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Galaxy Science Fiction, May 1954: A Retro-Review

Galaxy Science Fiction, May 1954: A Retro-Review

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Galaxy May 1954-small Galaxy May 1954-back-small

The cover of the May, 1954 issue of Galaxy Science Fiction is by Ed Emshwiller, specifically for Theodore Sturgeon’s story “Granny Won’t Knit.” I’ve only noticed a few covers in these early issues that are illustrations of the fiction within. More often, Editor H.L. Gold seemed to prefer unrelated covers for his magazine.

“Granny Won’t Knit” by Theodore Sturgeon — Roan works for his father, who runs a transportation company. Their society has strict rules around proper dress — hiding the bodies and hands of men and women. Families are organized into strict patriarchal units. Though he’s an adult, Roan hasn’t earned the right to begin his own family and remains under the guidance of his overbearing father.

Seemingly by accident, Roan transports himself into the presence of a young woman who has bare arms and hands. She teases him a bit as he flounders to leave. But in the days to follow, he can’t get her out of his mind and is determined to find her again.

Roan also draws closer to his grandmother, who remembers a culture no one speaks of. And she’s not convinced that the current technology for transportation is the best, considering its limitations to the planet Earth. Her strange views are unsettling, yet Roan sees reason in her thoughts and allows that he may be limited in knowledge.

I think this story stands the test of time. There’s not much that glaringly sticks out to make it a 1950s science-fiction story — at least nothing that comes to mind. It works well.

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Birthday Reviews: Jerry Sohl’s “Death in Transit”

Birthday Reviews: Jerry Sohl’s “Death in Transit”

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Cover by Ed Emshwiller
Cover by Ed Emshwiller

Jerry Sohl was born on December 2, 1913 and died on November 4, 2002.

In addition to science fiction, Sohl also wrote screenplays, including scripts for The Twilight Zone, The Outer Limits, and Star Trek, including the episodes “The Corbomite Maneuver,” “This Side of Paradise,” and “Whom Gods Destroy.” His episodes of The Twilight Zone were ghostwritten for Charles Beaumont, whose failing health meant he couldn’t deliver the scripts he had contracted for. He has published under the pseudonyms Nathan Butler and Sean Mei Sullivan as well.

“Death in Transit” was first published by Larry T. Shaw in the June 1956 issue of Infinity Science Fiction. It was first reprinted in 2003 in Sohl’s posthumous collection Filet of Sohl: The Classic Scripts and Stories of Jerry Sohl. It was published again in Science Fiction Gems: Volume Fourteen, edited by Gregory Luce in 2018.

In 2016 the film Passengers posited a spaceship on a lengthy voyage. Anyone who has seen it will find Sohl’s short story “Death in Transit” familiar.  The story opens with Sohl’s pilot, Clifton West losing his wife, Karen, when she falls down a ventilation shaft on the spaceship one year into a ten year voyage. Although West tries to deal with his loss, the loneliness on the spaceship begins to gnaw at him. He begins to look at the records for the passengers to decide who to wake up for companionship. Although he knows he should wake a man, and even settles on George Hedstrom, he develops an infatuation for Portia Lavester and wakes her, knowing it is a bad idea.

Sohl does not portray West’s actions as well-thought out and even as West tries to behave properly in light of what he did, trying to give Lavester the room she needs to get used to the idea that she has been awakened nine years earlier, West still comes across as creepy. When Lavester does begin to soften towards him, her response to him, even when she claims some affection, never seems quite right. She is aware that even if he hasn’t physically touched her, he has still violated her. Writing in 1956, Sohl did not portray his lone starship pilot as a hero, but clearly shows the horror felt by Lavester at his actions.

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Birthday Reviews: Jo Walton’s “Escape to Other Worlds with Science Fiction”

Birthday Reviews: Jo Walton’s “Escape to Other Worlds with Science Fiction”

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Cover by Gary Kelley
Cover by Gary Kelley

Jo Walton was born on December 1, 1964.

Walton’s novel Tooth and Claw won the World Fantasy Award in 2004. In 2008 she won the Prometheus Award for Ha’Penny. She won the Mythopoeic Award in 2010 for Lifelode. In 2012 her novel Among Others won the Hugo, Nebula British Fantasy Award, the Copper Cylinder Award, and the 2014 Kurd Lasswitz Preis. Her novel My Real Children won the James Tiptree Jr Memorial Award in 2015. She was presented with the Skylark Award from NESFA in 2017.

Originally published on Tor.com, “Escape to Other Worlds with Science Fiction” was selected by Gardner Dozois for his The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Seventh Annual Collection. It was reprinted in the collection The Stories: Five Years of Original Fiction on Tor.com and was included in Patrick Nielsen Hayden and David G. Hartwell’s Twenty-First Century Science Fiction. Walton included it in her 2018 collection Starlings.

Set in the same world as Walton’s Small Change alternate history trilogy, “Escape to Other Worlds with Science Fiction” takes a look at the worldwide Depression that followed her World War II. Linda and Joan Evans live in relative squalor, barely making ends meet with Joan working as a secretary and having an affair with her married boss and Linda working a waitress at Bundt’s Germany Bakery in New York. While Joan tries to enjoy herself without worrying about the ramifications, Linda is constantly afraid that the Bundts will eventually replace her when their daughter is old enough to work in the bakery.

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Birthday Reviews: November Index

Birthday Reviews: November Index

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Cover by Michael Whelan
Cover by Michael Whelan

Cover by Frank R. Paul
Cover by Frank R. Paul

Cover by Jack Gaughan
Cover by Jack Gaughan

January index
February index
March index
April index
May index
June index
July index
August index
September index
October index

November 1, Zenna Henderson: “Troubling of the Water”
November 2, Lois McMaster Bujold: “The Hole Truth”
November 3, Neal Barrett, Jr.: “A Day at the Fair”
November 4, Kara Dalkey: “Bouncing Babies”
November 5, Janet Pack: “A Coin for Charon”
November 6, Catherine Asaro: “Echoes of Pride”

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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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