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A Jaunt Through Clark Ashton Smith’s Collected Fantasies—Vol. 2: The Door to Saturn

A Jaunt Through Clark Ashton Smith’s Collected Fantasies—Vol. 2: The Door to Saturn

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clark-ashton-smith-vol-2-door-to-saturn-coverI’m back from my latest amble through the collected SF and fantasy stories of Clark Ashton Smith from publisher Night Shade. I’m reading these at a gradual pace, sprinkling a story here and there among whatever else I’m reading. It’s like having Clark Ashton Smith casually hang out with you for months at a time, a darkly erudite and sporadically mordantly humorous traveling companion who occasionally asks: “Hey, what are you reading there? Well, let me tell you this story I just thought up…”

Same caveat as for Vol. 1: If you’re a Clark Ashton Smith neophyte, these Night Shade chronological editions aren’t the best starting point discovering him. I recommend the Penguin Classics collection The Dark Eidolon and Other Fantasies for readers who want a quality primer with a collection of some of Smith’s stories in an inexpensive and easily available volume.

Contents

Vol. 2 features stories written over a more abbreviated period than in the previous volume: July 1930 to May 1931. Each story is listed below with its original date and place of publication — often (as is the case with “The Red World of Polaris” and “The Face by the River”) many years after when it was first composed, and sometimes in a modified form different from the corrected text Night Shade presents.

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Spacial Delivery by Gordon R. Dickson

Spacial Delivery by Gordon R. Dickson

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oie_84350M5i9fCBeSpacial Delivery (1961), a slight and slender book, is a relic of a past age when not every new book by an author had to be some sort of masterpiece. The same year this book came out, Dickson published two other novels and ten short stories. Over the course of fifty years of published writing, he wrote 55 novels and nearly 200 short stories. I can’t say for sure, but that sort of volume seems to have given him the freedom to write whatever sort of stories he wanted, whether high-concept space opera like his Childe Cycle, pulp fare like Hour of the Horde, comic stories like his Hoka collaborations with Poul Anderson, or middle-of-the-road standalones like this book.

When my friend Carl tossed me this back in the early eighties, he told me it was a comedy. I trusted him and gave it a read. It was funny, not in the laugh-out-loud style of the Hoka stories (which if you haven’t read, are about teddy bear-like aliens who have trouble distinguishing fact from fiction, and act out human stories, including Sherlock Holmes and The Jungle Book), but good for a chuckle or two. On rereading, the humor’s a little thin, but it’s a decent enough way to spend a couple of hours.

Out in a crucial sector of space between regions of human and Hemnoid hegemony, lies Dilbia, a planet of high mountains and deep forests. The Dilbians have a rugged, frontier-style civilization, with people living in small towns or with their clans in forests. The Dilbians themselves, well, the cover gives it away. They sort of look like bears — very big bears.

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Self-published Book Review: The Seventh Colour by Will Davidson

Self-published Book Review: The Seventh Colour by Will Davidson

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Seventh_ColourI’m still running behind on book reviews, but I’ve started to receive submissions again. Please keep them coming–see the instructions here.

The Seventh Colour by Will Davidson is the tale of a society in stagnation. A thousand years ago, the elves departed, and the dwarves’ slow decline led to their eventual extinction, leaving the humans alone in the world. But magic faded with the elves, and the humans were never able to match the dwarves’ technical ingenuity, so all they had were the technology and social structures left by their departed allies. And whether they worked for the dwarves and the elves or not, human society is dying trying to cling to those things.

The story is told in multiple ways. The first, and most straightforward, is the view of Tomas, an investigator in Rivertop looking into the disappearance of a number of individuals whom his boss, Victor, believes were involved in an incident that injured Victor and killed his wife. Interspersed with Tomas’s perspective is the redacted confession of subject T187356, who recounts his harrowing encounters with highwaymen and orks and the criminal rebellion that his aunt and uncles are involved with. These converge when Tomas meets the vanished individuals, and we recognize the interrogated subject as one Alyster Trale. He and his sister, Elyssa, are currently under the protection of their parents’ friends. Far from arresting his suspects, Tomas joins them on their journey to find someplace safe for Alyster and Elyssa, and he hears them out as they travel.

Merson, Forba, Rauor, Lias, Lariad, and Pepina were all good friends at University, and like many University students, they held many long discussions about the ills of the world, and what could be done about them. They hit upon the idea that they should seek out the vanished elves, and went about learning what they could of them. Much of the novel is their account to Tomas of their quest, twenty years before this new journey he’s joined them on.

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Pellucidar Break: The Monster Men by Edgar Rice Burroughs

Pellucidar Break: The Monster Men by Edgar Rice Burroughs

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monster-men-original-dust-jacketI’ve reached the halfway point on my retrospective of Edgar Rice Burroughs’s Pellucidar novels — and if I’ve learned one thing from having done two other complete ERB retrospectives (aside from never get in a flying vehicle with Carson Napier), it’s that I should take a break before plunging forward into the second half. Or maybe plunging down into the second half. Once a Burroughs series enters the late 1930s, the drop off in quality can get frightfully steep.

So before going Back to the Stone Age, I’m rewinding to the salad days of ERB’s career and exploring a lesser-known work: a take on Frankenstein and The Island of Dr. Moreau filtered through the pulp jungle adventure; a book of great promises and great frustrations.

The story that would eventually become The Monster Men is an ambitious thematic and character experiment that explodes with the exuberance of early Edgar Rice Burroughs. It’s also a misfire where generic pulp elements and a terrible ending undermines the potential for one of its author’s most intriguing works. The ebullience of youthful ERB bursts through, but the control and follow-through with complex ideas seem to have been left to the concurrent Tarzan, Mars, and Pellucidar series.

Burroughs wrote the novel in April 1913 during a feverish period between The Cave Girl and The Warlord of Mars. He may have devised the idea in late 1912 as a short story. But he soon discovered the short story wasn’t his medium and expanded the idea into a full-length book titled “Number Thirteen.” It appeared as “A Man without a Soul” in the November 1913 issue of All Story. For its first book publication in 1929, the name was changed to The Monster Men, by far the weakest of the trio of titles, but the one we’re stuck with. “The Man without a Soul” had been used as the title for the U.K. book publication of The Mucker, which probably accounts for the change. The title coincidence between these two books, however, isn’t exactly a coincidence, something I’ll examine later.

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In 500 Words or Less: Ghost Talkers by Mary Robinette Kowal

In 500 Words or Less: Ghost Talkers by Mary Robinette Kowal

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Ghost Talkers Mary Robinette Kowal-smallGhost Talkers
By Mary Robinette Kowal
Tor (304 pages, $24.99 hardcover/$11.99 paperback, August 2016)

Every year I end up teaching at least one section of Grade 10 Canadian History as part of my day job (yes, I work with high school students by choice on top of writing) and begin the course by talking about the First World War. I’ve discussed trenches, the Battle of the Somme, German artillery, etc. so often that that particular stretch of history feels like a long-time colleague. Which meant that Mary Robinette Kowal’s Ghost Talkers (my first exploration of her work, though I’ve listened to Writing Excuses for years) was interesting for me not just as an avid reader but also as a historian, to see how introducing mediums and spirits to the front lines would change the nature of the war.

The amount of research that Kowal must have done for this novel shows. From the dialogue between the characters, to the references to actual events and aspects of period culture and slang, the characters in Ghost Talkers felt the same as individuals from primary sources I’ve read for my teaching. At the same time, the characters are realistic and easy to relate to; central protagonist Ginger, one of the senior members of the army’s Spirit Corps, is particularly compelling because she’s motivated by the death and grief around her (some of which is quite personal) but keeps pushing herself to discover the threat against her people before it’s too late.

Ginger’s entire story is set against the historical fact of women’s status and patriarchal society at the time of the First World War (in Canada most women couldn’t vote at the time) and since part of the story is about women proving their worth in a “man’s war,” I’m left wondering what would happen at the end of this alternate war. Would women be forced to go back to their traditional roles, like in our world, or would things be different?

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Trader to the Stars by Poul Anderson

Trader to the Stars by Poul Anderson

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oie_221517P0i26eYZI have no idea which Poul Anderson book I picked up first. It might have been The Winter of the World or Hrolf Kraki’s Saga. Whichever it was, I enjoyed it. It was enough to get me grabbing books at random from the big stack of his work my dad had bought. I’ve read a ton of his books, but with nearly seventy novels and sixty short story collections to his name, I still have plenty to go.

I’d venture a guess that Poul Anderson, multiple Hugo- and Nebula-winner, is probably better remembered for his fantasy than for his science fiction. Since his death in 2001, it seems his fantasy writing, the seminal swords & sorcery novel The Broken Sword in particular, has acquired a much greater reputation than his sci-fi.

While he wrote many standalone sci-fi novels, a large number were part of a specific future history. The Technic Civilization covers humanity’s spread across the stars, beginning, chronologically, with the story “The Saturn Game” set in the year 2055 and ending with “Starfog” in 7100. The majority of the stories take place during the second half of the third millennium and feature Falstaffian merchant prince Nicholas van Rijn, his agent David Falkayn, or Imperial secret agent Dominic Flandry.

Anderson’s future history stories are a mix of pulp space opera and hard sci-fi. At the heart of many of the stories is an explicit scientific conundrum that needs to be answered. Each puzzle, though, is couched in adventures with alien barbarians, enemy planets, or galactic empires.

Trader to the Stars (1964) collects three van Rijn adventures, “Hiding Place,” “Territory,” and “The Master Key.” Each features van Rijn working out evolutionary puzzles, usually in the face of some grave danger and always in hopes of making a profit. The first two throw the trader into the middle of danger, while the third lets him, Nero Wolfe-like, get to the bottom of a native uprising from the luxurious surroundings of his penthouse.

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March Short Story Roundup

March Short Story Roundup

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oie_2535049EywGcOBUIt’s roundup time again, folks. This past March we were treated to two stories from Curtis Ellett’s Swords and Sorcery Magazine and a trio from Adrian Collins’ Grimdark Magazine. Some I liked, some not so much. Without further jib jab, I’ll start the reviews.

Swords and Sorcery #62 opens with “The Sword Over the River Thar” by Bryan Dyke. It’s a thoughtful and introspective tale of a reluctant soldier looking back over his childhood and his own wartime experiences. There are many fine moments in the story, some quite moving. Unfortunately, the story suffers from moments of weak prose, including an overreliance on the word portal. References to such disparate elements as hoplites, barons, elves, and the distinctly Anglo-Saxon-sounding placename Norwich, make the setting feel ramshackle. I hope to be of service by pointing these things out. This is Dyke’s first published story and there is far more than the germ of a good story on display here. I hope to read more by him in future.

In the past, most recently in December’s roundup, I have been harsh towards the stories of Jeffrey Scott Sims. I have found them to be in possession of solid plots wrapped in clunky, faux-archaic prose. So I was surprised when I found myself quite enjoying his new story, “A Sojurn in Crost.” Bereft of supplies, stranded in enemy territory, “Lord Morca, wizard and warrior of ancient Dyrezan” and his battle-tiger, Treenya, are making their way to the coast and safety when they come across the town of Crost. There’s little mystery to what’s going on in this quite familiar story, but Sims spins his yarn with enough conviction to overcome any staleness. Sims’ style remains similar to that of his previous tales of Dyrezan but is deployed with more control and concision.

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Space Pirates, Ancient Ruins, and Supercarriers: A Look at Endless Space 2 Early Access

Space Pirates, Ancient Ruins, and Supercarriers: A Look at Endless Space 2 Early Access

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Endless-Space-2-Early-Access-small

Aight. 14 hours in, 4 campaigns played/started, it’s the wee hours of the morning, going on afternoon. I think I’ll take a stab at writing a few words on the Early Access release of Endless Space 2.

First up, Bad Things! I Wish These Weren’t in the Game, But They Are

#1: Soft turn limits.

This is a bug. Every campaign that’s made it to turn 67-ish so far (Craver, Sophon, Voydani) suffers a fatal error. Suggested options include A) loading an autosave from a couple turns ago, and B) ignoring it. Autosaves did nothing. Same turn rolls around, yellow/red screen of death on my monitor. Ignoring it, amusingly enough, was more effective. I made it to turn 69 (thanks, game) before Terrible Things happened to my computer. I strongly suspect this bug exists due to issues in how the game covers faction deaths, because as the Cravers I had murdered the last Voydani Ark and was cleaning up stragglers.

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Where the Time Goes by Jeffrey E. Barlough

Where the Time Goes by Jeffrey E. Barlough

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Where-the-Time-Goes-smallerWhere the Time Goes
by Jeffrey E. Barlough
Gresham & Doyle (337 pages, $14.95 trade paperback, October 2016)

If you’ve been looking to jump into Jeffrey Barlough’s Western Lights series, his ninth and latest installment makes a good diving board. The books are set in a post-apocalyptic alternate history where woolly mammoths and monsters from Greek and Etruscan legend rub elbows with ghosts, spirits, and worse, but Where the Time Goes adds a third genre to the cake batter: time travel.

Philip Earnscliff, a junior partner in the firm Bagwash and Bladdergowl, has been summoned to the country estate of the elderly Hugh Calendar to put Calendar’s affairs in order; Calendar has been in a coma for some weeks and appears unlikely to recover. The lawyer spends his hours paging through Calendar’s papers, gazing out the window at a neighboring estate called the Moorings — abandoned and ruined following an accident during Calendar’s youth — and taking nightmare-plagued naps. Earnscliff has no reason to think anything is amiss, at least not until he walks in upon Miss Carswell, Calendar’s young and attractive acquaintance, with a syringe full of sleeping elixir stuck between Calendar’s lips. Soon enough Earnscliff finds himself back in time, trying to repair the tragedies of the past while, as a side quest, solving the mystery of a local serial killer that strikes every six years.

It’s been a long strange trip for Barlough’s Western Lights since their 2000 debut, Dark Sleeper. The early books with Ace were sinister and Gothic, yet since moving to Gresham & Doyle they’ve generally trended toward cozy mysteries with supernatural elements. 2011’s A Tangle in Slops was more Midsummer Night’s comedy than horror; and the last two installments — What I Found at Hoole and The Cobbler of Ridingham — could have been written by the lovechild of Agatha Christie and M.R. James.

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Peplum Populist: Hercules, Samson & Ulysses

Peplum Populist: Hercules, Samson & Ulysses

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hercules-samson-ulysses-posterThe “versus film” has been with us for decades, even if “vs.” didn’t show up in early movie titles like Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man. Audiences crave watching cinematic legends smash into each other in duels to the death — or duels to the mutual understanding. Alien vs. Predator, Freddy vs. Jason, Batman v[s]. Superman, King Kong vs. Godzilla (soon ready for a rematch), Jesse James Meets Frankenstein’s Daughter (this really happened), Sherlock Holmes vs. Jack the Ripper (a number of occasions), and Dollman vs. The Demonic Toys. Bring up anything involving the SyFy Channel and sharks and you get hurt.

Italian sword-and-sandal (peplum) films couldn’t resist putting titans of the ancient world into the ring together, and there’s no finer example than 1963’s Hercules, Samson & Ulysses. The Italian title translates as “Hercules Challenges Samson,” in case you needed to know who goes up against whom and who is hanging around as the sidekick.

When it comes to peplum-as-pulp, Hercules, Samson & Ulysses is the real deal. Appearing at the point in the genre’s evolution when sword-and-sandal films either went stale or went silly, HS&U falls solidly on the positive silly side. It’s an outrageous actioner that knows exactly what its audience wants to see and delivers 100% on the promise of watching two legendary supermen batter each other in muscular absurdity. It may not be the best sword-and-sandal film, but it’s one of the most entertaining. This is the peplum film to watch if most of the genre’s other offerings don’t grab you.

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