Ubik by Philip K. Dick
188 pages
Published 1969
Read from February 22 to February 25
Rating: ★★★★ out of 5
I believe the correct term for this sort of book is a yarn.
A fast-paced, delectably balls-nuts yarn. It took me a while to get
into it, but once in, I read it with a nearly constant dumb grin on my
face. There's something Gaiman-esque about Joe Chip's plight, with
furnishings, appliances, magazines, and everything else around him
reverting to older forms as his version of reality degrades, haunted all
the while by the ubiquity of Glen Runciter. Put less anachronistically,
Dick prefigures Gaiman by about three decades. Further, its plot in
outline anticipates (or inspired?) Tad Williams' Otherland series in
many respects. Whichever way you want to look at it, this book was good.
It even featured women and "Negros" in positions of responsibility,
which put it considerably ahead of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?,
at least in terms of a (slightly) more retroactively plausible future.
Not bad, considering it was published a scant year later.
Monday, February 25, 2013
Sunday, February 24, 2013
2013 read #29: All About Emily by Connie Willis.
All About Emily by Connie Willis
97 pages
Published 2011
Read February 24
Rating: ★★½ out of 5
It's cheating a bit to claim this one as a "book" I read. Despite what the jacket flap claims, 17,000 words is not "long" for a novella. The large print, wide margins, and small pages disguise the fact that there just isn't much here. It's published by Subterranean Press, who for whatever reason think it's a sound business practice in print's waning years to print up "deluxe hardcover editions" of modest novellas and sell them for $20 a pop. I wonder who even buys these things, mismanaged libraries aside. (Someone affiliated with my library, either staff or vocal patron, must have a thing for Subterranean Press.) The "illustrations" inside are all kinds of goofy, made goofier by recycling them in an amateurish collage on the cover. I prefer to imagine characters on my own terms, thank you, instead of having some model smiling blandly in an undergraduate-level photoshop.
This is a workmanlike AI story, nothing fresh or memorable except, perhaps, its Broadway trappings. Projecting current celebrity and internet culture several decades into the future led to rather silly reading. (The phrase "go viral" is like fingernails on chalkboard for me.) I like what little Connie Willis I've read, but this little story will not make any favorites rankings.
97 pages
Published 2011
Read February 24
Rating: ★★½ out of 5
It's cheating a bit to claim this one as a "book" I read. Despite what the jacket flap claims, 17,000 words is not "long" for a novella. The large print, wide margins, and small pages disguise the fact that there just isn't much here. It's published by Subterranean Press, who for whatever reason think it's a sound business practice in print's waning years to print up "deluxe hardcover editions" of modest novellas and sell them for $20 a pop. I wonder who even buys these things, mismanaged libraries aside. (Someone affiliated with my library, either staff or vocal patron, must have a thing for Subterranean Press.) The "illustrations" inside are all kinds of goofy, made goofier by recycling them in an amateurish collage on the cover. I prefer to imagine characters on my own terms, thank you, instead of having some model smiling blandly in an undergraduate-level photoshop.
This is a workmanlike AI story, nothing fresh or memorable except, perhaps, its Broadway trappings. Projecting current celebrity and internet culture several decades into the future led to rather silly reading. (The phrase "go viral" is like fingernails on chalkboard for me.) I like what little Connie Willis I've read, but this little story will not make any favorites rankings.
2013 read #28: After the King: Stories in Honor of J.R.R. Tolkien, edited by Martin H. Greenberg.
After the King: Stories in Honor of J.R.R. Tolkien, edited by Martin H. Greenberg
439 pages
Published 1992
Read from February 18 to February 24
Rating: ★★½ out of 5
I'm eager to consume every current "Best of SF" anthology in my local library, but this book is something different that caught my eye. The publisher's blurb is quick to point out, "These stories were not created to imitate the master, but to celebrate the dazzling diversity of fantasy which Tolkien's work has inspired." Its contents page reads like a who's who of late '80s and early '90s fantasy, a checklist of authors that, had I grown up in a more conventional manner, would be the source of fond childhood memories. As it is, I've read embarrassingly little from any of them. I'll comment on that as I read through these stories, no doubt. For now, before I begin, I want to say I'm really excited to read this book. I'm skeptical about these claims of "dazzling diversity" -- my understanding is that the recent diversity of fantasy fiction began with the next generation of authors, those who began breaking into the pro magazines later in the '90s. But I expect this to be (mostly) a fun read all the same. I better not be disappointed.
First, I want to mention that this is my first time reading a collection edited by Martin H. Greenberg. He was a prolific anthologist whose books were everywhere in the '90s. As a teen, I was fixated on getting my hands on one of his productions, a book of dinosaur stories capitalizing on the post-Jurassic Park ubiquity of dinosaur mania. I kept checking for his name whenever my father took me to used bookstores, but never ever obtained a copy. I seemed to find a new Greenberg anthology every time I checked, though. It's something of a (very minor) milestone for me to finally read a collection he edited. Though, given the subject matter of some of his books -- UFOs, the Joker, Vampire Detectives -- maybe I shouldn't hold high hopes for this one, despite the roster of talent Greenberg (or his publishers) assembled.
Now, on to the stories.
"Reave the Just" by Stephen R. Donaldson. I have a copy of Lord Foul's Bane in the basement. I've been meaning to read it for, um, five or six years now. I plan to get to it... someday. (Incidentally, Lord Foul's Bane was published in 1977? Seriously? I assumed it was mid '90s at the earliest, given its reputation for "moral bleakness," always popular in internet fantasy circles.) This story does little to entice my interest in Donaldson's fiction. It's a slog: tedious torture porn written in an oh-so-clever omniscient voice meant to contrast ironically with the subject matter, with no appealing or interesting characters, a "hero" who serves only to tell people to help themselves, no sharp worldbuilding, nothing actually clever, just nattering along as if I were expected to give a shit. It's just... bleggghh. It didn't sustain my interest whatsoever; I had to read it a couple pages at a time over the course of an entire day. Literally, a whole day. I hope this isn't a sign of things to come.
"Troll Bridge" by Terry Pratchett. I've always gotten Pratchett mixed up with Piers Anthony, which is an unfortunate comparison -- I've only read one Piers Anthony book, probably Roc and a Hard Place, and it was godawful. It was bad enough to put me off punning, "satirical," over-prolific fantasy novelists of every stripe. But really, no one deserves to be conflated with Piers Anthony. This story is actually pretty cute. Really cute, and quite enjoyable. A nice little introduction to Pratchett, I think.
"A Long Night's Vigil at the Temple" by Robert Silverberg. I have mixed feelings regarding Silverberg. I loved Lord Valentine's Castle, liked Majipoor Chronicles, Valentine Pontifex, Hawksbill Station, and The Alien Years, and felt utterly indifferent about Nightfall and Kingdoms of the Wall. I think Silverberg's alright, but with the exception of Lord Valentine's Castle, I wouldn't put him on any list of favorites. He seems to use the same basic approach for many of his stories: he takes a common Golden Age sci-fi concept, and he explores it from what, at the time, is an unexpected angle. The Alien Years posits an alien invasion, gets it over with in a single day, then follows its effects on Earth society over the next century and a half. Kingdoms of the Wall posits a human colony on an alien world, then explores its cultural effects on the native sentient beings. Hawksbill Station takes time travel deep into the geologic past, and uses it as a means to create penal colonies. "Vigil" picks up ten thousand years after a world-changing alien contact, when priests pray nightly to the trinity of alien beings who "saved" the Earth so long ago, and (inevitably for a '90s story) the lead priest and central character questions his faith. It's fairly good, not great -- a leisurely, comfortable tale of archaeological mystery that unearths no real surprises, straddling the gray zone between sci-fi and fantasy, which always wins points from me.
"The Dragon of Tollin" by Elizabeth Ann Scarborough. The first author I hadn't heard of, though apparently she collaborated on the Acorna series, which I encountered once in a grade school English textbook. This story did nothing to make me want to seek out more from her. Heavy-handed social commentary is only tolerable in an otherwise entertaining story. This was bland, predictable, and entirely forgettable. (Two days after reading it, I'm struggling to recall what topic her social commentary even pertained to.)
"Faith" by Poul and Karen Anderson. I've read one or two of Poul Anderson's Time Patrol collections, and nothing at all by Karen Anderson. This tale they crafted together could be a textbook example of How Not to Begin Your Story in current SF fashion. It opens with four pages nattering on about this generically quaint pastoral region on the edge of a generic fantasy kingdom, and how a goblin fort shows up one day and kids begin to disappear, and then thirty-three years pass. Four pages to set that up -- information that was apparent between the lines anyway once the actual story began after all those wasted pages. Pro tip: No one wants to read four pages of scene setting in a short story, no matter how unique and interesting it is, because in actuality it is neither of those things. Set your scenes by having people act and having things happen in your story -- you know, by actually writing a short story instead of a historical society leaflet or travel brochure. This isn't a movie where you open with a birds-eye shot and slowly zoom in on the hero during five minutes of opening credits. You gotta get in there, make an impression with your characters, tell a story, and get out of there. There can be room for leisurely exploration sometimes, but make us give a shit about what's going on first, before you do anything else. If top-name fantasy fiction was like this in the early '90s, it's no wonder editors stress this simple concept so earnestly today. Beyond that, "Faith" is just kind of there, neither good nor especially bad.
"In the Season of the Dressing of the Wells" by John Brunner. Aside from a certain expositional ham-handedness -- the protagonist, in essence, stops and tells anyone who will listen that "I no longer believe in God because of what I went through in The War!", and other characters repeat that back to him almost word for word -- this story reminds me quite a bit of contemporary fantasy fiction. Put another way, it's the least dated story in the collection so far. It's charming, sweet, and absorbing. My only beef with the tale is Brunner's lackluster attempt to portray the effects of shellshock. That's a lot for any writer to take on, and Brunner just doesn't handle it convincingly, in my opinion. On the whole, though, quite the enjoyable story.
"The Fellowship of the Dragon" by Patricia A. McKillip. This one was faintly entertaining. It read like young adult lit. The characters were bland and hastily sketched, the fairy tale incidents were predictable and (in the absence of characters I cared about) not very interesting -- kind of a minimum effort piece all around, but not terrible for all that. Maybe a C or C-.
"The Decoy Duck" by Harry Turtledove. I only know Turtledove as "That guy weirdly obsessed with the South winning the Civil War, and the ten thousand different ways World War II could have gone." I only read one or two of his Worldwar books, the ones where aliens come along and change the course of World War II. The one thing I clearly recall from it is some lecherous Chinese(?) character getting put into a breeding program and marveling at the color of a redhead girl's nipples. Needless to say, I did not have high expectations for Turtledove's entry in this fine volume. It turned out to be an exercise in mediocrity, populated with tiresome Orientalist and Nordic stereotypes. The swarthy "southrons" are described as "clever," with some asperity, intended as an antonym to "honest" and "open" (and also, implicitly, "good"). Nordic physiognomy here represents strength and innate nobility. Such anachronistic notions of race just don't fit in a pseudo-Byzantine time period, and aren't entertaining in any case. Now add in a completely cliched 1990s plot about religious identity (seriously, that's like half this book so far), only this time those swarthy, decadent southrons can't even be good practitioners of their own religion; it's left to their Nordic convert to be the one missionary with conviction and scruples, natch. Sigh. I'm just glad to have this behind me now.
"Nine Threads of Gold" by Andre Norton. I'd heard Norton's name bandied about it a positive way, so I was curious about how this one would turn out. Unfortunately, it falls mostly flat. There are too many characters -- the viewpoint "weaver," and the nine perfect Aryan specimens she is drawn to weave together -- so no one develops much of a personality in the limited space available. The dialogue was kind of awkward and forced, as well. At a guess (I'm not going to bother to look it up), I'd say this was a prequel to some pre-existing novel or series, which follows the subsequent adventures of the nine golden-haired children, the "blood of legends," in their totally-without-weird-racial-undertones fight against darkness. It certainly has the unsatisfying, temporizing feel of a prequel.
This hasn't been a satisfying book so far. At least I'm half done now by page count.
"The Conjure Man" by Charles de Lint. I've made a small vow to read de Lint, but for one reason and another I've never managed to read even one of his works until now. I almost bought his books several times when I had money, but changed my mind every time. I checked out two of his novels but returned them unread (partly because I unknowingly checked out sequels, and I hate reading series out of order). I was excited for this story, and it quickly rewarded my expectations. For one thing, it indirectly inspired me to write a story for the first time in far too many months. For another, "Conjure Man" was a good story. At first it was a bit preachy in a typically '90s "Everything is high-tech these days and no one cares about what's important anymore!" way, and it kind of tapers off toward the end, but the characters and setting were wholly engaging. A charming little piece.
"The Halfling House" by Dennis L. McKiernan. A mildly amusing tale in the "fantasy creatures with attitude" mode, which always skirts the edge of annoying if not done just right. "Halfling House" crosses that line several times with its groan-inducing "references" to everything from Lovecraft to '90s Coors commercials. Despite that, the antics of the hapless and mismatched wee folk had a faint charm. The ending was stupid though.
"Silver or Gold" by Emma Bull. I know I have a soft spot for non-European folklore traditions, but this story was wonderful. Bull makes it seem effortless, spinning a rich, lived-in world you just want to spend time in. More so than even Brunner's contribution, this doesn't seem dated at all. Possibly my favorite story in this collection.
"Up the Side of the Air" by Karen Haber. From the title, I expected this to be a primitive steampunk tale, following shortly after The Difference Engine popularized the concept. I have an unfounded fondness for steampunk still. The subgenre is almost never good; at this point it exists almost solely as creative shortcut and cliche, a set of props to help lazy people tell lackluster stories. But every once in a while I get a craving for airships and one-armed colonial generals and the inevitable lady scientist who flouts society's expectations; it would have provided a welcome break here. Sadly, none of that matters, as this proved to be a completely generic wizard's apprentice story. The whole crux of the story -- "The new apprentice is a girl!" -- may or may not have been old hat in 1992, but it certainly is not impressive to me now. Mercifully, the story is brief. Pointless and brief.
"The Naga" by Peter S. Beagle. I want to say I've read something by this guy, and recently too, but it isn't coming to mind. Oh well. This was a fairy tale in the "rediscovered manuscript" mold, pleasant but not particularly moving or deep.
"Revolt of the Sugar Plum Fairies" by Mike Resnick. I don't know how you can racially stereotype sugar plum fairies, but here you go. It's meant for comedic effect, and this story did bring a smile to my face, but it's still a bit of an odd choice, if you ask me. In terms of pop culture references, this is the single most dated story of the bunch.
"Winter's King" by Jane Yolen. A brief but moderately satisfactory fairy tale. Not much to say about it.
"Götterdämmerung" by Barry N. Malzberg. The stock "experimental" trick of setting off dialogue with an em dash instead of quotation marks? Yeah, that hasn't struck me as fresh or new since I was like 19. Leaving quotation marks out altogether has a nice effect on my ear, but em dashes are just silly. If Malzberg had skipped the em dashes, I'd give this story modest praise -- I want to follow the earlier adventures of Barbara the Giantess in particular -- but presentation counts. The requisite 1990s pop culture reference in this story: The wizard makes an offhand mention of how, with the loss of a magic ring, the characters live "at the end of chronology." I couldn't decide whether to groan or award Malzberg a point for cleverness.
"Down the River Road" by Gregory Benford. Benford's always a good time. This novelette isn't an exception, necessarily, though it is a bit busy. We got an enormous ringworld/tubeworld setup, we got a world-river, we got metallic fauna in silver streams, we got timeflows, we got timestorms, we got tame zombies, we got spirit handshakes, we got hydrogen hats, we got memory men, we got blunderbusses that grow on trees and shoot bullet-seeds, we got the ol' "guy accidentally kills himself in the future" routine. Spread it out over 400 pages and slap an appropriately batshit cover on it, and you got yourself a solid post-New Wave sci-fi novel. As it is, it's all a bit cluttered and off-putting. Still a good time, though.
"Death and the Lady" by Judith Tarr. A quite good story to wrap things up, very satisfying.
Well, overall, I'd say this book was a disappointment. Not entirely so -- there were at least five worthwhile contributions in the lot -- but enough of one to make me long for one of the more recent "Year's Best" anthologies. Lucky thing I have three of those waiting for me in my library box...
439 pages
Published 1992
Read from February 18 to February 24
Rating: ★★½ out of 5
I'm eager to consume every current "Best of SF" anthology in my local library, but this book is something different that caught my eye. The publisher's blurb is quick to point out, "These stories were not created to imitate the master, but to celebrate the dazzling diversity of fantasy which Tolkien's work has inspired." Its contents page reads like a who's who of late '80s and early '90s fantasy, a checklist of authors that, had I grown up in a more conventional manner, would be the source of fond childhood memories. As it is, I've read embarrassingly little from any of them. I'll comment on that as I read through these stories, no doubt. For now, before I begin, I want to say I'm really excited to read this book. I'm skeptical about these claims of "dazzling diversity" -- my understanding is that the recent diversity of fantasy fiction began with the next generation of authors, those who began breaking into the pro magazines later in the '90s. But I expect this to be (mostly) a fun read all the same. I better not be disappointed.
First, I want to mention that this is my first time reading a collection edited by Martin H. Greenberg. He was a prolific anthologist whose books were everywhere in the '90s. As a teen, I was fixated on getting my hands on one of his productions, a book of dinosaur stories capitalizing on the post-Jurassic Park ubiquity of dinosaur mania. I kept checking for his name whenever my father took me to used bookstores, but never ever obtained a copy. I seemed to find a new Greenberg anthology every time I checked, though. It's something of a (very minor) milestone for me to finally read a collection he edited. Though, given the subject matter of some of his books -- UFOs, the Joker, Vampire Detectives -- maybe I shouldn't hold high hopes for this one, despite the roster of talent Greenberg (or his publishers) assembled.
Now, on to the stories.
"Reave the Just" by Stephen R. Donaldson. I have a copy of Lord Foul's Bane in the basement. I've been meaning to read it for, um, five or six years now. I plan to get to it... someday. (Incidentally, Lord Foul's Bane was published in 1977? Seriously? I assumed it was mid '90s at the earliest, given its reputation for "moral bleakness," always popular in internet fantasy circles.) This story does little to entice my interest in Donaldson's fiction. It's a slog: tedious torture porn written in an oh-so-clever omniscient voice meant to contrast ironically with the subject matter, with no appealing or interesting characters, a "hero" who serves only to tell people to help themselves, no sharp worldbuilding, nothing actually clever, just nattering along as if I were expected to give a shit. It's just... bleggghh. It didn't sustain my interest whatsoever; I had to read it a couple pages at a time over the course of an entire day. Literally, a whole day. I hope this isn't a sign of things to come.
"Troll Bridge" by Terry Pratchett. I've always gotten Pratchett mixed up with Piers Anthony, which is an unfortunate comparison -- I've only read one Piers Anthony book, probably Roc and a Hard Place, and it was godawful. It was bad enough to put me off punning, "satirical," over-prolific fantasy novelists of every stripe. But really, no one deserves to be conflated with Piers Anthony. This story is actually pretty cute. Really cute, and quite enjoyable. A nice little introduction to Pratchett, I think.
"A Long Night's Vigil at the Temple" by Robert Silverberg. I have mixed feelings regarding Silverberg. I loved Lord Valentine's Castle, liked Majipoor Chronicles, Valentine Pontifex, Hawksbill Station, and The Alien Years, and felt utterly indifferent about Nightfall and Kingdoms of the Wall. I think Silverberg's alright, but with the exception of Lord Valentine's Castle, I wouldn't put him on any list of favorites. He seems to use the same basic approach for many of his stories: he takes a common Golden Age sci-fi concept, and he explores it from what, at the time, is an unexpected angle. The Alien Years posits an alien invasion, gets it over with in a single day, then follows its effects on Earth society over the next century and a half. Kingdoms of the Wall posits a human colony on an alien world, then explores its cultural effects on the native sentient beings. Hawksbill Station takes time travel deep into the geologic past, and uses it as a means to create penal colonies. "Vigil" picks up ten thousand years after a world-changing alien contact, when priests pray nightly to the trinity of alien beings who "saved" the Earth so long ago, and (inevitably for a '90s story) the lead priest and central character questions his faith. It's fairly good, not great -- a leisurely, comfortable tale of archaeological mystery that unearths no real surprises, straddling the gray zone between sci-fi and fantasy, which always wins points from me.
"The Dragon of Tollin" by Elizabeth Ann Scarborough. The first author I hadn't heard of, though apparently she collaborated on the Acorna series, which I encountered once in a grade school English textbook. This story did nothing to make me want to seek out more from her. Heavy-handed social commentary is only tolerable in an otherwise entertaining story. This was bland, predictable, and entirely forgettable. (Two days after reading it, I'm struggling to recall what topic her social commentary even pertained to.)
"Faith" by Poul and Karen Anderson. I've read one or two of Poul Anderson's Time Patrol collections, and nothing at all by Karen Anderson. This tale they crafted together could be a textbook example of How Not to Begin Your Story in current SF fashion. It opens with four pages nattering on about this generically quaint pastoral region on the edge of a generic fantasy kingdom, and how a goblin fort shows up one day and kids begin to disappear, and then thirty-three years pass. Four pages to set that up -- information that was apparent between the lines anyway once the actual story began after all those wasted pages. Pro tip: No one wants to read four pages of scene setting in a short story, no matter how unique and interesting it is, because in actuality it is neither of those things. Set your scenes by having people act and having things happen in your story -- you know, by actually writing a short story instead of a historical society leaflet or travel brochure. This isn't a movie where you open with a birds-eye shot and slowly zoom in on the hero during five minutes of opening credits. You gotta get in there, make an impression with your characters, tell a story, and get out of there. There can be room for leisurely exploration sometimes, but make us give a shit about what's going on first, before you do anything else. If top-name fantasy fiction was like this in the early '90s, it's no wonder editors stress this simple concept so earnestly today. Beyond that, "Faith" is just kind of there, neither good nor especially bad.
"In the Season of the Dressing of the Wells" by John Brunner. Aside from a certain expositional ham-handedness -- the protagonist, in essence, stops and tells anyone who will listen that "I no longer believe in God because of what I went through in The War!", and other characters repeat that back to him almost word for word -- this story reminds me quite a bit of contemporary fantasy fiction. Put another way, it's the least dated story in the collection so far. It's charming, sweet, and absorbing. My only beef with the tale is Brunner's lackluster attempt to portray the effects of shellshock. That's a lot for any writer to take on, and Brunner just doesn't handle it convincingly, in my opinion. On the whole, though, quite the enjoyable story.
"The Fellowship of the Dragon" by Patricia A. McKillip. This one was faintly entertaining. It read like young adult lit. The characters were bland and hastily sketched, the fairy tale incidents were predictable and (in the absence of characters I cared about) not very interesting -- kind of a minimum effort piece all around, but not terrible for all that. Maybe a C or C-.
"The Decoy Duck" by Harry Turtledove. I only know Turtledove as "That guy weirdly obsessed with the South winning the Civil War, and the ten thousand different ways World War II could have gone." I only read one or two of his Worldwar books, the ones where aliens come along and change the course of World War II. The one thing I clearly recall from it is some lecherous Chinese(?) character getting put into a breeding program and marveling at the color of a redhead girl's nipples. Needless to say, I did not have high expectations for Turtledove's entry in this fine volume. It turned out to be an exercise in mediocrity, populated with tiresome Orientalist and Nordic stereotypes. The swarthy "southrons" are described as "clever," with some asperity, intended as an antonym to "honest" and "open" (and also, implicitly, "good"). Nordic physiognomy here represents strength and innate nobility. Such anachronistic notions of race just don't fit in a pseudo-Byzantine time period, and aren't entertaining in any case. Now add in a completely cliched 1990s plot about religious identity (seriously, that's like half this book so far), only this time those swarthy, decadent southrons can't even be good practitioners of their own religion; it's left to their Nordic convert to be the one missionary with conviction and scruples, natch. Sigh. I'm just glad to have this behind me now.
"Nine Threads of Gold" by Andre Norton. I'd heard Norton's name bandied about it a positive way, so I was curious about how this one would turn out. Unfortunately, it falls mostly flat. There are too many characters -- the viewpoint "weaver," and the nine perfect Aryan specimens she is drawn to weave together -- so no one develops much of a personality in the limited space available. The dialogue was kind of awkward and forced, as well. At a guess (I'm not going to bother to look it up), I'd say this was a prequel to some pre-existing novel or series, which follows the subsequent adventures of the nine golden-haired children, the "blood of legends," in their totally-without-weird-racial-undertones fight against darkness. It certainly has the unsatisfying, temporizing feel of a prequel.
This hasn't been a satisfying book so far. At least I'm half done now by page count.
"The Conjure Man" by Charles de Lint. I've made a small vow to read de Lint, but for one reason and another I've never managed to read even one of his works until now. I almost bought his books several times when I had money, but changed my mind every time. I checked out two of his novels but returned them unread (partly because I unknowingly checked out sequels, and I hate reading series out of order). I was excited for this story, and it quickly rewarded my expectations. For one thing, it indirectly inspired me to write a story for the first time in far too many months. For another, "Conjure Man" was a good story. At first it was a bit preachy in a typically '90s "Everything is high-tech these days and no one cares about what's important anymore!" way, and it kind of tapers off toward the end, but the characters and setting were wholly engaging. A charming little piece.
"The Halfling House" by Dennis L. McKiernan. A mildly amusing tale in the "fantasy creatures with attitude" mode, which always skirts the edge of annoying if not done just right. "Halfling House" crosses that line several times with its groan-inducing "references" to everything from Lovecraft to '90s Coors commercials. Despite that, the antics of the hapless and mismatched wee folk had a faint charm. The ending was stupid though.
"Silver or Gold" by Emma Bull. I know I have a soft spot for non-European folklore traditions, but this story was wonderful. Bull makes it seem effortless, spinning a rich, lived-in world you just want to spend time in. More so than even Brunner's contribution, this doesn't seem dated at all. Possibly my favorite story in this collection.
"Up the Side of the Air" by Karen Haber. From the title, I expected this to be a primitive steampunk tale, following shortly after The Difference Engine popularized the concept. I have an unfounded fondness for steampunk still. The subgenre is almost never good; at this point it exists almost solely as creative shortcut and cliche, a set of props to help lazy people tell lackluster stories. But every once in a while I get a craving for airships and one-armed colonial generals and the inevitable lady scientist who flouts society's expectations; it would have provided a welcome break here. Sadly, none of that matters, as this proved to be a completely generic wizard's apprentice story. The whole crux of the story -- "The new apprentice is a girl!" -- may or may not have been old hat in 1992, but it certainly is not impressive to me now. Mercifully, the story is brief. Pointless and brief.
"The Naga" by Peter S. Beagle. I want to say I've read something by this guy, and recently too, but it isn't coming to mind. Oh well. This was a fairy tale in the "rediscovered manuscript" mold, pleasant but not particularly moving or deep.
"Revolt of the Sugar Plum Fairies" by Mike Resnick. I don't know how you can racially stereotype sugar plum fairies, but here you go. It's meant for comedic effect, and this story did bring a smile to my face, but it's still a bit of an odd choice, if you ask me. In terms of pop culture references, this is the single most dated story of the bunch.
"Winter's King" by Jane Yolen. A brief but moderately satisfactory fairy tale. Not much to say about it.
"Götterdämmerung" by Barry N. Malzberg. The stock "experimental" trick of setting off dialogue with an em dash instead of quotation marks? Yeah, that hasn't struck me as fresh or new since I was like 19. Leaving quotation marks out altogether has a nice effect on my ear, but em dashes are just silly. If Malzberg had skipped the em dashes, I'd give this story modest praise -- I want to follow the earlier adventures of Barbara the Giantess in particular -- but presentation counts. The requisite 1990s pop culture reference in this story: The wizard makes an offhand mention of how, with the loss of a magic ring, the characters live "at the end of chronology." I couldn't decide whether to groan or award Malzberg a point for cleverness.
"Down the River Road" by Gregory Benford. Benford's always a good time. This novelette isn't an exception, necessarily, though it is a bit busy. We got an enormous ringworld/tubeworld setup, we got a world-river, we got metallic fauna in silver streams, we got timeflows, we got timestorms, we got tame zombies, we got spirit handshakes, we got hydrogen hats, we got memory men, we got blunderbusses that grow on trees and shoot bullet-seeds, we got the ol' "guy accidentally kills himself in the future" routine. Spread it out over 400 pages and slap an appropriately batshit cover on it, and you got yourself a solid post-New Wave sci-fi novel. As it is, it's all a bit cluttered and off-putting. Still a good time, though.
"Death and the Lady" by Judith Tarr. A quite good story to wrap things up, very satisfying.
Well, overall, I'd say this book was a disappointment. Not entirely so -- there were at least five worthwhile contributions in the lot -- but enough of one to make me long for one of the more recent "Year's Best" anthologies. Lucky thing I have three of those waiting for me in my library box...
Wednesday, February 20, 2013
2013 read #27: A Rogue's Life by Wilkie Collins.
A Rogue's Life by Wilkie Collins
162 pages
Published 1856 (as weekly serial in Household Words), 1879 (as slightly revised novella)
Read February 20
Rating: ★★★½ out of 5
This is my first exposure to Collins. In fact, when I picked this novella off the shelf, I'd never heard of him, and had no idea who he was. As such, I'm in no position to evaluate his modern reputation, though I'm guessing he's one of the more prominent Victorian writers who nevertheless have slipped through the cracks of time, denied the cheap and plentiful mass paperback editions and middle school curricula that sustain other "classic" authors. This impression is nurtured by the somewhat tawdry edition stocked by my library, which looks for all the world like a small press imprint of some local writer's pirate fiction, or worse, some tacky evangelical tract. Have a look. I was somewhat self-conscious reading it in public. Perhaps Hesperus Press spent their entire design budget snagging a perfunctory introduction from none other than Peter Ackroyd. (Though apparently Ackroyd wrote a biography of Collins, which makes the connection rather less random.) Wikipedia tells me Collins penned the first English language detective novel, though, and several movies have been made based on his works, so maybe I'm just completely out of the loop. (I am.)
A Rogue's Life is a charming picaresque tale, hilariously dry, cynical, and ironic in the best Victorian mode. In that respect it's nothing unique or remarkable, merely a winsome (and short) example of a well-populated genre. But it's a style I love, so it was well worth the two or three hours it took me to read it. I have to admit, despite all that, it bogged down quite a bit in the middle with a fairly rote recitation of love first thwarted, then won -- an inevitability, perhaps, given the time period, but enough to diminish my overall satisfaction with the book.
162 pages
Published 1856 (as weekly serial in Household Words), 1879 (as slightly revised novella)
Read February 20
Rating: ★★★½ out of 5
This is my first exposure to Collins. In fact, when I picked this novella off the shelf, I'd never heard of him, and had no idea who he was. As such, I'm in no position to evaluate his modern reputation, though I'm guessing he's one of the more prominent Victorian writers who nevertheless have slipped through the cracks of time, denied the cheap and plentiful mass paperback editions and middle school curricula that sustain other "classic" authors. This impression is nurtured by the somewhat tawdry edition stocked by my library, which looks for all the world like a small press imprint of some local writer's pirate fiction, or worse, some tacky evangelical tract. Have a look. I was somewhat self-conscious reading it in public. Perhaps Hesperus Press spent their entire design budget snagging a perfunctory introduction from none other than Peter Ackroyd. (Though apparently Ackroyd wrote a biography of Collins, which makes the connection rather less random.) Wikipedia tells me Collins penned the first English language detective novel, though, and several movies have been made based on his works, so maybe I'm just completely out of the loop. (I am.)
A Rogue's Life is a charming picaresque tale, hilariously dry, cynical, and ironic in the best Victorian mode. In that respect it's nothing unique or remarkable, merely a winsome (and short) example of a well-populated genre. But it's a style I love, so it was well worth the two or three hours it took me to read it. I have to admit, despite all that, it bogged down quite a bit in the middle with a fairly rote recitation of love first thwarted, then won -- an inevitability, perhaps, given the time period, but enough to diminish my overall satisfaction with the book.
Tuesday, February 19, 2013
2013 read #26: Our Father Who Art in a Tree by Judy Pascoe.
Our Father Who Art in a Tree by Judy Pascoe
200 pages
Published 2002
Read February 19
Rating: ★★★½ out of 5
The white trash child, forced by unreliable parentage to be wise beyond her years, is one of my favorite narrative voices. My very first published story used that voice, and I've kept on toying with it in various ways. The promise of seeing such a voice employed in a published literary novel prompted me to pick up this little volume. (Yes, I've read To Kill a Mockingbird. It was great.) As I was brought into this book because of the narrative voice, it was one of the main things I evaluated as I read. I felt that, while adequate, it wasn't especially consistent overall. The line "Christ hanging from what appears to be like a great plus sign" is too naive by far for a girl only months away from confirmation. But that was only the most egregious of small quibbles. The emotional heart of this story was strong and clearly expressed. All in all, a brief but worthwhile read.
200 pages
Published 2002
Read February 19
Rating: ★★★½ out of 5
The white trash child, forced by unreliable parentage to be wise beyond her years, is one of my favorite narrative voices. My very first published story used that voice, and I've kept on toying with it in various ways. The promise of seeing such a voice employed in a published literary novel prompted me to pick up this little volume. (Yes, I've read To Kill a Mockingbird. It was great.) As I was brought into this book because of the narrative voice, it was one of the main things I evaluated as I read. I felt that, while adequate, it wasn't especially consistent overall. The line "Christ hanging from what appears to be like a great plus sign" is too naive by far for a girl only months away from confirmation. But that was only the most egregious of small quibbles. The emotional heart of this story was strong and clearly expressed. All in all, a brief but worthwhile read.
Sunday, February 17, 2013
2013 read #25: A Field Guide to Getting Lost by Rebecca Solnit.
A Field Guide to Getting Lost by Rebecca Solnit
206 pages
Published 2005
Read February 17
Rating: ★★★★½ out of 5
Like a signature isotope sprinkled through my geology, I'm perennially homesick for the American West.
Some of my earliest memories were made in Prescott, Arizona, when I was 3 years old: Running laughingly around my father's truck until a dog, magnified and terrifying in childhood, rose up and snapped its jaws in front of my face. Huddled on the floor of the truck while our father visited his junkie friends on a cold Halloween night, my brother told me a red light in the sky was an invasion from Mars; I believed him implicitly, and feared.
My memories became consecutive and less sporadic when I was 6 and 7, living, however intermittently, in Colorado Springs: The weekly motel where we stayed, the Buffalo Lodge on El Paso Boulevard, its bathroom and kitchenette and my father's rising paranoia. The station wagon never emptied of trunks and boxes and suitcases, its sides wood-paneled, always ready for my father to pile us into it and drive restlessly east over the endless plains to the flat pewter clouds of Ohio before slewing the whole weighty load around and coming back again. The scattered weeks of first grade, broken up by my father's peregrinations, the kids who knew on some level that I was Weird and refused to talk to me, all save the dirty hillbilly child who ate ants on the dusty playground on warm days, to whom I confided that my father called me "Rick-tard" and who cheerfully began calling me that too, our shared assertion of power against our large and terrible fathers. The bitter Front Range winds and the ever-fluctuating weather. The brown boots with the red laces, the ones that always got me in trouble with the gym teacher, because I loved those boots and could never remember when I had to wear gym shoes because I was never in one place long enough to conceive of a schedule, much less think to commit it to memory. The occasional pilgrimage up to the Garden of the Gods or up US 24 into the mountains, the mountains, because in some cabinet in his brain not yet broken up and tossed into the fires of his paranoia, our father loved the mountains, loved the blue skies, loved the pines and the solitude and the sweet soft wind that could turn chill and harsh in a moment, and he wanted my brother and I to know that place.
In still later years, the road itself was my home, drawing lines across the wide emptiness of New Mexico and Arizona, Kansas, South Dakota, Montana, Washington, Oregon. Once we began sleeping in the car -- at first an exciting lark, an adventure that went sour with years until it became a hateful silent thing, a stunted teenage son and the rapidly degenerating father lost forever in delusion -- I grew intimate with strange lost corners of the Western states, applying names to places that had no names on my map, marking them as familiarly as the decayed carpet of my grandmother's Ohio house or the old empty field beside the Buffalo Lodge where once upon a time we'd played wiffle ball. I watched black crayfish crawl in a lazy plateau stream in New Mexico, and again on the other end of the state I found a hidden waterfall with a cave behind it, and I wanted to be Huck Finn and crawl inside and hide away from the adult world, but my father wouldn't let me nearer and ordered me away. In New Mexico, again, there was a desolate parking area on the side of a lost road, where an old windmill stood silent and still, where one morning in my first winter sleeping in the car I woke in a cocoon of silent white, and felt a chill deep inside when I first realized this was my life now, this was how things would be from now on. On another day, nearby, I touched the footprints of dinosaurs. In the Black Hills on a warm winter day I ventured onto the ice of a granite-bound lake. In Montana I woke to a thick rime of ice where my breath had frozen to the mouth of my sleeping bag. In the Oregon Outback I glimpsed scenery I had never imagined, massive volcanic hills cut and rounded by Ice Age torrents, now brown and inviting with prairie grass.
Some of my happiest adult memories, as well as some of the saddest, were made in New Mexico, Utah, California. Through all of them familiarity was mingled with discovery, the strange dislocation of seeing the scenes of childhood again through older eyes. And underlying everything was a pull, sure as a lodestone, a homing instinct orienting me to my proper terrain. I may have lived eleven years now on the Atlantic coastal plain, but it has never felt like home, not the way the West feels like home, has always felt like home.
All of that is a big bunch of words to introduce this book -- a lot of words to map out why Solnit, more so than almost any other author whose words I've happened upon, speaks to me, articulating thoughts and feelings my fingers are too clumsy to share. "I grew up with landscape as recourse," she says, "with the possibility of exiting the horizontal realm of social relations for a vertical alignment with earth and sky, matter and spirit." The social realm has always been, will always be a land foreign to me, a faded charcoal sketch of monsters and impossible creatures on dry vellum. Landscape, no matter how remote, no matter how exotic, fits a necessary block of my being, a terrane long fused to and forever inseparable from my identity.
Beyond my appreciation for that deep-rooted familiarity, that shared experience and outlook, I loved the beauty and strength of Solnit's prose. My favorite section of the book is probably the first rumination on the motif of "The Blue of Distance." I could quote it in its entirety, but here's just enough to explain why:
My interest wandered a little during Solnit's reflections on urban ruins, '80s punk, and the adolescent love of frayed edges, because the narco-romantic lifestyle and mindset have never appealed to or made sense to me. But even there, Solnit explicates obvious emotions that I, as someone who literally could not imagine being 30 until quite recently, had never been able to articulate: "[T]eenagers imagine dying young because death is more imaginable than the person that all the decisions and burdens of adulthood may make of you." Her punks anticipating nuclear war in their wilderness of ruins fit seamlessly with her earlier themes on growth rising only from decay.
On the whole, Getting Lost, a swift interweaving of memoir, philosophy, history, art history, natural history, dreams, music, and travel essay, functions as an integrated and beautiful objet. I'm just at a loss as to why my library stuffed it so cavalierly into the travel section of all places -- Getting Lost has so little to do with that subject -- but then, my library's Dewey decimal disorder is proverbial.
206 pages
Published 2005
Read February 17
Rating: ★★★★½ out of 5
Like a signature isotope sprinkled through my geology, I'm perennially homesick for the American West.
Some of my earliest memories were made in Prescott, Arizona, when I was 3 years old: Running laughingly around my father's truck until a dog, magnified and terrifying in childhood, rose up and snapped its jaws in front of my face. Huddled on the floor of the truck while our father visited his junkie friends on a cold Halloween night, my brother told me a red light in the sky was an invasion from Mars; I believed him implicitly, and feared.
My memories became consecutive and less sporadic when I was 6 and 7, living, however intermittently, in Colorado Springs: The weekly motel where we stayed, the Buffalo Lodge on El Paso Boulevard, its bathroom and kitchenette and my father's rising paranoia. The station wagon never emptied of trunks and boxes and suitcases, its sides wood-paneled, always ready for my father to pile us into it and drive restlessly east over the endless plains to the flat pewter clouds of Ohio before slewing the whole weighty load around and coming back again. The scattered weeks of first grade, broken up by my father's peregrinations, the kids who knew on some level that I was Weird and refused to talk to me, all save the dirty hillbilly child who ate ants on the dusty playground on warm days, to whom I confided that my father called me "Rick-tard" and who cheerfully began calling me that too, our shared assertion of power against our large and terrible fathers. The bitter Front Range winds and the ever-fluctuating weather. The brown boots with the red laces, the ones that always got me in trouble with the gym teacher, because I loved those boots and could never remember when I had to wear gym shoes because I was never in one place long enough to conceive of a schedule, much less think to commit it to memory. The occasional pilgrimage up to the Garden of the Gods or up US 24 into the mountains, the mountains, because in some cabinet in his brain not yet broken up and tossed into the fires of his paranoia, our father loved the mountains, loved the blue skies, loved the pines and the solitude and the sweet soft wind that could turn chill and harsh in a moment, and he wanted my brother and I to know that place.
In still later years, the road itself was my home, drawing lines across the wide emptiness of New Mexico and Arizona, Kansas, South Dakota, Montana, Washington, Oregon. Once we began sleeping in the car -- at first an exciting lark, an adventure that went sour with years until it became a hateful silent thing, a stunted teenage son and the rapidly degenerating father lost forever in delusion -- I grew intimate with strange lost corners of the Western states, applying names to places that had no names on my map, marking them as familiarly as the decayed carpet of my grandmother's Ohio house or the old empty field beside the Buffalo Lodge where once upon a time we'd played wiffle ball. I watched black crayfish crawl in a lazy plateau stream in New Mexico, and again on the other end of the state I found a hidden waterfall with a cave behind it, and I wanted to be Huck Finn and crawl inside and hide away from the adult world, but my father wouldn't let me nearer and ordered me away. In New Mexico, again, there was a desolate parking area on the side of a lost road, where an old windmill stood silent and still, where one morning in my first winter sleeping in the car I woke in a cocoon of silent white, and felt a chill deep inside when I first realized this was my life now, this was how things would be from now on. On another day, nearby, I touched the footprints of dinosaurs. In the Black Hills on a warm winter day I ventured onto the ice of a granite-bound lake. In Montana I woke to a thick rime of ice where my breath had frozen to the mouth of my sleeping bag. In the Oregon Outback I glimpsed scenery I had never imagined, massive volcanic hills cut and rounded by Ice Age torrents, now brown and inviting with prairie grass.
Some of my happiest adult memories, as well as some of the saddest, were made in New Mexico, Utah, California. Through all of them familiarity was mingled with discovery, the strange dislocation of seeing the scenes of childhood again through older eyes. And underlying everything was a pull, sure as a lodestone, a homing instinct orienting me to my proper terrain. I may have lived eleven years now on the Atlantic coastal plain, but it has never felt like home, not the way the West feels like home, has always felt like home.
All of that is a big bunch of words to introduce this book -- a lot of words to map out why Solnit, more so than almost any other author whose words I've happened upon, speaks to me, articulating thoughts and feelings my fingers are too clumsy to share. "I grew up with landscape as recourse," she says, "with the possibility of exiting the horizontal realm of social relations for a vertical alignment with earth and sky, matter and spirit." The social realm has always been, will always be a land foreign to me, a faded charcoal sketch of monsters and impossible creatures on dry vellum. Landscape, no matter how remote, no matter how exotic, fits a necessary block of my being, a terrane long fused to and forever inseparable from my identity.
Beyond my appreciation for that deep-rooted familiarity, that shared experience and outlook, I loved the beauty and strength of Solnit's prose. My favorite section of the book is probably the first rumination on the motif of "The Blue of Distance." I could quote it in its entirety, but here's just enough to explain why:
For many years, I have been moved by the blue at the far edge of what can be seen, that color of horizons, of remote mountain ranges, of anything far away. The color of that distance is the color of an emotion, the color of solitude and of desire, the color of there seen from here, the color of where you are not. And the color of where you can never go.
My interest wandered a little during Solnit's reflections on urban ruins, '80s punk, and the adolescent love of frayed edges, because the narco-romantic lifestyle and mindset have never appealed to or made sense to me. But even there, Solnit explicates obvious emotions that I, as someone who literally could not imagine being 30 until quite recently, had never been able to articulate: "[T]eenagers imagine dying young because death is more imaginable than the person that all the decisions and burdens of adulthood may make of you." Her punks anticipating nuclear war in their wilderness of ruins fit seamlessly with her earlier themes on growth rising only from decay.
On the whole, Getting Lost, a swift interweaving of memoir, philosophy, history, art history, natural history, dreams, music, and travel essay, functions as an integrated and beautiful objet. I'm just at a loss as to why my library stuffed it so cavalierly into the travel section of all places -- Getting Lost has so little to do with that subject -- but then, my library's Dewey decimal disorder is proverbial.
2013 read #24: The Darkest Road by Guy Gavriel Kay.
The Darkest Road by Guy Gavriel Kay
420 pages
Published 1986
Read from February 15 to February 17
Rating: ★★★★ out of 5
Contains spoilers for the entire Fionavar Tapestry.
The first book in this trilogy, The Summer Tree, ended with our heroes winging their way into the lair of the Dark One on a moment's notice, without so much as an inkling of a plan as to how they'd rescue their damsel in Fantasy Evil distress. The next book, The Wandering Fire, skipped all the petty details about how these Toronto yuppies managed to save their friend from the literal bedchambers in the literal evil lair of a literal god of evil, jumping several months beyond a mission accomplished. The Darkest Road opens with the opposite strategy, finding some of our heroes several days before the end of the previous book. "Oh man, I sure hope those guys on the boat succeed with their impossible mission, because if not, we're screwed!" -- that isn't a source of tension when you, the reader, already know the maritime expedition succeeds beyond everyone's wildest expectations, and the literal dark wizard will be defeated with ease. Just thought I'd note that.
This entire series has been plagued by what I feel is melodramatic prose. Everybody's heart is constantly breaking, everyone is perpetually bent down under the sorrow of life, in Toronto as well as Fionavar. No one knows how they can bear up under the weight of all that tragic destiny, yet they do. Similarly, no one knows how to wield their powers, until the exact moment they need to wield them, when suddenly they act on instinct alone and save the day. This happens a lot throughout the trilogy. On some levels, that's pretty annoying, and not the best storytelling. We know all our main heroes will do whatever they must do, because they're figures of legend now, no longer relatable, human-scale protagonists. If Kim doesn't know where her magic ring is leading her, it will all become clear within a few pages, because it is what is meant to happen. If Kevin needs to be some kind of sex sacrifice to the mother goddess, well, that's inevitable too. No one acts with agency, because they're all getting tugged along by preordained fates. Dress it up as a 1980s fairy tale all you want, with Arthur and Guinevere and the Wild Hunt all going through their perpetual motions, but it's never quite satisfying. Fate and inevitability are distasteful concepts, in fiction as in philosophy.
Despite all that, though, I think this series finally clicked for me in this volume. The exact moment it did was when Kim broke the holy pacifism of the giants. Oh, don't get me wrong, the way she broke their spiritual essence -- by showing them her friend Jennifer/Guinevere in the Super Evil clutches of the Dark One -- is eyeroll-worthy. Am I to accept that nothing, in all the countless eons of the giants' existence, clued them into how the Dark One operates, and how his attentions affect his mortal victims? Nothing ever suggested to them that maybe an Evil Dark God of Evil might hurt some people, just as a general thing? But in describing the eons-spanning sorrow of the giants' loss of purity, where even their ghosts must say farewell and go their separate ways, Kay's moist sentimentality fit. This trilogy is all about how actions, even inevitable actions, have consequences -- power has a price, always, and even being on the side of Light™ doesn't mean you will not hurt people, or not lose something important inside you, or be happy. There are some notable (and welcome) exceptions as The Darkest Road unfolds, but broadly speaking, this series isn't fiction about choices and agency. It's fiction about loneliness, about losing everything, even who you thought you were deep down inside, to the disinterested workings of life's loom.
The one character explicitly, emphatically free to make a choice, Darien, chose one of the more predictable paths in all of fantasy, choosing his father the Evil Lord of Dark Evil and then undoing him with the power of love. I had Darien's choice pegged not even a hundred pages into the book. But eh, I didn't care for that entire plotline anyway.
The Fionavar Tapestry may be riven with structural problems, with mawkishness and predestination and fantasy cliche, but it finally makes sense to me. Plus, it has one of the most prog rock scenes I've ever read: A giant clay-and-rock demon rising to slay a child demi-god, and friggin' Lancelot stepping out of the forest to battle the earth demon for the devil-child's life. Why do I not own a Roger Dean print of this scene?
420 pages
Published 1986
Read from February 15 to February 17
Rating: ★★★★ out of 5
Contains spoilers for the entire Fionavar Tapestry.
The first book in this trilogy, The Summer Tree, ended with our heroes winging their way into the lair of the Dark One on a moment's notice, without so much as an inkling of a plan as to how they'd rescue their damsel in Fantasy Evil distress. The next book, The Wandering Fire, skipped all the petty details about how these Toronto yuppies managed to save their friend from the literal bedchambers in the literal evil lair of a literal god of evil, jumping several months beyond a mission accomplished. The Darkest Road opens with the opposite strategy, finding some of our heroes several days before the end of the previous book. "Oh man, I sure hope those guys on the boat succeed with their impossible mission, because if not, we're screwed!" -- that isn't a source of tension when you, the reader, already know the maritime expedition succeeds beyond everyone's wildest expectations, and the literal dark wizard will be defeated with ease. Just thought I'd note that.
This entire series has been plagued by what I feel is melodramatic prose. Everybody's heart is constantly breaking, everyone is perpetually bent down under the sorrow of life, in Toronto as well as Fionavar. No one knows how they can bear up under the weight of all that tragic destiny, yet they do. Similarly, no one knows how to wield their powers, until the exact moment they need to wield them, when suddenly they act on instinct alone and save the day. This happens a lot throughout the trilogy. On some levels, that's pretty annoying, and not the best storytelling. We know all our main heroes will do whatever they must do, because they're figures of legend now, no longer relatable, human-scale protagonists. If Kim doesn't know where her magic ring is leading her, it will all become clear within a few pages, because it is what is meant to happen. If Kevin needs to be some kind of sex sacrifice to the mother goddess, well, that's inevitable too. No one acts with agency, because they're all getting tugged along by preordained fates. Dress it up as a 1980s fairy tale all you want, with Arthur and Guinevere and the Wild Hunt all going through their perpetual motions, but it's never quite satisfying. Fate and inevitability are distasteful concepts, in fiction as in philosophy.
Despite all that, though, I think this series finally clicked for me in this volume. The exact moment it did was when Kim broke the holy pacifism of the giants. Oh, don't get me wrong, the way she broke their spiritual essence -- by showing them her friend Jennifer/Guinevere in the Super Evil clutches of the Dark One -- is eyeroll-worthy. Am I to accept that nothing, in all the countless eons of the giants' existence, clued them into how the Dark One operates, and how his attentions affect his mortal victims? Nothing ever suggested to them that maybe an Evil Dark God of Evil might hurt some people, just as a general thing? But in describing the eons-spanning sorrow of the giants' loss of purity, where even their ghosts must say farewell and go their separate ways, Kay's moist sentimentality fit. This trilogy is all about how actions, even inevitable actions, have consequences -- power has a price, always, and even being on the side of Light™ doesn't mean you will not hurt people, or not lose something important inside you, or be happy. There are some notable (and welcome) exceptions as The Darkest Road unfolds, but broadly speaking, this series isn't fiction about choices and agency. It's fiction about loneliness, about losing everything, even who you thought you were deep down inside, to the disinterested workings of life's loom.
The one character explicitly, emphatically free to make a choice, Darien, chose one of the more predictable paths in all of fantasy, choosing his father the Evil Lord of Dark Evil and then undoing him with the power of love. I had Darien's choice pegged not even a hundred pages into the book. But eh, I didn't care for that entire plotline anyway.
The Fionavar Tapestry may be riven with structural problems, with mawkishness and predestination and fantasy cliche, but it finally makes sense to me. Plus, it has one of the most prog rock scenes I've ever read: A giant clay-and-rock demon rising to slay a child demi-god, and friggin' Lancelot stepping out of the forest to battle the earth demon for the devil-child's life. Why do I not own a Roger Dean print of this scene?
Thursday, February 14, 2013
2013 read #23: Sailing from Byzantium: How a Lost Empire Shaped the World by Colin Wells.
Sailing from Byzantium: How a Lost Empire Shaped the World by Colin Wells
297 pages
Published 2006
Read from February 9 to February 14
Rating: ★★½ out of 5
When I was a kid, I got most of my books used, or through surplus outlets. One of the first history books I ever got was a surplus outlet find, a Cliffs Notes summary of ancient Greece and Rome. At least, I think it was Cliffs Notes, but I was only about 10, and I can't remember it now with any certainty. Regardless, I do recollect that it was meant to be an abridged study aid, not a stand-alone examination of detailed history, dispensing with an emperor in a sentence or two, a philosophy in a paragraph.
I mention this because Sailing from Byzantium reminded me of that book. Wells compresses a thousand years of complicated intellectual history, from three broad, culturally distinct areas of the world, into less than three hundred pages. He rifles through names and dates as if prepping you for a midterm, and rarely pauses to give a real sense of time and place and personality, or offer more than the thinnest skein of connective tissue between events and persons. His simple prose is journalistic rather than elegant -- it doesn't leave much of an impression. Even the book's organization, split by region rather than narrated chronologically, annoyed me. I came away from this book bored and feeling like I didn't learn much of substance.
Which is a pity, because I love every subject it covers: Byzantium itself, the Renaissance, early Muslim science and philosophy, early Slavic/Russian history. Split it into three more substantial books, or triple its length and content, and Sailing from Byzantium would probably rank among my favorite history sources. But alas. I won't blame this book directly for my recent reading slump; I will say it was easy to put it aside for days at a time while I rediscovered the joys of television and the internet.
Which isn't to say it's entirely without merit as it is. The first third of the book, skimming through Byzantine influences on the Italian Renaissance, was too brief and summary to have much worth, but I enjoyed the sections on Syrian translation of ancient Greek texts as well as the spread of Orthodox influence into Slavic populations, two subjects I've wanted to learn about but haven't explored in any detail. In those areas, Sailing from Byzantium amounted to a tasty free sample, just enough information to keep me intrigued, not enough to satisfy. I sure wish my library had more thorough books on those subjects, so I didn't have to settle for this ultimately inadequate morsel.
297 pages
Published 2006
Read from February 9 to February 14
Rating: ★★½ out of 5
When I was a kid, I got most of my books used, or through surplus outlets. One of the first history books I ever got was a surplus outlet find, a Cliffs Notes summary of ancient Greece and Rome. At least, I think it was Cliffs Notes, but I was only about 10, and I can't remember it now with any certainty. Regardless, I do recollect that it was meant to be an abridged study aid, not a stand-alone examination of detailed history, dispensing with an emperor in a sentence or two, a philosophy in a paragraph.
I mention this because Sailing from Byzantium reminded me of that book. Wells compresses a thousand years of complicated intellectual history, from three broad, culturally distinct areas of the world, into less than three hundred pages. He rifles through names and dates as if prepping you for a midterm, and rarely pauses to give a real sense of time and place and personality, or offer more than the thinnest skein of connective tissue between events and persons. His simple prose is journalistic rather than elegant -- it doesn't leave much of an impression. Even the book's organization, split by region rather than narrated chronologically, annoyed me. I came away from this book bored and feeling like I didn't learn much of substance.
Which is a pity, because I love every subject it covers: Byzantium itself, the Renaissance, early Muslim science and philosophy, early Slavic/Russian history. Split it into three more substantial books, or triple its length and content, and Sailing from Byzantium would probably rank among my favorite history sources. But alas. I won't blame this book directly for my recent reading slump; I will say it was easy to put it aside for days at a time while I rediscovered the joys of television and the internet.
Which isn't to say it's entirely without merit as it is. The first third of the book, skimming through Byzantine influences on the Italian Renaissance, was too brief and summary to have much worth, but I enjoyed the sections on Syrian translation of ancient Greek texts as well as the spread of Orthodox influence into Slavic populations, two subjects I've wanted to learn about but haven't explored in any detail. In those areas, Sailing from Byzantium amounted to a tasty free sample, just enough information to keep me intrigued, not enough to satisfy. I sure wish my library had more thorough books on those subjects, so I didn't have to settle for this ultimately inadequate morsel.
Friday, February 8, 2013
2013 read #22: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick.
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick
174 pages
Published 1968
Read from February 7 to February 8
Rating: ★★★★ out of 5
1960s futures can feel more dated and unrelatable than the worlds of older science fiction. Even though (or perhaps because) it was a time of experimentation and change in the genre, the authors of the New Wave seemed to have a fixed, limited set of ideas and concerns: psychoactive drugs, psychic powers, messiahs, the nature of perception, the nature of reality, what it means to be human, where one human ends and society begins. Plopped on top of that was a layer of cultural baggage, all the more baffling in retrospect because of how soon it would get swept away in the culture at large. For instance, women, in this novel and others I've read, only exist as secretaries and housewives (and android femme fatales, naturally). The combination of dated experimentation (within sharply proscribed limits) and soon-to-be-antiquated social expectations marks New Wave sci-fi, inescapably, as a product of its era.
That said, this was an excellent novel. Intervening years have discredited the whole "empathy is unique to human beings" angle, but that is just me being pedantic. The portrayal of the empathy-less android thought process was creepy, unsettling. The hardboiled trappings were thoroughly entertaining. Now I'm eager to read more of Dick's work.
174 pages
Published 1968
Read from February 7 to February 8
Rating: ★★★★ out of 5
1960s futures can feel more dated and unrelatable than the worlds of older science fiction. Even though (or perhaps because) it was a time of experimentation and change in the genre, the authors of the New Wave seemed to have a fixed, limited set of ideas and concerns: psychoactive drugs, psychic powers, messiahs, the nature of perception, the nature of reality, what it means to be human, where one human ends and society begins. Plopped on top of that was a layer of cultural baggage, all the more baffling in retrospect because of how soon it would get swept away in the culture at large. For instance, women, in this novel and others I've read, only exist as secretaries and housewives (and android femme fatales, naturally). The combination of dated experimentation (within sharply proscribed limits) and soon-to-be-antiquated social expectations marks New Wave sci-fi, inescapably, as a product of its era.
That said, this was an excellent novel. Intervening years have discredited the whole "empathy is unique to human beings" angle, but that is just me being pedantic. The portrayal of the empathy-less android thought process was creepy, unsettling. The hardboiled trappings were thoroughly entertaining. Now I'm eager to read more of Dick's work.
Wednesday, February 6, 2013
2013 read #21: The Book of Imaginary Beings by Jorge Luis Borges with Margarita Guerrero.
The Book of Imaginary Beings by Jorge Luis Borges with Margarita Guerrero
Translated by Andrew Hurley, illustrated by Peter Sís
222 pages
Published 1967 (translation published 2005)
Read February 6
Rating: ★★★½ out of 5
In their foreword, Borges and Guerrero suggest Imaginary Beings is best enjoyed piecemeal, that "the curious dip into it from time to time." I ignored their injunction, mainly because I don't have the luxury of keeping my copy around; it's due back at the library on the 11th. But perhaps I'll respect their intentions and give a sampling of impressions in place of a review:
I want to write a story called "Mother of Ants." I don't know what it would be about, yet, but I'm imagining something creepy and entomological, possibly inhabiting the early Enlightenment intersection of art, alchemy, and proto-science described in that biography of Maria Sibylla Merian.
Likewise, "The Ink Monkey" and "Mother of Tortoises" are amazing titles. I need to take a break from all this reading and start pumping out some short stories soon. "The Ink Monkey" in particular creates all sorts of half-formed images and possibilities in my imagination -- the words themselves, if not the original story.
The thought of banshees belonging to "the race of elves" almost makes me want to include (screaming, nocturnal) elves in a new high fantasy story. Almost. I'm sick of elves, though, and I'm sure the interminable literature on "dark elves" has already drained this inspiration dry.
I would like this book better if certain entries were more expansive. The tale of the A Bao A Qu is satisfyingly detailed, for example -- it tells the story of how one might encounter such a being and what it would mean -- whereas most other beings are given only the scantest of definitions.
Wait, Wang Ch'ung (or Wang Chong) was a real person? Far out! A materialist and rational atheist, "Wang spent much of his life in non-self-inflicted poverty. He was said to have studied by standing at bookstalls, and had a superb memory, which allowed him to become very well-versed in the Chinese classics. He eventually reached the rank of District Secretary, a post he soon lost as a result of his combative and anti-authoritarian nature." (So says Wikipedia.) That sounds like an intriguing character right there.
Interesting that the pygmies of Pliny battled Russian cranes, when the "Little People" of Cherokee folklore fought cranes as well.
Translated by Andrew Hurley, illustrated by Peter Sís
222 pages
Published 1967 (translation published 2005)
Read February 6
Rating: ★★★½ out of 5
In their foreword, Borges and Guerrero suggest Imaginary Beings is best enjoyed piecemeal, that "the curious dip into it from time to time." I ignored their injunction, mainly because I don't have the luxury of keeping my copy around; it's due back at the library on the 11th. But perhaps I'll respect their intentions and give a sampling of impressions in place of a review:
I want to write a story called "Mother of Ants." I don't know what it would be about, yet, but I'm imagining something creepy and entomological, possibly inhabiting the early Enlightenment intersection of art, alchemy, and proto-science described in that biography of Maria Sibylla Merian.
Likewise, "The Ink Monkey" and "Mother of Tortoises" are amazing titles. I need to take a break from all this reading and start pumping out some short stories soon. "The Ink Monkey" in particular creates all sorts of half-formed images and possibilities in my imagination -- the words themselves, if not the original story.
The thought of banshees belonging to "the race of elves" almost makes me want to include (screaming, nocturnal) elves in a new high fantasy story. Almost. I'm sick of elves, though, and I'm sure the interminable literature on "dark elves" has already drained this inspiration dry.
I would like this book better if certain entries were more expansive. The tale of the A Bao A Qu is satisfyingly detailed, for example -- it tells the story of how one might encounter such a being and what it would mean -- whereas most other beings are given only the scantest of definitions.
Wait, Wang Ch'ung (or Wang Chong) was a real person? Far out! A materialist and rational atheist, "Wang spent much of his life in non-self-inflicted poverty. He was said to have studied by standing at bookstalls, and had a superb memory, which allowed him to become very well-versed in the Chinese classics. He eventually reached the rank of District Secretary, a post he soon lost as a result of his combative and anti-authoritarian nature." (So says Wikipedia.) That sounds like an intriguing character right there.
Interesting that the pygmies of Pliny battled Russian cranes, when the "Little People" of Cherokee folklore fought cranes as well.
2013 read #20: Chrysalis: Maria Sibylla Merian and the Secrets of Metamorphosis by Kim Todd.
Chrysalis: Maria Sibylla Merian and the Secrets of Metamorphosis by Kim Todd
284 pages
Published 2007
Read from February 3 to February 6
Rating: ★★★½ out of 5
Scientific biography isn't my favorite genre of natural history book; I'd prefer to imbibe my scientific knowledge directly from books dedicated to a topic rather than to a person. Perhaps eighteen years spent browsing science sections of bookstores and seeing dozens of variations on "Darwin's God" and "Darwin's voyages" and "Darwin's life" and "Darwin's wife" (depriving shelf space from anything interesting or informative) have primed me to scoff at the idea of placing the scientist before the science. It positively reeks of fallacious argument from authority. In my ideal conception of science, the individual scientist only matters as a potential source of bias and error. The work of many scientists over many generations is what produces worthwhile knowledge, not the force of one particular personality, no matter how attractive the latter may be to the reading public (and, by extension, biographers). You may detect a slight whiff of snobbery in my attitude: "Oh, those biographies may be all well and good for the unwashed rubes out beyond the gates of academia, but I'll reserve my attentions for the important matters, thank you." But sometimes it can be fun to learn about particular scientists, just as it can be fun to learn about any other specific person. If I happen to resent scientific biographies for hogging valuable shelf space better filled by real science books, well, I try not to let that cloud my critical judgment. The way the publishing world works, I gotta take what I can get.
I was drawn to this book because I love a) early women scientists and b) early science and scientists in general. I'd never before heard of Maria Sibylla Merian. I'm not especially keen on entomology, but this Merian person sounded interesting, and if I learned something about insects along the way, all the better.
Unfortunately, as scientific biographies go, this one was heavy on the biography, light on the science. This, despite the fact that Merian left behind few personal documents, consigning her to the fate of a historical cipher. There was almost no scientific content until the penultimate chapter, which quickly sketched out a current picture of metamorphosis before segueing into talk of phenotypal plasticity. The biography was generally interesting, so the book was still worth the read, but it left me craving another good, satisfying natural history volume like The Tree.
284 pages
Published 2007
Read from February 3 to February 6
Rating: ★★★½ out of 5
Scientific biography isn't my favorite genre of natural history book; I'd prefer to imbibe my scientific knowledge directly from books dedicated to a topic rather than to a person. Perhaps eighteen years spent browsing science sections of bookstores and seeing dozens of variations on "Darwin's God" and "Darwin's voyages" and "Darwin's life" and "Darwin's wife" (depriving shelf space from anything interesting or informative) have primed me to scoff at the idea of placing the scientist before the science. It positively reeks of fallacious argument from authority. In my ideal conception of science, the individual scientist only matters as a potential source of bias and error. The work of many scientists over many generations is what produces worthwhile knowledge, not the force of one particular personality, no matter how attractive the latter may be to the reading public (and, by extension, biographers). You may detect a slight whiff of snobbery in my attitude: "Oh, those biographies may be all well and good for the unwashed rubes out beyond the gates of academia, but I'll reserve my attentions for the important matters, thank you." But sometimes it can be fun to learn about particular scientists, just as it can be fun to learn about any other specific person. If I happen to resent scientific biographies for hogging valuable shelf space better filled by real science books, well, I try not to let that cloud my critical judgment. The way the publishing world works, I gotta take what I can get.
I was drawn to this book because I love a) early women scientists and b) early science and scientists in general. I'd never before heard of Maria Sibylla Merian. I'm not especially keen on entomology, but this Merian person sounded interesting, and if I learned something about insects along the way, all the better.
Unfortunately, as scientific biographies go, this one was heavy on the biography, light on the science. This, despite the fact that Merian left behind few personal documents, consigning her to the fate of a historical cipher. There was almost no scientific content until the penultimate chapter, which quickly sketched out a current picture of metamorphosis before segueing into talk of phenotypal plasticity. The biography was generally interesting, so the book was still worth the read, but it left me craving another good, satisfying natural history volume like The Tree.
Monday, February 4, 2013
2013 read #19: The Wandering Fire by Guy Gavriel Kay.
The Wandering Fire by Guy Gavriel Kay
298 pages
Published 1986
Read from February 3 to February 4
Rating: ★★★½ out of 5
Contains spoilers for The Summer Tree as well as the current volume.
So you end the first volume of your epic fantasy trilogy with a glimpse of your heroes -- who, mere weeks ago, were simple Toronto yuppies -- throwing themselves into an unplanned, last-ditch rescue mission into the very bowels of the impenetrable lair of the Dark One, a literal evil god who hates everything and everyone and has literal god powers and can wipe your heroes out and crush them with a thought. How will you ever manage to get them out of this jam?!
Why, by skipping months ahead, to a point where your heroes are safely back in Toronto, figuratively thinking "Man, that was quite an escape!"
In my Summer Tree review, I mentioned how tedious "Dark Ones" are. Not only are they the most over-done fantasy cliches ever, they create the Superman problem in reverse: they're so overpowered, they have to be sidelined in order for your good guys to last longer than a White Castle Crave Case on an Ohio family's dinner table. I'm willing to cut Kay some slack -- he was writing before modern fantasy fiction, as we understand it today, really took shape. That doesn't mean I have to enjoy his villain, though.
What was oddest about this volume was the pacing. The Summer Tree was brisk without feeling rushed. Within the first thirty-five pages of The Wandering Fire, by contrast, the damsel in distress (shudder), rescued so conveniently between books, has given birth to a possible antichrist (shudder), and our heroes have slipped into Stonehenge and summoned both Uther and Arthur Pendragon, hey guys, no big deal, just out here summoning the heroes of legend, lol. Arthur's introduction was so rushed, and so reliant on archetypes to fill in the blanks, I never developed a mental picture of him; for the rest of the book I couldn't stop visualizing him as Billy from Adventure Time, right down to his voice. I'm not saying I'd prefer, say, Robert Jordan's pacing (summoning Uther and Arthur Pendragon would take approximately 6,000 pages if Jordan were writing it), but I do like my fantasy series to feel a bit more... epic. Like something weighty and complexly magical is going on, grinding inexorably deep in the heart of the world. This book gave the impression that all the accumulated wisdom of the One True World, its millennia of magic and scholarship, meant nothing until some '80s yuppies stepped in to manage things. At this rate, in the next book they'll have defeated the evil god and kicked back in the den with some chilled Bartles & Jaymes in time for Miami Vice.
Kay's coke-binge pacing (sorry, everything about this series makes me think of the '80s) wasn't bad, per se, it was just a different way of getting things done, and took getting used to. This installment didn't even eke out 300 pages, for crying out loud. The book felt more fleshed out by the middle, though, and all in all it was as enjoyable as the first volume in the series. And in parts it was unexpectedly moving.
A footnote: I mentioned in my Summer Tree review how Fionavar reminded me of Roger Zelazny's Amber -- both are the "one true world" in a sprawling multiverse of stories and worlds. Here I should point out how the Fionavar books prefigure the Wheel of Time. Much is made of how the same heroes are reborn, the same tragedies repeated, the same stories woven through the loom. Considering how much of the early Wheel of Time volumes is a rehash and recombination of older fantasy stories, I find it kind of hilarious that the titular Wheel itself isn't even original.
298 pages
Published 1986
Read from February 3 to February 4
Rating: ★★★½ out of 5
Contains spoilers for The Summer Tree as well as the current volume.
So you end the first volume of your epic fantasy trilogy with a glimpse of your heroes -- who, mere weeks ago, were simple Toronto yuppies -- throwing themselves into an unplanned, last-ditch rescue mission into the very bowels of the impenetrable lair of the Dark One, a literal evil god who hates everything and everyone and has literal god powers and can wipe your heroes out and crush them with a thought. How will you ever manage to get them out of this jam?!
Why, by skipping months ahead, to a point where your heroes are safely back in Toronto, figuratively thinking "Man, that was quite an escape!"
In my Summer Tree review, I mentioned how tedious "Dark Ones" are. Not only are they the most over-done fantasy cliches ever, they create the Superman problem in reverse: they're so overpowered, they have to be sidelined in order for your good guys to last longer than a White Castle Crave Case on an Ohio family's dinner table. I'm willing to cut Kay some slack -- he was writing before modern fantasy fiction, as we understand it today, really took shape. That doesn't mean I have to enjoy his villain, though.
What was oddest about this volume was the pacing. The Summer Tree was brisk without feeling rushed. Within the first thirty-five pages of The Wandering Fire, by contrast, the damsel in distress (shudder), rescued so conveniently between books, has given birth to a possible antichrist (shudder), and our heroes have slipped into Stonehenge and summoned both Uther and Arthur Pendragon, hey guys, no big deal, just out here summoning the heroes of legend, lol. Arthur's introduction was so rushed, and so reliant on archetypes to fill in the blanks, I never developed a mental picture of him; for the rest of the book I couldn't stop visualizing him as Billy from Adventure Time, right down to his voice. I'm not saying I'd prefer, say, Robert Jordan's pacing (summoning Uther and Arthur Pendragon would take approximately 6,000 pages if Jordan were writing it), but I do like my fantasy series to feel a bit more... epic. Like something weighty and complexly magical is going on, grinding inexorably deep in the heart of the world. This book gave the impression that all the accumulated wisdom of the One True World, its millennia of magic and scholarship, meant nothing until some '80s yuppies stepped in to manage things. At this rate, in the next book they'll have defeated the evil god and kicked back in the den with some chilled Bartles & Jaymes in time for Miami Vice.
Kay's coke-binge pacing (sorry, everything about this series makes me think of the '80s) wasn't bad, per se, it was just a different way of getting things done, and took getting used to. This installment didn't even eke out 300 pages, for crying out loud. The book felt more fleshed out by the middle, though, and all in all it was as enjoyable as the first volume in the series. And in parts it was unexpectedly moving.
A footnote: I mentioned in my Summer Tree review how Fionavar reminded me of Roger Zelazny's Amber -- both are the "one true world" in a sprawling multiverse of stories and worlds. Here I should point out how the Fionavar books prefigure the Wheel of Time. Much is made of how the same heroes are reborn, the same tragedies repeated, the same stories woven through the loom. Considering how much of the early Wheel of Time volumes is a rehash and recombination of older fantasy stories, I find it kind of hilarious that the titular Wheel itself isn't even original.
Saturday, February 2, 2013
2013 read #18: The Solitude of Thomas Cave by Georgina Harding.
The Solitude of Thomas Cave by Georgina Harding
237 pages
Published 2007
Read February 2
Rating: ★★★ out of 5
I picked this one up on the basis of its title and its clean, evocative cover. I didn't bother to read the jacket leaf summary or anything. Sometimes that's a terrific method of finding unexpected treasures, other times it leads to reading a few paragraphs before discarding the book into the return pile. This time the result was pretty good but not great, a slim, brisk book about a voluntary Arctic castaway in the early 1600s. It tells a small, briefly moving story of human loss and coping, and babbles on a bit too long (despite its brevity) to wrap things up in a seemingly unnecessary coda -- altogether a middling work of moderate talent, a pleasant but forgettable literary trifle.
237 pages
Published 2007
Read February 2
Rating: ★★★ out of 5
I picked this one up on the basis of its title and its clean, evocative cover. I didn't bother to read the jacket leaf summary or anything. Sometimes that's a terrific method of finding unexpected treasures, other times it leads to reading a few paragraphs before discarding the book into the return pile. This time the result was pretty good but not great, a slim, brisk book about a voluntary Arctic castaway in the early 1600s. It tells a small, briefly moving story of human loss and coping, and babbles on a bit too long (despite its brevity) to wrap things up in a seemingly unnecessary coda -- altogether a middling work of moderate talent, a pleasant but forgettable literary trifle.
Friday, February 1, 2013
2013 read #17: The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy, 2012 Edition, edited by Rich Horton.
The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy, 2012 Edition, edited by Rich Horton
562 pages
Published 2012
Read from January 12 to February 1
Rating: ★★★½ out of 5
At first I was inclined not to repeat the structure of my Subterranean review; I wanted to give my overall impressions instead of a giant rambly post detailing my reaction to each story. But it was hard to resist jotting something down about each story as I read it. Plus, I lost my motivation quite early in this volume and read it in bits and pieces over the course of three weeks. Keeping notes as I went was the only way to produce a meaningful review. So even though there are twenty-nine stories this time instead of eleven, I'm going to subject you to a paragraph (or at least a couple sentences) about each and every one.
"Ghostweight" by Yoon Ha Lee. I have zero idea how this story made anyone's "best of" anything list, especially not in the year 2012. This is the sort of story that would crop up once an issue in Analog in the late '90s, something that so clearly didn't meet the same quality standards as the rest of the stories that you wondered just what the editor saw in the damn thing. This has everything I hate about "hard" science fiction: flimsy characters, nonsensical technobabble, an almost nonexistent plot buried under painfully "artistic" prose. This is a story where a woman seeks revenge and thereby becomes a monster herself. That's it. That's an age old plot; this story adds nothing to it. Oh, and it turns out her "ally" in seeking revenge was the one who inadvertently caused her family to be killed in the first place. Such a flimsy plot twist would only matter if I gave a shit about either character, which I didn't, because this story was awful. This story makes me angry. Here I am, publishing my stories in non-paying zines no one's ever heard of, when this shit is making its way not only into Clarkesworld (which rejected one of my stories, the bastards), but into the industry's biggest and best-selling annual best-of anthology, which probably has more readers than any of the pro magazines. What the Christ.
"The Sandal Bride" by Genevieve Valentine. This was a cute but insubstantial story. I liked it but I doubt I'll remember much about it by the time March gets here. Again, not sure how this is top of the line material.
"The Adakian Eagle" by Bradley Denton. A fun and thoroughly enjoyable pulp novella set in the Aleutians in World War II. It's so pulp, in fact, that Dashiell Hammett is a main character. Yeah. I'm generally not a fan of the "Historical personage (or classic author) has a straaaaange adventure!" motif, which is far commoner than I would have believed. Aside from this story's title and a couple awkward references to "a bird statuette" and the like, however, it wasn't especially ham-handed. (Not at all like this one Asimov's-published story in the late '90s, "Interview with an Artist" I believe it was called, where a time traveler, having changed history so Hitler became a moderately successful artist instead of, well, a Hitler, was horrified to discover that tampering with the timeline had made the Holocaust many times worse. "The artist is Hitler!" was pretty much the entire substance of the story.) "Eagle" was marred a little bit by its reliance on Magical Native crap -- it's still Magical Native crap even if your Magical Native scoffs at the idea of being a Magical Native -- but it wasn't as bad as it could have been.
"The Sighted Watchmaker" by Vylar Kaftan. Not only is this story's title a pun on Dawkins, it opens with a quote from The Blind Watchmaker. That's just a bit on-the-nose, don't you think? I tried to keep an open mind regardless. The prose quality is quite good by genre standards. It went down smooth. But that's the only positive thing I have to say about it. Its basic storyline -- "Intelligent machine protects a planet and nurtures the development of intelligent life, then abandons them so they may 'grow up' on their own terms" -- strikes me as a completely worn-out sci-fi cliche. And as much as I agree with the sentiment, "Why would an intelligent race be violent and poison its own planet??"-style moralizing got old sometime in the friggin' 1980s. I have a feeling I'll keep saying this, but isn't this supposed to be the very best SF of 2012? Is genre fiction entirely exhausted, drained of all new ideas, lacking anything new to say?
"The Girl Who Ruled Fairyland, For a Little While" by Catherynne M. Valente. This title, by contrast, I liked. The story was great too. I have higher tolerance for fantasy cliches than sci-fi ones, probably because I find fantasy (and soft sci-fi) more entertaining in general. In fact, I still find that hoariest of all old fantasy cliches, Faerie or Fairyland or whatever you wanna call it, to be rather charming. This story turns up the charm and whimsy and snaps off the knobs. Seriously, it's fuckin' precious. Maybe a bit too precious -- it kind of made my teeth hurt by the end.
"Walking Stick Fires" by Alan DeNiro. This wasn't the best-written story, but it was delightfully gonzo. I wish I could create narratives as batshit as this and give no fucks. It takes confidence in addition to skill.
"Late Bloomer" by Suzy McKee Charnas. A standard coming of age in small town America (with vampires) story. Nothing special, nothing terrible either.
"The Choice" by Paul McAuley. An alien artifact washes up on an English beach. Two friends investigate; one of them begins to change. This is bread-and-butter sci-fi, timeless and satisfying, telling a human-scale story against a surreal backdrop, colored with deft references to The War of the Worlds. Well, it isn't quite timeless -- the waterlogged pessimism and Third World-ization of the West date it definitively to our current fashions and outlook. But I can't object to that. Good story.
"East of Furious" by Jonathan Carroll. Meh. This one didn't do anything for me. No strong feelings one way or the other. "An alchemist and her divorce lawyer drink coffee" is not as entertaining as it sounds.
"Martian Heart" by John Barnes. This one started out meh but became surprisingly moving. Baldly manipulative, but moving nonetheless.
"Pug" by Theodora Goss. A charming, airy, almost weightless mood piece. I particularly enjoyed its nonlinear structure, the way each small scene established a bit more of the situation. I was disappointed when it ended; I wanted more, and to see where it would lead.
"Rampion" by Alexandra Duncan. Another really good one, a retelling of "Rapunzel" set in Umayyad Spain. Like all good retellings, this one uses the fairy tale as only one element of its overall plot, weaving a rich and involving story around the basic thread of "Rapunzel." My only dissatisfaction is with the ending; I find that short genre fiction in general has a problem with "sticking" the ending.
"And Weep Like Alexander" by Neil Gaiman. This is my first exposure to Gaiman's shorter work. There isn't much to this story; it's barely three pages long, and it's completely disappointing. The conceit of an uninventor is cute and all, but the punchline -- "Smartphones make you dumb!" -- could've been a banal status on your friend's Facebook four years ago. What a waste of an excellent title.
In better news, it's January 31 now, writing these as I go, and I'm officially halfway done with this book by pagecount! It's only taken twenty days to get this far. How fast will I finish the rest, now that I'm committing to it?
"Widows in the World" by Gavin J. Grant. Transhumanism is, like nanotechnology, one of those staple hard sci-fi cliches that's been run into the ground over the last few decades. Also like nanotech, it's basically just magic at this point, its stories nothing but fantasy under "futuristic" set dressings. This story earns a few points by committing to the bonkers imagery. It isn't as entertainingly gonzo as "Walking Stick Fires," though. My main impression of this story is flipping ahead to see how many pages to the end. That, and the talking fetus. The talking fetus was great.
"Younger Women" by Karen Joy Fowler. Speaking of stale old Facebook jokes, here we have a scathing (and "timely"!) critique of vampires who date teenage girls. Also, I'm kind of bugged that Fowler quotes a recent National Geographic article without attribution. The one good part of this story: it was short. I looked in the back of the book, and sure enough, this was originally published in Subterranean. I thought it had that familiar Subterranean reek of mediocrity. (Again, I must remind you, this is supposed to be the year's best SF.)
"Canterbury Hollow" by Chris Lawson. More bread-and-butter sci-fi: An underground space colony has a population-control lottery! Two young people "balloted" for extirpation fall in love and decide to end it together! I found this one to be unremarkable until the final passage, which for whatever reason moved me.
"The Summer People" by Kelly Link. I loved this story. There just isn't enough magical Americana to go around, that's what I always say. As someone not far removed (ethnographically speaking) from the Kentucky hill country, I might voice a slight objection to the main character's Twainian accent, but honestly it never became distracting; it flowed well. Great stuff.
"Mulberry Boys" by Margo Lanagan. A delightfully grotesque yarn. Now this is the kind of dark, perverse fantasy I wish I could write.
"The Silver Wind" by Nina Allan. A standard-issue timeline-manipulation tale set (partially) in a standard-issue near-future British dystopia. Not a bad story, but a forgettable one. Honestly I thought this sort of thing was no longer fashionable. It certainly doesn't feel current, talk of "Fortress Britain" and hard-line right-wing anti-immigrant technocratic dictatorship aside.
"Choose Your Own Adventure" by Kat Howard. Now this is how you write a clever, whimsical, moving story in little more than three pages. Neil Gaiman should take notes.
"A Small Price to Pay for Birdsong" by K.J. Parker. The first half or so of this story was quite good, but after a certain point it began to drag, and it ended well beyond where I think it should have. There were two obvious (I thought) ending points, natural junctures to close off a complete and satisfying story. If it had ended at either one of those points, I feel it would've been a superior story. But it kept going and overstayed its welcome.
"Woman Leaves Room" by Robert Reed. There's a reason Robert Reed is one of the current darlings of the short genre fiction set. This story was a skillful and affecting blend of intimate human sadness and high concept sci-fi cliche. Excellent stuff.
"My Chivalric Fiasco" by George Saunders. I was skeptical of this one at first -- it was first published in Harper's, and it was written in that current "artistic" prose fashion -- but holy hell, did it grow on me. The prose worked to hilarious effect.
"The Last Sophia" by C.S.E. Cooney. A languidly unsettling tale of changelings. I'm running out of things to say about these things, but I like this one.
"Some of Them Closer" by Marissa Lingen. Another standard sci-fi tale, readjustment to life back on Earth after relativistic time-loss. Pleasant, cute, sweet, not amazing, not surprising.
"Fields of Gold" by Rachel Swirsky. Another passable story: kind of sweet, kind of sad, kind of moving, kind of funny. Of the two "bureaucratic mechanisms of death and afterlife help a middle-aged failure learn the importance of life and love" stories I've read this year, I prefer "Not Last Night but the Night Before" (in Subterranean 2), but this one was entirely acceptable.
"The Smell of Orange Groves" by Lavie Tidhar. I'm a sucker for what might patronizingly be termed "world sci-fi": stories by authors outside the expected Anglophone nations. Tidhar, apparently, grew up in a kibbutz. Between that and the evocatively exotic title, I had high expectations for this piece. This one doesn't disappoint. It's more of a mood piece than a story, but it satisfies. "World sci-fi" futures seem to feel more lived-in, richer, louder, grimier, entrepreneurial and energetic rather than defeated and pessimistic, full of scents and texture and odd little details. This story conformed to that tendency. I loved every word.
"The Cartographer Wasps and the Anarchist Bees" by E. Lily Yu. Now this is the story I've looked forward to since I first cracked open this book, solely because it has far and away my favorite title in the collection. And holy shit, was it ever good. This is exactly the sort of thing I expected from a "year's best SF" anthology, not that "Ghostweight" or "Younger Women" crap. I can't get over how good this story is. You better go read it yourself. My favorite story in the book, by a wide margin.
"The Man Who Bridged the Mist" by Kij Johnson. The very last story, and also seemingly the longest. Just when I'm most impatient to finish the damn thing, it throws an almost sixty page novella my way. Sigh. Anything after "The Cartographer Wasps and the Anarchist Bees" would be a letdown in any case. Regardless, I really liked this novella. Sometimes it's nice to soak up a world, a vibe, a sense of place, to take it easy and feel tender fondness while watching the river of killer mist roll by. (This is the second published work I've read this year with "killer mist" as a major plot element. What gives?) Oddly, this story immediately reminded me of Albion, the land in the Fable video games; perhaps it was the population of cheerful, gender-blind villagers that's common to both. Being a leisurely tale of an architect discovering something about himself during a dangerous construction project, it reminded me of a novella I wrote long ago, lost now, the world's last remaining copy languishing the last fourteen years in the copyright storage library in DC. I'm rambling again, sorry. The point is, this was a good story.
All in all, this was a good book. I was torn on how to grade it -- three and a half stars feels insufficient for the absolutely wonderful stories in here, while four stars feels too forgiving of the crappy and mediocre ones. But grades are arbitrary anyway, so it doesn't really matter. Many of these stories will persist, haunting my memories for who knows how long, and that's the best thing I can ask from a collection like this. If I'd started reading best-of anthologies when I was 18, maybe I'd be a much better writer today. As it is, I'm looking forward to checking out another volume in this series; my library has at least two others.
562 pages
Published 2012
Read from January 12 to February 1
Rating: ★★★½ out of 5
At first I was inclined not to repeat the structure of my Subterranean review; I wanted to give my overall impressions instead of a giant rambly post detailing my reaction to each story. But it was hard to resist jotting something down about each story as I read it. Plus, I lost my motivation quite early in this volume and read it in bits and pieces over the course of three weeks. Keeping notes as I went was the only way to produce a meaningful review. So even though there are twenty-nine stories this time instead of eleven, I'm going to subject you to a paragraph (or at least a couple sentences) about each and every one.
"Ghostweight" by Yoon Ha Lee. I have zero idea how this story made anyone's "best of" anything list, especially not in the year 2012. This is the sort of story that would crop up once an issue in Analog in the late '90s, something that so clearly didn't meet the same quality standards as the rest of the stories that you wondered just what the editor saw in the damn thing. This has everything I hate about "hard" science fiction: flimsy characters, nonsensical technobabble, an almost nonexistent plot buried under painfully "artistic" prose. This is a story where a woman seeks revenge and thereby becomes a monster herself. That's it. That's an age old plot; this story adds nothing to it. Oh, and it turns out her "ally" in seeking revenge was the one who inadvertently caused her family to be killed in the first place. Such a flimsy plot twist would only matter if I gave a shit about either character, which I didn't, because this story was awful. This story makes me angry. Here I am, publishing my stories in non-paying zines no one's ever heard of, when this shit is making its way not only into Clarkesworld (which rejected one of my stories, the bastards), but into the industry's biggest and best-selling annual best-of anthology, which probably has more readers than any of the pro magazines. What the Christ.
"The Sandal Bride" by Genevieve Valentine. This was a cute but insubstantial story. I liked it but I doubt I'll remember much about it by the time March gets here. Again, not sure how this is top of the line material.
"The Adakian Eagle" by Bradley Denton. A fun and thoroughly enjoyable pulp novella set in the Aleutians in World War II. It's so pulp, in fact, that Dashiell Hammett is a main character. Yeah. I'm generally not a fan of the "Historical personage (or classic author) has a straaaaange adventure!" motif, which is far commoner than I would have believed. Aside from this story's title and a couple awkward references to "a bird statuette" and the like, however, it wasn't especially ham-handed. (Not at all like this one Asimov's-published story in the late '90s, "Interview with an Artist" I believe it was called, where a time traveler, having changed history so Hitler became a moderately successful artist instead of, well, a Hitler, was horrified to discover that tampering with the timeline had made the Holocaust many times worse. "The artist is Hitler!" was pretty much the entire substance of the story.) "Eagle" was marred a little bit by its reliance on Magical Native crap -- it's still Magical Native crap even if your Magical Native scoffs at the idea of being a Magical Native -- but it wasn't as bad as it could have been.
"The Sighted Watchmaker" by Vylar Kaftan. Not only is this story's title a pun on Dawkins, it opens with a quote from The Blind Watchmaker. That's just a bit on-the-nose, don't you think? I tried to keep an open mind regardless. The prose quality is quite good by genre standards. It went down smooth. But that's the only positive thing I have to say about it. Its basic storyline -- "Intelligent machine protects a planet and nurtures the development of intelligent life, then abandons them so they may 'grow up' on their own terms" -- strikes me as a completely worn-out sci-fi cliche. And as much as I agree with the sentiment, "Why would an intelligent race be violent and poison its own planet??"-style moralizing got old sometime in the friggin' 1980s. I have a feeling I'll keep saying this, but isn't this supposed to be the very best SF of 2012? Is genre fiction entirely exhausted, drained of all new ideas, lacking anything new to say?
"The Girl Who Ruled Fairyland, For a Little While" by Catherynne M. Valente. This title, by contrast, I liked. The story was great too. I have higher tolerance for fantasy cliches than sci-fi ones, probably because I find fantasy (and soft sci-fi) more entertaining in general. In fact, I still find that hoariest of all old fantasy cliches, Faerie or Fairyland or whatever you wanna call it, to be rather charming. This story turns up the charm and whimsy and snaps off the knobs. Seriously, it's fuckin' precious. Maybe a bit too precious -- it kind of made my teeth hurt by the end.
"Walking Stick Fires" by Alan DeNiro. This wasn't the best-written story, but it was delightfully gonzo. I wish I could create narratives as batshit as this and give no fucks. It takes confidence in addition to skill.
"Late Bloomer" by Suzy McKee Charnas. A standard coming of age in small town America (with vampires) story. Nothing special, nothing terrible either.
"The Choice" by Paul McAuley. An alien artifact washes up on an English beach. Two friends investigate; one of them begins to change. This is bread-and-butter sci-fi, timeless and satisfying, telling a human-scale story against a surreal backdrop, colored with deft references to The War of the Worlds. Well, it isn't quite timeless -- the waterlogged pessimism and Third World-ization of the West date it definitively to our current fashions and outlook. But I can't object to that. Good story.
"East of Furious" by Jonathan Carroll. Meh. This one didn't do anything for me. No strong feelings one way or the other. "An alchemist and her divorce lawyer drink coffee" is not as entertaining as it sounds.
"Martian Heart" by John Barnes. This one started out meh but became surprisingly moving. Baldly manipulative, but moving nonetheless.
"Pug" by Theodora Goss. A charming, airy, almost weightless mood piece. I particularly enjoyed its nonlinear structure, the way each small scene established a bit more of the situation. I was disappointed when it ended; I wanted more, and to see where it would lead.
"Rampion" by Alexandra Duncan. Another really good one, a retelling of "Rapunzel" set in Umayyad Spain. Like all good retellings, this one uses the fairy tale as only one element of its overall plot, weaving a rich and involving story around the basic thread of "Rapunzel." My only dissatisfaction is with the ending; I find that short genre fiction in general has a problem with "sticking" the ending.
"And Weep Like Alexander" by Neil Gaiman. This is my first exposure to Gaiman's shorter work. There isn't much to this story; it's barely three pages long, and it's completely disappointing. The conceit of an uninventor is cute and all, but the punchline -- "Smartphones make you dumb!" -- could've been a banal status on your friend's Facebook four years ago. What a waste of an excellent title.
In better news, it's January 31 now, writing these as I go, and I'm officially halfway done with this book by pagecount! It's only taken twenty days to get this far. How fast will I finish the rest, now that I'm committing to it?
"Widows in the World" by Gavin J. Grant. Transhumanism is, like nanotechnology, one of those staple hard sci-fi cliches that's been run into the ground over the last few decades. Also like nanotech, it's basically just magic at this point, its stories nothing but fantasy under "futuristic" set dressings. This story earns a few points by committing to the bonkers imagery. It isn't as entertainingly gonzo as "Walking Stick Fires," though. My main impression of this story is flipping ahead to see how many pages to the end. That, and the talking fetus. The talking fetus was great.
"Younger Women" by Karen Joy Fowler. Speaking of stale old Facebook jokes, here we have a scathing (and "timely"!) critique of vampires who date teenage girls. Also, I'm kind of bugged that Fowler quotes a recent National Geographic article without attribution. The one good part of this story: it was short. I looked in the back of the book, and sure enough, this was originally published in Subterranean. I thought it had that familiar Subterranean reek of mediocrity. (Again, I must remind you, this is supposed to be the year's best SF.)
"Canterbury Hollow" by Chris Lawson. More bread-and-butter sci-fi: An underground space colony has a population-control lottery! Two young people "balloted" for extirpation fall in love and decide to end it together! I found this one to be unremarkable until the final passage, which for whatever reason moved me.
"The Summer People" by Kelly Link. I loved this story. There just isn't enough magical Americana to go around, that's what I always say. As someone not far removed (ethnographically speaking) from the Kentucky hill country, I might voice a slight objection to the main character's Twainian accent, but honestly it never became distracting; it flowed well. Great stuff.
"Mulberry Boys" by Margo Lanagan. A delightfully grotesque yarn. Now this is the kind of dark, perverse fantasy I wish I could write.
"The Silver Wind" by Nina Allan. A standard-issue timeline-manipulation tale set (partially) in a standard-issue near-future British dystopia. Not a bad story, but a forgettable one. Honestly I thought this sort of thing was no longer fashionable. It certainly doesn't feel current, talk of "Fortress Britain" and hard-line right-wing anti-immigrant technocratic dictatorship aside.
"Choose Your Own Adventure" by Kat Howard. Now this is how you write a clever, whimsical, moving story in little more than three pages. Neil Gaiman should take notes.
"A Small Price to Pay for Birdsong" by K.J. Parker. The first half or so of this story was quite good, but after a certain point it began to drag, and it ended well beyond where I think it should have. There were two obvious (I thought) ending points, natural junctures to close off a complete and satisfying story. If it had ended at either one of those points, I feel it would've been a superior story. But it kept going and overstayed its welcome.
"Woman Leaves Room" by Robert Reed. There's a reason Robert Reed is one of the current darlings of the short genre fiction set. This story was a skillful and affecting blend of intimate human sadness and high concept sci-fi cliche. Excellent stuff.
"My Chivalric Fiasco" by George Saunders. I was skeptical of this one at first -- it was first published in Harper's, and it was written in that current "artistic" prose fashion -- but holy hell, did it grow on me. The prose worked to hilarious effect.
"The Last Sophia" by C.S.E. Cooney. A languidly unsettling tale of changelings. I'm running out of things to say about these things, but I like this one.
"Some of Them Closer" by Marissa Lingen. Another standard sci-fi tale, readjustment to life back on Earth after relativistic time-loss. Pleasant, cute, sweet, not amazing, not surprising.
"Fields of Gold" by Rachel Swirsky. Another passable story: kind of sweet, kind of sad, kind of moving, kind of funny. Of the two "bureaucratic mechanisms of death and afterlife help a middle-aged failure learn the importance of life and love" stories I've read this year, I prefer "Not Last Night but the Night Before" (in Subterranean 2), but this one was entirely acceptable.
"The Smell of Orange Groves" by Lavie Tidhar. I'm a sucker for what might patronizingly be termed "world sci-fi": stories by authors outside the expected Anglophone nations. Tidhar, apparently, grew up in a kibbutz. Between that and the evocatively exotic title, I had high expectations for this piece. This one doesn't disappoint. It's more of a mood piece than a story, but it satisfies. "World sci-fi" futures seem to feel more lived-in, richer, louder, grimier, entrepreneurial and energetic rather than defeated and pessimistic, full of scents and texture and odd little details. This story conformed to that tendency. I loved every word.
"The Cartographer Wasps and the Anarchist Bees" by E. Lily Yu. Now this is the story I've looked forward to since I first cracked open this book, solely because it has far and away my favorite title in the collection. And holy shit, was it ever good. This is exactly the sort of thing I expected from a "year's best SF" anthology, not that "Ghostweight" or "Younger Women" crap. I can't get over how good this story is. You better go read it yourself. My favorite story in the book, by a wide margin.
"The Man Who Bridged the Mist" by Kij Johnson. The very last story, and also seemingly the longest. Just when I'm most impatient to finish the damn thing, it throws an almost sixty page novella my way. Sigh. Anything after "The Cartographer Wasps and the Anarchist Bees" would be a letdown in any case. Regardless, I really liked this novella. Sometimes it's nice to soak up a world, a vibe, a sense of place, to take it easy and feel tender fondness while watching the river of killer mist roll by. (This is the second published work I've read this year with "killer mist" as a major plot element. What gives?) Oddly, this story immediately reminded me of Albion, the land in the Fable video games; perhaps it was the population of cheerful, gender-blind villagers that's common to both. Being a leisurely tale of an architect discovering something about himself during a dangerous construction project, it reminded me of a novella I wrote long ago, lost now, the world's last remaining copy languishing the last fourteen years in the copyright storage library in DC. I'm rambling again, sorry. The point is, this was a good story.
All in all, this was a good book. I was torn on how to grade it -- three and a half stars feels insufficient for the absolutely wonderful stories in here, while four stars feels too forgiving of the crappy and mediocre ones. But grades are arbitrary anyway, so it doesn't really matter. Many of these stories will persist, haunting my memories for who knows how long, and that's the best thing I can ask from a collection like this. If I'd started reading best-of anthologies when I was 18, maybe I'd be a much better writer today. As it is, I'm looking forward to checking out another volume in this series; my library has at least two others.
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