Electronic OtherRealms #24 Spring, 1989 Part 3 of 10 Copyright 1989 by Chuq Von Rospach All Rights Reserved OtherRealms may not be reproduced without permission from Chuq Von Rospach. Permission is given to electronically distribute this issue only if all copyrights, author credits and return addresses remain intact. No article may be reprinted or re-used without permission of the author. Much Rejoicing Dan'l Danehy-Oakes Copyright 1989 by Dan'l Danehy-Oakes Episode 9: Not Yet a Vast Wasteland Molly Dear: The Autobiography of an Android Stephen Fine, St. Martin's, 1988, 0-312-02254-9, $18.95 Helen O'Loy never had it so good. Science fiction is often a powerful medium for social comment. This is why non-genre writers frequently step into the genre briefly to write their own visions of utopia, dystopia, or what-have-you: and, depending on the writer, the results can be as good as Nineteen Eighty-Four and The Sentimental Agents or as bad as The Terminal Man and Shikasta. Similarly, many genre writers, from Philip K. Dick to Fredrik Pohl and C.M. Kornbluth by way of Robert A. Heinlein and Joanna Russ, have taken advantage of the genre's built-in ability to mess around with the reader's perception of society. Science fiction is also a powerful tool for examining fundamental questions, and particularly the question of an operative definition of humanity. Examples of this examination abound, from The Caves of Steel to A Case of Conscience. Alas, the two rarely mix. This is, perhaps, the signal flaw in Stephen Fine's first novel. The book is entitled Molly Dear, to which my mind keeps trying to append an -EST, and is frustrating from start to finish. It promises much; and while it delivers what it promises, the goods delivered are damaged and muddled. The story is an old one, what you might call "robot picaresque." An android or robot comes to full sentience; its innocent actions are taken for rebellion; it has a series of adventures and misadventures, including capture for reprogramming, contact with the genuine rebel underground, interludes with the highest and lowest levels of human society, etc., etc. The implementation of the story is rather more original. The rebel underground are actually a bunch of zoned-out space hippies trying to bring about the perfect human-android world through interbreeding -- between humans and sentient fungi, ferchrissakes; might as well have them fucking rutabagas -- and, believe it or not, meditation and tantric yoga. The story's science is rather more wonky. I've already glanced off the biological problems with Fine's idea of androids; to that, I'll add only that he seems deucedly unclear at times whether they're living things or machines. (I don't mean that the narrator seems unclear on this issue. She is perfectly well-versed in the science of her own creation. It's the science itself that's so pseudo that my brain hurt.) Fine also treats us to a ship that can handle an Earth-to-Mars trip in three days without smooshing its passengers. Implicit in such an arrangement is either gravity control or the infamous inertialess drive; but no other sign of either of these technologies is to be seen anywhere. Indeed, the ship itself is mentioned for the first time only a few seconds before Molly Dear boards it, and its presence at that moment is more in the lines of a failed deus-ex-machina than logical extrapolation from the culture at hand. Molly's focus is her treatment by her human masters/creators. As such, it might be an interesting social-commentary novel on the treatment of subject groups by society as a whole, whether blacks (hispanics, women, subject group of your choice) in America or Arabs in Israel. But the actual relationship between humans and androids in Fine's postulated society is so lacking in any analogy to any real human society that it loses all bite, and degenerates into mere flailing. Similarly, Fine has some fine moments of focus in which Molly is clearly more human than her human intimates. But these fail to gel into an examination of humanity, in large part because they keep getting mixed up with the political issues of the novel. In all, Molly Dear is a failure, but a failure more interesting than many writers' most successful works. Stephen Fine has an excellent sense of language (Molly Dear reminded me of an abnormally well-written 19th century "confessional novel") and vision that may lead him to create some excellent work in the future. I'll be looking forward eagerly to his next book, and hoping he learns from the experience of Molly Dear; but I fear I can't in good conscience recommend Molly Dear to you. There Are Doors Gene Wolfe, TOR, 1988, 0-312-93099-2, $17.95 Happily, I can recommend Gene Wolfe's latest, There Are Doors, without reservation. It's a romp, a frolic, a sheer pleasure, and it's also the best novel Philip K. Dick never wrote. Doors has a lot of the same something-is-going-on-outside-the-frame weirdness that made Free Live Free such a treat. Our hero, unnamed (or, rather, given a series of false names by other characters. His real name *may* be Mr. Green), meets a woman and falls in love. She leaves unexpectedly. He follows her as best he can, and finds himself in a world so much like ours that it takes him a while to understand the differences. (Indeed, "Green" is rather an innocent; the reader is generally three steps ahead of him in understanding his circumstances.) This world-shift leads to the sort of disorientation Dick was famous for. At one point, "Green" reflects on his encounter with Sheng, a Chinese-born American citizen who acts exactly like a '40s stereotype of a "Chinaman." In the world he knows, he thinks, Chinese folks simply do not act like that. To reveal much more would be to spoil the book. Let me simply say that "Green" does indeed find his love -- indeed, finds her several times over -- and that the ending, while ambiguous, is quite pleasant. Justice is done, virtue is rewarded (or is its own reward), and villains get exactly what they deserve. Dancing at the Edge of the World: Thoughts on Words, Women, Places Ursula K. LeGuin, Grove Press, 1989, 0-8021-1105-X, $19.95 What can you say about a collection of essays on topics ranging all over the map, from menopause to book reviews to travelog to the making of a TV movie? The easiest thing to say, I suppose, is to say "it's by Ursula K. LeGuin and you should go and read it right now." For an awful lot of people the name LeGuin alone is sufficient cause to go and toss $20 on the counter at their local B. Walden chain bookstore and demand a copy. For the reader who simply refuses to be intimidated by the mere name of one of the finest craftspeople and artists in American letters today, then, I added the second half of that statement. This is LeGuin's selection of her essays and book reviews from the past decade (more or less). Even if you don't agree with everything she has to say, and I don't always, her saying it makes it worth listening to: both because she has thought long and deeply upon the topics at hand, and because the essays themselves are a pleasure to read. If you're not convinced, at this point, there's simply no hope for you, and I suggest you go read a novel by Piers Anthony. Memories of the Space Age Ballard, J.G., Arkham House, 1988, 0-87054-157-9, $16.95. I think I've mentioned J.G.Ballard in these pages once or thrice before. Yes, Carroll & Graf are still at it, and, no, this isn't a review of one of those. Memories of the Space Age is a new book, but of old stories. Most of them -- I'm tempted to say all but I'm not certain about two of them -- have been collected in some of Ballard's previous collections. Therefore, I can't really say the Ballard fan should go out and buy Memories. I'd recommend it highly to someone new to Ballard, however, and the utter hard-core Ballard fan (me) will buy it anyway, if only for the artwork. Arkham have outdone themselves, with a Max Ernst wraparound cover and gorgeous interior illustrations by J.G. Potter, he of the peculiar camera, the man who invented photo-surrealism. So I suppose I'm addressing myself here to those who don't often read Ballard. Much of JGB's work deals with decadence and decay. There is a charm to decay that has fascinated science fiction writers all the way back to H.G. Wells with his Morlocks and Eloi; the concept was picked up right away by the pulp writers, notably the Don A. Stuart version of John W. Campbell. Ballard, then, is working in a well-established tradition, one that grows out of the very heart's blood of "hard sf." Still, the "hard sf" reader generally has no use for Ballard, an attitude that ceases to puzzle only when you realize that "hard sf" has become, in the past few decades, a haven for unreasoning optimism -- usually right- wing optimism, at that. Ballard, while not by any means a pessimist, doesn't paint lovely pictures of the glittering future. He writes psychological tales with a language of sheer power that leads some more braindead readers and critics to regard his work as the ultimate triumph of style over content, sizzle over substance. Memories of the Space Age is all substance. It is Ballard's first thematic collection since The Atrocity Exhibition, combining into one volume Ballard's many visions of the final end of space programs. Beginning with "Cage of Sand" in the '50s, Ballard seems to have understood far better than anyone the true significance of man's, and especially America's, reach into space. The US space program has been a megalithic process. Megaliths are generally ruins; it was Ballard's genius to equivocate the two megaliths and see the space program as a ruin. So we are treated to repeated sights of Cape Canaveral buried in sand, endlessly orbiting capsules containing the remains of their pilots, scavengers living on the ruins of old craft. Ballard's obsessive characters live full lives in such landscapes, and they and it illuminate each other. Perhaps the most powerful story in the book is the most quiet, and one of the oldest, "A Question of Re-Entry." A UN representative travels up the Amazon in search of a crashed capsule, the first to successfully land on the Moon and return. The interaction between space-age and primitive man is, by itself, worth the price of Memories. The space age may well be over. The US government talks of building the equivalent of a wall between us and the Universe, ostensibly to protect us from Russian missiles; but, as their own most optimistic estimates indicate that the Space Defense satellites if completely successful would allow massive numbers of warheads to detonate on US soil, the true motivation for this system must be sought elsewhere. Looking back from this vantage, a memorial to the time when humans walked, so terribly briefly, on another world, is not at all a bad thing. Closet Classic: Cinnabar Ed Bryant, Bantam 1977, 0-553-10599-X Like I said about decay. You can't live with it, you can't live without it, so you may as well learn to love it. Edward Bryant did, and wrote a series of strange and wonderful stories about a city at the center of time, known (as is the collection of these stories) as Cinnabar. In Cinnabar nearly anything can happen, as long as it doesn't take too much energy; the people are very old (though forever young) and time takes its toll on them. Bryant acknowledges his debt to the history of decay in science fiction, both by mentioning Ballard's Vermillion Sands in his introduction and by reference in the stories. But the debt is historical and his stories are his own. The imagery is stupendous. From the first page, the reader is shown a world where things have fallen apart; the road to Cinnabar is lined with the hulls of burned-out school buses. The city's architecture, ever vague, is something between Gotham City and the topless towers of Barsoom. Most of the action in Cinnabar is at parties and in laboratories. The people are all artists and scientists; drudgery is (or seems) eliminated. In a sense, Cinnabar is more of a resort than a city. If you find a copy, read it and treasure it. Cinnabar is an ore of quicksilver, rare and beautiful; when heated it transforms... Behind the Scenes A Look at Paradise Mike Resnick Copyright 1989 by Mike Resnick [[Editor's note: this is a change of pace for the Behind the Scenes series. Mike has passed along some background material on his book Paradise (Tor Hardcover) and the Universe in which it and most of the books he writes exists. There is no particular theme to this article, just a collection of information Resnick fans should appreciate.-- chuq]] Birthright was the first book I sold to Sheila Gilbert at NAL, though it wasn't the first one she published. When she bought it, she suggested that I set all my novels in that future, which covers 17,000 years and a couple of million worlds. I agreed to do so IF the stories could fit in; so far 11 of my 13 NAL novels and 4 of my 6 Tor novels have fit in comfortably, and the next major piece of work I'm planning to do -- a trilogy tentatively entitled Soothsayer, Oracle and Prophet -- will also be set there. I've divided the galaxy into major sectors. The civilized portion, usually ruled by Man, is known, depending upon the era in which the story is set, as the Republic, the Democracy, the Oligarchy, and either the Monarchy or the Commonwealth (depending on who is using the term). Then there is the Inner Frontier, that section of unexplored and frontier worlds toward the core of the galaxy; the Outer Frontier, that section of unexplored and frontier worlds out on the Galactic Rim; and the Spiral Arm, our local environs. I refer to so many worlds and races in passing that I can't keep them straight at this late date, so every time I complete a manuscript I give a copy to local fan Jackie Causgrove, whom I then pay to find all references to races and worlds and add to the Concordance she has been keeping on all my books. It runs to about 50 pages, single-spaced, these days, and without it you would see one hell of a lot of contradictions from one book to the next. Universe Timeline Year Era Story or Novel 1885 A.D. "The Hunter" (Ivory) 1898 A.D. "Himself" (Ivory) 1982 A.D. Sideshow 1983 A.D. The Three-legged Hootch Dancer 1985 A.D. The Wild Alien Tamer 1987 A.D. The Best Rootin' Tootin' Shootin' Gunslinger in the Whole Damned Galaxy 2057 A.D. "The Politician" (Ivory) 2908 A.D. 1 G.E. 16 G.E. Republic "The Curator" (Ivory) 264 G.E. Republic "The Pioneers" (Birthright) 332 G.E. Republic "The Cartographers" (Birthright) 346 G.E. Republic Walpurgis III 367 G.E. Republic Eros Ascending 396 G.E. Republic "The Miners" (Birthright) 401 G.E. Republic Eros at Zenith 442 G.E. Republic Eros Descending 465 G.E. Republic Eros at Zenith 588 G.E. Republic "The Psychologists" (Birthright) 882 G.E. Republic "The Potentate" (Ivory) 962 G.E. Republic "The Merchants" (Birthright) 1701 G.E. Republic "The Artist" (Ivory) 1813 G.E. Republic "Dawn" (Paradise) 1859 G.E. Republic "Noon" (Paradise) 1888 G.E. Republic "Midafternoon" (Paradise) 1902 G.E. Republic "Dusk" (Paradise) 2154 G.E. Democracy "The Diplomats" (Birthright) 2275 G.E. Democracy "The Olympians" (Birthright) 2469 G.E. Democracy "The Barristers" (Birthright) 2911 G.E. Democracy "The Medics" (Birthright) 3004 G.E. Democracy "The Policitians" (Birthright) 3042 G.E. Democracy "The Gambler" (Ivory) 3286 G.E. Democracy Santiago 3324 G.E. Democracy The Soul Eater 4375 G.E. Democracy "The Graverobber" (Ivory) 4822 G.E. Oligarchy "The Administrators" (Birthright) 4839 G.E. Oligarchy The Dark Lady 5461 G.E. Oligarchy "The Media" (Birthright) 5492 G.E. Oligarchy "The Artists" (Birthright) 5521 G.E. Oligarchy "The Warlord" (Ivory) 5655 G.E. Oligarchy "The Biochemists" (Birthright) 5912 G.E. Oligarchy "The Warlords" (Birthright) 5993 G.E. Oligarchy "The Conspirators" (Birthright) 6304 G.E. Monarchy Ivory 6321 G.E. Monarchy "The Rulers" (Birthright) 6400 G.E. Monarchy "The Symbiotics" (Birthright) 6599 G.E. Monarchy "The Philosophers" (Birthright) 6746 G.E. Monarchy "The Architects" (Birthright) 6962 G.E. Monarchy "The Collectors" (Birthright) 7019 G.E. Monarchy "The Rebels" (Birthright) 16201 G.E. Anarchy "The Archaeologists" (Birthright) 16673 G.E. Anarchy "The Priests" (Birthright) 16888 G.E. Anarchy "The Pacifists" (Birthright) 17001 G.E. Anarchy "The Destroyers" (Birthright) Peponi Character Kenya Analog Fuentes F. C. Selous Jonathan "Johnny" Ramsey Theodore "Teddy" Roosevelt Catamount Greene John Boyes Ephraim Oxblood Nicobar Jones Amanda Picket Karen Blixen/Elspeth Huxley Buko Pepon Jomo Kenyatta Commodore Quincy Lord Delamere Caleb Crawford youthful L.S.B. Leakey James Praznap Deedan Kimathi Bago Baja Ogingo Odingo Sam Jimana Tom Mboya Nathan Kibi Tonka Daniel arap Moi Joseph Buchanka Frederick Ndirangu Mike Wesley Sam Weller Ian Masterson Ian Henderson/Perry Mason Stan Gardner Perry Mason Location Kenya Analog Berengi Nairobi Balimora Isiolo Maracho Nakuru Capatra Mombasa Mount Hardwycke/Mount Pekana Mount Kenya/Kirinyaga Lamaki Nyeri Greenlands White Highlands Bzenzi Hills Ngong Hills Sabrehorn Inn White Rhino Inn Royal Hotel Norfolk Hotel Thunderhead Bar Lord Delamere Lounge Equator Hotel New Stanley Hotel Equator Hotel's Message Tree New Stanley Hotel's Thorn Tree Dalliance Club Muthaiga Club Lake Jenapit Lake Bogoria Villa Hotel Sparks (now Lake Naivasha) Hotel Mount Pekana Lodge Aberdares Country Club Keringera Game Park Buffalo Springs Game Park Siboni Plains Park Masai Mara National Park Independence Highway Uhuru Highway Bukwa Enclave Lado Enclave (Uganda) Bakatula Salisbury, now Harare (Zimbabwe) Sentabel Game Park South Luangwa Valley The Impenetrable Forest The Ituri Rain Firest (Zaire) The Great Southern Desert The Kalahari Desert Tribe Kenya Analog Bogoda Kikuyu Siboni Maasai Sorotoba Wakamba Korani Samburu Kia Luo Dorado Wanderobo Braggi Meru Begau Tigen Kandabera Nandi Bal Fosi El Molo Kalakala (primarily Bogoda) Mau Mau (primarily Kikuyu) Sentabels Mtebele (Zimbabwe) Baroni Makonde (Tanzania) Animals Kenya Analog Landship Elephant Sabrehorn Black Rhinoceros Thunderhead African Buffalo Demoncat Lion Bush Devil Leopard Silvercoat Wildebeest Nightkiller Hyena Treecrawler Colobus Monkey Treetop Giraffe Dust Pig Wart Hog Dasher Zebra Chatterbox Vervet Monkey Wilken's Wildbuck Grant's Gazelle Ngana's Wildbuck Thomson's Gazelle Hardwycke's Wildbuck Peter's Gazelle Water Pig Hippopotamus Millipede Snake Willowbuck Impala Beefcakes Cattle (imported) ------ End ------