Review of The Concrete Jungle by Charles Stross

At the current state of science fiction’s evolution, the grab bag of familiar science fiction tropes is as large as it ever has been.  This paves the way for one type of ‘originality’: test the limits by combining as many as you can.  Published in 2004, Charles Stross’ novella The Concrete Jungle is a posterizable example.  Anything (familiar) goes in its roughly 100 pages: zombies, alternate history, androids, Greek myth, 21st century corporate life, threats of alien invasion, Big Brother conspiracies, the occult, emotion detectors, invisibility shields, and all not to mention humor involving lesbian sheep and jokes having “don’t have a cow” as the punchline.  Whether this is too much for 100 pages will depend on what expectations the reader brings to the table.

Bob Howard is a mild mannered, unassuming agent for the Laundry Arcana Analysis Section of British Intelligence.  Woken in the dead of the night, he is called to the office on a code blue alert and given a folder of top secret files to review en route to a site the Section wants answers regarding.  The files detailing a century’s research into gorgonism, i.e. the ability to burn to cinders anything carbon-based with the power of sight, Howard prepares himself with heat goggles approaching the scene.  The charred corpse of a domestic animal lying in the middle of a traffic circle, where the investigation leads is only more bizarre. 

Review of Deathworld by Harry Harrison

Storms, carnivorous plants, earthquakes, and all manner of teeth, fangs, and claws hungry for flesh on a planet whose two cultures are at sociological odds, Harry Harrison’s 1960 Deathworld is a Golden Age conceit imbued with New Age ideals.  The title defining which side of the fence the main thrust of the novel falls upon, there is something for fans of each era to enjoy, but with much left unspoken in the middle.  

Jason dinAlt, a gambler with psionic abilities, finds himself on the planet Pyrras after a ruse gone awry.  Otherwise known as Deathworld, he must go through intensive training just to step outside the door of the facility where he’s been invited to stay and help solve Pyrras’ eminent problem.  The flora and fauna predatory and only becoming more aggressive, the Pyrran population is dwindling each year, complete extinction a certainty if the onslaught of claws, creatures, poisons, and all other manner of menace are not put in check.  The Pyrrans a scarred and calloused culture who rarely live to see old age, dinAlt, however, meets with resilience at all turns of his research, that is, until being thrust into life outside the secure facility.  Survival taking a whole new twist the deeper into the jungle he moves, he holds out hope that Deathworld will not live up to its name—for himself or the Pyrrans.

Review of Griffin's Egg by Michael Swanwick

Michael Swanwick’s Griffin’s Egg tries as much to be retro sci-fi as it does to push the limits of the genre—or at least the limits when the novella was published in 1991.  The story of a industrial worker on the moon who must deal with the spillover of violence from Earth to the point of post-humanism, the effort succeeds for as much as it could be improved, proving the combination at least marginally effective.

Gunther Weil is an employee of G5, one of the biggest industries mining the moon for metals and raw materials.  Though working on a voluntary contract, he holds no place in his heart for the rote and plethora of bureaucracy, the rubbish strewn about the moon’s surface, or the radioactive storms that plague his rover trips delivering fuel pods.  But he is more afraid of political turmoil on Earth; governments continually with fingers on the button, Weil considers life on the moon a worthy sacrifice.  He can run, but he can’t hide; one day a button is pushed.  World governments reacting in kind, the effects eventually reach the moon.  A terrorist unleashing a chemical agent into one of the mining complexes, Weil and the others must find a way to bring normalcy back to their isolated colony.  The choice they ultimately face amidst the evolving chaos, however, is anything but.

Review of Looking for Jake and Other Stories by China Mieville

Things have changed in the genre.  It used to be that writers cut their teeth and honed their style in the short fiction world of magazines and quarterlies, collections and anthologies, slowly climbing the ladder of success to novel-hood. But today, any writer with a good idea and manuscript in hand (and a little good luck) can get published.  Iain Banks, for example, has twenty-seven novels published, but only one short story collection.  China Mieville is another writer whose initial successes were novel- rather than short fiction-based.  It took seven years from the appearance of his first novel, 1998’s King Rat, to the time his first collection was published, 2005—and it remains his only collection published as of 2013.  Containing dark, occasionally artistic, often florid stories of horror, fantasy, and things marginally between, Looking for Jake and Other Stories is collection and is the subject of this review.  The following are short commentaries on the individual selections:

“Looking for Jake” is Mieville’s second-ever published work.  Epistolary in form and edgily atmospheric in tone, the narrator describes London after a strange apocalypse.  Monsters and other horrors forever hovering at the edges of empty streets and macabre scenes, Mieville is obviously attempting a moody, artistic piece regarding the evolution of society.  Lexically exuberant to say the least (very similar to Perdido Street Station in style), it’s a story to ruminate upon, nothing clear-cut, and one of the best in the collection.  

Review of The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells

It’s difficult to get much more classic than H.G. Wells 1898 The War of the Worlds.  The first novel to Martian aliens, a significant number of books and stories have since fallen under its influence; to say it was a door opener would be putting it mildly.  From the B-movie likes of Burroughs in the aftermath on through the likes of Alastair Reynolds, Iain Banks, John Scalzi, and Vernor Vinge today, there are few who have not been directly and indirectly affected by the novel. Given the apocalyptic proportions the story takes on with the star of war at its helm, flowing through to the religious and political sub-texts, it would be remiss not to name the novel one of the most influential sci-fi works of all time. 

Told from Wells’ typical competent-British-male perspective, The War of the Worlds is the first-hand account of a science journalist’s witnessing the great Martian invasion.  The man unnamed, he is living a normal life until astronomers observe strange bursts of light coming from Mars.  Metal capsules streaking in from space and plowing into the suburbs of London a few days later, little happens at first.  The public gathers around the pits containing the half-buried cylinders, listening to the thumping and tapping noises that emanate from within, and speculate on the qualities of Earth’s neighbors.  But when a disgusting specimen plops out and lays waste to the surrounding crowd with never-before seen weaponry, London turns to panic.  The chaos and destruction which result, and too humanity’s reaction as the British homeland is razed to the ground, is now classic.  But reading for one’s self is all the pleasure.

Review of Coraline by Neil Gaiman

Featuring a bright, confident girl caught up in a nightmare only a child could have, Neil Gaiman’s playfully frightening Coraline is a delight.  A fairy tale a la the Brothers Grimm for the modern age, the 2009 novella strikes a perfect note, a wonderful little story of a clever and brave girl ringing true after the past page is turned.

Moving to a new home brings big changes to Coraline’s life.  But she’s ready for it.  Her new apartment only part of a larger mansion, she introduces herself to the retired actresses who live next door, Miss Spink and Miss Forcible, and the elderly man who claims to be training a mouse circus upstairs, Mr. Bobo.  On the advice of these eccentric but kindly neighbors, she sets about exploring the mansion’s grounds and corridors.  Coming upon a mysterious door that opens into a brick wall, her mother’s explanation (that it is just a way to separate the flats) can’t scratch the itch.   And so one day while her father is at work and her mother is off grocery shopping, Coraline snatches the key to investigate the wall a little closer.  What she finds sucks her into a world that is eerily similar to her own, but the more she investigates, the less it is. 

Review of Oceanic by Greg Egan

There is no doubting Greg Egan’s views.  All of his short fiction and novels incorporating detailed scientific theories and concepts (actual and playful), he is this generation’s leading writer of hard sci-fi.  But that he goes out of his way to denounce religion through fiction is what makes him one of the genre’s most politicized authors, as well.  Subverting religious concepts with the knowledge mankind has gained through science, there is even the ostensible idea that mankind would be better off without religion.  Synthesized into the story of a young man growing up in a culture with a Christian-esque belief, Egan’s 1998 novella Oceanic is a prime example of his worldview in fictional form.  (Please note this review is for the novella Oceanic, and not the short story collection of the same name by Egan.)

A brief but impacting bildungsroman, Oceanic tells of Martin and the effect religion has on his life as he grows older.  Uncanny, Egan captures perfectly the Pentecostal belief in story form.  ‘Baptized’, accepting God into his heart, and ‘speaking in tongues’ before leaving home, the fundamental elements of the sect are presented in analogous form in Martin’s life and culture.  Consistent throughout, Egan keeps the story’s perspective on the personal and religious as Martin moves from boyhood and into the secular world.  Through this coming of age, his beliefs run a gauntlet of tests, none perhaps greater than his chosen profession.

Review of The Alchemist by Paolo Bacigalupi

Though I have read both The Windup Girl and Pump Six and Other Stories, I’m still holding my breath on Paolo Bacigalupi.  Relatively original ideas, engaging plots, vivid settings, and seemingly a strong environmental agenda to his work, there’s a lot to like.  However, I find he’s unable to produce any synergy between plot and theme.  The Windup Girl ending on a note that satisfies story rather than being a progressive solution to the world’s bioengineering ills, and many of the stories in Pump Six dependent on sensationalism to get their point across, I keep waiting for Bacigalupi to work thematic material into his stories with more subtlety—to present the issues he so rightly has identified in a fashion more relative to the reality he's commenting on.  It was thus with expectation I pushed into his third major publication, the 2011 novella The Alchemist.

Set in an Asian-Medieval world (co-created with Tobias Buckell called the Khaim, though in fact their stories share nothing in common but a name), the main character of The Alchemist is Joez.  Former trades abandoned, Joez has devoted the past fifteen years of his life to building a machine, a balanthast, that will destroy the evil bramble.  Bramble the result of people’s usage of magic, its thick stalks and poisonous hairs spring up in fields and home whenever anyone uses spells and witchery.  Joez himself secretly using the forbidden practice to heal his ailing daughter, the beginning of the story finds him selling her bed to get money to continue work on the balanthast.  But the struggle to construct a working prototype is only the beginning. Convincing the magister of Khaim, the ruthless Scacz who beheads anyone caught using magic, that the machine is science not magic, however, may be the greater task.

Review of The Executioness by Tobias Buckell

I’ve long been in debate with myself about the woman warrior. On one hand I can understand that it may be proper to present women in positions of strength and power—to give them a place in epic fantasy as otherwise none would be available amongst the male dominated battles and bloodshed.  On the other hand, isn’t a woman wielding a sword and shield and leading armies just a man with breasts—cramming feminism into a masculine box?  Aren’t there more effective ways of integrating the unique aspects of women into literature than violence and blood?  Tobias Buckell’s 2011 novella The Executioness only furthers this debate in my mind.

The Executioness is the story of Tana, a middle aged woman living as a butcher in Khaim.  Her father, the city’s executioner, is aged and lies sick abed.  One day when the bell rings, calling him to a beheading, he is too weak to stand and forces Tana to don the mask and clothes to do his part.  Trembling every step of the way, Tana completes her father’s assignment, collapsing afterwards in a heap of emotion but with a handful of coins to feed her father, husband, and children.  The problem is, raiders invade the city before she has a chance to return home, kidnapping her sons for slave labor.  Her home burned in the invasion, Tana’s desire to find her sons and bring them home becomes the goal of her life.  Her life destroyed, she has no other choice.

Review of The Only Neat Thing to Do by James Tiptree Jr.

The biography of James Tiptree Jr., known as Alice Sheldon in reality, makes for interesting reading.  Having had anything but a predictable life, amongst her many talents was writing science fiction.  Her personal life troubled, its emotional tension leaked into her fiction, giving it a certain salience, and likewise dark undertones.  One of her last novellas, The Only Neat Thing to Do may be the most autobiographical of them all.

Coati Cass is a plucky, intelligent young girl with dreams of space.  She knows all the star stations, the models of ship that traverse the universe, and the rules of space flight.  Saving up her money, she decides to put her knowledge to use and fulfill her dreams by renting a ship for a few weeks’ trip into the great unknown.  Things go smoothly at first; she spends the last of her money on fuel and food, gets permission to lift off after chartering a course, and heads off to the starry beyond.  At the first way station, however, things take a turn—as innocent as it may be.  Intercepting a message from a pair of spacers thought lost, she decides to follow up on their request for help.  Little does she know what else was stowed in the message container.