Short Fiction: November 2017

I had another few weeks of unexpectedly busy life, so I didn’t manage to post all of my recommended short fiction of 2017 before the closing of the Hugo nominations.  In any case, I still want to share the short fiction I’ve enjoyed reading, and I hope to get back to a more stable schedule soon.  For this set of stories, the themes are heists and trickery.  All three authors--Gillian Daniels, Marie Brennan, and J.R. Dawson--are new names to this series of posts.

His Wife and Serpent Mistress by Gillian Daniels (Short Story, Beneath Ceaseless Skies): The Marquis lives with his cruel uncle, and he is in love with a part-serpent woman.  He feels trapped in his life, but sees no way out of it.  When his uncle asks him to marry another woman for money, many truths about his past and present circumstances begin to become clear. The Marquis was an easily sympathetic character, and I was pleasantly surprised that the story did not pit the two women against each other. This was a fun heist story that comes to a delightfully happy ending.

The Siret Mask by Marie Brennan (Short Story, Beneath Ceaseless Skies): Another heist story, this one involves a legendary thief who has an elaborate scheme to steal the famous Siret Mask during a festival. No plan survives contact with the enemy, though, and this one in particular ends up relying on a lot of dangerous improvisation and changing roles.  The story had a lot of energy and fun, and it was also the sort where you feel certain everything will come out alright in the end. 

Marley and Marley by J.R. Dawson (Short Story, Fantasy & Science Fiction Magazine--Buy Here): Marley is orphaned at a young age, and put in the care of an unusual guardian -- herself from the future.  Young Marley is disappointed with what she can see of her future, and the two Marleys do not get along.  As Marley grows up, moving towards her inevitable appointment to raise herself, she considers whether she truly has to accept her future and her past.  This one is a lovely, emotional story that explores how life changes people, and whether people can change themselves.

TV Musings: Summer Sci-Fi

Recently, there has been a truly massive amount of science fiction and fantasy television to enjoy.  In fact, I believe there are around 100 active (airing, upcoming or returning) genre shows right now.  Put in that context, I feel like my watching habits are fairly modest, though I’d prefer to think I’m just highly selective and generally busy reading books.  Today I want to talk about the shows I have enjoyed in the summer of 2016.  All of the following shows have already been renewed, so there will be more to come next year! Did I miss one of your favorites?  Let me know in the comments!

Orphan Black (Season 4):  

Beware of spoilers for previous seasons in the second paragraph.

For anyone unfamiliar with the show, Orphan Black is the story of Sarah Manning, a con artist and single mother, who learns one day that she is a rogue clone from a clandestine, wide-reaching experiment. Over four seasons, Orphan Black has shown itself to be a show of consistently high quality, and has earned a number of awards that include an Emmy (for main actress Tatiana Maslany) as well as a Hugo Award for short form dramatic presentation.  Next year will bring us the final season, and I really hope the writers have an amazing ending in store.  For this year, I expect I’ll nominate “The Scandal of Altruism”, one of several particularly powerful episodes, for the Hugo award for short form dramatic presentation.

At the start of the fourth season, I was surprised to see the story jump in time to the days before clone Beth’s suicide.  The audience has only ever gotten to know Beth through the memories of others, so I was eager to see her world.  On the other hand, these past segments were emotionally intense, and it was hard to watch her suffer with the knowledge of how it would end.  When we returned to the modern day, things were lightened a bit with humor in the lives of criminal soccer mom Alison, ex-assassin Helena, and cosmetic conspiracy theorist Krystal.  Through the past and present, we learn more about Neolution, including the goals and origins of the movement. One last thing that I especially liked in this season is the continuing consideration of how Sarah’s self-absorption affects the people she loves.  Her relationship with Felix is a prime example, and I appreciated that we were able to see some aspects of his life that don’t revolve around Sarah’s drama.  

12 Monkeys (Season 2):

12 Monkeys is my favorite of Syfy’s latest serious scripted science fiction shows, and I’m happy that a third season has already been confirmed.  In a nutshell, the story is initially that of a small group of people who are trying to use time travel to prevent a plague that has wiped out most of humanity in their present.  By the second season, things have moved into a bit more mystical territory, and the main focus is to prevent the Army of the Twelve Monkeys (architects of the plague) from destroying time itself in order to live in an eternal now.

I was a little skeptical of the mystical turn, but the quality of the show was undiminished.  The plot is even more clever and intricate than the first season, and it continues to push the boundaries of how time travel can be used in storytelling.  I enjoyed seeing how Cole, Ramse, Cassie, Jennifer and Jones changed as they face the painful consequences of their actions in this and the previous season.  I really love this cast and how well they play off of one another. On a side note, I was slightly disappointed that Jennifer’s mental health problems were given a supernatural origin.  At the same time, Jennifer also sought psychiatric help and learned to manage her condition with medication, so the writers kind of took this both ways. I think I’ll probably nominate “Lullaby” for a Hugo this year, a fairly self-contained episode where our time travelers attempt to protect time by traveling backward and killing the inventor of time travel (Katarina Jones) just after the death of her daughter.

Stranger Things (Season 1):

I think I and pretty much everyone else on the internet enjoyed this one.  Netflix is putting out some really quality original programming these day. I didn’t know what to expect going in, except that it was some sort of 80’s style sci-fi thriller.  The story involves the disappearance of neighborhood kid Will, whose distraught friends come across a mysterious, frightened, and powerful young girl named “Eleven” during their search for him.  Eleven has escaped from some kind of government compound, whose activities may put the town in danger.

I really liked the consistency of the 80’s vibe (the set, behavior, costumes, etc.).  The story also had a sense of nostalgia, and it was easy to binge-watch the whole season.  I also liked that, while violent things happened, it wasn’t as grimdark as some shows get these days.  I think sometimes I just want to watch a story about people stopping a nefarious government plot and rescuing a little kid, and I don’t want it to have a depressing ending.  On a last note, I liked that this one didn’t go the route of having clueless adults and hero kids.  Each age group tried to solve the problems in front of them as best they could, and for the most part they all believed one another.

Killjoys (Season 2):

Killjoys is another Syfy scripted show, which I thought showed a lot of promise in its first season. The show followed a team of three ‘killjoys’--Dutch, D’avin and John--who take on reclamation contracts for a living.  Dutch is the all-around leader, D’avin is a veteran who specializes in physical, and John is his little brother, who speciailzes in the technical side.  The end of the first season was a game changer, and the three of them became more embroiled in the violent politics of their star system.  After the events of the finale, they are still officially killjoys, but they only accept jobs that aid them in pursuing their own interests (allowing them to cross closed borders, etc.).

The world-building of the previous season pays off now, as there is a ton of story to tell in the Quad System.  I was impressed that just about every character in the show had their own arc. All the same, everything eventually ties neatly together into the broader story of the secrets of the system and the mysteries of Dutch’s past.  In more detail, the two major topics are the intentions behind the isolating wall that Qresh has put around Oldtown (in Westerly) after its bombing, and what is going on with the “Sixes”--sociopathic, self-healing assassins.  My only nitpicks about the show so far are pretty minor, such as the ridiculous spellings of the characters’ names (seriously, Khlyen? Pawter? D’avin?).  The end of the season marks another major shift in the premise, and I can’t wait to see what happens next.  I didn’t nominate any episode from season one for a Hugo, but I’m thinking that “Johnny Be Good” is award-worthy this time around.  

Dark Matter (Season 2):

Dark Matter is yet another Syfy show, and let me just say that I am loving how many space operas they have on their production list at the moment.  I thought the first season was promising, though it had some weaknesses.  Due to starting the series with mass amnesia, I felt like it took a really long time to firmly establish the characters beyond superficialities.  The world building is also a little unfocused, to the extent that I’m only starting to get a sense of the connections in their universe near the end of the second season.    

In the second season, the show suffered from a lack of focus.  Every single character had a subplot of their own, but they didn’t really seem to be building into anything larger.  There are hints of an imminent corporate war, but it doesn’t really seem to interest the crew of the Rasa all that much.  Also, with the way the story hops from one character’s personal story to another, sometimes the revelations and climaxes feel a little rushed.  On the positive side, all of these unconnected stories are really entertaining. There’s Portia’s history as a deadly science experiment, Android’s exploration of humanity, Ryo’s imperial succession family drama, tough-guy Markus’s uneasiness with his unsavory and grief-filled past, and more. I like the individual pieces, I just hope they build into something larger and more coherent in future seasons.

Review: The Many-Colored Land by Julian May

The Many-Colored Land by Julian May

Published: Houghton Mifflen, 1981

Series: Book 1 of the Saga of the Pliocene Exile

Awards Won: Locus SF

Awards Nominated: Nebula Award, Hugo Award, Mythopoeic Award, Prometheus Award

The Book:

“In the year 2034, Theo Guderian, a French physicist, made an amusing but impractical discovery: the means to use a one-way, fixed-focus time warp that opened into a place in the Rhone River valley during the idyllic Pliocene Epoch, six million years ago. But, as time went on, a certain usefulness developed. The misfits and mavericks of the future—many of them brilliant people—began to seek this exit door to a mysterious past. In 2110, a particularly strange and interesting group was preparing to make the journey—a starship captain, a girl athlete, a paleontologist, a woman priest, and others who had reason to flee the technological perfection of twenty-second-century life.

The group that passes through the time-portal finds an unforeseen strangeness on the other side. Far from being uninhabited, Pliocene Europe is the home of two warring races from another planet...” ~barnesandnoble.com

My Thoughts:

From the beginning, I thought this was a really fun idea.  The story of colonization is a familiar one, where misfits take off on a risky one-way journey to found a society that is hopefully more to their liking.  The twist in this case is that they are colonizing the Earth’s past.  I enjoyed the ideas of how a future civilization would prepare its pioneers, and seeing what sorts of people would want to leave a spacefaring future for a distant past.  I especially liked the training camp, and the way people were organized to learn various useful trades.  Of course, once they got to the Pliocene, things changed dramatically from a tale of survival and building a society to fighting against their new alien masters.  I think it would have been a pretty fun premise without the aliens, but switching the course to a power struggle against powerful aliens also made for a lot of excitement and drama.   

The novel is split between the viewpoints of a large number of main characters that travel together through the time portal.  The group is divided in two, and the handling of the two groups makes it very clear that this novel is a small part of a larger series.  One of the groups has a pretty dramatic arc, while the other seems relegated a to background, as if it will come into more prominence in later books.  Since there are so many characters, and since the story is plot-driven and full of Pliocene scenery descriptions, there isn’t very much time to develop each character individually.  They each have characteristics that make them distinct, but they are not yet particularly complex.  They seem to fit various archetypes, or perhaps mythological types, since the story also echoes a number of myths.  A few characters do achieve some personal growth, but they are primarily just the players through which the reader experiences the adventures of the Pliocene.  

Out of the large case, I enjoyed reading about some of them, though I found others a little exasperating.  Some of my favorites would have to be the priest, Amerie, and her friend, an elderly widowed archeologist named Claude.  They both seemed to have the healthiest attitude about their goals in their destination, and I think they have the strength of character to make something worthwhile out of their circumstances.  On the other end of the spectrum are people like Bryan, an anthropologist who took a one-way ticket to the Pliocene based on an unrequited crush.  Finally, the novel has a character that everyone seems to instinctively dislike and distrust for no discernable reason, an aggressive and powerful young woman named Felice.  I’ve seen how these things usually go, so I’m pretty sure the rest of the saga will not go well for Felice.  I had a lot of fun reading this first novel of the series, but I’m not sure I’m interested to see what happens next.  

My Rating: 3.5/5

If the idea of a bunch of future misfits taking a one-way ticket into the Earth’s distant past to fight aliens sounds like fun to you, then The Many-Colored Land is probably a book to check out. The story features a large cast of differing viewpoint characters, each with their own background, personality, and clash with future-modern life. The descriptions of the Earth’s Pliocene Epoch are vivid and interesting, and the struggle against the alien interlopers makes for an exciting story.  I’m not sure if I was engaged enough to read the rest of the series, but The Many-Colored land was a pretty fun adventure.

Review: The Dragon and the George by Gordon R. Dickson

The Dragon and the George by Gordon R. Dickson

Published: Ballantine Books, 1975

Series: Book 1 of the Dragon Knight

Awards Won: British Fantasy Society

Awards Nominated: World Fantasy Award

The Book:

“Jim Eckert was a dragon. He hadn't planned it that way, but that's what happened when he set out to rescue his betrothed. Following her through an erratic astral-projection machine, Jim suddenly found himself in a cockeyed world - locked in the body of a talking dragon named Gorbash.

That wouldn't have been so bad if his beloved Angie were also a dragon. But in this magical land, that was not the case. Angie had somehow remained a very female human - or a george, as the dragons called any human. And Jim, no matter what anyone called him, was a dragon.

To make matters worse, Angie had been taken prisoner by an evil dragon and was held captive in the impenetrable Loathly Tower. So in this land where georges were edible and beasts were magical - where spells worked and logic didn't - Jim Eckert had a problem.
And he needed help, by george!” ~Goodreads.com

This is the first book I’ve read by Gordon R. Dickson, and I chose it for the 12 Awards 12 Months reading challenge.  I bought a really old copy of the book at a used bookstore, so this is one of my relatively rare physical books.  The Dragon and the George kicks off a very long-running series of Dragon Knight novels.

The Book:

I had the feeling that The Dragon and the George might have been intended to be a parody of a standard good-vs-evil fantasy, but it also seems to simply be that sort of a novel. There are a lot of jokes about various clichés along the way, but it doesn’t really go very far beyond them.  For instance, there’s a lot of tongue-in-cheek type stuff with a sorcerer who talks about a magical IRS, but he still fulfills the standard role of the wizard who guides the hero’s quest and provides support at the darkest times.  In another example, Jim becoming a dragon kind of subverts the ‘knight’ hero, but it doesn’t actually change his fellowship-gathering or damsel-rescuing in any major way. The characters were mostly stock, though often amusing, and everything progressed as you would expect in this kind of pseudo-medieval quest fantasy.

Because it does seem to be intended as light and comedic, there are a lot of things that just seem to be hand-waved away.  For instance, the whole story takes place because Jim’s fiancée is accidentally transported to a magical medieval land during a University astral projection experiment.  I guess astral projection was a popular topic in the 70s, but it comes across as pretty silly today.  I also found it kind of weird that everyone seemed to accept that the fantasy land—with its dragons, magic, etc.—actually was medieval Europe. Given how aggressive a few of the characters were about mentioning their nationalities, I wondered if this was to allow for some kind of tongue-in-cheek social commentary.  If so, I think it is probably too specific to the time and place of publication to be particularly meaningful to me. In these ways, as well as in its simple story structure, The Dragon and the George felt really dated.  However, I still think it would be an entertaining story for a reader in the mood for this kind of light fantasy.

My Rating: 2.5/5

The Dragon and the George felt to me like it wanted to be a parody of a generic fantasy novel while still being a generic fantasy novel. It was pretty cute and funny, but it never strayed very far from the expected. I think it may have been more unconventional when it was first published, but now it feels rather predictable and dated. It’s still an entertaining, undemanding, comedic novel, though, and I think it would be a pretty fun beach read for fans of light medieval-Europe style fantasy stories.

Review: Replay by Ken Grimwood

Replay by Ken Grimwood

Published: Grafton, 1987

Awards Won: World Fantasy Award

Awards Nominated: Arthur C. Clarke Award

The Book:

“Jeff Winston was 43 and trapped in a tepid marriage and a dead-end job, waiting for that time when he could be truly happy, when he died.

And when he woke and he was 18 again, with all his memories of the next 25 years intact. He could live his life again, avoiding the mistakes, making money from his knowledge of the future, seeking happiness.

Until he dies at 43 and wakes up back in college again...” ~Goodreads.com

Replay is the first novel I’ve read by Ken Grimwood, and it seems that it is his most well-known work.  It appears that a few of his other novels were connected to details in Replay, which I think is a really interesting idea.  Unfortunately, Grimwood’s lesser-known works are currently a little difficult to find, so I don’t know when or if I will be able to read them.  

My Thoughts:

I had high expectations for Replay, but it took me a while to really warm up to the book.  I started reading it twice in the past few years, only to get distracted and put it down. I can trace my lack of interest to an ironic difficulty I have in identifying with ‘everyman’ protagonists.  Jeff Winston, in the beginning, seemed to be exactly that, and his first replay started with the pursuit of fast money and fast women. I’m very glad that I finally settled in to read the novel, because the story became so much more than it first appeared.  Jeff’s subsequent replays of his life began to build on one another, such that his mental state and identity became increasingly complicated and compelling as the story progresses. In retrospect, I can see how Jeff needed to get those juvenile dreams out of his system when he was first faced with inexplicable new youth, but he was not the kind of shallow person who could accept their fulfillment as the end of his journey.

The replays carried with them great promise, but also great sadness, since every life was self-contained.  Jeff had numerous lifetimes to explore the limits of his capabilities and to learn how he could affect the world, but he could never move past his 43^rd year of life. Jeff could never grow old with his family, and he had to start each new life knowing that everything he had accomplished, every relationship he had developed, had been wiped out as if it never existed.  I thought it was a very interesting situation—giving a person the opportunity to shape their lives as they wish, but also repeatedly erasing everything they achieve.  It’s such a strange balance between optimism and meaninglessness, and I enjoyed seeing how characters would react to being faced with this again and again.  Jeff was not one to passively accept his situation, and his search for understanding of himself and his situation propelled the story.

Given the repetitive nature of the premise, I was surprised that the story did not actually feel repetitious.  Each of Jeff’s lives go in very different directions, both in terms of his external situation and in terms of how he has changed as a result of his experiences.  The story also has a few surprising game changers that Jeff uncovers as he searches for meaning in his ‘replays’, but I don’t want to spoil them here.  At points, I feared that the ending would be a bit sappy and trite, but those fears turned out to be unfounded.  I felt that the ending was neither altogether happy nor sad, but instead filled with a sense of hope and uncertainty. Replay was published nearly thirty years ago now, and it is set in a particular period of history, but I think that the story will continue to resonate with readers for many years to come.

My Rating: 5/5

I had high expectations of Replay, and after I made it through Jeff’s first replay of his life, the rest of the story exceeded them.  It is a story about the risks people take or avoid in their lives and what they could accomplish with the assurance of second chances. It’s also a story about coping with circumstances outside of one’s control, and of facing the reality that one’s accomplishments will be swept away as if they had never existed.  Jeff starts out chasing juvenile dreams of money and sex, but with his many lives, he has an opportunity to see what kind of a person he is capable of becoming.  Several plot twists make the story delightfully more complicated, and I felt that things came together into a surprisingly hopeful and clear-sighted conclusion. Though it is set in a time that is growing increasingly distant from modern day, I think this is a story that can pass the test of time.

Review: The Time Ships by Stephen Baxter

The Time Ships by Stephen Baxter

Published : HarperCollins UK/HarperPrism (1996)

Awards Won : British Science Fiction Association,  John W. Campbell Memorial, and Philip K. Dick Awards

Awards Nominated : British Fantasy Society, Arthur C. Clarke, Hugo and Locus SF Awards

The Book :

“After H.G. Wells’s time traveler returns from his first journey, he is determined to head back to rescue his companion Weena from the deadly Morlocks.  However, as he travels forward in time, he finds that he is no longer passing through the same future.  Faced with the proof that history is not as concrete and unchangeable as he would have liked to believe, the time traveler moves into a world that baffles his comprehension.

Instead of fighting Morlocks, a gentle scientist and nursemaid Morlock, Nebogipfel, becomes his companion.  They travel through the eons together, altering both future and past as they struggle to survive and to see what the future might become.  Also, somewhere within the multitude of realities created by their travel through time, a frightened Weena is still being lost to the Morlocks of that original dark future.” ~Allie

This is the first of Baxter’s works that I’ve reviewed for this blog, but I have read a fair amount of his short and long fiction in the past.  In general, I’m a fan of his work, so I was happy to finally get around to reading this highly acclaimed novel. Sadly, I finished this book in December 2013, so it’s not eligible for any of my 2014 challenges.   My next two reviews, of The Shadow of the Torturer and Fairyland, are also not going to be considered eligible.  I finished them in January/February of 2014, but I started reading them both in December 2013.  I’m starting the year a bit behind in challenges, but I hope I’ll be able to catch up soon!

My Thoughts:

The Time Ships is a direct sequel to H.G. Wells’s The Time Machine, and I do think it would be necessary to read that first—though I imagine most people with an interest in science fiction will have already read it!  The Time Ships is told from the point of view of the Time Traveler, and Baxter even mimics the voice of the first novel somewhat, with its stiff Victorian prose and plenitude of exclamation points!  There’s also plenty of discussion of the nature of time travel, as well as other scientific or philosophical topics, so The Time Ships also keeps up with Wells’s dryness. At first, I wasn’t sure if this style was going to work in a modern piece of fiction, but, in my opinion, Baxter managed to make it seem charmingly reminiscent of Wells while still telling a fun story about interesting characters.

The novel followed Wells’s style in some ways, but it also provided a more modern view of its time-traveling Victorian explorer hero.  I enjoyed the protagonist more that I usually do with this character type, and I think part of the reason may have been that the story constantly acknowledged his arrogance and small-mindedness.  I felt that the story managed to show him as an admirable person who was also a product of his time and culture, without minimizing the flaws that this implied. I also enjoyed how his adventures forced him to confront his prejudices and preconceptions, forcing him to grow little by little.  The story also benefited greatly from its secondary hero, the Morlock Nebogipfel.  While Nebogipfel’s culture is nothing like our own, his attitude often seemed closer to a modern ideal than the Time Traveler’s. Nebogipfel has his own flaws, but he tries very hard to be understanding and patient with the Time Traveler’s shortcomings.  Together, the two of them made a team that I was happy to follow in their journeys through the ages of the Earth.  

Though the style can sometimes be a bit dry, and there are many side discussions, I think that The Time Ships is a pretty exciting time travel story.  I thought it was a neat idea to update The Time Machine’s time travel to the more current multiple-universe idea, and I appreciated that the novel stuck to its in-universe rules.  The Time Traveler and Nebogipfel range widely in their travels, and experience more than either of them could have expected. We get to see the planet’s deep past, its far future, several different civilizations, and even the effects of the development of time travel on the course of histories. All of this fits together logically and narratively with the personal story of Nebogipfel and the Time Traveler, and the conclusion brings the story full circle.

My Rating: 4/5

I think that The Time Ships is a worthy sequel to H.G. Wells’s The Time Machine, and it manages to tell a very different sort of story while still linking to the previous novel.  I appreciated the acknowledgement of the Time Traveler’s flaws, and the addition of the more enlightened Morlock protagonist Nebogipfel. I liked the use of the multiple-universe theory of time travel, and how the story followed the branches of different futures caused by the actions of the protagonists.  There is a lot of scientific and philosophical discussion throughout the story, but I found most of it quite interesting.  In the end, I can see why this one ended up on the radar for so many awards!

Review: Redshirts by John Scalzi

Redshirts : A Novel with Three Codas by John Scalzi

Published : Tor, 2012

Awards Won : Locus SF Award, Hugo Award

The Book :

”Ensign Andrew Dahl has just been assigned to the Universal Union Capital Ship Intrepid, flagship of the Universal Union since the year 2456. It’s a prestige posting, and Andrew is thrilled all the more to be assigned to the ship’s Xenobiology laboratory.

Life couldn’t be better…until Andrew begins to pick up on the fact that (1) every Away Mission involves some kind of lethal confrontation with alien forces, (2) the ship’s captain, its chief science officer, and the handsome Lieutenant Kerensky always survive these confrontations, and (3) at least one low-ranked crew member is, sadly, always killed.

Not surprisingly, a great deal of energy below decks is expended on avoiding, at all costs, being assigned to an Away Mission. Then Andrew stumbles on information that completely transforms his and his colleagues’ understanding of what the starship Intrepid really is…and offers them a crazy, high-risk chance to save their own lives.” ~WWEnd.com

This is only the second novel I’ve read by John Scalzi, though I intend to finish the Old Man’s War series at some point.  I’m reading this novel in an attempt to get through the Hugo nominees before the end of the voting period (KSR’s 2312 is still looming—I may not get that one finished in time).

My Thoughts :

The entirety of Redshirts is basically a long-running meta-fictional joke.  The title takes its name from a trope of the original Star Trek series, in which red-shirted, nameless extras were constantly killed off, usually to further a protagonist’s plot or to show the severity of a situation. These redshirts, who come into this status after their transfer to the Intrepid, are the heroes of Scalzi’s novel. They have to work together to figure out why their lives are suddenly being manipulated (and destroyed), by what seems to be a crappy Star Trek knock-off science fiction television show.  This resulted in a lot of really hilarious situational humor, as they try to use the nonsensical TV logic to their benefit.  While I did enjoy the humor, I think the story might have worked better in a shorter form of fiction.  Redshirts isn’t a long book, but the joke was already wearing a bit thin by the end.

The style of the book was also very bland, in a way that I think was intended to be a comedic take on bad science fiction.  The sentences were usually short and non-descriptive, and the story was dominated by dialogue.  The characters all had pretty similar, forgettable names (Hanson, Hester, Dahl, Duvall, Finn, etc.), and just about every line dialogue seemed tagged with “<name/pronoun> said”.  This worked well for a lot of the humor, giving the dialogue kind of a deadpan feeling, but it also became very repetitive quite quickly.  I think there is a thin line between writing deliberately badly in a parodic way, and just writing badly. I still found the story funny and entertaining, but I could see it going the other way for other readers. 

As story moves more into the meta-fictional realm, it begins to try to become a more serious kind of story.  I felt like this was a bit undercut by the writing style and the continuous jokes, but it was interesting to see how relatively normal people would react to this kind of an absurd situation.  For instance, one character comments about religious faith: 

 “I mean, you know and I know that in this universe, god is a hack,” he said.  “He’s a writer on an awful science fiction television show, and He can’t plot His way out of a box.  How do you have faith when you know that?” ~p.96

There is some interesting discussion about free will, and whether one can have a meaningful life without it. The story actually draws together to a surprisingly serious conclusion for such a tongue-in-cheek novel.  The three codas don’t seem especially necessary, but it was neat to see more of how the events of the story might affect “real” people.  I enjoyed the humor more than anything else in Redshirts, but I was pretty satisfied by the way the story ended.

My Rating : 3.5/5

Redshirts, as a joke story based on a Star Trek trope, is a fast, light, humorous novel to read.  It isn’t very long, but I kind of got the feeling that the joke might have been better suited to shorter fiction.  The writing is very choppy, simplistic, and dominated by dialogue.  While this style often underlines the absurd humor nicely, it also gets old after a while.  As the meta-fictional elements became more dominant, the story took some surprisingly serious turns (given the ridiculous premise).  I can see how this is a novel that will not be to everyone’s tastes, I got a lot of laughs from its funnier moments.

Review: The Chronoliths by Robert Charles Wilson

The Chronoliths by Robert Charles Wilson

Published: Tor, 2001

Awards Won: John W. Campbell Award

Awards Nominated: Hugo and Locus SF Awards

The Book:

“Scott Warden is a man haunted by the past—and soon to be haunted by the future. In early twenty-first-century Thailand, Scott is an expatriate slacker. Then, one day, he inadvertently witnesses an impossible event: the violent appearance of a 200-foot stone pillar in the forested interior. Its arrival collapses trees for a quarter mile around its base, freezing ice out of the air and emitting a burst of ionizing radiation. It appears to be composed of an exotic form of matter. And the inscription chiseled into it commemorates a military victory—sixteen years in the future.

Shortly afterwards, another, larger pillar arrives in the center of Bangkok-obliterating the city and killing thousands. Over the next several years, human society is transformed by these mysterious arrivals from, seemingly, our own near future. Who is the warlord "Kuin" whose victories they note? Scott wants only to rebuild his life. But some strange loop of causality keeps drawing him in, to the central mystery and a final battle with the future.” ~WWEnd.com

This is the second book I’ve read by Robert Charles Wilson, the first being Spin. The Chronoliths had a lot of basic similarities to Spin, though there are many differences in the details.  Of the two novels, I ended up preferring The Chronoliths, and I am curious to see more of Wilson’s work in the future.

My Thoughts:

The basic similarities between Spin and The Chronoliths left me often reading with a vague sense of “déjà lu”. Both stories feature an unexplained scientific phenomenon (involving temporal manipulation) that has a destabilizing effect on modern society.  Within this setting, both stories focus on the personal life of an ordinary protagonist.  The protagonist is a rather self-deprecating adult male who considers himself to be mediocre in his chosen field.  His life is largely shaped by his friendship with a highly regarded genius and his protective, fragile relationship with a vulnerable young woman.  He is hired by the genius, nominally for his professional skills, but actually to provide human companionship. Because of this, he learns about the nature of the scientific phenomenon. Despite these many basic similarities, The Chronoliths is much more than a proto-Spin. The strength of the characters and the ideas explored through the time-traveling monuments shape The Chronoliths into a novel that I will not forget anytime soon.

While there are some echoes of Scott Warden in Spin’s Tyler Dupree, I personally found Scott to be a more compelling protagonist.  While Scott is pulled into the circle studying the chronoliths more or less randomly, his personality is not that of a simple bystander.  He is constantly struggling to shape his own life, and to protect the people he cares about.  Scott is also no stranger to failure, and I was impressed by his maturity in being able to recognize and address his own failings. Specifically, after he fails his wife and daughter, he does not launch a campaign to ‘win’ his wife back.  He accepts that he has damaged his marriage beyond repair, and he does the best he can to salvage his relationship with his daughter (the young woman he wants to protect).  Scott does not always make the wisest decisions, but, to me, his flaws were what made him such a sympathetic protagonist.

Aside from Scott, there are many other characters (of varying levels of development) that fill out the world.  The eccentric genius Sue Chopra and her entourage are intensely dedicated to the studies of the chronoliths.  Through the personal lives of Scott, his daughter, his ex-wife, and her new husband, we see more of the social effects of Kuin’s chronoliths—organizations with strong opinions on Kuin and his supposed ideology.  There are also others that Scott meets throughout the story, such as the ex-pat drug dealer he befriends in Thailand. Though many of the characters are minor, it seems that they all have an important role to play in the story. 

In addition to the characters, I was very intrigued by the role of the chronoliths themselves.  While they’re mysterious and overwhelming, they’re also clearly a human undertaking (though the science is pretty fictional).  Since they presumably come from the near future, understanding the science and motivation behind the structures is never seen as an unobtainable goal. Furthermore, human perception shapes the importance of the chronoliths, in what Sue Chopra calls a ‘feedback loop’.  To put it very simply, when a monument to a future victorious battle appears in the past, it creates an expectation that the battle will occur and end in a certain way.  The belief that this will come to pass makes it more likely to happen.  I thought it was an intriguing way to tell a kind of ‘self-fulfilling prophecy’ story within the structure of science fiction.  However, rather than being unwitting victims of fate, the characters are consciously working to understand and manipulate the forces at play.   

My Rating: 4/5

The Chronoliths was very similar to Spin in its basic story and some character dynamics, but the many interesting details of The Chronoliths set it apart.  Though it is a story about a mysterious scientific phenomenon, the human perception of the chronoliths was more important than their physical existence. The arrivals of the chronoliths were physically destructive, but their main effect on the world was through human psychology and ideas of fate.  Wilson has an excellent cast assembled to explore these ideas, headed by the flawed and sympathetic Scott Warden.  Scott is an ‘everyman’ character who is drawn into the mystery of the chronoliths, while also trying to maintain his personal life in a changing world. This was a very entertaining and engrossing story, and it now ranks as my favorite novel by Robert Charles Wilson.

The Big Time by Fritz Leiber

The Big Time by Fritz Leiber

Published: Galaxy Science Fiction, 1957

Awards Won: Hugo Award

The Book:

“Have you ever worried about your memory, because it doesn't seem to recall exactly the same past from one day to the next? Have you ever thought that the whole universe might be a crazy, mixed-up dream? If you have, then you've had hints of the Change War.

It's been going on for a billion years and it will last another billion or so. Up and down the timeline, the two sides--"Spiders" and "Snakes"--battle endlessly to change the future and the past. Our lives, our memories, are their battleground. And in the midst of the war is the Place, outside space and time, where Greta Forzane and the other Entertainers provide solace and r-&-r for tired time warriors.” ~WWend.com

This is my second-to-last novel for WWend’s 2012 GrandMaster’s Reading Challenge.  Fritz Leiber was an author with a wide-ranging imagination, who applied his skill to many kinds of speculative fiction.  He wrote a number of Hugo award-winning science fiction stories (including this one), but he was also the author of many acclaimed works in horror and fantasy. Last year, I reviewed his horror/urban fantasy novel Conjure Wife, which may soon get its 4th film adaptation. The styles of Conjure Wife and The Big Time are so different that they seem almost written by different people.  I think that Conjure Wife was written more for wide appeal, which could be one of the reasons why it has been adapted to film so often.  The Big Time, on the other hand, is a very unusual book, and one that I could see having a smaller audience through the years.

My Thoughts:

I think that Leiber’s background in theatre is evident in The Big Time.  It is very easy to imagine the story being performed on stage, and—unless you wanted to do something elaborate with the alien costumes—I don’t think it would even be an especially expensive production.  The set and various prop pieces are very clearly described (as such) by the narrator, and the entire story takes place in a single location (called the Place).  The story is tightly bounded in time, as well, telling the events of a short period in the lives of Greta, the other entertainers, and a small group of time soldiers.  The eventual mystery and its resolution are paced well, and I appreciated that the reader is actually given all the clues to solve the mystery on their own.  As in a play, most of the surface plot of the story is told through visual description and dialogue.  I liked how Leiber gave each of the characters a distinct style of speech, reflecting their home time period, but I thought that it sometimes sounded a little too stilted.  I feel like the dialogue might come across better in a well-performed audiobook, or in a conversion of the story to stage drama.  

The strong personality of the first-person narrator, Greta Forzane, might be a major factor in whether or not one enjoys the novel.  She’s '29 and a party girl', and she tells her story in a very casual and conversational way.  Here’s an example of some of her early exposition:

“…you are not likely to meet me in the cosmos, because (bar Basin Street and the Prater) 15th Century Italy and Augustan Rome—until they spoiled it—are my favorite (Ha!) vacation spots and, as I have said, I stick as close to the Place as I can. It is really the nicest Place in the whole Change World. (Crisis! I even think of it capitalized!)

Anyhoo, when this thing started, I was twiddling my thumbs on the couch nearest the piano and thinking it was too late to do my fingernails and whoever came in probably wouldn't notice them anyway.” ~Chapter 1

To me, Greta seems pretty immature and ditzy, but I don’t think that would be a fair assessment of her character in total.  She seems to strive to diminish herself in order to care for others more.  She doesn’t really have strong opinions or convictions (except that the Surgery room is awful), and thus frames most situations in terms of how they affect the people around her. Her behavior and style of narration make her seem kind of empty-headed, but she proves to have pretty good reasoning skills.  It seemed almost as if her self-dismissive party-girl persona was designed to keep her focused on her work and distracted from thinking too seriously about her life.

The different ways Greta and the other characters cope with their strange lives is what lies behind most of the conflict of the novel.  All of the characters have been permanently removed from their natural timelines to fight a war that seems to have no end or final goal.  They know very little about either side, so they don’t even know whether they’re fighting to achieve an outcome that they would consider worthwhile. Regardless, the decisions made by the “Spiders” completely govern the characters’ lives. They don’t even have control over their own minds, as the actions of soldiers in the war alter their own memories of their lives.  Since they have essentially no control over their own destiny, they are left in a continuing existence that seems arbitrary and purposeless. The characters grapple with the facts of their existence in their separate ways and consider whether an attempt at rebellion is even a meaningful gesture.  The exploration of these reactions made the story much more compelling to me, but also considerably bleaker.

My Rating: 3.5/5

The Big Time is a very short novel, and one that I think I appreciated more than I enjoyed reading it.  The narrator, Greta, with her exaggeratedly ditzy behavior and moments of clarity and insight, may be a difficult character to like, and her personality colors the entire story.  I think it’s a pretty common observation that this novel is very influenced by principles of theatre, and even that it would be very easy to convert this story into a relatively simple theatre production.  The basic plot and eventual mystery moves along swiftly, with plenty of character-based tension (prompted by circumstances).  However, the underlying existential crisis of the characters gives the story a surprisingly depressing depth.  It’s definitely a strange novel, but I think I’m glad I gave it a chance.

For more of a discussion of the philosophical content of the novel, The Hugo Endurance Project has a good review here.