Review of Blindsight by Peter Watts

Amongst the many changes the development of science has brought, one is a push toward existential honesty.  Certainly huge gaps and questions exist in our knowledge of reality (did I hear you say something, Heisenberg?), but in the past two centuries mankind has put to rest innumerable myths and legends that had pervaded culture and society.  While boxing religion in (or out, depending on perspective), the rational view has forced humanity to face hard facts, or in the very least, uncomfortable questions.  Is the grave the only thing waiting after?  Are we just skin bags of chemicals and electrical impulses?  Is “love” only evolution’s way of ensuring the species survives?  Wholeheartedly embracing the hardline answers to such questions in order to see what comes next, Peter Watts is a sci-fi author who truly holds no punches.  In the tradition of Stanislaw Lem’s Solaris, his 2006 Blindsight is a superb look at the limits of humanity’s sensuality and intellect.  Less a philosophical and more a strong biological and neuroscientific perspective, what you see may be more—or less—than you think.

Blindsight is the story Siri Keeton.  Born an epileptic, half of his brain was removed and replaced with biotech, in turn enhancing and improving his interface with the world.  Thereafter disowned by his mother for being “unnatural”, his talents nevertheless lead him to space.  Earth abruptly contacted by an alien species dubbed the Fireflies, strange communications emanating from a distant point in the galaxy cause humanity to mount an investigation, and Siri, along with a fellow crew of people biomodified to varying degrees, are chosen to make contact.  But encountering an object beyond human imagination, getting at the heart of who, or what is behind the super-planet may be more than humanity is capable of comprehending.

Review of Saffron and Brimstone: Strange Stories by Elizabeth Hand

Saffron and Brimstone: Strange Stories is a 2006 short story collection from Elizabeth Hand (republished in 2014 by Open Road Media).  One a valuable spice of distinctive color and fragrance, and the other a term implying the stink of hell, a possible metaphorical spin on the dichotomous title is the dynamic joys of life and the deeper problems which give them context.  Reading the collection, the possibility becomes reality, in fact, to the point the two are synthesized. 

Like the best musicians and artists, Hand lays bare a part of her soul in Saffron and Brimstone.  Solitude, tattoos, writing, rape, punk rock, island life in Maine, art, the counter-culture, drugs, alternative lifestyles, troubled youth—all inform the stories and are conveyed in real, human terms.  Lightly sprinkled with aspects of the fantastic, the stories in the collection are highly personal—fictionally and non-fictionally—and for it, are some of the best writing Hand has produced.  (See the Afterword for relative biographical information.)

Review of Fifty Degrees Below by Kim Stanley Robinson

Forty Signs of Rain identifying the themes and mode for Kim Stanley Robinson’s Science in the Capital series, Fifty Degrees Below (2006), as is expected in the middle novel of a trilogy, further unpacks the ideas under discussion while escalating story to new heights of excitement.  Salting what was a rather tasteless opening, the second novel improves upon the first while launching the story into the third and conclusory volume, Sixty Days and Counting.

Working with the same cast of characters, Fifty Degrees Below opens with Frank Vanderwal having to leave the apartent where he was staying and search for a new home.  The flood now receded, its effects remain.  Housing prices and rent through the roof given the lack of supply and huge demand, Frank opts for creative domesticity.  Dividing time between his van, a homemade treehouse in a local park, and the showers at work, he soon settles into a routine that allows him to focus on what Diane, his boss at the NSF, has laid for him to do: think of plausible ideas that can be implemented to combat climate change.  With the jetstream sweeping ever southward, drawing the cold with it, Frank is under pressure.  Charlie Quibler, still advisor to Senator Phil Chase, is faced with a new task: a presidential campaign.  Caring for little Joe during the day while Anna works, Charlie has to back a man who, does not implement every environmental mitigation plan, but is at least a sight better than the man currently in office.  Let the campaigning begin.

Review of The Power that Preserves by Stephen Donaldson

If there is any common ground to reviews and discussion on Stephen Donaldson’s Thomas Covenant series (and Gap Cycle, for that matter), it is their divisiveness.  Opinion is split along many lines.  Some readers are turned off by Covenant’s personality, while others are intrigued by his atypical qualities as an epic fantasy (anti-)hero.  There are bold statements to the effect Covenant is just a Tolkien rip off, while other commentary believes the series is a fresh view on epic fantasy.  And still others are turned on or off by Donaldson’s worldbuilding.  The consistency with which The Power that Preserves, the third book in the Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever series, is delivered will probably not have these people changing their minds.

Covenant thrown back in the real world at the end of The Illearth War, the opening of The Power that Preserves finds him still in our reality. Also still battling his leprosy, his memories of the Land confuse his perspective of home.  Repercussions of his trip to the bar in The Illearth War arising, a claim is placed on his property by local authorities, causing him to leave his home once again, trailing anger and disillusion at the people who contact him.  But walking through the woods one day and seeing a girl about to be bitten by a snake, Covenant is distracted and goes to the rescue.  Before he can save the girl, however, he finds himself back with the Council, summoned to eliminate the icy hold Foul has placed on the Land with his great armies.  At a crossroads, Covenant must decide whether to return to the real world to help the girl about to be bitten, or stay, and with the power of his ring, drive back the assault of Lord Foul.

Review of The Light Ages by Ian R. Macleod

Steampunk, steampunk, steampunk.  Though it is the beginning of 2014 and the steampunk ship appears to have sailed, our pants are still wet from the flood, and as the water recedes, we try to filter through the driftwood.  Many of the titles deserving of disappearing as quickly as they washed ashore, some, however, will hopefully remain in the genre’s memory for a long time.  At or near the top of that list is certainly Ian R. Macleod’s The Light Ages.  As stereotypical a steampunk story as any can appear to be, it trumps the visuals through the literary manner in which substance complements aesthetics, its relevancy achieving greater heights.

The Light Ages is a frame story, foremost.  It opens with a Guildmaster walking the gloomy backstreets of London, seeking a changeling child.  Finding her in a makeshift home alongside the Thames, the girl taunts the man before asking to hear his life story.  Robert Morrow the Guildmaster’s name, he begins with his childhood in northern England in a mining town.  Aether pumped from the ground in vast quantities, he is being groomed to follow in his father’s footsteps, a minor guildsman of the tool workers which utilize the industry-changing substance. His mother not in the healthiest of conditions, she nevertheless has the energy to take young Morrow on her social visits, one of which includes a trip to the countryside to visit a woman who may or may not be a changeling.  His mother’s condition deteriorating rapidly thereafter, Morrow soon finds himself faced with the realities of his future in the present, and, in a calculated decision, decides to change it all.  From street urchin in London to printer’s assistant, child confidante to a Guildmaster, debt collector to revolutionary, Morrow gets what he wants, but not in the fashion his young mind imagined in a world turned upside down by the powerful aether. 

Review of The Alchemist by Charles L. Harness

Alfred Bester’s The Demolished Man, John Wyndham’s The Chrysalids, Harry Harrison’s Deathworld, Olaf Stapledon's Odd John, Theodore Sturgeon's More Than Human, basically anything by Philip K. Dick—and on and on goes the list.  What do they have in common?   Psi powers.  A big enough boom in the Silver Age to warrant its own entry into the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, telekinetics, psionics, whatever you want to call the reality altering  properties of thought was a popular idea.  The 50s not enough, Charles L. Harness penned his own tale of uber-mental powers in 1967’s The Alchemist.

Hope Chemicals is a firm that has built itself up from a brick farmhouse to one of the largest chemical researchers and producers in the US.  Run by Andrew Bleeker, he runs a bet with a Russian competitor that a new compound, silamine, can be created in their lab by a rogue chemist Pierre Celsus.  Watching the experiment take place, everyone is amazed when Celsus is indeed able to do what Bleeker bet he could—including Bleeker.  But it isn’t the new compound that has Hope Chemicals talking in the days that follow.  Celsus’ report containing more than a few anachronisms, Bleeker sends his patent and legal departments to investigate.  What they find turns the science of the company upside down.

Review of New Light on the Drake Equation by Ian R. Macleod

The existence, and equally, the non-existence of alien contact has been a topic of discussion amongst the scientific community for some time now.  Perhaps more in the 20th than the 21st century, the likes of Enrico Fermi, Frank Drake, and sponsors of radio antennas scanning the skies for alien life worked with the assumption it’s possible humanity is not alone.  Implementing this search in a wonderful, unheralded novella called New Light on the Drake Equation (2001), Ian Macleod gives his take on the astronomer’s formula.  The title apt, a fresh perspective is constantly in the making.

Wikipedia states: “The Drake equation is a probabilistic argument used to estimate the number of active, communicative extraterrestrial civilizations in the Milky Way galaxy.”  Believing in the probability, Tom Kelly has devoted his life to the astronomy, radio physics, and mathematics associated with building and working with Search-for-extraterrestrial-intelligence (SETI) devices and computing.  Culminating in a thin yet existent hope, and a lot of empty liquor bottles, his seventy years on Earth have brought him to the quiet mountains of France where he has set up a large radio antenna on a plateau.  As patient as a man can be, Kelly’s life passes by one drink and false computer alarm at a time.  Old age giving him time to reflect upon his younger days, it’s a surprise visit, however, from a former girlfriend that sets his mind moving in a new direction.

Review of Summer Soltice by Charles L . Harness

    "Two to one that you will report to his majesty that the Earth is shaped like a disc. Even odds for a cylinder. Three to one against a square. Ten to one against a sphere." He pushed the bag of staters back to Eratosthenes. "Just give me a hint," he whispered. "And keep your purse."

Knowledge regarding the true shape of Earth literally worth its weight in gold, Charles L. Harness’ 1984 Summer Solstice is a look at the underlying views of how such a variety of shapes could come to mind to begin with.

Summer Solstice is the story of Eratosthenes, a geometer tasked by Ptolemy II with determining the shape of the Earth: cylinder, disc, sphere, square?  The street odds against each interesting, rabbis, astrologers, philosophers, even sailors have their own opinion as to the reality of the earth beneath their feet, depending on their belief of perspective.  Eratosthenes’s situation more than precarious, a female slave awaits to poison him should his choice go wrong.  But complicating matters much further is the unscheduled arrival of Khor, an avian-esque alien on Earth, his ship in desperate need of repair. 

Review of Port Eternity by C.J. Cherryh

The history, legends, and myths surrounding the man known as King Arthur are some of the most enduring and inspirational material in the English language.  Like Robin Hood, Arthur’s name resonates in modern history.  The amount of books, fiction and non-fiction which have been spun off the man is increasingly difficult to quantify.  Appearing in such a wide variety of Western media and culture, most people, in fact, have only a hazy idea of who he was or might have been (including this reviewer), Disney as much a teacher as history class in high school.  C.J. Cherryh an Arthurian aficionado, she applied her interests in a science fiction novel.  Knowledge of the surrounding legends required for full appreciation, Port Eternity (1982) is a survival in space story that uses a strong sense of character to play with Arthurian myth to satisfying degree.

Port Eternity is the story of the crew and passengers of the Maid of Estolat.  Dela the rich and influential owner of the pleasure yacht, she routinely takes her lovers on lengthy space cruises to indulge in the pleasures of life.  A lover of Arthurian legend, she has decorated her ship in a motif of swords and shields, banners and castles, and, indulgent in the technology of her age, has had her clone servants psych profiles set to characters from Arthurian legend.  Lance is model man who functions as a lover.  Vivien is her keeper of accounts and protocol aboard the ship.  Gawain is an engineer, and Mordred is the ship’s pilot.  And the narrator, Elaine, is Lady Dela’s personal servant. 

Review of The Houses of Iszm and Other Stories by Jack Vance

A writer of all lengths of fiction, Jack Vance’s career is an even balance of novels, short stories, novelettes, and novellas.  The Vance Integral Edition collecting them all, The Houses of Iszm and Other Stories brings together a handful of everything but a novel.  Covering nearly the entirety of Vance’s short fiction career time and size-wise, the four stories range from 1954 to 1967, and include two novellas, a novelette and a short story. 

The Houses of Iszm – Is the story of a man visiting the planet Iszm, home to a highly unique industry of live tree homes.  The technology under threat from an underground faction, the man gets caught up in the fight in ways he’d rather not.  Early Vance, and not his most nuanced.  (See here for a longer review of this novella.)