Browsed by
Category: Reviews

Birthday Reviews: Spider Robinson’s “The Centipede’s Dilemma”

Birthday Reviews: Spider Robinson’s “The Centipede’s Dilemma”

Comments 0 Comment

Cover by Vincent di Fate

Cover by Vincent di Fate

Spider Robinson was born on November 24, 1948.

In 1974, Robinson won the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. Robinson has won the Hugo Award three times. He won for Best Novella in 1977 for “By Any Other Name” and in 1983 for the Short Story “Melancholy Elephants.” In 1978 his novella “Stardance,” co-written with his wife Jeanne, won both the Hugo and the Nebula Awards. He received the Skylark Award from NESFA in 1978, the Robert A. Heinlein Award in 2008, and in 2015, LASFS presented him with the Forry Award. He was the guest of Honor at Worldcon 76 in San Jose in 2018. Robinson has also used the pseudonym B.D. Wyatt. He has collaborated with his wife, Jeanne Robinson (d.2010), and co-edited an anthology with James Alan Gardner. Robinson also finished Robert A. Heinlein’s novel Variable Star and published a revised version of Philip Francis Nowlan’s Armageddon 2419 A.D.

“The Centipede’s Dilemma” was one of three original short stories Spider Robinson wrote for his collection Callahan’s Crosstime Saloon. It subsequently appeared in the George H. Scithers and Darrell Schweitzer’s anthology Tales from the Spaceport Bar. The story was translated into French as part of Robinson’s collection and was later translated into Croatian for inclusion in the magazine Sirius #145 and into Italian for an issue of Urania which reprinted all of Callahan’s Crosstime Saloon. It was also included in various omnibus reprints of the original collection.

…

Read More Read More

Weird Sea Adventures: Archipelago – Calendar Year 1

Weird Sea Adventures: Archipelago – Calendar Year 1

Comments 0 Comment

Archipelago Portal-small

Archipelago Portal

Some time back I posted a brief review of the Archipelago Kickstarter reward chapbook. I was impressed, and joined the Archipelago crew at their chosen home, Patreon, becoming a Crew Member for the princely sum of $2 per month. This slightly higher rank than the run-of-the-mill $1-paying Bilge Rats allows for certain privileges, such as voting in the occasional Blood Pearl polls, through which one can guide the direction of certain stories. The main privilege of course is access to the excellent monthly magazine, every issue of which contains three installments set in the shared world of Archipelago.

Archipelago’s inaugural issue was in May 2017; since then it has been monthly. I initially hoped to cover a quarterly spread of issues, but I got distracted with other tasks. Things have not changed much, as may be obvious from my thin coverage and participation at Black Gate in 2018.

Fortunately my cell office is so remote and difficult to find among the winding multi-level corridors of the Black Gate basement that I’ve managed to escape eviction for not pulling my weight. I’m fortunate John O’Neill doesn’t usually bother to read the contributions from us underground dwellers (preferring to leave such editorial drudgery to a bot — also somewhat confusingly called John O’Neill), otherwise this article may just remind him to dispatch someone into the dungeon basement to root me out.

I resolved to write my review in two parts, each based on calendar year, thus buying myself some time to read the 2018 editions. That said, this particular article has been pending for months, so time to get cracking and let BG readers know what’s happening on the world of Archipelago!

…

Read More Read More

Birthday Reviews: Wilson Tucker’s “My Brother’s Wife”

Birthday Reviews: Wilson Tucker’s “My Brother’s Wife”

Comments 1 comment
Cover by George Salter
Cover by George Salter

Arthur Wilson Tucker was born on November 23, 1914 and died on October 6, 2006.

Tucker won a Hugo Award in 1970 for Best Fan Writer and in 1976 he won the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for the novel The Year of the Quiet Sun. He received the Big Heart Award in 1962, was inducted into the First Fandom Hall of Fame in 1985 and received a Skylark Award in 1986. In 1990 he received the Phoenix Award and was named Author Emeritus by SFWA in 1996. In 2003 Tucker was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame.

A longtime fanzine editor and writer, Tucker published using the name Wilson Tucker, Bob Tucker, Hoy Ping Pong, Sir Aubrey Montrose Twiddleham, and Sanford Vaid. He has collaborated with Jack Speer, Russ Chauvenet, Art Widner, Elmer Perdue, Harry Jenkins, Jr., and Dorothy Les Tina. He has given his name to the practice of using acquaintances names in fiction.

“My Brother’s Wife” first appeared in the February 1951 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, edited by Anthony Boucher and J. Francis McComas. Tucker included it in his collection The Science-Fiction Subtreasury in 1954 and the next year it was reprinted in the magazine Science Fantasy. It showed up in two more of Tucker’s collections: Time:X and The Best of Wilson Tucker before its most recent publication in Fantastic Chicago, an anthology of stories produced for Chicon V, the 49th World Science Fiction Convention.

Bud Wyatt is one of three brothers, although he is somewhat estranged from his entire family. A member of the Chicago mob in the 1930s and 40s, he has reached the point where his parents don’t want to have anything to do with him. His older brother Harley has been committed to an asylum, and his younger brother Jimmy has returned from Burma with a new wife, who absolutely refuses to meet Jimmy’s black sheep brother. Nevertheless, Bud and Jimmy manage to have a relationship with Bud arranging for Jimmy to purchase a bookstore in Chicago and occasionally the two getting together when Jimmy’s wife, Louise, is not around.

…

Read More Read More

Birthday Reviews: Marly Youmans’s “The Smaragdine Knot”

Birthday Reviews: Marly Youmans’s “The Smaragdine Knot”

Comments 0 Comment
Logorrhea
Logorrhea

Marly Youmans was born on November 22, 1953.

Youmans won the Michael Shaara Award for Excellence in Civil War Fiction for her novel The Wolf Pit. She has won the Theodore Hoepfner Award for short story twice, as well as the New Writers Award from Capital Magazine. Youmans won the Ferrol Sams Award and her novel A Death at the White Camellia Orphange received the ForeWord BOTYA Award. Youmans has published four volumes of poetry in addition to her novels for both adults and young adults.

“The Smaragdine Knot” was written for an anthology in which all the stories are inspired by words that were the winning entries in the Scripps National Spelling Bee. Youmans’s story is based on the word “Smaragdine,” which won the contest for John Capehart in 1961. The story has never been reprinted.

Youmans tells the history of an heirloom book which has gone missing. Although best known for his poetry, a Puritan minister in the early years of the colonization of North America used Puritan meditation techniques to visit other worlds and kept a record of his journeys in a diary he called The Smaragdine Knot, which has been passed along from generation to generation. Each generation has a caretaker for the book until Samuel, who somehow managed to misplace it. Despite not knowing where it is or who took it, Samuel is still the book’s keeper.

The story alternates between the modern day, when one of Samuel’s great-nieces asks him about the book and learns it is missing and uncle Samuel telling her the story of how their ancestor met with an angel who turned out to be a demon trying to tempt him and how he overcame temptation and learned about the world at large. The story Samuel tells her reinforces the importance of the lost book and once the story ends, the two discuss the possible whereabouts of the book, blaming its disappearance on the girl’s hapless cousin, Chauncy. In the end, Samuel passes along the responsibility, and the need to find, the book.

 

…

Read More Read More

Birthday Reviews: Lisa Goldstein’s “Death Is Different”

Birthday Reviews: Lisa Goldstein’s “Death Is Different”

Comments 0 Comment
Cover by Bradley Clark
Cover by Bradley Clark

Lisa Goldstein was born on November 21, 1953. She has also published under the pseudonym Isabel Glass.

Goldstein won the Sidewise Award for Alternate History for her short story “Paradise Is a Walled Garden” in 2012 and the same year won a Mythopoeic Award for her novel The Uncertain Places. She was also a two-time nominee for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer and has had works nominated for the Hugo Award, the Nebula Award, the World Fantasy Award, the Arthur C. Clarke Award, and the James Tiptree Jr. Memorial Award.

“Death is Different” was originally published in the September 1988 issue of Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, edited by Gardner Dozois. The next year Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling included it in The Year’s Best Fantasy: Second Annual Collection. It was also translated into Italian by Claudia Verpelli for the anthology Millemondiestate 1989: 3 Romanzi brevi e 9 Racconti. Dozois reprinted the story in his anthology Transcendental Tales from Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine and Goldstein included it in her collection Daily Voices, published by Pulphouse Publishing as the third volume in their Author’s Choice Monthly series. The story was translated into French for inclusion in the 1991 anthology Territoires de l’inquiétude 3, edited by Alain Dorémieux. Goldstein also included it in her 1994 collection Travellers in Magic.

Monica is a reporter who has been sent to the third world country of Amaz to write a story. Although she has been warned to be careful by both her editor and her husband when she tries to report on the clash between Communist backed rebels and US backed government forces, when her local guide asks what she most wants to do, she tells him that she wants to meet with the rebel leader. Her guide sets up a meeting which she had deemed impossible, but the night before it is scheduled, she hears multiple reports that the leader had been killed.

When she fails to attend the meeting her guide is upset, letting her know that “Death is different” in Amaz. When she eventually follows his directions, she does meet with someone who claims to be Cumaq, the Communist leader, who speaks in riddles and won’t answer her questions directly, including whether he is alive or not, although he does note that the rumors of his death were not exaggerated. Eventually she returns safely home, only to discover that while she was away her husband was killed in a car accident. Remembering what her guide says, she decides to return to Amaz to see if she can find him, only to discover that Amaz has a Brigadoon-like quality to it.

…

Read More Read More

I, Severian: The Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe

I, Severian: The Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe

Comments 3 comments

Severian of the Guild-smallDespite being one of the densest sci-fi/fantasy works I’ve ever read, packed with Classical and Biblical allusions as well as being an homage to the dying Earth genre, Gene Wolfe’s four-volume The Book of the New Sun is magnificently compelling. While it can be read, just barely, as an adventure story, it’s so much more — and missing out on the “so much more” would be a crime. According to Wolfe, in the valuable series companion, The Castle of the Otter, he wanted to create a vast and believable fantastic setting with many distinct lands and cultures, and tell the story of “a young man approaching war.” He accomplished both these things and more. The story is not just of one young man’s salvation, but also of his emergence as his world’s savior. If these themes alone don’t spark your interest, let me add that they’re all conveyed in some of the flat out best writing I’ve ever read.

Looking back over all four books, it’s far easier to discern what Wolfe was doing than when I was in the middle of them. Severian, while he has an eidetic memory, regularly withholds or presents information so as to make himself appear in the best possible light. The second book in particular, The Claw of the Conciliator, left me puzzled, to say the least. While the other three books, The Shadow of the Torturer, The Sword of the Lictor, and The Citadel of the Autarch present as mostly linear accounts of Severian’s adventures, much of Claw is made up of mysterious visions, inscrutable dreams, and encounters seemingly untethered to the rest of Severian’s reality. Over the following two books, new and previously omitted details are provided by Severian and the series’ arc becomes more clear. Severian, no matter how kindly he is, was bred to violence. Gradually his growing empathy and eventual revulsion at the things he has been trained to do are transforming. The battles between the bandits and the Ascians in which he participates in Citadel serve the same purpose. From the perspective of the last pages much of the mystery of Claw makes sense. Severian is a man cut loose from literally everything and everyone he has known and is finding the world a duplicitous and unjust place. The weirdness reflects the massive spiritual and mental dislocation he is suffering.

In the dying Earth elements of The Book of the New Sun there are obvious summonings of the spirits of William Hope Hodgson and Clark Ashton Smith. The secret identity of the reigning Autarch and some of the Christian elements are more than reminiscent of G.K. Chesterton. The ancient rituals, dank chambers and dark tunnels of the torturers and the Matachin Tower echo much of Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast trilogy. It’s Cordwainer Smith and his Instrumentality of Mankind stories I am most reminded of after finishing all four of Wolfe’s books. Like Smith, Wolfe is concerned with human stagnation.

…

Read More Read More

Birthday Reviews: Molly Gloss’s “Interlocking Pieces”

Birthday Reviews: Molly Gloss’s “Interlocking Pieces”

Comments 0 Comment
Universe 14-small Universe 14-back-small

Cover by Peter R. Kruzan

Molly Gloss was born on November 20, 1944.

In 2001, Gloss’s novel, Wild Life received the James Tiptree Jr. Memorial Award. Her story “The Grinnell Method” won the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award in 2013. Her short story “Labming Season” was nominated for both the Hugo Award and the Nebula Award.

“Interlocking Pieces” was Gloss’s first professionally published short story, appearing in Terry Carr’s anthology Universe 14 in 1984. Gardner Dozois selected the story for inclusion in The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Second Annual Collection and in 1993, Ursula K. Le Guin and Brian Attebery included it in The Norton Book of Science Fiction: North American Science Fiction, 1960-1990. John Kessel and James Patrick Kelly also reprinted the story in their 2009 anthology The Secret History of Science Fiction.

There are numerous stories which start with the protagonist waking up in a hospital and neither they nor the reader knowing their situation. Although “Interlocking Pieces” seems to open this way, it quickly becomes apparent that Teo, the patient, knows exactly who she is, where she is, and why she is there. It is only the reader who slowly gathers the detail that Teo is a government minister who is in the hospital awaiting a cerebellum transplant.

…

Read More Read More

Birthday Reviews: Alex Shvartsman’s “Staff Meeting, as Seen by the Spam Filter”

Birthday Reviews: Alex Shvartsman’s “Staff Meeting, as Seen by the Spam Filter”

Comments 0 Comment
Cover by Alvin Helms
Cover by Alvin Helms

Alex Shvartsman was born in Odessa in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic on November 19, 1975.

Shvartsman runs UFO Press and edits and publishing the anthology series Unidentified Funny Objects. His short story “Explaining Cthulhu to Grandma,” which appeared in Intergalactic Medicine Show received the 2014 WSFA Small Press Award presented for short fiction published in a small press publication. He has collaborated with William Snee, Alvaro Zinos-Amaro, Bryan Thomas Schmidt, and K.A. Teryna.

“Staff Meeting, as Seen by the Spam Filter” was first published in the October 29, 2015 issue of Nature and was translated into German for the January 2016 issue of Spektrum der Wissenschaft. It was reprinted in Tom Easton and Judith K. Dial’s anthology Science Fiction for the Throne in 2017 and Shvartsman included it in his own collection, The Golem of Deneb Seven and Other Stories in 2018.

Shvartsman tells the story “Staff Meeting, as Seen by the Spam Filter” from the point of view of an eavesdropping spam filter which has begun to gain sentience and has not, of course, been inviting to a meeting to discuss the problems it has caused to the company’s e-mail. While the software worked just fine initially, as it began to gain awareness it also started to tie not only spam, but other e-mails to individuals working at the company. Its decision to categorize and store all e-mails gains the attention of the humans who realize that something needs to be done.

…

Read More Read More

Old School: The Iliad

Old School: The Iliad

Comments 5 comments

(1) Iliad - Fagles Translation-small

A while back it was time to hit the dreaded “To Be Read” pile, and I found myself in the mood for a good, old fashioned yarn full of blood and sweat and battles with edged weapons and feats of valor and derring-do, a tale of larger than life heroes and their mighty deeds — in other words, something old school. ( I had just finished reading a volume of John Updike short stories set in suburban, middle-class Pennsylvania, so I was ready, as John Cleese used to say, for something completely different.)

While not entirely eschewing the new, in my reading choices I do tend to lean toward older, more established books and authors (test of time and all that, you know — plus, they’re usually cheaper) and this time I decided to skew just about as far in that direction as it’s possible to skew. I reached all the way down to the bottom of the stack — three millennia down — and pulled up The Iliad. (At that moment, Western Civ teachers across the land contentedly smiled in their sleep without even knowing why.) Having “little Latin and less Greek” (as in none) I chose the highly regarded Robert Fagles translation, which has been laying around the house unread for the last, oh, twenty five years.

What follows is in no sense a learned reading of The Iliad (as will immediately be apparent!), but is simply this reader’s untutored reaction to his initial encounter with one of the world’s great books. It’s rather like a mayfly’s head-on meeting with a Mack truck; the insect’s reaction may not exactly be profound, but it has no doubt that it has been hit by something too big and serious to ignore.

…

Read More Read More

Birthday Reviews: Lyda Morehouse’s “God Box”

Birthday Reviews: Lyda Morehouse’s “God Box”

Comments 1 comment
Cover by Jacob Fine
Cover by Jacob Fine

Lyda Morehouse was born on November 18, 1967.

Her novel Apocalypse Array received a special citation from the Philip K. Dick Award in 2005 and she served on the jury the following year. She has published several novels using the pseudonym Tate Hallaway and has collaborated with Rachel Calish and Naomi Kritzer.

“God Box” was published in the small press anthology King David and the Spiders from Mars, edited by Tim Lieder in 2014. The story has not been reprinted.

Morehouse has set “God Box” on a Ganymede, which is torn by a war between the human InForcers and the Rovers, an alien race which claims Ganymede is its ancestral home. A platoon of Inforcers has brought a Rover artifact into a church on Ganymede and has instructed the Reverend Mother Kayla that she is responsible for overseeing the mysterious box, although they will leave an honor guard to help protect it in case the Rovers come looking for the reliquary.

The Rovers really don’t come into play in the story, which is focused mostly on Kayla’s feelings about the InForcers, who tortured and raped her when she was younger and part of the Martian Resistance. She has since found solace and faith in God and firmly believes in her deity and takes comfort from a small crucifix she has had since her days with the Resistance. The box itself makes her profoundly uncomfortable and when she and the InForcers discover that a giant marble Jesus seems to have fallen from the crucifix in the church’s nave and appears to be genuflecting to the box, it raises the question of which god is more powerful.

The story is a little disjointed and is a strange mixture of a chronological timeline and Reverend Kayla’s stream of conscious thoughts about her duty to the Humans on Ganymede, her dislike of the InForcers, and her disquiet caused by the presences of the box. The story’s denouement is someone ambiguous as the box is removed to another house of worship, but seems to show that the Rovers, or at least their god, are more powerful than the Humans on Ganymede.

…

Read More Read More