Copy Link
Add to Bookmark
Report
OtherRealms Issue 27 Part 05
Electronic OtherRealms #27
Spring, 1990
Part 5 of 11
Copyright 1990 by Chuq Von Rospach
All Rights Reserved.
OtherRealms may be distributed electronically only in the original
form and with copyrights, credits and return addresses intact.
OtherRealms may be reproduced in printed form only for your personal use.
No part of OtherRealms may be reprinted or used in any other
publication without permission of the author.
All rights to material published in OtherRealms hereby revert to the author.
Scattered Gold
Charles de Lint
Copyright 1990 by Charles de Lint
Escape From Kathmandu
Kim Stanley Robinson
TOR, November 1989; 314pp; 0-312-93196-4
Kim Stanley Robinson has -- rightly or wrongly -- acquired the
reputation of being a "literary" writer. Depending on with whom you're
speaking, this means that many consider his work to be either Big Think
material or stylistically dense, or both, all of which translates into
No Fun.
Well, it's true that Robinson is obviously a careful craftsman. His
writing has the echo of a man who cares deeply for both what he's
writing about and how he puts those words down on paper. But he can also
be fun, as witness this new collection of novellas, many of which first
appeared in Asimov's and have also appeared as limited edition Axolotl
Press hardcovers.
Happily, for those of you who missed those earlier appearances, or those
of you like myself who've been waiting for a hardcover collection of the
same, the strange and wonderful world of the Himals has now been
delivered to us in an easily acquired compilation that no collection
should be without.
The fictional view of Nepal will never be the same again. The stories
are told from the viewpoints of a handful of American and British trek
guides who are constantly getting involved in situations that range from
the whimsical to the downright mad. Who can forget the Yeti in a
baseball-cap, pedaling a bicycle madly down Kathmandu's twisting
streets? The mad climb up Everest, the revelations of the true nature of
Shangri-la, the honeycombing tunnels under...never mind. Read about them
for yourself.
But fun though Escape from Kathmandu is -- no question about it --
Robinson doesn't eschew more serious concerns for the romp. He deals
with many political and social concerns and these remain with the reader
as strongly as do all those scenes of mad wonder.
Which is just how it should be.
Dead Air
M. Dalton Allred
Slave Labor Books, 1989; 98pp; 0-943151-08-2
Dead Air appears to collect together four issues of a comic with which I
was completely unfamiliar until this compilation showed up in the local
comics store. The art's black & white, clean line drawings uncluttered
with unnecessary details. Insofar as Allred's storytelling abilities go,
the panel to panel sequencing is a little static, but not uncomfortably
stiff.
The story itself is a cracker -- at least its opening segments are. The
inhabitants of Roseburg, Oregon, find themselves cut off from the rest
of the world and fear the worst. Because their town was considered to be
the safest place in the world in the event of a nuclear war, they have
to assume that when all contact with the rest of the world is cut off,
that the bombs have finally fallen. They insulate themselves from the
outer world, allowing no one out and no one in -- although the latter's
more a consideration than something that actually needs to be enforced,
since no one is trying to come in.
But there are those that want out.
DJ Calvin Lennox's wife and child left town to go shopping in Eugene
just before the disaster struck and he wants to go find them. When the
town authorities won't allow him to leave, he and three friends make a
break and find the world...changed.
The mystery of what's happened and Allred's careful build up of Lennox's
discovery of the changes and their implications is ably handled until we
actually find out the truth, and then the whole thing unfortunately
fizzles. My problem isn't with the Judeo-Christian underpinnings of the
story -- in fact, I find it refreshing to see such beliefs presented in
a positive light in a medium (and this includes prose sf and fantasy as
well) in which only the more extreme practitioners of Christianity are
usually presented in an unfavourable light. When it comes to TV
evangelists and the like, I can't help but agree with their usual
depictions, yet as with any religious system, there are as many good
elements as bad, and it's rare that we see Christianity presented in
such a light.
Unfortunately, the illogic of what we're given here and the spacey New
Age mumbo-jumbo style in which it's presented, detracts from the complex
and fascinating mystery that Allred has set up, rather than giving the
story the powerful conclusion it deserves. Ultimately, it's a valiant
failure, but a failure all the same.
Cromm
Kenneth C. Flint
Foundation, March 1990; 400pp; 0-385-26749-5
I was about half way through Kenneth Flint's new novel when I finally
realized what it was about the book that bothered me. But let's back
track for a moment.
Commercial artist Colin McMahon just likes to take things easy --
whatever comes up, he's got Crocodile Dundee's philosophy down pat: "No
worries." But he starts having dreams of a past life and it's when that
past life begins to impinging upon present day reality he's soon faced
with the uncomfortable knowledge that he's going to have to make a
stand. Because people are dying, and more will die, if he doesn't clean
up his act and do something. Fast.
Flint's made a name for himself with his Celtic fantasies and while
Cromm treads some new waters for him -- those of contemporary fantasy --
he doesn't stray too far away from his major strength, which is bringing
ancient Ireland and its peoples to life. What the new book shows is that
he's equally at home in present day America and Ireland. But then
there's a major flaw, as I mentioned above.
The villains are stupid. And ineffectual. They're only dangerous when it
serves the plot for them to be so. If the plot requires that the hero or
his friends escape, then the villains suddenly turn into a bunch of
stumblebums, tripping all over themselves. Time and again there's no
logical reason why they shouldn't have killed McMahon -- except that the
plot requires them to do otherwise.
Which is really a shame, because everything else about this book is very
good. The characters are interesting; the manner that Flint has chosen
to flit back and forth in relating incidents from McMahon's present and
past life works wonderfully; the sense of place, both in old and
contemporary Ireland as well as the States, is vivid and immediate. He's
even opted to make the ancient Christian church (in the person of St.
Patrick) stand for a positive force without being preachy.
It's too bad that he couldn't have spent a little more time on his
villains and the plot.
Author's Choice Monthly #3
Lisa Goldstein
Pulphouse Publishing, December 1989; 99pp
Pulphouse Publishing continues its fine series of short story
collections, the draw for which is that the authors themselves choose
what will appear in its pages.
This time around it's Lisa Goldstein making the choices. Except for the
introduction, all of this material has appeared previously -- all in
Asimov's, I believe -- but even if you have all of those back issues
neatly lined up on a shelf somewhere, I still believe this to be a
worthwhile addition to your library.
Where else can you have such fascinating character studies such as
"Death is Different", "Tourists" and "Cassandra's Photographs" (to name
my favorite three of the five stories appearing here) between the same
covers, and get Goldstein's thoughts on their origins? And if you're not
already familiar with her work (shame on you), then this is an excellent
place to remedy just that.
Mythology 101
Jody Lynn Nye
Questar, February 1990; 264pp; $4.95; 0-445-21021-4
Jody Lynn Nye's previous credit in the field -- insofar as my own
limited knowledge of her work goes -- was her association with that
illustrated Pern book published by Del Rey. This time around, she's on
her own with a novel.
Mythology 101 is a sweet book that tells about a university student
discovering elves living under the college library. Nye's prose has a
light, often humourous feel, about it -- well suited to the rambling
storylines that lead to various funny situations more often than
furthering the overall plot.
If I was to criticize the book at all, it would be for its lack of
dramatic content, but I believe that would be critiquing the book for
what it's not, rather than for what it is. Nye doesn't appear to have
set out to write a thriller; the moments of action in the book tend
towards the kind one would encounter in a prime time television show,
rather than, say, Tolkien.
As such, a kind of dramacomedy I believe they're calling that sort of a
show these days, Mythology 101 is quite successful. It has lots of
engaging characters, humourous situations and Nye's prose style captures
that sense of fun with just a touch of drama very effectively.
And if you like it, I've read somewhere in the trades that there's a
sequel on its way.
Much Rejoicing
Dan'l Danehy-Oakes
Copyright 1990 by Dan'l Danehy-Oakes
A Cult Novel Worth the Cult
Shoot.
I've reviewed books by friends before, and nobody's taken me to task for
praising my friends.
But someone's bound to go after me for praising L. Ron Hubbard, so I'd
better defuse that right up front:
Being a prize winner in the "Writers of the Future" contest does *not*,
in any way shape or form, leave one beholden either to Bridge
Publications or to the shade of Hubbard. As proof, allow me to observe
that Battlefield Earth was a basically good story but swollen out of
proportion; and that I found Mission Earth frankly unreadable. Written
by Hubbard, published by Bridge, and I can't honestly recommend you by
either of them. So there.
Which leaves me unencumbered by the ghost of winnings past, to say all
manner of good things about Bridge's reprinting of Hubbard's
pre-Dianetics novel Final Blackout ($16.95, 0-88404-340-1). It's been
out of print for years; and it's attained somewhat legendary status as
"Hubbard's best novel."
So: Is it?
It's a damn fine novel, with a protagonist that successfully blends
strongly individuated character with cypherhood (we never even learn his
name; he's merely "the Lieutenant") -- something nobody would
successfully do in this field again until Michael Moorcock's Jerry
Cornelius; and very different from Cornelius at that.
The Lieutenant commands the remnants of a corps of British infantry,
surviving in the ruins of Europe after a high-tech war that destroyed
technology. The War continues, but there are no sides anymore; everyone
is just trying to survive. It's a perfect depiction of the power of
entropy in the social field.
Though there's no longer anything worth fighting for, the soldiers can't
go home. They've been forbidden to go home, because the Government (or
the latest in a series of governments; they seem to rise and fall
regularly) is afraid of disease. And rightly so; mutation and biowarfare
have made Europe a very unhealthy place.
It's hard to describe much of the plot without giving away *too* much,
but perhaps I can say that the Lieutenant does all he can for his
soldiers and his country; and it's more than anyone else could have
done. Though he does pull off some fairly unlikely maneuvers, they're
all plausible by the time Hubbard brings you to them: and the Lieutenant
never appears to be a superman or demigod.
Do I Dare to Eat A Peach?
A few fantasy writers have created worlds that seem as real as ours:
Tolkien's Middle-earth; Wright's Islandia; Dunsany's little kingdoms.
And Le Guin's Earthsea. For two decades now, some of us have taken
repeated brain vacations in this world where a name gives power, where
the True Language (spoken aright only by dragons) *is* power. A Wizard
of Earthsea introduced the young wizard Ged; The Tombs of Atuan showed
him in his full power; and The Farthest Shore brought him, in his
maturity, face-to-face with his greatest enemy.
A year ago, Le Guin and Atheneum announced that there would be a fourth
book of Earthsea. Since that time, we who love Earthsea have been
waiting. The last time I can recall waiting this impatiently for a book
was The Silmarillion.
Now it's here. Tehanu: The Last Book of Earthsea (Atheneum, $15.95,
0-689-31595-3) is in your friendly neighborhood bookstore.
Was it worth the wait?
Decidedly so. Le Guin has matured so much as a writer since the early
'70s that she can not only surpass what has done before, but transform
it.
Tenar, the girl from The Tombs of Atuan, is now a widow on Ged's home
island of Gont. She adopts a mysterious young girl, Therru, who has been
abused and burned. With her charge, she goes to ease the dying of Ged's
(and Tenar's) old teacher, Ogion the Silent. Ged returns to Gont on
dragonback, a wizard no more, tired and hurt -- at this point we are at
the end of The Farthest Shore, but Tehanu is just beginning. To
summarize plot would be to do a violence to the book; it has no easily
defined central good-versus-evil conflict like the first three.
The original trilogy is -- well, I can't call it sexist; but it assumes
extremely traditional sex-roles. In the interim, Le Guin's consciousness
has been, as it were, raised, and I was curious to see how she would
handle Earthsea society from a female point of view. The way was full of
dangers: would she overthrow everything she'd done so far? That seemed
unlikely; Le Guin has too much auctorial integrity for an answer like
that. Almost as bad would be to have Tenar spend a lot of time bitching
about "woman's place," for, while this would be both plausible and
legitimate, there would be no reason to set it in Earthsea: it would be,
in Le Guin's own terminology, no more than Poughkeepsie called Elfland.
Her solution is simple and elegant. She shows Earthsea from the point of
view of a woman who is both of and outside it; and who, by and large,
accepts "woman's place," but occasionally wonders why.
This is one of the "points" of Tehanu. Another is Ged's coming to live
as a man rather than a wizard. A third is the realization that nothing
ever really ends -- there are indeed "evil" characters in the book, and
they serve to demonstrate this deeply. And, one more "point": Le Guin
shows us how it is possible to live a non-sexist (though non-unisex)
life in a sexist society. To explain would be to give away too much
plot; and, as I said above, that I will not do.
A Collection of Dreams
Pulphouse Press is the source of a number of interesting projects. One
is the recently-launched "Author's Choice Monthly," another magazine
with both hard and softcover editions. Each ACM is a one-author
collection, apparently selected by the authors to represent some side of
themselves that they want represented.
Several of these have been printed, from a collection of good writers --
Lisa Goldstein, Ed Bryant, Jack Williamson, and others.
The second issue is by Karl Edward Wagner. Subtitled "Unthreatened by
the Morning Light", it collects stories that were in some way inspired
by dreams.
My first response, on reading it, was "Why?" None of these stories was
bad -- but none of them was particularly good , either. Truth to tell,
at a month's distance, I can barely even remember what they were about.
There may be a lesson here. Dreaming is a personal thing; what moves or
disturbs your subconscious mind may be completely opaque to others.
Like, Totally Rad
You may have to search a bit to find Francesca Lia Block's first novel,
Weetzie Bat (Harper & Row, $12.95, 0-06-020534-2), but it's worth the
effort. This is a dream of Los Angeles come true, where the people and
the architecture really are beautiful and everything is incredibly cool.
Weetzie is a right-now girl living in LA's nouveau scene, and she's
looking for love in almost the right places. The incredibly hip dude she
falls in love with is gay, but that's fine, because now they can look
together.
They do.
A genie grants Weetzie three wishes, and they're off.
The language is absolutely stunning; the story is bouncy, episodic, fun,
and human. Along the way, the question of Art is dismissed with a bit of
handwaving while that of AIDS is dealt with in as human a fashion as
I've seen.
It's a short book. You can read it in an hour. Do.
Can Anything Good Come Out of Analog?
Apparently yes.
J. Brian Clarke's series of "Expediter/Phuili" stories in Analog are
collected in the "novel" (read: fix-up) The Expediter (DAW, $3.95,
0-88677-409-8). The copyright page doesn't mention the original
publication of the stories, which bothers me.
Oh, well. Anyway.
The Expediter is pretty good, as fix-ups go. For non-readers-of-Analog,
the basic ideas is that we've found a huge, nifty object called The
Shouter, a planet covered with two-kilometer-tall towers that gives off
massive EM radiation. (We didn't see it before because the Pleiades were
in the way.)
Somebody else found it first, though. A race of sentient bulldogs
calling themselves Phuili are already there, and they refuse (at first)
to believe that humans are sentient -- they simply can't believe that
there's another sentient race in the Universe.
Phuili are peaceful, though, and let humans stay (partly so they can
observe them). Together, humans and Phuili discover the purpose of the
Shouter; then they discover a third race, desparately dangerous to all
life in the Universe.
The Expediter is an upbeat, fun kinda book, not great art, but not the
paramilitary Libertarian crud I expect from people who use their first
initials and middle names, and definitely worth $3.95 of your beer
money.
I anticipate a sequel. As far as this volume goes, they haven't
discovered who built the Shouter...
Nonfiction Corner
"I think, therefore I am," said Descartes.
Yeah? But how do you know you're really thinking? Maybe you just think
you're thinking! Or maybe we're all figments of someone else's
imagination entirely!
Questions like this are the stuff of major cool science fiction.
They are also the stuff of major cool philosophy.
Daniel C. Dennett is a philosopher of mind, whose profession is to
address and try to understand -- and maybe even resolve -- this sort of
question. If his name sounds familiar, it's because he co-edited the
book The Mind's I, with Douglas Hofstadter (of Godel Escher Bach fame).
M.I.T. Press has recently reprinted his collection of essays,
Brainstorms (0-262-54037-1), which range from scholarly critiques of
other philosophers to a humorous fantasia called "Where Am I?" which
debates the location of consciousness in a profoundly dramatic way.
Along the way, he vivisects B.F. Skinner's flavor of behaviorism and
discusses ways in which free will can arise from deterministic systems.
You won't find the answers to all your questions about Life, the
Universe, and Everything here. You won't even necessarily agree with
everything Dennett says (I certainly don't; he twists Godel's theorem in
a manner I find most inappropriate). But you will find yourself with
much food for thought... about thought.
Keep the home fires burning, kids. And remember what Bozo always said --
KEEEEEEEEEP LAUGHING!
------ End ------
