Review of Cleopatra Brimstone by Elizabeth Hand

Cleopatra Brimstone, the 2001 novella by Elizabeth Hand, is a bizarre tale of butterflies and perverted aggression.  It is the story of Janie Kendall, an only child who is raised in sheltered circumstances in middle America and grows into a university student with a great knowledge of entomology, butterflies in particular.  Raped after leaving campus one day, her life is never the same.  Retreating to her parents’ home—the only place she feels safe, it isn’t until a friend of the family arranges for her to house sit in London that she finally attempts to come to terms with the attack.  Handled in a fashion no one could predict, what results is a story that has been told before, but nothing even close to Hand’s terms.

Cleopatra Brimstone is the name of a variety of butterfly that Jane comes across while volunteering at the Royal London Zoo.  The name indirectly inspirational, her quiet American life comes to an end, and a counter-culture girl is born.  Doc Martens, black vinyl raincoat, and a shaved head just the beginning of the changes, how she moves forward with life will have the reader in shock and smiling.

Review of "The Choice" by Paul McAuley

John Steinbeck’s The Pearl is a powerful story as well as commentary: nothing brings out the greed and violence innate to humanity like the scarcity of valuable goods, that is, in a capitalist society.  Supply and demand determining the market, as well as thieves’ interests, when a rare item becomes available, rest assured somebody wants it, morals not always a scruple in acquiring the object.  Winner of the 2012 Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award, Paul McAuley’s novella The Choice is a sci-fi retelling of Steinbeck’s story (I don’t think intentionally), the title falling into place along the way.

The Choice is set in a Britain vastly different than what we currently know, yet familiar for the manner in which humanity persists.  Environmental destruction and global warming having taken their toll, the icecap in Greenland has collapsed, flooding the island nation, and as a result Lucas and his best friend Damian have grown up along a coast far different than maps currently describe.  Islands, channels, and mud flats the norm, the former farms and fishes to support his mother, while the latter works at his abusive father’s shrimp farm to get by.  Aliens having come to Earth in the aftermath of the flood, they traded environmental technology for rights to the other planets in the solar system.  One of these advanced ocean cleaners (called a ‘dragon’ by the locals) washing ashore one day, Lucas and Damian head to the beach along with others from the area to see for themselves what the the mysterious object actually looks like.  Their lives are never the same.

Review of Nightflyers by George R.R. Martin

Please note this review is for the novella Nightflyers, not the collection which also bears the name.

Wreathed in psi powers, zombies, and deep, dark space, George R.R. Martin’s 1980 novella Nightflyers is a page-turning horror/suspense/mystery.  The title is the name of the ship contracted to carry a crew of nine scientists to rendezvous with a legendary alien species called the volcryn said to be migrating in random arcs across the universe.  The captain a recluse, he never emerges from his cabin, yet keeps eye and ear on all of the crew as they go about their business on the flight to the next point the volcryn are supposed to appear.   Some of the crew possessing psi powers, trouble appears when one psionics starts to break down mentally.  Claiming an alien presence draws closer, the crew inject him with drugs in an attempt to enhance his ability to see the presence, something which all have felt but none have seen.  But the unexpected happens, and the crew’s mission begins to fade as things start to spiral out ofcontrol.  Getting to the bottom of the mystery takes all they have, and maybe just their lives.

Review of Godlike Machines ed. by Jonathan Strahan

There are many things that make science fiction unique, and one of them is certainly sense of wonder.  Choosing ‘godlike machines’ as his theme, one must wholeheartedly assume Jonathan Strahan was aiming precisely at this aspect of the genre when soliciting authors.  The anthology a combo of hard science, space opera and planetary weird of the super-size variety, it’s fair to say he hit his mark with Godlike Machines (2010). Whether the anthology is just a one-off, however, comes down to the individual story.

I once heard Jack Vance tell how he was shown a science fiction picture and asked to write a story based on it—whatever came to his mind—and the two would later be placed in tandem in a collection.  The story he produced was “Sail 25”; a solid novelette, but not his best.  Godlike Machines in many ways results in the same situation.  I realize there are some writers who cannot work without such prompts, but inevitably, the best stories arise more organically.  They evolve through iterations in the imagination with nothing to the story’s direction.  When writing based on premise, it’s automatic that a few fences are erected and a few demands are placed on the story.  This is not to say everything must fit within a tiny box, only that the reader is always aware of the strictures of the underlying premise: the writer was not writing with complete freedom.  Godlike Machines is thus closer to pastureland than open range.

Review of There’s a Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow/Now Is the Best Time of Your Life by Cory Doctorow

My apologies from the opening line; I normally try to rein it in, but in this case can’t help but let vitriol overflow into the review.  Cory Doctorow’s 2010 novella There’s a Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow/Now Is the Best Time of Your Life is a piece of fiction that needs to be called out—to be taken to task for content, and in the process exposed for the troubling story that it is.  Before diving into the critique, I will first give the novella the respect of outlining the plot.

There’s a Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow/Now Is the Best Time of Your Life (TaGBBT/NitBToYL) is the story of Jimmy, an ‘immortal’ growing up in post-industrial, post-human, post-everything America.  His father part of the pro-tech faction of what remains of humanity, Jimmy spends his days on patrol in a mecha with his robo-dogs hunting for wumpuses—self-replicating machines that traipse the remnants of the US breaking non-organic materials down into their basic components so that forests can regrow and the natural landscape one day return.  Jimmy’s immortal condition meaning he has a maturing mind stuck in the body of a ten year boy, conversing with the cute Lacey while out hunting in his mecha one day is anything but comfortable.  But teenage love quickly becomes the furthest thing from his mind as a band of enemy mechas attack Detroit, Jimmy the only thing that stands between a reversion to primitivism and the progress of science.

It took effort, but I feel that paragraph does the opening chapter of TaGBBT/NitBToYL justice.  What happens thereafter, well, only distances itself from the ideas of ‘coherent storyline’, ‘progressive worldview’, and ‘intelligent commentary’ one maddening step at a time.

Review of The Rediscovery of Man by Cordwainer Smith

Inspired by MPorcius's readings, I decided to re-read Smith's work and discovered what I remember as great has only gotten better over the years, somehow...

Due to its general dependence on the unknowns of the future and technology, science fiction is a genre of literature that does not age well.  People still appreciate H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine and Jules Verne’s Journey to the Center of the Earth for their roles and qualities in the field, but there remain strikingly dated elements or overriding worldviews which immobilize other perspectives.  That being said, there are jewels of the genre which float above the clock, heedless to the passage of time.  Olaf Stapledon’s Star Maker, Stanislaw Lem’s Cyberiad, and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein are works that will age only because of immutable time, all else transcendent.  Ignoring the contemporary and striking at the heart of humanity, Cordwainder Smith’s The Rediscovery of Man is another such work that has yet to show a gray hair or a wrinkle.

Published over the course sixteen years, 1950 to 1966, the stories in the collection represent one man’s vision of mankind’s future evolution.  The stories, though unequivocally science fiction, toe the lines of magic realism, surrealism, and the fantastic, and offer the briefest of glimpses into the Instrumentality of Mankind—a super intelligent overseer, of sorts.  Vivid, colorful, dynamic, they possess the energy and vivacity of James Tiptree Jr., every ounce of Ray Bradbury’s humanism, and the mind for bizarre technology of Alfred Bester and Philip K. Dick; it’s beyond certain Smith had his influence on the genre.

Review of Troika by Alastair Reynolds

One of the leading writers of space opera in modern science fiction, it can only be imagined that when Jonathan Strahan approached Alastair Reynolds with the anthology theme  ‘godlike machines’ in 2010, Reynolds jumped at the chance to contribute a story.  Going on to headline the anthology, the novella he produced, Troika, is a Big Dumb Object story for a new generation.

Troika opens with Dimitri Ivanov stumbling through the freezing cold having just escaped from a mental institution.  Clutching a precious metal object in his hand, hypothermia is setting in as he wanders the backroads of a Russian winter.  Picked up by a passing plow driver, he is dropped at his destination point, shivering but revived, and rings the doorbell of Nesha Petrova.  An ageing woman answers the door, and after initially doubting the man’s announced identity, lets him in.  Sitting over a pot of tea, what unfolds is an intriguing tale of exploration and discovery of a BDO the size of Tasmania that had appeared in the galaxy many years prior.  Ivanov one of three cosmonauts sent by Second Soviet to probe the massive shelled entity, the reader must wait until the last pages to learn how the metal object plays into the story of Petrova.

Review of A Small Price to Pay for Birdsong by K.J. Parker

For all the ambiguity surrounding the identity/gender/etc. of K.J. Parker, there is at least one thing for certain: they know how to write stories.  2011’s A Small Price for Birdsong is a solid novella that presents a surface rendering of a composer dealing with success and morality in all too human fashion.  Winner of Parker’s first genre award (the World Fantasy), the story comes well recommended.

A Small Price for Birdsong is the story of an unnamed music professor, and opens in the cell of his most brilliant student, Aimeric Subtilius of Bohec, as the man awaits death by hanging.  The professor attempting to coax out of Subtilius the theme to the last movement of his unfinished symphony before he is sent to the gallows.  But the condemned man refuses to give it up, saying death is greater place for his music to reside than with the populace that would see him put to death.  Seeking the final movement only for the passion of music, the professor walks away dejected that he will never hear the beauty of what could have been.  It is thus with great surprise he learns of Subtilius escape.  But even more surprising is when the escapee turns up in his study one evening with a deal too sweet to pass up.

Review of Let Maps to Others by K.J. Parker

As of 2011, A Small Price to Pay for Birdsong was the only awarded title in K.J. Parker’s fast growing ouevre.  A simple yet fluid and engaging piece, the author stayed with the groove (setting, style, story set up, etc.) and produced another solid novella Let Maps to Others (2012) one year later.  Bearing much, much in common with Birdsong, music is not the central device, however; Parker delves into the value of historical documents, trade, and tells an engaging tale of a ruse gone bad in the process.  It became the second award winner for Parker.

Let Maps to Others is the story of an unnamed scholar and his quest to discover the lost coordinates of Essecuvio—a place “where the soil and climate are the best in the world, the people are gentle, sophisticated, wealthy beyond measure and wildly generous, and where they’d never seen a lemon.”.  Discovered by the intrepid Aeneas Peregrinus three centuries prior, the sea captain died unexpectedly soon thereafter, taking the knowledge of its whereabouts with him to the grave and leaving generations of scholars, dukes, and merchants to speculate on its location.  His main rival Carchedonius requesting a meeting one day, the narrator is delighted to discover that a manuscript thought lost to time has been recovered, but is disappointed to learn the document does not contain the long sought after coordinates.  But it is watching what Carchedonius does with the document after he finished readig it that sets the story alight, and casts the narrator into unexpected waters. 

Review of A Billion Eves by Robert Reed

Robert Reed’s 2006 A Billion Eves is an odd story, yet coherent.  But given it’s science fiction, that in itself is not so odd.  Playing with parallel universes, gender, ecology, and religion, the novella is an interesting conceit not fully unpacked, and if pressed further might crumble.  What stands, however, is effective, damning commentary that extends beyond mere story.

A Billion Eves is the story of Kala, a young woman growing up in a world like our own in appearance, but marginally different from a cultural perspective.  A device called a ripper has been invented, and with it humans are able to irreversibly travel to a parallel version of Earth, taking with them any amount of items and people, up to and including whole buildings, depending how the device is deployed.  After one man rips a sorority of women through time so that he has his own personal harem, young women like Kala live in constant fear of being kidnapped and taken on a ripper trip into the unknown, never to see their loved ones again.  Parents and brother progressive, her family reject the ways of the church on their version of Earth and allow Kala to choose who she would marry and work where she pleases.  Selecting a job in a national park where she can help reduce the number of invader species brought with the group who initiated Kala’s version of Earth, finds remaining independent a difficult task in the wilds.