Review of "Recovering Apollo 8" by Kristin Kathryn Rusch

There are many who consider astronauts heroes of the modern age.  Where Eric the Red, Christopher Columbus, Marco Polo, and a variety of others are idolized for their exploration of wild lands of yesteryear, most people today know the names of Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong (Michael Collins gets the short end of that mission’s stick for some reason) as the first on the moon in the mid-20th century.  Attempting (emphasis on ‘attempting’) to put such feats in perspective for contemporary readers, Kristin Kathryn Rusch’s “Recovering Apollo 8” (2007) is alternate history of the space variety.

The novella has a premise that can only be described as strange. Taking one of NASA’s most successful, heralded missions as its Jonbar point, the story flips the success on its head such that it was a failure, and then sets a billionaire genius, one Richard Johansenn, on its heels to recover the lost ship and the men presumed dead inside.  Seeming a setup for a deconstruction of something, Rusch nevertheless plows ahead, telling her own tale of relative heroism. 

Would You Like to Read Me?: Snapshot of Book Publicity at the Beginning of the 21st Century

I recently received spam - sorry, a request - to review a debut novel.  The byline read: "A THRILLER SET IN A SCI-FI WORLD FILLED WITH PLOT TWISTS, A FEMALE PROTAGANIST AND SCIENTIFIC ACCURACY."  This was not sent by the author, rather their publicist, and so I don't know who to blame for the tragedy.  Hard to believe this a real example of book publicity...  Has it sunk so low?  (For the record, the plot summary which followed was no less refined or enticing.)

We can forgive the misspelling of 'protagonist.'  We can ignore the oxymoron "sci-fi world.... scientific accuracy."  And we can excuse the insult to intelligence that highlighting "female protaganist" is to would-be readers.  It's the sum total which causes the head to drop in shame.  For all the advances in publishing, for all the familiarity readers have with the system and its attempts to manipulate for gain, for  all the mass of media supporting the book industry, and for all the university courses and online material available how to build your brand, how to market your material, how to properly use social media, blah blah blah, I'm left wondering: that is the "hook" a publicist is throwing my way?  I'm not indignant; I'm sad at the reflection.

Review of Return to Eden by Harry Harrison

With Winter in Eden ending as it did, what the third and final book in the Eden series, Return to Eden (1988), would hold in store was a major question mark.  If something resembling an understanding had been established between the humans and yilane, what could drive the Eden storyline further?  Turns out, a lot.

Kerrick, having bartered a relative peace between the yilane and humans, looks to re-settle with his wife Armun and the rest of the tanu in a new community.  They do so beside a bountiful lake, but not without a moment of intense drama for the two male yilane who travel with them.  Leading to other major events, life is far from settled for the tanu.  Ambalasi, still de facto leader of the Daughters of Life, has her traditional mindset put to the test by Enge and one of the strong-willed Daughters, and in the process their whole community is tested.  And Vainte, exiled to a foreign continent, contemplates her future, and eventually comes to a conclusion—a predictable but effective conclusion.

Where Winter in Eden expanded the settings and characters of West of Eden, so too does Return to Eden.  But what is expanded, or at least concretized most significantly is theme—or rather themes, as there are many floating around Harrison’s extreme alternate history.  From race/species relations to the role of weapons, perennial philosophy to Otherness, linguistics to culture—all arrive at a relative sense of closure given the points causing tension thus far in the series.  The number of times I thought to myself “Wow, that ties back into that, and that…” is a significant indication of the preparation and organization Harrison brought to the series.

Review of Winter in Eden by Harry Harrison

Alternate history to the extreme, Harry Harrison’s West of Eden, first in the Eden trilogy, posited a world wherein not all dinosaurs went extinct.  An evolved bipedal species surviving the Cretaceous and gaining sentience called the yilane, the novel describes their first major interaction with humanity, and the war and violence that ensued.   More than just blood and fighting, it is clear Harrison was paving the way for a larger agenda on species relations, Otherness, war, civilization, and other major ideas surrounding the concpt of a multi-hued society.  In the second of the trilogy, Winter in Eden, those ideas begin to reveal themselves along clearer lines, even as the tension between the yilane and humans ratchets itself back up again.

Exploring new areas of the map, Winter in Eden likewise expands its points of view.  Just a side character in West of Eden, Winter begins to follow Armun, Kerrick’s wife, as she attempts to reunite with her husband.  Kerrick, meanwhile, attempts to extract what knowledge and science he can from the ruins of the yilane city razed at the end of West of Eden.  But a stronger calling eventually draws him away.  Though defeated, Vainte still lives, and in Winter in Eden her quest to destroy the vile ustouzou redoubles.  Employing means to make Hitler smile, she’s learned her lesson and aims for a methodical killing blow.  Likewise surviving the catastrophe is Enge, one of the Daughters of Light.  Her beliefs shunned by most yilane, she strikes out with a small group to create a new society, and discovers some very interesting aspects of the world in the process. 

Review of Down and Out in Purgatory by Tim Powers

Tim Powers is a writer whose development the reader has been able to track with certainty.  A marked maturation is visible from his fledgling, early efforts that won over more for ideas than execution to his latest efforts which feature a writer aware and in control of the craft.  2016 a more productive year than usual for Powers, it has seen the publication of a major novel, Medusa’s Web, and in June the novella Down and Out in Purgatory (Subterranean). 

Tom Holbrook is on a mission of revenge.  The love of his life killed by her husband (a man Holbrook was formerly close with, so close they had tattoos done together), he scours the American West searching, gun at hand.  A hardened man with purpose, when he finds the object of his revenge in a morgue, a wrench is thrown in the works.  But only temporarily.  Other, more rash means possible, revenge is still attainable for Holbrook, just not in this world, it seems.

Another award!!! Yeah!!!!! Wait....

Just what science fiction and fantasy needed: another celebration of mediocrity - sorry, fan-voted best science fiction and fantasy novel!!!  Thanks Dragon Con for dragging the bar a little lower!  (And thank you to whomever I stole the image on the right from: it fits perfectly.)

Review of The Book of the Damned by Tanith Lee

Tanith Lee is quietly one of the great writers of dark fantasy, and though now passed, still deserving of a wider audience.  Walking her own path in a field filled with wannabes, she slowly but steadily built an oeuvre of stories grounded in rich prose, a sensitivity to the workings of the human soul (ill-intentioned, good-hearted, or otherwise), a deep understanding of the power of myth and faery, and a talent for synergizing it all in fascinating stories.  1988’s The Book of the Damned (reprinted by Open Road Media in 2016) is the first in a series of works examining the phantasmagorical depths of the decadent, haunted city Paradys.  It remains one of not only Lee’s, but fantasy’s best works.

Presented as stories from a strange city (the subtitle is The Secret Books of Paradys), The Book of the Damned is ostensibly three novellas: “Stained with Crimson,” “Malice in Saffron,” and “Empires of Azure.”  Like Lee’s earlier Flat Earth books, however, the tales bleed and seep into one another to create a whole, of sorts.  Distinct yet suffuse entities, the characters and stories at each’s core takes one step further toward building in the reader’s mind the city of Paradys.

Review of Homunculus by James P. Blaylock

The best works of a sub-genre are most often those which come to light in hindsight.  Unaware they were/are part of a groundswell, there is no overt implementation of particular tropes or themes in order to be part of a specific literary or cultural movement.  Steampunk stories, for example, while billowing in popularity after 2009-2010, have not since seen as many truly unique works as the decades prior.  The best novels and stories produced before it became a cultural phenomenon, James Blaylock’s Homunculus (1986) is one such novel, and indeed one of the sub-genre’s charming, capering, and unwitting cornerstones.

A strange dirigible circling the rainy gray skies of England, the inventor Langdon St. Ives works oblivious on his space rocket at the outset of Homunculus.  But a late night burglary attempt on a perpetual motion device brings St. Ives closer to the gyres of the dirigible’s haunting significance.  Snagging him and dragging him into the proverbial machine, however, is his possession of the memoirs of Sebastien Owlesby and its account of a magical little man trapped in a box.  With the dirigible’s orbit decaying toward London, it isn’t long before it’s up to St. Ives and his Royal Society fellows to attempt to bring down a scheme that no one seem to have a firm handle on, right down to the very men perpetuating the scheme.

Review of Learning the World by Ken Macleod

After opening his career in science fiction with the original Fall Revolution series, Ken Macleod has since been going through the genre’s major tropes and conceptions to find inspiration.  The Engines of Light trilogy hard sf meets space opera and Newton’s Wake full blown space opera, for his next novel Learning the World (2005) Macleod decided to go the first contact route. 

A dual-perspective novel, the actual contact between humanity and a bat-like alien species comes very late in the novel.  Humanity interestingly the species technically advanced enough to do the contacting, Learning the World oscillates back and forth between characters in a generation starship approaching a new system and the aliens who inhabit one of the planets in the system as the two notice signs of the other before actual contact.  The aliens having a WWII level of technology, first contact technically (ha!) occurs when the aliens notice a new “star” moving through their night sky.  Other strange, unnatural things popping up in their atmosphere and environment, they quickly figure out they are not alone.  Meanwhile on the ship, factions appear once humanity observes likfe on the planet and likewise figures out it is not alone.  The main draw of Learning the World is thus the manner in which each side learns about the other and the relative effect it has on their societies.

Review of Fevre Dream by George R.R. Martin

Good ol' clichés.  In fiction they can be A) beaten like a dead horse, B) expanded upon to transcend origin, C) deconstructed for critical value, or D) given enough depth to stand on their own—legs tottering from the years of accumulated weight, but standing nonetheless.  Another way of putting this, B, C, and/or D are needed to avoid A.  George R.R. Martin’s Fevre Dream (1982) goes with tactic D, but it remains up to the reader whether its legs collapse.

The offer seeming too good to be true, at the outset of Fevre Dream Captain Abner Marsh approaches his midnight dinner with the mysterious Joshua York with strong reserve.  Marsh’s fleet of steamboats having recently been destroyed in winter’s ice, he has little of value, and is wary of the massive sum he is offered to captain a steamboat, no questions to be asked.  When Marsh learns the full incentive of the offer, however, he jumps on it—a dream truly come true.  A time later, Marsh finds himself happily plying the waters of the Mississippi once again.  But more questions remain.  York confines himself to his stateroom during the day, has a bizarre obsession with unsolved murders along the river, and his companions are a little long in the tooth—literally.  Little does Marsh know just how much stranger his life on the river is about to become.