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Birthday Reviews: Sarah Smith’s “And Every Pebble a Soldier”

Birthday Reviews: Sarah Smith’s “And Every Pebble a Soldier”

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Cover by Duncan Eagleson
Cover by Duncan Eagleson

Sarah Smith was born on December 9, 1947.

Although Smith is best known for writing historical mysteries set in Boston, she has also dabbled in speculative fiction, writing the hypertext novel King of Space and more traditional SF novels The Knowledge of Water and The Other Side of the Dark. She won the Agatha Award and the Massachusetts Book Award for The Other Side of the Dark.

Smith wrote “And Every Pebble a Soldier” for the 2015 anthology Deco Punk: The Spirit of the Age, edited by Thomas A. Easton and Judith K. Dial, based on a comment by Dial that linked Art Deco to Nazism. The story has not been reprinted.

Set in the aftermath of a truly destructive war, the protagonist of “And Every Pebble a Soldier,” a builder’s apprentice, is one of the only men to come back from war. Determined to build something useful, he begins to make a clockwork man that will help him clean up the debris that litters his town. When he finds a paving brick used to mark the grave of a friend, he chips away a bit of the rock and incorporates it into the wind-up man, eventually repopulating the village’s lost youth by creating an automaton with a piece of each one’s gravestone.

While some in the town take an interest in his hobby, others mock him or are down-right hostile.  The village priest sees him as someone performing the Devil’s work, as well as a threat to his own power in the Church. The apprentice persists, however, and slowly wins the town over as they begin to see his clockwork men as a way not only to repopulate the town, but to, in some way, bring their lost brothers and sons back to life.

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Peplum Populist: The Adventures of Hercules (1985)

Peplum Populist: The Adventures of Hercules (1985)

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adventures-of-hercules-1985-posterThis is a bit more of coloring-out-the-lines for my sword-and-sandal reviews, since The Adventures of Hercules comes from the mid-‘80s, far beyond the classic era of the Italian peplum of 1957–1965. But it is an Italian genre film about Hercules starring a bodybuilder from the US, which is the most sword-and-sandal situation imaginable. Plus, I’ve owed Black Gate a look at this film ever since 2009 when I reviewed the first of this pair of unbelievably goofy Lou Ferrigno Hercules flicks from director Luigi Cozzi. The guy who made that psychedelic version of the original Godzilla — which explains a lot about these Hercules movies.

The short version of the first part of my oration, In Facinorem Herculis: To cash-in on the success of Conan the Barbarian, Cannon Films contracted Italian filmmaker Luigi Cozzi to direct a new Hercules film starring bodybuilder Lou Ferrigno, who was at the height of his popularity after The Incredible Hulk television show. But instead of doing a standard Conan imitation — which the Italian film industry was already churning out — or trying to harken back to the classic Italian sword-and-sandal movies, Cozzi and Co. slapped Star Wars SF gimmickry over everything. According to Cozzi, it was his idea to pitch a Hercules film closer to the recent Superman films after the producers rejected a “sexy” script from director Bruno Mattei. Cozzi crammed the movie with laser blasts, lunar-based Olympians, giant robots, space travel via chariot, and plenty of beeping-and-booping synth noises. Although Cozzi had experience with riffing on Star Wars thanks to his 1979 movie Starcrash, it wasn’t any help overcoming a pinched budget, copious terrible performances, and the general misguided tone of “Who is this for?”

While Hercules ‘83 got a US theatrical release, it wasn’t a hot property in North America except as an object of jeers. But it made enough money internationally to justify Cannon moving ahead with a planned sequel, although with a trimmed budget. The Adventures of Hercules (Le avventure dell’incredibile Ercole, with a Roman numeral “II” added to some video releases) went straight to video and cable in the US and isn’t as well-known as its predecessor.

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Birthday Reviews: Albert E. Cowdrey’s “Immortal Forms”

Birthday Reviews: Albert E. Cowdrey’s “Immortal Forms”

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Cover by Cory and Catska Ench
Cover by Cory and Catska Ench

Albert E. Cowdrey was born on December 8, 1933.

In 2002, Cowdrey’s short story “Queen for a Day” won the World Fantasy Award. His novella “The Overseer” was also nominated for the World Fantasy Award. He received a Nebula Nomination in 2006 for the novella “The Tribes of Bella” and in 2009 his story “Poison Victory” was nominated for the Sidewise Award for Alternate History. He has on occasion published using the pseudonym Chet Arthur.

Cowdrey sold “Immortal Forms” to Gordon van Gelder for publication in the August 2006 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. The story has never been reprinted.

Shortly after Tommy Salvati inherits the house in which Hannah Loewe died, he begins to question the circumstance of her death. Salvati inherited the house because when he was younger, Loewe took care of him while his mother worked following his father’s death and, years later, he was the only person she felt close to, as well as being her lawyer.

His discovery that Loewe may have died after being prescribed a series of drugs by a doctor who was more interested in separating her from her money than treating disease makes him decide that he needs to investigate her death. When that leads to a dead end, he decides to do whatever he can to avenge her by destroying the doctor’s life and practice. As a lawyer, he does so by writing letters urging an official investigation into the doctor’s life.

One he starts his plan, the house, or a spirit in the house, becomes more active, not only haunting Salvati’s workroom, which had been the bedroom in which Loewe had died, but also moving events towards an outcome of revenge against the doctor and those who helped him. Salvati learns to work with the house to avoid the haunted room during the daytime when the spirit is active, and stay out of the way when the spirit seeks revenge.

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Birthday Reviews: Leigh Brackett’s “Interplanetary Reporter”

Birthday Reviews: Leigh Brackett’s “Interplanetary Reporter”

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Cover by Rudolph Belarski
Cover by Rudolph Belarski

Leigh Brackett was born on December 7, 1915 and died on March 18, 1978.

Leigh Brackett was the first woman ever to appear on a Hugo ballot when she was nominated for her novel The Long Tomorrow in 1956, and was nominated for two Retro Hugo Awards in 2016. Her collection Sea Kings of Mars and Otherworldly Stories was nominated for a British Fantasy Award. In 1978 she received a Forry Award from LASFS, and she was named the recipient of the Cordwainer Smith Rediscovery Award in 2005. In 2014 Brackett was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame. Brackett and her husband, Edmond Hamilton, were guests of honor at Pacificon II, the 22nd Worldcon, held in Oakland, California in 1964. She worked in Hollywood and is one of the credited co-writers of The Empire Strikes Back as well as The Big Sleep, on which she shared a writers credit with William Faulkner. She collaborated on fiction with Ray Bradbury and her husband. She published one of her non-genre novels using the pseudonym George Sanders. The Empire Strikes Back was dedicated to her memory.

“Interplanetary Reporter” was first published in the May 1941 issue of Startling Stories, edited by Mort Weisinger. It wasn’t reprinted until 2002, when Steve Haffner included it in the Brackett collection Martian Quest: The Early Brackett. In 2008 the story was included in an e-collection issued by Baen Books, Swamps of Venus. In 2009 Adventure House reprinted the original issue of Startling Stories that contained this tale.

Brackett was known for her planetary adventures and in “Interplanetary Reporter,” she places IP reporter Chris Barton in the Venusian city of Vhia. A grizzled war reporter, Barton has decided he is done with working as a reporter and is planning on telling IP editor John Sanger of his decision. On the way into Sanger’s office he spots the beautiful Kei Volhan, who is engaged to cub reporter Bobby Lance. Just as Barton announces his decision, Vhia comes under attack by a Jovian military force.

Partly to keep from saving face in front of Volhan, Barton allows himself to be convinced that he need to go into space to report on the Jovian attack. The two reporters and Volham manage to make their escape in an IP news spaceship and once they achieve orbit, they quickly learn that the surprise attack is not Jovian, but rather Martian in origin as Mars is trying to start a war between the Jovians and Venusians in order to gain a better deal on water rights.

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Worldbuilding Once and Future Fake News: Not Really A Review of Singer & Brooking’s LikeWar: The Weaponization of Social Media

Worldbuilding Once and Future Fake News: Not Really A Review of Singer & Brooking’s LikeWar: The Weaponization of Social Media

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LikeWar
(Not about the Sack of Limoges, or the Hundred Years War)
conversation-with-smaug-recoloured - 300 dpi
Worldbuilders!

What if I told you that the Sack of Limoges in Froissart… never happened?

Well, OK, you’d look at me blankly. After a moment you might ask, “I’ve never heard of Froissart. Where is that? French Canada?”

I’ve been reading LikeWar: The Weaponization of Social Media by Singer and Brooking. It describes the emerging world of Internet “news” where news passes from person-to-person on social media, no source is uncontroversially trustworthy, and where both information warriors and click-bait farmers are uninterested in the truth, except as a way of making untruths more plausible.

In this world, what determines a narrative’s success is not veracity but rather: Simplicity; Resonance; and Novelty.

Just switch the arena to “rumor” and this looks awfully like a greatly accelerated version of the pre-modern — especially Medieval and Renaissance — milieus we use as inspiration for Fantasy worldbuilding.  Keep the rumor but return the tech, and it’s also a good jumping-off point for building a Space Opera future. Stay with me and I’ll explain. But first, back to the smoking ruins of Limoges.

The authors — Singer wrote a great book on robot warfare, by the way — talk about a US military training scenario that would make a good Traveller adventure: insurgents set up both a demonstration and an ambush, guaranteeing the former will get caught in the latter, the objective being to generate Internet images of an occupier-perpetrated massacre. The military response — as I recall; the index isn’t very good — is to contain or avoid the ambush. Singer and Brooking remark that this won’t do any good. The insurgents — if cynical enough — can just shoot the civilians anyway and blame the occupiers, or simply upload images from elsewhere.

And that’s what made me think of Froissart and Limoges.

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Birthday Reviews: Roger Dee’s “Worlds Within Worlds”

Birthday Reviews: Roger Dee’s “Worlds Within Worlds”

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Science Fiction Plus September 1955-medium Science Fiction Plus September 1955-back-small Science Fiction Plus September 1955 contents-small

Front and back covers by Frank R. Paul

Roger Dee Aycock was born on December 6, 1914 and died on April 5, 2004. He wrote mostly using the pseudonym Roger Dee, although he also published one story as John Starr when he had two stories appear in the November 1951 issue of Planet Stories.

Dee’s story “Worlds within World” initially appeared in the October 1953 issue of Science Fiction +, the final science fiction publishing project of Hugo Gernsback. It was the penultimate issue of the magazine. The story was reprinted in Science Fiction Monthly issue one, in September 1955, an Australian magazine edited by Michael Cannon.

“Worlds within Worlds” may not have been a cliché when it was first published, but in many ways it reads like one now, not just for its central idea that modern readers will see coming, but for the techniques Dee uses to tell his tale. From the earliest part of the narrative, he uses undefined terms and technobabble to give it a futuristic feel and it is only well into the story that the reader fully begins to understand the situation that the main character, Racon, is in, although Racon is fully cognizant of where he is and what is going on. Mostly. He is wondering why he isn’t being allowed on an interstellar research ship that is about to launch.

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Birthday Reviews: Jon DeCles’s “The Power of Kings”

Birthday Reviews: Jon DeCles’s “The Power of Kings”

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Cover by Gary Ruddell
Cover by Gary Ruddell

Jon DeCles was born as Donald Studebaker on December 5, 1941.

In addition to writing, DeCles is also a Mark Twain interpreter, performing as Twain and giving lectures about the man’s life and career. He collaborated with Paul Edwin Zimmer on the novel Blood of the Colyn Muir. Studebaker married author Diana L. Paxson.

“The Power of Kings” was written for the eleventh Thieves’ World anthology, Uneasy Alliances, edited by Robert Lynn Asprin and Lynn Abbey and published in 1988. He would write a follow-up story for the next, and final, volume of the original series as well.

A troupe of actors led by Feltheryn has arrived in Sanctuary, where High Priest Molin Torchholder is building them a new theatre and has commissioned them to perform a play. Once a major actor in the capital of Ranke, Feltheryn and his crew are hoping to reestablish themselves in Sanctuary, unaware that Torchholder has specifically chosen a play that couldn’t help be political in nature and set to offend Prince Kadakithis and his lover, the Beysa. The story is clearly part of the woven tapestry of Thieves World and would not work well standing on its own.

The story deals with Feltheryn’s need to get the theatre in order, rehearse himself and his troupe, and keep tabs on his troupe, from his partner/lover Gisselrand, who is as focused as he is, to Rounsnouf, the comedian given a key dramatic role who is spending all his time at the infamous Vulgar Unicorn tavern. Into this schedule are thrown random groups of street toughs who want to avenge themselves on Feltheryn for not being able to rob him, as well as meetings, chance or otherwise, with various denizens of Sanctuary.

For someone who thrived in the capital, Feltheryn seems to have a poor sense for when he is being used a as pawn. Not only is Torchholder using him and the troupe for his own purposes, but many others who he or Rounsnouf come into contact with see the theatrical troupe as a means of advancing their own agenda. Even without the troupe being aware that anything is happening, they are moved in a political agenda which could (and should) be disastrous until Feltheryn’s quick thinking allows him to cast the situation in a more positive light.

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Birthday Reviews: Kurt R.A. Giambastiani’s “Intaglio”

Birthday Reviews: Kurt R.A. Giambastiani’s “Intaglio”

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Cover by Gary Davis
Cover by Gary Davis

Kurt R.A. Giambastiani was born on December 4, 1958.

Giambiastini’s debut novel The Year of the Cloud was a finalist for the 2002 Endeavour Award. In addition to writing fiction, Giambastiani has performed as a violist in regional orchestras and works as a software developer.

“Intaglio” was published by Algis Budrys in the October 1995 issue of Tomorrow Speculative Fiction, issue #17. The story has never been reprinted.

Giambastiani’s story is set several years after a rebellion was put down on the planet Thessalon. The people of Thessalon and the city of Pellion, where the rebellion was centered, have mostly been ignored by the Central Military Forces, apart from a series of economic sanctions. The Commander of the forces that crushed the revolt, Gavin Price-George, however, takes a series of intaglios, three dimensional photographs which allow the viewer to see depth and perspective, following the revolt and has published them in the years since. To celebrate an anniversary, he returns to Pellion with a showing of his intaglios.

Price-George comes with a full military contingent and announces that he is not only throwing a party for the people of Pellion, but that trade restrictions will also be relaxed. Giambastiani’s story focuses on the differences between the way Price-George is greeted by the younger generation, which doesn’t have a memory of the war and the deaths, and the older generation, for whom the wounds are still fresh and the memories of their killed friends and families shade their dealings with Price-George. The art display drives that home as the younger generation is seeing old images, but the older generation is seeing pictures of their younger selves, often at moments of great anguish.

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Birthday Reviews: John Dalmas’s “In the Bosom of His Family”

Birthday Reviews: John Dalmas’s “In the Bosom of His Family”

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Cover by C.A. Beal
Cover by C.A. Beal

John Dalmas was born John Jones on December 3, 1926 and died on June 15, 2017.

Dalmas first book The Yngling was serialized in Analog in 1969 and published in book form in 1971. Dalmas began publishing regularly in the 1980s, producing the Fanglith books and The Regiment series, as well as many short stories. In addition to his career as an author Dalmas worked for the US Forest Service.

Dalmas originally published “In the Bosom of His Family” in the October 1989 issue of Pulphouse: The Hardback Magazine, Volume 5: Horror, edited by Kristine Kathryn Rusch. The story has never been reprinted.

Although “In the Bosom of His Family” is an horror story, the true horror of the tale doesn’t become apparent until near the end. It focuses on Charley Greer, part of a family of ranchers who have been settled in the valley for generations. Everything is done the “Greer Way,” including procreation. The eldest sons are expected to marry and have children while the younger sons are expected to remain single and stay on to help the family ranch. Charley is the second son and is helping out, but he is also dying of cancer and realizes his time is near.

Dalmas focuses on the familial ties and the sense of filial obligation, but Charley also sees his sister-in-law pregnant with a child who will follow in Charley’s role. Charley also reflects on his own uncle Charley, a younger brother who he never met, but whose life he is emulating and who he heard stories about from his grandfather and did his best to evoke his grandfather’s memories of him.

Seeing the life around him and the life expected for his potential nephew, Charley decides that rather than die on the ranch, as is the Greer way, he would head to the hospital, even if it meant an arduous trek overland since he didn’t want to have to ask for a ride. As Charley makes his way, it becomes evident that the Greer way is more than just tradition and Charley wasn’t just channeling his uncle, but rather there is an element of reincarnation at play and Charley’s life as a second son was a continuation of his uncle’s life, just as Charley’s nephew will be a reincarnation of him. Charley’s hope is that by dying far away from the ranch, he might be able to spare his nephew that fate.

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Galaxy Science Fiction, May 1954: A Retro-Review

Galaxy Science Fiction, May 1954: A Retro-Review

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Galaxy May 1954-small Galaxy May 1954-back-small

The cover of the May, 1954 issue of Galaxy Science Fiction is by Ed Emshwiller, specifically for Theodore Sturgeon’s story “Granny Won’t Knit.” I’ve only noticed a few covers in these early issues that are illustrations of the fiction within. More often, Editor H.L. Gold seemed to prefer unrelated covers for his magazine.

“Granny Won’t Knit” by Theodore Sturgeon — Roan works for his father, who runs a transportation company. Their society has strict rules around proper dress — hiding the bodies and hands of men and women. Families are organized into strict patriarchal units. Though he’s an adult, Roan hasn’t earned the right to begin his own family and remains under the guidance of his overbearing father.

Seemingly by accident, Roan transports himself into the presence of a young woman who has bare arms and hands. She teases him a bit as he flounders to leave. But in the days to follow, he can’t get her out of his mind and is determined to find her again.

Roan also draws closer to his grandmother, who remembers a culture no one speaks of. And she’s not convinced that the current technology for transportation is the best, considering its limitations to the planet Earth. Her strange views are unsettling, yet Roan sees reason in her thoughts and allows that he may be limited in knowledge.

I think this story stands the test of time. There’s not much that glaringly sticks out to make it a 1950s science-fiction story — at least nothing that comes to mind. It works well.

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