Birthday Review: Dragon Venom, by Lawrence Watt-Evans

Today is Lawrence Watt-Evans' birthday. Lawrence has written a ton of very enjoyable fantasy, and a fair amount of pretty cool SF as well. I reviewed A Young Man Without Magic on this date last year ... one of my real favorites among his books, alas, first in a series that was aborted when his publisher abandoned it. Today I review another book, the concluding book in a satisfying series that, to say true, I had higher hopes for after the first book.

Dragon Venom is the conclusion to Lawrence Watt-Evans' fantasy trilogy that began with Dragon Weather (1999) and continued with The Dragon Society (2001). Overall I think the trilogy well worth reading. I will say, though, that I thought the first book clearly the best. This conclusion is a satisfactory finish to the series, resolving the main issues quite well, leaving open potential further stories in the world but leaving no requirement whatsoever for a continuation. The idea that resolve the main conflict is logical and convincing (in context), though I did think the protagonist arrived at his solution a bit easily, in some ways. The main problem with this book is that the action is a little disjointed, and that while there are new ideas introduced there is nothing as generally intriguing as the introduction of the whole situation in book 1. Also, the nature of the hero, albeit well displayed, is such as to leach some emotional satisfaction from his success.

As the book opens the hero, Arlian, is leading a group into a dragon cave to exterminate four more dragons, in his continuing quest to find and kill every dragon in the world. For Arlian is a dragonheart, made so by ingesting a mixture of dragon venom and human blood while he witnessed dragons destroying his boyhood village. Dragonhearts live for 1000 years, and have unnatural strength, charisma, and healing ability. But at the end of their life they give "birth", in a way, to a dragon that has been developing in their hearts for all this time. Also, they are unable to feel human emotions very strongly -- love and joy are closed off to them. In the previous books, Arlian discovered a way to kill dragons, and a way to remove the taint of the dragon from dragonhearts. Now, under the sponsorship of the ruler of the Lands of Man, the Duke of Manfort, he is tracking down dragons based on records of destroyed villages, hoping to have himself cleansed of his taint, along with every other dragonheart, once his quest is complete.

But there are problems. For one thing, there are hints that some of the dragons are wise to Arlian's quest, and are hiding themselves more securely. For another, most of the other dragonhearts are loath to abandon their long lifespan, and they have defied the Duke and moved to another city, and begun to cooperate with the dragons. Thirdly, the dragons, enraged by Arlian's actions, have taken to attacking many more villages than previously, despite Arlian's attempt to spread the knowledge of how to kill dragons, and the equipment to do so, as widely as possible. And finally, worst of all, it appears that Wild Magic from beyond the Lands of Men is encroaching on these lands -- it seems that the dragons, which are consist of tightly-bound magic, by their very existence shielded the Lands of Men from the Wild Magic. And the fewer dragons there are, the less shielding.

This last problem forces the Duke of Manfort to order Arlian to cease his attacks on dragons. Arlian, frustrated, decides to head to the border areas and beyond, in hopes of learning something about the wild magic. There he encounters wizards and other, stranger, magical creatures, and begins to formulate some ideas about the nature of magic. Back home he begins some rather controversial experiments, hoping to find a way to contain magic in a more benign form than dragons, while retaining the shielding aspects. But the dragons, and their representatives, the rogue dragonhearts, are not about to take this lightly ...

The solution is fairly logical, and pretty well set up in the overall trilogy. As I suggested, I did feel that perhaps Arlian came upon it just a bit conveniently. Also, his experiments are, er, ethically dicey, to say the least -- it all makes sense in the context of the books, but it does give one pause. So, a book I enjoyed, part of a trilogy which is certainly worth reading -- but not a brilliant work.

Birthday Review: The Course of the Heart, by M. John Harrison

Birthday Review: The Course of the Heart, by M. John Harrison

a review by Rich Horton

For M. John Harrison's birthday today I've resurrected this review which I wrote for my SFF Net newsgroup almost exactly 15 years ago, in July of 2004.

(Cover by David Lloyd)

The Course of the Heart is a lovely book, first published in 1992, but perhaps emblematic of Harrison's relative commercial obscurity it didn't get an American edition until 2004.

Actually, here's what I wrote in introducing my post, which covered three prominent UK writers of fantastika who had established reputations outside the SF/F field:

Finally, Harrison, in my opinion the best of these three writers, is by far the least successful commercially. He established a mild reputation in the SF field in the early 70s with his first few novels, particularly several novels and stories set in an "industrial fantasy" world based around the city of Viriconium (or Uraconium, or Vira Con, or ... its name was as ambiguous as its nature). Best known of these is The Pastel City, which I discovered at random in the mid-70s and quite loved. Harrison's later novels, however, sometimes failed to find a US publisher. To my knowledge, Climbers has never been published in the US, and The Course of the Heart, from 1992, is only now being published here by the small press Night Shade Books. (His later novels Signs of Life (1997) and Light (2003) [plus its later sequels], did receive fairly timely US editions.) Harrison's "mainstream reputation" is based more on his very "literary" instincts, though most of his work is either outright SF or slipstream (or, in a term Harrison coined himself, "New Weird"). I believe Climbers may be pure mainstream (it is the only one of his novels I haven't read). The Course of the Heart has strong fantastical elements, but a very mainstream (or "literary") feel -- a bit reminiscent, perhaps, of Angela Carter.

I'm going to gloss what I wrote a bit in light of the 15 intervening years. First, I probably overstated Harrison's "obscurity" -- while it's undeniable that he's less prominent than Banks or Pratchett (both of whom, sadly, died fairly young within the past several years,) he's not "obscure", though the success of his trilogy beginning with Light certainly expanded his reputation, particularly with the SF field. Secondarily, I've become uneasy with the lazy habit I had back then of categorizing books as "literary" instead of "SF-ish", though Harrison is a writer with a broader readership in "literary" circles than many SF writers.

Anyway, on to The Course of the Heart. The narrator had apparently completed some mysterious magical act with two other young people during his university years. This act is never revealed (somewhat frustratingly) but it involved contact with another "plane of existence" (my words) called the Pleroma. It wasn't successful, and it seems to have mentally damaged the other two people: Lucas Medlar and Pam Stuyvesant. The narrator has perhaps (or not?) escaped unscathed. Lucas and Pam marry, but can never really settle, and eventually divorce. Pam is an epileptic, always difficult, and eventually gets cancer.

The story winds back and forth in time. The narrator spends some time involved with the sinister older man, Yaxley, who initiated the original magical experiment, and who is trying further experiments, including a vile act involving incest. None of the magic really seems to work, but it all seems to involve contact with incomprehensible things. The narrator also keeps in touch with Pam and Lucas, even after they divorce. His own life is conventional -- an ordinary, fairly successful, job; a sexy wife, a daughter. Things finally come to a head with Pam's cancer, and her decline and death.

Intertwined with all this is a travel narrative cum history of an imaginary Eastern European country. This is supposedly written by one "Michael Ashman", but we soon gather that this is all an invention of Lucas Medlar, with some degree of cooperation from Pam. This country is perhaps called "the Coeur" -- the Heart -- and it seems somehow connected with the Pleroma. It was destroyed by invasion, but in Lucas's conception, the Empress left descendants, who continued to carry some essence of the Coeur, suppressed for the most part. Eventually leading to -- of course -- Pam Stuyvesant. What does all this mean? I am not sure, but it rewards thinking about. I should add that the fictional Michael Ashman spent time in Czechoslovakia just prior to World War II, and patronized a Tarot-telling Gypsy whore, who surely died in a concentration camp -- thus bringing the central 20th century atrocity to the table. I don't at all know what to make of the novel, but it is beautifully written, very evocative, intriguing, erotic, sad -- a striking work.

Ace Double Reviews, 114: Daybreak -- 2250 A.D., by Andre Norton/Beyond Earth's Gates, by Lewis Padgett and C. L. Moore

Ace Double Reviews, 114: Daybreak -- 2250 A.D., by Andre Norton/Beyond Earth's Gates, by Lewis Padgett and C. L. Moore (#D-69, 1954, 35 cents)

a review by Rich Horton

(Covers by Harry Barton and ?)

Here's an Ace Double pairing what should have been the first two women to become SFWA Grand Masters. Alas, C. L. Moore's family (that of her second husband, that is), who were apparently quite hostile to science fiction, refused to allow her to be given the award shortly before her death. To be more fair to them, their stated motive was that Moore by that time was suffering from dementia, and was in no shape to either understand the award, or to tolerate any ceremony about it. Fair enough, I dare say, but I think something could have been worked out. This was probably some time between 1978 and 1983. In 1984, Andre Norton became the first woman to be officially named an SFWA Grand Master, though in my mind, C. L. Moore will always have pride of place. (No disrepect to Norton, who after all was a year younger than Moore, nor to Leigh Brackett, 3 years younger than Norton, who died in 1978, probably a few years before she'd have had a chance to be named. (Note that Brackett was just 63, and to date the youngest people to be named SFWA Grand Masters are Connie Willis and Joe Haldeman, who were 66.))

One reason I bought this Ace Double is oddly personal. A number of years ago my brother-in-law, knowing I know a lot about science fiction, told me about a book he read when he was a kid. Or partly read, I should say. It seems his father (my father-in-law, though he died before I ever met my wife), found him reading it, took it away from him, ripped it in half and threw it out, telling him he didn't want his son reading any trashy Sci-Fi stuff, or words to that effect. My brother-in-law didn't remember the title or author, just the cover -- a guy poling a raft through ruins. Somehow that triggered a memory in me -- I was sure I knew the book.

As you'll have guessed looking at the cover image displayed here, that book was Daybreak -- 2250 A.D. Probably a later single edition, not this Ace Double. I went to my favorite used book store a couple of days later, and sure enough, I found a copy of a later edition of Daybreak -- 2250 A.D. with the right cover. I presented it to my brother-in-law the next time I saw him, to gratifying astonishment. (Incidentally, I can't find out who painted that cover. And later Ace editions, from the '70 onward, have a different cover that is blatantly and crudely copied from the original.)

(Cover by Nicholas Mordvinoff)

Of course I had to buy my own copy, and of course it had to be the Ace Double edition! Actually, I read Daybreak -- 2250 A.D. some while ago. The novel was first published in 1952 by Harcourt, Brace, as Star Man's Son, 2250 A.D. The Ace Double was the first paperback edition, in 1954, and the title was changed, with the original title given in parentheses as simply Star Man's Son. Later Ace editions retained the Daybreak -- 2250 A.D. title, while other hardcover editions were called Star Man's Son, 2250 A.D., and a number of non-Ace paperback editions went with the shorter Star Man's Son. The most recent editions seem to be a Baen omnibus pairing it with the 1975 novel No Night Without Stars, and using the Daybreak -- 2250 A.D. version of the title. Possibly, then, that was Norton's preference.


I don't actually remember the novel that well, though I do remember enjoying it. It's about a young man in a post-Apocalyptic world who wants to be a "Star Man" like his father -- essentially, someone who visits the old radioactive cities to try to salvage valuable stuff. But he is rejected -- perhaps because of his white hair (inherited from his mother), and he ends up going off by himself (well, with his cat with whom he has a telepathic link) and meeting up with another loner from a different tribe ... and in the end there's a confrontation with the mutated "beast people", and then a "conceptual breakthrough" sort of revelation. But, really, better to check out what Judith Tarr wrote about it at Tor.com: After the Apocalypse: Andre Norton's Daybreak -- 2250 A.D.

(Cover by Earle Bergey)

On to Beyond Earth's Gates. This is bylined "Lewis Padgett and C. L. Moore", which is curious because "Lewis Padgett" is generally regarded as a collaborative pseudonym for Moore and her husband Henry Kuttner. I do suspect, though, that the Padgett pseudonym was probably more often used for stories in which Kuttner was the primary author (while I suspect "Lawrence O'Donnell" stories were more often primarily by Moore.) And I say that, and it's important to remember that Kuttner and Moore claimed they often couldn't remember and couldn't tell who wrote which parts of some of their stories. That said, Beyond Earth's Gates was first published in the September 1949 issue of Startling Stories as "The Portal in the Picture", a complete novel by Henry Kuttner. I suspect the text of the Startling publication is essentially the same as the Ace Double.

Kuttner and Moore wrote some truly brilliant SF, but, sad to say, Beyond Earth's Gates doesn't qualify as such. It's told by Eddie Burton, a rising young Broadway actor. Lorna Maxwell is a "third-rate young ginmill singer" who has been pestering Eddie to help her get a leg up in her career. He doesn't want anything to do with her, but one night she comes over to his place -- and disappears. And of course Eddie is soon suspected in her disappearance.

Mixed in with this is Eddie's recollection of his Uncle Jim's stories of trips to a strange other world called Malesco. And Eddie's apartment was once his uncle's ... We know, of course, what's going on. Naturally, Eddie soon sort of stumbles -- falls -- through a dimensional portal into Malesco.

From there on the story is a fairly fast-moving thing about revolution in Malesco. This seems to be a parallel world, where history changed in roughly Roman times. It is now under the oppressive rule of the Hierarch, and his quasi-religious organization. Scientific knowledge is restricted greatly. and thus much less advanced than in our history. And, strangely, Lorna Maxwell has been co-opted by the rulers, and is nearly worshipped by the population, her glamor strangely enhanced. It seems our world is considered Paradise. Eddie is tangled up with some people in the hierarchy, and some out and out revolutionaries. But his only goal is to find Lorna, and bring her back, to clear his name.

All in all it's not really that interesting, unfortunately. You know how it ends, of course -- with Lorna and Eddie back in New York. And Lorna, strangely, trained perhaps by her star turn in Malesco, is now Malesca, the most beautiful woman in the world. And Eddie, who knows better, is unable to resist ...

Birthday Ace Double: Dwellers of the Deep, by K. M. O'Donnell (Barry Malzberg)/The Gates of Time, by Neal Barrett Jr.

Barry Malzberg turns 80 today. I've already reviews a couple of his Ace Doubles on this blog -- here's the third and last.

Ace Double Reviews, 41: Dwellers of the Deep, by K. M. O'Donnell/The Gates of Time, by Neal Barrett, Jr. (#27400, 1970, $0.75)

by Rich Horton

"K. M. O'Donnell" is a pseudonym of Barry Malzberg's. Dwellers of the Deep is one of his "recursive" novels -- that is, it's about SF. It's some 35,000 words long. According to the ISFDB, it's his third novel, and his second Ace Double half (of 4 total). The Gates of Time was Neal Barrett's first or second novel (Kelwin also appeared in 1970), and his first of two Ace Double halves (I have also reviewed Highwood).

(Cover by Jack Gaughan)

Dwellers of the Deep is about a young man named Izzinius Fox, a collector (not a fan!) of SF magazines in 1951. Izzy's main interest is Tremendous Stories -- an obvious analog of Astounding. (Other SF magazines mentioned include Thoughtful (F&SF?) and Thrilling (Galaxy?).) Izzy deals with a bookseller named Stuart Wiseman, who has been selling him back issues of Tremendous at perhaps inflated prices. But Izzy is also dealing with a group of aliens, who periodically take his consciousness up to their ship and pressure him to turn over his copy of the issue of Tremendous containing Cupboard's article about "A New Engineering of the Mind". (Obviously referring to L. Ron Hubbard's "Dianetics: A New Science of the Mind".) The aliens claim they will use this article benevolently to guide Earth to a new utopian future, but Fox is afraid they mean to conquer us. (For some reason the issue in question changes from the May 1950 issue (which is actually the issue of Astounding in which the first Dianetics article appeared) to the December 1946 issue as the book goes on.)

Izzinius has other concerns. For example, he is afraid of women, but there is a young woman living in his apartment building, Susan Forsythe, who keeps invading his room and trying to get him to attend meetings of the local fan group, the Solarians. Fox is also out of work, having quit his civil service job to concentrate on SF magazine collecting. The aliens are torturing him with false memories of his dead father. And his landlord is just plain weird ...

So the novel continues -- full of satire of fan politics and fan obsessions, with the occasional side trip to satire of bureaucracy. It's really pretty funny for the most part, though it may depend a bit on getting some of the fannish injokes. Not a great story by any means but basically fun stuff -- much like the previous "O'Donnell" Ace Double I reviewed, Gather in the Hall of the Planets.

In my previous review of Highwood, I covered Neal Barrett's career: short stories in Galaxy and such places beginning in 1960, and novels starting in 1970 with Kelwin and The Gates of Time, and later the Aldair books for DAW. Then, as someone once said, Barrett stood too long next to fellow Texan Howard Waldrop and just mutated. Beginning in the mid 80s he published a few novels and a number of short stories that are gloriously weird, poetic, loopily imagined -- just real neat stuff, including novels such as Through Darkest America (1986), short stories like "Ginny Sweethips' Flying Circus", "Stairs", and "Cush". His more recent work includes a number of mysteries and a couple further unusual science fantasies beginning with The Prophecy Machine in 2000.

(Cover by Josh Kirby)

But what about The Gates of Time? Suffice it to say, it doesn't in the least hint at the pretty worthwhile writer Barrett became. Ignoring a pointless prologue and epilogue, it opens with Luis Jarcal, the only surviving human, on a huge multi-species starship. His lover is a catlike alien, but he is soon in trouble with her husband. And the starship is in the vanguard of efforts to hold back something called "the Void". And Jarcal mysteriously becomes possessed by a strange being called N'Cil. His only friends seem to be a symbiotic pair of aliens -- the birdlike Lhis and the plantlike Quan. We are told that Earth's first attempt at a starship was swallowed, along with Earth, by the Void, only Jarcal surviving.

OK -- that could work. Then piratical evil aliens destroy the starship, only Jarcal and Lhis-Quan surviving. At the aliens' planet they encounter another human -- naturally a shockingly beautiful woman, named Sesharane. After the escape the quartet goes on the run, learning that, well, Jarcal and his N'Cil companion are fated to save the world or something and ...

Blah, blah, blah. Pretty much a case of the author making things up as he goes along. Without much concern for internal consistency (for example, we learn that Earth apparently had an extensive interstellar empire -- but wait a minute, earlier they just had one doomed starship -- is this explained? NO!) There is also such silliness as Sesharane refusing to have sexual relationships with Jarcal because, even though she loves him and he her, she is unable to have babies, so sex would be pointless. Eh? (As it happens, I just have been reading Neal Stephenson's Quicksilver, which makes much of a couple of main, heterosexual, characters engaging in rather extravagantly non-propagational sex -- not that that's a big deal or anything, but just that the contrast in attitudes really struck me.) Anyway, I really can't recommend The Gates of Time at all.

Birthday Review: Stories of C. M. Kornbluth

Cyril Kornbluth was born July 23, 1923, and died in 1958, only 34 years old, while running to catch a train in order to interview for an editing position at F&SF. He was one of SF's great cynics, and his work was dark and bracing. He collaborated extensively with Frederik Pohl, and also with Judith Merril. At the time of his death his reputation in the field exceeded Pohl's, but shortly thereafter, in New Maps of Hell, Kingsley Amis named Pohl arguably the field's best writer, and of course Pohl lived a half century and more beyond that, and did some tremendous work in that time, so by now he is (deservedly) regarded as the more important writer. But Kornbluth was very good as well, and it would have been wonderful to see where he might have ended up had he the chance to write more. Here's a selection of snippets I've written about Kornbluth, not necessarily representing his best work at all. But on what would have been his 96th birthday, I think he merits a look.

F&SF, Fall 1950

"The Silly Season" is C. M. Kornbluth at his most sardonic. A newspaperman investigates mysterious UFO-type manifestations. They seem real, but nothing comes of them. Over a few separate outbreaks, people become convinced they are all fake. Then the aliens REALLY come ...

Worlds Beyond, February 1951

Three more stories are reprints. One is C. M. Kornbluth's rather well-known first story, the short-short "The Rocket of 1955" (600 words) about a fake rocket launch. This first appeared in Escape in 1939, though the copyright notice here says "[c] 1941 by Albing Publications". ...

The third reprint is, as it happens, also by C. M. Kornbluth, though it is published as by "Walter C. Davies". "Forgotten Tongue" is also copyright 1941 by Albing Publications -- suggesting that the notice under "The Rocket of 1955" is a foulup, mistakenly copied from this story, which first appeared in the June 1941 Stirring Science Stories. Stirring Science Stories is yet another magazine to have died after its third issue (that June 1941 issue), though it was revived for one more issue in March 1942, by a different publisher. The blurb reads "A brief, apparently meaningless message -- but once you've read it, your mind wasn't your own". (Not sure what Knight was doing with tense there.) That made me hope for an early example of a "blit", but not so. It's more just sophisticated, and implausibly powerful, propaganda. It's set in a future divided between the Optimus party, representative of the rich (and apparently intelligent and physically superior) and the Lowers. The Optimus party is in control, but then an Optimus devises a way of influencing people through distributing books which subliminally make them Loyal -- but a Lower steals the book, changes every occurrence of Optimus to Lower, and turns the tables. Kind of dumb, I thought. Kornbluth did get some mileage out of the story, though, as besides this appearance and the original it was reprinted in the May 1942 Uncanny Tales.

Galaxy, December 1951

"With These Hands", by C. M. Kornbluth, is another story about a true artist facing replacement by less expensive machines. In this case Halvorsen ekes out a living by teaching, very occasionally selling something, and by the patronage of women who seem to hero worship him to some extent. In the dark conclusion, he finds this insupportable, and flees to a dangerous place to admire a true work of art, even if it means his life. Pretty good work.

Astounding, January 1952

And finally there is "That Share of Glory", one of C. M. Kornbluth's better known stories, though a somewhat atypical one. It lacks the bitterness of much of Kornbluth's most famous work -- indeed, it's downright Campbellian. It's about Alen, a novice in a quasi-religious order of linguists. He is assigned to his first mission, to help a somewhat rascally trader deal with the natives of Lyra. Alen does his job fairly well, using his knowledge of languages and customs to help foil some space pirates, and to help with the jewel trade on Lyra; and he also adheres to his Order's pacifism: they have a rule against ever using weapons. Then one of the crewmembers gets arrested, and it looks like the local authorities will railroad him, especially when Alen uses his knowledge to confound a strict local judge ... The resolution involves Alen realizing that sometimes violence is justified, and that the whole thing was a setup to test him: is he an inflexible prig only fit for low-level jobs in his order, or does he have the imagination to be a more influential member. So: very Campbellian. And pretty enjoyable.

Space Science Fiction, May 1953

"The Adventurer" is one of Kornbluth's somewhat well-known stories. It's cynical, naturally, and in a bracing way. In the future the US has become the Republic, ruled by hereditary and corrupt Presidents. The cabinet, in despair at the debased nature of the dynasty, decides to create a hero to lead a rebellion -- with cynically believable results. A good, bitter, story.

F&SF, April 1954

"I Never Ast No Favors", by C. M. Kornbluth (5700 words)
Amusing story told in a somewhat Runyonesque style. It's a letter from "Tough Tony", a teenaged gangster who has been sent to an upstate farm in lieu of jail. He's complaining to his mob boss about the horrors of farm life -- mainly a tough boss lady and a "hexing" war.

F&SF, November 1972

Frederik Pohl and C. M. Kornbluth's “The Meeting” is a very simple story, really, set not far in the future. Harry Vladek is shown attending a parent-teacher meeting at his son’s school. This is a school for “exceptional children” – that is, children with special needs. We are given a portrait of the trouble Harry and his wife are having with their son Tommy, and that that some of their fellow parents are also having, and a portrait of a bit of mild optimism in that this new (and expensive) school does seem to be helping Tommy – a bit. Just a little bit. On coming home his wife reminds him that a certain Dr. Nicholson has called, and urgently needs Harry to call back, with a decision. We soon gather that the decision concerns whether to allow Tommy to be the subject of a brain transplant – another boy is dying, his brain is perfectly intact, but an accident will soon kill him. Harry and his wife will get a new brain for their child… but, of course, their child is not dead, and his brain, while decidedly not working very well, is not dead either. That’s pretty much the story, and as such it’s pretty effective, though ethically there doesn’t seem to be a choice. (The brain transplant would be murder, of course.) But the depiction of the Vladeks’ despair is effective.

Belated Birthday Review: Short Stories of Fran Wilde

I've been busy the past few days -- my son Geoff got married on Saturday. And what with all that, I haven't been keeping up with this blog. Some time in the past week, I can't remember when exactly, was Fran Wilde's birthday. Fran's an exciting writer, and I've got to know her a bit at a few recent conventions, so I can say she's a neat person too. I hadn't exactly reviewed enough of her short stories for one of these collections, but there were a couple stories I didn't get to in Locus (my fault!) so I wrote a bit extra here (and, actually, I had already written more about "Clearly Lettered" in my Hugo ballot summary.)

Locus, July 2016

The Jewel and the Lapidary by Fran Wilde is a novella from Tor.com’s line of slim books. The central fantastical idea is pretty cool: there is a valley protected from outsiders by powerful jewels that are wielded by the ruling family (“Jewels”) but contained by Lapidaries who each bond to a single Jewel. This story concerns the betrayal and fall of the valley, leaving one surviving Jewel and her Lapidary, both fairly insignificant young women. They must find a way to resist the invaders, and at least to prevent them using the valley’s mines to supply jewels to allow them to cement and extend their conquest. It’s a slim story, fairly uncompromising in its plot, nicely written: I liked it, and I suspect the world it’s set in might yield more fine stories. [And, hey, look -- here's another story in the same universe: The Fire Opal Mechanism! I'll get to it soon!]

Hugo Ballot overview for 2017

“Clearly Lettered in a Mostly Steady Hand”, by Fran Wilde – a story of a visit to a museum exhibition that in the end seems to be a “freak show”, and which has a distinct and scary effect on the visitor. It’s told in the second person, and this is (perhaps rarely!) the exactly correct choice for this story, as the reader slowly realizes that the act of viewing the perhaps grotesque (or just misunderstood?) exhibits has parallels with how they see people who are different. This is a story that improved for me immensely on rereading – either because my mood was different, or because I saw more on a second pass -- the latter, really, is I think the truth.

Locus, November 2018

Uncanny’s 24th issue is subtitled Disabled People Destroy Science Fiction, and it features stories from writers who identify as disabled. Not all the stories explicitly feature disabled characters, but most do, and if a few read more as well-intentioned homilies than stories, the best here are very fine indeed. Fran Wilde is as ever challenging and intriguing with “Disconnect”, about a woman whose bones and joints disappear from her body in her sleep, usually recoverable; and her mentor, an older professor who is getting younger.

Expanded look at "The Synchronist", from Infinity's End

In Locus I wrote: "Fran Wilde’s “The Synchronist" is a pretty challenging story about the importance of consistent time-keeping for long distance space travel". I didn't write more because, well, Infinity's End had a lot of exceptional stories and I didn't have much space. But this is a really fine, interesting piece about a woman and her father, both of whom are experts in understanding and maintaining the consistency of timekeeping on interstellar travel. It's a wild story, and sometimes a bit hard to follow, but still fascinating.

Locus, March 2019

Uncanny in January-February features another challenging story from Fran Wilde. (I noticed that the last time I wrote about Wilde, I called both stories I covered “challenging”. I’m sure I did it on purpose – I’m even more sure Wilde does it on purpose.) “A Catalog of Storms” is built around a number of names given to different kinds of storms that menace a seaside village. But the story concerns the “weathermen” of that village, people who have been transformed into denizens of the air, and who can protect the town from the storms. Sila’s great aunt was one of the first weathermen, and her Mumma is terrified that she’ll lose one of her daughters the same way … and, indeed Sila’s sister Lillit is shown transforming in the opening sequence – and to her Mumma’s horror, Sila harbors the same ambition. The story concerns the stress between the heroic life and the mundane, perhaps, but more than that it is involved with language, and with letting go.

Birthday Review: Stories of Cory Doctorow

Yesterday was Cory Doctorow's birthday. So in slightly belated recognition, here's a collection of my Locus reviews of his short fiction -- some of the most intelligent, politically engage, and technologicall intriguing SF of the past couple of decades.

Locus, September 2002

Black Gate, by contrast, avowedly tries to publish more traditional adventure-oriented fantasy. The fourth issue, for Summer 2002, features a number of stories that fit that description just fine. The best story, though, is Cory Doctorow's "Beat Me Daddy (Eight to the Bar)", a post-holocaust tale, and straight SF, not fantasy, but I'm not complaining. A group of people are scratching out a living by scavenging the ruins of a "dresdenned" city. The narrator is a trumpet player in a casual band that represents the closest thing to real community around. When a young woman shows up and tries to get the locals to start growing plants instead of scavenging, there is some surprising resistance. The characters are well-drawn, and the central issue thought-provoking, though I thought the resolution unconvincing.

Locus, November 2002

The online newsmagazine Salon has long showed interest in SF, so perhaps it's not surprising that they have published an SF novelette: "0wnz0red", by Cory Doctorow, posted August 28. It's a fine story, too, pretty much in Bruce Sterling territory, about a software engineer in a decline after his best friend has died of. Then his friend shows up alive, indeed, in excellent health. It seems he has been treated so that his autonomic functions are under software control, to his body's benefit. But the feds want to keep that stuff under wraps ... I liked it.

Locus, January 2003

The December offering from Sci Fiction begs comparison with "Junk DNA", if only because both stories are collaborations by writers noted for madcap near future extrapolation. "Jury Service", by Charles Stross and Cory Doctorow, concerns a man who is selected to serve on a "jury" evaluating, for safety and utility, some tech downloaded from post-singularity, all the while worrying about a bio-hazard that seems to have infected him. The plot is twisty and interesting and frenetic, and the heart of the story, the depiction of wacky future tech and social adjustments to that tech, is neat stuff.

Locus, March 2003

Finally, the online newsmagazine Salon has published another fine story by Cory Doctorow. "Liberation Spectrum" (posted January 16, 2003) crackles with speculation. A "mobile multinational" pushing "cognitive radio" faces deep internal stress after there attempt to wire a Mohawk reservation and free them from the national telecommunication monopoly is resisted by the Canadian feds. The speculation is interesting technologically, and interesting sociologically, and the personal aspect (focussed on the corporation's founder and CEO) works as well. It's often funny, and also moving. And in many ways it's reminiscent of a Campbell-era Analog story, but 21st Century style, post-Bruce Sterling style.

Locus, February 2004

DAW's "monthly magazine" of themed anthologies offers a reliable if seldom exciting source of new SF and Fantasy. 2003 closes with Mike Resnick's New Voices in Science Fiction: 20 short stories by new writers (variably defined: from complete unknowns like Paul Crilley to well-established writers like Kage Baker and Susan R. Mathews). For the most part the stories seem more promising than outstanding. A high point is Cory Doctorow and Charles Stross's "Flowers From Alice", a very clever story of posthuman marriage with a delightful ending twist.

Locus, August 2004

I mentioned Emswhiller's story from the second issue of Argosy, dated May-June. I think the magazine is successfully straddling genres according to its apparent ambition. Besides the Emshwiller story there is a fine mystery by O'Neil DeNoux, a nice humorous Lucifer Jones piece from Mike Resnick, and a very enjoyable wild pair of novellas from Cory Doctorow and Charles Stross. Their 2002 Sci Fiction novella "Jury Service" is reprinted, followed by a brand new story, "Appeals Court", that follows directly from the first. Our hero, Huw, carrying an Ambassador from the post-Singularity "Cloud" of uploaded intelligences, makes his way willy-nilly to a much-changed U.S. There he finds primitive Baptists, petroleum trees, a hypercolony of flesh-eating ants, and another Church promoting lots of sex. And he hasn't escaped Judge Judy either ... Like the first story, it's full of whipcrack smart satire and wild speculation – fun stuff. [These became a novel, The Rapture of the Nerds.]



Locus, April 2005

Infinite Matrix was more or less missing in action last year, but so far this year it is in fine form. Perhaps the most talked-about short story of the year to date is Cory Doctorow's "i, robot". Doctorow is doing a series of stories re-examining SF classics from his contemporary political viewpoint. "i, robot" considers Asimov's robot stories (more The Caves of Steel than I, Robot, I thought) as well as George Orwell's 1984. Arturo Icaza de Arana-Goldberg is a detective in Toronto, raising his daughter alone after his wife defected to Eurasia. UNATS (North America) is engaged in perpetual war with the rest of the world, while trying to maintain "Social Harmony" by coercive means including restricting genetic engineering and robotic development (such as true AI). One day his daughter disappears, and Arturo tries to track her down, ending up in a tangle of loyalties – his wife may be involved, as well as scary advance robots, and on the other side the less than pleasant folks from "Social Harmony". I think it's a fine story – better than 2004's "Anda's Game" – my only quarrel is that while the depiction of the dystopian situation in North America is only too plausible, the depiction of the fairly utopian alternative in Eurasia is sheer wish-fulfillment. Still – a very thought-provoking work, well worth the notice it has received.

Review of Future Washington (Locus, January 2006)

Cory Doctorow's “Human Readable” opens as Trish, a lawyer, and her boyfriend, a scientist, visit the man’s family for the first time. On the way there, the emergent quasi-AI that controls traffic breaks down – the first, it turns out, of many such breakdowns. Trish becomes convinced that the extended network of tiny computing devices that is used for traffic control and other beneficial things is vulnerable to manipulation, and needs to be made “human readable”, even at cost to its efficiency. Her boyfriend is convinced that it works best if left alone – that occasional breakdowns are a small price to pay for the huge ultimate benefits. The story demonstrates (not quite convincingly, mainly because the tech is only handwaved in) that powerful interests can fiddle with the network so that, for example, rich people avoid traffic jams, while people on the outs with those in power constantly lose cellphone connectivity, and so on. Doctorow makes it more interesting by interweaving Trish’s love story with the political story. It’s good stuff, though I thought not quite outstanding. I note that on the surface it’s purely about the dangers and political problems of a near-future technological advance, but that it is also a pretty straightforward metaphorical look at the dangers and political problems of free-market capitalism.

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. I liked Cory Doctorow’s “When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth”, a post-holocaust novelette in which a bio-engineered plague kills most of humanity, and for a brief time a group of computer geeks try to set up a new world order of sorts.

Locus, October 2008

And an exciting new source of online fiction has appeared: Tor.com, associated with the publisher of course. The first three text stories (there is also a graphic story) appeared in July and August, all from “hot new writers” in a sense, ages ranging from 37 to 44: Cory Doctorow, John Scalzi, and Charles Stross. To which generation do these belong? I don’t know, but I do sense that they (perhaps especially Doctorow and Stross) feel that they are actively in dialogue with each other. The best of these stories is Doctorow’s “The Things That Make We Weak and Strange Get Engineered Away”, about a quasi-religious, nearly monastic, organization called The Order, the members of which are programmers who live communally. It seems utopian, but the protagonist learns some of the costs when he ventures outside to chase the source of an “anomaly” in the datastreams he monitors, and realizes who he has been working for (indirectly) and the effect of his work on ordinary people.

Review of Fast Forward 2 (Locus, November 2008)

Another of the bumper crop of new unthemed original anthology series has put out its second number. Fast Forward 2, unlike books from Jonathan Strahan and Ellen Datlow, is quite overtly an all-Science Fiction book. It also features no fewer than three collaborative stories. SF, probably in great part because of its commercial roots, has long featured a somewhat high proportion of collaborations, but three in one volume these days is unusual. In each case the partners are of broadly similar age and notoriety, suggesting that the contributions of each writer are likely about equal. The longest and most ambitious is “True Names” by Cory Doctorow and Benjamin Rosenbaum, nearly a novel. This is apparently a new entry in Doctorow’s ongoing series of riffs on famous SF stories. It concerns a far-future set of civilizations, mostly living in virtual environments. (That being the main nod to Vernor Vinge’s famous model – otherwise there is less thematic connection to the predecessor stories than in Doctorow’s “I, Rowboat”, “I, Robot”, and “Anda’s Game”.) One civilization is democratic, consisting of numerous entities vying for control, while the other is more or less totalitarian, ruled by a single strict program. The two polities battle across the Galaxy, not always noticing the threat of a third virtual environment, which seems lifeless but unstoppable. The plot involves computer program sex (sort of) and heroism, and questions about reality versus simulation – at multiple levels – and it’s fast-moving and interesting but for me it fell into the trap of excessive abstraction. I never quite believed in – nor always understood – what was going on. Nonetheless, it’s quite a thought provoking effort.

Review of Life on Mars (Locus, May 2011)

Cory Doctorow’s “Martian Chronicles” is the latest of his stories taking their titles from classic SF, though the story itself doesn’t really react to or comment on Bradbury. It’s about a boy on his way to Mars, who is really good at playing a Sims-like game mimicking a business setup. He makes a couple of friends who take different roles in the game, and learns, in Heinleinesque fashion (complete with the Heinlein trick of winning arguments by framing the opposing position as you desire) to know better, and to understand what’s really going on at Mars, where the economy is supposedly modeled on the game he plays.

Locus, June 2014

Robot Uprisings is John Joseph Adams' latest project, teamed this time with Daniel H. Wilson. The theme is clear enough, and the stories as a set are a fine examination of variations on it, from a nicely varied set of writers too, both from within and without the genre. As with many themed anthologies, read all at once there might be a bit of a sense of too much repetition. But by and large this is a strong book.

My favorite story was a reprint that I missed on its first appearance in 2010. Cory Doctorow's “Epoch” is about BIGMAC, a “doomed rogue AI”, and his story is told by Odell Vyphus, the sysadmin who has inherited responsibility for BIGMAC. Apparently BIGMAC was something of a dead end – “there just weren't any killer apps for AI”. Now it's obsolete, and expensive to maintain, and Odell's boss wants him to kill the AI. Naturally BIGMAC finds out about this plan, and implements its own plan to save itself. The story is funny and intelligent and moving and believable – the same can be said for the characters. Very strong work.