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Steampunk, Voodoo, and the Walking Dead: Something Strange and Deadly by Susan Dennard

Steampunk, Voodoo, and the Walking Dead: Something Strange and Deadly by Susan Dennard

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Something Strange and Deadly-small Something Strange and Deadly back-small

For readers with dark tastes and a deep-seated love for romance, I recommend Something Strange and Deadly, the first in a trilogy by Susan Dennard, author of Truthwitch.

Why, you might ask? Well, Dennard has a supreme understanding of how to enhance gothic themes with an addictive steampunk flourish, and captivate her readers with antagonists you come to enjoy more than the protagonists. (Okay, that’s a stretch. But she outdid herself with her villain). Do you know how to spend a blissful Saturday evening curled up under your favorite blanket drinking tea, while freezing rain crashes against your window in the coal black darkness of the night? Then you, my friend, know the right way to appreciate this diamond in the rough.

Eleanor Fitt, a ferociously intelligent sixteen year-old from a disgraced aristocratic family in Philadelphia, longs for the return of her older brother, Elijah. When she becomes entangled in a swarm of the walking dead at the famed exhibition, a harbinger of her brother’s possible doom delivers a telegram with a cryptic message that gives her a clue to his whereabouts.

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A Fairy Tale At The Heart Of The World: The Prince of Morning Bells by Nancy Kress

A Fairy Tale At The Heart Of The World: The Prince of Morning Bells by Nancy Kress

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The Prince of Morning BellsContrary to conventional wisdom, sometimes a book’s cover gives matter enough for a fair judgment. The copy I read of Nancy Kress’ The Prince of Morning Bells is a 1981 first printing by Timescape; the book was reprinted in the year 2000 by Foxacre Press, and I learned from Black Gate supremo John O’Neill’s 2012 look at the title that a digital version came out in 2011. At any rate, the front cover of the Timescape edition promises: “In the magical tradition of The Last Unicorn, the tale of a restless young princess and her wondrous quest!” Parts of the blurb are only half-accurate, but the important part, the difficult-to-believe part, is quite correct. The Prince of Morning Bells is worth mentioning with The Last Unicorn, not just in terms of quality but in tone. It works with classic fantasy traditions, using a witty and often lightly-ironic style with a sprinkling of anachronism to tell a deep and profoundly moving tale. Kress has apparently noted the influence herself, though I don’t find the books excessively similar. Their bones are configured in different shapes. Distinctive, individual, The Prince of Morning Bells shows how a fantasy tale can transmute allegory into anti-allegory, telling a symbolic story that works as story while also working as symbol.

It is the story of Kirila, who begins as an eighteen-year-old princess discontented with what seems an increasingly unimportant life. She therefore decides to set out on a great Quest for the Heart of the World. She’s soon joined on her travels by a talking dog, Chessie, who claims to be a prince under a curse that can only be removed at the Heart of the World, which he tells her is to be found in the Tents of Omnium. Together they journey on, as Kirila encounters challenges and temptations; the story, which had opened on a comic note, gradually sounds bleaker tones and darker shades until, at the mid-point of the book, there is an unexpected structural turn. Kirila’s quest continues, but her resources and energy are taxed further than one might have imagined. The promised happy ending seems distant; and indeed the conclusion, although everything promised, is at the same time more equivocal than one might have imagined. Yet also satisfying, with real wisdom gained, Kirila thoroughly changed and developed, and a sense of both mystery and high majesty overriding all.

The book’s a fairy tale as much as fantasy, and if in the beginning it seems like a sending-up of fairy-tale cliches, it quickly grows more serious. As Kirila matures in the course of her adventures the quest gains in emotional intensity, giving the plot its centre without becoming episodic. Structurally, the book’s clever; although it divides into two halves, it’s so much of a piece it avoids a feeling of easy symmetry. Instead the midpoint does what a good midpoint’s supposed to, initiating the falling action in an unexpected way, leading through an increasing emotional intensity to an inevitable yet unpredictable conclusion. Kirila becomes an everywoman whose journey is a symbolic progress through life, yet if she begins as a generic spunky red-haired princess with a temper, she swiftly becomes an individual with distinctive gifts and flaws. While the quest defines the book, the shape of the quest follows the shape of her choices, prompted by who she is and what she wants. Fairy tale and characterisation combine.

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It’s Large: Ringworld by Larry Niven

It’s Large: Ringworld by Larry Niven

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oie_1341223VTU50tGHBack in around 1980, when I read Larry Niven’s multi-award winning Ringworld (1970) for the first time, it totally blew my mind. I had never read anything that conveyed the feeling of BIGNESS so powerfully and so well. Rereading it yesterday, I was thrilled to discover it still does. It’s got its flaws, some pretty big ones in fact, but for much of its length it remains a terrific read. Despite having won numerous awards and a career that’s spanned over five decades, it remains the book he’s best known for.

Beginning with 1964’s “The Coldest Place,” Larry Niven began laying out the history of humanity’s expansion and exploits across a 30-light year bubble of of the Milky Way he dubbed Known Space. Over the next six years, he wrote about another twenty novels and stories that span from the late 21st century to the 32nd. Along the way he introduced some of the most iconic sci-fi aliens, including the cowardly Pierson’s Puppeteers and the ferocious Kzin (who now feature in their own unending series of shared-world anthologies).

Louis Wu is bored. Bored with an Earth where everywhere and everyone has blended into a bland homogeneity. In the past, he has taken what he calls “sabbaticals,” and gone on months-long solo deep space jaunts. The 1968 story, “There Is A Tide,” describes one of his voyages in great detail.

In 2850, while celebrating his 200th birthday, wandering the globe to avoid his own guests, stepping from one teleportation booth to another, Louis suddenly appears in an unexpected location with an even more unexpected host — a Pierson’s Puppeteer. Once, the three-legged, two-headed aliens maintained a vast commercial empire, trading in highly advanced technologies. Then, two hundred years ago, they pulled up stakes and left Known Space. Having learned the galactic core had exploded and the resultant wave front would reach Known Space in 20,000 years, they decided it was time to find safety. No human ever heard from them again or knew where they went.

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The Massachusetts Mummy: Universal’s Kharis Mummy Movies

The Massachusetts Mummy: Universal’s Kharis Mummy Movies

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A new Mummy is in theaters this weekend from Universal. How is it? I’m not sure, since as of this writing I haven’t watched it yet, although I’ll attend a screening on the morning this posts. But one of my favorite movie critics, David Ehrlich, said of it: “It’s an irredeemable disaster from start to finish, an adventure that entertains only via glimpses of the adventure it should have been.” You know you’ve got problems when people start talking of their fond memories of the Brendan Fraser Mummy from the Summer of ‘99. (I have a genuine affection for that silly movie. The Jerry Goldsmith score is killer.)

If you want to know more about why plenty of folks who love the classic Universal Monsters are a bit, well, concerned about this new Tom Cruise-starring Mummy and the studio’s plans for an entire “Dark Universe” franchise, our own Sue Granquist has you covered. As for me, I have no plans to write a post about Nu-Mummy. Instead, I’m going to hang out here in the 1940s, maybe work on my victory garden, listen to some 78s of Artie Shaw and the Gramercy Five, purchase War Bonds, and watch a couple of mummy flicks.

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“A World Gone to the Dogs”: City by Clifford D. Simak

“A World Gone to the Dogs”: City by Clifford D. Simak

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These are the stories that the Dogs tell when the fires burn high and the wind is from the north. Then each family circle gathers at the hearthstone and the pups sit silently and listen and when the story’s done they ask many questions:

“What is Man?” they’ll ask.

Or perhaps: “What is a city?”

Or: “What is a war?”

from the Editor’s Preface to City

oie_671529XHRO0a33City (1952), by Clifford D. Simak, unfolds over thousands of years, telling of the end of humanity, the rise of dogs and robots to terrestrial preeminence, and finally, the near abandonment of Earth. It’s a fix-up of nine stories, eight written between 1944 and 1951, and one more, added to later editions, in 1973. It is a book conceived of in anger and despair, yet one that strives to posit a better, more humane world — even if it’s one devoid of humans.

Perhaps because we, by which I mean the post-WW II generations, have grown up aware of the deepest, most evil tendencies of humanity, it’s difficult to appreciate completely the anger and despair over what happened during the 1930s and 40s. Years after its publication, Simak said:

“The series was written in a revulsion against mass killing and as a protest against war.”

That revulsion was so intense that Simak contemplated the extinction of his own species and its replacement by a better one.

I suppose following the First World War, there was some hope that humanity would avoid that sort of mass slaughter again. Instead, it only increased by many magnitudes. In an essay on City, Robert Silverberg wrote that the story “Desertion” was written in 1943 in direct response to reports from Europe about the Holocaust. Simak was a gentle writer, so there is little anger or bitterness in the novel, but he wasn’t prone to sentimentality either. His depiction of humanity’s downfall and supplantation is remorseless.

When Simak collected the stories, he presented them as a tales told by dogs to each other as perhaps no more than legends. For each story, Simak wrote an interstitial explaining what different dog philosophers thought about the veracity of each story, as well as any meaning it might hold for their society.

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Self-published Book Review: Clearwater Dawn by Scott Fitzgerald Gray

Self-published Book Review: Clearwater Dawn by Scott Fitzgerald Gray

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Clearwater Dawn — Ebook CoverI just spent the weekend on a ship, with very limited Internet access, so I’m afraid this month’s review is a bit late. The good news is that there is a self-published book review this month. I’d like to keep the monthly schedule going, so please keep sending me books to review–see the instructions here. 

Clearwater Dawn by Scott Fitzgerald Gray is a love story. It’s about the love between the half-Ilvani orphan Chriani and Lauresa, the daughter of an Ilmar prince and a sorcerous Leisanmira.

Chriani is the apprentice of Lauresa’s warden, Barien. At the age of eighteen, Chriani should have his own commission, but his temper, and Barien’s outsider status at court, have left him an unranked tyro. Despite this, he is very good at his job, aided by the preternatural senses he inherited from his Ilvani father, and the training in moving quietly and picking locks he received from his mother.  On a night of betrayal and death, Barien is murdered, and Prince Chanist marches off to war against the Valnirata Ilvani war clans. Chriani is left behind, unofficial guardian of the princess, sole keeper of Barien’s last words. When Lauresa hears them, and learns that Chriani was unable to share them with the prince before he left, she heads out to make sure her father learns of the betrayal Barien revealed. Chriani catches up with her before she gets far, and accompanies her to find her father, who may know more than they expect.

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Edgar Rice Burroughs’s Pellucidar Saga: Back to the Stone Age

Edgar Rice Burroughs’s Pellucidar Saga: Back to the Stone Age

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back-to-stone-age-first-edition-cover-john-coleman-burroughsI’ve now arrived at that period in the Pellucidar series. The period any Edgar Rice Burroughs series eventually reaches: the late 1930s. I took a break from my Pellucidar retrospective to look at Burroughs’s 1913 horror-adventure novel The Monster Men just to delay taking the next step and driving my snowmobile headfirst into the hard ice of the poorest period of Burroughs’s career. But now I’m here and must accept the facts of the late ‘30s and an author trudging through his weakest creative years. Maybe it won’t be so bad. Perhaps I’ll discover a few pleasures in the last three Pellucidar books.

Anyway, enough procrastination. I’m getting on the snowmobile.

Our Saga: Beneath our feet lies a realm beyond the most vivid daydreams of the fantastic … Pellucidar. A subterranean world formed along the concave curve inside the earth’s crust, surrounding an eternally stationary sun that eliminates the concept of time. A land of savage humanoids, fierce beasts, and reptilian overlords, Pellucidar is the weird stage for adventurers from the topside layer — including a certain Lord Greystoke. The series consists of six novels, one which crosses over with the Tarzan series, plus a volume of linked novellas, published between 1914 and 1963.

Today’s Installment: Back to the Stone Age (1937)

Previous Installments: At the Earth’s Core (1914), Pellucidar (1915), Tanar of Pellucidar (1929), Tarzan at the Earth’s Core (1929–30)

The Backstory

The ending of Tarzan at the Earth’s Core set the scene for a direct follow-up. Wilhelm von Horst, one of the German members of the O-220 expedition to Pellucidar to rescue David Innes, was still stranded somewhere in the inner world, and Jason Gridley chose to remain in Pellucidar to locate him. But other projects and business concerns prevented Burroughs from moving fast into writing this proposed sequel. He wouldn’t start work on the new Pellucidar novel until January 1935, writing it under the working title Back to the Stone Age: A Romance of the Inner World. It took him eight months to finish the 80,000-word novel, an unusually protracted length for him. And that was only the beginning of the difficulties.

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In 500 Words or Less … Never Now Always by Desirina Boskovich

In 500 Words or Less … Never Now Always by Desirina Boskovich

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oie_21364ndRY5yGNever Now Always
By Desirina Boskovich
Broken Eye Books (88 pages, $9.99 paperback, June 2017)

A while back I had an idea for a short story about people caught up in a massive alien invasion, where humanity is rounded up and imprisoned in gray, windowless compounds while their captors run nefarious experiments, all of which is part of some mysterious, overarching plot a la Lost and the like. Then I told myself something like that has been done so many times that it wasn’t worth bothering, and I tucked the idea away on a mental shelf and haven’t looked at it since.

I bring this up because the novella Never Now Always by Desirina Boskovich takes that core premise of people imprisoned and experimented on by mysterious overlords and spins it so effectively, adding layers of dark surrealism and uncertainty to create a deeply compelling story. Never Now Always has a War of the Worlds/The Fifth Wave vibe with a literary style, propelled by the fact that the story’s three protagonists (and practically the only characters focused on) are constantly having their memories stolen and/or modified, stripping away most of their identity by removing the thing that makes each of us distinct. Main character Lolo knows that she has to find her sister, Tess, but everything else is an uncertain blur, to the point that she doesn’t even know the words for things. Boskovich weaves those language gaps into the narrative with a subtlety that is also easy to read and follow – something that a lot of surrealist and literary fiction doesn’t pull off.

There are cycles repeated here, as Lolo and the others try to find and support each other and ultimately escape, but the ongoing layers of mystery means that there is never a moment without intrigue. Is their bizarre prison on Earth, or somewhere else? Are Lolo and the others children, or adults who have lost their semantic and episodic memories – or something else? Are the Caretakers around them seeking to experiment, indoctrinate, or possibly protect these humans from self-inflicted harm?

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Rebellion Worlds, Rocklike Aliens, and Cubes from Space: Rich Horton on The Rebellious Stars by Isaac Asimov & An Earth Gone Mad by Roger Dee

Rebellion Worlds, Rocklike Aliens, and Cubes from Space: Rich Horton on The Rebellious Stars by Isaac Asimov & An Earth Gone Mad by Roger Dee

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The Rebellious Stars Isaac Asimov-small An Earth Gone Mad Roger Dee-small

Rich Horton continues his tireless exploration of the Ace Doubles, this time looking at a 1954 pairing of Isaac Asimov’s second novel The Stars, Like Stars (re-titled here The Rebellious Stars), and the only SF novel by Roger Dee, An Earth Gone Mad. Here’s Rich.

The Rebellious Stars is better known as Tyrann, under which title it appeared as a Galaxy serial in 1951. (OK, it’s even BETTER known as The Stars, Like Dust…) In this edition it is about 67,000 words long, and the book is labeled “Complete and Unabridged,” so as far as I know it’s the same as the standard edition….

I was perhaps only 12 when I read The Stars, Like Dust. I’ve always remembered it, if only dimly, with pleasure… The story opens as Biron Farrill, the heir of the Rancher of Widemos on the planet Nephelos, is about to graduate from his university studies on Earth. He is wakened one night by a ticking which he soon determines is a bomb — an assassination attempt. Soon Sander Jonti, a friend of his from the university reveals that his father has been arrested by the Tyranni, the harsh ruling class that controls some 50 planets near the Horsehead Nebula, including Nephelos. It seems Biron’s father was involved in a resistance movement, and Jonti is as well. Jonti convinces Biron that his life is in immediate danger… The plot takes several twists from that point — it is all rather intricately designed — before reaching a somewhat surprising (though dare I say rather guessable) conclusion… while the plot is perhaps overcomplicated, and depends quite a lot on people acting in extremely convoluted ways, it is worked out somewhat satisfactorily in the puzzle-unraveling sense.

Matthew Wuertz reviewed the novel for us in its original Galaxy incarnation from 1951, and noted the similarities to a certain multi-billion dollar SF property.

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In Defense of an Abominable Personage: Perfume: The Story of a Murderer by Patrick Suskind

In Defense of an Abominable Personage: Perfume: The Story of a Murderer by Patrick Suskind

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Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (Constantin Film, 2006)

When someone tells you to pick a favorite book, and you’re the type of person who reads with a gnawing ache for a good story, selecting just one can prove daunting. Not so for yours truly.

One day my mom, out of the profound goodness of her heart, surprised me with a spontaneous visit to Half Price Books. There she gave me the gift of Perfume: the Story of a Murderer by Patrick Suskind. I fell in love with it the way you fall for the love of your life; a part of me that had hitherto hidden from my reach sewed itself into the fabric of my heart.

I wasn’t accustomed to reading books in which the implied Devil’s spawn lures you through the pages. Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, the anchor of the novel, has the misfortune of assuming this role due to his absence of a human scent. He thus embarks on a treacherously erotic quest for the perfect odor that can disguise him as an ordinary person.

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