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Birthday Reviews: Eileen Gunn’s “Thought Experiment”

Birthday Reviews: Eileen Gunn’s “Thought Experiment”

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Cover by Jeremy Geddes
Cover by Jeremy Geddes

Eileen Gunn was born on June 23, 1945.

Gunn’s story “Stable Strategies for Middle Management” was nominated for a Hugo Award in 1989 and the next year she received a Hugo nomination for “Computer Friendly.” Her collection Stable Strategies and Others, which included original works, was nominated or shortlisted for the Philip K Dick Award, the James Tiptree, Jr. Memorial Award, and the World Fantasy Award. Two original stories from the collection, “Nirvana High,” written with Leslie What, and “Coming to Terms” were nominated for the Nebula Award, with “Coming to Terms” winning the 2005 Nebula Award for Best Short Story.

Gunn published “Thought Experiment” in Jonathan Strahan’s 2011 anthology Eclipse Four: New Science Fiction and Fantasy. She subsequently included it in her collection Questionable Practices and Paula Guran selected the story for the anthology Time Travel: Recent Trips.

Ralph Drumm is an engineer given to performing the sort of “Thought Experiment” the story is named for. While sitting in a dentist’s chair having his teeth whitened, Drumm begins to muse on a way to achieve time travel and after returning home turns his thought experiment into a reality.

The story follows Drumm as he sight-sees through three different periods, a Wessex in the mid-fifteenth century where the inhabitants seem to speak a version of Anglo Saxon, a visit to Bethel, New York to see Woodstock in 1969, and to Washington, D.C. on April 15, 1865 to witness the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. For the most part, Drumm is only a witness to these events, although he senses hostility towards him on his repeated trips to Wessex, each spaced a year apart so he won’t have to worry about running into himself.

Gunn does bring up the idea of Drumm’s interference with history, not only when he tries to warn Lincoln about Booth’s impending assassination attempt, but on a more subtle level, simply by existing in times when he shouldn’t have. Gunn’s early description of Drumm as the first time traveler also foreshadows the possible existence of other, later time travelers.

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Mage: The Hero Denied #8

Mage: The Hero Denied #8

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Mage The Hero Denied 8-smallSo I’m starting work on my review for Mage: The Hero Denied #9, when I realize that, while I wrote a rather lengthy review of issue #8, I never got around to posting it. Expect the next review in the next week or so.

See the previous reviews in this series here.

Being a fifteen-issue series, issue #8 is obviously the halfway point for the story and as such we expect it to be something of a turning point. And while some parts of the story are very predictable for a mid-point chapter, this issue did manage to surprise me a few times. The two starting points are Magda waking up in the villains’ lair and Kevin facing the ogre that trashed his house. Magda gets the stereotypical James Bond treatment, where her enemy sets her up in a luxury suite and promises to provide her with every comfort before killing her. And Kevin gets pummeled by a monster. But then both story threads go in unexpected directions.

It starts with the way that Kevin handles the ogre. His focus here is on finding his family and since killing the ogre won’t help him in that goal, he refuses to fight back. The result is that the ogre starts tossing him around while Kevin just keeps asking where his family’s been taken. This isn’t the strike-first and ask-questions-later approach that we expect from Kevin. It’s the tactic of a more responsible hero who is controlling his rage so that he can achieve a more important goal than just defeating the monster.

The scene switches to Magda demanding to see her children. And here we see another parallel between Magda and the Umbra Sprite. She’s told that the Umbra Sprite values her daughters as much as Magda values her children. She’s then reunited with Hugo. And we’re left to wonder what’s happened to Miranda.

Back to Kevin, who continues to get pummeled by the monster, refusing to fight back until his questions are answered. But then he discovers that only Hugo and Magda were captured. Miranda is hiding in the rubble. Once he realizes that his daughter is there and could be harmed, he makes very quick work of the ogre, revealing that he could have easily killed the monster at any time.

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Galaxy Science Fiction, March 1954: A Retro-Review

Galaxy Science Fiction, March 1954: A Retro-Review

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Galaxy March 1954-smallThe March, 1954 issue of Galaxy Science Fiction features a cover by Ed Emshwiller. I’m not certain how easy it is to see, but I like how he added EMSH to the symbols in the background.

“The Telenizer” by Don Thompson — Langston is a reporter who becomes a target of someone with a telenizer. The device, once honed to someone’s brain waves, can change a person’s perception of reality. One countermeasure is drunkenness, but Langston opts for a neutralizing device that he can carry in a briefcase.

Langston starts a story on himself, beginning with an investigation on Isaac Grogan. Langston did an expose series on Grogan years ago on bribery and corruption, which eventually led to the man’s arrest.  Now that Grogan is free, he has motive for revenge. But there could be more at play than the obvious.

I like the premise and some of the action sequences; the story has a good pace. I couldn’t find much information on Thompson, which made me think the name could be a pseudonym for another author, given that this is the longest story in the issue. But I’m not turning up anything.

Maybe someone else (e.g. Rich Horton) has more information.

“The Littlest People” by Raymond E. Banks — Space labor forces are shipped cheaply by placing people in stasis while being shrunk to just a few inches in size. John’s father is the personnel director on an asteroid and meets with Mr. Mott, who arrives with new people available for hire. As John wanders the ship, he finds one of the little people — a woman — lying on the floor.

He picks her up and means to tell Mr. Mott, but there’s a bit of chaos at that moment, and John pockets her. Later, his sister brings the tiny woman (whom she names Gleam) out of stasis by accidentally injuring her leg. So John begins caring for Gleam like a pet while she bemoans her uselessness because of her permanently injured leg.

This is a really intriguing tale by Banks, and aside from some physical violence, it’s a good coming-of-age story.

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Birthday Reviews: Octavia E. Butler’s “The Book of Martha”

Birthday Reviews: Octavia E. Butler’s “The Book of Martha”

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Cover by Barry D. Marcus
Cover by Barry D. Marcus

Octavia E. Butler was born on June 22, 1947 and died February 24, 2006.

Butler earned a Hugo Award in 1984 for her short story “Speech Sounds.”  In 1985 her novelette “Bloodchild” received both the Hugo and the Nebula Award. She received a second Nebula Award in 2000 for the novel Parable of the Talents. In 2010 she was posthumously inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame. She received the SFWA’s Solstice Award in 2012. Kindred: A Graphic Novel Adaptation, based on her 1979 novel Kindred, earned her and Damian Duffy a Bram Stoker Award in 2018. She had several other award nominations as well.

Butler’s sold “The Book of Martha” to Ellen Datlow for publication in SciFiction on May 21, 2003. David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer picked the story up for Year’s Best Fantasy 4 the following year and in 2005, Butler included it in the second edition of her story collection Bloodchild and Other Stories. It was reprinted by Marleen S. Barr in Afro-Future Females: Black Writers Chart Science Fiction’s Newest New Wave Trajectory, published by Ohio State University Press and finally in Peter S. Beagle’s anthology The Secret History of Fantasy.

One of the questions theologians argue with regard to God’s nature is why an omnipotent and benevolent God would permit evil in the world. In “The Book of Martha,” Octavia E. Butler explores that question in a dialogue between Martha, an African-American writer, and God, who has summoned her to allow Martha to make a single change to humanity in an attempt to improve it.

Among the givens of Butler’s world is that God is insistent that humans have free will. Because of this, God’s omniscience doesn’t exist. When Martha asks God to help her model behavior based on her change, he can advise based on experience (and possibly earlier similar experiments), but God claims not to know the consequences for sure.

The discussion not only explores the law of unintended consequences, but also takes on what qualities a leader should have. Martha was chosen for the job not only because of her life experiences, but also because she cares about people and is worried that she might inadvertently cause harm. When Martha raised the question of creating a Utopiean society, the conversation turns to deconstructing what a Utopia would actually entail.

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Goth Chick News Reviews Stephen King’s The Outsider

Goth Chick News Reviews Stephen King’s The Outsider

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Stephen King The Outsider-small Stephen King The Outsider UK-small

If it seems like I’ve been talking about Stephen King a lot lately, you’re right. King has experienced a significant renaissance over the last few years, not only cranking out quite a lot of fresh new stories but seeing his work both old and new getting treatments for the large and small screen.

The Book Hub recently tallied up all the King tales about to be part of your entertainment lineup.

Movies

  • It: Part 2
  • Revival
  • Pet Sematary
  • Firestarter
  • Hearts in Atlantis
  • My Pretty Pony
  • Doctor Sleep
  • Drunken Fireworks (based on the short story from The Bazaar of Bad Dreams)
  • The Talisman
  • The Stand

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Birthday Reviews: Cleve Cartmill’s “Huge Beast”

Birthday Reviews: Cleve Cartmill’s “Huge Beast”

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Cover by George Salter
Cover by George Salter

Cleve Cartmill was born on June 21, 1908 and died on February 11, 1964. Cartmill also used the name Michael Corbin, when he had two stories appearing in the same issue of Unknown Worlds in 1943.

He is perhaps best known for his story “Deadline,” which appeared in the March 1944 issue of Astounding Science Fiction. The story was discussed at Los Alamos, where Edward Teller noted that Cartmill had described aspects of their research in detail. The discussion led to an FBI investigation into Cartmill, Campbell, and some other science fiction authors. Cartmill is said to have had a low opinion of the story, himself.

“Huge Beast” was originally published in the Summer 1950 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, edited by Anthony Boucher and J. Francis McComas. They included the story in The Best of Fantasy and Science Fiction in 1952, when the magazine was only three years old. In 1953, the story was translated and published in the first issue of the French magazine Fiction.

Loren Prater is working in his lab when a small creature suddenly materializes in front of him. At first taken for an animal, the alien quickly announces that he is a golen from a distant planet who has sought out Prater as the only person who can help his race avoid extinction.

The golen is an adorable creature and Prater can’t but help to reach out and scratch the creature’s ears. The golen, in return, is not only able to teleport (wirtle), but it can also share almost holographic imagery with Prater, showing the scientist the golen home world as the golen explains their ecological disaster. The golen’s story of the invading Hugh Beasts doesn’t quite add up and Prater realizes that the golen is trying to gain Prater’s assistance to annihilate mankind. The story then comes down to whether Prater can outwit the golen or if the golen can trick Prater into helping it.

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Black Gate Book Club, Downbelow Station, Third Discussion

Black Gate Book Club, Downbelow Station, Third Discussion

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Welcome to the second round of discussion on C.J. Cherryh’s classic 1981 novel Downbelow Station. New to the program? Check out the first and second rounds. We lose Chris on this one, perhaps a casualty of a bad Jump from the Beyond. Fletcher and myself carry the standard of the Black Gate Book Club as best we can!

Adrian S.

DBS5

Third round! And it is appropriate that I just started book 3 of DbS.  I’m on page 190, so I have surpassed my previous record of 169.

What can I say at this point? Well, my guess that conspicuously-absent Admiral Mazian was, in fact, behind the destruction of several company/neutral stations has borne out to be true!  I guess the big game is to try to force the Union to take control of these damaged stations and spread themselves too thin?  And to put all their resources at a station called Viking—the only 100% working station in Union space, I guess?  And to attack/destroy/cripple it and thus break the Union.

Of course, Union seems to be playing the same trick — forcing the refugees all to Downbelow Station, which has now become the one 100% working station in Company space.

So that’s what the power-players are doing, and everyone else is just running around between their feet.

I like how Cherryh illuminates parts of the plot, then occludes other parts. The sudden retreat of Mazian’s fleet from the Viking attack — was it due to Ambassador Ayer’s orders, or some other factor?

But again, I have to say that Jon Lukas, who does the right things for the wrong reasons, is still coming off as one of the only active people in the book. Honestly, how hard is it to get on the goddam PA system and say “Yes, the fleet is coming, no we are not all gonna die, keep calm and carry on.” Hard enough that only Jon Lucas can do it and keep Downbelow Station from tearing itself apart in a panic!

Satin, the Downer now working on Downbelow Station, is also active in that she is following her vision-quest thing regardless of what the older Downers and the Lukas-men and everyone else thinks.

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Birthday Reviews: Lloyd Arthur Eshbach’s “The Valley of Titans”

Birthday Reviews: Lloyd Arthur Eshbach’s “The Valley of Titans”

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Cover by Leo Morey
Cover by Leo Morey

Lloyd Arthur Eshbach was born on June 20, 1910 and died on October 29, 2003.

Eshbach founded Fantasy Press in 1946 and ran it for 9 years, publishing nearly fifty books, including titles by Doc Smith, Stanley Weinbaum, Jack Williamson, A.E. van Vogt, Robert A. Heinlein, L. Sprague de Camp, and others.

Eshbach’s novel The Land Beyond the Gate was nominated for the Compton Crook Stephen Tall Memorial Award. In 1988, he received the Milford Award for Lifetime Achievement, the Gallun Award for contributions to science fiction, and the First Fandom Hall of Fame Award. In 1949, he was the pro Guest of Honor at the Cinvention, the 1949 Worldcon in Cincinnati and in 1995, he was the Publisher Guest of Honor at the World Fantasy Convention.

Originally published as by “L.A. Eshbach,” “The Valley of Titans” originally appeared in the March 1931 issue of Amazing Stories, edited by T. O’Conor Sloane. It was Eshbach’s fourth published story. Interestingly, underneath his byline, the magazine touted him as “Author of ‘A Voice from the Ether’,” which wouldn’t appear until the May issue of the magazine. In 1968, Ralph Adris reprinted the story in the March issue of Science Fiction Classics.

“The Valley of Titans” is less a story and more a travelogue. Eshbach’s narrator, James Newton, has been sent to fly over the Himalayas to discover what has happened to several missing airplanes. His own plane is forced down in an horrific storm and he discovers a lost valley high in the mountains. This valley has less in common with the Himalayan Shangri-La (and actually pre-dates Hilton’s novel by two years) and more in common with the Plateau of Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World.

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On to Khatovar: Shadow Games by Glen Cook

On to Khatovar: Shadow Games by Glen Cook

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oie_193232fSIKM2J0If the previous book, The Silver Spike, told of endings, Shadow Games (1989) is about beginnings.

Picking up at the end of The White Rose (and taking place at the same time as The Silver Spike), Croaker, newly elected captain of the Black Company, decided he and any remaining members would return to Khatovar. With only six soldiers and Lady, it’s the only thing Croaker can think of doing: return the Company to its home. Unfortunately, neither Croaker nor anybody else knows precisely where Khatovar is (other than two continents away to the south) nor what it is. The Company’s annals describe it as one of the Free Companies of Khatovar, but the volumes from the first of the Company’s four centuries of existence were lost somewhere along the way. Trouble magnet that it is, and with a lost history brimming with evil deeds, the Black Company is certain to have a difficult path to Khatovar.

Shadow Games is the fifth of The Black Company books I’ve revisited, and so far my favorite. I suspect some will cry “Heretic!” So be it. Again be warned, there be spoilers below.

Even more than in the earlier books, Croaker is the lead character. As Captain, it’s he who is now responsible for the Company’s actions. Before, he was only an observer of the goings on of great men and women, now he is one of them. Cook presents him as the same snarky romantic from the previous volumes, but now he’s constrained by his position as the face and brains of the Company. The reader also gets to see the various levels of military preparation, only alluded to before, that go on in the Black Company.

As given to introspection as he’s always been, several of Croaker’s ruminations are deeper, and underline his separation from the world beyond the Company.

I ordered a day of rest at the vast caravan camp outside the city wall, along the westward road, while I went into town and indulged myself, walking streets I had run as a kid. Like Otto said about Rebosa, the same and yet dramatically changed. The difference, of course, was inside me.

I stalked through the old neighborhood, past the old tenement. I saw no one I knew — unless a woman glimpsed briefly, who looked like my grandmother, was my sister. I did not confront her, nor ask. To those people I am dead.

A return as imperial legate would not change that.

Something Croaker has mentioned several times over the series is that the Company is constantly changing. At one point in past centuries, the men of the Black Company were actually all black. By the time of the original trilogy, the only such member is One-Eye. As Croaker and friends go south, they slowly enroll new members. The greatest find are the Nar in the city of Gea-Xle. They are the descendants of members of the original Company who put the city’s reigning dynasty in power and stayed on as a hereditary caste of warriors. Croaker describes their leader, Mogaba, as the “the best pure soldier” he ever met. Gradually, Croaker builds on his pitiful remnant and something resembling a real fighting force, able to at least protect itself from the dangers of the road, is reborn.

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Birthday Reviews: Robert Moore Williams’s “Quest on Io”

Birthday Reviews: Robert Moore Williams’s “Quest on Io”

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Cover by Albert Drake
Cover by Albert Drake

Robert Moore Williams was born on June 19, 1907 and died on May 12, 1977. He published under his own name as well as the pseudonyms Robert Moore, John S. Browning, H.H. Harmon, Russel Storm, and the house name E.K. Jarvis. He may have been best known for his Jongor series.

Moore’s story “Quest on Io” appeared in the Fall 1940 issue of Planet Stories, edited by Malcolm Reiss. The story was never picked up for publication elsewhere, but in 2011, that issue of Planet Stories was reprinted as a trade paperback anthology.

Despite the title of Williams’s “Quest on Io,” there isn’t really a quest. Andy Horn is a navigator who is spending some downtime while his spaceship is being repaired prospecting on Io with his talking Ganymedian honey bear companion, Oscar. The two come under attack from another prospector who believes they are claimjumpers and when Andy confronts the other prospector, he discovers it is a woman, Frieda Dahlem. While the two of them quickly straighten out their differences, it becomes apparent that there are three claimjumpers who are out to kill both of them (plus Oscar) in order to keep their activities secret.

The story is essentially a western, although the action has been moved to Io. It feels written for an audience of young boys who know women exist, but think there are gross, only around to get in the way. Andy’s relationship with Frieda is very basic. Frieda appears to be a competent woman until a man is around, whether Andy, who becomes her hero, or the three claimjumpers, who turn her into a puddle of incompetence. Oscar seems to exist in the story purely for comic relief, although the humor misfires repeatedly.

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