally I only do these Birthday reviews if I have at least five stories ... but I should have reviewed "The Bog Girl" a few years ago (I didn't because it's kind of ambiguously fantastical), and in the upcoming August issue of Locus, I do have a review of a very fine new story from the last issue of Tin House, "The Gondoliers". So, close enough for government work. Anyway, SF/F readers should be seeking out Russell's work. Here are four really good places to start:

Locus, March 2008

Zoetrope All-Story features a sure enough no-fooling vampire story, “Vampires in the Lemon Grove” by Karen Russell, in the Winter 2007 issue. Two aging vampires rusticate in an Italian lemon grove. The man tells us his history, especially his lust for blood and the associated guilt, and his love for his companion – while she spends more and more time as a bat. The story is effectively literary: well-written, and character-driven, but it takes the vampire tropes seriously, and uses them in service of its character-based aims.

Locus, March 2013

The new Tin House has several stories in a fantastical vein, of which the best is a horrifying Karen Russell story, “Reeling for the Empire”, set in late 19th Century Japan, about women taken from their families to work in a silk producing factory – only to learn that their work involves producing the silk themselves, after drinking a special tea that changes them forever.

Locus, June 2014

One story that has got a lot of attention in the wider literary world (partly for its venue: its a digital only release from a new outlet called Atavist Books) is Sleep Donation, by Karen Russell. It deserves the attention on its own merits. A plague has swept the Americas – people are suddenly unable to sleep, leading inevitably to death. A treatment is discovered: those who can still sleep can donate their sleep to those who need it. Trish Edgewater is a volunteer for a “sleep bank”, using the story of her older sister, one of the first victims, to motivate new donors in to signing up. Complications arise – one of Trish's “clients”, a young baby, turns out to have particularly effective donations, which even sometimes cure insomniacs, but her father is concerned about the exploitation of his child. Another donor's sleep is infected with a terrible nightmare that drives some people to become “elective insomniacs”.  Trish herself wonders about her exploitation of her sister's story. The fundamental idea is in places preposterous, but Russell's extrapolations of the social impact are dead on, and the story examines our disaster-driven culture, perhaps our general “sleeplessness”, and the power of dreams very nicely.

Locus, August 2018

The New Yorker’s annual Fiction issue, themed Childhood, includes a striking Karen Russell story, “Orange World”. Like many stories from mainstream sources, it is using its fantastical material in service of a very contemporary story – the narrator is a woman pregnant for the first time, rather older than most first time mothers, and she is worried about her pregnancy, and her baby, and so she’ll do anything to keep him safe, including making a deal with a devil. Which is a real devil (if not THE devil), and preys on her horribly, until she finds a group for new mothers, which includes some women who have dealt with similar creatures. It’s funny and scary and dead honest – strong work from one of the best writers to regularly straddle genre borderlines.

Birthday Review: Capsules on some of Robert A. Heinlein's juveniles

Birthday Review: Capsules on some of Robert A. Heinlein's juveniles

Robert Heinlein was born 112 years ago today, in my state (Missouri.) A couple of decades ago I decided to reread (or, in many cases, read for the first time) all his so-called "juveniles". I found that effort quite rewarding -- I think they held up very well. So, here's a selection of what I wrote back then -- all very short looks -- about some of those juveniles (I didn't manage to write about all of them.) I will say, in summary sort of, that my favorite on that reread was Citizen of the Galaxy.

Let me add, while I'm here, a strong recommendation for Farah Mendlesohn's The Pleasant Profession of Robert A. Heinlein, a critical survey of all of his work. Farah treats his writing from the perspective of multiple different themes, so that she revisits different stories multiple times. Her views strike me as very intelligent, very provocative. She provides a necessary corrective to both his critics on the left, and his adulators on the right. For me, she was particularly useful on the late novels, acknowledging their weaknesses but sensibly highlighting both what some of them did right (fitfully), and, more importantly, illuminating how the thematic aspects of the late novels reflect his lifelong concerns. Definitely the best book about science fiction I've read in 2019.

Rocket Ship Galileo

The first, and regarded by many as the worst, of RAH's juveniles.  I can see why, but it's still pretty enjoyable.  Some far-fetched stuff, like the spaceship in a back yard business (and the estimate of what R&D for the first moon flight would cost: 1.5 million dollars), also the ancient race on the moon thing. Not to mention Nazis.  But it's still a good read.

Between Planets

A half-Venusian, half-Earthling boy gets caught up in the Venusian revolution. Enjoyable.  As with so much Heinlein (or, really SF of that time period!), the ending is seriously rushed.

Red Planet

A young man and his semi-intelligent Martian "pet" go to the "Company" school, and discover that the "Company" doesn't really have the best interests of the colonists at heart. One of many RAH depictions of Mars, this one seems more Leigh Brackett-like than the others. One of the better plotted juveniles, I think. I liked this quite a lot, really.

Space Cadet

A boy joins the Space Patrol, and his experiences as a "Cadet" are detailed.  As a novel, rather episodic. But generally fun, and with plenty of Heinleinian philosophy underlying his concept of the duties of the Space Patrol. (Is the Mars briefly mentioned in this one the same as the Mars of Red Planet? It can't be exactly the same, because the political situation seems very different.  But his (very brief) description of the Martians seemed similar.)

Tunnel in the Sky 

This features a group of students sent through a matter transmitter gate to a frontier planet for a "survival test". But the gate collapses, and they are marooned there. To an extent, it's like a response to Lord of the Flies. It's a pretty good story, structured better than many of RAH's novels.  It also features one of his black heroes, though the evidence for that is vague (probably on purpose).  The awful Darrell Sweet cover muffs it, of course.

Starman Jones

I think this one of the best in the series.  This features a teenage boy who stows away on board a starship, and works his way from stable boy to Captain.  It's episodic, like many of these books, but very enjoyable.  The depiction of the use of computers in navigation is, well, interesting (says someone who writes navigation software).  Both books share the odd feature of most of Heinlein's juveniles, the shying away from love interests.  Obvious love interest candidates are dangled before the reader, but nothing ever happens (to his protagonists, that is).  Even when his protagonists, in the juveniles, do marry, it's after oddly truncated romances: see Time for the Stars for a perfect example.

Another interesting feature of the juveniles is the range, throughout the books, of future Earth societies depicted.  Heinlein doesn't copy himself at all, I think, in this area.  The details are rarely foregrounded, but the background hints are neat.

Time for the Stars 

An odd duck, really.  Save maybe for the revised version of Podkayne of Mars, rather the saddest of the juvies (that I've read).  It's uneven, but some of what RAH is trying to pull off here is very ambitious.  The careful contrast of the characters of Tom and Pat makes this much more a novel of character than usual for Heinlein.  I don't think he quite succeeds, but still a very worthwhile effort.  (The above is probably gibberish to someone not familiar with the plot of Time for the Stars: basically, the central conceit is that some identical twins (and occasionally some other people) have telepathic links, which transmit at near infinite speed.  This makes them naturals for communication pairs, one to accompany a slower than light starship to new planets, the other to stay at home and receive transmissions.  Tom and Pat are one such pair: the further twist, of course, is time dilation, so that the twin who travels with the starship ages very little, while the other twin grows old.  That's pretty much the whole story, though RAH includes plenty of action (and tragedy), and even a non-convincing love affair at the end.)

Citizen of the Galaxy

Citizen is very enjoyable, the story of Thorby, a slave who is bought by an old beggar who turns out to be much more than it seems: after the old man’s death, Thorby spends some time with the Free Traders, a fascinatingly sketched spaceship based society, before eventually finding his true family, which naturally enough is a fabulously rich and powerful clan on Earth.  It’s a fun read, with some very interesting sociological speculation: the plot is a bit coincidence-driven, however, and things come too easily to Thorby (by which I don't mean he doesn't face much hardship and difficulty: he does, but (especially right at the end) he seems almost magically talented enough in just the right areas to succeed against significant odds.)

Have Space Suit, Will Travel

High school kid wins a derelict spacesuit in a contest, refurbishes it, and ends up kidnapped by aliens, taken to the moon and points beyond, and eventually facing a crisis which may mean the end of humanity. And good solid Heinleinish fun/instruction along the way. Also features one of his best heroines.