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Month: June 2018

Birthday Reviews: Yves Meynard’s “Tobacco Words”

Birthday Reviews: Yves Meynard’s “Tobacco Words”

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Cover by Kelly Faltermayer
Cover by Kelly Faltermayer

Yves Meynard was born on June 13, 1964.

Meynard’s novel The Book of Knights was nominated for the Mythopoeic Award and his anthology Tesseracts5, co-edited with Robert Runté, was nominated for the Aurora Award. He won the Aurora Award for his novellas “L’Enfant des mondes assoupis,” “La Marveiolleuse machine de Johann Havel,” “L’Envoyé,” “Équinoxe,” and “Une letter de ma mère.” He won the Aurora for best book for La Rose du desert. In 1994, he won the Quebec Grand Prize for Science Fiction and Fantasy. He served as the literary director for Solaris from 1994 until 2002. He has collaborated with Élisabeth Vonarburg and Jean-Louis Trudel, occasionally using the pseudonym Laurent McAllister for the latter collaborations.

“Tobacco Words” was originally published by Algis Budrys in Tomorrow Speculative Fiction #19 in February 1996.  David G. Hartwell selected the story for inclusion in Year’s Best SF 2 the following year and in 1998 the story was translated into Italian by Annarita Guernieri as “parole di fumo” when Hartwell’s anthology was published by Arnoldo Mondadori Editore.

Yves Meynard’s “Tobacco Words” is set on a space station with a strange culture.  The story focuses on Caspar, a twelve year old boy who can’t speak, and his sister, Flikka, who hears the sins of those who travel between the stars. In this world, their sins can have deadly affects if not confessed and absolved, although Meynard never offers any explanation for the phenomenon.

Meynard fills the story with details of three characters: the grandmother who is traveling through the universe at relativistic speeds, and whose life is broadcast to their home in slow motion; Aurinn, a first timer who doesn’t believe she has any sins, but when she confesses and is absolved winds up hospitalized; and an alien, whose sins are more human than those found in humans.

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Experience Poul Anderson’s Complete Psychotechnic League from Baen Books

Experience Poul Anderson’s Complete Psychotechnic League from Baen Books

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The Complete Psychotechnic League Volume 1-small The Complete Psychotechnic League Volume 2-small The Complete Psychotechnic League Volume 3-small

Art by Kurt Miller

When I learned last September that Baen Books was reprinting Poul Anderson’s classic Psychotechnic League stories, I wrote a brief history of the series. Here’s what I said, in part.

The Psychotechnic League began as a Future History, a popular beast among short SF writers of the 40s and 50s. Anderson published the first story, “Entity,” in the June 1949 issue of Astounding Science Fiction, and set the opening of his series a decade in the future. The series continued for the next two decades, (appearing in Astounding, Planet Stories, Worlds Beyond, Science Fiction Quarterly, Cosmos, Fantastic Universe, and other fine magazines), eventually extending into the 60s. In the process, his “Future History” gradually became an “Alternate History,” as actual history trampled all over his carefully constructed fictional timeline.

That didn’t seem to bother readers though, and the tales of the Psychotechnic League remained popular well into the 80s. The series included some 21 stories, including three short novels: The Snows of Ganymede (1955), Star Ways (1956), and Virgin Planet (1957). The short stories and one of the novels were collected in a trilogy of handsome Tor paperbacks in 1981/82, with covers by Vincent DiFate. Now Baen books is reprinting the entire sequence in a series of deluxe trade paperbacks, starting with The Complete Psychotechnic League, Volume 1, on sale next month.

Volume 1 was released right on schedule last October, and Volume 2 followed in February. The third and final book will be released next month.

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Modular: Mordenkainen’s Tome of Foes Looks to the Horizon

Modular: Mordenkainen’s Tome of Foes Looks to the Horizon

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Mordenkainen’s Tome of Foes-smallThe newest supplement for Dungeons & Dragons 5th edition, Mordenkainen’s Tome of Foes (Amazon), continues to provide the high quality of content we’ve come to expect from this series, focusing on quality and story depth over serious escalation of power.

Tome of Foes expands on setting and background information for the main setting, with the bulk of the book being the 137-page Bestiary chapter, containing monsters from across the dimensions, including a variety of duergars and drow templates to a host of Demon Lords and Archdevils. And that’s all just in the D section of the Bestiary, not even account for the constructs, elder elementals, and ample quantities of undead!

While the monsters are great to have, the first half of the book has a lot to offer for the Dungeon Master in terms of depth, as well.

The first chapter gives a wealth of detail on the eternal Blood War between the armies of demons and devils for who gets claim on being more evil. It’s easy to treat demons and devils as villains just there to be killed, but after reading this chapter, you’ll be more inclined to treat them as unique creatures, with their own goals and motivations. I’m looking forward to using this information to build a storyline where my players are stuck between the goals of demonic cults and devil cults, who hate each other nearly as much as they hate the party of adventurers.

Subsequent chapters provide details on the cultures of elves, dwarves, halflings, and gnomes. Information on the Feywild and the Underdark is also provided where appropriate, for those who want to incorporate them more into their campaigns. In addition, a chapter focuses on the endless war between the two gith races, the githyanki and githzerai, who escaped their enslavement from the mind flayers (who are themselves not covered in detail Tome of Foes, but are well covered in the previous Volo’s Guide to Monsters) only to find themselves in a brutal clash against each other.

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An End to the End: The Silver Spike by Glen Cook

An End to the End: The Silver Spike by Glen Cook

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oie_11558360wYZzXP1And so we come to end of the line for several of the main characters of the Black Company trilogy. The end of the third book, The White Rose, saw the storied mercenary company whittled down to a handful of survivors. The group — five veterans, the empire’s erstwhile ruler the Lady, and Croaker in the lead — decided to travel south and find Khatovar, the fabled home city of the Black Company.

Darling, otherwise known as the rebel leader the White Rose, chose to remain in the North rather than accompany Croaker and the rest of her friends. The wizard Silent, in love with with Darling, chose to remain with her despite her not having reciprocal feelings. Raven, also in love with Darling, stayed behind too, but rejected, went off with Case, the young imperial soldier he’d befriended.

Published four years after The White Rose, The Silver Spike (1989) is a sort of odd book that attempts to tie up several loose ends. It covers a lot of ground, constantly bouncing between several narratives and the better part of two continents. Concerned as much with giving ends to a host of characters as he is with the aftermath of the rebellion, Cook doesn’t tell a totally cohesive story.

Over here, several characters are chasing down a revived enemy only to be suddenly yanked away to face a different threat. Another storyline follows a new set of characters as they commit an act of great stupidity that leads to many deaths and horrendous destruction. There’re lots of very cool bits of business, but The Silver Spike feels like several books jammed together rather inelegantly. Perhaps if Cook had written a giant, sprawling work, like one of today’s thousand-page tomes, he could have made it come together better. But at only 313 pages, there’s little space for the rambling the book is given to.

The Silver Spike begins with Philodendron Case introducing and explaining himself. A minor character in The White Rose who found himself attached to Raven, now he’s a primary character.

This here journal is Raven’s idea but I got me a feeling he won’t be so proud of it if he ever gets to reading it because most of the time I’m going to tell the truth. Even if he is my best buddy.

Talk about your feet of clay. He’s got them run all the way up to his noogies, and then some. But he’s a right guy even if he is a homicidal, suicidal maniac half the time. Raven decides he’s your friend you got a friend for life, with a knife in all three hands.

My name is Case. Philodendron Case. Thanks to my Ma. I’ve never even told Raven about that. That’s why I joined the army. To get away from the kind of potato diggers that would stick a name like that on a kid. I had seven sisters and four brothers last time I got a head count. Every one is named after some damned flower.

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Birthday Reviews: Mary A. Turzillo’s “Thumbkin, Caesar, Princess, and Troll”

Birthday Reviews: Mary A. Turzillo’s “Thumbkin, Caesar, Princess, and Troll”

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Cover by Randy Asplund
Cover by Randy Asplund

Mary A. Turzillo was born on June 12, 1940. She is married to fellow science fiction author Geoffrey A. Landis.

Turzillo won the Nebula Award for her novelette “Mars Is No Place for Children,” which also topped the readers poll for Science Fiction Age, the magazine in which it appeared. She won two Elgin Awards for poetry chapbooks for her collection Lovers & Killers and for the collection Sweet Poison, written in collaboration with Marge Simon, both of which were nominated for the Bram Stoker Award, as was the poetry collection Satan’s Sweetheart, written by Turzillo and Simon. Turzillo’s poetry has also been nominated for both the Dwarf Star Award and the Rhysling Award. She has also been nominated for the British SF Association Award.

Turzillo sold “Thumbkin, Caesar, Princess, and Troll” to Stanley Schmidt and the story was published in the October 2002 issue of Analog Science Fiction and Fact. It has not been reprinted.

“Thumbkin, Caesar, Princess, and Troll” has a title reminiscent of a fairy tale , and despite its setting in a future Ohio focusing on nanotechnology, it has the trappings of a fairy tale to go along with the title. Thumbkin is a genetically modified genius who was bred to be only twelve centimeters tall by parents who though it would improve his chances to become an astronaut before an anti-science wave swept the country and destroyed the space program.

At Thumbkin’s graduation, Harry P. Caesar promised his company and his daughter’s hand to anyone who could solve three seemingly impossible problems. Naturally Thumbkin, as the hero of the story, was able to come up with solutions. Of course, Princess Caesar didn’t necessarily want to marry a twelve centimeter tall genius, especially when she was already dating a drug lord, Dick Troll.

The idea of a father giving his daughter in marriage to the winner of a contest is pervasive in fairy tales and despite his offer, Caesar, Thumbkin, and Princess are all well aware of how misogynistic the arrangement is. When Thumbkin goes to Caesar to seek his prize, Caesar explains that the decision must be Princess’s, something Thumbkin acknowledges, even as he works to “win” her from Troll.

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Future Treasures: The Thousand Year Beach by TOBI Hirotaka

Future Treasures: The Thousand Year Beach by TOBI Hirotaka

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The Thousand Year Beach-smallJim Killen, the science fiction and fantasy book buyer for Barnes & Noble, shares his curated list of the month’s best science fiction & fantasy books at Tor.com and the Barnes & Noble Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog.

There’s several things on his June list that caught my eye — starting with The Thousand Year Beach, by Tobi Hirotaka, a novel that contains virtual reality, a far future resort, and an apocalyptic battle between killer arachnids and a small band of artificial intelligences. It’s not your usual SF adventure, that’s for sure.

The Thousand Year Beach is book one of the Angel of the Ruins series. Here’s Jim’s take.

The first novel in translation from Japan’s Tobi Hirotaka, a three-time winner of the Seiun Award (often referred to as “the Japanese Hugo”). Costa del Número is a virtual resort, divided into several zones, including the Realm of Summer. Humanity used to find release and rest from a chaotic world among the artificial intelligences in the Realm, but no human has visited in a thousand years. The AIs there have continued to exist in their endless summer, however — until one day, an army of hungry spiders arrives and decimates the Realm in short order. As night falls, the few surviving AIs prepare for a final, hopeless battle against the invaders, uncertain of what’s happening in the real world beyond their virtual one.

Nick Mamatas (I Am Providence) is the editor of Tradebooks, Viz’s line of non-manga titles. His main focus is Haikasoru, a new imprint of Japanese science fiction, fantasy, and horror novels and stories in translation.

Nick tells us “The Thousand Year Beach presents an idyllic virtual world, still running long after having been abandoned by humans, that suddenly finds itself invaded by an impossible force.”

The Thousand Year Beach will be published by Haikasoru on June 19, 2018. It is 336 pages, priced at $16.99 in trade paperback and $9.99 for the digital edition. Read more details at The Outerhaven.

A (Black) Gat in the Hand: Thomas Walsh

A (Black) Gat in the Hand: Thomas Walsh

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Gat_WalshDiamonds“You’re the second guy I’ve met within hours who seems to think a gat in the hand means a world by the tail.” – Phillip Marlowe in Raymond Chandlers’ The Big Sleep

(Gat — Prohibition Era term for a gun. Shortened version of Gatling Gun)

Eighteen years after writing his first story, Thomas Walsh’s 1951 debut novel, Nightmare in Manhattan, won an Edgar Award. Twenty-seven years later in 1978, he picked up another Edgar for the short story “Chance After Chance.” That is impressive! Walsh wrote a half-dozen stories for Black Mask in the thirties and his “Best Man” was included by Joseph Shaw in his prestigious Hard-Boiled Omnibus.

“Double Check” appeared in the July, 1933 issue of Black Mask, which also included stories by Raoul Whitfield (Jo Gar), Erle Stanley Gardner (Ken Corning), Frederick Nebel (Tough Dick Donahue) and Carroll John Daly (Race Williams). How’s that for less than a quarter?!

It’s a buddy cop story – except the two men aren’t buddies. Flaherty is well-dressed, small and the smart detective. Mike Martin is big, rough, not the quickest thinker and looks rumpled. It’s brains and brawn.

A banker named Conrad Devine is being threatened, presumably with death, if he doesn’t pay out.

Flaherty constantly pokes at Martin, annoying the bigger man. More than once, Martin’s exasperation with his temporary partner is expressed as “I’m gonna lay you like a rug.”
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Birthday Reviews: Basil Wells’s “The Laws of Juss”

Birthday Reviews: Basil Wells’s “The Laws of Juss”

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Cover by David A. Hardy
Cover by David A. Hardy

Basil Wells was born on June 11, 1912 and died on December 23, 2003. In addition to publishing under his own name, he occasionally published using the name Gene Ellerman. The majority of Wells’s stories appeared between 1940 and 1960, although throughout the 60s and 70s he occasionally had stories appearing in the magazines. After disappearing in the 1980s, he again began to publish in the 1990s. He published four collections of his work between 1949 and 1976.

“The Laws of Juss” appeared in the third and final issue of Expanse, a magazine published between 1993 and 1994 and edited by Steven E, Fick. The story has not been reprinted.

In just a few pages, Wells plays games with the reader’s expectations in “The Laws of Juss.” At first, it appears that Grayson Brand is a captive of Dudley Feeber. Wells quickly reveals that the two men have a long-standing friendship, which adds an element of betrayal to Brand’s captivity.

In a datadump, Feebler explains two important things to Brand. The first is that a wealthy woman, Lynne Holmes, has set her sights on making Brand her sixth husband. The second is a description of the legal system on Juss, which Brand is relatively unfamiliar with since he is not a native to the planet.

As the title of the story implies, it is the legal system of Juss that is of interest, and although Feeber spells it out for Brand in a way that telegraphs the story’s ending, it feels like Wells has created an interesting enough punishment that it could stand to be more fully explored than within the confines of the story. According to Feeber, murder is punishable by essentially taking the murderer’s body and reforming it to resemble the victim’s body. The victim’s memories are then downloaded into the re-formed body, supplanting the memories of the murderer.

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Burton in a Skirt, or What Are You Going to Do with Your Life when Game of Thrones Is Over?

Burton in a Skirt, or What Are You Going to Do with Your Life when Game of Thrones Is Over?

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(1) Game of Thrones-small

Are you still trying to pull yourself out of the depression death-spiral you entered when you heard that the next season of Game of Thrones won’t appear until 2019? And do you find yourself going through every day in an ostrich-like endeavor to evade the knowledge that the next season of Game of Thrones will be the final season?

What will you do? What will you do?

Well, you could surrender to despair and binge-watch whatever the current iteration of CSI is (CSI Fresno? Arkadelphia? Mu?) until the foul odor of your sweaty, unwashed body drives away everyone you love and cherish.

Or you could do as your fathers’ fathers’… er… fathers (just old are you, kid?) did, yea, even as they wandered in the barren wilderness of the pre-internet, pre-fanboy, pre-CGI age: you could return to the source, the ancient fount from which Game of Thrones derives much of its overheated, multi-hued, melodramatic substance: the historical epics and biblical blockbusters and costume dramas that were Hollywood’s bread and butter from the silent era through the sixties, when the whole madcap caravan broke down by the side of the road, a victim of cultural change and economic vapor lock.

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Vintage Treasures: The Ends of the Earth by Lucius Shepard

Vintage Treasures: The Ends of the Earth by Lucius Shepard

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Lucius Shepard The Ends of the Earth-small

When he died in 2014, it was my unfortunate duty to write an obituary for Lucius Shepard. I considered him one of the finest short fiction writers in the genre in the 80s and 90, and tried to explain why in three short paragraphs. Here’s the core of what I wrote.

I first encountered him in the pages of Omni magazine in 1988, with his novelette “Life of Buddha.” I remember being astounded with the natural realism of his dialog, which captured the flow of modern speech in a way I’d never seen before. I read his brilliant Nebula Award-winning novella “R&R” — which opens with an artillery specialist in Central America getting a glimpse of a war map and wondering if he’s somehow caught up in a war between primary colors — and the novel it turned into, Life During Wartime (1987). His dark visions of the near future frequently involved inexplicable wars, and he wrote extensively about Central America, where he lived briefly.

Four years after his death, Shepard is in danger of being forgotten. Virtually all of his work is out of print, and his finest work — his award-winning short stories — is getting harder to find. Fortunately, it’s not getting more expensive. Those who know what to look for can snap up his best collections are bargain prices. In April I was the only bidder on eBay for a brand new copy of his World Fantasy Award-winning The Ends of the Earth (1991), and won it for the criminally low price of $7.99. It’s one of the finest fantasy collections of the last 30 years.

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