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Birthday Reviews: John Scalzi’s “Utere Nihil Non Extra Quiritationem Suis”

Birthday Reviews: John Scalzi’s “Utere Nihil Non Extra Quiritationem Suis”

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Cover by Edward Miller
Cover by Edward Miller

John Scalzi was born on May 10, 1969.

John Scalzi won the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer in 2006. He won the Hugo Award for Best Fan Writer in 2008, breaking David Langford’s nineteen year winning streak. He won a second Hugo in 2009 for Best Related Work for Your Hate Mail Will Be Graded: A Decade of Whatever, 1998-2008. In 2013, he won a fiction Hugo Award for his novel Redshirts: A Novel with Three Codas. His novel The Collapsing Empire is currently a Hugo Finalist. Redshirts earned Scalzi his second Geffen Award, which he previously won for the novel Old Man’s War. His novel The Android’s Dream received the Kurd Lasswitz Preis and the Seiun Award. Scalzi served two terms as the President of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America.

Scalzi wrote “Utere Nihil Non Extra Quiritationem Suis” for an audio anthology he edited, METAtropolis, produced for Audible Frontiers in 2008. The following year, the anthology was published in print form for the first time by Subterranean Press. Brilliance Audio issued the original audio anthology on CD and as an mp3 in 2009. In 2010, Tor reprinted the anthology and in the same year, it was translated into German. The story has not appeared outside its original anthology, whether in audio or printed form.

Benjamin Washington is living in the fully self-sustaining city of New St. Louis. Despite, or perhaps because of, a high-powered mother, Benjy is something of a slacker, putting off tackling his required aptitude test until the last possible moment. His poor scores, and lack of time to retake before the deadline of this twentieth birthday, coupled with his mother’s refusal to expend her political capital on nepotism, mean that he must take a job as a pig farmer working with genetically modified swine.

Suffering through life as a pig farmer, Benjy’s realizes how much he has screwed up, especially when he sees the girl he cares about together with a boy who is constantly needling him. Even as Benjy deals with the repercussions of his laziness, his learning experiences are presented in a manner that is designed to get a laugh, although Scalzi uses those same lessons to great effect later in the story.

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Birthday Reviews: William Tenn’s “The Lemon-Green Spaghetti-Loud Dynamite-Dribble Day”

Birthday Reviews: William Tenn’s “The Lemon-Green Spaghetti-Loud Dynamite-Dribble Day”

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Cavalier January 1967-small

William Tenn was born Philip Klass on May 9, 1920 and died on February 7, 2010. He was named an Author Emeritus by SFWA in 1999.

Tenn received a Nebula nomination in 1966 for the short story “The Masculinist Revolt” and his collection Dancing Naked: The Unexpurgated William Tenn was nominated for a Hugo Award for Best Related Work in 2005. In 2006, he received the Forry Award from the Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society (LASFS). He was one of the Pro Guests of Honor at Noreascon 4, the 62nd World Science Fiction Convention, held in Boston, MA.

“The Lemon-Green Spaghetti-Loud Dynamite-Dribble Day” was originally published as “Did Your Coffee Taste Funny This Morning?” in the January 1967 issue of Cavalier, a men’s magazine edited by Robert J. Shea. The same issue carried essays by Isaac Asimov and Theodore Sturgeon. The story gained its current title the following year when Tenn included it in his collection The Square Root of Man. In 1973, it was reprinted in German in Venus—Planet für Männer. Tenn included it, against his better judgement, in the NESFA Press collection Immodest Proposals: The Complete Science Fiction of William Tenn, Volume 1 and selected it for inclusion when Mike Resnick invited him to pick one of his stories for the anthology This Is My Funniest: Leading Science Fiction Writers Present Their Funniest Stories Ever. An audio version was produced for Drabblecast B-Sides #29 in 2013.

Tenn claims that “The Lemon-Green Spaghetti-Loud Dynamite-Dribble Day” “certainly isn’t science fiction,” however if you consider science fiction as a look at how technology changes lives, it can arguably be considered as such (and if you argue science fiction is what is written by science fiction authors, it definitely is).

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May Short Story Roundup

May Short Story Roundup

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oie_755858H7Y1HRDMEach month I sit down with the hope of reading nothing but good, solid sword & sorcery fiction. I may read all over the place most of the time, but I do the roundups to get a fix of the stuff that inspired me to blog in the first place. When I open the electronic covers and start reading, I want swords, wizards, warriors, big honking monsters. The basics.

When I finally sat down to read this month’s batch of stories for the roundup, I felt as if I was being deliberately messed with by everyone. There were a few applicable stories, but for the most part, what I read could have been found in the confines of other, less genre-affiliated magazines. It’s not that any of the stories were bad. In fact, they were quite good. They just weren’t heroic fantasy and that’s what I was looking for. Maybe it’s just that I’m getting old and cranky, maybe I’m just a dope, but I was not an especially happy S&S reader this month.

Heroic Fantasy Quarterly, the gold standard by which I judge even the superlative new Tales from the Magician’s Skull, let me down. Issue 36 has the usual complement of three stories and three poems. I don’t dislike any of them, but I only like one of them.

“More Blood Than Bone” by E.K. Wagner is not the one I liked. The issue of who is entitled control of natural resources and who gets to wield the power they confer is couched in a nautical tale starring a sea monster, a naturalist, and a sorcerous aristocrat.

Divided into several sections, each commences with an entry from The Bestiary of Tierence Stillson, Esq.. In the first section, Tierence herself appears on the deck of a ship hunting the dangerous haukfin, in order to gain a better, up-close understanding of the creature and one of its teeth, a source of great magical potential.

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Birthday Reviews: Susan Casper’s “Mama”

Birthday Reviews: Susan Casper’s “Mama”

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The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction August 1984-small The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction August 1984-back-small

Cover by Paul Chadwick

Susan Casper was born on May 8, 1947 and died on February 24, 2017. Casper was married to author and editor Gardner Dozois.

Casper’s first story was “Spring-Fingered Jack” in 1983 and in 1988, she co-edited the anthology Ripper! (also Jack the Ripper). Other stories included “Covenant with a Dragon,” “Nine Tenths of the Law” and “Up the Rainbow.” Her short fiction was collected posthumously in Up the Rainbow: The Complete Short Fiction of Susan Casper and she also had a novel, The Red Carnival, published posthumously.

“Mama” first appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, edited by Edward L. Ferman, in the August 1984 issue. It would be reprinted in 2017 in Up the Rainbow.

Gloria’s mother is over-bearing and somewhat typical of a Jewish mother in “Mama,” although she could have been just as stereotypical had she been a mother of numerous other ethnicities. The key is that she disapproves of Gloria’s life choices and while Gloria is just trying to live her own life, suffering from a sudden breakup with the boyfriend she didn’t seem to have much invested it, her mother is trying to “fix” her life, making it better in the only way she knows how.

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To Roam the Unreadable Tome: The Night Land Straight Up

To Roam the Unreadable Tome: The Night Land Straight Up

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The Night Land Sphere

Anytime that you read a Black Gate article, you do so at your peril. We all know this. How much time and money have you spent tracking down obscure books that you’ve read about here, and how many irreplaceable hours have you spent reading them? Yeah. Me too.

My most recent bout of this fever I blame squarely on Nick Ozment, who recently blew a loud horn on behalf of William Hope Hodgson’s 1912 weird classic The Night Land. Now I’ve had a copy of this book on my shelf for thirty five years and never once come close to reading it. (Wife and kids, working for a living, eating and sleeping, reading a zillion other books, watching Lost and Breaking Bad — you know how it goes, Hodgson, old boy; it was nothing personal.) I never felt any guilt over neglecting this masterpiece; after all, in his article, Nick alluded to the book’s virtual unreadability in its original form (Mr. O was using his piece to boost James Stoddard’s 2010 “translation” of the book into a more modern, accessible idiom.)

Well, to tell me that a book is “difficult” or “impenetrable” or “practically unreadable” (all words that featured prominently in Nick’s article) is like waving a red flag at a bull. My reading fate for the next three weeks was decided at that moment.

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Birthday Reviews: Gene Wolfe’s “The Cat”

Birthday Reviews: Gene Wolfe’s “The Cat”

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Cover by Rowena
Cover by Rowena

Gene Wolfe was born on May 7, 1931.

Wolfe received the Nebula Award for his novella “The Death of Doctor Island” in 1974 and in 1982, he received the Nebula again for the novel The Claw of the Conciliator, the second volume in his Book of the New Sun. He has a total of twenty Nebula nominations and in 20013 was recognized by SFWA as a Grand Master.

He has received the World Fantasy Award for his novels The Shadow of the Torturer and Soldier of Sidon as well as for his collections Storeys from the Old Hotel and The Very Best of Gene Wolfe. The Shadow of the Torturer also won a British SF Association Awards. The Sword of the Lictor received the August Derleth Award from the British Fantasy Society and the final volume of the Book of the New Sun, The Citadel of the Autarch, received the John W. Campbell Memorial Award and the Prix Apollo. The later, fifth volume, The Urth of the New Sun was recognized with the Italia Award.

Wolfe has also received a Rhysling Award for his poem “The Computer Iterates the Greater Trumps.” In 1985, he was the Guest of Honor at Aussiecon Two, the Worldcon in Melbourne and a GoH at the World Fantasy Con in 1983. He received a Skylark Award in 1989 and a Lifetime Achievement Award from World Fantasy Con in 1996. In 2007, Wolfe was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame.

“The Cat” was first published in the Souvenir book for the 1983 World Fantasy Convention. Gardner Dozois picked the story up for the inaugural volume of his long-running The Year’s Best Science Fiction: First Annual Collection and also reprinted the story in Magicats!, co-edited with Jack Dann. Wolfe included the story in his collection Endangered Species and later in the collection The Castle of the Otter, published by Centipede Press and which included the earlier Zeising Brothers book The Castle of the Otter along with additional material published in the intervening 23 years. In 1990, the story was translated into French as “Le Chat,” and has been published in France at least three times.

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Birthday Reviews: Craig Strete’s “Time Deer”

Birthday Reviews: Craig Strete’s “Time Deer”

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Cover by Rick Sternbach
Cover by Rick Sternbach

Craig Strete was born on May 6, 1950.

Strete was nominated for two Nebula Awards in 1976 for the short story “Time Deer” and the novelette “The Bleeding Man,” both published in December of 1974. He received a third Nebula nomination in 1981 for the short story “A Sunday Visit with Great-Grandfather,” which also placed in that year’s Locus Poll. His first collection was initially published in the Netherlands with subsequent collections appearing in the United States.

He published the magazine Red Planet Earth in 1974, focusing on Native American science fiction, and his novels have been published under his own name and the pseudonym Sovereign Falconer. He is of Cherokee descent and Native American themes and characters often appear in his works.

“Time Deer” was originally published in the November 1974 issue of Worlds of If, edited by Jim Baen. Baen included it in The Best from If, Volume III and Harry Harrison and Brian Aldiss selected it for their Best SF: 1974. The story was included in Nebula Award Stories Eleven, edited by Ursula K. Le Guin. Strete included it in his collection If All Else Fails…, which was first published in Dutch. In 1986, Joseph D. Olander, Martin H. Greenberg, and Frederik Pohl picked it as a representative story for Worlds of If: A Retrospective Anthology. The story was been translated into Dutch, French, German, and Italian.

In “Time Deer” Strete takes a look at an eighty year old man whose daughter-in-law and son have decided it is time for him to enter a nursing home. Even as his son, Frank Strong Bull, has conflicted feelings about the action and Frank’s over-bearing wife, Sheila, just wants to get the man put away, he communes with his past, focusing his attention on a deer, although whether the animal is actually there or not is left up to the reader.

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Birthday Reviews: Catherynne M. Valente’s “A Buyer’s Guide to Maps of Antarctica”

Birthday Reviews: Catherynne M. Valente’s “A Buyer’s Guide to Maps of Antarctica”

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Clarkesworld
Clarkesworld

Catherynne M. Valente was born on May 5, 1979.

She began publishing poetry and fiction in 2004 with the appearance of the poem “The Oracle Alone” and the novel The Labyrinth. She has won the Hugo Award twice for her work on SF Squeecast and won the Andre Norton Award for The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making, which had only appeared on her website at the time.

Her novel The Orphan’s Tale: In the Night Garden received the James Tiptree, Jr. Memorial Award and, along with its sequel Orphan’s Tale: In the Cities of Coin and Space, the Mythopoeic Award. Her short story “The Future Is Blue” earned Valente a Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award. She won the Lambda Award for her novel Palimpsest and her poem “The Seven Devils of Central California” was recognized with the Rhysling Award. Valente has also won five Locus Awards, two each in the novella and young adult book category and one in the novelette category.

“A Buyer’s Guide to Maps of Antarctica” was originally purchased by Neil Clarke and Nick Mamatas for Clarkesworld issue 20, published in May 2008. David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer selected the story for Year’s Best Fantasy 9 and Rich Horton reprinted it in Unplugged: The Web’s Best Sci-Fi & Fantasy: 2008 Download. The story was also used in Realms 2: The Second Year of Clarkesworld Magazine and Valente reprinted it in her collection Ventriloquism. It was nominated for the World Fantasy Award for Best Short Fiction.

Maps are cool, and although Valente doesn’t include any actual maps in “A Buyer’s Guide to Maps of Antarctica,” she does provide detailed descriptions of six fictional maps of Antarctica and the South Orkney Islands. Her descriptions, written as if they appeared in an auction house catalog, go far beyond simply providing details of the map.

Valente’s catalog entries paint a picture of two very different cartographers whose lives and interests intertwined. Nahuel Acuña is a serious cartographer who does his best, often under trying conditions, to accurately map the edges of the world. His quest is aided by his ability to garner funding from a variety of sources. On the other hand, Villalba Maldonado, who was on the same initial voyage as Acuña, and scrambles for any money in pursuit his interests, seems to relish depicting the world as he would like it to be, as well as trolling his rival with his creations.

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In 500 Words or Less: The City of Brass by S.A. Chakraborty

In 500 Words or Less: The City of Brass by S.A. Chakraborty

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The City of Brass-smallThe City of Brass
By S.A. Chakraborty
HarperCollins (544 pages, $16.99 paperback, $12.99 eBook, November 2017)

There are creatures and elements of the supernatural that appear in popular culture from time to time, earning a reaction of “ooh, look, it’s a ___________!” (At least from me; I don’t know about other people.) When I read the premise for City of Brass and saw that it focused on djinn and demons, I was intrigued right away – I mean, genies are cool.

The best part about Chakraborty’s take on djinn, ifrit and other associated beings is that they aren’t sensationalized or exoticized like we see on shows like Supernatural or Buffy. Between her personal background, a significant writing talent and what I can only imagine was a lot of research, Chakraborty creates a world that’s nuanced and detailed. It has exactly the vivid freshness we continue to need in the fantasy genre, as a balance for the variations on the same Eurocentric worldviews that are still widely common. When I teach my students about promoting diversity in speculative fiction, City of Brass will be one of the examples I hold up.

But the novel is much more than its world – at the end of the day, my interest is always characters. Our two main protagonists, Cairo street urchin Nahri and immortal warrior Dara, are great counterparts; they’re equally passionate and protective, but in different ways, and both are seeking to find their place in the world. I’ll admit that I groaned a bit at the first signs of romance between them (it begins early enough in the novel that I’m not really spoiling anything) but the way that this romance develops and progresses later doesn’t follow a typical narrative course, and so it won me over. Meanwhile, protagonist Alizayd’s journey is just as compelling, as he navigates loyalty to his family and his belief in what’s right, amid the cultural politics of the daeva.

That said, there’s so much built into City of Brass that I’d periodically lose track of certain details. For example, it’s mentioned early that Nahri aspires to escape Cairo and attend medical school; about a third of the novel later, when she’s working as a healer under very different circumstances and laments that old aspiration, I had to remind myself “Right, this is what she always wanted” because of how much had happened in between.

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Birthday Reviews: Shaenon K. Garrity’s “To Whatever”

Birthday Reviews: Shaenon K. Garrity’s “To Whatever”

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The Cackle of Cthulhu-small
Cover by Dave Seeley

Shaenon K. Garrity was born on May 4, 1978.

Garrity is best known for creating the on-line comic Narbonic in 2000. She has also worked as an editor for Viz Media and has had a hand in numerous cartoons, comics, and manga. Garrity’s first prose short story “Prison Knife Fight” appeared in Machine of Death in 2010, and she has published additional short fiction over the years. In 2005 she received the Outstanding Writers Award from the Web Cartoonist’s Choice Awards. The same year she was named co-Lulu of the Year by the friends of Lulu.

Her story “To Whatever” originally appeared on episode #335 of The Drabblecast, edited by Norm Sherman, on August 17, 2014. It received its first print appearance in Alex Shvartsman’s collection The Cackle of Cthulhu, published by Baen Books in 2018.

The stories of the Cthulhu mythos are generally designed to touch on the horror of the unknown. Although this concept plays into Garrity’s epistolary story “To Whatever,” she also takes a look at the other side of the coin. Ethan is aware that there is something strange living in the walls of his apartment, but rather than allowing it to scare him away or drive him crazy, as so often happens in stories of the Cthulhu cycle, he befriends the creature, feeding it, playing games with it, and watching television with it, although he never looks at it.

Ethan’s roommate, however, becomes jealous when Ethan starts spending time with Willem, a new tenant in the building. Although Willem does begin to exhibit the signs of going through a more traditional Lovecraftian response to the proximity of an ancient one, because the story is told from Ethan’s point of view, the horror is sublimated.

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