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Birthday Reviews: Harry Harrison’s “The Mothballed Spaceship”

Birthday Reviews: Harry Harrison’s “The Mothballed Spaceship”

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Cover by John Sposato
Cover by John Sposato

Harry Harrison was born on March 12, 1925 and died on August 15, 2012.

He is perhaps best known for his Stainless Steel Rat and Bill, the Galactic Hero series. Other series include The Hammer and the Cross, Deathworld, Stars and Stripes, and Eden. Before publishing science fiction Harrison worked as a comic book artist, often collaborating with Wallt Wood. In 1950, he left comic art to begin writing and editing, although he occasionally did return, and wrote the Flash Gordon newspaper strip in the 50s and 60s.

Harrison wrote the novel Make Room, Make Room, which served as the basis for the Nebula Award winning film Soylent Green. In collaboration with John Holt, he won the Italia Award for The Hammer and the Cross and the entire trilogy was nominated for a Sidewise Award. He was the Guest of Honor at ConFiction, the 1990 Worldcon. Harrison was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame in 2004 and was named a SFWA Grand Master in 2009. In addition to Holt, he has also collaborated with Robert Sheckley, David Bischoff, Jack C. Haldeman II, Marvin Minsky, and others.

With Brian W. Aldiss, Harrison edited several anthologies and published SF Horizons, the first serious journal of science fiction criticism. Harrison often made use of Esperanto in his fiction.

“The Mothballed Spaceship” was written for Astounding: John W. Campbell Memorial Anthology, which Harry Harrison edited. It was later reprinted in Harrison’s collections The Best of Harry Harrison and Stainless Steel Visions. Set in the same universe as Harrison’s Deathworld trilogy, the story was included in an omnibus edition of that series published by BenBella Books in 2005 (earlier omnibus editions of the trilogy do not include this story). In 1985, it was translated into Croatian for publication in the magazine Sirius.

Harrison provides a puzzle story with “The Mothballed Spaceship.” A derelict space battleship has been found five millennia after it was abandoned, however its automatic defense systems are still active. Jason dinAlt, Kerk, and Meta have been hired to figure out how to get on board and take control of the ship, which has destroyed all other attempts to approach it, and are given thirty days to solve the problem.

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Birthday Reviews: F.M. Busby’s “Tundra Moss”

Birthday Reviews: F.M. Busby’s “Tundra Moss”

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Cover by Paul Swendsen
Cover by Paul Swendsen

F.M. (Francis Marion) Busby was born on March 11, 1921 and died on February 17, 2005. In 1960, Busby, along with his wife Elinor, Burnett Toskey, and Wally Weber, won the Hugo Award for Best Fanzine for Cry of the Nameless, which was nominated a total of three times. In 1943, he joined the US Army and was assigned to work on the Alaska Communication System, which forms the background for his alternate history “Tundra Moss.” Busby served as the Vice President of SFWA from 1974-6. His novels include the Demu trilogy, the Rebel Dynasty books, and the Rissa Kerguelen series.

“Tundra Moss” appeared in the third volume of Gregory Benford’s What Might Have Been series of alternate history anthologies with the theme Alternate Wars. Its only reprints have been in subsequent editions of that book.

Set during World War II, the Alaska Communication System (ACS) outpost on Amchtika Island is an integral part of the United States war efforts in the Pacific theatre, made more important by the fact that in this timeline, the US is concentrating its power on the Japanese. They figure they can worry about the European theatre later, with the exception of a small force there led by Dwight Eisenhower.

While the story focuses on Buster Morgan’s activities in Amchitka, Busby also allows peeks into the actions of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, a band of Japanese saboteurs operating on Amchitka, and scouts in the area as the Japanese attempt to destroy the communications lines and the Americans are trying to relay orders which will support a major offensive far to the south.

Alternate history stories often teach the reader something about a relatively unknown and seemingly minor part of history, and the ACS certainly qualifies in the regard. The fact that Busby was stationed on Amchitka brings a level of detail and realism to the story which would have been difficult to match with just research. The disjointed nature of the story, jumping back and forth between the different characters, tends to work against it. It would have been stronger with fewer viewpoint characters and a more singular focus.

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A Worthy Successor to an Award-Winning Tradition: Provenance by Ann Leckie

A Worthy Successor to an Award-Winning Tradition: Provenance by Ann Leckie

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Provenance Ann Leckie-smallIngray Aughskold hasn’t just risked her life’s savings for this moment. If she fails, she’ll have to work for years to make up the debt. Her reputation will be ruined, and she’ll lose her job. Worse, her adoptive mother will never choose her to inherit over her vile foster-brother Danach. But just when the deal’s supposed to come together, everything’s falling apart.

Sitting in a holographic room, Ingray can see the Facilitator clearly, and the Facilitator can see her. The Facilitator can also see the opposing party. To Ingray, however, he’s just a gray blur.

The blur cites “unexpected difficulties” in fulfilling the contract. “The package will not be delivered unless the payment is increased.”

But Ingray doesn’t have any more money. If this deal goes through, she won’t even be able to afford her next meal. She’ll have to wait to eat until she’s on board the ship home to Hwae. She really should’ve forced herself to eat breakfast that morning, no matter how nervous she may have been. “Then do not deliver it,” she says.

She’d probably be better off if the anonymous procurer didn’t cave. All she’d suffer would be a dent to her savings for the Facilitator’s fee and her travel expenses. She could go home and hatch some new scheme to outdo Danach. But she doesn’t get that lucky.

“Very well, then,” the blur says. “The deal goes forward.”

“Very well,” she answers. At which point, she takes custody of a large shipping crate. Which wasn’t what she was expecting at all.

Arriving at the small cargo ship she’s booked passage on, she runs into a new problem in the form of Captain Tic Uisine. Taking one look at the size and shape of her shipping container, he suspects human trafficking and insists on opening it.

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Birthday Reviews: Theodore Cogswell’s “The Wall Around the World”

Birthday Reviews: Theodore Cogswell’s “The Wall Around the World”

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Cover by Richard Powers
Cover by Richard Powers

Theodore R. Cogswell was born on March 10, 1918 and died on February 3, 1987.

Cogswell received a Hugo nomination for his book PITFCS: The Proceedings of the Institute for Twenty-First Century Studies, which has been described as a “fanzine for pros.” His story “The Wall Around the World” was nominated for a Retro Hugo Award for Best Novelette. In 2000, he was posthumously inducted into the First Fandom Hall of Fame.

“The Wall Around the World” first appeared in Beyond Fantasy Fiction, edited by Horace L. Gold, in the September 1953 issue.  It was included in the British version of the magazine the following year and Judith Merril included it in the anthology Beyond the Barriers of Space and Time. The story was included in, and provided the name for, Cogswell’s collection The Wall Around the World in 1962.  Subsequent reprintings occurred in Brian W. Aldiss’s Yet More Penguin Science Fiction and The Penguin Science Fiction Omnibus, in Harry Harrison’s Worlds of Wonder (a.k.a. Blast Off), and in Wizards, edited by Isaac Asimov, Martin H. Greenberg, and Charles G. Waugh. Asimov and Greenberg also included the story in The Great SF Stories #15 (1953) and Susan Morris titled the 1990 Cambridge University Press anthology after the story, The Wall Around the World and Other Science Fiction Stories.  Mike Ashley reprinted it in The Mammoth Book of Fantasy. The story was translation into German in 1963, Dutch in 1978, and Italian in 1987.

Cogswell’s “The Wall Around the World” has some strong similarities to another story set in a world of magic.  Porgie is at a school for wizards and lives with his abusive aunt, uncle, and cousin because his aunt’s sibling was killed due to magic. Unfortunately, his teachers are not much more supportive than his family.

Porgie’s “problem” is that he has questions. Their world is surrounded by an insurmountable wall and Porgie wants to know what’s on the other side.  Unfortunately, the state of magic isn’t enough to allow him to fly over the wall and when he tries to figure out how, he only hears that essentially, magic is the only way, he shouldn’t ask questions, and their knowledge of magic gets stronger all the time as they focus on the approved texts. There is also the ominous hints that when Porgie’s father questioned the status quo, a supernatural being known as the Black Man did something to him.

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In 500 Words or Less: All Those Explosions Were Someone Else’s Fault by James Alan Gardner

In 500 Words or Less: All Those Explosions Were Someone Else’s Fault by James Alan Gardner

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All Those Explosions Were Someone Else's Fault-back-small All Those Explosions Were Someone Else's Fault-small

All Those Explosions Were Someone Else’s Fault
By James Alan Gardner
Tor (384 pages, $17.99 paperback, $9.99 eBook, November 2017)

Imagine a world where vampires, werewolves and demons all exist in public, courtesy of rich people making pacts with dark entities for immortality and power. Got that? Okay, now imagine a world where people can become superheroes by being exposed to the right (or wrong) kind of powerful energies, with as wide an assortment of powers as any comic book. Good? Take another pocket of your mind and add in things like wizard magic and weird science like opening rifts to other dimensions. And then combine all of this together into a single world.

Still with me?

If you’re not, I’d understand – but nonetheless, all of the above is present in James Alan Gardner’s All Those Explosions Were Someone Else’s Fault. I’m sure some of you are sitting back and thinking that sounds insane. But the X-Files/Cops crossover episode or establishing Bones and Sleepy Hollow in the same universe came with an expectation of a certain amount of ridiculousness, and the world Jim has created definitely has that flair. It’s interesting in that there’s a fast-paced and arguably straightforward narrative, even when the narrative pauses again and again with moments of “okay, I’d better explain this before we move on,” where this might be were-bats, rifts to other worlds that spew telepathic fireflies, university buildings named after rich vampires, or why a cascade of superpowers like force fields and telescopic vision and encyclopedic knowledge and whatever you would call Ant-Man (which is all in the first five chapters) makes logical sense.

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Birthday Reviews: Pat Murphy’s “On a Hot Summer Night in a Place Far Away”

Birthday Reviews: Pat Murphy’s “On a Hot Summer Night in a Place Far Away”

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

Pat Murphy was born on March 9, 1955.

In 1988, Murphy won a Nebula Award for her story “Rachel in Love” and her novel The Falling Woman.  “Rachel in Love” was also nominated for a Hugo Award and won the Theodore Sturrgeon Memorial Award.  She won a World Fantasy Award for her novella “Bones,” and a Philip K. Dick Award for Points of Departure. Murphy’s There and Back Again, by Max Merriwell, a science fictional retelling of Tolkien’s The Hobbit, received the Seiun Award in 2002.

“On a Hot Summer Night in a Place Far Away” was first published by Shawny McCarthy in the May 1985 issue of Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine. It was included by Murphy’s collection Points of Departure. The Women’s Press included the story in the anthology Letters from Home, which reprinted six stories each by Murphy, Karen Joy Fowler, and Pat Cadigan. The story appeared in Mike Resnick’s Future Earths: Under South American Skies.  It was translated for the German edition of Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine.

Murphy’s story “On a Hot Summer Night in a Place Far Away” is set Merida, Mexico where Gregorio sells hammocks to the tourists. He lives there because after his divorce, his wife remarried and he no longer feels welcome in his home village.  When a strange looking American tourist rejects both his advances and his sales pitch, he determines that he will both sell her a hammock and find his way into her bed.

He is only marginally successful, selling her an hammock, but only managing to talk to her. He learns that just as he is living in exile from his home village, having made a home for himself in Merida, but without roots, so, too, she is living in exile, looking forward to the day she is able to return to her home, which she claims is among the stars.  Although she makes him forget the details of the conversation, Gregorio manages to bring her some relief from her homesickness as she waits to be returned to the stars.

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The Origin Stories of Tempus, Niko and the Sacred Band: Tempus With His Right-Side Companion Niko, by Janet Morris

The Origin Stories of Tempus, Niko and the Sacred Band: Tempus With His Right-Side Companion Niko, by Janet Morris

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Tempus with his right-side companion Niko-small Tempus with his right-side companion Niko-back-small

Relive the iconic adventures of Tempus the Black and his Sacred Band through the eyes of Nikodemos, his right-side companion, as Niko seeks his spirit’s balance on Bandara’s misty isles. Five early tales of the Stepsons in a world of thieves, novelized with additional stories available nowhere else. Ride with Tempus and his Sacred Band once again, or for the first time. PUBLISHER’S NOTE: Parts of this work have been published in substantially similar form in several volumes of the Shared Universe Series, Thieves World.

This book contains the original stories first written about the Sacred Band of Stepsons, as well as some new stories that expand on their adventures, and  Niko’s quest to regain his spiritual and mystical balance. Meet the characters who made the Sacred Band famous: Abarsis, the Slaughter Priest Abarsis, who first formed the Sacred Band and from whom Tempus took over the Band; Niko, Critias, Straton, hazard-class and allergy prone mage Randal “Witchy Ears.” Meet Roxane the witch and her death squads, Ischade the Necromant and her cadre of undead servants, and Cime, Tempus’ wizard-slaying sister. Witness the might of the storm god Vashanka and his immortal god-ridden avatar, Tempus as they battle against sorcery, betrayal and corruption, alongside his Sacred Band of Stepsons. Meet legendary immortals Askelon, the Dream Lord of Meridian, and Jihan the Froth Daughter of Lord Storm.

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Modular: Dead Suns Adventure Path for Starfinder

Modular: Dead Suns Adventure Path for Starfinder

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StarfinderDeadSuns4Last fall, the game publisher Paizo began releasing their line of Starfinder products, taking their Pathfinder setting into a distant science fantasy RPG setting. In addition to the main Starfinder Core Rulebook (Amazon, Paizo), they also began releasing the Dead Suns Adventure Path. With four of the six Dead Suns books now out, it’s about time to look back on what they’ve released to see what all the series has got to offer for fans looking for material.

Paizo’s Pathfinder Adventure Path books have long been a staple of the company’s product line. It provides a broad campaign of adventures across six 92-page books, each released on a monthly schedule. In addition to the adventure, each book contained setting, culture, and religious information, a Bestiary supplement, and original fiction.

Dead Suns continues that tradition in their Starfinder campaign setting, with the only significant difference in format being that these books are released on a bi-monthly schedule, so it takes a year to release the full Adventure Path as opposed to the two Adventure Path schedule for Pathfinder. Starfinder is on a less aggressive production schedule than Pathfinder, without associated Player Companion or Campaign Setting resources released monthly, so the Adventure Path provide supplements to the two hardcover Starfinder supplements slated for release each year. (The Alien Archive was released in the fall, and the Pact Worlds setting book is slated for release this month.)

As the first Starfinder Adventure Path, Dead Suns is a planet-hopping quest through the Pact Worlds, as the players get their own starship and begin following the clues across planets, running afoul of massive corporations, space monsters, undead starships and necrotech, and the troublesome Cult of the Devourer, as they uncover the secret behind a lost superweapon.

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Birthday Reviews: Paul Preuss’s “Rhea’s Time”

Birthday Reviews: Paul Preuss’s “Rhea’s Time”

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The Ultimate Dinosaur-small The Ultimate Dinosaur-back-small

Cover by Wayne D. Barlowe

Paul Preuss was born on March 7, 1942. Mostly a novelist, he has published the Venus Prime series and stand-alone novels Human Error, The Gates of Heaven, and Core. His short fiction output is more scarce, consisting of three short stories and a published excerpt from his novel Starfire. His novel Secret Passages was a nominee for the 1998 John W. Campbell Memorial Award.

“Rhea’s Time” originally appeared in The Ultimate Dinosaur, edited by Robert Silverberg and Byron Priess, which was heavily illustrated by Wayne D. Barlowe and included a mixture of science fiction and factual articles about dinosaurs. The story has not been reprinted outside The Ultimate Dinosaur, but the anthology has seen two editions following its first publication.

Although originally published in a collection about dinosaurs, there are no saurians in “Rhea’s Time.” Preuss relates, with almost clinical precision, the story of a woman who has been in a coma for nearly a year, since shortly after a skiing accident. He tells the story from the point of view of Doctor Rowan, who has inherited her case after her original doctor gave up on her.

Despite his patient being completely unresponsive, Roan discovers that she actually is moving, albeit extremely slowly. Rowan begins employing unorthodox methods to establish contact with the woman, who he calls “Rhea.” Talking about her career as a biostratigrapher with her husband, Rowan is eventually able to come up with a rather intriguing explanation for what she’s going through.

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Mythic Landscape: The Weirdstone of Brisingamen by Alan Garner

Mythic Landscape: The Weirdstone of Brisingamen by Alan Garner

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Weirdstone_of_BrisingamenHalfway through my recent reread of Alan Garner’s 1960 debut novel, The Weirdstone of Brisingamen, it became clear to me that the true protagonist was the land, not the ostensible ones, sister and brother Susan and Colin.

Alderley Edge, in Cheshire, England, is the name of both a village and a great sandstone cliff “six hundred feet high and three mile long.” For Garner there’s a connection between land and myth, artistically at least, that is deep. His depiction of a land of rolling plains littered with farms and woods, riddled with thousands of years’-worth of mines makes it easy to see the svart-alfar, the “maggot-breed of Ymir,” boiling out of the earth. There’s something deeper than that, though; something that reaches beyond mere physical for Garner. It’s as if the land itself bred those stories and they are intertwined with it intimately and inextricably. Just walking the woods and rises around Alderley Edge, they can be felt pushing themselves up from the earth and traveling along on the backs of breezes.

Before the story proper begins, Garner recounts a true legend of Alderley Edge — that of a farmer from the village of Mobberly and the strange white-bearded man he meets on the way to market. The farmer hopes to sell his white mare at market in Macclesfield and when he agrees to sell it to the bearded man instead, he is shown a secret cave protected by an iron gate and filled with treasures. Inside sleep 140 knights, each, save one, with a perfect white mare by his side. The wizard, for that is what he is, tells the farmer why the knights are there:

“Here they lie in enchanted sleep,” said the wizard, “until a day will come — and come it will — when England shall be in direst peril, and England’s mothers weep. Then out from the hill these must ride and, in a battle thrice lost, thrice won, upon the plain, drive the enemy into the sea.”

In payment, the wizard tells the farmer to take whatever gold and gems he can fit into his pockets. He does, with unexpected and dire consequences for the future.

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