Review of The Outcast Blade by Jon Courtenay Grimwood

Picking up where The Fallen Blade left off, Act II of Jon Courtenay Grimwood’s Assassini trilogy, The Outcast Blade (2012), is more of A Game of Thrones meets Twilight. Major characters falling, cabals for Marco’s throne revealing themselves, and more bits and pieces of Tycho’s backstory revealed, the stakes only get higher.

Following upon the battle for Cyprus at the end of The Fallen Blade, The Outcast Blade opens with Tycho’s return to Venice. Thrown under the bus by people he thought friends, what should have been a triumphant return as a hero quickly becomes a fight for his life. Not all is as it seems with Prince Alonzo, and only Tycho’s physical abilities allows him to live another day. But Tycho’s return likewise has an effect on his friends. Atilo’s relationship with Desdaio takes a new spin as Tycho begins spending more time with Venice’s most desirable bachelorette—a fact that others in power would seem to try to exploit. With the Holy Roman Emperor Sigismund waiting on the wings with a mind to annex Venice, the city is a fire keg ready to explode.

Review of The Unexpected Dimension by Algis Budrys

In a broad sense, Jules Verne, H.G. Wells, and Edgar Rice Burroughs should be considered the foundation stones of contemporary science fiction: Burroughs writes the highly fantastical side and Wells the largely realist (or at least human-centric) side, while Verne represents a kind of middle ground, a fascination with the possibilities of technology and science as it plays against both sides. The fathers of space opera, soft science fiction, and hard sf, respectively, they have directly or indirectly influenced science fiction since. Squarely in the Wells’ camp, and thus the most likely to transcend his time yet be forgotten, was Algis Budrys. Largely overlooked when 50s’ sf is discussed, the descendants of Burroughs and Verne (e.g. Asimov, Heinlein, etc.) hog the spotlight all the while Budrys, along with a handful of other writers from his era, remain deserving of further discussion. Pulling together the best stories from the first eight years of his career, Budrys’ The Unexpected Dimension (1960) is as much representation of Wells’ legacy as it is engaging soft science fiction in its own right.

While reviewers today would be likely to call the story Dickian, “The End of Summer” was before Philip K. Dick’s time. About memory editing on an Earth where life has been extended near to indefinite, the novelette opens with a man returning to his US home after hector-years living in Europe. Having reviewed his memories of his previous time in the US on the flight over, he takes his time getting to his home, enjoying the long drive from the airport. But once at his old apartment and back in society, not all is calm and certain. Budrys’ sparse style suiting the story being told, he portrays the man, and the people around hinm, as more dependent on the memory vaults they carry than actual memory itself. Loss of the man’s memory vault a natural springboard into interesting story, what happens after examines—yes, like PKD—memory, perception, conspiracy theories, and the surreal, resulting in powerful, if not Brave New World-esque, ending. The title literal and figurative, “The Distant Sound of Engines” is another piece about memory. A short work, it tells of a driver who lost his legs in an accident and is now convalescing in a hospital room, listening to the sound of cars and trucks on the highway outside his window. About what the brain retains as long term and short term memory, Budrys writes subtly but powerfully.

Review of Feeling Very Strange: The Slipstream Anthology ed. by James Patrick Kelly and John Kessel

As editors James Patrick Kelly and John Kessel admit in the opening line of the introduction to their 2006 anthology Feeling Very Strange, the term ‘slipstream’ may be the most subjective in genre. Working with Bruce Sterling’s initial stab at a definition, as well as some of their own ideas, the pair do, however, come up with a comprehensible set of parameters that may corral the term into a semi-manageable space. Namely a literature of “cognitive dissonance and strangeness triumphant”, they equate the ability to understand two realities within a story to a post-modern cognizance of different levels or perspectives to reality. Selecting fifteen previously published stories they feel representative of the notion, regardless whether the reader agrees with the definition of ‘slipstream’ provided, the stories offered are quality reading material in their own right, even as much as they are dissonantly strange.

A strangeness not always readily accessible, the warning flag waved at the anthology’s opening ‘Beware! Not all is normal!’ is “Al” by Carol Emshwiller. On top of being a superb specimen of writing, it is likewise a James Hilton Lost Horizon conceit covering art, the motivation to create, and the humanity surrounding them both. Existing at the edge of complete comprehension, as perhaps do life and art, it’s a great note on which to open the anthology. Closing the anthology (and the only original story in the anthology) is M. Rickert’s “You Have Never Been Here”. Shifting between fictional and non-fictional perspectives, and, as the title hints, often using the second-person, it’s an hourglass tale—the grains of sands shifting quickly and steadily, rearranging themselves indefinitely. While perhaps lacking the depth of Emshwiller’s story, Rickert readily portrays the subjectivity of existence with appropriate mode and mood.

Review of The Fallen Blade by Jon Courtenay Grimwood

I've sometimes wondered if Jon Courtenay Grimwood is an author perpetually one step ahead of his audience. I do not refer to trends or patterns in genre, as, on this front, he is most often behind the times. I refer instead to his sense of style—his mannerisms while writing. Smooth yet indirect, the reader must put a little effort into penetrating the surface—not a lot, but a little. They must have an active mind to keep pace, even as the story he's telling is familiar at heart. And we all know what happens when most readers are asked to invest a little effort in their reading material. They give up, meaning Grimwood has not enjoyed the same success as some of his peers, despite writing the more sophisticated versions of familiar material. But in writing the Assassini trilogy, which The Fallen Blade (2011) is the first act of, Grimwood seems to have accepted market demands. Settling into a far more accessible groove, the story of Venice prowled by the paranormal is one fat spoonful of genre fare.

The familiarity in content as much style, The Fallen Blade takes the mindset of A Game of Thrones and marries it to Twilight substance. Werewolves and assassins, dukes and demons, princes and army regiments vie for power and control of 13th century Venice—a time when the city held great commercial power in the Mediterranean. Nobles warring with poisons and assassins after dark and openly with soldiers in the daytime, the canal city glitters on the exterior but is stinking to the core on the inside, corruption and depravity rampant. A gifted boy falling into the hands of an evil man one evening, he is trained as an assassin, all the while he tries to discover his lost history and the secrets behind his strange powers. Anything becoming possible beneath the arches of Venice in the aftermath, crossbows and cabals collide to decide who holds power in one of the world's most opulently and beautiful cities.

Review of Darwinia by Robert Charles Wilson

Cthulhu and hard sf are two branches of speculative fiction I have a dubious relationship with.  The triviality of humanity in terms of terror-inducing cosmic gods seems a cheap shot (Lem, for example, examines the unknowability of the great beyond with far more integrity in Solaris), and hard sf is so often a tedious yet pointless exercise: take an element of real-world science, extrapolate, then layer on a conventional plot to ‘see what happens’.  If no underlying human agenda exists, it becomes as much navel-gazing as ‘interesting scientific imagination’.  This is not to say either is incapable of being utilized with more substance, only that rarely is it done.  Robert Charles Wilson’s Darwinia (1998), a novel which wholeheartedly combines Cthulhu (in disguise) and hard sf, only confirms my stance.

At the turn of the 20th century, the “Miracle” has occurred.  Europe, along with its millions of people, has been physically removed from the map and replaced with a jungle that maps the old geological structure but whose flora and fauna are not of this Earth.  A New-New World born as a result, some Europeans living in the Americas return to settle the continent, even as the US flexes its muscles as the unrivaled leaders of civilization.  Accounts varying as to why and how the Miracle happened, religion and science have a new point of contention in their ongoing ideological war.

Review of The Gold Coast by Kim Stanley Robinson

Kim Stanley Robinson's debut novel, The Wild Shore, was an interesting re-visioning of Southern California. Post-apocalyptic yet pastoral, he destroyed the US with nuclear bombs then imagined what the first few phases of re-building might be like. Agrarian lifestyles all around, the characters attempt to recover the technology and other aspects of civilization destroyed by the H-bombs but start with the basics of farming and harvesting. Grassroots on one hand and revenge-oriented nationalism on the other, KSR used the resulting tension to emphasize the fundamental socio-political differences at work, leaving his main character, and as a result the reader, at a key divergence of perspective. With the release of the second novel in the Orange County series, The Gold Coast (1988), Robinson proves the future of SoCal can be re-imagined from an entirely different perspective—not definitively post-ap, but certainly relatively so—without chipping any of its critical teeth.

Orange County covered with cars, condos, strip malls, advertizements, franchises, street lights, housing developments—commercialism galore, The Gold Coast looks at some of the social and economic problems inherent to the capitalist market model. Robinson utilizing the lenses of the weapons industry and restlessness of youth culture as his main plot drivers, the novel centers on the McPherson family. The father Kevin is a high-level engineer working for one of the nation's largest weapons researchers and manufacturers, Laguna Space Research. Getting privileged treatment from the government for a super-black project, his life is turned upside down when, in the middle of preparing the proposal, it's announced his effort is mostly in vain: the project will go white. Things begin to spiral from there. Kevin's son, Jim, is a twenty-something working several part-time jobs to keep things together, though he still partially depends on his parents. It's his time with his friends, however, where he finds the most enjoyment in life. Designer drugs and parties every night, his only trouble seems to be finding a meaningful outlet for his energy—terrorism not above him.

Review of Roadside Bodhisattva by Paul Di Filippo

I suppose every writer may want to write a road novel at some point in time in their career. The open air, the off-the-wall people to be met, the moment to moment existence with little concern for the long-term—it's a life easier to imagine than live, and thus perfect material for fiction. A writer who has covered an immense lot of proverbial ground, I believe Roadside Bodhisattva (2010) to be Paul Di Filippo's road novel.

An appropriate point, the novel opens with a hitchhiker being dropped in the middle of nowhere by a yuppie more concerned about his house getting robbed than he is of getting any gas money for the ride. After walking a few miles on the desolate country road, the hitchhiker, a sixteen year old runaway, encounters a grungy but savvy elderly man camped beneath a tree. The man named Sid and the young man not wanting to give his name becoming Kid A, the two strike up a conversation and have a meal as the sun sets. Forming an awkward partnership the next morning, the pair continue down the road looking for breakfast, and find a lonely countryside diner cum motel. Little do the duo know of the people and life which wait inside.

Review of Equations of Life by Simon Morden

For certain there is a core of genre—stories and novels with easily identifiable elements clustered around commonly used tropes and settings, and Simon Morden's Samuil Petrovitch trilogy, led off by the novel Equations of Life (2011), is a prime example. A science fiction thriller, it tells of a smart-talking, brilliant young physicist who accidentally gets in over his head, and soon enough the mob and machine intelligence want it—his head, that is.

A standard story, but one that Morden reveals carefully and assuredly, Equations of Life steadily reveals the “reality” of the novel, even as it becomes more and more distant from ours. One ordinary day, Petrovitch is walking one of London's main squares and happens upon a kidnapping, and, for better or worse, decides to help the victim. Winding up protecting the daughter of a yakuza boss, his reward is soon enough offset by death threats from the Ukrainian mob which was trying to kidnap her, all the while a strange detective starts keeping tabs on his personal life. Experimental technology floating in the laboratories of the yakuza's massive corporation, strange messages begin to appear on Petrovitch's mobile, and it isn't long before his understanding of the world gets spun upside down, all the while various groups try to cut short his time on it.

Review of Broken Angels of Richard Morgan

Richard Morgan’s debut novel Altered Carbon was a straight-forward cyberpunk murder mystery that got by on vivid description as well as mainstream genre’s craving for more of the same, repackaged. The main character Takeshi Kovacs was a classic sf hero. Taking the law into his own hands to fight the bad guys and the corrupt system as needed, he survived the attempts on his life, killed the baddies in vengeful fashion, all the while getting to the bottom of things to catch the murderer. Broken Angels (2003), the second Takeshi Kovacs novel, finds the hero oriented in a new, perhaps more cynical, direction.

Now a mercenary fighting in inter-solar system corporate wars, at the beginning of Broken Angels Kovacs lies in convalescence after having been wounded in battle. A mate in the hospital having news too good to be true, he tells Kovacs of an alien artifact discovered on Mars, just waiting to be exploited. Kovacs convinced, he and the mate spring the archeologist who discovered the artifact from prison and are soon on their way to discover what exotic riches lie in wait. Trouble is, the war is still going on, and more than just Kovacs know about the artifact…

Review of neoAddix by Jon Courtenay Grimwood

As is clear, the appearance of any sub-genre in fiction is noticed after the fact. Sources diverse, the individual components that bond it into a coherent motif are apparent but not universal. The first works identified as “cyberpunk” possess a cybernet here, a multi-national there, neon-noir here and virtual existence there. But it took William Gibson’s Neuromancer to unite them all into a single, identifiable concept, thus letting the world know what has been happening elsewhere, and by default beginning a second-wave. The second wave wherein writers consciously play with the components comprising the sub-genre, by the time the third wave has hit the mainstream, it has almost entirely been reduced to an easily identifiable aesthetic. Jon Courtenay Grimwood’s 1997 neoAddix is third-wave cyberpunk of the purest distillation.

Fully cognizant of the diverse elements comprising the aesthetic of cyberpunk, as well as possessing a sophisticated sense of style, Grimwood invests in neoAddix all of his knowledge of the sub-genre, producing a finely-honed product in the process. Where some readers may be displeased with Gibson for ignoring the more conventional side of crime and corruption in his cyberpunk Sprawl, Grimwood dives directly in, telling of dishonest CEOs, multi-national corp greed, Yakuza dealings in data terrorism, hipster street kids caught up in affairs over their head, and of course, data jockeys running the golden sphere of the global net. A hard-edged thriller, Grimwood keeps the pedal to medal the entire length of his neon-tinted thriller in perfect cyberpunk style.