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OtherRealms Issue 20 Part 08
Electronic OtherRealms #20
Spring, 1988
Part 8
Pico Reviews, Part 2
Masterplay William F. Wu [**+]
Popular Library, $2.95, 0-445-20504-0
Masterplay, I'm afraid, is evidence that doing one's homework is not
enough. The basic idea is simple: some court cases are decided by a
computer-mediated wargame between two master gamers. (Wu constantly
italicized that phrase, which grated on my nerves a bit.)
Unfortunately, I find the concept quite unbelievable. Nor is Wu's
justification -- that this is a reasonable thing to do when technology
has outstripped statutes and case law, so why not (in effect) flip a
coin -- acceptable, either. Worse yet, debate on this point is central
to the plot, but there's never any evidence that enough people could
like the idea for the system to get started.
The wargames are always re-enactments of famous battles in history,
ranging from Richard III's defeat at Bosworth Field to the battle of
Kadesh about 3000 years ago. The gamers take the part of the opposing
generals and try to win the battle. Here is where Wu's homework shows;
he clearly knows the battles he presents, and understands enough about
tactics and strategy to discuss variations. (Many science fiction
authors don't do nearly as well; Gordon Dickson comes to mind.) In
passing, Wu subtly reminds us that not all of the great generals and
great battles were Western; a number of Asian and African examples are
presented as well, though generally not in as much detail. (These
subtle reminders about cultural biases are present throughout the book.
The two main characters are of Chinese ancestry, for example, though
there is little or no use made of their cultural background.)
The writing quality is generally acceptable, though there is one
oddity. Periodically, we are presented with some minor detail in a
totally obtrusive fashion. It is all well and good to be told that the
videophone in the gym has a small, recessed screen, for safety reasons;
the way we are told, however, totally breaks the flow of the narrative.
-- Steve Bellovin
Memory Blank by John E. Stith [*]
Ace, January 1986 $2.95, 230 pgs. 0-441-52417-6
Cal Donley wakes up covered with blood, not knowing why, not knowing
where he is, not knowing who he is. By the end of the book, all these
questions -- and more -- are answered, but the reader probably won't
care. Stith's prose is so unprepossessing as to be totally
forgettable. The setting takes place on an orbital colony, but this has
so little to do with the plot that it could as well have taken place in
Anytown, USA. Characters, action and dialogue are all equally
uninteresting. The exceptions are some of the interchanges between
Donley and his talking wrist computer, which at times show traces of a
Zelazny-like humor which Stith would do well to try to develop to
better effect in his future writing. And finally, Annoying Thing That
Publishers Do Case #333: It will be obvious to anyone who actually
reads the book that the writer of the back-cover blurb didn't.
-- Fred Bals
Mercedes Nights by Michael D. Weaver [**]
St. Martins Press, 1987, $16.95., 240 pgs., 0-312-01066-4
The dustjacket synopsis of Mercedes Nights relates an intriguing plot;
a black market operation has made illegal clones of a popular and
beautiful video star, Mercedes Night. The clones are being sold to
those who want to indulge their fantasies of doing, well, of doing
whatever they want with their Mercedes replicas. If author Michael D.
Weaver had stayed focused on that one idea, I think I would have
enjoyed Mercedes Nights much more than I did. Unfortunately, Weaver
weaves -- if you'll excuse the pun -- a variety of other confusing and
convoluted storylines into his main story. On page 80 of a 240-page
book, I realized that the black market cloning operation had been
barely referred to up to that point. I also realized that I didn't have
the slightest idea what was happening anymore, and worse, didn't care.
Weaver had blitzed me with so many different storylines, with no
connecting thread among them, that I was completely lost. Weaver's
writing is sharp and hard-edged, especially when it comes to action and
descriptive scenes. But the lack of a solid, straightforward plot makes
the book difficult, and some will probably find, impossible, reading.
Fans of comic books will enjoy the dust jacket art for Mercedes Nights,
drawn by Bill Sienkiewicz.
-- Fred Bals
Mercedes Night Michael D. Weaver [***]
St. Martin's Press 240 pg. $16.95
Except for the ending, this is a very good book. The ending is a deus
ex machina ending. The reader has some forewarning about the ending.
Still, the ending is a cheat. The story starts with the illegal cloning
of video star Mercedes Nights to create sex slaves for the rich and
depraved. Mercedes is a strong willed woman and her clones share this
trait. Some escape and threaten to expose the cloning operation. Since
the cloning operation could not exist without help in high places, the
exposure threatens a lot of very powerful people. Weaver has stacked
the odds against Nights and her clones so much so that he seems to have
been unable to think of a way to end it except through a deus ex machina.
The story is told as a series of separate story lines involving
disparate people that converge in the end. Weaver uses this technique
very well. What seems to be irrelevant characters and story lines all
turn out to be relevant in the end. The novel is a mystery as well. The
mystery is who backed the cloning operation and why as it quickly
becomes clear that selling the clones as sex slaves is really a cover
for the real purpose. The mystery is well done. The reader has a good
chance to figure out the mystery before it is revealed although it was
not all that hard to solve it.
The greatest strength of the novel is the personalities of the people.
They may be stupid or bright, nasty or nice, but they are all
rememberable as distinctive personalities. The future has a distinctive
cyberpunk feel but is restrained enough that it also has the feel of a
future society that could really occur. This book is definitely
worthwhile reading although it is probably more worthwhile to wait for
the paperback edition.
-- Danny Low
Metrophage by Richard Kadrey [*****][*]
Ace, February 1988, $2.95, 240 pgs., 0-441-52813-9
The disparity between the ratings above is caused by the fact that
Metrophage is something of the quintessence of cyberpunk. If you like
cyberpunk, specifically the cyberpunk style of William Gibson,
Metrophage is going to blow the top of your head off. But if hardcore
high-tech, street- smart losers, and a kinetic, surrealistic storyline
leaves you flatlined, then avoid Metrophage at all costs. According to
the introduction by Rudy Rucker, Richard Kadrey is "... well known for
his dadaistic collage illustrations." Kadrey's artistic background is
sharply evident in the descriptive scenes which pervade Metrophage. The
images throughout are as vivid as a hologram, as biting as a hypodermic
needle, blasting at the reader with such intensity that your eyes will
be bleeding by the end of the book. Indeed, I found it necessary to put
down Metrophage at times - so saturated with information overload that
I had to absorb what I had just read before I could go on. If there is
any justice, Kadrey will have a profound impact upon the field. Even
with it's early release date, I guarantee Metrophage will certainly be
one of the best books you'll read in 1988. Do your imagination a favor
and buy it. The high rating is for Cyberpunk fans, the low rating for
all others.
-- Fred Bals
Midnight City by Robert Tine [***]
Signet, December 1987 $3.95, 284 pgs., 0-451-15036-8
If you have a taste for the hard-boiled, I commend Midnight City to
your attention. Although not marketed as SF, Midnight City does have
some familiar science fiction elements to it. The story takes place in
a near- future New York City realistically extrapolated from the
present. Jake Sullivan, a member of an special force police unit,
familiarly known as the "Rovers," is charged with bringing a cop killer
to justice. Readers who like specifics may find the book annoying, as
Tine paints his future setting with a very wide brush, seldom giving
any details. But those who like realistic crime stories, crisp
dialogue, and tough characters should find Midnight City a good read.
-- Fred Bals
Myth-Nomers and Im-Pervections Robert Asprin [**]
Starblaze graphics, 189pp,, $7.95, 0-89865-529-3
Another long running series that's running long in the tooth. This
time, Skeeve heads off to Perv in search of his friend and mentor Aahz.
If you're looking for an interesting exploration of Perv and it's
society, you'll be very disappointed -- it's little different from
downtown New York or any major metropolitan area. The book, when all is
said and done, basically falls flat, and is one of the weakest links in
the series. This is two weak books in a row, which, to me, means it's
time to think about retiring the series.
-- chuq von rospach
Night and the Enemy Harlan Ellison & Ken Steacy [***]
Comico graphic novel, $11.95, 0-938965-06-9
An illustrated collection of some of Harlan Ellison's stories,
including 'Run for the Stars' and 'Life Hutch.' Nicely executed
drawings, and I always enjoy reading Ellison, but I think the book is a
little too expensive for what you get.
-- chuq von rospach
Shade of the Tree Piers Anthony [*-]
If I have read the back cover correctly, this is Anthony's first
attempt at the supernatural/Stephen King genre. I freely admit I have
never really read any of these types of books before, but having read a
lot of Piers Anthony before, I thought this might be very interesting.
It turned out to be incredibly boring.
I suppose it is part of the formula to hint at the mysterious
supernatural events that must come later, but the various deaths and
events recalled are so similar to one another that each new one
introduced just seems to add more pages to plow through until one finds
out the cause. Only those readers who just cannot put down a book will
bother to do so however.
And, if the idea is to build suspense and curiosity about that cause, I
can only say that by the time I got to within the last 60 pages, I
could really have cared less. I kept thinking Anthony would pull it out
of the fire somehow, but he never really did.
I'd hate to truly ruin the ending for those who might care (though I
would tend to classify giving away the ending as an act of mercy in
this case) -- so let me just say that the computer analogy drawn at the
end will ring false to anyone in the industry, and that it is never
really drawn to a full conclusion anyway, thus complementing a boring
beginning and middle with a weak ending.
-- Larry Kaufman
lsk@sun.com
Silverglass J.F. Rivken [**]
Ace books, $2.95, 186pp
It would be pleasant to report that under the apallingly sexist cover
of Silverglass is concealed a pretty good book. Alas, this is not quite
the case. It is an adequate, routine little Fantasy of no particular
distinctions and no conspicuous flaws. It has a little magic, a little
romance, some tepid AC/DC sex, the obligatory whiff of violence, and a
fair amount of mildly pretty writing. As a first novel, it is not bad,
but not that good either; the seams are occasionally visible, and the
authors habit of breaking the book into micro-chapters of about four
pages each is a trifle annoying. However, the reader who is particularly
into Fantasy about women might find some modest light reading here. You
can always tape some plain brown paper over the cover.
-- David M. Shea
Spectre by Stephen Laws [**+]
Tor; 275 pp; $3.95
Stephen Laws is the author of Ghost Train -- the book that this summer
had its ads removed from the English train station walls by British
Transport Advertising because they were "offensive to the general
travelling public." It seems British Rail wasn't too pleased with the
idea of haunted trains. Which makes me wonder what the photography
industry is going to say when they read Laws' new novel Spectre.
In the district of Byker in Northern England, six boys and a girl band
together as the "Byker Chapter" while growing up -- shades of Gary
Kilworth's Witchwater Country [The Bodley Head, 1986] or Stephen King's
It [Viking, 1986[, but nonetheless effective for this. Inseparable while
growing up, they each went their own way upon finishing collect -- each
keeping a copy of the same momento photograph from their last good
night together.
But then one by one they begin to die, their images disappearing from
the photograph as they do, and the remaining few have to band together
once again to try to survive.
Laws' language is good. His characters, while veering slightly into
stereotype at times, are still mostly well-delineated. And he's got a
good touch with the scare, bringing some fresh frights to some ordinary
household items. But there's one major flaw that comes at the end of
the book that spoiled a good deal of the tension for me.
Laws rightfully lets us follow his characters as, through their own
initiative, they slowly discover what's going on, but then he allows
his principal antagonist to step into stage-center right at the
high-point of the climax and blather on about cosmic horrors a la
Lovecraft by way of Greek myth for far too many pages. It isn't
realistic (something that's desperately needed in horror fiction to
maintain its believability and tension), but worse, it's boring and
stops the story dead.
Still, that aside, Spectre has some fine moments, some especially
chilling imagery, and a good solid story at its heard. And say, in that
high school picture of you and your friends, wasn't there someone
standing beside the teacher last time you looked...?
-- Charles de Lint
Stalking the Unicorn: A Fable of Tonight by Mike Resnick [***+]
TOR, 1987, 314pp, $3.50
John Justin Mallory, New York private eye, is hired by an elf to find a
unicorn in an alternate/parallel universe New York City that sounds a
lot more fun than the one in our universe. Along the way he joins
forces with a cat woman, a big game hunter/unicorn expert and a 9 inch
high horse against double crossing leprechauns and eventually the
demon-in-charge, the Grundy. If you're in the mood for light comic
fantasy, try this, though it did stretch out a bit too long to maintain
the pace. The ending doesn't definitely say 'series' but it could be
just the beginning of Mallory's bizarre adventures.
-- Mary Anne Espenshade
The Stainless Steel Rat Gets Drafted Harry Harrison [**]
Bantam Books 256 Pg. $14.95
This is the latest Stainless Steel Rat book to be published although it
is the second book in terms of story chronology. Unlike the previous
diGriz stories, this one is not an independent story. It is a sequel to
A Stainless Steel Rat is Born. The story and the opening chapters in
particular, do not make much sense unless one has read the prequel.
Harrison also seems to have caught the Heinlein disease with this book.
A good portion of the book is taken up with much philosophizing at the
expense of the story. To a certain extend, such a philosophical
discussion is necessary as Harrison has deliberately created two
diametrically opposed societies, one clearly Good and one clearly Bad,
and brought them into conflict but the extent of the discussion goes
far beyond what is needed to explain the situation.
The Stainless Steel Rat series has always been at the comic book level
of reality but with this book, Harrison has gone beyond that to a pure
cartoonish level of unreality. The stereotypical characterization of
people and society is so exaggerated in this book as to be totally
unbelievable. In the previous books, there was enough restraint that
one could accept the people and situations as stereotypical but real.
In all, this book is only for the completist. The original book in the
series, The Stainless Steel Rat, is still the best book to start with
for anyone who is interested in discovering why the series is so much fun.
-- Danny Low
The Starwolves Thorarinn Gunnarsson [***]
Questar/Popular Library 281 pg. $2.95
This is one of those rare Star Wars imitations that is actually good.
The main reason for this is characterization. The characters are
stereotypes but well done stereotypes. There actually is a well thought
story universe and the story itself is well plotted. The story also has
a sly sense of humor. Of course, there is lots of action and hints of a
great future for the hero, Velmeran.
50,000 years ago, the Union was formed to unify all of known space.
Many systems did not want to be part it as the Union was and is clearly
a tyranny. One of these was the Terran Republic. They called upon the
Aldessans for aid. The Aldessan provided the Terrans with the
technology to build warships better than those of the Union and an
artificial race, the Kelvessans, to crew the ships. However, by
overwhelming numbers the Union forced the Kelvessans to abandon Terra
and retreat to the fringe worlds where they have been fighting a
guerilla war against the Union ever since. This is the situation at the
beginning of the story.
This book is good basic fun SF. There's no startling scientific wonders
to dazzle the reader and no thought provoking examination of the human
condition. It's just an enjoyable story. While it is the first book of
a series, the story in the book is resolved before the end.
-- Danny Low
Sweet Silver Blues by Glen Cook [*]
Signet, August 1987, $3.50 255 pgs., 0-451-15061-9
In all honesty, I have little love for elves, gnomes, or other High
Fantasy elements and opened Sweet Silver Blues because of its implied
promise of a "hard-boiled detective" style. Lovers of fantasy may find
some redeeming qualities to this book. I found it a queasy mishandling
of the P.I. genre which at times seemed to be reaching for parody but
never quite made it. The story - such as it is - concerns a human
detective hired to track down a missing heiress in a world filled with
the standard cast of fantasy creatures for no apparent reason. I was
unable to finish this book, something which happens so rarely (I'm
compulsive about finishing everything, but most especially free review
copies) that I feel duty-bound to report it.
-- Fred Bals
Ten Little Wizards by Michael Kurland [**]
Ace Fantasy, 188pp, March, 1988, 0-441-80057-2
Based on the late Randall Garrett's Lord Darcy series, Michael Kurland
does attempts to do what may be impossible -- step in a great author's
footsteps. The story is a reasonably executed locked room mystery
(based pretty closely on Agatha Christie's Ten Little Indians, as the
title implies). If you're looking for a good Fantasy/Mystery mix, this
is a good book. If you're looking for a Lord Darcy book, you'll be
disappointed. The character names are the same, but the life and levity
and depth that Garrett wrote into his characters are missing.
-- chuq von rospach
Tesseract Joseph Addison [***]
Del Rel/Ballantine Books 246pg. $3.50
Tesseract is a mysterious being with godlike powers but some strange
weaknesses. It needs the help of humanity to save another race on another
planet. The problem is that mankind has destroyed itself in a nuclear
Armageddon. Tesseract decides to travel back in time and alter human
history to save mankind from itself so mankind can save the other race.
Mark Johnson is an up and coming young executive in the Tyson financial
empire. One day he receives an urgent call from Jonathan Tyson to
report to him immediately. This is the beginning of Tesseract's plan.
Or is it the end? The story is a very convoluted time travel story with
all the complications and confusion to be expected when cause and
effect are turned around.
However, the time travel paradoxes are not the point of the story. The
story is a series of mysteries within mysteries. Why, if Tesseract is
so powerful, does it need the help of humanity and Mark Johnson in
particular to save the other race? Who is the other race? What is the
menace? What can mankind do to save them? And why mankind? The
mysteries and questions are all nicely resolved at the end and the
answers are logical and sensible as well.
The characters are well developed but very familiar. The Reluctant
Hero, the Weary Mentor, the Power Mad Villain, etc. However, Addison
does a good job of developing them into realistic people. The whole
book is a recycling of familiar SF ideas and characters but done in a
fresh new way. This book is well worth while reading.
-- Danny Low
Thieves' World #10: Aftermath edited by Robert Asprin & Lynn Abbey [**]
Ace Fantasy, November, 1987, 273pp, $3.50, 0-441-80597-3.
I've been a big fan of Thieves' World shared world anthology.
Unfortunately, it is starting to show its age and losing its
originality. Still interesting to hardcore fans, but there are more
interesting books to spend your time on. Unless #11 picks up
dramatically, I'll be dropping the series.
-- chuq von rospach
Time Pressure by Spider Robinson [**]
Ace (Hardcover),October 1987, $16.95 216 pgs., 0441-80932-4
I've formed the opinion that Spider Robinson hasn't had a novel (in
both senses of the word) idea worthy of his talents since the one which
engendered the Hugo-winning Stardance. Unfortunately, Time Pressure did
nothing for me but lend added weight to that opinion. As usual,
Robinson has created some of the most intriguing, fully-developed, and
just plain real characters in science fiction with Time Pressure. And
you have to love an author who flies in the face of good sense -- or
taste -- by deliberately starting his book with the nadir of bad
opening lines, "It was a dark and stormy night," and makes it work. The
plot of Time Pressure concerns itself primarily with the interaction
between Rachel, a visitor from the future on a mysterious mission and
Sam, something of an unreconstructed hippie living in Nova Scotia.
While Sam's narration always stays interesting enough to keep you
reading the book, the plot of Time Pressure simply never goes anywhere,
finally culminating into a near-joke answer to the question which no
one has been asking, "Where have all the hippies gone?" Something of a
sequel to Robinson's earlier Mindkiller, Time Pressure will only be of
interest to his most ardent fans. The rest of us will have to wait --
and hope -- that his next idea will finally be something equal to his
writing skills.
-- Fred Bals
The Vang (The Military Form) Christopher Rowley [***]
Del Rel/Ballantine Books 369pg. $3.50
This story takes place 1000 years after Starhammer and uses an event
from that book as the basis for the story but otherwise has no
connection with that book. An illegal prospecting ship working near the
colony of Saskatch discovers a Vang lifeboat and unwittingly brings it
aboard, releasing the Military Form Vang inside it. It takes over the
ship and begins the conquest of the universe that its race had started
millennia ago that was rudely interrupted when another race destroyed
the Vang race in self defense.
The story is told in three separate story lines that converge at the
end. The first story line is that of the prospectors who find the Vang
ship. The second is that of a group of Saskatchers trying to rid their
planet of corruption. The third is that of a group of environmentalists
who are trying to prevent humanity from destroying Saskatch in their
quest for the illegal drug TA45 which is found only on Saskatch.
The characterization is superb. Not only are the characters distinctive
but they act as you might expect real people with their personalities
to act. The action starts out at a fast pace and quickly speeds to an
all out run that doesn't stop until the end. The ending is also well
done. Rowley has had problems in previous books finding a proper ending
for his books. All too often, a deus ex machina (and it was literally
that in Starhammer) would descend and resolve everything. In this book,
the ending is logical and realistic. This is an excellent action SF
story with superb characterization as well.
-- Danny Low
War for the Oaks Emma Bull [***-]
Ace Fantasy Special, 309pp, $3.50
Emma Bull is best known as co-editor of and contributor to the Liavek
shared world Fantasy series. In this, her first solo novel, a similar
sensibility is shown. The reader encounters an uneven mix of love, war,
and rock-and-roll as two dissident Faery factions battle for control of
Minneapolis. Eddi, girl guitarist/vocalist in a local bar band, is
drafted as the token mortal in this conflict, and her assigned
bodyguard is a shape- changer who occasionally turns into a large nasty
dog. Ditching her boyfriend and his band, Eddi begins to form a new and
better band, since music is to be her weapon in the stylized but brutal
Faery rumble in a city park.
Bull has a pretty good grasp of the hot Minneapolis rock scene, post
Prince; and she does about as well as anyone could at conveying in cold
prose the mortal magic which is rock music in its better moments. It
would be fun to jam with her. The book is reasonably well written,
though not terribly difficult to anticipate. Is the problem with me? Am
I the only SF/fantasy reader who has had Faery stories up to here?
Evidently so. If you like this sort of thing -- and clearly lots of
people do -- this is a reasonably good example of the type. Enjoy.
-- David M. Shea
When Gravity Fails George Alec Effinger [****]
Arbor House, 1987, $16.95. 290 pgs., 0-87795-851-3
I've seen When Gravity Fails cited in some quarters as Effinger's entry
into cyberpunk. Actually, it has much more in common with the works of
Raymond Chandler, turf which Effinger stakes out immediately by opening
the book with an excerpt from Chandler's definitive treatise on the
private detective, "The Simple Art of Murder." Like Chandler's Phillip
Marlowe, Effinger's main character, Marid Audran, is a "good" man in a
bad place, trying to maintain honor and dignity in a society which
places little weight on either. "Good" is in quotes because, on first
blush, Audran isn't represented as a particularly nice individual,
making his living through dope dealing and (Effinger implies) pimping
in an Arabic ghetto known as "the Budayeen." Yet, Audran has a code of
honor as strict as a samurai's sense of bushido. When a series of
apparently senseless murders begin to take place in the Budayeen,
Audran finds himself caught up in trying to find the killer, even
though his involvement will ultimately force him to compromise his
values. On the final ballot of the Nebula awards at the time of this
writing, When Gravity Fails is a book worthy of your attention,
especially if you like works in the growing cross-genre of mystery and
science fiction.
-- Fred Bals
Wulfston's Odyssey Jean Lorrah & Winston Howlett [*]
Sixth in the "Savage Empire" series, Wulfston's Odyssey is a
superficial book. The characters are not nearly as well defined as in
the other entries in the series. Lorrah and Howlett fell into a trap in
their previous offering. They gave some of their most entertaining
characters too much power. In this book, they concentrate on one of
their remaining characters.
While the treatment is very light, the characters remain true to their
previously established personalities. We follow two of the savage
empire's most interesting characters to a foreign setting. All the
elements of an exciting story are provided. A kidnapping, a beautiful
princess, a powerful enemy, poisonings, a ghost from the past, even
enough family intrigues for the Dynasty fans. Somehow the authors never
manage to pull it all together. The reader, at least this reader,
never becomes involved in the story.
The solutions to the problems in the story are not very inventive
either. Any story is in trouble when the obvious comes as a surprise
to all the characters. Still and all, fans of the series will find this
book a reasonable way to kill several hours while waiting for the next
book in the series.
-- Peter Rubenstein
OtherRealms #20
Spring, 1988
Copyright 1988 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 not be reproduced in any form without written
permission of Chuq Von Rospach.
The electronic edition may be distributed or reproduced in its entirety
as long as all copyrights, author and publication information remain
intact. No individual article may be reprinted, reproduced or
republished in any way without the express permission of the author.
OtherRealms is published quarterly (March, June, September and December) by:
Chuq Von Rospach
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Newark, CA 94560.
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