George
R.R. Martin is by now almost a household name. The success of the
Song of Ice and Fire novels feeding into the even greater success of
the television series, one hears the words ‘Winter is coming’
and ‘You know nothing, Jon Snow’ on the street. I
assume most of these people, however, are unaware Martin began his
career as a writer of short fiction in the 70s. Regular readers of
this blog know my jaded nature toward a lot of popular fiction, and
thus it should come as no surprise that I feel some of Martin’s
early, more humanist work is, in fact, his best. Capturing a few of
these stories, plus a handful of his more mainstream fiction, is the
1985 collection Nightflyers.
Containing
only six stories (though two are long novellas), things kick off with
the title story. Vampires in space, “Nightflyers” is the story of
a mission gone horrifically wrong. Mysterious captain and mysterious
happenings onboard make for a mysterious story that, for as well
developed and suspenseful as it truly is, lacks any true depth beyond
vampires and space. Undoubtedly, however, it will gain praise from
mainstream sf&f fans. (Longer review can be found here.)
“Nightflyers” is followed by another straight-forward but well
executed sf horror story, “Override”. About a miner on a distant
planet who uses remote controlled corpses to dig for valuable metals,
when a rivalry turns sour, things quickly get out of hand for him.
The
first really substantial story in the collection is “Weekend in a
War Zone”. Clearly influenced by the Vietnam War, as well as
Robert Sheckley stories like “Seventh Victim”, it tells of a man
who instead of taking a tennis course one weekend decides to enroll
himself in something else, something a bit more ‘physically
challenging’. Society having evolved beyond real war, human blood
sport is the name of his weekend game as he joins a small army to
fight against another. Martin creating a nice parallel to the
innocence of draftees in the Vietnam War being sent to the front, the
story offers layers the previous stories do not.
Feeling
very strongly like an Ursula Le Guin short, “And Seven Times Never
Kill Man” tells of the exotic planet Corlos, the furry Jaenshi who
live there, the aggressive Steel Angels (humans) whose religion
mandates the extermination of the Jaenshi, and a trader named Arik
(human) who would like to help the Jaenshi defend themselves. One of
the most developed stories in the collection, it puts respect for
culture and religion in its thematic crosshairs, resolving itself in
a scary yet not unrealistic fashion (context, natch). The weakest
story in the collection (despite the flowery title), “Nor the
Many-Colored Fires of a Star Ring” is a bit of hard sf romance,
with a touch of Norman Spinrad’s “Riding the Torch” (or perhaps
vice versa, I’d need to check the publication years). About an
exploratory vessel on the edge of known space, what lies in the
unknown causes potential problems, intellectual and mortal, for the
crew. Suffice to say, Spinrad’s story is far better at capturing
the existential sentiment Martin was aiming for.
If
isfdb.org is to be trusted, I haven’t read about 60% of Martin’s
short fiction, and his novels Armageddon Rag and Windhaven
still elude me. But of all that I’ve read, “A Song for Lya” is
the best, thus far. A very human rumination on love and death, the
story tells of a couple, Lya a mind reader and Robb an emotion
reader, who are asked to come to the planet Skheen to solve a problem
between the human and native population. The native Skheens having
existed for 14,000 years without evolving, they practice a mysterious
cult that is slowly taking hold of the human population, as well.
The cult’s practices inevitably resulting in death at the hands of
a strange alien attached to people’s bodies, Lya and Robb have
their work cut out for them if they want to investigate without
becoming involved. A poignant, mature read (despite the blob aliens
and telepathic stuff), Martin seems to have put his heart and soul
into this piece, and it shows. (Longer review found here.)
In
the end, Nightflyers is a mix of popular and more
literary-minded fiction, and in the least is a good sampler of genre;
science fiction, horror, fantasy, and mixes thereof. The strongest
stories in the collection are “A Song for Lya” and “Weekend in
a War Zone”, with the title story, “Override”, and “And Seven
Times Never Kill a Man” contributing positively to Martin’s short
fiction opus.
Bookended
by novellas, Nightflyers contains the following six stories:
Nightflyers
Override
Weekend
in a War Zone
And
Seven Times Never Kill Man
Nor
the Many-Colored Fires of a Star Ring
A
Song for Lya
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