As we move into the final month of reviews, there is a significant change in the format of the Tor Doubles. The series began with the proto-Tor Double of Keith Laumer’s The House in November and The Other Sky, but every volume since then has contained stories by two different authors.  However, three of the four final published volumes are single author books. This week looks at a volume with two stories by Mike Resnick, next week will be two stories by Damon Knight, and in three weeks, the final published volume contained two stories by Fritz Leiber. This volume was originally published in June 1991, which sharp eyed readers will note skips a month from last week’s volume. That is because Tor Doubles #33 and 34 were published in reverse numerical order, with this one published after the next one.

Bwana was an originally published in Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine in January 1990. Between 1988 and 1996, Resnick wrote ten connected stories about the utopian planetoid Kirinyaga, eight of which earned him Hugo nominations, including two winners. Describing the entire series as a “Fable of Utopia,” each story followed a similar pattern.

Kirinyaga is a planetoid set up to be a utopian society for the Kikuyu. Living a small village and surrounded by savannah with East African flora and fauna, the colonists attempt to recreate the lifestyle of their ancestors. They are led in this endeavor by a relatively ineffectual village chieftain and the mundumugu, Koriba. Koriba, the tribe’s shaman, is the guiding force to keep them on track to achieve their utopia. Oxford and Yale trained, he is the only person with access to a computer, which he uses to send messages to the maintenance team to ensure that his supplications for rain or drought are successful, and to learn of the arrival of shipments.

In Bwana, following an attack by hyenas, the tribe elects to disregard Koriba’s advice and they bring in a hunter to kill the beasts. The arrival of the hunter, a Massai, threatens Koriba’s authority and he quietly plots against the hunter, allowing him to establish himself in the community, where he acts in exactly the manner Koriba predicted. When the hunter’s position begins to inconvenience Koinnage and the other leaders of the village, they appeal to Koriba, who has been quietly laying the groundwork for the hunter’s downfall and reestablishing his own authority.

By living alone, Koriba allows himself the luxury of enforcing his view of what Kirinyaga should be without having to see or deal with the impact first hand. He interacts directly with very few of the villagers, most notably Ndemi, a young boy who practically worships him and is clearly being trained as Koriba’s replacement, and Koinnage, the village chieftain, who defers to Koriba, either through respect of being browbeaten by the mundumugu,

Koriba’s relationships with all the characters are as distant as his home is from the village. He is cordial to them, at least those who acknowledge his authority and power, but he remains aloof. Every interaction he has with them is either an attempt to teach/sway them to his way of thinking or to gauge their own thoughts. All of his conversations with the hunter, William Sambeke, are passive-aggressive. Sambeke realizes Koriba holds power on Kirinyaga and attempts to build a relationship with him, but when he is rebuffed since Koriba refuses to consider Sambeke, a Massai, has anything to offer a Kikuyu society, Sambeke decides to simply ignore Koriba and go about his business, a subtle, but effective undermining of Koriba’s authority, especially when Sambeke proves competent.

Bwana (and the other stories in the cycle) are written with such charm and a quaintness, that it isn’t always apparent that Koriba is one of the villains of the series. Told from his point of view, he is simply setting out to maintain the ideals of the society in their attempt to create a utopia for the Kikuyu, neglecting changes in attitude, circumstances, and actively fighting against anything which didn’t serve the Kikuyu hundreds of years earlier before the colonization of Kenya.

Although part of the larger Kirinyaga cycle, Bwana stands on its own, presenting an established setting in which the characters, with the exception of Sambeke, have established places in the society of which they are aware. Sambeke, although invited in by Koinnage and the other elders of Kirinyaga, serves as a disruptor and Koriba’s predictions that Koinnage will not like the results come true, but Koriba actively works to make sure the disruption is as great as possible to allow himself to maintain and champion the status quo.

Bully! was originally published as a chapbook by Axolotl Press in September, 1990. It is part of Resnick’s loosely related stories about Theodore Roosevelt. Bully! Was nominated for the Hugo and Nebula Awards and won the SF Chronicle poll.

From March 1909 through March 1910, former President Theodore Roosevelt traveled to Africa under the auspices of the Smithsonian Institute in order to collect animal samples and document the region’s natural history. John Boyes was an adventurer and hunter in Africa during this time. Due to his reputation, Roosevelt reached out to him for assistance. Boyes, who had managed to be named king of the Wa-Kikuyu for three years in the 1890s, apparently suggested that Roosevelt declare himself king of the Congo. In Bully!, Resnick explores the outcome should Roosevelt have taken Boyes up on his suggestion.

A firm believer in American exceptionalism, Roosevelt’s vision of the Congo is not one of a kingdom with him at the top, but rather as a democracy, which he would help bring about before returning to the United States. Roosevelt comes across as a dreamer who has a big vision, but no real understanding of the situation on the ground or how to bring it about. In contract, Boyes is presented as someone who understands the weaknesses of Roosevelt’s plan on the way the African tribes think and view each other, and understands why Roosevelt will fail. However, he also sees Roosevelt’s plan as a way for him to amass a fortune of his own, and so he continues to support, and possibly plan Roosevelt.

Roosevelt’s plans work best when he is interacting with Europeans, and he is able to oust the Belgians from the Congo. When dealing with the indigenous tribes, he can successfully build friendships by the force of his personality, but he is unable to change their culture enough to make them see a country unified without regard for tribes.

While Resnick does an excellent job of depicting the difficulties of introducing democracy to a people who have not been raised with the concept and for whom tribalism is the driving force, his depiction of Roosevelt makes the ex-President seem naïve about the way the world works. In addition to not listening to anyone who has a better understanding of the issues that face Africa, he also seems to have lost his understanding of Americans, who don’t flock behind him, ignoring the reality that he only became President because he was made Vice President to McKinley as a means of getting him out of the way until McKinley’s assassination raised him to the higher office.

Just as most of the support characters in Bwana are only briefly sketched to allow Resnick to focus on Koriba, in Bully!, with the exception of Boyes, most of the support characters, whether Europeans, such as “Yank” Rogers or Africans, such as Begoni, a Luba who based his decision as a juror on the tribal affiliation of the plaintiff and defendant, are quickly sketched to help prove a point and show how Roosevelt is misreading the situation.

Although Resnick could have hinted that Roosevelt would have been successful, there is never really any indication within that story that he will be able to achieve his goals in the Congo, even to the point where he seems to lose interest in his plan as he is trying to carry it out. The strengths of the story comes from the portrayal of Roosevelt (and, to a lesser extent, Boyes) and the way Resnick will show Roosevelt failing and in what areas he is able to achieve a modicum of success.

Bwana and Bully! form an excellent two-story collection. In Bwana, Koriba is trying to recreate a past that never existed through the sheer force of his will. In Bully!, Roosevelt is trying to create a future that can’t exist. Despite the abilities, intelligence, and arrogance of both of the characters, they can’t see the situation in which they are living, setting both up for ultimate failure, which Roosevelt finds within the confines of Bully!, but which is postponed for Koriba until The Land of Nod, the tenth and final Kirinyaga story.

Barclay Shaw provided the cover. In addition to the stories, Mike Resnick also provided an introduction. As a side note, in 2012, I reprinted Bully! in the collection Win Some, Lose Some: The Hugo Award Winning (and Nominated) Short Science Fiction and Fantasy of Mike Resnick.

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Steven H Silver is a twenty-one-time Hugo Award nominee and was the publisher of the Hugo-nominated fanzine Argentus as well as the editor and publisher of ISFiC Press for eight years. He has also edited books for DAW, NESFA Press, and ZNB. His most recent anthology is Alternate Peace and his novel After Hastings was published in 2020. Steven has chaired the first Midwest Construction, Windycon three times, and the SFWA Nebula Conference numerous times. He was programming chair for Chicon 2000 and Vice Chair of Chicon 7.