An Open Book

WW Norton,
hardcover,
$24.95
320 pages

ISBN: 0393057569

Lost Pages

I think it’s safe to make one generalization about everyone holding a copy of this magazine at the moment: we all like to read. But what strange combination of forces–nature and nurture–conspire to birth a reader? After all, there are so many more non-readers than bibliophiles, people who, once out of school, never willingly pick up another book in their lifetimes, that the set of circumstances that produce inveterate bookhounds must be rare indeed.

Rare, perhaps, but not so very far outside the boundaries of the easily comprehensible mundane world. All it takes to produce an avid reader out of a bright, impressionable youth is a little alienation; a soupçon of ambition; a smattering of hubris, and, paradoxically, self-doubt; access to books; a lack of competing diversions; and some support from select peers and adult mentors. At least that’s the conclusion we can draw from reading Michael Dirda’s amiable, fascinating memoir, An Open Book (W. W. Norton, hardcover, $24.95, 320 pages, ISBN 0393057569). As most of you know, Dirda is a Pulitzer-Prize-winning critic for The Washington Post, and one of the staunchest supporters of imaginative literature in the mainstream media. He’s chosen now generously to share with us the roots of his lifelong fascination with the printed word, and he’s produced a charming account, both universal and specific, archetypical yet unique.

Born to lower-middle-class, not particularly bookish parents in 1948 in the smallish city of Lorain, Ohio, Dirda quickly fell in love with the printed word. Before you could say "Big Little Books," Dirda was seeking solace and excitement and mind-expansion in the pages of Robert Heinlein, Lord Dunsany, H.P. Lovecraft, and Green Lantern comics, as well in such theoretically beyond-his-age classics as War and Peace and Walden. From elementary school through high school and into Oberlin College, Dirda charts his bittersweet initiation into the immemorial world of literature, bringing his story to an end with his graduation from Oberlin. He excels at capturing the differing mindsets and dreams peculiar to each stage of a book-loving boy’s life, from first-grader to adolescent to young adult.

But although the strong, colorful warp of Dirda’s memoir consists of loving reflections on all the books he’s assimilated, the equally vivid woof of his text is rich with homely observations and anecdotes relating to the wider world of the 1950s and 1960s that he inhabited. The affectionate, subtle portraits of his family members, friends and teachers; the depiction of his hometown, with its steel mills and ethnic neighborhoods; the expansion of his horizons on trips to Mexico and France and during his college years–all these sections of his narrative are sharp and compelling, brilliantly interwoven with the books that informed them. For anyone who lived through these eras, Dirda conjures up instant, keen-edged, unreasoning nostalgia. Yet he also can view these periods in clear-eyed hindsight as historical artifacts whose vanished modes are explicable in retrospect by analysis and logic.

Dirda’s tone in this memoir is self-effacing, wry, humorous, poignant, appreciative, tinged with small regrets that are outweighed by gratitude and pleasure for the life he’s lived. These emotions are conveyed in a prose that is limpid, assured, colorful and startling. Like some Nabokov of the Midwest, Dirda frames his tales with utmost art, producing a languorous, satisfying narrative that dips and weaves gracefully from days of routine pleasures to moments of crisis and existential growth. Sensual and full of acute sensory details, Dirda’s tale recreates his vanished past in full panoply.

When in his early years at Oberlin Dirda experienced a moment of despair, his father advised him thusly: "‘You know how to work, right? Just work harder than anybody else. If you do that, everything will turn out fine.’"

It’s advice that Dirda took to heart, and which has resulted in his large accomplishments to date. But adding the elements of love and dedication was not something his father recommended–that instinct comes from Dirda himself.

The Frank Book

Fantagraphics,
hardcover,
$39.95
351 pages

ISBN: 1560975342

Graphic Marvels

Orbiter

Vertigo/DC Comics,
hardcover,
$24.95
100 pages

ISBN: 1401200567

Barnum! In the Secret Service to the USA

DC/Vertigo,
hardcover,
$29.95
128 pages

ISBN: 1401200729

Zinedom

Let's All Kill Constance

William Murrow,
hardcover,
$23.95
210 pages

ISBN:0060515848

Inconstant Constance

At age eighty-three, with a big new career-capping retrospective volume just out–Bradbury Stories: 100 of Bradbury’s Most Celebrated Tales–Ray Bradbury might be forgiven for resting on his laurels. He’s worked hard and long and to great effect, giving pleasure to millions. But such is not his way. For a man to whom writing is not work but sheer enjoyable confirmation of his sacred, secular existence, producing yet another book this very same year is not a chore but rather a joyous affirmation of life. And so we encounter Let’s All Kill Constance (William Morrow, hardcover, $23.95, 210 pages, ISBN 0-06-051584-8). The novel is being marketed as a mystery, which it is. But of course, being a Bradbury book, it’s nonetheless utterly fantasticated in the unique Bradbury manner, and will appeal to anyone who has enjoyed Bradbury’s many tales in the genre.

An unnamed writer sits at home one "dark and stormy night" in the year 1960. (We will later find this man identified with Bradbury himself, as a fellow who "writes people on Mars" and who speculates about composing a novel where the hero smells like kerosene and burns books for a living.) There’s a wild inrush of storm, accompanied by a woman: the faded yet still potent film star Constance Rattigan. She clutches two mysterious books sent to her, books which seem to indicate a murder plot to slay all her old friends, a plot culminating in Constance’s own death. She enlists the writerly hero’s aid, staying with him that night and disappearing in the morning. Our protagonist in turn appeals to a detective friend named Crumley (certainly an homage to the mystery writer James Crumley). Together the men begin ransacking Constance’s past for clues.

The track down her first husband, a recluse in a junk-filled house. A fortune-teller named Queen Califia was Constance’s spiritual advisor. They meet Constance’s brother, a priest. An old man in a disused projection booth at Grauman’s Chinese Theater appears to be her father. Two ancient actors knew Constance at the start of her career. Into the case as helpers come Henry, a blind black man, and Fritz Wong, a film director. Clues begin to cohere. It appears that Constance is not the intended victim, but rather the perpetrator of the series of seeming murders. And the explanations for her mad assault on her past have tangled psychosexual roots.

Bradbury spins the plot along in a madcap way, with lots of action, producing a fizzy, frothy, sprightly confection of a book reminiscent of a Thorne Smith novel. Chapters and sentences are short but poetically striking. The core tropes of Bradbury’s career–the glamour of films, the eeriness of death and the afterlife, the creative compulsions of the artist–all pinwheel around the action like fireworks. Our hero is the eternal child-man, who will never die–or at least who feels that way in his heart. Yet he is not immune to mortality, recognizing that all good things come to an end. But rather than instill bitterness in him, such a recognition merely makes him savor life the more. His willingness to help Constance despite the warnings of his friends marks him as a kind of savior figure who leaves no soul behind.

Zesty, inventive, full of the trademark lifeshouts for which Bradbury is beloved, this novel rings interesting changes on the notion of the self-made person, showing that preceding every bright resurrection necessarily comes a messy death.

 

The Labyrinth Key

Catastrophe in the year Zero

Howard Hendrix’s previous four novels–Lightpaths (1997); Standing Wave (1998); Better Angels (1999); and Empty Cities of the Full Moon (2001)–all exhibited an admirable and remarkable playfulness, an engagement with abstruse philosophical and metaphysical conundrums, embodied in likable characters and recomplicated plots. Each book has been a little more assured and smooth than the previous, and the publication of his fifth novel continues that trend.

Had Neal Stephenson not already used the neologism Cryptonomicon for his own 1999 novel, that title would have fitted perfectly The Labyrinth Key (Del Rey, trade paperback, $13.95, 320 pages, ISBN 0-345-45596-7), a book that seeks to erase the distinction between "theology and technology," a centuries-old split that in Hendrix’s view has tainted our civilization in a nearly fatal manner. (This theme recalls the mystical engine of John Crowley’s ongoing Aegypt quartet, begun in 1987.) Using cryptography as his main leitmotif and tossing in resonant material from mythology, quantum physics, and a dozen other disciplines, Hendrix fashions a book that ignites all the intellectual depth charges of a Robert Anton Wilson novel while simultaneously functioning on its surface level as a satisfyingly convoluted spy thriller.

Jaron Kowk is a man with a seemingly straightforward mission: to help America’s National Security Agency beat the Chinese in the "quantum crypto race." But Jaron has gotten sidetracked in the labyrinth of history, running the threads of his researches deeper and deeper into the numinous alchemical past. Eventually, the fruits of his off-kilter hypotheses trigger his mysterious disappearance. But before he vanishes he broadcasts into the web a virtuality episode containing numerous clues to his findings.

Ben Cho is the man assigned by the NSA to pick up the trail of Jaron’s work. Interacting with Jaron’s widow, Cherise; with a Hong Kong detective named Marilyn Lu; with the Deputy Director of the NSA, James Brescoll; and with a handful of other oddball characters, some gonzo, some deadly, Ben will soon discover that his bond with Jaron goes deeper than expected. Amid terrorist attacks, ploys, and counterploys, Ben will undergo a strange transformation that allows him to become both the labyrinth of the universe and the key to its unlocking.

Hendrix has a lot of fun setting up a raft of competing conspiracies: besides the NSA, the CIA and the Chinese secret service, there’s the Tetragrammaton, the Kitchener Foundation, an outlaw segment of the web named Cybernesia, and, most mysterious of all, the Instrumentality. Hardcore SF readers will of course recognize this imaginary polity from the stories of "Cordwainer Smith," and Hendrix is deliberately invoking Smith’s creation, with its not-so-hidden guiding hand that grips mankind’s future. With tongue firmly planted in cheek, Hendrix tells us that one "Felix C. Forrest," a spook in the 1940s, was a pivotal figure in the net of conspiracies. Of course, "Felix C. Forrest" was another of Paul Linebarger’s pen-names. With his levels upon levels of watchers, and numerous triple- and double-agents, Hendrix approaches the giddy heights of an Edward Whittemore novel. Add to this such Egan/Stross riffs as "virtualization bombs" and "cryptastrophes," and you have a potent mix indeed.

Hendrix succeeds almost uniformly in blending spy-caper action with mind-boggling discourse quite believably and non-lumpishly. The one glaring flub along these lines I’d cite is the theoretical lecture on topology which Ben Cho delivers while getting a lap dance in a strip club (yes, that’s what I said). But this scene occupies only a minuscule slice of what is otherwise a bang-up hybrid of Kabbalah and terrorists, transcension and realpolitik.

 

Changing Planes

Hardcourt,
hardcover,
$22.00,
246 pages

ISBN: 0151009716

Leaving Without a Jet Plane

Readers of Asimov’s might recall a story by Ursula K. Le Guin that appeared in these pages in 1999. "The Royals of Hegn" concerned itself with a land or plane of reality divorced from ours by subtle distances, where every inhabitant save a handful was a snooty blueblood, and where the few Commoners provided a kind of spectacle we associate with Lady Di. This tale was a pleasant-enough jest, an up-ending of received wisdom. But now, presented in conjunction with its sister stories, it becomes much more, a single colorfully lacquered brick in a more impressive edifice.

Changing Planes (Harcourt, hardcover, $22.00, 246 pages, ISBN 0-15-100971-6) collects sixteen stories, only six of which have seen the light of day previously. The stories are embedded in a narrative frame that offers Le Guin nearly infinite possibilities.

A contemporary woman named Sita Dulip, as the nameless first-person narrator tells us, has discovered an interesting fact. By a certain twist of mind, one may unmoor one’s sentience in the peculiar stressful conditions found only in airport waiting rooms. Thus a stalled traveler may cross not only astrally but seemingly corporeally to other universes as a tourist and return in the blink of an eye, whiling away the otherwise-lost lounge time in exotic settings. These voyages are supervised and aided by an Interplanary Agency.

The stories that follow this prelude are records of such expeditions either undertaken by the narrator or learned-of second hand. (Of the narrator we learn little, only that she is "an introvert" and a "coward," preferring the "peaceful . . . dull, ordinary, complicated" universes to the more risk-filled ones. Fetching illustrations by Eric Beddows occasionally portray the narrator as resembling Le Guin herself.) From one strange venue to another we flow, learning of the mysterious, arcane habits and customs and beliefs of the various natives. In one world, seasonal migrations lead to a radically divergent, bivalent lifestyle ("Seasons of the Ansarac"). In another, the very language is enticingly incomprehensible, reflecting perceptual kinks in the aboriginal inhabitants ("The Nna Mmoy Language"). In a third, a feathered race curses those few among it who are born with wings ("The Fliers of Gy").

Some of the stories are sharply plotted; others are diffusely impressionistic; while still others resemble anthropological essays. But in all of them Le Guin’s impressive fecundity of invention and resonance of emotion insure that the reader’s attention never flags. Some of the stories are pointed satires: "Great Joy" catalogs how one plane becomes Disneyfied. Others are enigmatic fables: the purpose of the labyrinthine structure in "The Building" remains forever obscure. And others are allegories of contemporary events: the ethnic cleansing in "Woeful Tales from Mahigul" clearly reflects the Yugoslavian genocide. But in all cases, Le Guin manages to evoke a wonderful otherworldliness, a sense of being allowed to see vistas never before comprehended.

Borges and Swift are mentioned by name in this volume, and of course the mixed strains of fabulism and satire accurately encompass what Le Guin is mostly aiming for. Readers might also be reminded of Jeff VanderMeer’s Ambergris stories insofar as both VanderMeer and Le Guin are attempting to fashion palpably outré worlds in rich detail from the ground up. Occasionally there are Jack Vance moments as well. Consider how this passage from "The Ire of the Veski" might have been plucked from just about any Vance novel:

The Veski are an angry species. Their social life consists largely of arguments, recriminations, quarrels, fights, outbursts of fury, fits of the sulks, brawls, feuds, and impulsive acts of vengeance.

There is no difference in size or strength between the men and women of the Veski. Both sexes supplement their natural strength with weapons, carried at all times. Their mating is often so violent that it causes injury and occasionally death to one or both of the participants.

But the two literary predecessors that kept occurring to me as I bathed in the lulling current of Le Guin’s book were both from men who were famous for endorsing the sheer power of dreams qua dreams. I’m thinking of Lord Dunsany and H.P. Lovecraft. In Dunsany’s "Idle Days on the Yann," and even more powerfully in Lovecraft’s The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath (1955), one gets this same sense of mystical geographies unrolling themselves at your feet, endless disparate regions "beyond the fields we know," which could yet be reached by those lucky enough to learn how to untether themselves from the quotidian.

A Plague of Demons and Other Stories

Bean Books,
Trade Paper,
$15.00
438 pages

ISBN 0743435885

Test to Destruction

A Plague of Demons and Other Stories (Baen Books, trade paper, $15.00, 438 pages, ISBN 0-7434-3588-5) is the fourth in a series of recent Baen reprintings of the work of Keith Laumer. This volume centers around the theme of alien contact and offers a complete novel plus seven other works ranging in length from novella to short-short. Its existence should serve to convert a new generation of readers into Laumerophiles, and to remind us older acolytes of his virtues.

I first became enraptured by Laumer’s work some thirty-five years ago, at the proverbially receptive age of thirteen. It possessed then–and seems to me to possess now–much to recommend it. Laumer’s prose was not flashy–although he could turn out a good sharp simile–but you always recognized its distinctive stamp, a certain distinct voice. His tone was mature, that of an adult who had participated in consequential activities–Laumer had military and diplomatic service under his belt–and who had witnessed some of the world’s cosmopolitan glamor. His dialogue was crisp, and his humor sharp. As for his characters–well, Laumer really only had one: the competent, duty-bound, resourceful man, a lone wolf and even a bit of a rogue if need be. What more iconically attractive figure could there be for the typically nerdy SF reader of thirteen such as I once was? If Heinlein had buffed this figure to a high polish, then Laumer did something like mass-produce him. Laumer’s competent men were Fords to Heinlein’s Cadillacs. They were tougher, more low-rent, less elegant, pitted with hard use. But under their dull hoods lurked 450 horsepower engines.

The lead novel is a prime example of Laumer’s propulsive charms. John Bravais is a kind of super-spy called on by an associate in Algeria to help investigate why soldiers are going missing from the battlefield. What Bravais quickly discovers is a conspiracy by aliens and their human confederates to harvest brains as onboard guidance units for weapons in an interstellar war. After much exciting hounds-and-fox action on Earth, Bravais is himself eventually harvested, waking as a cybernetic tank on a lunar battlefield. Is he daunted? Not a whit! He wins the war for humanity and, when offered a new android body, refuses, choosing to remain a tank to carry the war to the stars.

Now that’s a real man!

All cynical kidding aside, Laumer’s stern, even primitive ethos is a compelling and occasionally touching one. Like Howard’s Conan, Laumer’s heroes live by a clearcut black-and-white code so appealing in this age of muted grays. If you can read without some sniffles "Thunderhead," in which an out-of-shape discarded soldier makes the final sacrifice for his ideals, then I wouldn’t really trust you with, say, something as crucial as pet-sitting my dog. "End as a Hero" features van Vogtian effects and plotting without the same melodrama. "Doorstep" is an O. Henry-style one-note sad joke, while "The Star-Sent Knaves" is more typical of the humorous romps Laumer essayed in his Retief stories and elsewhere. Laumer’s first sale, "Greylorn," about a dedicated starship captain surmounting mutiny and aliens while Earth’s fate hangs in the balance, perfectly represents in embryo all Laumer’s later work. And "Of Death What Dreams" deals with the classic dystopian high-society/low-society divide beloved by a generation of SF writers.

But it’s in a story like "Test to Destruction" that Laumer spins some interesting changes on his core hero. Subjected simultaneously to torture by humans and psychic probing by aliens, the rebel leader Mallory endures grievous pain to emerge a superman–but a flawed superman, a budding tyrant. That Laumer saw this potential flaw in his fabled credo of rugged individualism is testament to the fairness and balance of his vision.

Laumer juggled the standard tropes of the field gracefully without really inventing any breakthrough concepts of his own. Perhaps his one real innovative idea was that of the Bolos, the aforementioned intelligent tanks. But having access to this consensus stock of tried-and-true ideas allowed him to focus on breakneck plotting and suspense. And actually, he employed the stock images with real brio and knowledge and even foresight. Tell me if the opening to Plague–first serialized in 1964–doesn’t sound like pure cyberpunk:

It was ten minutes past high noon when I paid off my helicab, ducked under the air blast from the caged high-speed rotors as they whined back to speed, and looked around the sun-scalded, dust-white, mob-noisy bazaar of the trucial camp-city of Tamboula, Republic of Free Algeria. Merchants’ stalls were a clash of garish fabrics, the pastels of heaped fruit, the glitter of oriental gold thread and beadwork, the glint of polished Japanese lenses and finely machined Swedish chromalloy, the subtle gleam of hand-rubbed wood, the brittle complexity of Hong Kong plastic–islands in the tide of humanity. . . . I made my way through the press, shouted at by hucksters, solicited by whining beggars and tattooed drabs, jostled by the UN Security Police escorting officials of a dozen nations.

Toss in the neck-jack that the hero of "Of Death What Dreams" (1970) needs to download a new skill-set, and you’ve got another godfather of the cyberpunks.

Keith Laumer may have written the same rags-to-riches-through-indomitable-willpower story over and over–but man, what a story that is!