Nina Allan is one of the best, and one of the most individual, writers working in our field. She's published two strong novels (The Rift (2017) and The Race (2017)) but for me she shows at her best with her short fiction -- though her best short fiction is longer novelettes and novellas (including the exceptional short novel "Maggots".) Here's a selection of my reviews of her short work for Locus.
Locus, June 2008
Each year Albedo One sponsors a contest, the Aeon Award, and this year’s winner is Nina Allan’s “Angelus”. It’s told by a chess Grand Master from Eastern Europe, who encounters an old college friend by surprise, and reminisces on their shared history at Cambridge, in particular the one woman they both had some sort of relationship with, the daughter of a powerful professor. Quite subtly the differences in this world are revealed – political relationships are evidently quite different to our world’s, and there is a war fought in part by greatly altered “flyers” – and this is related also to the sad way the relationship of these two men and the young woman they both, perhaps, loved worked out.
Locus, August 2009
Black Static’s version of “horror” probably fits my taste as well as any horror magazine. At the August/September issue I enjoyed Nina Allan’s atmospheric “My Brother’s Keeper”, which I suppose qualifies as horror in that it’s a ghost story. But ghost stories, to me, often don’t have a “horror” vibe, as in this case, in which Martin is confronted with a family secret on receiving a special gift from his Lesbian “aunts”, as his single mother tries to resist their well-meaning interference is his life – all this mediated by Martin’s dead brother’s commentary.
Locus, July 2010
Similarly, Nina Allan’s “Flying in the Face of God” (Interzone, March-April), about a woman making a documentary about a woman undergoing radical bodily alterations to become a starship pilot seemed to be about the wrong person – I’d have liked to see more about the pilot, less about the filmmaker, though I have no doubt Allan told the story she wanted to tell. And not by any means a bad story, I should say.
Locus, November 2010
At the September-October Interzone I quite liked Nina Allan’s “The Upstairs Window”. It’s a cynically told piece, in which the narrator tells of a friend of his, an artist who has got in trouble with the government and who must flee. The narrator is a journalist, who cultivates a more detached attitude. Behind this somewhat simple outline hints of the background slowly come to light – this is some sort of repressive England (perhaps an alternate present?) – and the revelation of this background is what gives the story depth and interest. I thought it a slant approach to telling the story, and ultimately quite effective.
Locus, January 2011
A few small press anthologies have come my way. Eibonvale Press is devoted to “Horror, Magic Realism, Slipstream, and the Surreal”, and Blind Swimmer is an anthology of new stories by writers who have published with them. The general theme is “Creativity in Isolation”, and the stories are a generally nice lot. My favorites include “Bellony”, by Nina Allan (one of the more interesting new writers), about a reporter who comes to an English seaside resort to investigate a favorite author of hers, who had disappeared some years previously. She leases the writer’s old house, and learns some contradictory things – stories she hears, facts she learns, about the writer’s past life don’t seem to jibe. Nicely mysterious work, with an interesting character behind the character in the disappeared writer, who we never actually meet.
Locus, June 2011
The best piece in the March-April Interzone, however, is “The Silver Wind”, by Nina Allan. Martin is a real estate agent in a rather oppressive future, but he becomes fascinated with the idea of time travel and the potential involvement in that sort of thing of a dwarf clockmaker named Owen Andrews. But visiting Andrews is dangerous, as he’s somewhat persona non grata to the government. But Martin’s interest is personal – his wife has died – and his hope is to turn back time. What he finds from Owen Andrews is rather different, and it takes Martin to a quite different place. Martin’s personal story is in contrast to the back story, of a militaristic and racially fraught future – and the strange background of Andrews’ clock researches adds a third intriguing axis to a fine story from a continually improving writer.
Locus, October 2012
Black Static for July-August debuts a new, smaller, format for the magazine, one that I understand will be used for Interzone as well. (The fiction wordcount, as far as I can tell, will be roughly the same.) The standout this time comes from the remarkable Nina Allan. “Sunshine” is a vampire story, though avowedly “an undercover protest against vampire fiction”. The protagonist is a vampire, or in his term, a hirudin. He is in the nature of things a solitary individual, and a serial killer. The story, told in his voice, details his life and methods, and then the one human he ever cared for, a young woman, and how their relationship came about and in the end was resolved, in a shocking way that illuminates the idea of vampire as serial killer. A really effective, powerful, piece.
Locus, October 2016
There’s been a lot of good stuff recently at Tor.com. The best is “The Art of Space Travel”, by Nina Allan, a fine meditative story about Emily, who works at the hotel where the Martian astronauts are staying before they head out to space. The story isn’t about the astronauts, though, but about Emily, and about her mother, a scientist who has a sort of Alzheimer’s-like disease, perhaps because of contamination she encountered while investigating a plane crash, and about her mother’s involvement in preparation for a failed earlier Martian mission, and about Emily’s desire to learn who her father was. A good example of the effective – not just decorative – use of an SFnal background to tell a mundane story.
In Now We Are Ten ... Nina Allan’s “Ten Days” is also strong, about Dora, a lawyer and a death penalty opponent, who becomes fascinated with the story of Helen Bostall, who had been executed for the murder of her radical socialist husband in the 1920s. Dora is convinced she was innocent (which seems obvious enough). When she fortuitously finds a curious watch that turns out to be a time machine, she goes back to try to meet Helen Bostall and warn her of the danger she is in. But what can happen when you try to change the past? Allan’s story, though, isn’t really about the twists and dangers of time travel: it’s more interested in character, and in politics, and their intersection.
Locus, March 2017
Five Stories High is a collection of five novellas, all set in a spooky house called Irongrove Lodge. Each story is really independent – the house is similar in some ways from story to story but with different characteristics. The best story is the first and longest, “Maggots”, by Nina Allan. Willy is a boy from the North of England who becomes convinced that his Auntie Claire has been replaced by another creature who looks just like her. This ends up messing with his relationship with his first girlfriend, who is convinced he has Capgras Syndrome. Over the years, Willy hides his suspicions and quietly investigates cases of people who seem to have some of the same convictions he has, a path that leads him to a scary story of a man who wrote a book about how his sister had become a demon, and who ended up murdering her. These people had lived in Irongrove Lodge, and Willy finds his way there, and has a legitimately scary revelation about what has happened to him, and to his Aunt.
Locus, August 2017
In the June Clarkesworld Nina Allan, one of the most consistently interesting of contemporary SF writers, offers “Neptune’s Trident”. The world has changed radically since something called the clampdown, which seems to be result, at first, of some sort of invasion or attack. Caitlin is living in Scotland, struggling to keep her and her partner Steph going by gleaning useful items from what washes ashore; and hoping that by some miracle her brother, a submariner, has survived. Steph has a strange disease, a result of whatever has changed the world, that results in people becoming what are called “flukes”, and Caitlin is hiding her condition from an increasingly hostile society, represented here most directly by an itinerant preacher Caitlin encounters. Hints at the true nature of what’s happened slowly surface – perhaps a deep change in reality? This is interesting work, which seems to fit into a long tradition of morose English catastrophe SF, going back to John Christopher (All Flesh is Grass) and of course J. G. Ballard’s early novels.
Monday, May 27, 2019
Friday, May 24, 2019
Birthday Review: Threshold Shift, by Eric Brown
Today is Eric Brown's birthday -- he becomes another writer who just caught up with me in age again, at 59. For his birthday, I've reposted my review of his collection Threshold Shift, from the October 2006 Locus, and I've appended a couple more reviews of short work by him.
Threshold Shift, by Eric Brown (Golden Gryphon, 1-930846-43-6, $24.95, 218pp, hd) September 2006.
A review by Rich Horton
When considering single author collections, the “theme” is not so much the concern. Often, indeed, one wants the opposite: a representation of the writer’s range. Especially with an author’s first American collection. This book does a good job representing Eric Brown’s range: it depicts him doing what he does best very well. And what he does best is colorful, unabashedly story-centered, rather old-fashioned in settings and plots, but if old-fashioned on the outside still quite thought-provoking on the “inside”.
Brown has been a very prolific writer of short fiction over the past 20 years or so, but he is not very well-known in the U. S. The great bulk of his stories have appeared in British magazines: mainly Interzone, but also Spectrum SF, Postscripts, and others. (He was also a regular in the US magazine Science Fiction Age before its unfortunate death.) He has twice won the British Science Fiction Award. This fine collection will hopefully introduce him to a new set of readers: it is his first to appear in the US (he has had two earlier British collections).
I’ve long enjoyed the best of Brown’s stories, while finding him a bit uneven. Threshold Shift is a strong selection, featuring his two BSFA winners. One story, BSFA winner “Hunting the Slarque”, is from an extended series documenting the last years of the planet Tartarus, whose sun is about to go nova. I thought the series a bit repetitive, but selecting one story avoids that problem. “Hunting the Slarque” is Brown at his most, well, lurid, but still satisfying, about a Hunter hired to track down the two surviving legendary Slarque, creatures native to Tartarus, creatures who (along with some humans) wish to stay on Tartarus and perish with the planet.
Three stories come from a long series of stories, collectively my favorites among Brown’s work, concerning the alien Kéthani, and their gift to humanity: immortality. Brown’s usual concern with the stories is the ethics of immortality, as opposed to the Kéthani themselves. For example, “Thursday’s Child” very movingly considers a couple with opposing views: the husband is in favor of accepting the Kéthani offer, and indeed he works in “collection”: picking up the dead and sending them via Onward Station to the Kéthani planet for resurrection. But the wife is opposed, and she has resisted allowing their daughter to be implanted with the chip that allows resurrection. But then the daughter becomes ill … In “The Kéthani Inheritance”, it is the man of a couple (in this case a new couple) who resists implantation, partly because he’s not sure bad people should live forever. But his new lover doesn’t want to lose him, and when both lose their parents, their perspective is altered. The other Kéthani story is a bit different. “The Touch of Angels” is the only original in this book, a murder mystery which ends up giving us a bit more insight into Kéthani motives than previous stories.
Other highlights include the other BSFA winner, “The Children of Winter”, a colorful romantic story of an alien planet with multiple races, including of course the mysterious humans; and a collaboration with Stephen Baxter, “The Spacetime Pit”, which reminded me of an old Algis Budrys story, “The War is Over”, as it told of a woman crashed on a primitive planet, and her long wait for the inhabitants to develop the capability to save her.
The rest of the collection is also entertaining. Eric Brown is a so far underappreciated writer – perhaps because he’s not really flashy and new, perhaps because his lesser works are sometimes disappointing. But he does what he does best very well, and work like that showcased here is very fun – and also thematically engaging.
From my summary of Spectrum SF for 2000
The two novellas published this year were "Destiny on Tartarus" by Eric Brown and "Great Wall of Mars" by Alastair Reynolds. Both are colourful and exciting, well worth reading, but not quite Hugo material. The Brown story is the first (in internal chronology) of his Tartarus stories, about the planet of a Sun which is about to go nova. This story is set a century before the nova, so it's not about the impending nova like the other stories, which I think may be why I liked it the best of all the Tartarus stories. (For one thing, it avoided repeating the same plot elements and thematic elements that several other stories had.)
Locus, July 2006
Cemetery Dance remains perhaps the most reliable source of well-written contemporary horror. In #54 I was taken with a clever story from Eric Brown, “The Man Who Never Read Novels”, in which a horror novelist meets a man on a train who confesses to not reading contemporary novels – for an interesting reason. Of course the writer is compelled to press his new manuscript on him … with amusingly mordant results.
Threshold Shift, by Eric Brown (Golden Gryphon, 1-930846-43-6, $24.95, 218pp, hd) September 2006.
A review by Rich Horton
Brown has been a very prolific writer of short fiction over the past 20 years or so, but he is not very well-known in the U. S. The great bulk of his stories have appeared in British magazines: mainly Interzone, but also Spectrum SF, Postscripts, and others. (He was also a regular in the US magazine Science Fiction Age before its unfortunate death.) He has twice won the British Science Fiction Award. This fine collection will hopefully introduce him to a new set of readers: it is his first to appear in the US (he has had two earlier British collections).
I’ve long enjoyed the best of Brown’s stories, while finding him a bit uneven. Threshold Shift is a strong selection, featuring his two BSFA winners. One story, BSFA winner “Hunting the Slarque”, is from an extended series documenting the last years of the planet Tartarus, whose sun is about to go nova. I thought the series a bit repetitive, but selecting one story avoids that problem. “Hunting the Slarque” is Brown at his most, well, lurid, but still satisfying, about a Hunter hired to track down the two surviving legendary Slarque, creatures native to Tartarus, creatures who (along with some humans) wish to stay on Tartarus and perish with the planet.
Three stories come from a long series of stories, collectively my favorites among Brown’s work, concerning the alien Kéthani, and their gift to humanity: immortality. Brown’s usual concern with the stories is the ethics of immortality, as opposed to the Kéthani themselves. For example, “Thursday’s Child” very movingly considers a couple with opposing views: the husband is in favor of accepting the Kéthani offer, and indeed he works in “collection”: picking up the dead and sending them via Onward Station to the Kéthani planet for resurrection. But the wife is opposed, and she has resisted allowing their daughter to be implanted with the chip that allows resurrection. But then the daughter becomes ill … In “The Kéthani Inheritance”, it is the man of a couple (in this case a new couple) who resists implantation, partly because he’s not sure bad people should live forever. But his new lover doesn’t want to lose him, and when both lose their parents, their perspective is altered. The other Kéthani story is a bit different. “The Touch of Angels” is the only original in this book, a murder mystery which ends up giving us a bit more insight into Kéthani motives than previous stories.
Other highlights include the other BSFA winner, “The Children of Winter”, a colorful romantic story of an alien planet with multiple races, including of course the mysterious humans; and a collaboration with Stephen Baxter, “The Spacetime Pit”, which reminded me of an old Algis Budrys story, “The War is Over”, as it told of a woman crashed on a primitive planet, and her long wait for the inhabitants to develop the capability to save her.
The rest of the collection is also entertaining. Eric Brown is a so far underappreciated writer – perhaps because he’s not really flashy and new, perhaps because his lesser works are sometimes disappointing. But he does what he does best very well, and work like that showcased here is very fun – and also thematically engaging.
From my summary of Spectrum SF for 2000
The two novellas published this year were "Destiny on Tartarus" by Eric Brown and "Great Wall of Mars" by Alastair Reynolds. Both are colourful and exciting, well worth reading, but not quite Hugo material. The Brown story is the first (in internal chronology) of his Tartarus stories, about the planet of a Sun which is about to go nova. This story is set a century before the nova, so it's not about the impending nova like the other stories, which I think may be why I liked it the best of all the Tartarus stories. (For one thing, it avoided repeating the same plot elements and thematic elements that several other stories had.)
Locus, July 2006
Cemetery Dance remains perhaps the most reliable source of well-written contemporary horror. In #54 I was taken with a clever story from Eric Brown, “The Man Who Never Read Novels”, in which a horror novelist meets a man on a train who confesses to not reading contemporary novels – for an interesting reason. Of course the writer is compelled to press his new manuscript on him … with amusingly mordant results.
Thursday, May 23, 2019
A Lesser-Known Philip K. Dick Novel: Time Out of Joint
Time Out of Joint, by Philip K. Dick
a review by Rich Horton
No Philip K. Dick novel can be called "forgotten", but it seems to me that this novel has become less known than it deserves, because I think it's one of his best novels, and probably his very best novel prior to The Man in the High Castle. Here's what I wrote about it some time ago, a fairly brief look at the book..
One of Philip Dick's more noted early novels is Time Out of Joint, from 1959. This was originally published in hardcover by Lippincott -- perhaps Dick's first appearance between boards. Lippincott was at that time publishing the occasional SF book -- A Canticle for Leibowitz was another -- though carefully disguised. For instance, Time Out of Joint was not presented as SF, but as "A Novel of Menace".
The setting is what seems a first a slightly altered 1950s. The main character is Ragle Gumm, who makes his living solving a puzzle for a newspaper. Ragle lives with his sister and her husband. He carries on a somewhat unsatisfying affair with the rather immature wife of a not very pleasant neighbor. And he worries about his curious standing as the reigning puzzle-solving champion.
Slowly we realize that his world is somehow artificial. He (and his brother-in-law) uncover curious buried items, occasionally see strange things that seem to imply most everyone in the town is artificial, hear odd transmissions via crystal radio, and so on. One of the most symbolic findings is slips of paper with names of objects -- "the word is the thing", anyone? Most significant is when Ragle stumbles across newspapers and magazines from the future (1998 or so -- why is 40 years such a common SF near future?)
The general outline of what's going on with Ragle and his family should be relatively clear -- I'll leave the specific solution and the motivations for readers to discover. The basic idea is, then, familiar enough -- redolent of Daniel Galouye's slightly later novel Simulacron-3, just to name one. What makes the book stand out is for one thing the way Dick uses the 50s setting to comment, as if from the future, on the 1950s (and to do so with an aspect of nostalgia that almost makes the book seem as if written in 1998), also the portrayal of the characters, and finally a certain charged feeling of strangeness -- very much a central feature of much of Dick's work -- that gives the idea of inhabiting an artificial world -- "word as thing" or "signifier as object" if you will -- real psychological immediacy.
a review by Rich Horton
No Philip K. Dick novel can be called "forgotten", but it seems to me that this novel has become less known than it deserves, because I think it's one of his best novels, and probably his very best novel prior to The Man in the High Castle. Here's what I wrote about it some time ago, a fairly brief look at the book..
One of Philip Dick's more noted early novels is Time Out of Joint, from 1959. This was originally published in hardcover by Lippincott -- perhaps Dick's first appearance between boards. Lippincott was at that time publishing the occasional SF book -- A Canticle for Leibowitz was another -- though carefully disguised. For instance, Time Out of Joint was not presented as SF, but as "A Novel of Menace".The setting is what seems a first a slightly altered 1950s. The main character is Ragle Gumm, who makes his living solving a puzzle for a newspaper. Ragle lives with his sister and her husband. He carries on a somewhat unsatisfying affair with the rather immature wife of a not very pleasant neighbor. And he worries about his curious standing as the reigning puzzle-solving champion.
Slowly we realize that his world is somehow artificial. He (and his brother-in-law) uncover curious buried items, occasionally see strange things that seem to imply most everyone in the town is artificial, hear odd transmissions via crystal radio, and so on. One of the most symbolic findings is slips of paper with names of objects -- "the word is the thing", anyone? Most significant is when Ragle stumbles across newspapers and magazines from the future (1998 or so -- why is 40 years such a common SF near future?)
The general outline of what's going on with Ragle and his family should be relatively clear -- I'll leave the specific solution and the motivations for readers to discover. The basic idea is, then, familiar enough -- redolent of Daniel Galouye's slightly later novel Simulacron-3, just to name one. What makes the book stand out is for one thing the way Dick uses the 50s setting to comment, as if from the future, on the 1950s (and to do so with an aspect of nostalgia that almost makes the book seem as if written in 1998), also the portrayal of the characters, and finally a certain charged feeling of strangeness -- very much a central feature of much of Dick's work -- that gives the idea of inhabiting an artificial world -- "word as thing" or "signifier as object" if you will -- real psychological immediacy.
Monday, May 20, 2019
Birthday Review: Short Fiction of Adam-Troy Castro
Today Adam-Troy Castro once again is as old as I am. Every October I inch ahead of him, but every May he catches up again -- I just can't shake him! Anyway, he's one of the SF's finest storytellers, and a writer intimately concerned with moral questions, always wrapped in story. He also has exceptional range, of both tone (he can be silly funny and sharply funny and tragic and coolly logical) and genre (he's arguably more at home with horror than anything else, but he also writes fantasy, and SF (sometimes hard SF), and YA fiction, and mysteries, and exceptional pop culture exegesis, and more. So here's a selection of my Locus reviews of his short work.
Locus, July 2002
Analog's yearly July/August double issue is out. Adam-Troy Castro's "Unseen Demons", a related story to his earlier Nebula nominee "The Funeral March of the Marionettes", is long and intriguing but also a bit frustrating. Andrea Cort has been brought to the planet Catarkhus to determine what to do with a human who has brutally dismembered several members of the indigenous species. The problem is, settled law demands that he be tried under the indigenes' laws, and nobody has been able to communicate with the Catarkhans. This is a political issue because humans have a reputation for violence, and the other alien species on Catarkhus seem convinced that the humans are going to try to let the criminal get away unscathed. The problem is further complicated by the Catarkhan nature: they are almost unaware of their surroundings, and indeed the victims may well not have even known they were being murdered.
So we have a setup for a nice Analog-style problem story, interesting enough though as usual the alien species seems a bit too specifically created to set up the problem. The other interesting part of the story emerges slowly, and it involves Andrea Cort's personal history, which, too coincidentally for my taste, also involves brutal murder of aliens. The solution was somewhat disappointing – basically, the central problem is pretty stupid, and the solution is common sense. Other aspects of the problem were solved nicely though – such as establishing at least a very rudimentary communication with the aliens.
From my review of Imaginings, Locus, October 2003
Two stories struck me as particularly good. First, Adam-Troy Castro, a writer who is always a threat to do something really good. "Of a Sweet Slow Dance in the Wake of Temporary Dogs" seems to me among his best few stories. A man escapes his boring job to an exotic and romantic destination, and once their meets a sexy and willing woman who only enhances his enjoyment. But there's a catch -- visitors must stay the full duration, and the tenth day is given over to horrible experiences of war and suffering. Is it worth it? This is a sort of "Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" variant, with a twist to be sure, and Castro does an excellent job portraying both the idyllic and horrific aspects of this experience, and of asking but not answering his central question.
Locus, April 2009
So far the two remaining monthly (or almost) magazines forge on. Analog’s April issue’s lead novella, Adam-Troy Castro’s “Gunfight on Farside”, is the “real story” of the only Lunar gun battle, reluctantly told by the aging survivor of that battle to a persistent … well, why she’s so persistent is a cute secret of the story. Analogies with Wyatt Earp suggest that the legend has outpaced the facts – except that the “real” facts turn out to be even stranger than the legend. To be sure, as readers of the linked story “Sunday Night Yams at Minnie and Earl’s” will remember, these “facts” are fantastical, despite Analog’s hard SF reputation.
Locus, September 2010
Lightspeed in its third issue features two original stories distinguished by the originality of their ideas, and by some distinctiveness in the telling. Adam-Troy Castro’s “Arvies” has a truly striking central idea. Arvies are human bodies grown to be hosts for unborn humans in the far future, who live for centuries serially riding and wearing out host bodies. This story in particular focuses on one such “human” and her latest arvie, and her perverse decision to bear a child in this latest body. Castro tells the story quite straight-facedly, and the horror but plausibility of the central idea is thus well depicted. Full marks for that – alas, the very effectiveness of the dry depiction of the morals of that future also, to me, made the story a bit hard to like, as opposed to respect.
Locus, October 2012
Adam-Troy Castro's “My Wife Hates Time Travel” (Lightspeed, September) is very sweet, about a couple that learns that one or the other of them is fated to invent time travel, and the logical consequences of such an invention. Castro cleverly ramifies these consequences and paradoxes … and also makes the story a love letter to the wife of the title.
Locus, February 2014
The best stories at Lightspeed for January are very odd pieces. Adam-Troy Castro's “The Thing About Shapes to Come” is easily enough described – it's about a girl who gives birth to a cube, amid a rash of births of geometric figures – it's Castro's deadpan description of the child (called, of course, Di) and of the working out of the whole situation that makes the story strangely effective.
Locus, September 2016
Adam-Troy Castro’s “The Assassin’s Secret” (Lightspeed, August) is amusing as well, a slightly over the top tale of the world’s greatest assassin, who can kill with a stroke of his pen. Castro has a fair amount of fun describing his way of life, and his ways of death, but the center of the story is how the assassin deals with those who come asking for his services, and in particular the one secret he holds.
Locus, February 2018
One more issue from 2018, then a look at some of the later work from 2017. The January Lightspeed is full of fable-like pieces – even the SF, as Adam-Troy Castro’s “The Streets of Babel” is presented. It’s clever work, about a man living in the wilderness who is captured by a living city and made to endure the most dehumanizing aspects of city life for some months. Clever, as I said, with a distinct satirical point, though it didn’t quite sell me.
Locus, August 2017
Lightspeed for July includes a fine Chinese-flavored fable – or morality tale – from Alvaro Zinos-Amaro and Adam-Troy Castro (conspiring as ever to make me misplace the hyphens in one of their names!), “A Touch of Heart”. Dou Zhuo is a farmer whose land produces little, and he becomes envious of his more successful neighbor. Eventually he finds the means to hire an assassin of the notorious Black Touch, which endeavors to fulfill their contracts with the least possible effort. When Dou asks for his neighbor’s death, the assassin arranges to kill him, by removing one second from his life span. Dou is furious, but learns to make his requests more specific – and eventually learns what will satisfy him with the least effort expended.
Locus, January 2018
Adam-Troy Castro and Alvaro Zinos-Amaro give us another of their Chinese-flavored morality tales in the November 21st issue of Beneath Ceaseless Skies. “The Mouth of the Oyster” tells of a fortunate couple who fall victim to a terrible plague, that leaves the husband blind and his wife somewhat crippled. But their love is if anything intensified, and so is their commercial success. Then a magician offers his product – eyes that can restore sight to the husband – but only one facet of sight – he might ask for beauty, or the ability to see deceit, or anything he can think of. But will the effect of this special sight be an unmixed blessing?
Locus, March 2018
Analog opens 2018 with “Blurred Lives”, a novella from Adam-Troy Castro, the latest in his stories of Draiken, formerly an operative employed in a number of interstellar conflicts. He had retired to an out of the way planet, trying to avoid the attention of his former employers, but was unsuccessful. Here he and one of his former enemies, Thorne, are joined in hunting the “puppet masters” who directed their operations, and who thus forced them into complicity in what they now see as crimes. Thorne’s escape over time has been pure escape – into a sensory deprivation box, and she remains more likely to simply want to forget, while Draiken is driven by a desire for something like justice. This leads them to Liberty, a cylinder world whose inhabitants live luxurious lives, but who are subject to random selection for “disposal” at the behest of the rulers, one of whom is the man Draiken and Thorne seek. And they find him – ready to die – and he offers Draiken a deal: enter one of the – call them “prisons” -- and escape, and Draiken can have what he wants (freedom for all the prisoners). But if he doesn’t escape, he stays there forever. This is the occasion for one of Castro’s specialties – particularly inventive horrors that humans can inflict on others, and I’ll leave the nature of that to the reader to discover, but it’s horrifying and morally awful. There is also a nicely put dilemma at the resolution. Strong stuff, with perhaps a hint of over-constructedness to the setup – but that’s in service of a worthwhile moral.
Locus, October 2018
I also liked Adam-Troy Castro’s “The Unnecessary Parts of the Story”, which cleverly deconstructs an all too familiar scenario: the Spaceship with the Captain and the Professorial Type and the Hot Girl and the Forgettable Guy etc. etc. as they deal with a horrible alien plague in mostly very stupid ways. Point of view is everything in this story, and that leads us down a path to a not quite expected conclusion.
Locus, February 2019
In the January-February Analog there is also a novella from Adam-Troy Castro, the latest of his Draiken stories, “The Savannah Problem”. I was particularly struck by the structure here – the story seems all exposition, in a way, as Castro depicts Draiken’s pursuit, capture, and extraction of a gangster thug from a space station. All this is interesting – Castro is good at action and tactics – but it seems extended, as we wait and wait for his purpose in capturing this man. A risky tactic in a storyteller – but Castro pulls it off with a brilliant rapid thematically relevant conclusion.
Locus, March 2019
Speaking of “challenging”, the January/February F&SF, which is through and through a strong issue, has several stories that are borderline horror, with the horror turning on the question of personal responsibility. Adam-Troy Castro’s “Survey” is one of those stories told entirely in dialog, depicting a college student taking a survey, seemingly one of those psychology research projects, this one an “exploration of stress on the human animal”. The means of putting stress on the young woman in the story is quite horrifying (I leave it to the reader to learn it), and when it’s married with a certain ambiguous offer of a kind of power, the questions the story asks – about the nature of responsibility, I suppose – become even more queasy-making.
Locus, July 2002
Analog's yearly July/August double issue is out. Adam-Troy Castro's "Unseen Demons", a related story to his earlier Nebula nominee "The Funeral March of the Marionettes", is long and intriguing but also a bit frustrating. Andrea Cort has been brought to the planet Catarkhus to determine what to do with a human who has brutally dismembered several members of the indigenous species. The problem is, settled law demands that he be tried under the indigenes' laws, and nobody has been able to communicate with the Catarkhans. This is a political issue because humans have a reputation for violence, and the other alien species on Catarkhus seem convinced that the humans are going to try to let the criminal get away unscathed. The problem is further complicated by the Catarkhan nature: they are almost unaware of their surroundings, and indeed the victims may well not have even known they were being murdered.
So we have a setup for a nice Analog-style problem story, interesting enough though as usual the alien species seems a bit too specifically created to set up the problem. The other interesting part of the story emerges slowly, and it involves Andrea Cort's personal history, which, too coincidentally for my taste, also involves brutal murder of aliens. The solution was somewhat disappointing – basically, the central problem is pretty stupid, and the solution is common sense. Other aspects of the problem were solved nicely though – such as establishing at least a very rudimentary communication with the aliens.
From my review of Imaginings, Locus, October 2003
Two stories struck me as particularly good. First, Adam-Troy Castro, a writer who is always a threat to do something really good. "Of a Sweet Slow Dance in the Wake of Temporary Dogs" seems to me among his best few stories. A man escapes his boring job to an exotic and romantic destination, and once their meets a sexy and willing woman who only enhances his enjoyment. But there's a catch -- visitors must stay the full duration, and the tenth day is given over to horrible experiences of war and suffering. Is it worth it? This is a sort of "Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" variant, with a twist to be sure, and Castro does an excellent job portraying both the idyllic and horrific aspects of this experience, and of asking but not answering his central question.
Locus, April 2009
So far the two remaining monthly (or almost) magazines forge on. Analog’s April issue’s lead novella, Adam-Troy Castro’s “Gunfight on Farside”, is the “real story” of the only Lunar gun battle, reluctantly told by the aging survivor of that battle to a persistent … well, why she’s so persistent is a cute secret of the story. Analogies with Wyatt Earp suggest that the legend has outpaced the facts – except that the “real” facts turn out to be even stranger than the legend. To be sure, as readers of the linked story “Sunday Night Yams at Minnie and Earl’s” will remember, these “facts” are fantastical, despite Analog’s hard SF reputation.
Locus, September 2010
Lightspeed in its third issue features two original stories distinguished by the originality of their ideas, and by some distinctiveness in the telling. Adam-Troy Castro’s “Arvies” has a truly striking central idea. Arvies are human bodies grown to be hosts for unborn humans in the far future, who live for centuries serially riding and wearing out host bodies. This story in particular focuses on one such “human” and her latest arvie, and her perverse decision to bear a child in this latest body. Castro tells the story quite straight-facedly, and the horror but plausibility of the central idea is thus well depicted. Full marks for that – alas, the very effectiveness of the dry depiction of the morals of that future also, to me, made the story a bit hard to like, as opposed to respect.
Locus, October 2012
Adam-Troy Castro's “My Wife Hates Time Travel” (Lightspeed, September) is very sweet, about a couple that learns that one or the other of them is fated to invent time travel, and the logical consequences of such an invention. Castro cleverly ramifies these consequences and paradoxes … and also makes the story a love letter to the wife of the title.
Locus, February 2014
The best stories at Lightspeed for January are very odd pieces. Adam-Troy Castro's “The Thing About Shapes to Come” is easily enough described – it's about a girl who gives birth to a cube, amid a rash of births of geometric figures – it's Castro's deadpan description of the child (called, of course, Di) and of the working out of the whole situation that makes the story strangely effective.
Locus, September 2016
Adam-Troy Castro’s “The Assassin’s Secret” (Lightspeed, August) is amusing as well, a slightly over the top tale of the world’s greatest assassin, who can kill with a stroke of his pen. Castro has a fair amount of fun describing his way of life, and his ways of death, but the center of the story is how the assassin deals with those who come asking for his services, and in particular the one secret he holds.
Locus, February 2018
One more issue from 2018, then a look at some of the later work from 2017. The January Lightspeed is full of fable-like pieces – even the SF, as Adam-Troy Castro’s “The Streets of Babel” is presented. It’s clever work, about a man living in the wilderness who is captured by a living city and made to endure the most dehumanizing aspects of city life for some months. Clever, as I said, with a distinct satirical point, though it didn’t quite sell me.
Locus, August 2017
Lightspeed for July includes a fine Chinese-flavored fable – or morality tale – from Alvaro Zinos-Amaro and Adam-Troy Castro (conspiring as ever to make me misplace the hyphens in one of their names!), “A Touch of Heart”. Dou Zhuo is a farmer whose land produces little, and he becomes envious of his more successful neighbor. Eventually he finds the means to hire an assassin of the notorious Black Touch, which endeavors to fulfill their contracts with the least possible effort. When Dou asks for his neighbor’s death, the assassin arranges to kill him, by removing one second from his life span. Dou is furious, but learns to make his requests more specific – and eventually learns what will satisfy him with the least effort expended.
Locus, January 2018
Adam-Troy Castro and Alvaro Zinos-Amaro give us another of their Chinese-flavored morality tales in the November 21st issue of Beneath Ceaseless Skies. “The Mouth of the Oyster” tells of a fortunate couple who fall victim to a terrible plague, that leaves the husband blind and his wife somewhat crippled. But their love is if anything intensified, and so is their commercial success. Then a magician offers his product – eyes that can restore sight to the husband – but only one facet of sight – he might ask for beauty, or the ability to see deceit, or anything he can think of. But will the effect of this special sight be an unmixed blessing?
Locus, March 2018
Analog opens 2018 with “Blurred Lives”, a novella from Adam-Troy Castro, the latest in his stories of Draiken, formerly an operative employed in a number of interstellar conflicts. He had retired to an out of the way planet, trying to avoid the attention of his former employers, but was unsuccessful. Here he and one of his former enemies, Thorne, are joined in hunting the “puppet masters” who directed their operations, and who thus forced them into complicity in what they now see as crimes. Thorne’s escape over time has been pure escape – into a sensory deprivation box, and she remains more likely to simply want to forget, while Draiken is driven by a desire for something like justice. This leads them to Liberty, a cylinder world whose inhabitants live luxurious lives, but who are subject to random selection for “disposal” at the behest of the rulers, one of whom is the man Draiken and Thorne seek. And they find him – ready to die – and he offers Draiken a deal: enter one of the – call them “prisons” -- and escape, and Draiken can have what he wants (freedom for all the prisoners). But if he doesn’t escape, he stays there forever. This is the occasion for one of Castro’s specialties – particularly inventive horrors that humans can inflict on others, and I’ll leave the nature of that to the reader to discover, but it’s horrifying and morally awful. There is also a nicely put dilemma at the resolution. Strong stuff, with perhaps a hint of over-constructedness to the setup – but that’s in service of a worthwhile moral.
Locus, October 2018
I also liked Adam-Troy Castro’s “The Unnecessary Parts of the Story”, which cleverly deconstructs an all too familiar scenario: the Spaceship with the Captain and the Professorial Type and the Hot Girl and the Forgettable Guy etc. etc. as they deal with a horrible alien plague in mostly very stupid ways. Point of view is everything in this story, and that leads us down a path to a not quite expected conclusion.
Locus, February 2019
In the January-February Analog there is also a novella from Adam-Troy Castro, the latest of his Draiken stories, “The Savannah Problem”. I was particularly struck by the structure here – the story seems all exposition, in a way, as Castro depicts Draiken’s pursuit, capture, and extraction of a gangster thug from a space station. All this is interesting – Castro is good at action and tactics – but it seems extended, as we wait and wait for his purpose in capturing this man. A risky tactic in a storyteller – but Castro pulls it off with a brilliant rapid thematically relevant conclusion.
Locus, March 2019
Speaking of “challenging”, the January/February F&SF, which is through and through a strong issue, has several stories that are borderline horror, with the horror turning on the question of personal responsibility. Adam-Troy Castro’s “Survey” is one of those stories told entirely in dialog, depicting a college student taking a survey, seemingly one of those psychology research projects, this one an “exploration of stress on the human animal”. The means of putting stress on the young woman in the story is quite horrifying (I leave it to the reader to learn it), and when it’s married with a certain ambiguous offer of a kind of power, the questions the story asks – about the nature of responsibility, I suppose – become even more queasy-making.
Friday, May 17, 2019
Answers: Science Fiction Planets
A couple of days ago I posted a quiz on the subject of Science Fiction Planets. I promised the answers, so here they are. (If you want to see the quiz first unspoiled, here it is.)
SPOILER SPACE
SPOILER SPACE
Quiz: Science Fiction Planets
1. This image is based on a Star Wars prequel film, and portrays the capital city of the Empire, which is an "ecumenopolis," or planet-spanning city. Many people think that an inspiration for this city is the capitol city/planet of the Empire in Isaac Asimov's Foundation series. Name either planet/city. Click here .
Coruscant, Trantor
2. Pierre Boulle, author of Bridge on the River Kwai, also wrote a novel set on a planet of the star Betelgeuse, and it too spawned a successful movie (and eventually many more.) Name the first movie made from that book. (Note that the movie, unlike the novel, is revealed to be actually set on Earth in its famous final scene.)
Planet of the Apes
3. Planets of this three-star system are understandably a common site for science fiction stories. Examples include Robert Silverberg's first book; the planet Rakhat in Mary Doria Russell's novel The Sparrow; as well as the planet Pandora in the movie Avatar. This star system was also the original destination of the Robinson family before they became Lost in Space (in the '60s TV series.) Name this star system.
Alpha Centauri
4. This planet with a mysterious worldwide intelligence is featured in films by Andrei Tarkovsky and Stephen Soderbergh, based on a novel by a Polish science fiction writer. Name both the planet (which has a name recalling our sun) and the author (whose name might recall our moon, or at least our lunar exploration).
Solaris, Stanislaw Lem
5. N. K. Jemisin made history when she won the Hugo Award for Best Novel three years running, for each volume of a trilogy. Most of the action is set on a continent called the Stillness. Per the title of the trilogy, on which planet is this continent located?
(Broken) Earth
6. The late great Ursula Le Guin set much of her science fiction in a future sometimes called "Hainish". She won the Hugo and Nebula Awards for her novel The Left Hand of Darkness, set on the notably cold planet Gethen. What is the English name for that planet (supposedly also the translation of Gethen into English?) (That English nickname is also used in the title of a short story set on the planet.)
Winter
7. Perhaps the most famous planet located outside our Solar System in TV is Vulcan. In which episode of Star Trek: The Original Series, written by Theodore Sturgeon, did Spock's undergoing pon farr force the Enterprise to return to Vulcan.
Amok Time
8. Samuel R. Delany gave one of his novels the subtitle "an ambiguous heterotopia". The novel's protagonist, Bron Helstrom, lives on a moon of the planet Neptune, though he was born on Mars and visits Earth during the novel. Name either the original title of the novel or Delany's preferred title.
Triton, Trouble on Triton
9. A long series of novels beginning with Dune,by Frank Herbert, centers around control of which planet(also sometimes called Dune), the source of the spice mélange, which among other things is used to help navigate starships. If you don't remember the novel, you may remember David Lynch's film, or the SyFy Channel miniseries. (And, reportedly, Denis Villeneuve is working on a pair of films based on Dune.)
Arrakis
10. Cixin Liu (or Liu Cixin), was the first Chinese writer to win the Hugo Award for Best Novel, not to mention gaining fans including Barack Obama. The novel in question concerns invaders from the planet Trisolaris, so-called because its system has three suns. What is the title of the novel, in its English translation, based on the difficulties caused by the complex orbit of Trisolaris due to those three suns (and also representing a system in Newtonian mechanics that is not amenable to a closed-form solution?)
The Three-Body Problem
11. In recent years a great many extrasolar planets have been detected by various means, and science fiction writers are beginning to use those planets in their novels. Allen Steele has written a long series of novels set on a (as yet undetected!) moon of one of those extrasolar planets, 47 Ursae Majoris b. The planet is called Bear (for obvious reasons) – what is the trickier name of the moon which Steele's characters colonize?
Coyote
12. While more famous for the Chronicles of Narnia, C.S. Lewis also wrote a trilogy about a man named Elwin Ransom, with books set primarily on Malacandra, Perelandra, and Thulcandra (the Silent Planet.) Give the usual English names for these planets (in the above order.)
Mars, Venus, Earth
13. The planet Mesklin is noted for its unusual shape, which leads to a very strange gravity gradient. The novels set there were written by a high school science teacher named Harry Stubbs, who used this name as a pseudonym.
Hal Clement
14. On which planet is the title structure of Kim Stanley Robinson’s first novel, Icehenge, found? (Well, at least it was a planet when the book was published!)
Pluto
15. Leigh Brackett wrote a number of stories and novels about this recurring character. Though he is most associated with Mars, his adventures also took him to Venus, and out of the Solar System to the planet Skaith, and he was actually born on Mercury. His last name might suggest the nature of the landscapes of, at least, Mars and Mercury. Who was this character?
Eric John Stark
Old Besteller: The Rose and the Ring, by William Makepeace Thackeray
Old Besteller: The Rose and the Ring, by William Makepeace Thackeray
a review by Rich Horton
I've previously written about Thackeray, in the context of his great novel Henry Esmond -- in my opinion one of the very best novels of the 19th Century. This time around I'm covering something much lighter -- the last of several "Christmas books" he wrote under the name M. A. Titmarsh, and generally the best regarded of those. These were more in the vein of entertainments appropriate for reading at the Christmas season than, necessarily, books that directly concerned Christmas. At any rate, I'll begin with the biographical snippet I wrote before.
William Makepeace Thackeray was born in India in 1811 -- his father was a secretary for the British East India company. William came to England in 1815 after his father's death. He was educated at Charterhouse School and at Cambridge, but did not take a degree. He spent the next several years more or less wasting his time -- some travel, some apparently desultory studies of law and art, failed attempts at starting two newspapers. His family had money, but Thackeray lost some of it by his own efforts and more after a couple of Indian banks failed. So upon his marriage in 1836 he had to support his family, and he turned to writing. He wrote for various magazines (Fraser's and Punch among them), doing reviews, satirical sketches, and some travel writing. He published a couple of novels (Catherine and Barry Lyndon) before becoming famous with the publication of Vanity Fair in 1848. He and his wife had three daughter. One died in infancy. The eldest, Anna Isabella, became a well known novelist in her own right. The youngest married the famous critic Leslie Stephen. After the birth of their third child, Thackeray's wife succumbed to depression, and eventually had to be committed to an asylum. Thackeray died quite young, in 1863. (Indeed his wife, still mentally ill, outlived him by over 30 years.)
The Rose and the Ring is the last of his "Christmas novels", published at Christmas, 1854. (The previous set, totalling five, I believe, dated to the 1840s.) It's a very short novel, something less than 40,000 words by my estimate. It's copiously illustrated, by Thackeray himself. My copy is the Wordsworth Classics edition.
It's a wholly satirical story, concerning the countries Paflagonia and Crim Tartary. The two countries have been at war often, but now are expecting a marriage between Angelica, the only daughter of the King of Paflagonia, and Bulbo, the son of the King of Crim Tartary. The complication is that both Kings are recent usurpers. In Paflagonia, the new King took over when his nephew Giglio was only an infant; while in Crim Tartary Duke Padella rebelled against the rightful (but not very good) King, and the toddler Princess Rosalba was thrown into the woods and eaten by lions. All this, it turns out, was the doing of the Fairy Blackstick, who, in the way of fairies, was offended by the royal families. But, we are told, Blackstick, who has noticed how bad all these royal people turn out, has decided that a bit of misfortune in the lives of the young children will be good for them.
So you can see what's going on -- the Princess Rosalba was not actually eaten by lions, but managed to wander into Paflagonia, where she became the much put upon maid to Princess Angelica. As for Prince Giglio, he has grown up, still rather spoiled, in the Palace, with the expectation of marrying his cousin and becoming King in the end anyway. But now that Angelica will marry Bulbo, his hopes are dashed. Which, in reality, after a bunch of events, means he'll notice the virtuous maid (now called Betsinda) of Angelica ...
The plot is driven to a great extent by more mischief from the Fairy Blackstick, in the form of a rose and a ring, each of which renders the bearer attractive to all who see them. Those work well enough that when Angelica and Bulbo have them, they are happy to be engaged to each other ... but as the objects move on to other people, complications ensue.
But no more about the plot. Suffice it to say that all works out well at the end (except for the people who end up killed!) But in the mean time there are amusing issues such as the King's Butler being turned into a doorknob, and his unpleasant wife, now the Countess Gruffanuff (Thackeray has lots of fun with names -- there's also a General Hedzoff) plots to marry Giglio. And Betsinda/Rosalba is thrust out of the palace again. Giglio himself end up in exile. There are orders to execute Giglio and (by mistake) Bulbo as well. And in the end inevitably war.
So, a fairly conventional fairy tale plot. The pleasure -- and there's a good deal of pleasure -- is in Thackeray's exaggeratedly satirical view of everything. The writing is very funny throughout. I noted the fun with names, but also the characters are depicted with a nasty joy. Certainly the pretensions of aristocracy are mocked, and indeed the foolishness of almost everyone. But it's mostly somewhat gentle under the surface (the story is nominally for children, after all). The drawings -- also by Thackeray as I note, are fun as well. This is a slight book, of course, but a fun one.
a review by Rich Horton
I've previously written about Thackeray, in the context of his great novel Henry Esmond -- in my opinion one of the very best novels of the 19th Century. This time around I'm covering something much lighter -- the last of several "Christmas books" he wrote under the name M. A. Titmarsh, and generally the best regarded of those. These were more in the vein of entertainments appropriate for reading at the Christmas season than, necessarily, books that directly concerned Christmas. At any rate, I'll begin with the biographical snippet I wrote before.William Makepeace Thackeray was born in India in 1811 -- his father was a secretary for the British East India company. William came to England in 1815 after his father's death. He was educated at Charterhouse School and at Cambridge, but did not take a degree. He spent the next several years more or less wasting his time -- some travel, some apparently desultory studies of law and art, failed attempts at starting two newspapers. His family had money, but Thackeray lost some of it by his own efforts and more after a couple of Indian banks failed. So upon his marriage in 1836 he had to support his family, and he turned to writing. He wrote for various magazines (Fraser's and Punch among them), doing reviews, satirical sketches, and some travel writing. He published a couple of novels (Catherine and Barry Lyndon) before becoming famous with the publication of Vanity Fair in 1848. He and his wife had three daughter. One died in infancy. The eldest, Anna Isabella, became a well known novelist in her own right. The youngest married the famous critic Leslie Stephen. After the birth of their third child, Thackeray's wife succumbed to depression, and eventually had to be committed to an asylum. Thackeray died quite young, in 1863. (Indeed his wife, still mentally ill, outlived him by over 30 years.)
The Rose and the Ring is the last of his "Christmas novels", published at Christmas, 1854. (The previous set, totalling five, I believe, dated to the 1840s.) It's a very short novel, something less than 40,000 words by my estimate. It's copiously illustrated, by Thackeray himself. My copy is the Wordsworth Classics edition.It's a wholly satirical story, concerning the countries Paflagonia and Crim Tartary. The two countries have been at war often, but now are expecting a marriage between Angelica, the only daughter of the King of Paflagonia, and Bulbo, the son of the King of Crim Tartary. The complication is that both Kings are recent usurpers. In Paflagonia, the new King took over when his nephew Giglio was only an infant; while in Crim Tartary Duke Padella rebelled against the rightful (but not very good) King, and the toddler Princess Rosalba was thrown into the woods and eaten by lions. All this, it turns out, was the doing of the Fairy Blackstick, who, in the way of fairies, was offended by the royal families. But, we are told, Blackstick, who has noticed how bad all these royal people turn out, has decided that a bit of misfortune in the lives of the young children will be good for them.
So you can see what's going on -- the Princess Rosalba was not actually eaten by lions, but managed to wander into Paflagonia, where she became the much put upon maid to Princess Angelica. As for Prince Giglio, he has grown up, still rather spoiled, in the Palace, with the expectation of marrying his cousin and becoming King in the end anyway. But now that Angelica will marry Bulbo, his hopes are dashed. Which, in reality, after a bunch of events, means he'll notice the virtuous maid (now called Betsinda) of Angelica ...
The plot is driven to a great extent by more mischief from the Fairy Blackstick, in the form of a rose and a ring, each of which renders the bearer attractive to all who see them. Those work well enough that when Angelica and Bulbo have them, they are happy to be engaged to each other ... but as the objects move on to other people, complications ensue.
But no more about the plot. Suffice it to say that all works out well at the end (except for the people who end up killed!) But in the mean time there are amusing issues such as the King's Butler being turned into a doorknob, and his unpleasant wife, now the Countess Gruffanuff (Thackeray has lots of fun with names -- there's also a General Hedzoff) plots to marry Giglio. And Betsinda/Rosalba is thrust out of the palace again. Giglio himself end up in exile. There are orders to execute Giglio and (by mistake) Bulbo as well. And in the end inevitably war.
So, a fairly conventional fairy tale plot. The pleasure -- and there's a good deal of pleasure -- is in Thackeray's exaggeratedly satirical view of everything. The writing is very funny throughout. I noted the fun with names, but also the characters are depicted with a nasty joy. Certainly the pretensions of aristocracy are mocked, and indeed the foolishness of almost everyone. But it's mostly somewhat gentle under the surface (the story is nominally for children, after all). The drawings -- also by Thackeray as I note, are fun as well. This is a slight book, of course, but a fun one.
Tuesday, May 14, 2019
Quiz: Science Fiction Planets
Recently I wrote a quiz for a trivia site I am a member of. The subject was Science Fiction Planets. I prepared 15 questions -- only the first 12 were used, but I'll add the other three at the end. If anyone wants to email me their guesses at the answers (no cheating please!) I'll try to compile a list of who got the most right. (I expect a fair amount of 15s, actually!), and I'll publish the answers in a day or two. (email: rrhorton@prodigy.net)
Thanks to Steven Silver, by the way, who helped with some of the questions.
1. This image is based on a Star Wars prequel film, and portrays the capital city of the Empire, which is an "ecumenopolis," or planet-spanning city. Many people think that an inspiration for this city is the capitol city/planet of the Empire in Isaac Asimov's Foundation series. Name either planet/city. Click here
2. Pierre Boulle, author of Bridge on the River Kwai, also wrote a novel set on a planet of the star Betelgeuse, and it too spawned a successful movie (and eventually many more.) Name the first movie made from that book. (Note that the movie, unlike the novel, is revealed to be actually set on Earth in its famous final scene.)
3. Planets of this three-star system are understandably a common site for science fiction stories. Examples include Robert Silverberg's first book; the planet Rakhat in Mary Doria Russell's novel The Sparrow; as well as the planet Pandora in the movie Avatar. This star system was also the original destination of the Robinson family before they became Lost in Space (in the '60s TV series.) Name this star system.
4. This planet with a mysterious worldwide intelligence is featured in films by Andrei Tarkovsky and Stephen Soderbergh, based on a novel by a Polish science fiction writer. Name both the planet (which has a name recalling our sun) and the author (whose name might recall our moon, or at least our lunar exploration).
5. N. K. Jemisin made history when she won the Hugo Award for Best Novel three years running, for each volume of a trilogy. Most of the action is set on a continent called the Stillness. Per the title of the trilogy, on which planet is this continent located?
6. The late great Ursula Le Guin set much of her science fiction in a future sometimes called "Hainish". She won the Hugo and Nebula Awards for her novel The Left Hand of Darkness, set on the notably cold planet Gethen. What is the English name for that planet (supposedly also the translation of Gethen into English?) (That English nickname is also used in the title of a short story set on the planet.)
7. Perhaps the most famous planet located outside our Solar System in TV is Vulcan. In which episode of Star Trek: The Original Series, written by Theodore Sturgeon, did Spock's undergoing pon farr force the Enterprise to return to Vulcan.
8. Samuel R. Delany gave one of his novels the subtitle "an ambiguous heterotopia". The novel's protagonist, Bron Helstrom, lives on a moon of the planet Neptune, though he was born on Mars and visits Earth during the novel. Name either the original title of the novel or Delany's preferred title.
9. A long series of novels beginning with Dune,by Frank Herbert, centers around control of which planet(also sometimes called Dune), the source of the spice mélange, which among other things is used to help navigate starships. If you don't remember the novel, you may remember David Lynch's film, or the SyFy Channel miniseries. (And, reportedly, Denis Villeneuve is working on a pair of films based on Dune.)
10. Cixin Liu (or Liu Cixin), was the first Chinese writer to win the Hugo Award for Best Novel, not to mention gaining fans including Barack Obama. The novel in question concerns invaders from the planet Trisolaris, so-called because its system has three suns. What is the title of the novel, in its English translation, based on the difficulties caused by the complex orbit of Trisolaris due to those three suns (and also representing a system in Newtonian mechanics that is not amenable to a closed-form solution?)
11. In recent years a great many extrasolar planets have been detected by various means, and science fiction writers are beginning to use those planets in their novels. Allen Steele has written a long series of novels set on a (as yet undetected!) moon of one of those extrasolar planets, 47 Ursae Majoris b. The planet is called Bear (for obvious reasons) – what is the trickier name of the moon which Steele's characters colonize?
12. While more famous for the Chronicles of Narnia, C.S. Lewis also wrote a trilogy about a man named Elwin Ransom, with books set primarily on Malacandra, Perelandra, and Thulcandra (the Silent Planet.) Give the usual English names for these planets (in the above order.)
13. The planet Mesklin is noted for its unusual shape, which leads to a very strange gravity gradient. The novels set there were written by a high school science teacher named Harry Stubbs, who used this name as a pseudonym.
14. On which planet is the title structure of Kim Stanley Robinson’s first novel, Icehenge, found? (Well, at least it was a planet when the book was published!)
15. Leigh Brackett wrote a number of stories and novels about this recurring character. Though he is most associated with Mars, his adventures also took him to Venus, and out of the Solar System to the planet Skaith, and he was actually born on Mercury. His last name might suggest the nature of the landscapes of, at least, Mars and Mercury. Who was this character?
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