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A Review of The Time Ships by Stephen Baxter

A Review of The Time Ships by Stephen Baxter

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time-shipsI’m not entirely sure how to review a sequel that’s written by a different author. I’m even less sure how to proceed if that sequel happens to be for a classic.

It’s not enough that it be a good book on its own. It also has to carry over themes from the original, and ideally, it should measure up to the original — which is almost impossible, because classics tend to become classics because the ideas in them are unique, cutting edge, or at least presented in a fascinating new way.

The Time Ships, by Stephen Baxter, is a sequel to H. G. Wells’ The Time Machine, and that’s one of the most impossible legacies in science fiction.

It’s a very good book, but it isn’t revolutionary in the way the original is — in part because it really can’t be. To top The Time Machine, you’d pretty much have to invent a new genre.

When The Time Machine ends, the nameless Time Traveller promises to be right back, departs for the future, and vanishes forever. The Time Ships repeats this scene from his perspective (in the original, we see it from the Writer’s point of view) and explains what happened to him.

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Chris Braak Reviews The Magicians

Chris Braak Reviews The Magicians

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the-magicians-by-lev-grossmanThe Magicians
Lev Grossman
Viking (416 pp, $16.00, August 2009 – May 2010 paperback edition)
Reviewed by Chris Braak

Lev Grossman’s The Magicians makes an admirable attempt at an ambitious premise: is it possible to use the form and structure of Harry Potter to tell a story about ennui, dissipation, and cynicism? What is the difference between the childhood wonder evoked by the “you’re such a special child” childrens’ fantastic literature — with its black and white morality, its uplifting sense of meaning and hope — and the obdurate, insistent messiness of real grown-up life?

The Magicians follows Quentin Coldwater, a brilliant, industrious high school student who spends his time working obscenely hard at schoolwork for ends that are not entirely clear to him, as he is selected for and matriculates at a secret school for wizards in upstate New York. The story self-consciously mimics such similar novels as Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, except it equally self-consciously subtracts the moral clarity, the battle against ultimate evil, and the soul-building trials of its main character’s childhood.

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Gemmell’s Legend Remains a Rousing Call to Arms

Gemmell’s Legend Remains a Rousing Call to Arms

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legendI love pre-battle speeches. Arnold’s “Then to hell with you!” prayer to Crom before the battle of the mounds, and Theoden’s exhortation to the Rohirrim just before their charge on the Pelennor Fields (“spears shall be shaken, shields shall be splintered!”), to name two, make me want to pick up spear and shield and wade into the fray (of course Kenneth Branagh’s Band of Brothers/St. Crispin’s Day speech from Henry V remains the best). Even though I’d never want to fight in a real shield wall, the power of these speeches admittedly gives me second thoughts.

That’s probably why I loved reading David Gemmell’s Legend (1984) so much. Gemmell’s debut novel is more or less a buildup to (and execution of) a monumental battle scene, and its rousing inspiration speeches don’t disappoint. In terms of the printed page Legend ranks right up alongside Steven Pressfield’s spectacular Gates of Fire for galvanizing battle-speeches.

Here’s one sample as delivered by Druss, the eponymous “legend” from whom the novel derives its name. Druss is an aging warrior and a veteran of innumerable battles who dusts off his axe Snaga and treks to the defense of the fortress Dros Delnoch, like an aging athlete coming out of retirement to prove he can still play. On the eve of the final battle, he rouses the outnumbered Drenai to stand with him, one last time:

Theoden leads the charge...
Theoden leads the charge...

“Some of you are probably thinking that you may panic and run. You won’t! Others are worried about dying. Some of you will. But all men die. No ever gets out of this life alive.

I fought at Skeln Pass when everyone said we were finished. They said the odds were too great, but I said be damned to them! For I am Druss, and I have never been beaten, not by Nadir, Sathuli, Ventrian, Vagrian, or Drenai.

By all the gods and demons of this world, I will tell you now — I do not intend to be beaten here, either!” Druss was bellowing at the top of his voice as he dragged Snaga into the air. The ax blade caught the sun and the chant began.

“Druss the Legend! Druss the Legend!”

If you like the above monologue, you’ll probably love Legend. If not, well, there’s always Magic Kingdom for Sale: Sold.

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A Review of Daemon World (Warhammer 40,000)

A Review of Daemon World (Warhammer 40,000)

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daemon-world-newDaemon World
Ben Counter
BL Publishing (414 pp, $7.99, 2009 (originally published in 2003))
Reviewed by Bill Ward

The world of Warhammer 40,000 takes ‘dark’ to a whole new level, with a constellation of warring races in various shades of gray (for example, the ‘good guys’ of the Imperium have no qualms about eradicating entire planets within their own empire), a bleak, medieval gothic aesthetic oozing with fanaticism, intolerance, and cruelty, and an essentially hopeless outlook for humankind.

Indeed, the series tagline, “In the grim darkness of the future there is only war,” gets at the heart of the 40k setting, though it misses somewhat the undercurrent of black humor and parody that have been present in this universe since its inception. But the enormously popular world of the 41st millennium is more than just a space opera version of Warhammer Fantasy – despite its space elves and orks, Warhammer 40,000 is a unique and appealing setting that has been steadily accruing a history and a body of lore for over twenty years, all of which makes it much more complex and interesting than it may appear at first blush. It is a richly detailed, dark fantasy of the future that synthesizes everything from Paradise Lost to Star Wars, H.R. Geiger to H.P. Lovecraft, Dune to Starship Troopers.

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Howard Andrew Jones Reviews HeroScape

Howard Andrew Jones Reviews HeroScape

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Heroscape expansion packs

In 2004, I made my first trip to GenCon and was overwhelmed by the experience. I don’t remember much about the specific tables I visited, but I do remember coming across this new game, HeroScape, which applied a modular style to tactical war gaming – not just in the building of the army (which was usually modular in some sense), but in the design of the playing surface and terrain.

Just as Howard describes himself below, I was also the sort of person who always chose storytelling games over wargames. I had bought some Warhammer units, but had spent so much time painting them that I’d never actually gotten around to playing the game … and even if I had, the lack of terrain would have annoyed me.

With HeroScape, all of these elements came packaged together in a master set, and you could expand on the experience easily enough with various expansion packs. Six years later, Howard describes his experience with the current incarnation of the game.

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William Michael Mott’s Pulp Winds

William Michael Mott’s Pulp Winds

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Pulp Winds
William Michael Mott
Grave Distractions Publications (190 pp. $14.99)
Reviewed by Howard Andrew Jones

A couple of years ago I had the chance to read a cracking good heroic fiction story by William Michael Mott. I knew Mott was a Robert E. Howard fan and a pulp aficionado, but what I didn’t know was that his “Temple of the Salamander” would read like a head-on collision between some of the best features of the stories of Jack Vance, Robert E. Howard, and Clark Ashton Smith. “Temple of the Salamander” was set in the dying days of Earth, on a vast, last plateau crossed by an amazing road that may well be intelligent and is certainly dangerous. Traveling this road is the warrior Tulruhk, who is different from the rest of his tribe in part because of his curiosity and in part because he’s capable of compassion, so rare in his world that it makes his occasional act of mercy look like a saintly visit. Tulruhk aids a dying scholar and is rewarded with a chance for membership in an exclusive order dedicated to exploration. Tulruhk’s quest to gain that membership fuels the action in two of his chronicled adventures.

Mott’s drafted three stories of Tulruhk and the last plateau, and they’re collected in Pulp Winds, an anthology of his original work that includes heroic poetry, some atmospheric horror that hearkens back to Lovecraft and Shaver without emulating their sometimes difficult prose, and what may be the only homage I’ve ever read to one of Robert E. Howard’s  fight stories. If Howard had ever written a Costigan fight story with weird elements it would have sounded an awful lot like “Fisticuffs of the Damned.” I think the biggest surprises of the collection were two heroic stories featuring Jack the Giant Killer. When Mott first mentioned these  in an e-mail I was skeptical, but there’s nothing light and airy about these, and I ended up enjoying them almost as much as the adventures of Tulruhk.

Pulp Winds won’t appeal to every reader — in Mott’s work the hero gets the girl and the monsters are there for the pummeling. Which isn’t to say that they’re predictable or that there are no surprises; it’s just that Mott proudly wears his love for pulpy story elements on his sleeve. Mott wants to serve up new adventures in the style of some of the best adventure writers from the golden days of the pulps, hence the title of his collection. If you’re like me and are sometimes in the mood for some monster bashing, sword-slinging, and damsel saving, Pulp Winds delivers in spades.

Feature Excerpt: Rich Horton’s “Back to the Future: Modern Reprints of Classic Fantasy”

Feature Excerpt: Rich Horton’s “Back to the Future: Modern Reprints of Classic Fantasy”

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centaurideviceContributing Editor and SF historian Rich Horton’s article for Black Gate 14 was on modern reprints of the best in classic fantasy and science fiction:

Orion, via their imprints Millennium and later Gollancz, took a different tack in keeping important SF in print. The SF Masterworks series, beginning in 1999, undertook to reprint the very best science fiction novels of the past century or so… a couple of story collections slipped in, including most significantly (to my mind) The Rediscovery of Man, by Cordwainer Smith, the complete stories of one of the oddest and most intriguing SF writers ever. Other interesting works… include what may be Jack Vance’s best singleton novel, Emphyrio; M. John Harrison’s cynical take on Space Opera, The Centauri Device; Michael Moorock’s colorful and louche science fantasy, The Dancers at the End of Time (always my personal favorite among his works); one of the most significant works from Russia: Roadside Picnic, by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky; and the complete “Roderick” novels by John Sladek, brilliant satire from one of the field’s best and darkest satirists.

As we wrap up the Sneak Preview of the massive 14th issue of Black Gate we’ve posted a lengthy excerpt from Rich’s article, in which he covers titles from Baen Books, the SF and Fantasy Masterworks lines from Orion, the Science Fiction Book Club, Wildside Press, and NESFA Press.

Rich’s previous feature articles for us include “Fictional Losses: Neglected Stories From the SF Magazines,” (Black Gate 11) “The Big Little SF Magazines of the 1970s,” (BG 10) and  “Building the Fantasy Canon: the Classic Anthologies of Genre Fantasy” (BG 2).

The complete “Back to the Future: Modern Reprints of Classic Fantasy” appears in Black Gate 14.

Charlene Brusso Reviews A Magic of Nightfall

Charlene Brusso Reviews A Magic of Nightfall

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magic-of-nightfallA Magic of Nightfall
S.L. Farrell
DAW (656 pp, $7.99, March 2009 – March 2010 mass market edition)
Reviewed by Charlene Brusso

Fans of S.L. Farrell’s marvelous ability with character and world-building (check out the Cloudmage trilogy) will cheer at the arrival of the latest book in the Nessantico Cycle (sequel to A Magic of Twilight). Book two returns readers to the marvelous Renaissance style city of Nessantico, “the most famous, the most beautiful, the most powerful of her kind,” bustling with energy, ambition, magic (much of it unauthorized), and ever-rising intrigue. But this is a Nessantico 25 years after the events of Twilight, a shaky Nessantico and its powers-that-be set to tumble down the slippery slope that has been steadily growing steeper in the last few years.

Nessantico is the capital, both political and religious, of the Holdings, an immense and entrenched empire – immense, but half the size it used to be. To the east, rival nation-state Firenzcia is forming its own alliances with its neighbors. Likewise, the Concenzia Faith has undergone a schism. In Nessantico, the much-beloved Ana ca’Seranta still serves as the “real” Archigos, but rival Archigos Semini ca’Cellibrecca, a conservative religious hardliner, leads the faithful in Brezno in Firenzcia. Unlike Ana, Semini has no tolerance for heretics like the Numentodo, natural philosophers who’ve proven that magical ability has no link to religious faith.

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Short Fiction Review #33: Oxford American Future Issue

Short Fiction Review #33: Oxford American Future Issue

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oxford-americanOxford American Issue 70 contemplates life in 2050 with 11 stories that share a pessimistic view of America’s future beset by natural and man-made disaster, human folly and avarice.  In other words, just like it is today, only worse.

While dystopia has always been a fundamental science fictional trope (indeed, the one that has historically been most likely to gain literary credence, e.g., Brave New World and 1984), there was a time, particularly during the Golden Age of the 1930s to 1950s but still continuing on in counterpoint to the New Wave movement during the 1960s/1970s, when writers portrayed a future improved by technology, not devastated by it. Even the cyberpunks, despite their bleak industrial noir settings, arguably depicted technology as a “force for good” when their renegade heroes turn the technological tables to upend the corporate masters.

Part of the bleakness here might be because Oxford American terms itself  “The Southern Magazine of Good Writing,” and the American South certainly has a collective consciousness of disasters dating back to the Civil War, but most recently with Katrina and the BP oil spill in the Gulf.  “The Vicinity of the Sick” by M.O. Walsh depicts a Louisiana where people have to wear bio-hazard suits to go in the water; a woman dying of cancer is driven by her reluctant husband to a restricted biohazard in hope of escaping the soul-sapping hazards of technological illusions that pervade “normal” existence in Connie May Fowler’s “Do Not Enter the Memory”; and a strange pair from opposite socio-economic backgrounds try to survive (and discover some basic bond of humanity) in the Bayou following ecological and technological collapse in “Maroon” by Susan Straight.  Along the same lines, in a non-fction piece, Kevin Brockmeier lists his “Ten Great Novels of the Apocolypse.”

In addition to ecological disaster, the stories share to varying degrees the usual suspects for end-of-the-world scenarios: the amoral corporate focus on the bottom-line and self-interest, the numbness of media and advertising that leads to unhealthful lifestyles, medical advances that keep people biologically alive in bodies long past expected mileage.

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New Treasures: Dan Abnett’s Warhammer 40K: Horus Rising on Audio CD

New Treasures: Dan Abnett’s Warhammer 40K: Horus Rising on Audio CD

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horus-cdI have a 3-hour commute to my job in Champaign, Illinois, and I exhausted the excellent Dark Adventure Radio Theatre adaptations of H.P. Lovecraft’s major works months ago. What’s a bored commuter to do?

Rejoice when the latest Black Library Audio CD arrives, that’s what. I thoroughly enjoyed Nick Kyme’s Thunder From Fenris — a tale of desperate battles against a zombie plague (and worse) on a frozen planet — last year, and have been looking forward to the next release. Nothing helps the miles (and miles) of cornfields of  Illinois slip by like a fast-paced tale set in the Warhammer 40,000 universe, lemme tell you.

As entertaining as it was, Fenris was only 70 minutes, and it fit on a single CD. This week’s mail brought the much more imposing Horus Rising: a 6-hour, 5 CD audio extravaganza adapting one of the central works in the Warhammer 40K canon – the tale of the epic betrayal of the immortal Emperor by his Warmaster, Horus:

It is the 31st millennium. Under the benevolent leadership of the Immortal Emperor, the Imperium of Man has stretched out across the galaxy. It is a golden age of discovery and conquest. But now, on the eve of victory, the Emperor leaves the front lines, entrusting the great crusade to his favourite son, Horus. Promoted to Warmaster, can the idealistic Horus carry out the Emperor’s grand plan, or will this promotion sow the seeds of heresy amongst his brothers? Horus Rising is the first chapter in the epic tale of the Horus Heresy, a galactic civil war that threatened to bring about the extinction of humanity.

Abridged from the best selling novel by Dan Abnett and read by award winning star of stage and screen Martyn Eliis, Horus Rising comes to life in this almost 6 hour reading.

Six hours!  Just long enough to occupy me all the way to work, and back.  Champaign, here I come!