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Month: January 2018

Birthday Reviews: Judith Merril’s “Barrier of Dread”

Birthday Reviews: Judith Merril’s “Barrier of Dread”

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Cover by Earle K. Bergey
Cover by Earle K. Bergey

Judith Merril was born Judith Grossman on January 21, 1923 and died on September 12, 1997. She adopted the pseudonym Judith Merril for her writing. Merril received an Aurora Award in 1983 for Lifetime Contributions to the field and a second Aurora Award in 1986 for Lifetime Achievement in Editing. She was the subject of the non-fiction book Better to Have Loved: The Life of Judith Merril, written by her granddaughter, Emily Pohl-Weary, which won the 2003 Hugo Award for Best Related Work.

In addition to her writing career and her activities as an editor, Merril founded the Spaced Out Library in Toronto, now the Merril Collection of Science Fiction. In addition to her own writing, Merril collaborated with C.M. Kornbluth, publishing work under the joint pseudonym Cyril Judd. She was married twice, first to Dan Zissman, and later to science fiction author Frederik Pohl.

“Barrier of Dread” was originally published in the July-August 1950 issue of Future Combined with Science Fiction Stories and was later picked up by Martin Greenberg for his Gnome Press anthology Journey to Infinity. It also appeared in Selected Science Fiction Magazine issue 5 in 1955. It was next reprinted in Homecalling and Other Stories: The Complete Solo Short SF of Judith Merril, published by NESFA Press.

In “Barrier of Dread,” Merril posits a future which seems to have been popular among mid-twentieth century authors: A galactic-spanning empire in which humans have complete luxury while robots and automata do all the hard work. As Managing Director Dangret is preparing to open up a new galaxy for human colonization, his wife, the artist Sarise makes an offhand comment about the speed with which new galaxies are being opened.

Despite his lofty title, it appears that Dangret has plenty of time on his hands because his niggling concerns at his wife’s comment leads him to lock himself away for several hours watching a history of humanity, which gives Merril a chance to provide the background for this world to her reader.

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Vintage Treasures: Ten Thousand Light-Years From Home by James Tiptree, Jr.

Vintage Treasures: Ten Thousand Light-Years From Home by James Tiptree, Jr.

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Ten Thousand Light-Years From Home-small Ten Thousand Light-Years From Home-back-small

James Tiptree, Jr — aka Alice Sheldon — was one of the finest science fiction writers of the 20th Century. As Thomas Parker put it in his review of her Hugo Award-winning biography The Double Life of Alice B. Sheldon, by Julie Phillips:

Alice Hastings Bradley Davey Sheldon was a remarkable person — world traveler, painter, sportswoman, CIA analyst, Ph.D. in experimental psychology… and one of the greatest of all science fiction writers. If you don’t recognize her name, that’s partly by her own design.

Born in 1915, from an early age Alice was a lover of this new genre that was in those days still called “scientifiction,” devouring every copy of Weird Tales, Wonder Stories, and Amazing Stories that she could find, but it wasn’t until the mid 60’s that she tried her hand at writing any SF herself. After some false starts, she completed a few stories and in 1967, when she was 51, she sent them off to John Campbell at Analog, not really expecting anything to come of it. As she considered the whole thing something of a lark, she submitted the manuscripts under a goofy pseudonym that she and her husband, Huntington (Ting) Sheldon, cooked up one day while they were grocery shopping — James Tiptree Jr. The Tiptree came from a jar of Tiptree jam; Ting added the junior.

To Alice’s professed surprise, Campbell bought one of the stories, “Birth of a Salesman.” A new science fiction writer was born, one who would, in the space of just a few years, make a tremendous impact on the genre (as two Hugos, three Nebulas, and a World Fantasy Award attest, to say nothing of the James Tiptree Jr. Award, which is given to works which expand or explore our understandings of gender).

Tiptree wrote two novels, Up the Walls of the World (1978) and Brightness Falls from the Air (1985), but it’s her short fiction for which she is remembered. Virtually all of her short stories have been gathered in important collections such as Her Smoke Rose Up Forever (Arkham House, 1990) and Meet Me at Infinity (Tor, 2000). But I don’t think it’ll come as a surprise to anyone that I prefer to read Tiptree in her original paperbacks, including her very first collection, Ten Thousand Light-Years From Home, released by Ace in 1973.

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Dune: Warts and All

Dune: Warts and All

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Dune Frank Herbert-smallI read Frank Herbert’s Dune for the first time during university and loved it. It was pretty obvious why it had won the 1965 Hugo and Nebula awards. When I was in my late 30s, I went back to it, and couldn’t get through even a few chapters before the crash-and-burn. What happened?

Bad writing to start with, mostly bad dialogue. The first bunch of chapters intercuts a lot between interesting things, like the Bene Gesserit and prescient memories, and Paul’s adventures, and cartoony super-villainy spouting Republic Serial Villain dialogue.

“Fools!”

“Those fools!”

“I’m going to get you!”

This execrable dialogue doesn’t even contain itself to the quotation marks. In-narrative close-third person dips into character’s thoughts spread the pain into the narrative and make George Lucas look like Hemingway.

We spend so much time with the villains in their self-congratulatory soliloquies at the beginning that I just stopped, scratching my head at how I could have enjoyed this.

Was I just a naive reading at 20, or had the style of writing changed so much between 1990 and 2010s that I’d gotten accustomed to different styles and aesthetics? I think probably it’s a bit of both.

But finally, in 2018, I finally tried again and pressed through and it turns out that after Paul and his mother are in the desert, the villains take a back seat. Then we get into the good stuff like the Fremen culture, some of the implications of the Bene Gesserit missionary work, the prescient memories as perceptions through time, and the sand worms.

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Warlords of Atlantis: The Edgar Rice Burroughs Adaptation That Isn’t

Warlords of Atlantis: The Edgar Rice Burroughs Adaptation That Isn’t

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warlords-of-atlantis-poster

In December, my patience with North American video distributors at last ran out. If they refused to deliver Region A Blu-rays, and in some cases even DVDs, of movies from my beloved Hammer Film Productions, I needed to take drastic steps. Yes, I asked Santa Claus for a region-free Blu-ray player. Santa delivered as promised and I immediately ordered a Blu-ray of The Plague of the Zombies from Amazon.uk.

Next on the list … Warlords of Atlantis. It’s not a Hammer Film, but going region-free brings benefits like at last owning a copy of the fourth Edgar Rice Burroughs film from the team of director Kevin Connor and producer John Dark. It isn’t actually an Edgar Rice Burroughs adaptation, but in intent and most of the execution it might as well be.

Explain? Glad to. Connor and Dark made three low-budget movies in Britain based on ERB’s most popular science-fiction stories: The Land That Time Forgot (1975), At the Earth’s Core (1976), and The People That Time Forgot (1977). This Burroughs trio struck gold at the box-office, especially with adventure- and monster-loving kids. Connor and Dark planned a movie based on A Princess of Mars, this time working with EMI Films in co-production with Columbia.

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Birthday Reviews: Kij Johnson’s “The Evolution of Trickster Stories Among the Dogs of North Park After the Change”

Birthday Reviews: Kij Johnson’s “The Evolution of Trickster Stories Among the Dogs of North Park After the Change”

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The Coyote Road-small The Coyote Road-back-small

Cover by Charles Vess

Kij Johnson was born on January 20, 1955. Johnson won the Nebula in three consecutive years for her short stories “Spar,” “Ponies,” and the novella “The Man Who Bridged the Mist.” “The Man Who Bridged the Mist” also received the World Fantasy Award, Hugo Award, and Asimov’s Reader Poll. Johnson also won a World Fantasy Award for the novella The Dream-Quest of Vellitt Boe and the Theodore Sturgeon Award for “Fox Magic.” She served on the Sturgeon Award jury from 1997 through 2012 and on the World Fantasy jury in 2014.

“The Evolution of Trickster Stories Among the Dogs of North Park After the Change” was original published in the anthology Coyote Road: Trickster Tales, edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling. It was picked up for Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror, edited by Datlow, Kelly Link, and Gavin J. Grant. The story was nominated for the Sturgeon, World Fantasy, and Nebula Award. Johnson included it in her collection At the Mouth of the River of Bees. The story has been translated into German.

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It’s A Tragedy

It’s A Tragedy

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AristotleThere was a time when genre in fiction writing wasn’t quite the crowded mishmash of categories and sub-categories, and sub-sub-categories that we’re faced with now, which in any case double in number with the use of the prefix “YA.” There are so many that sometimes it gets difficult to decide which one you’re writing – or reading for that matter.

But there does seem to be a traditional genre that really doesn’t exist anymore: the tragedy. We’ve got most of the others, comedy, satire, the epic, we even have pastoral in the form of the popular song. It’s tragedy that we’re missing.

And I don’t think tragedy has disappeared because it’s really a dramatic genre. We not only still have drama in the traditional sense, but we also have modern versions of same in films and TV. Playwriting is really just an ancient form of scriptwriting.

Is it the definition?

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Birthday Reviews: Allen Steele’s “Day of the Bookworm”

Birthday Reviews: Allen Steele’s “Day of the Bookworm”

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Cover by Dominic Harman
Cover by Dominic Harman

Allen Steele was born on January 19, 1958. He was a finalist for the 1990 John W. Campbell, Jr. Award for Best New Author. Steele’s first two Hugo Awards were for his novellas “The Death of Captain Future” and “Where Angels Fear to Tread” in 1996 and 1998. His third Hugo was for Best Novelette and broke with the five-word titles, for “The Emperor of Mars” in 2011.

He also received the Phoenix Award in 2002 from the Southern Fandom Confederation and the Robert A. Heinlein Award from the Heinlein Society in 2013. Many of Steele’s early works focused on the expansion of mankind into near earth space, with his more recent works exploring the planet Coyote.

“Day of the Bookworm” was published in the anthology Little Green Men—Attack!, edited by Bryan Thomas Schmidt and Robin Wayne Bailey and published by Baen Books in March, 2017.

When an alien spaceship lands in front of the main branch of the Boston library (as well as New York’s and London’s) in Allen Steele’s “Day of the Bookworm,” the military has a predictable response, cordoning off the blocks around the building and evacuating the library while waiting for any activity which would allow a military response. They are not prepared, however, for what actually happens, which is the appearance of two librarians, Molly Cooper and Levon Kahn, who were engaged in an illicit tryst and unaware of the evacuation notice.

The result was that they were able to work with the aliens who had entered the building to build up a sort of détente and understanding between the two races. Steele posits a similar situation to Galaxy Quest, which he notes within the story itself. His response is different from that of the film as his librarians work with the aliens, who resemble large slugs, to ensure that they have a better understanding of humanity, while not threatening them, despite the military power arrayed outside the library. Steele’s librarians’ solution is clever, but they must explain it to a reasonably sympathetic army colonel and an officious White House aide.

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Goth Chick News: Pop Culture Meets Couture…

Goth Chick News: Pop Culture Meets Couture…

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JC-RT Alien

Gather around friends, because this is kind of awesome.

Of course, we see wearable fan merchandise at every trade show and convention we cover, but for the most part the designs would be only be worn on high school and college campuses – or at said trade shows and conventions. It’s rare if nonexistent to find an article of clothing that would actually be suitable for average social situations while still paying homage to your favorite bit of pop culture.

That is, until JC-RT came along.

Touting themselves as the creators of, “a better tailored plaid shirt through the union of our analog and digital worlds,” JC-RT has taken plaid away from emo, west coast hipsters and elevated it to a new artistic level. Their standard shirts have amazing names like “Grandpa’s Haunted Attic Vintage Flannel” and the “Bell Jar” plaid, but the company recently outdid themselves but producing a line of gaming-inspired as well as movie-inspired shirts. Each piece in the two lines is based on the color scheme of a classic video game or movie poster.

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Oz Goes Thrift Shopping: “This is [bleeping] Awesome!”

Oz Goes Thrift Shopping: “This is [bleeping] Awesome!”

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Nick Ozment's loot-small

On Wednesday, January 17, 2018, after I clocked out from work, I decided to do a 5 for 5: Hit all five of Med City’s thrift stores (at least that I know of) — 2 Goodwills, 2 Salvation Armys, and a Savers. I also dropped in at Nerdin’ Out, a store that specializes in collectible comic books and action figures.

It was a challenge, as I had just sprained my ankle that morning, and the walks down the aisles started to feel longer and longer as the day wore on. By the time the sun was setting, I had adopted the limping, shambling gait of the recently undead. But the increasingly incredible finds that I kept stumbling upon at one store after the other released enough adrenalin to keep me going — all the way until I got home, pulled off my snow boot, and found my ankle swollen to double its size.

Here (sharing only the finds that would be of particular interest to readers of this site) is my haul. Not all pickin’ days are this fruitful, I assure you. If they always turned out like today, hell, this is all I’d ever do.

From schlocky VHS horror flicks and classic sci-fi paperbacks to giant rubber snakes and other rare collectibles, today’s pick turned up treasures from across the entire spectrum of what I hunt for.

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Birthday Reviews: Pamela Dean’s “Paint the Meadow with Delight”

Birthday Reviews: Pamela Dean’s “Paint the Meadow with Delight”

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Cover by Darrell K. Sweet
Cover by Darrell K. Sweet

Pamela Dean was born on January 18, 1953. Dean has published the Secret Country trilogy as well as three stand-alone novels. In the 1980s, she was involved in the Liavek series of shared world anthologies, contributing stories to each of the five volumes as well as the title poem for the fourth volume. She has been nominated for the Mythopoeic Award twice, for her novels Tam Lin and The Dubious Hills.

Her story “Paint the Meadows with Delight” appeared in Will Shetterly and Emma Bull’s anthology Liavek: Wizard’s Row in 1987, and was reprinted in 2015 in Patricia Wrede and Pamela Dean’s Points of Departure: Liavek Stories.

Although set in a shared universe, Pamela Dean’s “Paint the Meadows with Delight” stands on its own. The Benedictis are a large Acrivain family living in exile in the city of Liavek. While the father attends political meetings, the rest of the family lives in wait for the day they can return to their native country. One of the daughters, Jehane, is convinced the Acrivain god Acrilat has turned his back on the family because they have left their native land. The result is that the family is in turmoil and one of the sons, Deleon, has disappeared.

Jehane is determined to restore her family to their lost happiness and seeks out one of Liavek’s wizards to help. Jehane’s plan isn’t particular well thought out, in either her goals or her mission. She seeks both to have Acrilat leave her family alone and also to have the family able to return to an Acrivain that is politically welcoming to them. These goals, along with her search for her missing brother, take her on a miniature quest through Liavek, visiting Granny Carry, the Magician, and, at the Magician’s insistence, the House of Responsible Life, and Silvertop, another magician.

In the end, the success of her quest, or even who helped her achieve it, is questionable. The most that can be said is that Jehane may have been able to reconnect on some level with her younger sister, Nerissa, who she also learned has been quite active in ways that Jehane had not even suspected.

While the story can be read and enjoyed on its own merits, its place in the shared-world universe gives it quite a bit of background depth and its structure as a quest around Liavek allows Dean to touch on the characters and concepts created by the other authors.

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