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OtherRealms Issue 18 Part 08
Electronic OtherRealms #18
Fall, 1987
Part 8
Much Rejoicing
Reviews by
Dan'l Danehy-Oakes
djo@ptsfa.uucp
Copyright 1987 by
Dan'l Danehy-Oakes
Reviewed in this column:
How to Write Tales of Horror,
Fantasy and Science Fiction
J.N. Williamson
Lincoln's Dream
Connie Willis
[****+]
To Sail Beyond the Sunset
Robert A. Heinlein
[*****-]
The Children of Arable
David Belden
[***+]
Yearwood
Paul Hazel
[**]
The Reality Matrix
John Dalmas
[***]
Firebird
Kathy Tyers
[**+]
The American Shore
Samuel R. Delaney
"Science Fiction is the search for a definition of man and his
status in the universe which will stand in our advanced but
confused state of knowledge (science)...
"Corollary: the more powers above the ordinary that the
protagonist enjoys, the closer the fiction will approach to
hardcore SF." --Brian W. Aldiss, Billion Year Spree
Episode 3: Last and First Books
A slight digression before we move on to a new crop of SF and Fantasy
books. If you have no interest at all in ever writing fiction, skip to
the first blank space in this column; I'm going to discuss a book on
the subject.
Very well. Now that those three are gone, the rest of you might want to
know about "Writers Digest Books." Writer's Digest magazine publishes
all sorts of articles on all aspects of writing, and any given issue
may contain little or nothing of interest to a beginning SF writer, or
may be fascinating from cover to cover.
But Writers Digest also publishes a series of books on writing, from
the annual Writer's Market to Damon Knight's excellent book on Writing
Short Fiction, to (and here we come to the point) a book issued just
this spring, called How To Write Tales of Horror, Fantasy & Science
Fiction, edited by J.N. Williamson[1987, $15.95. ISBN 0-89879-270-3] --
no relation to Jack Williamson. How To is, like any book on writing, of
use only to those who are willing to live with it and figure out what
in it works and doesn't for them; furthermore, it is quite uneven.
It is uneven because it is written by a large number of people -- it's
a collection of (all new) articles by people ranging from Ray Bradbury
and Robert Bloch, to George Clayton Johnson and a whole bunch of people
I've never heard of and don't expect you have either. Some of the
articles are full of pithy, useful advice; others are anecdotal and
entertaining. Johnson's article is about narrative hooks, and consists
almost entirely of a collection of his own first sentences; it's easily
the most pointless thing in the entire book. Bradbury's article is
personal but helpful. Most have at least one or two insights that a
would-be writer might do well to heed -- even the Johnson.
There are also articles by people connected with the publishing
business including an agent and a couple of editors. These are
excellent perspectives on what these people do, what they can do for
you, and what you can do to avoid making them hate you or your
manuscript. This isn't one of the best books on writing I've ever read,
but it's far from the worst: I give it a tentative recommendation.
So, from a book on learning to write let's turn to some books by people
learning to write: I've got four first novels in this crop, and I'm
pleased to say that not a one of 'em is a real stinker.
The prize of the bunch is unquestionably Connie Willis's Lincoln's
Dreams [Bantam-Spectra 1987, $15.95. ISBN 0-553-05197-0]. A lot of
people have been waiting for Willis to publish a novel, and damned if
it wasn't worth waiting for.
The premise is like nothing I've ever seen before. Jeff is a
researcher, working for a fellow who writes best-selling novels set in
the Civil War. Jeff meets a woman named Annie who's been having dreams,
strange dreams which seem to take place at the sites of some of the
Civil War's worst battlefields. More; they seem to be visions of the
battles as seen by Robert E. Lee.
Her psychiatrist who is Jeff's former college roommate, which is how he
meets Annie -- has drugged her in an irresponsible manner. This may or
may not be connected to the fact that said psychiatrist has become her
lover in complete defiance of all canons of patient-doctor relations.
Why is she having these dreams? Is she being possessed by Lee's ghost,
or is she merely, as the psychiatrist thinks, a very sick woman? The
dreams are filled with details, vivid and accurate details that only an
expert on the period can really understand; but even Jeff can't
understand why.
The book has a flavor that reminds me of the old South, with its
sadness and nostalgia, but without a sign of the decadence so often
associated with Southern art and fiction. Its characters are alive; you
come away with the feeling that something strange has just happened to
a close friend.
And you will never in a million years guess why Annie is dreaming those
dreams, but when you find out, you'll think you knew all along.
The other masterpiece before me today is Robert A. Heinlein's To Sail
Beyond the Sunset [Ace Putnam 1987, $18.95. ISBN 0-399-13267-6]. This
is Maureen Smith's story, told by herself, and it may well be that the
best parts of the book take place before it really becomes stfnal, in
the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Maureen, as most of you already know, is the mother of Woodrow Wilson
Smith, better known as Lazarus Long. To Sail Beyond the Sunset is a
novel as personal and as touching as the best parts of Time Enough for
Love, Lazarus' book; it is the story of a daughter, wife, mother, and
ultimately an independent, intelligent woman surviving and thriving in
good and bad times.
Much of the story is narrated by Maureen from a jail on an unfamiliar
version of Earth. She is a member of Lazarus' Time Corps, and has been
arrested for an unlikely crime while on an equally unlikely mission; to
pass the time, she dictates her memoirs to a recorder built into her
abdominal cavity.
The device works. She tells her tale, up to the point (in The Number of
the Beast) where she is rescued/abducted by the Long clan and brought
into their polymorphous family and futurity. Each chapter is framed
with comments on what is happening in and around her cell, or wherever
she happens to be -- a court- room or whatever. There's plenty of
whatever. Eventually, she's rescued by the Time Corps and allowed to
take part in the completion of her odd mission -- a mission so
ridiculous that only Heinlein can pull it off with a straight face.
But pull it off he does, and the result is some of the best writing
Heinlein's ever given us. This may well be his last book; if so, he's
built himself a monument worthy of his life and work.
Onward, ever onward. A book came out at the beginning of this year with
almost no trumpeting or foofaraw, which I'd like to commend to your
attention. It's called The Children of Arable [Signet 1987, $2.95. ISBN
0- 451-14660-3], and it's the first novel by a British emigre' named
David Belden. On the strength of this novel, I'd like to submit that
Belden is a Man To Watch. (Remember: You read it here first.)
The book is not without flaws. Belden begins with an audacious concept;
a human society literally without a concept of gender, where the sexual
organs are completely superfluous except for pleasure, and nobody forms
special attachments. The people of this "Collectivity" speak English,
but without the sexed pronouns. His solution to this is clever enough
that I don't want to give it away -- but this is also where the book
begins to crack, because he explains his solution in the same passage
where he explains why he isn't using it. He fails to follow through his
concept, and refers to characters as "he" and "she" before it is
logical to do so.
You see, it does become logical to do so. Children is about a woman who
brings about the fall of this genderless collective state, and, if it
happens in an unbelievably easy manner, it is no more so than in dozens
of other SF novels where a single protagonist brings the Revolution,
changes the world, etc. And Mary/Martin/Mariammo, the protagonist, pays
a much higher price for her revolution than the typical stfnal demigod.
The imagined culture is rich and full in texture, and damn near every
odd corner we're exposed to turns around and plays a key part in
Martin's victory. The complexity of Belden's imagination and plotting
promise excellent books in the future. Children, though flawed, is an
excellent (though not an easy, or a fast) read, and well worth your
attention now.
What's this? Yearwood [Bantam-Spectra 1987 , $3.95. ISBN 0-553-
26681-0] by Paul Hazel; another first novel. It says here it's...Oh,
no...it's the first in a Fantasy trilogy. Worse; it looks Celtic as
hell. Another damn Celtic Fantasy trilogy. What, Oh Mighty Editor, did
I ever do that you inflicted this on me? Oh, well, I said I wanted a
batch of first novels...
Still, let's read it. Matter of principle; every book gets a fair
reading here. H'mmm. A one-eyed man, with talking crows named Thought
and Memory. That's not Celtic, that's Norse. But this here is Welsh,
and Finnish, and...
Well. Surprise, surprise. It's still Celtic as hell, but it's pretty
damned original, if only in its blending of traditional elements from
all over northern Europe..
What have we got? A boy raised by a backwoods nobleman who isn't his
father, who turns out to be the True King's son. Ships of the dead.
Standing stones. Seal-people. A mishmash, which somehow coalesces into
a coherent geography and culture; not a bad trick, if you can pull it off.
The plotting's pretty good too, so far. Hazel's telling us the
ever-popular tale of the Doomed King, but with enough changes rung on
it that I never guessed -- not correctly, at any rate -- what was going
to happen next. I rarely even guessed at all.
Hazel's biggest problem is his style; it's full of poorly-handled mock-
archaic phrasings that annoy without building flavor. The entire
trilogy is written and published (this is the first paperback edition
of a 1980 Atlantic-Little Brown hardcover), so I imagine the
subject-predicate inversions and other signs of would-be archaic
writing continue through the trilogy; but they aren't so bad that they
keep me from wanting to read the rest of it, as it comes out. (For one
thing, volume one ends on a cliffhanger.)
Still, I can't help but wish that a good copy-editor had banged Hazel
over the head with Fowler or Strunk and White a few times, to teach him
the difference between style and stylishness.
John Dalmas boils an honest pot: or so is my impression after reading
his excellent pot-boiler, The Reality Matrix [Baen 1986, $2.95. ISBN 0-
671-65583-3].
Poul Anderson proclaims on the (rather garish) cover that this book
"makes the reader think." Well, maybe it made Anderson think. It kept
me turning pages -- I read the last 150 in a single sitting -- but no
more.
We have an engaging set of characters, notably a Swedish psychic named
Ole who talks vit yust a tiny accent, and a cop who doesn't believe in
ESP, and a concept that should have been the subject of a profound,
thoughtful novel: reality "as we know it" is actually a game played by
beings -- what we might call our "souls" -- who agree to forget the
higher reality while playing. The game is scheduled to end in six
months, unless Our Heroes can defeat the usual incredible odds to stop
it. That Matrix is not the subject of a profound, thoughtful novel is
annoying, but not fatal.
The plotting is tight. Dalmas starts at a nice, gentle pace, and
accelerates it a bit at a time until the reader is nearly out of
breath. Along the way, he introduces a set of villains that, while they
didn't set me booing and hissing, wrung a cheer out of me the first
time one got himself killed (and killed in a particularly villainous
manner, too -- rather reminded me of Patrick McGoohan's death in Silver
Streak).
But the plotting gets in the way at times. Dalmas makes everything too
easy for his heroes. Toward the end, some of them get killed, but by
that time, it's okay for them to get killed. We're so indoctrinated
with the idea of the game, and the idea that dead people just "recycle"
into new roles, that it doesn't have the impact it should.
He also drops things. Two of the heroes are ghosts; at one point, he
tells us that they're going to haunt the home of one of the villains --
in, I believe, Texas. When we see them next, they're on the Canadian
border, with no explanation of how they got there or why they aren't
busy haunting the villain.
Similarly, when he first introduces Ole, we're told that he received
his psychic powers in a head injury which also left him half-witted. He
never once shows a sign of half-wittedness -- unless, of course, his
accent is half- witted, v'ich concept I know some Svedes who vould
gladly argue vit.
Still, Dalmas delivers solid entertainment and original characters. I
don't think anybody will feel cheated at the end of The Reality Matrix.
I promised four first novels, and here's the last: Firebird [Bantam-
Spectra 1987, $3.50. ISBN 0-553-26716-7], by Kathy Tyers. A good old-
fashioned space opera. More or less.
Our heroine, Firebird, is the third daughter of the Queen of a
matriarchal planet: Naetai. Or sometimes N'Tai -- I think the latter
refers to the empire ruled from the planet, but it never became quite
clear to me. I'm also not sure it's a matriarchy; the ruler is always
female, but most of the aristocracy seems to be male.
Anyway, the N'Taian empire is a small wart at the edge of a
half-a-galaxy ruled by a Federated mankind. The Federacy is bigger than
the empire, has incredibly powerful telepathic operatives, and probably
has an advanced technology. The Federacy has been asking the empire to
join them in peace and harmony for hundreds of years. What does the
empire do? Why, it launches a sneak attack to wrest a relatively minor
planet from Federal control, of course!.
And Firebird is right there in the front lines. You see, Naetai has
strict rules limiting the number of heirs to any noble house, even the
royal house. She is expected to die gloriously in battle. Instead, she
manages to get herself kidnapped.
The rest of the story is fairly predictable. She discovers that the
Federacy is Good and Just; she falls in love with her captor (a
repeated occurrence in SF stories whose underlying psychosexuality
should be examined some time); she joins a mission to stop her
homeworld from developing an Ultimate Weapon.
Firebird is a good read for an airplane, or the bathtub, but I wouldn't
send it to Mom as proof that this sci-fi stuff really is great
literature.
If I did want to convince someone of the literary value of SF, I'd ask
them to read this Closet Classic. I began this column with a book about
the writing of Horror, Fantasy, and SF; I'm concluding with a book
about reading SF.
Samuel R. Delany is well-known as a writer of erudite but popular SF
and Fantasy (Nova, Dhalgren, Tales of Neveryon, etc.), as well as
several Hugo- and Nebula-award stories and novels (The Einstein
Intersection, Bable-17, "Aye, and Gomorrah," "Time Considered as a
Helix of Semi- Precious Stones," and "Prismatica"). He is also quite
well-known in the circles that care about such things as one of the
foremost critics and theoreticians of SF.
In 1977, Dragon Press published a collection of his essays, The Jewel-
Hinged Jaw, which has since appeared in paperback. The following year,
they brought forth a book-length work, The American Shore, which had
only a single printing, and I would like to suggest that this is simply
a crime.
The American Shore is a close analysis of a short story by Thomas
Disch, "Angouleme." It is not a critical evaluation of that story,
though it certainly does speak in places of the story's "meaning" and
worth. Rather, The American Shore is a close and closely-reasoned
analysis of the processes in the reader's mind as she reads a tale of
Science Fiction.
Consider: when you read an SF story, you actually build a world,
complete with culture, economics, sociology, arts, business, military
and political history, etc., etc. in your mind, all from a very few
words. The classic example, and one Delany cites, is Heinlein's
sentence in Beyond This Horizon: "The door dilated." The experienced SF
reader gleans from this a technology capable of building irising doors,
a society that finds them desirable, a culture in which they are
common, etc., etc., and this radiates outward from the single detail
and interacts with the other details the writer offers, and builds a
surprisingly complex image of what this future world is and is not
like, to the point where the reader can spot a detail that doesn't
actually contradict anything else but feel that it doesn't "fit."
Delany tears the story into 200+ short sections -- some as short as a
single word -- and analyzes what each of them does to build the world
and society in the reader's mind. He does not discuss, except
peripherally, what causes the author to select those details, or what
they "mean" to the author: this essay is about a story, and a story is
judged by the reader, not the author.
Like all the Closet Classics so far, The American Shore is not going to
interest everyone. But if you are interested in knowing about SF, not
just reading it, you may find much of value here to support many
rereadings.
Some paperback publisher should grab this puppy; it should be one of
those books that never sells heavy, but sells steailyy for year after
year.
OtherRealms #18
Fall, 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. No article may be reprinted
without the express permission of the author.
