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Author: Steven H Silver

Birthday Reviews: S.N. Lewitt’s “Festival”

Birthday Reviews: S.N. Lewitt’s “Festival”

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Cover by Nicholas Jainschigg
Cover by Nicholas Jainschigg

S.N. (Shariann) Lewitt was born on September 29, 1954. She has also published as Rick North and Gordon Kendall, the latter in collaboration with Susan Shwartz.

Lewis has published under her full name as well as her initials. Her novels include original works such as Angels at Apogee, Rebel Sutra, and Memento Mori, as well as the Star Trek novel Cybersong. She collaborated with Shwartz on the novel White Wing and has written two books in The Young Astronauts series as Rick North.

“Festival” appeared in the Summer 1994 issue of Pirate Writings, edited by Edward J. McFadden. It was reprinted in The Best of Pirate Writings: Tales of Fantasy, Mystery & Science Fiction, also edited by McFadden.

Lewitt has set “Festival” on an alien world settled by humans. The early settlers found the world to be an inhospitable place with a jungle that seemed practically sentient and intent on destroying the colony. Eventually, technological means were invented to keep the jungle from encroaching on the colony and at the same time a raucous annual festival emerged, which invariably resulted in the deaths of some of the revelers. Secret Societies sprung up to find those who died in the revels and take their bodies outside as a tribute to the jungle.

Sandro is preparing not only for the festival, donning a costume like all the other revelers, but also for his induction into the Red Men’s Society. The story talks about his preparations and then goes into a lengthy flashback to give the reader the history, intentionally vague, of the planet and the festival, before connecting Sandro to his sponsor for membership in the Red Men’s Society, his co-worker Chema. The two men go out on patrol, looking for the bodies of the dead to drag out into the jungle while wearing full environmental suits so they won’t have to worry about their own exposure.

The short length of the story combined with its flashback nature gives it a disjointed feel. Lewitt is not able to give sufficient coverage to either the origins of the colony’s culture nor to Sandro and his desire to become part of the Red Men’s Society or his reaction to the secrets he is exposed to. While his reaction to those secrets is one which seems completely human and normal, it doesn’t seem to take the colony’s values into consideration.

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Birthday Reviews: Michael G. Coney’s “The Byrds”

Birthday Reviews: Michael G. Coney’s “The Byrds”

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Changes
Changes

Michael G. Coney was born on September 28, 1932 and died on November 4, 2005.

Coney won the 1977 British SF Association Award for his novel Brontomek! and was also nominated in 1984 for his novel Cat Karina. In 1996, his story “Tea and Hamsters” made the ballot for the Nebula Award for Best Novelette and two of his stories, “Die, Lorelei” and “The Sharks of Pentreath” were nominated for Seiun Awards.

“The Byrds” first appeared in the 1983 anthology Changes, edited by Michael Bishop and Ian Watson. In 1985 Judith Merril selected it for inclusion in the inaugural volume of the Tesseracts anthology series of Canadian science fiction. Ursula K. Le Guin and Brian Attebery also included the story in The Norton Book of Science Fiction: North American Science Fiction, 1960-1990. The story appeared the following year in David G. Hartwell and Glenn Grant’s Northern Stars: The Anthology of Canadian Science Fiction. It made its most recent appearance in Mike Ashley’s The Mammoth Book of Awesome Comic Fantasy.

Michael Coney takes a look at mass hysteria in “The Byrds,” in which a Canada which is struggling with population problems sends out questionnaires to the elderly which encourage them to choose euthanasia. In one family, as Gran gets on in years, she refuses to kill herself and instead strips naked, paints herself like a bird, and straps on an anti-gravity belt before taking to the trees to the mortification of her family.

The family calls in a psychiatrist, Dr. Pratt, who seems more intent on writing papers, appearing on television, and generally making a name for himself than helping the family. As the word spreads about what Gran did, others begin doing the same and Gran becomes an unwilling and uncooperative guru for the movement following her lead.

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Birthday Reviews: Willard E. Hawkins’s “The Dwindling Sphere”

Birthday Reviews: Willard E. Hawkins’s “The Dwindling Sphere”

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Cover by Gilmore
Cover by Gilmore

Willard E. Hawkins was born on September 27, 1887 and died on April 17, 1970.

Hawkins only published eleven short stories of genre interest over a span of nearly thirty years, although he published his first story as early as 1912. In addition to writing various genres, he established World Press, for which he was the publisher and editor of mostly non-fiction books about the West. He also worked as a newspaper editor for various Colorado papers, including Denver Times and the Rocky Mountain News. His first genre story, “The Dead Man’s Tale,” appeared in the debut issue of Weird Tales.

“The Dwindling Sphere” was originally published in the March 1940 issue of Astounding Science-Fiction, edited by John W. Campbell, Jr. Laurence Janiver reprinted it in his 1966 anthology Masters’ Choice (a.k.a. 18 Greatest Science Fiction Stories). The story was picked up by Isaac Asimov and Martin H. Greenberg for their anthology The Great Science Fiction Stories Volume 2: 1940 (a.k.a. Isaac Asimov Presents the Golden Years of Science Fiction), which caused it to be translated into German in 1980. In 2017, Hank Davis used the story in his anthology If This Goes Wrong…

Hawkins explores several generations of a single family in “The Dwindling Sphere.” The first section, set in 1945, discusses how Frank Baxter accidentally created the Plastocene process while attempting to find a way to create atomic energy. He was partially successful in creating a reaction, but the energy he was seeking completely dissipated, leaving behind a product which would revolutionize manufacturing. Subsequent sections focus on his descendants who discover Baxter’s journals and add on to them as they deal with the long-term repercussions of his discovery.

Hawkins deals with a society in which the working class has been turned into a luxury class since only a small number of people are needed to supply the world with plastocene, and therefore everything it needs, although food production hasn’t (yet) been switched to plastocene. In this period, the new luxury class is discovering that work provides them with a raison d’etre. Several hundred years later, society has evolved more and the early Baxters have been all but forgotten until a distant relation finds their diary, which corrects many historical misconceptions. By that time, plastocene production is beginning to threaten the livability of Earth, leading to the final sections of the story in which the Baxters’ descendants are forced off Earth by the long-term success of plastocene.

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Birthday Reviews: Tanya Huff’s “Finding Marcus”

Birthday Reviews: Tanya Huff’s “Finding Marcus”

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Sirius
Sirius

Tanya Huff was born on September 26, 1957.

Huff has won the Aurora Award twice. Her first Aurora was in 1988 for her short story “And Who Is Joah?.” She won the second in 2013 for the novel The Silvered. Huff has also been nominated for several Gaylactic Spectrum Awards as well as the William L. Crawford – IAFA Fantasy Award, the Sapphire Award, and the James Tiptree, Jr. Memorial Award.

“Finding Marcus” was written for the anthology Sirius: The Dog Star, edited by Martin H. Greenberg and Alexander Potter in 2004. The story was reprinted in 2007 in Huff’s collection Finding Magic and again in 2013 in the collection He Said, Sidhe Said & Other Tales.

Reuben is a dog in in “Finding Marcus.” As the title implies, he is attempted to find his master, Marcus, from whom he has become separated. Their separation is not a normal one, for several reasons. Marcus had been working on a project to find Gates between dimensions and when he was eventually successful, he brought Reuben with him. Unfortunately,  Marcus learned that the Gates are only one way and they would have to find and pass through several Gates before returning to their own world.

In their passage through the Gates, Reuben managed to acquire the ability to understand human speech, and speak as well, although whether he can speak to Marcus is left ambiguous. The worlds they pass through are a mixture of hi-tech, low-tech, and mid-tech, with our own timeline apparently considered mid-tech. The two became separated when they appeared in a low-tech marketplace and Marcus was accused of being a demon. In trying to escape, Marcus and Reuben learned that in order for a Gate to deposit them in the same location, the two had to be touching, leading to Reuben’s quest.

As Reuben focuses his quest on finding each Gate to take him to the next world and eventually Marcus, which Reuben knows will be the eventual outcome, Huff explores the pitfalls of being a dog alone in the world. The danger posed by people, either well-meaning or not, the hunt for food, the avoidance of traffic, and the seeming ever-presence of cats. Although Reuben is happy to be searching alone, he winds up connecting with a crow, Dark Dawn With Thunder, who can also speak and wants to hear Reuben’s story. Even as Reuben tries to push Dawn away, the crow insists on helping him find the next Gate, offering him advice and warnings from her position in the sky and forging a bond with Reuben that he refuses to acknowledge, just as he refuses to accept Dawn’s pessimistic view of the ultimate success of his quest.

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Birthday Reviews: Hideyuki Kikuchi’s “Mountain People, Ocean People”

Birthday Reviews: Hideyuki Kikuchi’s “Mountain People, Ocean People”

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The Future is Japanese-small The Future is Japanese-back-small

Cover by Yuko Shimizu

Hideyuki Kikuchi was born on September 25, 1949.

Kikuchi published his first novel, Demon City Shinjuku in 1982 and his novel Black Guard was adapted into the film Wicked City in 1987. In addition to writing horror novels, Kikuchi has also published several manga. In addition to the series listed above, he also created Vampire Hunter D.

In 2012 Kikuchi’s short story “Sankaimin” appeared under the title “Mountain People, Ocean People,” in the 2012 anthology The Future is Japanese, edited by Nick Mamatas and Masumi Washington.

Set in the far future, “Mountain People, Ocean People,” as the title suggests, shows a world in which humanity has divided into two groups, one living in the mountains, the other under the sea.  Kikuchi’s main focus is on the mountain dwellers, who have developed the ability to fly, with hunters among them looking out for wind spiders and sky sharks. Among those is third-generation hunter Kanaan who is trying to surpass the reputations of his ancestors, although his father ultimately disappeared under a cloud of suspicion that Kanaan knows is unwarranted.

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Birthday Reviews: John Kessel’s “The Franchise”

Birthday Reviews: John Kessel’s “The Franchise”

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Fields of Fantasies
Fields of Fantasies

John Kessel was born on September 24, 1950

Kessel won the Nebula Award for Best Novella in 1983 for “Another Orphan” and a second Nebula Award for Best Novelette in 2009 for “Pride and Prometheus,” both of which were also nominated for the Hugo Award. “Pride and Prometheus” also earned the Shirley Jackson Award. Kessel’s “Buffalo” won the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award in 1992 and his “Stories for Men” won the James Tiptree Jr Award in 2003. He also won the Ignotus Award for a translation of “The Invisible Empire” in 2010. In 2006, Kessel was presented with the Phoenix Award for his Achievements by DeepSouthCon.

“The Franchise” was originally published in the August 1993 issue of Asimov’s Science Fiction, edted by Gardner Dozois, alongside Bruce McAllister’s baseball story “Southpaw” and Robert Frazier’s poem “Night Baseball.” Both Kessel and McAllister’s stories were alternate histories of baseball featuring Fidel Castro. “The Franchise” was reprinted in Nebula Awards 29, edited by Pamela Sargent and in Kessel’s collections The Pure Product and The Collected Kessel. The story was also included in W.P. Kinsella’s baseball anthology Baseball Fantastic in 2000. In 2014, Rick Wilber reunited “The Franchise” and “Southpaw,” which were both reprinted in his anthology Field of Fantasies: Baseball Stories of the Strange and Supernatural. “The Franchise” was nominated for the Nebula Award for Best Novelette and the Hugo Award for Best Novelette in 1994.

“The Franchise” is an alternate history in which George Herbert Walker Bush decides to parlay his college baseball experience into a baseball career. After floating around in the minors for several years without making a mark, he suddenly finds himself called up to play for the Washington Senators in the World Series when their first baseman is injured. Bush finds himself facing the ace pitcher for the New York Giants in several games, a phenom known as the Franchise named Fidel Castro.

The story is designed as a face-off between Bush and Castro, but it becomes clear very early that Bush is well out of his league and Castro is just playing with him. Castro’s ability to completely own Bush whenever he comes up to the plate, whether by striking him out or allowing him a moment of glory to reach base, is the Cuban ballplayer’s way of showing his contempt for Bush’s father, US Senator Prescott Bush. However, the struggle between George Bush and Castro is only the surface. The real struggle is between Prescott Bush and his son, a struggle which is just as lopsided as the one playing out on the baseball diamond.

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Birthday Reviews: Peter David’s “Alternate Genesis”

Birthday Reviews: Peter David’s “Alternate Genesis”

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Cover by Roger Stine
Cover by Roger Stine

Peter David was born on September 23, 1956.

Peter David’s novel Star Fleet Academy: Worf’s First Adventure received the Golden Duck Award for Middle Grades in 1994 and his Star Trek novel The Rift was nominated for a Prometheus Award by the Libertarian Futurist Society. In addition to his science fiction and fantasy, David has written for several comic books, including The Incredible Hulk, Aquaman, Supergirl, and Spider-Man 2099. His television career includes scripts for Babylon 5, Young Justice, and the creation of Space Cases with Bill Mumy. His work in comics has earned him an Eisner Award, a Wizard Fan Award, a Julie Award, and a GLAAD Media Award. In 2011, he was named a Grandmaster by the International Association of Media Tie-In Writers.

“Alternate Genesis” first appeared in the June 1980 issue of Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, edited by George H. Scithers. It was reprinted by Jim Reeber and Clifford Lawrence Meth in 1997 in the anthology of Jewish science fiction Stranger Kaddish.

David uses the structure of the opening verses of Genesis as the format for his shaggy dog story “Alternate Genesis,” in which God creates the world in a topsy-turvy manner, following the guidelines in Genesis, but naming things differently so darkness became daytime and light becomes nighttime with fish created in the sky and birds in the sea, only correcting that latter when it shows itself to be unsustainable.

In this version of creation God, a woman, creates Eve in her own image, but when Eve asks for a mate, God ignores her, providing no response or explanation to Eve for the lack of a mate like the ones given to all of the other animals. Eventually when Eve renounces God, God sees fit to offer an explanation, the entire point of the story.

Had David relied on just the one punchline at the end, “Alternate Genesis” would not have worked, being too long a set-up for a single joke. The topsy-turvydom of creation, however, allows the long set-up to work and even distracts from the clues to the final joke, making it a much stronger piece.

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Birthday Reviews: Jerry B. Oltion’s “The Menace from Earth”

Birthday Reviews: Jerry B. Oltion’s “The Menace from Earth”

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Cover by Randy Asplund-Faith
Cover by Randy Asplund-Faith

Jerry Oltion was born on September 22, 1957.

Oltion was nominated for a Hugo Award and won a Nebula Award for his novella “Abandon in Place,” which he later expanded to novel length. He has also won the Endeavour Award for his novel Anywhere But Here. His story “The Astronaut from Wyoming,” written in collaboration with Adam-Troy Castro, won the 2007 Seiun Award. Oltion has also collaborated with Bruce Bethke, Stephen L. Gillett, Kevin Hardisty, Nina Kiriki Hoffman, Alan Bard Newcomer, Kent Patterson, Robert Thurston, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Amy Axt-Hanson, Elton Elliott, and his wife, Kathy Oltion. For a few years, beginning in 1992, Oltion presented on an irregular basis the Jerry Oltion Really Good Story Award, but ended the award when he realized how many people were sending him stories hoping to receive the honor.

Jerry Oltion published “The Menace from Earth” in the October 1999 issue of Analog Science Fiction and Fact, edited by Stanley Schmidt. The story was the seventh to appear in his “Astral Astronauts” series about explorers who find a way to allow their consciousnesses explore the galaxy in a space ship and adjust the amount of mass and solidity their forms has.

The title of “The Menace from Earth” immediately calls to mind the more famous 1957 novelette and 1959 short story collection by Robert A. Heinlein, which certainly inspired Oltion’s title and influenced part of the story. However, Oltion’s story is not a slavish retelling of Heinlein’s, and if he hadn’t titled it for the Heinlein work the similarities may have gone unnoticed.

“The Menace from Earth” takes place on and near a planet in orbit around Alpha Centauri, where Oltion’s astronauts, his narrator, Liam, and Tilbey, are enjoying the local hospitality, which would seem to be based on the greetings received by explorers in stories of Polynesia. Each man has paired up with one of the local women, Kylona, Yavetra, and Etinitu and are living a life of luxury in a paradise, although only Liam has plans to stay when the others move on. Their idyll is interrupted by the arrival of a UNASA ship using their technology, but much improved.

The astral astronauts work to defend the world against the interloper, whether it is by destroying her ship or trying to convince her not to report her findings back the UNASA. Until they know her intentions, she is definitely a potential menace from Earth. Their ability to alter their mass, however, means that the astral astronauts and the interloper can fly by riding air currents, and it is this portion of the story which pays the most direct homage to Heinlein’s story, not only in the flying, but also in the danger to the narrator’s girlfriend, Kylona.

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Birthday Reviews: Andy Duncan’s “Santa Cruz”

Birthday Reviews: Andy Duncan’s “Santa Cruz”

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Cover by Shawn T. King
Cover by Shawn T. King

Andy Duncan was born on September 21, 1961.

In 1998, he was a finalist for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. Duncan has won the World Fantasy Award twice, for his collection Beluthahatchie and Other Stories in 2001 and for his novella “Wakulla Springs,” co-written with Ellen Klages, in 2014. “Wakulla Springs” was also nominated for the Nebula and Hugo Awards. Duncan did win a Nebula Award in 2013 for his Novelette “Close Encounter” and he has a total of 8 nominations for the Nebula Award and three for the Hugo Award. He also won the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award for his Novella “The Chief Designer,” which was also up for the Hugo and Nebula. Duncan has won the Southeastern SF Achievement Award twice, for “The Chief Designer” and “The Big Rock Candy Mountain.” He is currently on the Board of SFWA.

“Santa Cruz: A True Story” was published in Jaym Gates’s anthology Genius Loci: Tales of the Spirit of Place in 2016. The original publication received poor distribution and there are currently plans in the works to re-release the volume through another publisher with better distribution. The story has not yet been reprinted.

Duncan relates “Santa Cruz: A True Story” as if it had happened to him. The fictionalized version of Duncan is on a trip through California and stops in Santa Cruz, just south of San Jose, to visit with an old friend, Rob, who wound up settling in the city because there was something magical about the place that spoke to him, even if he couldn’t quite explain what it was.

For the most part, the story is completely mundane. Andy and Rob finish a night of reminiscing and while walking across an empty parking lot come across a drunk woman who has been abandoned in the lot. Andy offers her a lift home with Rob following her. Even when the story gets weird, it doesn’t get particularly weird. Andy makes a turn that causes him to lose Rob. The woman gives him drunk directions to a random cul-de-sac and eventually to her home. He manages to extricate himself from her neighborhood in about a tenth of the time it took to get there, and he reconnects with Rob.

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Birthday Reviews: James P. Blaylock’s “Doughnuts”

Birthday Reviews: James P. Blaylock’s “Doughnuts”

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Cover by Phil Parks
Cover by Phil Parks

James P. Blaylock was born on September 20, 1950.

Blaylock won the 1987 Philip K. Dick Award for his novel Homonculus. He won the 1986 World Fantasy Award for the short story “Paper Dragons” and again in 1997 for “Thirteen Phantasms.” Blaylock has also been nominated for the Mythopoeic Award three times, the Nebula Award once, and the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award once. Blaylock’s most frequent collaborator is Tim Powers and the two have also used the name William Ashbless, which can be used jointly or individually. Ashbless has also been featured as a character in each of their works. Blaylock has also collaborated with Adriana Campoy, Alex Haniford, and Brittany Cox.

“Doughnuts” was originally published as a chapbook by Blaylock through Airtight Seels Allied Productions in 1994, a publishing house set up by James T. Seels in 1992 to publish Seels’s bibliography of Blaylock. The story was reprinted by Subterranean Press as a chapbook in 1997. Blaylock included it in his collections 13 Phantasms (2000) and The Shadow on the Doorstep (2009).

There is really nothing fantastic or science fictional about Blaylock’s “Doughnuts,” although the story, which deals with addiction, does have an horrific element to it as Walt and Amanda each deal with their own addictions and turn on each other when their problems are pointed out. Walt’s wife has informed him that his diet is no longer going to include doughnuts. Although he has been playing along with her ultimatum, he sneaks out of the house before she wakes to go to his local shop, Lew’s Doughnuts, only to discover that Lew has changed his hours. The shop is no longer open twenty-four hours, and Walt will need to wait until 8:00 to get his fix. Eventually, he returns home with a box of doughnuts.

Amanda’s own addiction is shoes. Just as Walt sneaks out early to buy doughnuts, littering the floor of his car with bags from Lew’s, Amanda buys multiple pairs of shoes and hides them in the trunk of her car until she can sneak them into the house. When Walt goes into the trunk to retrieve her car jack and discovers two pairs of the same shoes, he confronts Amanda, setting of a brief but intense fight that roils both of their emotions throughout the day, leading Walt to binge on nearly all the doughnuts he bought that morning. A later discovery of shoes in the trunk that his neighbor identifies as $1,000 Ferragamo’s exacerbates the situation.

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