donn@sdchema.UUCP (04/20/84)
Yet more book reviews. I suppose I should remind everybody that the
stupid asterisks mark collections or anthologies.
Some people don't like to be kept guessing, so:
FEVRE DREAM. George R. R. Martin.
THE ANUBIS GATES. Tim Powers.
*SAN DIEGO LIGHTFOOT SUE AND OTHER STORIES. Tom Reamy.
THE WILD SHORE. Kim Stanley Robinson.
THE SEX SPHERE. Rudy Rucker.
THE VOID CAPTAIN'S TALE. Norman Spinrad.
*GENE WOLFE'S BOOK OF DAYS. Gene Wolfe.
*THE WOLFE ARCHIPELAGO. Gene Wolfe.
FEVRE DREAM. George R. R. Martin. Pocket, c1982. Haven't vampires
been beaten to death over the last several years, what with 'SALEM'S
LOT, GHOST STORY, THE VAMPIRE TAPESTRY and other novels repeatedly
dragging the poor creatures from their graves for one more dance? FEVRE
DREAM is at least a decidedly different vampire novel. Although it
follows the recent convention of treating vampires as being
unsupernatural creatures (in FEVRE DREAM we find that vampires avoid
the sun because they get terrible sunburns, they don't turn into bats
and they are long-lived but mortal) this novel goes further in that it
gives a glimpse of what vampire society would be like. In the year
1857, Captain Abner Marsh is hired by one Joshua York to commission and
then captain the fastest and fanciest riverboat ever to sail the
Mississippi, the FEVRE DREAM. York's peculiar nocturnal habits
eventually lead Marsh to suspect that the reclusive financier is a
vampire. Marsh confronts him, and instead of being attacked and
disposed of, Marsh learns that York is a kind of vampire vegetarian --
he has discovered a compound which when ingested by a vampire prevents
him or her from lusting after blood. York, it seems, is on an
idealistic quest to meet all the vampires in America and convince them
to give up killing humans for their blood. Unfortunately for both York
and Marsh, there are vampires who kill less for nutrition than for
sport... Martin does a good job of rendering the period atmosphere and
of stirring up suspense, and the depiction of vampires as real
creatures is the best I've read in the genre. A fun book to read.
THE ANUBIS GATES. Tim Powers. Ace, 1983. This book is impossible to
describe. I will make a stab at it, but failure is predestined...
Suppose that reality is determined by what people believe. In the
past, say, there really were vast and powerful gods such as Horus and
Ra and Anubis, but their powers have dwindled over time until they are
almost insignificant. Yet suppose that you are a follower of the
ancient gods, and you have discovered a spell that may allow you to
travel back in time to the days of the gods' greatness. Magic is
almost dead, but in one last gasp you manage to open a hole to the
past... and that's when things begin to go wrong. Instead of opening
a conduit to 4000 BC, you have blasted time with a shotgun, so it is
full of holes and creatures from various times begin popping up
inappropriately. Now, imagine that you are Brendan Doyle, a professor
of English at Cal State Fullerton, who is asked by a mysterious
millionaire to give a private lecture on Samuel Taylor Coleridge only
to find that part of your task is to escort paying visitors to see the
REAL Coleridge lecture in 1810. After you arrive in 19th century
England, wouldn't you be just the least bit tempted to stay behind and
fool around? The fun begins when Doyle is abducted by agents of the
Egyptian sorcerers, who think that Doyle can help them achieve their
real goal of destroying the present reality and returning the ancient
gods to power... The rest of the novel is one pulp thriller scene
after another, and the plot twists come so fast and so inventively that
the reader gets carried away despite the preposterousness of the
premises. If you don't require every book you read to add to your
understanding of the meaning of life, you'll get much pleasure out of
THE ANUBIS GATES.
*SAN DIEGO LIGHTFOOT SUE AND OTHER STORIES. Tom Reamy. Ace, c1979.
Tom Reamy died at the age of 42 in 1977, leaving behind one novel, the
intriguing but flawed BLIND VOICES, and one story collection, this
one. The collection is also flawed -- the biggest flaw is the sick
Harlan Ellison introduction. I used to like Ellison's introductions in
DV, but this introduction is just terrible. If you ignore the
introduction there are still a few problems but the good parts are
really good. The first story, 'Twilla', is about a mysterious little
girl who arrives in Hawley, Kansas, and the elementary school teacher
begins to suspect the unpleasantness behind the facade. This story,
like BLIND VOICES, succeeds in capturing just the right atmosphere of
the small-town Kansas that Reamy grew up in. 'Under the Hollywood
Sign' is a nasty horror story that preys on heterosexuals' fear of
homosexuality. 'Beyond the Cleft' is a gruesome bit of terror that
takes place in a North Carolina town where children have become
cannibals. 'San Diego Lightfoot Sue' is the story of an amateur witch
who casts a spell to find true love, but it's not the light humorous
story you might expect -- in fact it's quite moving. 'The Detweiler
Boy' is about a hunchbacked boy who seems to have some odd connection
to serial murders in LA (very scary). Three of the other pieces are
light, throwaway stories ('The Sweetwater Factor', 'The Mistress of
Windraven' and 'Waiting for Billy Star'). One story is dumb and
forgettable ('Dinosaurs') and two are so awful as to be truly
embarrassing ('Insects in Amber' and the unfinished movie outline,
'2076: Blue Eyes'); the book would have been much stronger if the
editor (Ellison? Virginia Kidd?) had left these stories and the
introduction out. The book is good, but if you want to get acquainted
with Reamy, buy BLIND VOICES instead.
THE WILD SHORE. Kim Stanley Robinson. Ace, c1984. A short story by
Kim Stanley Robinson called 'Venice Drowned' appeared in UNIVERSE 11
(edited by Terry Carr), and was collected in THE BEST SF OF THE YEAR
#11 (also edited by Terry Carr). This story was a moody description of
an Italian tour guide and his rich Japanese visitors, diving to the
submerged city of Venice in the year 2050 or so. This story left
several troublesome questions behind -- what was responsible for the
change in the weather that so hurt Venice? Why are obnoxious Japanese
scavenging the art treasures of Venice instead of obnoxious Americans?
THE WILD SHORE (first of the new Ace Specials, edited by (guess who?)
Terry Carr) has some answers to these questions. THE WILD SHORE is the
story of Henry Fletcher, a young man who lives in the tiny fishing
village of Onofre, sixty miles or so north of the small town of San
Diego, twenty miles from the fringes of the wasteland that is Orange
County. Henry struggles in the fishing boats for most of each day,
with a little time left to take lessons from one of the few remaining
survivors of the old times, Tom Barnard. One day two men arrive over
the railway from the south on a handcart. They bring word of the
American Resistance and the world beyond the quarantine that cuts
America off from its neighbors. Henry and Tom travel to San Diego to
meet the Mayor, and gradually they begin to piece together the
picture. According to legend, one bright day in 1984 or 1985,
thousands of neutron weapons hidden inside identical Chevy vans went
off simultaneously, all across the country. In the explosions and
subsequent panic, almost the entire population of the country died. Is
this what really happened? Why was the country never rebuilt? This is
really a very well-written book, and full of beautiful images (such as
a walk through the scorched ruins of UCSD :-). If you liked AGAINST
INFINITY, you will really like THE WILD SHORE.
THE SEX SPHERE. Rudy Rucker. Ace, c1983. This has to be the dirtiest
science fiction novel I have read in a long time (maybe ever). It is
also very surreal, and very funny, and appropriately Rucker was the
winner of the First Annual Philip K. Dick Award. A few fragments of
the plot will convince you that the author is totally insane... A
physicist and a mathematician working in Italy succeed in isolating a
piece of hypermatter and force it to lodge in our universe. The
hypermatter promptly eats the physicist. Meanwhile, Alwin Bitter, an
American mathematician who teaches in Heidelberg, is on vacation in
Rome. He goes out for a walk late at night after having sex with his
wife and is accosted by a pimp. The pimp saves him from having to get
involved in a minor traffic accident and to be nice Alwin lets him
drive him back to the hotel. The pimp turns out to be a member of a
gang of kidnappers who ransom people for money, and he chains Alwin up
in a cell beneath the Colosseum. But not for long, because Alwin is
'rescued' by the radical Green Death gang and forced to help build an
atomic bomb. Just as the bomb is about to go off, Alwin is saved by
being transported into the fourth dimension. This goes on, and on, and
on, until reality flickers and nearly fades out. I really don't have
words to describe just how wild this book is. Buy it and find out.
THE VOID CAPTAIN'S TALE. Norman Spinrad. Pocket, c1983. This book
comes with a lot of good reviews on the cover -- does it deserve them?
You'll have to decide for yourself, because this is the sort of book
you'll either love or you'll hate. Genro Kane Gupta is the Void
Captain of the DRAGON ZEPHYR, a ship that travels between the stars
carrying both cargo and passengers, in a manner not unlike a
steamboat. The steerage passengers are in suspended animation, while
the first class passengers live it up in a very stylish way in the
forward cabins and lounges. The Captain has the function of being the
host of the party, while the Domo is the hostess -- the two set the
style and the mood for the guests. The Captain has a subsidiary duty
to press the button which activates the hyperspatial Jump that takes
the ship across the Galaxy in hops of 4 light-years at a time. But
there is more to the hyperspatial travel than meets the eye: it also
requires the participation of a Pilot, who is physiologically linked
into the ship's Jump circuitry. The Pilot (who must be female) enters
a state of ecstasy or nirvana which is used by the alien Jump hardware
to travel through hyperspace. The Pilot usually is a haggard junkie
who lives only for Jumps and is ostracized by the passengers and the
rest of the crew; but on the voyage which the novel is concerned with,
Captain Genro is suprised to discover that the Pilot is a quite comely
and intelligent woman, and he makes the terrible mistake of falling in
love with her. Loving this Pilot is a mistake not just because it
earns the Captain the scorn of his associates, but also because she has
a peculiar and deadly ambition which can only be satisfied through the
Captain... This is certainly Spinrad's best book. I rather liked it,
but you should be wary of the strange dialect used by the narrator (I
had fun with it) and you may find the physical and philosophical
underpinnings of Spinrad's universe hard to digest (I did but I managed
to live with them).
*GENE WOLFE'S BOOK OF DAYS. Gene Wolfe. Doubleday, c1981
(hardcover). The stories in this book vary in age from 1968 to 1981
and they vary considerably in quality, too. It's clear in many of
these stories that Wolfe was struggling for the voice which he later
found and used to great effect in works like PEACE and THE FIFTH HEAD
OF CERBERUS; I don't think this is as good a collection as THE ISLAND
OF DOCTOR DEATH AND OTHER STORIES AND OTHER STORIES, which I highly
recommend. The stories have a minor gimmick -- they are set around the
holidays of the year, from Lincoln's Birthday to New Year's Eve.
Sometimes this fits nicely and sometimes not. The really good stories
outshine the gimmick. 'The Changeling' is a story about a Korean War
vet who comes home to find that some things are different but some
disturbingly aren't. ('The Changeling' is set in the same conceptual
universe as the novel PEACE, and helps to explain some of the
latter...) 'Forlesen' is a very disquieting but also funny story about
a man who can't seem to remember why he exists. 'The War Beneath the
Tree' is a funny and touching story about the struggle of sentient
Christmas toys to survive through the next Christmas. 'Car Sinister'
is a little amusement that purports to divulge the way REAL cars are
manufactured. If you do get the book, DON'T skip the introduction,
which if you ask me is worth the price of the book in itself.
*THE WOLFE ARCHIPELAGO. Gene Wolfe. Ziesing Bros., c1983. This book
puts together three of the stories from the collection THE ISLAND OF
DOCTOR DEATH AND OTHER STORIES AND OTHER STORIES, all with the conceit
that their title is some permutation of 'The Island of Doctor Death'.
The story behind these stories is that in 1971 Wolfe's story 'The
Island of Doctor Death and Other Stories' was up for a Nebula award in
the novella category, and at the banquet Isaac Asimov mistakenly
announced that Wolfe had won, when in fact there had been 'no award'.
The embarrassment must have been agonizing. Joe Hensley later
suggested to Wolfe that he should write a story called 'The Death of
Dr. Island', since it would win easily on the sympathy vote. Wolfe
wrote the story, turning 'The Island of Dr. Death and Other Stories'
inside out, and the resulting tale actually did win the Nebula. 'After
that,' says Wolfe, 'a hundred readers or so challenged me to write "The
Doctor of Death Island",' and he did, and it is collected here with the
other two stories. Superficially the stories are very different. 'The
Island of Doctor Death and Other Stories' is about a child who lives
with his divorced mother and discovers he has a way of entering the
world of the tacky adventure paperbacks he loves to read (or perhaps
vice versa). 'The Death of Dr. Island' is about a psychotic teenager
who has had split-brain surgery and is consigned to a peculiar hospital
in orbit about Jupiter, a hospital which has the form of a sentient
island floating on the waters which cover the inside of a giant
transparent sphere. The boy discovers that he is being used as a tool
to help another patient. 'The Doctor of Death Island' is about Alan
Alvard, the man who invented talking books -- books which have
microscopic computer speech circuitry in their spines and endpapers,
and can discuss with you the contents of their pages. Alvard has been
been sentenced to life for killing his business partner, and when it
becomes apparent that he too will die (of cancer), the court rules that
he can use his funds to be frozen until such time as he can be
revivified and cured. When Alvard awakes he discovers that he has been
cured and granted immortality to boot, but his life sentence without
parole still stands, and worse his patent has been circumvented and he
is penniless. Alvard then concocts a wicked revenge on an almost-
illiterate society... These are three of the best stories from THE
ISLAND OF DOCTOR DEATH AND OTHER STORIES AND OTHER STORIES (not THE
best story, which I contend is 'The Eyeflash Miracles'), and they
provide a belated hardcover edition for some excellent work (ISLAND was
a paperback original). The cover art is well done and amusing, and the
book mark is a clever play on 'The Doctor of Death Island'. I had no
hesitations about buying THE WOLFE ARCHIPELAGO. [And DON'T miss the
introduction! More connections with 'The Changeling'...]
Donn Seeley UCSD Chemistry Dept. ucbvax!sdcsvax!sdchema!donn
32 52' 30"N 117 14' 25"W (619) 452-4016 sdcsvax!sdchema!donn@nosc.ARPA