Review: The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction Oct/Nov 2008

The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction
October/November 2008 • 60th Year of Publication

Days of Wonder (novelette) – Geoff Ryman
5 out of 5
A riveting tale of warfare between horses and cats. Both the horses and cats have human characteristics, such as speech; they also wield guns. The core of the story focuses on Leveza, a horse whose fold is slaughtered by the cats. Leveza in turn takes a cat captive, binds it with ropes, and knocks out its teeth. In the course of the conflict, a fascinating bond develops between captor and captive. I was swept up in the savage heartache of Leveza’s story. The sci-fi concept is that the now vanished humans genetically seeded their own knowledge and characteristics inside the DNA of animals. Leveza believes that humans could be genetically resurrected if all the various elements are brought together from the animal kingdoms.

The Visionaries (novelette) – Robert Reed
3.5 out of 5
Trolling the slush piles of various publishers are the agents of a mastermind who has figured out ways to identify the visions embedded in speculative fiction and apply them as financial tools. Certain rare visionaries have an innate bond with another individual existing 100 years in the future. This story focuses on one such “visionary” writer and his career path as author and forecaster of the future. The concept is clever, the narrator is likable, and there is nice surprise twist toward the end. However, overall the story seems light and designed mostly for brief amusement.

Planetesimal Dawn (novelette) – Tim Sullivan
3 out of 5
On an asteroid two humans struggle to get back to base and accidentally discover an alien mining system. One of the two humans is insufferably antisocial, so much so he resists all efforts to return to base. The other extricates herself from the mining system and encounters a bizarre alien in the process. The story’s concepts and plot held my attention while I was reading it, but characters were so unremarkable, I’m sure this one will quickly fade from my memory.

Inside Story (short story) – Albert E. Cowdrey
4.5 out of 5
Entering the wrong FEMA trailer could turn you inside-out, literarily. This tale feels like the X-files blended with a situation comedy set in New Orleans. I loved the dialogue with Cajun dialect. My favorite line: “’Jeeeeeesus Key-rist,’ Fournet muttered. ‘A four-foot-high parakeet made of rubber bands. I never seen nothing like that, even on Dr. Who. What the hell I’ma put in my report, assuming I ever get to make a report? They’ll think I’m nuts at Tulane and Broad.’” Highly entertaining.

Sleepless Years – Steven Utley
5 out of 5
Admittedly I’m partial to stories that examine issues of faith, particularly the gulf between Christianity and atheism, or in the case of this tale, agnosticism. The agnostic in this story is scientifically revived from death but in a state that prohibits sleep. Since he donated his body to science, his life is not his own, doomed to an endless existence as a lab experiment, since he could be kept “alive” forever. This painful story portrays how throughout a life characterized by tragedy one man is unable to accept Christian faith. I was deeply moved, saddened, and chilled by this story.

The New York Times At Special Bargain Rates – Stephen King
3 out of 5
It’s a ghost story. The eeriness is slight and not too memorable.

Dazzle Joins the Screenwriter's Guild – Scott Bradfield
3.5 out of 5
A talking dog is tapped to write a screenplay based on his biography. It’s amusing send up of Hollywood, worth a few chuckles, but that’s about it.

Going Back in Time – Laurel Winter
4 out of 5
This is a short, fragmented, experimental piece that playfully illustrates some of the theories of physics. It’s sexy, lively, and humorous.

Private Eye – Terry Bisson
4 out of 5
Not a P.I. story, but a vignette about the near-future of voyeurism. Subscribers pay to see what other “wired” people, called “Private Eyes” see. The Private Eye’s strict protocols result in a tour-de-force of sexual tension for the Private Eye, the object of his sight, and his viewers. At the risk of repeating myself, it’s sexy, lively, and humorous.

Whoever – Carol Emshwiller
4.5 out of 5
This is a fascinating little tale of amnesia. The narrator has no idea who she is or how she got where she is. It reminded me of Corwin’s plight in Roger Zelazny’s 1st Amber novel. The story has not only an interesting puzzle, but also romance and action. The narrator’s voice quite engaging as she theorizes what has happened to her.

Evidence of Love in a Case of Abandonment: One Daughter's Personal Account – M. Rickert
4.5 out of 5
I’m a big fan of M. Rickert, so I’m sad to say this isn’t her best story, but if you’ve never read her work before, it’ll probably blow you away. As usual for Rickert, she’s come up with an extremely creepy premise. Wives and mothers are vanishing, some on the run, others being captured. Some of these women are next seen at their public executions, which are broadcast live. This story follows one family whose wife/mother is missing. There’s a political barb in this one, and it’s fairly disturbing.


The Scarecrow's Boy – Michael Swanwick
4.5 out of 5
In a near-future where robot intelligence has been installed in such things as a scarecrow, a car, and boat, a little boy’s fate is in the hands of a one such scarecrow. This in an intriguing story of how an AI being sorts through memory, emotion, and programming to arrive at a suitable solution for this boy in danger.

POEM
December 22, 2012 – Sophie M. White
This poem has vivid details and a humorous premise.

COVER
"New Beginning" by Max Bertolini
Dramatic!

Book Review: Players at the Game of People (1980) by John Brunner

Having been delighted with John Brunner’s The Whole Man, I had high expectations for Players at the Game of People. Unfortunately this novel turned out to be bleak, where as The Whole Man was hopeful, and depressing, where as The Whole Man was uplifting.

Players at the Game of People is also quite a confusing read. If it were not for the dust-jacket blurb, I wouldn’t have understood what was going on until about halfway through the novel. That said, the second half of the novel is much better than the first and almost made the novel as a whole worth my while.

Here’s the basic concept: Godwin is one of many human beings who have surrendered themselves to alien entities (or if you prefer a supernatural metaphor, devils). In exchange for allowing these entities to take over their bodies at a moment’s notice, the humans receive whatever career and/or lifestyle they wish. Godwin has chosen to be a man of leisure, experiencing exotic locales & women, eating posh food, and driving a fancy car.

The first half of the novel is so tough to get through because Godwin is so deeply unhappy and bored with his life. Clearly the deal he made has resulted in his inability to appreciate any of the delights of life, because they come without any effort.

In the second half of the book, Godwin comes to an awareness of how he has “sold his soul,” despite his adamant argument that without the deal he most likely would’ve ended up a wasted drunk on skid row. Sadly his awareness does not lead to character change. The ending is decidedly tragic.

As a reader, I’m perfectly willing to lay aside a book part the way through if it doesn’t please me. So it says something that I finished this novel, actually reading the last half in one sitting. Perhaps the hope of a redemptive ending kept me going. Whatever the case, I must admit that Brunner has done a excellent job of revealing in excruciating detail what it truly means to ‘gain the whole world but lose your soul.’

Reader's Response: "Pump Six" by Paolo Bacigalupi

Reader’s Response: “Pump Six” by Paolo Bacigalupi
from Fantasy & Science Fiction September 2008

The first person narrator, Alvarez, has troubles at home. He and his wife Maggie are trying to get pregnant, and Maggie doesn’t seem to be thinking too straight as she uses a lit match to locate a gas leak.

Alvarez has troubles at work, the sewage treatment plant for all of New York City. His fellow employees do no work and simply hang out and bicker all day. When an equipment problem comes up, they call Alvarez to fix it, if they think to even call Alvarez at all. In the course of the story, Alvarez comes to discover that the whole sewage treatment system is on the brink of complete collapse due to lack of maintenance over the course of one hundred years.

The world described in the story is one that is winding down. It appears that human beings may be de-evolving into new hermaphrodic, pack-like race called trogs that does nothing except hang out on the streets and have orgies. Alvarez worries that if he gets his wife pregnant their baby may end up being one of these trogs. Various other descriptions of the water, the lack of availability of certain consumer products (such as bacon), the breakdown the of the university system at Columbia (the students spend all their time on the quad in the nude), all suggest a future of social and genetic decay caused by environmental pollution.

Although the vision of things breaking down is depressing, I found the narrator’s voice to be engaging enough to maintain my empathy and interest. He’s a hard worker, thinks of the needs of others before himself, and endures the company of idiots for the sake of making a living.

My only complaint was some of the repetition of Alvarez’s worries and concerns. I guess the cycles of his griping about his co-employees (notice I don’t call them co-workers), about trying to get Maggie pregnant, and about how he’s stuck with the responsibility of being the only responsible fix-it person in sewage management, are intended to add realism. We all do tend to repeat ourselves when it comes to our everyday complaints. However, I would have preferred a bit of trimming on these points to make the story more concise.

“Pump Six” is an excellent example of the range of science fiction that is being published today. Anyone who thinks the genre is still only about space men and time travel hasn’t been reading the genre in ages. Even so, I would have never expected a story about future sewage treatment, yet it was fascinating and frighteningly plausible.

Bacigalupi’s story highlights the slump in human ingenuity and thus in turn society’s infrastructure that we all witness right here and right now. Food contaminated with E. coli bacteria, bridges collapsing, cranes falling: we face system failure all the time. Who doesn’t fear genetic mutations due to the poisons we have pumped into our environment?
Well, maybe those who are ceasing to think, which is the bigger horror Bacigalupi has illuminated here. There are those we encounter daily at work, in our schools and universities, and in our government who seem to be a thoughtless and ambitionless as Alvarez’s co-employees and as the trogs in the streets. One wonders at times if we are seeing the inevitable decay of our species.

Yet there are glimmers of hope, as Bacigalupi portrays in the final pages of the story. Alvarez appears to be a human with the ability to grow and learn, so all is not lost. There must be others.

I forced myself to look at the good things. People were still out and about, walking to their dance clubs, going out to eat, wandering uptown or downtown to see their parents . . . Lots of things were still working . . . I couldn’t let my myself wonder if that baby was going to turn out like the college kids in the quad. Not everything was broken.
As if the prove it, the subway ran all the way to my stop for a change. (41-42).

Even though most of the conflicts in the story remain unresolved, the tale ends on a tone of hope, suggesting we might be able to fix some of the problems we are creating for ourselves. But we need a few more good men, like Alvarez, who are willing and able to keep thinking to pull us out the muck. I hope they’re out there.

Star Trek (TOS) Book Review: Enterprise: The First Adventure by Vonda N. McIntyre

Part of the reason I’ve gotten back on a Star Trek kick after about a 10 year hiatus is anticipation of the new movie coming in about one year. The premise of the new movie is an origin story of sorts, showing how the crew from the original television show came together, the story of their first adventure together. The crew has been recast, of course. And on top of that the producers, director, and writers are saying things like, ‘The new movie will be unlike anything you’ve ever seen in Star Trek, but entirely faithful to what has come before.’ Sounds like a lofty goal. I hope it is actually true. No doubt, not all Trekkies will be pleased with the finally result.

Most Trekkies (“The Original Series” Trekkies anyway), however, would be quite pleased I think with the “first adventure” as envisioned by Vonda N. McIntyre in her 1986 novel. From the standpoint of character driven fiction, where the hopes, desires, self-doubts, strengths, and weaknesses of the players are the pivotal ingredients for the story, Enterprise: The First Adventure is without a doubt one of the best Star Trek novels ever written. Case in point, this is the only Trek novel I’ve read that succeeded in making Yeoman Rand an endearing and fully-fleshed out person.

McIntyre actually creates a full-blown back-story for Rand that fits completely with what little we see of her in the original series. Yet the story is completely unexpected and surprising. It involves her having been enslaved and making a daring escape prior to joining Starfleet. Rand is shown to be meek and nervous due to her horrific past experiences. Uhura takes the timid Rand under her wing and helps to build her confidence. In the course of the novel, we get to see her grow not only in her demeanor but also her decision to grow out her hair. It’s these small details that make this novel extraordinary.

The scenes where McIntyre portrays the main characters first impressions of each other are delightful, believable, and (at times) shocking. For instance here’s Kirk’s first impression of Spock:

Jim had little use for science officers. They always wanted to impart far more unsolicited information than he needed at any given moment about any given problem. And every time he had made the mistake of actually asking a science officer a question, he had ended up feeling that he might as well be back in an Academy lecture hall.

Jim probably would not have much interaction with Commander Spock. With any luck, the Vulcan would be one of those withdrawn intellectual types who preferred to remain secluded with experiments somewhere in the depths of the ship’s laboratories. (p. 40)

On the facing page, we get Spock’s first appraisal of Kirk:

Commander Spock had little use for heroes. Whatever the self-sacrifice required for heroism, however commendable or admirable the actions might be, a person could only become a hero within an environment of chaos and destruction. In Commander Spock’s view, foresight and rationality should prevent the evolution of any such environment. He wondered if James Kirk, facing a crisis, would choose rationality, or succumb to the lure of heroism. (p. 41)

McIntyre is writer who understands that no character, no matter how short their appearance in the story, should be left standing around like window-dressing. The most minor characters in the novel have significant and meaningful roles to play. Sam Kirk, Jim’s brother, is not only present to support and cheer the youngest Captain in Starfleet, but also he serves as the conduit between Jim and Sulu. Sulu is especially uncomfortable coming aboard the Enterprise because his ship assignment was changed at the last minute, against his wishes. Sam, it turns out, is an old friend of Sulu’s family from when Hikaru was a child. Sam immediately helps to break the ice by personally introducing Sulu to his brother Jim.

There are a number of scenes that will cause any veteran Trek fan to chuckle. Kirk keeps thinking how he hopes Gary Mitchell can be his First Officer instead of Spock, once Mitchell recovers from an injury. Knowing the one television episode where Mitchell appears, in which he becomes corrupted by absolute power, this Trek fan just had to laugh, knowing Mitchell’s destiny in advance.

Additional pleasure comes from scenes that illustrate the inner core of these characters we know like old friends. McCoy’s Grand Canyon vacation is just so HIM. It’s completely anti-technology and just down-right earthy. Interestingly McIntyre uses McCoy’s incommunicado status to reveal more of the good Doctor’s back-story. Kirk calls McCoy’s ex in search of him.

The incidental humor is strong. There’s a funny problem with the food synthesizer where veggies are produced in the shape and texture of steak. On the other hand, the item looking like an avocado is actually beef. Some of the crew are shocked to see vegetarian Spock shoving a bloody hunk of meat into his mouth, not knowing that he’s determined it’s the best way to get the amount of chlorophyll he prefers.

The first Spock vs. McCoy argument/debate is a doosey. I won’t ruin it for you. All I’ll say is that it is absolutely perfect. As is Kirk’s initial impression that Scotty has a problem with orders. In the series, how many times is Scotty shown to question, complain, and otherwise gripe about what the Captain wants his engines to do? McIntyre addresses this dynamic beautifully. Kirk even asks for Scotty’s resignation.

You may notice, if you’ve even read this far, that I haven’t mentioned any kind of “adventure”. Well, that’s because the “first adventure” doesn’t actually kick off until well past the halfway point in the novel. This is no detriment though. I was so pleased with the subtle ways in which McIntyre developed and revealed the characters, I didn’t sense any lack of anything. And when the adventure arrives, it’s fairly lightweight. For that matter, the ‘guest star’ characters Ms. Lukarian of the vaudeville company and an emotional Vulcan named Stephen, are lightweight characters as well. Thankfully the aliens encountered are fresh and intriguing, but there’s never any real sense of threat or danger. (Well, maybe ‘never’ is an exaggeration.)

The main point is McIntyre delivers on her portrayal of the main Star Trek character much more so than on plot or on her own original elements. For most Trekkies, character is the main point anyway. If we didn’t love that crew and think of them as dear old friends, we wouldn’t have trekked with them this far and this long. All I can say is that the characters we love are alive in this novel. To me that’s a remarkable achievement.

P.S. For a contrary review that characterizes McIntyre’s novel as “juvenile”, see: http://trekmovie.com/2008/04/21/library-computer-retro-review-enterprise-first-adventure-pockets-2009-book-plans/
I’m not sure we read the same book. And anyway wouldn’t you expect these characters to seem a bit younger in their attitudes and actions at this point in the chronology?

Retro Review: "It Didn't Happen" (1963) by Fredric Brown

On the treadmill this morning I read a story from the collection The Best of Fredric Brown, edited by Robert Bloch. Brown’s stories appeared from the 1940’s thru the 60’s in such publications at The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Weird Tales, GALAXY magazine, and Playboy. “It Didn’t Happen,” the story I consumed this morning, originally appeared in Playboy, October 1963—which perhaps explains perhaps the opening scene set in a strip-joint. A stripper, Queenie Quinn, is murdered by Lorenz Kane because she violently objects to his solicitous approaches. Lorenz is quickly arrested and held for the murder, after all there are witnesses that place him at the joint that evening, including the security guard who admitted him backstage. The gun is found in Lorenz’s possession and the slugs match. An open and shut case. But not so fast. Lorenz tells his lawyer a story of strange perception. His story turns into a treatise on Ontology and solipsism. He claims to have had several odd experiences which convinced him that he was real, while many of the other people he encountered in the world were not. Lorenz doesn’t claim to be the only real person, with the world being his own imaginary creation; he thinks that there are an unknown number of real people sharing the world with those who are imagined constructs. I’ll not reveal the conclusion to the story, but suffice it to say there’s a twist and it wraps up quickly. Most of the tale is told in passable dialogue. As with most stories of this length, there’s not enough space for deep character development. Really the main draw here is the eerie concept. Mainly Fredric Brown is drawing on that old perception of how does one know what is real and what is only one’s perception or imagination. How can anyone prove that life is nothing more than a dream? I found the story to be a fun, quick read in the vein of a Twilight Zone episode.