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OtherRealms Issue 25 Part 03
Electronic OtherRealms #25
Summer/Fall, 1989
Part 3 of 17
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.
From Beyond the Edge
Reviews by our readers (Part 1, continued)
The Gold Coast [**]
Kim Stanley Robinson
The cover blurb calls this a "prophetic glimpse" of Orange County, CA,
in the 21st century. I've seen better prophets handing out literature
in airports. OC is the drug capital of the country, but there are no
problems with violent crime, worker productivity, or long-term
addicts. But that almost makes sense, since drugs don't have any
inconvenient side effects like hangovers, overdoses, flashbacks, or
withdrawal syndrome. The engineers working on SDI-style missile
defenses haven't noticed that their system can't aim fast enough to
shoot down ICBMs, and are concentrating their efforts on other
problems. The San Diego to Oslo red-eye (Hey, there's a profitable
route!) is nearly as fast as military fighters that can outrun
surface-to-air missiles. Suspension of disbelief is one thing, but this
is ridiculous. The only thing that partially saves this novel is some
strong characterizations (mainly of the men -- most of the women are
cardboard cutouts), and that's not enough by a long shot.
-- Chuck Koelbel
The Illyrian Adventure
Lloyd Alexander
Dell, 1986, $2.50
This book is meant for children older than those who read Alexander's
The Wizard in the Tree. The story concerns orphaned Vesper Holly and
her guardian Brinnie who search for the legendary treasure her father
believed Illyria contains. From the beginning there is deceit and
villainy towards them by the government of the country. From the
beginning the rebels of the country are shown as heros. But the solution
is not as simple as that. The author shows his pleasure in words by
how and where he uses them, but I found the characters easy to pigeonhole.
-- Joyce Scrivner
Imago
Octavia E. Butler
Warner, 1989, 0-446-51472-1, 264 pp., $19.95
True to the nefarious trends of modern publishing, Butler's Xenogenesis
trilogy has become a series, which means that this third novel is not
the last we'll hear of the alien Oankali, and their genetic absorption
of humanity.
As with Adulthood Rites, the second book of this tale of sundered and
conquered Earth, Imago focuses on crises in the life of a human-Oankali
chimera, a "construct" child of Lilith, who was the first post-Third
World War human victim of the alien's master plan. Again, the setting
is in the mixed species colony in the Amazon basin, where Jodahs comes
of age -- twice. As his first metamorphosis (hence the title) takes
place, Jodahs discovers that he will not be male, as was always
assumed, but will be in fact the first construct ooloi, the powerful
third sex which initiates and controls all reproduction. Of his five
parents, Nikanj, his own Oankali ooloi is equally disturbed at this
development, for a human-based ooloi is not yet a part of the alien's
master plan. Both on Earth and back on the giant organic mother ship
that orbits beyond the Moon, the Oankali debate the wisdom of allowing
Jodahs' independence. For an ooloi, especially one who may still
contain elements of what the aliens regard as the suicidally violent
"contradiction" that condemns unmodified humanity to extinction, can do
great harm with its great powers of genetic manipulation and activation.
Jodahs and his extended family separate themselves from the larger
colony, even though they risk attack by the wild human resisters, the
sterile free people who refuse to mate with the Oankali. As Jodahs'
final metamorphosis approaches, however, he becomes desperate for human
mates, and is shocked when he discovers young Jesusa and Tomas,
diseased and disfigured, yet somehow fertile. In curing the brother and
sister, he learns of their secret human town high in the mountains, and
binds them irreversibly to himself as lifemates. The three rejoin
Jodahs' family, only to discover that its sibling, Aaor, is also
becoming a human ooloi and is even more needful of fertile human mates.
Butler's fine writing skills have created another moving, memorable
story, with believable settings and characters, despite the bizarre
themes of this series. And still my skin crawls at the explicit and
implicit messages. Time and distance factors also begin to seem
inconsistent with the first two novels.
With Imago, the vampire-like alien hunger for humans is made clear;
mates are attracted and bound to ooloi via a neurochemical addiction
that makes hash of free will (and of contemporary social values). Of
more fundamental concern is the pivotal distinction Butler tries to
make between the "bad" hierarchical life of human evolution and the
"good" acquisitive life of the Oankali. Nothing in the biological
literature supports such a separation, or suggests that good and evil
could be so easily, evolutionarily resolved. "E" for effort and
masterful writing recommend this novel to your attention, but my
suspension of disbelief remains on hold.
-- Dean R. Lambe
In Alien Flesh
Greg Benford
Tor, 1986, $3.95
I've long been waiting for a collection of Greg's short stories. He is
one of the few current writers who produces high quality hard SF;
Timescape is especially memorable. His characters are usually human
(this helps in short stories to bind the reader to the situation)
presented by either a specific hard science problem (in other words a
classic hard sf story) or by a problem created by society interfacing
with a scientific discovery. The latter is shown in the lead story in
the anthology where the main character has immersed himself inside an
alien being to achieve scientific goals of discovery. The character
afterwards has nightmares possibly caused by the alien's thoughts that
interfere with his readjustment into his relationships. I think Greg is
one of the more successful writers of character and plot in the field
at the moment, and it shows in these stories.
-- Joyce Scrivner
King of the Murgos
David Eddings
Del Rey 1988, $16.95
I enjoyed David Edding's first series about Garion and Belgarath. I've
reread it several times when I wanted to read a book I enjoyed and
forget the current reality. I don't think it requires a second series
about the same people and I wish he had created a new culture with new
characters to act heroically. However, just because this second book in
the Malloreon isn't what I would like, I refuse to reject the idea of
returning to characters I have enjoyed already. So I do. And I
recommend this book to those who enjoyed the first series, but wait for
the paperback. The problems are much the same as those in the first
book (evil gods stealing Garion's son this time and forcing him to
follow them around to save the world.) It's a bit like Star Trek in the
third year. I watched the shows because I enjoyed them more than other
television, but there was a sameness in the plot and characters.
-- Joyce Scrivner
The Legacy of Herorot
Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle & Steven Barnes
Simon and Shuster, 1987
This is a hard science adventure of how to colonize other worlds. The
problems are ecologic, the solutions are in changing the earth-logic
thought for Herorot-logic thought. The people are intelligent, except
when they use false assumptions. One man thinks differently and the
story revolves around the conflict of the individual and his society as
well. The resolution brings both situations to a climax.
-- Joyce Scrivner
Melancholy Elephants [*****]
Spider Robinson
TOR, 1985, $2.95, 244pp.
Excellent short story collection, including the 1982 Hugo winner, the
title story. A few puns, but more serious in overall tone than
Robinson's Callahan's stories. Both "No Renewal" and "In the Olden
Days" make unpleasant points about the kind of society our world's
current greed and lack of conservation are leading too, so does
"Melancholy Elephants", in a way. "Father Paradox" is a different
solution to the time travel "kill an ancestor" plot. "Chronic Offender"
is a time travel story on the "you can't really change anything"
model. "Rubber Soul" and "Satan's Children" are my favorites of the
bunch. Though I'm not quite old enough to get all the references in
"Rubber Soul", I did realize who it was about rather quickly, and the
detailed footnoted explanations are as interesting as the story itself
(to say more would be a definite spoiler).
-- Mary Anne Espenshade
Memory Prime [Star Trek #42] [**]
Gar and Judith Reeves-Stevens
Pocket, 1988, $3.95, 309pp.
I hadn't planned to get this one, it didn't sound very promising, and
if I had spent money on it I'd be very disappointed, but since it was
given to me I read it. While the overall quality (plots,
characterization, consistency) of the Trek books has improved a great
deal over time, don't use this book as an example. We have here yet
another episode sequel, this time to "The Lights of Zetar", with yet
another over- zealous Starbase commander made to look like an idiot by
taking command of the Enterprise away from Kirk. Commodore Wolfe
arrives on the Enterprise convinced that Spock is guilty of treason and
assorted other crimes, before any of them have even been committed, on
the flimsiest of circumstantial evidence. The real guilty party, and
his motives for framing Spock, are all too obvious from the beginning.
I think the authors have borrowed the repressive Federation from
Blake's Seven -- it isn't recognizable as the UFP I'm familiar with,
the portrayal of the Andorian characters is quite off base as well. The
last quarter of the book picks up a bit, but it was hardly worth
getting there.
Memory Prime, the replacement for the destroyed library Memory Alpha,
is a top security installation, using self-aware computer "programs"
that interface directly from "core" with altered humans. It is also the
location of an awards ceremony involving all the major scientists of
the Federation and the target of a terrorist attack. The only redeeming
features of this book are the continuing relationship between Scotty
and Mira Romaine, now chief computer technician in command of Memory
Prime, and some good lines foreshadowing the Next Generation, like
McCoy's reference that he probably won't make Admiral (and be able to
requisition a shuttle instead of using the transporter) till he's 140.
-- Mary Anne Espenshade
Outpassage [****]
Janet & Chris Morris
Pageant, 1988, $3.50, 0-517-00832-7, 368
Paige Barnett was a high-ranking executive of InterSpace Tasking, the
powerful mining and exploration company. She probably knew too much
about the peculiar disaster on the planet known only as "X-31A", but
she assumed her rank would protect her. She was wrong. Sergeant Dennis
Cox was a good soldier, a US Ranger on loan to IST. He was also one of
the two survivors of X-31A, and he definitely knew too much. Cox had no
illusions about protection, but even he was surprised when he and Barnett
were shanghaied off Earth to another planet where the same problem seemed
to be appearing. Was it merely a revolution among IST's slave laborers?
The founding of a new religion? Could it possibly be the alien contact
fearfully awaited for so long? It was a strange and weird challenge for
Cox and Barnett, with not merely their own lives, but possibly a new
departure for the entire human race hanging in the balance.
Experience shows that the Morrises do, about as well as anybody, the
fast-paced action/adventure story, combining that with a genuine feel
for characters which is beyond most of the "future combat"
wordslingers. Outpassage goes a step beyond that. This is not a book
which glorifies militarism. It recognizes militarism as an inherent
part of the human psyche, a useful and necessary tool in certain
situations, not an end in itself. The book then goes on, exploring the
next stage of human evolution. A book which thus combines exciting and
plausible action sequences with thoughtful philosophy is something of a
rarity, and well worth your trouble. I definitely recommend this book.
Remember, you only die once....
-- David M. Shea
Paradise: A Chronicle of a Distant World
Mike Resnick
Tor, 1989, 0-312-93183-2, 323pp, $17.95
Paradise, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder -- so Resnick
discovered in the East Africa he's come to know so well. Thus his
latest novel, set within his multi-species future history some 2800
years from now, is really about neither paradise nor a distant world,
but a highly readable tale of politics and ecology, evil and good, and
the interdependence of all things relative.
As Matthew Breen begins his journalistic career in chronicling alien
planets, first dominated, then freed by the vast human Republic, he
focuses on Peponi and its lush, unspoiled past. Breen's first books
follow from interviews of human expatriates, from big game hunters to
colonial farmers, who -- in their own ways -- destroyed the Peponi they
loved. August Hardwyke remembers the idyllic world of Landship hunting,
with near savage Bluegill beaters and gunbearers. Sadly, the market for
the Landship's gemlike eyestones meant extinction for those massive
animals by the time Amanda Pickett had settled into her fertile
Greenlands farm. Amanda, who came to be Peponi's first well-known human
author, recalls those better days for Breen as well, and her fellow
exiles explain the human side of the Kalakala Emergency, the wag's
native uprising that drove Men out.
On the strength of his books about the world and its people, the
legendary Old Man, President Buko Pepon, invites Breen to see the
planet. The pepons (as the bluegill wags wish to be called), newly
independent and self- governing, face many problems as they try to
accommodate imported livestock and crops, as well as a vital tourist
industry.
In the final segment, their harsh dusk in sad and sharp contrast to
their innocent dawn, Breen visits a Peponi without its historic great
leader, a planet of dust and death, yet still with beauty and dignity.
If this morality play seems a little too close to home, rather than in
a "far galaxy," it's no less science fictional or worthy of your
attention. True, the "Bradburys," the portrayals of a different place
and time as much like the people next door, are as apparent here as in
most of Resnick's episodic novels, but one can scarcely fault Grand
Master modeling. For those who see the world through traveler's
glasses, Paradise will strike a chord and mist an eye; for others, it
teaches that sometimes it is too late to go and see.
-- Dean R. Lambe
Paradise [****+]
Dan Henderson
Tor, 1983, $2.95, 314pp, 523-48549-2
In the Middle Ages, one of the common vices was overreaching: the wild
ambition to be more than you were permitted to be. (See, for instance,
MacBeth.) I suspect it is this flaw which caused this otherwise
excellent novel to be slapped down, not by a status quo deity, but by a
marketplace which would not take the trouble to figure out what the
author was attempting. Henderson was trying to do about three different
novels here with the same set of words, and if he fell a trifle short
of bringing them all off, he should at least get bonus points for
effort. First there's the religious novel, exploring the theme of
Perfectability Of Man; and if you think it's a picnic doing a religious
novel without mentioning God, you try it. Then there's the neo-noir
mystery novel, an obvious growth industry in the SF genre (see
Effinger's When Gravity Fails) which Henderson anticipated. Finally
there's the New Southron Fantasy novel (as distinguished from the Old
Southron Fantasy of the Manly Wade Wellman school). Of these three
novels, Henderson succeeds in bringing off about two-and-a-half. Some
writers of much greater commercial success can't write a book that
succeeds as one novel.
I don't know much about this author. (Though I also admired his wonderfully
gonzo short story "Carruthers' Last Stand," deservedly anthologized by
Donald Wollheim in his World's Best for 1979.) I do know this is much
too good a book to be relegated to oblivion. Seek it out.
-- David M. Shea
Phases of Gravity
Dan Simmons
Bantam, $4.50, 0-553-27764-2
Simmons does not write simple entertainments, nor does he pen whizbang
adventure, yet there is both action and amusements in his works. With
his award-winning Song of Kali, he seemed to tell a chilling fantasy of
contemporary Calcutta; now, as he ventures into almost science fiction,
the territory is familiar -- if just a bit out of phase.
Framed in flashbacks to his childhood, his failed marriage, his oddly
hollow moon walk, we leapfrog about the life of middle- aged ex-
astronaut Richard E. Baedecker. We first meet Baedecker as he attempts
to communicate with his son, Scott, who has gone guru gah-gah in
darkest India. There, amidst the flies, beggars and Taj Mahal,
Baedecker loses his son and gains his girlfriend, Maggie Brown.
Back home in St. Louis, Baedecker makes a pilgrimage to the home town
he doesn't remember, then quits his empty aerospace job in favor of a
random odyssey across America in search of sons and lovers. First in
Colorado, where his former Apollo command module mate, Tom Gavin, seeks
salvation on mountain peaks, then in Oregon, where his mission
commander, Dave Muldorff, makes his own peace with mountains, Baedecker
continues to look for his lost dreams. That he, and his former
crewmates, all find separate truths about their sons is but one of many
threads knit through this fine tapestry of hard engineering and
mysticism.
Well-tred though these paths may be, from The Right Stuff to the Jack
Nickolson role in "Terms of Endearment," Simmons brings new meaning to
the tarnished American Dream and those lunar footprints dearly won and
so sadly lost. And if mention of Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev seems odd in
a SF context, remember that Simmons isn't really writing genre fiction
here -- all the more reason to read him, and to encourage more of these
Special Editions from Bantam.
-- Dean R. Lambe
Prison Ship []
Martin Caidin
Baen, $4.50, 0-671-69814-1
I had to wait some time before I wrote this review, as I did not wish
to let my first impressions overwhelm any secondary feelings. I reacted
very badly to the book. Although I did finish it, I can't recommend
this book to anyone.
This is the first book that I've seen that had the literary equivalent
of Television's "Viewer Discretion Advised" warning. It certainly
deserves it. The offensive sections are discreetly marked, maybe too
discreetly. My personal opinion is that the book would have been vastly
improved by removing those sections entirely. The protagonist's total
disregard for the lives of those not in his immediate circle while
still being portrayed as a desirable role model, is a heavy turn-off.
It may be as the discretion warning states, that Martin Caidin takes
special pride in "faithfully rendering" reality. If so, you may be
certain that I will no longer purchase books written by Martin Caidin.
I've read some of his earlier work, so it's somewhat dismaying that I
won't be able to enjoy his work any more. To give you some idea of my
depth of feeling on this book, I (who NEVER have parted with a fictional
work) have the hard choice of attempting to recoup some of my money by
selling this book to the local used book store, or to avoid being
responsible for someone else reading this book by throwing it away.
-- Edwin Wiles
Shadows of The White Sun []
Raymond Harris
Ace, 1988, $3.50, 230pp, 0-441-06881-2
I wish I could figure out what's going on here, but I can't. The author
seems to have fallen into the trap of knowing his own elaborate
creation so well, he has forgotten the reader doesn't. There's a
truckload of local color, names, places, ranks, customs, relationships,
simply thrown without explanation at the reader, who struggles
helplessly to sort the grain of story from the chaff of superfluous
detail. I couldn't make heads or tails of it.
-- David M. Shea
------ End ------
