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OtherRealms Issue 24 Part 09
Electronic OtherRealms #24
Spring, 1989
Part 9 of 10
Copyright 1989 by Chuq Von Rospach
All Rights Reserved
OtherRealms may not be reproduced without permission from Chuq Von Rospach.
Permission is given to electronically distribute this
issue only if all copyrights, author credits and return
addresses remain intact. No article may be reprinted or re-used
without permission of the author.
Lots and Lots of Reviews
by
Lots and Lots of Readers
Part 2
Great Sky River
Gregory Benford
Bantam Spectra, 1987, ISBN 0-553-27318-3, 340 pp., $4.50.
Those of us with acquaintances who teach the humanities have difficulty
explaining a Benford. A physicist who writes, literately, lyrically?
they exclaim. How can that be? Easily, I reply, the true wonder is
those who profess literature but cannot create same, let alone
integrate a function.
Which brings us to Benford's expansive far future history of humanity,
a broad galactic spacetime canvas where people aren't limited to
fleshed genes and machine intelligences aren't always what they seem.
Yet for all the grandeur of this backdrop of battle between biolife and
mechlife, for all the diamond sparkle of science well presented, Great
Sky River sings a tribal lay of trusting son and father, loner and lover.
Deep in toward the galactic center, a few hundred people, all who
remain of the once mighty clan Citadels on planet Snowglade, scramble
though the ruined landscape of a world now dominated by machines.
While the Mechs were ignored at first by the human colonists,
descendants like Killeen, Clan Bishop, and his young son, Toby, wage a
seemingly futile war of attrition against a Mechciv that treats humans
as rats within the walls.
The Bishop Cap'n is killed by a Mantis, a new hunter mech able to
electromagnetically manipulate the brains of its biological prey, and
Killeen's self confidence shatters -- as well as the reliability of his
implanted chip ancestral Aspects, Faces, and Analogs. Only through
further losses to the wily Mantis as the Bishops join first with
remnants of Rooks, then with resettled Kings, does Killeen regain
stature. The mad Hatchet, Cap'n of Kings, demands more of Killeen, his
son, and his new friend Shibo, last woman of Knights, however. In
meeting Mantis in its lair, Killeen confronts Hatchet's Mephistophelian
bargain with his own integrity, and discovers ancient secrets about
Mantis, and Man, and the black hole in the sky.
Part of a greater whole, yet a novel that stands alone with a clear and
satisfactory conclusion, this story moves the reader through many
layers and levels. While I might quibble with a few nits of
electrophysiology and ecology, I have no qualms about a strong
recommendation.
-- Dean R. Lambe
The Loremasters
Leslie Gadallah
Del Rey Books, 1988, 0-345-35576-8, 280 pp., $3.50.
Our sermon for today, good friends, is Product. Yes, Product, that
which is stamped from molds, displayed on racks, and save for minor
details of design and advertising, remains indistinguishable from
dozens of similar widgets, gizmos, and -- alas -- novels spread before
the consuming public.
With her second novel, this Canadian writer offers yet another After
Things Fell Apart Product. Hundreds, perhaps thousands of years after
the Bush Wars and the Separation, tired old Earth holds only
technophiles in their energy-starved Enclaves and technophobes in their
pseudo-feudal squalid villages. Reese, a thoroughly inept Phile
anthropologist from the Mid-American Enclave, bumbles around the Phobe
town of Monn on what may be the Mississippi River. Reese searches for
weapons-grade fissionables left conveniently by Old People. In the
process of delicately scouting the hostile, superstitious, and ignorant
Phobes with all the subtlety of a wounded bear, Reese offends some
noble louts and attracts a teenage thief.
Meanwhile, back at the Enclave, Reese's lover, engineer Cleo, watches a
tokamak nuclear fusion reactor explode. She remains equally unimpressed
by the challenge that an actual discovery of ancient plutonium would
create for the fuel rods of their failing fission reactor, but she does
worry a lot about Reese. So Cleo drops in on the Phobes too.
To the surprise of only the sophisticated characters, Reese is taken
for a witch, captured by the True Church, and locked up in the inept
Governor's prison. Sarah, the teenage thief, leads her riverboat friends
in a Keystone Kops rescue, which ultimately succeeds despite the
Enclave's parallel mission to deliver Reese from the forces of confusion.
For those who measure their lives in TV commercials, this tepid
warmed-over stew might appear digestible. To be sure, it evinces better
command of English than most new novelists, an obvious benefit of an
unamerican education, but it remains pablum for the eyes. So why is it
on the racks, you wonder, rather than a book by a more experienced,
credible, and fact-conscious SF writer? Product, my friends, product.
Bought cheap and sold dear. Product.
-- Dean R. Lambe
Men Like Rats
Rob Chilson
Questar, 1989, 0-445-20763-9, 212 pp., $3.95
Philip Klass, who the SF world knows as "William Tenn" for his
wonderfully zany, satirical stories from the late '40s to the early
'60s, retired from college teaching recently. This, please note, is not
the same Philip Klass who writes about aerospace issues and debunks UFO
nonsense. We can but hope that William Tenn will return to writing fiction.
Why mention Tenn in a Chilson review? Only because Rob's rat tale is
much the same Klass act that was so memorable as "The Men in the Walls"
when it originally appeared in 1963 as a Galaxy serial. Chilson gives
no indication that he was ever aware of the Tenn classic, but the
similarities are striking in plot and theme. In both works, giant
aliens have all but extinguished human life and have remodeled Earth to
their needs, yet a few primitive bands of humanity survive, like rats
in the walls of an extraterrestrial warehouse.
The Chilson novel concentrates on one lone outcast, Rick, and his young
friend, Loy, as they scurry through the vast alien transport system,
raiding huge Cans, Bales, and Boxes in a technology that -- true to
Clarke's Law -- is so advanced as to be indistinguishable from magic.
Rick and Loy make an odyssey from High to Low, Freeplace to Outside, in
a constant attempt to avoid capture by rival human groups or death from
the alien's increasingly sophisticated people eating machines.
Throughout, Rick seeks a simple haven with reliable food and a few
cooperative females, true heaven for any rat.
While the Tenn original and the Chilson version differ enough that I
can recommend both, Men Like Rats has a number of niggling problems. In
attempting to show the ET constructs as truly alien, Chilson often falls
into murky confusion. Perhaps much of the difficulty comes from "cut to
fit" copyediting. And the "prochronism" problem -- my term for the
opposite of "anachronism," the use of contemporary terms inappropriately
projected into the future -- gives us cedar trees and philosophy that
are hard to swallow. Still, this novel deserves your attention,
especially if it inspires another look at an old master like Klass.
-- Dean R. Lambe
The Observers
Damon Knight
Tor, 1988, 0-312-93074-4, 281 pp., $16.95.
I do not go gently into this good Knight. It is, after all the middle
book of a trilogy. Were it a world where Candide wouldn't have to
cultivate his garden, the work would have been published as the one
single novel it seems to be. In our world of megacorporate publisher
greed, however, we get a thin gruel of piecework writing -- cliffhanger
nonendings and all.
The near-future story of the giant floating city "Sea Venture" and her
original passengers, opened in the novel CV, continues with some
familiar and a few new characters. Dr. Wallace McNulty, now married to
his nurse Janice, has a quiet California practice. However, McNulty's
Disease, the invasion by a tiny alien life force parasite discovered
(and thought destroyed) by "Sea Venture" personnel during mid Pacific
drilling, suddenly reappears in American cities. President Draffy and
CDC epidemiologist Dr. Harriet Owen are more than a little paranoid
about a potential epidemic, for among the subtle symptoms of recovered
McNulty's "victims" is a resistance to political propaganda and
bureaucratic BS. Owen succeeds in organizing a quarantine, and
thousands of "infected" people, including Dr. McNulty, marine
scientists Randy Geller and Yvonne Barlow, and retired assassin John
Stevens, his wife and newborn daughter, are imprisoned. Site of this
vast Medical Detention Center is -- what a coincidence -- the old "Sea
Venture," now anchored in San Francisco Bay.
Along comes a tsunami and wipes out much of the Pacific Coast. Never
mind, though, because that's not important. Petty details like a
wrecked California and a rampaging mob of "It's 2000, He's Coming
Again" religious nuts are ignored once mentioned. Truly important
matters, apparently, include kneejerk anticommunism by cardboard
politicians, the fact that "Sea Venture" still floats, and a sudden yen
by alien parasites for lab rats. Stay tuned, there must be an end in
sight. Meanwhile, check out Knight's brilliant earlier work in the library.
-- Dean R. Lambe
The Seekers
David Dvorkin
Franklin Watts, 1988, 0-531-15088-7, 283 pp., $16.95.
Second time at bat, and Dvorkin pops one across the foul line into the
stands. Budspy, his first effort, was a solid hit, despite the shopworn
nature of its "what if the Nazis won?" plot. The invention and
characterization that carried the first novel are absent from The
Seekers, however.
Two thousand years after the fall of the first galactic empire (hohum),
Planetary Administrator Melkorn Ayerst of the backwater planet Davner
(yawn) confronts the militaristic new religion, The Church of the
Quest, which seeks to take over his world (zzz). Ayerst and his
daughter Rikki are further troubled when it turns out that the
commandant of the Questor base is none other than Ayerst's ex-wife,
Ellis Davner (surprise!), who abandoned kin, clan, and kid ten years
back when she got religion. Ellis kidnaps her daughter and Rikki's
nerdy fiance, and tries to kill her ex-husband. Just in time, Ayerst is
rescued by the legendary killers of Davner, the thunderbeasts. Of
course, the mighty forest beasts turn out to be atheistic, telepathic
brontosaurus lookalikes, who wouldn't bruise a butterfly (giggle).
Together with his pet human, Ayerst, Thor the thunderbeast hijacks a
Questor ship to the ruling planet, Lark, where Ayerst gets laid and
political deals get made. And the girl gets the boy at the end, as
darkness falls on daffy Davner (sigh).
You have better things to do with your beer money than wade through
this sophomoric set of "Is there a God?" arguments. Let's hope Dvorkin
gets back in center field with his next one.
-- Dean R. Lambe
There Are Doors [****]
Gene Wolfe
Tor, 0-312-93099-2
Here are some of the ways to interpret this book: an adventure hopping
between alternate realities; an extended dream by a man in love; the
delusional system of a patient in a psychiatric hospital; or an
experiment in style by one of science fiction's master stylists. Trying
to explain this book to someone who hasn't read it is impossible in a
short review, so I won't even try. I will highly recommend it, though,
as a first- class contemporary fantasy. It's an entertaining,
fast-moving story with some interesting undercurrents. And don't be put
off by the mention of dreams and delusions above. By the end of the
book, everything has been rationally explained, and the explanation can
be worked out by the reader before it's revealed.
-- Chuck Koebel
Those Who Hunt The Night [*****]
Barbara Hambly
Ballantine Books $16.95 296 pg.
Hambly has always written fantasies with a mundane touch. Magic in her
stories is not magical but a part of everyday life. With this book, she
has created a story that matches her style. It is magical while being
very mundane. This is mainly due to the subject, vampires. Even the
strictest skeptic will concede that psychotics who think they are
vampires can exist so the threat of vampirism is not totally fanciful.
In vampire stories, a mundane style can heighten the horror by increasing
the sense of reality. This is what Hambly has done in this book.
Someone is killing the vampires of London. A vampire, Ysidro, forces
Professor James Asher to search for the killer. Ysidro is a classic
sexually attractive vampire but all the other vampires Asher encounters
have realistic personalities. It is easy to believe that they were once
real people. The cause of vampirism is only hinted at and there is some
hand waving about the psychic powers of vampires. On the whole, Hambly
sticks by the traditional vampire myths with some original twists. For
example, vampires do not need to sleep in a coffin lined with their
native soil but they do sleep in coffins because coffins are light
tight and not likely to be disturbed when found.
The story is superbly plotted. The groundwork for all the plot
developments are laid beforehand. No one acts like an idiot. If they go
off on the wrong path, it is because that is what an intelligent person
would do given so little facts to work with. While the form is that of
a mystery, the story is not a proper mystery in that the reader is not
expected to solve the mystery. The style is more like of a Sherlock
Holmes story where the reader goes along for the ride and watches the
Great Detective at work.
John Asher has a definite resemblance to Holmes. His wife, Lydia, is a
medical doctor and helps him in the case just like Dr. Watson helps
Holmes. However, Asher is a distinctly different character. He is more
human than Holmes. John Asher is someone that the reader could expect
to meet in real life where as Holmes is clearly larger than life. As a
character, Asher is equal to Ysidro which is a sign of very good
character development. It is easy to make a vampire, such as Ysidro, an
interesting character. He is an archetypical sexually attractive
vampire. It is much harder to make a hero such as Asher interesting
without making the hero larger than life but Hambly has succeeded.
Hambly has done her research well since the novel takes place in 1907
with references going back over 300 years. Despite the fantasy
elements, this story is more a hard science fiction story than a
fantasy. It could also be straight fiction. It is very well done and is
recommended even for those who dislike vampire stories. This book
should easily make the awards lists.
-- Danny Low
Twistor
John Cramer
William Morrow, 1989, 0-877-95967-6, 250 pp., $18.95.
Professor John Cramer of the University of Washington Physics
Department believes in the adage "write what you know." With his debut
novel, Cramer gives us a varied bunch of UW physicists, a lesson in how
science is done, and a painfully accurate tour of Seattle.
When young postdoc David Harrison and comely grad student Vickie Gordon
stumble upon six other universes while researching the implications of
superstring theory, their senior professor, Allan Saxon, sees only
dollar signs. Saxon, who finds himself more than a pawn for the
unscrupulous Martin Pierce of the Megalith Corporation, seeks to exploit
the "twistor effect" for personal fame and power. Pierce has an even
more nefarious agenda, however, and orders Saxon kidnapped and tortured.
Almost too late, as Pierce's armed henchmen arrive to steal the twistor
apparatus, Harrison twists himself and the equipment into a giant tree
on an alternate Earth. Unfortunately, Melissa and Jeff Ernst, children
of a physics department colleague, are carried along to the
multidimensional tree house, and the police and FBI join the search.
With a handy tool kit and a convenient supply of batteries, Harrison
builds a tiny twistor on his new world while Vickie Gordon and her
hacker brother, "Flash," plunder the Megalith computer files. Forces of
good and evil race to a breakneck finish, one of the most creative
alien birds in SF history craps out, and a typical academic department
chairman falls behind the world's largest eight-ball.
OK, so the work has a few first novel faults, some almost as large as
the big hole in the middle of Seattle that Cramer forgot to mention.
It's still a lot of fun, a whole lot of valid scientific speculation,
and well worth your time. New hard SF writers are rare; encourage this
one with your beer money.
-- Dean R. Lambe
------ End ------
