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Month: March 2009

Short Fiction Review #14: Interzone #220/February 2009

Short Fiction Review #14: Interzone #220/February 2009

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Back in June, Interzone published an edition dedicated to “Mundane SF,” which essentially means the story’s future speculative setting must be based on plausible science. So, no FTL, which virtually eliminates space opera, or telepaths or pointy eared aliens who speak English and act more or less like human beings except that they have pointy ears even though they live on planets light years away from Earth.  I guess. It all sounds to me like Hard SF in a girdle, and I don’t quite get it. You could, for example, group fiction that takes place only in New York City, or must involve farm implements, or that is first person narration by a transsexual. I mean, it might be interesting to read a collection of stories that take place in New York City, if only to say, “Oh, I recognize that restaurant where the characters are eating, I go there all the time,” but, beyond that, I’m not really sure how the categorization serves to help the reader to appreciate the author’s technique or critical perspective. Geoff Ryman’s introduction seems to say that one purpose of mundanity is to provide hope (and, indeed, his own contribution, “Talk is Cheap,” seeks to show how hope springs eternal in even direst circumstances). But, I’m not so sure why that should be the case. After all, On the Beach takes the mundane approach to the possibility of nuclear holocaust that is plausible, but certainly not hopeful.

I was thinking about this in reading the latest Interzone, which, with one exception, could be a mundane issue.  Not only in the sense of plausible scientific extrapolation, but also in the sense of, well, being mundane in trodding  familiar ground.  Not that this is necessarily a bad thing; the better stories here manage to unearth some disturbing ideas that are certainly relevant to our mundane existences.
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The Nebulation: Short Stories

The Nebulation: Short Stories

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When I became eligible to become a member of SFWA last year I thought about it long and hard and finally decided to join. I forget why, now. The experience hasn’t exactly been a bad one–it’s been oddly non-experiential, as a matter of fact. For instance, you may have noticed that the final ballot for this year’s Nebulas was recently announced, here… and here (and elsewhere). The information content is not identical on these apparently official pages, and they don’t seem to be aware of each other’s existence. There is no link to an actual ballot where one might actually vote (here or apparently in the members-only section of the site), or any information on the deadline for voting. I queried for info at the “query for info” email address; I was told that I’d be told when the final ballots were mailed. Old school mail: carried by weary snails and weighed down with stamps and stuff.

I am a traditionalist, and all that. But maybe not all that. The thing is, I like the snails pretty well, but they don’t seem to be able to find my house reliably. Email is faster, more reliable, cheaper, more check-backable. Why not use it? Are we not Living in the Future? Also, doesn’t SFWA know now when the votes are due? Why can’t they tell us? Why not have, say, one page with all the relevant info or links between all relevant pages? Where shall wisdom be found? Where is the place of understanding?

You practically can’t be an SFWA member unless you’re kvetching about something, so there’s my kvetch of the day.

But to celebrate my first and possibly last Nebula vote, I thought I’d read as much of the nominated work as I can and inflict it on share it with you readers of the Blog Gate. This week: short stories.

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Tarzan Swing-By: Tarzan and “The Foreign Legion”

Tarzan Swing-By: Tarzan and “The Foreign Legion”

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Tarzan and Foreign Legion 1st edI would like to step forward at this moment to address the audience before the curtain rises on our feature book review presentation so that I may make a personal observation about Edgar Rice Burroughs. Specifically, I would like to explain why I’ve written so many posts about his work in the last few weeks.

Burroughs needs no excuse for discussion in a magazine dedicated to heroic fantasy and planetary romance. Adventure literature as we know it springs from the influence of Burroughs in the early twentieth century. Although pulp magazines existed before Burroughs published Under the Moons of Mars (later titled A Princess of Mars) and Tarzan of the Apes, this double-punch in 1912 changed the style of this publishing medium for the remainder of its lifetime, and the influence continued into the paperback revolution and on into our era. Burroughs looms as one of the Titans of genre literature. But the true question is: Why am I re-reading so much of his work right now, in concentrated doses that I usually reserve for no author?

One answer is that I enjoy writing about Burroughs almost as much as I enjoy reading him. For an author who supposedly crafted straightforward entertainment, Edgar Rice Burroughs’s novels contain a remarkable breadth of ideas for debate and consideration. But a deeper reason for such current copious reading of Burroughs is that his work always gives me a unique uplift. In times of uncertainty and concern, I find that no author can temporarily re-energize me than ERB. Even a violent and embittered book, such as the one I’m about to discuss, provides an energy boost like a literary vodka with Red Bull. Burroughs knows how to make life seem wild, colorful, and far removed from the petty concerns of the everyday. It isn’t strictly “escapism,” a word I dislike, but a form of romantic empowerment. Burroughs’s daydreams on paper enhance our yearning for that which is beyond what we have to struggle with in day-to-day life.

End of psychological exegesis. The curtain now rises on today’s Tuesday Topic: one of Burroughs’s most unusual books, one that few people have read because — let’s face facts — how many but the most dedicated fans manage to reach Book #22 in any long-running series?

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The Pity of the Wolves: Joseph Campbell, part 2

The Pity of the Wolves: Joseph Campbell, part 2

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wolf-and-sisiutlsmall1A few years ago, for one of Brian Swann’s anthologies of traditional Native American literature, I translated a quasi-historical story from Kwakwaka’wakw oral tradition that contained in it an episode in which a dead man is brought back to life by wolves. One of the English word choices I struggled with was the term the revivified character later used to describe why the wolves had done it.

Stories about wolves resurrecting the dead permeate older bodies of Kwakwaka’wakw story, and range from ancestor myths to first-person accounts of shamanic initiation. The myths have a subgenre featuring adolescent heroes who go out into the wild, enter the spirit realm, encounter dangerous and beneficient beings–not infrequently dying and resurrecting in the process–and return home with spiritual treasures. Does that not sound just a little bit Campbellian?

One problem with seeing this subgenre as more evidence of the universality of Campbell’s monomyth is that the genre as a whole also has stories featuring magical children and stories featuring mature heroes, each of which has a characteristic structure that is distinct from the adventures of the adolescent hero. …

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