Steven H Silver – Page 37

Birthday Reviews: John Varley’s “Just Another Perfect Day”

Thursday, August 9, 2018 Steven H Silver Comments 2 comments

John Varley was born on August 9, 1947.

Varley has won the Hugo and Nebula Awards for his novellas “The Persistence of Vision” and “Press Enter [].” He won an additional Hugo Award for the short story “The Pusher.” His novel Red Thunder won the Endeavour Award. The novel version of The Persistence of Vision won the Prix Apollo. His novella “In the Halls of the Martian Kings” won the Jupiter Award. He won the Prometheus Award for The Golden Globe. “Press Enter []” and “Tango Charlie and Foxtrot Romeo” both won the Seiun Award. In 2009, Varley won the Robert A. Heinlein Award. One of Varley’s most famous stories, “Air Raid,” which formed the basis of the novel and film Millennium, was originally published with the pseudonym “Herb Boehm.”

“Just Another Perfect Day” was originally published in Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone Magazine in June of 1989 by editor Tappan King. Gardner Dozois picked the story up for his The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Seventh Annual Collection. When Dozois’s volume was translated into Italian in 1995, Varley’s story was translated by Massimo Patti and included in the volume Millemondi Inverno 1995. In 1996 it appeared in translation in the German magazine Galaxies #3 and was translated into Japanese in 1998. Varley included the story in The John Varley Reader and John Joseph Adams reprinted it in the April 2011 issue of Lightspeed, as well as a performance of the book in the Lightspeed Podcast for the same year.

One of the cliché’s of science fiction is the character who awakens to a blank slate, in an empty room, with no idea who they are, where they are, or even what year they are in. It is a way for authors to provide necessary information not only to the character, but to the reader. In “Just Another Perfect Day,” John Varley bases his entire story on that cliché, providing a letter to his amnesiac, written by a previous version of the amnesiac, to explain the important parts of what has happened in the twenty-two years since his last actual memory.

The majority of the letter explains to the reader what the day has in store for him, what happened to him in 1989 that caused him not to remember anything since 1986, and eventually the salient features of what has changed in the world that he doesn’t remember, notably that the Earth has been invaded by aliens, called Martians, although they don’t come from there, and each day they are interested in visiting with him for an hour to talk. The subjects of these discussions, both historically, and in the context of the day the story is set, is left up to the reader to conjecture.

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Birthday Reviews: F. Anstey’s “The Adventure of the Snowing Globe”

Wednesday, August 8, 2018 Steven H Silver Comments 0 Comment

F. Anstey was born Thomas Anstey Guthrie on August 8, 1856. He began using the pseudonym F. Anstey after an editor included a typo in his byline, replacing his first initial with an F. He published under both the F. Anstey name and his own name. He died on March 10, 1934.

Trained as a lawyer, Anstey frequently used his legal background in his books and novels, most of which were humorous. He was a frequent contributor to Punch. In addition to fiction, he also produced plays. Over the years, many of his stories have been turned into films, most recently the 1988 film Vice Versa, starring Judge Reinhold and Fred Savage, based on his 1882 book of the same title.

“The Adventure of the Snowing Globe” was originally published in the December 1905 issue of The Strand Magazine, edited by George Newnes. The following year, Anstey included the story in his collection Salted Almonds. In 1996, Peter Haining chose the story for his anthology The Wizards of Odd: Comic Tales of Fantasy, which has been translated, along with the story, into German. Mike Ashley used the story in his 2012 anthology Dreams and Wonders: Stories from the Dawn of Modern Fantasy. In 2013, the story was translated into Russian for inclusion in an anthology.

Anstey’s “The Adventure of the Snowing Globe” is almost a proof of the adage that to a man with a hammer every problem looks like a nail. Anstey’s narrator is, like Anstey, a lawyer. When he is magically transported into a snowglobe where a princess is held captive in a castle by her evil uncle, who has set a dragon to guard her, Anstey’s character resorts to legal means to free her, thinking of what motions he can file with the court, down to the level of naming the laws that he would bring to bear.

The princess, of course, understands the situation better than the attorney, but she can only conceive of a knight rescuing her and is tied into the paradigm as much as the narrator is tied to his legalistic one. The big difference, of course, being that the princess understands life within the snowglobe kingdom much better than the narrator does.

Anstey builds a divide between the princess and the lawyer by providing them with very different speech patterns. Both speak formally, but the princess and her seneschal speak in an archaic manner, while the lawyer speaks in an Edwardian manner, as if he were addressing a judge.

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Birthday Reviews: David R. Bunch’s “The From-Far-Up-There-Missile Worry”

Tuesday, August 7, 2018 Steven H Silver Comments 2 comments

David R. Bunch was born on August 7, 1925 and died on May 29, 2000.

His second collection of short stories, Bunch! Was a Philip K. Dick Award nominee in 1994. Bunch also was the only author to have two stories included in Harlan Ellison’s anthology Dangerous Visions, which featured his stories “Incident in Moderan” and “The Escaping.” Many of Bunch’s stories are set in his world of Moderan

Bunch’s penultimate professional sale was “The From-Far-Up-There-Missile Worry,” which appeared in the fourth issue of Crank!, edited by Bryan Cholfin and published in 1994. As with most of Bunch’s work, this story has never been reprinted and is currently out of print.

“The From-Far-Up-There Missile Worry” is a strange stream-of-conscience tale clearly is set in a world in which some sort of annihilation is imminent, with the narrator living in dread of the end of his world and trying to come up with his reactions when the end, which he predicts will fall from the sky, comes. His fear is clearly demonstrated by his constantly shifting his thoughts from one area to another as well as his use of randomly capitalized words scattered throughout the story.

As the relatively short work progresses, Bunch builds more on the atmosphere of despair than providing any real indication of a story or even what is happening to the reader. The narrator’s internal dialogue about his concern for himself and his future is really the driving force, although by the end of the work, it becomes clear that humans, or partial humans, are in danger of being wiped out by the complete cyborgs that mankind created and which have gotten away from their control. Despite this, the story does not come across as anti-technological or a warning about mankind building its own replacements. “The From-Far-Up-There Missile Worry” is a study in an all-encompassing anxiety that cripples from the inability to take any meaningful action to either protect oneself or effect a change to the world.

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Birthday Reviews: Ian R. MacLeod’s “Starship Day”

Monday, August 6, 2018 Steven H Silver Comments 1 comment

Ian R. MacLeod was born on August 6, 1956.

MacLeod’s novella Song of Time won the John W. Campbell Memorial Award and the Arthur C. Clarke Award in 2009. His novella “The Summer Isles” won the World Fantasy Award and the Sidewise Award in 1999 and the novel length version also won the Sidewise Award in 2006. He won a third Sidewise Award for Wake Up and Dream in 2012 and a second World Fantasy Award for “The Chop Girl.” He has collaborated with Martin Sketchley on one story.

“Starship Day” first appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction in the July 1995 issue, edited by Gardner Dozois. The following year, it was translated for the German edition of the magazine and also appeared in MacLeod’s collection Voyages by Starlight and was selected by Dozois for his The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Thirteenth Annual Collection. In 1997, it was translated into French for inclusion in Cyberdreams 11: Illusions technologiques, edited by Sylvie Denis. John Joseph Adams most recently reprinted the story in the February 2017 issue of Lightspeed.

Stories about generation ships or interstellar voyages usually focus on those who are traveling on the ships. If they deal with the people left behind, it is generally as an afterthought. In MacLeod’s “Starship Day,” people living on a ravaged Earth a generation after a starship left are waiting to hear what the voyagers will find when the finally come out of cryosleep in orbit around a distant planet. In the village of Danous, everyone is sitting on pins and needles waiting to see the transmission with the exception of Owen, the village doctor, who is adamant that it is just another day.

Owen goes out of his way to make the day normal, seeing patients in the morning, having lunch with the latest in a long line of mistresses, who uses the opportunity to break up with him, going home to listen to his wife play her cello before the two go to a viewing party, where Owen considers starting an affair with his wife’s sister, and eventually going to check up on Sal Mohammed, a friend and patient he had seen that morning who failed to attend the party.

When Owen discovers that Sal has committed suicide, possibly in part because of Owen’s own dismissive attitude during their morning appointment, the situation begins to unravel. The message comes in from the starship that there is no planet for them to land on. While everyone else seems to take this in stride, it brings up a variety of emotions for Owen regarding his own lost daughter.

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Birthday Reviews: Élisabeth Vonarburg’s “Cogito”

Sunday, August 5, 2018 Steven H Silver Comments 1 comment

Élisabeth Vonarburg was born on August 5, 1947.

She has twice been nominated for the Philip K. Dick Award and once for the James Tiptree, Jr. Memorial Award. Her greatest recognition came from the Canadian Casper/Aurora Awards, which she has won ten times. Vonarburg won the French language award in 1987 for her story “La Carte du Tendre” (“Readers of the Lost Art”). That same year, she received a second Aurora for her fannish contributions to Solaris. She won three additional short story Auroras for “Cogito” (1990), “Ici, des tigres” (1991), and “La Course de Kathryn” (2004) and five Auroras for Best book for Histoire de la Princesse et du Dragon (1991), Ailleurs et au Japon (1992), Chroniques de Pays des Mères (1993), Les Voyageurs malgré eux (1996), and Reine de Mémoire 4. La Princesse de Vengeance (2007). She won the Prix Rosny-Ainé and the Prix Boreal in 1982 for her novel Le Silence de la Cité. She also won the Boreal for Chroniques de Pays des Mères (1993), Les Rêves de la mer (1997), Reine de Mémoire 1. La Maisson d’oubli (2006) and Reine de Mémoire 4. La Princesse de Vengeance (2007). Prior to 1990, the Aurora Award was known as the Casper Award and in 2011, the Prix Aurora and Prix Boreal combined.

Vonarburg originally published “Cogito” in French in Imagine #46 in December 1988, and it was translated into English with the same title for Tesseracts 3, edited by Candas Jane Dorsey and Gerry Truscott in 1990. The next year, it was published in French in Vonarburg’s collection Ailleurs et au Japon. Algis Budrys reprinted the story in English in issue 21 of Tomorrow SF in 1996 and Vonarburg again included the French version in her 2013 collection La Musique du Soleil. The story received the 1990 Aurora Award for Meilleur nouvelle en français (Best Short-Form Work in French).

“Cogito” is a strangely chatty story about a young girl, Nathany, who is growing up on Cybland, a planet settled by humans who left Earth in search of a life made better through cybernetic implants. The narrator begins by describing Nathany’s life in her communal school, originally EdBlock 6 until her teachers determined that she was precocious and moved into SpecBlock D. As the story continues, the narrator takes breaks from the action, such as it is, to address the reader directly, providing the background for the world necessary to understand upcoming events.

Through the course of the story, Vonarburg reveals that people on Cybland have all five of their senses removed at a very young age and are implanted by “cybes,” which allow them not only to have heightened senses, but also to present themselves in any way they want while they can also switch around the way their senses interact with the world, creating their own personal synesthesia.

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Birthday Reviews: Rick Norwood’s “Portal”

Saturday, August 4, 2018 Steven H Silver Comments 2 comments

Rick Norwood was born on August 4, 1942.

Norwood published his first piece of fiction in 1972, following up with several stories in 1982, and then began publishing fiction again in 2003 with “Portal.” He was active in the nderground comic scene, editing God Comics and writing essays and articles for various comic magazines and websites. He also earned a Ph.D. in Mathematics and has taught since the early 1980s.

“Portal” appeared in the sixth issue of Black Gate magazine, released in Fall 2003 and edited by John O’Neill. The story has not been reprinted.

Ostensibly, “Portal” is the story of Ian, an escaped serf who is eluding capture and working temporarily at a fair for Stolnesserene, who runs a Blade Maze, a chance for people to try to reach into a box containing a series of razors and blades to retrieve a sword. However, rather than focus solely on Ian, the stories jumps between him, his boss, Ian’s friend Tod, and Carver, an art dealer who is also on the fair circuit and is intent on retrieving the blade from the maze.

Norwood follows each of these characters to some extent, but in a manner that indicates there is more to the story than he is sharing, not necessarily in background, although that clearly has depth, but in the future. As such, “Portal” almost comes across as a vignette rather than a full story. The title takes its name from an ability that Ian has to create portals that open to other worlds. These portals are not fully understood by the inhabitants of Ian’s world and when he first opens one accidentally, his father berates him. In the course of “Portal,” Ian enters one of the doorways he creates, which may be the first time someone has gone through and come back, further pushing the idea that this story is part of a larger whole.

“Portal” has the feel of the opening chapter of a much longer work, whether a series of short stories set in the same world or a novel. Norwood introduces several characters as well as their situations and includes prediction about Ian and Tod without showing how their fate will play out or even if they will live up to the expectation laid before them. Ian’s backstory opens “Portal,” and although his concern at being captured runs through much of the story, it isn’t picked up again, further providing the feel that Norwood is positioning this story as the opening of a novel.

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Birthday Reviews: Clifford D. Simak’s “Observer”

Friday, August 3, 2018 Steven H Silver Comments 4 comments

Clifford D. Simak was born on August 3, 1904 and died on April 25, 1988.

Simak won the Hugo for Best Novelette in 1959 for “The Big Front Yard,” for Best Novel in 1964 for Way Station (a.k.a. Here Gather the Stars), and in 1981 for Best Short Story for “Grotto of the Dancing Deer,” which also won the Nebula Award. He also won a Retro-Hugo in 2014 for the novelette “Rule 18.” His novel City won the International Fantasy Award in 1953. He won the Jupiter Award for the novel A Heritage of Stars. Simak was the Guest of Honor at Noreascon I, the 29^th Worldcon, held in Boston in 1971. He was inducted into the First Fandom Hall of Fame in 1973 and in 1977, SFWA named him a Grand Master. He received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Horror Writer’s Association in 1988.

Simak published “Observer” in the May 1972 issue of Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact, edited by Ben Bova, although it is possible the story was originally purchased by John W. Campbell, Jr. before his death. Simark included it in his 1988 collection Off-Planet and it was reprinted in Eternity Lost, volume 1 of the Stories of Clifford D. Simak published by Darkside Press. The story has most recently been reprinted in the Open Road Media collection of Simak’s work The Big Front Yard and Other Stories

“Observer” appears throughout most of its length to be a story without a human protagonist. The narrator is some sort of sentient who wakes on a planet and begins to figure out where he is and what his purpose is. The story is serious in nature, but the reader can’t help comparing the observer to the unlucky sperm whale called into existence in Douglas Adams’s The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

It also becomes clear to the reader that the observer’s purpose is to check out new planets to determine if they are suitable for human settlement, and it has explored several planets over the years, although it doesn’t recall any of its previous existences. Reading the story in 2018, the sentient’s quest to figure out its purpose seems routine, although it quite possibly was fresh when Simak originally published the story.

The biggest question for a modern reader is the exact nature of the observer. In a modern story, it would be some form of AI, but in a story published in 1972, the observer was more likely to be some sort of robot or computerized probe. Simak eventually does reveal its nature and origin, but does so in a manner that feels anticlimactic and raises more questions than it answers.

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Birthday Reviews: Robert Holdstock’s “Magic Man”

Thursday, August 2, 2018 Steven H Silver Comments 0 Comment

Robert Holdstock was born on August 2, 1948 and died on November 29, 2009.

He won a British Science Fiction Award (BSFA) for the original novelette “Mythago Wood” in 1981, and the novel version earned him the 1984 BSFA and the 1985 World Fantasy Award. The second book in the series, Lavondyss, won the BSFA in 1988. Holdstock’s novella “The Ragthorn” won the World Fantasy Award in 1992 and the BSFA Award the following year. He won a third BSFA in 1989 for Best Artist for the anthology Other Edens III, shared with Christopher Evans. He won a special Prix Imaginaire in 2003 for La forêt des mythagos, tome 1 and tome 2, two volumes that contained five Mythago Wood novels. The following year, he won the Prix Imaginaire for his novel Celtika. He was awarded the Karl Edward Wagner Award posthumously in 2010.

“Magic Man” was originally published in Mary Danby’s anthology Frighteners 2 in 1976 and reprinted in Danby’s 65 Great Tales of the Supernatural three years later. Holdstock included it in his collection The Bone Forest and it showed up in the reprint anthology Great Vampires and Other Horrors. The story was translated into German for an appearance in Heyne Science Fiction Magazin #5 in November 1982 and into French in 2004 for a collection of Holdstock’s works, Dans la vallée des statues et autres récits.

On the face of it, “Magic Man” seems to be a face-off between One Eye, the old man in a group of prehistoric hunters who paints images of the hunt on the walls of the shrine-cave, and He Who Carries a Red Spear, the leader of the bands hunting bands. There is clearly no love lost between the men and the situation is made worse because Red Spear’s son enjoys hanging around with One Eye and wants to learn to draw.

One Eye teaches Red Spear’s son to paint in the cave, but, while he teaches technique and discusses proper topics, he fails at the most basic level to explain to the boy the importance of painting in the shrine-cave. While some poo-poo the cave’s effectiveness, it is clear that what is painted there influences the day’s hunt, down to the number of bison the hunters capture. When the clash between Red Spear and One Eye escalates, One Eye instructs the boy to paint a scene which clearly shows that One Eye plans to murder Red Spear, which would put the entire tribe at risk.

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Birthday Reviews: Raymond A. Palmer’s “Diagnosis”

Wednesday, August 1, 2018 Steven H Silver Comments 1 comment

Raymond A. Palmer was born on August 1, 1910 and died on August 15, 1977.

Although Palmer wrote short stories and novels, he was best known as an editor. From 1938-1949, he edited Amazing Stories and from 1939-1949 he edited Fantastic Adventures as well for Ziff-Davis, resigning when they moved production from Chicago to New York. He formed his own company, Clark Publishing, and began publishing Other Worlds Science Stories from 1949 to 1957, during which time he also edited and published Fate Magazine, Universe Science Fiction, Mystic Magazine, Science Stories, and Space World. His assistant in the early 1950s, and often times credited co-editor, was Bea Mahaffey. Palmer is perhaps best remembered for publishing the fiction of Richard Shaver and promoting Shaver’s stories as non-fiction. In 1961, comic author Gardner Fox paid tribute to Palmer by using his name for the DC character the Atom.

Palmer published “Diagnosis” in his magazine Other Worlds Science Stories in the March 1953 issue. The story has never been reprinted.

Donald Jensen and Mary Mason are working on experiments trying to map the subconscious to the conscious mind. Although both are brilliant scientists, Jensen still manages to be condescending to Mason and dismissive of her at times due to her gender. He also gives her a hard time about dating someone named Brannan. Mason puts up with his garbage, but at the same time she pushes back, reminding him that she is competent and capable and that what she does when she isn’t working isn’t really any of his business.

When they decide to reverse the experiment, and try to read Jensen’s brain patterns instead of Mason’s, the machine provides an actual picture of what he is thinking rather than simply the wavy lines that it usually reports and when it becomes clear to Mason that Jensen’s subconscious is picturing her naked, she slaps him and the machine shorts out, leaving both of them unconscious. Upon awakening, they check the record and learn that Jensen’s subconscious took them through a fantasy world adventure in which Dahnjen Saan had to rescue Marima Saan from the evil priest Bra Naan.

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Birthday Reviews: July Index

Wednesday, August 1, 2018 Steven H Silver Comments 1 comment

January index
February index
March index
April index
May index
June index

July 1, Genevieve Valentine: “ From the Catalogue of the Pavilion of the Uncanny and Marvellous, Scheduled for Premier at the Great Exhibition (Before the Fire)”
July 2, Kay Kenyon: “The Executioner’s Apprentice”
July 3, Michael Shea: “Fast Food”
July 4, Peter Crowther: “Cliff Rhodes and the Most Important Voyage”
July 5, Jody Lynn Nye: “Theory of Relativity”
July 6, John Langan: “The Unbearable Proximity of Mr. Dunn’s Balloons”

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Black Gate

Adventures in Fantasy Literature

Browsed by
Author: Steven H Silver

Birthday Reviews: John Varley’s “Just Another Perfect Day”

Thursday, August 9, 2018 Steven H Silver Comments 2 comments

Birthday Reviews: F. Anstey’s “The Adventure of the Snowing Globe”

Wednesday, August 8, 2018 Steven H Silver Comments 0 Comment

Birthday Reviews: David R. Bunch’s “The From-Far-Up-There-Missile Worry”

Tuesday, August 7, 2018 Steven H Silver Comments 2 comments

Birthday Reviews: Ian R. MacLeod’s “Starship Day”

Monday, August 6, 2018 Steven H Silver Comments 1 comment

Birthday Reviews: Élisabeth Vonarburg’s “Cogito”

Sunday, August 5, 2018 Steven H Silver Comments 1 comment

Birthday Reviews: Rick Norwood’s “Portal”

Saturday, August 4, 2018 Steven H Silver Comments 2 comments

Birthday Reviews: Clifford D. Simak’s “Observer”

Friday, August 3, 2018 Steven H Silver Comments 4 comments

Birthday Reviews: Robert Holdstock’s “Magic Man”

Thursday, August 2, 2018 Steven H Silver Comments 0 Comment

Birthday Reviews: Raymond A. Palmer’s “Diagnosis”

Wednesday, August 1, 2018 Steven H Silver Comments 1 comment

Birthday Reviews: July Index

Wednesday, August 1, 2018 Steven H Silver Comments 1 comment