Charlie Stross turns 55 today (damn kids!), so it's a good time for a look at his short fiction!
Locus, February 2002
Asimov's also features the latest of Charles Stross' stories about Manfred Macx, genius information entrepreneur in a frenetic near-Singularity future. In "Tourists", Manfred's enhanced glasses, and attached memory, are stolen, and he finds himself essentially unable to cope. Fortunately, his lover Annette and his AI cat Aineko are soon on his track, and there is a chance for a solution, involving alien tourists, lobsters, and avatars of a dead man. I don't think this is the best of Stross' Macx stories -- perhaps the idea density which has been so impressive throughout the series is losing some impact -- but it is another solid outing by one of the most impressive of Britain's "Radical Hard SF" clade.
Locus, June 2002
The latest of Charles Stross's Manfred Macx stories is "Halo" (Asimov's, June), stepping forward a generation to focus on Manfred's daughter, Amber. Amber has sold herself into slavery to herself, in order to escape the clutches of her mother, Manfred's villainous ex-wife, the IRS agent Pamela. But Mom finds a way to get at Amber even in the Jupiter system. How can Amber deal with this latest threat? As with earlier Macx stories, the real meat is in the tossed-off details of life as we approach a Vingean singularity, and in the clever touch Stross displays in describing his high-tech future and its economics – such as an asteroid taking on the personality of Barney ("I love you, you love me, it's the law of gravity …"). Beyond the jokes and tech Stross has a bigger story to tell in this series, and "Halo" advances the overall arc an intriguing bit.
Locus, October 2002
The other novella, perhaps even stronger, is the latest and to date longest of Charles Stross' Manfred Macx stories, "Router" (Asimov's, October). Manfred's daughter Amber, the Queen of the Ring Imperium (a monarchy located around Jupiter), has sent virtual copies of herself and her court on a lightsail-propelled ship to a brown dwarf. She and her people hope to find a router there for interstellar communication (based on information they have gleaned from the "lobsters" of the very first story in the series). She is also dealing with another lawsuit from her estranged mother – luckily the local laws of her monarchy apply, including trial by combat. And back home in the inner Solar System, humanity is close to a Vingean singularity. This story, as with all of Stross' recent stories, is just brimming with, put most simply, Very Cool Ideas, and it also still manages to have likeable characters, a clever and involving plot, and an intriguing resolution opening up nicely to the next story in the sequence. (How Stross will keep upping the ante as the series continues, though, I surely don't know!)
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, December 2003
The December Asimov's features two more novellas. Charles Stross's "Curator" is the latest in his Accelerando series, following Manfred Macx and his descendants as humanity goes through a Vingean Singularity. This story introduces Manfred's grandson Sirhan. Sirhan is waiting for his "mother" Amber to return from her trip to the Router, an alien installation at another star. He plans to claim all her assets as child support, even though he is really the child of another, now dead, version of Amber. Manfred's long-estranged first wife has her own plans for her family. While of course Aineko the cat has other ideas. It's more of the same fascinating stuff as the earlier stories in the series, but it doesn't work quite as well. I think this is because this story seems more a transition, more part of an eventual novel, less self-contained. Still, the wit and audacious inventiveness that we expect from Stross remain.
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.
Locus, October 2004
With Charles Stross, still often called a "hot new writer" though he has been publishing almost as long as McHugh, we can segue neatly from September to October-November at Asimov's, as these issues see the final two stories of his acclaimed Accelerando sequence. "Elector" (second to last) is set on Saturn, where the remnants of relatively normal humanity, including a number of resurrected people based on historical figures, live in an artificial habitat. Amber Macx believes that the "Vile Offspring", humankind's descendants, running on "computronium" in the inner System, will soon destroy Saturn, so she is running for office, with a platform advocating escape on a starship. Sirhan, for whom Amber is an "eigenmother" (his mother was another version of Amber), regards her candidacy with some suspicion, especially as he suspects her of throwing a loose woman, Rita, at him. Manfred Macx, reincarnated, shows up as well. The final story is "Survivor", set decades later in a new human system built around a brown dwarf, using hacked alien "Router" technology. Sirhan and Rita have a son, Manni, who has some secrets of his own, which become significant when the artificial cat Aineko returns, wanting to close a long ago bargain. Both stories are enjoyable, though I think I liked "Survivor" more. "Elector" is denser with ideas but thin as a story – "Survivor", with the advantage of being the last in the series, comes to some real, and interesting, conclusions about Galactic society and the pitfalls of the Singularity.
Locus, April 2006
Probably best of all in One Million A. D. is Charles Stross’s “Missile Gap”, which at first blush seems to violate the anthology’s guidelines: it is set in roughly the present day, though on a rather altered Earth. But not to worry! At any rate this Earth is sufficiently weird to hold one’s interest no matter how far in the future the story is set! It seems to have been moved, as of 1962, to an enormous disk, with escape velocity such that space travel is impossible. But the Cold War continues, sort of. The story follows an American effort to colonize a dangerous new continent, and a Soviet effort to explore the disk using an Ekranoplane – a very large seaplane. Disturbing discoveries are made by both groups, which might lead to more understanding of what has happened to Earth. But a third thread follows a shadowy spy, who it turns out has quite a different agenda to pursue, one with rather stark implications for humanity as a whole.
Locus, May 2006
Indeed Stross and Wolfe provide two of the better stories in Baen's Universe's first issue. Stross’s “Pimpf” is a short novelette about the Laundry, the secret agency at the heart of his novel The Atrocity Archive. In this case Bob Howard has to deal with a new employee getting lost in a computer game, as well as menacing Human Resources types.
Locus, December 2006
Oh look – it’s 2007 already! At any rate, here is the January 2007 Asimov’s. The cover story is a very fun outing from Charles Stross called “Trunk and Disorderly”, a new entry in the shortish list of stories about “Elephants in Spaaace!” The elephant this time is a pet dwarf mammoth foisted on the narrator, Ralph, by his sister. Ralph is a member of the Dangerous Drop Club, and he is planning a drop from orbit to the surface of Mars. So he is not at all pleased to have to deal with a mammoth – especially after his sex-robot has just left him, and as he tries to break in a new butler. The whole confection is, as might seem clear, a bit Wodehousian, with SFnal interest supplied by details such as various semi-mechanical characters, and by the new political organization of the Solar System which includes, for instance, an Emirate of Mars, and by plenty of Stross’s slick offhanded incluing of future brainstem kicks. The plot is breakneck enough, involving a scheme to overturn the Emir, but plot hardly matters here – what matters is the fun we have getting to the end.
Locus, February 2010
Story collections often have good new stories as well. Indeed, often novellas, as with Charles Stross’s Wireless, an excellent collection throughout, that closes with a brilliant time travel novella, “Palimpsest”. Pierce is recruited from something like our time by agents of the Stasis, an organization a bit like Asimov’s Eternity, devoted to preserving Earth and humanity across time and until the end of time. Stross extrapolates dizzyingly from this concept, showing us multiple histories of humanity, and multiple futures for the Solar System (and indeed Galaxy), and clever and chilling means of enforcement of Stasis, and inevitably the other side, the opponents. Pierce is given a real life (or lives) with emotional weight, and real decisions to make. The Asimov reference is purposeful – I have no doubt Stross had The End of Eternity in mind when writing this story – but the story is its own.
Friday, October 18, 2019
Birthday Review: Iron Sunrise, by Charles Stross
Today is Charles Stross's birthday. I plan to put together a look at his short fiction later, but for the morning, how about this review of one of his early novels.
Iron Sunrise is a sequel to Charles Stross's 2003 novel Singularity Sky. Sequel isn't a precise term here -- Singularity Sky resolved its story quite well, and this novel is set in the same universe and features the two main characters of the previous novel in important roles, but the main conflict is completely new. Stross wrote one other novelette in this universe ("Bear Trap"), and he now declares himself finished. It's an interesting setup, and could certainly profitably be mined for further stories, but he seems to feel it has become a bit shopworn, and a bit outdated. Anyway, he has a fecund imagination, and his other ongoing work (The Atrocity Archives, Accelerando, The Family Trade) certainly shows that he will not lack for interesting settings.
I was tempted, when I first wrote this, to defer entirely to Charles Oberndorf's review in a recent New York Review of Science Fiction. Oberndorf, it seemed to me, captured the strengths and weaknesses of the book very well. So I recommend you read it if you can -- but I'll do something quick here as well.
The story opens as "a nondescript McWorld named Moscow" is dying -- its sun having been detonated by some enemy. They immediately blame a rival world, New Dresden, and automatic defenses launch a reprisal. But is New Dresden really to blame? And even if they are, is there any point to destroying yet another system?
One of the refugees fleeing the effects of the Moscow disaster is a teenager named Victoria Strowger, who calls herself Wednesday. Guided by her imaginary friend, she tracks down a mysterious piece of information on her home station before leaving. Her friend is named Herman -- which reveals to any reader of Singularity Sky that "he" is in fact an agent of the Eschaton, a post-singularity intelligence which aims to protect its existence by severely prohibiting certain atrocities and especially causality violations. Even in her new home, Wednesday realizes that she is a target -- for reasons she doesn't really understand. So she escapes on a ship heading to -- New Dresden.
A variety of other people are also involved. The coming attack on New Dresden is something the UN wishes to prevent, and the agent assigned to the problem is Rachel Mansour, heroine of Singularity Sky. She and her husband Martin Springfield end up on the same ship with Wednesday. So does a veteran political blogger named Frank. And so too are representatives of a vile group of Nazis-in-Space(tm). It appears this last group may have something to do with the problems at both Moscow and New Dresden. They are determined enemies of the Eschaton. And they have a special interest in Wednesday, and whatever she may have learned ...
It's a fast moving and fun story, with plenty of pretty neat ideas. It's a bit more smoothly written than Singularity Sky. It resolves intelligently and fairly satisfyingly -- perhaps there is just a hint of the over-convenient about the conclusion. Oberndorf's review also points out, quite sensibly, that Stross's imagination, so fecund at times, fails him at other times. One way is that all his worlds seem pretty bland (though this is actually explained by the terraforming action of the Eschaton). Another problem is the way Wednesday is portrayed -- as a pretty typical disaffected 90s goth girl, to a first approximation. In sum -- a good book, one of the better SF novels of the year, but no more than good.
Iron Sunrise is a sequel to Charles Stross's 2003 novel Singularity Sky. Sequel isn't a precise term here -- Singularity Sky resolved its story quite well, and this novel is set in the same universe and features the two main characters of the previous novel in important roles, but the main conflict is completely new. Stross wrote one other novelette in this universe ("Bear Trap"), and he now declares himself finished. It's an interesting setup, and could certainly profitably be mined for further stories, but he seems to feel it has become a bit shopworn, and a bit outdated. Anyway, he has a fecund imagination, and his other ongoing work (The Atrocity Archives, Accelerando, The Family Trade) certainly shows that he will not lack for interesting settings.I was tempted, when I first wrote this, to defer entirely to Charles Oberndorf's review in a recent New York Review of Science Fiction. Oberndorf, it seemed to me, captured the strengths and weaknesses of the book very well. So I recommend you read it if you can -- but I'll do something quick here as well.
The story opens as "a nondescript McWorld named Moscow" is dying -- its sun having been detonated by some enemy. They immediately blame a rival world, New Dresden, and automatic defenses launch a reprisal. But is New Dresden really to blame? And even if they are, is there any point to destroying yet another system?
One of the refugees fleeing the effects of the Moscow disaster is a teenager named Victoria Strowger, who calls herself Wednesday. Guided by her imaginary friend, she tracks down a mysterious piece of information on her home station before leaving. Her friend is named Herman -- which reveals to any reader of Singularity Sky that "he" is in fact an agent of the Eschaton, a post-singularity intelligence which aims to protect its existence by severely prohibiting certain atrocities and especially causality violations. Even in her new home, Wednesday realizes that she is a target -- for reasons she doesn't really understand. So she escapes on a ship heading to -- New Dresden.
A variety of other people are also involved. The coming attack on New Dresden is something the UN wishes to prevent, and the agent assigned to the problem is Rachel Mansour, heroine of Singularity Sky. She and her husband Martin Springfield end up on the same ship with Wednesday. So does a veteran political blogger named Frank. And so too are representatives of a vile group of Nazis-in-Space(tm). It appears this last group may have something to do with the problems at both Moscow and New Dresden. They are determined enemies of the Eschaton. And they have a special interest in Wednesday, and whatever she may have learned ...
It's a fast moving and fun story, with plenty of pretty neat ideas. It's a bit more smoothly written than Singularity Sky. It resolves intelligently and fairly satisfyingly -- perhaps there is just a hint of the over-convenient about the conclusion. Oberndorf's review also points out, quite sensibly, that Stross's imagination, so fecund at times, fails him at other times. One way is that all his worlds seem pretty bland (though this is actually explained by the terraforming action of the Eschaton). Another problem is the way Wednesday is portrayed -- as a pretty typical disaffected 90s goth girl, to a first approximation. In sum -- a good book, one of the better SF novels of the year, but no more than good.
Thursday, October 17, 2019
Birthday Review: Stories of Bruce McAllister
As with many writers, my Locus career doesn't encompass all of Bruce McAllister's exceptional short fiction. But he has published some exceptional work since 2002 ... so here's what I've written about him, in honor of his birthday today.
Locus, April 2004
Amid a group of decent stories in the April F&SF, two of the shortest stand out. Bruce McAllister's "The Seventh Daughter" is very short indeed, less than three pages, but quite affecting, about a boy and a model village he makes and the stories he invents about it -- and how this affects his adult life.
Locus, January 2006
“Kin”, by Bruce McAllister (Asimov's, February), is an affecting, but also somewhat chilling, story of a boy who tries to hire an alien assassin to kill the man who wants to kill his sister (that is, abort his mother’s unborn child). The alien and the boy strike up a relationship, and we learn a lot about the assassin in particular – and we get hints about where the boy’s life may lead him.
Locus, June 2007
Fantasy Magazine #6 has several very nice pieces. Bruce McAllister's "His Wife" again evokes an American childhood in Italy, here from the perspective of a middle-aged man returning to Italy with his now grown son. He takes him to meet the aged woman who had fascinated him in his childhood. She is near death, but she has yet another surprise for him.
Locus, October 2010
From Northern Ireland comes Albedo One. Number 38 features another of Bruce McAllister’s ongoing series of fantasies about a teenaged American boy in an Italian village. In “Heart of Hearts” the fourteen-year-old narrator experiences what we might call “puppy love” with a mysterious local girl, who makes patterns in the sand with seashells, and who cannot swim because she is narcoleptic. And who might have some connection with the old local story about Percy Bysshe Shelley … All these stories are sensitive, atmospheric, quiet, and cumulatively absorbing.
Locus, June 2017
Bruce McAllister’s “This is for You”, in the May Lightspeed, is a brief and quite disquieting SF story. The narrator is a boy just returned to Earth from Pitipek, a planet near Tau Ceti, still adjusting to human ways – and human girls. But he starts to make friends with Mala, and decides to make a painting for her. All innocent enough, but we realize that painting on Pitipek is not quite like painting on Earth
Locus, October 2017
There’s a good set of stories in the August Lightspeed. “Ink”, by Bruce McCallister is a subtly realized tale of a boy with hemophilia who collects stamps, and while living in Italy asks for old stamps from an old lady – and the letters she finds bring up memories of her past, and of her husband and son, lost during the War.
Locus, April 2004
Amid a group of decent stories in the April F&SF, two of the shortest stand out. Bruce McAllister's "The Seventh Daughter" is very short indeed, less than three pages, but quite affecting, about a boy and a model village he makes and the stories he invents about it -- and how this affects his adult life.
Locus, January 2006
“Kin”, by Bruce McAllister (Asimov's, February), is an affecting, but also somewhat chilling, story of a boy who tries to hire an alien assassin to kill the man who wants to kill his sister (that is, abort his mother’s unborn child). The alien and the boy strike up a relationship, and we learn a lot about the assassin in particular – and we get hints about where the boy’s life may lead him.
Locus, June 2007
Fantasy Magazine #6 has several very nice pieces. Bruce McAllister's "His Wife" again evokes an American childhood in Italy, here from the perspective of a middle-aged man returning to Italy with his now grown son. He takes him to meet the aged woman who had fascinated him in his childhood. She is near death, but she has yet another surprise for him.
Locus, October 2010
From Northern Ireland comes Albedo One. Number 38 features another of Bruce McAllister’s ongoing series of fantasies about a teenaged American boy in an Italian village. In “Heart of Hearts” the fourteen-year-old narrator experiences what we might call “puppy love” with a mysterious local girl, who makes patterns in the sand with seashells, and who cannot swim because she is narcoleptic. And who might have some connection with the old local story about Percy Bysshe Shelley … All these stories are sensitive, atmospheric, quiet, and cumulatively absorbing.
Locus, June 2017
Bruce McAllister’s “This is for You”, in the May Lightspeed, is a brief and quite disquieting SF story. The narrator is a boy just returned to Earth from Pitipek, a planet near Tau Ceti, still adjusting to human ways – and human girls. But he starts to make friends with Mala, and decides to make a painting for her. All innocent enough, but we realize that painting on Pitipek is not quite like painting on Earth
Locus, October 2017
There’s a good set of stories in the August Lightspeed. “Ink”, by Bruce McCallister is a subtly realized tale of a boy with hemophilia who collects stamps, and while living in Italy asks for old stamps from an old lady – and the letters she finds bring up memories of her past, and of her husband and son, lost during the War.
Wednesday, October 16, 2019
Birthday Review: Stories of Daniel Hatch
Daniel Hatch had a recent birthday, and so in his honor, here are some of my reviews of his short fiction from Locus. Hatch is an Analog regular (and, one might add, one of those Analog regulars (there are quite a few) who disprove the notion that Analog is a haven for politically conservative writers), and consistently one of their most interesting contributors.
Locus, January 2003
The lead novella for the January Analog, Daniel Hatch's "Seed of Destiny", concerns a planet inhabited by aliens with strangely mutable genetics. The result is that many species are sentient, but that they can't control their offspring's' sentience, and thus a durable civilization is almost impossible. A human scientist studying the problem makes a breakthrough, but then is kidnapped by an aggressive species hoping to use his knowledge to maintain their own power. The central idea, which reminded me a bit of the main idea in Brian Stableford's novel Dark Ararat, is very interesting, and the slow working out of the consequences is well handled.
Locus, October 2007
Analog for October has a pretty strong lineup overall, highlighted by the lead novella, Daniel Hatch’s “An Angelheaded Hipster Escapes”, and by an Ekaterina Sedia short story, “Virus Changes Skin”. Hatch’s story is about a man from the 20th Century, Jonathon Bender, who has ended up a brain in a box (fairly literally) and a slave to AIs running a space station. (I wonder if both Bender’s name and his situation are nods to the delightful animated show Futurama.) Bender’s scheme for escape ends up getting him stolen by Penelope Antoinette de Sandino y Murphy, one of the Twenty-Seven Families who rule Ciudad de Cielo: an enclave of a group supporting “pure humanity” – no AI upgrades – based in the former Ecuador at the site of an abandoned attempt at a space elevator. Penelope has her own issues, involving political intrigue among the families and a slimy boyfriend, and Jonathon needs to be proven human to escape ownership by the corporation that had previously bought him. This story really only introduces these issues, and the interesting future behind all this. It’s entertaining on its own, and I’m sure it is a precursor to future Penelope and Jonathon stories.
Locus, July 2009
Two long novellas dominate the July-August Double issue of Analog. Daniel Hatch’s “Seeds of Revolution” follows from a couple of earlier stories about a planet where the dominant species takes on multiple forms – is multiple species, if you will. That idea is scientifically interesting, but has been treated with more rigor elsewhere (in Brian Stableford’s Dark Ararat, to name one novel, and in a way in another story I’ll mention later in the column). Hatch here is more interested in having fun – though politically engaged fun, and darkly tinged – with the idea of having intelligent animals of various shapes running around. He explicitly evokes most obviously Pogo (the main character looks like an opossum and somehow has an alien name that is rendered Pog) and the Scarlet Pimpernel (though at times it seems a bit odd to have a fire-breathing Socialist take on the character of an avowed Royalist). Most veteran SF readers will be reminded inevitably of Poul Anderson and Gordon R. Dickson’s Hokas.
Locus, May 2012
Analog for May opens with a long – perhaps too long – novella from Daniel Hatch, “The End of Ordinary Life”. Thomas O'Reilly is an Alaskan bush pilot in a near future in which the US is falling apart, Canada is opposing it, and an old man names Clayton Shaw, it turns out, has met an alien. The plot is mainly a slightly too heavy-handed account of a government crackdown that O'Reilly gets involved in, partly because of his four girlfriends, and how the alien (a bit too conveniently) helps things out. That part is just OK, but O'Reilly and his girlfriends are enjoyable if a bit familiar as characters, and the depiction of Alaska is quite involving.
Locus, November 2012
Daniel Hatch's “Siege Perilous” is a nice Analog story from the November issue. It's set in an isolated asteroid habitat, which comes under attack. The target is the advance “cog” technology being studied in the asteroid. The means of resistance combines an unusual gambit by the crusty leader of the asteroid's people, as well as, basically, advanced anti-virus tech – and more. A brief note following the story claims “ideas are the soul of any science fiction story”, and “Siege Perilous” is chock full of ideas: about computing, about war, about economics, about life in space, and about people.
Locus, December 2013
Daniel Hatch is one of the most consistently interesting of Analog writers, and “The Chorus Line” is the best piece in the December issue of that magazine. A rich man has hired an expert “time viewer” to prove that another man's spectacular discovery about the origins of man is a fraud. But in the end what they do discover about the first humans, in the Olduvai Gorge area, is more important than questions of fraud … not a major work, but a nice small moving piece.
Locus, January 2003
The lead novella for the January Analog, Daniel Hatch's "Seed of Destiny", concerns a planet inhabited by aliens with strangely mutable genetics. The result is that many species are sentient, but that they can't control their offspring's' sentience, and thus a durable civilization is almost impossible. A human scientist studying the problem makes a breakthrough, but then is kidnapped by an aggressive species hoping to use his knowledge to maintain their own power. The central idea, which reminded me a bit of the main idea in Brian Stableford's novel Dark Ararat, is very interesting, and the slow working out of the consequences is well handled.
Locus, October 2007
Analog for October has a pretty strong lineup overall, highlighted by the lead novella, Daniel Hatch’s “An Angelheaded Hipster Escapes”, and by an Ekaterina Sedia short story, “Virus Changes Skin”. Hatch’s story is about a man from the 20th Century, Jonathon Bender, who has ended up a brain in a box (fairly literally) and a slave to AIs running a space station. (I wonder if both Bender’s name and his situation are nods to the delightful animated show Futurama.) Bender’s scheme for escape ends up getting him stolen by Penelope Antoinette de Sandino y Murphy, one of the Twenty-Seven Families who rule Ciudad de Cielo: an enclave of a group supporting “pure humanity” – no AI upgrades – based in the former Ecuador at the site of an abandoned attempt at a space elevator. Penelope has her own issues, involving political intrigue among the families and a slimy boyfriend, and Jonathon needs to be proven human to escape ownership by the corporation that had previously bought him. This story really only introduces these issues, and the interesting future behind all this. It’s entertaining on its own, and I’m sure it is a precursor to future Penelope and Jonathon stories.
Locus, July 2009
Two long novellas dominate the July-August Double issue of Analog. Daniel Hatch’s “Seeds of Revolution” follows from a couple of earlier stories about a planet where the dominant species takes on multiple forms – is multiple species, if you will. That idea is scientifically interesting, but has been treated with more rigor elsewhere (in Brian Stableford’s Dark Ararat, to name one novel, and in a way in another story I’ll mention later in the column). Hatch here is more interested in having fun – though politically engaged fun, and darkly tinged – with the idea of having intelligent animals of various shapes running around. He explicitly evokes most obviously Pogo (the main character looks like an opossum and somehow has an alien name that is rendered Pog) and the Scarlet Pimpernel (though at times it seems a bit odd to have a fire-breathing Socialist take on the character of an avowed Royalist). Most veteran SF readers will be reminded inevitably of Poul Anderson and Gordon R. Dickson’s Hokas.
Locus, May 2012
Analog for May opens with a long – perhaps too long – novella from Daniel Hatch, “The End of Ordinary Life”. Thomas O'Reilly is an Alaskan bush pilot in a near future in which the US is falling apart, Canada is opposing it, and an old man names Clayton Shaw, it turns out, has met an alien. The plot is mainly a slightly too heavy-handed account of a government crackdown that O'Reilly gets involved in, partly because of his four girlfriends, and how the alien (a bit too conveniently) helps things out. That part is just OK, but O'Reilly and his girlfriends are enjoyable if a bit familiar as characters, and the depiction of Alaska is quite involving.
Locus, November 2012
Daniel Hatch's “Siege Perilous” is a nice Analog story from the November issue. It's set in an isolated asteroid habitat, which comes under attack. The target is the advance “cog” technology being studied in the asteroid. The means of resistance combines an unusual gambit by the crusty leader of the asteroid's people, as well as, basically, advanced anti-virus tech – and more. A brief note following the story claims “ideas are the soul of any science fiction story”, and “Siege Perilous” is chock full of ideas: about computing, about war, about economics, about life in space, and about people.
Locus, December 2013
Daniel Hatch is one of the most consistently interesting of Analog writers, and “The Chorus Line” is the best piece in the December issue of that magazine. A rich man has hired an expert “time viewer” to prove that another man's spectacular discovery about the origins of man is a fraud. But in the end what they do discover about the first humans, in the Olduvai Gorge area, is more important than questions of fraud … not a major work, but a nice small moving piece.
Tuesday, October 15, 2019
Birthday Review: Stories of Walter Jon Williams
Today is Walter Jon Williams' 66th birthday. So here's a set of my Locus reviews of his short fiction, as we await his next Quillifer novel, due in just a couple of weeks.
Locus, July 2002
Worlds That Weren't is an anthology of four Alternate History novellas. Walter Jon Williams in "The Last Ride of German Freddie" gets credit for the wackiest idea: bring Friedrich Nietszche to the American West, specifically Tombstone at the time of the gunfight at the OK Corrall.
Locus, May 2003
The lead novella in the May Asimov's is Walter Jon Williams's "Margaux", set in his Praxis universe. The story itself is an effective portrait of Gredel, a beautiful young woman who is the girlfriend of a small-time. Gredel's accidental befriending of Caro, a bored aristocrat, drives the story. She witness Caro's empty life, and her boyfriend's increasingly risky life, her mother's status as a kept woman, and her stepmother's abuse at the hands of her husband. The lessons Gredel learns seem unavoidable in her situation – but the upshot is chilling. A solid story, with a convincing and ambiguous central character. What's missing is anything much in the way of SFnal punch, though I suspect that placing the story in its larger Praxis universe context would supply that.
Locus, November 2003
The word count in the October-November Asimov's doesn't disappoint either -- there are three long novellas (at close to 30,000 words apiece) among 7 stories. My favorite is Walter Jon Williams' "The Green Leopard Plague". A mermaid, Michelle, is hiding out on a remote South Pacific island. She makes her money doing deep background historical research, using what remains of the Net after much social upheaval and the Lightspeed War. Her client wants details about a mysterious gap in the life of Jonathan Terzian, who in that gap went from obscure Philosophy professor to the founder of a new economic and social order based engineering people to use chlorophyll for basic nourishment. (We gather that much more has changed in the intervening centuries -- people are mostly immortal, and can alter themselves to do much more than use chorophyll: for example, they can become mermaids.) The search details are interspersed with the actual story of Terzian's crucial weeks, as he encounters a mysterious woman on the run from a former Soviet mob of sorts; and he ends up helping her escape while learning the secret she carries. Michelle's is also dealing with a former lover, who "died" but has been restored from a backup, and who won't accept that she is no longer interested in him. The resolution to each thread has a nice sting in the tail, with a message about the ambiguity of historical knowledge buried in one story; and with a nice variation an age-old tale of jealousy emerging from the other.
Locus, September 2004
Walter Jon Williams's "The Tang Dynasty Underwater Pyramid" (Sci Fiction, August 4) is great fun. Ernesto is a member of an Andean folk music group that is a front for an organization that does borderline illegal services for the right price. He is hired to retrieve a certain cargo from the bottom of the ocean off the coast of Hong Kong. Thus he must subcontract some dive experts, who happen to be members of a water ballet troop. Then they join a cruise ship as part of the entertainment, and make their way to Hong Kong, only to find that a rival group is not far behind. Plenty of action, humor, double-crossing, and even some science-fictional macguffins are on hand. Light stuff, indeed, but a joy to read.
Locus, November 2004
Between Worlds is a fine collection of novellas, edited for the SFBC by Robert Silverberg. The general theme is far distant stars – the "Galactic frontier". Walter Jon Williams offers a long piece set in his Praxis universe, "Investments", in which a couple of the heroes of the Praxis books investigate some shady business on a newly opened planet – but end up encountering a very dangerous astronomical anomaly.
Locus, June 2007
Still better in Alien Crimes is Walter Jon Williams's novel length "Womb of Every World". This opens in a fantasy-like setting, with a man named Aristide who has a magic sword and a talking cat. He heroically organizes a mission to flush out some bandits who seem to have been sacrificing caravan travelers to their evil god. But of course much more is going on than the fairly standard fantasy setup this seems to be -- in fact, the bog standard nature of the setup ends up being part of the point. Aristide is investigating a much bigger crime than the bandits' actions -- a crime with interesting speculative resonance. So in this case the genres combine beautifully -- the story truly is about a crime, but the crime is very SFnal.
Locus, March 2013
Subterranean for Winter is a special Walter Jon Williams issue, with a good old novella, “Surfacing”, and a new one, “The Boolean Gate” (published last year as a chapbook), which presents Mark Twain late in his life, quite believably, as he encounters Nikola Tesla and a bizarre project. It's been well-received in general, but I confess that while I thought it well done, in particular as to Twain's character, it didn't really work for me as a story.
Locus, October 2017
In “The Triumph of Virtue” (The Book of Swords), Walter Jon Williams introduces the hero of his new fantasy series, Quillifer. The young Quillifer, studying to be a lawyer, and in love with a beautiful woman of the new Queen’s court, gets involved in a mystery aimed, apparently, at the Queen’s inappropriate lover. Quillifer must navigate the shoals of court intrigue to solve the crime – and he learns to his discomfiture that solving the crime is much easier than dealing with an embarrassed Queen.
Locus, July 2002
Worlds That Weren't is an anthology of four Alternate History novellas. Walter Jon Williams in "The Last Ride of German Freddie" gets credit for the wackiest idea: bring Friedrich Nietszche to the American West, specifically Tombstone at the time of the gunfight at the OK Corrall.
Locus, May 2003
The lead novella in the May Asimov's is Walter Jon Williams's "Margaux", set in his Praxis universe. The story itself is an effective portrait of Gredel, a beautiful young woman who is the girlfriend of a small-time. Gredel's accidental befriending of Caro, a bored aristocrat, drives the story. She witness Caro's empty life, and her boyfriend's increasingly risky life, her mother's status as a kept woman, and her stepmother's abuse at the hands of her husband. The lessons Gredel learns seem unavoidable in her situation – but the upshot is chilling. A solid story, with a convincing and ambiguous central character. What's missing is anything much in the way of SFnal punch, though I suspect that placing the story in its larger Praxis universe context would supply that.
Locus, November 2003
The word count in the October-November Asimov's doesn't disappoint either -- there are three long novellas (at close to 30,000 words apiece) among 7 stories. My favorite is Walter Jon Williams' "The Green Leopard Plague". A mermaid, Michelle, is hiding out on a remote South Pacific island. She makes her money doing deep background historical research, using what remains of the Net after much social upheaval and the Lightspeed War. Her client wants details about a mysterious gap in the life of Jonathan Terzian, who in that gap went from obscure Philosophy professor to the founder of a new economic and social order based engineering people to use chlorophyll for basic nourishment. (We gather that much more has changed in the intervening centuries -- people are mostly immortal, and can alter themselves to do much more than use chorophyll: for example, they can become mermaids.) The search details are interspersed with the actual story of Terzian's crucial weeks, as he encounters a mysterious woman on the run from a former Soviet mob of sorts; and he ends up helping her escape while learning the secret she carries. Michelle's is also dealing with a former lover, who "died" but has been restored from a backup, and who won't accept that she is no longer interested in him. The resolution to each thread has a nice sting in the tail, with a message about the ambiguity of historical knowledge buried in one story; and with a nice variation an age-old tale of jealousy emerging from the other.
Locus, September 2004
Walter Jon Williams's "The Tang Dynasty Underwater Pyramid" (Sci Fiction, August 4) is great fun. Ernesto is a member of an Andean folk music group that is a front for an organization that does borderline illegal services for the right price. He is hired to retrieve a certain cargo from the bottom of the ocean off the coast of Hong Kong. Thus he must subcontract some dive experts, who happen to be members of a water ballet troop. Then they join a cruise ship as part of the entertainment, and make their way to Hong Kong, only to find that a rival group is not far behind. Plenty of action, humor, double-crossing, and even some science-fictional macguffins are on hand. Light stuff, indeed, but a joy to read.
Locus, November 2004
Between Worlds is a fine collection of novellas, edited for the SFBC by Robert Silverberg. The general theme is far distant stars – the "Galactic frontier". Walter Jon Williams offers a long piece set in his Praxis universe, "Investments", in which a couple of the heroes of the Praxis books investigate some shady business on a newly opened planet – but end up encountering a very dangerous astronomical anomaly.
Locus, June 2007
Still better in Alien Crimes is Walter Jon Williams's novel length "Womb of Every World". This opens in a fantasy-like setting, with a man named Aristide who has a magic sword and a talking cat. He heroically organizes a mission to flush out some bandits who seem to have been sacrificing caravan travelers to their evil god. But of course much more is going on than the fairly standard fantasy setup this seems to be -- in fact, the bog standard nature of the setup ends up being part of the point. Aristide is investigating a much bigger crime than the bandits' actions -- a crime with interesting speculative resonance. So in this case the genres combine beautifully -- the story truly is about a crime, but the crime is very SFnal.
Locus, March 2013
Subterranean for Winter is a special Walter Jon Williams issue, with a good old novella, “Surfacing”, and a new one, “The Boolean Gate” (published last year as a chapbook), which presents Mark Twain late in his life, quite believably, as he encounters Nikola Tesla and a bizarre project. It's been well-received in general, but I confess that while I thought it well done, in particular as to Twain's character, it didn't really work for me as a story.
Locus, October 2017
In “The Triumph of Virtue” (The Book of Swords), Walter Jon Williams introduces the hero of his new fantasy series, Quillifer. The young Quillifer, studying to be a lawyer, and in love with a beautiful woman of the new Queen’s court, gets involved in a mystery aimed, apparently, at the Queen’s inappropriate lover. Quillifer must navigate the shoals of court intrigue to solve the crime – and he learns to his discomfiture that solving the crime is much easier than dealing with an embarrassed Queen.
Birthday Review: Stories of James H. Schmitz
James Schmitz was born in Hamburg, Germany, on this date in 1911. His science fiction, which appeared for three decades from the early '40s to the early '70s, was very enjoyable. Here's a number of things I wrote about some of his stories, and his last, little known, novel.
Planet Stories, May 1951
The James H. Schmitz story that started me on this odyssey, "Captives of the Thieve-Star", is the cover story of the May issue. Channok and Peer have just got married. Channok wishes to eventually join the Imperial Secret Service, but Peer is the daughter of a pirate, who hoodwinks Channok into taking some stolen goods and hiding them on an out-of-the-way planet. On the way, they encounter a derelict ship heading to the same system. They realize that there was some sort of falling out among the crew, and that there is some valuable stuff on the ship. But there is sure to be some sort of guard, beyond the deadly poison that killed the people on the ship. So they bury it on the planet, and go off to hide Peer's father's contraband. Then the bad guys from the derelict ship show up. Peer concocts a plan to let Channok get the drop on them, and they trick the bad guys into messing with the strange alien race on the planet. And that's just about all, except Channok shockingly realizes that the bad guys are ISS members, thus apparently freeing him, conscience-wise, to join up with Peer's family as a pirate. The plot here isn't that well worked out, but Schmitz' breezy way with characters, especially women, does show through, and the story is pleasant enough reading. Peer is definitely a Schmitz heroine in the general style of Trigger and Telzey.
Galaxy, November 1955, January 1956
I ended up buying some old Galaxys, the issues for November 1955, and January and February 1956. I chose these because the Schmitz serial "The Ties of Earth" is included in the November 1955, and January 1956, issues. (There was no December 1955 issue because of a distribution change. Guy Gordon tells how he found the November and January issues at a flea market long ago, and waited ten years to read "The Ties of Earth", always looking for that elusive December 1955 issue with the "middle" part of the serial. Fortunately, I had the ISFDB to tell me that it was only a two-parter, and that there was no December issue.)
"The Ties of Earth" is about 27,500 words long, just long enough to be an uncomfortable fit in a single magazine issue, but on the short side even for a two part serial. It's rather uncharacteristic for Schmitz in some ways: it's set only on Earth, in contemporary times. It does however have his usual obsession with psi powers. The hero is Alan Commager. He's in this mid-30s, a fairly wealthy widower. His friend Jean has asked him to help her get her husband Ira out of the clutches of a seemingly fraudulent group claiming psi powers. Commager himself recently had a publicized run of "luck" at a dice game, so the hook they use to contact the psi group is to have them test Commager himself for psi powers. Present at the meeting are a wealthy older man, Herbert Hawkes, and two attractive younger women, Ruth McDonald and "Paylar", and a few other folks. Paylar is soon revealed to be the most important person present, and she is the one who tests Commager.
Suddenly Commager is waking up at his house, having no memory of what happened. Soon we learn the his powers were apparently real, and that they scared Paylar sufficiently that she arranged things so that nobody realized what had happened. Then the plot kicks into gear: Ruth McDonald shows up dead at Alan's workplace, Alan is attacked by psi forces. When Alan evades both these attempts to trap him, Paylar confronts him with a story about her group: they are "Old Minds", original humans with limited psi powers. They are attempting to control "New Minds", much more powerful psis, to keep the Earth safe. When they find powerful "New Minds", they either convince them to join their organization, or kill them. Will Alan join? (As you'll have realized, he is a powerful "New Mind" psi.)
Alan refuses, and the plot resolution involves a few more "psi battles", involving landslides (shades of "Poltergeist"), giant squid attacking Alan's boat, and finally a series of quite shocking twists involving Alan's life history. The end is a dizzying series of twists and countertwists, as both Paylar and her "Old Minds" and Alan as a "New Mind" seem to gain the upper hand at different times, and to hypnotically convince the other side that they really won. It's a bit confusing because for a while it isn't clear whether what the author is telling us at any given time is "truth", or "what Alan/Paylar thinks is truth". Though right at the end it's clear that Alan has come out on top, and that from now on he will nurture "New Minds", who really are not inimical to the Earth at all, but rather the next stage in its "communal evolution", one might say.
I found the story a pretty fun read up until the tiresome ending. I thought Alan's character was well done, and I was also taken with Jean. The strongly implied extramarital affair between the two added some nice tension, and furthermore was well-described and convincing. Paylar was a reasonably interesting "villain", though the other villains were stock. The plot was twisty and fairly involving, though there were a few holes. (For instance, Ruth McDonald shows up dead at one point, then shows up alive later. This isn't a continuity mistake, and Schmitz implies an explanation, but doesn't really nail it down well.) Several of the twists were pretty neat, especially the one involving Alan's marriage.
The problems with the ending are at least threefold, as I see it. One problem is endemic to "psi" stories: the powers of the participants in psi battles often seem to vary conveniently depending on plot needs, and "The Ties of Earth" has some such power variance. Another problem is that a couple of the very last twists, intended to be really wrenching, aren't set up quite fairly. In particular, Alan's childhood turns out to be important, but issues with his childhood, such as that he was an orphan, aren't even mentioned until right towards the end. A third problem may be partly due to my desires for the story direction, as opposed to the author's intentions, but I was very disappointed when Jean, as a character, was basically just discarded before the climax. Schmitz didn't want to deal with Alan and Jean resolving their relationship, apparently, especially with Alan's difficulties dealing with his newfound "New Mind" status. Understandable, perhaps, but disappointing, and structurally off. And, finally, the gooey mystical Old Mind/New Mind stuff, especially in its characterization as of the final twist, just doesn't work for me. (It is very reminiscent of A. E. van Vogt, actually.)
One possibility to account for at least some of the problems is that Galaxy's editor, H. L. Gold, may have butchered the story, as he did so often to other writers. If so, that's a darn shame, and as far as I know, there is no original manuscript available. (Maybe it's still up in that mysterious attic with the Karres Venture manuscript.) I suspect this story is less likely than most to eventually get reprinted.
Amazing, December 1961
Schmitz's "The Star Hyacinths" is a part of his main sequence of stories, about a future Galactic civilization called the Hub. In Eric Flint's set of books collecting his complete works for Baen, it was included in the volume called Telzey Amberdon for convenience' sake: it does not feature Telzey, but one of the main characters, Wellan Dasinger, appears in some of the Telzey stories. This is fairly minor work (perhaps that's why it appeared in Amazing and not Analog). Six years prior to the main action, Dosey Asteroids were robbed of a shipment of extremely valuable Star Hyacinths. Wellan Dasinger is on a mission with a certain Dr. Egavine -- who turns out to be a criminal. As do the the crew of the ship they are taking, except for the attractive and competent pilot, Miss Duomart Mines. No surprise -- they're looking for the missing Star Hyacinths. And as it happens, so is Wellan, in is role as insurance investigator. They have to negotiate hypno sprays and machine that broadcasts fear, as well as a survivor of the crash of the spaceship that had the stolen gems. None of it quite convinced me, either economically or as to plot. And for that matter Duomart is less fun as a heroine than either Telzey or Trigger. Schmitz was usually at least kind of fun reading -- and that's the case here -- but this ranks fairly low on any list of his Hub stories.
Amazing, November 1962
Schmitz's "Left Hand, Right Hand" is pleasant and fairly ordinary SF, with a familiar plot. Troy Gordon is a member of an Earth expedition researching the newly discovered planet Cassa. He has recovered his barely alive compadre Jerry Goodman, a pilot, and his keeping him hidden? Why? It seems the Earth expedition has been overrun by penguin-like aliens, the Tareeg, and to his disgust the rest of the expedition, the scientists, have been cooperating with the Tareeg, after a coujple of them were tortured to death. Troy wants Jerry to help him escape and return to Earth with the news -- especially as the Tareegs, water creatures, are preparing to crash comets into Cassa to turn it to a water planet. But Jerry must recover first, and Troy must keep him a secret from both the Tareegs and the quisling scientists. It all culminates in a twist ... and all this is nicely done, but routine.
Analog, February 1966
"The Searcher" is a Hub story from Schmitz, but it does not feature either of his most famous heroines, Telzey Amberdon and Trigger Argee. Instead the heroine is Danestar Gems, from the Kyth Interstellar Detective Agency. Danestar is an expert in miniature gadgetry. Unfortunately, this is all we really get to know of her, besides that she is "a long-waisted, lithe, beautiful girl". That's a weakness in the story -- Danestar is really a cipher, unlike Telzey and Trigger, who do acquire real characters over there multiple appearances. The other weakness is not uncommon to Schmitz's stories -- the resolution depends to too great an extent on basically luck, or rather the unusual powers depicted taking on whatever aspect the plot requires.
The story is about an energy creature from a dust cloud called the Pit which has come to Mezmiali, a planet just two light years from the edge of the cloud. The creature is in search of an alien instrument it needs. As it happens, Danestar and her partner are investigating a smuggling group that just happens to be trying to smuggle that particular instrument to private buyers. The energy creature can simply absorb humans, unless they are Danestar and her partner, in which case there will only be close calls. The story begins as a detective story about Danestar foiling the smugglers, but the last half or so is a chase between her and her partner and the energy creature, until she magically figures out how to zap it.
I thought it one of Schmitz's weaker pieces, though others seem to like it a lot.
The Eternal Frontiers (Putnam, 1973)
The only James Schmitz novel I hadn't read was his last, The Eternal Frontiers, from 1973. This short book (about 42000 words) is not set in his usual "Hub" universe. Instead, humans, fairly far in the future, are divided into a couple of major groups, and some much smaller groups. The two major power centers are the Star Union, mostly space dwellers, and the Galestrals, who are descended from the colonists of a very hostile planet, and thus are very competent fighters and planet workers. The Star Union is further subdivided into a group of people who are fully developed for zero gravity, and who can't tolerate planetary gravities (the Swimmers), and a group who live in habitats where gravity is still used (the Walkers).
The novel is set on a new planet, remote from human space, which has a lot of valuable heavy metals. The Walkers wish to mine the metals conventionally, which would give them a political advantage, and the Swimmers want to do it from "domes" (gravity controlled) with more automation. This would be more expensive, but the Swimmers believe it would be safer. I didn't quite figure out where the Galestrals really fit. At any rate, funny things start happening, and it begins to look like someone, a rogue Galestral or a rogue Swimmer, perhaps, is trying to sabotage things so that it looks too dangerous for Walkers to mine the planet. People start being killed, by a violent, elusive, beast. Ghosts start showing up. Other evidences of sabotage are uncovered. The eventual resolution is a twist, and not quite fair in some ways. It's far from Schmitz at his best. The characters are pretty much ciphers. (He does feature a couple of his usual spunky, competent, women.) The book really reads like a sketch of a novel. A revised, longer, version, beefing up the interpersonal relationships and characterization, and setting up the solution to the novel a bit more fairly, might have been pretty good. Some of the ideas are in fact kind of neat. I almost wonder if Schmitz ran out of energy: he retired from writing the year after this was published, maybe he just didn't want to put the work into the book that it needed.
Planet Stories, May 1951
The James H. Schmitz story that started me on this odyssey, "Captives of the Thieve-Star", is the cover story of the May issue. Channok and Peer have just got married. Channok wishes to eventually join the Imperial Secret Service, but Peer is the daughter of a pirate, who hoodwinks Channok into taking some stolen goods and hiding them on an out-of-the-way planet. On the way, they encounter a derelict ship heading to the same system. They realize that there was some sort of falling out among the crew, and that there is some valuable stuff on the ship. But there is sure to be some sort of guard, beyond the deadly poison that killed the people on the ship. So they bury it on the planet, and go off to hide Peer's father's contraband. Then the bad guys from the derelict ship show up. Peer concocts a plan to let Channok get the drop on them, and they trick the bad guys into messing with the strange alien race on the planet. And that's just about all, except Channok shockingly realizes that the bad guys are ISS members, thus apparently freeing him, conscience-wise, to join up with Peer's family as a pirate. The plot here isn't that well worked out, but Schmitz' breezy way with characters, especially women, does show through, and the story is pleasant enough reading. Peer is definitely a Schmitz heroine in the general style of Trigger and Telzey.
Galaxy, November 1955, January 1956
I ended up buying some old Galaxys, the issues for November 1955, and January and February 1956. I chose these because the Schmitz serial "The Ties of Earth" is included in the November 1955, and January 1956, issues. (There was no December 1955 issue because of a distribution change. Guy Gordon tells how he found the November and January issues at a flea market long ago, and waited ten years to read "The Ties of Earth", always looking for that elusive December 1955 issue with the "middle" part of the serial. Fortunately, I had the ISFDB to tell me that it was only a two-parter, and that there was no December issue.)
"The Ties of Earth" is about 27,500 words long, just long enough to be an uncomfortable fit in a single magazine issue, but on the short side even for a two part serial. It's rather uncharacteristic for Schmitz in some ways: it's set only on Earth, in contemporary times. It does however have his usual obsession with psi powers. The hero is Alan Commager. He's in this mid-30s, a fairly wealthy widower. His friend Jean has asked him to help her get her husband Ira out of the clutches of a seemingly fraudulent group claiming psi powers. Commager himself recently had a publicized run of "luck" at a dice game, so the hook they use to contact the psi group is to have them test Commager himself for psi powers. Present at the meeting are a wealthy older man, Herbert Hawkes, and two attractive younger women, Ruth McDonald and "Paylar", and a few other folks. Paylar is soon revealed to be the most important person present, and she is the one who tests Commager.
Suddenly Commager is waking up at his house, having no memory of what happened. Soon we learn the his powers were apparently real, and that they scared Paylar sufficiently that she arranged things so that nobody realized what had happened. Then the plot kicks into gear: Ruth McDonald shows up dead at Alan's workplace, Alan is attacked by psi forces. When Alan evades both these attempts to trap him, Paylar confronts him with a story about her group: they are "Old Minds", original humans with limited psi powers. They are attempting to control "New Minds", much more powerful psis, to keep the Earth safe. When they find powerful "New Minds", they either convince them to join their organization, or kill them. Will Alan join? (As you'll have realized, he is a powerful "New Mind" psi.)
Alan refuses, and the plot resolution involves a few more "psi battles", involving landslides (shades of "Poltergeist"), giant squid attacking Alan's boat, and finally a series of quite shocking twists involving Alan's life history. The end is a dizzying series of twists and countertwists, as both Paylar and her "Old Minds" and Alan as a "New Mind" seem to gain the upper hand at different times, and to hypnotically convince the other side that they really won. It's a bit confusing because for a while it isn't clear whether what the author is telling us at any given time is "truth", or "what Alan/Paylar thinks is truth". Though right at the end it's clear that Alan has come out on top, and that from now on he will nurture "New Minds", who really are not inimical to the Earth at all, but rather the next stage in its "communal evolution", one might say.
I found the story a pretty fun read up until the tiresome ending. I thought Alan's character was well done, and I was also taken with Jean. The strongly implied extramarital affair between the two added some nice tension, and furthermore was well-described and convincing. Paylar was a reasonably interesting "villain", though the other villains were stock. The plot was twisty and fairly involving, though there were a few holes. (For instance, Ruth McDonald shows up dead at one point, then shows up alive later. This isn't a continuity mistake, and Schmitz implies an explanation, but doesn't really nail it down well.) Several of the twists were pretty neat, especially the one involving Alan's marriage.
The problems with the ending are at least threefold, as I see it. One problem is endemic to "psi" stories: the powers of the participants in psi battles often seem to vary conveniently depending on plot needs, and "The Ties of Earth" has some such power variance. Another problem is that a couple of the very last twists, intended to be really wrenching, aren't set up quite fairly. In particular, Alan's childhood turns out to be important, but issues with his childhood, such as that he was an orphan, aren't even mentioned until right towards the end. A third problem may be partly due to my desires for the story direction, as opposed to the author's intentions, but I was very disappointed when Jean, as a character, was basically just discarded before the climax. Schmitz didn't want to deal with Alan and Jean resolving their relationship, apparently, especially with Alan's difficulties dealing with his newfound "New Mind" status. Understandable, perhaps, but disappointing, and structurally off. And, finally, the gooey mystical Old Mind/New Mind stuff, especially in its characterization as of the final twist, just doesn't work for me. (It is very reminiscent of A. E. van Vogt, actually.)
One possibility to account for at least some of the problems is that Galaxy's editor, H. L. Gold, may have butchered the story, as he did so often to other writers. If so, that's a darn shame, and as far as I know, there is no original manuscript available. (Maybe it's still up in that mysterious attic with the Karres Venture manuscript.) I suspect this story is less likely than most to eventually get reprinted.
Amazing, December 1961
Schmitz's "The Star Hyacinths" is a part of his main sequence of stories, about a future Galactic civilization called the Hub. In Eric Flint's set of books collecting his complete works for Baen, it was included in the volume called Telzey Amberdon for convenience' sake: it does not feature Telzey, but one of the main characters, Wellan Dasinger, appears in some of the Telzey stories. This is fairly minor work (perhaps that's why it appeared in Amazing and not Analog). Six years prior to the main action, Dosey Asteroids were robbed of a shipment of extremely valuable Star Hyacinths. Wellan Dasinger is on a mission with a certain Dr. Egavine -- who turns out to be a criminal. As do the the crew of the ship they are taking, except for the attractive and competent pilot, Miss Duomart Mines. No surprise -- they're looking for the missing Star Hyacinths. And as it happens, so is Wellan, in is role as insurance investigator. They have to negotiate hypno sprays and machine that broadcasts fear, as well as a survivor of the crash of the spaceship that had the stolen gems. None of it quite convinced me, either economically or as to plot. And for that matter Duomart is less fun as a heroine than either Telzey or Trigger. Schmitz was usually at least kind of fun reading -- and that's the case here -- but this ranks fairly low on any list of his Hub stories.
Amazing, November 1962
Schmitz's "Left Hand, Right Hand" is pleasant and fairly ordinary SF, with a familiar plot. Troy Gordon is a member of an Earth expedition researching the newly discovered planet Cassa. He has recovered his barely alive compadre Jerry Goodman, a pilot, and his keeping him hidden? Why? It seems the Earth expedition has been overrun by penguin-like aliens, the Tareeg, and to his disgust the rest of the expedition, the scientists, have been cooperating with the Tareeg, after a coujple of them were tortured to death. Troy wants Jerry to help him escape and return to Earth with the news -- especially as the Tareegs, water creatures, are preparing to crash comets into Cassa to turn it to a water planet. But Jerry must recover first, and Troy must keep him a secret from both the Tareegs and the quisling scientists. It all culminates in a twist ... and all this is nicely done, but routine.
Analog, February 1966
"The Searcher" is a Hub story from Schmitz, but it does not feature either of his most famous heroines, Telzey Amberdon and Trigger Argee. Instead the heroine is Danestar Gems, from the Kyth Interstellar Detective Agency. Danestar is an expert in miniature gadgetry. Unfortunately, this is all we really get to know of her, besides that she is "a long-waisted, lithe, beautiful girl". That's a weakness in the story -- Danestar is really a cipher, unlike Telzey and Trigger, who do acquire real characters over there multiple appearances. The other weakness is not uncommon to Schmitz's stories -- the resolution depends to too great an extent on basically luck, or rather the unusual powers depicted taking on whatever aspect the plot requires.
The story is about an energy creature from a dust cloud called the Pit which has come to Mezmiali, a planet just two light years from the edge of the cloud. The creature is in search of an alien instrument it needs. As it happens, Danestar and her partner are investigating a smuggling group that just happens to be trying to smuggle that particular instrument to private buyers. The energy creature can simply absorb humans, unless they are Danestar and her partner, in which case there will only be close calls. The story begins as a detective story about Danestar foiling the smugglers, but the last half or so is a chase between her and her partner and the energy creature, until she magically figures out how to zap it.
I thought it one of Schmitz's weaker pieces, though others seem to like it a lot.
The Eternal Frontiers (Putnam, 1973)
The novel is set on a new planet, remote from human space, which has a lot of valuable heavy metals. The Walkers wish to mine the metals conventionally, which would give them a political advantage, and the Swimmers want to do it from "domes" (gravity controlled) with more automation. This would be more expensive, but the Swimmers believe it would be safer. I didn't quite figure out where the Galestrals really fit. At any rate, funny things start happening, and it begins to look like someone, a rogue Galestral or a rogue Swimmer, perhaps, is trying to sabotage things so that it looks too dangerous for Walkers to mine the planet. People start being killed, by a violent, elusive, beast. Ghosts start showing up. Other evidences of sabotage are uncovered. The eventual resolution is a twist, and not quite fair in some ways. It's far from Schmitz at his best. The characters are pretty much ciphers. (He does feature a couple of his usual spunky, competent, women.) The book really reads like a sketch of a novel. A revised, longer, version, beefing up the interpersonal relationships and characterization, and setting up the solution to the novel a bit more fairly, might have been pretty good. Some of the ideas are in fact kind of neat. I almost wonder if Schmitz ran out of energy: he retired from writing the year after this was published, maybe he just didn't want to put the work into the book that it needed.
Thursday, October 10, 2019
Old Bestseller Review: The Graftons, by Archibald Marshall
Old Besteller: The Graftons, by Archibald Marshall
a review by Rich Horton
Archibald Marshall was the penname used by Arthur Hammond Marshall (1866-1934), a British journalist and novelist. He seems to have written primarily realistic novels of British contemporary life, set prior to the first World War. I was to an extent reminded of some novels my mother used to read, by "Miss Read" (though those, I believe, were set later) -- contemporaries compared him to Trollope, which seems a huge stretch to me, though I suppose he may have aspired to that status. He seems to have been fairly popular, especially (says Wikipedia) among American readers, though he was not so successful as to show up on the Publishers' Weekly lists of the top ten bestselling novels of the year. He wrote at least one SF novel, Upsidonia, from 1916.
The Graftons is from 1918, or so the copyright says. My edition, possibly an American first, is dated 1919 on the title page. It's published by Dodd, Mead. There is an introduction (dated March 1918) by the author, which states that it "deals with the same characters as Abington Abbey". Abington Abbey was an earlier novel (though Wikipedia curiously dates it to 1919.) Marshall refers to criticism of that novel (and futher criticism presumed to follow of The Graftons) for not dealing with the impact of the War, and he demurs that he cannot deal with the effects on society of the War until it is concluded, so he has set his novels in the decade or so prior to the War. He admits that his characters doubtless face a potentially tragic future, and that at least one of the young men in the book will likely have died.
The Graftons are a family from the City now occupying Abington Abbey. The father is George, a widower, and he has three daughters (Caroline, Beatrix, and Barbara), and one son, also called George. As the novel opens, the Rector of Surley, a local church, is dying, and the question is who should succeed him? The main candidates are the Rector's son, who is perhaps too inexperienced, but well liked; and the rather pompous and annoying Vicar of Abington, A. Salisbury Mercer. The gift of the living of Abington is in George Grafton's hands, and so there's a problem -- the Grafton's (and most everyone else) cordially dislike Mercer, but they don't think they should foist him on Surley either ... So this all seems to be a reason people might compare Marshall to Trollope. But this whole issue is quickly resolved, in a generally satisfying fashion (and these chapters have some nice comic elements.)
The rest of the book primarily resolves around the love affairs of Caroline and Beatrix. Beatrix is the more worldly of the two older girls, and we soon gather she had thought herself in love previously with a man who turned out to be rather a cad. (I assume this was dealt with in Abington Abbey.) There is a man named Dick Mansergh, a Navy man, who is clearly besotted with her, and he's of the right class and has the right money. But does she love him? As for Caroline, she is a country girl at heart, and she falls for Maurice Bradby, who is apprenticed to George Grafton's property agent. As such Bradby is distinctly of a lower class than the Graftons, so their relationship will raise questions.
Of course all is resolved pleasantly -- it is that sort of novel. There is even the possibility of a remarriage for George Grafton, to a pretty (and rather rich) local widow, some years younger than him. I thought this subplot resolved in a clumsy and annoying fashion, actually.
It's a very pastoral book, quietly preachy in a classic "Little England" fashion, very much plumping for the virtues of English country life, and of the class system, etc. The writing is fine, the characters are, well, types, and somewhat idealized types, but not poorly portrayed. It seems in the end just of the sort of book to have been popular in its time, and to have become completely out of fashion not long after.
a review by Rich Horton
Archibald Marshall was the penname used by Arthur Hammond Marshall (1866-1934), a British journalist and novelist. He seems to have written primarily realistic novels of British contemporary life, set prior to the first World War. I was to an extent reminded of some novels my mother used to read, by "Miss Read" (though those, I believe, were set later) -- contemporaries compared him to Trollope, which seems a huge stretch to me, though I suppose he may have aspired to that status. He seems to have been fairly popular, especially (says Wikipedia) among American readers, though he was not so successful as to show up on the Publishers' Weekly lists of the top ten bestselling novels of the year. He wrote at least one SF novel, Upsidonia, from 1916.
The Graftons are a family from the City now occupying Abington Abbey. The father is George, a widower, and he has three daughters (Caroline, Beatrix, and Barbara), and one son, also called George. As the novel opens, the Rector of Surley, a local church, is dying, and the question is who should succeed him? The main candidates are the Rector's son, who is perhaps too inexperienced, but well liked; and the rather pompous and annoying Vicar of Abington, A. Salisbury Mercer. The gift of the living of Abington is in George Grafton's hands, and so there's a problem -- the Grafton's (and most everyone else) cordially dislike Mercer, but they don't think they should foist him on Surley either ... So this all seems to be a reason people might compare Marshall to Trollope. But this whole issue is quickly resolved, in a generally satisfying fashion (and these chapters have some nice comic elements.)
The rest of the book primarily resolves around the love affairs of Caroline and Beatrix. Beatrix is the more worldly of the two older girls, and we soon gather she had thought herself in love previously with a man who turned out to be rather a cad. (I assume this was dealt with in Abington Abbey.) There is a man named Dick Mansergh, a Navy man, who is clearly besotted with her, and he's of the right class and has the right money. But does she love him? As for Caroline, she is a country girl at heart, and she falls for Maurice Bradby, who is apprenticed to George Grafton's property agent. As such Bradby is distinctly of a lower class than the Graftons, so their relationship will raise questions.
Of course all is resolved pleasantly -- it is that sort of novel. There is even the possibility of a remarriage for George Grafton, to a pretty (and rather rich) local widow, some years younger than him. I thought this subplot resolved in a clumsy and annoying fashion, actually.
It's a very pastoral book, quietly preachy in a classic "Little England" fashion, very much plumping for the virtues of English country life, and of the class system, etc. The writing is fine, the characters are, well, types, and somewhat idealized types, but not poorly portrayed. It seems in the end just of the sort of book to have been popular in its time, and to have become completely out of fashion not long after.
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