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OtherRealms Issue 20 Part 04
Electronic OtherRealms #20
Spring, 1988
Part 4
Scattered Gold
Reviews by
Charles de Lint
Copyright 1988 by Charles de Lint
Reviewed in this Issue
The Secret Ascension [***+]
by Michael Bishop
Tor, November, 1987, 341pp, $16.95
0-312-93031-3
Fairie Tale [***+]
by Raymond E. Feist
Doubleday, February, 1988, 415pp, $17.95
0-385-23623-9
Memory [*****]
by Margaret Mahy
J.M. Dent & Sons, 1987, 234pp, $7.95
0-460-06269-7
Buffalo Gals and Other Animal Presences [*****]
by Ursula K. Le Guin
Capra Press, 1987, 196pp, $15.95
0-88496-270-9
The Tommyknockers [****]
by Stephen King
Putnam, November, 1987, 558pp, $29.95
0-339-13314-3
Soulstring [****]
by Midori Snyder
Ace, November 1987, 182pp, $2.95
0-441-77591-8
Marlborough Street [****]
by Richard Bowker
Doubleday, 1987, $12.95
0-385-19753-5
Mercedes Nights [****]
by Michael D. Weaver
St. Martin's Press, December, 1987; 240pp; $16.95
0-312-01066-4
The Scream [***+]
by John Skipp & Craig Spector
Bantam/Spectra, February, 1988, 416pp, $3.95
0-553-26798-1
Tea with the Black Dragon [*****]
by R.A. MacAvoy
Hypatia Press, 1987, 210pp
0-940841-037
Lightning [*****]
by Dean R. Koontz
G.P. Putnam, January 1988, 352pp, $18.95
0-399-13319-4
A Truce With Time [****]
by Parke Godwin
Bantam/Spectra, February, 1988, 310pp, $16.95
0-553-05201-2
A quick glance at the ratings in this column will call up a preponderance
of four and five star generals marching along, each to their own rhythm,
through the following pages. Before you ask -- no, I haven't gone mad
with my asterisk key. There've just been a lot of very good books
crossing my desk in the past couple of months. And since, as I mentioned
when we first met, I prefer to talk about the good books, I'm concentrating
on the Good Stuff I read recently, rather than the material I'd rather
just as soon not have cracked open in the first place.
Alright. The books are formed up for full-dress parade, ready for your
inspection, so let's get straight to them.
The Secret Ascension
I'm not sure if a familiarity with Philip K. Dick's canon is necessary
to appreciate this novel -- I have to admit that Dick is on of the
classic SF writers that I still have to read -- but its apparent from
reading The Secret Ascension that a familiarity will certainly add a
deeper resonance to what's a fine novel all on its own.
Subtitled Philip K. Dick is Dead, Alas, Bishop's newest novel is set in
a dystopian alternate America where the Vietnam war was won, Nixon has
held office for sixteen years, and a writer named Philip K. Dick --
known for his startling and original mainstream novels, but not for his
Sf -- has been blacklisted by the government for writing
anti-government works that are only available in samizdat circulation
(much like the works of certain Russian authors in our world).
Dick has died at the opening of the novel and become an avatar of sorts --
a catalyst that sets into motion a series of events that will hopefully
bring this alternate world back into a more positive timeline -- such
as our own.
Bishop's prose has never been better. His characters are fully realized
and his alternate history stands not only as a fascinating speculation,
but also illuminates our own. So don't worry if you're familiar with
dick's work or not. bishop's novel stands on its own, though I don't
doubt that if you are unfamiliar with Dick's work, it will pique your
interest, as it has mine, to go out and read something by the man.
Fairie Tale
After a number of very successful forays into high fantasy, including
one in the company of collaborator Janny Wurts, Raymond Feist is
staking out some new territory with his latest novel Fairie Tale. The
packaging tells us that this territory is Stephen King country -- by
which I mean horror that's sold as mainstream -- even though King's
name is noticeably absent from the blurbs. Barker, Streiber and Straub
have been called in to take his place as a comparison. But the
packaging, while it doesn't lie, isn't quite right.
This is in fact a contemporary fantasy, or more properly a mainstream
novel with vague fantasy traces that grow more pronounced the further
we get into the book.
How does it fare? Quite well, although it does have a few problems.
Successful screenwriter Phil Hastings moves with his family from
California to their new rural home in upstate New York where Hastings
plans to get back into writing novels. They meet Hasting's old friend,
Abigail Cook, and make new friends. but unknown to them all, the forest
behind the house is inhabited by Fairie and an ancient mystery cult,
which humans caught in the crossfire.
Feist's prose has never been better and he's done a wonderful job of
bringing in all sorts of Faerie lore to the storyline. The problems that
the book has aren't enough to spoil it by any means. But they are present.
The first is that all the human characters are simply too nice. They're
kind and considerate, brave, rich, and good-natured and not one of them
has a single flaw. There's nothing intrinsically wrong with this -- but
it does become a little tiresome. Some conflict between the characters --
and we spend most of our time with these paradigms -- would have lent
some well-needed tension, especially to the first two thirds of the book.
Because that's the other problem. Until about two thirds of the way
through, the only tensions delivered are some reasoning tidbits dealing
with the Faerie that are thrown in here and there, almost at random.
Other than that, we know what's going to happen. The rich daughter is
going to get together with the poor student; of course the researchers
are going to become good friends with the family; the twin boys will
fit right in with the other kids in the area, etc., etc. it's not until
there is only a third of the book left that the conflict really rises
above the tantalizing hints of Faerie menace.
Be that as it may, Faerie Tale is still an entertaining book, due
mostly to Feist's control of the language. the prose is so deftly laid
out and rolls ahead so smoothly that it's very easy to read on and if
everything does tie up neatly with only one casualty among the cast,
well, this is a fairy tale, isn't it?
I hope this book does well for Feist because I'd like to see him try
something else in a similar mode -- only with a more varied cast. A
little bit of treachery and betrayal wouldn't hurt -- just to keep us
on our toes. he's proven himself capable of this with his high fantasy
books and I'd like to see him translate that to a contemporary fantasy.
Memory
I get on a big of a crusade at times when it comes to some books that
are marketed as YA, but completely ignored by the greater part of the
SF/F reading public. I can remember when this applied to Patricia
McKillip, Jane Yolen and Diana Wynne Jones. And it still applies to New
Zealand writer Margaret Mahy, though I was happy to see her last book
The Tricksters (J.M. Dent & Sons, 1986) make the final ballot for the
World Fantasy Awards.
It should have won.
Mahy's writing has everything one could hope for: complex plots, rich
characterizations, and a way with words that makes each individual
paragraph worth reading on its own, as well as in the context of the
story. There's a different flavour about her writing which might,
perhaps, be due to the New Zealand setting of most of her books, but
I'll wager it's more because of her skill as a writer.
And while, yes, her protagonists are young, their situations are timeless.
We were all young. We all went through the difficulties of adolescence.
And such subject matter is just as relevant as any other -- so long as
it's in the hands of a skilled author.
Her earlier novels (as opposed to her picture books aimed at very young
children, which have their own charm) usually have a fantasy or SF
flavour. Besides the above-mentioned The Tricksters, my other two
personal favorites that I can whole-heartedly recommend are The Haunting
(J.M. Dent, 1982) and The Changeover (Atheneum, 1984), each of which
won the Carnegie Medal in their respective years of publication.
Her new novel Memory is less overtly fantasy-oriented; in fact, its
fantastical elements are not so much overt as to be found in between
the lines. Nineteen-year-old Jonny Dart is haunted by his past,
especially the death of his sister. On the fifth anniversary of her
death, he sets out to find his sister's best friend, Bonny Benedicta,
who was a fortune teller as a young girl. Instead he meets up with
Sophie West, an old woman living by herself in a house with a giant
sculpture of a tap attached to the wall of her house.
If Jonny has too much memory, Sophie, suffering from Alzheimer's, has
too little. How a street punk and a senile old lady get along might not
seem like the basis for a very exciting novel, but let me assure you,
Memory is a riveting book. The storyline moves strongly, while Mahy's
descriptive passages, her insights into the humans psyche, and the book's
underlying resonances make the trip through its pages extremely rewarding.
Buffalo Gals
and Other Animal Presences
This is a rare treat from Le Guin -- especially following the
fascinating and experimental, but ultimately unsuccessful novel Always
Coming Home (Harper & Row). Again it's a collection of bits and pieces;
this time the unifying whole of the short stories and verse collection
together is a common theme of communication between mankind and
others -- animals, plants, stones, aliens.
The centerpiece of the collection is the new novelette "Buffalo Gals,
Won't You Come Out Tonight" (just reading that title brings the melody
of that song to mind), an outstanding contemporary exploration of
native American totem animals. It's about a young girl, a child really,
who survives a plan crash in the desert and finds herself in a kind of
Dreamtime where she meets, first Coyote, then a whole village of totem
animals. The prose is sharp and clean the characters wonderful, and the
story itself, with all of its asides and SF speculations mixed in with
Native lore, is a real treat.
Other material includes stories from the perspective of an oak tree
("The Direction of the Road") to those of ants and penguins ("The
Author of the Acacia Seeds"); from a laurel tree ("The Crown of
Laurel") to an alien tapped in a scientist's laboratory ("Mazes"). But
no matter what the individual subject matter, the theme running through
each offering, including the author's introductions to each piece and
her forward, all deal with communication.
In that sense, Buffalo Gals becomes a must read. For that's what the
expression of creativity is all about. communication. And what Le Guin
has given us here are compass directions to help us broaden not only
out understanding of the world around us, but of those others that we
share it with as well. Strangers and aliens. She's given us the
blueprints to open lines of communication not only between men and
women (and too wide a gap lies there too often), but between human and
non-human -- a valid need if we're all to survive the coming years.
And if talking animals seem too juvenile for you -- think of them as
archetypes. It won't change the voices, but if it helps you to hear
them, then it won't matter what label you put on them.
The Tommyknockers
The is it; after five novels released rapid-fire in the past fourteen
months, The Tommyknockers will be the last of Stephen King's original
fiction to hit the stands for the next five years. If, of course, King
holds to his promised retirement. Considering how prolific he has been,
and his own avowed "need to write," he could very easily change his mind.
The Tommyknockers is the first novel-length Science Fiction to come out
under King's own name, but it's not the SF of Gregory Benford and other
Hard SF writers. It owes its inspiration instead to the B "Sci-Fi"
movies that King takes such delight in. He describes it himself as "a
gadget novel -- it's about our obsession with gadgets. That's what our
nuclear weapons, our Sidewinder missiles, all of those tools of destruction
are -- just gadgets. Our technology has outraced our morality. And I
don't think it's possible to stick the devil back in the box."
He goes on to add, "Every day, when I wake up and turn on the news, I
wait for someone to say that Paris was obliterated last night...by a
gadget. it's only the grace of god that has kept it from happening so
far." That sense of moral outrage comes through in The Tommyknockers,
hard and clear.
As in Misery, the two main characters here are writers -- Bobbi
Anderson produces western novels, her old friend Jim Gardner is a
poet. But this time the characters' occupations aren't intrinsic to
the novel. we're not exploring the craft of writing; we're watching
the impact of an alien artifact upon the sensibilities of a wide
spectrum of human beings.
It beings innocently enough with Anderson stumbling over a piece of
metal in the woods behind her house in the fictional township of Haven,
Maine. Subsequent unearthing proves that it's just the tip of a much
larger object, buried for millennia in the Main woods. Anderson becomes
obsessed with its excavations, first drawing her friend Gardner in to
help, then the rest of the township.
Gardner is an alcoholic and upon the brink of suicide when he goes to
help Anderson. Because of a metal plate in his skull, he remains
unaffected by the madness that soon takes over all the other residents
of Haven. First the artifact exudes an influence that awakens a burst
of creativity in the townspeople and they find themselves capable of
putting together all kinds of gadgets. Hot-water heaters are run on
flashlight batteries; portable radios become teleportation devices.
But then the artifact begins to pervert people. They become telepathic,
eventually sharing a group mind, and physically change. The more alien
they become, the more Gardner realizes that they present a danger not
only to himself, but to the world as a whole. Unfortunately, he's
alone, against five hundred of what he calls "the tommyknockers,"
naming the aliens after the old nursery rhyme.
If you can run with the basically silly "Sci-Fi" premise, The
Tommyknockers is a lot of fun. Faithful King readers will also enjoy
the usual references to other of his books -- including the nearby town
of Derry (from It) through mentions of John Smith (from The Dead Zone)
and the C.I.A. "shop" (from Firestarter). King's books themselves are
described as one character speaks of Anderson's westerns being good
reading, not "full of make-believe monsters and a bunch of dirty words,
like the ones that fellow who lived up in Bangor wrote."
Also present is a very strong sense of rural and small town Maine --
one of King's strengths, though the fact that he's such an excellent
regionalist writer often gets lost behind talk of how he's just a
horror writer, or how much his latest book sold for.
The characterization, always King's forte, is as excellent as ever and
it's because of that and the sheer verve of his writing style, that the
five year drought coming up is going to be hard to take by his admirers.
But in the meantime we have The Tommyknockers and there are always the
old books to reread. And King will be back, because just as the butler
Stevens in his novella "The Breathing Method" (Different Seasons), King
lives by the words "Here, sir, there are always more tales."
Soulstring
Because of the vast body of work that's been built up in the high
fantasy genre over the past decade and a half, it's difficult for
writers to come up with something fresh. Some, like Stephen Donaldson,
overcome this by bringing characters with modern sensibilities from our
world to a magical one. Others, like Judith Tarr, get by on the sheer
verve of their storytelling and characterization, so that while the
story itself might not be entirely new, the telling of it is.
Midori Snyder can be added to the latter company with her first novel.
In Soulstring, Magda de'Stain Moravia has inherited the family magical
strengths to the great disappointment of her father. Because she's not
male, she can't rule, but her father has hopes of at least marrying her
off, thereby making an alliance with some powerful lord and salvaging
something out of his disappointment. Naturally Magda has different
ideas about her future and the book tells the story of her struggle to
free herself from her father's influence and make a new life for
herself with the husband she's chosen on her own. Unfortunately, her
father's put a most interesting curse on her husband.
What makes the old story work is Snyder's fresh approach to the
material. It's high fantasy, but it reads like something else again as
she combines a lean edge to her passages of lyric prose. The warmth of
her characters is effortlessly conveyed to her readers, the traditional
mock medieval setting has a grittiness that rings true and, old story
or not, she's still added some new twists to the brew.
Marlborough Street
There's a lot of talk in Marlborough Street about baseball and
psychics; the plot's about a young psychic -- mostly ineffectual, but
good-hearted -- caught in a life-and-death struggle with another
psychic who uses his power towards evil ends; but mostly the book is
about awareness and growth. It's refreshing to read a book where the
protagonist makes mistakes, but you don't consider him a loser; where
you can enjoy following the change and actual growth of his character
as the story unfolds; where the interaction between characters reads so
well that you feel as though you're eavesdropping on their
conversations, rather than reading a book.
I enjoyed parts of the novel Bowker followed this with (Dover Beach,
Bantam/Spectra, 1987 -- reviewed last time around), but Marlborough Street
really engaged me. What strikes me odd, however, is that, in looking
back, I can't really find what the difference is between the way Bowker
told either story. This one just clicked up for me, right from the
opening page, but it's not simply the plot that grabbed me (although
there is a much better plot this time). there's something going on
between the lines of Marlborough Street that lends it a deeper resonance --
and I'm neither a baseball fan nor overly enamoured with psychics.
Mercedes Nights
Sometimes in the near future the top vidstar is one Mercedes Night;
talented, intelligent and beautiful, everybody wants a piece of her,
just as they do the screen goddesses of the present century. Now
someone has cloned her. The replicas are prefect and anyone with enough
money can own one and do anything they want with her.
Naturally, the original Mercedes Night isn't particularly enamoured
with what's going on when she finds out about it. to further complicate
matters, those behind the clones plan to use them to disrupt the
political and economic structure of this future world. The clones are
expendable to them -- as it the original Mercedes. And to yet further
complicate matters, the clones have such developed personalities that
each of them is certain that they're the original.
This is Mike Weaver's second novel (written before the Avon fantasy
Wolf-Dreams which came out earlier this year, but appearing later).
Unlike Wolf-Dreams, which while it was entertaining, still trod some
well-travelled ground, Mercedes Nights is a unique blend of believable
extrapolation, strong sympathetic characters, a hard boiled plot that
never lets up, and enough ideas to fill a dozen standard novels. like
Heinlein at his best, or some of the current writers like William
Gibson, Weaver doesn't spend a lot of time explaining the background.
Future tech is simply presented as there while the story move on,
leaving the reader to go back and enjoy all those background ideas on
their second time through.
A quick look at the plotline and Weaver's style of telling the story
might leave you with the idea that this is just another cyberflash
rip-off, but this simply isn't so. Mercedes Nights has got the flash,
and verve and vigor, too, but it's got substance as well and this time
around Weaver's not treading any old ground. Behind the striking cover
by comics artist Bill Sienkiewicz is one of this year's most
entertaining reads.
The Scream
It's rock'n'roll horror -- a battle of the bands like you wouldn't believe.
On the one side we have The Jake Hamer Band, fronted by Vietnam vet,
Jake Hamer himself. Serious musicians, dedicating their craft to
entertaining their fans, yes, but also to making a statement to the
world at large, that music can be a force for good. Defending
themselves and rock music against the political and religious onslaught
that is currently trying to bring it down.
On the other side we have The Scream, and all they want is your blood.
The novel ends with a literal battle of the bands -- and I don't mean
who plays the hottest licks. To get there we find out a lot about the
music scene, TV evangelists, how Vietnam lives on in some vets, and we
meet a cross-section of characters that run from those we wouldn't mind
sitting down to have a beer with, to those who'd make us move to
another continent -- just so that we wouldn't chance running into them
on the street one day.
John Skipp and Craig Spector know the music scene and life on the
streets -- something that's come through with startling clarity in
their previous works. The Light at the End (Bantam/Spectra, 1986) was
about a vampire loose in New York's subway system -- standing against
it were the employees of a messenger service. Although there are
moments of sloppy writing (incredibly sloppy writing) the book had such
a powerhouse sense of energy that almost anything could be forgiven.
They followed that up with The Cleanup (Bantam/Spectra, 1987) in which
an aspiring musician is given godlike powers and uses them to try to
clean up New York. In it the authors appeared to simply lose control
for while there were the usual sections of just plain bad writing, the
energy level of the book wasn't nearly as high as the previous one and
the plot was downright silly.
How do they fare in the new one? The uneven writing continues --
brilliant passages run side-by-side with material so awkward you wonder
how it got past the editor -- but the energy level's back, the
straight-ahead assurance of what they're about, and in that sense, the
book's a rousing success.
Think of it as going to the drive-in for a couple of B-movies and just
being blown away by the cinematography -- the pacing, slow pans, quick
editing cuts of one of them. It's the surprise of the parts that are so
good, squeezed in amongst that B-movie material you went to see, that
really startles. The good parts, the energy, are such that you'll catch
it again -- or look into the next flick that director's involved in --
and that's exactly the way it is with Skipp and Spector's work.
While the craftsmanship isn't always of the level it should be, it
still works. Or in other worlds, while The Scream ain't good English,
it's still rock'n'roll.
Tea with
the Black Dragon
Tea with the Black Dragon was one of the best fantasy novels to be
published in 1983 -- a perfect little book, unmatched by any of
MacAvoy's later fine works except for perhaps The Grey Horse
(Bantam/Spectra, 1987). It introduced us to the middle-aged Celtic
fiddler Martha Macnamara and her friend Mayland Long, a centuries old
Chinese dragon in the shape of a man, both of whom later appeared in
Twisting the Rope (Bantam/Spectra, 1986).
What MacAvoy did with that first novel was weave some new twists into
our venerable genre by mingling old dragon magic with new computer
magic and topping the whole brew off with a liberal dose of realistic
characterization and a snappy plot. And she pulled the whole affair off
with aplomb and bravado.
Yes, yes, you're saying, but the book's five years old, so why review
it now?
I thought you'd never ask. You see, it was a paperback original -- a
nice enough edition because the original publisher Bantam makes decent
paperbacks that don't fall apart in your hands the second time you read
them, but it's still just a paperback. A book this good was just crying
for a durable hardcover edition and that's just what Allan Newcomer's
Hypatia Press has done for us now.
The trade edition -- which is all I've seen -- is printed on acid-free
paper in a fairly nice design (I think larger margins all around would
have added to the visual appeal of the interior pages), with a
leather-like finish on the cover and dustjacket -- both of which are
very attractive: gold on black. I'm not sure of the price, but I think
it ran twenty dollars with a slipcase offered for an extra five dollars.
There's an introduction by Anne McCaffrey and an afterward by MacAvoy,
signatures by both, and for the price, I don't think you could ask for
more. For ordering information, write to Hypatia Press, 86501 Central
road, Eugene, OR 97402.
Lightning
Ever since I discovered Dean Koontz's work a half dozen years or so
ago, his books have gone to the top of my "to be read" list as soon as
they've been published. The prime reason for this is that they're just
so damned good. They're literately written, thrillers that never let up
their tension, but more importantly, at least for me, the characters --
and especially the sympathetic ones -- that Koontz creates are so real
you feel that any day you could bump into one of them on the street.
Each subsequent book's been better than the one before it, but with
last year's Watchers, I really didn't think they could get any better.
happily, Koontz has proved me wrong again.
Lightning is ostensibly a thriller. Laura Shane has an apparently
ageless guardian angel who comes out of nowhere at various times in her
life to help her in moments of great danger. But what happens when the
angel needs help from her?
I won't give you more than the above thumbnail sketch of the plot,
because Lightning is definitely one of those books in which half the
pleasure is discovering just what happens next. Twenty pages into the
novel, Koontz has what other authors would make the climax of the book,
but he just keeps rollercoasting along, the plot as tightly wound as a
coiled spring. The narrative technique he uses in certain sections --
juxtapositioning present actions with flashbacks -- actually maintains
the books impetus, rather than slowing it down.
But it's Koontz's skill with the language, and his characters, that keep
me coming back to his books. In Lightning, it's the friendship between
Laura and her childhood friend Thelma Ackerson that gives this novel
its true heart. The warmth and humor with which Koontz conveys their
relationship would be enough to make a wonderful story all on its own.
Have I convinced you to try it yet? Yes, I know. It looks like a novel
that takes place in "Stephen King country," but trust me, it's not.
That's just the packaging. Under that cover is as warm a group of
characters -- caught up in a high speed thriller of a plot, it's true --
as you're likely to find anywhere.
In other words, Good Stuff.
A Truce With Time
This novel is for those readers who loved Parke Godwin's contemporary
short fiction such as "Influencing the Hell Out of Time and Theresa
Golowitz" and "The Fire When It Comes" (both of which are available in
the excellent collection titled after the latter story, published by
Doubleday, 1984). For Godwin himself, it might well have been an
exorcism of past ghosts, though only those who know him would be able
to assign how much truth to that there is.
It is a brave novel.
It deals not with quests and dragons and unicorns, nor with Faerie
running through city streets. Rather it chronicles the lives of some
middle-age characters -- old enough to realize the mistakes they've
made with their lives, young enough to try to change them.
Pat Landry is a writer who's known some success with his craft, but
only in a limited way. His relationships with women have all slipped
away and he is approaching a crisis point in his life when he meets the
artist Lauren Hodge.
What follows is a love story -- but not a Harlequin romance. It's a
very real and searching study of what it means to be human, to grow
old, to fall in love, to spend half a lifetime wanting to make something
of oneself, but always having that success lie just out of reach.
It's also a novel about ghosts, for as Landry is working through his
present problems, he also has to deal with ghostly visits from his late
family. Landry learns that to be at peace in one's present, one needs
to be at peace with one's past.
I said that this was a brave book, and I meant it. Godwin could just as
easily have gone on to write yet one more Arthurian novel. One more
fantasy. One more SF collaboration with Marvin Kaye. And any of those
would have undoubtably been very good. But they would also have been
safe.
Godwin is a writer who isn't afraid of stretching his talents, nor, would
it seem, of exorcising his ghosts in public. And that's something we all
benefit from: a writing who isn't afraid to bare his heart on the page.
That's it for this time. Next installment we'll look at how effective
Orson Scott Card's continuation of his Tales of Alvin Maker series is
with the second volume, Red Prophet and who knows what else. Until
then, be merry and well.
OtherRealms #20
Spring, 1988
Copyright 1988 by Chuq Von Rospach
All Rights Reserved
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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.
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republished in any way without the express permission of the author.
OtherRealms is published quarterly (March, June, September and December) by:
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