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Birthday Reviews: Ben Bova’s “The Café Coup”

Birthday Reviews: Ben Bova’s “The Café Coup”

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Cover by Michael Garland
Cover by Michael Garland

Ben Bova was born on November 8, 1932.

Bova won the Hugo Award for Best Editor six times, including a solid run from 1973 to 1977 as well as a Balrog Award for editing in 1983. In 2007, his novel Titan won the John W. Campbell Memorial Award. He received the Skylark Award from NESFA in 1974 and the Gallun Award from I-CON in 2005. In 2008, the Heinlein Society recognized his space exploration advocacy with the Robert A. Heinlein Award and in 2016 he was inducted into the First Fandom Hall of Fame.

He took over the editorship of Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact in 1972 upon the death of John W. Campbell, Jr. and edited the magazine until 1978, when he left to help start up Omni Magazine, which he edited until 1982. Bova has collaborated on fiction with Rick Wilber, A.J. Austin, Gordon Dickson, Bill Pogue, and Les Johnson. He has also collaborated with numerous other editors on a variety of anthologies. Bova was the author Guest of Honor at Chicon 2000, the 58th World Science Fiction Convention held in Chicago. Bova has also published as by Oxford Williams.

“The Café Coup” was first published in the September 1997 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, edited by Gordon van Gelder. The next year, it was reprinted in Bova’s collection Twice Seven and was translated into German by Michael K. Iwoleit, Cecilia Palinkas, Horst Pukallus, Chris Weber, Manfred Weinland for inclusion in Der Tod im Land der Blumen. Van Gelder included the story in One Lamp: Alternate History Stories from the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction in 2003 and in 2017, the story was included in The Best of Bova, Volume III.

One of the primary focuses of alternate history fiction is a way to change the outcome of World War II or prevent the war from happening. Bova takes the latter route in “Café Coup,” in which a time traveler from a future in which pockets of technologically advanced societies are beset by barbarians at their gates who are intent on destroying the last vestiges of civilization, decides that the root of his world’s problems is World War II and the best way to change the world is by making sure the Germans win World War I.

Bova’s narrator has thought through his plan to the extent that he realizes he would never be able to return to the world he has helped create. He convinces his wife of the importance of the project and the two travel back together, effecting the change and living their lives in a German occupied Paris in 1922.

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Birthday Reviews: R.A. Lafferty’s “Sodom and Gomorrah, Texas”

Birthday Reviews: R.A. Lafferty’s “Sodom and Gomorrah, Texas”

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Cover by Sol Dember
Cover by Sol Dember

R.A. (Raphael Aloysius) Lafferty was born on November 7, 1914 and died on March 18, 2002.

Lafferty won a Hugo Award for his short story “Eurema’s Dam” in 1973, which tied with Frederik Pohl and C.M. Kornbluth’s “The Meeting.” Lafferty’s story also won the Seiun Award in 1975 and he won a second Seiun in 1993 for the story “Groaning Hinges.” In 1971 Lafferty received a Phoenix Award from DeepSouthCon and in 1990 he was recognized with a Life Achievement World Fantasy Award. He was the second recipient of the Cordwainder Smith Award for authors whose work deserves rediscovery.

“Sodom and Gomorroah, Texas” was first published in the December 1962 issue of Galaxy Magazine, edited by Frederik Pohl. It was translated by Ferruccio Alessandri for the Italian version of the magazine in 1964. Lafferty included it in his 1972 collection Strange Doings. A. Kindt-van Ewijck and G. Suurmeijer translated the story for the Dutch version of Strange Doings, called Niet Pluis in 1975 and the same year it was translated for the French edition of Galaxie. The story saw a German translation in 1982 in the anthology Science-Fiction-Stories 92. The story was posted to Project Gutenberg in 2007 and was included in the LibriVox anthology Short Science Fiction Collection Vol. 004. In 2011, it was published as a chapbook. Its most recent publication occurred in 2015 when it was included in Feast of Laughter, Volume 2, an anthology edited by Kevin Cheek as an appreciation of R. A. Lafferty on the occasion of the centennial of his birth.

“Sodom and Gomorrah, Texas” is actually a story about expectations and the understanding of reality. Manuel has been hired to work a s a census taker in the Santa Magdalena region of Texas by Mr. Marshal. When Manuel asks if he should count the little people, Marshall instructs him to count all people, not just adults, although Marshal also has to specify not to count animals or spirits. While Marshal and Manuel see no difficulty with the instructions, the reader sees them readily, only wondering what form Lafferty will chose to show the hijinks sure to take place.

The little people living in the remote Texas region where Manuel is sent to count the nine human inhabitants are aliens who firmly believe they have a deed to the Earth. They allow Manuel and his mula, Mula, to count them, but at great cost. When Manuel turns in his figures, which are highly inflated, Marshal turns them in, resulting in problems with the little people who don’t want to be known.

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In Which Severian Becomes Human: The Sword of the Lictor by Gene Wolfe

In Which Severian Becomes Human: The Sword of the Lictor by Gene Wolfe

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oie_622120n9dhjJAUSeverian has finally arrived in the fortress town Thrax and taken up his duties as lictor, or “he who binds”, and jailor. More importantly, he serves in his trained capacity as torturer and executioner. It is his latter duties that lead to a rift between Severian and Dorcas. No matter how rationally he makes his case for legal torture and execution, she is more and more disturbed by his work. Eventually she leaves him and takes up residence in a tavern.

His refusal to employ his guild talents for the personal desire of Thrax’s ruler leads him to flee northward — that and the fiery salamander sent to kill him by an agent of his old nemesis, Agia. Severian hopes to return the life-restoring gem, the Claw of the Conciliator, to the traveling sisterhood from which Agia stole it back in the first book, The Shadow of the Torturer. With the revealing of several dire secrets, Dorcas leaves Severian to return to Nessus and uncover the truth of her past.

1980’s The Shadow of the Torturer is a coming-of-age tale of Severian’s passage into young adulthood and out of the safe confines of his guild’s tower. While Severian’s constant withholding of information makes his narration unreliable, the book still flows in a generally normal fashion — Severian has adventures during which he journeys from point A to point B.

1981’s The Claw of the Conciliator reads like little more than a series of someone else’s dreams and nightmares. There are powerful passages, but like dreams, their potency comes not from basic storytelling, but strange imagery and psychologically dislocating events. I’m still not sure how much of Wolfe’s story eluded me, even thinking back on it now, but there are sequences that I will not forget any time soon.

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Birthday Reviews: Catherine Asaro’s “Echoes of Pride”

Birthday Reviews: Catherine Asaro’s “Echoes of Pride”

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Cover by James Gurney
Cover by James Gurney

Catherine Asaro was born on November 6, 1955.

Asaro has won the Nebula Award for Best Novel for The Quantum Rose and the Nebula Award for Best Novella for “The Spacetime Pool.” She has also won three Sapphire Awards, presented by the SF Romance Newsletter, for the novel Catch the Lightning and the stories “Aurora in Four Voices” and “Moonglow.” Asaro served as President of SFWA from 2003-2005.

“Echoes of Pride” was originally published in the anthology Space Cadets, edited by Mike Resnick and published by SCIFI to coincide with Loscon IV, the 2006 Worldcon. The story is based on a scene from Asaro’s 2004 novel Schism. The story was reprinted in the fifth issue of Galaxy’s Edge in November 2013.

Sauscony Valdoria, Soz, is a cadet in the Dieshan Military Academy, although she harbors a secret which even her closest bunkmates don’t know. When the Imperator, Kurj comes to inspect the troops, he seems to single Soz out for special treatment, ordering her to run an advanced obstacle course which is generally reserved for more advanced cadets.

Even as Soz follows her orders, she tries to figure out why the Imperator, her half-brother, is so focused on humiliating her. Is he trying to get her to wash out, picking on a half-sibling, or making her prove her mettle? Perhaps even more importantly to Soz, she is figuring out how to maintain her secret from her bunkmates, or even wondering if they will recognize how out of the ordinary Kurj’s interest in her is.

As a reworking of a chapter (13) from the 2004 novel Schism, the story clearly ties into a more complex work, yet at the same time, Asaro has managed to let it stand on its own. Without the surrounding novel, “Echoes of Pride” could almost be set in any military training milieu, the intricacies of Asaro’s universe only impinging on it in parts. The story as is offers up sibling rivalry as well as a warrior out to prove who she is and what she is capable of. Being part of a novel, the story can provide an introduction not only to Schism, but to Asaro’s wider works.

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Birthday Reviews: Janet Pack’s “A Coin for Charon”

Birthday Reviews: Janet Pack’s “A Coin for Charon”

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Sol's Children
Sol’s Children

Janet Pack was born on November 5, 1952.

Pack has collaborated with Kevin Stein on several poems and has co-edited anthologies with Margaret Weis, Robin Crew, and Martin H. Greenberg. She has occasionally published as Janet Deaver-Pack.

“A Coin for Charon” was published in Jean Rabe and Martin H. Greenberg’s anthology Sol’s Children in 2002. It has never been reprinted.

Pack’s story demonstrates one of the problems with writing about near future events, although in a slightly atypical way. Pack published the story, set on a space station in orbit around Pluto, in 2002 and in 2006, NASA launched the New Horizons mission to fly through the Plutonian system. When Pack wrote the story, little was known about Pluto and only one moon, Charon, had been discovered. By 2005, two additional moons had been found, Nix and Hydra. By the time New Horizons had reached Pluto and upended what we thought we knew about the planet, two additional moons, Kerberos and Styx, had been discovered. We have also learned that Pluto was not the frozen ball of rock and “methane-ethane-nitrogen-carbon-monoxide frost” that Pack described.

However, the focus of the story is less on Pluto and more on the dysfunctional relationship between two of the scientists on the space station, Velerie Heyer and Konrad Gregorius, whose relationship starts badly and only worsens as they get to know each other and are forced to work together, with the discovery of a magnetic element that Pack describes as forcing the tidal lock between Pluto and Charon, only cementing their enmity.

There are many historical stories about scientific relationships which go wrong and Pack takes the worst of all of those and transplants them to a remote space station with very tight living quarters, sure to exacerbate the problem. Although she mentions the rest of the station’s inhabitants, Heyer and Gregorius are really the only ones shown in any depth, although Heyer also interacts with Tobias Wellett. Without more input from the secondary characters, Heyer’s view of the situation is, of necessity, skewed and the reader is left wondering if the other characters have really kept to themselves as much as Heyer indicates rather than trying to alleviate the tension before the state of affairs could reach the point it does in the story.

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Birthday Reviews: Kara Dalkey’s “Bouncing Babies”

Birthday Reviews: Kara Dalkey’s “Bouncing Babies”

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Not of Woman Born
Not of Woman Born

Kara Dalkey was born on November 4, 1953.

Dalkey was nominated for the Mythopoeic Award in 1989 for her novel The Nightingale, a retelling of one of Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tales in a Japanese setting. Ten years later her novel Heavenward Path was also nominated for the Mythopoeic Award for Children’s Literature. She was also nominated for the James Tiptree Jr. Memorial Award in 2004 for her short story “Lady of the Ice Gardens.”

“Bouncing Babies” was published in the anthology Not of Woman Born, edited by Constance Ash in 1999. The story has never been reprinted.

Although the people who live in the world of “Bouncing Babies” may see it as a utopia in which people don’t have to worry about giving birth unless they want to and the need to work is obviated, it is also a world in which a person’s worth is based solely on their ability to provide reproductive material. Teenage girls are genetically tested and if they prove to fit societal requirements are paid ten million dollars to have their eggs harvested, their genotype then used to determine their ability to fit into society.

Ms. Goodwin has long since had her eggs harvested and is living a life of luxury when she receives a notification to visit the Reprotec Bank. Not having any clue what they want to talk to her about, she goes in and discovers that her eggs are no longer genetically desirable. In fact, a child born from them was returned as defective by its parents. The bank has seized her assets to regain their investments and Goodwin realizes that she has nothing to fall back on.

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Birthday Reviews: Neal Barrett, Jr.’s “A Day at the Fair”

Birthday Reviews: Neal Barrett, Jr.’s “A Day at the Fair”

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Cover by Paul Chadwick
Cover by Paul Chadwick

Neal Barrett, Jr. was born on November 3, 1929 and died on January 12, 2014..

Barrett’s novelette “Ginny Sweethips’ Flying Circus” was nominated for both the Hugo and Nebula Award and his story “Stairs” was nominated for the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award. He received a nomination for the World Fantasy Award for Best Collection for Perpetuity Blues and Other Stories. He has published Tom Swift novels under the house name Victor Appleton. Barrett was named Author Emeritus by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America in 2010.

“‘A Day at the Fair’” was first published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction in the March 1981 issue, edited by Edward L. Ferman. Ferman included it in The Best from Fantasy and Science Fiction, 24th Series the next year. Barrett has included the story in two of his collections. He reprinted it in Slightly Off Center: Eleven Extraordinarily Exhilarating Tales in 1992 and again in Perpetuity Blues and Other Stories in 2000.

For Toony, the local fair is a high point of the year, bringing together all the various castes who have settled on the planet and giving her a chance to eat a variety of comfort foods. Her trip to the fair in the company of her grandfather, who remembers life on Earth before coming to their planet, her sister Lizbeth Jean, her practically absent mother, and Tyrone, a Noord, who seems to be either a low-functioning alien or a high functioning pet.

While the fair appears to be a way for people to gather, enjoy food, play games, and form a sense of community, there also appears to be a more sinister aspect. Grandpa gets sucked in by a Patchman, a form of spaceman, who tries to sell him on a service that allows him to speak to the dead. When he tries it, he is able to have brief conversations with some friends and his wife, but the actual mechanism for making it work is ignored by Barrett and the characters. The fair also seems to have a form of slave market and Grandpa and Toony find themselves looking at a captured Bug, who claims to be the vice-admiral of an alien species captured in a war the Patchmen are fighting far from the fair’s planet. The fact that people can be bought and sold at the fair puts Toony’s relationship with Tyrone in a very different light and also indicates that the fair may be a cover for the slave trade, which becomes more obvious as Toony and her grandpa are talking to the Bug.

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From Beneath the Review Pile: The Same Old Story

From Beneath the Review Pile: The Same Old Story

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oie_1235943NVf82AxcAs they used to say in Monty Python, “and now for something completely different.”

The more I read, the more difficult it is for me to be entranced by a novel or short story. My writer brain is always whirring away in the background, pointing out when an author has done something clever or highlighting specific techniques like Chekhov’s gun. To be honest, it’s sort of a pain in the ass. If a novel isn’t gripping to the point that my writer brain clicks off for a bit – or at least gets quieter – I usually put it down somewhere around the fifty-page mark, if not sooner.

Doing this column makes it tough sometimes, too, because a) I don’t like to review something I didn’t at least enjoy enough to finish, but b) I need to find a book worth reviewing every two weeks. And honestly, two years into this column it’s getting harder, since I keep seeing the same story over and over again.

Let me give you an example, without giving too many specifics (since I don’t want to insult anyone). Recently I started a space opera ARC that I received from a publisher, because the back cover blurb sounded really cool, involving a protagonist who’s vilified by the galaxy he worked to save. Except the novel doesn’t start with that; it goes back to the protagonist’s youth, struggling to find his own way in a typical noble household, feeling stifled and controlled until he escapes and begins to come into his own, etc, etc. Sigh. Where’s my story about the intergalactic savior grappling with whether he should consider himself a hero or a villain? If we started there, I’d be able to forgive yet another far-future imperial setting structured like a hundred other novels I’ve read in the last few years.

Sorry if that sounded a little more heated than I usually get here. It’s just that I keep seeing the same story, and it’s wearying. Sometimes the story pretends to be different through its main characters. Like a post-alien invasion apocalypse where the adults are gone and young people have to survive on their own. Jazz it up with lead characters that are different than your usual fare, whether it’s based on gender identity, race, mental health, physical disability, etc, and maybe you’ve got a hit. Or maybe it’s the same story with the exact same beats and even some of the same tropes, and all the author is trying to do is be clever.

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Birthday Reviews: Lois McMaster Bujold’s “The Hole Truth”

Birthday Reviews: Lois McMaster Bujold’s “The Hole Truth”

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Cover by J.K. Potter
Cover by J.K. Potter

Lois McMaster Bujold was born on November 2, 1949.

Bujold has won seven Hugo Awards. Her first Hugo was for the novella “The Mountains of Mourning.” She has won the Best Novel Hugo for The Vor Game, Barrayar, Mirror Dance, and Paladin of Souls. She won back-to-back Best Series Hugos for The Vorkosigan Saga and the World of the Five Gods series. “The Mountains of Mourning” and Paladin of Souls also earned Bujold Nebula Awards, as did the novel Falling Free, which also won a Prometheus Hall of Fame Award. She earned the Italia Award for the novel Komarr and the Mythopoeic Award for The Curse of Chalion. Her novel A Civil Campaign won a Sapphire Award. Bujold has also been recognized with the Skylark Award from NESFA and the Forry Award from LASFS. She was the guest of Honor at Denvention 3, the 66th Worldcon in Denver in 2008.

“The Hole Truth” was first published in the December 1986 issue of Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone Magazine, edited by Tappan King. The story’s only other publication occurred in the NESFA Press anthology Dreamweaver’s Dilemma, which was originally published in 1996.

Authors often become so identified with specific series that readers find it difficult to remember that they have written outside those series. Lois McMaster Bujold’s name is synonymous with her Vorkosigan series and her World of the Five Gods, but she has also written stories and novels that stand on their own. In fact, “The Hole Truth” is part of a mini series of three short stories.

The story is set on Milton Street in the small Ohio town of Putnam. As with many cities in the Midwest, following the winter, Putnam is plagued by a plethora of potholes. One of the potholes in Putnam is on Milton and the residents don’t think much of it, although it caused severe damage to Waldo Simpson’s shocks. Eventually, Bill Pointer looked closely at the pothole and realized that it seemed to have a thick substance in it. When he poked at it with a stick, the stick became lodged and eventually sucked into the pothole, or possibly sinkhole.

While the city postpones dealing with the pothole, the residents of Milton Street, and eventually others, come up with their own use for the hole, dropping a wide, and ever-increasing mass, of garbage into the hole which seems to have an insatiable appetite for detritus. As more is dumped into it, the hole grows larger, allowing for bigger pieces of trash to be thrown in. Suddenly, the hole shuts with little warning, at least temporarily.

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Birthday Reviews: Zenna Henderson’s “Trouble of the Water”

Birthday Reviews: Zenna Henderson’s “Trouble of the Water”

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Cover by Jack Gaughan
Cover by Jack Gaughan

Zenna Henderson was born on November 1, 1917 and died on May 11, 1983.

Henderson was nominated for the Hugo Award in 1959 for her novelette “Captivity,” one of the stories in her The People series. Her story “Porrage” was made into a television film starring William Shatner in 1972, and “Hush” was adapted for an episode of Tales from the Darkside.

“Troubling of the Water” was originally published in the September 1966 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, edited by Edward L. Ferman. Henderson included it in her collection The People: No Different Flesh the following year. In 1973, it was translated into Japanese and in 1993, it was translated into Italian by Giuliano Acunzoli. The story was most recently included in the NESFA Press volume Ingathering: The Complete People Stories, edited by Mark and Priscilla Olson.

Henderson’s People stories are quite different. “Troubling the Water” is set on a nineteenth century ranch in an area suffering a long drought. Access to water has become a major issue, but while most modern science fiction dealing with lack of water would use it as the basis for conflict over water rights, the characters in Henderson’s story use it to support each other and build a community.

In “Troubling of the Water,” Barney and his Father see a meteorite fall to Earth on their property. Set in the nineteenth century in a rural backwater, they are surprised to find a burnt and blinded boy at the site of the meteorite strike. The bring him back home and begin to nurse him back to health, eventually naming him Timothy. It becomes clear to Barney’s father and eventually to Barney that Timothy was not a boy struck by a meteorite, but rather an alien who had come to Earth. Through touching Barney and forging a link with the boy, Timothy is eventually able to learn to speak and learn of the family’s need for water.

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