Birthday Review: In the Courts of the Crimson Kings, by S. M. Stirling (plus two shorts)

S. M. Stirling turned 66 today, so I decided to exhume this review I wrote a while ago about his novel In the Courts of the Crimson Kings, along with a couple of brief looks at short stories from my Locus column.

In the Courts of the Crimson Kings, by S. M. Stirling

a review by Rich Horton

I was surprised to realize that I've actually not previously read a Stirling novel. I confess the premise of the Draka series turned me off -- I don't dispute that the stories might be enjoyable and well done, but I didn't want to read them. In a different way, the Island in the Sea of Time books aren't either my cup of tea. I did read some stories set in his Dies the Fire universe, and had I more time I might have gotten to the novels, but I didn't. However, his new series appeals quite openly to my inner Golden Age of SF fan. I had been considering getting the first, The Sky People, but hadn't got around to it. So instead I began with book 2 of the series (I'm not sure there will be any more -- there doesn't need to be, but there could be). This novel opens with a rather unbearably twee prologue set at an SF convention in 1962. The viewpoint character is named Fred (wink wink nudge nudge), and he records the reaction of the SF professionals to the American landing on Mars. Injokes abound, most labored (a writer named Bob (wwnn) lamenting that he had to abandon his planned novel about an orphaned adopted by Martians), only one cute (and that maybe unintentional: a brand new writer named Larry bursting out "Lookatthat!"). Lots of namechecking: Jack, Arthur, Spreggie (!), Poul, Beam, Leigh, etc. I get it, I suppose -- we are being signaled that this is a novel about the sort of Mars we used to dream of in SF, but I thought it went on way too long for too little effect.

But the real novel is much better. This is an alternate history, in which for reasons that will become clear, Venus and Mars have conditions similar to many pulp era SF stories. Venus is a wet jungle planet with fairly primitive humanoid inhabitants. And Mars is a dying desert planet with very civilized humanoids with a very old, very tradition-oriented culture. The Sky People concerned the exploration of Venus. Now, In the Courts of the Crimson King deals with Mars.

The main characters are a Martian Princess, natch, and a human scientist. But that's not quite right. The Martian, Teyud za-Zhalt, is the daughter of the current very old King (or Despot) of the City That is a Mountain, the much shrunken remnants of a Kingdom that once ruled all Mars. But Teyud's mother was not of the appropriate genetics to have an official child (or something), and since Martian women can control their fertility, her decision to have a child was a capitol crime. She was horribly killed, though the King managed to spirit his daughter away, where she was raised ("socialized") in her mother's genetic caste, Thoughtful Grace -- very intelligent and powerful warriors. Because of the control over fertility, Martian females and males have essentially equal status, so Teyud in fact is a potential heir to her father's throne -- which makes her a target if found of rivals of higher social class but less direct genetic relationship to the dying older King. So for decades (Martians are very long lived) she has been acting as a mercenary for hire, guarding caravans and the like, I suppose. And now she has been hired to escort a Terran expedition to a mysterious long-abandoned city. And the archaeologist who most wants to investigate this city is Jeremy Wainman. Jeremy is well-qualified, not just because of his scientific ability, but because he is fairly well adapted to Martian conditions: he grew up in the dry New Mexican highlands, and he is very tall, at 6' 6" only half a foot or so shorter than Teyud.

So, the expedition sets off for the lost city. Jeremy and Teyud, predictably, perhaps, begin to take a liking to each other. But they are soon aware that they are being chased ... as we learn, by representatives of not only the putative "Crown Prince" who has discovered her existence, but also by representatives of conservative factions in the King's government, who are concerned over his innovations (he is working with Terrans to use nuclear power to help circulate water more efficiently, thus perhaps to some extent alleviating the long decline of Martian civilization). They each manage to save the other's life, further cementing their affections for each other. And at the lost city they make a spectacular discovery, one with implications for Teyud's fitness to rule a perhaps revived Mars.

All this is really more or less the shape of the narrative we expected. And so it continues, with lots of action, chases, a "damsel in distress" (except, as noted, it's not a damsel but a guy -- Jeremy -- part of a purposeful inversion of pulp traditions that Stirling pulls off nicely) -- all leading to a dramatic final confrontation. And it's really lots of fun. I will say that I thought the actual final conclusion a bit too much of a deus ex machina, and not quite what I had in mind. Which of course isn't necessarily an author's obligation -- he's writing his book, not mine -- but still! Anyway, for all that as I said, I liked the book, as light entertainment.

Locus, July 2002

S. M. Stirling's "Shikari in Galveston" (Worlds That Weren't) is set in an alternate world where an asteroid impact in the late 19th Century wiped out most of Europe and the United States' technological civilization: the new "British Empire" is dominated by India (and the descendants of Englishmen who fled to India under Disraeli's leadership), while the U. S. is inhabited by "tribes" of both white men and Indians, as well as debased descendants of those who turned to cannibalism in the aftermath of the asteroid impact.  I was disturbed by the way in which the cannibals were blithely portrayed as permanently subhuman, making them convenient villains, but the story, about a hunting expedition into cannibal country that runs into evidence that the cannibals are planning an organized attack on the "civilized" tribes, is brisk, exciting reading.

Review of Warriors (Locus, May 2010)

S. M. Stirling, in “Ancient Ways”, tells a very entertaining story of a Cossack joining up with a Kalmyk to rescue a kidnapped princess. It’s SF because it’s set in his “Dies the Fire” future, in which electricity suddenly stopped working, and society forcibly reverts to pre-industrial ways. It’s pure unpretentious fun, and I could see a series of stories following the same set of characters.

Birthday Review: Stories of William Barton

This is a slightly belated birthday review, for William Barton, who turned 69 a day ago. He wrote some truly exceptional SF in the first decade of the 21st century (and some before that, to be sure), but alas, he seems to have fallen silent about 10 years ago. I particularly recommend the first story here, "The Engine of Desire", a tremendous novella.

Locus, August 2002

I have made it no secret that my favorite SF story of 2001 was Ian R. MacLeod's "New Light on the Drake Equation", which is to some extent about the loss of the 20th Century's Sfnal dream of the future.  Now I find that one of my favorite stories so far in 2002 is also, to me at least, something of a sad farewell to the yearnings of 20th Century SF, though in the case of William Barton's "The Engine of Desire", a novella from the August Asimov's, these yearnings have to some great extent been achieved, but not in the way John Campbell showed us.

This story is set many centuries in the future of Barton's 2000 Asimov's story "Heart of Glass", and features the same narrator, an "optimod": a bio-engineered human/animal mix.  The wonders it features include AI, FTL travel, Galactic empires, colorful aliens, robots, etc. But we are shown these in the aftermath of a couple of utterly disastrous wars, in which humans were used as cannon fodder by advanced alien.  The ruins of the Galaxy are tenuously at peace, but much has been lost, by many different species swept into the war.  The narrator is now a scavenger of abandoned technology.  As the story opens he rescues an intelligent, human-designed, robot, delightfully named Mr. Pommesfrites, then makes his way to another planet, vaguely hoping to find some trace of the AI who once ran his starship.  On this planet we see more of the devastation left by the war, as well as a sardonic look at the continuing destructive habits of intelligent beings.  The narrator encounters another human-derived refugee, observes the residents of this planet at their games, and drifts on.  In a way not much happens, but the story is still strikingly effective.  It is told in voice suffused with regret, with loss, with sad remembrance.  It shows us a future stuffed with potential but devoted entirely to war and devastation, one in which humans are wholly insignificant pawns. It's an achingly moving story.

Locus, June 2003

In the context of arguments about "fun" and "adventure" in contemporary SF, William Barton's novella "The Man Who Counts" (Sci Fiction, May 28) is particularly interesting. The story is on the one hand a lush recreation of the purest of old-fashioned SFnal dreams. It's set in a future in which Mars and Venus have been lushly terraformed, and in which worlds of other stars have been colonized as well. The very title is taken from the first of Poul Anderson's Polesotechnic League stories. The action involves the heroic escape of prisoners from a Martian penal colony, and their attempt to uncover a political scandal. But all this heroism is undercut -- the narrator is a serial rapist and killer who continues to kill innocents. The lead female character prostitutes herself repeatedly to "pay" for their escape. The future penology is grotesque -- the death penalty has been abolished, but criminals are mindwiped, and reprogrammed to be "studs" or "snatches" -- compelled to be always ready for sex. Alternately they might be castrated. I can't say I was thrilled or uplifted by this story, or exactly cheering for the heroes (though they are ultimately on the side of good), but I was kept reading, always interested, usually horrified. This is full of action, full of colorful SF ideas, but it can hardly be called fun. Much contemporary SF reflects on Golden Age SF, often rather cynically -- that may be one aspect that turns off some readers, but it's necessary for writers to stay honest.

Locus, September 2003

William Barton's last couple of stories ("The Engine of Desire" and "The Man Who Counts") have seemed to me to carry a strong subtextual element combining nostalgia for the lost dreams of old SF with a certain critique of those dreams. His new story, the long novella "Off On a Starship", from the September Asimov's, makes this explicit -- no need to go subtext-mining here! An SF-loving 16 year old stumbles into a flying saucer and finds himself whisked to Titan and then points beyond. He struggles to survive amid overtly science-fictional environments that remind him of stories by Burroughs and Niven and Norton and almost any other writer a boy in 1966 might have encountered. With the help of a friendly robot he finally makes some sense of his fate, and comes to a decision about his future -- and the Earth's. On the one hand the story sharply exposes regrets about our failure to achieve such classic SFnal dreams as journeys to Mars, but on the other hand slyly asks just how "adult", as it were, some of these dreams are.

Locus, September 2004

William Barton's "The Gods of a Lesser Creation" is another of his stories about "optimods" (genetically engineered human/animal hybrids) and androids (or gyndroids). The most fundamental issue raised, of course, is slavery. In this case the narrator is mostly dog. His job is to serve and guard his owner, Dr. Allie Battenberg. In the course of the story we see various other sorts of ownership, represented by Battenberg's using of a naïve young woman, by her pilot's use of a robot sex toy, by the exploitation of the local "Social Discards". It's a thoughtful and subtle story by a consistently underrated and challenging writer.

Locus, September 2006

Double issues of Asimov’s are usually especially strong. For one thing, they tend to feature novellas, and indeed the October/November issue has two, both good. William Barton’s “Down to the Earth Below” invokes mostly Edgar Rice Burroughs, with nods to Heinlein’s Glory Road. Alan Burke, nearly 14, and his three friends fall into an abandoned mine while playing games set in a Burroughsian world they have invented. There is no way out but through, as it were: through to a strange land where they meet a beautiful woman and fierce warriors, and undertake a quest. In a way the story is about growing up: certainly Alan is on the cusp of puberty, as represented by the woman he meets changing from the “Untouchable” to the “Beloved”. This is explicitly an adolescent fantasy, but the rather touching resolution isn’t quite as expected, and can be read in multiple ways. Barton has given us a recent set of slightly uneasy paeans to the lost worlds of SF and Fantasy: the dreams of fabulous futures and colorful realms that we mostly abandon as we age (and that even as dreams we have to some extent abandoned in recent decades: there is no possible Barsoom, nor really a Foundation).

Locus, September 2008

William Barton, with “In the Age of the Quiet Sun” (Asimov's, September), extrapolates to a future beloved of SF readers, as asteroid miners (slaves to shady corporations) stumble on a fantastic find, an alien spacecraft. I don't think it really convinces, but in a way it's not meant too – the attitude is ever knowing – this isn't where we are going, but a version of where we wanted to go.

Ace Double Reviews, 49: The Beasts of Kohl, by John Rackham/A Planet of Your Own, by John Brunner

Today would have been John Brunner's 85th birthday. I've previously posted quite a few reviews of Brunner's Ace Doubles, but there are more to come! Here's one I wrote back in 2004.

Ace Double Reviews, 49: The Beasts of Kohl, by John Rackham/A Planet of Your Own, by John Brunner (#G-592, 1966, $0.50)

by Rich Horton

(Covers by Jack Gaughan)

I decided after having read a couple previous John Brunner Ace Double halves that I liked his early easygoing adventure stuff, and so I bought some more Brunner Ace Doubles. This book comes not too long before Brunner published Stand on Zanzibar, his huge, ambitious, Hugo winner. A Planet of Your Own is very short, at 30,000 words. The Beasts of Kohl is about 52,000 words long.

"John Rackham", as I have mentioned before, was a pseudonym for John T. Phillifent, who also published under his own name (mostly in Analog). The Beasts of Kohl opens with a man named Rang hunting on an alien world, in the company of a bird and a large dog, with both of whom he can speak telepathically. We soon learn that Rang is a "beast" of a superintelligent sea creature named Kohl. Kohl decides, of a sudden, that Rang is too intelligent to keep as a beast -- he must take him to his home planet, on which Kohl found him as a boy, and let him decide where is his real home. Kohl also fetches another beast much like Rang (well, except for the breasts): Rana, who has been in the keeping of one of Kohl's fellow sea beings.

It will be no surprise to the reader that the home planet to which Kohl takes Rang and Rana is Earth. The kicker, though, is that due to time-dilation or other effects of Kohl's method of star travel, tens of thousands of years have passed from the time of Rang and Rana's birth to the time of their return. They are, in fact, Cro-Magnons, and they return to roughly the present day -- or a bit in the future. Either due to Cro-Magnons being naturally superior, or due to Kohl's enlightened training, Rang and Rana are much better thinkers than the run of humans, not to mention the telepathic ability. Luckily, on their return, they quickly encounter the world's leading genius, Hector Raine (I assume the similarity of names between Rang, Rana, and Raine was on purpose), as well as Hector's beautiful and also pretty bright secretary, Meryl Martin.

The remainder of the plot turns on Rang and Rana and Kohl trying to "uplift", in a sense, Hector and Meryl, mixed in with Hector's sleazy business manager trying to sell his consulting services to the Soviets. A kidnap attempt ensues, followed by some derring-do and superpowers, and of course the eventual realization by Hector and Meryl that they love each other (despite Meryl's interest in Rang and Hector's in Rana) ...

Routine stuff, a bit below the previous Rackham stories I've tried, a bit disappointing on the whole.

A Planet of Your Own opens with Kynance Foy, a beautiful and intelligent girl from Earth, finding herself stranded on the planet Nefertiti. She has learned that her looks and education mean awfully little on the aggressive colony planets, and that the zygra pelt she had hoped to acquire cheaply off-Earth is just as expensive on Nefertiti, home of the Zygra Company, as anywhere. She has no money with which to buy passage home, so she jumps at the curious offer of a job with the Zygra Company. They need a supervisor for their operations of Zygra, an uninhabitable planet where the curious plant-like zygra pelts grow. Kynance is a bit leery of the job -- nobody else seems to jump at it -- but it offers a generous salary plus a free ticket back to Earth.

She soon learns that she will need to spend a year on Zygra, completely alone. And that her boss is a slimy sexual harasser. And that the Zygra Company has rigged the contract to be full of loopholes which will allow them to void it and thus not pay her or give her the ticket home. Luckily, one of her degrees is in law ... The reader soon learns, and Kynance shortly thereafter, that there are actually inhabitants of Zygra -- some of the previous Zygra Company reps, marooned there after their contracts were voided. She realizes that she will need to fight the Company with all her legal acumen if she is to survive, let alone get her trip back to Earth. And in a rather surprising rapid finish, she and the previous survivors cook up a plan ...

I thought this rather weak for Brunner. The hand of the author is all too evident in setting up implausible legalities and loopholes for Kynance to deal with and use. I can't believe the Company could so easily get away with their evil ways, nor that, given that, that Kynance could so (relatively) easily foil their plans. And many aspects of the setup were just too convenient, such as Zygra's year being just a few days longer than Earth's, which turns out to be legally significant. It's still a fast and breezy read, and you root for Kynance, but it's really not that good. Oddly enough, it showed up on the long list of Nebula nominees for Best Novel of 1966, the second year of the Nebulas. (By current rules, it would be a novella, and not eligible for nomination as a novel.)

Birthday Review: Hazard, by Jo Beverly

Jo Beverly was born 22 September 1947, and died in 2016. In her memory then, on what would have been her 72nd birthday, here's something I wrote long ago about one of her Regency romances.

Hazard, by Jo Beverly

a review by Rich Horton

I read the occasional Regency romance, and one of the best contemporary Regency writers is Jo Beverly. (Jo has SF connections -- she was a Writers of the Future finalist back in the day, and she had a pretty decent SF romance story in the Catherine Asaro anthology Irresistible Forces in 2004.) Hazard is 2002 novel, peripherally connected to her ongoing Company of Rogues series of Regencies.

Lady Anne Peckwood is a demure daughter of a Duke. She is lame -- a twisted foot, and perhaps for that reason keeps to the background, but she is (as ever with Regency heroines) beautiful anyway. But she has been twice jilted, and begins to wonder if she will ever marry, even while she realizes she is not that upset over the jiltings -- perhaps, indeed, relieved. Her married younger sister is having her first child, and the blessed event occurs while their brother Uffham and his "secretary", a lower born man named Race de Vere, are visiting. Race shows himself very useful in the crisis when the baby comes a bit early, and Anne finds herself extremely attracted -- especially when they kiss, and when they play Hazard (a precursor to Craps) -- but of course de Vere is completely unsuitable for a Duke's daughter, despite his excellent war record.

Anne realizes her retiring habits are one reason she has not met a man she truly wishes to marry, so she vows to try one more season in London, this time taking a more dramatic role. Here long time friend St. Raven, one of the Company of Rogues, will be her escort -- but they are friends, not potential lovers. She creates a sensation, partly because of her beauty, partly because of Tris's escort, partly because of her embracing her handicap by such means as using a walking stick as a fashion statement. But the men she meets do little for her -- some are worthy but boring, some are not really worthy at all. Only her encounters with de Vere excite her -- but there is no getting over the fact that his father made his money in trade (and in a lottery!), nor indeed that for strategic reasons he may be declared a bastard before long. Eventually Anne settles on a war hero of sorts.

Well, we know where this is headed. Anne's elopement with the rackety war hero will not suit -- and somehow Race de Vere and she will overcome barriers between them. Of course none of this really convinces, but Beverly plays a bit fairer than some writers might with the situation. (De Vere, for example, does not suddenly become the Earl of Oxford and thus suitable.) There's a premarital sex scene, typical for Regencies nowadays, though not I think very believable. But readable enough. It's not great stuff -- not Heyer, even -- but it does rank above the run of contemporary Regency romances.

Birthday Review: Short Fiction of Andy Duncan

Last year on this date I posted a few of my reviews of Andy Duncan's stories, but for some reason I missed several stories I'd covered. And I've reviewed a couple more since then, so why not repost my reviews this year, with the extra ones added.

(There's a new one too, in the September-October Asimov's, which I cover in the upcoming October Locus: "Charlie Tells Another One", about the great early banjo player Charlie Poole. Poole is featured (briefly) in the first episode of Ken Burns' Country Music series on PBS, and it was striking to see him called out right after I'd read Andy's story!)

Anyway, Happy Birthday, Professor Duncan!

from my Year End Summary, 1999

The best new story, and perhaps the best story Weird Tales published this year, was by Andy Duncan: "From Alfano's Reliquary". This is about an early, corrupt, Pope, and his curious servant. Extremely well-written. Duncan is very very impressive.  I think this story might make my Hugo nomination ballot.

Locus, April 2007

One of the most welcome names in the table of contents of Wizards is Andy Duncan -- I haven’t seen much from him lately, and I’ve missed him. "A Diorama of the Infernal Regions, or The Devil’s Ninth Question" has a claim to be the best story in this book. An orphan girl raised in a museum reaches a certain age, when her master wants her to start performing in the magic show -- which means submitting to the creepy attentions of a mostly male audience. She escapes to another world, where she meets, eventually, the Devil, and where she must answer his questions.

Review of Eclipse 4 (Locus, )

Andy Duncan’s “Slow as a Bullet” is pure tall tale, about a man who foolishly bets that he can outrun a bullet, and how he manages to do it. Duncan’s voice (or that of his narrator) carries the story, which is enjoyable but (as one expects for this sort of story) really quite slight.

Locus, February 2010

Indeed The Dragon Book is enjoyable throughout -- not a story fails to please. The clear best piece is the closing story, which is also probably the least traditional "dragon" story: "The Dragaman’s Bride", by Andy Duncan. The story features Pearleen Sunday, from Duncan’s excellent earlier story "The Devil’s Ninth Question", but she is primarily there to record the relationship of an "Old Fire Dragaman" and a young woman threatened by sterilization as part of the infamous eugenics movement of the early 20th century, which focused on the poor of Appalachia. Duncan beautifully evokes the mountainous back country of his characters, and situates his "Dragaman" there with complete naturalness. The language is spot on, the story involving, the issue affecting.

Locus, March 2010

PS Publishing’s Christmas special is The Night Cache, by Andy Duncan, which is only barely fantastical, but very enjoyable, about the love affair of two young women, and how one of them drags the other into her passion for geocaching.

Locus, August 2012

Finally, I must mention Andy Duncan's new collection, The Pottawatomie Giant. It's mostly reprints, and these are, as you might expect, excellent: stories like his wonderful secret history of the Soviet space program, “The Chief Designer”; and his delightful pair of stories about Pearleen Sunday and her encounters with the devil and a dragon of sorts (“A Diorama of the Infernal Regions; or, The Devil's Ninth Question” and “The Dragaman's Bride”). There is one new story, and it's a fine one: “Close Encounters”, in which a UFO contactee, years after his fame, is lured by a reporter into joining a latter day attempt to contact the aliens – with strange, sad, results, and accompanied by moving recollections of his previous “contact” and its results.

Locus, August 2018

Analog’s latest issue features an Andy Duncan story, "New Frontiers of the Mind", that probably isn’t SF, but which is about a pretty significant figure in the history of SF and indeed of Analog: John W. Campbell, Jr. It’s well known that Campbell, while a student at Duke, participated in J. B. Rhine’s early investigations of ESP. This story imagines Campbell’s interactions with Rhine (in this case, an implausible early success), and also the marriages of both Campbell and Rhine (whose wife had a significant role in his researches). It’s a pretty affecting portrait of both couples, and of the obsessions of both men.

Locus, December 2018

And in The Book of Magic Andy Duncan offers his third Pearleen Sunday story, “The Devil’s Whatever”, in which Pearleen, a wizard based in Appalachia, is finagled into helping her friend, the Devil’s son-in-law Petey Wheatstraw, out of a fix involving places named after the Devil.

Speaking of Andy Duncan, An Agent of Utopia is a very welcome new collection from him. It includes some of his best earlier stories, and it opens with two brand new pieces, both very good. “An Agent of Utopia” is set in London in 1535, with Thomas More waiting to be executed. But he has a surprising visitor – a man from Utopia, the subject of More’s famous book. This man’s job is to free More and take him back with him – but More refuses. And the story turns to a real event – More’s eldest daughter, the celebrated writer Margaret Roper, arranged to steal his head from the spike it was displayed on. Here she turns to the man from Utopia, who for all this Utopian background, finds himself smitten and unable to refuse her.

The other new piece is “Joe Diabo’s Farewell”, told by Eddie Two Rivers DeLisle, a Mohawk working the high steel. It follows him through one day, marked by an accident in which Joe Diabo, a veteran worker and one of the few Mohawks sticking with the “old ways”, falls to his death. Eddie, given the day off, and grieving, ends up picking up some extra money acting as a “real Indian” for the premier of a new movie about Custer. And in so doing encounters a real General who was at Little Big Horn, a pretty girl who seems to like him, and a bunch of the other “real Indians”, who are every sort of ethnicity except for Native American … but who are his kin anyway. One more encounter with Joe Diabo closes the story, which is lovely, and hard to describe – carried by voice, and character, and a perhaps paradoxical groundedness, given that much of it is set 30 stories in the sky. These two stories, along with “The Devil’s Whatever”, represent very well one of Duncan’s greatest strengths: all are steeped in the voice of their characters (and tellers), yet all three (or four) voices are completely different, and completely effective.

Birthday Review: Stories of Tanith Lee

Tanith Lee was born 19 September 1947, and died, only 67, in 2015. She was really a remarkable writer, I think perhaps sometimes not as well appreciated as she should have been, perhaps because she was quite prolific, perhaps because some of her most original work was in her short fiction. Here's a selection of my reviews of her short fiction, from my Locus column, late in her life.

Locus, April 2002

And at last to the Spring Weird Tales, which features a few nice stories. Weird Tales regular Tanith Lee contributes one in "Flicker of a Winter Star" a graceful novelette about a woman farmed out to a nursing home by her oafish son-in-law, and the strange creature that she encounters there.  Lee is always worth attention, though this is perhaps lesser Lee, and also less exotic than usual for her.  But well executed.

Locus, May 2002

DAW has issued a big anthology of fantasy stories in celebration of that imprint's 30th Anniversary, called simply enough DAW 30th Anniversary Fantasy, edited by Elizabeth R. Wollheim and Sheila E. Gilbert. The admirable Tanith Lee contributes "Persian Eyes"; a spooky story set in Ancient Rome, in which a mysterious Persican slave girl casts an unusual spell over the men of several unfortunate households.

Locus, November 2002

October/November is also F&SF's special double issue. Best might be Tanith Lee's novelette "In the City of Dead Night", an effective fantasy about two thieves breaking into the title city, and the terrible thing that awaits them. Nothing much new here, but Lee does effectively work changes on familiar tropes.

Locus, May 2003

Tanith Lee's "Blood Chess" (Weird Tales, Spring) is a vampire story, but quite original, about a vampire who exacts a toll from the neighboring village: one young woman every so often. The vampire's sister, not herself a vampire, tells the story of one particular victim.

Review of Fair Folk (Locus, April 2005)

This book features stories of fairies – but not, as Marvin Kaye's introduction notes, "wee, adorable elves". The fair folk here are often very fair indeed, but they are also scary, jealous of their rights, and willing to harshly use any mortal who gets on their wrong side.

Tanith Lee's opening piece, "UOUS", is a perfect illustration. Sixteen year old Lois is a lives with her stepmother and stepsisters in a decaying house on the edge of a scary wood. The others treat her as a servant, while they spend their lives in dissolution: lots of sex, drugs, and alcohol. Then Lois  meets a fairy: an eerily handsome man named Finn. But Finn is not willing to give her three wishes: instead he will take them. And Lois is set on a path of stealing from her fellows, leading inevitably to inviting Finn to the house, where he will take just what he wants. The story is uncompromising, and one feels uneasily that the characters perhaps deserve their odd fates, but that by implication those fates may be reserved for us.

Locus, December 2005

Lords of Swords promises traditional Heroic Fantasy and it delivers that pretty well. It’s an uneven anthology, but the best stories are solid work, particularly Tanith Lee’s lovely “The Woman in Scarlet”, about a traveling Sword’s Man, who is almost literally married to his Sword, which takes on a female persona. The Sword drives him where she wants, usually to dispense justice, but then she sends him to an unexpected place, and an unexpected man. Can a Sword be unfaithful?

Locus, January 2008

From Asimov’s for January I quite liked Tanith Lee’s “The Beautiful and Damned by F. Scott Fitzgerald”, a tensely unwinding medical mystery, in which a man comes to a domed city and visits a couple of old friends. The city is under a quarantine, we learn, for slowly emerging reasons: a virus with terribly ironic effects.

Locus, March 2008

And finally, a new anthology from Norilana Books, Lace and Blade, promises “an elegant and romantic “soft” form of sword and sorcery” – mixing wit, intrigue, passion – and of course swordplay and magic. And it delivers on all counts: the stories are wonderfully entertaining throughout, as with Tanith Lee’s “Lace-Maker, Blade-Taker, Grave-Breaker, Priest”, about two swordsmen on a ship who take violently against each other, but whose plans for a duel are upset by a shipwreck.

Locus, March 2009

Norilana Books continues its active foray into the original anthology market with the second Lace and Blade collection of – what? Costume fantasy? Fantasies of manners? At any rate, I greatly enjoyed about half the stories here … the rest were disappointing. But the book is well worth it for the high points, particularly perhaps the last two pieces. Tanith Lee’s “Comfort and Despair” is a sly portrait of an apparently mismatched marriage enlivened by certain secrets.

Locus, November 2009

In the October Fantasy Magazine Tanith Lee offers “Clockatrice”, a fine colorful entertainment in which another photographer stars – this one a freelancer who does art projects for magazines (and other things). She visits a rock star at his family’s ancient estate, hears a somewhat gothic story about a young woman turned to stone in the gardens, gets to see the statue, and the man’s bed … and ends up interested and annoyed enough, against her better judgement, to use the photographs she took to create a particular piece of art retelling the story of the cockatrice and the young woman. Which of course has consequences!

Locus, December 2009

Norilana Books has issued no fewer than six original anthologies in 2009. The latest is Sky Whales and Other Wonders, which seems aimed at presenting stories centered on really colorful central ideas. I liked “The Sky Won’t Listen”, by Tanith Lee, an SF ghost story, in which a psychic investigator of sorts is engaged to deal with a ghostly “whaling ship” on a distant planet. This planet features “sky whales”, once harvested for their luminous skin. That’s over now, but a ghost ship has been attacking some of the newer ships that try to herd the whales away from human cities. There is a human ghost on the ghost ship of course, and his motive is a bit different than expected – nice colorful work.

Review of Teeth (Locus, August 2011)

Tanith Lee’s “Why Light” is a story about a vampire girl going to meet her arranged husband. Lee suggests some different aspects of the vampire legend – limited tolerance to sunlight – and tells a conventional but enjoyable story about an unexpected romance.

Locus, September 2013

Tanith Lee's “A Little of the Night” (Clockwork Phoenix 4) is the story of an officer who kills a brutal fellow officer and must flee, finding himself in a mysterious near-abandoned castle, soon realizing that some sort of vampirism is going on, some pull on the residents' life force. This is Lee in fairly familiar form for her, at times a tad overwrought, but enjoyable.

Birthday Review: Why Do Birds, and some short fiction, by Damon Knight

Damon Knight was born 97 years ago today. He died in 2002. In this space I've previously reviewed all his Ace Double, and his excellent final novel, Humpty Dumpty. Here then is something brief I wrote about his second-to-last novel, Why Do Birds, as well as a few more short stories.

Why Do Birds, by Damon Knight

Why Do Birds is Damon Knight's second-last novel, from 1992. It is described on the cover, fairly accurately, as "A Comic Novel of the Destruction of the Human Race". (Actually, it's not clear that the Human Race is actually destroyed.) The main character is Ed Stone, who shows up in 2002 claiming to be from 1931, despite being about 30 years old. He says aliens kidnapped him and kept him on their spaceship for 70 years, and now they have released him and given him a job. He is supposed to convince everyone on Earth to voluntarily enter a huge cube, and go into suspended animation. Then the aliens will take everyone somewhere, while the Earth will be destroyed.

Naturally people think he's crazy -- indeed, he thinks he might be crazy. But he has a ring that compels anyone he shakes hands with to believe him. Before long he is meeting the President and other political leaders, and the Cube Project is well under way. He also acquires a girlfriend and a number of additional allies. But there are a few people who oppose his plans, in some cases for sinister reasons.

The narrative is deadpan, simple on the surface, often quite funny. Ed is a curious character -- not quite likeable, a bit sinister himself, but in the end someone we sort of root for. His girlfriend Linda Lavalle is rather more likeable. The story plays out over a dozen years or so, as the Cube is built, while the forces arrayed against Ed raise doubts about his story, and Linda has her own loyalties tested. The ending is pretty much as we are compelled to expect, and mostly satisfying. That said, I couldn't love the book -- parts of it made me impatient, and I must confess I am not sure what Knight was really up to. Certainly the aliens and their plans are never explained. There are hints that the world of the book is not quite our world (besides the obvious differences between the 2002 Knight imagined as of 1992 and the real 2002). There are strange occurrences that might imply something really odd is going on, but I never figured out just what. But Knight is never less than interesting, and while it don't think truly understood this book, it lives in my memory -- it is a very original work.

Galaxy, June 1951

Damon Knight is one of those SF writers who I've always thought was best at the novella length (loosely defined). (Those his late novels are pretty good.) Stories like "The Earth Quarter", "Rule Golden", "Double Meaning", "Four in One", "Natural State", "Dio", and "Mary", all long novelettes or novellas, really stand out in his oeuvre. That said, Knight also wrote a passel of equally brilliant short stories: "The Country of the Kind", "Masks", "I See You", and "Fortyday" are four that come immediately to mind, from four different decades. Perhaps then it is fairer to say that Knight was a great writer of short fiction, though I'd say he didn't come into his own as a novelist until late in his career. (On balance, despite Knight's lasting fame in the field, I think he was underrated as a writer of fiction, perhaps because of the prominence of his contributions as editor, critic, and founder of SFWA.)

Anyway in this issue I was a bit surprised to find a longish novelette I didn't recognize in "Don't Live in the Past". Bernard Vargas is a functionary in the far future who is forced to travel back in the past after the "pipelines" in his world have malfunctioned, sending a bunch of dangerous stuff (mostly food) to the past. Vargas ends up in the very period in which the Sacred Ancestor who founded their society lived. He ends up imprisoned, and escapes with some revolutionaries. It seems that "Blodgett", the Sacred Ancestor, is a thug. But how can that be? The future is a utopia? Knight's story, of course, suggests in part that perhaps that future is not such a utopia after all. But also ... well, there's a twist to the story, a fairly guessable one. It's an OK story, but it's easy to see why this isn't one of Knight's best remembered pieces.

Space Science Fiction, March 1953

"The Worshippers" is rather less serious. A prissy philosophy professor and author finds himself quite by accident alone on an alien spaceship, which he flies by sheer luck to an unknown planet, where he ends up stranded among the natives (different aliens than the makers of the spaceship). He is surprised and pleased to find that they immediately worship him as a god, this despite the fact they seem fairly sophisticated and advanced. The man proceeds to remake the aliens in his idea of humanity as quickly as possible -- eliminating their immoral habits and introducing them to the idea of weapons, etc. Things are going quite swimmingly until yet another group of aliens shows up ... It's fairly minor work for Damon Knight, getting off a number of somewhat obvious satirical jokes, pretty silly stuff in many ways. Not without value but not terribly important in the Knight oeuvre.

Galaxy, January 1954

The lead novella is "Natural State", by Damon Knight, at about 25,000 words a true novella. (And Galaxy was, I believe, the only magazine at the time to use the term novella.) "Natural State" was later expanded into the Ace Double Masters of Evolution (1959). The expansion is fairly slight, to about 30,000 words. Here's my Ace Double review:

The future world is divided into city dwellers and "muckfeet". The city dwellers rely on high technology. They are conditioned to fear and feel sick at the thought of country life, and of muckfeet food and hygiene. They have previously fought wars, which both sides claim to have won: but as there are only 22 remaining cities in the whole world, and the muckfeet control the rest of the area, and have a much higher population, the real winners seem obvious.

As the book opens, the Mayor of New York has a desperate idea. He assigns a leading actor, Alvah Gustad, to fly out to the muckfeet and offer to trade with them: the high tech city products in exchange for much needed metals -- and also in the hopes of converting the muckfeet to city ways. Alvah somewhat reluctantly and fearfully makes his way to the country. At first he is confronted with suspicion and threats, or is just ignored. But finally he is given a chance to sell his wares at a fair somewhere in the Midwest. Much to his surprise, nobody is remotely interested in his products -- and worse, after he gets into a scuffle, he finds that the muckfeet have managed to completely disable his energy sources. He is stranded.

A pretty young woman named B. J. and a wise mentor type named Doc Bither take Alvah under their arms, and over some weeks they manage to overcome his conditioning against muckfeet food and smells. We get a look at the muckfeet way of life, which is based on using spectacular products of genetic engineering in place of machines. For example, for airplanes they use "rocs" -- huge flying lizards. Plants are used to extract metals from the ground. Other animals are used as truck or as message devices or as "libraries". Alvah is still reluctant to become a muckfoot, though -- he is still loyal to New York. But he is also in love with B. J. And when the cities launch an attack on the muckfeet, Alvah realizes that many things he has long believed are false. The novel is resolved in a predictable confrontation between Alvah's new friends and his old city.

This is a decent piece of work, enjoyable enough, but lesser work than Knight's best. I would rank it third of his three Ace Doubles (not counting the story collection). Some of the plot contrivances just don't convince -- such as Alvah and the very first muckfoot girl he meets falling in love. And Knight's case for the "natural state" versus "technology" is grossly loaded -- the cities' high tech is burdened by having to comply with the laws of physics, basically, which don't really seem to affect the muckfeet genetic creations. Or put another way -- Knight imagines a utopian perfection of genetic engineering, with limited costs; but the opposing high technology is auctorially declared to be inferior -- but not proven so.

(I also looked at the differences between the original novella and the expanded Ace Double. They consist of a brief passage, about a page, in the middle of the book which explains some of the genetic engineering; and a long additional sequence right at the end, extending the final conflict and giving Alvah a chance to be an action hero of sorts. On the whole, the additions are padding, though I think the explanatory passage fits fine.)

Amazing, July 1960

And, finally, Damon Knight’s “Time Enough” (incorrectly given as “Enough Time” in the TOC) is a pretty good story of a man reenacting a moment of humiliation during his boyhood, hoping to overcome, in reenactment, the fear that had paralyzed him (and, he thinks, ruined his life) back then. But, of course, he cannot escape his nature. Solid work, if to my mind not in the first rank of his stories.

F&SF, October-November 2002 (Locus, November 2002)

October/November is also F&SF's special double issue. ... There is a story from the late, great, Damon Knight: "Watching Matthew", a very well-done novelette about four episodes in the life of a man, ranging from age 10 through old age, seen from the POV of his dead twin. A nice story, but it didn't knock me out.