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OtherRealms Issue 28 Part 17
Electronic OtherRealms #28
Fall, 1990
Part 17 of 18
Copyright 1990 by Chuq Von Rospach
All Rights Reserved.
OtherRealms may be distributed electronically only in the original
form and with copyrights, credits and return addresses intact.
OtherRealms may be reproduced in printed form only for your personal use.
No part of OtherRealms may be reprinted or used in any other
publication without permission of the author.
All rights to material published in OtherRealms hereby revert to the author.
Words of Wizdom [Part 2 of 2]
Phoenix
Steven Brust
Ace, 256pp, $3.95, 0-441-66225-0
The Vlad Taltos series continues, and as usual Steven Brust writes a
fine, enjoyable novel. It opens with Vlad being hired by a God to kill
a King, and it ends with Vlad's entire life in tatters -- and Vlad happy
for the first time in a long time.
Along the way, Vlad kills the King, he and Cawti finally call it quits
(a long time coming and an appropriate action in the circumstances, but
it still bothers me no end to have watched that relationship grow,
stagnate and die over the length of the series), the Easterners revolt,
all Hell breaks loose (fortunately not literally -- although Brust is
certainly capable of throwing it in if he needs to).
In other words, the typical well-done Steven Brust book, a combination
of emotionally powerful happenings, complex plot-twinings and a wry
sense of humor (the humor in the book reminds me very much of Tom Baker
as Dr. Who, who always had time for a sly comment as the world was
about to explode around him -- a character balanced by equal parts of
raw ego, terror and fear of failure). Most people have either
discovered Brust by now and are overjoyed at the thought of a new book
or are long disgusted and already reading the next review. If you're
new to his books, don't start here -- go pick up Jhereg and start at the
beginning. This is not a series where you can pop into the middle
without getting hopelessly lost. [****]
Sparrowhawk
Thomas A. Easton
Ace, 240pp, $3.95, 0-441-77778-3
Thomas Easton's first novel is an interesting mix of hard science and
wild speculation. Easton is the long-time reviewer for Analog (which
serialized this work in 1989) and a trained biologist, and what he's
done is try to write what is, for lack of a cleaner term, biological
space opera.
Let me try to explain. In Easton's future world, biological
breakthroughs have led to using genetically modified animals for
vehicles: giant, Greyhound bus-sized pigeons for ambulances, sparrows
for commercial jets, giant roaches, turtles and other beasties for
automobiles. Anything you want, they can build through gene splicing
and experimentation.
About ten pages into the book, I shook my head in disbelief. While the
science is a pretty clear extrapolation of current trends, the logic of
the situation is rather hard to swallow. But as I thought about it, I
realized that Easton was only doing with biology the kind of
semi-fictional handwaving we take for granted in the 'real' hard science
fiction stories. We can accept faster than light space travel,
teleportation, hand-held laser guns and the other trinkets and toys of
the hard SF world, all of which are arguably closer to fantasy than
reality, but when someone does the same in biology, we have trouble
believing it, even though the science of Easton's police-cruiser
Sparrowhawks are closer to reality than many of the concepts commonly
used by other authors.
What I did was stop worrying about it. Pretty soon it really didn't
matter -- Easton's written a good story here, and you can see the
Roachsters and Turtles heading down the freeway, the Hawks and the
747-sized Sparrows flying the skies like planes. Around this he builds
a fascinating action-adventure/mystery that's a lot of fun, even if it's
not terribly hard to unravel.
All in all, a good, successful first outing that is a good read while
rather quietly setting some of our preconceptions about what's Science
and what's Fiction in this field on its ear. Definitely worth an
evening of your time. [****]
N-Space
Larry Niven
Tor, September, 1990, 0-312-85089-3, 512pp, $19.95
Larry Niven has been writing SF for 25 years. For someone who pretty
much cut his teeth on Niven's work, that scares me a bit. It's hard to
realize I've been reading him that long. He's simply always been there.
To honor this anniversary, Tor books has put together a collection of
Niven material. Some of it is reprint: excepts from his books, some of
his more famous stories. Some of it is new, like the cult classic "Down
In Flames" -- long distributed through gray-market channels but never
before published. "Down In Flames" is the outline of the story that
proves that all of Known Space is a shuck, a hoax. You have to read it
to believe it.
Each work has either a forward or an afterward, and there's a lot of
good material both by and about Niven. This book is a good overview of
his career -- the only thing I found missing is a story from his Warlock
series. I wish it had "What Good is a Glass Dagger". Also missing is a
Hanville Svetz story, and a Draco's Tavern story, and...
Which is probably why these things are missing -- Niven's done so much
that's notable that you have to draw the line somewhere. I do wish it'd
been drawn on the other side of Warlock, though.
For Niven fans, a gottahave. It also makes a really good introduction
to the writer for people that are just starting out. It was for me a
nice way to spend some time with an old friend. [****]
The Year's Best Science Fiction, Seventh Annual Collection
Gardner Dozois
St. Martin's, 598pp, $24.95, 0-312-04451-8
There's not a lot I can say about this collection that I haven't said
about previous collections. Suffice it to say that this is the book I
keep around so I don't need to store the entire year's supply of
magazines. Dozois doesn't publish every worthy story, but he comes
close. He has twenty-five of the top works of 1989, including Mike
Resnick's "For I have Touched the Sky", Connie Willis' "At the Rialto",
Michael Swanwick's "The Edge of the World", Alan Brennert's "The Third
Sex" and more. This, of all of the "Best of" collections in the field,
is the one that really gives you a feel for what happened in the short
fiction world that year. [****+]
Universe 1
Robert Silverberg and Karen Haber
Foundation, 449pp, $8.95, 0-385-26771-1
When I was growing up, there was an anthology called Orbit, edited by a
person named Damon Knight. Little did I know when I was grabbing these
off the library shelves that I was not just getting a book of stories,
but I was getting a book of some of the best of the field. Later on,
Terry Carr started Universe, another anthology of original fiction.
Between these two editors, a foundation for a lot what makes modern SF
successful was laid (and, coincidentally, I was made a fan of the
genre). Damon isn't editing Orbit any more, and Terry Carr has left us
long before we were ready to say goodbye, but in the hands of Karen
Haber and her husband, Robert Silverberg, Universe lives on. This, the
18th volume of the series (why is Universe 18 inexplicably named
Universe 1? Don't ask me. Only the publisher knows) is the first since
Carr's death, and shows that the series has been placed in very good
hands. There is a wide range of styles and ideas here, from Kim Stanley
Robinson's "The Translator" (my personal favorite) to Barry Malzberg's
"Playback" to M.J. Engh's "Moon Blood". The only thing these stories
have in common is a commitment to strong, quality writing. I'm very
glad to see Universe alive and kicking, and thrilled that it's in the
hands it's in. Highly recommended. [****+]
Blood is not Enough
Ellen Datlow
Berkley, 308pp, $3.95, 0-425-12178-X
One more anthology, this a mix of new and original material. Ellen
Datlow is Fiction Editor for Omni, and has started editing a series of
theme anthologies with a twist (the other one that's been published is
Alien Sex, which I haven't gotten my hands on yet). Blood is not Enough
is a vampire anthology. Actually, it's more an anthology on vampirism
in its many forms -- these are not the bite them in the neck type
ghoulies.
These are the suck them until they're dry vampires of Harlan Ellison's
"Try a Dull Knife" (always a story that gives me nightmares after
re-reading it), and the vampires of fear and death of Dan Simmons'
"Carrion Comfort" (by far the most powerful story in the bunch -- can
Simmons write anything that is merely good? He's likely to give a lot of
authors inferiority complexes by the time he's done). There's Ed
Bryant's "Good Kids", which shows that real vampires might be the least
of your worries.
Basically, there's a lot of really good stuff in here. A fine theme
anthology -- Datlow is a very good editor who seems to be able to coax
the best out of her writer's. If this is an indication of what her
books are going to publish, I'll be sucking each one dry as it comes
out. [****]
Golden Fleece
Robert J Sawyer
Questar, December, 1990, 250pp, $4.95, 0-445-21078
I really wanted to like Golden Fleece. It is a tale of an insane
intelligent computer on an interstellar ship named JASON that Has A
Secret and is willing to go to any length, including murder, to protect
that secret. The book, in fact, opens as we watch Jason (the AI persona
and point of view character) not only commit a murder, but do so both
gleefully and with the nastiness of a cat playing with a mouse. It's
clear, from the beginning, that the character that is speaking to us is
not the hero of the story. The similarities between this book and
Christie's Murder of Roger Ackroyd are clear, although Sawyer definitely
heads off in his own directions.
And thus lies the problem with the book. This is a telling of the story
of 2001: A Space Odyssey from the point of view of HAL. But being
locked into HAL creates some serious limitations to what Sawyer can do
to tell the story and make it interesting to the reader. Structurally,
he can't switch from first person to an omniscient viewpoint without
screwing up the story, but he can't successfully tell the story purely
from a first person POV -- especially one locked into an immobile
computer.
So from the very start Sawyer has done the writerly equivalent of
painting himself into a corner and then depending on his skills to paint
a door into the wall to make his exit. JASON has microphones and
cameras everywhere -- hallways, bedrooms, bathrooms, in the closets,
under the bed -- he does a better job of surveillance than Colossus did
in The Forbin Project (one must wonder how the citizens of this ship had
to feel about all this 'benign' oversight by the computer, yet not once
did we see any indication of anyone worrying about not having any
privacy at all about anything). That's a very expensive proposition and
I wondered what justification the builders of the ship could have to
convince everyone, especially the Governments that funded the ship, that
it was necessary to watch people that closely (an authorial necessity,
yes. But would a ship really be built with this level of watchfulness?
I can't buy it, except perhaps under a very tight autocratic
dictatorship -- but would they send people to the stars where they
couldn't be completely controlled?)
The authorial manipulations get worse, though. At some point, Sawyer
decided that he really had to get inside the head of Aaron, the
computer's main antagonist. To do this without breaking point of view,
he had JASON take a brain dump of Aaron and sticks it into a few spare
gigabytes of RAM and simply simulates the persona of Aaron, neuron by
neuron -- in real time. Just an off-the-cuff weekend project for a
self-actualized AI like JASON, you understand.
Now, if you can stretch your disbelief across all of the technical and
structural problems, you've got a pretty good story here. JASON is a
murderer and is definitely Up To Something. What it is, he's not
saying. Aaron, on the other hand, has to solve the murder and figure
out the mystery before he finds himself breathing vacuum himself. It's
a pretty good mystery with pretty good writing -- I simply found myself
constantly distracted by the man behind the curtain waving his hands and
blowing lots of smoke.
If Golden Fleece is a failure, it's because Sawyer set his sights very
high and found that his writing skills weren't quite up to the task.
How well you like this book will depend on how forgiving you are of
watching the author manipulate the story to make what needs to happen
happen. For me, I could never forget that Sawyer was there, directing
traffic and could never suspend disbelief long enough to let the story
work. A good, but unsuccessful first novel from someone that I think is
going to continue setting unreasonable goals for himself -- and start
reaching them. [**]
The Zork Chronicles
George Alec Effinger
Avon, 290pp, $4.50, 0-380-75388-X
I'm a long-time fan of Zork, having played it on the original MIT
machines back when personal computers were still too weak to support it.
I'm also a big fan of Effinger, whose When Gravity Fails and The Fire
in the Sun are wonderful works. So when I found out that he was writing
the novelization of the computer game, I had to see what came out.
I wish I could say I liked it. Part of the problem is inherent in the
idea: how do you write a narrative of a computer game? Effinger solved
the problem by writing it from the point of view of the character you
control while playing the game. That's okay as far as it goes, but it
wears thin after a while. The other inherent problem is that this kind
of book ends up turning into a travelogue. First you visit the unicorn,
then you visit the volcano, then you do this, then you do that. Zork
fans can follow along and enjoy the references and watch the progress,
but everyone else is likely to either be very confused or bored.
Effinger tries to rise above this by using the Zork story as a baseline
while tossing in lots of other stuff. There's a lot of interesting (and
sometimes wickedly funny) comments, in jokes, commentary on people in
the field, awards and organizations. When this stuff works, it's
hilarious. When it sputters, everything comes to a crashing halt.
Unfortunately, it sputters far too often to support the tale, which
ultimately becomes boring and sketchy.
All this book really needs is a good rewrite to tighten up the weak
spots, clear out the deadwood and the gags that didn't work and to fix
up some of the errors in consistency. Unfortunately, in a knock-off
product like this, it didn't get that kind of care and what we get is a
prototype of what could have been as good a book as McCrumb's Bimbo's of
the Death Sun, but what is, when we're done, merely is an inadequate
work for any but the most hard core of Zork fans. [*]
------ End ------
