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OtherRealms Issue 15 Part 01
Electronic OtherRealms #15
May, 1987
Part 1
Table of Contents
Part 1
Editor's Notebook
Chuq Von Rospach
Darkchild-Bluesong-Starsilk
Barbara Jernigan
Science Fiction: The 100 Best Novels
Jim Day
The Regiment
Danny Low
The Adventures of Hajii Baba of Ispahan
Dave Taylor
A Door Into Ocean
Alan Wexelblat
With a Single Spell
Peter Rubinstein
Part 2
Things Received
Pico Reviews
Part 3
Words of Wizdom
Chuq Von Rospach
Terry Carr Dies
Back and Forth Across the Ghetto Walls, and Other Perigrinations
James Brunet
Editor's Notebook
Bureaucracy in Action
I suppose it had to happen eventually. I've had reports that some
copies of #14 showed up with postage due. It was a small issue, and
according to my scale under the limit, but some folks at the USPS
evidently disagreed. Most copies seem to have come through unharmed,
but if you were one of the ones who got caught, my humble apologies. If
you can figure out a way of letting me know (without costing yourself
more than the $.17 you had to tithe the PO) I'll make you whole -- say,
at a con or at the bottom of that LOC you were going to write me.
Of course, the USPS isn't perfect. I sent six copies of #14 into
Canada, and due to temporary brain malfunction put U.S. postage on
them. Of the six, four came back for more postage, and there were two
different values for postage due. And when they went back out with
proper postage, one came back a second time, just for the hell of it.
I guess I've been lucky to date, the Post Office hasn't done anything
nasty to me, although my postman has occasionally threatened suicide
when forced to put all that mail in that little tiny box. Keep up the
good work! (I like getting mail...)
A Letter in My Mailbox
Speaking of getting mail, the lettercol seems to be dying off again.
The Hugo argument has disappeared without a trace, and except for a few
screwups on my part, I don't seem to hear from you folks much. There
are pages just waiting for your thoughts to be shouted to the world.
So why don't you folks write?
The rules for a LOC (Letter of Comment) are simple. You write it and
mail it to me. If it gets published, you get a free copy of
OtherRealms, and the masses see what you have to say. The only topic
that isn't allowed in the Lettercol is glowing praise for me or my
magazine (those I frame in the privacy of my own home, where nobody can
see me blush).
The New Address
Please make sure that you use the new address in the masthead. By the
time you see this, I won't be living in Sunnyvale anymore, and I don't
want to confuse the postman any more than I have to. They are supposed
to forward things, but right now I don't quite trust them...
Con Schedules
Just as a side thought, since I like meeting people interests, if
you're going to be at a Con that I'm at, please feel free to track me
down and say hello. My current schedule has me at Baycon and Westercon
here in the S.F. Bay area, and I'm also planning on making the trip to
Brighton for Worldcon. If you're going to be there, I'd love to hear
about it so we can find time to sit and talk.
Coming Up
As we grind our way to going quarterly, you'll start seeing some
changes in OtherRealms, change I hope all of you can help. Besides
dedicating more space to the lettercol (hint! hint!) I'm starting to
look for more feature material to supplement the reviews. I have
articles on Historical Realism (by Harry Turtledove), Hard SF (by Jim
Brunet) and Brian Aldiss (by Davis Tucker) but I need more. If you
want to write an article on your favorite author, your favorite style
of fiction, or just about anything you want that has to do with authors
and books, please drop me a note about it. My hope is to eventually run
about 25% feature material and 75% reviews. I'm also interested in
doing a series of author or artist interviews, either new or reprints.
If you are an author who is tired of answering the same questions over
an over again, why not try this? Interview yourself!
I'm also looking for more art. My inventory is up (thank you!) but I
still need a lot of smaller, filler type material and cover art. I
hope to do my first cover art in the July issue in time for Westercon,
and I have a nice piece from joan hanke-woods, last year's Hugo winner,
to kick it off, but unless I get more covers, that will be the only
cover I'll do. If you're an artist with some genre material, I'd
really like to hear from you.
Until next month!
Darkchild -- Bluesong -- Starsilk
Sydney J. Van Scyoc
Berkley Science Fiction
[****+]
Reviewed by Barbara Jernigan
barb@oliveb.ATC.Olivetti.COM
Copyright 1987 by Barbara Jernigan
WARNING: slight spoiler, as the books do build upon each other.
One of the most common complaints against Fantasy and Science Fiction
is that the alien cultures just aren't alien enough. Van Scyoc's books
are above the crowd. The people of the planet Brakrath, human colonists
stranded when their ship crashed, and thus isolated from the human
mainstream for generations, keep step within an alien culture defined
by both physical and social mutations to their less-than-hospitable
world. It is a logical society with a rich history, with legend --
particularly when speaking of the barohnas, the stone-women who serve
as living solar collectors, bringing warmth, light and a long enough
growing season to the valley folk on the sun-starved world. The reader
can believe in this world, in its people, with their culture as rich as
any on real-time Earth. My only criticism, and this a point of personal
prejudice, is that Van Scyoc is not quite sensual -- as in sensory
details -- enough. A small quibble indeed, for she certainly provides
enough fodder for complete imagery -- her brush- strokes are spare,
like the best of the Chinese Zen painters.
All three books are "rites of passage," and the three taken together
serve as an epic. Each is a complete tale -- though best read in order
for the sense of history. They are also written in an interesting
controlled point of view style. Chapters bear the headings of one of
the characters -- Khira, Darkchild, Danior, Keva -- and follow that
character in so tight a third-person that only a heartbeat shift would
make it first-person perspective. Occasionally, the same scene will be
retold from another character's point of view in the next chapter. It
is refreshing to read so disciplined an author.
Darkchild has three protagonists, Khira, last surviving palace daughter
of the Valley Terlath, Darkchild, the curious boy she finds midwinter,
a stranger to Brakrath, and the Guide, an entity embedded in
Darkchild's consciousness with the command to protect the boy, and keep
him learning. For Darkchild, we immediately discover, is an information
gathering tool of the Benderzic ("Who could refuse or distrust a child?
And who, but a child, is most able to learn a very great deal in a very
short time?"). The Benderzic then reclaim their unsuspecting
information gatherers and drain their memories selling knowledge the
target worlds' treasures -- and fatal weaknesses -- to the highest
bidder.
Darkchild has no memory when Khira finds him, crouched in the snow; he
is a blank slate, obedient to the control of the Guide, the Guide who
controls the mental doors leading to Darkchild's true identity and to
memories the boy best not see for the pain they would bring. Khira is
also Darkchild's protector -- and Darkchild is her protection from a
winter of loneliness. For in the valleys of Brakrath, all but the
palace daughters -- barohnas never bear sons to term -- hibernate the
deep-snow winters, while their barohnas await the return of the sun in
their winter palaces, high in the mountains. Khira was alone, for her
sister had failed in her challenge that summer, the ritual of facing
and slaying a dangerous beast in the mountains, an act that would bring
the sudden mutation from frail human adolescent to tall, strong
featured, bronze-skinned, sun-stone commanding (among other things)
barohna. Failing her challenge, the palace daughter never returned, and
the legends of the people said her soul became a bird....
Khira befriends Darkchild, and teaches him the ways of Brakrath. He is
a quick study, though he feels she doesn't appreciate just how quick he
is. She does appreciate, with no small annoyance, that there is more
than just Darkchild in the dark-haired waif. There is another. And the
other is not her friend -- nor, she senses, is he Darkchild's. Plus
there is the warning of the Armini, another information gathering race,
who are surveying Brakrath with the Council [of barohnas]'s permission.
They inform Khira of Darkchild's Benderzic connections, and, worse to
them, that he is a Rauthimage, a clone among hundreds of clones,
created without permission from explorer Birnam Rauth. The explorer is
a mystery, disappeared centuries ago, his call for help repeating in
the song of a strange alien white silk.
Darkchild tells of Khira's coming of age -- and that of Darkchild and
his Guide. Each has a challenge -- like any adolescent, that of finding
themselves. Khira and Darkchild meet that challenge against the
tapestry of a very strange, and quite intriguing world.
Bluesong takes up the thread twenty years later. Darkchild has been
reborn as Iahn, and is the barohna Khira's consort. They have several
children, one is a boy, Danior. Danior, at least in his own eyes, is a
nonentity. There is no place but civil courtesy for a palace son, for
there has never been a palace son. There is no tradition to guide his
steps, as there is for his sisters -- even though his sisters'
tradition will likely get them killed when they challenge. He bitterly
bears this lack of place as an albatross around his neck. He must make
a legend for himself -- as his father made a legend for himself. But
what? He has no direction, nothing but simple-minded, shorter-lived
adolescent impulses. Until he takes a pairing stone into his hand and
it glows with life -- a pairing stone, which should answer only to a
barohna, and then only if another barohna has the stone's mate. The
barohna that should have the other stone is dead, her consort, Iahn's
Rauthimage "brother" Jhaviir and their young daughter long disappeared.
Danior's destiny glows in his hand, and his first impulse is to throw
it from him. He at last decides to go to his great-great grandmother in
the plains, hoping to find wisdom in her uncanny understanding.
Keva is the other player in Bluesong's saga of growing up. She has
dreams of a bearded, dark haired man riding a whitemane and a blue silk
that sings a voiceless song in the wind. Just dreams, she is told by
her foster mother, a member of the isolated, antagonistically
suspicious fisher- people, who live by the warmstreams without need of
the evil, power- hungry barohnas, who drew the sun's fire as easily as
one might draw water from the warmstream...and used that fire to
destroy all who would stand against them, enslaving the rest. She
reluctantly accedes to this, though the dreams constantly haunt her
like insistent memory, until she finds evidence in her foster mother's
effects to the contrary: a thin strip of blue silk and a stone, set as
if for a necklace. Knowing the truth, that she was stolen from her
wandering, nameless father, Keva leaves the warmstreams to seek him.
She is woefully ignorant of life beyond the warmstreams -- and, worse,
has been trained to distrust, even hate the enslaving barohnas of the
mountains. This becomes great trouble when she unwittingly meets her
challenge, in a moment of protective adrenaline taking "stone into her
heart" and transmorphing in a space of heartbeats (no surprise to the
reader) into a barohna. Now her quest is two-fold, to find her father,
and to learn to accept, and then master, her considerable powers --
powers that seem to wield themselves.
Danior finds her, recognizing her instantly as his cousin, nay, as his
Rauthsister -- for their Rauthimage fathers are genetically identical.
Here is a kindred spirit, he decides, one who can share his quest for
identity. She also holds the other pairing stone.
Keva understands nothing of this -- she wants only to find her father,
he can explain this unwelcome change. If he is not in the valleys or
the plains, then perhaps the desert. She slips away, trodding
ignorantly into greater danger. Danior, of course, follows -- and
together they find themselves, and their destinies, their legend, in a
delightfully unexpected way.
Finally, there is Starsilk. Starsilk strays from the boy-girl formula
of the first two books, focussing instead on Reyna, Iahn and Khira's
youngest daughter, and Tsuuka, a cat-like sithi residing on the planet
of the singing silks. When the book opens Reyna thinks she has a place,
unlike her brother Danior in the preceding book. Her two older sisters
have failed their challenges, her father, after an apparent quarrel
with her mother, has left to visit his brother in the desert, his
return date disturbingly indefinite. Reyna cannot bear the loneliness.
She knows, at fifteen, she is past her majority, past her time -- and
is driven, greatly by fear of failure, to train for her challenge. But
she is not to go, her mother says with the backing of an Armini gauge.
Even if she were to kill her beast, she would not change, she did not
have the brain mutation that would transform her into a barohna, she
would die, if not by the first beast then by the next she would
undoubtedly seek, and her death would have no meaning. So what could
she do? Remain forever a palace child? Already quickening in her
mother's womb is the daughter that will, according to the Armini
scanner, succeed her; a daughter fathered by a stranger, as was typical
barohna custom, the white-haired hunter Juaren. Reyna, then, was
nothing. She had no place. The heiress to the sun throne would be born
before the next spring. Well then, Reyna decides, she will face her
challenge anyway, death preferable to a life trapped in a child's body.
But that is not Reyna's destiny. True, she was not born to be a
barohna, but she can meet another challenge, that of finding her
grandfather, Birnam Rauth, whose distress call is recorded on the white
silk. Her brother Danior has seen visions in the silks' songs, the
Armini know the home-planet of the silks. It is there Reyna must look,
her challenge is to be the first Brakrathi to leave the planet. Her
challenge and Juaren's. Who has a promise of his own to fulfill.
Tsuuka, meanwhile, has her own troubles, born of nightmare and memory.
Her bowersibling, Maiilin, was stolen from her when they were but
weanlings, transformed, mysteriously, into a mindless growler by
something she should not have seen in the heart of the forest, where no
sithi should ever go. Tsuuka blames Maiilin's loss on herself, for she
was too timid to stay by her side in her recklessness. And now,
Tsuuka's favorite cub, Dariim, the very image of Maiilin, is drawn into
the forbidden depths of the wood, called by an angry red starsilk she
has claimed for her own. Can Tsuuka bear to let history repeat itself?
And what of her own questions? What is it that the sithi should not
know? Who is the Unseen? What is the truth of the singing silks? And
who are the strange beings who now walk her planet with their own
quest? Are they her enemies? The Unseen's? What waits in the dark
groves of the forest's heart?
Together, Reyna and Tsuuka find their answers -- and in that answer
Brakrath's own challenge is discovered. In the words of Juaren, the
last of the hunters who knows his true sworn task, that of protector,
the enemies of Brakrath must be discovered, studied, and understood,
and the protector must then wake the people. Brakrath has long lingered
in ignorant isolation. But, with the growing interest of outside races,
the studious Armini, the opportunistic Benderzic, it is time for
Brakrath to wake.
Three quests of discovery, three rites of passage, and the birth of a
world's awareness to the galaxies beyond its dim star. Van Scyoc
creates in detail the cultures of two worlds, one the human outgrowth
of generations of adapting to a hostile planet, the other completely
alien -- and very believable. Plus glimpses of many more. Her universe
is that of splintered humanity, First Earth but a distant memory. It is
a rich tapestry, a real tapestry, exceedingly well wrought. Van Scyoc
understands human nature. Her protagonists are fully human, they have
hopes, fears, doubts, shortcomings, and surprising (to them) inner
strengths -- and they, like the worlds they inhabit, are real. This
trilogy has placed itself in my top- ten. Go read!
Science Fiction: The 100 Best Novels
David Pringle
224 pages, 1985, $15.95 hardcover
Carroll & Graf Publishers, Inc.
[***]
Reviewed by
Jim Day
JimDay.Pasa@Xerox.Com
Copyright 1987 by Jim Day
David Pringle is well known to readers of British Science Fiction as
editor of Interzone, the only SF magazine currently being published in
Britain. He also edits Foundation: The Review of Science Fiction,
published three times a year.
Following a foreword by Michael Moorcock is an introduction in which
Pringle gives a short account of the development of SF as a distinct
form of fantastic fiction. Next is a very brief bibliography of
reference works dealing with science fiction. Although useful, the list
is far from complete.
The main part of the book consists of a series of essays arranged in
chronological order from 1949 to 1984. Each essay discusses the merits
of a book selected by Pringle as an outstanding example of the SF
novels of its time. Are all of these books truly outstanding? Pringle
admits that not more than a dozen could really be considered literary
masterpieces, and he explains that his purpose is not to tout these
novels as great literature but to encourage people to read good SF.
To provide some indication of Pringle's critical judgement it may be
useful to mention the first book chosen by him from each decade of SF.
The first of these is George Orwell's 1984, published in 1949, a story
about life in the future totalitarian state of Oceania. Pringle notes
that the book is really not so much a prediction of things to come as
it is an exaggerated view of the way things actually were in the forties.
The first book from the Fifties to be discussed by Pringle is Ray
Bradbury's Martian Chronicles, a colorful collection of stories about
human exploration and exploitation of the planet Mars. According to
Pringle, Bradbury ignored consensus views on how SF should be written
and used the motifs of science fiction to achieve his own literary
ends, often slighting technical detail and scientific plausibility to
express a particular style or mood. Pringle's favorite story from
Bradbury's book is "And The Moon Be Still As Bright."
The first novel selected from the Sixties is Rogue Moon, by Algis
Budrys, a story in which human volunteers travel to the Moon via matter
transmission. Their task is to map a deadly lunar maze constructed by
an unknown alien race. Pringle explains that the primary emphasis of
this novel is on psychology rather than technology, exploring the
ultimate limits of human endurance.
The first novel from the Seventies is Tau Zero, by Poul Anderson, the
story of a starship bound for a planet some 30 light-years away. An
accident occurs in which the ship's deceleration system is destroyed,
causing it to accelerate inexorably toward light-speed. Pringle says,
"The consequences, for the ship's crew and for the fabric of reality,
are ingeniously worked out -- mind boggling seems much too mild a term
to describe them."
The first novel selected by Pringle from the present decade is
Timescape by Gregory Benford, a story in which a small group of
scientists tries to avert a global disaster by sending a warning
message 35 years into the past. Pringle comments that "... the very
difficulties of the enterprise, the stubbornness of actuality against
which the characters are continually bruising their heads, make this
the most convincing example of time travel in all science fiction."
Although I have not read all of the novels discussed in Pringle's
essays, I tend to agree with his evaluation of those that I have read,
and believe that he has succeeded quite well in outlining, by example,
the development of SF over a span of 35 years.
The book provides information about first and current editions of each
novel discussed, and also includes an alphabetic index of names and titles.
The Regiment
John Dalmas
Baen Books, $3.50, 404 pages
[***]
Reviewed by
Danny Low
hplabs!hpccc!dlow
Copyright 1987 by Danny Low
While the book has enough military action to satisfy those who like
military SF, the military action is only half of the book. I could not
identify a single original story element in this book. On the other,
Dalmas has put together a tasty and unique stew of a SF story using old
SF plot ideas and devices.
The main character, Varlik 681 Lormagen, is a journalist assigned to
cover what appears to be a minor local uprising on the planet Kettle.
He quickly discovers that the minor rebellion is a full scale uprising
by a well trained, well equipped and well led native army with outside
support. The government is using T'swa mercenaries in an attempt to
defeat the rebels. Varlik attaches himself to the Red Scorpion T'swa
Regiment. His adventures with the regiment forms the first half of the
story. Varlik discovers the T'swi soldiers are finely cultured which
does not fit into his image of professional soldiers. Wounded, Varlik
decides to visit the T'swi's home planet while recuperating. This
begins the second half of the book. He learns something of the T'swi
culture and the plot that is behind the rebellion on Kettle. The trail
of the plotters leads back to the capital and some very high government
officials. The characterization is adequate. The description of
military routine and action is realistic. The plot is reasonable. The
only serious flaw is that the nature of the plot is obvious from the
very beginning to an experienced SF reader.
The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan
James Morier
Originally published in 1824
Oxford University Press edition of 1954
[*****]
Reviewed by
Dave Taylor
hplabs!taylor
Copyright 1987 by Dave Taylor
Fantasy is a genre that has been around for a long time. The roots are
the oral histories of ancient civilizations and the moral lessons of
cultures (Aesop's fables, for example). A particular geographic region
also occasionally creates a type of story, and the Mysterious Middle
East before and during the initial British colonization efforts was a
fertile ground for exciting Fantasy.
The most famous of these tales is The Arabian Nights, the premise of
which is that the wily princess Scheherazade foils her husbands plot to
kill her by spinning out a new tale each night to avoid her execution.
Another popular tale of this genre is the magic lamp/three wishes story
-- Aladdin and his Magic Lamp is popular to all, as is another tale Ali
Baba and the Forty Thieves.
Most of those don't really impart much of a feel of the culture and
civilization that they take place in. The Adventures of Hajji Baba of
Ispahan is quite different. It is a tale of a scoundrel, Hajji Baba,
who wanders about Persia getting into and out of scrapes with deftness,
wit, and the occasional beating.
The story begins with our hero being educated by his parents, and his
learning about the "ways of the world." He decides to travel, rather
than simply take up his father's trade, and is almost immediately
kidnapped by the vicious Turcomans, who make a slave boy out of him.
Fortunately, Hajji has learned enough from his father to be able to
give very good shaves, and he manages to get out of this particular
scrape okay. Of course, he becomes a thief, stealing the Turcoman
money. Then he finds himself in the position of having to steal back
into his home city and rob it with a band of cut-throats.
Hajji manages to find quite a bit of adventure, and a fair sprinkling
of love and friendship, and grow from boyhood into manhood. As the
reader, we are not only allowed to know of Hajji, but we are also given
a fun, colorful tour of Persia in the early 1800's.
To give you an idea of how fun this book is, here's an excerpt from
where Hajji describes to his doctor associate (don't ask how he became
an assistant to a doctor!) how the Shah of Persia took the medicine of
a Western (Frank) doctor:
When once he had got possession, he looked at it with intense
eagerness, and turned it over and over on his palm, without
appearing one whit more advanced in his knowledge than before. At
length, after permitting him fully to exhaust his conjectures, I
told him that the Frank doctor had made no secret in saying that it
[the pill] was composed of jivch, or mercury. "Mercury!" exclaimed
Mirza Ahmak -- "just as if I did not know that. And so, because
this infidel, this dog of an Isauvi [follower of Jesus], chooses to
poison us with mercury, I am to lose my reputation, and my
prescriptions are to be turned into ridicule. Whoever heard of
mercury as a medicine? Mercury is cold, and lettuce and cucumber
are cold also. You would not apply ice to dissolve ice? The ass
does not know the first rudiments of his profession. No, Hajji,
this will never do; we must not permit our beards to be laughed at
in this manner."
Suffice to say that this is one of my all-time favorite books, one that
I have read at least five times since I got it. It's wonderful, lots
and lots of fun, and highly amusing. It's also a fine glimpse of a very
different culture and of how the Persians first viewed and treated the
strange beardless Westerners. Very highly recommended.
A Door into Ocean
Joan Slonczewski
Avon, 406 pp, 1986, $3.95
[***]
Reviewed by
Alan Wexelblat
wex@mcc.Com
Copyright 1987 by Alan Wexelblat
How does a reviewer go about disagreeing with the New York Times Book
Review? That august publication has said of A Door Into Ocean that "you
not only know the protagonists intimately, you care passionately about
the outcome." I'm sorry to say that, for this reviewer, it just wasn't so.
A four-hundred-page novel has to be fairly spectacular for me to become
passionate about it. Door is not spectacular. It has its good moments
and its bad. Slonczewski has obviously put a great deal of time and
effort into developing this work. The characters are three-dimensional,
with histories and futures. Even the minor characters are drawn in
painstaking detail. The world they live in is also well-drawn; taken
as a whole, it hangs together well.
However, in four hundred pages, there is room for a lot of mistakes;
some of the goofs here are real whoppers. Some have to with not
thinking out the full consequences of the setting; others are as simple
as allowing a character to use the word hassle the way we 20th-century
Americans do. These mistakes crop up just often enough to play havoc
with the reader's suspension of disbelief.
A Door Into Ocean is the story of the clash of two cultures. This clash
is shown through the eyes of protagonists who travel from one culture
to the other. Slonczewski goes to great lengths to create aliens who
are truly alien. The cultures are well-developed, with rich backgrounds
and an abundance of detail. At times this becomes oppressive;
Slonczewski has a tendency to use the unusualness of her setting as a
club with which she bashes her readers. Despite the length of the book,
we are never given the chance to slip into the culture. Either we
understand immediately or we are lost from the start.
The novel is set in a far-distant future in which the watery moon Shora
circles the planet Valedon. Each planet has human-descended
inhabitants. They are physically distinct, though, because the natives
of Shora have developed adaptations that allow them to survive better
in an ocean/island environment.
Valedon is an ordinary world. Post-holocaust in nature, the majority of
the people live at a low technological level. Atomic energy is known
but forbidden by the feudalistic overlords. The people live as traders,
small merchants, soldiers and peasants. The upper classes monopolize
the high- technology items that are available and control the world's
spaceport. Valedonian society is organized around stone: each person
must wear a stone indicating his or her profession; most of the names
of people and places are derived from mineral names.
Shora, on the other hand, is anything but ordinary. It is populated
exclusively by females. They live on and in giant sea-plants that serve
as rafts, homes, food sources and more. They have developed an advanced
biological and genetic science that allows them to reproduce and live
in perfect harmony with their world. Their culture is peacefully
anarchic -- decisions are made by Gatherings of all adults. They also
follow the doctrine of non-violence that we associate with Ghandi
(although the author never credits him).
Spinel, a native of Valedon, is the male lead of the story. He is
brought to Shora by Merwen, an influential Shoran who wishes to use him
to prove to her sisters that Valedonians are human. Valedonians wish to
trade with Shora to obtain the valuable sea-silk that the Shorans
harvest and spin into fabrics. However, many Shorans oppose the use of
the items that the Valedonians trade. Also, some Shorans suffer from a
debilitating psychological addiction to the gems that the traders
bring. A debate ensues whether to close the planet and expel the Valedonians.
In the midst of this, the rulers of Valedon invade Shora. They set
about conquering the planet. The Shoran's non-violence sets up a
situation wherein we find out what happens if they held a war and one
side didn't show up.
While Slonczewski handles both plot and characters with reasonable
skill, the thing that most alienated me from this book was the
subtext. Door is clearly intended as a metaphor for our 20th-century
American society, with Valedon representing the authoritarian, nasty,
destructive, warlike males and Shora the anarchic, kind, peaceful
females. We are shown how men mess things up and how only women can
understand and harmonize with the world we live in. Some people may
like the message; I found it simplistic and vaguely insulting.
With a Single Spell
Lawrence Watt-Evans
Del Rey, 263 pages, $3.50
[***]
Reviewed by
Peter Rubinstein
Copyright 1987 by Peter Rubinstein
In With a Single Spell, Lawrence Watt-Evans tries his hand at a common
story line. The plot line of young innocent being forced to rely on his
own resources, coming of age and growing to adulthood should be
familiar to everyone. How the author sets the situation, develops the
characters, and injects unique elements into the story determine how
entertaining the novel will be.
The protagonist, Tobas, begins as a spoiled, lazy rich kid who resists
being forced into the cold cruel world once by tricking an aging wizard
into accepting him as an apprentice. When Roggit, the wizard, dies
after teaching Tobas but a single spell, Tobas is finally forced to
leave his sheltered environment and seek his fortune elsewhere. He is
then faced with a series of trials that he must negotiate successfully
using his wits and his one spell.
As I read this novel, I found myself waiting for Tobas to acquire more
spells, enabling him to deal with his problems. The author manages to
remain faithful to his original premise, however, while still allowing
a gratifying development of increased power for the reader identifying
with Tobas.
Evaluating this book according to the criteria presented above, I would
say that the situation is set reasonably well. Watt-Evans provides
ample opportunity for the reader to identify with Tobas. The story
continues plausibly enough after the stage has been set and Tobas
starts out on his adventures. One of my few complaints is that the
author has rigged things to make Tobas' biggest obstacle susceptible to
his single spell.
In the area of character development, the story is a bit weaker. The
initial layout of Tobas character is adequate, but as the story
progresses, little is done to add to the reader's insight into his
personality. I received the impression at the end that Tobas was still
essentially a child. Additionally, there is little done to establish
more than one dimension in any of the secondary characters.
Finally, there is the injection of unique elements into the plot. Here
Watt-Evans has done a much better job. The concept of Tobas facing his
obstacles with a single spell is maintained effectively. The plot
twists that advance the story and the punch line (punch chapter?) are
both well done.
The book is sufficiently entertaining to be recommended, although
readers who enjoy complexity in their reading may come away
disappointed.
OtherRealms #15
May, 1987
Copyright 1987
by Chuq Von Rospach.
All Rights Reserved.
One time rights have been acquired from the contributors.
All rights are hereby assigned to the contributors
OtherRealms may be reproduced in its entirety only
for non-commercial purposes. With the exception of
excerpts used for promotional purposes, no part of
OtherRealms may be re-published without permission.
