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Birthday Reviews: Stanisław Lem’s “Ijon Tichy’s Last Journey to Earth”

Birthday Reviews: Stanisław Lem’s “Ijon Tichy’s Last Journey to Earth”

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Cover by Dominic Emile Harman
Cover by Dominic Emile Harman

Stanisław Lem was born on September 12, 1921 and died on March 27, 2006.

Polish author Stanisław Lem won the Seiun Award in 1977 for his short story “Rozprawa” and the Geffen Award for the novel Solaris, which was thrice adapted for film, first in 1968 for Soviet television by Lidiya Ishimbaeva and Boris Nirenburg, second by Andrei Tarkovsky in the Soviet Union in 1972, and finally by Steven Soderbergh in 2002. Lem has also received the City of Krakow’s Prize in Literature, several prizes from the Polish government during the Communist period, the Grand Prix de Littérature Policière, the Franz Kafka Prize, and was made a member of the Order of the White Eagle. In 1973 Lem was given an honorary membership in SFWA, but once he was eligible for a regular membership, the bylaws of the organization required the honorary membership to be rescinded, which caused an uproar among some members.

“Ijon Tichy’s Last Journey to Earth,” which was written as Ostatnia Podroz Ijona Tichego, was published in English in August 1999 in Altair #4, without a previous Polish publication. It was translated by a team comprised of Kurt von Trojan, Robert N. Stephenson, and Ela Wroaebel. The magazine was edited by Andrew Collings, Jim Deed, and Robert N. Stephenson. The story was later translated into German as “Ijon Tichys letzte Reise” and published by Wolfgang Jeschke in the anthology Reptilienliebe.

Stanisław Lem’s Ijon Tichy stories are not hard science fiction, but rather social satire, usually showing the title character traveling to distant planets and observing and commenting on their customs, which are often strangely reminiscent of human custom. Most of the stories have been collected in Lem’s book The Star Diaries. “Ijon Tichy’s Last Journey to Earth” has a recursive component in that Tichy refers to his own book The Star Diaries as a narrative of his travels and implies that the story he is currently relating will appear in a future edition of the book.

Tichy’s set up for the story is that he has been exploring the Cassiopeia constellation for the past six years (although his references to “Cassiopeia’s eight supermoon” indicates that Lem isn’t aware of, or care about, the difference between a constellation and a planetary system) and is returning to Earth for the first time in several years. Upon his arrival, he notices that men and women seem to have swapped traditional attire, with men wearing skirts and women wearing pants. Furthermore, it seems to him that people are being chased through the streets by people wielding butterfly nets. He seeks out someone to explain the cultural changes to him.

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Birthday Reviews: Ray Vukcevich’s “Ornamental Animals”

Birthday Reviews: Ray Vukcevich’s “Ornamental Animals”

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Cover by Timothy Caldwell and Rick Lieder
Cover by Timothy Caldwell and Rick Lieder

Ray Vukcevich was born on September 11, 1946.

Vukcevich was nominated for the Philip K. Dick Award in 2002 for his collection Meet Me in the Moon Room. His novelette “The Wages of Syntax” was nominated for the Nebula Award in 2004. Vukcevich has published two collections of his own short stories, the novel The Man of Maybe Half-A-Dozen Faces, and a short anthology that collected one of his short stories and one of Kelly Link’s short stories that was given away at a World Horror Convention.

“Ornamental Animals” was published in the fifteenth issue of Pulphouse: A Fiction Magazine sometime early in 1993. By the time this issue was published, Pulphouse had backed away from the weekly schedule it had initially set for itself (and never achieved) and claimed to be a monthly magazine, although only two issues appeared in 1993. The story has never been reprinted.

In “Ornamental Animals,” Amy Grindle is an aspiring model who has a habit of going through catalogs and magazines she appears in and clipping photos of herself from the pages, although her face has yet to be shown in any of them. On a whim, as she went through the catalog, Amy decided to purchase a set of two genetically modified cats, although she really knew very little about them or the company that makes them. Because of that, she was quite surprised when she eventually received her pair of “Fire Cats.”

Although Fire Cats look more or less like non-genetically engineered cats, they do have some differences, which Amy learns about quite quickly, partly due to the cats’ response to her and partly because once she received them she realized she should read the manual on their care and feeding. She quickly learns that although the cats are alive, they don’t offer any of the traditional benefits of pets. They are born without joints, except in their jaws, and therefore can’t move and must be fed manually. Even more intriguing is the talent that gives them their name. When certain conditions are met, the cat’s heads explode in flame, although the cats themselves are all right.

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Birthday Reviews: Pat Cadigan’s “New Life for Old”

Birthday Reviews: Pat Cadigan’s “New Life for Old”

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Cover by Maren
Cover by Maren

Pat Cadigan was born on September 10, 1953.

Cadigan won a Hugo Award for Best Novelette in 2013 for “The Girl-Thing Who Went Out for Sushi,” which has also won a Seiun Award. She previously won a World Fantasy Award in the Non-Professional category for co-editing the fanzine Shayol with Arnie Fenner. She won two Arthur C. Clarke Awards for her novels Synners and Fools. In 1979 her story “Death from Exposure” won the coveted Balrog Award. In 2006 Cadigan received the third (and most recent) Richard Evans Memorial Prize, given to genre authors who were considered insufficiently recognized for their excellence. Cadidgan served as the Toastmaster for MidAmericon II, the 2016 Worldcon in Kansas City.

Disney’s animated film Aladdin was released in 1992 and to take advantage of the popularity of the film, Mike Resnick and Martin H. Greenberg edited the 1992 anthology Aladdin: Master of the Lamp, with stories based on genies, djinni, and the 1001 nights. Pat Cadigan’s story “New Life for Old” made its debut in the anthology. The following year, Cadigan included the story in her collection Dirty Work and in 1996 it was translated into French for Cadigan’s anthology Les garçons sous la pluie.

Cadigan’s djinn appears to 70-year-old Millie as she is polishing a family heirloom, a lamp that dates back to the family’s origins in the Middle East. Millie greets the djinn’s appearance with skepticism, based on her life experience and the drink she took that afternoon, although she doubts it is enough to get her that tipsy. The djinn does, however, make her an offer of one day of youth. If she turns it down, he’ll remove all memory of their meeting. Naturally, she takes him up on the offer and lives out a life of her youth.

Millie and the djinn reconnect after her day and she tells him all about it, reveling in what she was able to do and how she felt. However the experience wasn’t all she had hoped for and she realizes that a better, and more useful experience would have been to live a day as an old woman when she was younger. That way, she would better enjoy what she had rather than just one day that was wistful and nostalgic even as she was enjoying herself. Cadigan’s story is a quick tale that presents not only the good feelings that nostalgia can bring, but also a sense of the regrets and the difference in the view of someone young and someone older.

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A Celebration of the Wonder of the Universe Itself: Vast by Linda Nagata

A Celebration of the Wonder of the Universe Itself: Vast by Linda Nagata

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Vast Linda Nagata Gollancz-small Vast Linda Nagata Gollancz-back-small

Gollancz edition (1990); cover by Bob Eggleton

I’ll get right to it: Linda Nagata’s Vast is everything you want epic sci-fi to be: a huge scope in time and space, a compelling look at the horizons of human and technological evolution, and a celebration of the wonder of the universe itself. Vast provides all this, with some truly beautiful descriptions of stellar evolution thrown in for good measure. On top of all this, this scale and big ideas are woven alongside excellent character formation and a plot that builds tension so effectively that long years of pursuit between vessels with slow relative velocities still feels sharp and urgent.

I liked this book. A lot.

Vast is set in the far future, after multiple waves of colonization have moved out from Earth (which has since itself been destroyed). Humanities’ settlements along the frontier have been ravaged by twin threats from an ancient lost race called the Chenzeme: automated, partially biological warships and an engineered virus that turns its hosts into carriers of a cult that enslaves entire populations. Humanity, it seems, is being squeezed between these two prongs of an incredibly ancient civil war with weapons lingering on even after the civilization that wages it is long gone.

But there’s a whole lot going on against this epic background. Vast is actually the concluding book in a series that includes three others (one of which is the Locus Award-winning Deception Well) but I didn’t realize this when I picked up the paperback edition this summer in a used bookstore when my vacation reading supply tanked. The plot picks up with four characters — Nikko, Lot, Urban, and Clementine, all human — on a starship called the Null Boundary heading into Chenzeme space. Starting with the final book means I missed all the details of how these characters originally met, how they learned Lot was a carrier of the cult virus, and how they ended up on the Null Boundary, but it didn’t decrease my enjoyment of the book. Sometimes it’s nice to be dropped in the middle of an unfamiliar universe to figure things out as you go. (I remember starting Gene Wolfe’s Long Sun quartet for the first time with the third book and being simultaneously confused and enthralled.)

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Birthday Reviews: Homer Eon Flint’s “The Nth Man”

Birthday Reviews: Homer Eon Flint’s “The Nth Man”

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Cover by Frank R. Paul
Cover by Frank R. Paul

Homer Eon Flint was born Homer Eon Flindt on September 9, 1889 and died on March 27, 1924 under suspicious circumstances.

Flint’s career as a speculative fiction author ran from 1918 until his death in 1924, during which time he collaborated with Austin Hall. The majority of his work appeared in All Story and Argosy All Story, which were published by Munsey. Flint’s death is a mystery that remains unsolved. He was killed when a car he was driving in ran over a cliff. Although there have been claims that Flint stole the car at gunpoint with the intent to commit a bank robbery, that charge was put forward by a gangster, E.L. Handley, several years later. There is no evidence that Flint was involved with anything illegal, and may have found himself in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Although “The Nth Man” was originally sold to the Munsey Corporation in 1920, it didn’t appear until after Flint’s death when the rights had been re-sold to Hugo Gernsback and it was published in the April 1928 issue of Amazing Stories Quarterly. It disappeared and wasn’t reprinted until 2015 when it was included in the Wildside Press e-anthology The 26th Golden Age of Science Fiction Megapack.

Flint opens the story with six lengthy vignettes describing miracles that occurred between 1920 and 1933, promising that they were linked in some way, but not offering any explanation for how they occurred. These instances range from the rescue of a nine-year old girl drowning after falling off a cliff to the transportation of a freighter from the middle of a typhoon to the Australian desert, to the disappearance of a bank in Hamburg.

Once he relates all of these miracles, which takes about half of the story, he begins to refocus his tale on the specifics, which tie the various vignettes together. The key vignette to our understanding is the one set in 1920, in which a young Bert Forsburgh meets a young Florence Neil. Fosburgh is the son of a wealthy businessman, Daly Fosburgh, who by the time the main story is set is prepared to economically take over the United States with his son, now a young adult, set to be his figurehead governmental leader.

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Birthday Reviews: Linda D. Addison’s “Little Red in the Hood”

Birthday Reviews: Linda D. Addison’s “Little Red in the Hood”

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Cover by Kandis Eliot
Cover by Kandis Eliot

Linda D. Addison was born on September 8, 1952.

Addison has won the Bram Stoker Award four times for her poetry collections, becoming the first African-American to win. She won her first Stoker for Consumed, Reduced to Beautiful Grey Ashes in 2002. In 2008 she won for Being Full of Light, Insubstantial. Her collection How to Recognize the Demon Has Become Your Friend won in 2012, and her final award in 2014 came for her collaborative collection Four Elements, with Marge Simon, Rain Graves, and Charlee Jacob. She has also collaborated with Beecher Smith and Stephen M. Wilson.

“Little Red in the Hood” appeared in issue 23 of Tomorrow Speculative Fiction in November 1996, edited by Algis Budrys. The following year Addison included it in her collection Animated Objects, which included six stories and several poems. Stefan Dziemianowicz, Robert Weinberg, and Martin H. Greenberg also selected the story for the anthology 100 Hilarious Little Howlers. Its most recent publication was in the e-book anthology Unconventional Fantasy: A Celebration of Forty Years of the World Fantasy Convention, edited by Peggy Rae Sapienza, Jean Marie Ward, Bill Campbell, and Sam Lubell for the 2014 World Fantasy Con in Washington, DC.

Addison’s “Little Red in the Hood” is barely more than a vignette. It tells the story of fairy tale and nursery rhyme characters when they aren’t on duty. Little Red is relaxing at the end of the day in a bar, throwing back a double vodka. The Big Bad Wolf is sitting on the other side of the bar. When Red complains about having to be eaten daily, the wolf points out that he has to essentially have a Caesarian section each day when they retrieve Red after the story ends.

Other characters chime in with their concerns. As traditional characters they worry that the advent of the Power Rangers will knock them out of their roles, although the Red points out that the coming of the Purple People Eater didn’t impact them. The story ends in media res when Red and the Wolf are summoned because someone is reading their story to their child.

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In 500 Words or Less: Tales of the Captain Duke by Rebecca Diem

In 500 Words or Less: Tales of the Captain Duke by Rebecca Diem

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oie_71323z2d6LGpYTales of the Captain Duke
By Rebecca Diem
Woolf Like Me (paperback/ebook editions, price varies, Aug 2014 – May 2018)

For anyone who reads this column even semi-regularly, this next review is probably gonna seem out of place. But indulge me for a few minutes to talk about Tales of the Captain Duke, a four-part series of indie novellas by Toronto author Rebecca Diem.

First thing to make clear: these novellas are equal parts steampunk adventure and romance, which is obviously not my usual cup of tea, so the fact that I’m reviewing it here should tell you something. Because honestly, I got swept up in this series. Why? Besides the fact that airships and pirates and steampunky technology are really cool, these novellas focus on character, which is always the number one thing I look for in a series.

Though the title is Tales of the Captain Duke, the focus is really on Clara, a debutante who leaves her life of wealth by sneaking away on an airship and falls in with “pirates” standing up to economic tyranny and corruption, under the leadership of the legendary Captain Duke. Okay, maybe that sounds like an obvious romantic setup – especially as the attraction between Clara and her new Captain is made clear – but Clara is far from your stereotypical female character.

She’s a badass, and quickly becomes an important part of the Captain Duke’s crew, joining a group of nuanced characters who go through a series of arcs from the first novella to the last. For example, you have first mate Trick, who becomes a vehicle for exploring physical disability when he relearns how to make music with a prosthetic arm, and youths Cat and Mouse, who desperately want to be adults and contribute more to their captain’s operations but have a lot to learn before they can.

This character work is tied into detailed, thought-out worldbuilding beyond the usual Victorian steampunk. Remember that this is an adventure story, too, complete with plenty of action and danger. Admittedly, this isn’t a story about elaborate twists and turns or huge surprises; when things from Clara’s past get mentioned off hand, you know they’re going to play a greater role later on, and when the Captain Duke’s people get betrayed, the culprit is pretty clear. That isn’t a bad thing, by any means. I love what Patrick Rothfuss calls “big fat fantasy books,” but sometimes I need a story that’s straightforward and fun, too, which Diem delivers in this series.

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Birthday Reviews: Ralph Robin’s “Inefficiency Expert”

Birthday Reviews: Ralph Robin’s “Inefficiency Expert”

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Cover by Chesley Bonestell

Cover by Chesley Bonestell

Ralph Robin was born on September 7, 1914 and died in December 1983.

Robin worked as a chemist for the National Bureau of Standards as well as working as a Professor of English at American University in Washington. In 1976 he received the Christopher Morley Award from the Poetry Society of America. His career as a science fiction author spanned 1936 to 1953, during which time he published a dozen stories in a variety of magazines.

“Inefficiency Expert” was originally published in the March 1953 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, edited by Anthony Boucher and J. Francis McComas. Two years later it was translated into Italian as “Esperto di inefficienza” for publication in Fantascienza #5, edited by Livio Garzanti. It has never been reprinted in English.

Robin has created a society in which people have inhabited two planets, Leu and Tagr. Tagr is the more structured, authoritarian planet while Leu is more easy going, but at the same time introverted. The only citizens of Leu who will generally talk to foreigners are those who hold the title politeman, such as Vorasel. When Tagrian Transportation Executive Dalet-Fraygo-Tapandri-Mil finds himself stranded on Leu while his spaceship is being repaired, politeman Vorasel is assigned to communicate with him, which also results in Vorasel taking Dalet on a tour of some cultural points in Leu.

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Birthday Reviews: China Miéville’s “Entry Taken from a Medical Encyclopedia”

Birthday Reviews: China Miéville’s “Entry Taken from a Medical Encyclopedia”

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The Thackery T. Lambhead Pocket Guide to Eccentric & Discredited Diseases-small

Cover by John Coulthart

China Miéville was born on September 6, 1972.

Miéville won the World Fantasy Award, the Kitschie, the British SF Association Award, and the Hugo Award for Best Novel for The City & the City in 2010. The book also earned him his third Arthur C. Clarke Award, following one for Perdido Street Station in 2001 and Iron Council in 2005. He has won the British Fantasy Award for Perdido Street Station and The Scar. All four of the previously named novels have also won the Kurd Lasswitz Preis. He has won the Ignotus Award for Perdido Street Station and Embassytown and the Grand Prix de l’Imaginaire for Perdido Street Station and The City & the City.

China Miéville wrote “Buscard’s Murrain” for Jeff VanderMeer and Mark Roberts’ anthology The Thackery T. Lambshead Pocket Guide to Eccentric & Discredited Diseases in 2003. When he included the story in his 2005 collection, Looking for Jack, Miéville changed the title to “Entry Taken from a Medical Encylopedia,” which was more descriptive, especially with the work taken out of the context for which it was created. The story was translated into German to appear in the collection Andere Himmel, with the title based on the new title of the work. He has collaborated on non-fiction with Mark Bould and on fiction with Max Schäfer, Emma Bircham, and Maria Dahvana Headley.

“Entry Taken from a Medical Encyclopedia” is a short work presented to offer the history and symptoms of the fictional Buscard’s Murrain, also known as the Gibbering Fever. The entry is filled with humor, discussions of quackery, filial defenses, fraud, and footnotes.

Miéville begins with a history of the disease, explaining that it was first contracted by Primoz Jansa, when he read a word aloud, causing his brain to experience an alteration that possible caused some sort of worm to start tunneling through his brain. The disease was believed to have been spread by the repeating of that word, known as a wormword. Jansa traveled to London where his gibbering preaching caused several outbreaks of the disease, first described by Samuel Buscard, who may have become associated with the patient through the revenge of another surgeon Buscard was blackmailing.

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Birthday Reviews: James McKimmey, Jr.’s “Planet of Dreams”

Birthday Reviews: James McKimmey, Jr.’s “Planet of Dreams”

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Cover by Ken Fagg
Cover by Ken Fagg

James McKimmey, Jr. was born on September 5, 1923 and died on January 19, 2011.

Although McKimmey wrote several science fiction short stories between 1952, when “Tergiversation” appeared in The Avalonian and 1968 when “The Inspector” was published in The Farthest Reaches, the majority of his fiction, including all seventeen of his novels, were in the crime fiction genre. In addition for his writing, he is known for an eleven year correspondence he conducted with Philip K. Dick between 1953 and 1964.

“Planet of Dreams” first appeared in the September 1953 issue of If, edited by James L. Quinn. LibriVox included the story in their 2010 audio anthology Short Science Fiction Collection 042.

Daniel Loveral’s ideal utopian society is to live on a planet in which nobody has to work, their every need from food and water to clothing and tools provided for by machines and their world. To achieve this, Loveral has led a group of immigrants to Dream Planet and instituted the society of his promise. Ironically, Loveral is required to work constantly to ensure that his followers can live in the world he promised them.

When word reaches Loveral that one of his followers, George Atkinson, is working, Loveral goes to discuss the situation with him. If anyone (other than Loveral) works in their utopian world, Loveral sees it as an admission of failure. Furthermore, if Atkinson makes something that only he has, Loveral is afraid that jealousy will also rears its head and cause the society to fail.

Unfortunately, Atkinson has very different views. While Loveral is busy with a project to make sure the society as a whole is what he pictured, he isn’t paying attention to their actual current wants and needs. Atkinson, like so many of the other inhabitants of the planet, are finding that the utopian world which they signed on is a boring place that doesn’t challenge them or give them any real raison e’dtre. Rather than being able to enjoy themselves, they can only focus on how bored they are.

It becomes apparent that although Altkinson appears to be acting alone, he is a representative for all of the citizens. McKimmey portrays Atkinson’s solution as one that is supported by everyone and the only real solution to the problem, however both McKimmey and, apparently, Atkinson seem to have ignored other potential paths towards the goal of revisiting the utopia’s charter and providing the sense of purpose people need, which ultimately weakens the story.

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