Browsed by
Author: Steven H Silver

Birthday Reviews: Arthur C. Clarke’s “Let There Be Light”

Birthday Reviews: Arthur C. Clarke’s “Let There Be Light”

Comments 2 comments
Playboy, February 1958
Playboy, February 1958

Arthur C. Clarke was born on December 16, 1917 in Minehead, England and died on March 19, 2008 in Colombo, Sri Lanka.

Clarke won the Hugo and Nebula Awards three times each. Rendezvous with Rama and The Fountains of Paradise both won for best novel (and also both won the British SF Association Award). His novella “A Meeting with Medusa” won the Nebula in 1973 and the short story “The Star” won the Hugo in 1956. He also won the Retro Hugo for his short stories “The Nine Billion Names of God” and “How We Went to Mars.” Both “A Meeting with Medusa” and Rendezvous with Rama won the Seiun Award and Rama also won the John W. Campbell Memorial Award, and Jupiter Award. Clarke won the Geffen Award for Childhood’s End. His novel Imperial Earth was inducted into the Gaylactic Spectrum Hall of Fame in 2001. He received the International Fantasy Award for his non-fiction book The Exploration of Space.

Clarke was the guest of honor at NYCon II, the 14th Worldcon, held in New York in 1956. He received a Forry Award from LASFS in 1982 and was named a Grand Master by the Science Fiction Writers of America in 1986. In 1997 he was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame. He won a Gallun Award in 2001, was inducted into the First Fandom Hall of Fame in 2002 and in 2004 received the Robert A. Heinlein Award. The Arthur C. Clarke Award, sponsored by the BSFA, the Science Fiction Foundation, and the SCI-FI LONDON Film Festival, was established in 1987 to honor science fiction published in the UK.

Clarke collaborated on fiction with Gregory Benford, Gentry Lee, Stephen Baxter, Mike McQuay, Michael P. Kube-McDowell, and Frederik Pohl. His story “The Sentinel” formed the basis for his novel and the film 2001: A Space Odyssey, the sequel of which, 2010, was also turned into a film. His novel Childhood’s End was adapted into a television mini-series.

“Let There Be Light” was initially published on September 5, 1957 in the Dundee Sunday Telegraph. It was first reprinted in February 1958 in Playboy magazine. It would eventually be reprinted in the Playboy Press science fiction anthology Transit of Earth in 1971. Clarke included it in his collection Tales of Ten Worlds in 1962 and it also appeared in The Collected Stories of Arthur C. Clarke in 2000. The story appeared in German in the 1963 collection Unter den Wolken der Venus. In 1980 it was translated into Croatian for the March issue of Sirius #45. A French translation of the story appeared in the Arthur C. Clarke collection Le Livre d’or de la science-fiction: Arthur C. Clarke (a.k.a. Et la lumière), in 1981. Guido Zurlino and Beata Della Frattina translated the story into Italian for inclusion in the January 1987 issue of Urania #1039. It appeared in French again in 2013 as part of the collection Odyssées: l’integrale des nouvelles. Although the story fits into Clarke’s Tales from the White Hart series, it was not included in that collection, which was first published eight months before the story first appeared.

…

Read More Read More

Birthday Reviews: John Sladek’s “Stop Evolution in Its Tracks!”

Birthday Reviews: John Sladek’s “Stop Evolution in Its Tracks!”

Comments 0 Comment
Cover by Josh Kirby
Cover by Josh Kirby

John T. Sladek was born on December 15, 1937 and died on March 10, 2000.

John Sladek won the British SF Association Award in 1984 for his novel Tik-Tok, which was also nominated for the John W. Campbell Memorial Award and the Ditmar Award. His novel Roderick was nominated for the Seiun Award, the Ditmar Award, and the Philip K. Dick Award. His essay “Four Reasons for Reading Thomas M. Disch” was nominated for the William Atheling, Jr. Award for Criticism or Review. Sladek also collaborated with Disch on several short stories. Sladek has also written several parodies of famous science fiction authors using pseudonyms which either replace all the vowels of the parodied author’s names with asterisks or with pseudonyms that are acronyms of the authors’ names (for instance, R*y Br*db*ry or Barry DuBray).

Sladek published “Stop Evolution in Its Tracks!” in issue 24 of Interzone in December, 1988, edited by David Pringle & Simon Ounsley. Pringle, Ounsley, and John Clute selected the story to appear in Interzone: The 4th Anthology the next year and in 1994, David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer included the story in The Ascent of Wonder: The Evolution of Hard SF. The story was also collected in the posthumous Sladek collection Maps: The Uncollected John Sladek, published in 2002.

“Stop Evolution in Its Tracks!” is a satire on the creationist belief, told through the eyes of a science reporter who has been sent to observe and write an article about Professor Abner Z. Gurns, a creationist who claims a background in science and runs a school whose sole mission is to denigrate evolution in favor of creationism. Sladek provides Gurns with all the traditional claims made by creationists in their attempts to refute evolution without offering an overt defense of evolution.

The humor, such as it is, comes from how ridiculous the claims of the creationists are when piled one on top of the other. In order to drive the point home, Sladek offers up even more ridiculous claims when he has exhausted the usual ones. The story takes on a reductio ad absurdum tone which allows the reader to dismiss everything which precedes it. However, because Sladek doesn’t provide a counterargument to the satirical, an understanding of evolution is necessary to fully appreciate the story and see the fallacies for what they are, aside from the lack of logic they present.

…

Read More Read More

Birthday Reviews: Sarah Zettel’s “The Temptation of Harringay”

Birthday Reviews: Sarah Zettel’s “The Temptation of Harringay”

Comments 1 comment
Cover by Vincent di Fate
Cover by Vincent di Fate

Sarah Zettel was born on December 14, 1966.

Sarah Zettel’s novel Reclamation was nominated for the Philip K. Dick Award in 1997 and two years later her novel Playing God was nominated for the James Tiptree Jr Memorial Award. In 2010 her story “The Persistence of Souls” was nominated for the Sidewise Award for Alternate History.

Zettel sold “The Temptation of Harringay” to E.J. Gold for publication in the January 1995 issue of Galaxy, the penultimate issue of the most recent incarnation of the magazine. The story has never been reprinted.

Harringay owns a small art gallery in New York and is visited by a stranger from Ann Arbor who has brought a portrait by a friend of theirs who only recently finished art school. When looking at the painting, the stranger relates the background of the story to Harringay in an attempt to get him interested in displaying and selling it.

According to the stranger, who went to art school with the artist, the painting was created when the artist wasn’t able to get into the massive, juried Ann Arbor Art Show. Taking a photograph of a homeless man looking on at the art show, she turned the photo into a painting, although she wasn’t happy with it. As she wrestled with the painting, it came to life, arguing with her, giving her advice, and eventually offering her a career in art in exchange for her soul.

The story is clearly a deal with the Devil tale, but Zettel introduces the idea that the story is being told by a third party rather than the person whose soul is being bartered. Although it seems clear that the artist’s friend is telling the story to drive up Harringay’s interest in the piece and potentially other pieces by the artist, Zettel is actually doing something a little more subtle, in line with the title of the story. The twists to the standard deal with the devil are what make “The Temptation of Harringay” interesting because none of the characters, the artist, her friend, or Harringay, really show any personality. The major interaction, aside from the friend telling the story to Harringay, is the image in the artist’s painting coming to life to argue with her about what the painting should capture and the fact that she isn’t talented enough or have enough experience, yet, to paint what she is striving for.

…

Read More Read More

A Massive History of D&D Culture: Art and Arcana by Michael Witwer, Kyle Newman, Jon Peterson, and Sam Witwer

A Massive History of D&D Culture: Art and Arcana by Michael Witwer, Kyle Newman, Jon Peterson, and Sam Witwer

Comments 2 comments

Art and Arcana-small

Art and Arcana is a massive book that satisfies a strong sense of nostalgia for those who played Dungeons and Dragons in the 1970s and 80s, as well furnishing a history of the game and, to a lesser extent, the people and companies behind it. Focused primarily on the artwork that has helped define the game from its earliest days, authors Michael and Sam Witwer, Kyle Newman, and Jon Peterson have provided a beautiful look at the game’s first forty-five years, with an emphasis on the first few editions.

Even the endpages of this 440 page book indicate what is sandwiched between them. The opening pages show a map of the Village of Hommlet from the classic T-1 dungeon, while the closing pages are a reproduction of a classic piece of Erol Otis’s artwork from Deities and Demigods. A foreword by Joe Manganiello points out that “in [the 1980s], Dungeons and Dragons wasn’t cool.” As someone who began playing the game in 1980 (in Glenview, where the Witwers were from, although I didn’t know them), Manganiello’s comment is an understatement. At the time, the concept that stars like Manganiello and Sam Witwer would be involved with a book about Dungeons and Dragons would have been mind-boggling, as would the idea that the host of a late night talk show like Stephen Colbert would admit to playing it, or that people could make a living as a Dungeon Master and charge people to watch their games.

…

Read More Read More

Birthday Reviews: Emma Bull’s “A Bird That Whistles”

Birthday Reviews: Emma Bull’s “A Bird That Whistles”

Comments 1 comment
Cover by Anthony Branch
Cover by Anthony Branch

Emma Bull was born on December 13, 1954.

Bull’s novel Bone Dance was nominated for the Hugo, the Nebula, the World Fantasy, and the Philip K. Dick Awards. Her novel War for the Oaks was nominated for the Compton Crook Stephen Tall Memorial, the Geffen, the Mythopoeic, and the William L. Crawford – IAFA Fantasy Awards. She received a second Nebula nomination for the story “Silver of Gold,” a second Mythopoeic nomination for The Princess and the Lord of Night and additional World Fantasy nominations for Liavek: The Players of Luck and Territory. She is married to Will Shetterly, with whom she has collaborated on fiction and as an editor. She has also collaborated with Steven Brust, Elizabeth Bear, and Leah Bobet.

“A Bird That Whistles” appeared in the anthology Hidden Turnings, edited by Diana Wynne Jones in 1989. Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling selected it for inclusion in The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror: Third Annual Collection. The story was reprinted in the Shetterly/Bull collection Double Feature, published by NESFA in 1994. In 2004 Patrick Nielsen Hayden included the story in his anthology New Magics: An Anthology of Today’s Fantasy.  The story also appeared in the 2011 book The Urban Fantasy Anthology, edited by Peter S. Beagle and Joe R. Lansdale.  In 1994, Alice Bellagamba translated it into Italian for the anthology Miti fiabe & guerrieri and the story was also translated for the French anthology Traverses in 2002.

John Deacon is a 17 year old banjo player who is starting to appear at open mic nights at Chicago’s Orpheus Coffeeshop. Deacon is not a very strong performer and lacks confidence, yet he is willing to get on stage. At the same time, he has developed a crush on Orpheus waitress Lisa Amundsen. One day, while waiting for his name to be called up, he strikes up a conversation with Willy Silver, a dulcimer player. Silver proves not only to be willing to mentor Deacon and teach him new methods of playing his banjo, but also a rival for Lisa’s affection, although Lisa has never shown more than a friendly inclination toward Deacon and he’s too shy to act on his infatuation.

Set in the 1970s, the story has a background of the unrest against the Vietnam War and comes to head during a march against the war when Deacon is attacked in the Orpheus’ parking lot. Knocked down and bleeding, he is waiting for a continued attack that never comes. Looking up, he finds Silver looking fearsome with red lights in his eyes and his attackers fleeing. After giving Deacon advice, Silver disappears, having protected and nurtured the young musician. In return Deacon gave Silver some questions to think over.

…

Read More Read More

Birthday Reviews: Josepha Sherman’s “River’s Friend”

Birthday Reviews: Josepha Sherman’s “River’s Friend”

Comments 4 comments
Cover by Jim Holloway
Cover by Jim Holloway

Josepha Sherman was born on December 12, 1946 and died on August 23, 2012.

Sherman’s debut novel The Shining Falcon won the Compton Crook Stephen Tall Memorial Award in 1990. Sherman collaborated with Mercedes Lackey, Laura Anne Gilman, Susan Shwartz,and Mike Resnick. She  co-edited the non-fiction folklore collection Greasy Grimy Gopher Guts with Toni Weisskopf.

“River’s Friend” saw print in issue #178 of Dragon under editor Roger E. Moore and fiction editor Barbara G. Young in February 1992. As with so many of the stories which appeared in Dragon, this one was never reprinted.

Sherman sets her story in an alternative Russia during the reign of Vladimir the Great. Souchmant has the unique position at Vladimir’s court of a peasant who has managed, through the prince’s good graces, to become one of the bogatyrs. Souchmant knows that he is part of the nobility only at the sufferance of his lord. He also has a secret that, if found out, would force him from Vladimir’s court. Vladimir is known in this world for his distaste for anything that smells of the supernatural, the Other, and ever since he was a young boy, Souchmant has been in communication with the Other, specifically the spirit of the River Niedpra.

It isn’t his communication with the River Spirit that gets Souchmant in trouble with his lord, but rather his frustration at the lack of understanding the bogatyrs have about the way the common people live. Souchmant erupts complaining that they don’t know how to do anything useful or complete a task without violence. He offers that he can capture a live swan without the use of any weapons or even a net. Once the words are out of his mouth, Vladimir banishes him to complete the task.

Rather than do as he was instructed, Souchmant, with some help from the spirit of the Niedpra, saves the river from having a group of Tatars build a bridge over it, which would also serve to stanch its flow. Having defeated the Tatars with supernatural aid, Souchmant can’t admit what exactly he has done when he reports on the attempted Tatar invasion to Vladimir. Thrown in jail, he is eventually rescued by an unlikely ally.

…

Read More Read More

Birthday Reviews: M. Rickert’s “The Super Hero Saves the World”

Birthday Reviews: M. Rickert’s “The Super Hero Saves the World”

Comments 0 Comment
Cover by Walter Velez
Cover by Walter Velez

M. (Mary) Rickert was born on December 11, 1959.

In 2007, Rickert won two World Fantasy Awards,  for her collection Map of Dreams and for the short story “Journey Into the Kingdom.” She won the 2012 Shirley Jackson Award for “The Corpse Painter’s Masterpiece.” Map of Dreams also received the William L. Crawford – IAFA Fantasy Award for best first fantasy novel. Rickert has also published using her full name.

Rickert originally published “The Super Hero Saves the World” in the June 2003 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, edited by Gordon Van Gelder. She also included it in her first collection, Map of Dreams. It has not otherwise been reprinted.

“The Super Hero Saves the World” is a story of magic realism about a young girl, Marcado, who as a young child managed to survive an attack by a python that killed her mother. Rickert follows the relationships between Marcado and her sister, Elsine, and their relationship with their father, who was with Mercardo when the snake swallowed her, although Marcado was cut from the snake’s belly. Perhaps because of her experience, Marcado grows up distant from the rest of her family and sees the world in a different way.

While Elsine has a life filled with boys and fun, Marcado keeps to herself, focusing on dancing whenever she can, finding a freedom and safety in movement, although she understands that it exasperates both her sister and father, so she avoids it when they are around. Her father especially is distant from Marcado, perhaps blaming her for his wife’s death when his daughter survived the same attack. He not only ignores her dancing, but when a teacher praises a poem Marcado wrote about being a super hero, his only response is annoyance at being called from work for something as minor as his daughter’s creativity.

Marcado eventually comes to an understanding with her sister, as well as coming to terms with the death of her mother and her own strange experience, though she never manages to overcome the barrier between herself and her father. The super hero she sees in herself, with the strange origin story, is working to make her world a better place, giving her peace, and eventually building up a friendship with Elsine and her husband. She must, however, continue to strive to save the world until she makes contact with her father.

…

Read More Read More

Birthday Reviews: Janny Wurts’s “The Snare”

Birthday Reviews: Janny Wurts’s “The Snare”

Comments 2 comments
Cover by Janny Wurts
Cover by Janny Wurts

Janny Wurts was born on December 10, 1953 and is married to speculative fiction artist Don Maitz.

Wurts is both an author and artist, publishing her own fiction and novels as well as three novels in collaboration with Raymond E. Feist. Her collection That Way Lies Camelot was nominated for the British Fantasy Award in 1995. She also won three Chesley Awards for her artwork. In 1993, she won in the color art, unpublished category for The Wizard of Owls. She won the hardcover illustration award in 1995 for the cover to her own novel, The Curse of the Mistwraith, and in 1998, she received a special award for her contributions to ASFA. Wurts was guest of honor at the World Horror Con in 1996 in Eugene, Oregon, and a the World Fantasy Con, held in Tempe, Arizona in 2004.

“The Snare” was originally published in Wurts’s 1994 collection That Way Lies Camelot. It has never been reprinted. The story is based on a painting by Don Maitz entitled “The Wizard,” which originally appeared on the cover of the January 1983 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.

Wurts’s story is one of vengeance. The Wizard Iveldane has been imprisoned by his mentor, the Great Wizard of Trevior, for countless centuries, first bound by air, then water, then earth, and finally by fire. Through the ages, Iveldane has gone through all the emotions possible, wondering what his master was trying to teach him, cursing his master with hatred, and eventually vowing to exact a terrible price from him, which is how the story opens.

Iveldane’s meeting with the Great Wizard, as well as his eventual imprisonment when his master felt his tutelage was over, are shown in flashback. Although the Great Wizard eventually must explain why he did what he did to Iveldane, most of the Great Wizard’s motives are known to the reader long before Iveldane needs to be told. The fact that the Great Wizard does have to tell Iveldane implies that Iveldane was not ready either for his punishment or, ultimately, the role that he takes on after defeating his former master, although it is quite likely that Iveldane will grow into the position once he attains it.

…

Read More Read More

Birthday Reviews: Sarah Smith’s “And Every Pebble a Soldier”

Birthday Reviews: Sarah Smith’s “And Every Pebble a Soldier”

Comments 0 Comment
Cover by Duncan Eagleson
Cover by Duncan Eagleson

Sarah Smith was born on December 9, 1947.

Although Smith is best known for writing historical mysteries set in Boston, she has also dabbled in speculative fiction, writing the hypertext novel King of Space and more traditional SF novels The Knowledge of Water and The Other Side of the Dark. She won the Agatha Award and the Massachusetts Book Award for The Other Side of the Dark.

Smith wrote “And Every Pebble a Soldier” for the 2015 anthology Deco Punk: The Spirit of the Age, edited by Thomas A. Easton and Judith K. Dial, based on a comment by Dial that linked Art Deco to Nazism. The story has not been reprinted.

Set in the aftermath of a truly destructive war, the protagonist of “And Every Pebble a Soldier,” a builder’s apprentice, is one of the only men to come back from war. Determined to build something useful, he begins to make a clockwork man that will help him clean up the debris that litters his town. When he finds a paving brick used to mark the grave of a friend, he chips away a bit of the rock and incorporates it into the wind-up man, eventually repopulating the village’s lost youth by creating an automaton with a piece of each one’s gravestone.

While some in the town take an interest in his hobby, others mock him or are down-right hostile.  The village priest sees him as someone performing the Devil’s work, as well as a threat to his own power in the Church. The apprentice persists, however, and slowly wins the town over as they begin to see his clockwork men as a way not only to repopulate the town, but to, in some way, bring their lost brothers and sons back to life.

…

Read More Read More

Birthday Reviews: Albert E. Cowdrey’s “Immortal Forms”

Birthday Reviews: Albert E. Cowdrey’s “Immortal Forms”

Comments 0 Comment
Cover by Cory and Catska Ench
Cover by Cory and Catska Ench

Albert E. Cowdrey was born on December 8, 1933.

In 2002, Cowdrey’s short story “Queen for a Day” won the World Fantasy Award. His novella “The Overseer” was also nominated for the World Fantasy Award. He received a Nebula Nomination in 2006 for the novella “The Tribes of Bella” and in 2009 his story “Poison Victory” was nominated for the Sidewise Award for Alternate History. He has on occasion published using the pseudonym Chet Arthur.

Cowdrey sold “Immortal Forms” to Gordon van Gelder for publication in the August 2006 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. The story has never been reprinted.

Shortly after Tommy Salvati inherits the house in which Hannah Loewe died, he begins to question the circumstance of her death. Salvati inherited the house because when he was younger, Loewe took care of him while his mother worked following his father’s death and, years later, he was the only person she felt close to, as well as being her lawyer.

His discovery that Loewe may have died after being prescribed a series of drugs by a doctor who was more interested in separating her from her money than treating disease makes him decide that he needs to investigate her death. When that leads to a dead end, he decides to do whatever he can to avenge her by destroying the doctor’s life and practice. As a lawyer, he does so by writing letters urging an official investigation into the doctor’s life.

One he starts his plan, the house, or a spirit in the house, becomes more active, not only haunting Salvati’s workroom, which had been the bedroom in which Loewe had died, but also moving events towards an outcome of revenge against the doctor and those who helped him. Salvati learns to work with the house to avoid the haunted room during the daytime when the spirit is active, and stay out of the way when the spirit seeks revenge.

…

Read More Read More