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Mage: The Hero Denied #13

Mage: The Hero Denied #13

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Mage The Hero Defined 13-small“Remember, Kevin, in the world of magic … things aren’t always as they seem!”

That’s a line from Mirth in this latest issue. This time, I’ll talk about what we see in this issue (spoilers), as well as what I think is really going on (double spoilers).

So, it opens with Mirth appearing before Kevin and Miranda, telling them that his power has been greatly reduced as Kevin’s power has grown. All he can do at this point is guide them to the Umbra Sprite’s lair and advise them along the way.

Meanwhile, Magda and Hugo are still wandering through the Umbra Sprite’s lair when they are approached by one of the Gracklethorns. This one is taken out rather easily with a can of magic hairspray. And by “taken out,” I mean killed, because Magda tells her son that they have to hide the body before they move on. They choose to hide in a closet and re-think their strategy, but the closet door that Magda opens leads into a vast cavern complex.

Back to Kevin and Mirth, with two pages of dialogue that I think gives away the game. Kevin mentions that Mirth’s hair has gone from white to black again, assuming that he has finally recovered from being trapped in a bank teller machine way back in the first series. Mirth mentions that the bandages that cover his legs (or specifically the spaces where his legs once were) are now also covering his arms, as he’s acquired new scars. He then ridicules Kevin for thinking that his one bat-strike against the Umbra Sprite in the second volume could have done anything more than annoy it.

Eventually, Mirth is able to dispel the illusion that hides the Umbra Sprite’s tower. Kevin manages to defeat a two-headed acid-spewing dragon and then Kevin, Mirth, and Miranda make their way into the cavern at the base of the tower. Of course, the caverns that they enter at the bottom of the tower look similar to the caverns that Magda and Hugo enter near the top of the tower, implying that they’ll meet each other somewhere in these caverns, probably next issue. It’s also significant that we see the imp hiding behind a rock, observing Kevin, Mirth, and Miranda.

The issue ends with Karol Gracklethorn, working in a rescue mission in her human guise, being approached by a one-legged hippie who announces that he is the Fisher King and that he knows she’s been looking for him. And that’s the issue.

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In 500 Words or Less: Moon of the Crusted Snow by Waubgeshig Rice

In 500 Words or Less: Moon of the Crusted Snow by Waubgeshig Rice

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Moon of the Crusted Snow-smallMoon of the Crusted Snow
by Waubgeshig Rice
ECW Press (224 pages, $14.95 paperback, $7.99 eBook, October 2, 2018)

At Can*Con this year, we held a panel titled “True or False: All Post-Apocalyptic Fiction is Derivative Crap.” Obviously, we chose the title to enflame diehard fans of the genre – but while I can’t speak for the rest of our programming team, I’ll freely admit that it takes a lot for a post-apocalyptic story to excite me these days. There are only so many stories you can tell in a world that’s collapsed without it feeling stale; even established properties like The Walking Dead are accused of being well past their prime. However, even as reviewers like me grumble about certain subgenres, authors manage to create something that’s fresh and exciting to show us up. Which means I have to say thanks(?) to Waubgeshig Rice, after binging his novel Moon of the Crusted Snow over the course of about three days.

Part of the appeal right away was the slow, gradual way that Rice builds tension in this story. We’re introduced to a focused cast of characters in an Ontario indigenous reserve, where people are already used to living minimally – so when the Internet and satellite TV go down, no one balks, since it happens all the time. When the phone and power lines follow, the reader is probably getting more nervous than the characters … until they figure out something has gone really wrong and have to decide how the community will cope.

But things are kept ambiguous right to the end, so much so that we never find out the cause of Moon’s apocalypse. Since the novel never leaves the reserve, we only hear about society’s collapse tangentially, from a handful of characters who escape the chaos. In fact, there’s a lot that gets unanswered by the end of the novel, including the fate of several key characters. But Rice doesn’t make it feel like we’re left hanging; instead, it’s part of the overall uncertainty of the novel, and a reflection of how life is rarely packed up neatly, even when things aren’t collapsing.

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Birthday Reviews: Shane Tourtellotte’s “A New Man”

Birthday Reviews: Shane Tourtellotte’s “A New Man”

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Cover by Dominic Harman
Cover by Dominic Harman

Shane Tourtellotte was born on November 30, 1968.

Tourtellotte was nominated for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer in 2000 and his novelette “The Return of Spring” was nominated for a Hugo Award in 2002.

Tourtellotte has collaborated with Michael A. Burstein and edited an anthology in honor of Hal Clement.

“A New Man” was originally published in the October 2003 issue of Analog Science Fiction and Fact, edited by Stanley Schmidt. It is part of Tourtellotte’s First Impressions series of short stories and has only been reprinted on Tourtellotte’s website.

The main focus of “A New Man” is Josh Muntz’s return home after thirteen years. Muntz attacked three women, killing one of them, but was deemed insane and has spent the last thirteen years in a mental institution. A new technique has allowed the grafting of someone else’s mind onto Josh’s in order to alleviate the violent tendencies that caused him to commit the attacks. Tourtellotte looks at the impact Josh’s crimes and his return have on him and his family.

Tourtellotte gives Josh every advantage he can. In addition to the procedure, he has follow-up visits with both a psychologist and a physician who want to see him succeed. They’ve arranged for him to have a job with a boss who is happy to overlook his past if he does his job, and he has a home to live in with his still-married parents. At the same time, Tourtellotte puts obstacles in his path. While his mother is supportive, his father has a hard time accepting what his son has done and remains distant. Josh himself feels the need to apologize to his victims and their families, despite the advice of his team.

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Birthday Reviews: John Helfers’s “The Final Battle”

Birthday Reviews: John Helfers’s “The Final Battle”

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Cover by John Howe
Cover by John Howe

John Helfers was born on November 29, 1972.

Helfers has been nominated for the Hugo Award, both times in the Best Related Work category. In 2009 he and Lillian Stewart Carl were nominated for The Vorkosigan Companion: The Universe of Lois McMaster Bujold and in 2013, he shared a nomination with Martin H. Greenberg for I Have an Idea for a Book…: The Bibliography of Martin H. Greenberg. While Helfers has written numerous short stories and novels, he is perhaps best known as an editor for Tekno Books and Five Star Press and he has worked on many anthologies which did not include his name on the cover. He has collaborated on fiction with Jean Rabe, Russell Davis, and his wife Kerrie L. Hughes. His editing collaborations are too numerous to mention. He has also published works under the house name James Axler.

“The Final Battle” was published in Martin H. Greenberg’s anthology Merlin in 1999. The story has never been reprinted.

In Helfers’s story, Merlin, recently escaped from his confinement by Nimue, is shown to be a tremendously powerful magic user. Rather than showing Merlin participating in rituals to call down lightning, the magic Merlin does is almost an afterthought. A wave of his hand conjures a massive castle and, once inside, he uses magic as readily as anyone else would use breathing. Difficulties occur when he grafts himself onto a familiar, a sparrow, who flies out and discovers that Arthur’s nemesis, Mordred, is approaching Merlin’s castle. Mordred’s casual destruction of the sparrow and Merlin’s bond to it warns the magician of Mordred’s intent and that Arthur’s bastard is more powerful than Merlin expects.

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Reworking A Classic: Frankenstein in Baghdad by Ahmed Saadawi

Reworking A Classic: Frankenstein in Baghdad by Ahmed Saadawi

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9781786073976The Arabic world has seen an upsurge in speculative fiction in recent years. Some attribute it to the disappointments of the Arab Spring and the disaster of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Others point to ready access to the Internet, allowing Arab writers to communicate more easily with genre fans in other parts of the world.

Of course this ignores the fact that Arabic literature has a long tradition of the fantastic. Arab writers are working from very deep roots. So it’s interesting that one of the most successful Arab speculative novels of the past decade takes its inspiration from a Western source.

Frankenstein in Baghdad retells Mary Shelley’s classic tale in American-occupied Baghdad in the early years of this decade. The book originally came out in Arabic in 2013. Baghdad is a nightmare of opposing factions shooting it out while a corrupt Iraqi government propped up by the clueless Americans tries to keep it all together.

***Spoilers follow. If you don’t like spoilers, just go out and buy the novel. You’ll be glad you did.***

Hadi is a junk dealer who drinks too much and works too little, living in an abandoned house and telling wild tales at the local cafe to anyone who listens. On his rounds he comes across the wreckage of countless car bombings. While the emergency crews try to clean up as much as possible, they often miss small body parts. Hadi decides to take these home and sew them together, making a complete body that would be suitable for burial.

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Birthday Reviews: David Zindell’s “Caverns”

Birthday Reviews: David Zindell’s “Caverns”

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Cover by Pete Lyon
Cover by Pete Lyon

David Zindell was born on November 28, 1952.

Zindell was a first place winner of the 1985 Writers of the Future Third Quarter contest with the story “Shanidar,” which Terry Carr subsequently selected for his Terry Carr’s Best SF of the Year #15. The next year, he was nominated for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. His novels Neverness and The Broken God were both nominated for the Arthur C. Clarke Award.

“Caverns” was originally published in the Winter 1985/6 issue of Interzone, edited by Simon Ounsley and David Pringle. In 1987 it was translated into German for publication in Wolfgang Jeschke’s anthology L Wie Liquidator. It has never been reprinted in English.

“Caverns” is a tragic love story between the narrator and his wife, Mary. The narrator has decided to undergo an experimental process of introducing neurophages into his system in order to take the next evolutionary leap. Mary is unwilling to participate in the experiment with him and the two grow apart through the story, which is told in alternating sections, some of which details his divergence from humanity and others which show his relationship disintegrating.

It is important to note that even the earliest parts of his human relationship are not particularly strong. It is clear that the narrator never really listens to what his wife is saying, although she also doesn’t appear to be very good at communication. When she tells him she’s pregnant, for instance, he’s surprised at the news, but she seems to think he should have known without having to tell him. As the neurophages take hold, it becomes clear that even as he insists that he needs her, the two are leading parallel and only occasionally convergent lives. He loves not Mary, but his impression of who she is. Told from his point of view, Mary’s needs can only be conjectured as she strives to give him what she thinks he might need, often to her own detriment and without actually understanding what he is looking for.

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Birthday Reviews: L. Sprague de Camp’s “The Figurine”

Birthday Reviews: L. Sprague de Camp’s “The Figurine”

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Cover by John Bierley
Cover by John Bierley

L. (Lyon) Sprague de Camp was born on November 27, 1907 and died on November 6, 2000.

De Camp won his only Hugo Award in 1997 for his non-fiction book Time & Chance: An Autobiography. He also won the International Fantasy Award for the non-fiction book Lands Beyond, written with Willy Ley and won the British Fantasy Award for The Fallible Fiend. In 1996 he was recognized with the first Sidewise Award for Lifetime Achievement and in 2003 received a Southeastern SF Life Achievement Award. He was named a Grand Master of Fantasy with a Gandalf Award in 1976 and received a Forry Award in 1977. In 1979 SFWA named him a Grand Master and in 1984 he received a Life Achievement World Fantasy Award. H was inducted into the First Fantasy Hall of Fame in 1989 and, along with his wife Catherine Crook de Camp, earned a Gallun Award in 1993. SFRA presented him with a Pilgrim Award for lifetime contribution to SF and F scholarship in 1998. De Camp was the author Guest of Honor at Tricon, the 24th World Science Fiction Convention held in Cleveland in 1966.

“The Figurine” was first published in the February 1977 issue of Fantastic, edited by Ted White. De Camp included it in his 1980 collection The Purple Pterodactyls, which was translated into German in 1982 by Thomas Schlück. The story has not, otherwise, seen print.

A trip to Guatemala in “The Figurine” results in Willy Newbury returning home with a small statue of a god that he places in his office. His children begin to joke that the god is ruining the television reception and they jokingly give the god a sacrifice of some plastic flowers, which clears it up. Newbury doesn’t really believe that the statue has magical powers, but he brings it along on a business trip, where he finds himself in the middle of a riot. He jokingly offers to sacrifice a chicken to the statuette in return for escaping unharmed. When he manages to get away from the rioters and gets home, he suddenly finds that things that were working previously aren’t anymore, and the figurine is no longer fixing things for plastic flowers.

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Birthday Reviews: Frederik Pohl’s “Bialystok Stronghead and the Mermen”

Birthday Reviews: Frederik Pohl’s “Bialystok Stronghead and the Mermen”

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Cover by Frank R. Paul

Cover by Frank R. Paul

Frederik Pohl was born on November 26, 1919 and died on September 2, 2013.

Pohl won the Hugo Award seven times. He won for Best Professional Magazine from 1966-1968 for If, each time beating himself for his work on Galaxy. In 1973, he won his first fiction Hugo for the short story “The Meeting,” in collaboration with the late C.M. Kornbluth. The story tied with R.A. Lafferty’s “Eurema’s Dam.” He won the Hugo for Best Novel in 1978 for Gateway and a second short story Hugo in 1986 for “Fermi and Frost.” In 2010 he won his last Hugo, for Best Fan Writer. Pohl won the Nebula Award for Best Novel in consecutive years for Man Plus and Gateway. His novels Gateway and The Years of the City both won the John W. Campbell Memorial Award. Gateway also won the Prix Apollo and Jem won the American Book Award. In 1996, Pohl won the Clareson Award from the Science Fiction Research Association.

Pohl received the first Skylark Award from NESFA in 1966. In 1989, he was inducted into the First Fandom Hall of Fame. He was named a Grand Master by the SFWA in 1993, received the Forry Award from LASFS in 1994, and the Milford Award in 1995. In 1998 he received the Gallun Award from I-Con and was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame. He received Lifetime Achievement Awards from Writers and Illustrators of the Future and from the Prix Utopia in 2000. In 2009, he was awarded the Eaton Award and in 2013 was recognized for Distinguished Service by the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award. He was a Guest of Honor at LACon I, the 30th Worldcon, held in Los Angeles in 1972.

“Bialystok Stronghead and the Mermen” was written for the bid to host the 2012 Worldcon in Chicago. It was the first of several stories commissioned by the bid from a variety of authors for promotional purposes and was given out at various conventions. Pohl’s story was the first to appear and has not been reprinted. Pohl, and later authors, were asked to write a story which featured a lantern-jawed super-scientist with the initials B.S., his brilliant girlfriend Elaine (Pohl supplied the last name, used throughout the series), and the arch villain Dr. D. Vice.

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A High-Octane Thriller in a Post-Pretty World: Imposters by Scott Westerfeld

A High-Octane Thriller in a Post-Pretty World: Imposters by Scott Westerfeld

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Impostors Scott Westerfeld-small Impostors Scott Westerfeld-back-small

Bullets fly as an assassin shoots up the ballroom with an assault rifle. On stage, teenager Frey huddles behind a fallen table with her twin sister Rafia, taking cover. Rafia just finished delivering her first public speech when the attack began. In the audience, people die.

Frey has been training for this moment her entire life. She’s probably going to fall under the bullets, but that doesn’t matter. The only thing that does is saving Rafia. Grabbing her military-grade pulse knife, she rises from the table and rushes the gunman.

He never even has a chance.

Frey isn’t just her sister’s body double. She’s also Rafia’s secret last line of defense. She knows how to use every weapon with lethal force, as well as every quotidian object – scarves, tablets, vases. Rafia was born twenty-six minutes before her, so she’s the heir. Their father, a ruthless dictator, rules over the city-state of Shreve.

Successfully taking down the assassin, Frey feels giddy with triumph. Finally, she has done what she was born to do. Better yet, the way the attack went down, no one saw there are two Rafias. The secret of Frey’s existence has been preserved.

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Birthday Reviews: Poul Anderson’s “The Valor of Cappen Varra”

Birthday Reviews: Poul Anderson’s “The Valor of Cappen Varra”

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Cover by Hannes Bok
Cover by Hannes Bok

Poul Anderson was born on November 25, 1926 and died on July 21, 2001.

Anderson won the Hugo Award for Short Fiction for “The Longest Voyage” and “No Truce with Kings.” He won the Hugo Award for Best Novelette for “The Sharing of Flesh,” “Goat Song,” and “Hunter’s Moon.” Anderson won the Hugo for Best Novella for “The Queen of Air and Darkness” and “The Saturn Game.” Both of those novellas and “Goat Song” also earned the Nebula Award. His novel Hrolf Kraki’s Saga won the British Fantasy Award and his novel Genesis won the John W. Campbell Memorial Award. His novel Tau Zero was recognized with a Seiun Award and A Midsummer Tempest won the Mythopoeic Award. Four of his works won the Prometheus Award: Rader to the Stars, The Star Fox, The Stars Are Also Fire, and “No Truce with Kings.” He received a Forry Award in 1968, was named a Grandmaster of Fantasy with a Gandalf Award in 1978, a Skylark Award in 1982, was named a Grand Master by the SFWA in 1998, was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame in 2000, and received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Prometheus Awards in 2001. He was the guest of Honor at Detention, the 17th Worldcon in Detroit in 1959. He has published under the pseudonyms Winton P. Sanders, A.A. Craig, and Michael Karageorge. He frequently collaborated with his wife, Karen, and with Gordon R. Dickson, Gergen, F.N. Waldrop, Midred Downey Broxon, and Gordon Eklund.

“The Valor of Cappen Varra” initially appeared in the January 1957 issue of Fantastic Universe, edited by Hans Stefan Santesson. It was reprinted by L. Sprague de Camp in the anthology Swords and Sorcery: Stories of Heroic Fantasy and by Anderson in his collection Fantasy and later The Armies of Elfland. Jack Dann and Gardner Dozois used the story in their anthology Bestiary! The story has been reprinted in a chapbook on its own as well as with other stories by Anderson. It has been included in the Anderson collection The Star Beast and Other Tales and in Wildside Press’s The Third Golden Age of Science Fiction Megapack. It was translated into German in 1973 and into French in 1988.

I was first introduced to Cappen Varra as a character in Robert Lynn Asprin’s anthology Thieves World, not realizing that he had a history prior to that story. In fact, 22 years before Cappen Varra showed up in Sanctuary, Anderson described his adventures amongst a northern tribe in “The Valor of Cappen Varra.” With the introduction of Cappen Varra into Asprin’s world, it seems Anderson imported the world of the earlier story entirely, although it wasn’t referenced again.

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