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Strange Birds,
Gene Wolfe,
DreamHaven Books
(912 Lake St.,
Minneapolis, MN 55408; www.dreamhavenbooks.com), $10.00, 40 pp.
(ISBN: none)
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My wife and I recently attended Balticon 40, largely in order to say hello to guest of honor Gene Wolfe (an old friend whom we don’t see often enough). While there, we picked up a copy of Strange Birds, a limited-edition (1000 copies) chapbook containing two stories Gene wrote in response to the artwork of Lisa Snellings-Clark, who has similarly collaborated with a number of other writers.
“On a Vacant Face a Bruise” tells the tale of Tom, who is drawn to the circus by animal noises, can’t get in for lack of money but climbs a tree to watch and is accosted by a strange bird that talks, has little arms under its wings, and wears a fancy shirtfront. Soon, enticed by dolls and animals and birds, Tom is an apprentice lion tamer traveling from world to world, ever more part of the operation, until the circle closes on a note that suggests pain is the point of life. Classic Wolfe, cryptic and evocative. Much less cryptic is “Sob in the Silence,” which tells us of a horror writer who, hosting an old friend and his family, plots awful deeds and gets exactly what he deserves.
Well worth the price, if DreamHaven has any copies left.
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I also picked up a copy of Victor Koman’s Kings of the High Frontier, released as a limited edition way back in 1998 by Final Frontier Books (part of Bereshith Publishing, most of whose titles seem to be horror). They still have copies, which would seem to reflect more on their approach to marketing via the con circuit than on Koman’s skills. After all, Koman is a three-time winner (once for this book) of the Prometheus Award for libertarian SF.
Okay, the Prometheus is not exactly a mainstream award. But the SF community has strong libertarian sympathies, and one would think that any tale of independent spaceship builders who view NASA as an obstacle on the path to space would find more readers. This is especially true if one considers Greg Benford’s Afterword comment that “We’ll probably have a Shuttle blow-up before this decade is out.” He was a few years off, but it did happen within ten years, and since then NASA has not accomplished much. On the other hand, Bert Rutan has done his best to look like a backyard spaceship builder from the SF of the 1950s.
If you remember the dream, if you think we should have people a lot further out by now, if you love Ben Bova’s work, then this one’s for you.
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Variable Star,
Robert A. Heinlein and Spider Robinson,
Tor,
$24.95,
318 pp.
(ISBN: 076531312X)
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In 1955, Robert A. Heinlein outlined a novel, shoved his notes in a drawer, and forgot about it. If he had written it, it might have been one more of the famous Heinlein Juveniles. But he didn’t, and his notes were lost to the world until they turned up among his papers well after his death and Spider Robinson—who tells how it all came about in the Afterword—got the job of turning the notes into the novel Variable Star.
The plotting bears Heinlein’s mark. The writing and the sense of humor is distinctly Spider’s, enough so that if you expect to read a new Heinlein novel, you will probably be disappointed. But Art Dula, trustee for the Heinlein estate, told Spider “to take his outline and write the best damned Spider Robinson novel you’re capable of.” And Spider did that. The novel is easily good enough to occupy a place of honor on any shelf of Spider Robinson books.
Here’s the tale: Ganymedean Joel Johnston has been finishing high school on Earth and dating Jinny. College—where he hopes to study music—looms ahead. But Jinny puts the pressure on until he says yes! He wants to marry her, and then it’s off to meet Jinny’s family, who turn out to be the richest of rich and of course any poor chump who marries into the family will give up all his plans and start studying business. Said poor kid feels pressured and betrayed and immediately cuts and runs, though not before making a good impression on Jinny’s seven-year-old cousin. Since he wants to get just as far away as he can, he signs onto a colony ship. He will never see Jinny again! Good riddance! And What have I done? And Waaahhh!
Yeah, the kid’s a mess. But with a little help, he starts to grow up and learn who he is and where he’s going, which is a good part of the Heinlein Juvenile recipe. There are complications, of course, but they are all adequately if lightly foreshadowed (e.g., as soon as Spider mentions the Fermi Paradox, the Astute Reader knows that aliens will come into the tale at some point).
Buy it. You’ll be glad you did, both because it’s a good story and because it is unique in the history of the genre.
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When we last saw Tinker (in Tinker, reviewed here in April 2004), she had been turned into an elf by a besmitten Windwolf, survived capture by the evil oni, and used her genius to tinker up a hyperdimensional monkeywrench to foil the oni’s plans to invade Pittsburgh, which thanks to Tinker’s dad and his hyperdimensional gate, has been alternating between Earth and Elfhome for a while now. Wen Spencer had come up with an intriguing blend of SF and fantasy, which—combined with her appealing characters—worked very nicely.
The sequel is Wolf Who Rules. Tinker had saved the day, but Pittsburgh was now stranded on Elfhome, there were still oni lurking in the background, and a mysterious hyperdimensional discontinuity in the Turtle Creek district just might mean the threat of an oni invasion was not over. Tinker is investigating the discontinuity when a dragon attacks her. She survives, but now she is plagued by dreams of Oz that seem to be telling her what to do next. Unfortunately, as is the way of dreams, the instructions are not clear and will take most of the novel to figure out. Meanwhile, Tinker is discovering that the mating habits of elves are not the same as those of humans. She has a glorious husband, but one of her bodyguards is pretty yummy and yes, elves are supposed to be able to play with their bodyguards. Since her body is now elf but her mind is still human, she has some psychological maneuvering to do while she discovers missing family members and the truth about the tengu (half crow, half human), figures out how to save a few astronauts, defeats a dragon, and restores peace to Pittsburgh. And let’s not forget to mention the complications of elvish politics.
Spencer’s fans will be delighted. Others should pick up a copy of Tinker first; they’ll then have a two-volume treat in store.
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Quantico,
Greg Bear,
Madison Park Press,
$14.99
(SFBC),
357 pp.
(ISBN:1582882177)
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Greg Bear’s Quantico is firmly rooted in today’s headlines. Have you noticed failures of the FBI to prevent crimes? That’s why Congress is intent on dismantling the Bureau. Have you wondered why the government feels it necessary to add Homeland Security on top of NSA, CIA, FBI, etc.? The alphabet soup and turf wars are even worse here. Have you heard that terrorism has increased since 9-11? Oh, boy! Or that you can now buy—on eBay, yet!—the equipment to do a spot of genetic engineering, maybe a nice little plague? That’s here too. Along with survivalist, polygamist, religious nuts.
The tale begins as a mysterious fellow delivers samples of deadly powder. It sounds like anthrax. Then there’s a truckload of inkjet printers toppled beside the road. In due time, we will learn that the printers are part of a nefarious scheme, but first we must drop by Quantico, the FBI training academy, to meet what may be the last class, including William Griffin, whose agent dad will soon be badly injured when a bust goes bad and a barn blows up (triggered by the aurora, of all things). The barn looks like a staging center for an anthrax attack, complete with printers and a fireworks launcher, but there’s nothing but yeast on the premises.
It isn’t long before Griffin is heading to his dad’s hospital room. His classmate Fouad al-Husam has been drafted by the mysterious BuDark and sent to Iraq to investigate anthrax deaths. The truck driver (remember the printers?) has made it back to his base, a defunct California winery (don’t forget the yeast) owned by an idiot-savant with enormous lab skills. A plot is becoming apparent, at least to the reader, though the characters still have many clues to stumble upon and piece together.
Which they do, of course. They even get around the rather tricky red herring, and just in time. As thrillers go, Quantico is fairly standard in structure. Since the author is Greg Bear, the pacing is excellent and the technical details are well and inventively worked out. The business with the printers might actually work, as should the aurora trigger and the fireworks. The genetic engineering, on the other hand, seems a bit of a stretch, which is just as well.
The book appeared first in the UK in 2005. This US edition comes from the book clubs, but don’t let that stop you. You’ll enjoy it.
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Since I enjoyed A. Lee Martinez’s Gil’s All Fright Diner (reviewed October 2005), I was happy to find In the Company of Ogres in my mail. Martinez is busily having fun sending up the classic tropes, and if the style isn’t heavy on bad puns, it still reads a lot like Robert Asprin.
The protagonist is Never Dead Ned, so named because every time he gets killed, he comes back. Indeed, this seems to be his greatest skill, for though he’s a pretty good accountant for Brute’s Legion, he really isn’t much of a soldier. Perhaps this is why he gets tapped to be the new commander for Ogre Company, a group of misfit troopers heavy on ogres and goblins but with a salamander, an Amazon, a siren, some elves, a few humans (who, it seems, are surprisingly hard to kill), and a history of short-lived commanders. He gets off to an inauspicious start when a roc squashes him, but the Red Woman soon shows up to poke him back to life.
In the archetrope for this story, Ned would soon display a talent for leadership, whip Ogre Company into shape, and win a major victory or two (remember Asprin’s Phule’s Company?). But no. Ned’s a nice guy, but a chump. The siren and the Amazon are soon dueling for his attention, but he’s still a chump. An evil wizard wants to pluck out his eye and steal his secret power, but he’s still a chump. A demon lord is hunting for him, but he’s still a chump. The fate of the universe depends on him, but he’s still a chump.
Get it? The poor fellow has to grow up, take some responsibility, get control over his inner demon, and get a life instead of another death. Of course, he does, and the reader enjoys a light, entertaining romp.
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The Machine’s Child,
Kage Baker,
Tor,
$24.95,
351 pp.
(ISBN: 0765315513)
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Kage Baker has earned praise for her tales of the Company, a.k.a. Dr. Zeus, a future-based outfit that “recruits” throughout time, turns its new troops into immortal cyborgs, and sends them out to fill in the blank spots of history, collect treasures before they are lost, and defend the Company’s interests, at least until 2355, when its knowledge of the future stops. The troops are of many human species, even Neandertals and the like, even species that have not yet turned up in the fossil record, and some just don’t mingle well with later types. Thus the Company has had to set up places where it can stash the troops it no longer needs. These aren’t retirement homes; they’re more like file rooms, with the old fellows literally in storage. There is also the “Bureau of Punitive Medicine,” where mad, mad Marco tries his best to find a way to kill those immortals the Company wants to get rid of. Alas, no matter what he does to them, even shredding them down to the skull, their immortal bodies regrow. So he must keep trying.
In The Life of the World to Come (reviewed here in April 2005), we met Alec Checkerfield. He was a “recombinant,” a tetraploid constructed from the genetic material of extinct human species. He was also the third of a trio of clones. The first, Nicholas, met and loved the Botanist Mendoza before he was burned at the stake in the 1600s. The second, Edward, was a secret agent of the British Empire who also met and loved Mendoza before he died. Alec met her too, discovering her in exile on an island 150,000 years in the past. Once more they loved, and she gave him information he needed to move forward in his quest to bring down Dr. Zeus. Then he lost her, and in the search for her, he came across and downloaded the recorded minds of his predecessors.
So he’s a fairly strange fellow as The Machine’s Child opens. Alec, Edward, and Nicholas are time-sharing a single body, and it is not always clear who is in charge. Alec’s AI, Captain Morgan, runs his time-ship, disguised as a giant schooner, and plots the steps toward bringing an end to the tyranny of Dr. Zeus, making Alec immortal, and finding Mendoza once more. Of course, she turns up in a drawer at the Bureau of Punitive Medicine. Once the Captain has helped her regrow a body and restored some of her memory, she happily if a bit childishly accepts Alec as her love and ignores the way he shifts speech and manner as Nicholas and Edward come to the fore. She also displays much more of her nature as a “Chrome generator,” an emitter of strange energies that do strange things with time. And the plot moves on toward 2355 and crisis and perhaps the end of Dr. Zeus.
But Dr. Zeus has other foes as well. For instance, there is Budu, a giant of an Enforcer, slope-browed in the old, old style, put on ice until his one-time protégé Joseph found him and began laboring to restore him to life and potency. There is also Suleyman, who seems to play a more patient game.
In the end, 2355 is closer than ever. Alec, his other selves, and Mendoza are in a very strange state. The Captain is in possession of what he needs to make Alec immortal and perhaps do other things as well. And at least one more volume will arrive in due time.
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Of historical interest is Erle Cox’s Out of the Silence, first published in Australia in 1919. The tale is rooted twenty-seven million years in the past, when global cataclysms destroyed human society, except for three time capsules bearing individuals whose mission it would be, if they were ever awakened, to restore the glory that was. Cox’s prose feels overly simple and unsubtle today, but any reader familiar with Edgar Rice Burroughs will not find it strange. The tale is fairly straightforward, beginning when winegrower Alan Dundas, digging a water hole for his stock, unearths a huge metal dome. Before long he finds the way inside, discovering both obstacles and marvels, and awakens Earani. In due time, the question must be faced: Will Earani save the world, or must the world be saved from her? Her ancient society was founded in the principles of eugenics popular in Cox’s time, when overt racism was much more prevalent than it is today. Cox has been criticized for his racist content, but as “Book Wrangler” John Costello notes in his postscript, Cox deserves considerable credit for foreseeing—and condemning—the rise of the eugenic state represented a little later in the twentieth century by Nazi Germany. |
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Flashing the Dark,
Bruce Boston,
Samsdot
(order from www.projectpulp.com),
$9.95,
102 pp.
(ISBN: 1933556234)
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Bruce Boston is one of the premier poets of science fiction and fantasy, but he doesn’t write only poetry. Flashing the Dark is a collection of forty short items. Some are long enough to call stories. Some are situations or paragraphs, prose poems or reflections or even jokes (such as “Shaggy Flea Story”). In all cases, the language is that of the poet, carefully chosen, sometimes cryptic, and the imagery is well off the beaten track.
I enjoyed it.
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Today it is not at all uncommon to find women’s names on science fiction and fantasy stories, but for many years the perception was that SF&F was a male field. The writers were mostly male, or at least had male names (such as James Tiptree, Jr.!) or androgynous names (e.g., Andre Norton) or used only initials (e.g., C. L. Moore). And of course only males ever read the stuff!
Sho-ah, as they say out in the country. The truth is that women were among the very first writers in the genre, they’ve been with us ever since, and they’ve been reading it, too. If you want proof, get a copy of Daughters of Earth: Feminist Science Fiction in the Twentieth Century. Editor Justine Larbalestier has assembled eleven samples of SF&F by women, beginning with Clare Winger Harris’s “The Fate of the Poseidonia,” which appeared in the June 1927 issue of Amazing. Today’s reader is struck by how much better it is than many other tales of similar vintage as well as by Gernsback’s condescending tone toward it and its author. Is that enough to label it “feminist,” as an example of the difficulties posed women by the society of the time? If not, the accompanying essay by Jane Donawerth is quick to point out that it features a strong woman and is concerned with, among other things, “illicit reproduction” in the form of miscegenation and television.
Television? Yeah, I thought that a stretch too, but that’s what happens when you turn academics loose, as Larbalestier has done with all the stories here, by Leslie F. Stone, Alice Eleanor Jones, Kate Wilhelm, Pamela Zoline, James Tiptree, Jr., Lisa Tuttle, Pat Murphy, Octavia Butler, Gwyneth Jones, and Karen Joy Fowler, besides Harris. Many of these are writers we have no problem recognizing as feminists today. Beside them, a Harris must seem quite tame. But it is worth remembering that there was in fact a time when a woman who asserted herself by such things as writing a story and putting the manuscript in the mail was committing an act of revolution. |
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"The Reference Library" copyright 2006, Tom Easton
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