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Mage: The Hero Denied #9

Mage: The Hero Denied #9

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Mage-9-smallSo there’s a weird thing that happens in superhero comics after they’ve been running for a while. No matter what sort of superhero we’re dealing with, how weak or powerful, eventually we start to see stories that begin with someone attacking them out of the blue, followed by the hero trying to figure out what’s happening. This happens even more often with superhero teams, since they tend to have publicly known headquarters. While these are sometimes set up as stories of revenge for some past defeat, more often it’s something along the lines of, “The hero is going to stop my evil plan, so before I even start the evil plan, I’m going to take out the hero.” Strangely, after the villain fails to take out the hero, they’ll just go ahead with the plan anyway. But in almost all of those stories, the hero wouldn’t even have KNOWN there was an evil plan if they hadn’t been attacked.

Kevin Matchstick is semi-retired at the start of Hero Denied. He has no idea that the Umbra Sprite has set up a new operation. He’s raising his kids and doing nothing that will cross his path with the Umbra Sprite. He’s not even looking for the Fisher King. Really, he doesn’t start moving until he’s attacked. And even then, he’s basically flailing about with no real focus until his wife and son are kidnapped.

So if the Umbra Sprite had just left Kevin Matchstick alone, he wouldn’t be coming after her. He wouldn’t even have known that anything was going on. Which I suppose is a lesson in how we often make bigger problems for ourselves by overthinking situations.

The issue opens with Kevin and Miranda driving through Fairy Land. Kevin’s got a dozen baseball bats in the backseat, ready to get charged up. I’m not sure how we’re meant to take that fact. On the one hand, it could mean that Kevin’s just getting ready for a lot of fighting. But since he can basically charge any object with magic energy, there is the question of why he’s chosen only to pack baseball bats instead of an assortment of weapons. Or why he doesn’t continue the habit he’s developed in the first half of this series of using improvisation to charge up whatever’s around. It might just be that he’s grasping for something familiar and comfortable as his world is torn apart.

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Birthday Reviews: Robert Lynn Asprin’s “No Glad in Gladiator”

Birthday Reviews: Robert Lynn Asprin’s “No Glad in Gladiator”

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Cover by Gary Ruddell
Cover by Gary Ruddell

Robert Lynn Asprin was born on June 28, 1946. He died on May 22, 2008.

Asprin won the coveted Balrog Award for the Thieves’ World anthologies Shadows of Sanctuary and Storm Season. The first anthology in the series, Thieves’ World, was nominated for the World Fantasy Award. In addition to his work on the shared world series, Asprin is also known for his long-running Myth series, featuring Skeeve and Aahz. Other series, often written with co-authors, include Phule’s Company, Time Scout, and The Cold Cash War. For a time, Asprin was married to Lynn Abbey, who co-edited several of the Thieves’ World anthologies and eventually resurrected the series in the 2000s.

“No Glad in Gladiator” was published in the ninth volume of the Thieves’ World series, Blood Ties, edited by Asprin and Lynn Abbey in 1986. Its only reprinting was in the third Thieves’ World omnibus edition which included volumes 7-9, The Shattered Sphere.

The gladiator slave Jubal was one of the first characters introduced in the Thieves’ World shared world series, conceived by the series creator, Robert Lynn Asprin. By the time the ninth volume rolled around, Jubal had enjoyed his triumphs and suffered his set backs. In “No Glad in Gladiator,” Asprin has cast him in the role of eminent grise, showing a meeting between Jubal and Chenaya, a Rankene noblewoman and gladiator who is trying to make her way in Sanctuary.

Despite both characters’ background as gladiators, “No Glad in Gladiators” is a relatively static story. Asprin has the two characters sitting in a room talking, Chenaya’s looking for an alliance with Jubal and Jubal, after explaining why he isn’t interested in an alliance, explains to Chenaya all of her shortcomings. The story doesn’t fully work without its larger context. Jubal provides enough information about himself for the reader to understand who he was, and is, but Chenaya’s history is only painted in broad strokes, making her something of an enigma.

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Black Gate Book Club, Downbelow Station, Fourth Discussion

Black Gate Book Club, Downbelow Station, Fourth Discussion

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DBS7

Welcome back to the Black Gate Book Club! We are rapidly closing in on C.J. Cherryh’s Downbelow Station (DbS).  You can get to speed with the first, second, and third rounds.

Adrian S.

Fourth round!

Okay, page 285 and Fletcher, you are right that things are (finally) happening quick. The Union Fleet has dropped into the system, and the Company Fleet and the militia go out to meet them.  I like the idea that all the ships look the same on scan, whether they are jump-capable merchanters or in-system merchanters, or Fleet Carriers or whatever—they all look the same until they maneuver or start to fire.

Jon Lukas has become the bad guy that he was hinted at with a full murderous take-over of Downbelow Station.   Of course, he’s made a choice on which side he’s on, gambling that the Union is going to win, and from there getting roped into helping Union win.  This puts him with a lot of targets on his back.

Kressich is in the exact same boat, but with more targets on his back, he’s terrified of his people in Q, and terrified of his own security, but once the shooting starts, he is one of the few people who has security and has people.

The relationship of the “leaders” to their armies/militias is interesting.

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Birthday Reviews: Mary Rosenblum’s “Night Wind”

Birthday Reviews: Mary Rosenblum’s “Night Wind”

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lace-and-blade-smal

Mary Rosenblum was born on June 27, 1952. She was killed when the small plane she was flying crashed on March 11, 2018. She wrote mystery novels under her maiden name, Mary Freeman.

Rosenblum’s 1994 novel The Drylands won the Compton Brook Stephen Tall Memorial Award for best first novel. In 2009 her short story “Sacrifice” received the Sidewise Award for Alternate History. Her novella “Gas Fish” was a Hugo Award nominee and “One Good Juror” made the shortlist for the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award. Two of her stories, “Rat” and “The Eye of God” were considered for the James Tiptree, Jr. Memorial Award.

Rosenblum sold “Night Wind” to Deborah J. Ross for inclusion in the anthology Lace and Blade. The story has never been reprinted, although Rosenblum’s “Dragon Wind” appeared in the second Lace and Blade anthology. “Night Wind” was a nominee for the Nebula Award for Best Novelette in 2009.

“Night Wind” is set in a Renaissance period Spain where magic can be passed down from father to son. Alvaro is the scion of a noble line, but his father’s magical power has been taken from him and Alvaro does not have any magic of his own, a situation the family is trying to hide. Having studied at university with the great scholar Delarentario, Alvaro has returned to his ancestral estates where his mother is trying to forge a marriage alliance with the merchant Salvaria. Along the way, Alvaro is accosted by the brigand Night Wind.

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Birthday Reviews: James Van Pelt’s “The Inn at Mount Either”

Birthday Reviews: James Van Pelt’s “The Inn at Mount Either”

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Cover by Vincent Di Fate
Cover by Vincent Di Fate

James Van Pelt was born on June 26, 1954.

In 1999 Van Pelt was a finalist for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. Van Pelt received a Nebula Award nomination for his Short Story “The Last of the O-Forms.”

“The Inn at Mount Either” originally appeared in the May 2005 issue of Analog Science Fiction and Fact, edited by Stanley Schmidt. Rich Horton included it in Science Fiction The Best of the Year 2006 Edition. Van Pelt selected the story for his own collection The Radio Magician and Other Stories, published by Fairwood Press in 2009. The story finished second in the Analog Readers’ Poll and was a finalist for the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award.

“The Inn at Mount Either” is a sprawling resort with doorways that provide access to alternative worlds, a complex arrangement which means that the resort employees dissuade their guests from exploring on their own. Despite that, the security at the facility seems farcical and the guests are not actually warned of the resort’s true nature.

Dorian Wallace approaches the concierge because his wife, Stephanie, has been missing for a full day. Despite the oddities and dangers of the lodge, the concierge is neither concerned nor helpful, indicating that they don’t consider someone missing until they’ve been gone for 48 hours, although later developments should indicate that concern should happen immediately, or after two hours at the outside.

Unable to get help, Dorian goes off in search of his wife, remembering how taken she was by the doorway to Polynesia they had seen earlier. Naturally enough, he gets lost in the convoluted structure and passes through some of the doorways, experiencing a variety of alternatives the lodge looks out upon.

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Birthday Reviews: Charles Sheffield’s “Marconi, Mattin, Maxwell”

Birthday Reviews: Charles Sheffield’s “Marconi, Mattin, Maxwell”

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Galaxy May 1977-small Galaxy May 1977-back-small

Cover by Bonnie Dalzell

Charles Sheffield was born on June 25, 1935 and died on November 2, 2002. On two occasions, he published fiction under the name James Kirkwood when he had multiple stories appearing in a single issue of a magazine.

In 1979 Sheffield was a nominee for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. He went on to win the Hugo and Nebula Award for his novelette “Georgia on My Mind.” His novel Brother to Dragons won the John W. Campbell Memorial Award and his novel The McAndrew Chronicles received the Seiun Award. In 1998 Sheffield served as Toastmaster at Bucconeer, the Worldcon in Baltimore. From 1998 until his death, Sheffield was married to author Nancy Kress.

“Marconi, Mattin, Maxwell” was first published in the May 1977 issue of Galaxy, edited by James Baen. Sheffield included it in his 1979 collection Vectors. The story kicked off a series of ten short stories featuring Henry Carver and Waldo Burmeister, two lawyers in the future. In 2001, Sheffield collected all of the stories in Space Suits: Being the Selected Legal Papers of Waldo Burmeister and Henry Carver, Attorneys-at-Law, as Transcribed and Edited by Henry Carver, LL.B., and With a Special Introduction by Waldo P. Burmeister, LL.B. The story was also translated into German in 1980 for an appearance in Science-Fiction-Stories 80, edited by Walter Spiegl.

In “Marconi, Mattin, Maxwell,” Henry Carver is relating his relationship with the great inventor Gerald Mattin. The story is set up as a letter to an editor who is including a chapter about Mattin in a book about great scientists. Carver indicates that the letter provides the editor with the true story of Mattin rather than the sanitized version that Carver wrote for the book.

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Birthday Reviews: Mercedes Lackey’s “A Different Kind of Courage”

Birthday Reviews: Mercedes Lackey’s “A Different Kind of Courage”

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Cover by Richard Hescox
Cover by Richard Hescox

Mercedes Lackey was born on June 24, 1950.

Lackey has been nominated for the Lambda Award three times, winning for her novel Magic’s Price in 1991. Her novel The Ship Who Searched, written in collaboration with Anne McCaffrey, was nominated for the Seiun Award and her novel The Fire Rose was nominated for the Sapphire Award. In addition to her collaborations with McCaffrey, she has also collaborated with Joseph Sherman, Ru Emerson, and Mark Shepherd on the Bard’s Tale series, with Ellen Guon and Rosemary Edghill on the Bedlam Bard series, with husband Larry Dixon, Holly Lisle, Cody Martin, and Roberta Gellis on the SERRAted Edge series. Other collaborators include Dave Freer, Eric Flint, Andre Norton, Marion Zimmer Bradley, James Mallory, C.J. Cherryh, and others.

“A Different Kind of Courage” was Lackey’s first sale and originally appeared in Free Amazons of Darkover, a shared world anthology set in Marion Zimmer Bradley’s world of Darkover and edited by Bradley in 1985. The story was reprinted by Steven H Silver and Martin H. Greenberg in Magical Beginnings, an anthology of the first stories by various fantasy authors. In 1988, “A Different Kind of Courage” was translated for the German publication of Freie Amazonen von Darkover.

Rafi is an outcast, someone who doesn’t fit in anywhere and has failed at everything she has tried to do. After she was ejected from training as a Keeper, her father planned to marry her off to Lord Dougal, who has a reputation for having his wives killed. Rather than marry Dougal, she runs away and joins the Free Amazons, where she quickly discovers she has neither the strength, stamina, nor ability to be successful. Her partial training as a Keeper, however, causes her to be sent on a mission with Caro and Lirella, neither of whom want to be saddled with her. One evening, they sent her out to gather firewood, a task she also fails.

Upon returning to her companions, she finds that they have been attacked and, although they have defeated their attackers, both have horrible wounds. Rafi does what she can for them, overcoming her fear of their pack animals to use them to drag the women inside where she treats their wounds and keeps them warm. She also uses her Keeper training to reach out to seek additional help. She does what she can through the night, but by the time help arrives, Rafi is, herself, on the verge of death.

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Birthday Reviews: Eileen Gunn’s “Thought Experiment”

Birthday Reviews: Eileen Gunn’s “Thought Experiment”

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Cover by Jeremy Geddes
Cover by Jeremy Geddes

Eileen Gunn was born on June 23, 1945.

Gunn’s story “Stable Strategies for Middle Management” was nominated for a Hugo Award in 1989 and the next year she received a Hugo nomination for “Computer Friendly.” Her collection Stable Strategies and Others, which included original works, was nominated or shortlisted for the Philip K Dick Award, the James Tiptree, Jr. Memorial Award, and the World Fantasy Award. Two original stories from the collection, “Nirvana High,” written with Leslie What, and “Coming to Terms” were nominated for the Nebula Award, with “Coming to Terms” winning the 2005 Nebula Award for Best Short Story.

Gunn published “Thought Experiment” in Jonathan Strahan’s 2011 anthology Eclipse Four: New Science Fiction and Fantasy. She subsequently included it in her collection Questionable Practices and Paula Guran selected the story for the anthology Time Travel: Recent Trips.

Ralph Drumm is an engineer given to performing the sort of “Thought Experiment” the story is named for. While sitting in a dentist’s chair having his teeth whitened, Drumm begins to muse on a way to achieve time travel and after returning home turns his thought experiment into a reality.

The story follows Drumm as he sight-sees through three different periods, a Wessex in the mid-fifteenth century where the inhabitants seem to speak a version of Anglo Saxon, a visit to Bethel, New York to see Woodstock in 1969, and to Washington, D.C. on April 15, 1865 to witness the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. For the most part, Drumm is only a witness to these events, although he senses hostility towards him on his repeated trips to Wessex, each spaced a year apart so he won’t have to worry about running into himself.

Gunn does bring up the idea of Drumm’s interference with history, not only when he tries to warn Lincoln about Booth’s impending assassination attempt, but on a more subtle level, simply by existing in times when he shouldn’t have. Gunn’s early description of Drumm as the first time traveler also foreshadows the possible existence of other, later time travelers.

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Mage: The Hero Denied #8

Mage: The Hero Denied #8

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Mage The Hero Denied 8-smallSo I’m starting work on my review for Mage: The Hero Denied #9, when I realize that, while I wrote a rather lengthy review of issue #8, I never got around to posting it. Expect the next review in the next week or so.

See the previous reviews in this series here.

Being a fifteen-issue series, issue #8 is obviously the halfway point for the story and as such we expect it to be something of a turning point. And while some parts of the story are very predictable for a mid-point chapter, this issue did manage to surprise me a few times. The two starting points are Magda waking up in the villains’ lair and Kevin facing the ogre that trashed his house. Magda gets the stereotypical James Bond treatment, where her enemy sets her up in a luxury suite and promises to provide her with every comfort before killing her. And Kevin gets pummeled by a monster. But then both story threads go in unexpected directions.

It starts with the way that Kevin handles the ogre. His focus here is on finding his family and since killing the ogre won’t help him in that goal, he refuses to fight back. The result is that the ogre starts tossing him around while Kevin just keeps asking where his family’s been taken. This isn’t the strike-first and ask-questions-later approach that we expect from Kevin. It’s the tactic of a more responsible hero who is controlling his rage so that he can achieve a more important goal than just defeating the monster.

The scene switches to Magda demanding to see her children. And here we see another parallel between Magda and the Umbra Sprite. She’s told that the Umbra Sprite values her daughters as much as Magda values her children. She’s then reunited with Hugo. And we’re left to wonder what’s happened to Miranda.

Back to Kevin, who continues to get pummeled by the monster, refusing to fight back until his questions are answered. But then he discovers that only Hugo and Magda were captured. Miranda is hiding in the rubble. Once he realizes that his daughter is there and could be harmed, he makes very quick work of the ogre, revealing that he could have easily killed the monster at any time.

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Galaxy Science Fiction, March 1954: A Retro-Review

Galaxy Science Fiction, March 1954: A Retro-Review

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Galaxy March 1954-smallThe March, 1954 issue of Galaxy Science Fiction features a cover by Ed Emshwiller. I’m not certain how easy it is to see, but I like how he added EMSH to the symbols in the background.

“The Telenizer” by Don Thompson — Langston is a reporter who becomes a target of someone with a telenizer. The device, once honed to someone’s brain waves, can change a person’s perception of reality. One countermeasure is drunkenness, but Langston opts for a neutralizing device that he can carry in a briefcase.

Langston starts a story on himself, beginning with an investigation on Isaac Grogan. Langston did an expose series on Grogan years ago on bribery and corruption, which eventually led to the man’s arrest.  Now that Grogan is free, he has motive for revenge. But there could be more at play than the obvious.

I like the premise and some of the action sequences; the story has a good pace. I couldn’t find much information on Thompson, which made me think the name could be a pseudonym for another author, given that this is the longest story in the issue. But I’m not turning up anything.

Maybe someone else (e.g. Rich Horton) has more information.

“The Littlest People” by Raymond E. Banks — Space labor forces are shipped cheaply by placing people in stasis while being shrunk to just a few inches in size. John’s father is the personnel director on an asteroid and meets with Mr. Mott, who arrives with new people available for hire. As John wanders the ship, he finds one of the little people — a woman — lying on the floor.

He picks her up and means to tell Mr. Mott, but there’s a bit of chaos at that moment, and John pockets her. Later, his sister brings the tiny woman (whom she names Gleam) out of stasis by accidentally injuring her leg. So John begins caring for Gleam like a pet while she bemoans her uselessness because of her permanently injured leg.

This is a really intriguing tale by Banks, and aside from some physical violence, it’s a good coming-of-age story.

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