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Birthday Reviews: Edward Wellen’s “Barbarossa”

Birthday Reviews: Edward Wellen’s “Barbarossa”

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Since I realize I jumped the gun and moved Walter Jon Williams’s birthday up a couple of weeks with my Birthday Review published earlier today, here is someone who was actually born on October 2.

Cover by Kevin Davidson
Cover by Kevin Davidson

Edward Wellen was born on October 2, 1919 and died on January 15, 2011.

Most of Wellen’s publications were short stories and he was more active in the mystery field than in science fiction, although he began publishing in the genre in 1952 with the non-fact article “Origins of Galactic Slang” in Galaxy. In 1971 he published his only science fiction novel.

“Barbarossa” was initially published in the June 1973 issue of Vertex: The Magazine of Science Fiction, edited by Donald J. Pfell. It was reprinted in the anthology Fantastic World War II in 1990, edited by Frank McSherry, Jr.

Wellen briefly explores the fate of a Nazi U-boat commander who refused to surrender to the Allies when Admiral Doenitz gave the order following Hitler’s death at the end of World War II. Using every trick he could think of, Helmut Niemans managed to escape the Allies, jettisoning enough flotsam from the ship that it was believed to be lost. Instead, he spent the next twenty-odd years as a pirate, picking up crew as he could to replace the Germans who died, tried to escape, or mutiny.

Less a story than a vignette showing how Niemens manages to continue adding to his crew, with a flashback to explain his history, Wellen fails to show how the ship manages to remain functional, although ever-decreasingly, through the years. He also doesn’t discuss how Niemens is able to avoid any sort of detection. Instead, the Commander is shown as a sad Captain Nemo, awaiting the revival of the Nazi ideology while he crews his boat with a rag-tag collection of slaves who don’t believe in his vision. Wellen also ignores the fourteen crewmen who were aboard the boat during World War II, and doesn’t clarify where their loyalties lie — whether to Niemens, the Reich, or simply remaining alive in their tight and smelly quarters.

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Autumn Short Story Roundup

Autumn Short Story Roundup

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hfqIt’s been more than a piece, heck, even more than a while, since I’ve done one of these. I’m glad to be back because there’s been some really good short fiction published in the last couple of months. I’m not going to get to everything, but I am going to get to the best — Heroic Fantasy Quarterly 37 and Tales From the Magician’s Skull No. 2.

HFQ 37 has four stories and three poems. The continued use of evocative black and white art makes it my favorite looking ezine out there, but it’s the high quality of the stories that matters.

P. Djeli Clark kicks off the issue with the more-than-a-little grim “The Paladin of Golota.” Teffe is a young boy in the decaying town of Am Amara. He survives by robbing the corpses of the stream of warriors who have come to his town to fight the demon worms that infest the surrounding lands. Contrary to his fellow street kids, Teffe draws a line at cutting the throats of the wounded, instead waiting until they die on their own. This slight sense of honor leads him into a conversation with the fighter, Zahrea. She knew coming to Am Amara meant her death was likely, but came anyway.

“You’d die just to become a hero?” he asked.

She sat back and closed her eyes before saying: “Heroes give the world hope. They fill our tales and stories. There is a reason we do not make gods our heroes, but instead mortals who became more.”

Clark is a writer whose work I’ve admired very much in the past and this is my favorite story of the month. The story is grim, but unlike so many such stories, Clark not only provides a moment of grace in the darkness, but its entirety is built around that moment.

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Birthday Reviews: Donald A. Wollheim’s “Blueprint”

Birthday Reviews: Donald A. Wollheim’s “Blueprint”

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Cover by Hannes Bok
Cover by Hannes Bok

Donald A. Wollheim was born on October 1, 1914 and died on November 2, 1990.

Wollheim entered science fiction fandom at its birth and was responsible for a meeting in Philadelphia between New York and Philadelphia science fiction fans which is considered by some to be the first science fiction convention. He was a member of the Science Fiction League, founded the Fantasy Amateur Press Association (FAPA), and the Futurians. He was one of the Futurians not allowed into the first Worldcon as part of the “Exclusion Act.” In the 1940s, he began working as an editor as well as a writer, editing for Avon Books and later Ace before starting up his own line, DAW Books. From 1965 through his death, Wollheim edited an annual World’s Best SF anthology series.

In 1975, Aussiecon One, the 33rd Worldcon, presented Wollheim with a Special Award for being the “Fan Who Has Done Everything.” Wollheim was inducted into the First Fandom Hall of Fame in 1975 Wollheim won a World Fantasy Special Professional Award in 1981 for DAW Books and a Special Convention Award in 1986. He also won the Milford Lifetime Achievement Award in 1980, the I-Con Award and Forry Award in 1987. He and his wife, Elsie, earned a British Fantasy Special Award in 1984. In 2002, he was inducted posthumously into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame and in 2010, SFWA awarded him the Solstice Award, which was accepted by his daughter, Betsy. Wollheim was the Guest of Honor at Nolacon II, the 46th Worldcon in 1988.

Wollheim used a variety of pseudonyms, including Martin Borrow, Graham Conway, Millard Verne Gordon, David Grinnell, Martin Pearson, Allan Warland, W. Malcolm White, and Lawrence Woods. He collaborated, as author and editor, with George Ernsberger, Forrest J Ackerman, Terry Carr, Arthur W. Saha, C.M. Kornbluth, Robert A. W. Lowndes, John Michel, and Lin Carter.

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Birthday Reviews: S.N. Lewitt’s “Festival”

Birthday Reviews: S.N. Lewitt’s “Festival”

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Cover by Nicholas Jainschigg
Cover by Nicholas Jainschigg

S.N. (Shariann) Lewitt was born on September 29, 1954. She has also published as Rick North and Gordon Kendall, the latter in collaboration with Susan Shwartz.

Lewis has published under her full name as well as her initials. Her novels include original works such as Angels at Apogee, Rebel Sutra, and Memento Mori, as well as the Star Trek novel Cybersong. She collaborated with Shwartz on the novel White Wing and has written two books in The Young Astronauts series as Rick North.

“Festival” appeared in the Summer 1994 issue of Pirate Writings, edited by Edward J. McFadden. It was reprinted in The Best of Pirate Writings: Tales of Fantasy, Mystery & Science Fiction, also edited by McFadden.

Lewitt has set “Festival” on an alien world settled by humans. The early settlers found the world to be an inhospitable place with a jungle that seemed practically sentient and intent on destroying the colony. Eventually, technological means were invented to keep the jungle from encroaching on the colony and at the same time a raucous annual festival emerged, which invariably resulted in the deaths of some of the revelers. Secret Societies sprung up to find those who died in the revels and take their bodies outside as a tribute to the jungle.

Sandro is preparing not only for the festival, donning a costume like all the other revelers, but also for his induction into the Red Men’s Society. The story talks about his preparations and then goes into a lengthy flashback to give the reader the history, intentionally vague, of the planet and the festival, before connecting Sandro to his sponsor for membership in the Red Men’s Society, his co-worker Chema. The two men go out on patrol, looking for the bodies of the dead to drag out into the jungle while wearing full environmental suits so they won’t have to worry about their own exposure.

The short length of the story combined with its flashback nature gives it a disjointed feel. Lewitt is not able to give sufficient coverage to either the origins of the colony’s culture nor to Sandro and his desire to become part of the Red Men’s Society or his reaction to the secrets he is exposed to. While his reaction to those secrets is one which seems completely human and normal, it doesn’t seem to take the colony’s values into consideration.

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July-August 2018 Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction: A Review

July-August 2018 Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction: A Review

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Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction July August 2018-small

Having just come out of the 1969 Retro-Reviews, AND Black Gate Book Club’s 1981 Downbelow Station, I wanted to dip into the modern SF/F scene a bit before starting the 1979 Retro-Reviews. I delved into Fantasy & Science Fiction, July/August 2018. I’ll be talking about the fiction and poetry in this review, spoiler-free, but skipping book review columns and such.

This is a somewhat special issue, with stories inspired by (or matching) the excellent Bob Eggleton cover art “Big Mars.”

“The Phobos Experience” by Mary Robinette Kowal

 
Darlene Ritika works on the Bradbury Space Center, orbiting Mars, in this alternate history tale. She is hiding a severe case of vertigo from her superiors and co-workers and gets called out by the Man to go to Phobos and find an entrance to a series of secret caves. They find a cave, but discover they are not the first people to be there. A slow-motion chase/fight ensues in the low gravity. With the heart of the story being such a slow scene, the story in its entirety seemed really rushed to me.

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Birthday Reviews: Willard E. Hawkins’s “The Dwindling Sphere”

Birthday Reviews: Willard E. Hawkins’s “The Dwindling Sphere”

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Cover by Gilmore
Cover by Gilmore

Willard E. Hawkins was born on September 27, 1887 and died on April 17, 1970.

Hawkins only published eleven short stories of genre interest over a span of nearly thirty years, although he published his first story as early as 1912. In addition to writing various genres, he established World Press, for which he was the publisher and editor of mostly non-fiction books about the West. He also worked as a newspaper editor for various Colorado papers, including Denver Times and the Rocky Mountain News. His first genre story, “The Dead Man’s Tale,” appeared in the debut issue of Weird Tales.

“The Dwindling Sphere” was originally published in the March 1940 issue of Astounding Science-Fiction, edited by John W. Campbell, Jr. Laurence Janiver reprinted it in his 1966 anthology Masters’ Choice (a.k.a. 18 Greatest Science Fiction Stories). The story was picked up by Isaac Asimov and Martin H. Greenberg for their anthology The Great Science Fiction Stories Volume 2: 1940 (a.k.a. Isaac Asimov Presents the Golden Years of Science Fiction), which caused it to be translated into German in 1980. In 2017, Hank Davis used the story in his anthology If This Goes Wrong…

Hawkins explores several generations of a single family in “The Dwindling Sphere.” The first section, set in 1945, discusses how Frank Baxter accidentally created the Plastocene process while attempting to find a way to create atomic energy. He was partially successful in creating a reaction, but the energy he was seeking completely dissipated, leaving behind a product which would revolutionize manufacturing. Subsequent sections focus on his descendants who discover Baxter’s journals and add on to them as they deal with the long-term repercussions of his discovery.

Hawkins deals with a society in which the working class has been turned into a luxury class since only a small number of people are needed to supply the world with plastocene, and therefore everything it needs, although food production hasn’t (yet) been switched to plastocene. In this period, the new luxury class is discovering that work provides them with a raison d’etre. Several hundred years later, society has evolved more and the early Baxters have been all but forgotten until a distant relation finds their diary, which corrects many historical misconceptions. By that time, plastocene production is beginning to threaten the livability of Earth, leading to the final sections of the story in which the Baxters’ descendants are forced off Earth by the long-term success of plastocene.

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Birthday Reviews: Peter David’s “Alternate Genesis”

Birthday Reviews: Peter David’s “Alternate Genesis”

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Cover by Roger Stine
Cover by Roger Stine

Peter David was born on September 23, 1956.

Peter David’s novel Star Fleet Academy: Worf’s First Adventure received the Golden Duck Award for Middle Grades in 1994 and his Star Trek novel The Rift was nominated for a Prometheus Award by the Libertarian Futurist Society. In addition to his science fiction and fantasy, David has written for several comic books, including The Incredible Hulk, Aquaman, Supergirl, and Spider-Man 2099. His television career includes scripts for Babylon 5, Young Justice, and the creation of Space Cases with Bill Mumy. His work in comics has earned him an Eisner Award, a Wizard Fan Award, a Julie Award, and a GLAAD Media Award. In 2011, he was named a Grandmaster by the International Association of Media Tie-In Writers.

“Alternate Genesis” first appeared in the June 1980 issue of Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, edited by George H. Scithers. It was reprinted by Jim Reeber and Clifford Lawrence Meth in 1997 in the anthology of Jewish science fiction Stranger Kaddish.

David uses the structure of the opening verses of Genesis as the format for his shaggy dog story “Alternate Genesis,” in which God creates the world in a topsy-turvy manner, following the guidelines in Genesis, but naming things differently so darkness became daytime and light becomes nighttime with fish created in the sky and birds in the sea, only correcting that latter when it shows itself to be unsustainable.

In this version of creation God, a woman, creates Eve in her own image, but when Eve asks for a mate, God ignores her, providing no response or explanation to Eve for the lack of a mate like the ones given to all of the other animals. Eventually when Eve renounces God, God sees fit to offer an explanation, the entire point of the story.

Had David relied on just the one punchline at the end, “Alternate Genesis” would not have worked, being too long a set-up for a single joke. The topsy-turvydom of creation, however, allows the long set-up to work and even distracts from the clues to the final joke, making it a much stronger piece.

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Galaxy Science Fiction, April 1954: A Retro-Review

Galaxy Science Fiction, April 1954: A Retro-Review

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Galaxy Science Fiction April 1954-small Galaxy Science Fiction April 1954-back-small

The April, 1954 issue is one of the more remarkable issues of Galaxy Science Fiction, in my opinion. I’m amazed at the quality of the stories. There have been many good issues, of course, but this is one of those rare issues that jumps out at me. It’s like watching a beloved TV series where a few episodes really stand out. It’s the nature of art, I suppose. Every piece is its own and affects people differently; some may enjoy it, some may reject it, some may be confused, some may be enlightened. And the same artist might create multiple pieces that evoke different reactions from the same person. Rather than ramble on about my thoughts on art, I’ll return to the topic of this article and review the fiction.

“The Midas Plague” by Frederik Pohl — In Morey’s world, consuming is mandatory. Houses, clothes, and food must be purchased and used to meet quota. There must not be waste. Those at the high-end of society have low quotas and can live the high-life of one-room houses, perhaps without any cars. But those at the low-end of society struggle in consuming enormous mansions, luxury cars, and so much of material products and food that there aren’t enough hours to consume it all. Morey only works one day per week because the demands of consuming take the rest of his time. Robots have helped to create a world where there is an abundance of everything, forcing the quotas in order to avoid waste and support the massive production.

Morey’s wife Cherry comes from a well-off family who has very little to consume. She loves Morey, but it’s a difficult adjustment to his lower-class life of consuming so much. Morey tries to help her by consuming more, but they’re not making their quotas.

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Birthday Reviews: Jerry B. Oltion’s “The Menace from Earth”

Birthday Reviews: Jerry B. Oltion’s “The Menace from Earth”

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Cover by Randy Asplund-Faith
Cover by Randy Asplund-Faith

Jerry Oltion was born on September 22, 1957.

Oltion was nominated for a Hugo Award and won a Nebula Award for his novella “Abandon in Place,” which he later expanded to novel length. He has also won the Endeavour Award for his novel Anywhere But Here. His story “The Astronaut from Wyoming,” written in collaboration with Adam-Troy Castro, won the 2007 Seiun Award. Oltion has also collaborated with Bruce Bethke, Stephen L. Gillett, Kevin Hardisty, Nina Kiriki Hoffman, Alan Bard Newcomer, Kent Patterson, Robert Thurston, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Amy Axt-Hanson, Elton Elliott, and his wife, Kathy Oltion. For a few years, beginning in 1992, Oltion presented on an irregular basis the Jerry Oltion Really Good Story Award, but ended the award when he realized how many people were sending him stories hoping to receive the honor.

Jerry Oltion published “The Menace from Earth” in the October 1999 issue of Analog Science Fiction and Fact, edited by Stanley Schmidt. The story was the seventh to appear in his “Astral Astronauts” series about explorers who find a way to allow their consciousnesses explore the galaxy in a space ship and adjust the amount of mass and solidity their forms has.

The title of “The Menace from Earth” immediately calls to mind the more famous 1957 novelette and 1959 short story collection by Robert A. Heinlein, which certainly inspired Oltion’s title and influenced part of the story. However, Oltion’s story is not a slavish retelling of Heinlein’s, and if he hadn’t titled it for the Heinlein work the similarities may have gone unnoticed.

“The Menace from Earth” takes place on and near a planet in orbit around Alpha Centauri, where Oltion’s astronauts, his narrator, Liam, and Tilbey, are enjoying the local hospitality, which would seem to be based on the greetings received by explorers in stories of Polynesia. Each man has paired up with one of the local women, Kylona, Yavetra, and Etinitu and are living a life of luxury in a paradise, although only Liam has plans to stay when the others move on. Their idyll is interrupted by the arrival of a UNASA ship using their technology, but much improved.

The astral astronauts work to defend the world against the interloper, whether it is by destroying her ship or trying to convince her not to report her findings back the UNASA. Until they know her intentions, she is definitely a potential menace from Earth. Their ability to alter their mass, however, means that the astral astronauts and the interloper can fly by riding air currents, and it is this portion of the story which pays the most direct homage to Heinlein’s story, not only in the flying, but also in the danger to the narrator’s girlfriend, Kylona.

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Birthday Reviews: Damon Knight’s “Backward, O Time”

Birthday Reviews: Damon Knight’s “Backward, O Time”

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Cover by Virgil Finlay
Cover by Virgil Finlay

Damon Knight was born on September 19, 1922 and died on April 15, 2002. He was married to author Kate Wilhelm. Over the years, he used the pseudonyms Stuart Fleming and Donald Laverty. As an author, he collaborated with James Blish and Kenneth Bulmer. He edited a variety of anthologies and magazines with Martin H. Greenberg, Bill Evans, and Joseph D. Olander. A member of the Futurians, Knight published a history of the organization and also inspired the founding of the fannish group the National Fantasy Fan Federation (N3F) and founded the Science Fiction Writers of America (SFWA), and the Milford Writer’s Workshop which gave birth to the Clarion Workshop.

Damon Knight won a Hugo Award for Best Reviewer in 1956 and in 2001 his story “To Serve Man” was awarded a Retro Hugo Award. He won a Jupiter Award in 1977 for his short story “I See You.” The Science Fiction Research Association presented him with a Pilgrim Award in 1975 for Lifetime Contribution to Scholarship. He and Wilhelm both received the Gallun Award from I-Con in 1996. In 1995, he was named a SFWA Grand Master. The award’s name was changed to the Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award following his death in 2002 and in 2003 he was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame. Knight, along with Wilhelm, were the guests of honor at Noreascon II, the 1980 Worldcon in Boston.

Knight published “This Way to the Regress” in the August 1956 issue of Galaxy Science Fiction, edited by H.L. Gold. The story was also translated for the February 1958 French language edition of the magazine. By the time Knight included it in his 1966 collection Turning On: Thirteen Stories, Knight had changed the title to “Backward, O Time.” The first title, of course, is a play on the sign P.T. Barnum used in his side shows, the latter comes from a hymn written by Elizabeth Akers Allen. The story appeared in French again in 1970 and 1976 as well as in English in 1976 in The Best of Damon Knight. The latter book was translated into both Spanish and Dutch, meaning additional versions of the story. In 2014 it was included in the Gollancz collection of Knight’s works Far Out/In Deep/Off Centre/Turning On, which was an omnibus edition of his first four collections.

As the title would suggest, “Backward, O Time” is a time slippage story in which the main character, and probably all the other characters, live their lives backwards. Knight follows the life of Lawrence Sullivan from the moment of his birth in a car accident to his eventual death, being inserted into his mother’s womb. At first, the reader is under the impression that in his moment of death, Sullivan flashes back on his life, but it becomes clear that what Knight is doing is much more experimental.

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