Browsed by
Category: Reviews

Birthday Reviews: Ramsey Campbell’s “No End of Fun”

Birthday Reviews: Ramsey Campbell’s “No End of Fun”

Comments 0 Comment

Most days in 2018, I’ll be selecting an author whose birthday is celebrated on that date and reviewing a speculative fiction story written by that author. 

Cover by J.K. Potter
Cover by J.K. Potter

Ramsey Campbell was born on January 4, 1946 in Liverpool. His story “The Chimney” won a World Fantasy Award in 1978 and two years later he won again with his story “Mackintosh Willy.” Additional World Fantasy Awards came for Best New Horror, which he edited with Stephen Jones, and the collection Alone with the Horrors, which also won a Bram Stoker Award. His essay collection Ramsey Campbell: Probably also won a Bram Stoker Award. He has won the British Fantasy Award twelve times, more than anyone other than Stephen Jones.

Campbell’s first published story was “The Church in High Street” (1962), which I included in my 2003 anthology Horrible Beginnings, which reprinted the first stories by various horror authors. His story “No End of Fun” was originally published in J. K. Potter’s Embrace the Mutation, edited by William Schafer and Bill Sheehan and published by Subterranean Press in 2002. Campbell also included it in his collection Told by the Dead the next year and it was selected by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling to appear in their annual The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror.

Ramsey Campbell’s “No End of Fun” probably had a dated feel, at least to American readers, when it was first published. It tells the story of Lionel, who is visiting the boarding house run by his cousin Dorothy’s daughter, Carol, for the first time since Dorothy’s funeral. The story follows Lionel’s attempts to connect to Carol’s thirteen year old daughter, Helen, who sees his visit as a chance to escape the drudgery of helping her single mother run the boarding house as well as a chance to spend time with the boyfriend her mother has forbidden her to be with. Lionel attempts to take her to a carnival, only to watch her run off to go on rides with her boyfriend while he tries to win her a prize. The next night, he winds up going to the theatre alone, giving her instructions to meet him when the show is over so they can return to the boarding house together.

Although his cousin Dorothy is not the focus of his attention during the trip, her presence is never far from his mind. He is staying in her room and occasionally sees her image in an old mirror located in the room. Lionel notes that Helen resembles Dorothy in ways Carol never did.

…

Read More Read More

Birthday Reviews: Patricia Anthony’s “Lunch with Daddy”

Birthday Reviews: Patricia Anthony’s “Lunch with Daddy”

Comments 2 comments
Cover by Lynne Taylor Fahnestalk
Cover by Lynne Taylor Fahnestalk

Most days in 2018, I’ll be selecting an author whose birthday is celebrated on that date and reviewing a speculative fiction story written by that author.

Patricia Anthony was born on January 3, 1947 and died on August 2, 2013. Her debut novel, Cold Allies, won the 1994 Locus Award for Best First Novel. Booksellers often tell stories about customers who come in looking for a book with a basic description like “It’s blue.” When I was working for a bookstore in the mid-1990s, I had a customer come in looking for “A science fiction book with a blue cover and red print.” Based on that, I was able to correctly identify the book as the paperback edition of Cold Allies.

Her story “Lunch with Daddy” was originally published in Pulphouse Hardcover Magazine issue 8 in Summer 1990, edited by Kristine Kathryn Rusch. It was reprinted in Anthony’s collection Eating Memories in 1997.

“Lunch with Daddy” tells the story of a woman who is visiting her abusive father five years after the last time she has seen him. During that time, she has managed to come to terms with her hatred of both her father and her mother, although she has put it aside rather than confronting either of her parents. Her father has summoned her to his mansion to give her a gift just before he is set to take a four year posting to Geneva, Switzerland at the request of the new President.

At first, he merely seems distant and oblivious to any harm he caused his daughter when she was younger, however, as the story unfolds it becomes clear that the technology which is preserving his life and making him an asset for the government has also impacted his ability to have emotions or relate to those around him. His former inability to feel empathy has been technologically augmented, making him even more monstrous than the wife and child beater he was.

An attempt to make amends to his estranged daughter take the monster that he is and adds a pitiable veneer to him. The story is well written and draws the reader into its world in a short space, leaving a more emotional impact than either of the characters is able to show.

…

Read More Read More

Grimmer Than Grim: The Children of Húrin by J.R.R. Tolkien

Grimmer Than Grim: The Children of Húrin by J.R.R. Tolkien

Comments 8 comments

…since you are my son and the days are grim, I will not speak softly: you may die on that road.

Morwen to her son Húrin

41lJZHCn54L._SX315_BO1,204,203,200_One of the most significant elements of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings — and missing from Peter Jackson’s misdirected films — is the almost suffocating atmosphere of great melancholy over a lost, better world; lost due to pride and jealousy. Even in the The Hobbit, a book aimed more at children than adults, it pervades the story, one that depicts the actions of pitiably small individuals against a world that, outside the green confines of Bilbo’s Shire, is dangerous and long bereft of the comforts and protections of civilization and order. It rises in The Lord of the Rings from a mournful undercurrent to a major theme. The characters cross a landscape littered with the ruins and remnants, such as the remains of Amon Sul and the titanic Argonath, of a nearly forgotten past. The once mighty elf realms, even Lothlorien, are reduced to dying shadows of what they were. The towering city of Minas Tirith is crumbling and half-empty.

It’s in the under-read The Silmarillion, Tolkien’s complex sequence of Middle-earth myths and legends, that he fully explores the litany of misbegotten oaths, pride-blinded decisions, betrayals, murders, rapes, and invasions that led to the downfall and destruction of the old world. And between two tales, those of the war of the house of Fëanor and Morgoth and the sinking of Númenor, we learn of the ruination directly underlying the events chronicled in The Lord of the Rings.

One of the worst tragedies told in The Silmarillion is that of doom laid on the family of Húrin Thalion, and specifically the fate of his son Túrin Turambar and daughter Niënor Níniel. Inspired by the Finnish story of Kullervo (a story Tolkien turned his own hand to, released in 2015 and discussed here), Túrin’s fate mimics his but is tied to a greater story that concerns not just his own family but all Middle-earth.

The Children of Húrin (2007) is a standalone expansion of that story, and takes place in the final stages of Morgoth’s (essentially Satan’s) war on the Elves and their human allies. Following their great defeat in the battle of the Dagor Bragollach, the Battle of Sudden Fire, the elves and their allies have spent twenty years rebuilding their forces in order to launch a direct attack on Morgoth’s great fortress, Angband. It is during these preparations that the book opens.

As he readies himself for a battle he has doubts about, Húrin tells his wife, Morwen, that should the Enemy prevail, their son Túrin should be sent to safety in the elven kingdom of Doriath. Húrin’s worries prove well-grounded, and even more disastrously than in the previous battle, the Elves and their allied forces are destroyed. This second great battle is called the Nirnaeth Arnoediad, the Battle of Unnumbered Tears. Most of the generals are killed, and the few survivors are driven into hiding as their lands are overrun by orcs and men allied to Morgoth.

…

Read More Read More

Birthday Reviews: Isaac Asimov’s “Buy Jupiter”

Birthday Reviews: Isaac Asimov’s “Buy Jupiter”

Comments 1 comment
Cover by M.S. Dollens
Cover by M.S. Dollens

Most days in 2018, I’ll be selecting an author whose birthday is celebrated on that date and reviewing a speculative fiction story written by that author. Continuing the series, let’s wish a happy 98th birthday to a Grand Master of the field, Isaac Asimov.

Isaac Asimov was born on January 2, 1920 in Petrovichi, Russia and died on April 6, 1992. His received a special Hugo Award in 1963 for his science articles in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. In 1966, he won the Hugo for Best All-Time Series for the Foundation series. He later won the Nebula Award for novel The Gods Themselves and the novelette “The Bicentennial Man,” which also won a Hugo. He received additional Hugos for the novel Foundation’s Edge, his novelette “Gold,” and his posthumous memoir I. Asimov. In 1987, he was named a Grand Master by the Science Fiction Writers of America. In 1997, he was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame.

While the Foundation series is known for its lack of aliens, Asimov did write about aliens in other novels and short stories, including “Buy Jupiter.” “Buy Jupiter” was originally published in Venture Science Fiction Magazine in May, 1958, edited by Robert P. Mills. It has been reprinted several times, including as the title story of Asimov’s 1975 collection Buy Jupiter and Other Stories. While Asimov was known for shaggy dog stories, and the title “Buy Jupiter” would imply exactly that, in this case the the punning title doesn’t carry over into the tale itself, although it is descriptive.

Although Asimov’s famous Foundation series does not include aliens (with the exception of the story “Blind Alley”), in “Buy Jupiter,” he focuses on negotiations between a representative of Earth and the alien Mizzarett, with a second alien race, the Lamberj, mentioned by name and other alien races implied. The Mizzarett are negotiating with the humans over the purchase of Jupiter, explaining that they could take it by force, but they would prefer to negotiate a fair deal. The human negotiator is concerned that selling or leasing the planet to the Mizzarett will either stymie human plans for expansion to the Jovian moons or be seen by the Lamberj as taking sides in a potential war between the alien races, a war which the Mizzarett ambassador swears doesn’t exist.

The Mizzarett eventually convinces the human Secretary of Science of its race’s intentions, but the explanation occurs off stage, only to be revealed when the Secretary of Science presents the explanation to the President. The explanation is simple, and allows the humans to come out ahead in the negotiation, although it does raise the question of the Mizzarett’s truthfulness and the naïveté of the humans who believed the aliens and agreed to their conditions.

…

Read More Read More

Birthday Reviews: E.M. Forster’s “The Machine Stops”

Birthday Reviews: E.M. Forster’s “The Machine Stops”

Comments 6 comments
Oxford and Cambridge Review
Originally published in the Oxford and Cambridge Review

Most days in 2018, I’ll be selecting an author whose birthday is celebrated on that date and reviewing a speculative fiction story written by that author.  To kick off the series, let’s wish a happy 139th birthday to an author not known specifically for his science fiction: E.M. Forster.

E.M. (Edward Morgan) Forster was born on January 1, 1879 and died on June 7, 1970. Not generally thought of as a science fiction author, he was active writing before science fiction was codified as a genre and some of his writing can be classified as falling under the genre’s rubric. Best known for novels that explore the class differences in British society such as A Room with a View, Howards End, and A Passage to India, Forster also wrote the future satire “The Machine Stops” published in November, 1909 in the Oxford and Cambridge Review. Forster included the story in his short story collection The Eternal Moment and Other Stories in 1928, and James Gunn included it in the second volume of his history of science fiction, The Road to Science Fiction: From Wells to Heinlein. The story has been adapted for television, stage, radio, and graphic novel. The story also inspired a concept album of the same name for the band Hawkwind. In 2012, “The Machine Stops” was inducted into the Libertarian Futurist Society Hall of Fame.

From the very beginning, “The Machine Stops” has a very contemporary feel. A woman is sitting in an almost empty room which could have been designed by Apple. Everything is white with light and music coming from invisible sources, but both of which respond to her voice commands. Her son calls her on a tablet in order to convince her to come visit him, while she doesn’t see the point in leaving her home since she has everything she needs, either virtually or in reality, within easy reach. The lecture series described could easily be a series of TED Talks.

Vashti is perfectly happy in her self-contained world, not needing to interact with anybody or experience anything directly, and that is the way most people feel. She is jostled from her bliss by her son, Kuno, who insists that she visit him, not virtually, as a normal person would, but physically. She eventually makes the arduous journey via air-ship, forcing herself to breath unfiltered air, interact with rude stewards who don’t have the decency to avoid speaking to her, and eventually visits her son. He tells her that he expects to be made homeless, evicted from the self-contained world and forced to live on the surface. Even more unsettling to Vashti is that Kuno doesn’t necessarily consider this punishment the end of the world.

…

Read More Read More

In 500 Words or Less: Sins of Empire by Brian McClellan

In 500 Words or Less: Sins of Empire by Brian McClellan

Comments 1 comment

Sins of Empire-smallSins of Empire
By Brian McClellan
Orbit (640 pages, $18.99 hardcover/$15.99 paperback, November 2017 reprint)

Have you ever taken a look at your pile of unread books and thought, “I feel like reading about __________,” and realized that type of book is nowhere in the ten (or maybe thirty) you have waiting? Apparently having an ongoing stack of books you intend to get to is a sign of creative intelligence (yay me!) but it doesn’t help when you have a craving for, say, an epic fantasy with great worldbuilding and even better characters, and you have nothing like that on hand.

It was that desperate hour of need that led me to my local bookstore and a copy of Sins of Empire by Brian McClellan, whom I admit to having never heard of before that day. I picked up his book on a whim because the cover art and back cover description caught my eye, and to my amazement I think it’s one of my favorite books this year.

First and foremost, I’m a sucker for dynamic and flawed characters who I want to root for, and McClellan delivers a ton of them. There’s Michel Bravis, the ambitious member of the secret police who argues with himself when he’s nervous, or Lady Vlora Flint, the mercenary commander who’s hard as steel but whose heart bleeds for the underprivileged, or Mad Ben Styke, betrayed former lancer who’s spent ten years of good behavior behind bars to protect the people who served beneath him. The best part of what McClellan does is put these characters into situation after situation that pushes them in different directions and keeps the action moving — which isn’t easy in a 640-page book. In almost every epic fantasy book I’ve read there are moments where the story slows, but Sins of Empire doesn’t have that — there’s constant movement, but consistent character development and intrigue at the same time.

Connected to that is the rich history of the world. Characters make reference to past events and histories that motivate all the action in Empire, giving the world a level of detail that amazed me. Of course, I didn’t realize that this isn’t the first time McClellan used this setting , and that there’s a separate trilogy that takes place prior to Empire, featuring some of the same characters. Oops. But that doesn’t minimize the importance of the world’s history and how McClellan filters it through the narrative.

…

Read More Read More

Fantasy as Something Brighter: Peter S. Beagle’s The Overneath and Jane Yolen’s The Emerald Circus

Fantasy as Something Brighter: Peter S. Beagle’s The Overneath and Jane Yolen’s The Emerald Circus

Comments 0 Comment
The Overneath-small The Emerald Circus-small

The Overneath by Peter S. Beagle (Tachyon Publications, 336 pages, $15.95 in trade paperback, November 14, 2017)
The Emerald Circus by Jane Yolen (Tachyon Publications, 288 pages, $15.95 in trade paperback, $9.99 digital, November 14, 2017)

In 1900 Frank L. Baum published The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, arguably the first truly American fairy tale. Now, a century and counting along the Yellow Brick Road, what can be said about the current state of the fairy tale in America? We seem deep in the wilds of dystopias like Hunger Games and its darker cousin, The Walking Dead, captivated by the grim fantasies of American Gods and Game of Thrones. Is this the new reality for the American fable, for literary fantasy that aspires to be anything more than a Disney retelling?

Against this darker background, a pair of recent collections from San Francisco’s Tachyon Publications attempts to reestablish or at least reconfirm fantasy as something brighter, if no less compelling. The Overneath by Peter S. Beagle and The Emerald Circus by Jane Yolen (both published November 2017) together provide a sample of American fantasy by two of its most enduring and cherished voices. Beagle and Yolen are both giants, with hundreds of publications and dozens of awards between them. They have won the highest accolades in the fields, and both now write from positions of something like legend. But do the unicorns of Beagle or the Arthurian retellings of Yolen have anything to give readers who have come to expect a heavy dose of grim realism or even grimmer apocalypse in their high fantasy?

…

Read More Read More

From the Vaults: The Lands of the Earthquake by Henry Kuttner

From the Vaults: The Lands of the Earthquake by Henry Kuttner

Comments 0 Comment

landsoftheearthquakeOnce upon a time, Ace Books published hundreds of double novels. It’s a simple thing: a pair of novellas, often by two different authors, were joined back-to-back, done in such a way that you’d have to flip the book upside down to read the second once you’d finished the first. Black Gate has been posting Rich Horton’s reviews of many of these old books for some time now. Many times a newer author’s work was paired with that of an established author in order to garner more attention. It was a clever idea that allowed lots of shorter works to get in print.

DMR Books, publishers of the Swords of Steel anthologies (reviewed here), has revived the format with the release of Howie Bentley’s Under a Dim Blue Sun backed with a reprint of Henry Kuttner’s 1947 Lands of the Earthquake. I reviewed the former this past August but neglected the latter, so I’m back with a look at a seventy-year-old tale of cross-planar travel and alien wizards.

Henry Kuttner is one of the greats of golden age sci-fi and fantasy. Under his own name as well as over a dozen pseudonyms, on his own and in collaboration with his wife, C.L. Moore, he wrote hundreds of stories. They range from Lovecraftian pastiches he crafted in his youth, to early additions to the annals of swords & sorcery, to classic sci-fi tales such as “Mimsy Were the Borogoves” and “The Twonky.”

There are several published discussions regarding which Kuttner stories are solo creations versus written as joint efforts with Moore. If the second, the question then is how much was done by one or the other. According to one review of Lands of the Earthquake, it was written not by Kuttner at all, but by Moore. I don’t know, and I freely admit that I haven’t enough experience with either to make a claim one way or the other.

…

Read More Read More

Wings, Wind, and World-Wreckers: The Best of Edmond Hamilton

Wings, Wind, and World-Wreckers: The Best of Edmond Hamilton

Comments 5 comments

Best-of-Edmond-Hamilton-SFBCJames McGlothin has been providing excellent continuing coverage on Black Gate of Del Rey’s famous “The Best Of…” anthologies that shaped many SF readers in the 1970s. He was kind enough to allow me to take a pile of notes I’d assembled for Del Rey’s The Best of Edmond Hamilton (1976) and do an entry in the series. I also sought the blessing of our editor John O’Neill because Edmond Hamilton is his favorite pulp author and I wanted to feel sure I wasn’t intruding too far into another’s territory. Both James and John are welcome to trash Edgar Rice Burroughs and Godzilla as much as they want after this.

I’ll admit to having absorbed less Edmond Hamilton than I should. I’ve read some of his short fiction, but only one of his novels, The Star Kings (1947), a science-fiction variant on The Prisoner of Zenda that’s about as thrilling as Golden Age space opera gets. (Because John O’Neill will ask, I read the original magazine version of The Star Kings, not the later book revision with the sequel-friendly ending.) I’m more familiar with the work of Hamilton’s wife, Leigh Brackett, one of the great science-fiction writers and one of my favorite authors of all time. Their marriage didn’t lead to frequent collaborations, as the marriage of C. L. Moore and Henry Kuttner did. I’m glad Hamilton and Brackett maintained separate writer identities, and the feeling became sharper after reading this selection of what Brackett thought was her husband’s finest short fiction.

I’ve read many of the Del Rey “Best Of…” volumes, but few that I’ve enjoyed as consistently as this one. It’s not only because Hamilton was a superb writer — all the authors in the series were first-rank SF masters — but because of two specific factors.

…

Read More Read More

Ride Your Own Pet Sea Monster: The Abyss Surrounds Us by Emily Skrutskie

Ride Your Own Pet Sea Monster: The Abyss Surrounds Us by Emily Skrutskie

Comments 0 Comment

The-Abyss-Surrounds-Us-smallWhat Anne McCaffrey did for dragons, Emily Skrutskie does for sea monsters.

In The Abyss Surrounds Us, first-person present-tense narration sweeps readers into the world of Cassandra “Cas” Leung. Since Cas is a trainer of Reckoners, genetically engineered giants of the ocean, her perspective gives us the joy of having our own pet sea monster. As Cas, you’ll strap on your scuba gear and swim alongside a massive tortoise, running your hands over and between its keratin plates. You’ll climb on its back and sit on its head. You’ll hitch a ride as it dives. You’ll command it in battle, sending it to charge, ravage, and destroy.

At the age of seventeen, Cas has worked her whole life to become a full-fledged Reckoner trainer. The day has finally come for her to go on her first solo mission, accompanying the legendary monster Durga as she protects a cruise ship in the lawless Neo Pacific. Cas’s first mistake is assuming that any escort duty in pirate-infested waters is going to be a cakewalk. Her second is deciding to go through with the mission despite signs that Durga’s sick. Her third mistake, after pirates have succeeded in killing Durga and overtaking the ship, is failing to take the suicide pill that would guarantee her a swift and painless death.

Defenseless in enemy hands, Cas has a brain full of information the pirates must never discover. But instead of torturing it out of her, the vicious pirate queen has other plans. She has acquired a Reckoner fetus on the verge of hatching. To avoid execution, Cas must birth the thing, raise it, and train it to kill the very people who would come to rescue her.

Once she’s got a lethal beast on her side, though, she can turn it on the pirates and escape. Or at least, this is what Cas thinks. Which is her final mistake.

…

Read More Read More