Reclaimed SF Site Review: Emphyrio, by Jack Vance

Here's another SF Site review I'm posting on this blog after the demise of that wonderful site. This review was written in 2000.

The UK imprint Millennium is reprinting a number of classic SF novels as SF Masterworks. This is an effort for which they deserve much praise. I have at hand number 19 of this series of reprints, a 1969 novel by Jack Vance, Emphyrio. [I should note that more recently this novel was reprinted by the Library of America as part of Gary K. Wolfe's selections of some of the best American SF novels of the 1950s and 1960s -- the volume with Emphyrio is American Science Fiction: Four Classic Novels 1968-1969.]

This is one of Vance's best novels, and in many ways a good introduction to this author. On display are many of the hallmarks of his mature style: his elegant writing, his wonderful depiction of local colour, his unusual social systems. Emphyrio lacks only the humour that is so often present in Vance: this is one of his more melancholy books. It's also better plotted than many of his novels, and it's a stand-alone.

The story concerns a young man in the city of Ambroy (on the planet Halma) named Ghyl Tarvoke. Ghyl is the son of Amiante Tarvoke, a rather unconventional inhabitant of Ambroy. Amiante is a master carver of wooden screens, one of the handmade products that Ambroy exports to the rest of the Galaxy, but he is rather solitary, and does not produce especially many screens, and does not participate in the religious rituals of Ambroy, which involve intricate leaping (saltation).

Ghyl's childhood is wonderfully presented. It's rather lonely, but happy, as Amiante's rearing of Ghyl bids fair to make him as unconventional as his father. Ghyl explores much of his city, which is ruled by a very few "Lords" or "Remedials," who control the utilities and services of the city, and provide a guaranteed minimum support lifestyle to the common people who co-operate, in exchange for control of the market for Ambroy's artwork. Various regulations are enforced, most notably an absolute rule against duplication of any kind, ostensibly to ensure the maintenance of Ambroy's reputation for completely original handmade art.

Ghyl makes a few friends, some who end up "noncups," or people living outside the welfare system. He also learns eventually that his father's unconventionality extends to illegal duplication: his father has a collection of historical documents, which he duplicates. He also teaches Ghyl the writing systems used in these old documents. One old document is an unfinished version of the legend of Emphyrio, a hero of the past on the planet Aume who helped humans throw off the domination of aliens from the mood Sigil. As Ghyl grows older, he remains isolated from most of his fellows, an isolation only enhanced by his brief affair with a Lord's daughter, and further exacerbated by his father's eventual punishment and death for his duplicating.

Finally Ghyl is pushed to a desperate act, kidnapping a Lord's spaceship. This leads to a journey offworld, where he eventually learns much about the true story of Emphyrio and the true nature of his own planet, of the Lords who rule it and the mysterious puppet makers of the moon Damar. The resolution is satisfying if a bit odd, with a nice twist. However, although the plot of this novel is satisfactory, the real pleasures, as with all Vance, lie elsewhere.

This book features, for one thing, a very satisfying depiction of an odd, lonely but happy, childhood. For a second thing, there is the culture of Ambroy, which is perhaps not so odd as some of Vance's social structures, but still fascinating, with its welfare system, prohibition of duplication, mysterious Lords, and unusual and mordantly amusing punishments. Thirdly there is Vance's always elegant prose, with his glorious touch for names of people (Amiante Tarvoke), alien races (the Garrion), and places (Daillie); and his knack for coining words (noncups, skeel, Remedials). And finally, his plots, even when unsatisfactorily resolved, often seem to be following conventional paths before suddenly taking unusual but believable turns. Vance's main weakness, besides his occasional trouble with endings, is his cavalier approach towards scientific realism. With some writers this bothers me, but I think it's best with Vance simply to ignore this. So what if his spaceships seem but cars that can be driven at FTL? That's not the point with Vance.

I might make a minor quibble about the production values of this book. It appears to use the plates from the 1979 DAW edition, slightly enlarged, and complete with typos. This is not as attractive as it might be. But I'm only quibbling: if the money thereby saved makes this project feasible, I'm happy. Besides, there is a nice new cover painting.

Repatriated SF Site Review: My Favorite Science Fiction Story, edited by Martin H. Greenberg

I was a bit surprised to realize that I haven't posted here in half a month -- but I have a good reason: my new grandson, Sylvester Took Whitman, was born, and my wife and I have been at Sylvester's home, babysitting his older siblings while my daughter was in the hospital, and welcoming Sylvester when he came home.

Here's another review that I wrote for the great but now sadly defunct website SF Site. This one is from 1999.

Review: My Favorite Science Fiction Story, edited by Martin H. Greenberg

In this new anthology, Martin H. Greenberg uses a gimmick that I've seen before, but one which still has legs. He has selected several prominent SF writers of the present day, and asked them to choose one favorite SF story. Their choices form this anthology.

Ideally, an anthology of this nature should have two aims: 1) simply to present a collection of outstanding stories, to participate, if you will, in the process of SF canon-forming; and 2) to throw light on the influences on the selecting writers. It might suggest what stories appeal to writers, as possibly opposed to readers (something in the way that the Nebula Awards do), and it might illustrate the development process of the field. It doesn't really appear that Greenberg had any special intent to reinforce this secondary aim, however.

For one thing, the authors chosen to select stories are not a particularly homogeneous group, either in age or in being members of any identifiable "school" or "movement." In addition, the stories chosen seem for the most part to be chosen as favorite reads, not so much as influences. This is not really a complaint, just an observation: what we are left with, thus, is mostly an anthology of the first type, a canon-building anthology.

The authors selecting stories are Arthur C. Clarke, Anne McCaffrey, Joe Haldeman, Frederik Pohl, Mike Resnick, Andre Norton, Alan Dean Foster, Poul Anderson, Harry Turtledove, Greg Bear, Connie Willis, Lois McMaster Bujold, L. Sprague de Camp, Robert Silverberg, Gregory Benford, Marion Zimmer Bradley, and David Drake. A varied lot, including writers who emerged during Campbell's "Golden Age," such as de Camp and Pohl, some who emerged slightly later, as with Clarke and Anderson, and continuing to such comparatively recent stars as Bear, Willis and Bujold.

I've been reading SF for quite some time now, and I've always liked short fiction, so the bulk of these stories are familiar to me. I was pleased to reread Theodore Sturgeon's "The Man Who Lost the Sea" for the umpteenth time: this story, Clarke's selection, may well have been mine if I were eligible to choose a story for a similar anthology. This is one of the most moving of all SF stories, and its theme lies at the heart of SF: the desire to keep exploring, the value of exploration for its own sake.

Other prominent selections include Frederik Pohl's brilliant story of what humans might become in the very far future, "Day Million" (chosen by Haldeman); C.M. Kornbluth's mordant SF Hall of Fame tale, "The Little Black Bag" (Pohl's choice), about a present day doctor discovering medical tools from the future, and the bitter misuse to which they are put; and Howard Waldrop's Nebula-winning tale of the fate of the last dodos, "The Ugly Chickens" (chosen by Turtledove). Also from the SF Hall of Fame are Lester del Rey's "Nerves," "A Martian Odyssey" by Stanley Weinbaum, and "The Ballad of Lost C'Mell" by Cordwainer Smith. Each of these stories is famous, thus familiar. But at the same time each is famous for good reason, and I was happy to reread them. Certainly there is no harm in reprinting them again.

But any anthology will hopefully also include some surprises. I had never before read Ward Moore's "Lot, " for example. This is a story of the first day of a Nuclear Holocaust, and as such it has a bit of a dated feel. But it's really a depiction of a character, the markedly unpleasant man who is, he believes, fully prepared for this disaster. We follow his actions, filtered through his self-satisfaction, as he brings his family towards "safety" in the back country. The protagonist bears a striking resemblance, in more than one way, to another unpleasant SF survivor of a Nuclear War, Hugh Farnham of Heinlein's Farnham's Freehold. "Lot" in itself is chilling enough, though no real plot resolution is reached. I don't think the story requires one, thought there was a sequel, and there was also a somewhat well-regarded movie based on the two stories: a Roger Corman production, directed by Ray Milland (who also played the lead):  Panic in Year Zero!, from 1962 . At any rate, thanks to Connie Willis for selecting it (and, I wonder, meditating upon influence, how much this story affected her "A Letter From the Clearys").

Another story that I hadn't encountered before, and which I really enjoyed, was Poul Anderson's choice, "Black Charlie" by Gordon R. Dickson. This is a story about the nature of art, a difficult but worthwhile subject. Dickson's protagonist is an experienced art buyer, and he is approached by a man on a backwoods planet, who has some sculptures by a member of that planet's indigenous alien race. The sculptures are worthless, in objective terms, but at long last the art buyer is pushed into understanding the history behind the sculptures, and the character of the alien who produced them. Does this knowledge in the viewer make them art? I don't know, but the story is indeed art.

The other selections are by and large fine stories as well. I felt that the second Kornbluth story ("The Only Thing We Learn," chosen by David Drake) was a bit obvious, and nowhere near the quality of his best work, and the pieces by Eric Frank Russell ("Diabologic") and Robert Sheckley ("Untouched by Human Hands") were also somewhat slight, to my taste. Again, both writers have certainly produced stories that belong in anthologies like this. And Norman Kagan's "The Mathenauts" (Greg Bear's choice), while full of fascinating ideas, doesn't really work as a story. But four merely minor stories out of a collection like this is no great weakness, especially as I'm sure the next reader will feel differently than I do.

One other quibble concerns the book's production values, in particular the copyediting. The book is riddled with typographical errors, most of the sort where the correct word is replaced by another word, such that a simple spellcheck won't catch the error. This is becoming sadly common these days, but even so there were far too many in this book.

These quibbles aside, any collection that includes the stories I've mentioned -- as well as "Common Time" by James Blish, Keith Laumer's early Bolo story "The Last Command," Barry Malzberg's meta-fictional "A Galaxy Called Rome," and Roger Zelazny's moving "The Engine at Heartspring's Center" -- is well worth the price.