More Astounding Magazine than New Worlds, 'The Palace of Eternity' has so many wild ideas but little framework to hold them. You get the Egons - globeMore Astounding Magazine than New Worlds, 'The Palace of Eternity' has so many wild ideas but little framework to hold them. You get the Egons - globes of spirit-light that provide the soul of the universe. Energy-sucking butterfly ships tearing at the fabric of interstellar travel. Bat-guided missiles, astral reincarnation, black sack-like bipedal aliens with mouths razored into their stomachs, and a mystical three-year-old who holds a secret power but comes across like a child actor in a sitcom pilot about divorce. Clearly, the sink overfloweth and Bob Shaw does little to connect these far-flung concepts. Cliche overpowers style, and the only characters that mean anything are not the humans, but their alien enemies, the Pythsyccan, foul creatures with a viscous appearance that betrays their clear & morally-clinical understanding of the universe. For all its bright and brief fireworks, I won't remember much of this jigsawed novel besides its spectacular cover by Leo and Diane Dillon (Ace edition). And I'm glad I didn't spend $50+ dollars on it lured out on the online market. Next Bob Shaw: Other Days Other Eyes.
Parts autobiography alongside analysis of a curdmudgeon/closet-sadist father, this is also a story about a family under the rule of a professional 'haParts autobiography alongside analysis of a curdmudgeon/closet-sadist father, this is also a story about a family under the rule of a professional 'hack' writer and immature patriarch. At times, the book suffers from a lack of eloquence and a misdirection of structure, but how can one truly write about a father who was imprisoned by his own adolescence, turning out books with the rituals of an assembly line, all to fill the family's fridge while fulfilling his sadistic hungers (big breasted alien cyborgs with a penchant for torturous bondage). Andrew Offutt was a legend in two facets: output of smut and sword & sorcery, and a SF convention personality. But with all the promise of a sleazy timescape of what it means to be a "lowly" paperback writer, what we are left with is a sadness that even author Chris Offutt can't fully define. It seems that mystery pervades this book, but it resolves itself like a first-draft of a much more fascinating book. I'm lukewarm on this one, but how I look forward to find an Andrew Offutt paperback out in the wild, his pseudonyms on the cracked spines like some faded and forgotten tombstone....more
Consistently strange and evocative, this is a gold-standard collection from the wild and eloquent mind of science fiction & horror/fantasy scribe, MicConsistently strange and evocative, this is a gold-standard collection from the wild and eloquent mind of science fiction & horror/fantasy scribe, Michael Bishop. He transcends the nuts and bolts of the genre, and while never mired in irony of mocking space-operas and interstellar adventures, paints a multi-universe with the true exotic power of fellow weird-scribes, Clark Ashton Smith & Chad Oliver. In an odd way, I think Michael Bishop reworked SF very much in the same mold that Ramsey Campbell did with the horror genre -- yet not with ghosts re-engineered, but alien lifeforms and cultures.
Underline the odd in oddities, this is strange literature at its best.
"Blooded on Arachne" - a teenage boy visits Arachne to complete the ceremonial 'blooding'. Spiders ride the winds on delicate webs, and finding himself strapped to one arachnid above the strata of this barren planet, he contemplates the moral dangers it takes to become something more than human.
"Cathadonian Odyssey" - a stranded astronaut is followed by a monkish lifeform that follows her over a landscape of mirror-glass pools. Is this solitary creature intrigued by her fantasies of a human world returning, or preparing her for a far different universe. As far-out as it is beautiful.
"Effigies" - a barren land is inhabited by threadbare humans barely able to farm a root vegetable. Hungers prevail as the elder of the tribe tries to fuse plant and human into continuing a re-engineered race. How the seeds of these effigies may just be that - nothing more than a pod person, or something so alien it reaches towards the illogical expanse of a new evolution.
"The House of Compassionate Sharers" - trauma victims are sent off to a strange clinic where 'compassionate sharers' aim to help quell the madness of its patients. A dismayed cyborg of once-human renown tries to find solace in his newly modeled life - half-machine, half flesh, he doesn't know what his meaning is anymore. Only his therapist, a mute robot in far worse shape than him, may be the one to help him. Question is: do the victims of worse trauma help those working out their own suffering? That is the bold question in this fine work that has a very cruel edge to it. Again, Bishop has told a tale that is both spiritually enhanced yet guttural and so odd it leaves an oily residue of regret.
"In Chinistrex Fortronza the People are Machines" - equal parts future-history and comedy of errors. The world is completely automated. Gods exist, but not at how we imagine them. There is a feeling that pervades the steel and the circuitry of this new world, and that in the otherworldly consciousness, like a blip on some ancient radar, is something resembling human thought and error. And throw in a primal ape re-morphed into a God like machine, and the epiphanies of the network reaching towards some spiritual evolution. Fuck, Bishop is gloriously weird.
"Leaps of Faith" - a suicidal man works as a pest remover. He finds himself at the home of a scientist and her family. He tries to convince them not only to sign a year-contract for his services as bug killer, but of a greater good inherent to mankind, but will they open their hearts to him, or shun him off a madman? A completely odd suburban tale not only about the anatomy of a future flea, but the ruminations of trauma and forgiving one's self for failing at life.
"On the Street of the Serpents" (novella) - Mao has his mind transferred into the body of a young German scientist. Picasso is reworked to a cyborg who continues his work unbridled. However the world will soon be colored red as not only countries will be re-bordered but perhaps put on the path towards spiritual freedom. This is the future of Europe, as a mad middle-aged man returns to Seville, Spain to stop this growing revolution by old-fashioned assassination. Extremely odd caper about changing time, changing history, and somehow failing at both.
"Piñon Fall" - three boys find a winged alien dying in the snow. Feeding him pine nuts, they revitalize the creature. All the while, their next door neighbor, a brutish Polish woman full of entropy, finds the alien's pod and his slumbering female traveling mate. Throw in an axe murder, a blizzard with butterflies, and you end up with one of the more bizarre alien invasion stories from the 1970s.
"Rogue Tomato" - Philip K. Dick as his own planet, but not the planet you think. He's become a massive tomato who witnesses the world like something out of Olaf Stapleton's 'Starmaker.' Complete with alien invasions and discussions of God-like entropy, this is pulp absurdia and tongue-and-cheek wordplay. Even PKD would have to wonder about Bishop's enthralled and exulted imagination here.
"Spacemen and Gypsies" - the weakest of the lot is still a solid story. More of sorcery & savagery than emblematic science fiction, this short tale details the travels of a caravan of gypsies encountering a spaceship with two asshole spacemen. Oh, and how could I forget, a dancing bear.
"The White Otters of Childhood" (novella) - influenced by Well's 'Island of Doctor Moreau', Bishop works this novella with wonders. Basically it's a revenge tale by the sea, a lurid drama where the last denizens of unevolved mankind try to transcend the brutal lordship of hirsute king, Serenos. Throw in mutated stillborns, Frankenstein in the form of a shark, beheadings and backstabbings, a perfect way to close out this collection that has made me a fervent fan, declaring Michael Bishop as one of the finest SF writers....more
I guess this is one of the only reviews of this 1983 anthology edited by stalwarts of the strange writers of SF, Michael Bishop and Ian Watson. While I guess this is one of the only reviews of this 1983 anthology edited by stalwarts of the strange writers of SF, Michael Bishop and Ian Watson. While the theme is about transformations, the various tales transcend their own mutability and become odd entries that are not quite horror nor SF, but skewered visions of both. Perhaps post new-wave speculative body horror? Really, this collection left me with some type of odd residue, an obtuse lacquering of the uncanny where science is little more than a 'catch', a gizmo of sorts, to help excel the transmutation and the horrible evolution outside of the lab.
Sporting with the Chid / Barrington J. Bayley -- Bayley is a purveyor the mouth-dropping 'weird'. Here two astronauts hang out with the Chid, humanoid aliens who despite being adept at surgery, seem despondent and lazy at first, but soon show how far advanced their skills are. As they grow a native forest to remind themselves of 'home', we witness brains and other organs live their own lives free of any physical body. A nasty tale of symbiosis, and slime.
Wife's story / Ursula K. Le Guin -- reverse Lycanthropy. A short tale that Ursula seems to have been banged out on a cocktail napkin. Not her finest moment.
Rouge tomato / Michael Bishop -- a planet is formed to feed the invaders... yes, not of rock or stardust, but a sentient giant tomato guided by one mortal Earthly mind. The delivery is where Bishop excels as the insanity of creation is gloriously toyed with. Monty Python takes of Genesis.
New me / Thomas M. Disch -- Disch can do better. We know he dislikes the church but this parable has the subtleties of getting randomly punched on the subway. Read his novel, The Priest, to get his full scathing wit in action.
Legacy / Charles Sheffield -- three giant humans are found in the ocean anchored by behemoth chains. The government gets on the case trying to figure out where they came from. In a world rapidly advancing in biomorphic engineering, where does the secret lie, and which scientist will put all on the line trying to figure it out? Clunky smartass prose, but fascinating in its raw constructions of giants being drowned and murdered. Perhaps the same place where J.G. Ballard's giant in superior The Drowning Giant came from. Sheffield is now on my radar.
Sisohpromatem / Kit Reed -- solid tale of Kafka in reverse that originally appeared in Moorcock's New Worlds.
Byrds / Michael G. Coney -- one by one, family members start believing they are becoming birds. With the aids of jet packs, the disillusioned drop their human wardrobes to become avian monks on the powerlines, roofs and trees. How birdshit transcends form. Coney is quite mad.
Desertion / Clifford D. Simak -- an astronaut and his dog weather a Martian landscape each with a lethal dose of immediate transfiguration drugs. As usual, the purity and earnest care in which Simak writes is a classic of the genre's tenderness. I can see why people don't admire him, but I'm one of his sentimental legion. City and Choice of Gods are fascinating works, classics of SF. BTW, did Simak hate cats?
First Christmas Tree / Tom Disch -- a haiku jack-off. Disch, one of my favorites, wastes a page with irony as memorable as gum on a shoe.
Dark of the June / Gene Wolfe -- Wolfe is so hit or miss with me, but Dark of the June is a fine ghost story blue around the edges with elemental melancholia. Slipstream spirit in the machine as a father tries to find his dissonant and deconstructed daughter.
Indian Rope Trick Explained / Rudy Rucker -- as with Sheffield, this tale made me intrigued by another author I've never read. In this case, Rudy Rucker. Hopeless dad and shitty husband figured out how to time skip (at least by ten seconds), but when he receives a gift of thorns from an African street performer, he figures out how transcend time even quicker. Ridiculously fun. Anything where a character is reduced to paper-thin dimensions is something to applaud.
Flies by night / Lisa Tuttle and Steven Utley -- how we can shed the skin at midnight. Perhaps the only empowering story of human turning into a fly.
Day of the Wolf / Ian Watson -- within a recreated fauna of an English forest, in the middle of Africa no less, a game warden seeks out the hirsute hunter who is killing all the genetically-modified wildlife. Great premise.
Between the Dark and the Daylight / Algis Budrys -- obtuse and strange, this tale is about the accelerated evolution of children. Who better else to battle the filthy hippo creatures on the muddy planet? Of course, the children are best seen and not heard. Budrys could have written this into EC Comics, the horror pulpy and the scientific elements even pulpier.
Once on Aranea / R.A. Lafferty -- who doesn't want to become a lord of spiders? I realize there's little in-between with Lafferty. He's definitely a comic but he sets up his madness with some dark threads. What happens when you cocoon a scientist and his dog in a sentient sack of star spew?
Master / Angela Carter --a misanthropic hunter goes deep in the Amazons trying to kill every panther in the jungle. His kidnapped lover is forced into the hunt, only to be her own gateway towards seeing God in utter, grim violence. Nuance is not Angela Carter's middle name, and I love her for that.
Apotheosis of Myra / Walter Tevis -- the planet is the star of this great tale from the author of The Man Who Fell to Earth. Like the planet in Solaris, a sentient planet feeds off the desires of its inhabitants. Here the hallucinatory grass sings, and the multiple moons give little serenade. Throw in a 'kill your rich wife' scenario, and The Apotheosis of Myra becomes a unique tale all its own. James Cain and Stanislaw Lem.
Itihonian Factor / Richard Cowper. A sixteen year old schoolgirl has a spiritual tryst with a woman's ghost. A strange future gothic is tender for all the right reasons.
Truly a unique collection, and sadly, one that slipped through the cracks. Don't pass this one up in the $1 racks....more
I finally got around to reading this much-lauded classic of Russian SF. While not overwhelmed by the prose, the ideas in (and behind) The Zone are majI finally got around to reading this much-lauded classic of Russian SF. While not overwhelmed by the prose, the ideas in (and behind) The Zone are majestically satisfying. The plot is well known. Years ago, aliens visited Earth unseen, and left behind no other relics but their own junk. Imagine spark plugs, fourth-dimensional spills, oil leaks, gum and cigarette ends, and of course, disused batteries. It is these objects that are left behind that fortify this short novel's longstanding memory, and allow the depths of desperation to shine in the main characters, The Stalkers...especially Red, who seems like he'd fit perfectly in a David Goodis grimscribe. The Stalkers are the brass of the story -- capitalistic vagabonds who enter the wastelands to bring back the junk and turn it to profit for the sake of science. And in the end, we find out there is no 'code' in the Stalker manual, none whatsoever.
It's a novel about being unable to win, no matter how hard one pushes back. It's a hard gut-punch against the glories of Science Fiction, Soviet or otherwise, and the delivery comes across like a Noir mash-up within a Chernobyl landscape, one complete with booby traps, flesh-eating bacterial mold, invisible bugtraps and meat grinders (SF traps, see Rogue Moon by Budrys). Characters have names like Vulture, Four Eyes, Hamfist, and Dr. Valentine, and it would be easy to imagine these wild boys in the Dick Tracy universe, but here in this fine novel, they are just players in this immoral funhouse, and like most searching for the big wish and the payday, they find themselves being played yet again....more
Perhaps a low rating for a novel that has such vibrancy and rootless energy. But, it labors like a joke going in thirty different directions, while coPerhaps a low rating for a novel that has such vibrancy and rootless energy. But, it labors like a joke going in thirty different directions, while completely foregoing any links to characters and any resemblance to depth...barely an inch, actually. The narrative never slows down to take a much-needed breath, and that's essentially its problem. There is a 100+ page block that is strictly a courtroom scene where 7 men are on trial for ending the world by way of nuclear weapons. It is impenetrable with quips and absurdities so plentiful that even Stanislaw Lem would bring out his red pen.
Morrow's seeds are quite brilliant, only in glimmers: where else can you have unborn citizens (future ghosts) try to execute the last seven mortals of Earth feel like the literary equivalent of watching an episode of Perry Mason with the volume turned all the way up to 100. Nothing memorable, but oh-so-loud....more
An unholy concoction of the Marx Brothers and John Carpenter's They Live, complete with verbal jackoffs belonging to an amphetamine-aggro child, mixedAn unholy concoction of the Marx Brothers and John Carpenter's They Live, complete with verbal jackoffs belonging to an amphetamine-aggro child, mixed with solipsism and slapstick, and of course, surreal moments that come off the page like bad jokes from the cyborgian vaudeville circuit. Thankfully my first foray into Lem's Universe was a short one, and while he packs enough ideas and tricks to fill an epic, most of it is absolute drivel, but fascinating drivel it is. Within one page, I bounced from a 1-star review to a full 5, but at the end of the novel, I'll give it a questionable three. There's cyborgs and peasants, enough drugs to spin the head of PKD and Huxley, some bipedal rats, bombs going off everywhere, conspiracies within conspiracies, and layers and layers of reality crumbling into one another...constantly. But yes, it's a about the neverending rabbit holes of science and fiction, and with the world all but gone, why don't we all just go out with a hallucinatory whimper...? I haven't read a book that I both disdained and applauded at the same time. Here goes Lem. ...more
What it lacks in consistent clarity & power, 'Cautionary Tales' makes up for in its multi-directional output - SF, horror, otherworldly third-world noWhat it lacks in consistent clarity & power, 'Cautionary Tales' makes up for in its multi-directional output - SF, horror, otherworldly third-world noir lit. Recent reads by fellow 1970s scribes, Michael Bishop and Vonda McIntryre, proved emblematic of the decade with their colorful approach to the genre, and while Yarbro paints a powerful landscape, she lacks the narrative power of her two peers. Sometimes she reads like Paul Bowles writing for EC Comics, and at other times, tepid horror dosed with with far too many characters at play, which ultimately give little to grasp on besides a name only. Still, despite her lack of description, it's a powerful insightful collection in its own right. And the undercurrent for many of these tales about disillusioned workers/grunts trying to survive the daily grind is something to applaud. I find that more and m ore today, modern writers tend to shy away from writing raw-knuckled about the low-levels of poverty & grunt-work.
Allies - invisible alien force haunts a swamp that the corporation must protect. Profile rules.
Dead in Irons - the corporation will make you do the dirty work with little compensation. In this case, cryogenic janitors deal with bureaucratic bullshit on a transport starship.
Disturb Not My Slumbering Fair - zombie tale played for laughs...? but who's laughing?
Everything That Begins with an "M" - idiot savant beckons a curse in a medieval village.
Fellini Beggar - interview with a puppet/person hybrid who starred in Fellini's last opus.
Frog Pond - EC Comic-style shortie about toxic waste and biodiversity of the worst kind. Very jokey.
Generalissimo's Butterfly - most powerful tale in the bunch. An engineer is given a choice to regain her freedom. Robotic butterflies to spy on the citizens of this nameless Latin American town is the undercurrent plotline. Lesson learned: you can't trust nobody. Existentially gutted is the only way to survive.
Into My Own - playwright contemplates downloading his talent into a wise-cracking computer. Did Robert Sheckley ghostwrite this one?
Lammas Night - gaslight revenge about marital infidelities. mildly entertaining if you're so into old-fashioned adulterous revenge plots.
Meaning of the Word - archeologist discovers an alien language in a sand pit. Fair.
Swan Song - a teasing dialogue between two wealthy scientists ends with a glimpse into a mythical Finnish apocalypse.
Un Bel Di - the 2nd best tale is a politically dark one. Touches on sexual abuse (from one alien species to another) in this disturbing but wholly unique tale. Ugly parable of political/religious deception.
An Indulgence - yes, an indulgence. A poem, actually.
Again, a solid collection. Two things that did bother me: 1.) James Tiptree Jr.'s intro didn't do much for me. A backcover blurb alone would have achieved the praise. 2.) After each story, Yarbro discusses them. Shrug. I find this unnecessary to have its reason/flaws/genesis explained by the author themselves. Let the story do the work....more
Infinite Summer, Christopher Priest, Pan Science Fiction, 1979.
Priest hovers somewhere between Graham Greene & J.G. Ballard, two fellow Englishmen whoInfinite Summer, Christopher Priest, Pan Science Fiction, 1979.
Priest hovers somewhere between Graham Greene & J.G. Ballard, two fellow Englishmen who detail disillusion with varying degrees of espionage, envy, national pride, and many hollow men. This collection of five tales cements the transition where Priest left outer space in order to examine the 'inner space' that Ballard referred to when SF spun its wheels into smoke and cinder. 'An Infinite Summer' is a near-brilliant collection running the gamut between the grim and the unabashedly romantic.
'An Infinite Summer' - a young Londoner falls in love with the sister of the woman he is to woo and eventually wed. However, this Victorian romance is royally disturbed when a timeslip terrorist takes his freeze-gun and paralyzes the woman of our protagonist's desire, leaving her frozen in the moment. Now the old man wanders a WW2 London where other people are frozen in time along the Thames abuzz with the German invasion, contemplating not only his dying desire, but how time functions so haphazardly. Such a wild premise, unfortunately marred by its eventual comforts and convenience. Still, rather brilliant.
'Whores' - the 1st of the Dream Archipelago Cycle. A soldier is on R&R after being exposed to a nerve gas that rewires his senses -- he begins to smell what he sees. As he hunts down a prostitute, he finds that she was victim to the dubious war of the islands, and in the arms of another woman, he finds that his solace is as far out of reach as his duplicitous bodily functions. Very solid atmosphere here, only marred by a disembodied hand confusing the climax, a Dali-esque diversion that doesn't quite fit.
'Palely Loitering' - an unabashedly Victorian love story where the narrator visits a riverside amusement where three bridges bring tourists to the past, the future, and the alternate today. After spotting his 'object of desire' sitting on a bench awaiting her lover, he seeks to discover who her lover is, while navigating his passion through the missteps of time travel. Understated and eloquent, a steampunk dalliance that is both bittersweet and playful.
'The Negation' - channeling Camus & Franz K., Priest writes a gloomy novelette on soldiers and writers as the setting once again returns to the Dream Archipelago. A young soldier becomes fascinated with a writer-in-residence at the wartorn village he's stationed to protect. The tale's initial mood is one of Russian minimalism, and then soon develops into a treatise on the inner strife between the artist vs. the soldier. With a plot as vague as the fog-shrouded wall pivotal to the climax, 'The Negation' may just have negated itself, and it feels like an unfinished piece that is worthy for its existential pallor only. Still, it's so well-written, you don't mind feeling underwhelmed at its climax.
'The Watched' is the most 'far-out' of the lot. Here on the islands, a millionaire ex-pat finds a folly overlooking a pasture of strange flowers, harvested by the odd Quattari, a group of refugees that have taken solace on the island of Tumo. Disillusion and horny as all middle-aged hell, the main narrator tries to figure out the odd ceremonies that take place in the Quattari's Arena, while also hoping to make sense of the 'scintillas' (microscopic cameras) that not only hide in his mansion but all over the island. Perverted and rich with subtlety, 'The Watched' is a fine novella that shows the imaginative restraint and deviant suggestion that Priest is known for.
A five-star novel when it comes to its ideas and their disorientating nuances, but nearly a two-star novel when it comes to its abbreviated characteriA five-star novel when it comes to its ideas and their disorientating nuances, but nearly a two-star novel when it comes to its abbreviated characterizations and the cloying love-triangle melodrama. In a long while, I haven't been torn into two clear directions with one novel. As brilliant as it is frustrating, Priest is becoming my new favorites despite this colorful misfire.
In modern-day southwest England, The Wessex Foundation carries on a secret experiment where the 39 test-subjects are transported 150 years into a future southwest England, which has now become an island after severe earthquakes, and to boot, a holiday seaside resort where even surfing has become a thing (not too mention England is now under majority Soviet rule). But the trustees of the group are curiously cautious as to what's going on behind closed gates and send in one of their young guns, a corporate shark and handsome slickster, Paul Mason. Now this bloke has a tender spot for one of the scientists, a Julia Stratton. And he's a maguffin alright, only present to remind our heroine Julia that she still has a 'thing' for him and to provide a threat that will not only jeopardize the program, but the dual existences of Julia and her one true love (contained in the dreamfuture of Wessex), David Harkman.
Deeply rich idea-building, but where Christopher Priest fails is with his characters. They people Priest's fantastic world of dual mirrored selves, past & present, with a one-dimensional grace that becomes nearly bawdy. Not to say Priest doesn't illuminate his cast, he does in doses (when they're analyzing the realities/fantasies, not in conversation), but by the anti-climax, this reader here felt cheated a bit. All the action is overwrought dialogue, and what little movement there is, it's dedicated to people opening and shutting dream canisters in the laboratory to see if the inhabitants have disappeared. It's the equivalent of having an action movie end with the heroes and villains opening multiple fridges to check what's leftover. Still, a fine and concise novel, and important to Priest's CV and his transition to more quietly menacing novels about identity and despair...Affirmation, Glamour).
For fans of UK SF, especially in the mold of J.G. Ballard and D.G. Compton). Despite its polarizing review, I'll never see mirrors the same way ever again. ...more
A fascinatingly rich (and fascinatingly obtuse) novel penned by the prolific SF Belfastian writer, James White. In essence, this novel is about hope aA fascinatingly rich (and fascinatingly obtuse) novel penned by the prolific SF Belfastian writer, James White. In essence, this novel is about hope amidst an overcrowded pigpen of violence, disillusion, and biased earthbound law (note that White wrote this in Belfast, Ireland in the mid-1970s). The focus is not on alien invasion or technological wonders, but on the subconscious -- the precarious genetic codes that lay the groundwork between sleep and dream. Yes, this is about a journey of the hivemind, the collective 'seed' of human history pollinating another universe. Well, that's the plan.
If you don't like novels that focus on dreams and dream logic, then this one isn't for you. Not only do our two main characters, Devlin and Patricia, dream continuously and in great detail, they pontificate these dreams in turgid dialogue that embody the core weakness of the novel. When characters talk like info-dumps, you lose authenticity and fumble through the vernacular as if in quicksand. Or at least I do as a reader.
Still, the dreams themselves are the core of this novel: of being a trilobite in prehistoric oceans, a brontosaurus in a Jurassic swamp, a Neanderthal pushed off the evolutionary ladder, a corrupt king on the fields of old England, and even as far into the future as a grizzled revolutionary unwilling to join 'the cause', only to have his fate sealed in the doom-kissed sunblast from a nuclear bomb. White is surely laying it on thick (and yes, this is a fix-up), but he weaves a memorable story highlighted by its unhinged ideas. And kudos to the astral priest, Brother Howard, for being the voice of conviction in this novel. I would love a novel about him and his journey from starry-eyed explorer to a cynical priest amidst the ruins of Earth.
'The Dream Millennium' is an important book in the SF canon, despite its overabundance in explanation. However, I appreciate SF novels not steeped in hype and the usual must-read lists, but those lingering in obscurity, waiting to be discovered in the dusty shelves of the paperback collector. Cheers to Joachim Boaz for writing about this novel on his essential site: https://sciencefictionruminations.com/...more
A very solid collection of Vonda McIntyre's 1970's output, where each story restrains itself from the common zap-gun fireworks, genocidal wargames, anA very solid collection of Vonda McIntyre's 1970's output, where each story restrains itself from the common zap-gun fireworks, genocidal wargames, and space operatic backstabbing so common to the pulp standards of the genre. Here, Vonda plays with the soul of science fiction, ruminating its emotional place in a fairly non-violent fashion, where the narrative focuses on the ostracized, mainly those humans who were re-engineered in labs, physically altered as their evolutions are fast-tracked so significantly that they find themselves blue-hearted loners and tender misanthropes. This is what some call overly-emotional (as Tom Disch stated of Vonda in his overview of SF, 'Stuff Our Dreams Are Made of'), yet I find it a near-classic of SF, stories far more New Romantic than New Wave. How science has rebranded the human body for space travel but has left the human soul intact. No doubt, there will be disillusion and strife.
'Fireflood' - a human in transition escapes the lab-camp where she became an elemental 'armadillo' of sorts. As she tries to rush to the peace-zone country, where winged humanoids fly freely, she is faced with the question of where she can find not only safety, but a place to call home.
'Of Mist, and Grass, and Sand.' What became the award-winning novel, DreamSnake. Here Vonda toys with a post-nuke landscape as a healer tries to save a sick child. She has 3 magical snakes (one extraterrestrial, the others re-engineered and magical) that help her heal the sick and dying. Heady stuff and heartfelt, and quite worthy of its praise.
'Spectra' - "I am dreaming. I reach out for something I have lost, something beautiful" opens this short about a humanoid confined to the slavery of a 9-to-5 existence.
'Wings' - an elder winged creature lives in solitude within a ruined, empty temple. All the others have left the planet (Earth, I assume) for further territories. When a young savage falls from the sky, this elder takes care of the youth and mends its broken wings, only to find themselves wishing they were in the stars, hope unbound, and not on a death planet waiting to perish.
'The Mountains of Sunset, the Mountains of Dawn' - an extension of the prior tale, 'Wings.' Now Vonda shows the perspective of those in-flight to new habitats. One in particular is an elder, an earth-born winged creature who pontificates the Earth it has left. She falls into a love affair with a younger passenger and not only re-discovers her passion and lust, but her sense of flight beyond the confines of a secluded generation ship.
'The End's Beginning.' Revised human now in the form of a dolphin. Yes, a dolphin. This one reads similar to the film, 'The Day of the Dolphin' in its execution of turning animals into assassins. Short and pungent, only held down by its ruminations to revolt.
'Screwtop' - a prison in a barren jungle. Three lovers figure out a plan to escape but question their own sense of duty, their own obligation to the countries they were borne from. Again, violence is limited, and the focus goes on faith and loyalty. Tender this is, but perhaps its own melodrama tinges the narrative a bit too blue. Really, everybody is so emotional, even the sadistic warden who simply wants to have a child and turns his back on violence.
'Recourse Inc.' - odd transition for Vonda here. This reads more like a Robert Sheckley or Kuttner tale. Playful anti-corporate absurdities told in the form of letters between a customer, the unruly banks overcharging, and a middle-man who might just be Satan. Strangely comic as if Vonda took a happy pill and experimented with satire all of a sudden.
'Genius Freaks' - a nice Northwest setting against the rain-grey mountains, where a young wanderer tries to escape the government who have fast-tracked her evolution and made her a genius. Kind of similar to Thomas Disch's 'Camp Concentration', but with the angst of a Gus Van Sant film. Solid soliloquy about vagrancy and identity. Bittersweet.
'Aztecs' - the longest and arguably the weakest story in the collection. A ship crew member becomes a pilot, a position that requires one to withstand sleepless hours of intense flight. And not only that, they have their heart and nervous system completely rewired in a deathwatch surgery not many survive. Before she embarks on her first mission, she meets a pacifist from the planet Twilight. They fall in love fast, fuck and ruminate, then fuck some more. And yes, like all forlorn lovers, our pilot's lab-designed evolution disallows anything meaningful. Be careful whose heart you touch. Simply, Vonda tells us again that science will change us, and that to survive, we can no longer pity the monsters we've become....more
I guess reading too much 1960s/1970s' dystopian fiction can wear down the treads. While Effinger is lauded for his novels, I believe I chose the wrongI guess reading too much 1960s/1970s' dystopian fiction can wear down the treads. While Effinger is lauded for his novels, I believe I chose the wrong one to start with. What appears interesting in synopsis fails to land a proper punch. Three men in various degrees of timeslips, all named Ernest Weintraub, suffer away in their droll existences....one a communist in 1920's Germany and Springfield, USA; another, an ex-pat poet in North Africa drinking away the days like some low-rent Paul Bowles; and lastly, and perhaps most interestingly, a hack-man loser living in Brooklyn within the throes of a bureaucratic doomsday. The problem is nothing really happens. Yeah, I get it, we're all doomed in the fates of capitalism and corruption, you hate your job and your wife, and what better way to flame the fires than to shrug it off with a predictable hangman cynicism........but here the novel reads simply as a first-draft diatribe and does little for speculative fiction as it does for novel-length narrative in general. While we all realize the world ends with a whimper, it may as well at least be interesting last breath, right? This is not.
I will try Effinger's 'What Entropy Means to Me' and/or 'The Wolves of Memory.'...more
2 1/2 stars. Average transitional SF that is occasionally seeded with brilliance, but otherwise remains a tepid brew that transcends little and barely2 1/2 stars. Average transitional SF that is occasionally seeded with brilliance, but otherwise remains a tepid brew that transcends little and barely leaves any residue. Not an outright slight against editor, Terry Carr, but this anthology feels candy-coated, pleasant at first but then steadying off into familiar territories of Vietnam-war-era SF. This is not a Brave New World but a rather placid one. It reads more like a workshop hazed over in cheaply bitter pot smoke.
West Wind Falling, Gregory Benford & Gordon Eklund. A rather mundane yet crudely-envisioned take about the moral weight of killing your own. Rebellious settlers on an ice star plan to return to Earth, if Earth will allow them back. However this narrative has the political depths of a faucet leak, and proves that throwing in a little sex does not make it new wave.
Good News from the Vatican, Robert Silverberg. Mr. Prolific, Silverberg, churns out a tale in bar-chatter form. At an Inn besides the Vatican, scholars wait to see if the first robot has been voted in as the pope. The premise is there, but in the end, it is just cynical rumination. Perhaps Disch and Sladek could have played this hand better with their unique and playful vitriol.
Jade Blue, Edward Bryant. How can a story centered on a feline humanoid who breast feeds a human child be so mundane?
Nor Limestone Islands, R.A. Lafferty. Floating stone islands appear above the American midwest. They're selling their stone on the cheap, but can the conservative landowners below take their offer? Mmm, probably not. There's an intriguing 'hippy vs. farmer' presence here, olde town America versus 'the other', in the form of slovenly & mystical counterculture kids. The usual Lafferty wonky-isms are at full speed. One of the better ones in this Universe.
Time Exposures, Wilson Tucker. Reading like a plot from a Bob Shaw story infatuated with lenses (both ocular and of the camera), good old Wilson Tucker uses a device as the main star within this peculiar hardboiled narrative: a camera that can photograph time up to 12 hours in reverse. The murder-mystery premise is far more intriguing than the sleuthy resolution, which reads like a telegraphed pitch out of crime fiction 101. If Spillane wore a spacesuit, perhaps.
Mindship, Gerard Conway. Premise, and premise only. The idea of a 'sensitive' mind-engineer is a great one. A 'cork' is a cerebral sponge of sorts, a medium whose job is to plug into the ship's crew mind-nest and allay the astronauts fears and panic as their ship travels into another universe. I wonder if Conway's novel (also called Mindship) makes this premise actually work.
Notes of a Novel About The First Ship Ever to Venus, Barry Malzberg. Here lies the beginnings of his watermark novel, Beyond Apollo. Salty and thoroughly wise-ass, Malzberg likes fucking with his readers as much as he does kibbitzing about NASA and US Politics. The idea that the government pays millions to have a violinist play a live performance on a doomed ship is quite hilarious. Malzberg really is the profane jester of the SF canon. One of the better ones in the collection.
Poor Man, Beggar Man, Joanna Russ. The usual playful and multi-colored writing from Russ is horribly absent in this historical ghost story, one set in Roman times. It seems as if all the sugar has been sucked out of her prose, and she's writing for a more conservative market. And why does Russ have to write her own commentary after the story's climax is beyond me. Do we really need to know why an author wrote this particular story? Simply, no. Really, it's not a bad tale, but it's definitely not a memorable one, especially for Joanna.
The Romance of Dr. Tanner, Ron Goulart. On an idiosyncratic planet, a human writer pens propaganda soap-operas for a race of lizard people. Wife cheats on him, the government is crooked, same old shit. I notice Goulart gets a lot of critical guff on many reviews, and I'm afraid this doesn't help his cause. If you like your humor horribly outdated, then why not give it a roll.
The Human Side of the Village Monster, Edward Bryant. Urban overpopulation, strict eugenics, food crisis, and pollution. All the ingredients are there for a socialist doomscribe, but hasn't this been done better before? Yes, it has. This is a common kind of tale in the early 1970s scene, and if you want to read one of the best, I suggest you read Kate Wilhelm's The Red Canary, a masterpiece of urban dread to be found in her magnificent collection, The Infinity Box.
Mount Charity, Edgar Pangborn. The best of the collection. Writers like Pangborn and Clifford D. Simak get some flack about being too 'pure' and 'good-natured', free of the cynical chains of post Golden Age SF. While this story is the more conventional of the collection, it is also the best. A peregrine, an ape, a snake and a wolf are altered by some alien virus (or spore), and as a family unit, they timelessly travel through centuries documenting the advancement of mankind. Lyrical and bittersweet, I applaud this one for its simple elegiac approach. The literary equivalent of a homemade chicken pot pie on a Sunday afternoon.
All The Last Wars At Once, George Alec Effinger. Public murder is approved for a 30-day trial period. Men kill the women. Women kill the men. Straight vs. Queer. Black vs. White. The Veterans vs. The Artists. You get the idea. Superficial transgressions play heavy in this tale, and while mired in its heavy-handedness (kind of like Norman Spinrad at his loudest), the ending in Times Square on New Year's Eve is near brilliant. What happens on the last day of the killing period is hauntingly grand guignol. A precursor to The Purge film series, and the bookend tale helps ease the pains of this rather stiff and lukewarm collection....more
'The Infinity Box', Kate Wilhelm. Pocket paperback, 1977.
I'm quite captivated by Kate Wilhelm as of late. Her 'Where Late The Sweet Birds Sang' is a n'The Infinity Box', Kate Wilhelm. Pocket paperback, 1977.
I'm quite captivated by Kate Wilhelm as of late. Her 'Where Late The Sweet Birds Sang' is a novel that transcends the dystopia into territories beyond survival, moving with a haunted narrative where existential grit and glamour of doom darken the horizons. Here in her mid-1970's collection, the dystopia darkens even more, and her characters unwind in the social and environmental decays like puppets pawn to their own ignorance & disillusion. The thing is, her apocalypses don't seem to have a beginning or an end, but exist already -- yes, we've been living within this long-goodbye from the get-go. While she writes with a fantastical air, just like her patriot in literary SF, Lucius Shepard, the cerebral unravelings are what makes her fiction so sharp and profound. I'm surprised her legacy doesn't shine as much as it should, but then again, who cares about dead authors when we have living ones. Did I mention she's kind of cynical as fuck too?
THE INFINITY BOX - this novella is about mind invasion, mind control. A middling average family man encounters a new neighbor. She is wan, unattractive, and like an injured bird, consistently nervous. He's attracted to her though, and without explanation, he is able to enter her mind, play and replay her thoughts and memories, and in the end, invades her not out of genuine interest, but because he can. Madness unravels in a psycho-therapeutic drama, and yes, the male gaze is treacherous.
THE TIME PIECE - Wilhelm plays it like a pulp game here as she enlivens a short tale about a man retiring from a 'good job'. His reward is a watch, and he soon finds out that he can freeze and then rewind time. While life grows stale and he questions the worth of his history, he tries to find some diamonds in his twilight-year funk, only to realize that life may just be a series of misconnected fragments from a predictable script. Far out concepts mingle with standard time-travel ploys.
THE RED CANARY - this one is brutal. Poverty and overpopulation, and a healthcare system that is not only a flawed bureaucracy but perhaps a method of suffocating the weak. A lonely man with a shit job in a shit apartment with a shit wife and a child he cares little about. Only to wander the city as sickness is everywhere. What makes this story work so well is that we could be on the edge looking down at this soon-to-be reality. Don't read this one when you're researching for a new health plan...
MAN OF LETTERS - parallel worlds clash as a hack writer loses his marbles, and finds himself and his life in a timeslip that may be his own madness, or a deviant plan. Solid.
APRIL FOOL'S DAY FOREVER - what if the government decided to wipe out half the population with manicured diseases? And why are all the doctors so friggin' young? Yes, the strongest will survive, or will they? What is a really dark novella about eugenics, medical care, and secret governments (star chambers) may conclude with a bright dash of optimism, but is this a heavy-handed ticket about age-ism and assisted deaths, or is it just Wilhelm fucking with the reader's expectations? Wilhelm definitely believes that art and expression is the only way out of it.
WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN, BILLY BOY, BILLY BOY? - one of the more weaker, disjointed tales. More of the same, like 'Red Canary' - overpopulation, suicide, and rebellion. This one is quite fatalistic. Here, one reader may decide to slow down reading this collection, for the whimpers of a slow apocalypse may feel repetitive. I dig it though.
THE FUSION BOMB - a nice, refreshing escape from the urban landscape. Here on an island off the Carolina coast, a research team is assembled. Their goal is to play hedonism to the fullest, live the good life -- sex, food, travel, money -- while searching for the shape of the soul, the necessity of 'the enlightenment'. Yeah, Wilhelm is taking it into far-reaching territories, and here she and Lucius Shepard (visit his 'The Ends of the Earth' collection) seem to be writing in the exact same parallel universe. And really, this strange woman coming to the island as a secretary.....where does she really come from? Visions from within clash with nature, and a great story about immortality only slightly fizzled with a strange anti-climactic conclusion. Does nature truly win in the end?
THE VILLAGE - In the early 1970s, I think every SF writer wrote about Vietnam infiltrating our suburbs and/or cities in the US. Here it seems stock-like and predictable, the armed forces attacking their own ('Red Dawn' with radicalism), just for the sake of destruction. Harlan Ellison, Kit Reed, Norman Spinrad, Effinger and Ballard all did it just the same.
THE FUNERAL - a tonal exploration of a young woman designated as a teacher-in-training to a private school segregated from the world around them. Wilhelm pre-dates 'The Handmaid's Tale' in this one. A cautionary tale of new religion and order, and one can not help but think of Scientology (without the cosmic bureaucracy) and the teachings of Mary Baker Eddy. How it ends, Wilhelm brings yet another tale to a bruised song of silence. Perhaps the endings are never conclusive, focused only on what leads up to The End. To call Wilhem 'nebulous' would be an understatement. She is an existentialist to the fullest.
Again, I'm surprised Wilhelm isn't read and studied more. She's a gem, and then some....more
And here we sit at the dinner table with the brilliant curmudgeon, the uninhibited uncle of modern American SF, Thomas M. Disch. While not quite the aAnd here we sit at the dinner table with the brilliant curmudgeon, the uninhibited uncle of modern American SF, Thomas M. Disch. While not quite the acidic analysis of the vast genre I was expecting, The Dreams Our Stuff Is Made Of is a marvel of casual discourse about the ridiculous, the profane, and the morphing trends of 100+ years of 'out-there' literature. He badmouths Poe as a tawdry reporter of the occult, lauds HG Wells as pioneer, compares Star Trek to laying the foundations of a politically-correct modern office template, breaks down Heinlein with both applause and ridicule, badmouths the Republican SF mode in tandem with the new age 'emotionalists', and climaxes with a surprisingly optimistic take on the future modes of storytelling. While no means a deep analysis, it is a fine work throwing Disch's wide net over what makes science fiction a vital form in the global consciousness....more
Sometimes books transcend their accolades. Where Late The Sweet Birds Sang is one of those. A cheap used paperback came into my bookshelves, and bloodSometimes books transcend their accolades. Where Late The Sweet Birds Sang is one of those. A cheap used paperback came into my bookshelves, and bloody hell, this one swept me away. Finely melancholic without turning purple-prosed. Haunting, yes. Bittersweet, even more so. A wonderful novel about post-apocalyptic identity, a novel about human/clone ostracization, darkly future-forward.
Told in three sections, the focus never leaves the clinic inside this valley of Virginia. Of course the world has ended: atmospheric maladies, infertility, and even perhaps, some good old-fashioned bomb-dropping. Wilhelm chooses not to focus on the causes of 'The End', but how the human race reinvents itself to maintain some resemblance of integrity...and survival for the long-term. The first section focuses on David, entirely human, who helps build the facility to start the cloning business. This part is the strongest of the three -- a deeply haunting scenario of man vs. his creation, but not what a reader would think - the black sheep syndrome in full exposure. Section 2 focuses on Molly, a 1st-gen clone who relishes in her artistic individuality, only to be shunned by the group and their collective hive-mind. Section three focuses on birthed-clone, Mark, and while this feels cut from the cloth of a YA novel at times, it is something to behold as the relationship between a doctor, Ben, and Mark himself shows the weight of an emotional conundrum. The thing is, while haunting and brooding, Wilhelm doesn't relish 'the villain', the 'westworld' clone intent on destruction. Wilhelm is more concerned with co-existence and intent, yes, more than human. That is what propels this elegant novel from those sepia-toned 1970s. It poses the big questions and lets you figure them out in this moral play, a science fiction wonder. Magnificent....more
Perhaps one of top disruptive novels ever written in the SF universe. Playful and perverse, this is such a tear and rip in regards to the operatic spaPerhaps one of top disruptive novels ever written in the SF universe. Playful and perverse, this is such a tear and rip in regards to the operatic space-travel standard. This is like a good dose of fuck-you to convention and the Golden-Age mold that cemented the genre's scope before 1972 when this novel was released. Barry Malzberg seemed pissed off not only at the storytelling & heroic form, but also of America, especially the space race and America's part in it. Everybody is a sucker, so why not play them dry?
Conspiracy theories come across in rapid succession as our astronaut hero, Harry Evans, tries to write the novel of his aborted mission to Venus. Not only that, it is a duplicitous analysis of schizophrenia and slaptick, murder to the head, verbal hijinks played like locker-room chatter as performed by Samuel Beckett's tropes, and lots of sex with astronaut wives. Really, madness has never fitted both so wrong and so well into science fiction. Its abundance in playing the fool is something to applaud.
No wonder why this stirred the pot back in the day, and one can still hear that collective groan from the US authors on top, prim and proper wordsmiths cringing at all the sex, the passages of endless impotency, the shit into space jokes, the latent homosexuality, the carnivorous and inept feeding tube that psychoanalysis shirked alongside the NASA brass, and especially the unreliable narrator (which reminds me to come up with a list of the best books with unreliable narrators). This is all a scalding satire complete with sodomy and Venusian aliens, and thank you to Barry Malzberg for not giving a rat's ass. My first novel of his, and surely not my last of his. Guernica Night and Revelations are knocking at the back door. Malzberg is the foul jester of our beloved genre, surely....more
Despite its unbridled language and colorfully bombastic delivery, NOVA is still a work of pulp, a space-opera reworked for the Age of Aquarius, but atDespite its unbridled language and colorfully bombastic delivery, NOVA is still a work of pulp, a space-opera reworked for the Age of Aquarius, but at its core still, a space-opera stilted by its conventions - yes, it's Moby Dick & Seven Samurai, but instead of a whale at the end of the journey, we have a star going nova, and its starspawn matter, Illyrion, as the treasure -- that shit can power a new galaxy of discovery & industry, so it all comes down to is who gets it first.
NOVA is an amusement, a funhouse ride where Delaney creates a cast of characters that shine off the page in uninhibited technicolor. You have Lorq, the scarred and ginger-haired pirate leader who happens to be a billionaire, and his ragtag crew highlighted by the gypsy novice, Mouse, who masterfully plays a Syrnx, an instrument like Pan's reeds which evokes not only otherworldly sounds, but ancient scents from the old Earth (now called Draco). The Twins, Katin the Novelist, The Winged Beasts of Sebastian, the mystical pink-haired pilot, Tyy. Quite the gang to represent a culture dipping its collective toes in psychedelia and protest. Heck, they inhale a drug called Bliss, and play the Tarot instead of Poker.
Writing it about this now shows how much Delaney achieves in 200 mere pages, and now I think how much more I wanted to like it than I actually did. The naysayer? Perhaps the stunted action sequences diminished the return, the long sequence of two flashbacks side by side and taking up a 1/3rd of the novel, or the conventional villains in Ruby Red and her robotic-armed asshole brother, Prince. Or the action that came off the pages rather unconvincingly at times like a poorly-choreographed cartoon.
Perhaps a 2nd read will give it added dimension, or maybe I'll go straight for DHALGREN, which judging by many reviews is as difficult as FINNEGAN'S WAKE. Read NOVA however. Don't mistake my 3-stars...the novel is indeed entertaining....more
The 2nd volume of the UK New Worlds collective welcomes the familiar names of Aldiss, Ballard, Platt, Disch, and even Barrington Bayley (here under thThe 2nd volume of the UK New Worlds collective welcomes the familiar names of Aldiss, Ballard, Platt, Disch, and even Barrington Bayley (here under the guise of PF Woods). While not as rich and vast as the 1st volume, this sophomore-slump maintains the engine of solid tales from different perspectives, however sometimes, the nouveau of these new writings seem enticing but not thoroughly satisfying. Close to a solid 3.5 stars, I guess, highlighted with a Paul Lehr cover that evokes a giant extraterrestrial whale, and the moon-blue craters of a sentient planet.
Kicking it off with Brian Aldiss in tongue-in-cheek mode. 'Another Little Boy' plays with an idiocracy which exposes the profitable socialites/politicians whom have have no idea what history actually is. No longer armed with libraries, the new-world brass have to come up with a festive idea to celebrate the bombing of Hiroshima. Slightly caustic, and clearly Aldiss is toying with the counterculture as dimwit hedonists on the shallow end of celebrity. Speculative sarcasm.
'Poets of Milgrove, Iowa' shows John Sladek taking a page from the works of Barry Malzberg. Yet again, a disillusioned astronaut comes back to Earth. A hero's welcome, or an acidic 'fuck you' to the American smalltown suckers. More speculative sarcasm.
'Transfinite Choice' is David Masson redeeming himself after his oatmeal entry within the 1st volume. This short story is brimming with great ideas about charting timeflows and moving populations. What is the best way to remedy overpopulation? Of course, time-shift the lower-class masses and send them to a new reality, an alternate reality not yet overcrowded. But with equations abounding in dizzying discourse, Masson cleverly shows that even in the mirror-worlds actually overcrowd themselves. Rebellion is always the solution when you have to sleep with strangers. A fine tale that delivers wonders while retaining a rather spastic manner. Still, very interesting.
'Total Experience Kick.' Charles Platt, the author of what I believe is the best sex-SF-farce ever written, 'The Gas', takes on a counterculture tale of obsession. Two sound engineers work towards creating the ultimate in high-fidelity rapture. As the tale develops, infatuation rears its ugly head, and a concert turns into something that defiles the senses, overloads the sensory, turns the mods into maniacs. A tale that brims in 1967 aesthetics, and not quite mind-blowingly so.
Thomas Disch offers a triptych of shorts about the Titanic, a real estate walk-through within a ruined New York City, and a philosophical discussion between two paranoid strangers. Nothing much to offer here, which is a rarity for Disch, one of my favorite SF writers hands-down. All of these pieces fizzle with a half-seeded idea, 'glimpses' not outright 'tales'; experiments more than actual engagements.
'Singular Quest of Martin Borg' by George Collyn. A perfect example to highlight the debate between info-dumping your backstory, or veiling it with restraint and innuendo.... I can see why purist readers would find this tale annoying, but I found this wide-scope story of revenge and body-swapping to be a highly readable farce. And yes, I'm a sucker for stories about dysfunctional and disillusioned robots, and gaudy cross-gender entropy.
'The Countenance' by Barrington Bayley/P.F. Woods' - solid. Why is it that the luxury liner travels the universe but does not have one window looking out into space?
'The Pleasure Garden of Felipe Sagittarius' - here Michael Moorcock takes on the voice of a standard yank gumshoe amidst the ruins of Berlin. He throws in an alternate universe Hitler, Einstein, Bismarck, and that tongue-in-cheek nudginess is rather trite, and dare I say, annoying. Funny how bland this actually is, especially for Moorcock who seems to be channeling a dime-store hack on purpose, and in the end, a dime-store hack it is. Still, you have a man-eating garden...
'Sisohpromatem' by Kit Reed is a reverse-take on Kafka's 'Metamorphosis'. No surprises here at how the story unfolds but entertaining in its own mild & predictable way.
And perhaps the collection is redeemed by Roger Zelazny's 'For a Breath I Tarry.' Of course we've read tales of computers still functioning in a human-less world, but Zelazny's acerbic and witty delivery is what makes this boldly parable tale play like a sincere parody of dueling mind-machines trying to rebuild the human race. Clean, effective, and with an Adam & Eve allusion that while common, is quite a nice way to end this Less-Than-Challenging entry into SF in the mid-to-late 1960s....more
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