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Birthday Reviews: Allen Steele’s “Day of the Bookworm”

Birthday Reviews: Allen Steele’s “Day of the Bookworm”

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Cover by Dominic Harman
Cover by Dominic Harman

Allen Steele was born on January 19, 1958. He was a finalist for the 1990 John W. Campbell, Jr. Award for Best New Author. Steele’s first two Hugo Awards were for his novellas “The Death of Captain Future” and “Where Angels Fear to Tread” in 1996 and 1998. His third Hugo was for Best Novelette and broke with the five-word titles, for “The Emperor of Mars” in 2011.

He also received the Phoenix Award in 2002 from the Southern Fandom Confederation and the Robert A. Heinlein Award from the Heinlein Society in 2013. Many of Steele’s early works focused on the expansion of mankind into near earth space, with his more recent works exploring the planet Coyote.

“Day of the Bookworm” was published in the anthology Little Green Men—Attack!, edited by Bryan Thomas Schmidt and Robin Wayne Bailey and published by Baen Books in March, 2017.

When an alien spaceship lands in front of the main branch of the Boston library (as well as New York’s and London’s) in Allen Steele’s “Day of the Bookworm,” the military has a predictable response, cordoning off the blocks around the building and evacuating the library while waiting for any activity which would allow a military response. They are not prepared, however, for what actually happens, which is the appearance of two librarians, Molly Cooper and Levon Kahn, who were engaged in an illicit tryst and unaware of the evacuation notice.

The result was that they were able to work with the aliens who had entered the building to build up a sort of détente and understanding between the two races. Steele posits a similar situation to Galaxy Quest, which he notes within the story itself. His response is different from that of the film as his librarians work with the aliens, who resemble large slugs, to ensure that they have a better understanding of humanity, while not threatening them, despite the military power arrayed outside the library. Steele’s librarians’ solution is clever, but they must explain it to a reasonably sympathetic army colonel and an officious White House aide.

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Birthday Reviews: Pamela Dean’s “Paint the Meadow with Delight”

Birthday Reviews: Pamela Dean’s “Paint the Meadow with Delight”

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Cover by Darrell K. Sweet
Cover by Darrell K. Sweet

Pamela Dean was born on January 18, 1953. Dean has published the Secret Country trilogy as well as three stand-alone novels. In the 1980s, she was involved in the Liavek series of shared world anthologies, contributing stories to each of the five volumes as well as the title poem for the fourth volume. She has been nominated for the Mythopoeic Award twice, for her novels Tam Lin and The Dubious Hills.

Her story “Paint the Meadows with Delight” appeared in Will Shetterly and Emma Bull’s anthology Liavek: Wizard’s Row in 1987, and was reprinted in 2015 in Patricia Wrede and Pamela Dean’s Points of Departure: Liavek Stories.

Although set in a shared universe, Pamela Dean’s “Paint the Meadows with Delight” stands on its own. The Benedictis are a large Acrivain family living in exile in the city of Liavek. While the father attends political meetings, the rest of the family lives in wait for the day they can return to their native country. One of the daughters, Jehane, is convinced the Acrivain god Acrilat has turned his back on the family because they have left their native land. The result is that the family is in turmoil and one of the sons, Deleon, has disappeared.

Jehane is determined to restore her family to their lost happiness and seeks out one of Liavek’s wizards to help. Jehane’s plan isn’t particular well thought out, in either her goals or her mission. She seeks both to have Acrilat leave her family alone and also to have the family able to return to an Acrivain that is politically welcoming to them. These goals, along with her search for her missing brother, take her on a miniature quest through Liavek, visiting Granny Carry, the Magician, and, at the Magician’s insistence, the House of Responsible Life, and Silvertop, another magician.

In the end, the success of her quest, or even who helped her achieve it, is questionable. The most that can be said is that Jehane may have been able to reconnect on some level with her younger sister, Nerissa, who she also learned has been quite active in ways that Jehane had not even suspected.

While the story can be read and enjoyed on its own merits, its place in the shared-world universe gives it quite a bit of background depth and its structure as a quest around Liavek allows Dean to touch on the characters and concepts created by the other authors.

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Egyptian Dystopian Fiction: The Queue by Basma Abdel Aziz

Egyptian Dystopian Fiction: The Queue by Basma Abdel Aziz

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the_queue_basma_abdel_aziz-smallSince the Arab Spring, there has been an upsurge in dystopian fiction coming out of the Middle East. The dashed hopes of that widespread popular uprising have found their expression in pessimistic novels such as Otared, (reviewed in an earlier post) and several other notable works of fiction.

One of the most lauded in the West is The Queue by Basma Abdel Aziz, an Egyptian writer and social activist.

In The Queue, we are transported to a strange near future where the civilian government has been taken over by a faceless entity called the Gate. The Gate issues a series of edicts that become ever more baffling and hard to obey. Companies are forced to changed what they produce, individuals need to get signed forms for even the most mundane matters, and little by little the Gate forces its way into every aspect of the city’s life.

The people rebel, in what the Gate refers to as the Disgraceful Events, which are suppressed with predictable police brutality. One of the casualties is a young man named Yehya, who is shot by a police officer. Yehya needs a form signed in order to have the bullet removed, but the Gate closes right after the Disgraceful Events.

As Yehya languishes, the Gate issues a continuous torrent of edicts, prompting more and more citizens to line up in front of the Gate hoping to get their forms filled out. The line soon stretches for miles, developing its own economy and culture. Street preachers rail against the citizens for their lack of faith in the Gate, shopkeepers try to make a living selling tea and snacks to the other people in line, and salesmen give away free mobile phones that are bugged.

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Birthday Reviews: John Bellairs’s “The Pedant and the Shuffly”

Birthday Reviews: John Bellairs’s “The Pedant and the Shuffly”

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The Pedant and the Shuffly John Bellairs-inside-small

Art by Marylyn Fitschen

John Bellairs was born on January 17, 1938 and died on March 8, 1991. He is best known for his novel The Face in the Frost. Most of his focus was on young adult fiction, including the Anthony Monday series, the Cubby Lewis Barnavelt series, and the Johnny Dixon series. After Bellairs’ death, Brad Strickland wrote novels in the Barnavelt and Dixon series.

Occasionally Bellairs turned his attention to short fiction. His short story “The Pedant and the Shuffly” was originally published as a stand-along book in February 1968 with illustrations by Marylyn Fitschen. Mythopoeic Press reprinted it in 2001 and it was included in the NESFA Press Bellairs omnibus Magic Mirrors in 2009. Both reprintings included Fitschen’s illustrations.

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A Gentle Book about Harsh Times: The List by Patricia Forde

A Gentle Book about Harsh Times: The List by Patricia Forde

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The List Patricia Forde-small The List Patricia Forde-back-small

“Extinction is the saddest word,” Letta’s mentor tells her on his deathbed. “You don’t understand. In the old days, before the Melting, no one would listen. No one. The politicians just talked and talked. They used words to keep the people in ignorance.”

A dystopian novel, Patricia Forde’s The List takes place in our world after the polar ice caps have disappeared and sea levels have risen. Letta, our seventeen-year-old heroine, is only an apprentice when she abruptly inherits her master’s position as Wordsmith. Now a member of the elite, she’s one of the few people in the town of Ark who’s allowed to use the full scope of language. Everyone else must speak “List,” 500 words that leader John Noa has approved. (Yes. Letta lives in Noa’s Ark.)

The List doesn’t include words like “hope,” “love,” or “dream.” Noa considers these words too dangerous, since they encourage people to think about the future. Most articles are gone, as well as “Hello,” “Thank you,” and “Please.” People are only allowed to use specialized vocabulary if it’s necessary for them to do their jobs. Art and music of all kinds likewise have been forbidden.

As Wordsmith, Letta prepares basic Lists for Ark schoolchildren and specialized Lists for apprentices. She also thinks it’s part of her job to preserve non-List words so that humans can recover language at some future time, when our ancestors have proven they can handle it responsibly. What she doesn’t know is that Noa destroys her note cards, believing humans must be stripped of language completely.

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Birthday Reviews: Nat Schachner’s “Ancestral Voices”

Birthday Reviews: Nat Schachner’s “Ancestral Voices”

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Cover by Howard V. Brown
Cover by Howard V. Brown

Nat Schachner was born on January 16, 1895 and died on October 2, 1955. Schachner was an attorney who began writing in collaboration with fellow attorney Arthur Zagat. After about a year working together, each man began writing solo, but after publishing science fiction for a decade, Schachner turned his attention towards biographies, focusing on early Americans.

“Ancestral Voices” was a solo effort published by F. Orlin Tremaine in the December 1933 issue of Astounding Stories.It has never been reprinted in English, although a French translation appeared in 1973 and an Italian translation ten years later.

Schachner opens “Ancestral Voices” with a brief look at several people for whom their ancestry helps define who they are in a very basic way, from a Hitlerian dictator of “Mideuropa” (although Hitler is also mentioned) to the crème-de-la-crème of Boston society, to an accountant who is convinced of his superiority over his boss because he is Anglo-Saxon rather than Spanish. Schachner also posits a boxing match between an Aryan champion, Hans Schilling and a Jewish challenger, Max Bernstein, clear stand-ins for Max Schmeling and Max Baer, who fought in the year the story was published.

The main thrust of the story, however, is the arrogant scientist Emmet Pennypacker, who has created a time machine. Denying his assistant any part of the glory, Pennypacker travels backwards in time, without knowing when or where he’ll wind up. To his chagrin, he finds himself in Aquileia during the Hunnic attack of July 18, 452. Unable to return to his own time until the machine is ready to take him there, he winds up rescuing a Roman girl from her Hun rapist.

Although the idea of going back in time and stopping your parent from being born has become cliché, that is the scenario Schachner wrote. However, given the fifteen centuries that separated Pennypacker from his distant forebears, it means he eradicated the common ancestor of about 50,000 people living in the Twentieth Century.

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Birthday Reviews: Robert Silverberg’s “When We Went to See the End of the World”

Birthday Reviews: Robert Silverberg’s “When We Went to See the End of the World”

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Cover by Dean Ellis
Cover by Dean Ellis

Robert Silverberg was born on January 15, 1935. In 1956, he won a Hugo for being the Most Promising New Author, nearly two decades before the John W. Campbell, Jr. Award debuted. He has subsequently won two Hugo Awards for Best Novella and one for Best Novelette. Silverberg has also received two Nebula Awards for Best Short Story, two more for Best Novella, and one for Best Novel.

He has won or been nominated for numerous other awards. Silverberg was a Guest of Honor at Heicon ‘70, the 28th Worldcon, held in Heidelberg, Germany. He was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame in 1999 and named an SFWA Grand Master in 2004. Other lifetime achievement awards include the Big Heart Award, the Forry Award, the Prix Utopia, the Skylark Award, the Milford Award.

“When We Went to See the End of the World” was published in Universe 2 in 1972 by Terry Carr. The story was nominated for both the Hugo and Nebula Award. Carr reprinted it the following year in The Best Science Fiction of the Year #2, and Isaac Asimov included it in Nebula Award Stories Eight. Lester del Rey also included it in his Best Science Fiction Stories of the Year, Second Annual Collection. It has since been included in several collections and anthologies and has been translated into Italian, Dutch, German, French, and Russian.

“When We Went to See the End of the World” is set at a cocktail party which in many ways seems very much of the early seventies when the story was written. Casual sex and marijuana are routine, but the main focus of the story is Nick and Jane telling the rest of the attendees about their recent excursion to see the end of the world.

Such excursions are new, only recently having come down from a price where only millionaires could afford to go, so Nick and Jane gained social status by being the first in their neighborhood to see the end of the world, and Nick sees the opportunity to have an affair with a neighbor’s wife.

Their status, and Nick’s chances for an affair, appear to be ended when a couple of latecomers to the party indicate that they have also taken the journey to the end of the world, although the world they saw was extremely different from what Nick and Jane had experienced. Before either couple can accuse each other of lying about their experiences, another couple announces that they completed the journey and saw someone else when they were there.

The story is a reasonably light-hearted look at a common idea in science fiction and presents a reasonable explanation for the multiple experiences the party-goers who visited the end of the world had. At the same time, since all of the activity takes place in the confines of the cocktail party, it is quite possible to read “When We Went to See the End of the World” is a story about people trying to one up each other, rather than relating their actual experiences.

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Birthday Reviews: Arthur Byron Cover’s “A Murder”

Birthday Reviews: Arthur Byron Cover’s “A Murder”

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Cover by O'Neil de Noux
Cover by O’Neil de Noux

Arthur Byron Cover was born on January 14, 1950. He attended the 1971 Clarion Writers Workshop and made his first sale to Harlan Ellison for inclusion in The Last Dangerous Visions. Cover’s novel, Autumn Angels was nominated for the 1976 Nebula Award. Cover was the owner of Dangerous Visions bookstore in Sherman Oaks, California until the store closed in 2002.

His story “A Murder” was published in the August 17, 1991 issue of Pulphouse Weekly Fiction Magazine and was purchased by Dean Wesley Smith. The story has never been reprinted.

Cover’s “A Murder” is a metafictional and psychological exploration of a brutal murder. He tries to get into the head of both the victim, Stephanie, and the murderer, Bill Prisman. Stephanie is an avid reader of horror novels and stories and when she finds herself being attacked, she is very much aware that it was a complete surprise. There was none of the forewarning or sense of foreboding that she would have expected there to have been in the novels and stories she has read. Prisman’s mind is dark. He has just been released from prison and has a sense of entitlement towards women that he can only fulfill by raping and murdering them.

Cover brings the two of them together and then backs away from the horrible crime be invoking the point of view of the omniscient author. Rather than describing Prisman’s attack, he discusses an alternative to the horror he has set up. This tangent is presented in almost clinical terms and serves to show that certain ideas about criminal behavior, notably reformation, are impractical.

Prisman is the poster child for recidivism, something both he and the law enforcement community know, but their hands are tied by a society and culture which believe that people can change when placed in an environment which actually serves to reinforce their worst tendencies. Once this detour is complete, Cover allows his story to continue to its inexorable ending.

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War Eternal: Beyond the Farthest Star by Edgar Rice Burroughs

War Eternal: Beyond the Farthest Star by Edgar Rice Burroughs

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beyond-farthest-star-ace-frazetta-coverIn 1940, Edgar Rice Burroughs created his final new adventure setting, the extrasolar planet Poloda. For the first time in a career that had ignited pulp science fiction back in 1912, Burroughs pushed beyond the solar system to the region of pure speculation. But what he discovered four hundred and fifty thousand light-years from Earth wasn’t an E. E. Smith space opera, or even an old-fashioned romp on a weird planet of monsters and savage humanoid tribes. Against the grain of its romanticized title, the incomplete short novel Beyond the Farthest Star isn’t an escapist tale, but a bleak meditation on a world mired in unending warfare. The title makes you anticipate Star Wars. Instead you find just Wars.

This is a stark work. It offers no illusions. There’s a dash of humor and some winking satire, but the overwhelming sensation of Beyond the Farthest Star is resignation to carnage. There are no valiant heroes on Poloda who become beacons for others to follow. There are only stalwart soldiers who fall in line to fight the fight, whatever it may be, and die in numbers tabulated by the hundreds of thousands.

We’re used to Edgar Rice Burroughs as a master of sweeping adventure in worlds where fighting means hope. It’s a shock to see him sitting glumly among the ruins of hope, waiting for the next wave of barbarians. Looking at Poloda from the perspective of the twenty-first century is to see a prophetic futurist emerging in Old Man Burroughs. The story the Old Man tells is not much fun. But it’s enthralling — and there’s nothing else like it in the ERB canon, even among the strange evolutions his work took during his last decade.

As with Savage Pellucidar and its sister books set on Mars and Venus, the Poloda novellas were planned to form a connected sequence for later hardcover publication. Part I, “Beyond the Farthest Star,” was written in October 1940 over twelve days, and Part II, “Tangor Returns,” was finished in December in five days. “Beyond the Farthest Star” appeared in the January 1942 issue of Blue Book, but Burroughs never submitted Part II for publication, probably because he scrapped the series after starting work as a war correspondent. “Tangor Returns” wasn’t discovered until thirteen years after Burroughs’s death. It was published along with “Beyond the Farthest Star” in the 1964 Canaveral Press omnibus Tales from Three Planets. Ace Books later released a paperback of the unfinished Poloda saga as Beyond the Farthest Star, with the first novella retitled “Adventure on Poloda.”

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Birthday Reviews: Clark Ashton Smith’s “The Maze of Maal Dweb”

Birthday Reviews: Clark Ashton Smith’s “The Maze of Maal Dweb”

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Cover of Double Shadow, artist unknown.
Cover of Double Shadow, artist unknown.

Clark Ashton Smith was born on January 13, 1893 and died on August 14, 1961. Along with H.P. Lovecraft, he was one of the major authors at Weird Tales, writing stories which were similar to the dark fantasies Lovecraft wrote.

Smith maintained a correspondence with Lovecraft for the last 15 years of Lovecraft’s life. While Lovecraft wrote about Cthulhu, Smith wrote about the far future Zothique. Smith was named the Cordwainer Smith Rediscovery Award winner in 2015.

“The Maze of Maal Dweb” first appeared in a limited edition chapbook, The Double Shadow and Other Fantasies, published by Smith in 1933. A the time the story was called “The Maze of the Enchanter.” It received its first general publication, and under its better known title, in the October 1938 issue of Weird Tales, edited by Farnsworth Wright.

Smith included it in his 1944 collection Lost Worlds and it has frequently been reprinted since, including translations into Dutch, German, French, and Italian. Maal Dweb also appeared in Smith’s story “The Flower-Women.”

“The Maze of Maal Dweb” has Tiglari working his way through a swamp to retrieve his beloved, Athlé, from the titular lord of the solar system. Despite Maal Dweb’s palace being impregnable, Tiglari has somehow managed to acquire knowledge of the dangers that lie within, so he can arm himself appropriately for his quest.

Similarly unexamined is how Maal Dweb, a recluse who is never seen by anyone except the women he orders sent to him, can successfully rule his vast domains. Similarly, the palace is seemingly unpopulated except by the petrified forms of Maal Dweb’s previous victims. Rather than a living home in which to live, Maal Dweb sits like bait in his trap, waiting for doomed adventurers to come to him.

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