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Birthday Reviews: Jim C. Hines’s “Spell of the Sparrow”

Birthday Reviews: Jim C. Hines’s “Spell of the Sparrow”

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Sword and Sorceress XXI-small Sword and Sorceress XXI-back-small

Cover by Arthur Rackham, 1910

Jim C. Hines was born on April 15, 1974.

Hines took first place in the Writers of the Future first quarter contest in 1999 for his story “Blade of the Bunny.” His novel Red Hood’s Revenge was nominated for the Gaylactic Spectrum Award. In 2012, he won the Hugo Award for Best Fan Writer.

“Spell of the Sparrow” first appeared in Sword and Sorceress XXI, edited by Diana L. Paxson. An audio version was included in PodCastle 13, edited by Rachel Swirsky. Hines included it in his e-book collection Kitemaster and Other Stories and it was also reprinted in his collection The Goblin Master’s Grimoire.

While there are many tales of changelings and children who are abducted by fairies, Hines goes for a different story in “Spell of the Sparrow.” Alycia and James are two happily married former thieves with a daughter who, against her mother’s wishes, sneaks off to practice magic. Their lives are thrown into turmoil when Basi, a Cloudling, turns up, having cast a love spell on James. Although Hines explains that Cloudlings use bird magic, and Basi has a sparrow as a familiar, he never fully explains what she is, nor why she chose to cast a spell on James.

“Spell of the Sparrow” is a puzzle story, with James in love with both Alycia and Basi, unable and unwilling to betray either one. Alycia and their daughter, Mel, must try to figure out a way to break the spell, although Basi, and Hines, set enough strictures on the way Cloudling magic works and Mel’s abilities that breaking the spell becomes nearly impossible.

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Peplum Populist: The Maciste Films of Italian Silent Cinema (2015)

Peplum Populist: The Maciste Films of Italian Silent Cinema (2015)

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maciste-films-of-italian-silent-cinema

The mighty muscleman Maciste has battled his way across millions of cinema screens around the globe, toppling tyrants, aiding the oppressed, vanquishing monsters, and taking on evil armies. Yet most of the world doesn’t even know his name. Instead, Maciste has gone undercover with pseudonyms such as Colossus, Atlas, Goliath, and most often, Hercules.

Maciste first appeared in the Italian sword-and-sandal (peplum) boom of 1957–1965 in Maciste in the Valley of the Kings (1960), which became Son of Samson in English-speaking territories and started the tradition of erasing the character’s name outside his home country. Maciste featured in twenty-four more pepla over the next five years, placing him second only to Hercules in the pantheon of sword-and-sandal strongmen. Since I started these “Peplum Populist” articles a year and a half ago, I’ve examined four Maciste films — and just one has “Maciste” in its English title, Maciste in Hell (1962), and that was only in the U.K. It became The Witch’s Curse in the U.S. I’ve come across only two Maciste film that use his name in the English dubbing, and in Colossus and the Headhunters he still lost his name in the title. 

So who is this brawny Italian superman? Why did everyone in Italy seem to know who he was and hold him almost equal to Hercules at the movie palaces?

The short answer: Maciste is a hero created not from myth, folklore, or poetry, but from movies. The long answer: well, it’s a long answer, hence why this article exists. I’ve wanted to explore the whole “Maciste issue” at length, and discovered the best approach was to go right to the source — Maciste’s roots in the silent films of Italy. The most extensive English study on the topic is The Maciste Films of Italian Silent Cinema by Jacqueline Reich (Indiana University Press, 2015). Consider this your history of the origin of Maciste by way of a book overview.

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Birthday Reviews: Rachel Swirsky’s “The Monster’s Million Faces”

Birthday Reviews: Rachel Swirsky’s “The Monster’s Million Faces”

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Cover by Shaun Tan
Cover by Shaun Tan

Rachel Swirsky was born on April 14, 1982. To this point, her writing career has been focused on short stories, although in 2010 she co-edited the anthology People of the Book: A Decade of Jewish Science Fiction and Fantasy with Sean Wallace. Her stories have been collected in two volumes, Through the Drowsy Dark and How the World Became Quiet: Myths of the Past, Present, and Future.

Swirsky won the Nebula Award for Best Novella in 2010 for her story “The Lady Who Plucked Red Flowers beneath the Queen’s Window” and the Nebula for Best Short Story in 2014 for “If You Were a Dinosaur, My Love.” She has been nominated for four additional Nebulas as well as four Hugos and four World Fantasy Awards, including nominations for both of her Nebula winning stories for all of those Awards. Swirsky was a Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award finalist for “Eros, Philia, Agape” and also has a Rhysling Award nomination for her poem “The Oracle on River Street.”

“The Monster’s Million Faces” was first published at Tor.com on September 8, 2010, acquired by Patrick Nielsen Hayden. In February of the following year, Tor issued the story as an electronic chapbook and they included it in their massive e-book The Stories: Five Years of Original Fiction on Tor.com in 2013. That same year, the story saw its first print publication when Swirsky included it in her collection How the World Became Quiet: Myths of the Past, Present, and Future.

Monsters come in all forms and Swirsky examines them in “The Monster’s Million Faces,” a story about Aaron, who was kidnapped and abused for five days when he was eight years old. As an adult he is trying to deal with the trauma, especially after he attacked his boss in a blind rage brought on by her sexual advances.

Aaron is working with a psychiatrist, Dana, who puts him into a series of trances, not just to have him confront his abuser, but to try to figure out what sort of false memory they can graft onto him to help him move past what happened to him. Never entirely explicit, the false memories he undergoes are each horrifying in their own way as he confronts different versions of his attacker, each with their own motive, many of which remain hidden to Aaron. At the same time, he tries to work through his own fear, anger, and rage to understand why a stranger, who has never been caught, would do what he did to an innocent eight year old.

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Birthday Reviews: Bill Pronzini’s “Cat”

Birthday Reviews: Bill Pronzini’s “Cat”

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Cover by David Palladini
Cover by David Palladini

Bill Pronzini was born on April 13, 1943.

Although he has written significant science fiction, Pronzini is better known as a mystery author, specifically of the Nameless Detective series. He has also served as an editor on nearly 100 books, including some science fiction and fantasy anthologies, and occasionally with co-editors such as Martin H. Greenberg, Marcia Muller, to whom he is married, Ed Gorman, and others.

In 1981 Pronzini was nominated for the British Science Fiction Association Award for his story “Prose Bowl,” co-written with Barry N. Malzberg. He received a World Fantasy Award nomination the following year for his anthology Mummy! A Chrestomathy of Crypt-ology.

“Cat” was originally published by Edward L. Ferman in the November 1978 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. It was reprinted in a Portuguese edition of the magazine within a few years and was also translated into Italian for publication in Urania.

Cat stories are ubiquitous in science fiction, enough so that Andre Norton was able to publish five volumes in her Catfantastic anthology series, and other authors have also published anthologies of feline science fiction and fantasy. Pronzini’s “Cat,” surprisingly, hasn’t been reprinted in any of these anthologies. It is a sort of recursive science fiction, not in the usual sense, but because Benson, Pronzini’s main character, not only reads science fiction, but refers to the stories, by author and title, giving shout-outs to multiple Fredric Brown stories, as well as works by E. Hoffman Price, Jerome Bixby, George Langelaan, James Thurber, and others.

The basic premise is that a cat has wandered into Bronson’s house and he doesn’t know how it got there. Allowing his imagination to run wild, Bronson begins to feel uneasy about the cat’s presence, eventually turning to fear. Bronson’s emotion and response to the cat builds quite rapidly, until he decides to shoot the animal.

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Birthday Reviews: Emil Petaja’s “Found Objects”

Birthday Reviews: Emil Petaja’s “Found Objects”

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Cover by Hannes Bok
Cover by Hannes Bok

Emil Petaja was born on April 12, 1915 and died on August 17, 2000.

Petaja published thirteen novels and more than 150 short stories. His Otava series, beginning with the novel Saga of Lost Earths, is based on the Finnish epic the Kalevala. Petaja was a close friend of artist Hannes Bok and founded the Bokanalia Foundation, which included a small art press, in 1967. He published three portfolios of Bok’s work as well as a commemorative volume. He was also the chairman of the Golden Gate Futurians, a San Francisco based science fiction club for professionals and fans. He was named the first Author Emeritus by SFWA in 1994.

“Found Objects” was originally published in Petaja’s collection Stardrift and Other Fantastic Flostsam in 1971, published by William L. Crawford’s Fantasy Publishing Company. Robin Wayne Bailey chose the story as one of five stories to represent Petaja in Architects of Dreams: The SFWA Author Emeritus Anthology, which covered the first five Author Emeriti named by SFWA.

Set in a contemporary San Francisco, “Found Objects” revolves around a party for a group of amateur artists as one of their number, the benefactor Triptich, is planning on departing San Francisco. He tells one of the guests, Jack Clay, that the purpose of the party is to help all of the attendees achieve a crest in their lives, a moment of perfect enjoyment before he has to leave, a concept which dovetailed neatly with thoughts Jack had while driving to the party.

Jack and his wife Mab don’t see eye to eye on things.  Jack just wants to do his own thing and move forward, while Mab likes to make life as difficult for those around her as possible, making a big show at the end to draw attention to herself. Her actions are passive-aggressive and for the purposes of Triptich’s party take the form of a refusal to wear the clothing he selected for her and then to disappear once she is at the party.

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Birthday Reviews: James Patrick Kelly’s “Rat”

Birthday Reviews: James Patrick Kelly’s “Rat”

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The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction June 1986-small The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction June 1986-back-small

Cover by Michael Garland

James Patrick Kelly was born on April 11, 1951.

Although Kelly has published the novels Wildlife and Look Into the Sun, the majority of his fiction has been at shorter lengths, including the stories “Bernardo’s House,” “Mr. Boy,” and “One Sister, Two Sisters, Three.” In addition to his own novels and short stories, Kelly has edited several anthologies with John Kessel, and has collaborated with Kessel, Jonathan Lethem, Robert Frazier, and Mike Resnick on stories and poems.

Kelly won the Hugo Award for his novelettes “Think Like a Dinosaur” and “1016 to 1.” His novella Burn won the Nebula Award as well as the Italia Award. His works have also been nominated for the Seiun Award, the Gaylactic Spectrum Award, the James Tiptree, Jr. Award, and the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award. He is the author most published in Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, with both fiction and a regular column appearing in the magazine.

“Rat” was originally published in the June 1986 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, edited by Edward L. Ferman. It received a Nebula Award nomination for Best Short Story and was picked up by Orson Scott Card for the anthology Future on Fire and by Ursula K. Le Guin and Brian Attebery for The Norton Book of Science Fiction: North American Science Fiction, 1960-1990. Card reprinted it again in Masterpieces: The Best Science Fiction of the Century and Kelly included it in his collection Think Like a Dinosaur and Other Stories. When F&SF’s new editor, Gordon van Gelder, edited The Very Best of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Volume 2, he selected the story to be in the table of contents. The first two times the story was reprinted, it was translated into German for an appearance in Wolfgang Jeschke’s L wie Liquidator and French for Scott Baker’s Ombers portées.

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March Short Story Roundup: Part 2

March Short Story Roundup: Part 2

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Cirsova 7-smallThe past month saw a bumper crop of new short fiction arrive in my mailboxes, digital and physical. This time out, I looked at Cirsova #7, Swords and Sorcery Magazine #74, and the bonus story I forgot to read for my review of Tales from the Magician’s Skull.

I love Cirsova. When it first appeared two years ago, I was impressed with what I saw, and ended my review of its first issue with these words:

If this is what the first issue looks like, I expect future ones will blow me away.

Subsequent issues have upheld that initial promise, but I found this particular issue’s heavy dose of space opera and sword & planet tales not to my liking. I’m too easily bored by rockets and rayguns these days.

#7 commences the proceedings with “Galactic Gamble” by Dominka Lein. It opens with a line that demands more funny than is delivered by the story:

Rasmuel lost his keys on the asteroid Zalima-46. 

Space gangsters, space monsters, and even a fight in a pit did not manage to make this one a winner for me.

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Birthday Reviews: David Langford’s “Waiting for the Iron Age”

Birthday Reviews: David Langford’s “Waiting for the Iron Age”

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Cover by Tim Gray
Cover by Tim Gray

David Langford was born on April 10, 1953.

Langford may be best known as the holder of twenty-one Hugo Awards for Best Fan Writer, including an unprecedented nineteen year winning streak. During that time he also won six Hugo Awards for Best Fanzine for Ansible and a Best Short Story Hugo for “Different Kinds of Darkness.” In 2012, he won his 29th and most recent Hugo for Best Related Work for The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, Third Edition, edited with John Clute, Peter Nicholls, and Graham Sleight. Langford has tied with Charles N. Brown for the most Hugo Awards won.

In addition to his Hugo Awards, Langford has won a FAAN Award for Best Fan Writer at Corflu, and three British SF Awards, for his short story “Cube Root,” his non-fiction Introduction to Maps: The Uncollected John Sladek, and the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction. His Ansible Link column won a Non-Fiction British Fantasy Award. In 2002, Boskone awarded Langford a Skylark Award.

“Waiting for the Iron Age” was originally published by Brian Stableford in the anthology Tales of the Wandering Jew in 1991. Langford later included it in his collection Different Kinds of Darkness.

Langford explores the life of the immortal in “Waiting for the Iron Age.” His narrator is unidentified, but has clearly lived for millennia and has acquired and retained knowledge over that time, although it is also clear that at various times throughout his lifespan he’s undergone a series of rebirths of a sort, which don’t imply death, but do indicate a new start in life. During the Twentieth Century the narrator acquires the scientific terms to discuss his situation and begins to use scientific theories to express himself and a prognosis for his future.

“Waiting for the Iron Age” lacks a plot, focusing on the philosophical with a strong dose of the mathematical to look at the situation the narrator finds himself in. The lack of a storyline will make the story less accessible to many readers, but Langford does offer a distinctive take on the mental processes of someone who has lived an extremely long time with no end in sight.

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Birthday Reviews: Barrington J. Bayley’s “The Way into the Wendy House”

Birthday Reviews: Barrington J. Bayley’s “The Way into the Wendy House”

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Cover by Gerry Grace
Cover by Gerry Grace

Barrington J. Bayley was born on April 9, 1937 and died on October 14, 2008. He often collaborated with Michael Moorcock, and the two variously used the names James Colvin and Michael Barrington for their joint projects. He also used the solo pseudonyms John Diamond, P.F. Woods, and Alan Aumbry.

Bayley won the 1996 BASFA Award for Short Fiction for “A Crab Must Try.” He won the Seiun Award for Best Translated Long Story for Collision Course, The Zen Gun, and The Garments of Caean. The Zen Gun was also a Philip K. Dick nominee. His story “Tommy Atkins” was also nominated for the BSFA Award.

“The Way into the Wendy House” appeared in the May 1993 issue of Interzone, whole number 71, edited by David Pringle and Lee Montgomerie. It has not been reprinted. The story is not only an example of recursive science fiction, but also incorporates Bayley as a character in his own right.

The narrator of “The Way into the Wendy House” is a snob who sits in a pub and reads science fiction novels, imaging himself more intelligent than the boors who inhabit the out-of-the-way village of Donnington. Against his will, he is drawn into conversation with Alan. Alan turns out to be highly educated, although the narrator can’t understand why Alan would not only want to live in the village, but revel in conversing with those the narrator feels are beneath him.

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Constant Killing, Machiavellian Schemes, and Political Intrigue: Thunderhead by Neal Shusterman

Constant Killing, Machiavellian Schemes, and Political Intrigue: Thunderhead by Neal Shusterman

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Scythe Neal Shusterman-small Thunderhead Neal Shusterman-small

Neal Shusterman’s dystopia Thunderhead has rocked the New York Times bestseller list for YA Hardcover for the past two months as of this writing. The sequel to Scythe, a Printz Honor book, it’s just as dark, intense, and daring as the original.

The world of Scythe and Thunderhead is perfect. An incomprehensibly complex, sentient, and nearly all-knowing AI named the Thunderhead runs everything without the slightest hitch. No one needs to work unless they want to, and humans are immortal. If you grow older than you’d like, you can “turn the corner” and become whatever age you choose. If you fall from a high place and splat, a revival center will bring you back. Don’t worry about poison. Don’t worry about car crashes. As long as your flesh isn’t consumed, you’ve only been rendered deadish. Give it a day or two, and you’ll be back among the living.

Unless, of course, a Scythe chooses to glean you.

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