Review of R&R by Lucius Shepard

The late 60s/early 70s was a time of international and civil strife.  The Vietnam War one of the major touch points, things in the US only quieted down in the late 70s with the election of Jimmy Carter.  But with the induction of Ronald Reagan into office a few years later, a new round of unpopular military action was begun.  Learning their lesson, the government operated mostly out of the public eye, inserting small strike forces in Latin America to assist guerrilla armies here and broken governments there, all with an eye to economic rather than human interests.  Aware of what was happening in the region, Lucius Shepard penned R&R in 1983.  Bringing awareness to a situation that to this day does not receive the same recognition as Vietnam or Iraq, the near-future story of a US soldier fighting in Guatemala offers anti-war sentiment in mature fashion, and in turn adds itself to the ranks of anti-war stories told in highly human terms.

R&R is the story of David Mingolla, an army soldier fighting in the jungles of Guatemala against whatever enemies spring before him.  Cubans, local rebels, and even renegade U.S. Army units on the attack, things are far from black and white in Mingolla’s life.  Preferring to relax and walk the rural villages while his buddies whore, take drugs, pit fight, and carouse in the neon madness that springs up outside army barracks, he spends his r&r time thinking of going AWOL to Panama—an idea his morals prevent him from acting on time and again.  Meeting a partially psychic woman in a village one evening changes things, however, and Mingolla’s world begins to spin ever faster.

Review of The Jaguar Smile by Salman Rushdie

The 1980s were a tumultuous time in Central America.  Though late Cold War, the Reagan administration was still sticking its nose into the region to attempt to prevent communism from spreading—which is an underhanded way of saying keeping a handle on its own economic interests.  Panama, Costa Rica, Honduras, and numerous other countries, including Nicaragua, were caught up in the resulting mess of violence and social turbulence—memories that haunt to this day.  Secret armies formed and disbanded, attacks taking cities and even the sleepiest villages by surprise, and revolutions a dime a dozen, about the only constant for the people was the uncertainty of life—aka war.  Invited by the then government of Nicaragua to see the country and hear the political ideology under discussion, The Jaguar Smile: A Nicaraguan Journey is Salman Rushdie’s account of three weeks in the country in July 1986.

A very well-written piece of journalism, The Jaguar Smile holds more in common with Orwell and Steinbeck’s international accounts of war, than say, Bruce Chatwin or Paul Theroux’s travelogues.  Rushdie forever keeping an eye to the interaction of politics, religion, society, theory, and practice, the relatively short book (170 pages) is packed with the ideologies at stake, lives of the people, political concepts attempting to be implemented and implemented intentionally or otherwise, and just enough background history to contextualize events.  The writing style a mix of Rushdie’s prosaic leanings with a concise journalistic approach, the book is both informative and a pleasure to read.

Review of The Night We Buried Road Dog by Jack Cady

If there is any universal trigger of nostalgia in the United States, it is the Golden Years of the 1950s.  Glamorized to this day, the innocence of youth, the music on the radio, and of course, the tons of steel molded into cars are some of the most common visuals associated with the period.  DeSotos, Hudsons, Chryslers, Lincolns, and all other manner of road behemoths piloted the burgeoning highways of America, guzzling gas and fueling the joy the driving every mile of the way.  Simply a beautifully written novella, Jack Cady’s 1993 The Night We Buried Road Dog reflects back upon the era to evoke a similar nostalgia, and in the process touches upon aspects more intrinsic to the motion and direction of the human spirit.

The Night We Buried Road Dog is the story of Jed and his life in small town Montana circa 1961.  He and his friend Jesse both car junkies, the hammer of pistons on the open road is their religion.  So in love with automobiles, when Jesse’s decrepit Hudson gets too old, they bury it in his front yard, complete with a tombstone and epitaph.  But Jesse does not spend long without a car, a giant Lincoln is soon burning rubber beneath his feet.  The highways of the night forever calling their name, mile after mile is racked up by the pair.  But everywhere they go, they see markers and signs left by the mysterious Road Dog—a man some think is real, and others just a legend of heartland USA’s open highways.  One night driving home, an even more mysterious thing happens: a ghost car flashes past, and in its wake the mystery of the Road Dog deepens. 

Review of Equal Rites by Terry Pratchett

Hindsight is a unique perspective; it makes predilection seem easy.  But based on The Colour of Magic and The Light Fantastic, who would have thought that Terry Pratchett’s Discworld books would begin appearing with such regularity and increasing popularity?  Probably the same number who said it wouldn’t.  (I’d be curious what Sir Terry thought.)  Regardless, looking back we can see that for as fun and funny as the first two novels are, Equal Rites, the third Discworld book, is where the series really starts to gain traction.  Pratchett seeming to realize the potential of the Disc, the novel’s exploration of a social theme (in this case, gender) through a sustained and humorous (and sustainably humorous) narrative became the trademark of the series.

Equal Rites is the story of Eskarina Smith.  Eighth son—err, daughter—to an eighth son, her births sees a visitor, the aged wizard Drum Billet, come knocking to pass on his staff of magic before dying.  Without a care to the sex of the child, he enchants the staff to obey only the newborn child before DEATH takes him peacefully away.  Beyond the power of Esk’s father and local witch Granny Weatherwax to tame, the rune-covered staff cannot be destroyed.  So they hide it.  But by the time Esk has reached her eighth year, it’s obvious there is something special about her.   So her father sends her to study with Weatherwax to become a witch.  Eventually the staff intervenes, and before Esk knows it, she and Granny Weatherwax are off on a perilous journey to Ankh-Morpork to see she receives a proper wizard’s education.  Trouble is, there have only ever been male students at the Unseen University…  

Review of The Brave Little Toaster by Thomas Disch

Thomas Disch’s most famous books—On the Wings of Song, 334, and Camp Concentration—are all works of literary speculative fiction.  Possessing quality prose, classical references, and of course, a certain gravitas, they force The Brave Little Toaster (1980) to stick out like a tree in a field in Disch’s oeuvre.   In the tradition of Stanislaw Lem’s Fables for Robots and Cyberiad, the novella tells the story of household appliances who go on a quest to find their lost master.  At times playful and at others profound, the novella is a Brothers Grimm fairy tale of sci-fi proportions.

A vacuum cleaner, alarm clock, electric blanket (a yellow one), tensor lamp, and the titular toaster are living in a cottage in the countryside at the beginning of The Brave Little Toaster. The master away for more than 2 years, the appliances are starting to get antsy that he will never return.  Concocting a plan to escape their confines and find him, the group soon finds themselves on the adventure of a lifetime—at least as far as appliances go.  Encountering all manner of friends and foes, obstacles and rescues, Disch confirms it’s not the destination but the journey which matters.

Review of Breathmoss by Ian R. Macleod

Reading Ian R. Macleod’s 2002 Breathmoss has brought to a head my thoughts regarding Ursula Le Guin’s influence on speculative fiction.  The number of times her name appears in my notes (Macleod’s novella included) has built to the point I’m even introducing this review with the idea.  A bucolic coming of age in a sci-fi setting, the author’s style and the story’s outcome are (thankfully) his own, but the mindset behind it walks a path pioneered by Le Guin, all to positive effect.

Breathmoss is the story of Jalila, a girl living on the planet Habara.  Her family moving their home in the highlands to a town by the sea at the beginning of the story, Al Janb is a wildly different place than the pastureland and open plains where her formative years were spent.  Living in an all female society, her parents (in fact three women) are optimistic the change will bring benefits to their lives. But Jalila is less sure; every new and odd thing appears in an unfavorable light compared to the highlands.  She sees rocket ships launching, aliens wandering the streets, and, an even stranger thing one day: a man.  Life swirling ever faster, Jalila must find a way through her new reality toward her future.

Review of The Executioner's Guild by Andy Duncan

Dripping with the flavor of Howard Waldrop’s character driven tales set in the American south, Andy Duncan’s 1999 The Executioner’s Guild is also high quality storytelling.  Effusive rather than pointed, Duncan’s talents draw empathy for not only for the characters involved, but the situation they are in, striking at something deeper in humanity in the process.

The Executioner’s Guild is the story of an execution in Andalusia, Mississippi circa 1941.  Arriving one hot summer day, the executioner, one Jeffrey Simpson, trundles into the town in a rickety truck bearing the instrument of death, an electric chair.  The townsfolk in awe of Simpson and his lawful duty, he meets with Sheriff Davis over iced tea and pie, and the two discuss the condemned.  Offensive but compliant, Childress was found sitting quietly beside the man he murdered, and now waits his hour of death—bile on his tongue but acceptance in his heart.  The Sheriff, and in particular his deputies, are eager to see the sentence carried out and the weight of the imminent death, relieved.  But whether or not Simpson can perform his job becomes complicated when Childress requests to see the man who will pull the switch on his life.  Not for reasons the reader might expect, what happens as a result of their meeting in the small town overflows with tension.

Review of Ecopoiesis by Geoffrey Landis

In the tree of science fiction there are branches, and sub-branches, and sub-sub-branches, all leading off in many different directions.  One of the main branches is hard sf, and from this springs several others that are quite visible, one of which being the ‘whodunnit in a futuristic scientific scenario’.  In the tradition of Larry Niven, Geoffrey Landis’ 1997 novella Ecopoiesis is a Martian murder mystery of such special circumstances.  Whether those circumstances are enjoyable is up to the expectations readers bring to the table.

Leah Hamakawa and David Tinkerman, along with a soldier named Tally, have been sent to Mars to investigate a pair of deaths at the outset of Ecopoiesis.  The upper crust of Mars years before punctured to allow magma to warm the planet’s atmosphere and bacteria deposited to sow the first seeds of life, nothing came of the project as its founder was extradited to Earth for violation of solar system environmental policy.  Research nevertheless occurring in the aftermath, the remains of two scientists have been found, and the culprits need to be found.  Hamakawa, Tinkerman, and Tally using their wits but keeping one eye over their shoulder as they may be next to die, the investigation moves cautiously through the exploded research and living (“hab-and-lab”) capsule, a crime scene hampered all the more by the state of Mars’ evolution.

Review of The Colour of Magic by Terry Pratchett

The explosion of epic fantasy we are experiencing in 2013 was not even a blip on the market radar in the 1980s. A handful of British writers had written a few tomes in the first half of the 20th century—E.R. Eddison, C.S. Lewis, and of course J.R.R. Tolkien, and in turn were imitat—err, followed by a few American writers, Donaldson, Brooks, and others. But the veritable deluge currently ongoing was not even a twinkle in papa epic’s eye. At the beginning of the decade, a couple of names set out to re-define the term ‘epic’, going on to have market impact to this day: Robert Jordan, Glen Cook, and Terry Pratchett. The first choose to wallow in the archetypes of the genre to the point his series became bogged down by its own weight. The second choose to ignore good and evil and go in a grittier direction. And the third, well, the third chose another road: humorous subversion, and in turn has kept fantasy fresh and funny ever since. Monty Python’s fork in the road was 1983's The Colour of Magic; Pratchett hasn’t looked back since.

The Colour of Magic is a parody of absurd proportions. Starting in Ankh-Morpork, a rough-and-tumble city of medieval presentiments, the book tells the story of Rincewind, a wizard kicked out of Unseen University after learning only one spell. Running into a man at a bar, Twoflower (a naïve tourist from rich foreign lands), the two find themselves stumbling and bumbling their way from one unwanted adventure to another, trying to stay alive while keeping possession of the one thing everybody wants: a walking chest of gold. Yes, you read the last phrase correctly. Made of sentient pearwood, the chest ends up protecting the pair more often than needing protection. The thieves of Ankh-Morpork, the dragons of Netherlands, and the wizards of the Big Sea all wanting a piece, The Colour of Magic is a romp.

Review of The Sultan of the Clouds by Geoffrey A. Landis

It’s interesting that The Empire Strikes Back is considered by most to be the best Star Wars film of them all.  Is it the love-triangle between Leia, Luke, and Han Solo?  Luke’s time with Yoda?  The emergence of Boba Fett?  Or is it that the Empire wins in the end?  Regardless, what can’t hurt are the sensawunda set pieces.  The asteroid hideout with a surprise, the battle over the ice plains of Hoth, training in the jungles of Dagobah, the requisite time aboard star destroyers, and of course, the stunning scenes in the climactic sequence at Cloud City.  Following in the footsteps of George Lucas’ mode of sci-fi, and seeming particularly entranced with idea of Cloud City, Geoffrey Landis’ 2010 novella The Sultan of the Clouds is mini-space opera of wholly retro proportion. 

The Sultan of the Clouds is the story of David Tinkerman.  A technician living on Mars, he is asked to go to Venus with the lovely and intelligent Dr Leah Hamakawa.  Invited by the planet’s magnate, the 12 year old Carlos Fernando Nordwald-Gruenbaum, Tinkerman doesn’t know what to make of the invitation but accompanies the woman he secretly loves, anyway.  Arriving at the ruler’s lavish domain in the cloud cities of Venus, things quickly turn mysterious.  For reasons Tinkerman cannot comprehend, Norwald-Gruenbaum seems sets on courting and marrying Dr. Hamakawa regardless of the age difference.  Tinkerman’s presence extraneous as the magnate pours traditional Venutian gifts on the Doctor, he has plenty of time to explore the magnificent floating globes and transport systems, and in the process gets himself into more trouble than he imagined.  The beautiful yet toxic atmosphere of Venus threatening, it’s only a matter of time before he comes to the bottom of Norwald-Gruenbaum’s ambitions.